As some of you may know, I practice the craft in a very low key, quiet way on my own. Estrada, Sensara, and Hollystone Coven are not quite that quiet and practice their theatrical rituals together as a powerful coven in a nearby wood by a lake. Over the winter break, I felt the urge to learn more.
I’d discovered a TV show on Crave called Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale. If you can, give it a watch. Sanctuary is a small English town twinned with Salem (in the US) where there is a practicing witch—with a clinic and a laboratory full of herbs and potions. It’s such a quaint town, you almost want to live there … until someone dies and all fingers point one way.
But I digress. Wanting to know more about the craft, I searched my local library to see what kind of books they had on hand. That’s where I ran into this one:
The Practice of Witchcraft Today: An Introduction to Beliefs and Rituals, written by Robin Skelton in 1990. What caught my eye was the author’s biography. At the time (1990) Robin Skelton was a poet, critic, and essayist who’d published seventy plus books. Here was a man who’d been an initiated witch for nearly twenty years AND he was teaching at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. How cool is the West Coast? Skelton was born in England in 1925 and died in Victoria at age 72 (1997). This book explains his teachings.
Part I: Answering the Questions
This is wonderful! He really drills down to the Q&A most asked by the curious. What do witches believe? Do witches raise spirits? Do witches have sexual orgies? Unfortunately, the answer to that is no, Estrada, though I know you’d prefer otherwise:)
Skelton is clear to point out that witchcraft is an Ancient Religion, a Sacred Religion. Here are a few of the main points. Witches believe:
that all beings have spirit and are alive (trees, rocks, winds, water, toads, horses, humans, ravens … This is what draws me to the craft.
in the Earth Goddess and her consort, The Horned God, Cernunnos
that the sun, moon, and stars can influence the destiny of us mortals
that life continues through rebirth (reincarnation)
that death need not be feared as life is perpetual
that witch religions are matriarchal
that all humans have energy fields and produce psychic power
“The difference between stage magic and real magic is that in true magic what appears to have happened has actually happened” (22).
He reveals that each witch keeps a Book of Shadows for setting out rituals, ceremonies, incantations, spells, and herbal lore incorporating the nature of the land.
In Part 2, he teaches about Rituals and Celebrations including the Witch’s calendar (involving both moons and sabbats).
Part 3 offers a collection of spells; verbal magic as well as talismanic magic. There is much talk of colors and symbols.
Thoughts On Casting Spells
Every witch makes his or her own spells. They must be cast with true intent. The intensity of that intent is what’s important and the belief that it will work. They must NOT cause harm. As you may know, that is The Witch’s Law:
Do what ye will provided that ye harm none. Perfect Love. Perfect Trust.
When picking up special talismans from the thrift store, clean in salt for 48 hours and then imbue with energy and intent. I loved this advice. As we all know, things hold onto energy, be it positive or negative, and you can find true treasures in thrift stores.
Do I recommend this book? Yes. I think there’s much to be learned from going back to the roots of witchcraft and remembering that not only does Goddess worship predate Christianity, it’s a sacred craft.
Blessed be.
P.S. On New Year’s Eve, I set up candles and cast my Tarot. I was The Star. My future was The Sun. And my outcome was The Magician. It can’t get much more positive than that. But seeing The Magician made me wonder: Is it time to awaken Estrada, The Man in Black? Thoughts?
Wouldn’t you love to own a curiosity shoppe crammed with all sorts of treasures, perhaps some that are even magical? This is what our feisty seventeen-year-old hero, Willow Stokes, inherits when her father dies. The problem is, nothing seems the least bit magical so nothing’s been sold for decades, and Willow’s about to lose the shoppe. She can’t pay the rent. The townspeople of Ardmuir regard her as a charlatan, all except for her kind and handsome best friend, Finlay Barrow, and her affectionate “storm-cloud gray kitten” Argyle.
This all changes the day the mythical wolpertinger warns: “Beware the girl in the oxblood cloak!” and then that very girl appears in the shoppe looking for a very particular grimoire. Is the outlander, Brianna Hargrave, bad news or the answer to all Willow’s problems?
I dare you not to get hooked on the opening of this cozy fantasy.
“Always heed the warning of a wolpertinger. Those words became something of a refrain in the weeks after the girl with the wild hair and strange accent entered my shoppe and spun everything arse over teakettle.”
Character-driven cozies are trending these days, whether they’re mysteries, romances, or fantasies. This one blends a little of all three. Scots-talk tampers the swearing into bollocks, arse, and shite. There are clans and tartans, weans and dragon’s eyes, pony carts and magic thimbles. There’s a sweet love story with a first kiss that leaves you cheering for the happy couple, minimal violence, and creepy bad men get their comeuppance. Even the “ravenous cats” can be beat.
The brilliant cover features artwork by Vera Drmanovski—thistles, magic mushrooms, and the fantastical wolpertinger. I’ll be reading more of Mara Rutherford YA books. This one is a treasure trove—a whimsical coming-of-age story brimming with magic and adventure, that reminds us what’s important in life: friendship, love, and loyalty. I want to crawl inside the Cabinet of Magical Curiosities and stay there. Perhaps, there’ll be a sequel. One can only hope.
Mara Rutherford is something of a curiosity herself. A triplet born on Leap Day in California, she studied journalism before dropping into YA fantasy, married a marine who turned diplomat, is raising two sons, and currently lives in Rome. If that’s not a cozy fantasy, nothing is.
Reader Beware: This fast-paced Young Adult novel contains several graphic, disturbing scenes of indescribable gore and violence. Actually, I shouldn’t say “indescribable” because it’s Sutherland’s sensory play-by-plays that push it over the edge into the HORROR realm, giving Stephen King a run for his money. Quill & Quire’s called him Canada’s answer to R.L. Stine. If the macabre is not to your taste you might want to give it a pass, but if you’re intrigued by Halloween horror, Stranger Things, and masterfully crafted suspense, read on.
This rapid-fire tale is as highly emotional as its teenage protagonists. Seventeen-year-old Joana, her thirteen-year-old brother Peter, and her troubled father are on the run—not from evil humans but from the voices that haunt their tortured father. The Whisperings.
“They whisper in my ear in the middle of the night as I sleep. They murmur, mumble, and mutter, often nothing more than a stream of indecipherable nonsense. Clear words sometimes jump out of the noise, like fish flying from the water, and sometimes the voices yell. But they all want, and need, and demand”(53).
Every time The Whisperings take hold, the Guests pack their car and drive off to find a new town. This nomadic existence started thirteen years ago when Joana’s mother was violently murdered in their family home. (Note: her horrific murder is described in vivid detail later in the story.) Now, they’ve arrived in the small town of Burlington, Vermont and rented the dank basement of a sprawling (and crawling) Victorian house from old Mrs. Cracknell. It’s a fixer-upper with reduced rent because Dad’s a handyman. It’s hard to keep a job when you’re constantly running from the voices in your head.
Known locally as “The Kill House”, it’s alive, not only with the spirits of a family torn asunder by a tragic murder-suicide, but with creepy insects that natter in the walls. “Ta-tump, ta-tump, ta-tump!” You see, Abraham Keil, the depraved murderer, was an entomologist at the local university. Centipedes and spiders lurk in these musty pages, and a Death Watch Beetle sings Joana into her closet, where she bashes in the wall and discovers the red room. Use your imagination.
If that’s not enough, there’s a creepy little beetle dead-centre every time we break scenes that makes me jump even though I know it’s coming.
When Joana tumbles from a red rock cliff, narrowly escaping with her life, she awakens in hospital with the ability to see ghosts herself. The Whisperings have somehow been transferred to her via a concussion. Woven through the story is a B-plot love story that offers some relief from the nail-biting suspense. Joana meets Willem, a quirky, bookish boy who works at the local diner and christens her, Pumpkin Spice on account of her first latte. How sweet. Will they both survive the hauntings?
Joana’s been on the run since she was four years old and wants nothing more than to put down roots in Burlington, an old-timey village that feels like home to her. She loves to run, and this talent earns her a place on the school rugby team. Things seem to be working out, what with rugby and Willem, until they’re not.
Canadian author Joel A. Sutherland is the award-winning author of Scholastic Canada’s Haunted Canada series (now a graphic novel in development for television). This “master of the macabre” lives in Ontario with his family, but sets his books south of the border in Vermont. His novel, Summer’s End, was a Red Maple Award Honour Book. The Whisperings follows his debut YA novel, House of Ash and Bone, a novel of ghosts and witches, also set in Vermont. He received a Masters of Information and Library Studies from Aberystwyth University in Wales.
In the Afterword, Sutherland explains that horror stories “teach us how to defeat the thing hiding under our bed, the monster lurking in our closet, or the voices only we can hear. They give us the tools we need to face our fears. They remind us that we’re not alone; when the lights go out, we all get a little scared. But in the morning, the sun always rises” (289). Well, maybe not for ALL the characters in this book. If you’re craving frenzied goosebumps, this may be the book for you.
This book is subtitled: “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.” It’s a wonderful book; one I’ll add to my library. It’s about changing attitudes, rediscovering nature, and learning gratitude. If anyone can save the planet and ameliorate this current crisis, it’s Indigenous teachings and children—coupled together this book creates a lifeline to hope.
My understanding is that Monique Gray Smith took the teachings offered in Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) by Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer and adapted them for Young Adults. It’s a beautifully written and produced book with gorgeous illustrations by Diné (Navajo) artist, Nicole Neidhardt.
Most of the stories originate in the East. Having grown up alongside the Great Lakes and studied with Anishinaabe Elders and teachers at Trent University, they resonate with me. I well remember the teachings of the Seven Fires. We are now in the time of the Seventh Fire. That prophecy “tells that all the people of the earth will see that the path ahead is divided. Each person must make a choice in their path to the future” (278).
Some teachings I’ve chosen to weave into my life—like planting one corn seed, one pole bean seed, and one squash seed together in my community garden plot in the way of the Haudenosaunee People. This is not only to honour my Tuscarora grandmothers, it makes sense. The corn stalk provides a trellis for the pole beans and the wide squash leaves keep the soil moist and weed free. I also found Pass the Feather, where I can order tobacco seed from a Haudenosaunee woman who says, “You are not paying for tobacco seeds or my time – this is a gift from me to you. Tobacco is not for sale and should not be bought.” You can leave Dawn a donation for her time. I love this concept. Then when I pluck from the wild, after asking the plant if I can take a part of her to use, I can leave some sacred tobacco as a gift.
passthefeather.ca
This idea of changing the way we approach nature and do business is one the author proposes. Engage in a gift exchange rather than purchase and sale. Think potlatch: give rather than take, making gratitude one of those things you give.
It seems a romantic and radical idea to change the way we’ve done business for hundreds of years, but isn’t that what’s needed. I mean, that’s how we lost our old growth trees, isn’t it? The Europeans who arrived here on Turtle Island saw only wood for their houses and ships, rather than sentient beings who’d been part of a thriving ecosystem for thousands of years.
We may not be able to change the world view completely but making gifts rather than flocking to the mall to purchase is one way to proceed. Also, we can buy locally crafted products to support our artists and creators rather than huge corporations from the other side of the world.
There are times as I read that I’m transported back home. I remember collecting maple sap in Ontario and boiling it down on my kitchen stove until it bubbled thick in the bottom of the pot and steam ran down the walls. Oh, that was wonderful syrup. And we always had a garden. I knew all the plant life around my childhood home and learned to use natural remedies. Things are different now that I live in a city on the West Coast, but I’m trying to do whatever I can. It’s not only better for the earth, it feeds and soothes my soul.
What can you do? Learn the old Indigenous ways, appreciate the plants, and show your gratitude. Perhaps buy or borrow this book for your teenagers, or if you’re a teacher, read parts of it in the classroom. Working together and sharing these ways of walking on the Mother Earth creates hope, which lessens anxiety and brings beauty to our world.
P.S. If you’ve never smelled sweetgrass, you must. It’s indescribably sweet and soothing. My grandson loves it.
I read A Discovery of Witches years ago but it wasn’t the right time for me. Reading can be like that. Something you read and love today might not work for you five years from now. In my case, it was the opposite. I consumed this lengthy, detailed novel—almost six hundred pages—in a matter of days and emerged amazed by Dr. Deborah Harkness. But how can you not be impressed by this teacher, scholar, creative writer, and cancer survivor?
Harkness describes herself as “a student and scholar of history, with degrees from Mount Holyoke College, Northwestern University, and the University of California at Davis. For my doctoral degree, I researched the history of magic and science in Europe, especially during the period from 1500 to 1700. The libraries I’ve worked in include Oxford’s Bodleian Library, the All Souls College Library at Oxford, the British Library, London’s Guildhall Library, the Henry E. Huntington Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Newberry Library.” Oh, to walk in those footsteps.
Indeed, when we meet Diana Bishop in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, it’s clear that Dr. Harkness has walked there herself.
I watched the series on AMC+ last month and quite enjoyed it, but reading the novel gave me a different sense of the characters, especially of Matthew and Diana. As much as I love the handsome Matthew Goode, the French vampire Matthew Clairmont appeared in my imagination more like my own protagonist, Estrada.
“In his black trousers and soft gray sweater, with a shock of black hair swept back from his forehead and cropped close to the nape of his neck, he looked like a panther … (19).
This dark man, this ancient vampire, is well over six feet tall, with considerable height and bulk, with intense gray-rimmed black eyes. He wears a long coat (but of course) and performs yoga like a gymnast. What’s not to love? This, apparently was the author’s inspiration for his character—a portrait miniature by Nicholas Hilliard (1547 – 1619). I repeat myself: What’s not to love?
What’s most astounding about this book in the author’s world building. In the beginning there were four races: humans, witches, vampires, and daemons. The first, humans, relegated the other three to myth and, over time, their numbers dwindled. Their political world is determined by The Congregation, a council of nine (three of each race) whose main task is to enforce a covenant that prohibits inter-species relationships/mating. Matthew and Diana’s forbidden love puts them on the Congregation’s hit list. Not only that, The Dreaded Congregation want Diana for her power. She’s the only witch in centuries to call up a much-coveted manuscript, Ashmole 782, from Oxford’s Bodleian Library.
Watch a video here to learn about the library. Oxford, and the Bodleian, are definitely on my bucket list, though I’ll need a good reason to be admitted.
Second to world building is the author’s fascinating knowledge of history, of alchemy, of science, and her ability to explain concepts in a way that readers can absorb and understand.
A Discovery of Witches is Book One of the All Soul’s Trilogy. There are now five books in this series. This is a romance with the breadth and depth of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series and the couple as noteworthy. I can’t wait to slip into Book Two and time-travel back to Elizabethan England with Matthew and Diana.
In 2023, Deborah Harkness survived ovarian cancer with the support of Karen, her partner of twenty-six years, whom she married four days before her surgery. We send them blessings. Having escaped ovarian cancer myself in 2014, I understand the terror of hearing those words.
Phaedra Luck may be no Greek princess like her mythical namesake, but she’s one fierce female protagonist. When we first meet “Fade” she’s sleeping rough in a cemetery. Like her missing great aunt Madeline, Fade survives on society’s fringes, woven into nature like other wild things—wolves, women, rabbits, and black bears.
From the dark, disturbing prologue (listen to the author read it here) to the bittersweet end, Penney unravels an epic family tragedy using flawless poetic prose and cinematic imagery. She’s a masterful writer, her chosen words and phrases, evocative and sensory. Blood stains these pages. Fire burns from the creases. “A sharp whiff of something wicked stings my nose. A wretched smell. Burnt. Like scorched meat” (18).
Buried within these charred pages are Gothic horror tropes that expose the darker side of humanity. The witch of Willow Sound lives in an isolated cabin along the coast of Nova Scotia—a cabin that Madeline Luck has built with her own two hands using the materials at hand on Micmac land.
The setting is as much a character as the missing Madeline, her niece Fade who’s come to find her, and Fade’s new sidekick Dr. Anish Chaudry AKA Nish, a PhD historian who helps to unravel the mystery. All good gothic stories evoke weather, and this is no exception. Hurricane Lettie appears like a mythic goddess at the appropriate moment, acting as both healer and destroyer.
Penney explores the mythos of madness in several ways. Madeline’s cozy cabin is juxtaposed not only with the horror lying in the hole below, but with the mad town of Grand Tea—a town thriving on occult tourism that wants to build a lucrative shrine to Madeline, their local witch. The townspeople survive at the edge of a cliff under a massive rock where rain falls “with Cenozoic era rock dust” (143) and their mad Mayor Davish becomes a strange symbol of patriarchal culture to foil this matriarchy.
Described as a “feminist tale about women called witches,” Penney’s story is at once, both mesmerizing, complex, highly entertaining, and an unapologetic statement illustrating the horrors historically and culturally perpetrated against women and children marginalized by society. In Penney’s words, the story” sheds light on what societies do with people and the past they don’t want.” Her Afterword not only reveals her inspiration for the story, but also the magnitude of crimes perpetrated by one tiny Canadian province: “All stories about Nova Scotia must have some darkness in them, I say. Because of all the bones” (309). Unapologetic, and rightfully so. The book is destined to become a classic of East Coast regional folklore.
Penney leaves no list of accolades; in fact, this could be her debut novel. If it is, it will not be her last. There is something precious here to read and savour.
For those readers, intrigued by witches and spells and such things, you will find them woven into these words and buried beneath the dirt and bones of this book. Madeline leaves a hand-made grimoire, and a spell jar containing “a black candle, a white candle, a clove of garlic, a wild rose stem smothered with thorns, a spring of elderberries, and a snip of a rosemary. Everything is flecked with some kind of sparkly black spice.” Black salt. Madeline buried this spell in the earth to protect her house. They are “traditional objects with ancient meanings” (99). But my favourite spells are the old photographs with words on the back that invoke the dead. “Maddie. Berry tea. Rosemary” (286). What would your spell be?
Beneath this tragic tale is another deeply layered story, a catalyst I dare not tell. But I promise you this: It will tear a hole in your heart. Catch Vanessa reading the first chapter here.
