Elizabeth Hopkinson's Hidden Grove

  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...

  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...

  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...