It has been a busy time for me lately, besides working with students, preparing new texts for the Quareia page, etc, I have been doing podcasts, lectures and have a masterclass coming up at The Magickal Womens Conference in London at the end of this month… so here is what I have been up to…

I was up in Scotland recently for the Scottish Pagan Federation annual conference in Edinburgh, and what a great community they are!

There was a wide variety of speakers, great market stalls and tons of really good and interesting people who attended. I made a bunch of new friends, and got to listen to some really good talks, my favourite being the lecture on Alchemy by Dr Robert Plimer – you can find out more about his work here.

The general calibre of the speakers was high thanks to Steffy the organiser, and the subject matter was wide ranging.

The ‘after’ discussions were also really good and I left feeling that magic, Paganism, and all that they encompass was strong and vital in Scotland.

It felt good to realise that very diverse paths were lively, engaged with, and had much to pass on to the younger generation… and everyone rubbed along together so well.

There were so many interesting personalities that I met, who were brimming with enthusiasm, experience and wisdom – I wanted to scoop them all up and take them home with me.

The day after, I had a day to kill before flying back south, so I wandered around Edinburgh for the day. I visited the castle, the National Museum, St Giles Cathedral, and pottered around the old town for a few hours listening to the pipers playing on the street while looking at the mountains of tourist tat on sale in the various shops.

But the museum was the best of all….. its collections are excellent, and I wandered around an impressive Samurai section, a mountain of renaissance curiosities before I landed in the Egyptian section.

Canopic chest of Amenhotep NMS

Most of the Egyptian section was Greco Roman and Ptolemaic, but there were some corners hiding pure gems, such as small deities from the Place of Truth and a really interesting collection of things found at Deir el–Bahari, the area on the west bank of the Nile  opposite Luxor, an area of mortuary temples and tombs.

So all in all it was a fruitful weekend, and I highly recommend Edinburgh as a place to visit and also a base to use for exploring Scotland.

Once I got back, the next thing was recording the podcast with Alex of Glitch Bottle… over three hours long! We talked back and forth about a wide variety of all things magical, and my expletives filter was not working that day………

Alex is a wonderful interviewer and really gets to the heart of a question.. so he kept me on my toes!

At the end of the month, on the first day of June, I will be giving a masterclass on magic/structure/boundaries and directional work at the London Magickal Womens Conference. We will also have a stall there with Stuart Littlejohn’s art and various books, decks etc. If you attend, come and say hello!

I hope everyone has a wonderful magical summer, and at some point, the sun shines in Britain (we can all hope!!).