The Magical World of Tylluan Penry

I'm a bit late posting, I know, but I just wanted to wish everyone a very happy Halloween/Samhain. This is a very special time of year, when the veil between this and other worlds is particularly thin (the same thing also happens around May 1st).

So if you experience increased psychic activity, premonitions, strange co-incidences etc., put it down to this shift in the psychic tides. It's a wonderful, magical time or year, but can be quite frightening sometimes, particularly if you try and resist instead of going with the flow.

I've been outside tonight, looking at the stars. The sky is like a piece of midnight blue velvet, studded with diamonds. The Pleiades are visible, as is Orion's Belt (known as Arthur's Yard long ago in Wales.) If you try and be still for a while you can feel the changes around this time of year, you can almost feel the year changing gear!

Brightest blessings
Tylluan

As I've mentioned before in this blog, I will be speaking at the Witchfest International on November 8th at Fairfield Halls in Croydon on November 8th.

The Children of Artemis who organise this event, (which will be the largest witchcraft festival in the world, apparently!) have just notified me that I will be speaking at 4pm. They've even put a photo of me on their webpage, at http://www.witchfest.net/wf_international.htm!

I've opted to talk on Murderous Mandrakes and Witches Flying Ointment because I think these are much misunderstood topics. At the moment I'm putting the finishing touches to my talk hoping to make it interesting - I haven't had anyone drop off to sleep while I'm speaking yet, and intend to do my best to make sure they never do!

As with all my talks, I organise a free raffle for two of my paintings. This means that anyone who actually manages to sit through one of my talks has a chance or winning! I also donate one, larger painting to the main raffle.

If the Wales Witchfest is anything to go by, it should be a very enjoyable event though apparently on a much, much larger scale. I'm very much looking forward to it. If any of you are able to come, do please come and have a chat, I'd love to meet you!

Just when I thought I was getting on top of writing,etc., I realise that, far from it, I am falling behind again. I apologise for not getting online more often... my only excuse is that with the Witchfest looming I am trying to get ready for that (and do my pictures for the raffles!) and write my next book.

Well, I seem to be writing as much as ever, but it's never ending. And then I ask myself, would I want it to end? Almost certainly not. I like having something to do, something to aim for... life without a project would be like a half-life for me.

So really, I should just stop moaning and get on with things, shouldn't I?

Diets are funny things. This is the only diet I've ever been on in my life and I'm basically doing it purely because one doctor insisted that the reason I was feeling so dire was that I was very large. So I started my diet that very day (early July) and have now lost 38 pounds.

And guess what? Not only do I not feel any better at all, but nobody has even remarked on the fact I've lost so much weight!

Regular readers of this blog may remember that Mr Penry suffers from insomnia. And I suffer from his insomnia.

Not so long ago he put a clock in the bedroom, not just any clock you understand, but a Victorian Postman's clock with a tick like the Gates of Doom. Now I know why the post was always delivered on time back then.... the poor bloody postman never slept. I know just how he must have felt...

The thing with his insomnia however, is that he cannot be sleepless on his own. He has to wake me up to tell me about it. So last night, there I was, snoring like thunder snoozing happily, when he woke me up to tell me he had a great idea. Irish dancing.

Now I'm not at my most alert in the middle of the night, but I did my best. 'Whaaaaat?'
'Dancing,' he tells me, in that endearing, little boy way of his, 'Irish dancing. I think it might work, don't you?'
'Yeah, whatever....' I mumble, anxious only to get back to dreamland.
Next thing I know there he is, lying in bed, doing all the leg movements like Michael Flatley and I'm bouncing up and down like I'm on a bloody trampoline!

This morning, I crawled out of bed at my usual hour. HImself? He's tucked up like a baby, sleeping tight, a seraphic smile on his face....

You can find one of my most recent online articles for the Cardiff University Pagan Society at this link:

http://cardiffpagan.co.uk/magazine/issues/18/

Just scroll on down for the index and mine is the first under 'Articles.'

I've been thinking long and hard about this ever since I agreed to do a blog for Blog Action Day. But what is poverty? It's easy to point to the cold, the starving and say 'This is poverty.' It's true.

But there are other types of poverty too, often found in the midst of wealthy nations, a type of poverty that has little to do with whether you are hungry, homeless or cold.

Poverty of conscience - we see this often enough lately, where nobody ever seems prepared to accept responsibility when something goes pear shaped.

Poverty of expectation - I think Oscar Wilde explained this one well when he wrote 'We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.' Those in the gutter who are content merely to look at the ground suffer from this sort of poverty.

Poverty of hope - where we no longer even dare to believe that things could or should be better; it's a particularly nasty form of poverty because it prevents us helping ourselves or others.

Poverty of the mind - this is when we become obsessed with trivia and the cult of celebrity. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with either provided you get some sort of balance.

I'm sure anyone reading this will be able to come up with other, much better, examples. But it's a start, isn't it?

To define poverty purely in terms of money is to miss the point. Or as the Romans so elegantly put it:
Homo doctus in se semper divitias habet; a learned man always has riches within himself.

Some time ago I blogged about Mr Penry's excursion that culminated in him driving home with a giant owl strapped to the roof of our car....

I meant to photograph the said owl long ago, but alas first the weather was terrible and then I was feeling pretty rough... well, enough of excuses. Here is Owlie, standing proud:

Bearing in mind that the bench Owlie is standing on is actually too high for me to sit on (unless I stand on a bucket first), he's pretty impressive, isn't he?

This is such a weird tale that I don't blame anyone for not believing it. But here goes anyway.

Regular readers of this blog will already know that my home is not only haunted, but it seems to be a hive of psychic activity. So far, so good. It was originally built as a wedding present by a father for a young couple who only lived here for seven years.

Now today we called in to visit a friend of ours who runs an antiques centre. He was having a sale. Tucked away in the corner in a dark cupboard was a lovely solid silver tea set. It was so beautiful and so unusual that we asked to look at it (not to buy it, just to look at it.)

Anyway, this tea set had an inscription. And - this is the coincidence - it had been bought by the employees of the man who bought our house to give to his son, on the occasion of his marriage. In other words it was a wedding gift for the first people who lived in our house (which itself was built as a wedding present.)

To think of that silver tea set sitting in our home nearly a hundred years ago..... weird or what?