Witchcraft & Wicca.

For the witch whose career confines them to an urban environment, regular Craft practice may often seem like a futile gesture, especially if home is a small, gardenless-flat. Even the suburbs can be magically incapacitating, if there is constant noise from traffic and neighbours. People work long hour without having the opportunity to notice the subtle changing of the seasons. Weekends are a constant battle with family, domestic chores and socialising. It’s no wonder that the urban witch has little time left for magical and spiritual development.Traditional Witchcraft for Urban Living deals with the constant barrage of psychic problems that confront the urban witch on a daily basis. Based on the teachings of a traditional Craft background, the author successfully manages to blend the Old Ways with practical contemporary practice. This book is part of the Traditional Witchcraft Series. Other titles in the series are Traditional Witchcraft for the Seashore(Jan 2012), Traditional Witchcraft for Fields and Hedgerows (Mar 2012) and Traditional Witchcraft for the Woods and Forests (Mar 2012).

Traditional Witchcraft and the Path to the Mysteries, the sixth and last in the Traditional Witchcraft series, is a voyage of discovery and, as with every journey, it is essential that we understand where we are now and where we want to be. We need proper direction unlike that popular old Irish saying: “If I wanted to be going there, I wouldn’t be starting from here!” So let us make our preparations, put our house in order, and begin our journey of exploration and self-discovery. As with all stages of Life there are friends and acquaintances to consider: the essence of some we will take with us – the rest we will leave behind. But as the genii from Where the Rainbow Ends says: “Time is short, and we have far to travel.”

Although we are an island race, few are fortunate to live near enough to the sea to use the shoreline as a regular magical working area. And yet for the natural witch, born and bred by the sea, the beach and rocky shore are equally as magical as the inland woods and hills of more traditional approaches to witchcraft. The author takes us on a magical journey along the seashore and reveals how to work with the natural oceanic tides and energies. Learn how to harness the powers of the deep, and collect flotsam and jetsam for use as ritual tools. A book like no other. ,

An in-depth course of study in the modern practice of traditional witchcraft. I stand in the meadow, at the forest’s edge. One step forward and I will straddle the boundary between fading light in the swaying grass and rich darkness in the woods. One more step and I will be immersed in the nighttime world of southern, hardwood forest. My home lay behind me, the wild magic ahead. I am the witch at the forest’s edge. This book is an invitation to animists, ancestor worshipers, magic seekers, and the wild at heart. It systematically explores the foundational aspects of modern traditional witchcraft. The book is structured into 13 core chapters or classes that cover all essential skill sets for any modern, traditional witch in a practical, caring way. Each chapter offers suggested activities and/or reflections for journaling and a reading list for further exploration. Advanced skills such a hedge riding and ritual possession are taught in a structured, explicit way that makes them accessible to a wider audience. Written from an animistic perspective and without pushing any specific deities, the book offers a thorough practical and theoretical framework for considering each witch’s personal theology and practice. Without pushing one cultural context, The Witch at the Forest’s Edge offers the means to reflect on the multiple cultures that inform the practices of modern witches, encouraging the reader to think deeply and undergird modern practices with ancestral knowledge.

Both FieldCraft and its companion title, WoodCraft, assume a certain degree of magical understanding on the part of the reader with regard to routine divination, spell and Circle casting. For this reason, the text does not include the basic elements of rudimentary witchcraft that can be found in titles similar to Mean Streets Witchcraft and Sea Change. The books have been written in tandem to avoid any unnecessary repetition, and to provide cross-references where necessary. ,

Traditional Witchcraft and the Pagan Revival takes us on a journey into the past, along the highways and byways of our pagan heritage to discover when the different aspects of magical influence entered traditional witchcraft. It will appeal to everyone with an interest in magic, witchcraft and paganism - from grass roots to the more advanced levels of Wicca - who wish to learn more about the different traditions and their antecedents. ,

One of the most significant social changes in the 20th-century was the wedge driven between the males and females of Craft as a result of social media and political feminism. From a purely magical point of view the battle of the sexes has been one of the most negative crusades in the history of mankind since everything in the entire Universe is made up from a balance or harmony of opposite energies. Men and women are different as night and day but still part of the same homo sapiens coin, regardless of their individual sexuality.

'This book gently leads the reader into a new and deeper understanding of the forest and our ancient and intrinsic connection with the trees, that has been largely forgotten in this modern age. If you wish to develop and nurture a true affinity and knowledge of trees, then Tongues in Trees will most definitely help you to do that.' Luke Eastwood, author of The Druid Garden and The Druid's Primer Trees occupy a place of enormous significance, not only in our planet’s web of life but also in our psyche. A Spell in the Forest - Tongues in Trees is part love-song, part poetic guidebook, and part exploration of thirteen native sacred British tree species. Tongues in Trees is a multi-layered contribution to the current awareness of the importance and significance of trees and the resurgence of interest in their place on our planet and in our hearts. FROM THE BOOK: 'Trees have always figured in human consciousness. I believe that when we walk among trees, or notice a particular tree, a kind of exchange happens. Trees love to be met.' 'Trees somehow mediate between ourselves and a different reality, a different order of consciousness – pre-verbal, post-verbal, trans-verbal, non-verbal – such a relief, sometimes.' 'Trees in a natural forest mirror and speak to something of the wild soul in a human. As we visit, we encounter and are supported by the elemental powers that reside in such places, and can more readily connect with our own instinctual natures and the wild soul.' 'Wildness is not to be confused with a state of chaos, being out of control, savage. It’s a question of relinquishing the ego’s grip to larger natural rhythms, cycles, surroundings: an essential aspect of thriving. When one does this, one is more receptive to one’s environment, physical or more numinous.' 'Woodland, forest, strikes me as a perfect example of the individual and the community being gracefully, harmoniously and inextricably part of each other.' 'I walk the forest, listen for birds, rivers, cascades, stories of the wildwood rustling in the leaves... try and stay aware of the great mycorrhizal web beneath my feet connecting us all...' '[T]he ancients knew that spending time among trees is one of the best approaches to health and healing. Recently, Japan has spent millions researching the health benefits of shinrin-yoku, forest-bathing.' 'In the forest I step into a different kind of time. It's not simply that it so clearly stretches back so far into the past, but also that it allows me what Thoreau described as a ‘broad margin’ to my day.' '‘Mother trees’, we know from work by Suzanne Simard, will reduce their own root competition to make room for their own offspring. Trees will also help neighbours of their own species if necessary.' 'Forests are liminal places, thresholds into a meeting of the physical and metaphysical, where we’re on the cusp of another reality...' 'In our past, our physical survival and some of our sense of meaning came from an awareness and direct experience of our connectedness with the more-than-human. We need that awareness more than ever now.' 'Our being here, our walking on this earth, is a co-creation, a mutual belonging. How to live, if not in reciprocal affinity?'

A Zen approach to the World, the Universe and Everything. Many of today’s disenfranchised pagans in the West appear to be seeking a spiritual connection to life without feeling the need to become a witch, a Wiccan, a shaman, Heathen, or a Druid. Here the Shinto approach fulfils the basic need for a belief system based on what we would define as simple animism and ancestor worship in accord with the world’s other, authentic, animistic traditions such as the Australian Aboriginal and Native American way of life; while Zen provides the intellectual stimulation rising from the simplicity of basic folk-belief to elevate the soul to a higher level of mysticism.