The other day I found the most beautiful fungus on an aging white pine set against deep green moss that was almost arcing over the brook. When I looked up Dacrymyces palmatis I discovered that it’s common name was “Witches… Read More ›
Witches
The Norns, Spiritual Mystery and Me, Part 2 by Janet Maika’i Rudolph
Part 1 was posted yesterday. You can read it here. The Norns were explaining the mess they had made when they got drunk at a Valhalla party. The Norns looked at me with sadness. “We knocked over one of our… Read More ›
The Norns, Spiritual Mystery and Me, Part 1 by Janet Maika’i Rudolph
In 2020, I began writing my biography because some weird things were happening in my life including some which were time-bending. To help make sense of it, I wrote up “conversations” with the mythical characters of Persephone, Inanna and the… Read More ›
Double, double… rhymes are trouble by Katie M. Deaver
I never considered myself one of those people who gets really “into” Halloween. But, as one might expect having an eight year old, especially an eight year old who celebrates her birthday shortly before the holiday, has made me much… Read More ›
Embracing Darkness: All Hallows Eve in Old Lancashire
Come Halloween, the popular imagination turns to witches. Especially in Pendle Witch Country, the rugged Pennine landscape surrounding Pendle Hill, once home to twelve individuals arrested for witchcraft in 1612. The most notorious was Elizabeth Southerns, alias Old Demdike,… Read More ›
Witches in the Weeds by Sara Wright
In folklore Old women are believed to control all aspects of Nature – Fire, Earth, Air and Water, but in myth and story they have a special relationship with water. The title “witches in the weeds” emerged after I did… Read More ›
Mother Demdike, Ancestor of My Heart, Part 3 by Mary Sharratt
Continued from Part 1 and Part 2 When Bess was in her fifties, walking past the quarry at sunset—called daylight gate in her dialect—a beautiful young man emerged from the stone pit, his hair golden and shining, his coat half… Read More ›
Ignoring Isn’t The Same As Ignorance by Darla Graves Palmer
My book club recently read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, a futuristic novel wherein women’s reproductive rights, as well as the women themselves, are controlled entirely by those in power. I’ve wanted to read it for a long time… Read More ›
No One Is Safe from the Parodist (Part 3) by Barbara Ardinger
Vader has lost the helmet and is now old and fat and speaks in a tenor voice. He’s obviously the smartest guy in the room. I am not the first to mess with Shakespeare. In 1680, a hack named Nahum… Read More ›