Just a quick thank you to everyone who answered my plea for help when the binoculars 'view blog' icon went missing from my home page.

Your kindness and thoughtfulness are what make blogland so special.

Brightest blessings
TYlluan

I've often said that some strange stuff happens in my part of the world. Given the fact that the roads are full of potholes and full of boy racers, the following story seems reckless in the extreme. Basically, two boys clung to the back of a bus for several miles. What makes the story so gloriously Welsh however, is the breathless reporting on the ICWales site :

"FOOTAGE of two teenagers clinging to the back of a bus hurtling through the South Wales Valleys was today removed from the internet.

The boys, aged between 13 and 15, could be seen putting themselves in danger on the back of the number 100 bus between Tonteg and Pontypridd."

Hurtling? Well, maybe. I've yet to see a bus up here do anything other than trundle, the roads are too narrow. And I just loved the precision of the Bus number and its route (note - anyone hanging on a bus coming from TOnteg would do well to invest in a parachute...)

But oh, what a stupid thing to do.

You can read the whole sorry story here : http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/02/29/teen-bus-stunt-film-removed-from-web-91466-20541477/

Has anyone else had this problem today - I go to my home blog page, and there are no longer those nice little binoculars that allow me to view my blog.

Where have they gone? Is this yet another 'improvement?' They are still visible on the 'Write' page..... but they've disappeared from my home page.

Aaaggh! What's happening?

I never realised just how mad the world has become.... in the wake of a number of teenage suicides in Bridgend, South Wales, two schools (one in Radyr, the other in Treorchy, neither a million miles away) decided to set their pupils the following homework:

In Radyr the children were asked to write suicide notes as part of an English literature class. See : http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/02/27/year-9-pupils-told-to-write-suicide-notes-in-class-91466-20529543/

In Treorchy the children were asked to plan their own funerals as part of their RE work. See:
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/02/27/pupils-given-funeral-planning-task-for-homework-91466-20532117/

I just think it's sick.

Mr Penry managed to get lost in the mountains two days ago - how he does it I do not know, I never manage to walk that far from human habitation. But give that man a pair of boots and a stick and he's off....

And this time he went off just a tad too far. Although you might not think it, whole chunks of the Rhondda are just wild mountainside, and you can find yourself a long way from the beaten track in no time. And given that he had deliberately wandered off the beaten track, through woods etc., I was starting to worry.

Did he have a torch? No - it was early afternoon when he set off.
Did he have a compass? He looked at me blankly when I suggested one. Wayfarers like Mr P navigate by.......well, what exactly?

You might be surprised. Now what can you navigate by, I wonder? The moon? The stars?

In Mr P's case it was poo. Yes, the great man had worked out that once he encountered horse poo he was nearing civilisation.... and the first pile of dog poo meant that home was nigh (on account of dog walkers only venture so far, horses a little bit further and after that it's a poo free zone.)

So, with magnificent views of the fast setting sun, he clambered down the last paths and eventually made his way home.

Me? I've gone grey (again.)

I am up to my eyeballs in poisons this morning. No, don't panic, nobody's laced my morning milk with something nasty. It's just the book has a chapter on poisons and that's what I'm working on at the moment. It's pretty dark stuff and I shall be glad of some light relief later today when I leave my cave and rejoin the human race again!

But for the moment it's back to the witches' ointment and the Deadly Nightshade!

From time to time I like to blog about the surreal things that seem to happen in Wales... this little gem, from the Times (no less) of 16th July 2007, is absolutely priceless:

Nessie’ bobs up in Welsh river
Coastguards issued an alert after a creature like the Loch Ness monster was spotted in a river.

The 25ft-long monster was seen floating in Wales. But the “Nessie” was a giant raft built for a river festival that was dashed from its mooring by a felled tree during heavy rain. A search team finally found the raft, which has a 6ft tall Loch Ness Monster head and a tail, five miles downstream in the River Towy near Carmarthen, West Wales.

Ian McCue, chairman of the Carmarthen River Festival, said: “It was quite embarrassing . . . In fact, the coastguard I spoke to was in hysterics for about 10 minutes when I told him.”

You really couldn't make it up, could you???

You'd think I'd know better at my age, you really would. And it's not as though it's never happened before, because it has. Frequently. But the truth is, I'm a devil for toffees and today was offered a particularly sticky confection from Thorntons.

I was weak, dear friends, and the toffee was wonderful.

And on Monday, I'll be visiting the dentist to replace my filling.....

The internet is a wonderful tool, but sometimes it doesn't half throw up some rubbish. Today I came across a site where a 'witch' claimed that she practised Medieval Witchcraft that dated back to 7,000BC.

I could almost have smiled if it hadn't been a blatantly commercial site peddling spells and 'witch supplies' at no mean prices.

I hope nobody is daft enough to be fooled, but I won't be holding my breath........

Yes, I'm still writing. Have just finished sorting out chapter ten... all 10,500 words of it. Now to chapter eleven which looks at the moment as though it will be considerably shorter. Normally when I edit things I try and cut stuff out but there are always times when you discover new information that simply has to be included.

The trouble with writing of course is that it risks turning me into a bloody hermit. So every couple of hours I make myself get up and do something useful like, um, make myself a pot of tea. I would go and sit in the garden but Barney is a bit mental at the moment and whenever I go out there he thinks I've come to play Chase. So I'll leave that for a while until Ben and Homer have tired him out a bit (which should be sometime around 2019 I think....)

Ah well, onwards and upwards......

The kitchen chair I usually use has broken. In fact, to all intents and purposes it ceased to be a chair about five years ago, and I'm not sure why I'm still trying to sit on it. Sentimentality, maybe This weekend - taraaaaa!!! - we decided we would replace it.

All I wanted was a wooden kitchen chair, preferably with arms, something rather large and comfortable that I would pad out with my patchwork cushions. You'd think a plain wooden chair for the kitchen would be pretty straightforward, wouldn't you? The only think I insisted on was being able to see the chair before I bought it.

Think again. I began by making a list of all the furniture retailers within about 18 miles. I had about twenty. I began dialling and discovered that about half of those had gone out of business in the last year. I'd say another seven are probably on their way, judging by the way they fielded my call.

Number 1. We say we have the chairs in stock, but actually we don't. Well, we have some of them. We can't tell you which ones, you have to tell us which ones you're interested in and then we'll check and see if we've got them here. Delivery will be about two months anyway....

Number 2 - We do have wooden chairs but whether they're kitchen chairs or not is a matter of interpretation (I kid you not. They actually said this.)

Number 3 - Ha ha ha! No. Sorry.

Number 4 - We don't sell wood any more. (this in spite of the fact that their website was full of wooden furniture, and the firm's name is something like 'The Wooden furniture company' ) When pressed, she said 'Well, we sell some wood. But we only have one wooden chair and that's got wheels on it.'

Number 5 - We only sell chairs if you buy the table as well.

Number 6 - We have wooden chairs but nobody's priced them yet.

Number 7 - Um.... we have some Indian chairs, will they do? When pressed to describe all they would say was 'They have metal bits on the back.' Can you describe them? No, not really.

THe mind boggles.

Hopefully I will receive the proofs of my book 'Seeking the Green' sometime this week, so the publication date must be moving nearer.... and nearer....It's already got its ISBN number too

It's an exciting time for me, I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product.

Meanwhile, I am two books ahead and still working on my book about plants and magic....Luckily I love writing, and it's been part of my routine for so long, that it's no hardship to try and fit in a few pages here and there.

As soon as I have more news, my Blogfriends will be the first to know!

I had never thought to be writing this. On our planet, in this year 2008 a woman has been condemned to death for Witchcraft. Yes, it's happened in Saudi Arabia and not in Peckham, but after all, the Saudi's are considered allies to the west, aren't they?

Most of the newspaper and online reports concentrate on the absurdity of the claim that anyone could possibly be a witch but that's not all that's at stake here. It's freedom of religion... the freedom to be who we want. If a witch or anyone else commits a crime, then try them by all means for that crime, but not for what they believe.

When I was young I was brought up to be very careful about telling people my beliefs. 'Bad times can return' was the general warning, and I must admit I thought my elders were being over cautious.

Now I realise they were right.....

I thought I would post a little more on this subject since yesterday's post just scraped the surface (well, metaphorically speaking!)

If you look at the folklore associated with many standing stones and stone circles, you find that quite a few are said to be the result of women being turned to stone for dancing on the Sabbath (usually because the Devil was playing the fiddle!)

This, when you think of it, is very interesting. For a start it links whatever went on at the stones with women rather than men. Also, the association with music could suggest that whatever went on at the stones in ancient times was accompanied by music (though maybe not a violin, that would be pushing things a bit.) But it could have been singing, chanting, even a harp. There are quite a few psychics who believe it's possible to 'sing' the stones back into consciousness.

But one of the things I think is probably most important when you encounter a stone is to actually communicate with it. Remember that the whole computer age was only made possible when someone worked out the possibilities of the silicon chip. And that early radio sets worked through the properties (scientific, not magical) of crystal.

So the idea of communicating with stone really isn't as mad as it might sound. Maybe they can download information if only we take the time and trouble to work with them. And since most things operate in dual directions, the work that we put into helping the stones learn about the modern world, may well be reciprocated.

In other words, the stones will be able to teach us things we maybe never even thought of asking.....

One of the things about having most of my activities curtailed is that it gives me time to do things I might not have got around to otherwise. So I've done quite a bit of reading these last few days. As a Pagan, I believe that everything on the earth has a level of consciousness. Some things may be more conscious than others, but they're conscious all the same. This can include things like stones, trees, springs etc.

One discovery I wanted to share is the idea that at some time centuries ago, around the time of the Synod of Whitby, (when it was clear that Christianity was here to stay), some adherents to the pagan faiths decided to actively suppress some of this consciousness, particularly at stone circle and standing stone sites, to prevent their power falling into the wrong hands. This resulted in the stones being 'put to sleep' until such time as it was safe to reawaken them. Therefore the power exuded by these sites up until relatively recently wasn't a fraction of what it had once been.

In the mid 1970's a number of witches felt called to re-awaken these stones, with the result that their consciousness is steadily growing. Could this be the reason (or at least one of the reasons) why interest in paganism is growing?

It's an interesting thought.....

Well, I'm still crippled up, but marginally more mobile than yesterday. However, something so weird happened today that I thought I'd post and see if anyone else has had something similar happen.

As you know, it's a fairly new moon - so I suppose I should be ready for most things. Two things happened today :

1. A light in one of our outbuildings has started working today after months of inactivity. Normally if I switch it on, nothing happens. Today it worked again!

2. The headlights came on in our car. When we checked the car was locked, nobody has been in it for a few days, but the switch had been moved to 'on.' If it had been accidentally left on when we last used it, the battery would certainly have been flat by now. But the battery isn't flat. And someone/something had moved the switch.

Weird or what?

On Thursday Mr Penry and I went off for a nice walk up the mountain Nearly made it to the top, too - Mr P would have gone ever onwards but I was starting to feel a bit tired. Anyway, by Friday morning I was in agony - I seem to have trapped a nerve in hip or back or something - and needed the entire day in bed (*gnashing of teeth*)

So apologies for not blogging, I am up and about at the moment with the aid of a stick but I still feel I have aged overnight and am now 140! Hopefully a couple of days and I shall be back to normal (whatever that may be again!

Brightest blessings
Tylluan

I've spent hours writing today, trying to catch up on my book. So far I've done the first draft, and my second draft is standing at 60,000 words and rising. I'm barely half way through it yet, so aim to make about 100,000 if possible.

Now I am sitting at my laptop, half asleep, so shall toddle off now and catch up with everyone later.

Yesterday I wrote about a group of plants called the Mother-Die flowers because it was widely held that if you picked them you would cause the death of your mother (or someone close to you.) This was a common tradition right across the UK, often involving spring plants with white flowers. (Remember that in the East, white is the traditional colour of death and mourning, not black.)

Now at first sight it's easy to take this belief at face value. Certain plants = bad luck. But there's a lot more to it than that. You'd expect that any unlucky plant would have no other use, wouldn't you? Because obviously if it has some beneficial use, people are going to go on picking it.

But in fact many of these Mother-Die plants are extremely powerful, magically speaking. One good example is the Elder. Another is the Hawthorn.

So why is the same plant thought of as extremely powerful on the one hand and extremely unlucky on the other?

The answer lies, I believe, in the way the early Church tackled the problem of paganism. Without going into a long and rambling tirade, basically the Church either:
(a) Christianised the plant, so that a plant with links to say, the Goddess Brigid was instead linked to the Christian St. Brigid (to all intents and purposes exactly the same person.)
(b) If Christianisation didn't work, the next stage was to demonise the plant. In other words you gave it nicknames such as 'Old Man's Beard' linking it to the Devil ('Old Man' as part of a plant nickname always shows evidence of demonisation) and tell people it's extremely dangerous.

You might be surprised just how persistent Pagan beliefs were (and in some cases, still are.)

The Mother Die plants, on closer examination were virtually all very powerful magical plants within the Pagan tradition. By inventing the myth of causing bad luck,the Church tried hard to suppress the earlier Pagan beliefs so that nobody in their right mind would use the plant any more.

But as we now know - it didn't turn out quite like that.....

At this time of year the bulbs are just starting to flower: snowdrops, crocus, even a few primroses in sheltered places. But did you know that traditionally, it can be very dangerous to pick them? I don't mean because someone from the National Trust is going to pounce and prosecute under the Wildflowers Act.... I mean the mysterious world of the Mother Die flowers.

In most of the UK (I can't speak for the rest of Europe or N. America) it was considered very unlucky to pick certain flowers. These were known as Mother-Die (or some variant) and they were often white flowers, although some other colours appear in the list, such as violets, primroses and campion. The tradition was that if you picked these flowers, your mother or loved one would die soon after. (In the case of primroses if you picked less than 13 your hens would stop laying.)

So Mother-Die; Kill your Mother Quick; Break your Mother's Heart etc. Clearly something very strange has been going on in folk magic where flowers are concerned.

It's a fascinating topic and I'm going to try and write more on it tomorrow...........

There is a buzz in the air today that has nothing to do with Imbolg. People are walking around with their heads held just a little higher, and small secret smiles play around their mouths. I even heard the odd strains of song while out and about this morning.

So what has caused this sudden lift of spirits, I hear you ask? Simple.

Wales beat England playing rugby at Twickenham yesterday.

I wasn't there. I didn't see it happen. I didn't even listen to the match on the old steam radio (two decades of disappointment does get to you after a while.)

Time to dust down the old Welsh flag again....

Today I have been hidden away like a hermit working at my book - several more pages past the first drafting stage and the word count is 50,000 and still rising. It may not sound as though I've done all that much, but I am also working on the index as I go, and everything takes time.

Yesterday's walk was like a balm to my soul. It gave me energy somehow, like recharging my batteries. And in the evening I came across this wonderful extract from a 19th century poem in welsh by THomas Telynog Evans that I would like to share with you because it's so beautiful:

"In lovely harmony the wood has put on its green mantle, and summer is on its throne, playing its string-music; the willow, whose harp hung silent when it was withered in winter, now gives forth its melody - Hush! Listen! The world is alive!"

I went off exploring where I live again today.

To get us in the mood I thought I would render one of the images in sepia... it's amazing how it changes our perception of a place, isn't it?

There was plenty of evidence that Spring is just around the corner, too....

And finally, the magical Elder tree is already putting out a few tentative shoots:

My internet connection is very slow and keeps breaking down - you cannot believe how long it's taken me to get this post up and running!

Anyway, I hope you've had a great day,
Brightest blessings to you all

Tylluan

As a Pagan, today is one of the cross-quarter festivals, Imbolg (variously written as Imbolc, Imbolg and even Oimelc)which marks the first day of Spring.

I can already see you shaking your heads in disbelief.... 'No, Spring starts on March 21st' you might say. Does it really? Have a think about it - if June 21st is Midsummer's Day, and December 21st marks the depths of Midwinter, then March 21st (the Equinox) is actually the middle of Spring, not the beginning.

Anyway, I can see signs of Spring all around me. The evenings are lengthening noticeably provided the sky isn't full of grey clouds. Daylight filters through my curtains a little earlier. The bulbs are poking up through the earth like spears. The birds are singing. The earth is changing gear.

Even if you're not a Pagan, I would urge you to get out of doors however briefly today, and just notice the day, the sky, the sunshine, the colour of the earth.

When I was a child I marked the changing seasons by noticing what the world around me was doing. For example, one of my aunts would always say 'Tis on the eve of Valentine the birds begin to mate.' And sure enough, if you listen out you'll hear a marked change in the birdsong around the middle of February.

You don't have to live in a leafy suburb or deepest rural Wales to be able to do notice the changing year. It's a tribute to Nature's power that even in the most congested of cities, you'll find weeds struggling to grow and birds struggling to sing.

The signs are always there, we just need to look for them again.

Happy Imbolg everyone!