The magic of theatre enchants and transforms us… through art we can see the magic abroad in the world as Art makes visible what is otherwise hidden from view!

What is more magical than an act which teaches you about yourself, transforms the way you relate to the world for the better and enchants those that witness it? This Solstice the culmination of months of work occurred… a performance of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” by a community of individuals.

We had folks with years of experience, others who had never been on stage before and then more like myself with some time treading the boards.

This community introduced me to the mask-maker who opened the doors to the studio-cauldron simmering me into a professional artist, new friends, deeper relationships and a kindred faery author-artist. It allowed my partner to take to the stage for the first time and we all saw him blossom under the lights!

It was an experience, not without its challenges. Any pressured environment can lead to fractured friendships and stressed relationships… and this made rehearsals slow-going. But it also gave us the opportunity to overcome the obstacles and work together to create something which had the audience entranced. They joined us for the ride and cheered us when we recovered from our mistakes! Folks left, delighted with having been able to understand a story they expected to be lost by, with smiles on their faces and a touch of magic in their hearts.

We all grew together, cast, crew and audience, enraptured by a tempest under a Summer Solstice Sun. Any act of art can be an act of magic. Transformational, celebrational, world-changing magic.

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What magic did you work this Solstice?

Painting in Progress: The World Tree that stretches through the universe holding the shape of what is, connecting the worlds of living and dead and the never-incarnated divine… How many worlds are there beyond this one? How many have to be seen to be believed?

I remember, when I was about 12, going to a spiritualist church. Mother took me. I was fascinated by the artist who sketched alongside the medium who spoke and who handed out pictures which were recognised by folks in the audience.

Last month I went to see a stage medium with two friends and followed it with a trip to the local spiritualist church. Going as an adult with experience of magic and energy was fascinating – to feel what happened magically as well as to watch the evidence given, down to names, ages, descriptions of bedrooms… educational.

The point of a spiritualist mediumship demonstration is to provide evidence for the audience that their dead are still with them, still there. It attempts to prove to those present that there is life after death. There are other explanations for what happens – perhaps the ‘medium’ is psychic and reads the information from their audience, or perhaps they are a fraud and collect information beforehand somehow… the ability to watch what the energy does, however, showed me that there were spirits being spoken to.

Since then I’ve been reading about Seidr again. It highlights one of the differences in perspective between ‘pagan’ and Christian paths. Where the spiritualist primarily gives evidence, the Seidr Prophet primarily answers questions. They both speak to the spirits, contact the dead, use trance and so on… but the pagan participants are expected to already accept the continuation of life-after-death, the Christain setting does not expect belief before proof.

I wonder why? Perhaps we expect, within paganism, that folk will have sought their own experience already? Perhaps it is more due to the ‘rationalist’ soil in which spiritualism grew up?

Either way, despite my own personal experiences with the dead and despite the possibility of it not being accurate, the evidence given moved me. It has really helped me to solidify my thoughts into beliefs where scepticism still lived.

I wonder; have you sought out evidence for something you’ve believed already… and has it helped?