Published in Issue 2 of Pagan Ireland (Winter 2021). Get a copy of this issue here: https://paganireland.com/buyissues

Some thoughts and feelings, mixed with my opinions, strongly held ones not always complimentary to what I see about me. I’m certainly not a humanist; so if asked I would describe myself as a non-religious Pagan, feeling as I do that the minute any spiritual endeavour becomes organised, structured and written down it becomes a religion. Priests and priestesses, named gods and goddesses who need be served with ritual, with prayer, with sacrifice; at this point I am inclined to walk away.

No need for any of this; it’s just mostly trimmings without substance. I do not see that we have any need to place any person, god or mortal between us and living nature. Between our simple humanity and the great mechanism to which we can belong. To be part of nature, rather than apart from it. Just each individual one of us accepting our insignificance without fear, rather with joy and respect for the life spark within us that is our connection to the great whole of living nature and the planetary being.

I call this wild magic. It is an energy that runs through all and every thing. A living network of channeled power from the weather systems and oceanic currents to the mycelia that runs about the whole planet; an interconnected current which we can touch and be touched by.

Between light and dark is shadow, being of both but neither. Dancing in this place between is the living magic. We can touch this by being open and unafraid, by just accepting it and ourselves as part of all being. Call it the wellspring. Call it, if you like, the godhead. Whatever name suits it is nature in all its elegant grandeur, beauty and completeness. I would not presume to offer a system; rather just my own take on all of these wonders.

Fire
The one thing that sets us humans apart from all other animate beings is our ability to make (and need of) fire. It set us, as a species, on the path to what and who we are. It is also part of the terrible price we pay for all that we have become. It is something that we can offer with love to nature. Clean, natural, living fire is truly the only offering that we as humans should even think to make. Dry woods harvested without hurt or harm to trees, a beautiful, clear, dancing, flame. It is truly at the heart of everything we are.

Ritual
So many badly performed banal offerings of repeated, reiterated words mostly meaningless. Yet this is the reality of most organised ritual. Step aside from this; speak with an honest voice. Breath out words that come from spirit and heart, unselfconsciously. Just let it flow. Nature is listening if no one else. Accept that you are a minute spark of life and without fear give that spark to the greater flame. Approach hallows with awe, love and always barefoot and bare headed. Respect the ancestral will that made them. The only candle you will ever need is the flame of your own innocent will.

So what are we, each of us? Maybe, just the current animate expression of our ancestral bloodlines. Certainly we are each of us responsible for our lives and deeds. So respect where we have come from. If only that we may ourselves be respected, when we become ancestors. Respect the nature that gives us place and life; it is an elegant, beautiful mechanism wonderfully complete and we are part of this greater being.

How do we grow to this? Go plant a tree. Look at nature going about its business. Catch the scent of a wildflower. Reach out and touch the ocean currents, the tides and the life therein for we have this ocean and its currents and tides flowing through our bodies and histories. This river of blood, the ancestral current that connects us to all that has ever been.

Enough.

Bev Richardson

Bev Richardson is one of the few remaining people who genuinely knew the founder of Wicca. Despite this claim to fame, he has lived many lives - having served briefly as a boy soldier he returned to his beloved island at the age of 17 and found work where he could, including running ‘discos’ at the Witches Mill. In 1968, whilst living in Gerald Gardner’s apartment there, he and his soon-to-be wife cleaned and catalogued all the exhibits in the museum of witchcraft. Later, they spent 3 years living ‘off grid’ in a cottage in Ballaglass Glen before leaving the island for a nomadic lifestyle, until 1995. Eventually, they settled in North Cork, at the end of the road, literally, in a place called Castle Pook.