FOREST WITCH
I have a spiritual practice called "taking my skulls for a walk"!
The amazing star constellation cloak (the stars glow in the dark!) was made by Lyn Hill of Sacred Awakenings!
Yes, I do have a cauldron!
I am a daughter of
On the jetty by "our" lake. The swan bone flute was made by a very talented artist called Paul Bloomer, after I found a swan skeleton on an uninhabited island in the archipelago on our doorstep!
When I was four years old our family moved from a small village to large seaside town, in the Netherlands. Until then I had spoken the West Frisian dialect but my first ever "language switch" was upon me. I rapidly learned to speak "unaccented mainstream Dutch"! After that my life was lived in cities: Amsterdam (where I went to Art School), Stockholm, London and Lima in Peru (where I taught art to slum children).
I never felt truly at home in the Netherlands. As a child I often wondered "where the mountains and fjords had gone". When I was 14, our family made a trip to Norway and there was a sense of homecoming. I realise that I had, somehow, been homesick for Scandinavia without even knowing it!
When I was 19 I met a Swedish man who was to become my husband and the father of my three children. I learned to speak fluent Swedish and lived in Sweden for some time. He was offered a job in London. We thought it was "only for a year". We ended up raising our three sons there! This move forced me to work, write and teach in English. Had I continued working in Dutch or Swedish, I very much doubt my work would have reached the global audience it enjoys today.
When I was 49 years old we bought a house in Sweden, by spirit-led accident. It is in a very rural and remote location, on the coast of the Baltic Sea, near a lake and surrounded by forest on all sides. There are Bronze Age petroglyphs, a famous grave mound and many rune stones in the immediate surroundings!
As part of buying this house I made an agreement with the Norse gods that one building would become a Forest School where I would teach Seiðr and the Old Norse Traditions of Scandinavia, meaning ancestral and indigenous spiritual material from Northern Europe! I have never looked back. In the future I also hope to host sacred art retreats at my Forest School and even Forest Witch Courses! The Forest and all its inhabitants are my spiritual teacher!
FOREST WITCH ESSAYS ON SUBSTACK:
SOLITUDE DIARY OF A FOREST WITCH
