From Dr. Halo Quin

Notes of Love & Magic

Hello dear ones,

The summer has arrived in the UK and with the heat comes all the exciting events... I've got a whole bunch of travel round the country lined up, so I'm being organised and the next 3 months of workshops are all lined up already! (Along with the all important time to rest and connect with my self, my gods, and my loved ones.) Find links to the next things here, or scroll down for details.

The Welsh occult Conference was this Saturday just gone, and I wrote a little post celebrating it, but I was also asked to write up something for the Star Club blog (to be posted next week), which I thought you might enjoy, so here it is.

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Betwixt, Between, and Listening

It has fascinated me, these past few years, exploring the overlap between intuitive, witchy magic, and the Ceremonial, Grimoire-based techniques. More often than not they are rooted in the same goals, the techniques and desires are serving the same functions. What differs, and means that sometimes the different options require proper mental shifting, is the world in which they are approached through..

Cue Jack Hunter and his talk on ontological flooding.

The Welsh Occult Conference, organised by Sian Sibley and the DragonOak coven, is an event I’ve attended a few times (and spoken at!) and there are always fascinating talks, both during the event and over dinner afterward. This year was no exception.

Ontological Flooding - an attempt to avoid being tripped up by the barriers between world-views. A methodological experiment in bypassing the question of “who is right” to get to the seemingly important question: “what is real?”

I won’t go into the topics of the talks, instead, I’m interested in poking this betwixt-space where the topics blend and blur. The magical gap between worlds. Fitting for a witch, I guess. As a philosopher I had to ask Hunter ‘But what do you mean when you say “real”?’ As a witch, a magic-weaver, I’m not sure that’s really the core of what we were there for.

Reality is slippery. It varies based on our state of mind, our perception, our understanding. Reality is a story we tell ourselves. But this story impacts us, shapes our lives, becomes, heh, ‘real’. So what story do we choose to tell?

What happens when a magical charm is mis-spelled, but apparently continues to work? When a grandson is the grandfather, carrying the same threads of fate and folklore?

What happens when a researcher melds fact and fiction under the ancient, ever-renewing yew trees? (Don’t eat the poison, folks, unless you wish to experience the result.)

What happens when we tap our noses and the top of our spine and slip between mind and matter into the numinous behind the tangible? When we travel into the twelve hours of the night, carrying our sword and carried by the serpent, in the daytime.

Where does story end and reality begin? In our experience of it, of course.

This is something we do as magical practitioners. We re-write our stories, and thus our worlds. This is what makes us practitioners. We are active in our fate, or at least, we hone our skills in choosing where we will weave our own destiny as the still point in the centre of the wheel, or the silver wheel of stars and fate and choice… Between Welsh goddesses and hymns to celestial beings, offerings that become conjurings in the right hands, we get to choose to choose.

What reality are you writing? What magic are you weaving?

The talks called us to investigate, to explore, to follow the threads into truth, to walk the land and listen - to the trees, the gods, the magic, the land. They called us to action, to walk our talk, to listen to the beings on the edges of our expected reality, those ladies from the outside… (fairies? Witches? Nymphae? Which story...)

So what do you claim to love, to honour, to desire? Will you conjure that story into being?

Within Star Club (and the Crimson Coven) we explore different techniques, different worlds, and writing different stories for our lives in my favourite way - through ritual and magic.

If you can find your balance on the edge, and fear not the transformation, initiation, dissolution, then all things are possible.

You just need to pick which story you are telling.

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I'd love to hear from you so do please hit reply and tell me... which story are you living? Is it weaving the world you want to choose, or is it time to change your tale?

~~~

In delight,

~ Halo Quin x

author, performer, witch

PS: Apprentice level Patrons now get monthly live workshops included, and a code for 50% off the retreats, which will happen around the festivals, 8 times a year. In May we'll be working with Air on affirmations, spells, and poetry as magic, and June's workshop will be on selkies, self-love and the element of water.

Become a Patron here.

Next Crimson Coven Chat - Life is a Love Spell: Aphrodite as Inspiration and Initiator with Irisanya Moon on 29th May ’23, at 6:30pm BST (UK time).

Find out more here:

Crimson Chat with Irisanya Moon

And, this Sunday is the Crimson Craft workshop, Words of Love and Blessing, where you'll learn how to weave ongoing enchantments that powerfully and consistently shift your life to more love, more peace, and more joy with just a few words.

Words of Love and Blessing