The Journey

I would love to take you on a journey, one that leads us through the wilds of nature and back to the roots and bones of witchcraft, a natural witchcraft that works with the seasons and all the beautiful items that Mother Nature provides, drawing on magical folklore and a little bit of hedge witchcraft and gypsy magic too. No fancy schmancy tools or ceremonial rituals, this is about working with the source.

Mother Earth provides us with the changing of the seasons and within that turning of the year she gives us everything we need to work magic from natural energy in the form of storms, rain and sunshine to tangible items packed full of magical energy such as seeds, leaves and stones.

Just a walk through the fields, a forest or along the hedgerows or seashore will provide you with a whole host of natural magical items and will help you connect with the energy of the moment. Whatever season, month or day of the week it might be, nature is our own magical barometer.

You can tap into the energy from any place and each area or location will have its own unique energy. Forests, ponds, parks, streets, seashores and even city centres will all have that magical energy – it is just a case of plugging yourself into the source.

Select a tree or bush that is near you or your home. I have a silver birch tree at the end of my road and each day I look at it to see how it is and what stage it is at. In the winter it is dark and bare, then as spring approaches I see the tiny green buds starting to form, then they open and the green leaves start to show fully followed by catkins. Throughout the summer the leaves are bright green followed by a turning to yellow in the autumn before they float one by one down to the ground, ready once again for the winter slumber. It is my 'nature calendar', along with the plants in my own small garden. I can look out and tell exactly where we are in the cycle of the year.

Get to know your local area, take regular walks around your locality. Discover all the plants and trees that grow where you live. If you are close to a forest, a park or the sea you are very blessed. If you live in the city you may have to look a bit harder, but you will find Mother Nature there too. Have a look in local parks and recreation areas along with your local cemetery and churchyards. Take a notebook with you when you go out and write down what you see or take photos of the plants and trees so that you can identify them.

It doesn't matter whether you live in the city, in the country, on the side of a mountain or in a high-rise block of flats – magic is all around you.

You can throw away the structure and the rules (but only if you want to) and be wild! This is your journey, take the bits you like, the parts that work for you and throw them all into your very own and unique mixing pot to create a pathway that belongs to you.

Wheel of the Year

When I first started on my pagan journey I was presented with the Wheel of the Year, which it seemed most pagans worked with. I spent ages trying to remember the dates and learn the names and correspondences; even to this day I have to stop and think about it when trying to recall what is what! I also started dressing my altar for each sabbat and looking up all the correct colours, herbs and associations to know what to put on it. But I have to admit I started to lapse and I realised that I wasn't connecting with the celebrations and what I was doing was just a mechanical action because I thought I had to. As my journey has deepened and the years have passed I don't worry about any of it any more. I don't particularly work with the sabbats or at least not the set dates on the calendar. Especially as Mother Nature appears to be having a menopausal meltdown here in the UK at the moment and the seasons are all completely squiffy. I have summer bedding plants in the garden that have continued to flower all winter and daffodils and hawthorn flowering in January; it has all gone completely mad. In fact the winters in the past couple of years in the UK have not even been that cold. So it makes it quite difficult to celebrate the specific sabbats when nature isn't playing ball.

If you do follow the Wheel of the Year and it works for you then please, please continue to do so. I am not knocking the system, I just want to share with you how I work with the seasons and it is more on a monthly/weekly/stick-your-head-outside kind of basis rather than following the set dates on a calendar. It works for me, but it might not work for you.

I left the Wheel of the Year behind and started working with the energies of each month. It started a few years ago and has evolved to me working not just with the energies of each month, but sometimes even the specific energies of the week or the day. It is all governed by what nature and the weather are doing at any given time.

Also, the energies will vary depending on where you are in the world and how your seasons work. Our ancestors would have welcomed the first day of spring when they saw the signs of growth in the plants and the soil and the warming up of the weather, not because it was February 2 (Imbolc). While it is useful to have the sabbat dates to use as a universal guide, the first signs of spring aren't always on a specific date. I struggled when spring was early or late and didn't arrive when the calendar told it to. With the UK having a very mild winter last year it was hard to acknowledge Yule/the winter solstice when the weather was so warm I didn't even need to wear a coat ...

So now I follow my intuition and see what the energies of the day, week or month are going to bring. Be guided by nature, when she starts to send out the first shoots of spring on her plants, when the frosts have finished, when you open the door in the morning and you can feel the warmth of the early morning sun on your face. Listen to the birds, watch them building their nests, follow the progress of the baby birds learning to fly. Watch flowers opening on plants and leaves as they journey through the year from buds to green to orange and then fall. Nature is all around you, even if you live in the city there will be at least a tree or a bush that will give away the tell-tale signs of the seasons. Breathe in the air each day and see if you can tell when spring turns to summer and summer to autumn...