Many people start their exploration of the various neopagan beliefs by looking online or reading books. This may well open up our minds to new ideas and outlooks, but I would advise visiting some Mind, Body and Spirit events to get to know people in the various pagan movements One of the things I have come to love most about the Pagan movement, is the sense of community that exists, despite a huge divergence in beliefs and cultures. In the last five years I have met and befriended many amazing and wonderful people. Tina and I have been to many events. Sometimes as participants and sometimes as visitors. The atmosphere…

This month, I want to talk about healing, drumming, and an amazing personal experience that involves both activities. Tina and I have been drumming for several years now, travelling to venues around Lincolnshire and demonstrating Shamanic Drumming. Many people have reported good effects and inner experiences which have helped them in their lives. I saw Tina trance many times and manifest her guide, Nicholas Black Elk. I even had an hour long training session with him at Cleethorpes beach in Lincolnshire,- when He/Tina demonstrated many variations of the basic shamanic beat and left me exhausted from trying to keep up! When I started writing these articles, it was with the…

I was sitting and gazing out across the fields this morning in the bright sunshine. My mind was wandering,- as it often does, and I was pondering on the concept of “Faith “ or “Belief”. Many years ago, as a Christian child, “Faith” was deemed a very important thing to have. We were expected to accept everything we were told, “on Faith”,- even though those individuals who held themselves up as examples were very obviously flawed. In the end I simply accepted that those who were in charge of my education were somewhat lacking in honesty. I looked it up in the dictionary, later on today. According to the Oxford…

Touching Mother Earth I was sitting in my van one morning, quite recently. The windows were open and I was listening to a pretty little bird chattering away as I gazed across the misty fields. It was a cold damp morning, everything tinged with silver and grey. I could hear the distant traffic from the M180,- it sounded like waves on shore. I relaxed and allowed my mind to wander. I began to ponder on the myth, and the hidden purpose of civilization. I found myself sitting in a cave, looking out past a large fire in the entrance. Behind it, I felt protected from wolves and bears, but I…

To make some sense of my journey into paganism for the reader, I must backtrack a little from my last article. I mentioned last month, that it was really when I moved to Lincolnshire, that my interest in all things occult blossomed into a new lifestyle. London is a very busy place, and I was a very busy person. With a fairly large family to provide for, I generally worked over 80 hours every week. In the latter years, as engineering died due to the sell-off of British industry, I had to travel further and further to work.  I spent what time I had left working on our garden. It…

I hope that I have not exhausted the reader as they followed my journey so far. I have never kept a diary, and I guess that I am simply reviewing my own past as I look at what paganism means to me. Also, because I write about faeries, a lot of people think I am in a fluffy world of my own. Nothing could be further from the truth. Until I met my dear Tina Kavanagh, I followed a very logical, analytical path. I joined and studied many groups who were involved in the paranormal.   I read widely on psychology, hypnotism, anthropology, philosophy, religion, and anything even remotely connected…

Finding Purpose From the age of sixteen onwards, I was very much embroiled in day to day matters. Girlfriends, marriage, separation, divorce. In the world of work and business, I rose and fell . Then I rose again and fell again. When I left Ireland, I was quite broken, in many ways. I was filled with bitterness and resentment and trapped by my past. I still studied avidly. Reading was my escape and my hope for untangling the web of my past. Psychology, philosophy, magic and religion were my main interests. I was lucky enough to meet a lovely lady, who helped me to begin to heal, and shared her…

I often wonder what it is that makes some people spend their whole lives searching for truth or enlightenment. For myself, I believe it was an effort to justify the feeling of being ‘different’ from those around me. Now I can accept that I am neither better or worse than those around me. I am simply fascinated by the challenge of making sense of a very complicated universe. My own father disparaged the idea of any fairness in the world. I disagreed totally. Intuitively, it seemed to me that there had to be a pattern and a plan to the world. In the ideas of spiritual evolution and reincarnation, I…

Sadly, the daily pressures and problems of life can delay our spiritual growth and leave little time for meditation or reflection. Aged only Forty-eight, my father left behind a life which had been filled by hard work, alcohol and debt,- a life which had always been over-shadowed by the horrors of war. By the age thirteen, I had lost myself in an endless cycle of work and study. My mother blamed herself for my father’s death, and spiraled into depression and alcoholism. In a terrible row,- about a week before he died, she had cursed him,- wishing him dead. As always, I was a witness, and his reply was chilling.…

Finding the Pagan Way For many of our readers, I will be speaking to the converted, when I say that Paganism is a very wide term. It covers very many groups and belief systems, but for me personally, it was like stepping into the light. All I had read and analysed over the previous 45 years came to life when I moved to Lincolnshire, in the United Kingdom, and met my present wife, Tina. It was around then that I became much more involved in the pagan movement. This poem I wrote, describes the impact that discovering paganism as a lifestyle,- rather than a case for study, had on me.…