S2 #24 / Dr Christina Oakley-Harrington, Dreams of Witches

Dr Christina Oakley-Harrington is Treadwell’s founder and
presiding spirit. She was voraciously interested in spirituality
and magic since childhood, and grew up in West Africa, Burma, and
Chile, only moving to the West at the age of fifteen. In her
early twenties, she was heartened to discover Europe’s own native
religious traditions and has been a pagan ever since. A former
academic, she left university life in 2001 to establish
Treadwell’s. These days she serves as a consultant for programs
and projects but is usually at the shop. She is the author of two
books and numerous articles and was co-founder and literary
editor of Abraxas: International Journal for Esoteric
Studies.Today we discuss her new book from Black Letter Press -
Dreams of Witches. Free, pagan, transgressive: worshippers of
Pan, devotees of Diana. The men and women who meet under a full
moon in the wild woods danced, sing, made music, and made love;
in the home they make potions and mutter spells, be it to curse
or cure.


The witch image infused the European imagination down the
centuries, appearing in court records, prose, and poetry. The
impulse the literature described finally became a practiced
mystery religion in the twentieth century, in the form of Wicca
as it coalesced in the New Forest in the 1930s and 30s. The poems
and passages in this book illustrate the supportive imagination
of the New Forest Coven and its most famous initiate, Gerald
Gardner. They date from the late medieval period through the
Edwardian age, and all were instrumental, influential - inspiring
early pagans, and hopefully, too, readers today.



In the Plus show we get into cunning folk. The covens importance
around doing no harm and acting with integrity. The body as the
source of magical energy and more broadly the adoption of magic
and part of ones agency. Christina then poses the question 





Enjoy


Show notes:


Treadwells https://www.treadwells-london.com/Dreams of Witches
https://www.blackletter-press.com/product-page/christina-oakley-harrington-dreams-of-witches


Kibbo kif -
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/nov/02/kindred-of-the-kibbo-kift-1920s-youth-movement


Margaret Murray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Murray


Gerald Gardener https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Gardner


Keep in touch? 


https://linktr.ee/darraghmason 
Music by Obliqka https://soundcloud.com/obliqka