It’s Not Done Yet
Hedge Witchery
Hedge is a Teutonic term originally meaning any fence, boundary or enclosure, later meaning a specific type of living thicket planted to act as a fence, enclosure or boundary.
Old High German (language used roughly from 500 to 1050 C.E): hegga, hecka
Old Dutch (600 to 1150 C.E.): heggehn
Old Saxon or Old Low German (800 to 1200 C.E) : haeg
Anglo-Saxon or Old English (550 C.E to 1250C.E): hecg, hegge, haga, hecge or hege
Middle English (11th century and about 1470 C.E): hedge, hegge, hedgen, heggen
Suffolk dialect (at least 1300 C.E. to present day): hetch
Modern English (1550 C.E to modern day): hedge
Middle English hagathorn meaning “hedge thorn” becomes the modern hawthorn
Old Teutonic stem haja- meaning “behind the hedge” gives rise to the Old English haja, Middle English heye, haye and thus the English hay. Behind the hedge lays the hay field.
The old words for hedge also gave rise to the words hawk (hedge-bird), haggard, edge and hag (witch).
Old English for hedgerow is heggeræw.
Saxon haegtessa and the Old English haegtesse, roughly translates to hedge-rider, hag-rider, witch and witch-fury.
In a 13th century Icelandic text called the Poetic Edda,… Continue reading
Consciousness
I am asleep.
I am asleep and have delved into some deep abyss of dreaming far beyond the physical enclosure that is my body.
I dream and know I am dreaming. I glide through a realm of black and blue, soft and delicate as silk, sheer like fine muslin. I dance in the glory of the dreamscape.
Then, a gradual awareness begins to tug at me. I feel my body calling me back to awakening. The most simple and basic need driving me out of my sweet surrender to dreaming: the need to pee.
I float in a spiral pattern upwards and out of the dreamscape towards the light of the morning sun.
I awake and sit, then clamber out of bed, and reach for clothing left out the night before. I find I cannot put it on and I perceive everything is still soft and shrouded in the wrong kind of pale light.
I am still asleep, dreaming of being awake.
I decide to try again to wake.
Again I find myself dreaming of waking, this time stumbling to the bathroom naked. I realise the falseness of my wakefulness as I reach for the bathroom doorknob.
I decide to… Continue reading
Another of Those “About Me” Posts
What’s your Path?
I am a Hedgewitch. Meaning I am a shamanic practitioner of folk magick (that’s the short explanation). My spirituality is Celtic/Anglo-Saxon Paganism. I started in Wicca like many do, but have moved further away from it more and more of time. I am not however a Wicca-basher like many non-Wiccan Witches are.
Do you have an altar?
Sometimes I use an altar and sometimes not. An altar is simply a workspace to me. I have laid out elaborate altars on tables, simple altars in dirt, and none at all. Sometimes I use my stang as a kind of portable altar, but that is not its only purpose.
A shrine?
I have shrines, many in fact. I like them. One in each room of the house, some simple and small. The main one in the living room is the largest and has the most “stuff”, it also receives the most attention. Right now I have no shrines outdoors, partly due to it being winter and partly due to being trapped in an apartment. Which I hate, I miss the country life so very much!
Do you believe in deities?
I believe in the gods as surely as believe… Continue reading
Right Now I am Reading…
Research causes you to read books you otherwise might not have!
- “A dictionary of English etymology” by Hensleigh Wedgwood
- “Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: a regional and comparative study” by Alan Macfarlane
- “Shamanism: a reader” edited by Graham Harvey
- “An historical sketch of the provincial dialects of England” by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps
- Je Ne Sais Quoi lupa
- Wordless Wednesday: Ask the Stones Admin
- Swimming the Sunlight Alison Leigh Lilly
To Fly By Night
Hoofprints in the Wildwood
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