books

The Books of Poppy Palin

Poppy has written extensively about green-spirituality, wild witchery, natural enchantments and spiritwalking.

Here is a testimony to the worth of Poppy's writing and illustration by respected Hedge Witch author

Over the last 20 years Poppy has written nine published books and contributed a chapter to a tenth. A re-written,much improved, version of the Waking the Wild Spirit tarot book is available January 2012

Poppy's eleventh book, a collaboration with GREEN MAGIC, will follow in 2012.

All Poppy's profits from her work go directly to animal welfare organisations and charities.

However, Poppy now receives no royalties at all from six of the following books.

CRAFT OF THE WILD WITCH - Green Spirituality and Natural Enchantment (Llewellyn Worldwide)

Synopsis
Seven talented Wiccans have joined together to produce this invaluable guide to the art of spell-crafting. Much more than a do-it-yourself magic manual, this guide to the craft emphasises the responsibilities and ethical issues that are part of the magical life. The wisdom collected here is meant to inspire and empower beginners and less experienced magic users, so they may go on to safely and confidently customise their own magical practice.

Spiritwalking is based on Poppy's experiences with the unseen over the past 4 decades and is a guide to being a natural psychic/seer. It is hoped that it will help people walk with spirit more effectively and safely in the modern world.

Spiritwalking is a practical guide to working with the 'unseen', including spirits, entities and energies, be they human or otherwise. Drawing together the wild craft of the shamanic practitioner and the wise counsel of the medium or psychic, Spiritwalking takes the reader through a practical course in becoming an effective, empathic spiritwalker; one who can look beyond our physical existence in order to bring healing, balance and deeper understanding. It includes examples of 'unexplained' or 'paranormal' events from the author's own life and offers ways that we may understand them whilst giving instructions for how to deal with similar situations. This book is a highly original 'how to' manual that will enable anyone to deal with unwanted psychic intrusions, balance inharmonious energies or welcome in spirits who can work with us for positive ends. The personal examples from the author mean that this book is not a 'dry' read but rather is entertaining as well as instructional. It will give the reader an opportunity to understand how we may work with the unseen in everyday life and will bring a deeper understanding of our 'otherworldly' counterparts who share our space, be that indoors or in the landscape of city or countryside. It is an accessible course which is suitable for anyone with an interest in finding more meaning in life; a reader need have no beliefs for here is a pure, fresh approach to spirit-full living which only requires an open mind and a sense of adventure.

Her most recent project is a book that seeks to bring all her previous work togther in one inspirational, challenging guide offering her latest thoughts on The Way of the Wild Soul

Poppy Palin's work has the rare ability to invoke a sense of deep enchantment. Her poetic imagery and profound insights convey a fresh and magical view of the world, empowering and life-affirming. Her books coax the intuitive, natural, wildish self to surface and be recognised and integrated.

In an era blighted by professional mystics, mercenary magicians and dodgy gurus all jostling for air-time, Poppy Palin is the real thing. Her writing is fluent and uncompromising. You know that she is drawing upon deep levels of earthly and unearthly wisdom. If I needed help and guidance I would turn to her. You can trust her - and what she writes - completely.

Poppy's writing evokes the realities we have experienced, but not ourselves been able to put into words. She gives meaning to things not understood, opening our eyes to things we have looked at, but not previously seen. Jill Smith, author of The Callanish Dance and Mother of the Isles

Poppy Palin's work on psychic techniques is imaginative and fresh, yet grounded in traditional practices. Rae Beth

Why Protect?
We need to be protected psychically, or spiritually, every time we open up to unseen forces or extraneous energies. There are beings who dwell between worlds – in other energetic realities, or etheric levels to the one we are currently in – who have codes of conduct that are distinctly other to our own. This does not mean that they are
necessarily better or worse but rather unbeneficial to us, just as cat hair is unbeneficial to a person with an allergy. As we all know, cat hair isn’t inherently evil yet it will be a problem to some none the
less. When we extend our energy beyond our own tried and tested material boundaries we will always encounter other spiritual sources and forces that are unlike our own and although we cannot say that the astral levels are full of nasty, vindictive presences we can categorically state that it is best to be protected just in case our own
essence does not respond well to another it may encounter. Protection is rather like being inoculated before going to a country unlike our own with its own ailments to which we are unaccustomed. We are physically unprepared for a virus or disease that may attack us when we engage in foreign travel so we take precautions. These precautions are not fatalistic rather they are sensible and can be undertaken with a light-heart as we will know that we are far more able to enjoy our experience abroad if we are not sick. Likewise, on returning to our own country we would not appreciate having brought a foreign virus back with us and would no doubt in retrospect wish we had taken the time to inoculate ourselves adequately before we went. So it is with psychic protection. It’s just a sensible precaution that will make our travelling in the unseen realms far more enjoyable and ensure our daily life between astral journeys is untroubled and psychically healthy. Like inoculations,psychic protection certainly isn’t here to frighten anyone, rather to give confidence. Although it may seem to take up time initially, in the long run such an outlay of effort is well worth it.

WANDERING IN CIRCLES
‘Identification with our bodies can be as non-sensical as identifying ourselves as our car or our house whilst on this
earth. We are not this thing, this generous collection of cells that holds together for the duration of our experience – instead we are rather like a hand inside a glove puppet. Once a puppeteer’s hand withdraws from within a puppet body the audience does not mourn, rather they accept that the thrilling show is over and so they go on their way filled with gratitude for enjoying a good performance. Identification with the body after death, and denial of the supreme animating life-force that wore it but has left it, is as futile as lamenting the limpness of the puppet after the show is over. Nothing beneficial can be gained by our forgetting our essential nature or mistaking the temporary show we witness as the full reality.’
From Guidance

Above: Poppy's self-published, not-for-profit 'teaching' novel THE GREENING - Rise of the Faerytide

PROFITS FROM THIS WILL GO TO ETHICAL CHARITIES, NOT TO POPPY, SO PLEASE SUPPORT IT!

This is a non-profit making work dedicated to the resurgence of a magical, harmonious way of being with reverence for the natural world at its wild heart. The book is 518 pages long and took over three years to write. Any slim profit will go to ethical charities and if you buy direct from Poppy you will increase the possibility of profit and get the reduction in price she is able to give when she sells direct.

Poppy Palin’s style of writing is unique and unmistakeable. Her words have a poetic rhythm that creates beauty whenever they are read – and this book is no exception. In fact, in many ways, this is probably her best to date. Weaving the magic of everyday life into a wonderfully crafted novel she tells us the tale of characters linked through both time and place. And within that tale there is a sense of the containment, the lack of awareness and the lack of confidence we all feel in our lives from tie to time. We follow the struggles of the characters to discover who they really are, and who they can really be as they face the everyday problems and issues that many who follow an ethical, spiritual path will be familiar with.

Yet at another level this book contains the potential to teach those who read it some of the ideas and techniques that are part of the Craft which Poppy practices. It is an exquisite book, full of detail and beauty, and her love for the environment, and her relationship with the spirits shine through these pages.

And the end of the tale, for me, seemed like a beginning, as I turned the pages so the wheel turned, and so it seemed with the characters in this book – finally awake to all around them, their story lay before them…..

Paperback 515 pages (March 2005)
Publisher: Wild Spirit
Language: English
ISBN: 0954341708

To order your copy direct from the author please contact Poppy Palin at poppypalin@gypsymoondesign.fsnet.co.uk

Personal website: www.crystal-visions.org.uk
Grove website: www.penarddun.org.uk
Tarot website: www.tarot-visions.co.uk

The woman swept the leaves.
Sweeping was good medicine she always thought; the rhythmic action was familiar and reassuring and it helped to soothe the unnameable anxiety that gnawed at her guts this day. She did not know it yet but there were leaves in the tangled skein of her hair too, russet against the frosted strands which looked more like a mass of moonlight now, no longer the shining raven’s wing of years gone by. Everything was change; the years had somehow slipped furtively past and left Alicia Owens old, stealing her bright vigour and leaving her a silvered shadow of herself. Such was the curse, and the blessing, of life in a human form. In such a fast-flowing mortal world only the motion of sweeping remained constant. For decades the same gesture each autumn into winter; the gentle brushing of swirling leaves, saffron, gold and cinnamon, the measure of the seasons marked by a prayerful gesture with a favourite besom.
The colours in the swirling leaves reminded her of strange exotic places that she would never see, not in this life. She saw the leaves as spices, heaped on the market stalls of Marrakech. Oh, there was much she had not done, so little time to accomplish all there was to do in one incarnation! The rhythm of her besom could take her to places unseen though; the motion rocked her to that waking dream- world where everything was possible. That otherworldly realm was the place in which Alicia had always been happiest. If only she could slip away there now.
But the nagging sensation in her solar plexus remained, unsettling her.
Alicia was a woman given to a slow pace and to mellow moments, to wistful dreams of souks and spices. She was an autumnal creature, as were all the ancient Shining Ones; it was their secret season of sorcery. She usually revelled in the drifting mist, the visible shifting of the veil between the worlds, yet on this day...
On this day she was drawn to look up and see the girl that stood alone at the bus stop across from her garden wall. For a moment her heart lurched painfully, frighteningly, and then settled. Her broom ceased its sweeping. Alicia’s faded chambray eyes widened and she shook her head as if to clear her vision. How could the girl stand out as if in relief from her background without anyone else noticing? Everything, the road, the ordinary houses, the muddle of litter crumpled in the gutter, all of it became sepia toned and unfocused compared to this girl. This girl was separate, thought Alicia, this girl was other. She was compelling, terrible, like a road accident fatality who wandered the highway as a tormented wraith, unseen by passers by. Yet she was just a girl; a girl wearing a faded and torn black velvet frock coat, its worn collar studded with tears. Alicia saw her in minute detail, as if the girls own tears were somehow magnifying her, making her sharp and shining in her misery. Oh, she was so alone!
Some forty years ago, Alicia thought, pin-sharp and precise, I was just like her. And, under the sagging skin, she knew that in so many ways she still was.
Alicia had once shared the striking physical presence of this poor young woman as she had shared the pain that made her flare, bright and cold, in the careless lilac miasma of an autumn afternoon. This girl had tallow skin and angry hair which exploded around her waxen face, crowning it in fiery glory. Her eyes were strange, strangely familiar, emphasised by the streaks of black make-up she habitually wore; black which now, unbeknownst to her, had left tear-trails like tribal markings on her cheeks. She was not tall but held herself rigidly straight, perhaps through pride or maybe as if she were perpetually braced against any eventuality. She was not rumpled or forlorn, despite her weeping, she simply emanated hurting.
Alicia felt an overwhelming urge to call out to her whilst at the same time as experiencing an inner dread, worse than before. Her stomach knotted and her teeth clenched against the desire to reach out to the waif in the velvet coat. A girl with hair like wicked tongues of flame. As she gazed at that shock of vermillion-hued hair Alicia could smell burning, a sickening stench like cordite, and perhaps something worse, smouldering. What was real? This was the problem with autumn, it robbed rationality and replaced it with layer upon layer of memory. Past, present, future, swirling like dead leaves. She shook her head again, more vigorously. Images of normality, of autumn bonfires in back gardens, merged with a scene of stark horror, a market square, a blackened stake at its centre...
Alicia came to her senses in slow motion. The girl was still there as before, solid enough against the bare scratched metal of the bus stop. Alicia was torn, she longed to invite the girl in to share her sorrow and yet oh to hide and lock the door against her! The Faerytide was unbelievably strong in this fiery woman, too strong for this world, and it made the mortal Alicia reel. If her energy affected Alicia in such a way what would it do to other mortals, those without her seeing and knowing? Alicia in her faded floral smock and baggy cardigan, an elderly woman living alone with clothes hugged threadbare by a dozen other needy girls, felt her human-self fighting her spirit, forbidding her to touch this kindred. Her soul cried out even as her body rebelled...
(Go to her now....no, stay away!)
But she needs me, just as they all need me, but more...much more.
Oh yes, Alicia had certainly helped stray girls before; she had given them tea and healing, maybe a very basic tarot reading, nothing too scary, just words and images of more comforting futures maybe. Sometimes she had offered them no more than a hot bath, a warm bed and the benefit of her unobtrusive hospitality. Had it ever been safe to take in these drifters, these misfits? Right now it felt like the most perilous, and yet the most obvious, thing.
No matter how much her human-self struggled Alicia could not tear her gaze from this sight, nor extricate her heart which had been moved beyond words by the plight of another woman, of another Fey. This was indeed no usual or ordinary girl, no runaway, and no hapless, hopeless misfit. A strange woman who was almost incandescent in the afternoon mist, a woman who was weeping, one who looked as familiar as...
The crow flew at Alicia, cackling, and her torpor was broken. Instinctively she swiped at it with her broom but it still came close enough to brush her cheek with its iridescent oil-slick wings.
“I hear you, shining brother,” Alicia acknowledged and lowered the broom in shame. The crow was her harbinger, the bringer of news, and it spoke most oftenly of death. It had an unpleasant job to do and it did it without balking; Alicia had no right to swat it away. The winged darkling was always true and was bringing her the clear knowledge that the girl, the blaze of woman-ness before her, was going to kill herself this day...
(This night!)
Alicia spat and made the sign, an involuntary action even though she had long since learned to honour death. Old superstitions from days of fear, long since passed, lingered in her depths, ready to surface at the slightest provocation.
The crow landed on the fence and bobbed its head, a beady eye fixed on the oblivious girl with her coat lapels studded with early stars, jewel bright tears of an unspoken grief. Apart-ness radiated from her; a young woman somehow physically removed from everyone and everything, from the whole world. This girl was as Alicia had been before the crow became her friend, before she had re-membered. She was a pariah, an enigma...in danger.
“Wait!”
Alicia opened her mouth and stepped over the fallen broom towards the crying girl. The word came out as a croak and the girl did not turn. How could she hear the pathetic voice of an elderly woman above the torrent of her own grief? And the bus was coming around the corner. The girl was focused on the bus but she had to be stopped. If she went away to her fate...
(Holy Mother, help me now!)
The girl had to be stopped but Alicia was frozen, gripped by a residual mortal fear of coming too close to one so powerful, so...doomed. Yet the Faerytide rose up and almost drowned her.
“Wait, please!”
It was said louder this time, beseeching, but the girl was moving and the noise of the bus’s brakes were more obvious than the sound of an old woman’s plea. The bus stopped and the girl stepped on. Alicia thought, even above the hiss of the doors opening for her and the hum of the engine, that she heard the girl sniff. One of the sad tear-stars on her collar broke free and made a celestial ice flow down the back of the tattered coat. Alicia saw...
(or did she feel?)
...the girl square her shoulders, defying the bus driver to notice her pain, challenging him to comment upon it. The driver was lost in the cab, shadowy in the October afternoon half-light.
(‘It’s always worse in October,’ Alicia’s mind chattered, ‘always worse for those with the seeing and the knowing.’)
The girl with the seductive spangles of misery on her velvety coat, the girl who had chosen to die rather than bear this burden of being alone, was getting away.
“No!”
Alicia broke free of her dream-like torpor once more and lurched stupidly towards her garden wall, on the other side of which a bus was closing its doors against her; a bus taking the girl to a fate more certain than any other. Alicia reached out, knowing she looked ridiculous, knowing nobody cared. The girl was going down the bus aisle now towards a seat, the bus was pulling away. The crow with eyes like asphalt after a car wreck, slick and shiny with a myriad of colours swirling on black, was cawing. Alicia wanted to scream at her ineffectual actions, the whole of her life condensing down into that pin-prick of feeling, that moment between choosing and letting go.
She turned away from the sight of the departing bus and ran for the house.

Below: CRAFT OF THE WILD WITCH - Green Spirituality and Natural Enchantment

Greet an old friend, one who seems silent save for the whispers of her silvered leaves, and hear the subtle messages present in the touch of your hand on her rough bark...

Leave an offering of milk and honey for the sweet-toothed spirit who guards a favourite hill...

See a special stone in a vision, know you will find it on the beach today...

Feel the eyes of the Fey folk upon you as the sky spins above you and you dance in celebration of the Greening on a May morning...

Such is the way of the wildwitch, the solitary spirit-weaver whose life is filled with natural enchantment.

By having an ongoing dialogue between Earth and sky...a meaningful relationship with the spirit of the land on which we live and an openness to the profound teachings of the Unseen worlds all around us...we can practice a form of witchcraft which is both natural and free. This wild craft deepens the love and respect we have for the magic inherent in the natural world while developing a deep inner knowing based on our personal interactions with the more ethereal levels of being. It is a green spirituality with great relevance for today, a path which has it’s roots in the rich soil of the past and it’s branches reaching up towards the bright essence of existence. By working in a disciplined yet flowing way, with an understanding of the tides of life, the wildwitch acts as the living wood that connects the beautiful Earth we live on with the mysteries of the eternal All.

Covering all aspects of safe and effective communion with the wild within and without, including spell-weaving with the seasons, creating a working partnership with companion spirits and living a life of natural enchantment in a modern world, Wild Witchcraft is both a source of inspiration and a solid guidebook which can be used by anyone seeking a more meaningful communion with the sacred in all it’s many poetic guises.

... Wildwitchery is all about a weaving of celebration, invocation, visualisation and our heartfelt intent into our familiar practices while respecting and recognising the spirit inherent in each part of creation and the ebb and flow of the seasons. The word craft used here in wild witchcraft is about translating that magical spark into grounded and ordinary tasks, bringing the enchantment to bear in our household chores, childcare, handiwork, relationships and leisure pursuits. It is true that spell-craft can be practised under a full moon in robes but it can also be worked whilst baking bread, shelling peas, watering plants, combing hair or painting a room. A wildwitch can create formal spells in a controlled way but chooses to do so not as an isolated, occasional act but rather as a part of an integrated magical life in which every thought or deed can become an act of devotion or enchantment. The key is to see each moment as magical and each act as a prayer, in potentiality.

The wildness gives our practice an unpredictable element, making sure we are ready even in the midst of the most tedious aspects of life, like doing the laundry or cleaning, to interact with our surroundings magically. The craft of it ensures that we have the skill, as regards knowing how magic works and what is safe procedure, as well as a knowledge of the energies, the spiritual attributes and seasonal meanings of all that we chose to work with. When we work magic we weave these energies into our manifest practices. The ‘witchy-ness’ comes in to the equation by means of our starlight vision, our ability...and our will...to perceive these energies, that which is of mystery, and connect with that which is considered hidden.

With complete commitment, awareness and a sense of fulfilling a vital role in a modern world, a wildwitch’s whole life can become an unfolding, ongoing spirit-song of dedication to healing, harmony and wholeness. Wild witchcraft is, therefore, not only something that you practice when the occasion calls for it but something that you live from minute to minute. Because of this there are no ordinary, dull moments, only a seamless flow, a merging of magic into life.
You may find that the role of the wildwitch and your own nature are inter-linked, entwined and bound by promises made long ago, by understandings gained in the time-before-time. Consequently it may seem entirely natural to weave magical understanding into the very fabric of your daily existence...to become an enchanter, or enchantress, who sees themselves as actively being enchantment. Is it then surprising to hear that to be a wildwitch requires much commitment and dedication? Because it is a process of becoming, as full of primal power as the sea and as bound by the cycles of the moon as the tides, it is essential to give of yourself fully or else the experience will only be like dipping a toe in the water rather than diving with dolphins. It is vital to give of our true selves with ease yet with much personal application, putting both human heart and eternal soul into it for the duration of this incarnate life. And, perhaps, beyond.

This reference to an incarnation acknowledges our existence as both a temporal and temporary human being and as an eternal spiritual essence finding human expression. Such an understanding is pivotal to a wildwitch’s work as it gives relevance and reverence to both the manifest and the ethereal aspects of all that is. The duration of our incarnation is something we shall refer to hereon in as the ‘Earth-walk’ as for a wildwitch it is important to end the separation between human existence on this planet and our generous host, the Earth Mother. ‘Earth-walk’ suggests a partnership, a relationship between manifest beings and a complex living organism that chooses to support their continued existence. The whole ethos of walking as a wildwitch revolves around this end to ‘apart-ness’ and so it is vital that we state both verbally and symbolically, as often as we can (although without contrivance) how we honour this connection.

Wild witchcraft is a balance, an interaction, between Earthly (apparent) appreciation and spiritual (intangible) understanding which is both simple and effective. We are all of us souls that need to develop and grow as well as being humans that need to find meaning in life and we should consider if we are energetically compatible, as souls, with a path which empowers through a love for the Earth and working with the waxing and waning tides of life for magical, healing purposes. There are many ways to walk toward truth and this is but one of them, a way that will resonate profoundly with those willing to commit to a process that not only strengthens and nurtures us as spiritual beings but also gives us an opportunity to act for the environment, and our fellow creatures, in a more physical sense.

REVIEW: Craft of the Wild Witch by Poppy Palin
Moon Shadows Magazine, October 2005
Reviewed by April Rose

The Craft of the Wild Witch will allow you to explore the green spirited path through a poetic and compelling journey of one wild witch’s experience. If you are free-spirited and have a passion for nature and the magical path, or you yearn to express yourself more fully, this book will inspire you.

With her poetic enchantments and free-spirited nature, Poppy Palin takes you on an enlightening journey into the practices of wild witchcraft. Within each chapter you are taught the practices and rituals of becoming a wild witch. You’ll explore the history and the free-spirited philosophy that embraces this nature of being and you’ll be guided and enlightened within the journeys that take place.

Poppy Palin shares her remarkable knowledge of rituals, Fey and otherworld companions, sacred intent and safe practices, herb helpers, tree meditations, spell weaving and much more. Every chapter reveals in-depth the green-spirited path and you’ll be taken on a personal journey of growth and development as you read through this book.

There is a true essence of beauty within magic and the wild witch ways and if you have a poetic soul and a love for magic and nature, I highly recommend this book.

Reproduced below is part of the introduction to this challenging yet gently lyrical book.

There is often a reluctance to express our true spiritual nature, and the values and behaviours that stem from that nature, openly in modern Western society. If we chose to do so then our actions and expressions can be interpreted by others as something bewilderingly nebulous at best or downright embarrassing at worst and so either way we become unworthy of a sensible response and the appropriate measure of respect. Alternatively, a spiritual impulse and the actions that stem from this can be mis-read as a statement of religious allegiance of some kind. The latter is the more usual response, as it is easier to explain away spiritual expression in conventional terms than it is to explore any other possibilities that lead to unfamiliar territory. Therefore our authentically profound, and completely natural, spiritual impulses are usually pushed into the shade of the nearest convenient religious umbrella and any uniquely wild and joyful experience of the divine is so tamed.

To separate out religion and spirituality is something that the majority of us rarely do, yet if we begin by engaging in that process now then we will be better served to explore the more balanced way of expressing our soul-selves that this book shares. It is a process that will enable us to make the journey to the wild heart of being that green spirituality inspires and gives us the ability to discern what is wholesome, instinctive and free and what is a synthetic construct. It allows us to identify that which gives effective shelter yet insists we live in its shadow, stunted.

So, what is the difference between religion and spirituality? Well, we could state that religion is something that has been fashioned by men, for men…it is a construction that categorically answers a basic human need for meaning. Even if it is claimed that it is based on the word of God it has still been filtered and moulded by a human source, built upon or added to like an ancestral home over the ages until it dominates it’s surroundings with its impressively imposing solidity. Religion can certainly be quantified immediately as something tangible like bricks and mortar and because of this robust familiarity we may establish an easy allegiance to it, a tie. Indeed, the root of the word religion in Latin is in the verb ligo meaning to bind or tie, which then becomes religio meaning god-fearing. Such a description is in itself enough for us to perhaps understand the difference between religion and the organic, free-flowing soul-expression that the words ‘green spirituality’ suggest.

Religion is a fixed proposition that promotes an unshakable adherence; it is not about resurgence or growth in a natural verdant sense but about continuity and steadiness. It has little of the spontaneity or unpredictability of a living spirituality; rather it is a rigid structure that shelters us from other more unrefined ways of being. It may have its basis in truth and contain a measure of the original dazzling vision that inspired it but essentially it is a yoked and plodding donkey as opposed to a glorious white mare pounding through the surf at twilight. It has been domesticated and certainly won’t do anything astonishing. And indeed many do prefer a sturdy workhorse to a flighty and charming one.
Religion requires us to be similarly domesticated and give over our personal autonomy to the belief system or master. Moreover, it does not link us directly to the divine but instead ties us into a chain of command by which we may communicate with the sacred…these we call priests, rabbis, imams etc. We are roped, like men on a mountain, to the next highest figure, in a line of such figures continuing upwards out of our sight. We only know that the furthest invisible being is up there above us as we are kept from falling by the chain that stretches out to them. We are kept safe yet effectively disempowered, unable to observe for ourselves what may be above us, or all around us. It offers a structure with reassuringly solid walls and obvious boundaries, not a flexible framework which allows us to peer through.

Religion certainly makes life easier for us in many respects; it offers us a means of unwavering support in a changing world that can be very reassuring. If we are willing to accept it’s ethos wholesale then it provides all of the answers for us and we need not tax ourselves by looking any further for ‘the truth’. Therefore it is possible to be protected and comfortable but never to be a pioneer or explorer in a religious sense, there is nothing to seek as someone else has already found it for us and will offer us the map that will lead us to life’s treasure with no surprises. The price of the feeling of security we gain from it means that we must put the exotic blooms of our spirit in a tiny plant pot on someone else’s windowsill.

Through religion we may keep our spirit’s foliage nurtured to some degree even if we cannot then flourish, as we should. We can rely on being watered and offered a little sunlight at least. The real problem with religion is that when we, as living energetic beings, grow too big for the pot that it’s belief system has placed us into we will simply find ourselves transplanted in a slightly bigger pot of exactly the same design rather than be dug directly into the rich loam of the land. This is where spirituality comes in; it allows us to choose our own type of soil and to use our own knowledge and instincts to pick the best sort of positioning to allow for our growth. We may not have the security of someone else providing us with water but when the rains come we feel twice as refreshed.

Spirituality has little to do with the tenets and laws that bind with their security ropes and has everything to do with individual exploration and personal feelings. It is an experiential way in which we can feed directly from that which is sacred in order to reach our fullest potential and so blossom accordingly. One may be a spiritual seeker where it is not so easy to be a religious seeker as we may only ever seek truth within our religions framework. This can make our search for enlightenment rather like taking part in a treasure hunt in a small fenced and cultivated field when we could be out on an open heath turning over every lichen patterned rock with wonder. Pre-ordained religious parameters provide us with a foregone conclusion whilst with a more flexible spirituality the quest is ongoing. Religion both protects and restricts whilst spirituality has wide-open spaces that challenge us with their unfamiliarity. Spirituality is, by its nature, gloriously limitless and unconstrained.

There are no firm universal beliefs that one must subscribe to in order to be spiritual, spirituality is more about having an active faith in the existence of the sacred than in a hard and fast belief in it and a desire to label it conclusively. Faith, perhaps, is about hope and searching whilst religious belief already knows and feels safe to shut the door on other possibilities. Faith knows that it does not know but has a willingness to learn. When we believe, in a religious sense, we are all too ready to draw lines in the sand which say ‘us and them’ or ‘right and wrong’. Good and evil are the artificial divisions which polarise us, for and against, using limited criteria to judge others and elevate our own positions in accordance with a religious doctrine that gives us full permission to act in such a manner. Such divisions are the tools of separation, not of ongoing transformation. Faith is a gentler concept that speaks of broader truths as well as personal ones in a way that allows us to be wiling to amend our views. Therefore there can be a fearless interchange and colloquy…a free-flow of ideas and feelings, an ongoing soul-poem, a natural unfolding. Spirituality speaks not in complex concepts but in our daily lives, when man-made or intellectual constructs end there can be a constant stream running through our days, a stream bubbling up from the cool depths of ourselves, unpolluted.

Another fundamental difference may be this…that religion is usually linked to the State or with patriotic fervour whereas spirituality is aligned with liberty and choice and is a matter of personal preference that sits well with us at a deep level, regardless of race etc. Spirituality of any kind may the way of the freethinking non-conformist who values the right to change and grow unhindered, like a wildflower. Their only limits are self-imposed, those of personal integrity and acquired empathy, the result of unhindered personal interaction with the sacred.

In its simplest form, spirituality is about acknowledging spirit. This starts with our own eternal spirit and ripples out in an understanding of the spiritual nature of other people, be they living or currently discarnate. Part of spiritual exploration may be working with these latterly mentioned ‘unseen ones’ who we ourselves can learn to perceive through various techniques as well as via a natural ability or openness. Perhaps, in some cases, it is this innate ability to ‘see’ (or look beyond that which we are told is ‘real’) that drives us to nurture our spiritual impulse. From there we may gain an acceptance, by direct experience, of a greater unseen spirit, a motivating quality in our daily lives, the life-force energy or Creator energy. It is wholly up to us how we attain communion with spirit, as there is certainly no one there to mediate or correct us if we are simply seeking our own truths. Perhaps this is why so many folk today class themselves as ‘unspiritual’ (or, more usually, non-religious) as the whole area of spirituality can be perceived as rather vapid and insubstantial, an area without the blessing or security of conventional authority, with no hierarchy to monitor it. However, the burgeoning interest in a wide array of practices loosely affiliated to the seeking of truth beyond conventional or customary ideas, practices such as divination, healing, clairvoyance etc., reveal a thirst for greater meaning within the general populace.

So how may we quantify spirituality at all, how are we even able to name it? Well, spirituality is open hearted and has a wide embrace, we cannot spot it by its doctrines or creeds but rather by the authentic compassion one person may show to another, by the level of attunement a person has to the subtler emanations of a situation. When one is unafraid of revealing one’s spirituality there is a genuine expression of interconnectedness, of a deep union with all other beings who are soul-kin under the skin regardless of temporary boundaries imposed by gender, age etc, and a sensitivity to the energies that unite us all. A spiritual life is one with kindness at the core, a boundless benevolence that comes from that faith in the life-force energy that runs through each of us and is a gift born of the greater spirit.

To live a spiritual life can include active service to the world alongside prayer and mediation, retreat and contemplation, as can a religious life. This is what spirituality and all world religions share, the desire to be a more compassionate and contemplative human being. But once again we can observe the difference, there are no masters in a spiritual sense, as all people act as our teachers and life itself is the temple. The only bonds in spirituality are to our enspirited brothers and sisters on Earth, in service of the spirit that created us all, with love, in peace. It is blending the faith in that unseen energetic aspects of being with purely manifest acts of kindness and care.

So, where does green spirituality take us that pure spirituality does not? Why do we need it?....

This section will be updated when the new book and limited edition book/deck set becomes available

Above, the 336 page tarot guide book and a sample of the 78 cards. The book is unique in that it tells the story of each card in the characters voice, i.e. The Fiddler (The Devil in traditional tarot decks) or The Wandering Minstrel (The Fool) tell their own whimsical yet wise tales in the first person. In this way the book aims to allow those who don't absorb dry facts easily to understand the energies of each card in a more gentle, lyrical fashion. The tarot deck and book are based on Otherworldly faery-tale images and energies, allowing divination (or profound contemplation) to occur through magical fiction and accompanying illustrations.

Above: The tarot card's back...very 'psychedelic' when the cards are swirled out!

Note: This card/book set was never meant to be a traditional-style tarot...The Waking the Wild Spirit Tarot was only really named a Tarot by the publisher for sales purposes! Instead it is more of a divination set, following the framework of tarot but adding its own unique twists and turns to the formula. However, if you are willing to work with its quirks and foibles it is more than capable of serving you as a tarot!