Gypsies and Elves In Fields Of Magical Anarchy

Dan had a great love of Balkan Gypsy music, and we would often find ourselves at festivals dancing together in wild abandon at the fast pace, fun and sexy energy of the gypsy vibes.

We also both loved the freedom and connection to nature that living in and travelling by boat or van gave us.

We considered ourselves to be Travellers, identifying strongly with nomadic cultures and the love of being able to up and off at any time, to change our scenery and neighbours if so desired.

Our communities overlapped through many different circles of nomadic friends who lived and worked on the water or the land, either full-time or part-time, in boats, vans, trucks, buses, caravans, fire-engines, yurts, domes and teepees.

This was our reality.  All three of our children were born on our Dutch Barge ‘Cornelia Adriana’, giving them legal rights and status as Bargee Traveller children.

The summer months were often times for us to reconnect with our tribes in the fields up and down the country, as we crewed various different festivals, helping to construct, decorate and run Temporary Autonomous Zones on a variety of themes, topics and subjects.

Over the years, our festival spaces and crew creations ebbed and flowed with whatever the crew members passions, interests and investments were focused on for that particular year.

We ended up with a fluid inner-core of regular yearly crew members as well as a much wider network of Festival Community who each had their own roles within the Greater Creation of each and every Festival.

We put on Healing Spaces, Permaculture Spaces, Film Spaces, Chill-Out Spaces, Women’s Spaces, Children’s Spaces, Workshop Spaces for anything and everything from Circus skills and Felting, Basket-weaving and Qi gong, to Spirituality and Alternative Technology.  We had a little flurry of running Sweatlodges one year, and as a slight variation on that theme, and one of my firm favourites, the Mystic Sauna!

Our wider Festival community supported these efforts with their own skills and assistance in Geodesic Dome making, marquee construction, the beauty bringers and artists putting their own splashes of colour and creation over the nuts, bolts and canvas of the practical logistics. These temporary community celebrations of Conscious Creation were Radical Acts of Anarchy against Passive Corporate Consumerism and the hegemonic takeover of Culture by the ravenous Beast of Babylonian Bullshit.

I think it is safe to say that for many of us, creating and crewing Festivals was a very conscious political act of rebellion against a Cultural Tyranny based on mind-control and social programming, financial exploitation and passive consumerism.  We revelled in creating little pockets of political resistance that planted seeds of self-reliance, sovereignty and inspiration to cut the enslaving bonds of the Soul-less Matrix System that demands dependence and compliance from its populations, en mass.

As our crew members ebbed, flowed and evolved through our own individual journeys of learning and consciousness, so our offerings ebbed and flowed with our own visions of averting Dystopia and creating an alternative Utopian reality based on Self-Reliance and Self-Governance.

I was already in the thick of this social and political adventure when I met Dan, and he slotted into our Festival traveller community very neatly.  He wasn’t quite so politically militant as I, being a more easy-going reveller than political agitator, but he happily joined in the Festival Creation Crew. 

Some of my strongest memories of us crewing together were with the Mystic Sauna under the banner of The National Elf Service!

Dan and I bought ourselves some plastic Elf ears from a stall at the beginning of the festival, which was located in the magical pine forests of Scotland.  We sported our Elf ears with pride, and got fully into character with the help of some psychedelics put into the Magic Donations Hat by one of our customers!  We had been given a spot for our Mystic Sauna right by the river, so our sauna people could come straight out of the heat and into the bracing waters of the Scottish highlands!

One evening, Dan came running out of the sauna and jumped into the river with wild abandon, totally forgetting to take his Elf ears off.  He only realised that he’d lost them in the river when he got into bed and saw me take mine off.

He was very sad that he’d lost his Elf ears, as we had been having great fun Elfing about together at the festival.  I told him that he should ask the Land Spirits, the River Spirits and the Elves that lived on this particular Land if they would bring his ears back.  Of course he didn’t believe in Land Spirits, River Spirits or Elves, despite strongly identifying with his Magical Elf Self whilst under the magical influence of the mushrooms!  He did, however, make a comedy gesture of declaring his request, out loud in the van, before we went to sleep that night.

The next morning, he went out to have an early morning dip in the river, and he came back in a state of shocked disbelief with his Elf ears in his hand.  They had been neatly placed on the river bank where we had created a dipping pool out of Rocks.  He just kept looking at the Elf ears in his hand and shaking his head in disbelief.  Of course, I laughed heartily at yet another little bit of spiritual evidence that the Universe liked to send his way every so often to disturb and disrupt his Reality Paradigm!

This was not the first, nor the last time that my Reality Paradigm smacked him round the face with an experience that was undeniably real but that he could not explain within his own understanding of Newtonian Physics!  

Dan, Inka and The Goddess

Straight after Eden Festival where Dan had lost and found his Elf ears, The National Elf Service took the Mystic Sauna to Knockengorrock Festival, also in Scotland, where Dan and I had met exactly three years before.

We were travelling in my van with my black cat Inka and our rescued grass snake Ziggy.  

Ziggy was a wild grass snake that had been dragged out of a bush on our mooring by our neighbour’s dog.  The terrier had mauled her and her body was punctured many times by his teeth.

Because I have a flashing neon sign above my head that says ‘WITCH’, people always bring me young or injured animals that need looking after, or very often the animals manage to turn up at my door on their own.  So inevitably I ended up with the injured grass snake.  She required daily herbal baths to heal her wounds, and so we took her with us on our Scottish tour with The National Elf Service.  My festy crew were used to me travelling with my cats, but bringing a snake to the festivals was unusual even for me! 

It was the Friday night of the festival and we were just finishing setting up the Mystic Sauna to opened it to the public.  Tim and I were inside, testing it out and getting the wood burning stove hot enough for the sauna to function properly.  The heat was just getting up to a decent level and Tim went to go and get more wood.  When he came back in, he looked at me and said “Jo, I think you need to go out and see Dan.  Inka has been badly hurt.”

I rushed out and found Dan in a right old state, holding Inka who looked like he was dying.

My cat was twitching in spasms and Dan told me what had happened.  

He had gone to close the van side door and Inka had got a shock from the noise and tried to jump out just as the door closed.  His head had been caught in the door as it closed hard against the van.  His eye had popped out and Dan told me how he had pushed his eye back in because although he thought he had just killed my cat, he didn’t want me to see Inka with his eye hanging out.

He also told me that he had prayed and begged every God and Goddess he had ever heard me mention, to save Inka.  He had even offered his own life to the Gods in exchange for his own if only they would spare the life of my cat.

Its amazing how when humans are in desperate need, they will suddenly turn to the Gods that they claimed not to believe in beforehand.  And so is the dance between Life and Death.

It was about 9pm on the Friday night of Knockengorrock festival.  This was the exact time we had met, in exactly the same place three years before.  It was our third anniversary, literally to the hour and even the location.  This synchronicity did not pass me by.

We rustled help from other crew members and friends to try to find a mobile phone that had both battery power and signal in this back water of Scotland, to try to find the nearest veterinary practise.

After making a few phone calls, Dan and I tatted down the van and set off in the darkness.  We drove to the nearest town about 45 minutes away, and the lovely elderly Scottish lady vet welcomed us in when we arrived.

The first thing she did was to give Inka some Rescue Remedy for the shock, and I thought to myself “This is my kind of vet!”  

(For those not in the know, Rescue Remedy is a vibrational flower essence.  It has no medicinal value, and is essentially homeopathic, working on the energy field to energetically calm the symptoms of shock or trauma.)

She then assessed him, gave him a steroid injection to protect his brain from the cranial swelling that was happening, and told us that she would keep him there overnight and that we should check in with her in the morning to see if he survived the night.

Dan and I went back to the van that was parked right outside the vet’s, and bedded down for the night.

As we were lying in bed, we were both upset and worried, and Dan felt terrible about what had happened.  He once again told me how he had called all the Gods and Goddesses by every name he’d ever heard me use.  He told me again how he’d offered his life in exchange for Inka’s.

He told me how he’d basically prayed for the first time in his life, and how sorry he was about what had happened.

The terrible irony was that I had done exactly the same thing with another of my black cats several years before.  As I went to shut the van side door, Little Minx had jumped in exactly the same manner, and her head had been squashed in-between the door and the van in exactly the same way as had happened to Inka on this night.  Little Minx had died in my arms a matter of minutes later.

I had written a poem called ‘The Cat-a-logues’ that detailed this experience, along with many other tragic tales about my Black Cats, and I had recited it that night in our camp at Knockengorroch, upon request, about an hour before Dan squashed Inka in the van side door.

This had been another of the Dark Lessons of Death that my many black cats helped me to learn, as I had a flurry of losing five black cats over a period of five years.  They were my teachers and the physical embodiments of the Black Panther Medicine, for my own understanding of the Reality Paradigm of Death.   That night, however, Dan was the recipient of this particularly harsh Black Cat lesson.

The next morning, we went into the vet’s to see how Inka was doing.  He had made it through the night, but was not in a good way.   We explained to the vet how we were working at the festival, and she suggested that she keep him until the end of the festival, under medical care and observation, and that when we were ready we could come and pick him up.  This plan seemed to work well for everyone, so we set off in the van, back to Knockengorrock.

As we were driving, Dan told me about a strange experience that he had through the night while we were parked up outside the vet’s.

He described how when we had gone to bed and he started drifting off to sleep, he became aware of a huge female figure who knelt down beside the van, between the van and the vet’s practise.  Dan said he didn’t know who she was, and that he couldn’t see her face because she was so big, like a huge giant.  

He told me how he woke up several times through the night, and every time he awoke, she was still there, kneeling between us and the vet’s.

I asked him who he thought she was.  He told me he didn’t know.

I asked him about his call for help to The Goddess, and suggested that maybe She was answering his request.  I could feel his discomfort at the possibility of this explanation, and yet when we got back to the festival site, he relayed this story to several people, and added as a caveat that maybe I had been right about the existence of all these Gods and Spirits after all.

Being on the land, in the magical pine forests of Scotland gave Dan’s Magical Elf Self far greater power within the ongoing battle over his own Reality Paradigm.   The fact that even the wise old witchy Scottish vet gave Inka a remedy that Dan would consider to be nothing but water, challenged the Atheist Scientist on his own turf of Medical Science.  

We saw out the festival, picked Inka up and took him home to begin his slow but steady recovery to full health after being diagnosed with cranial fractures and a broken collar bone.

Once home, it became clear to me, as I nursed both a very damaged cat and a very damaged snake back to health, that this was a test for me, as a Cat and Serpent Medicine Woman, to see if I could indeed walk my talk and heal those creatures that lent me their own power in my healing work.  Both Inka and Ziggy regained full health.  The Medicine Woman passed her Test with flying colours.  We released Ziggy back to the wild when her injuries were fully healed, and Inka is still prowling the waterways of Yorkshire, after he adopted Stan, a homeless man, after I left Dan and The Kraken.

The Clash Of Paradigms

The two incidents of the Elf ears and the accident with Inka demonstrated to me that Dan was being given opportunities, thick and fast, to adjust his Reality Paradigm.

Because if you hang out with a Witch of any decent calibre for long enough, you’re going to witness some strange magical shit happening.

There was an invitation being presented to him.  He could choose to stay within his Atheist Scientist Reality Paradigm.  Or he could take a leap into The Great Mystery and offer himself up to a Paradigm Shift, letting his Magical Elf Self lead the way.  

This invitation from The Universe lay on the table for many years.  And Dan would pick it up and read it every so often, consider it and then put it back down.  Until the next time he had a strange and cosmic experience that the Atheist Scientist could not explain.

When he allowed his Magical Elf Self to come out and play, we shared many beautiful and profoundly magical experiences.

In the oxytocin bliss of Freebirthing our children on our boat, he was more than happy to name our daughters Holly Elfin and Ivy Pixie, and we discussed for days which fairy-based second names to give them.

However, when the Atheist Scientist was in charge, he told me that I lived in a fantasy world, that was clearly not real, and basically inferred that I was imagining things, making stuff up or just plain crazy.  

I often wondered why he chose to be with me, when everything that I lived, breathed and believed in was in direct contrast to everything he claimed to be real and true. 

When we were planning on having children, Dan broached the issue of the differences of our Reality Paradigms, and asked me how we should navigate that.  I replied that I thought we should teach them all of it, and let them decide what their Truth and Reality was.  He agreed that this was a fair way to approach it.

But several years into our parenting, he could not maintain this agreement or suppress his own disbeliefs in my Reality, and he began to invalidate me in front of our children, attempting to seed within their minds that what I was teaching them was not real or was simply the product of my own imagination.  He arrogantly scoffed at me and my reality declaring it to be nonsense.

What he didn’t figure into his equation was that all three of our children are energy sensitive and highly psychic, and so even before he started trying to discredit me to them, they had already had their own powerful spiritual experiences which I was trying to help them to understand.

Holly could feel Reiki turning on and off when I would hold and comfort her, and she would say to me “Mummy, you just turned your Reiki on, didn’t you?”, at exactly the moment when I had just turned my Reiki on without telling her.  She could also hear Elemental Spirits talking to her.

Ivy could hear the Spirits of the Dead, and Taiga was highly sensitive to the Fairy Folk.

So when Dan started trying to tell them that all these things were imaginary and not real, they knew from their own personal experiences which informed their own Reality Paradigms that his Reality did not align with their own.  This created a division between my children and their Father that fostered mutiny and rebellion amongst the ranks of these Gifted Younglings, as they felt that he was invalidating them as well as their Mother.  

The Atheist Scientist grew angry and resentful, attempting to regain ideological power and control over his non-compliant and magical family, through typically toxic masculine behaviour, and the Magical Elf was banished into the mists of Fantasy, never to be seen again.