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00:04:56.140they zoom up through the earth and into the sky and then as they as they sail back down to earth
00:05:01.920they shimmer and that is the aurora borealis. Loretta you seem to have a visceral reaction
00:05:08.920to the mention of aurora borealis so first off how are you who are you today and also
00:05:15.740why did you have such a visceral reaction to that? I'm doing well um I'm mid unpacking
00:05:26.000my family and I just moved um so there's a little bit of chaos behind me still um but I'm I'm pretty
00:05:35.740all things considered in the in the land that I live in I'm pretty good um
00:05:46.020it's always been a a dream of mine to see
00:05:50.800the aurora i it's it feels anytime i get to see a video or photo or um you know look into
00:05:59.880a piece of labradorite and imagine that that might be what it looks like um it just i just
00:06:08.700it's got it's something i've got to try to do before i die same and you know it's not like
00:06:14.620the eiffel tower or something where you can just like book a plane ticket and go in there there
00:06:19.960like you have to have luck and also a plane ticket in many cases let me let me start with
00:06:30.500that Loretta do you think that there's a ritual or rituals that can bring you luck what do you
00:06:34.780think about the concept of luck oh absolutely in fact in um the traditions that I work in
00:06:41.040capturing luck is a really big thing um in fact
00:06:46.360I've I find that in this like you know modern place of sharing information especially when it
00:06:56.300comes to abundance or um prosperity work which are two different things um luck historically was
00:07:06.600the first step that was supposed to be taken and it's kind of been lost um there's
00:07:14.360several different things working with the bones of a black cat um the ethics around that have
00:07:23.140have changed um you know now as we have access to natural death specimens um but that's working
00:07:34.460with the bones of a black cat or something that was it was commonly worked in conjure um
00:07:42.920even I mean there's certain plants that we know um those spirits bring us luck um there's
00:07:51.640creating mojo hands around carrying those spirits with us you you conjure several different spirits
00:08:00.880and then you put it all together and then that creates its own spirit and then that's a spirit
00:08:07.480that you enter into a contract with and feed and that brings you luck there is the the working of
00:08:19.220dressing your shoes and dressing your feet so that you're always walking in luck so it's it's
00:08:25.680definitely that luck work is a big part of my practice and it's, it's historically
00:08:30.800relevant. Um, it's actually something that I really wish more people would, uh, do because
00:08:41.580we, there's this, this awareness also that we spend a certain amount of luck. Like for example,
00:08:48.300um you're driving down the road you miss getting struck by another car well that's luck spent
00:08:57.060so then you've got to go and gather some more of that luck there's something that goes around in
00:09:04.280my head a lot and i haven't really come to any conclusions so i'm i'm looking to the two of you
00:09:09.800for your perspective on this and i guess i guess we'll start with una do you differentiate between
00:09:16.140rituals spells practices ceremonies and if so how and and what's the difference
00:09:23.820that's a really great question um i do differentiate between rituals and spells
00:09:32.400for certain um i guess it's good to have a kind of working definition of what a ritual is um so
00:09:41.340for me rituals are like containers they're containers of liminal space space which is a
00:09:52.900threshold which is a it's kind of like a transformative tunnel and it's a space in
00:10:01.620which we can escape from quotidian life the socio-economic structures we live in
00:10:08.260and we can make way for something to happen and we don't necessarily know how or in what way we're
00:10:18.960going to come out the other side of a ritual when we go into it but it's really a jumping off point
00:10:25.220it kind of reminds me of the the fool tarot card you know it's both the beginning and the end
00:10:30.540so I think it's really good to have this yeah kind of tunnel tunnel vision of a ritual
00:10:37.380um and it's also kind of like the athenor in alchemy so it's this furnace like an egg it's
00:10:46.680an egg in which we keep things brings things up to a certain temperature keep them simmering
00:10:52.720simmering away and we let something grow within it we go into this ritual and we yeah we don't
00:11:00.700know what we're going to be like when we come out of it we can set up the conditions for change
00:11:05.300happening perhaps in a direction you know in usually in a direction which we want to go um
00:11:11.700but we can't guarantee what on earth the outcome will be and that's kind of the really special
00:11:17.520thing about rituals for me it's a it's yeah constructing a bridge very architectural
00:11:24.500whereas for me a spell is something we do to have uh that has a desired outcome for us so we set our
00:11:38.820sights on an outcome and we do something often that contains a ritual in order for this thing
00:11:45.780to happen but so the spell can might contain a ritual but a ritual doesn't necessarily contain
00:11:51.460a spell. Loretta, do you want to jump in on that? And I'll just restate rituals, spells, practices,
00:12:02.240ceremonies. So for me, for the lens that I approach the work through, ritual is more
00:12:12.760of something that is done repetitively um so for like for us um you know in in root work conjure
00:12:25.080very traditional brujerÃa there is um you know laying down work um which i think a lot of people
00:12:34.120you know where we say work a lot of people's here or to other people that means like spell work we
00:12:42.100don't really use spell work, that word very often, that term very often. So for me, it's like the
00:12:50.360ritual of spiritual bathing, which is something that I do every day. The ritual of dressing my
00:13:00.740feet, my shoes, my hat, which is something that I do every day. So it becomes a ritual because
00:13:09.940it's incorporated in my moving in everyday life where laying down work is something that I and
00:13:17.040you know we don't we don't really work with um within the calendar in the same way you know it's
00:13:25.900there are certain days of the week that are good for certain types of workings um you know if I
00:13:32.740wanted to do some road opening I would do it on a Monday or a Wednesday depending on which spirits
00:13:37.640I'm working in with but where you know laying down work is something that if we need to do it
00:13:45.120we do it then and there um I think you know conjure brujeria root work those things fall
00:13:53.500under more of like a folk magic lens um and because these are living practices like these
00:14:00.280aren't practices that have died and then been resurrected these are practices that are they're
00:14:07.580living traditions so they they change as time changes right but the the root is always um
00:14:17.460it comes from our elders it comes from our teachers it's word of mouth and
00:14:23.020it's passed down in even in daily conversation so when we lay down work
00:14:30.560we just do it and you know one of my teacher professor porterfield one of my favorite things
00:14:37.860that he says is the most effective type of work can be done with a pocket knife and knowing what
00:14:48.240direction you're facing so for us it's a little bit different um and a lot of our our ritual is
00:14:57.700cunning you know it's kept hidden it's kept secret because that's the way that we have been
00:15:06.900able to walk in this world holding on to our traditions um while also for survival um acclimating
00:15:19.780and you are an instructor at ritual craft which obviously the word instructor makes us think of
00:15:29.480someone who's been deeply educated and and you mentioned word of mouth but how else do you
00:15:35.880you get these sort of like otherwise inaccessible pieces of information and how do you see that
00:15:45.960relationship between education and invention so books are so books through our lens and again
00:15:59.680this is just you know through the traditions that I work in um books are it's like a recipe book
00:16:06.300um and there is the suggested formula that goes into the recipe right
00:16:13.100but because these are living traditions and these are traditions that evolve with us um it's always
00:16:24.360it's good to know the spirits that are being called on in the recipe and it's good to know
00:16:32.240what's growing around you and what spirits of the land or plant spirits or non-human spirits
00:16:41.440spirits that are, as we believe, because we are in an animus tradition, which is a word that's
00:16:48.620become more popular recently. We believe that everything has a spirit. So it's good to be able
00:16:56.220to follow a recipe. And, you know, those recipes are often based, have a historical base. But like,
00:17:05.100let's say I'm trying to do some work for abundance. And I don't necessarily have
00:17:14.980chamomile. But I recognize that chamomile is used for abundance because it looks like little gold
00:17:25.320coins. And then I look out onto my lawn, and I see that there's dandelions. And I see that those
00:17:32.300dandelions also look like little gold coins so I can make that my own I can make that work for me
00:17:40.380where I stand and in folk magic I think it's important to to be able to you know read the
00:17:49.980recipe but then work from where you stand I love this metaphor of the recipe that you can
00:17:57.860that you can sort of change things but from a fundamental foundation of this is what works
00:18:05.060like I'm thinking about baking and if you don't have some kind of leavening agent it's not going
00:18:09.760to work if you use salt instead of sugar in your cookies they're going to taste terrible but
00:18:15.280outside of that if you want to you know substitute this nut for that nut or or whatever that we are
00:18:22.780we're allowed to do that right yeah and substitutions make it make sense is really all
00:18:31.140that it you know that's all you really have to do yeah i love this notion make it make sense
00:18:39.020una i want to turn to you for a second because your book includes a section of ritual practices
00:18:46.160that you wrote that you wrote were channeled from the spirits of the occult women who inspired them
00:18:54.820so i want to know about that process and and and what practice brought you to this channeling
00:19:04.520ability and also if you have anything to say about education and invention and how we can put those
00:19:11.040things together. I want to hear about that too. But first, how did you channel those rituals that
00:19:17.880are in your book? Sure. I mean, it's a difficult question to answer, not because I don't know the
00:19:25.340answer, but because I feel really cagey talking about it. But I guess I come from a Scandinavian
00:19:36.060folk magic tradition and as well as that I have a background in ritual theatre which is much more
00:19:43.220akin to ceremonial magic so we were we were a magical group who made theatre that was secretly
00:19:54.180ritual not so secretly ritual kind of everyone knew what we were up to on the scene in London
00:20:00.180um but yeah I guess with channeling I learned my channeling abilities through rituals in a
00:20:10.640ceremonial context so I really honed them well we would we would construct rituals ourselves
00:20:17.720um this CH group we had a system and we'd construct rituals ourselves which were incredibly
00:20:24.980physical so you know we were there as so-called actors in the room together and we would use each
00:20:34.160other's bodies and props to physically lead somebody through a very somatic experience
00:20:41.380to move them from their their own self their personality etc all the accoutrements of a
00:20:50.700personality into their character which was usually an archetypal character I call it an archetype
00:20:58.360more than a character we didn't really use that language of theatre and so I learned my channeling
00:21:05.180abilities through working on these processes where I was channeling archetypes within the
00:21:13.320context of a theatrical production that was secretly a magical order conducting rituals
00:21:21.580for the public to go through um so that was kind of that's kind of my background and then
00:21:28.380also working um from a scandinavian folk magic practice here in shetland um and the living
00:21:36.980tradition of specifically Shetland folk magic then channeling usually we're talking about
00:21:45.940necromancy so talking to the dead talking to the spirits of the dead and so I kind of used
00:21:55.440used all of my backgrounds to figure out ways to channel the spirits of the women I am writing
00:22:03.900about who have some of whom have been dead for hundreds of years, some of whom have been dead
00:22:09.500for not quite so long. And I just spent a lot of time with each woman. I did, you know, a heck of
00:22:18.880a lot of research when I was writing the book about all aspects of these women's lives, what
00:22:23.920people had written about them, what they had written about themselves, interviews in some of
00:22:31.560the more more recent um women i was writing about then you know had television interviews
00:22:39.300sybil leak for example was often on bbc tv uh a great british broadcasting corporation
00:22:47.280um and so there's a lot of material to work with just to to get a flavor of these women because1.00
00:22:54.800for me don't want to approach somebody without knowing a bit a fair bit about them and about1.00
00:23:00.120whether you even want to get in touch with them which was a big part of my kind of sifting process
00:23:06.700when it came to writing the book who do I want to write about who am I going to get along with
00:23:11.020who am I maybe not going to get along with and am I willing to try that anyway um so I'd work for
00:23:18.940a few months at a time on um working with each woman and I just spend that couple of months um
00:23:27.740specifically chatting to yeah that one woman who I was building a relationship with0.91
00:23:34.980and I'm not going to go into the specific methods I would use when I sit down and talk to them
00:23:43.120because that feels very private and very sacred to me and not something I can talk about but
00:23:49.980My background in creating rituals definitely informs what I did.
00:23:56.700So there's the channeling aspect and then there's the putting the gleanings from this channeling into a ritual format that will work for people who are practicing magic today.
00:24:13.920And so, yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on there, mechanically speaking.
00:24:19.980um and i think what came out of it is quite an accessible set of rituals really uh accessible
00:24:27.600set of spells and practices and i think that comes from just being able to over time develop
00:24:35.280a way of channeling where you can you can really um hone your communication abilities it's like
00:24:44.380honing your communication abilities with living human beings you know you just got to be nice
00:24:49.800you've got to be polite and I think the basics of channeling come down to the basics of communication
00:24:54.520in particular you know active listening um so I also have some training in counseling and that
00:25:01.800really helped me you know just the real you know daily life stuff of being a counselor
00:25:07.260and talking therapy and yeah for me channeling it's it's not hugely different from just having
00:25:17.360a conversation with somebody who is you know physically manifest in this room right now
00:25:25.920um like chatting to you um so that's that in terms of sort of working from traditional texts
00:25:37.020you know grimoires and so on I would also use the recipe book analogy I think that's a really good
00:25:42.520one in terms of you have i know i'm talking a lot about structure here but i think that is so
00:25:47.960important you know that container that tunnel that structure um you thinking about yeah using the
00:25:55.480the structure of a recipe and then dabbling a bit in the creation of of um a recipe that suits you
00:26:06.660so you're using this you know grimoire whatever as as the basis of whatever you're doing and then
00:26:13.340you're just playing mix and match in a way sometimes I think it can start off like that
00:26:18.220you just feel like you're yeah you're playing some mix and match kind of game and seeing what
00:26:25.460works it's such an experimental thing and I think over time you you gather your own set of
00:26:30.860correspondences and you learn narratives of plant beings animal beings you know so much of it is
00:26:39.020about um Rachel is about constructing a good story a story that you can tell yourself a story that you
00:26:45.700can tell the spirits that you're working with um and when it comes to creating stories then you
00:26:53.340just have to spend a lot of time chatting to those plants yeah Loretta what can you add as