Hi from Western NY
Posted: Wed Jul 04, 2012 6:30 am
Hi everyone,
Interesting place here! I've been enjoying reading all the posts, and the very useful information. I am, for lack of better description, a hedge witch, of Irish heritage. I had Craft training in an American family tradition a very long while ago, and have been practicing mostly solitary for almost four decades now. I'm also a scholar. I lived in Ireland for three years, getting an advanced degree and studying the language, mythology and folklore, mostly to find out what about Robert Graves's White Goddess was actually true (a lot of the basics about the poetic tradition, as it turns out, but not much of the history).
I have some passing familiarity with Lucumi and Vodou, and good relationships with the spirits. They feel like cousins to me--another version of the Catholicism I grew up in. My current work is on non-mainstream American religions and spirituality, focusing on the early 20th century. Over the past year, I've been trying to work out a particular chapter topic, something that seemed missing. And I've been strongly compelled, almost overwhelmingly, to Appalachia. It wants me to come there. After a variety of anvils dropped in front of me: stuff people have said in conversation, books and texts people randomly drew my attention to, some life stuff, it finally dawned on me (duh), that rootworking and hoodoo was pretty much the elephant in my psychic room, waving its trunk at me in increasing annoyance: "hey, I'm right here!"
And to do this right, I need to get back into actual practice again, working with my hands and that thing that calls me, not just reading from secondary sources. For various reasons, I've been away from psychic work for awhile, and it seems it's time to start again. So, hi everybody.
Interesting place here! I've been enjoying reading all the posts, and the very useful information. I am, for lack of better description, a hedge witch, of Irish heritage. I had Craft training in an American family tradition a very long while ago, and have been practicing mostly solitary for almost four decades now. I'm also a scholar. I lived in Ireland for three years, getting an advanced degree and studying the language, mythology and folklore, mostly to find out what about Robert Graves's White Goddess was actually true (a lot of the basics about the poetic tradition, as it turns out, but not much of the history).
I have some passing familiarity with Lucumi and Vodou, and good relationships with the spirits. They feel like cousins to me--another version of the Catholicism I grew up in. My current work is on non-mainstream American religions and spirituality, focusing on the early 20th century. Over the past year, I've been trying to work out a particular chapter topic, something that seemed missing. And I've been strongly compelled, almost overwhelmingly, to Appalachia. It wants me to come there. After a variety of anvils dropped in front of me: stuff people have said in conversation, books and texts people randomly drew my attention to, some life stuff, it finally dawned on me (duh), that rootworking and hoodoo was pretty much the elephant in my psychic room, waving its trunk at me in increasing annoyance: "hey, I'm right here!"
And to do this right, I need to get back into actual practice again, working with my hands and that thing that calls me, not just reading from secondary sources. For various reasons, I've been away from psychic work for awhile, and it seems it's time to start again. So, hi everybody.