The Above World: Reaching for the Sky in Native American Traditions

Painting by Albert Bierstadt, Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albert_Bierstadt_-_Indian_Canoe.jpg

The Sky World of Native American tradition refers to a parallel celestial universe located in the Sky. It is home to deities such as the Sun, the Moon and Morning Star, but ordinary people can sometimes access it in exceptional and magical circumstances.

Fact or Fiction? The Fate of the Witchfinder General

William Powell Frith: The Witch Trial (1848) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15179244.

here is no name from the period of England’s witch trials more infamous than that of Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled witchfinder who was instrumental in the witch-panic that swept East Anglia in the middle of the 17th century.

Courting the Wild Twin

I first caught the perfume of my wild twin by walking with muddy boots through wet grasses to my scrubby woodland den as a six-year-old. As the trees swirled I caught a scent and started to cry without understanding. I wove a pheasant feather in my hair. I hear it now in the owl court who hoot across the frost grass and moon-touched lawns of my cottage. There’s more than book smarts in that chill delirium. These are not domestic tones, not corralled sounds, but loose as Dartmoor ponies on the hill. They give me ecstasy. Not safety, not contentment, certainly not ease, not peace, but ecstasy. It’s almost painful. Makes me restless.

The Fairy Trees: Blackthorn, Hawthorn and Rowan

Hawthorn Blossom © Lisa Schneidau

White blossom on the trees is one of the delights of springtime, but it masks a deeper magic in three of the most charismatic of British trees: blackthorn, hawthorn and rowan. Storyteller and ecologist Lisa Schneidau has some practical tips on navigating plant folklore, bringing you face to face with the fairy realms and the ways of the Other Folk…..

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