Hekate & Me on AEON BYTE

This weekend’s AEON BYTE features an interview with me about the Goddess Hekate and the HEKATE Her Sacred Fires project.  Details can be found at:

http://aeonbyte.blogspot.com/2010/06/goddess-hekate-06262010.html

Midsummer Blessings!

Dear Readers

Now that the Sun is at its zenith, shining brightly in all his glory – encouraging growth and the unfurling of the wealth of the Earth which will manifest in food and drink in the months to come, it is also time for us to sit back and enjoy some rest and plan for the harvest of our labours.

Midsummer for me is a period of tremendous joy, especially when the Sun shines here in the Wye Valley as it is doing today – the last few years have been all too cloudy, grey and rainy for me!

As a family we went down to the Welsh Coast for the 20th and today I have spent the day here in the hills gathering the first round of herbs and roots for my magic-larder for the year.  I do prefer wild-crafting my herbs whenever I can, and of course grow some of my own too.  There is a certain magic about finding a plant in the wild and watching it grow until it is ready to harvest – whilst also ensuring that there will be some more of it again next year! Tonight I will be heading out with a few close friends to an ancient megalithic stone monument in the Brecon Beacons where we will be performing our rites …

Here’s hoping that you all had a beautiful Midsummer Celebration too!   Here there will much more still until the 25th as in the traditions I work in Midsummer is celebrated on the actual day of the Solstice, as well as a few days later in accordance with tradition.

Thank You : Rite of Her Sacred Fires

You can find out more at the project’s website www.sacredfires.co.uk

New Flames Burning!

Hekate Her Sacred Fires, the anthology I have been working on for the last few months, is finally in print and making its way to homes all over the world.  It has arrived with a number of the contributors now that I know of, as well as a few eager readers who placed their orders well in advance!  Some who are a bit further away, in Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, Chile and Mexico might have to wait a bit longer for their copies (postal services!).

Tara Sanchez, from the Temple of Hekate, who is also one of the contributors received her copy here in the UK late last week.  She has read the book cover to cover and has written a review of what she thought of the book on her blog, which you can read over at http://www.templeofhekate.net/blog/?page_id=158 – I am very much looking forward to the comments from all the readers (and most of all the other contributors, as this is a project which is very much about the bringing together of people who share a passion for Hekate).

There was a minor glitch with the printing which caused a few images to be printed very dark, this is being looked into at the moment to see if it can be corrected – but on the whole I hope that everyone will agree that it is a wonderful collection of material, in some ways a beautiful treasure chest for anthropologists who are looking for an example of how an ancient Goddess not only survived into the modern age, but how she is viewed in different places around the world today.  We have also had a few requests from readers for a hardback edition, which is something we might be able to look into in due course too.  If you have suggestions or comments, or even requests, please leave a message for me here by responding to this blog (or you can email me).

Though I express many of my own views about this project in my foreword and introduction to the book itself, I feel it necessary to say once again here, that this has been a project unlike anything  I have ever worked on in my life.  Not only did I get to explore a goddess who is very close to my heart in new and exciting ways through the experiences of others, but I also made many new friends and found out about magical and spiritual communities I had been completely unaware of before.  In fact one of the participants to The Rite of Her Sacred Fires wrote to me about her experiences of the rite and noted amongst what she said that it was something which brought together people from communities who, though they share a passion for magic, spirituality and of course the Goddess Hekate, would not ordinarily speak or communicate with each other.

Likewise, I feel that this project which has resulted in the publication of Hekate Her Sacred Fires, bridges such divides and shows very clearly how though the language (both symbolic and actual!) we speak might be different, how the robes (or lack thereof!) we clothe ourselves might be made from different fabrics, designs and colours – the passion we have for the Goddess Hekate bind us together.  More importantly even, the experiences we have of her – whether we are in Australia, Chile, Mexico, USA, Canada, Sweden, The Netherlands, Turkey, Bulgaria, England, Wales, Cornwall, Ireland or Spain – or indeed ANYWHERE on this beautiful planet Earth, shows that the Torchbearing Triple Goddess of the Crossroads is able to manifest and touch the lives of her devotees and others who call upon her, and sometimes those she calls upon – whenever, and however it pleases her.  She is not a Goddess bound to time and place, but instead she really is the Axis Mundi, the Soul of the World who is able to bring down her starfire to inspire, create and unlock doorways.  Sometimes, even dynamite it apart to make way for a new way of being, with freedom and without the restriction we place upon ourselves everyday.

Hail Hekate!

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You can find out more about Hekate Her Sacred Fires at www.sacredfires.co.uk or you can order a copy now (with free P&P to any destination worldwide) for the RRP of £24.99 using Paypal:

Her Sacred Fires – Now Available

For those of you who have not yet ordered your copy of HEKATE Her Sacred Fires, a book all of those of you who work with Hekate, and indeed with any Goddess, will find fascinating, you can do so through the project’s website www.sacredfires.co.uk, through the publishers at www.avaloniabooks.co.uk, or right here and now using Paypal:

(RRP UK£24.99, PB, A4 size, 308 pages; free P&P)

To find out more, including a full table of contents, and a list of contributors with their biographies, see www.sacredfires.co.uk