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The Camel and the Deer

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A couple of weeks ago on 18th March, something happened that has not happened for a good while: the holy seasons of Lent and Ramadan began on the same day. Both are seasons of prayer, fasting, almsgiving and self-examination in their respective religions of Christianity and Islam, both commemorate times of prayer in out-of-the-way places by revered religious figures, and both culminate in an important feast (Easter and Eid al-Fitr). This week, I made use of a public "comtemplation room" in my hometown of Bradford to pray silently alongside Muslims, each according to our own tradition. But as a member of the Community of Aidan and Hilda, I feel another form of connection with my Muslim neighbours. Both Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne (d.651 AD) and Saint Hilda of Whitby (614-680 AD) lived in the same century as the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) (c.570-632 AD). They inhabited the same world, with many of the same cultural norms, even though the first two were in the British Isles and the...
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Empire & Me

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  During the last week, I watched all three episodes of the BBC/Open University documentary Empire , presented by my favourite historian, David Olusoga (pictured above, with me at Bradford Literature Festival). Those of you who have read some of my earlier blogs will know that I've been grappling with issues of Empire for some time. But watching this series, I feel I have finally made my peace with the history of Empire and my family's part in it - the good, the bad and the ugly. Empire affects us all, even those ancestors who never left the shores of Britian. So many movements of people around the globe, so many interrelationships. So much impact on societies, language, folklore, music, agriculture, industry, the environment... And it's complex. You can't just split it into "good" and "bad". We find different "sides" of it within our own family history. With that in mind, I'd like to walk you through some of my family's history wit...
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Asexual Vampires?

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  I recently read Ell Huang's excellent essay  Interview with the Vampire and Asexual Loneliness  In it, Ell does an asexual reading of all versions of Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice - the book, film and recent TV series - talking about how the loneliness of Rice's vampires speaks to the asexual experience.  I don't intend to reiterate all the points Ell makes (you can read the essay yourself). But there were many aspects that resonated with me, even though Ell is aromantic, single and childfree, and I am heteroromantic, married and a mother. Some of the points that grabbed me most stongly were: Queer Time. The idea that queer folk typically discover themselves and come of age later in life than non-queers. Or maybe we feel ourselves in a perpetual coming-of-age, a perpetual adolescence. Feeling like a child ("girl" always seems more fitting a word for myself than "woman" although I an currently 51) but not wanting to be infantalised. The vampir...
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Your Mighty Maidenhead

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  Art by Anna Hopkinson 2024 I've been reading the Advent Lyrics from the Exeter Book as Christmas approches. These are poems in Old English. (The version of the English language brought to the British Isles by the Angles, Saxons etc.) that explore the mysteries of the Incarnation and Virgin Birth in early medieval aliteration and symbolism. In the fourth lyric - addressed to the Virgin Mary - one phrase stood out for me. ond no gebrosnad wearð mægðhad se micla. Which translates as:  and your mighty maidenhead was not destroyed Your mighty maidenhead! This makes Mary sound like a shieldmaiden, a Valkyrie. I love it.  It reminds me of some of the tales of mighty virgins I've retold in my  Asexual Fairy Tales  books. Of Sir Galahad and Clorinda the Knight. Of the potency of amethyst, and the magic power of the unicorn. In fact, that even reminds me of the perfect asexual comment that said, "Forever a unicorn. No one is majestic enough to ride me." Mighty and majes...
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The Queer, the Witch and the Mystic

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  In August 2021, I wrote a blog about Mother Shipton and St Robert of Knaresborough entitled Witch or Saint? A Fine Line.   Today, I am returning to similar territory in order to answer my own questions: Why are so many Queer people drawn to witchcraft or witchy vibes? How much difference is there really between the practice of witches and my own practice as a Celitc Christian drawn to the mystical tradition? I have been helped considerably in my investigations by the BBC's podcast Witch  and Sacha Coward's excellent book Queer As Folklore. Regarding my first question, Sacha outlines a number of reasons in his book, some of which he discovered through responses to an online callout, asking for people who identify both as witches and LGBTQIA+ to share their thoughts on the correlation between the two. There is an obvious comparison to be made between historic witch hunts and the persecution of Queer people. Morover, both in previous centuries and more recently, there...
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The True Myth

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  CS Lewis famously wrote:  Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.  As a Christian mystic, an amateur folklorist and a livelong Lewis fan, I've long agreed with this line of thought. I would go so far as to say (and I believe Lewis would have, too) that all myths are true in a certain sense. Those of us in the folklore and fantasy world find ourselves banging our heads on a virtual brick wall every time someone uses the term "myth" or "fairy tale" to mean something that is untrue. Myth is a way of looking at and understanding the world by means of story and symbol. That's why I like listening to Michael Meade's podcast, Living Myth , that looks at current events from a mythic perspective. This approach is every bit as valid and vital as the empirical approach, if not more so. In fact, the more I learn about the likes of quantum physics (n...
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Pride and the Black Madonna

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  Our Lady of Montevergine by Anna Hopkinson Please note: This article does not intend to appropriate the lived experience of Black or Romani people, gay men or traditional Third Genders. Please read the linked articles for wider perspectives. Night was drawing on fast, and with it temperatures none could survive. The ground was covered in a crust of snow. The lovers’ extremities began to turn blue. By morning, if the wolves didn’t hurry, early walkers would find two bodies encased in blocks of ice. But it was not the wolves who came. It was the Madonna. The Black Madonna, they called her. Our Lady of the Shadow-Side.  It’s Pride Month and - aside from posting rainbows and reminders that the A in LGBTQIA+ isn’t silent - I’m crowdfunding a book of Diverse & Inclusive Saints called Legends from Lindisfarne.  One of the most obviously Pride-centred stories in the book is called “Our Lady of Montevergine: Affirmer of Same Sex Couples”. It’s a retelling of a medieval legen...
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