I feel that I should start my blog posts here, really, with a brief introduction. I'm a very long way from being famous, or even notorious, even within Pagan circles, but I'm going to be popping up here on a more or less regular basis (and possibly for a long time), so at some point you are liable to wonder, "Who is this person? What gives him the right to be here?" I'd say that nothing whatsoever gives me such a right, as it happens, but maybe if you know where and what I've come from, then you might at least allow me a little bit of leeway.

I've called myself a "witch" for somewhere around thirty years, and been consciously a Pagan for a bit longer than that. Like most people drawn to a Pagan path, I wandered and searched for some time until, by a stroke of good fortune, I landed in the lap of a teacher (literally, though I think that's a story for another time) who introduced me to what she called, for want of a better term, a Traditional path. Think Cochrane rather than Gardner or Sanders, and you have the general flavour, although the particular path was and is by no means "Cochranite", as such. I was initated by her in May 1987.

Since then, I appear to have become a sort of walking repository for the remnants of some obscure, and sometimes dying, Pagan traditions, having been gifted more or less accidentally with the teachings of several such, in the hope of keeping them alive. Alongside work with local deities and places of power, and about thirty years experience in the more esoteric side of the martial arts too, what I've ended up with is, I hope, not so much eclectic as a working synthesis. At least, I find it quite an interesting place that I'm walking through.

Alongside that background journey, I've been an activist on the political left for my entire adult life, and I've trained in classical Japanese budo and in historical European martial arts; I'm a writer and poet, a storyteller, a dancer, and an artist, deeply involved with the contemporary Surrealist movement.

As with the extended meander I've taken through the esoteric, I've come here without a pre-prepared plan; and hopefully without too much of an ego. Whatever I write, here, will inevitably be written under the influence of my own journey, in all its aspects, and of my own teachers. Neither grants me special privileges - we're all clinging together on this little ball of rock, and there's a kind of spiritual equality in that fact - but maybe some of my reflections here will be of use to a few of you, out there.

Then again, maybe not. Either way, though, I do welcome constructive feedback and discussion. My aim in writing this particular series of blog posts is to stimulate any readers I might have into thinking, and experiencing, for themselves, not to lecture or to impose my own beliefs and practices on others. Because when all is said and done, the Path must always be walked alone. It's just nice to have some company along the way, from time to time.

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