Sunday again

Spent the morning with a very nice couple who want to use our premises for a Samhain journeying workshop. They came over to have a look at the place and think it will be suitable (even with an almost complete lack of mobile reception - workshop participants have to switch phones off. Cue images of this kind of conversation: Hello? HELLO? I can't hear you very well - I'm in the Underworld. Oh wait, we're going through a tunnel...)

Then we went for lunch, and after that T and I slogged up to the top of the Tor to do the handfasting. This went very well. It didn't rain and halfway through, as the couple were saying their vows, four fritillaries appeared and danced about in a kind of butterfly coil. Then we went back down the Tor by the steep back path and had a picnic - made by the couple's respective mums - in a buttercup meadow. It might be a handfasting, but mothers still like to get involved.

The bride looked great: she wore a green and silver dress with a long green woven mantle, and an ivy leaf coronet. She has very long pale red hair.

They're getting legally hitched at the registrar's office on Tuesday, so we're going along to that, too.

Bitchcraft (from me)

A customer came in today - a nice psychotherapist who has just written a book on John Dee and Enochian magic, so given my previous literary productions, we had a lot to talk about. He went into one of our competitors today and saw that they had a replica of one of Dee's Enochian tablets, displayed in a cabinet. Being something of an authority on Dee, he felt duty bound to tell the girl at the front desk that it was, actually, upside down and maybe she'd like to put it up the right way.

To which she replied: 'I can't touch the things in that cabinet. They're dark and evil.'

He refrained from pointing out that she does in fact work in an occult shop, not Safeways, and perhaps a fluffier profession might be worth considering...

And yet more bitchcraft....

Actually this is just an anecdote, related today by one of our customers.

She has a friend who is a Wiccan high priestess. The friend was, one day, cleaning her kitchen in a frantic hurry (expecting guests) when the doorbell rang. So she hurriedly wiped her hands over her face and hair and answered the door.

On the step were two young Mormons. They took one look at this nice middle aged woman, standing on a doorstep decked with pentacles, and started edging away. No Biblical talk, no attempts at conversion.

"It's OK!" she said. "I have a lot of respect for Christ, I'm always happy to listen." By this time they were practically sprinting backwards down the path and then they were gone.

So she thought, oh well, closed the door and went back inside. On the way to the kitchen, she happened to glance in the hall mirror.

She'd managed to cut her hand slightly whilst cleaning the kitchen, and running her hands through her hair had distributed the results. She was covered in blood from hairline to chin.

She apparently nearly ran after the Mormons, shouting, 'No! You don't understand - the cat's still alive!' But thought better of it.

You can see how rumours start.