this is just a quick update of the shenanigans and goings on of my first Witchfest last weekend. At the end I've included a video made by the fabulous Olivia, enjoy!
Witchfest
'Humpspohiujbwadhv,' was precisely what went through my mind as the alarm went off at no later than 4:45 am. Olivia appeared to be bouncing off the walls, but I had a hard time dragging my half awake body to Swansea train station, but a beautiful sunrise appearing over the misty fields made it worthwhile. Despite a slight tube-related kerfuffle, we made it to Croydon bang on time and met up with a fabulous teenage witchy Essex bunch. We went to the lovely opening speech and blessings, then hit the stalls. I spent disappointingly little in comparison to my last festival escapade at Barefoot, but was very pleased with my new rune bag, runic lore book, and one of those gorgeous leatherbound journal jobbies. No bookshelf is complete without at least one, particularly not mine. I ended up bumping into all sorts of unexpected faces; someone I met at Barefoot festival, a woman I'm pretty sure I recognised from an Open University documentary I saw a while back on Village Witchcraft, and an old friend I hadn't seen for at least a year. I also ran into a pair of less than lovely faces from the past, but fortunately claws remained retracted (physically, anyway), and thus all was good in the hood. Filming and taking photos was strictly prohibited, but Olivia being the awesome camera-wielding ninja that she is, managed to get enough footage to make a 10 minute video out of it (with a section including yours truly where, not wanting to regurgitate Tiffany's response to 'what do you like most about Witchfest', she had me waffle on about Runes instead.) There was a great range of talks, ones I attended including Phiona Hutton's whisperings in Avalon, Ronald Hutton's Ancient Pagan Britain (which was so popular that there were hardly any seats left when I got there), and Moving Magic, taught by a loud Scottish guy who shared with us some fantastic techniques for circle casting, spellwork and raising energy, all based in movement. But by far the best was the one about the obstacles and difficulties faced by teenage witches, which I was told by one of the lovely speakers might well have been a pretty boring talk, but alas it was met with standing ovation. I was rather impressed. Following the talks, the musical entertainment commenced, and we watched the beginning of the brilliant Daughters of Gaia performance, before having to leave early and say our fond farewells, until next year....
