WELCOME
Welcome to the revived and revamped Witchdom blog. A site for nature-loving, hedge-riding hedge witches. For the past year I have been recovering from major surgery of stage-1 cancer and have had to learn to speak and eat again. However, in that time I managed to write a book about magic and the earthly side of my hedge-witch pathway called Magic for Hedge Witches in the Pagan Portal series published on 27th May, 2022 by Moon Books (now an imprint of Watkins Publishing). During that year one of my other books in the Pagan Portal series Hedge Witchcraft became a publisher bestseller and my book Hedge Riding is not far behind.
Now, much recovered, I’m beginning my blogs with an article on hedge riding. There will be regular blogs thereafter on hedge witchcraft and hedge riding. As no two hedge witches practice the same, I can only write about my earthly personal nature- and magic-based pathway alongside what all hedge witches have in common and that is hedge riding – an important aspect of hedge witchcraft.
ABOUT ME
I am a hedge-riding hedge witch and pagan of more than two decades. I’m also a proud wife, mother and grandmother and a crone witch retired from my everyday job though I still write and help other authors. My main pagan pathway is the same as any hedge witch and that is I hedge ride. Hedge riders are said to straddle the hedge with a foot in this and the realms of the Otherworld. Hedge riding is shamanic, and though some witches interpret it as only connecting with nature, hedge riding does involve Otherworldy travel. The rest of a hedge witches practice can vary greatly from witch to witch but many follow a nature pathway alongside as do I. With English, Irish, Scottish, Swedish and Norwegian among my ancestry it’s hardly surprising that my inclination is towards the Celtic and Norse pantheons.
My general pathway as well as hedge riding, includes then nature, folk magic, divination including the Elder Futhark runes), and connection with nature spirits. I’m also an animist. I have studied with Shamanism Ireland and guest lectured for several years in Modern Pagan Witchcraft at Liverpool John Moores University where I studied for my own degrees.
As well as writing many articles, which have appeared in various spiritual magazines, I was a co-founder of Irish Pagan magazine Brigid’s Fire. My books include Pagan Portals – Hedge Witchcraft, Hedge Riding, and Magic for Hedge Witches (to be published in May 2022), and The Spiritual Runes. I’m in the process of writing a second hedge riding book and how to connect it directly with your magical practices.
With the situation with Covid 19 and after the surgery, my workshops are temporarily on hold. But after speech therapy and some progress, I do hope this will not be for much longer. I’m also planning a YouTube channel which shortly I will be posting details about on this website.
I currently live near the River Severn close to the Cotswolds in England having recently moved from Ireland and before that lived in the Netherlands and Belgium where I was active in the pagan communities.