My mossy dreaming tree.
#Treelife
#WitchSky
#EmilyCBanting

The witch sits the river and listens to the gossip it has heard on journey from source. She learns to make her magics fluid, to overcome all barriers. She learns every flow rate has its use. When to rage, when to be placid. She sits the river and becomes wiser. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Some have a kissing tree, some have a thinking tree, some have a tree they tell their secrets to. I am a greedy witch. I've as many trees as lovers and I've performed magic with most of them. My favoured wood is like a party filled with old friends to talk to. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Thresholds may be the witch's engine of sorcery, but the wise among us learn to recognise those that should not be traversed. Not every gate has to be opened. Not ever border needs to be danced across. There are times where we only need acknowledge they are there. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982

The land wakes in green gowning and golden gorse. The land wakes in tangle, scratch and a constancy of call. Woodpecker, blackcap and even the greenfinch’s wheezing song delight the ears. Joy rides the tide of blood. Hope cracks the armoured earth. Spring walks the way. - #EmilyCBanting, 1982

A black and white landscape. Harrowed fields. A distant line of trees show their wooden bones to the horizon. A harsh hedge is border.

Some hold to the misguided belief farmland does not sing to the witch. They fetishize ferality to the point they exclude the truth that every place has it songs. Fields sing of what is buried below, sing of libation thirst. Their tangled borders are spirit trap. – #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky

A coven can take many forms. None need perpetuate hierarchical pisspuffinry. I am fond of the guerrilla coven called for single purpose. I am fond of my stitch, bitch and witch meetings where more than sorceries are swapped. A coven is not an excuse for grand titles. - #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky

In my wooden temple, I can hear the land singing its songs of renewal as the trees pull on their green gowns again. In dappled kiss across my skin, growing hope of magics yet to come. This is a time when witchery is fierce bliss. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky #Spring

Give me a sky with clouds for nephomancy, a tangled field edge for phytognomy and I shall tell you tomorrow. For nature gifts every tool needed to look around the corner of time. The witch does not want for signs. Any walking brings a cascade of omens. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

The witch is her feral conversations with the land. The witch is her fluid conversations with the river. For all magics involve relationships. To walk and to talk with the spirits of place is to move into their mysteries. In our listening is learning. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

You'll come across practitioners who will play hierarchical status games by telling you that your cauldron is cringey. These are the same people who will judge you on their continuity fantasies with no historical basis. Forget them. Witchcraft is what works. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

We've reached that turn in the year where we may find moss nests holding written wishes in our sacred spaces. The wise witch is secure in her sorceries. She shares the landscape with different folk faiths, enjoys a diversity of magics– #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky #Spring

The witch walks through hedges. The witch walks through the wall of the woods. She knows the words of passing, knows the politeness owed to gates of thorn and tangle. Her constant conversation to the land leads her to secret places, leaf-cloaked sanctuaries. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

The witch feels the land's waking. Feels the greening of her soul. Her sorceries grow, her sorceries bloom. A thousand new feral songs swim her blood. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Inside the witch is a library of feral spirits, a hundred books that need not be written for their knowledge is best told by tree root and hedge blossom. Her living practice is a curation of wonders and wild wisdom. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

The witch knows that places weave themselves into her story with the dance of their shadows, the singing of their songs. She becomes aware this process is bidirectional. The witch walks the wood and it remembers her footfall, every conversation with its spirits. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Spring is told in bulb bloom, wild garlic crowding. Spring is told in stretching shadows, the waking of ghosts. For the gentle kiss of the sun is a summoning. Whether at meadow edge or a town's neglected alley, few things can refuse it's call. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982

Every salt-hag has her place of standing. Rocks upon which she sings to summon the winds. Choired by gull shriek and surf rasp, these are her tide temples. These are her places where waves whisper wonders. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Those neglected places – harsh, bosky and blurred by the speed they are rushed passed – are adored by the witch. For those places sing fierce songs. These are our thorn temples. Their spirits scratch the sky, tithe blood and offer wonders. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

The threshold sings a song of seduction. Shoreline. Riverbank. Wood edge. The witch hears it as summoning, as a promise of magics. It is a kiss in her ear, a pull upon her her bones. The witch is one who answers the call of wonder. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

I believe #EmilyCBanting once told me a story about this.
If i remember correctly, it can be a tricky feat to pull off.

The river is the witch's friend. It is her gossip-gatherer, her curse-cleanser. It sings the seasons to her. Its banks and bridges are an engine of fluid threshold magics. She is on first name terms with its tutelary spirit. One could call it her accomplice. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

On clear winter mornings, the sort where you regret wearing fingerless gloves within two minutes of being outside, I often go to the wood edge. Establish myself as a listening post. For the best conversations in witchcraft may start with a period of being quiet. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

I suspect it isn't just us witches who take inspiration from a wander around the Weychester Physic Garden. Where else can the public so easily learn the lore and interesting uses of aconite? The gardens are such a boon to folklorists and possible poisoners. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982

Living on Hookland's coast it isn't just salt hags who know the power of the ocean. Everyone understands the King-Under-the-Sea has an insatiable appetite for land, that his tide teeth will always bite. No wall, however high, will keep him out forever. – #EmilyCBanting, 1981

The root of hag come from the German hagzussa and Old English hægtesse – hedge-sitter. For those old boundaries of the land, whether tangled threshold of hawthorn or stacked stone, were magical thresholds. Sitting atop them, the witch could see beyond into the Otherworld. – #EmilyCBanting, 1981

What does the witch know? She knows where the land whispers, she knows where the land growls. This is a vital comprehension. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

To stand at the edge of the wood is an intoxication. As a witch I feel it as a rush of green communion, a wave of possibility roaring towards me. You feel it touching you psychic skin, somewhere between the tease of a lover and warning of scratches to come. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Every hour is the witching hour. We are as potent at dawn or noon as we are at the suggested 3am. We flourish during the solar alchemy of twilight. We are creatures of the threshold. The turning of time is a powerful engine of magics. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

The witch needs no tarot or crystal ball. One of my favourite nature-gifted scrying pools is at the edge of a local water meadow. This is my place for nephomantic cloud-telling. Peering into the still water to look around the corner of tomorrow. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky