Haunted With Witch, Magical Mentor and Author, Fio Gede Parma

0:00

very spooky we are so excited beside ourselves with excitement for this one we could just go out and cast some spells that's how excited we are we're feeling inspired very inspired because today we are joined by the incredible witch author and I don't know what else like the most magical human we've ever spoken to truly F gapa and we first heard of f thanks to

1:00

Ali Ward and allies on a two-parter that Ally did with Foo and Ken and I are like we need to talk to we have to talk to them yeah yeah so we did soop FIA was awoken as a witch at age 11 has founded multiple covens has experienced so much within the world of Witchcraft has experiences and relationships with the Fay just is an amazing mentor to a lot of other people within Witchcraft and is also a bit of an expert when it comes to Witchcraft and the history of it and how it interacts with the world today and so Theo they're just an expert in their field and so us as kind of like wannabe baby witches we were like well baby witches yeah we're like we have to talk to Foo because I think that we all ask ourselves and in this community of two girls one ghost a lot of times we're like how do we get into it if we feel like we should be doing it what are the first steps and Foo had a lot of those

2:00

answers for us yeah we talked about how to claim your power how to begin Foo gave us so many book recommendations which we've included in the show notes and Foo themselves has also authored so many text there's the witch belongs to the world the elements of magic and their newest book ecstatic witchcraft comes out in August so we really hope you enjoyed this episode and we hope that you join Karen and I on embracing our witchiness our witchy sides and in order to be a witch it starts with claiming you are one so here we are today claiming tentatively that we are witches we are witches and we are going to Embark upon this path which requires us to not only study it but also to practice it yes so please enjoy this episode with fio garma on

Welcome Fio

3:00

witchcraft hi Theo hi thank you for joining us we are so excited to talk to you Karen and I there's so much to tell you and then so much to ask you because you have so much to share and so much wisdom to share but first of all Karen and I just a little context we grew up with a lot of paranormal happenings in our lives which is what led us to one led us to becoming friends we started this podcast and kind of throughout the journey we've really I've had Asel travel experiences we've had a lot of things in our lives that we've experienced and we've we have like coven and a lot of witches who listen to our podcast and sometimes we feel a little bit fraudulent saying we are witches but it's we've found ourselves now on a journey to wanting to tap more into our spirituality and into I guess witchcraft or being witches and wanting to feel like we own that and

4:00

that it is actually fair and good for us to say right and there are a lot of listeners who also feel that way and so we're really excited to talk to you who you have so much knowledge and are a witch and so much experience from such an early age too that you really knew exactly it sounds like who you were in terms of the direction you should go with your practice and so I guess we're hoping to absorb some of that knowledge and Confidence from you as well when dipping our toes into this subject and I think also because it can feel a bit overwhelming and daunting to begin so we'd love to well first we'd love to hear your story and then get your advice and your opinion on how we can start okay wow um do you just want me to go right forward is can I run your background sure yeah okay well as you indicated it

How did you become a witch

5:00

is true that I realized I was this witch being when I was about 11 and then when I was 12 I dedicated myself to it because that's the kind of person I am I guess I think a lot of people who are attracted to the craft young are very serious people and very like obsessive maybe and so I was I was both serious and obsessed you know and this was in 19 99 like there was just a lot going on in the meteor as well that was like very witchy and I would see myself in the books or the television series or the films there were aspects of what I was seeing that I knew intuitively even as an 11 and 12 yearold had something to do with authentic Witchcraft and um real magical practice like I could see it and I could feel it but I then started to read everything I could get my hands on early on as as well in that period there

6:00

was an explosion of Witchcraft kind of 101 books I would say at the time it was just what I was able to access was decidedly more American Wiccan and what I mean by that is that I guess the wiccan Revival happened in Britain in the 1950s but when it came to the states it became Americanized in a particular way and then certain books were coming out that either wanted to make it accessible and therefore stripped it or or maybe even decontextualized it a little of its more folky Gothic even a little bit like some of the Paranormal stuff that is actually in the craft right it kind of turned it more into this like religion which it totally is for some people but that was not what I was looking for I was looking for witchcraft and you kind of know it when you find it for different people and there there are infinite witchcrafts I don't want to say this's one monolithic one and so I found my way through the

7:00

study of books but then I realized very quickly that you had to practice it you couldn't just sit there and um I couldn't just sit there and read things and look on the internet and print out spells put them into a binder which I did a lot of but I did I started doing the Spells I did a lot of spells as a teenager just to see if they would work really do you remember your first spell yeah I do the first spell that I did was from a book called spells which I still which I which I still have it's actually by Matthew green I remember the it's called spells by Matthew green it was a spell to make my sister's nightmares go away and I remember I had to walk around the house rubbing like garlic cloves into mirrors I remember that did it work I think at the time it worked but she has since then had like my sister's dreaming life is very lucid like she has lucid dreams most of the time I'm wondering if that spell affected her because I'm like

8:00

why do you get to have lucid dreams she's like oh don't you get to like have complete agency and faculty in your dreams don't you just get to decide you eat what you eat in your dreams I'm like no no only wow gosh yeah has she heard the

How did you practice witchcraft

rumor that you're not supposed to ask people or tell people in your dreams that you know you're dreaming CU I've heard that oh that's interesting you know I've never come across that ever I think that's an interesting urban legend that's what that sounds like to me yeah well I'm sure you'll be the first to know if she ever encounters anything like that okay so you said that you realized you needed to practice rather than just look at things in in books yeah so did you practice alone or is that when you kind of sought out advisors or a coven yeah I immediately wanted to find people of um I practiced on my own quote unquote because which is never alone we're always with the

9:00

spirits and the elements of life but I practiced alone as a living human uh for about a year and then I encountered this little teen coven that had already been established um we were all the same age but it had been going for a year and so I just entered this coven went through a very rudimentary initiation right that we probably extrapolated from books but we learned a lot from each other and then through that coven I met these adult pagans and wiccans and witches and occultists and they were both interesting and repulsive to me didn't you become like their leader well I was always a little bit again serious and obsessed so I I and also I grew up with ritual and ceremony and most of them didn't so I guess I had a ritual sensibility and so I would just start running rituals and they would come and then they just would be like now you're running all the rituals so and this was you know I was in grade 10

10:00

11 12 and then but when I left high school and I moved to a city which um is obviously everything in Australia is on Stolen Aboriginal land but it's called Brisbane by Colonial standards but I moved there and I helped to found a coven there that pretty much changed the direction of my life uh and still impacts me to this day and that's where I went through what I class as my like very real witchcraft initiation yeah that's where that happened is this coven still in existence uh the coven U that would depend on who you asked um I would say that a lot of us who descend from that coven call that the mother coven it was called the coven of the Wildwood and that transformed into the Wildwood tradition of Witchcraft which is um an initiatory private tradition as most witchcraft Traditions are and it has initiates in various continents so so does that coven still exist I guess you could say yes but as as an initiatory

11:00

tradition okay is that the initiation

How to become a witch

that you speak about and write about in your book The Wit belongs to the world sure but I I kind of talk about I've been initiated in multiple Traditions but I guess for me all of that is the same Labyrinth of initiation it just has different doors and then witchcraft initiation which we can talk about if you want obviously I can't talk about details but I can talk about feeling and can talk about history I can talk about why we do it you know you were mentioning before feeling maybe like I think used the word fraudulent and I think the reality is witches are witches are witches and you know people ask me this question if you want to be a witch and you're thinking about it all the time and you're studying it and you're doing it and then you claim it you're a witch that's the witchiest thing there's no one out there who can possibly anoint you as a witch all that we do in covens and initiatory houses or Traditions is

12:00

that we welcome a witch someone who is already a witch into our house into our lineage that's all that that is and yes it can Empower someone and yes it can make someone a more skilled witch absolutely maybe a more knowledgeable witch but you can do that any you you can do that in other ways too so would you say the first step to becoming a witch is just saying I want to become a witch and I wit and then start practicing and studying I think so I think when you know there was this um very radical feminist organization called women International terrorist conspiracy from hell this was in the states and it was like Wich and this was back in the 60s and 70s these were women who were definitely drawing inspiration from the idea that witches were persecuted women of power and intelligence which I think is one threat of truth it's not the only threat of Truth and then they used to say that all

13:00

you had to do and maybe this also comes from jjan Budapest who's like a famous dianic high priestess who's still alive I think she lives in the bay or or LA but she used to say that all you had to do was say I am a witch three times and mean it and I do think that that is on some level if you do that and you mean it then you are kind of opening some doorway of perception within yourself I think you are I think you are catalyzing something but then do you have the follow through will you I've met so many people who go oh yeah I'm a little bit witchy or I yeah I'm a witch and I think yeah maybe if you worked harder on it like yeah I do think that it requires dedication and discipline absolutely it is not just a summer activity a winter activity an Autumn activity as the case may be for people who celebrate Halloween it is a whole thing but what that means to each individual witch obviously is very personal it's kind of like with you know passions or if I say

14:00

I'm a writer but I don't actually write am I a writer that is correct that is a great analogy yeah I feel like I'm

The Triple Soul

relating a lot to those people who don't have the follow through but I think for me it's been just some confusion and maybe just like lack of me putting in the effort to understand what witchcraft is or could be for me because I find myself having all these moments and these indication that draw me to these topics and it's been a part of my life for a really long time but on top of that I tend to do things that just feel right and then sometimes I start second guessing myself because I'm like well what if I'm appropriating a certain culture or what if this doesn't fit into one sect of Witchcraft is this like what am I even doing here I have no clue I'm just going off of my gut instinct and then I start to kind of spiral and second guess myself impostor syndrome and then I kind of push it away from

15:00

myself until it starts Crawling Back Again sure I think the gut instinct is the prime mover of the witch however there are other parts of of it right and I think this is a great moment to talk about the triple Soul which is a really powerful understanding of the self as we relate to the cosmos and this is a teaching in various witchcraft Traditions but the idea that we have like an animal Soul or a fetch which is also the dream Walker the one that moves to the dreams like by the way every human has this Soul it's not just witches it's the one that can also that witches and spirit workers can mindfully send out into the other world or send out to fly which is where we get this idea that witches can fly and that's the that's when you say gut instinct that's what we would associate with the fetch the the double the fetch the animal soul and then we have this middle Soul The Shining body or the aura or the breath Soul those are all words for the same soul and this is the container this Soul helps us to develop self-reflection this

16:00

Soul helps us to orient in this middle World left from right up from down cup from TV banister from curtain and it helps us think in things and move in in ways that we would say logical practical very in this Middle Earth plane and then we have a what we call the god Soul or the Deep self or the holy demon and this is like a star Soul it is like the piece of you that is intrinsically in itely connected to the source of God herself in all things it is the Divine one who knows ourselves to be divine and is not blocked from that and so every day I and many other witches like me We go through this practice of aligning and singing those souls in my main tradition we have a whole series of other layers of that so I would say to someone and this is one of the first things I teach like an apprentice witch and it's not just the alignment technique to align the three parts of the self it's also more than that it's about how are you a Crossroads

17:00

of multiple influences how are you your ancestors of blood how are you relating to the ancestors of the land who are still alive how are you relating to the ancestors of magic and Witchcraft and inspiration we are always more than one thing so yes gut instinct is Primal it's necessary it's the thing that starts us and then we need to consider the history the the law how we relate to it how we relate to it in this time and what is most relevant to our context but never like trying to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water and respecting not necessarily engaging everything but respecting everything as much as possible as we come into contact with it but also always remembering that that inspiration that Divine nosis or powerful knowledge that intimate knowledge that each of us is accessing through the practice or through the surrender or through the Instinct that that is the teacher that our connection to the the god soul is the prime

18:00

teaching method it is great to have other living teachers because they can be raw complex human examples of how magic or the craft or anything works but it is also they're there guiding and facilitating your access to the mystery you know they're helping to provoke and catalyze your access to the gods or the spirits or your own Divinity and that is the prime teacher so again even though it goes through all these levels of Law and training and Legacy and da da da da I think as long as you're questioning what is the nature of this practice where does it come from how do I relate to it in this time if it is a practice of a living culture that is being actively marginalized or oppressed by settler colonialism or capitalism or imperialism then yeah do I have a right to to engage this publicly privately you know etc etc all of those things are important filters and I think all of those questions are important catalysts

19:00

for Spiritual learning okay yeah it's better to be asking those questions than not at all because then you're not connecting with all of that and the asking of the questions is also spiritual practice like it's not they're not different right right all right this making me feel a little bit better about myself yeah totally and my what I felt was quote unquote like failed Journeys and restarting so if we were your Apprentice witches how would you help us start our journey so I ask a lot of questions first because everything that has already existed in your life is relevant I think it's honestly [ __ ] if people make you just like if a teacher or a mentor or a guide is not going to sit down and get to know you about your life and not ask you a bunch of questions about your life I'm not sure what they're doing that's probably just passing on their dogma and Doctrine right so what I do is I I get to know someone by sitting with them over many many sessions and I ask them questions about what they were like as children

20:00

when did they first start perceiving other worldly things or dreaming true or having access to the knowing or the sight when did they start seeing spirits or perceiving Spirits like things that we associate with witches right so I ask them all these questions like and tell me what like folklore or myths or fairy tales really like shook you or woke you up so i' try to get this kind of stuff and then I'd ask questions that people might be thinking are more but like tell me about your parents tell me about your family life tell me about the books you liked as a kid or the movies you like all of this stuff is it easy for you to fall asleep is it how do you wake up like there's a lot of questions like this over months and months sometimes years sometimes it takes years for a witch to like be like yes I will teach you but there's a lot of questions and then there's a lot of giving of basic foundational technique and a lot of that is about listening to the land listening to the ancestors and

21:00

beginning to cultivate a practice of reverence like a lot of it's that to be honest yeah it's interesting and I was reading your book specifically with like the demon work and like spending time with the darker I can't remember the specific phrasing but that whole section of the book reminded me so much of like trauma work or like Shadow work I know a lot of people have talked about Shadow work in the spiritual Realm and it was so interesting having recently done a lot of trauma work in like EMDR and I felt very a lot of similarities between those two yeah I have very little experience with things like I've never had EMDR like I I'm sure there are all these parallels and people tell me there are and I have a strong feeling that that is because the tributaries of a cult Shadow stalking and Demon work and psychotherapeutic and psychologic frames are actually more connected people think

22:00

so so I think that's why that is the case and it is true that a lot of like a lot of people who are in Psychotherapy and in Psychology are usually often especially the forerunners quite mystical and quite magically like they're drawn to that kind of thinking so I think a lot of those people probably were inspired by these alchemical models by models of shamanic C basus or like breakdown and re uh resurrection and honestly a lot of this stuff is just archetypical and by which I mean deeply profoundly true like primordially patented like absolutely true I also feel like all of this is

Poetry

it's very erotic and sensual and yes poetic it's like a very beautiful yeah erotic study I you know uh I hope people would understand that to be true but I've been definitely my writing style has been critiqued in the

23:00

Witchcraft communities for being too poetic but the thing is I I loved it I loved it thank you yeah people either people either love it or they loath it no um no that that is actually some somewhat true but I think the reality is and this has been a mindful both choice and just style of my being I've written like this since I can remember it's just that there's no other way for me to communicate this kind of mystery like it's just you know think it was Starhawk who you know Starhawk is a very influential witch and just influential activist in the world and I think in the spiral dance she says something like poetry is the language of Witchcraft not Theology and that's just I think that's just blatantly true because it's through poetry that you can communicate these like Mysteries yeah it reminds me of

Fairies

spell books too like spell books are basically just a book it's a poetry book yes you're right that's true sense you had mentioned that when you do speak to

24:00

people who you're considering taking on in an apprenticeship one of the things you ask is what they connected with what the creatures or fairy tales and I feel like fairies were huge for me and I just loved all the stories of fairies and Fay and I think having our podcast for over six years now we have a lot of both positive and negative experiences come into our box where people are attributing things to Fay and I know that you had mentioned in the episode you did with Ali Ward that you work with the Fay and so I was curious what your experience is and if you could teach us a little bit more about that because we don't know much yeah look the good people uh I always hesitate it's very complex to talk about them because generally they do not want to be talked about so I have to kind of walk my way through this very

25:00

mindfully it is true that I have Spirit familiars who are of those people and if you look at historical records of witch trials some of the most interesting witch trial records are accused witches who were definitely some form of cunning person or Spirit worker or what we would today easily just say is a witch and they had these familiars or familiar spirits who they said were fairies and the traditional folkloric understanding of a fairy at least in the Celtic countries in different European nations and actually in even in my father's um culture in Bary like when I asked him about these beings as a kid like based on what I knew about Celtic understandings he was like oh yeah we have them and then he told me all of this law about them which matched utterly the Celtic law that I had come across so the thing is to put on these human kind of frames these dualistic of are they good are they bad is ridiculous it's just they're the other crowd the

26:00

other people they have their own laws their own court systems in some cases they have their own worlds and they appear to be large to be small sometimes they'll appear as some kind of animal and then disappear you know so the thing is they're not one thing and when we say you know often traditionally we would say the good people or the people of Peace as a reason we say things like the word fairy is actually it originally comes from Latin fata so like like f a which is like fate so the idea of like a being who is so woven into fate as our witches so and the thing is like historically the fairy people and witches are very Linked In some cases erotically there is there's quite a lot of stuff out there that is talking about the erotic relation ship or at least the deeply intimate

27:00

relationship between fairy familiar and

Fairy Smut

witches have you read a chord of thorn and Roses no I haven't is that is that like a novel oh well yeah because I feel like lately there's just a bunch of series that are very much fairy as you call it fa smut yeah fairy smut oh okay and it's like the Fay human magical like intertwined relationships and I feel like there's been a huge push for that in the Zeitgeist lately so I don't know if you had heard of it you know that doesn't that doesn't surprise me because the thing is that that is true historically culturally mythically it is true that for centuries of Millennia humans have been getting it on with spirits that is absolutely true I have personal experiences of such things and it is uh terrifying wonderful weird it's all of the above Foo those are my

Nature and Witchcraft

absolute favorite stories to hear about what

28:00

really yeah yes yeah okay fair smut is a thing I guess yeah yeah you talked a lot about nature is being a part of kind of like the Natural Evolution of a practicing witch too and I was just curious how the different elements or pieces of living things and animals can relate to someone's practice because two the things that I think Sabrina and I experience without being practicing witches is I was I was a kid who would always talk to trees and hug trees and go into the woods and just like tell the trees everything and Sabrina feels very connected with water you know putting her feet in the ocean taking a shower so she's very she gravitates to water I gravitate more to like plants and trees and I don't know I guess I was just curious how how that influences someone's Direction in the world of Witchcraft well first of all I want to

29:00

say that everything is nature everything is natural so that's kind of just the Baseline so then in some traditions of Witchcraft and not just witchcraft in yoga Tantra different forms of Christianity even there's this idea of The Elements of Life um the classical elements or the um viic elements in in Chinese uh medicine the elements are slightly different but there's a Five Element system there too and so obviously that would be maybe not obviously but the classical elements are earth air fire water and something we either call Ether or Spirit or mystery uh The Fifth Element yeah in a lot of forms of magic and Witchcraft we form relationships with those living intelligences because they are the Bedrock of all the fabric of all existence right and so I guess some witches will feel I mean just people like like if you start to talk about the elements all people get the elements

30:00

that's the thing that's why it's so accessible because people understand the wind and the water because actually I think most I think all humans are naturally animistic like when you look at children they are all Naturally animistic by which I mean they all naturally seem to understand and move through the world as a living sensuous mess and they are relating to the plants the dogs the birds the centipedes the waterways as being as cousins as relations this is normal this is normal this is not weird at all in any kind of over cultural sense and so in a witchcraft sense The Elements of Life either they form the entire kind of framework of one's study like certainly in the reclaiming tradition of Witchcraft which I'm also involved in we teach something called the elements of magic which I've also created a book about with my friend Jane Merith and a number of other recla cling writers but but in that we work through like when

31:00

someone takes that course which is the introductory course to the tradition we introduce them to the Elements of Life in ritual and magical ways but also in very embedded ways like a lot of people in reclaiming are deeply involved in permaculture or like kind of anarchistic gardening and food production or are deeply involved in Street politics and social justice and so the way that reclaiming people look at elements is also deeply cre creative and often quite politically provocative and so like a challenge might be to start your own compost and to start feeding that compost into your garden or a challenge might be to go and understand what the water um table is in your area where the wells are what the names of the rivers and the streams are or to understand the creatures or the beings or the life systems of your bio region and to study them to watch the bird migrations like all of that that is all going to enrich your life in general but it is also going to your magic so you could extend this

32:00

further what would you say in your own

Personal Practice

personal practice is one part of witchcrafter part of your practice that you are personally working to grow yeah I mean a lot of that to be honest because I am not a gardener I am not a permaculturist I've done some Street activism but I'm not I'm not a rigorous Street activist so actually you know it's all of those aspects of of The Craft as I understand it which some witches would be like those aren't aspects of The Craft but in my communi is they really are and it's that kind of stuff that I feel like I need to grow and I want to say that what I've been doing for the past 20 years is honing and refining the Arts of community leadership and Priestess and the Arts of mentoring and teaching witches and that's where I've grown a lot of my skills and that's where I offer because it is also true that we all collaborate we can't all be excellent at everything

33:00

I'm not drawn to cooking and baking but recently I have been doing more of re-remembering how magical that is and how you can really bake something or cook something and it can be this alchemical process that creates a spell like I've been doing that more lately so it's actually kind of those things that is where I feel like I need to grow my edges as we would say yeah cuz I kind of went for when I was younger I went for I'm going to learn how to astral travel I'm going to learn how to read tarot I'm going to learn how to battle malevolent Spirits I'm going to learn how to conjure Angels so I went [ __ ] deep into ult Arts very early I feel like that's where Karin and I are right now yeah but then at the same time I feel like Sabrina you're always baking and doing that sort of stuff and I found myself really gravitating towards kind of like that slower light of connecting with the garden and growing things and

34:00

know way too many things about birds at this point I thought it was unhealthy but now it's making me feel better about my interest in the local birds so I guess we're we're a mix yeah I want to say to you both it sounds like you have it sounds like you're being respectfully tentative about claiming that you're witches but it sounds to me like you're both doing a lot of things that if you just if you just surrender and reflect you might see all the connections and you might be like ah and then it might be useful to you both to like you know I don't know if you've gone through any self-dedication but that can be like that was profound for me as a teenager to do that and then it might be true that you study with you know established teachers and traditions but you might not because the prime teachers are the elements the gods the ancestors those are the teachers

Paranormal Connections

yeah because we're a paranormal podcast

35:00

I feel like and you know I do feel like a lot of people believe there's paranormal connections between Witchcraft and Spirits how do you do you find you have a connection to the spiritual World a paranormal world have you had any experiences that you would like to share with us oh god I've had look witchcraft is other the worldly it it is the conjuration of spirits like it is that's what I kind of meant earlier by decontextualized or like there was this movement early on that made especially like wicker into this religion and like where you just kind of believe in the God and the goddess and you do some like wheel of the Year [ __ ] and you're like a witch no W witches are witches witches are witches we see spirits we fly so yes I have countless things most witches I know have had deeply paranormal experiences I mean I'll tell you one thing and maybe this will be instructive about the about the Fay oh so in 2008 I was um

36:00

traveling for nine weeks uh with two witch friends of mine and we were traveling mainly through Britain and Ireland but we also traveled through Greece and in Britain and Ireland we were just in a car and we would stop and Camp illegally apparently in Ireland apparently it wasn't illegal but in England because it's England it was but we would just Camp wherever the [ __ ] we wanted in forest valleys and that was amazing that period was deeply consolidating in my witchcraft practice and so it was the first time I'd been to Britain in Ireland where my mother's ancestors are from and I really really wanted to do that right so we went to this place called Glaston Bri tour which a lot of people would know about it's um a beautiful place and it's also steeped in folklore and myth and legend aruan legend Christian Legend Pagan Legend and Glastonbury tour is said to be the home of gwi up Neath who is like the king of the fairies there anyway so that's all

37:00

going on so it's it's very close to the September equinox so in the northern hemisphere that's the Autumn Equinox but the day light hours was still longer than the um I guess it was equaling out but the day this I remember the sun was setting very late for me and we were up in the middle of the tour in St Michael's Tower and we were singing all these prayers and songs the three of us and then we started coming down and it was still light out but was becoming twilightshiek there later I discovered that this image that looked exactly like what I saw of a

38:00

woman in Violet clothes with antlers I had never consciously seen a goddess with antlers usually they're male divinities yeah but there are actually quite a few horned and ant goddesses but I saw her and I knew with every Mo of my being in the way that sometimes you know these things I knew that she was the lady of Avalon because a glen Bri is also considered to be the site of Avalon the Celtic or Welsh other world or one of the ENT points right and so I saw her and I knelt down and I stupidly promised her a few things which later actually paned out but I think what I did there what I promised her and what I said to her really opened the gate for what happened next which was utterly terrifying so this part of the experience was euphoric and amazing and then so I get up and I turn around and my friends are nowhere to be seen and there is the in glastenbury tour so the tour there are no trees on the side of the tour there are on the bottom so you can see everything around but they my

39:00

friends were gone I thought I was kneeling for like two minutes at most they were gone and suddenly there was no um source of light there was no sun there was no moon everything was green and that was my first clue that I was in trouble and then I started to walk and I could hear behind me what sounded like like a whole procession of people laughing and there were bells and I could hear and feel on the back of my neck the like a horse like doing that horse thing out of its nostrils they're like yes yes it was terrifying it was so visceral and I knew with every again with every Mo of my being that if I turned around I would be taken into fairy and that I would be gone and that my friends would find my dead lifeless body on the side of the tour and that I would be in fairy which is some people might be going o how lovely no no not and so I I didn't want to maybe you'd be in Eternal pleasure but then you'd kind of like wake up out of it and realize

40:00

you were being held hostage like that's the thing right like the fairy people were known to abduct people and that's interesting like you might want to like talk to someone later on in another episode about the interesting Links of how fairy abductions became alien abductions like there's an interesting link there because once people stopped believing in fairies their frame of reference was aliens anyway but there's books written about that anyway so I'm like running away and then suddenly there's all these lights going off like blue like Balls of Fire that's what they looked like and then I eventually I find the line of a fence and again there's no one around but I jump over the fence and I'm like where suddenly is every human so I can feel that I'm in more I'm in more of like an astral some people would say or other world I'm kind of between this world in the other world yeah they were trying to suck me in fully and then I get to the um the tent finally and I can hear these people in the tent there's enough light to see the tent and

41:00

I can hear them and it sounds like they're talking underwater and then the tent unzips itself and nothing walks out and then it zips itself back in front of me and then at that point I lose it and I start screaming the names of my friends really loudly and these apple trees around the tent are vibrating and all of the apples are dropping oh my gosh it's like an earthquake and then my friends break through the tree line and they look as white as ghosts and they're like we thought the fairies took you and they were serious they're witches they get it they understand and I was like yeah they nearly did they they very nearly do so your screams and the dropping apples make me think that you were like literally shattering that world I think so I think so and I remember I have a distinct memory of like when I was screaming their names like doing it magically I remember Conjuring a lot of power because at this point I was like if I don't witch myself out of this like and average human actually at this point might just lose their mind but I I do have the skills to

42:00

get myself out of this and I knew if I just really screamed with a lot of power I had a feeling it would shatter the um the whole like glamour because the fairy people are very good at Glamour and they're very good at making you think things and see things that are not technically there yeah to kind of mislead you how I passed through that I don't think it was a test from their angle maybe it was but I feel like I have did a lot of magical strength by going through that process because it was after that that I really started working with my fairy familiar I had a lot of powerups quote unquote after that but yeah like I grew up in a house that was haunted too and everyone in that house knew that like we all saw things or felt things and strange things would happen like that was normal again like both my parents would would affirm and acknowledge that that was a

Aliens Bigfoot Cryptids

thing that's good that's one of the things that we talk about a lot within our community of the podcast is sometimes for certain people the podcast

43:00

and the community here are the only people that believe them in what they're experiencing and it there is something really lovely about having other people experience the same thing even if it is yeah confusing and startling at times to just have someone else to confirm like yeah I'm seeing and experiencing the exact same thing as you yeah that's nice and I guess in terms of covens like you have a whole Community who's that is right supporting you that's right you mentioned the connection of fairies now being referred to as alien abductions do you believe in aliens like what what is your perspective on Aliens and Bigfoot and Cryptids and things like that you know belief is a like when you just shifted that language to say what is your perspective I was like oh I can answer that I I do have a perspective I just want to yeah belief is interesting because it's like I think that's again such a Protestant notion right sure but anyway what do I experience as true and

44:00

like what are the patterns I observe I have had one or two experiences that I would say probably connect to extraterrestrials you know so beings not from this planet I guess but I don't I can't answer on to like what are they I actually don't have an answer about that I have more stronger responses to what is a God or what is an angel or what is a fair I could from the folklore in my experience I could answer those more concretely like aliens I don't know if I can answer that but of course I assume based on the infinite Infinities of life that there are many many many life forms I'm intrigued by the fact that the way we portray especially gray aliens is actually more in common with how people might actually have seen the fairy people so like these kind of like um insect bug eyes and the glowing skin and the long fingers is actually more like

45:00

again there's this link with traditional cultures and how they um experience the good people so that's an interesting link to me Cryptids and I'm like yeah Cryptids go yes absolutely like hell yeah yeah and also I know some really I know people who are like at the most grounded people and they have I have not seen a Bigfoot have not seen a yahi which is kind of like Australia's Bigfoot I have not seen hairy men have I been out in the bush and felt the presence of them yes like distinctly I know people who have seen them and I totally it's not even that I believe them I totally know these people and completely know that they experienced what they experienc yeah yeah I have never been more happy to hear that response I was wasn't necessarily expecting it but I'm a big uh Bigfoot

46:00

fan I feel like if I weren't podcasting and enjoyed travel and being in the middle of the woods without being scared more I'd probably be in like a Bigfoot search group in a van searching for big van yeah like banging on cowbells and putting out like Skittles and being like come here come here let's be friends yeah cuz that would work apparently they hate they hate Sound but I'm actually where I currently am I'm visiting some friends up near the Byron Bay part of Australia there are lots of sightings of hairy men and yahs around here wow wow sounds like we need to take a trip to Byron Bay field trip field trip get in our Magic School Bus and go straight to Byron Bay yeah that's incredible I also loved F in your

Curses

book how honest you are about curses because I feel like oh Karen and I often talk a lot about like when it comes to us reading stories or

47:00

doing research we're like you know it's not worth cursing people or be nice and like don't do anything bad but the real reality is like we're human and there's this Duality to us of good and bad and we're not you know whatever the vers there is no perfect so well we're complex we're complex we're multip we're very yeah right so I liked that the dialogue about curses and that it I think you said like it's [ __ ] that people say they don't curse or something like that and you probably said it so much more beautiful and eloquently but that made me want to know what curses you've done yeah I've done curses absolutely yeah I don't pretend not to I try to stay away from the idea like there are some people I know who indulge in Petty curses and I think yeah if you're going to do petty things you become a petty person so no thanks but I think that cursing is an elegant art and when you wield those powers for the sake of the oppressed or the persecuted

48:00

whether they're human or more than human or entire land systems that that is Noble I actually think if you don't bind or curse as a witch I kind of wonder what's the point it's like one of the things we're most known for like if you close your eyes or not even close your eyes and you think and just the average person thinks what is a witch known for they would probably think a few things they think witches can do spells witches talk to spirits and see spirits witches curse people now I know that a lot of early witchcraft revivalists in in Britain in the west were very kind of like they were very white many of them were from the middle class or the or even the upper middle class A lot of them were workingclass people and they were quiet at the time about things like cursing and they even said oh we don't do that when we know for a fact they did we have direct evidence they did but the the way that the early witches were cursing were was cursing like cursing or

49:00

binding or blasting or banishing the influence of the Nazis that's a that's a very powerful story um the cone of power story from the southern covs of British witches Gerald Gardner was a big part of that but I have cursed people I think the first curse that I I mean honestly I did my sister I she knows this to be true I I will say this because she knows this to be true she'd think it's funny now I think at the time I don't think she the same sister that you tried to help yes I don't I don't think she'd um yes I only have one sister I I don't think she'd find this too bad to say but I used to get very annoyed at her and she we were very mean to each other as teenagers we were incredibly mean we're much better now but I remember once pointing at her and with all my Fury saying I hope your toenails fall off anyway the very next day like the next day I remember this well she comes back

50:00

and she goes I'm so pissed off at you today and soccer my toenails fell off when I kicked the ball oh yeah and by that time I'd had enough Success With Magic that I was like a little bit cocky and I was like well don't mess with me but then I ex yeah I remember another curse I did in year 12 where my house got egged and another out queer person's house got egged and I pretty much knew who did it and they were fully homophobic I was so enraged by the fact that they had come and egged both of our houses and actually when I real like my friend that rang me and was like oh my house was egged and I could see who it was like I ran out after them and like you know cut curse them out and then I went around to the corner of my house where my outdoor Temple was where I did a lot of my rituals and that whole section was covered in egg slime and I saw it all and I got like I filled with this like Fury and I work with hecy who is this ancient Greek goddess of sorcery

51:00

and linal spaces and things like that and she's very popular amongst modern witches and she was present and she's an amazing cursor let me tell you and so I just let her kind of cloak me I let her kind of cover me with her presence in what a lot of witches would say is kind of like a light form of aspecting or transpossession which is a whole other art as well and I filled with that power and then I just directed her Fury at these three boys I knew who they were so I visualized their faces and I just let it rip and let me tell you that those yeah some bad things happened to them they're all still alive they deserved it though no they really did they really did yeah yeah I see your point of curses yeah using them to almost teach people a lesson yeah because the thing is like a lot of stand up for yourself s and for others who are oppressed absolutely absolutely yeah mainly I do curse actually to be honest

52:00

that might be the only curse I ever did that felt like it was also on behalf of me but the the all the other curses have been on men who have assaulted their Partners well I'm very glad you're doing that yeah that's mainly the other curse work I've done I feel like if there's one motivator for people to really step into their their witchiness maybe this is this is it the opportunity to also help other people in that situation oh yeah it's actually very um powerful thing to do especially when you know those people have tried everything else they've tried you know those they're usually women those women have tried everything else they've tried to be civil and polite and everything that Western Society taught them to be they've tried to be like plating you know they then they've tried to do legal things and they've tried to do this but so much is stacked against them and then you remember oh I'm a witch I can help my friend there you go you're a good friend to

53:00

have I know yeah glad we have your contact have you ever felt like you've

Have you ever been hexed

come in contact with a negative curse or something being put upon you or even you know friends or family have you ever been hexed I have yes and what do you do I have been hexed and I have had confirmation of who those people have been um what I have done is I've just picked all of that up and thrown it right back at them with like hundred times the fullest don't mess with me fellas yeah like don't I I wouldn't I wouldn't do it like like not talking to you two obviously you ain't fellas but yeah just there there are people who I know have done that and those same people have tried it on other people I've known and I just am like good luck to you yeah but it's just you know very Petty those things are very Petty and very rarely do I come in contact with a

54:00

curse though like I I work with a lot of clients who aren't at all magical practitioners and they come to magical practitioners because as you would come to an electrician or a plumber you know right you come to people who have finesse or skill in those areas hopefully and very rarely do I come across like a curse launched by another practitioner maybe if I lived in a country where that is more common I would but in places like where where I'm hanging around usually the curses are more self-inflicted to be honest interesting yeah like in terms of like negative self-thought sure like that would begin it or that would make it easier for those self curses to last longer yeah but sometimes it's like a little bit of an maybe an intergenerational Affliction that becomes a curse because everyone in the family talks about it like it's a curse that can just that can that can create the curse I mean it is also true that there are such a thing as ancestral curses that is also true yeah yeah

How do you weed out charlatans

definitely well this actually brings up

55:00

a question that I know I've had Ken you've had and a lot of our listeners have had is that today witchcraft there's thousands of books there's thousands of people who claim to have medium abilities psychic abilities can read your tarot and then they you know how do you weed out the for a lack a better word the garbage like how do you find there are frauds yeah yeah and there are really good readers and there are mediocre readers so yeah I ask around again it's the same as again let's go back to the plumber and electrician there are plumbers and electricians who will [ __ ] you over so you ask around you ask your community you ask your friends you're like do you have a the number of a good electrician like that's the same thing do you so therefore do you have the number of a good medium that's how you do it you ask the people you trust and then if you're doing a little bit of research go onto their website go on their social media and see how they talk about themselves or see because you can kind of build a picture if someone I I

56:00

this is my kind of theory if someone is actually going to talk about and credit their teachers or talk a little bit about the the context of what they do and why they do it then I'm more inclined to respect them if someone is like very much like I am the top psychic of the blah I'm like h no not interested yeah even if they are like a genuinely gifted medium if they talk about themselves like that I'm zero interested yeah yeah do you have any book

Book recommendations

recommendations as we're going to you as our expert do you have any books that you would recommend aside from yours to get started to start learning about witchcraft yeah yes I do I think that people should also read the kind of the classics and so I think that if people are serious they definitely ought to read books by dorine Valiente and Gerald Gardner even but with the cave not so much with Doran Valente she's brilliant all the way lover but sometimes you have to give caveats to people like Gerald Gardner because he definitely was

57:00

homophobic he definitely was like a colonialist absolutely he was and you can't ignore these things but he was also deeply instrumental and so for history reasons read his books and then in terms of contemporary writers Lee Morgan is a brilliant occult scholar and non-fiction and fiction writer of Witchcraft so I always recommend his books Courtney Weber is a brilliant writer and thinker I believe she lives in Oregon now just outside of Portland she's brilliant God there's actually just so many and I feel bad um you can email them to us too we could like create a list to because I you know I really do believe our listeners and K and I included would love to have a resource like that just to like refer back to to be like oh okay these are books that we could start with absolutely a lot of people love Christopher penac books they very accessible and practical Matt orin's books accessible and practical like people really like that style of stuff

58:00

too it's probably more like kind of structural and yeah like accessible language and then Jane Meredith who I write books with also writes like less witchcraft more like goddess centered work but she's deeply involved in reclaiming which is a witchcraft tradition her books are really solid and beautiful she writes a lot of memoir in her books which is just gorgeous and uh uh you know people really like I mean star like Starhawk the thing is there's a lot of occult especially male occult thinkers and writers these days who are saying things that Starhawk said in the 70s and 80s and and a lot of people think Starhawk is dead like even some I'm like like I'm like no Starhawk is very much alive and she's still out there doing witchcraft and teaching permaculture in Palestine like she's still out there doing some things as a 70-year-old that are wild and deeply necessary yeah so in 1979 she had this book come out

59:00

called the spiral dance which was like a watershed moment for kind of feminist and anarchistic witches because before that books were coming out that were more like coming from the people who were initiates of like Garian and alexandrian wicker or from like other occult forms of The Craft and Starhawk had been initiated in a private tradition of witches but she was able to and what I love she was able to create a book when she was in her 20s that is still a classic and is still beautiful like the older I get and when I go back to the spiral Dance I'm like ah this is just poetry this is just poetry and it's also deeply it's like a workbook it's also deeply accessible and it was deeply empowering to women who were realizing they might be witches or who were realizing that magic and Witchcraft was a way to connect to their power as women in the world and what I also love about Starhawk is that she has remained versatile and able to remain

1:00:00

and be radically inclusive you know so she hasn't she hasn't turned into like she's a ssom but she hasn't turned into a ssw woman who loads trans women for some reason right yeah which you know unfortunately sometimes as people get older it's harder to adapt yeah their views but that's awesome that sounds like a mustre and then also F you have a book coming out I have another book coming out yeah so I just had the which Belong To The World come out which is my like most favorite book and most personal but then I have a book coming out in August which is a revised edition of a book of mine that came out in 2012 and so it's called ecstatic Witchcraft and that book comes out through cross Crow books in August yeah I was so bummed I so I saw it on Amazon but then it was like pre-order now like not available to August and I was like I want it now yeah I know Sabrina sent me the link and was like oh counting down the days we got to order this yeah it

1:01:00

has a really beautiful cover it does it really does it's eye-catching for sure yeah where can people find you what are resources that you recommend to people yeah look I'm on Instagram and I'm on I'm still on Facebook because I'm 35 oh my God Facebook hey we were the first ones to even get on Facebook right so you kind of have to keep it that's right and yeah I have a website which has a bunch of things you know fart.com which I'm sure you'll include so I don't feel like I need to spell that out to people but yeah and then I have free like classes on my YouTube channel I have a lot of free classes and free material for people that's amazing and you know I'm around the place doing things I actually go to to the states almost every year obviously during the the three main years of Co even though the pandemic is still going on I wasn't

1:02:00

but I usually go I I'm coming up in June and July this year mainly to the West Coast but I teach a lot in the states amazing yeah so like I'm also offering courses online some of them are very open to beginners others are absolutely not and then I teach classes that are in person that you know go from things like transpossession and fallen angels to like yeah elements of magic which is like so accessible and so grounded yeah yeah well thank you so much for making yourself available for us to talk to you and learn a little bit more it was so great to hear your stories and I already feel I mean I'm still I still feel a little bit like a fraud but I feel a little bit closer to saying I'm a witch yeah I actually respect it I feel motivated yeah I respect your tentativeness actually because a lot of people just do say their which and I and I'm like oh you

1:03:00

know yeah and I think the tentativeness is is pretty respectful I think what it indicates is that you respect that there's a whole world of Witchcraft yeah but I would say to you yeah like go out under the full moon on your own bring some offerings call to the powers of Witchcraft in whichever form they come to you and just if you're serious and then just say like I want to do this and then your life will deeply change amazing you're going to be getting messages from us being like Oh my God what is happening that's right that's correct we'll visit you in the astral plane eventually you're like oh you really did it you tapped in I'm sure well it sounds like you two can already do it it sounds like you two can already astral travel so we're not in control of it though we've had experiences but no yeah zero control well there is there are way there are ways to do that I actually think I have some I think I do have a

1:04:00

class online that is free that talks about how to how to do that all right Sabrina you want to have a little date to watch this video thank you so much Foo it was so great to meet you amazing thank you Foo yeah you too thanks for having me of course Very