When Fairies and Friends Unite: Building Relationships in Witchcraft with Halo Quin

This episode focuses on the intricate relationship between witchcraft and building community. Halo Quin elaborates on her path as a witch, her engagement with spirits, and the pivotal role of shared stories and practices in nurturing connections.

• Halo introduces her background and role as an author and podcaster 
• Discussion on the importance of spirits and community in witchcraft 
• Insights on practical methods for starting local witchy meetups 
• Daily practices that foster relationships with the spirits and nature 
• The transformation through storytelling and shared experiences in community 
• Advice for new practitioners on embracing individuality in magical practices 
• Exploring the connection between creativity and witchcraft 
• Encouragement to seek and share personal stories and experiences 
• Halo's reflections on the enchantment of the world around us 

Follow and join Halo now- visit her website at haloquin.net!

Chapters

• 4:00 Welcome to Your Average Witch
• 11:30 Introducing Halo Quinn, Author and Podcaster
• 17:16 Discussion on Spirits and Community Building
• 22:00 Getting into Witchy Stories
• 30:25 Halo’s Witchcraft Journey and Philosophy
• 1:40:45 Building Community in Paganism
• 2:20:00 Daily Practices and Rituals
• 2:51:00 Advice for New Practitioners
• 3:20:00 The Importance of Stories in Community and Magic

Transcript

Grandpa Kimothy: 0:04

Welcome back to Your Average Witch, where every other Tuesday we talk about witch life, witch stories, and sometimes a little witchcraft. This week I'm talking with Halo Quin, an author and podcaster in England. We talked about spirits, community, and how you can build community near you. Now let's get to the stories. Hello, Halo, welcome to the show. 

Halo: 0:28

Hi,Kim, nice to be here. 

Grandpa Kimothy: 0:30

It's nice to have you. Can you please introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are and what you do and where they can find you.

Halo: 0:38

Absolutely. I feel very formal in these moments where we're just coming into an introduction. So, hi, I'm Halo Quin, I'm a pagan author, I'm a storyteller and I am a witch, and have been for as long as I can remember, though I wouldn't have called myself that when I was small. A few key interesting things about me I am absolutely fascinated, and always have been, by fairies, so sometimes I describe myself as pixie-led. I live in the wild, wet, windy West Wales in the UK, so the ocean is just the other side of the wall behind me, and I am actually officially a doctor of philosophy, philosophy and storytelling. I teach magic, specifically embodied witchcraft and working with spirits and the fair folk through my courses and things which I host at the Enchanted Academy, and you can find all of my books, my classes, my many, many live streams and ridiculousnesses and random adventures at haloquin.net. That's the net where I catch everything.

Grandpa Kimothy: 2:02

I like that. Can you please tell me what it means to you when you call yourself a witch?

Halo: 2:11

So the word witch is such a huge and fascinating and complicated term, right, right, and I first encountered it in the context of. I was about 11 when I was stepping into the magical spaces and realizing that adults really believed in this and, what's more, there were books on this, actual books on this. That makes it real in the world, world, right. And so I encountered it in the context of of neo-Wicca, that kind of modern broad church of of Wicca, so the term, which that's where I came across it. But I very quickly realized that I wasn't wiccan. Because that's a particular, especially in the UK, like that's a particular religious style of, of magical practice and of paganism. It's a particular set of paths. So I was like, right, okay, well, that means then I'm a witch, and at that point what it meant for me was a person who practices magic and believes in and follows and works with the pagan deities and spirits, who engages with the living spirits of the landscape of the world, who I was brought up talking to trees and treating trees and plants as people. So, like that animistic childhood understanding of the world was then woven in as I grew up and as I began to add in these practices. So the emphasis then for me became on the craft of witchcraft. It was something that I did and something that I was in the world, and so my understanding of it over the last 30 years has sort of evolved from that starting point. And of course, over those years I discovered that it's got these historical roots in practices of malefica. That was where the term which was originally applied and I looked at and I went, oh god's cat, like, should I stop using it then? And I'd sort of use the word which for myself, in front of people who weren't pagan and who didn't have the same context I did, and they'd ask me if I'd slept with the devil or if I murdered someone, right? Okay, sorry, no, no, no, no, like that's like. That was my response. I'm like, well, no, don't be silly.

Halo: 4:51

And at that point I started describing it as a religious path, using it as synonymous for pagan. But where I came back to to this understanding was, in the world that we live in, anyone who practices a subversive form of magic and I say subversive in that it's not like the mainstream doesn't think that it's something you should be doing. And, let's be honest, the mainstream over culture doesn't think that we should be lighting candles and praying to the fairy queen and singing her songs and dancing with her under the full moonlight right, or lighting candles to the moon goddess for healing, or talking to the horned god and the wild god of Pan to find out what's going on in the forests, like they don't think we should be doing that because that runs counter to the current worldview, which is materialistic, rationalistic and if you really want to go and find spirit, go and look for God in the church. So I realized this term witch by using it, and using it in the modern sense of someone who practices a folklore-rooted, spirit-based, magical practice in the context of Monday paganism. That's how I was using it. But using it in the world and being open about applying that term to myself, I was reminding myself and them that what I did is considered odd, is considered outside of the bounds of what is kind of mainstream, acceptable, even if it's only working towards uplifting people and healing and supporting and building relationship and community with the spirits of the land and with each other. All of my magic is around that: healing our relationship to ourself and with other people and working with those spirits, and even with those really positive things, what we do or what I do, is considered to be odd and weird and somewhat should be kept in the shadows. So I kept hold of the term witch kind of for that reason. Hold of the term witch kind of for that reason. And then also, I'm attached to and have spent many, many years being a member of the Reclaiming tradition of witchcraft and I'm an initiated Feri witch, Anderson Feri witch, so it's the term that is for people who practice the paths that I practice. So that's the long answer. The short answer is witchcraft is working magic in relationship with the spirits of the world and building community with those spirits in order to change the world. In my case, I hope for the better.

Grandpa Kimothy: 7:41

That is one of my favorite responses responses so far. I love the long answer. I love it. 

Halo: 7:54

Yeah, I actually wrote a piece on my blog about it, like about why I use that term in response to, to be honest, it was my mum. Because I've got books out that, where I say I'm a witch. And she knows I've called myself a witch since I was 10 or 11, and every now and then she comes back to me. She's like you, sure, because, like, like, people ask me, what do you do? And and you know, and I say that you call yourself a witch, and they get really scared and worried and they think it means all these things and I'm like, well, at one point it did, and it doesn't for the people within my communities and it doesn't for me, but I've got to remember that what I do is still weird to most of the world. It's still heretical, when we live in a rationalist, post-enlightenment capitalist, materialist world, to go dancing with the spirits. That's heresy, right.

Grandpa Kimothy: 8:57

Yeah, how does that make you any money? Then you absolutely should not do that.

Halo: 9:03

Or it doesn't make me any money yes, more to the point, it doesn't make anyone else any money, so you shouldn't be doing it, um, but it's like, well, yeah, there's more to life than being a cog in someone else's machine. Thank you very much. This is where I come back to like it's that for me it's it's a network of it's about being a relationship, and what I found is that over my many, many years, most of the time I don't do spells in the way that people think of spells, I like have at various points and I know how to like weave magic and in spellcraft, and how to use the colors of candles and synthetic magic and symbols, and learning, studying pentacles at the minute from, like, solomonic pentacles. So all those things. I find the tech, technical side of it really fascinating, but most of the time I don't need to do spells because I've spent my life working in that magical space and building relationship with the spirits and they look after me like I look after them, so it just my heart, right?

Grandpa Kimothy: 10:17

Oh, I love it. So I'm going to go back a little bit. You, you were raised an animist, even if they didn't call it that?

Halo: 10:28

Yeah, pretty much. It took me a long time to realize that, and when I described it that way on social media or something, I was like, oh, I was brought up an animist. My mom messaged me and she's like I'm so sorry. What have I done? Like, I made you weird, sorry, what have I done like I made you weird? And I was like no, no, mom, you know how you brought us up to talk to the trees, like the trees are people and don't pull the leaves off the plants, because they have feelings too. And you know the rocks are beings that that have lives of their own. And, okay, we've got to clear out the ant's nest because they're causing problems, but you know they're still tiny, tiny people. The world is alive and that's, yeah, that's how I was brought up, um, particularly by my, by my mother, who mostly raised me, and the same for my brothers as well, though they went a very different path with it.

Halo: 11:18

That you know it's, it's sort of in the background for them. And yeah, when I started finding people describing animism, I was like, well, yeah, isn't that just how the world is? The world is alive then dominionism comes in.

Grandpa Kimothy: 11:37

But anyway, look, look this is.

Halo: 11:41

Here's the thing. So, as human beings, as people in the world, our natural default if you look at children, if you look at cultures throughout history our default way of engaging with the world is as alive, full of spirits, as animated. That's how we naturally engage with the world and it takes a lot to beat that out of us with a materialistic. You know I'm using catchphrases, but like materialistic capitalists, like all of that dominionists things, those models that has to, they have to use that to beat out of us our relationship with the world as alive and enchanted.

Grandpa Kimothy: 12:33

I'm here. It didn't leave me, dawn. I'm just pondering. This is such a perfect conversation for now, okay, but I'm going to bring us back Absolutely. Can you introduce us to your practice? Do you have any consistent things that you do, maybe even a daily practice that you'll share?

Halo: 13:06

Absolutely so. I have ADHD, I have an ADHD brain, and so consistency in terms of like things being identical every day, day in, day out, year in, year out, that's not my strong point. That's not the way I engage with things. Where I am reminded that I am consistent is that I always come back to those relationships. I come back to the magic, even if I get distracted. I come back to those things I consistently am engaged with them, to the magic even if I get distracted, I come back to those things I consistently am engaged with them. So my, my daily practice shifts around that connection and that interrelationship. So the way that that looks is that my magical practice is woven through. The foundations of it are woven throughout my life and it's and this has built up over many years, obviously, but it's things like when I step outside or I'm coming back in on that threshold, I acknowledge and tune into and greet the spirits of the earth and sky and the energy and the powers and the beings of it. I mean, in my case, at the moment, I live right next to the ocean, so you know I send love to the ocean and it remember that connection when I go for a walk along the prom.

Halo: 14:39

Sometime, I have, varying degrees of of being able to walk, depending on what my body is doing. So when I'm able to go for a walk, I will walk the land, feeling into that connection, into those patterns in the earth. So it's that piece about relationship. And then in the morning, when I wake up, when I open my curtains, I will greet the world, and I quite often so. Here is where it starts to look like a daily practice that you could write down in a book or that you could pick up and start doing as something that seems a bit more formal, something you can feel like you're actually doing something, and I quite like the it's colloquially known as the Valkyrie's Prayer. So I'll open the curtain and this comes from some heathen connections and I'll say Hail Day and Day's Sons. Hail Night and her daughters. Oh and I say this every day and it's gone out of my head because I'm saying it in front of people now Hail day.

Grandpa Kimothy: 15:47

We have Google, we can find it. No, no, I love that.

Halo: 15:51

Come back in a second. But yeah, right, like so. And the door says watch over me with loving eyes and grant me victory. Hail to the gods, hail to the goddesses, and hail to the bountiful earth. Eloquence, grace and native wit bestow upon me and healing hands whilst I live. And so that's how I greet the world most mornings, and I won't say every morning, but it goes through my mind, even if I don't speak it out loud, when I open the curtains and see the daylight. And so many of my practices are woven into those points. When I pour myself my first cup of tea, I pour a cup of tea for the ancestors and the beloved and mighty dead, and I say a little prayer. That's sharing that with them and asking them to share that with our hungry dead, those that have been forgotten and haven't been fed, because it's like okay, well, I know that our ancestral spirits, many of us, get forgotten and many of us end up hungry in that space. And I'm like okay, those of you that are here and are connected here, this is for you and please share that with those of our tribe, our people, our humanity, of all of the peoples that are also not human, that are connected to us, like share it with them as well, that they may be fed that all are well. Come back to one of my core practices uh is within, is from the Anderson Feri tradition, so spell that f-e-r-i to distinguish it from the fae, which I also work very much with, and that is the practice of aligning the triple, so aligning the parts of yourself within yourself, so that you're basically in this practice, you're, you're tuning into all of the parts of yourself, you're kind of grounding, centering and using your breath and a spoken prayer to come into alignment so that you can listen to and hear and respond from and move in unison as all of the parts of yourself, your body, your emotional self, your mental self, your rational self, your spirit self. However, you want to divide those up and that's how I describe it to people outside of the tradition. The tradition is like those parts, because those are easy enough to understand, of the tradition is like those parts, because those are easy enough to understand, and aligning that with the, the ground of being um, god herself, the holy mother, like the star goddess, by whatever name you want to know her and my spirits,  yeah. So, again, like that's, there's a lot of pieces to it, but for me, those are the. Those are the core things I come back to is greeting the world, um, greeting the spirits, remembering my place in that, in that network, in that community, um, and aligning myself so that I'm doing my best to bring all of me to my work, my play, my life and all of me in alignment. So I'm not denying a part of myself or ignoring a part of myself in order to like prioritize the, the rational I think I should be doing this or the emotional, uh impulsive part, like whichever, and like try and bring it all together in alignment with uh impulsive part, like whichever, and like try and bring it all together in alignment with those parts of me that are deeply connected to listening to, the spirit and the magic that was beautiful.

Grandpa Kimothy: 19:34

It moved me to tears, which I cut out. Don't worry about it. If you all were listening, especially if you're in the U.S. right now perhaps it moved you too, because, this is not going to go out in February. I'm taking February off, but it's going to go out in March. So this is what is. I don't know how to tell time. It's the first week of February and if you think back what was happening, then you know why I'm having a hard time. So maybe it affected you. Just go back and think about what it was like on February 4th. That is today, right?

Halo: 20:17

Yeah, okay.

Grandpa Kimothy: 20:18

Because my I don't use this computer a lot. Anyway, thank you, and I'm sure everyone else is thanking you as well.

Halo: 20:28

Oh.

Grandpa Kimothy: 20:31

That said, could you tell me the biggest motiv- I think I already know it at this point. Can you tell me what the biggest motivator is in your practice?

Halo: 20:42

I mean, like, what underlies everything for me is that it's about relationship, absolutely like, all of it is about relationship. It's about being in relationship, particularly with the, the spirit world, um, and being for me. My, my practice is, like rooted in maintaining those, those connections, and reminding myself that those beings are there and that they are around me, that I can lean on them and that they also, like, there's a reason that I can lean on them and that's that somehow what I do they, they, it feels like they guide me and they, they help direct me in those, in those things, and somehow what I do they find is a benefit for them. And I think that's that's one of the reasons that I tell stories and that I teach and that I do like I do almost weekly free circles and live streams in the Enchanted Academy, where I'm sharing with people magical techniques or thoughts on things or stories or whatever is because the spirits and the gods and the beings that I work with that are my family, even if it's like an extended and very strange or weird with a y family like right, they're sharing their stories and opening those doors for people. It's building that relationship and building this bigger community that is bigger than any one of us and bigger than just humans. Many of us have forgotten in our culture and I forget all the time that I say our culture, like I'm in Britain, you're in the US, so we pretty much share these a lot of cultural touchstones. We forget that we're not alone, that we're not isolated. We forget that those spirits, that whole world, that whole network of spirits, some of which care deeply about us and some of which don't want anything to do with us because they've got their own things going on right, but there's so many of them that are so close to us and we isolate ourselves by imagining a division and imagining a materialist world, even if we're, we're pagan or magical. We forget because the rest of the culture tells us oh no, it's just, it's just the material world, right, so that? So that underlies the what that I do. The main motivator for the things that I choose to integrate into my practice is building and maintaining those relationships and staying in touch with that community and remembering that the world is enchanted. The reason that I do that at all is because I don't want to lose it, because, like if I'm really raw and really honest, I have felt that magic, since I was small and I was lucky enough that at a critical point, like just before I hit puberty, just before I was getting to that point where everyone starts to really disbelieve in I mean, fairies, for me the fair folk were like key for me, for me, and that kind of point where I was starting to think, oh, maybe that my teachers are just humoring me when they say, oh, you know, the fairies obviously like you or whatever. Maybe they're just humoring me. I started to think that and I encountered, as I said earlier, books where there were people who were writing about this, adults who were seriously writing about it, publishers who were publishing it. I'm like, okay, so there is space in this world for this, and I was lucky enough to move through that and to keep hold of that thread and I have seen so many people who have lost that sense and that connection, that connection and the world is poorer for it. So, underlying the why, the deep why for this is because it feels so important to me that we remember culturally, that we remember that the world is enchanted, that there are those spirits there, that there is that network, those spirits there, that there is that network. And so I keep doing my practices to remember it myself, because I need that in the world and I can see that other people need it too, and you know, aside from that, they look after me. I'd be pretty screwed if they didn't. There's so many times where things have looked rough and if I hadn't been apparently lucky, I'd have been in trouble financially or with housing or all sorts, and just somehow, at the right moment normally coinciding with a prayer or a please help, something turns up. So yeah, yeah.

Grandpa Kimothy: 26:19

So curiosity question. You know how in Peter Pan, in the cartoon, the movie, they're like clap your hands because it helps strengthen the fairy Tinkerbell. It helps her be stronger if you believe in her. Do you think that it works like that?

Halo: 26:47

I actually don't… what I think, the way I think that it works. So and I I'm just playing that phrase “I do believe in fairies, I do, I do,” and there's a description by, when they first started putting the stage show on in London of Peter Pan. So it was a book and then they made it into a stage show and it was like one of the earliest pantomimes as we know pantomimes and I don't think you've got pantomimes in quite the same way we do in the UK. It's a very weird British tradition, UK. It's a very weird British tradition. But each Christmas or New Year, depending on your locale, it can be a January thing. It's an all-family show and I could tell you a bit about the history. It came out of the Commedia dell'arte and the Harlequinade and those sort of characters, the clowning and things. But they take a traditional story or a well-known story, normally like Cinderella or Peter Pan, and people play these stock characters and you know how the story pans out. But there's comedy and there's humor and there's drama and there are phrases where you're like it's behind. You- have you ever heard something, you must have encountered, that like references to the, the pantomime where people are like it's behind you and the person's going what where, and they're just somehow not looking at the thing behind them. Have you seen that sort of thing?

Grandpa Kimothy: 28:15

Yeah.

Halo: 28:16

Yeah, like that, that comes from pantomime. So there's these ridiculous things and you get the panto dame, who is, someone dressed in drag, who's like comedic relief, but that, like there's a long tradition here. So anyway, to go back to when Peter Pan was first put on the stage, there's a description by one of the journalists that I read, and I can't remember who it was, who said that know, this is a ridiculous show, it's for children. So I went into it thinking I was going to be a bit bored. And it got to that moment and there'd been all these pyrotechnics and there'd been like children were performing in it. There was much less health and safety at the point. It was quite dangerous. There were children flying around on wires right and disappearing through trap doors, and so there was this. It was this big production, but that moment where Peter Pan is like you have to clap for Tinkerbell and the, Peter Pan is there and I think Tinkerbell was just this little light that they had, and the light begins to flicker and Peter Pan turns to the audience and says you have to clap and say you believe, to bring Tinkerbell back, and there's just this moment of stunned silence. And there's this moment where you think, all right, no one's going to do that, no one believes in fairies, no one believes in magic, no one's going to buy into this. And then, all of a sudden, the whole audience begin to clap. I do believe in fairies, I do, I do. And the description was of the face of the person playing Peter Pan, the principal boy, who, sort of like, was watching this light flickering and it began to grow brighter and their face lit up as Tinkerbell came back to life. And you watch the audience as everyone, just for that moment, feels the magic returning to the world, in this tiny, ridiculous act of clapping your hands and saying you believe. And so, for me, I don't think that they need our belief, they don't need our belief to live, to exist. Our ancestors, our human spirits, like there's a long tradition of like they, if we are not fed when we pass on, like we get hungry. We need that, that support, because a part of our humanity, like the bit that makes us human and connected to the living, begins to fade away from not being fed, and I think that that's, like that's the aspect of our relationship as the living to the dead. That's in that relationship and in this case, here, when we forget that there is magic in the world, when we stop believing, we begin to close our eyes to it, we disconnect from it, we pull away from it, and then we treat the world that we share with these beings and particularly the fair folk are spirits who are very, very close to our level of vibrational existence. If you want to think of it that way. They're very, very close to the material world, so they're very closely connected to the manifest world that we live in. So we close our eyes, we forget that they're there, we stop believing, so we disconnect, and that means that we lose a part of ourselves. Culturally, we lose access to a part of ourselves, which, incidentally, makes us easier to control and easier to turn into cogs and easier to you know all of that jazz. So there's a very good reason for the overculture to want us to forget this. But we forget and we pull back, and that means that they then lose an ally in the world. They then have to deal with us treating the world as pure material, as pure resources, as something to be used, and because they share this world with us, they then have consequences to deal with, but it doesn't weaken them as beings. They're still powers, they're still there, the magic is still there. It's just us that have forgotten, it's us that have closed our eyes and our hearts and our senses to that, and that, I think, is why it's important for us to take that moment to really really feel what we knew as children, what we knew in ages past that that magic is real. The fair folk are real, the spirits are real, the powers behind what we call the gods, by whatever names and faces that we meet them in, they're real. Those beings are real and they're there. And by refusing to clap, clap, by refusing to believe, we lose sight of them.

Grandpa Kimothy: 33:45

I feel like I'm listening to NPR. You're giving a lecture in the best way, in the best way.

Halo: 33:53

I mean I did say I’m like a Doctor of Philosophy. I did my PhD in the philosophy of storytelling, so you know I'm no stranger to the academic world. I've been out of it for a little while. It did take me 12 years to do my PhD, so I've I've been out of that space but I I do love it, I do enjoy it, so this is a delight. Thank you, I'm glad you qualified that like in in in a good way, yeah, in the best way. It's something I'm really passionate about.

Grandpa Kimothy: 34:32

Good, I love hearing people talk about something they enjoy talking about. Speaking of, what's something you wish more people would ask you about?

Halo: 34:50

On the one hand, I don't generally need people to ask me about the things that I'm interested in, because I will just tell them and I'll go like exactly right. So I'm like here's this really cool thing, and if they go, oh, that's interesting, and then I'll go do you know about it? You want to know more about it, like, but there's something. So one of the things that that I love to talk about, one of the things I get really excited about, is actually when people start asking me really philosophical questions about the metaphysics of the the world. So like I hinted at it a little bit and you, you were kind of asking a little bit about like how do you believe that they need us? Is is basically it right? 

Grandpa Kimothy: 35:38

Do you believe that they'll lose power if we don't kind of like the american gods situation yeah, or Terry Pratchett's model?

Halo: 35:43

Yeah, sorry, carry on that's that…

Grandpa Kimothy: 35:47

Was it just the, the American Gods, where they were getting weaker because we were moving on to other things?

Halo: 35:54

Yeah, and like I think that there's, there is an aspect where…so I, I I think of it as the Terry Pratchett model. In Small Gods. So if you know Pratchett, if you, as the Terry Pratchett model in Small Gods, so if you know Pratchett. If you don't know Pratchett, then absolutely read some of his books, get to know him. Yeah, his series on the witches, the characters are amazing. If you have spent any time in particularly pagan communities, you will recognize these people, and the way that he describes aspects of how magic works is, it's like did you, was he a practitioner? And I don't think he is, but he hits on some real truth and it's that like that thing that, the, the gods feed on our belief and they get small and fade away if we stop believing in them. And I don't think that that's that's. As I say, I don't think that that's the case, but the, in that the, behind those gods, there are particular powers, there are particular spirits that are their own things, but they will sometimes withdraw from interacting with us. They may have less impact in our lives. So things like that. We're talking about the metaphysics of how the world works and I really like to start to have conversations around like what's actually going on? What's our best guess and our best theory, and how do we discuss that for how these things work? For what exactly is the difference between a fairy and an angel and a god. Like how does that model work? How do we distinguish between them? We have an idea that there are differences but there are overlaps. So, like, what's going on behind that? And often when I start getting excited about that, I can get really into some of the philosophical side of it and it's all theoretical, right. Uh, I can root it in my experience. I can say, well, these things feel like this because or I'm drawing these conclusions because I've seen these. But then I've I've philosophized out a model of metaphysics, and yeah, I'd love, love to to talk more about those those things with people who are interested in it. And yeah, sometimes some of my students will ask questions that are along those lines and I'll be like great, you want to hear about this conversation and I want to hear what they think about it as well. Like, how does this, how does this idea, this model, reflect how you have experienced things? Does it? If I say, oh, you know this, these are like this model of reality, this idea about how this might work, does it fit with what you've experienced? So one of the examples of this is that I was really curious, so over the years I've had periodically, I have like encounters and callings and a sense of like the dead going hello, come and talk to us. And I hear a lot of people talking about ancestor work and it's like sit at your altar and pour a cup of tea and light a candle or a glass of water or like make an offering of what they'd like to your ancestors and sit and have a chat and I'm like, well, I can sit and have a chat with with my ancestral spirits, I know, and ancestral spirits I don't that are like kind of people. But there are other times where I encounter the, the spirits of the dead, and they feel different. And when I started trying to go to spiritualist churches because that was one of the places that people seem to really be working with magical technology in order to talk to the spirits of the dead and to build those skills for communicating the spirits of the dead like an actual place you might be able to go and learn these is spiritualist development circles. So I'd go to the churches and watch the mediums and I've got a certain amount of what you might call the sight in terms of I could kind of watch and I could see that each one of them was doing something slightly different. One of them had like a dodgy phone line. One of them made a room around himself that you could sort of see the spirits coming into view as they stepped into that room and then he'd be talking to someone about that spirit and then they'd step out of that room. It threw a different direction, not through a specific door. One person made a portal that he was kind of looking through, portal that he was kind of looking through, at which point I had gotten a little bit curious and decided to sort of- and it sounds really woo, but like mentally like step through that, to go into that space and go what's on the other side of this? And I kind of was like looking through that portal and kind of sticking my head through and the, the spirit, guardians and angels and things that he, he had around him, kind of did the equivalent of a magical bouncer slammed me back in my body, excuse you, bam. Yeah, it's like don't you meddle with the things you're not meant to be going like you're. This is not your portal. But what was curious about that to me is that when I, when I end up, I sit with my ancestors on and if we, we think about it in like a three worlds sort of thing, this is the best way I can describe it like on this level, I can sit with the ancestors and the ancestors can come to me, or I can travel out to where they are, like on a horizontal plane. When the dead call, I end up sinking down and there I find bones and not much personality. There's sort of almost a collective thing, and sometimes they're hungry and sometimes they're having a party and they're like you're all going to come and join the party in the land of the dead eventually, like we're in no rush, you'll come here, you'll join us eventually, but there there's no like individual thing. And then these mediums, like they were connecting with individual personalities okay, what's going on? And so there was this sort of almost a sense of going up and I started to sort of think. Think about, well, what would explain this? How would this work? And I came back to the, the model of the multi-part soul or spirit which we find in so many cultures, which I learned in in the Feri tradition of like the parts of ourselves there's our body is one of our souls, or one of the parts of our soul. The like animal self is one of the parts, like the rational personality is one part, and it was that kind of that moment where it clicked oh, those different parts of ourselves can stay together and travel on or they can separate out and go to different places, and the bit that is in our bones, well, that's the bit that goes down, the bits, that sort of like the personality that we'd recognize if we're looking to talk. That's the bit that the spiritualist church, the mediums, are talking to. So I started to kind of like explore that metaphysical world of that model in that context of what happens after death. And now I don't know, and I could have just been imagining it or projecting it or, you know, interpreting the information and constructing something. But the more that I build on this and the more that I apply this and go, okay, how does this apply in different scenarios, the more I recognize that well, it works, it's a functional metaphysical model of that aspect of the world. So, yeah, those sorts of things are things that I'd like to have more conversations about with more people.

Grandpa Kimothy: 44:10

This is so interesting. When I- sometimes I pass out. And sometimes when I do that, I go somewhere. And it's not like a dream, it's somewhere else. And the most recent one, I actually had a hip replacement and I was on some really strong drugs and I stopped breathing and my husband had to do CPR to bring me back and I went somewhere. And I wonder if that's the higher one.

Halo: 44:51

Possibly. Yeah, I think that from the stories that people tell and from my own sense and my own experiences, when we go journeying out of our body our conscious mind will go in certain directions and our conscious mind isn't necessarily traveling with the rest of us, which is why sometimes you can have like an out-of-body experience or an astral projection experience or things, and when you wake up you've got a sense of an experience that you didn't, you don't remember having, and you've got knowledge that you gathered, because that part of your spirit, that part of your soul went off and gathered that knowledge and brought it back, but your conscious mind didn't go with it. So when you had that like going, that experience of going out of your body, the consciousness certainly traveled somewhere and I think our tendency in those situations is to kind of go upwards and go into that space. It feels like an upwards, but in reality it's kind of more of an outwards if you think about it, because upwards is in relationship to gravity and gravity is in relationship to the center of the earth. So we're feeling a sense of down but we actually mean in, and we're feeling a sense of up but we actually mean out and expanding. So you're sort of expanding out into that space. So you're sort of expanding out into that space which is more ethereal, which is comfortable for the mind, comfortable for the consciousness, comfortable for those parts of our spirit Rather than the down, and in which is more where our bones settle and where parts of our soul fit in that deep, dense space.

Grandpa Kimothy: 47:09

This is so interesting.

Halo: 47:15

Does that sound like that? Does that resonate well?

Grandpa Kimothy: 47:16

Yes, it makes enough sense that I feel like I understood what you said.

Halo: 47:20

Right, and I'm 100% sure that some of your listeners, at the very least, will have had experiences and they'll be going “That's not what it felt like to me,” right?

Grandpa Kimothy: 47:35

You're not in this body with me. 

Halo: 47:41

Exactly. We're all different and we all have different inclinations and what we share. If you're listening to me now, you probably share the human experience, right, a certain amount of human experience with me. And I think probably we share more than we have. There's more similarities than there are differences, right as far as I'm concerned. But there are still variations and differences and some of us are much more comfortable going down than they are going up. So those experiences might be different, or the outwards and where you gravitate towards. If you've had these different experiences, it's like, okay, what does that then tell you about you and where you're comfortable and what parts of yourself you are most consciously aware of and consciously connected to? It's all ways you can start to sort of open those questions, if you want to, to go okay, what does that tell me about who I am in this moment or who I was in that moment when I had that experience? What does that tell me about what I was trying to move towards or away from? And this is one of the things that for for some of us I know for me, periodically, obviously you with your hip replacement, will go through periods of pain where our bodies are discomfort, have a lot of discomfort right, and or we're going through traumatic experiences and the world is very hard, and so then we might have an inclination towards wanting to kind of disassociate from our body, disconnect from the earth and then we might float up, and I'm not saying that any of those things as a negative. These are neutral things where we need to go in order to protect ourselves, whether that's going up to sort of disconnect from physicality temporarily, as long as we come back and reintegrate's where the health comes in. We have these mechanisms for good reason. We have these abilities for good reason. They're for protecting ourselves. So many people, especially in the US at the moment, let's be honest, are, will be having disassociative or disconnecting, floaty experiences. Right, and this is your mind, your spirit, trying to protect yourself. There will be a problem if it goes on for a long period of time, but recognize that actually it's okay, it's not a problem in the moment. You're doing your spirit, your self, your body, your mind, you're doing what you need to do in order to get through the experiences that you're having, right? For other people, the sinking down, getting more physical, some people like to, like you might start lifting weights and moving heavy things, right? Those sorts of inclinations towards getting more into the physical, going deep down into the earth, more and more grounded, like that's another way that for other people can be really, really helpful. But it depends on where you are, at what point in the journey, what kind of person you are, as to what you need in those moments. And finding the ability to, in the moments where you find that reintegration and that balance is really key. I took an awful lot within my work. So my book, the Crimson Craft, like the subtitle, is Sexual Magic for the Solo Witch, but what it's really about is for the solo witch, but what it's really about is coming back into embodiment and back into connection with the life force that is being pleasurably alive, right? And that's because, for me, I disassociate into my mind. Disappear into fantasy books, into academia, that's how I protect myself and I had to learn and relearn how to be reconnected, how to come back and root into my body and that's what we're encouraged to do is to float off rather than come down and deeper. But for some of us, going deeper in and letting go of the thinking about stuff is also a protective thing. So it's finding that balance between the two. That is where health comes. Returning to that equilibrium when we have safe space to do so and making those safe spaces. Generally in community, we need each other for those safe spaces or safer spaces right, safe enough spaces to find that equilibrium that we need in order to integrate our experiences, integrate where we're at reconnect with our magic and move forwards in the ways that are right for us, in those moments that are helpful, that are supportive.

Grandpa Kimothy: 52:47

This is such a good conversation. I love it a lot.

Halo: 52:51

Well, thank you.

Grandpa Kimothy: 52:55

I would like you to think about your favorite tool. It doesn't necessarily have to be a physical thing. It can be a philosophy or a quote or a certain smell you like to work with. What's your favorite tool and how do you use it?

Halo: 53:11

My favorite tool is my voice. So my voice is probably my core magical tool. You'll have noticed throughout this that I've mentioned. You asked about my daily practice and I mentioned prayers right speaking. Now, periodically I have pushed that and I've lost my voice. So at this point I need to be quite careful because I've done some, some damage to it because I'm a performer, I'm a singer, I'm a storyteller, so I use my voice a lot. So I have had to remember that it's not my only tool and to not push it and it certainly isn't my only tool. Like you know, magically, my body, et cetera, like all of those, those pieces I come, come back to. When I don't have my voice, I come back to the breath and when I'm not in a space where I can use my voice, then I will use my words in writing, and so for me that that core tool is in the voice and then secondarily in sound and in language, all carried through the breath, and I use it in prayer, in I love using chants and songs in ritual. I lead guided meditations and I've practiced and learned ways in which you can use your voice, so the different tones of voice in order to guide people through different trance states, hypnotic techniques, techniques, so actual therapeutic hypnosis. Looking at how do you use words, rhythm, tone, sound, how do you use those things in order to carry people into deeper connection with themselves, into a space of openness where they can access information, where they can connect with spirit, where they can journey? So I use my voice to, to guide people on journeys and then bring them back. And the same again how do you use your voice to anchor people back down into their body? So all of those things and obviously all of that is very much about working with other people, telling stories. These techniques come in as well, but remember, people include not just the other embodied living humans, but also the trees, the waves, the spirits and my own self. So I use my voice as a way of carrying myself through those spaces. I will sing myself through those spaces. I will sit by the sea and sing to the sea, and the sound of the waves and the wind will keep me safe from prying ears and I will sing with the spirits there as an offering, as a communion, as a connection, but also as a healing. Those vibrations, those sounds move through me and they shift my energy and reconnect me with things and help me remember that enchantment and all of those things apply to words more generally and language more generally.

Grandpa Kimothy: 56:43

That's so interesting. I actually I was realizing that I do a little bit of that. I have this phrase that I sing on Thursdays I work with them, and on thursdays I have this certain way that I sing this phrase to sort of help me connect with the being that we're working with. That's and I never thought about it the way you're phrasing it, so that's really interesting that I actually do it. Yeah.

Halo: 57:24

Most people do, in one way, shape or form, either use their voice or language in magic, but it's quite common that people don't think that they do, and this is something that I've noticed. So my most recent book is Storytelling for Magic and I'm releasing a course called the Cauldron of Awen. So we're working with Ceridwen and Taliesin. So, if you don't know, Ceridwen is the Welsh goddess, put very briefly, of inspiration and initiation, and Taliesin is the greatest bard to ever live that was born from her cauldron, as, as it were. So we'll be working with their story. And the reason that I wrote Storytelling for Magic and that I put together this course is because so many people come up to me after I've told a story, particularly if I've done it in ritual. So you tell the story. It's partly as a tr trance, it's partly as an incantation, it's partly as a charm. You're telling these stories in these magical spaces and they'll come up to me and go oh, that was, that was beautiful. I felt so like, I felt this. I felt that I wish I could do that. And every single person I turn around and I say but you do. I heard you tell a story over a cup of tea before the ritual. I heard you tell a story to someone the other day. They asked you what you'd done that afternoon and you said, oh, funny thing happened and you told them a story. Because we're storytelling creatures, right, we're storytelling animals. This is what we do, so we tell our stories and for those of us aren't comfortable. I'm obviously a very wordy person and you're obviously a wordy person as well. You've started a podcast, right?

Grandpa Kimothy: 59:18

Well, I'm a nosy person.

 Halo: 59:34

But there are other ways of being nosy. You specifically chose to ask people to come and talk to you and to talk with you, right? That's so, yeah, but there's like that aside right, some people aren't wordy in the way that I'm wordy, either can't or don't use their voice, aren't as comfortable in the vocal communication that I always come back to. I've always been a chatty, chatty person, though, believe it or not, for several years I had such bad stage fright that I couldn't talk to more than one person at a time or I'd freeze up and start crying. So that was not a fun period of time. But anyway, that aside, I overcame that. For those that aren't vocal, you still tell stories, you write on social media. You might knit in colors that you have chosen that express something, and I know people who will crochet. What's that like? What's, like you know that's beautiful. They go oh yeah, I, I made this for Artemis and they'll talk a little bit about that goddess and about why those colors, and they might use very few words, but while they're doing that, the person is looking at the crochet and like taking those pieces of those concepts and the story is being shared. There are all sorts of different ways we tell our stories in the way that we dress ourselves, in the way that we write. I've seen the most beautiful, beautiful of elemental invocations by someone who is oftentimes mute, invoking water. With what did they call them? It was hand prayers, a form of sign language that utilized the shapes as evocative, and they were telling a story through those shapes.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:02:03

I'm hearing you say this and I'm thinking of people in my group who say oh no, I don't do those things, but you do knit, you guys. I see you. 

Halo: 1:02:13

Yeah. And when people say to you, oh, what's that you're knitting, you go. Oh, this is a temperature snake, and so each line of it shows the temperature of the day. 

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:02:18

Aren't they great? 

Halo: 1:02:19

I wish I had the patience to keep one of those up.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:02:28

Me too.

Halo: 1:02:29

Yeah, I'd like knit maybe three weeks of one of those and then I'd save it all up to the end and be like oh no, no, oh, I've got to do the whole thing it's too much and I can't do it yeah. I'm just gonna have the head of a snake on the wall. But like, yeah, that sounded really terrible, but yeah, but that I have so much, so much respect for people who can tell those stories in those ways that take, they take months to knit to, to crochet these pieces and then when people ask about them, they can say, oh, this is where it comes from. And they show like the temperature snakes. They're like, oh, these are the ideas and this is where the colors are. And as the person looks at them, they say, oh, that's the story of the temperature of that year and the fact that you chose a snake that then communicates something. Or knitting a blanket for someone's newborn baby. Someone goes, oh, what are you up to? And you tell them, and you might tell them what their relationship is to you, and you're starting to share your story in that moment. And that then builds up into all these other moments where you share your story in these little pieces, not in a great long monologue or a narrative like I might do. I get up on the stage and I can monologue at people. That's easy. You give me 20 minutes to tell a narrative in the spotlight. I'm a Leo, I'm in my element. That's really easy for me. But to tell your story over the course of a six-month project, where you share a little bit about the inspiration here and then you show the way that that pattern unfolded and the colors that you chose unfolded and the colors that you chose, all of that, that's weaving a story in a way that weaves people into your life in a much deeper way than those moments. I'm not saying that it's a more powerful or less powerful or better or worse. It's a different way and each one has their place. Words it's a different way and each one has their place. And this is why us all being different is such a beautiful and wonderful thing, because we need to weave our stories in all of these different ways in order to build a community. I need people who are like that around me to remind me, to be in that long form connection, to notice those patterns over the years, to remember that you can tell the story in something tactile and be reminded of it every time you pick it up, rather than words that just disappear in the moment. And perhaps you need people like myself, where the stories are different in each moment, because they are told where the stories are different in each moment because they are told, they are created in that intangible meeting between teller and listener, in that moment where the sounds are and that moment where the story is happening, where the space and the time and the context of what's happening in the world around you all feeds in to that momentary story and the magic that spills out of it and the transformation, like that is a different form of magic and a different form of story that has its own power.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:05:56

That is, they're all equally needed. You said you're doing a podcast yourself, right? Yes, okay, good, because I hope you go into these things, because I just want to listen to this forever. 

Halo: 1:06:19

Well, this is okay, commercial break. But seriously, each month I share a live stream where I put on my fairy doctor persona and I have an actual antique doctor's bag. I say antique, it looks vintage and in it I have jars of yarn in different colors and I pull one out at random and they've got a label with some keywords on it and I tell the story of that yarn and I'll share the story and then afterwards I'll share some reflections on either on the nature of the magical story or the magic in that story and, of course, the fairy doctor. It's the medicine that is in story. So if you encounter it, whoever encounters it in that day, if it pops up in your feed or you encounter it weeks later, that medicine is what you needed in that moment. So I'm casting it as an enchantment, as a spell, I'm sharing it as a piece of magic. But yeah, if you want to come and listen to me, tell stories and talk about the magic that is in stories, that's on YouTube once a month and I share about that in the Enchanted Academy community. So the replays all end up in there as well, on YouTube.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:07:31

This is amazing. I'm excited.

Halo: 1:07:36

But come and join us. Absolutely, please do. And yeah, maybe you might want to come on my podcast as well and I can hear about what you're up to then.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:07:47

Okay, that brings me to a different question, which is what steps have you taken to build community near you, because we have a lot of internet community, but I'm interested to hear if you've done anything locally.

Halo: 1:08:07

Yeah, so on a, I'm going to start like on the outer circle and then kind of build my way inwards. So like, as I mentioned, the Enchanted Academy community that's an online community, right. So that's like the, the broader circle, and I am a member of the Reclaiming Witchcraft tradition and I teach at the witch camps and I've offered community classes with other teachers. So that's in person and we do have an online. I'm helping to organize Worldwide Witch Camp, which is in. We're coming up on our third year. It will be this coming autumn, fall, so that, again, that's an online event, but the people and the tradition I know through meeting in person. So Reclaiming I has in-person events, which camps, gatherings and what have you across Britain, and at one point there were more of them and it's getting less and less, less and less often because the people who organize these are getting older, are disabled, um, and have fewer spoons and less energy to be able to do these things. So this is one of the reasons a lot of stuff's moving online. So that's kind of like the, the big community in in Britain is like. I've helped support those. I helped to set up Dragon Rise in 2009, which is an in-person camp that happens every other year and I was there in person. So that was to help support the reclaiming community in Britain and in Europe and then to bring it down right, really really local, which is where actually the real magic really really happens. And what I hope people who come to those bigger events that are like every other year, that are happening like on a more international scale, when you go to those I hope that you take these back to your local community because that's what I try to do. So what I do in my local community, and what I've done for many years, is to run a moot. Me and a friend of mine run a monthly social and lots of moots are in the evening in a pub. And I live, as I said, on the wild, windy west coast of Wales. We are out on the edge of nowhere. I live in a small town, reasonably. It's the hub of the area but the public transport in and out of spaces and driving down those wide roads at night can be really tricky. So what we did was we started our moot in the afternoon in a cafe and I had to move around a little bit until we found one that really worked and landed in one that has comfy sofas, that does food and is open until 10 o'clock at night. But we run it from three o'clock in the afternoon until about seven o'clock, so the people who want to come after work can come to the later part, and the people who want to get home before it gets dark in the winter, who have animals to go home and feed because there's a lot of people who have small holdings and farms around here or people who need to get buses, they come to the earlier part, and there's normally a little bit of overlap in the middle. So we deliberately chose that time in order to make it as accessible as possible and put it in a cafe rather than a pub, so that we weren't surrounded by alcohol, because many of our community either don't drink for one reason or another, or are uncomfortable around a lot of drunk people. So we have people who are in recovery and so they are like it's safe for them to be there, and we also know that we're not going to get lots of rowdy drunk people going. Oh, what are you up to then? Right, that's, that's a weird tattoo. Oh, you've all got stars on your arms; what you're doing? Like there's a certain amount of chill there, of calm. So we set up these moots and we run them once a month, every… It's been every month for about just trying to think if it's two years or three years now. And obviously, over all the lockdowns and the pandemic, a lot, lot of things stopped running. So what had been running before had stopped running. So we started doing these, and the way that we started it was literally I put a post up on Facebook saying I'm starting a moot. I'm going to be in this cafe from this time to this time. I'll grab a table, come along and find me. And I said it to friends and said in that post tell your friends. And the first time two people showed up, and then the next, and one of those was like let's run this together. And I'm like, yes, please, it's much better if you're not trying to do it all on your own, because when one of you's having a difficult month, a low spoon month, the other one can pick it up. So it's better to do it with friends if you can. And so the next month I did it again and this time the two of us were there and two people that I was, that I kind of knew that were Facebook friends came and they told their friends and there were about five or six of us and every month since then it's been a slightly different combination of people, but we've had between four and twelve people show up from all different paths, from all different walks of life, all different ages, all different genders, and it's it's just beautiful having that social space to meet people who are sometimes we, like heathens will come. We've got someone, a couple of people, who are wiccans. We've got a ceremonial magician who's been doing it for 50 years at this point, I think, and he's sort of reaching the like the end of his life and looking back on things, and some of the people that come have some health issues, and so what's come out of this is that if we notice that they're not doing very well, people check in with them, we check in with each other, and this grew out of holding that space, and me and my friend were very, very clear. We're like this is a social space and we are going to be careful about it being invite by word of mouth, so we don't publicize the when and where publicly. We'd get more people if we did, right? Loads more people would turn up. If we just posted it as a public facebook post, there are lots of groups which will share that for you and there'd be a lot of people that would come along. But we do it through word of mouth so that we know that the people who are turning up are kind, are not turning up to stir trouble. Um, are not inclined towards starting drama and if things like drama, drama, starts arising because all humans together, um, we're quite careful to just go look, maybe this isn't the the place for that. Like, let's see what we can. Let's go and have a cup of tea elsewhere and like see if we can chat it through and and chill out a bit. So there's a little bit of pastoral care and a little bit of holding that space and a little bit of being very clear that you know what. Hello. Nice to meet you. You're new and what name would you like to us to to call you by and what are your pronouns? Like? How do you want to be referred to? How do you want to be referred to, how do you want to be welcomed into this space? So each person is welcomed in in that moment and when we new people are invited in, everyone is asked. It's like well, you know, we'll all go around and share who we are and what our paths are and what our pronouns are and how we'd like to be addressed and how we want to be respected. And some of our members are really confused by this, but they're like okay, this is fine, this is how we'd like to be addressed and how we want to be respected. And some of our members are really confused by this, but they're like OK, this is fine, this is how we respect each other. They don't really understand why, because it's new to them, but that culture of respect builds that. And then out of that, those that meet at those moots, when there's one of the festivals, one of the Wheel of the Year festivals coming up, we'll have a chat. So in January we had a chat about IMOG coming up, had a hunt around for, for spaces that will let us use the space in return for buying a cup, like use a private space in return for buying a cup of tea and a piece of cake or for a couple of donation or whatever. And we've tried a few different places. But we found a cafe that has a separate lounge that they will rent out and they're happy for us to use it. If everyone just buys a cup of tea and a slice of cake, so we all get there, we have a slice of tea, a slice of tea, a slice of cake and a cup of tea or whatever people fancy. Um, and we co-create our rituals because we're all coming from different traditions. We ask, we sort of set a date and a time, and I go and get in touch with the place and let everyone know yeah, we've got the place for that time, or my friend will do it if I'm snowed under. So we look after each other and we gather together in that moment, at that time. And so yesterday we got together at three o'clock in in the, the lounge space in the cafe, and they've set up a little fold out screen so that we can sort of screen ourselves off, and we said, okay, right, how's everyone doing? Have a bit of a check-in. So what does Imbolg mean to you? What have people brought that you would like included in our Imbolg ritual, in this ritual for recognizing this moment where we're midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, where we're really feeling those lengthening days, where we're midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, where we're really feeling those lengthening days where we're noticing the flowers budding and we ask and listen to each other and we learn from each other. And then we sit and think okay, so how do we want to create, cast our circle today, or demarcate our space today, and sometimes someone will bring a circle casting. Sometimes someone will bring a chant they'd like to do to um, call on the dizzier, or cast a circle of the ancestors,  sometimes we'll breathe together for the earth, the sea and sky. That which some of us have picked up from OBOD, one of the modern druid orders, and it's whatever roots us in  that moment. We all sort of piece together. How do we want to do this ritual? And each person will take a piece and I'll normally write it down so that if anyone forgets that it's their turn, I can go okay, would you like to light that candle and say that charm that you were going to do, and sort of cue people and we co-create and then we do those rituals together and that in itself both allows us to mark the time and celebrate and engage in a bit of magic.Sometimes we do healing magic for each other, we often do divination for each other and we're building and sharing our skills. But it also acts as a community bonding and building process because we're coming together and sharing those things. The reason that we are meeting at the moots is because we all have a shared interest in magic and paganism and ritual and community rooted around those things. So those rituals actually give that space. But because we don't it's not a set tradition we had to work out well, how do we integrate all the different paths people are walking? And that's one of the places that my many years of creating ritual in reclaiming specifically, but also just because I'm an experimenter, I came in was going okay, well, let's see if it's possible to weave this together. And we're very, very lucky that when the weather's nice, my friend that runs the moot with me and sort of takes point like we, we kind of take it in turns to facilitate the creation and he'll bring a bunch of firewood and if the weather's nice and the beach is is quiet enough, we'll go and have a fire on the beach and do our ritual on the beach. But if it isn't, we've got this space because we've talked to the people in the local town and that's one of the keys. We've gotten to know. I've gone around and gotten to know the people who run the cafes, who run those spaces. I've checked out those spaces and gone where it is going to be comfortable for our people and where are the staff going to be comfortable with us coming in. There's a beautiful tiny cafe which we could just all squeeze into, but if we did we'd fill up their space for four hours and they'd never be able to sell enough. They wouldn't be able to stay in business because they wouldn't have other customers coming in. So we don't use them for our meetings, but we'll often meet there if individuals want to meet up socially, because we want to support them. So we work in tandem with those actual local businesses run by local people or staffed by local people and we ask what the people who meet at the moot and who come together, who actually turn up, say what do you want to do? When do you want to meet? When are you free? When do you want to do a ritual together and how do you want to weave that ritual? What's the magic that is important to you? What do you need in this moment? And that's where the magic has to come from. That's where the community has to come from. It's like what does the community need? It doesn't matter what I think everyone should be doing. If I go in and dictate it like, that's not building that community. That might be like I, it's not building that community. That might be Like I can set up a training group and do that and that's great fun or put on a performance, but that's a slightly different thing. So yeah, it's Basically pick a place, pick a time, put out the call and say who wants to meet for a moot and just have a chat and turn up.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:23:54

I feel like you basically just told us how to start our own community in our own neighborhood.

Halo: 1:24:01

Yes, please, please do. And if, if anyone ever is like I don't know how, like I'm not sure, how do you do this? Like I'm always really happy to just go, oh, these are the steps, and this is how you make it so simple and so easy that all you need to do is pick a time, turn up and just keep turning up. And if people, people want that, if there's a need for that, like people will turn up and they will turn up consistently because they need it.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:24:34

I love it. I would like you to think about the three biggest influences on your practice whether it's people or a book or some kind of theory and thank them for how they influence you and what you do.

Halo: 1:25:13

 So this might it might sound a little bit flippant, um, and I'm gonna ask people to to bear with me for just a moment. But first I'm gonna thank Tinkerbell, and specifically Tinkerbell. Like the Fair Folk in general, you know that you are very, very dear to me and I would not be where I am without you. But specifically that very, very modern Tinkerbell who snuck through the bars of rationality to be cheeky and, yeah, sexy and cross and joyous and magical in that movie that I knew so well as a child. Like specifically that Tinkerbell, because you are the character, understand those old stories that tell of those beings that are deep in the land, and you brought that little thread through into my life and helped me connect with that magic so that when I was ready, I could follow that sparkling, shining pixie dust along that golden red thread into the realm of fairy and to connect with my queen and my allies and those beings that guided me and that guide me now. And I know that they were behind you at that point and I know that people get really cross about, think about fairies aren't like that but you open that door. You're a little window, you're a key in the keyhole that helped me find my way home, and for that I am ever so grateful. On a more serious, I suppose, and traditional note, the things that have influenced my practice oh so deeply. The Anderson Feri tradition I found that, found mention of that when I was 16 in college, on like the. It was like the, the earliest set of computers that were starting to like. There were now banks of computers in the library. So this is this is dating me a little bit, and I went on the computers and I was looking for stuff about fairies. So thank you, Tinkerbell, thank you to the queen of Elfhame, and in that search the Anderson Feri tradition popped up and whoever it was that put that website up with all of those things that you shouldn't have been sharing you're right like. You shouldn't have been playing. That was very naughty of you and that made many people very, very grumpy. But, you know, a hat tip in thanks because for many of us again, those doors come in the most unlikeliest and cheekiest of places and that magic that called to me through that. So to the Star Goddess and the gods of Faerie who called to me through that door, who reached out and lit my life up, who helped me to face and forge myself into all of who I can be and continue to do that, so that I can be wholly myself as a witch, as a magic weaver in the world, in circle with you, my beloveds. I thank you and, of course, side thanks to Victor and Cora Anderson for bringing that into the world. And there are so many, so many, like writers and teachers and people that I could thank, like for third place and gods and spirits. But I think that I have to come back to the magic and the power of story that is core and primary and foundational to so much of what has guided me through the world and through magic and through my life, guided me through the world and through magic and through my life. So to stories and storytelling and all that is story. Thank you, that was so good I now feel like I need to go and like make some offerings of, of thanks, to all the beings I'm like, and you as well, like my beloved ancestors and mighty and beloved dead and you know, guardians, the goddesses that have guided me, and like my patrons and things, and I'm like, you know, I'm particularly the fairy queen, like no, I did mention you, so you know I will be doing that afterwards. Like thank you all of you as well. But, yeah, I think for the purposes of this conversation, that pretty much sums me up. Tinkerbell, the Anderson Feri tradition, and story.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:31:49

Oh, my heart is full.

Halo: 1:31:52

Good, that's what I want.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:31:57

Do you have any advice for new practitioners?

Halo: 1:32:07

I have a lot of advice for new practitioners, but the thing that I always come back to and the thing that I would encourage people to come back to, there are three pieces, three pieces that are really really key, and one of those is that, while it is important like it's really important to listen and read and, like explore what other people are sharing, and to understand as best you can to find out as much as you can about the context of practices and of pieces, and so when you're, like, when you're reading or learning about something, actually exploring, where do those, historically and culturally, where do they come from? It's really important to do that. But it's also really really important to remember that you are yourself, you're unique and you have things about yourself that are not going to fit exactly what other people tell you you should do and how you should do it. So if something is challenging, it is worth exploring. Okay, why is this challenging? Is it because it is meant to be challenging and therefore I should explore and develop those skills and push myself to go through it? But the other reason it can be challenging is because you're trying to do it in a way that suits someone else and not the way that suits you and your spirits. And there are many, many traditions that have a long history of practice and that root into older traditions, older magical practices, even if they themselves are new. Now there are many people that have lots of experience and have tried and tested things, and many of those different paths contradict each other things and many of those different paths contradict each other, and so if you are really struggling with something, that doesn't mean that it isn't for you. It might just mean that you need to check out someone else's teaching on it, check out another context. Don't ditch things just because it's challenging, because some of it will be and that's because you need that space to grow, but do look at them and go is this challenging because it's because it's hard, or is it challenging because it is not right for me in this moment and you might come back to it? So, like that's a kind of an abstract, more more general thing. It's like learn as much as you can about things and go as deep as you can into things, but know that there are other options out there if something isn't right. And this also goes like not just with specific practices and specific things, and I'm going to give an example. This is a cliched example. Everyone says that you need to meditate. Right, meditation is a really important tool, is a really important technique. I know that all of my ADHD kin are already switching off right. The thing with meditation is look at why is it that it's recommended? hat is the skill that you are developing when you are told, sit still for five minutes every day and focus on a candle flick or whatever it is Like? What's the skill behind that? And the skill behind that part of that is developing the strength of will and discipline in order to focus yourself on the things that take focus. It's building up some magical muscles, but it's also giving yourself space to let stuff come up that you need to face. So you're not distracting yourself by the world, with the world from your own inner thing. So it's giving yourself that space to listen to what's going on. So there's like multiple layers, so take those and you go. Okay, I physically cannot sit still, like stock still, for more than about two minutes because my joints seize up. What can I do instead? For me, I like walking meditation, moving meditation. My body needs to move, and so I find the point of focus the equivalent of the candle flame, in the breath, in the piece of music, in the movement and I practice bringing my attention back to that In the walking, if I have to stay more still in rocking find something that fits with your body and your mind, that allows you to develop those skills and to open that space for yourself. And that goes for every magical practice. There will be a way of developing the skills that that is for, that suits you. The second one is that if you are really truly interested, really truly looking to learn, interested, really truly looking to learn magic and, in particular, witchcraft, as I've described it, of being in those relationships, then know that what that takes is recognizing and believing and acting as if, when you find it hard to believe, it is really real. Know that those spirits are really beings that are really there, that you can really enter into a real relationship with. This stuff is real. It is true, when I started out I was reading a lot of things. I could feel that magic that was there and I didn't want to lose it and it called to me. But my rational mind, even as a preteen, was like, yeah, but it could all be psychology, it could all just be in my head. And so the approach that I took was to go right, what would I do as a scientist? What would I do if this might be real or it might be all in my head? Well, if I decide it's all in my head, I'm never going to encounter it if it's real. But if I suspend that disbelief and go, it might be all in my head, but I want to know if it's real. So I'm going to put that to one side and I'm going to experiment and I am going to act as if I am going to treat those beings that I encounter as if they are real, with respect, as though they are beings to meet, and I'm going to enter into being in that relationship with them. And okay, I had a head start, because I'd already been doing that with the trees and the plants and the rocks and the you know. But I stepped into that space and went okay, maybe deities are imaginary friends or maybe they are really real. And if they're really real, I want to know. So I'm going to treat them as if they're really real and see what happens and over the time, and it takes time to develop that relationship, it takes time to encounter these beings. It takes sitting in your land and feeling the land beneath you, and that can be literally outside, in the landscape, or it can be an open window in that so that you can feel the wind and listening to and feeling that air coming in through your window, if you can't get out, lying down and feeling the earth beneath you and tuning into that and the spirits that are there, over time, treating these beings as real, engaging with them with that respect, in a real relationship, the experiences that I had showed me that it was real. So if you want to do this, know that it is real and even if you can't quite bring yourself to believe it, give yourself that time to experience it and make a decision either way, after time, after stepping in wholeheartedly. And my third piece of advice is go and find the stories. Find the stories of the people who have built the traditions that you're stepping into. Find the stories, the histories of the books, of the cultures that you are curious about. Find the stories that are offered, that are open to you, and learn and listen. Learn those stories, understand those stories, because those stories open up clues and cues, they give you context and as you listen to the stories and find the stories of the people, the authors that have written books, the people who have built traditions, and the folk tales and the fairy tales and the legends and the myths of the deities that you are engaging with, of the land that you are on, and this is important, that you do your best to find the stories of those beings that you are actively engaging with, because the easiest folk tales to find are the ones from Northern Europe and, as a friend pointed out to me recently, if you've never been to Britain, and you've never been to, like, the southwest of of England,  you may not realize that our land is literally how it is described in Narnia and in The Hobbit and the Shire, right, those stories are based on this landscape. So when you're listening to the stories, when you're reading those fantasy stories, or when you're the same applies to folktales when you're reading about the experiences that nor of northern european people within the forests those forests are very different to the redwood forests in California, right, so your forest may be very different and you may not have the stories of your local landscape, so you may have to find the stories that are open to you from northern Europe, because we not only are like, yes, listen to our stories, but we're also like here, these are the true stories which grr. But you can use those stories, explore those stories and go. Okay, if these are showing me something about that landscape, how can I find the keys to understanding this landscape if I don't have access to the folk tales and the folk stories? What are the stories of the people that have been here? What are the histories of the indigenous people that have been here? What are the histories of the indigenous people that have been here? What do I know? What are the names of the places and what are the stories that the trees tell when you sit with your back to them? What are the stories that the wind whispers to you when it moves through the valleys of the buildings in your city? What are the stories of the city that you are in? If you're a city dweller, if you grew up in a town, in a city, what are the stories there? Who are the characters, the historical people, how did that place come about? And those will start to open up the magic of the place that you are in and how you can deepen into relationship and the myths of the deities that move across the world, that travel quite comfortably. That will help you to tap into the culture and the understanding of those beings and then to meet them in that bigger space and where that bigger space of myth and that smaller space of history and local folklore and legend and your experience of that land, encountering it as really real, where that comes about and you rooting that in your body and your mind and how you are and the kind of person that you are, that's where your understanding of magic will grow from. And so if you are a wordy person and you tell stories, then begin to learn stories and tell those stories. If you like to write, write about the legends you're finding and the things that you're thinking. If you knit or you weave, you do yarn, craft, look up like what are the weaving patterns of this area, of my ancestors in this place or of this city? If like to draw, what's the map of the place and what patterns does it show? You bring your interests into it, because that's that place. Where magic is is in the relationship between you, the spirits, the history, the place. You are a crossroads and that is where magic is. And now I really feel like I'm electric.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:46:11

I'm so excited for people to hear this episode. I'm so excited. Because I'm thinking about my group and how it applies to each one of them. Oh, I'm so excited.

Halo: 1:46:34

I'm really glad.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:46:37

Well, now that you've seen what it's like to talk to me and you've seen how I ask these questions, who do you think would be an interesting addition to the show? Who should I have on?

Halo: 1:47:03

Hmm, so I think that, I think you might really enjoy a conversation with Irisanya Moon if you haven't had them on your show already, 

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:47:31

I have, and I actually got to meet Irisanya last year at Anahata's Purpose.

Halo: 1:47:34

There you go. Was I, was I right? Was that a good fit? 

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:47:36

Yes, they're delightful.

Halo: 1:47:38

Aren't they just? And the other person so I think you might enjoy, for very different reasons, is Sara Mastros. And because she is very, very good at getting into the nitty gritty of the technicalities of magical things, and so I think it would be a really interesting space for possibilities for conversation. I will definitely look them up. So her name is spelled s-a-r-a and then Mastros is m-a. Hang on m-a-s-t-r-o-s and they write. She writes about, She's got the, the Big Book of Incense, which is great, and a poetic,  translation of the Orphic Hymns, which is a really fascinating take on it and creatively interesting, and has The Book of the Sorcery of Solomon, which goes into the nitty-gritty of the technicalities of pentacles. So she's just a, generally a really fascinating person with quite a wide-ranging thing and really nerds out about technical stuff, which can be great fun when you start poking around, yeah.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:49:25

Awesome, thank you, you're welcome. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about? Anything I didn't ask, any questions you had for me or anything happening with you you had for me or anything happening with you.

Halo: 1:49:45

So now I'm just thinking, do I have any questions for you? And like loads, but I think we'd, we'd then be on for another two hours cause no, I want to know how you'd answer all the questions you asked me, so you'll have to come on on my podcast, Tea With Halo, the first episode aired yesterday, launched with Imbolg and Venus in Pisces, which is beautiful for connection and community, so check that out. But the main thing that I've got going on, I've just had my ninth book come out. It is called called Storytelling for Magic and it is about storytelling for magic. It is bardic skills and ritual craft for witches and pagans and even if you don't think you're a storyteller, guarantee you'll find something interesting in that, about weaving magic with stories and exploring stories to uncover their magic. And in Storytelling for Magic I work with, and you will work with, Ceridwen and Taliesin, who I mentioned before. I am launching a course on April Fool's Day called the Cauldron of Awen, working with Keridwen and Taliesin, and the story of the birth of Taliesin, how Taliesin became the greatest bard that ever was how he tapped into and connected with divine inspiration, which even the medieval Christian bards attributed as coming from God, but coming to earth through Ceridwen's cauldron, Ceridwen being the archetypal witch, sorceress and a one-day pagan goddess. Historically she probably wouldn't have been called a goddess, but today she absolutely is and she is the reason I ended up in Wales almost 20 years ago and found my home here. So on the 1st of April I'm inviting people to take the Fool's Leap with me into the Cauldron of Awen and we're going to be exploring, over three months, the intricacies of the stories that you tell. We're going to help you to find your story that you want to really deeply explore and to develop some of those skills of expression, whether that's through the voice. This will be particularly good if you're interested in expressing through the voice, either on your own or with other people. Remember, those people can include spirit people. They don't have to be in person, living, breathing human beings and exploring how to understand a story, how to find a story, how to learn a story, because memory is one of those things that we get scared of like oh no, how am I going to remember a story? It's much easier than you think, because we evolved to remember stories and that helps to develop then your memory for other things. So remembering a story and then expressing and sharing a story in magical ways, as an enchantment, so how to use all of those skills to enhance your magic. And this will be suitable for almost complete beginners right the way through to people who have been doing magic for decades but who want to engage with this kind of bardic process more deeply and to connect in with the Awen, with the divine inspiration poured out onto the earth by the goddess of initiation and inspiration, the great witch Ceridwen. So if you would like to find out more about that and to find my podcast and to find my online community where all of my courses are hosted, I invite you to come along and find my website, haloquin.net. That's the net under which I catch everything, and there you will find the Enchanted Academy where you can uncover what those courses are. I have self-study courses that will help you get the basics if you're a complete beginner, before you come dive into the cauldron, and I actually run membership programs so you can join for a monthly membership and just get absolutely everything. That is there under that banner. So do check it out. And, just to let you know, I offer scholarships as well. It is really important to me, if you haven't already noticed, that these skills and these magical pieces and that these relationships and these connections are accessible and available to as many people as possible. So the gorgeous folks who can afford to pay full price help to support the scholarships and for people to come along that need that little bit of financial accessibility. And I would like to just say that I have been in that place more often than not, so I understand what it is like and that is why I make that available. So, haloquin.net/tea for all of the courses. You'll find everything on my website and you can come and join the community for free and check out the magical circles and conversation there as well, if you want to just get a little bit more of a taste of me and ask me some questions before you dive into a course. So yeah, come and find me. There is what is the number one thing that you find important in not just creating a community, but in nurturing and supporting communities that you are part of, not that you're running, but you're a member of. What do you do and what do you feel is important to do to help support those communities so they can keep going?

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:56:06

Number one is probably show up.

Halo: 1:56:08

 Yep, because if we don't, there isn't one. 

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:56:10

But also both, if you see calling out things that need calling out, but also be willing to be called out without getting hostile about it. Yeah, those are the two big things, but number one is definitely show up, because there are community things here near me, like local things, that I don't show up to. I've been thinking about Raven. Raven, if you ever hear this, she runs the Tucson Pagan Sand Witches Community and I think at least monthly she does a brunch, none of which have I shown up for. Yep, and I am publicly acknowledging it, even though I'm telling everybody else hey, you need to have local community. So I'm calling myself out in this to show up. 

Halo: 1:57:35

Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly the core of it. Community, magical community, exactly the core of it. Community, magical community, any kind of community. The community is in the people being present and interacting and it takes a little bit of courage Sometimes it can take a lot of courage and it can take effort to actually remember to put it on your calendar, like that's the key I always. I have to put it on your calendar, like that's the key. I always, I have to put it on my calendar, otherwise I forget. So I put it on my calendar, put an alarm on my phone to remind me that there is this thing that I really want to be a part of. There is this community I really want to be a part of and then to just, even if I'm not feeling, feeling it in the moment before I leave my house because I'm a natural hermit, I love being with people, but an object at rest will remain at rest. So, yeah, like to to put my boots on and go out and actually step into that community space and then be willing to be seen and heard there, to actually ask those questions or put your hand up to go. Oh yeah, I could have a go at casting circle or, oh yeah, I'll sit next to that person who I don't know and make a new friend, and that's, yeah, absolutely how those communities. It's not only how those communities stay happening and are supported. It is the community that's being in community, it's showing up and being present and being kind to each other well, the last two things that I ask of my guests.

Grandpa Kimothy: 1:59:25

Thing number one is recommend something to the listeners. It doesn't have to be magical or witchy at all.

Halo: 1:59:28

Whatever you are into this week, recommend it so the big thing that's happening this month for me uh, that is both magical and isn't explicitly magical is February Album Writing Month. So it's abbreviated to FAWM, f-a-w-m and fawm.org, right, so if you have any interest at all in songwriting, or even in poetry writing or lyric writing or writing instrumental pieces, or just going and listening to people making amazing music, the form challenge is a monthly challenge for the month of February. And at this point because this is going to go out in March, isn't it You'll have missed the one for 2025. But if you go and sign up, you get to go and listen to what everyone else has been doing and get really inspired and one of the things I love about this. So the challenge is to write 14 songs, complete songs, whatever complete song means to you in 28 days to the month of February, and it was set up as a just a fun challenge between friends and then it was opened out to be a community, and so everyone kind of comes together with this shared goal. In the, in the northern hemisphere, it's like the darkest, coldest month of the year, like where, where I am especially, but like across most of most of the place. I mean where you are. You've got shorts and and what have you in the desert, but, like here, it's kind of cold, it's gray. We've just had a couple of days of sunshine but that means it's about to get frosty and stormy and and miserable. The days are getting longer. That means it's about to get frosty and stormy and miserable, the days are getting longer, but the weather is about to get really harsh. It's that last push of winter. So form happens now, where you can go into your like, pull out your notebook and there are prompts that people share where they like, set a time and at the beginning of the hour you get a skirmish prompt and everyone that's online at that point that wants to join in can just go along at the top of the hour and look at that prompt and go right, I'm writing a song on that and it could just be lyrics, which is why I'm like it also works for poetry writers, so it can just be lyrics. But it can also be lyrics and a melody. Some people are just like, they just sing into their phone, and some people they're like strum on a ukulele and some people do these full-on productions in their computer or they've got a whole room full of instruments and a drum kit and a guitar and in an hour they come out with this, this song. That sounds like there was an entire band working on it for months and you're like, how on earth did you do that? But what I really love about it not only does it get me writing and inspired and fired up and I start writing these songs and like quite often I'm a just sort of sing a rough melody into my phone and post that like if it's got a melody and lyrics, I'm happy. That's a song, like I'll listen back to them afterwards and go actually I really enjoy this. So I'm sort of making something, creating something, and then you've got something afterwards after this cold, dark month or this harsh winter, that you can listen to. But you can also and you are encouraged to go and listen to what other people are making, to read the lyrics that they're sharing and to comment something supportive, something that you like about it. And I love being able to hear all of these ordinary people and I am an ordinary person when it comes to music, like we're all weird and wonderful and special, but we're also all just ordinary people, and so you get to go and hear what ordinary people create and scratchy recordings on a phone through to fully produced things where people have spent like a week on each one and they've only come out with with one song or like four songs or whatever. There's full range of things. And you go, oh, oh, what I hear on the radio, what I hear on the cds or on Spotify, that's been so highly produced that it's kind of it makes me feel like making music is unattainable. And then I go and listen to what other people are doing, all in it together, and they're chatting about how they do it in the forums and they're sharing with each other where they feel proud or where they feel like they've let themselves down and they're sharing their process. And you just go, oh, making music, writing stuff, creating things this is just being human. I can do that, I'm a human, and it's so liberating. So, even though you'll have missed the official challenge time, I highly recommend that you hop on there right now, formorg, sign up right now and you'll be able to rifle through and listen to what some of the people have done and have a look through the forum and go hi, I missed it, but who would you recommend? I listen to what's inspiring and go and just listen to people making stuff, and there's a longer, more relaxed challenge in the summer, but you can start to see what people are doing and then, when february rolls around next year, you'll get an email saying hey, form's starting, do you want to come make some music with us and spend 28 days just being ridiculous humans together and creating stuff for fun, and you'll go oh yeah, maybe that halo is on to something.

Grandpa Kimothy: 2:05:43

 I just texted my friend Macy because I think this is something that she would really be into.

Halo: 2:05:47

She still has time. Yeah, it's, it's so wonderful and like, even if you're not a songwriter, even if you're not a musician, you can just go on there and people will put like they'll share instrumentals and say I'd love for someone to write some lyrics for this and people will share, yeah, so people collaborate, people share just lyrics and they're like I'd love for someone to sing this, but I can't sing. I hear it in like this sort of style or I don't mind what style it's in. Who would like to sing it? Who would like to put music to it? And you get these amazing collaborations that happen where people pull their skills and I put on. I did a song last year and it was this it was a really silly song that was like kind of a bit punky. It was out of my, my normal comfort zone, um, and I was sort of just being a bit shouty with it over like a hard beat I'd done on the computer and the lyric was like I've drunk so much coffee, I can see the future and I don't like what I see. And it was like I'm going to do something about this. And someone listened to it went oh, I really like this. Can I do a remix? And they did a remix and I was like I never would have made that. And now this, this little, tiny, silly thing I made, has just become something I could have never even imagined was possible. That's the magic of community and creativity and humanity you get together and you go. I can do this thing, and everyone who starts out is just this little shy about it. But there's this wonderful supportive vibe where you are actively encouraged to go and support the people who are new and to be supportive and to if people want critical feedback, they'll ask for it, and if they haven't asked for it, you don't give it. You just you go and you find what do I like about this? And you tell someone what you like about it and then they know what they're doing well and they feel inspired to do more and I just, I just love it, do it.

Grandpa Kimothy: 2:07:42

So cool! So the last thing I ask is please tell me a story. It can be a story from childhood that actually happened to you, or it doesn't have to even be a childhood, just something that happened to you. It can be a story that you heard as a child that you want like to share. I just really like stories.

Halo: 2:08:06

So okay, I'm gonna tell you a story and then I'm going to tell you a story and then I'm going to sing you a song. Oh Right, that came out of this, and this is part of my way of saying look right, I'm All right, I'll tell you the story and you'll understand this from this point. So when I was a child, when was very, very young, I would tell stories into my little tape recorder and then I'd put the my little Walkman, or knockoff Walkman, a little tape player with a little speaker on the front and it was bright red and it had a yellow front on the speaker and the buttons were blue and I'd put it inside my puppet. That was like a stuffed teddy bear, but it was a hand puppet. So I'd put it inside this teddy bear and I'd press play and then the teddy bear would tell me the story and I'd also make up songs and then the teddy bear would sing the songs. And as I got a bit older I sort of stopped doing that, but I continued making up little stories and singing little songs as I'd walk to and from school. But the problem I had was I could never remember how the melody went. I'd come up with this tune, but I couldn't remember what the tune was. And by the point I was walking to and from school I'd forgotten my little Walkman. I'd forgotten that I had a little record function. I was already on MP3 players, if I had anything at all, so I couldn't record it. And this was before smartphones with voice notes. So I'd make a note of the words and I'd try and draw the shape of the music. But I didn't know how to notate notes, so I'd sort of draw them in relation to each other. And then I'd get home and I'd look at it and I'd go what the hell does that mean? What this just is dots and lines. And I just, and I got really disheartened and I got to this point where I'd get really nervous and my best friend was a musician and she was grade eight piano and sang in a rock band and all of these things. And I was there going. I can't even remember what tune I was singing to myself five minutes ago. How am I supposed to write music? You need to be able to play the piano and do all of these things. And so I stopped writing songs, I stopped singing to myself, I stopped making my teddy tell me stories. I got to the point where I was too nervous to even speak, to even share an idea, in front of two people at once. If I noticed, if I didn't notice, I could ramble on for ages, but if I noticed that they were actually listening to me, I'd freeze up and I'd start to cry and I'd forget that I was saying anything. And then I'd go, why are you listening to it? Like, why are you looking at me? Why are you looking at me? Why are you staring at me? They'd be like what? It was that bad. And as time went on, I kept kind of coming back to this sense of I really. I actually really want to write songs. I can feel these songs bubbling up in me. I can hear the songs that the spirits are singing and I wish I could sing them. And eventually. Eventually, I found my way to supportive spaces where people are like you know what. It doesn't have to be perfect and you know what. You've got a smartphone now with a voice note function. You don't need to remember it, just sing it to your phone and your phone will remember it. Oh, and then I could listen back to what I told my phone and sing it until I remembered it, but I was still shy about it. I was still nervous about sharing it because it meant so much to me. Nervous about sharing it because it meant so much to me. So instead, what I'd share with people is I'm fascinated by fairies. I do magic. I study the fae and the folk tales and the folklore and all of these mythical beings. I look at all these weird things and I'll tell you their stories, but I'm not going to tell you mine, I'm not going to sing you my songs, because that's too precious, that's too vulnerable. That's my voice. My voice is my soul, my voice is my spirit. My voice is my spirit, that's my magic. So I'll tell you someone else's stories. And then I came across the term cryptozoologist and I thought to myself that's so cool, right? Cryptozoologist? That's such a term and it means someone who studies cryptids and, of course, cryptids. That's actually an American concept. It's those beings that could possibly exist. That's the term. As far as I understand, it's from America. It's the term for those beings that could exist, but we don't have hard evidence A being like Bigfoot or the abominable snowman or whatever. And I thought that was far too cool for me to ever say I was a cryptozoologist. And then someone said to me but Halo, you do study cryptids, you do study beings that could exist, but the material world doesn't think there's hard evidence, for you study fairies and folktales and I. But fairies are real, they're not cryptids. And eventually the penny dropped, and so I still find it difficult to believe that I am cool enough to call myself a cryptozoologist and I still kind of hide behind the stories rather than singing my songs, and so at a certain point I went it was actually in the first form that I'd done. I'm like you know what. I'm going to put these together. I'm going to be really, really brave and I'm going to write a song that helps remind me that it's not about whether or not I think I'm cool, I'm a cryptozoologist because that's what I do on my bookshelf of books about fairies that I've written, and I'm going to be brave enough not just to say that but to sing it. Now, if we were in person, I'd have you sing it back to me to like, really remind me and really drum it in. But as we're not, I invite you to take this in the spirit that it is meant as a vulnerable moment where I feel very, very silly as a very serious, professional pagan and a teacher of magic and a doctor of philosophy telling you that I'm a cryptozoologist.

I'm a cryptozoologist, I talk to fairies. 

I know fellow philosophers think that I am crazy. 

But what am I to do when they show up at my door?

And tell me, have you ever met a fairy scorned before?

I'm a cryptozoologist and Bigfoot is my pal.

He's still camera shy, but I tell him that it's swell. 

No one will believe me when I tell them where I'm going. 

But their loss, really their ignorance, is showing. 

I'm a cryptozoologist and my world's full of fun.

Nessie took me for a ride beneath the Scottish sun.

She knows all the secret glens the tourists never find,

Lifts my mood and Nessie doesn't mind. 

I'm a cryptozoologist and maybe they're not real, 

But life's too short to deny what I feel.

The world's a bigger place than will fit inside a box. 

So if you think I'll stop, you're well out of luck. 

I'm a cryptozoologist. They've helped me all my life. 

At this point I could woo a selkie wife. 

They lift our spirits, liven up our day. 

If you think that's not real at all, I wish you on your way. 

If you think they're not real at all, they wish you on your way. 

If you think they're not real at all, well, I'll talk to fairies and I'll woo a selkie wife. 

Chat to my friend Bigfoot about his long life.

Ride the waves with Nessie,what glories we shall see. 

And we'll have so much fun, the cryptids are me.

Because I'm a cryptozoologist and I'm recruiting, tell me about your favorite cryptid and maybe, just maybe, It'll make it into a future version of that song. 

Grandpa Kimothy: 2:18:25

Kacie, I know you're singing this now. I know Kacie is now going to sing that.

Halo: 2:18:28

Yay! So the lyrics for that? I actually have them,  available, like they're up somewhere. I'll get the link to you and there is, in fact, on the lyrics. There is a second page where there are additional verses, some of which I've written as I've encountered new cryptids and some of which other people have written in the same rhythm that are I want this to be an ever-evolving thing. I want this, this, to be a community song. So if you want to write your own verses and adapt what's there and mix it up and add things to it and play with it and sing it and share it, please do, and I will get you the link to the lyrics and make sure that that's somewhere you can find it. And if you don't, then please feel welcome to forget that you ever heard it and we will disappear like cryptids into the forest.

Grandpa Kimothy: 2:19:29

Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. It's been a delight.

Halo: 2:19:33

Good because I've had a lot of fun.

Grandpa Kimothy: 2:19:40

And this has been, I'm going to say it's been a healing time, a healing more than two hours.

Halo: 2:19:45

Oh, I'm glad. That’s all I can wish for.

Grandpa Kimothy: 2:19:48

Okay, everybody, go down and click and follow, go sing, go learn to tell some stories and I will find you. 

Halo: 2:20:04

Yeah, come and find me! Find me and the cryptids, we are real.

Grandpa Kimothy: 2:20:10

And I will see you on the internet. Bye!

Halo: 2:20:12

Bye. 

Grandpa Kimothy: 2:20:13

Thanks for listening to this episode of Your Average Witch. You can find us all around the internet on Instagram @youraveragewitchpodcast,  facebook.com/groups/hivehouse, at www.youraveragewitch.com, and at your favorite podcast service. If you'd like to recommend someone for the podcast, like to be on it yourself, or if you'd like to advertise on the podcast, send an email to youraveragewitchpodcast at gmailcom. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next Tuesday.