So! Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! Happy Spring Equinox! [there follows the transcription, lightly edited, of an ex tempore lecture to students delivered during the Plague Years, and thus recorded for them as a video, in a playground full of Spring flowers, birdsong, and the sound of playing children, rendering the Continue Reading
Culture
The Passion of Ceridwen – A Vision
I saw proud Ceridwen, great Queen and Goddess, Long blond curling hair and pale skin, a red dress, Alone in the fort on the lake, an evening of storm and silvery light. Her Lord rode hard to hounds and shouted, far away, Full of the joy of freedom and male Continue Reading
In Search of Lost Time
An Extract from The Hollow Behind the Hearthstone, a novel by Mark Devlin, forthcoming from The Hollow Press, 2021 Taril stood, setting his wine-cup carefully down, and went to the corner where he had leaned his staff. Istorius called Arnauld back, and directed him in moving piles of books and Continue Reading
Emily’s Malawi Journal – Summer 2005
MALAWI JOURNAL PART ONE It wasn’t really part of the picture in my head of what it would be like to come to Africa: grey skies, frequent rain, sometimes torrential, sometimes just a soft, intermittent drizzle. Shivering beside a one-bar electric heater, wearing two jumpers. Sometimes I have to pinch Continue Reading
The Natural Animism of Children
[originally published on Anima Monday, a collective blog about re-enchanting your world (https://animamonday.wordpress.com/) on May 4 2020, by Mark Devlin] The last few years have brought great changes in my life. Nearly six years ago now, my wife and I had our first child, a boy, and three years later, Continue Reading
The Summerhouse
It stirred in me as soon as we rounded the final bend in the narrow road from Cahirciveen, as the sea and sky swung into view, vast and deep dark blue in the gathering evening. An old feeling like a tingling half-heard tune far off played through me, and I Continue Reading
DREAMS FROM THE END OF THE WORLD : REFLECTIONS ON FASCISM AND OCCULTISM, CULTURAL APPROPRIATION, AND THIS MESS WE’RE IN
It was mid 2019. We were all talking about the End of the World. Like many other people I spoke to, I had been having crazy dreams as well. I had been on a Writer’s Retreat a few months earlier, and while there, overlooking a stormy bay on the West Continue Reading
Josephine and the Witch
[image: Nymphe de l’eau, Wilhelm Kotarbinsky, 1901] Once upon a time, there was an ugly, smelly old witch who lived alone in a murky pond. She got up when she wanted, and went to bed when she felt like it; she had frogs and toads and bats and rats and Continue Reading
A Deed Without A Name
THE WHITE LADY & THE PARLIAMENT OF OWLS
THE first time I saw the Ruined Tower, it took me by surprise, for it was in Summer, and the crown of oak-trees on its motte of earth were in full leaf; it was only very close by that I could see the fallen, ivy-covered building within. But I have Continue Reading