I breathe in deeply of the salty air, the cries of gulls fill my ears and I begin to walk.

Do I look hard, I wonder, or try to just relax and let reality wash through me? Taking my cue from the ocean I choose the latter.

Maybe five steps I have taken before I see, standing in the sand and calling to me, a staff of driftwood. The perfect height for me.

Sometimes what you need will come to you.

Heres something I wrote for New Years, a resolution if you like, for which an idea has begun percolating as to how to make it true:

I call myself enchantress-in-training. I am a Devotee of Delight.

I believe in the power of beauty, wonder and joy to heal the world.

I believe that feeding ourselves with delight fills our own cup to overflowing so we can give back to others, so we can heal the world.

I believe in the power of Love – as cliched as it sounds.

I have spent a few years musing on the idea, wandering round it, writing about it. This is why I wrote my Feyhearted books, especially Pixie Kisses.

This year I will find a way to act on this belief in ways that feel concrete.

This is the year that I move from belief to creating change.

Faith is no good without manifestation.

I resolve to manifest enchantment, to manifest more delight in the world, to bring healing through beauty and wonder and magic to those whose lives I touch… wherever I can.

I do not know how this is so, only that it is.

May beauty kiss your life, may magic grace your heart, may delight fill your days, and may you and your world be healed through each moment of bliss that pixie-kisses you.

Light shines from the depths

For so long I ran from water – fearing the depths of the ocean which engulfs, the river which sweeps away, the floods which drown. I knew its power, this water, I turned from it not because I thought it held no power but because I feared it because I knew its power.

Now I come to learn that I hold an Ocean within me. How can you hold an ocean within you and not break?

Trying to keep it contained lead to cracks through which it seeped.

I tried to build a relationship with Water outside of myself. This did not work. What I’ve come to realise is that what I ran from was what I carried within me. You cannot run from what you hold inside.

I feared that it would break me. If I had not begun the process of accepting it… it would have done.

Slowly I feel my way through holding an ocean within my self. Slowly, like the turning of the tides, I come to find the depths within my core, the power and the freedom there. Simply acknowledging that Water is so much a part of Me relaxed something clenched so tightly. Relaxing into my own nature, a source of perhaps my greatest power, allows me to hold it without breaking.

I will not be washed away as long as I remember that I AM the Water.

I have run from the things that hold power for me so often.

What do you run from? Which of those things hold power for you?

This has been a busy season, and yet… I have been saying ‘No’. I have been slowing down with the season. I have been seeking the stillness. Returning to roots; food and fire, hearth and home.

Turning inwards and outwards at the same time. Learning about the Runes, seeking my ancestors, discovering how I have grown.

I spent last weekend with some of my living family, last night with my friends. Between the two, however, it was time to Feast with the Dead.

An elephant's trunk is rough like stone... and its blessing is sticky!

A three-part story of a pilgrimage to The Community of the Many Names of God – Skanda Vale, part 3. Find part 1 here and part 2 here.

It was dark, night had fallen and I thought that Valli the elephant would be asleep for the night.

J, N, P and I walked past the door to Valli’s home, and P told us the story of how she gives blessings for treats as one of the Monks darted past us with a bag of carrots… and opened the door to her home.

“Would you like a Blessing?” He asked us.

I was in awe. She was huge and beautiful and had such presence. How could we say no?

She brushed my hair with her trunk and held it out for the carrot.

“Now that wasn’t a very good blessing Valli,” said the man, “try again”.

She placed the end of her trunk on my head… and SNORTED!

Ew! Covered in Elephant snot!

Queue peals of giggles and wiping with tissues. Valli got her carrot and I had a definite blessing! No-one else got snotted, so I feel honoured, if dubiously.

As we entered the forest to return downhill the sense of the land Spirit/s returned and, again, I was filled with Bliss. I wished the lights were off so we could walk through the forest in the darkness and feel Them more strongly. N turned to ask me how I was doing and, before I could tell them my wish, the lights blinked out leaving the path lit by the Full Moon’s light! Divine!

The curry, made from the food donated to the Temple and blessed in the Puja’s by the Gods, was heavenly too. Very, very spicy. As P says; ‘Religion is delicious.’

Its a fascinating place, Skanda Vale. Multifaith but primarily Hindu in form. Is it right to go and attend the Puja’s if the god-forms are not the ones you connect with most strongly? Is it cultural tourism to go to somewhere like this and participate when we don’t worship Kali at home? Is it ok that I see Her as a form of the Dark mother, who I do worship, and that I enter the Pujas with respect while seeing Kali as part of a larger form? I’m both a hard Polytheist and a believer that all is one. The faces of the Dark mother are an interface for her AND each Dark Mother Goddess is a being in her own right. She may not claim me, but I respect Kali and participating in her Puja’s move me, touch me, effect me in ways I appreciate.

As long as we enter into these relationships with respect and honour, following the rules of the Temple and the Gods and we hold a space in our hearts for these beings, then is it wrong?

Skanda Vale is a special place, deliberately open as a multi-faith space. Believing that all gods are, ultimately, the faces of The Divine. Protecting life where they can, offering connection to those that come with right-mind. In such a place as this to enter with respect and love – Perfect Love and Perfect Trust – is right, even when the Hindu Gods may not be your primary pantheon.

The Dark Mother is present and adored.

A three-part story of a pilgrimage to The Community of the Many Names of God – Skanda Vale, part 2. Part 1 lives here.

We were refused entry. Two of us, J and N, had not observed the obligatory vegetarianism and so knew they’d be watching from the terrace of the temple. But P and I had. As a full moon Puja it was more full than usual and so, there was no room for us!

Things will be as they will be.

The terrace is seperated from the main Temple room only by double doors and a wall with windows. A screen shows Kali throughout the Puja. The doors are open and the terrace is still part of the Temple.

I got as far as the door, the last female at the gates, and was told no.

Interesting.

As we sat and sang and rocked and prayed I let my ego roll the wound around my mind – Rejection! Rejection! it shouted. I waited until it calmed down and breathed through the disappointment. So close…

And then we came to a place where we could share in the place we were, my Ego and I.

Things will be as they will be.

Perhaps it was just as well – I had space to breathe, to move and avoid the pain of siting still for nearly 3 hours. I had space to breathe, to take in what I was able to and not be overwhelmed by the echoes of the burn-out from the pilgrimage I’d made there last. I had space to breathe, and to remember the place I find myself in many rituals – always on the edge.

At the last of Her Pujas I sat in the doorway.

Many many rituals I have ended up on the edge of the circle, holding the space, walking the boundary.

In my chosen career I walk the edges of acceptability – Philosophy does not look kindly upon Faeries.

In my religious traditions I tend to have to find my own way – neither dark nor light but both and neither.

On the edge.

I laughed and cried and sang and rocked and prayed. I smiled at the children who ran round the terrace. I searched for the words in the prayer book to try to understand. I made an offering of my pain and my singing to Her and I asked for her to destroy those blocks that no longer serve me. Those blocks that hold me back. Gladly, like the whirling scythe at harvest time, I felt her dance through me. I gave them to her. We’ll see if I try to claw them back again!

Shivering from the cold kiss of winter I entered the warm temple-room in the space allowed for the pilgrims to present themselves to Kali. I washed myself in her flame, knelt to her and accepted the blessings of sacred ash and colour and food that washed the body of the Goddess.

Time passed faster in the terrace than it had passed for me in the Temple room last time I was there.

Dealing with the disappointment and the cold and the strange experience of finding myself on the edge again was a good thing.

What will be, will be.

I really did not expect what happened when we left the Temple to join the other pilgrims in eating blessed curry…

The land is alive around us...

A three-part story of a pilgrimage to The Community of the Many Names of God – Skanda Vale.

Four of us walked through the darkening forest, a reddening full moon rising over the horizon as raindrops dripped upon our brows.

The trees were full of magic, the Spirit and spirits of the land – I could feel them around us, moving swiftly, watching.

I last stood on this land after an early morning Puja to Her, several years past. I’d stayed at Skanda Vale for two days with a friend and we’d been to every Puja each day. I was burnt out. The lack of sleep, the intensity of devotion-devotion-devotion in a language I did not really understand, the immense amounts of vegetarian curry (very tasty but not my normal diet!). We’d planned to stay a further day. I left that morning and said, even then, that I’d love to go back to visit the land if only I didn’t have to go to the Pujas too.

Last night, as I walked through that forest, I remembered why I fell in love with the land there.

Somewhere so alive my skin tingled and my heart overflowed with joy.

The twilight filtered through the trees and lit the way. I felt blessed to be able to feel the life that flowed through that place, recognising that the work I’ve been doing to open my awareness is not without success. I once thought myself as psychically sensitive as a brick, unable to sense the magic in the world around me. Now I step onto devoted land and almost fall over. Take heart, the things you long for can be developed over time.

I grinned the whole walk up through that beautiful, haunting forest and wondered what the Dark Mother, in the Dark time of the year, under a Dark Full Moon would share with us at the Temple that evening.

Skanda Vale’s site is here… and parts 2 and 3 of the story will be posted soon…

Staring into the Stillness - the dark brings a time for reflection and stillness has often eluded me; this winter I shall seek stillness out. What are you searching for?

Samhain, Halloween, All Saints’…

The turning of the year from light to darkness.

In the midst of the celebrations, the magic, the movement, is a point of stillness. The balance point before everything changes direction.

I don’t do being still very well, the turning began and the still point came and I didn’t understand what was happening. What should I be doing?! I cried. And then I realised; this is the point of balance, the stillness, the moment when all time stands still. And I did the only thing I knew how to do with stillness… I danced with the stillness in painting.

Before this… The ritual I assisted at was preceded by an hour long obstruction instead of the preparation time expected. Finally I stood still in confrontation without that overflowing of the oceans which spill themselves as tears. I surprised myself by remaining calm, drawing on the stillness that resides within.

The year-wheel tipped into motion again and the week following Halloween was filled with sparks, with changes, with moments of magic. Things began again – the darkness rising, the winter coming.

Right through to the Night of Fireworks. It should come as no surprise that the wheel is too huge to change direction in just one night.

And now we are sinking into the darkness. The time when stillness is more important than ever. The time of reflection, while the sun gives us space to breathe and go within, while the land recovers and asks us to rest and heal our bodies.

Can I spend more time in the stillness? Can I say No to some of the activities which present themselves as opportunities? At least for long enough to strengthen and heal. To gather strength for the spring which will follow winter as surely as the cold is filling the land.

Bones are calling. My mind turns to thoughts of the dead, ancestors of blood and spirit. My altar shifted and now reflects the song of the dead whispering on the winds, the deep water, the cauldron of the night.

This winter I will be seeking stillness.

In the chaos of life.

In the dark of night.

In the endless activities and the calm carved from the storm.

Many things still need doing this wintertide and between them I shall seek the stillness. I am learning, slowly, that a time to rest and reflect is as important as a time to act. I can only act well when I come from a place of stillness, from a rested place, a place where I gather my energies. The tools which will help me? Reflection. Meditation. Musing. Breathing.

What will you seek this winter? And how will you seek it out?

I have also been…

Upgrading to a PhD!!!

Completing a short Management Course with a Work Placement at Llanerchaeron (a beautiful georgian house with gardens)

Performing as the hostess in a murder mystery on stage

Making new friends

Building ‘A World Enchanted‘ – the next stage in the Feyhearted Project

Finding my singing voice again

Getting a new job – that is actually local to my home!!!

And getting really clear on my Work – while learning there is no rush…

Everything happens in its own time. I took a risk in July when I decided to leave my job and it paid off. Life is sweet and beautiful and becoming more enchanted everyday.

Survival is a strong driving urge in us… but what about thriving? What about loving your life? I waited until I was desperate to answer those questions, my journal from the first half of this year centers around trying to work out how to survive. I was asking the wrong question. I only found the answer when I asked; how can I be happy?

I weighed up the risk of failure against the certainty of misery and made a choice. I chose enchantment.

I’m very very glad I did.

So… What are you choosing?

When we look in the dark corner of our minds we find spells woven by ourselves and the people around us - our friends are the ones who help us break the spells that hold us back and weave new webs of wonder. Open the box and face it with friends.

Not only did I sing on stage – I pushed for the chance to do so.

I was terrified.

And afterwards… people were supportive. No one laughed at me (though I think I made a few people giggle at my antics), the world didn’t end (though it might have crumbled a little round the edges) and I feel proud of myself.

The reason I could do this when my self-belief was shattered long ago by people I trusted? Dear friends who have helped me rebuild my confidence. And one particular person who faced her own, rather similar demon with me.

When we face demons together, we can conquer them.

When we spend time with people who put us down, the demons grow, even where there weren’t any before.

The people we spend time with are important.

Who in your life binds you with your fears? Who builds your demons up because of their own? And who stands by you, helping you to break the spells that hold you back?

Who in your life helps you to enchant your world for the better?

We enchant ourselves and each other with our words, its up to us to choose which enchantments we’ll accept in our lives, and which we will break.

I will be singing to an audience again… with gratitude to the people in recent years who have helped me break the chains that bound my wings.

Who stands by your side and helps you fly? They’re your true friends, know them well.