Many years ago, Steve Wilson gave a talk entitled Archaic Witchcraft. One of the things he said was to remember how you imagined witchcraft would be when you were a kid. What thrilled you about the idea? What did you imagine that witches did? And then he suggested creating a Witchcraft to fulfill those childhood dreams. He proposed calling it Archaic Witchcraft. I suppose it could also be called Instinctive Witchcraft.
Nature
Poem: The Earth Child
The Earth Child
by Gerald Gould
Out of the veins of the world comes the blood of me;
The heart that beats in my side is the heart of the sea;
The hills have known me of old, and they do not forget;
Long ago was I friends with the wind; I am friends with it yet.
The hills are grey, they are strange; they breed desire
Of a tune that the feet may march to and not tire;
For always up in the distance the thin roads wind.
And passing out of sight, they pass not out of mind.
I am glad when morning and evening alter the skies;
There speaks no voice of the stars but my voice replies;
When wave on wave all night cries out in its need,
I listen, I understand; my heart takes heed.
Out of the red-brown earth, out of the grey-brown streams.
Came this perilous body, cage of perilous dreams;
To the ends of all waters and lands they are tossed, they are whirled.
For my dreams are one with my body, yea, one with the world.
From The golden book of modern English poetry 1870-1920, selected & arranged by Thomas Caldwell
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Posts that got my attention this week. A reminder that humans are animals and a part of nature; fatphobia; the birth of Witch Lit; the power of stories.
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An absolute Beltane belter from Julian Vayne, and an enticing invitation to meditate differently from Nimue Brown.
Resolutions for Earth Day
On Sunday, I checked my carbon footprint (it was not good) and resolved to go carbon neutral by planting trees.
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Some wonderful articles that I’ve spotted this week:
- Magic: what is it, where does it come from? By Ryan Cronin
- The Goddess Kālī swallows Jordan Peterson whole. By Josh Schrei
- My Grandmother’s Tree by Sīv Watson
- Shattered vessels and scattered sparks by Lorna Smithers
The quest for the authentic self
Many Pagans are on a quest for the authentic Self. This is often visualized as something we already possess; we just have to clear away the accretions caused by so-called civilization. In this model, the true Self can be found by getting in touch with Nature.
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Inspired by Ryan Cronin’s Friday Foraging, I decided to create a roundup of posts that I found interesting, inspiring, or important over the last week.
Photography, embodiment, and memory
It’s a curious thing, but when you’re behind a camera, especially one where you have to put your eye close to the viewfinder to see the field of view, you sometimes forget to really look at things and take them in properly. It starts to feel like the camera will do the remembering for you.
Plants of Mexico
Today we went on a Hidden Mexico tour to El Tuito, taking in a botanical garden, a village, a wood turning workshop, a bakery with an adobe oven, an artists’ cooperative, a graveyard, some ancient petroglyphs, and lunch in a stream.
