Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight? At Samhain AKA Halloween every October, the boundary between our world and that of the spirits becomes thinner and often breaks, allowing supernatural forces to hold sway for the night. At the exact opposite side of the year, on April 30th, the same is true of…
Author: Ariadne
I live in Hackney, London with my husband and Cujo and Jezebel. I am an Aries with Taurus rising, and I like disco music and Chinese noodles.
Flora & Faunus
Sex! Now that I have your attention, we can explore the festival of Floralia, which is held between April 28th and May 3rd, symbolizing the renewal of the cycle of life, and kicking off our Beltane celebrations.  It is celebrated with flowers, drinking, hunting, games, and sex. See, it didn’t take me long to get…
Nice Weather For Ducks
It’s raining a lot in London at the moment. I don’t know why anybody would be surprised by this, because April is famous for April showers.  But people constantly comment and complain about it, and quite honestly, as you prepare to leave for work to the sound of gusts of wet wind crashing against the…
Wise Old Owl
 “I have great faith in fools – self-confidence, my friends call it” – Edgar Allan Poe As April Fool’s Day descends, you can fall into one of two categories. The Fool, or the Non-Fool. If you wish to be thought so little of a fool that nobody would try to fool you for a second,…
The Golden Lamb AKA The Sweetest Sacrifice
This Easter holiday when making your ritual offering to the gods of Spring, why not create a golden lamb in effigy, and eat it? I’m sure the deities involved would be pleased with this sweet sacrifice.  Eating a lamb cake is perfectly in line with the traditional method of distributing edible portions of sacrificial animals…
Magic Eggs
“Long long ago before time had begun, the moon lost a pebble and away through space it spun, in the world far below only water could be seen, it sank down to the bottom and it lay there like a dream… Magic Egg….Rejected by the devil and circled by a dove, the message inside was…
Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit
As the festival of Ostara approaches, let us consider the Easter Bunny. He’s a funny old stick. Represented in early folk culture as a stern old-timey Germanic Easter hare or Osterhase, he would judge people annually to deem them worthy or not of his colourful bounty of eggs – not unlike Santa Claus at Christmas….
Ultra Violence with Ultra Violets
As I stand packed in with a throng of folk whose average age is 65-70, mixed flowers are being thrown madly in all directions. A Gallic rave remix of popular tunes (Le Lapin Jive?) is blasting over a powerful sound system, a light icy drizzle is falling and everybody’s blood is up. A carnation hits…
Shoot a Flaming Dragon Bomb
The Chinese Dragon is the highest-ranking creature in the Chinese god/animal hierarchy, representing power, majesty, dignity, fertility and wisdom. When he makes his appearance in effigy during Chinese New Year, he symbolizes the spiritual aspect of our existence and brings good fortune to all aspects of our lives. Â To celebrate the dragon at this time…
Giving Parties For Pets
Since the Early Times, familiar creatures were accepted as quasi-supernatural entities who would assist witches and the Cunning Folk in their magical practices. Documents of that era described them as appearing in numerous guises – usually as an animal, and most commonly as a cat, or cat-demon. Unlike ghosts or otherworldly spirits, they were described…
The New City Witches Cocktail Coven 