The New and the Old

I spent the weekend with my father, who lives in the New Forest. He is a very wise man indeed - and he's also a man who enjoys buying a bottle of wine, drinking less than half a glass and leaving the rest for me to finish. We had some great discussions about spirituality. He's doing shamanism training at the moment. It sounds like he's finding it a lot more earthy than the stuff he's explored before, but I think he's enjoying it. We were comparing our understandings of the Wheel of the Year etc. It's so funny that we're both finding traditions that fall under the Pagan umbrella at the same time, after years of our spiritualities being so different in character. Eventually the circles meet in the middle again!

On the way home on Sunday afternoon, I stopped in Burley, a gorgeous little New Forest village. It's supposed to have a long association with witches - of course, the village has made an entire tourist industry out of this fact, with several little witchy shops, although at least not all of these are pure tourist fodder! I found a couple of crystals I've been looking for and had a nice look around. In the first shop I went into, a woman was giving tarot/clairvoyant readings. I've never been keen on 'psychic' readings, since I know there are some frauds out there, and anyway I'm not sure what the reality is when it comes to that kind of thing. But I've been thinking of getting a tarot reading, since I'm learning some simple types of divination for myself (including a crystal pendulum), and I'm finding that useful. I couldn't stop thinking about this woman, so I listened to my intuition and went back to find her when I'd finished looking around the village. She turned out to be very good, and we talked about some very helpful things that, whether or not she's actually psychic, were excellent spiritual guidance for me. (I think she also spent more time with me than she normally would have done. I told them at the front of the shop that I wanted to pay extra, as a result.) Afterwards I went out onto the moor to sit down and get a record of what we talked about. It was beautiful there - wish I could have stayed longer!