Follow your Fear

Follow your Fear

So I have embraced this and because I needed a little nudge, when people asked about me and my life I wrote it down.This means I have a new blog. 

My faerytales is a mix of my story and my knowledge about the fae folk. 

It is very personal and makes me feel vulnerable and raw when I write it. It is personal and scary as vulnerability is something I work at.

Yet it felt like it was time. I can not promise you an easy read, though people find humor in my honest voice even in the darkest moments. Must be a British thing!

I did quite well with it this week but as I have gotten sicker (my kidney's are not happy) I have struggled to find the focus I felt I needed to write from.

I have smiled, felt glad, sobbed my eyes out in the process of writing this, yet I had to face it. 

If you just like my "how to" stuff this might not be for you, but my life is a supernatural stew of weirdness, wonderfulness and pain and sorrow.

I hope you will join me. I hope that it might inspire you. Embolden you.

As two very wise friends of mine have said,

"You already know who you are".

I am an imperfect hero. A healer who has known great pain and great joy. I am the witch.

Bright Blessings xxx

As always don't forget to BUY MY BOOK The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice! 

How to build an altar.

How to build an altar.

I have a whole months worth of assignments and such about altars in my book, The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice.

Altars are movable feasts. 

They are not fixed permanent things (that is a shrine) but allow doorway of energy in your home at that point. Building an altar must have a purpose. If you are looking to draw specific traits or an outcome from an altar (For Athena that could be wisdom, hunting for a job or item, single-womanhood, protection during military service).

Then you clean it carefully first with concentrated water, you might smudge it with incense dedicated for the God/dess, spirit or fae. Then a cloth (a clean one, maybe even made, especially for Athena Goddess of weaving for the purpose) cover you surface.
A large candle carved with the name of the God/dess and a dedication might be all that is there. Some flowers (changed daily) and some incense might be all you keep on it while you sit and tend your altar for a little while every day.  

The focus of an altar is to draw you, remind you, re-shape your thinking from a fearful space to a positive one.
The more things you add the more confusing your symbolism might be. Simple and from the heart is far more effective than expensive or elaborate without knowledge. An altar should change as what you need changes. It should be tended as an act of devotion and love. 
You can build an altar for a day, and evening (you need to put your tools somewhere), a couple of days or a couple of weeks. Yet it should not be longer than that.

A shrine.

A shrine is a determinant tended space for your sacred direction and thoughts. Multiple images of the same Deity or spirit can be placed there. It again needs regular up keep but is separate from your magickal working space. It requires tending, regular cleaning and offerings from food and wine, to flowers or other important objects (shells, stones, feathers, bones, jewelry). You may keep objects there but it is not somewhere you "work" at magickally. You might pray, sing, or meditate at your shrine but it is a private act of devotion. It is not an altar.


An altar is a a temporal space. One that can be an art form in the right hands. It is part play, part ritual, part art instillation. It is an elevation from the ordinary. I connection to an aspect of the Divine. It is more important what is missing than what is there. No coffee cup, no items at all that haven't be cleansed, consecrated, and dedicated to the purpose you have set. 
This is the sticking point in my temple and home for a large altar as the only we have is the coffee table and sooner or later someone leaves something that shouldn't be there! Then you have to start all over again! You also have to start again if you find the dog standing on it eating your offerings!

    

I hope that clears up some altar based questions and the like!
Bright Blessings xx
Don't forget to buy my book! You can also visit my shop Lucy Drake & Co for hand made artisan magickal goods. 

Doorways In the Veil

Doorways In the Veil 

There spaces and places, and of course times (times is interesting but for another time) when Veil, the misty membrane that separates a thousand different worlds becomes thin enough to see through, and beings from those place enter our physical plane more easily.
Fae, fey, and faeries are interesting because they do not only dwell on the other side of this Veil. I believe they are pan dimensional, living and being on more than one page of the book of the world. Fae, belong and live here too. Different fae, or fey, have different preferences to how they come and go, and dwell in this world. How they travel is different for them too.
I once asked my Brownie why he didn't glow and sparkle like faery pictures and his slightly grumpy reply was the he "didn't have to punch holes from one place to another". So that light, some orbs and the sparkling faery image is the light from somewhere else. He didn't sparkle because "I make my own doors".
He seemed to view the typical bewinged faery as uncivilized and crude for how they punctured the Veil.
When I pressed him, he said " Learning too much isn't learning right." Now I "think" I get the gist of what he meant, which was a combination of "Oops said too much." and "learning too much is like trying to carry too much water on a journey, you should pick up enough as you go along, a bottle at a time. Then drink it."
I could be wrong. Fae are trixy.
Doorways. Right. So some fae make doorways and others punch holes, some use old doorways.
A ritual circle is both a bubble or sphere of energy that keeps things out and a doorway to allow fae and spirits in.
Dependent on how or if you call the quarters you may already be calling or creating doorways for elemental fae through into your space. This is why I never summon, I call or evoke but I would hardly be kindly to someone who dragged me somewhere without my consent!
I am also generous in my libations and feed my house fae and visitors well.
It's a Celtic thing. When a guest leaves without eating or drinking I feel awful! Hospitality is important. I have been known to cook full meals from scratch for those who are hungry.
There are natural (and created) doorways around us all the time. Empty arches, deep pools and lakes, mirrors and I have even seen blank T.V screens used too.
Opening a doorway, or inviting a fae to use it is one thing. Yet closing a doorway is important too. That is why you release, give leave or even banish spirits from you circle before you release that too.
Deosil evokes and draw, widdershins releases and repels.

If you are making a faery door be very clear who you do and do not want coming through it. The other way would be to put a Guardian on the doorway, either to warn or repel unwanted guests.

Singing or speaking this aloud and knocking along the doorway with something wooden, or made of stone.

Wee-folk, green-folk, tree-folk true
Gyre-Carling, Great Faery Queen,
I give protection to this door to you.

Forest-folk, water-kin, hill-men sound
Himself of the many names, Lord on Hoof
I dedicate this door as holy ground.

Blue flowers and ferns or oak leaves in a bundle wrapped in blue and white ribbon should be dipped into dew, or spring water and sprinkled around the doorway three times.
Next paint or pour honey (or mead) in a circle deosil around the doorway. Shells, acorns and even bones can be hung on ribbon and hung from the up right posts. White and blue are best.
Take your wand (no metal except silver) and stand before it and starting at the top center working your way in a deosil circle three times saying or singing:

Come my friends, my guests, the door is open!
Use it wisely, use it well.
Come my friends, my good neighbours!
Use it gently, use it well.
The door is open.
The door is open.

Leave a plate at each side of the doorway with bread and something alcoholic, be it beer, wine or whiskey.
Feed them at least weekly, especially when the Veil is thin, like Beltane, Litha and the like.

Bright Blessings xxx

If you would like to open yourself to this world and work buy my book The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice.

Blood on Fire

Blood on Fire

In a fire, not last night but the night before I burned my dark moon blood. The sawdust it was collected in and onto was in some places vivid rowan red, in some a dark clay brown and in some the colour of raw liver. 

I have found using my MoonCup that pouring away what is collected stains my loo, and feels wrong. So I devised a saw dust bin in the bathroom. It is quite clean and has no smell, save for the sawdust I place onto of each deposit. 

Both TK and Witchling were there, Witchling being more curious than TK, but I was more preoccupied with the fire.

That sacred vital force, that consumed the paper, sawdust and my blood. In the long twilight I watched as the sawdust became a single coal, a mountain of fire.

My dreams and visions have had much fire in them of late. Bombs and earthquakes, violence. Not the peaceful rest I would like. Something is coming, not for me. Something big. 

Still I let it burn down and when almost done I scattered the hot ashes over my vegetable patch. Who knows it might even keep the cats away!

I gave of myself to the Fire and the Earth, those cleansing healing sacred forces.

I spent quite a bit of time teaching Craft, and talking about The Art of COnstant Cleansing with Witchling yesterday. She even wrote affirmations. Then into the next healing element, water. She is so smart and gets things so easily it makes my heart spin sometimes!

I have new blog. I will still keep writing here of course.

My life does some times feel like a faerytale after all! Not the ones you might expect but the old kind. Darker with surprising twists and strange characters, and unexpected heroes.

Buy my book The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice on Amazon. 

You could visit our shop on Etsy too Lucy Drake & Co.

Bright Blessings xxx

A little Knowledge

A Little Knowledge

is a dangerous thing.

Well done internet. Let me give you the slow clap today. Now for the most part the tweenage "experts" on my hard studied Craft are in the Facebook groups I don't use rather than on g+ or grown-up+ as I call it.

Until now (add dramatic echo). In a few decent communities I have been added to I have run foul of..."badly bearded boy".  An expert and general know-it-all who can't keep hair on his top lip. He uses (of course) a Goddess image as his avatar* (a different rant Lucy pick and choose*). Quite naturally he tells people he is a teacher of Craft (eye twitch) and an expert on magick (I don't even).

Now my darling Witchling is still but a babe, all be it she is nearly as tall as I am now. Always wise beyond her years and keen of deep understanding I could see IF she want to give out advice or knowledge (she doesn't seem that keen right now) I imagine it would be sound and come from practice and her book learning.

I was myself after all once a "teen-witch". So the age thing is really my problem. 

My problem is that someone after maybe reading some books (most likely not) and having read some generic bits and pieces now feels they have the right and expertise to state opinion as fact.

Now I am well aware I need to hold my tongue in retrograde, especially as the dark moon and all Her gifts is so close, but I must confess, no beg...please stop.

You have no idea how magick works. No idea the damage you will cause repeating common mistakes at best or making it up at worst.

I have been a full time witch for 18 years. Day in. Day out. I study constantly. Read prolifically, and I know, I really know I don't know everything. I know a lot about a lot of different things. I also do know experts in many fields, some of which I have been luck enough to study with.

From Welsh Mythology to micro mycology, from healing with crystals to Hellenistic music. 

All of that is debased by some greasy adolescent declaring absolute truth and it makes me feel a little ill.   

Granted I am taking personally being mansplained by a child but that could be the Dark Moon talking.

I don't mind a clever articulate debate on practices, ideas, or concepts. I don't think I know everything, in fact I know I don't. I know a lot. I am also a hard working and dedicated teacher of my Craft. My worth is not diminished by someone passing off movies and google searches as knowledge but it is dangerous. Not to me. Or to Witchling. For folks who think this person IS an expert. For someone essentially faking what I am, what I have worked my whole life to be.

Opening doorways in the world, in the Veil and in themselves they might not be ready for, might bring unwanted or unpleasant things through, and certainly can not close.

This can do real damage to the person, as well as the Craft as a whole. What we do isn't scary or dark but if you go and poke a hornets nest you will get stung. If you swim in waters with crocodiles you could eat eaten.

Do not wander in the dark, dark woods, it is beautiful, powerful and full of wisdom, but if you get lost, or hurt you need someone who knows what they are doing with you.

Bright Blessings

Magickal Dogma

Magickal Dogma

"You must only do it my way."

Whether it is Redes or Runes, Witch pyramids or (Goddess save me) the Wiccan 10 commandments, dogma is not new to the Craft, and I detest it.

I think it bothers me for many reasons. I think that is why I wrote my book The Key, because my "way" is predominately concerned with people deeply, soulfully and spiritually connecting with their own magick and who they are.

The first thing that happens when people start to do most magickal systems is that they get read the Riot Act. Don't do this, don't do that; do it my way. In fact most new students get treated like crap to "test their resolve" on the path. While I do see  the validity in making sure someone who is a huge investment of time, energy and magick really want to be there, it gets rid of lots of sensitive folks who are beautiful magickal creatures but do not tolerate that energy well.

The next thing they do is bombard you with "things" you "need".  Now I like shiny things as much as the next person, but they do not make a witch. Unfortunately most folks get stuck at this stage, either because they get caught up in the theater, or drama and baubles. As someone whose greatest magciks often came from empty white feed buckets and a good stick this preoccupation this expensive and often point toys barely used makes me roll my eyes.

When I teach the first thing I do is give my student a box. I tell them to put all their "witchy" stuff into the box. After all "any fool could be a witch with a runic dagger, a real witch can use an apple corer".

What I mean is, is you do not first find the magick within you, you will never find it without. When you open that space inside yourself, open that doorway, the light from the otherside spills from you.

That is the gift I want to give people. 

My "system" focuses first on Mind. On thinking, thoughts, mindfulness. Not only in daily practice (which is so important, for so many reasons) but in clearing away the negative draining thoughts, the ones that eat away at our energy and magick. I get folks to bring magick into their thinking in their daily lives, from affirmations, meditations and the like. To allow magick INTO their lives. Magick is like blood or air, it is always present but often ignored.

I used little keys, or fragments of many kinds of meditation as building blocks what I wove around sound pagan practice. Like my water meditation.

After Mind, comes Body. Witchcraft and pagan ways are not merely based in the Mind but in the belly, the hands, the feet. They are based on doing. In loving yourself. In the dancing. I have seen folks get stuck here too. They like the "in your head magick". They will give you all kinds of reasons but mostly it comes from left over Patriarchal thinking of Mind/Spirit = good. Body = bad. However it comes, learning to do magick comfortably in your own skin and enjoy it is important. It does take time, care and of course, practice too. 

Spirit is the last part. I teach what I know of the Unseen worlds through The Veil and how gently awaken your spirit to see, feel, and connect with these forces. 

Each step is joyful. Each breath we let go of those things that trap our thoughts in worries, negativeness and external forces. Each time we drink deeply from Peace and learn to trust and Surrender to what is sacred to ourselves that Doorway Opens a little more and the whole world becomes brighter. Each guided meditation, each pathworking, we gain new insight and awareness.

When they are done, they can tread any path they like. Learn any for of Craft, follow any Path. By that time I will have stripped away enough "you should's" and "you must's" for them to laugh and do it their way.  Who knows they might even do the next book too!

Bright Blessings xxx

Buy my book The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice on Amazon.

Supernatural Nature.

Supernatural Nature.

Do I worship nature, or do I worship something underneath nature, something Divine and deeper?
Is my weather magick, my ability to hear earthquakes before they happen, or my ability to heal plants, animals and people something "supernatural"? Or worse something "fake" or some kind of madness?
If this world is made up of simply the bones of which most people can see, touch and explain (through some sciences) and nothing else then I must either be worshiping dirt, or the idea of Sacred Earth. Yet they are not separate they are part of the same world of Divine Beingness.
I maintain that there is no supernatural, just a nature that most folks can not see or tap into. A ghost to me is no more inherently "supernatural" than water becoming clouds. It is a natural process.
As to the awareness of the world, like trees for example in my long history of being taught and working with them, trees like to listen, they also like to be heard. An oak tree might seem to someone who is ignorant or blind to the energies and spirits of the world to be unmoved by chants or by violent music, this is scientifically and spiritually not true. The grand old oak is alive and has more senses, different senses than the mundane human ones. They communicate, whispers to each other help each other grow, or not. Their whispers are silent to most folks but they are real and they are there. Trees give off gases, release nutrients and chemicals in their roots. This is tree language. While in spirit they make an effort to speak through thoughts and words.
It is arrogance and saddening folly to believe you know everything about everything.
The whole world and all the worlds within it are, for me like a book. Some people can see only the front cover. Some only a single page. For me I can leaf through pages, not all of them, not the whole book, but enough, enough to see and read that there is more. More than I could ever read but I try.
To say one page or another is the whole is absurd as say the cover is the whole. It is One book (or who knows) with different pages, chapters, languages, stories and voices.
Every thing from ants to whales, mer-folk and selkie, angels and cosmic snakes are natural. Some are just on other pages than most people can read these days. My magick is to draw words from one place in the book to the page I am on. Sometimes those beasts in the margins of gold and blue help me. They want to be seen, they want to do.
Magick has never been weird or "supernatural" to me. All of my thoughts, feelings and actions have power in them. People can and do have a huge impact in the natural world, mostly in the negative. I can not balance out all of humanity but I do what I can.
It helps to be able feel the pain of a tree, or even of a place. Healing that tree, that river, that home helps. This Patriarchal dichotomy of thinking of supernatral/natural, light/dark, good/evil, is not only wrong but harmful. For things that are not "natural" or"light" must therefore be "supernatural" and "dark". This allows the punishing, removal, repression and pollution of things that do not sit in the category. Which is harmful to the whole.

If there is need for rain, you could prayer for it. You could do magick. Reach out with your senses and song and draw the clouds and moisture, the ghosts of water to where you are. Or you can understand why the clouds and weather are different than they need to be. You can hear the ground crying out in pain. The rivers choking and dying. You can believe that this place of magick and wonder and beauty is a huge metaphor for God/ddess or you can see it IS Divine. It is Holy. It is a book of songs or poems to forces we are still ignorant of as an ant is to you.
My Goddess is not "dark" and "evil" because your belief is "light" and "good". My Gods and Goddesses are the oceans, the rivers and the sky. The fire in the hearth and the stars. They are the stars. Ancients, born, living ages and dying in explosions of light.
Some people have asked me why the dead, the fae and the spirits and God/dess speak to me.
I listen. I respect and do not have to believe, because in the same way as I believe in butterflies, I've seen them. Light as air, fragile but beautiful. Connected and different.

  Bright Blessings xxx

As always you can buy my book The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice here and visit out shop that makes handmade artisan magickal goods Lucy Drake & Co on Etsy.

Doing the Impossible

People who do 

IMPOSSIBLE 

things have doubts and bad days. 

They just keep going 

ANY WAY.

I watched an film last night and had my socks blown off. I have seen good and bad films a plenty but this story made embrace the above. Sometimes as someone who thinks mindfully and feels deeply sometimes my "mother's" negative voice creeps in and I feel overwhelmed and ashamed that I think and feel that I want to give up, lie down and cry. Yet I see now that every one, every single person feels like that sometimes. The difference is that some people stay there awash with grief and doubt. What makes me strong is not that I don't feel these things or think these thoughts but that I stop, and I get up. I get up and care for those that need it, keep my own mental training tight, embrace the good and beauty.

There are times when you absolutely need to sit down, rest, cry. 

Morn for those who are lost, even, especially if it ourselves. 

You will get lost. 

You will meet friends in unlikely places. 

You are going to puzzle, confuse, piss off people along the way. 

You may lose those you love. 

You might find love. 

There will be ghosts and shadows, mirages in the heat of day. 

Your fears made manifest.

Just get up. 

Get up and look after those who need you. 

Get up and keep going. 

Not for anyone else. 

For you. 

It doesn't matter how old you are.

 Or how young. 

It doesn't matter what prejudice there is.

Keep going.

Get up. 

You can make it.

You can do it.

You can reach your dream.

 Buy my book The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice

visit out shop on etsy Lucy Drake & Co.

Bright Blessings xxx

(The film was Tracks by the way, I am so buying the book).

Incense

 Incense

 

Burnt Offerings

So I figured I'd let you know what I have been up to lately. I have been making incense for the shop (Lucy Drake & Co) for the most part.

Incense for your rituals and rites. This hand ground, cauldron blended incense is made with the finest herbs, resins, woods and essential oils. Coven charged with crystals like Preseli Blue stone. I mix a blend using the herbs and oils most potent to weave your magick while also trying to build a scent landscape that is balanced and pleasing (some herbs can smell pretty noxious without blending correctly). Whether you are a novice or a High Priestess all my incense is lovingly and magickally created to make the most of the natural magicks and awaken the magick in your work.

Peace Incense
Made to gently waft peaceful relaxing energy around you and your space. Herbs and resins and essential oils of the highest quality go into this gentle sweet fragrance. Nothing dark, or clashing, with lavender and red clover as well as some sacred copal lemony notes.
Blissful. Wistful. Peaceful

Thankfulness
When you need to count your blessings, or if you have something to be grateful for this incense is uplifting, gladening and cheering. Whether you are using it during meditation, just need to pull your heart out of a funk, or are celebrating this mix of flowers, uplifting herbs like lemonbalm as well as happy and depression busting essential oils and gentle sweet resin notes will make you thankfull!

Forest Lord
Masculine, dramatic but soothing. Kick up your heels or quitely meditate it's deep roots, woody notes, smokey depths and strength. Oak and Holy as well as wood land herbs, resins and essentials oils wrap their coils around you, while the sweet musky scent might hush you, or make you want to frolick in woodland glens.
*contains synthetic musk as we beleive animal glands belong to animals

Godess Hecate
Dark, powerful sweet and bitter and unlike any incense you have used before. As befitting the Queen of Witches it has sweet flowers, sensual resins and a bitter note of her sacred herbs. Calling her presence with this incense twisting spirals in the air will transform your worship or rituals with light, power and deep deep magick.

Sweet Blessings
With wild heathers, and powerful blessing herbs this simple blend is great in your weekly, or monthy ritual work. Good at cleansing, clearing and putting a space to rights. Sweet enough not to offend those who do not like their incense bitter (like sage can be sometimes) but want to clean house, or bless any new beginning. With sandalwood and essential oils a plenty this mix is great for those who are new to this kind of incense.

Banish the Dark
Had a crap relative come to visit or stay? Troubled or unpleasant energy in your home, buisness or temple? Where you have restless spirits, figgety fae, psychic ick, or people pollution this is the stuff you need. It has all the indredients to get rid of everything, but then of course you have to make sure not to draw it back! From sages a plenty to rowan and resins and oils this will smoke out anything. Best used room by room and then opening all the windows and doors.

 Don't forget to buy my amazing book The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice!

Bright Blessings xxx

Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance is about sight, seeing things.

This blog came about from reading other psychics experience of the world. I thought I would share my experience as best as I can. So what do I see? Well sometimes I don't see anything. Sometimes there is smoke and static. Sometimes with no effort or desire I see people (dead or otherwise) or spirits, the way you would see your life. So real and solid and in full colour they can make me jump or I can think someone is physically in a room or space with me. Sometimes there is this overlay over a place, like anime grey drawings of people, animals, or events (old hautings often look that way).

When I am speaking to a spirit some times I hear them (Clairaudience), just as if they we standing next to me and I have to translate (if they are mad or crude I tend not to just repeat everything because they are not always tactful or kind).

I do give the gist of what is being said and the exactness of phrases that are repeated. Sometimes though speaking is easy sometimes there is static and noise. Like trying to hear someone in a crowded bar. 

Mostly though I get visions, sometimes snap shots of rooms, or gifts of a person, event, or place. Sometimes it is their old life they are showing me. 

She is stood in a kitchen with blue worktops baking in a white apron with tiny red flowers on it, there is a milk bottle covered in flour on the table. The lady has blue eyes, is slim but older, 50's or 60's with thick blonde grey hair.

Sometimes the visions change quickly coming thick and fast. Sometimes they get stuck on one image, it might be I haven't said the right thing yet. Sometimes it feels like I am there. I can smell warm milk and strawberry jam.

Sometimes I get more images like films in my mind. Or words. Sometimes that is all I get. If I have an emotional client that can be hard. They are hurting and confused and the person on the otherside is showing me them happily baking and sneaking a cigarette out of a kitchen window or door that is split like a stable door. What they dead want to say and what the living want to hear are often at odds with one another.

Likewise the things important to living people are not the same as for the dead. The living want to know what do about sick relatives, or money problems, where as the dead seem to care about their gardens, pets and the making sure the people intended to get their heirlooms actually get them. 

The visions I see that are so clear tend to stay with me a long time. 

I don't just get them when I read either, which can be fun (re-read fun as traumatic and agony) especially when shopping or doing something else.

The overlay of anime whispiness in this world is replaced when I close my eyes and focus with a clear more coloured vision. My guides, pathworkings and dreams are in this technicolor plain.

Scenes from the past replay themselves, sometimes over and over. The roaring noise of a battle field can rush around me in the most tranquil places catching me by surprise. 

Then I have this thing where I feel the pain (empathic abilities) the joy, soul crushing loneliness, terror, physical pain from both the living and the dead. 

As a child my obnoxious baby sister if she would get caught and punished (I normally took the hit on that one) and she got smacked (spanked) I would wail and sob because I felt every blow. 

Over the years I have come up with strategies and wardings, protections and self healing. 

Some people think that these gifts are a miracle and maybe they are right, but they have often felt much like a curse at times too.

I have had a great many visions of deaths and murders I have done nothing about except pray. I don't want to get arrested or get attention as someone chasing that kind of fame. I see them from all over the world too. 

Sometimes I can be somewhere like a train station and get bumped by someone and the overlay flashes me a warning of MURDERER. Then I spend my journey agonizing if I should have done anything, if I could do anything about it. It is exhausting.

It is like the rest of the world has thick clothes and I am naked and barefoot. I feel everything more keenly, every gust of wind, every footstep, every touch. There is a Veil of differing thickness that most everyone else sees through that I do not. I spend I lot of time keeping everyone else out.

TK is my boon. He has this field of silence around him, I can't even see him enter a room! If I want to find him in a crowd I look for the blank spot moving! When he holds me in his arms there is just him and me. Nothing else in the whole Multiverse.

I enjoy reading for people. However I am not someone who enjoys working "Tarot Parties". What I do and see is not conducive to a party atmosphere. I was offered a well paid job working doing Hen party readings and I turned it down. I just didn't feel I could tell what I honestly, compassionately saw in that environment.
I read a lot of other readers, for a while I went around the country, skyped all over the world, saying what I saw. When I couldn't travel (when I got really sick) that part of my life faded. 

Why not buy my excellent book The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice? It is very very good! (5 star reviews from the 1st and 2nd edition). Or visit our shop Lucy Drake & Co.

Until next time

Bright Blessings xxx 

The Second Key

The Second Key

Since coming home from Hastings (when not slaving over incense) I have been busy working on the next book. It is still rough right now but it is taking shape in interesting and unexpected ways.

Here is a sneak peek

"

Additional Assignment.

What symbols of water, cups and vessels are around you and how to you interact with them? What emotional or spiritual connections do you have with this element? What challenges you about these symbols? Aim for about 1000 words.

Weekly culmination.

So how was your week? How did you feel from drinking a little extra water? How did your mood alter, or not. There are no right and wrong answers. Is this week easier or more challenging than the fire weeks? Is there a different quality to the experience? How is this whole experience going?

My body is a vessel of the sacred."

The idea is day by day, and week by week, you build up practices that inspire, stretch and reveal truths about yourself, magick and the world. It was based loosely with the idea of an initiation onto a path at the end, but the whole process feels transformative. Each week has an affirmation that works with or opens the student to new ideas wit the work.

So far I have 18 weeks worth of work, though I know I have much more to add.My difficulty right now is organizing them into something that flows.

So this is where my brain is right now!

Don't forget to like, share and comment on here and buy the book The Key Opening the Doorway to Magickal Practice and visit my shop Lucy Drake & Co!

Bright Blessings xxx

Voting

Voting

After picking up some supplies both TK and I went to vote.

Last time around I felt I needed to vote tactically to stop some scarier member of the population getting more power. I got a Government that has cause so much harm and death to so many people (especially disabled and poor people). (Early estimates it could be 100,000 people have died as a direct result of sanctions and delays in getting money to the most needy). This time I voted with my spirit and heart.

I have no idea if I made a difference, but it felt important to do, and to show Witchling too. Voting is a powerful force for change, and all rights have had to been hard fought for, from the Chartists to Suffragettes, to Aneurian Bevan. These people didn't knock politely, they paid in blood for the rights that this Government and many others would like to tell you are not really yours, or unimportant.

While I am Welsh and from a small mining community I can not just blanket vote for the Labour Party. Tony "War Criminal" Blair destroyed my faith in that party, breaking all promises, eroding everything the party stood for, and demolishing the right to education in this country.

Ed Milliband is alright, I suppose. He might be a better at running the place than many others. I do want someone who can actually get the job done rather than just break the country into bits to sell to my friends and family like Cameron.

If I was voting tactically I might vote Labour. Yet this time hand on heart I went Green. 

Not only because they seem to care. Not only because they have a lot of women in the party (noticeable by their absence in the others). They seem to offer hope instead of fear. Hope that we can help the world be a better, fair place.

Hope that things can be better if we work together.

Hope.

If you can, and you live somewhere you get a vote, use it. Have hope.

Bright Blessings xxx

Difficult Journey's and Being of the Mist

Difficult Journey's and Being of the Mist

After an easy trip down there I spent this weekend at a Jack-in-the-Green festival in Hastings. I didn't see a lot of things, sometimes because I was napping to catch up on sleep, or because my host thought it was pointless or rubbish.
Yet the three most "magickal" events for me this weekend were not as you might imagine (and no it wasn't mussels mariniere but it could have been).
I was not overwhelmed by the sense of community and connectedness, far from it. Mostly people were people and other than TK, Witchling and MB (our host) I didn't feel connected to the people at all.
No that morning when the light crept up over the East Hill I felt no compulsion to "join in" even though I did.
I was aware that what I wanted was a fire (not only because on a coastal hilltop it is a bit nippy before dawn) and silence. Maybe not silence like a church, or even of meditation, but to listen to the wind and to the birds waking (it has been a long time since I heard dawn chorus).

I had set my alarm for 3 a.m, knowing I would need sometime to ease myself into awakeness and drink enough tea to be considered awake. By 4 a.m. we were up and dressed and by 4.30 a.m. we were in a taxi on the way to the hill. Unsure of who or how, or what was happening we followed the folks dressed in morris whites and bells. It was still dark at that point, the silver had not began to creep over the sea. We were few at that point too.

Slowly more people arrived and it a silver took the sea making everything like ghostly photographs. The many morris dancers and players began. It was very strange. I was torn between watching these people (some of whom were channeling a lot of energy and some who were not) and the increasing dawn light. More people arrived (some with dogs that growled and snapped at the other dogs, really, people? Really?) and as the light began to full appear the mood was excited and jubilant.

The orbs on the picture were not bugs (it was too cold and too windy) and we saw none while we were there. So it seems like the fae folk did join in with some of the dancing.
The more light there was the more joyful the mood and the dancing seemed to be.

I have not watched a sunrise for a long time. It was intoxicating. Uplifting. I used to watch one every day as a child. Funny the things we grow in and out of. 

In the ruins of an old castle I found something I thought I'd lost, and never thought that I would find again.

While the rest of the town was drumming or crowing the May queen, we, or rather I elected to go up to the East hill, the one that had drawn me the night before, was it, or was it the day? Time got funky over the weekend.

At any rate, I wanted to be up on the wilds(ish).

To some folks the weather would have put them off, I LOVED it. The clouds were at our level and were like living things moving and scattering in and out of the trees and gorse.

Hemlock and Blackthorn (oh Gayla it was everywhere in in bloom) hedges saved us from the wind for the most part and it was quieter near the edge of the cliff.

Carefully and with permission I collected Blackthorns and gorse flowers as we wandered into the mist and bluebells.It was another world. It was Anwen. Voices and gull cries appearing and disappearing in the wind scattered cloud.

Following the paths that could have been left by rabbits, dog walkers and the fey alike, that twisted and turned all the time the sea whispered in the background.

It was truly a magickal day and I could have stayed there all day but I walked as far as my feet would let me go.
The Jack-in-the-Green Parade on the Monday was again the third magickal moment for me. While some of the parade clearly knew the symbols and power they wielded some did not, but the power of Himself walked with them as clear as day. Several times I got shivers and felt his presence as they drummed, sang and thumped their way up the tiny street on which we perched. Often the parade stopped just before us (we had set up outside a pub which was open and doing roaring business at just 10.a.m)

It was strange to me that we didn't follow them to the castle, but MB assured me that the best spots would have already been taken and we would not see or hear much because there was no stage and all the people made it impossible to see the death of Jack.

Part of me was glad to eat more food and wander back through the almost immeasurable number of motorbikes (40.000, they believe) to the quiet. Part of me was glad that that vital and throbbing life force was not going to vanish before my eyes too.

No matter how difficult the journey's, no matter the lack of sleep or the cold, somethings are worth leaving your safe, comfortable place for. Somethings are worth the wind burn, the bags under the eyes and sore feet for. Comfortable is a cushion and sometimes we must do without it to remember we are truly alive.

Bright Blessings xxx

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Dancing in the dawn

Dancing in the dawn

I will write more when I am home. In the mean time

Bright Blessings and dance all you can!