by Wendy Hawkin | Dec 7, 2016 | Book Review, mythology, writing and publishing
I read Coraline last night. All of it. Every word. Wafting through my head in Neil Gaiman’s deep slow British voice. It took hours, but I couldn’t stop until the little girl had set her world back to rights.
If you haven’t met her, Coraline is a bored little girl who prefers microwaved pizza and chocolate cake; who turns up her nose at her father’s adventurous cooking, and is annoyed by her parents because they work too much and ignore her. She lives in an enormous old gothic house inhabited by eccentric people far more “interesting” than her parents.
She is bold, smart-alecky, and defiant. And like most children, Coraline is curious. She likes to explore.
That’s how she meets the “other mother”… the “beldame”… the monster who can suck a child’s soul out through her eyeballs and into a glass marble. For eyes are the heart of the soul. All the beldame leaves behind is a filmy shell with black button eyes…she sews them in with a long needle and black thread.
Emily Carr’s Guyasdoms D’Sonoqua c. 1930 museevirtuel.ca
She is D’Sonoqua, child-stealer of the Northwest Coast First People; the abusive step-mother in Cinderella who uses her new child for slave labour; the jealous poisoned apple-wielding queen in Snow White; the fire-building cannibal witch in Hansel and Gretel who cages and fattens little boys and girls with sweets before she cooks and eats them.
She is the Nightmare of a child neglected, bored, disbelieved, lonely, powerless, and vulnerable.
Coraline’s world is fraught with danger, but there is only one thing to do with a beldame that steals your parents and intends to suck your soul into a glass marble.
Fight. You must be brave and strong and smart and you must fight. You must solve the monster’s riddle; creep down the grave-dark corridor; descend into the moldy damp belly of a basement; ignore the skittering rats and spiders; and confront the monster. Even the bits that detach and creep after you, like the beldame’s clickety right hand. You must fight and win and you must do it alone. There is no other way.
All children must know this.
We cannot protect our children by locking them in glass rooms like butterflies. Glass cracks and breaks; evil seeps in like a virus; keys are lost and found; monsters lurk outside the door…and often inside. Butterflies grow sad and sick and die.
All children meet their monsters.
I did not meet the beldame as a child. My monsters were marauding pedophiles, child-stealers more Hearts in Atlantis than Coraline, but with similar intentions: to steal my soul. The crunch of tires on gravel meant HIDE. If no one is home, huddle behind father’s armchair and do not make a sound. Do not breathe. BECOME INVISIBLE. If walking to school: find a ditch, a creek bed, a copse of trees. VANISH. Take to the woods and fields. RUN. But it does not work. Monsters are strong; have powerful senses. They sniff you out…eventually, and you must fight.
I did not meet the beldame as a child. But I know she exists. I’ve met her since.
Every child has a monster. So every child must have courage and a plan and a voice. Give them magic, a mojo. An amulet for protection. An animal to confide in. Secret power words and numbers. An escape route through the woods. A hiding place. A song. Stories.
Stories in which the child confronts and beats the monster. Because as much as we try to deny it, we all know: monsters exist everywhere.
by Wendy Hawkin | Nov 13, 2016 | Ireland, journal, mythology, writing and publishing
As I paint the finishing gloss on To Charm a Killer, my mind drifts back to its creation. I can’t remember how the whole story came together–there were many edits, revisions, and transformations along the way. But, I do know some things.
In the beginning, a girl was abducted by a priest.
Hollystone Coven emerged as the hook for the series: a coven of witches who solve murders using magic. Not the blink and it’s done stuff, but by manipulating energy through ritual concentration and manifestation. For example, through focussed chanting, they raise power and bend and shape the forces of nature; something, we all have the capability of doing, if only we believed.
One day while hiking at Buntzen Lake, we came upon a large circle of people hidden in the woods. They were chanting “El Diablo” — whether conjuring or banishing the devil, I do not know. But that was the moment, the witches of Hollystone Coven began meeting there for Sabbat rituals.
I fell in love with Estrada, the High Priest of Hollystone Coven–everyone does–and he fell in love with the woods and with faeries.
“I’m serious, Sara. This forest reeks of life, especially after the September rains. Can’t you smell it?” He loved the primordial odour of wet earth; imagined his beginnings in the first fecund ooze…a microscopic amoebic creature, not yet conscious of the magical transformation that would one day occur.
Then I began scouting locations–walking in the footsteps of my characters.
Old Alexandra Bridge in Yale, BC is a real place, though the intuitive path Estrada follows to meet the killer is purely his own.
Drawn toward the killer by some unfathomable force, Estrada took his first steps across the Old Alexandra Bridge with trepidation. He couldn’t help but look down through the open u-shaped steel decking that stretched like rusty metal waves beneath his boots. Resting a leather-gloved hand on the orange railing, he stared, mesmerized by the roiling green-brown river. Beneath him, the Fraser, rife with sediment and autumn rain, funnelled through a canyon of colossal grey rocks into spiralling white-capped eddies. It was deep, cold, and forbidding.
And, when it was decided that the girl must travel to Ireland to escape the priest, I went with her to co-create her experiences. On Shop Street in Galway, I watched a woman performing street art, and she became an inspiration for Primrose, the Irish fey witch.
Draped and hooded in a forest green cloak that dragged upon the stones in folds, Primrose stood serenely, her hands hidden beneath gaping sleeves. Clustered branches of appliquéd emerald and silver oak leaves meandered over the cloak like a shimmering forest. The tiny elfish face beneath the hood was painted bright green, except for the area around her eyes, which was etched in dark spirals to resemble the knots of a tree. Her ever-changing irises glowed with golden iridescence as she smiled.
“You look like a nature goddess.”
“She’s Danu, Matriarch of the Irish gods,” said Estrada.
Primrose leads the girl on a mystical adventure in Ireland.
And when Estrada arrives, he experiences Primrose in a wholly different way.
That is as much as I can say; to say more would divulge too many secrets. This is, after all, a mystery.
Ireland is a magical land, and I hope to see you there one day. If this book is your inspiration, I will be smiling.
The Sligo Road
Dolmens at Carrowmore
Communing with the Faeries at Tara, seat of the High Kings of Celtic Ireland
by Wendy Hawkin | Oct 31, 2016 | healing, journal, mythology
Witchcraft has long been sensationalized and misunderstood.
This negative campaign reaches its pinnacle each Halloween with the image of the black-robed, black-pointy hat wearing crone. Old, ugly, evil. But…
Samhain is the witches’ new year. It is our time. A night the veils are thin between the worlds and the mind ripe for reflection.
fanpop.com
Witches are not EVIL. They LIVE…deep.
Witches are:
Sometimes silent; sometimes not.
Often apolitical, until pushed. Fierce proponents of social justice.
Reverent of Nature. Celebrate her, cry for her and fight for her; understanding that without her, we are nothing. Witches sing and dance for joy, appreciate her bounty and her beauty, and raise power in her divine goodness.
Observant. Revelling in the revolving wheel of the seasons.
Realistic. Accepting the certainty of death and rebirth; acknowledging the elements and appreciating their power.
Mindful. Witches meditate, craft, and heal. And seek to do no harm.
Energy-workers. They know that energy is mutable, can be bent and shaped by vibration, by words. They understand the power of manifestation, and know that thoughts cast out, come back three strong.
Healers of body, mind, and spirit.
Enamoured by numbers, symbols, myth and story.
Truth-Seekers. Casting ancestral memories back through time, they search their mother’s remedies for simpler, less invasive ways to heal and to live well.
Nurturers. Witches grow clean simple food, work with animals, herbs, and stones.
Creators of art, music…children. And so, envision a better future.
Intuitive. Listen to their internal voices and trust their feelings.
Strong and loving. Witches are not just women and not just men, but creatures whose sexual identities shift and shimmer in the changing winds.
Hopeful. Finding strength in each other, witches send hope into the world.
by Wendy Hawkin | Sep 6, 2016 | Book Review, mythology, writing and publishing
It’s been years since I was SO enthralled by a book. I was choked up at the end of the final chapter and had to stop…couldn’t read the epilogue. Didn’t want to. Didn’t want the boy to grow up—though I knew it was inevitable: he was, after all, an adult reliving his past—didn’t want to know what became of the wise and comforting Hempstock women, didn’t want to emerge from my ocean.
I don’t know exactly why this book had such a profound effect on me.
It had something to do with the fertile Sussex countryside, with the Hempstock farm—with Lettie, and Ginnie, and Old Mrs. Hempstock—with their pioneer spirit and simple sumptuous food: with their porridge and drippling honeycombs and pots of sticky berry jam; with warm unpasteurized milk straight from the cow (I’m sure I tasted that as a kid), with shepherd’s pie layered in gravy and mashed potatoes, and soup collecting in a hanging cauldron over an open fire. I wanted to join them at the scarred old kitchen table and whisper by candlelight and sleep curled up in the four-poster bed under the full moon— was both hungry and sleepy simultaneously.
It had something to do with magic realism (which I adore) and a delicate understanding of the soul and parallel worlds that know no space and time, with a reality that “was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger” (143).
Yes, it had something to do with incredible writing, perfect pacing and simple, yet powerful, descriptions that sing through the mind of the boy like an incantation. The girls and boys come out to play…
A boy that could be any seven year old boy and no seven year old boy. An unnamed boy…every boy and any boy and no boy: the “pudding-and-pie-boy”, the boy from the top of the lane, the boy running for his life in bare feet across the meadow in a lightening storm wearing red pyjamas and a soaking housecoat. He’s a boy much like I imagine Neil Gaiman to have been: a boy that reads by a glimmer in the dead of night, that dreams of Narnia and Batman, that loves the rain on his face as he sleeps, that feels and thinks and believes in a world adults have misplaced; a boy with no real friends until…a boy that fights demons and will give up his life to save the world.
And, it had something to do with a fluffy black kitten on a pillow that made me cry.
I promise I’ve not given anything away.
You must read it to know it.
Should I read the epilogue? Can I? Now? Ever?
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman, William Morrow: NY, 2013
by Wendy Hawkin | Jun 26, 2016 | Ireland, journal, mythology, writing and publishing
One of my main characters in To Sleep With Stones is a mysterious blue-tattooed dwarf who runs an antiquities shop in Glasgow and practices Druidry. Creating Magus Dubh has led me on a journey into the realm of contemporary Druids. Over the past several months I’ve researched Druidry and reflected on its importance to a planet in peril. Living on the West Coast of Canada means I’ve had to do this via the net and missed the visceral experience I could get in the UK. Still, I’m learning.
One of my best teachers is Philip Carr-Gomme. A brilliant man, who can distill even the most complicated of issues with a wave of his pen, Carr-Gomme has led the The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids since 1988.
It seems to me that Druids are People of the Trees. Their love for nature inspires them to protect and preserve, celebrate and advocate for the natural world.
Spiritually affiliated with the Celtic tribes, Druids are both artistic and political, bards and judges, but I leave this to Carr-Gomme to explain.
On his latest blog post, he offers an mp3 recording of a talk on Druid Wisdom. Listening to him explain in story what Druidry entails is both inspiring and peaceful. Perhaps I hear the voices of my ancestors in his words; or perhaps I am recalling bygone days when I lived in the Druid world myself. Maybe I am just resonating with the magic of storytelling.
When I laid on the hill of Tara in 2005, I experienced something similar. What now looks like a sheep pasture was once a vibrant home to the kings of Ireland. It is a sacred landscape to which I long to return because it feels like home.
Musing with the Sidhe. Tara Ireland
