My Grandmother was a particular inspiration to me as a child, and encouraged me in my interest in such things. She was a proverbial storehouse of charms, divination techniques etc. There would seem to be a technique for almost any question from what sex a unborn child would be to would someone die or not. If one of us children was suspected of not telling the truth about something out would come the dreaded dried Sea horse.

In my early teens I became less content with these rather, as I felt, simple and homely magicks. So I sought out those folk who were said to know other sometimes darker magicks, sometimes with success. In my late teens I even gave Gardnerian wicca a go, but the year and a bit in the Gardnerian coven was, looking back, doomed from the start. I found Gardnerian wicca for me lacked the depth of what I had learnt before, Also I could never get into the whole neo-classical God-Goddess thing. It was all too new and urban and lacked grit if you see what I mean. But at least I learnt something about group ritual, even if it was how not to do it.

After leaving (or was I pushed :o) I decided to, as they say, go back to my roots and have since that time over the years received instruction in traditional craft from a number teachers. Probably the most influential being a woman I normally call Aunt Joan (not her real name).

Over the last twenty years I have also been initiated into the Adinaths/Naths called by some the KaulaNaths (Tantric), a member of AMOOKOS (Tantric), La Couleure Noire, La Societe des Voudon. (Voudon), I'm one of the original members of O.G.D.O.S and have been involved in a number of other magickal sodalities in one capacity or another over the years.

Over the last eighteen years or so I have given talks and workshops at various speaker meetings and conferences small and large on subjects related to traditional witchcraft and once even on the positive ethics of hunting at the Greenwood conference in London and live to tell the tale!!!!

How the Magickal/Pagan world has changed; twenty years or so ago real traditional witchcraft was even more hidden than it is now. I remember well about seventeen years ago at a party full of wiccans and pagans. I was explaining to some folks that I wasn't a wiccan but followed a traditional form of witchcraft that had as it's focus an androgynous horned deity rather than there god-goddess polarity and was met with quite an hostile response. Over the years since then this situation has got a lot better and now I tend to find folk are less closed minded.

Is my Craft traditional yes, is it exactly the same as my teachers, no. But then again real living traditions have always changed over the time, after all they are alive. At times I have found a magickal practice I found worked well and have then sometimes integrated it into my craft. For instance none of my teachers called the elements at the quarters but I like it and so it has become part of my own practice. I feel we should always be open to learn from others (both flesh and spirit) and their ways. Saying all this at its heart my path has always remained the same; I walk the same path as those who have gone before me but with newer shoes. Benna'sywes