Goddess of Yule

Witches for Sale!

At last I can share my exciting news!!!

Some of my illustrative artwork is now available to buy as cards and prints on the wonderful Slippery Jacks website!  Click here to be taken to my page.

I was encouraged in this endeavour by new friends and old, to all of whom I give grateful thanks.  I'm so pleased to see my witches, wizards and dragons given the opportunity to fly to new homes.

Liebster Blog Award

A very, very belated thank you to Silver Fox from Secret Garden for including me in her five for this award.

As she beautifully puts it - 'Liebster is beloved in German...be loved...I am reminded of Rumi and Sufism. The beloved is the other, you and the Divine. You see yourself and love reflected in another eyes.'

I have the opportunity to pass this award onto 5 blogs who open my eyes, this will come soon. For the moment this is an acknowledgement and grateful thanks to my one beloved follower, you are of course the first recipient ;-)

Witches Are For Life...

...Not Just for Hallowe'en!

This has become my mantra over the last few weeks, as I rediscover some illustrations from an age ago.

I have an inkling that a few will be appearing on cards sometime very soon...

No Cobwebs on Me! (c) Amber Caspian, 2011

Autumn Memories

Autumn is without doubt my favourite time of year, inspired by wonderful memories of a childhood spent playing around bonfires and doing spooky plays for our parents and making potions with burnt edge labels and seeing a witch's hat hanging high in a tree and loving the smell of the earth and falling leaves fiercely.

I love it so much that I always try and get as much out of the season as possible and make it last just that little bit longer.  I see friends; celebrate Samhain / Hallowe'en in all its various ways.  I walk miles on clear, fresh days with a golden sun hanging low in the sky.  I stand under the full moon absorbing its special silver blessing. 

The full moon yesterday certainly has affected me and I am so full of ideas that I've been driven to create and be within the energy.  Consequently I find myself too busy to write and my poor blog feels a little neglected. However it's all to the good as I am beginning to feel that I have made some things start to evolve.  Old friends have visited and brought new friends. They will be gracing these pages with their presence before very long...

Samhain Crone

Mabon Goddess

Dismantling Home, Packing and Letting Go...

Dismantling ones home and packing up possessions is an enlightening experience.  I find myself examining objects and books more closely than in a long time, sensing their importance, feeling their weight and meaning in my life.  Do they add something or represent the past?  Do I value them enough to want to pack them and store them? Will I be happy to see them again in a few months time? For many of them it’s been a heartfelt yes! For some it is a very grateful no.

But it’s not only the physical that we reassess at times like these; it’s the internal clutter as well.  I’m more acutely aware of how differently I feel since I first moved in here.  I contemplate how my life will be when next I unpack.  I acknowledge a deep understanding that sudden though this move is it is happening at the perfect time and all is moving forward toward an exciting newly shaped life.  It is time to say goodbye to hiding and eternal isolation within my fortress of books, of steeping in the juices of my private world.  It is time to welcome in the shift, the motion of the Universe inviting me into fresh life again.

My tree-house gave me a semblance of peace and time to heal.  I travelled the world and came back to its welcoming arms. I sunk in the cushioning sound of birdsong and forever winds.  I have let go of so much over the last three years, burned letters in quest-fires, made footprints in red canyons and upon frozen lakes.  My internal world feels renewed and inspired. I can breathe deeply and laugh loudly without fear or regret.

So now I shed the burdensome diaries of many years despair and the dead-weight of unread books. I feel lighter and freer as I step into the beginnings of my handmade life and look forward to eventually moving into the house of belonging (from David Whyte's wonderful poem).

Holistic Garden

Hitchin's 'Rhythms of the World Festival' has a rather wonderful secret. 

Hidden in amongst some trees to the side of all the busy music madness of the main festival, is the Holistic Garden. 

A peaceful haven of healing and happiness.

This year I volunteered to help out in the Tea Teepee,
an enchantment of herbs, china tea cups, organic cakes and flapjacks. 

As I can't post the marvellous scents and flavours here are some images that
I hope will give you an idea of the magic we brewed there.

Hanging an Exhibition

Irena Willmott / Justin Hawkes

Since October when I got my dream job, I have been learning about curating as I went along and it’s been a great deal of fun!  I have hung my own little exhibitions before but never a large body of work by other artists.  It’s been an interesting process, one that has developed as I’ve moved from instinct to knowledge brought by experience.

Anji Jackson-Main / Brigitte Anne Hague

To me it’s important to create something that gives the viewer a way in, rather than something that shuts people out.  I sometimes feel that stark white walls around a lone painting is just making the viewer do all the work, which of course is fine but rather daunting and perhaps a little limiting.

Justin Hawkes / Irena Willmott / Mel Fraser

I am a passionate writer and reader of stories, children’s, fiction, history, biography, whatever takes my interest.  In this last show particularly I am aware that the way the pieces are positioned, the choices I have made as well as those of the artists, tell a story.   A story of form, texture, colour, detail and simplicity. It has never quite worked as powerfully for me before and I am struck by the thought that my creativity has also taken part, I have joined in the artist’s dance. 

Christophe Gordon-Brown / Mel Fraser

A colleague of mine once said that he thought I should just let the Art speak for itself, a fan of white walls and space.  Whereas I came from the angle that a loose theme or common thread made it easier to speak to the public.  I still feel that has a place, the themes really were very loose and never restrictive to the artist.  However I guess I am now feeling braver and more able to express myself creatively here, instead of keeping it quietly under wraps.

Brigiite Anne Hague / Bob Crooks

Alan Foxley / Anji Jackson-Main

There’s a lovely flow about this exhibition despite the fact that the artists were chosen almost at random, just because we liked their work.  There was no overarching idea other than to bring some fabulous work together.  Perhaps I have moved out of my own way at last and gone with an emotional response to the work rather than an intellectual one.

Mel Fraser / Anji Jackson-Main

It was interesting how as the artists delivered their work and I hung the show, each piece eased itself into a given space organically.  The texture of the carved stone alongside felted and embroidered material, the masculinity of one piece softened by the femininity of another, the arching colour of a painting echoing it’s twin in a sculpture.  As the last sculpture settled in its space the work seemed to sing to each other.

Anji Jackson-Main / Justin Hawkes

These pictures don't exactly reveal the flow but hopefully give an idea of the connections and perhaps a little of their song.

Irena Willmott / Justin Hawkes

The Bag Man / The Curious Traveller

Twin stories, born from one childhood reality mixed with a vivid imagination...

They originally came out curiously entwined but never quite merged into a cohesive tale.  I had to carefully pick out the bits that worked best for each story.  Gradually like Siamese Twins they were separated and thankfully both have survived.

The Bag Man

Round our way, down winding country roads laced with cow parsley and yellow fields, walks a mysterious man who no-one really knows.  We see him most days from car windows, a blurred image of man and bags, coat and hair, hidden face and bowed back.  We call him The Bag Man and we fear him, just a little...

Sometimes a stranger becomes part of family mythology and is named by children with little awareness of common usage and hefty dictionaries.  So let it be said before we begin that in this story a ‘bag man’ is much the same as a ‘bag lady’ and let us disregard all other meanings.

So the Bag Man walks the country roads up and down, carrying his bags up and down. Parents scare their children with stories that the Bag Man will get them if they don't behave or go to bed on time.  Adults pass him in the car at speed in case he gets home before them.  Especially when they are alone they find they fear him more than their children do.  For children are curious and will tag along behind him, despite their parents warnings.

Yet have they ever thought on and pondered upon a life such as his?  We had questions galore to ask him if only our parents would slow down and stop.  Where is he going? Where is he from?  Does he have a house to live in and what is in his many bags?  Questions never to be answered, for now we are as fearful as our parents had been.

Now as I recall my childhood I speculate anew on the mystery that was the Bag Man.  With the burdens of adult life upon my shoulders I wonder whether he was as free as he seemed or was he tied to the roadside, slave to the journey, the travail of the winding way.  Did he feel boundless and more alive than we do? I imagine stories for him as I did when young, but instead of great adventures and treasure, they are of dark faeries and lost loves.


In my mind’s eye I see that many, many years ago he went to market to buy groceries.  A young man he was with jaunty step and clear eye, meeting his lady-love for a light lunch of oysters and pearls.  He left her with promises and intensions to return upon the Sunday when both were to be wed. He turned with a wave and set off home, his bags full to the brim with ingredients for cold pottage and syllabub, grate pyes and plump pastries for the wedding feast.  Whereupon he unwittingly trod inside a faery ring and begun the wandering way in that hidden realm.

We could not know what torment he suffered, for he looked wild and mad and out of his wits to our human sight.  Those taunting sprites and glamoured maidens tore at his hair and pinched at his skin.  They danced with him by night and hectored him by day; much cruel sport was made of him.  The wind was always against him and the sun burned his back, the roadside held him as the way stretched and blurred and home was always just around the corner.

So hundreds of years fell away, never to be recalled, and when the Bag Man steps from the verge to the path, released from their time to our time, he is far older than he knew and his lady-love is long, long gone.  His bags are full of dust and hunger and loss and grief, those pyes and pastries never made nor tasted.

Yet still we see him walking along the verge, the Bag Man plodding the roadside, seen but briefly as we rush by pursuing our busy lives.

By Amber Caspian, 26 May 2011

What is Home?

A couple of days ago I was unexpectedly served notice on my flat.  I now feel an unsettling mixture of excitement as to the next part of my journey and acute grief at losing my home.

I moved here three and a half years ago after a particularly rough year of virtual homelessness.  A studio flat in a converted barn, it is spacious and light and perfect for painting in.  A miles walk across the fields from the nearest village it stands amongst fields and woods steeped in Norman and Saxon history.  A haven made of beams and branches that move with the wind and surrounding trees like a living breathing tree-house.  The wonderful sound of rain on the roof; the hoot of owls in the night and wood pigeons hoo-hooing by day; the smell of earth, leaf and fields of wheat, my senses singing now they are away from the city life I had known before.

Where will I go now? How do I survive leaving somewhere that feels so much a part of me?

It still seems strange that a year ago I spent most of the year travelling and away from home. I particularly remember feeling that home was people; I missed my niece, family and friends so much it hurt! I also carried my ‘home’ on my back, a turtle-shell full of my clothes and sleeping bag, a few books and journal, camera and toothbrush. Did I really need more than I could carry? But in the end I realised it was emotional baggage that I needed to shed, and perhaps a few books…

Since then I find I carry mainly colours within me, the amazing array of the Painted Desert, the subtle ones of a frozen Swedish lake, the vibrant golden beauty of Angkor Wat, along with the vastness of skies and of my love for the people in my life. All this doesn’t need packing or storing or clearing out. With this I can find and create a home again… perhaps an improved version that’s a little warmer in winter.

Goddess Cycle Poems

A number of years ago I celebrated the wheel of the year by writing poems about the Goddess as she changes with each festival. The idea was to have images to go with them; I have done a few but by no means all so they will appear as and when. These things cannot be forced!


I immersed myself in books on folklore, a huge passion of mine, but mainly tried to describe my own vision of her; brought to life as a tangible being who one could actually meet.  Describing Her through words She might speak when presiding over a village’s celebrations.  I also wanted to give a sense of the season, the changes She goes through, Her relationship with the God and all the themes that come from that, as well as the dark and the light aspects.


A couple of years later I did the same with the God, the same process of learning and envisioning.  I feel I did achieve what I set out to do at the time; in fact it proved to be a turning point for me in terms of my writing. Ten years on I probably would write very different poems, which is a very interesting thought!


Personally I don't believe that God/dess will manifest into physical form.  I see Her/Him as an essence, a metaphor, the feminine and the masculine principles that govern nature and us.  I believe in the God/dess within.

Cambridge Folk Festival

On Sunday, Lammas Eve, I went to the Cambridge Folk Festival for the first time.  Massively overcrowded in a very small space, something I’m not keen on, it was still a fun day involving lots of Pimm’s, cider and ale with of course a picnic!

My picnic

Interesting things I saw there, aside from bands, were this troupe of brightly coloured Molly Dancers known as Gog Magog Molly, named after some hills near Cambridge.  Molly dancing is a traditional East Anglian dance distinct from Morris Dancing, which died out in the 1930’s and was revived in the 1970’s.  No sticks or bells are involved but instead very different steps, brightly coloured costumes, painted faces and rebellious behaviour.  Associated with Plough Monday, the first after Epiphany, it involved the ploughboys touring around the village landowners offering dances in exchange for money, when they should have been starting work.  Anyone refusing had an unfortunate trick played on them, such as a large furrow ploughed into their lawn.  The disguises were needed as they hoped to still gain work with the landowners in the spring.

Gog Magog Molly Dancers

Molly Band

My favourite Molly

Also I loved these two giant foxes made out of willow that decorated the site...

Willow Fox Banjo Player

Willow Fox Fidder

...and this wonderful mannequin girl, don’t know who she is or where she’s from but would love to find out.

You never know what you will discover!

Goddess of Lammas

Creativity Unhindered

Great joy! Since my last post I've taken the lid off the well and a positive overflow of creativity has erupted from deep within! The feeling is amazing and it's the way I want to live always (does the waggle dance around the room).

Someone said to me recently that, when you are blocked creatively the best way to get through it is to make something for someone other than yourself. So here is an image of a 'Spirit Horse' I drew for my friend Janet, a wonderful woman who takes groups of women on Moon Journeys to the Arctic and the Outer Hebrides (more on that in a future post) and loves horses and drums.

Spirit Horse (c) Amber Caspian, 2011

We ride our spirit horse when we journey on the heartbeat of a drum deep into our subconscious, galloping on the rhythm like pounding hooves upon the sweet loamy soil of our souls.

Creativity Unblocked

The main reason for starting a blog was to find a way to pull together all the elements that make up me and get through a creative block.  I have long had a difficult relationship with my creative self.  For some reason I have trouble even getting into the canoe let alone riding it along upon the river of creative flow.  With writing it is different; I have never experienced a serious ‘wounding’ by anyone, not at school or from any other source.  I’ve always felt free to simply write whatever comes into my head, and this has been enhanced by my job in a publishing house writing copy and checking artwork, and during both my Art degree and counselling diploma.  It feels peaceful and relaxing, soul expanding and exciting, I love it!

However with painting it all feels so different.  I am tense and nervous, find it hard to settle and not judge myself.  So why do it?  Again because I love it!  I love the fact that I can do it; put what is in my mind down onto canvas and paper.  Love the fact that occasionally I will do something I’m really happy with.  I do enjoy it but at the moment I feel as though I am the hunter stalking my prey.  Creativity is hiding in the hedgerow, running off at a pace, skulking in corners trying not to be noticed.  We observe one another from the corner of our eye, trying not to engage but all the while yearning for that moment when we can meet and spend time in each other’s company.

I mentioned ‘woundings’ and yes this has happened to me.  Perhaps due to being a sensitive child I took them badly and now they have formed scar tissue, so the creative muscles won’t stretch and flex as they normally would.  I think I have forgotten them and then I hear that teacher’s voice or get a flash of memory from some other incident and am crushed again.  I look with envy at other artists who seem so prolific and long to have that ease and flow, but I have had that experience too!   Usually when I haven’t been working I find I pick up paper and paint without thinking, turn to material and thread in a heartbeat, doodle and design without anxiety.  Perhaps there is a clue in that...

So to honour the fact that I have begun this blog to bring together all my creative sides, here is an image of one of my paintings to get things going.

'Spinning the Dream' (c) Amber Caspian

This painting has had several titles over the years but I have recently settled on ‘Spinning the Dream’.  An oil painting based on a dream I had of being in a dark place suddenly illuminated by a spider hanging on a thread in front of me.  The spider transformed into a silver perfume bottle and emanated an unusual perfume, which I could actually smell in the dream.  As I painted it I felt in touch with an empowered magical part of myself, hence I am wearing rich robes and my hands are held up in a gesture of 'creating'.  It took about three years to paint because I was training to be a counseller as well as working and didn’t have much spare time, however it progressed with me and I feel reflects the growth and emerging spirit within me.  It also was the first painting I had finished in a long time that I felt brought together many of my influences and inspirations into a cohesive image.  I am still very pleased with it now.

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

I was brought up in the wonderful market town of Thaxted in Essex, which is home to the Thaxted Morris Men who are the oldest revival morris side in the country.  One of their specialities is my particular favourite, the performance of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance. To quote from their website (http://thaxtedmorris.org/) 'the long continuity of Thaxted’s dances in the hands of just a very few teachers and leaders of the side has meant that Thaxted performs in a distinctive style evolved from early versions of the dances. This is particularly noticeable in the haunting Thaxted version of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance based on the Wheelwright Robinson tune performed as the climax to the Saturday evening displays at the annual Thaxted Ring Meeting and the Patronal Festival a few weeks later'.

The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is an English folk dance that started in Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire.  The earliest records mention it back in 1686 but it thought to be older than that.

Performed either at the great church or down in front of the guildhall, it is very atmospheric and harks back to simpler times. 

At dusk a lone fiddle can be heard and eventually appears in his colourful rags leading the side in a long winding line. 

The first six carry beautiful carved wooden deer heads adorned with stag horns, followed by the hobby horse/oss, a robin hood/archer/hunter character, Maid Marion who is always a man and one other who plays a note on a triangle every few seconds. There is a Fool character in the dance when performed at Barthelmy Fair at Abbots Bromley but I don't recall seeing one at the Thaxted dance.

 

The place is vertually silent, the atmosphere caught up in the magic, the side move gracefully through the woven pattern of steps, leaving the tune to stick in your mind and haunt your dreams...

Flash photography detracts from the atmosphere

Midsummer Walk

I consider myself to be so fortunate on days like these. I get to walk around the beautiful Essex countryside and watch the seasons change the view.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was struggling to get far through deep snow drifts, and now I’m walking through long grasses, common bindweed, buttercups and daisies, with gorgeous butterflies and dragonflies wafting up in front of me.

I am fascinated by the shapes of the hemlock (I think!) heads that are both in flower, in seed and dried brown/purple on different heads of the same plant. I wonder if the weird weather has made them turn early as I am sure I usually only see the browned heads in late summer.

Many photos later, I move on following a well trodden path along the side of a field across a tiny footbridge and into a patch of wild meadow.

Lots of purple vetch...
... and giant field mushrooms predominate here.

Passed the little wood and round to cross the lane and into the great patchwork of fields and woods in which I often wander. I’m followed by numerous bees and butterflies, good to see!

It’s so hot that most of the mammals and birds are hiding quietly in the woods, it’s silent and vast and I can feel the warmth coming from the wheat fields. The stems are a little short perhaps but the heads seem fat and full of promise. Shadows and colours, textures and clouds fill my vision, the smell of earth and vegetation rises up, a light breeze touches my skin; this is truly soul’s balm.

Walking always clears my mind, earths all the stresses and worries I’m carrying and invites inspiration in. Sometimes I come away with simply a renewed peace of mind; at others I am virtually running home with ideas flapping about in my head. I find that if I carry pen and paper with me I end up writing a rather dreary diary entry so now I only take my little camera along. It goes with me everywhere!

Over 2 hours later I turn for home...