Shipley Moot

01/02/2024

The nights are noticeably longer. There is the faint promise of spring in the air. Gaia stirs in her sleep. A very pleasant Imbolc to you all

30/11/2023

Hello lovely people - icy roads and a cold epidemic (yes, epidemic!) - is anyone turning up tonight?

14/11/2023

Interesting. There's always been an element of the Anglican Church in the nudd about modern witchcraft, with its formal covens and its careful social vetting, and its high priests of all things. Really? High priests? And why would you write down a Book of Shadows, considering how expensive paper was, and how unlikely it was that you were literate anyway?

Head over to and watch the new A Style is Born episode on Biophilic style! https://astyleisborn.link/ASIBs2e5KazWe all have a similar image that com...

09/11/2023

Moot. Thursday 30th November. See you there!

04/11/2023

Fascinating essay. It doesn't say it, but the insistence on framing Western Witchcraft as an offshoot of Christianity (we're told witches worship "The Devil", a Christian demi-god, and that they mock Christ, even though they inherited practices from a very long time before Jesus of Nazareth was born) does hint at an agenda that's more misogynist (and homophobic) than faith based. Great illustrations.

Jon Crabb on the witch craze of early modern Europe, and how the concurrent rise of the mass-produced woodcut helped forge the archetype of the broom-riding crone — complete with cauldron and cats — so familiar today.

31/10/2023

Here's the story I was told:

If you're making your calendar out of the natural cycle of the year then you will use observable events: days and nights, the turn of the seasons, and the phases of the moon.

If you're clever (which our ancestors most definitely were) you will notice that there are two points in the year where the sun stands still in the sky and then starts going back the way it came, one in June and one in December. We call these points solstices.

There are 28 days in a full cycle of moon phases. We call this a lunar month. There are 13 lunar months from one solstice to next year's counterpart.

This gives us a year of 364 days.

There is one day that doesn't fit. One day that stands outside, where that clever, new fangled calendar can't reach, where the old wildness can still peep through and the old laws still apply.

That day began at sundown today. It will end at sundown tomorrow.

The old year has died. The new year is yet to be born. This is the day of infinite possibilities.

Make a wish, you never know who's listening 😁

)O(

(next Moot on the 30th November btw, Hullaballoo bar in Shipley. See you there.)

28/10/2023

Next month (November) there are Thursdays on the 23rd and 30th.

Is Thursday the best day?
Is 7.30pm the best start time? Would people prefer earlier?
Which out of those two dates would be best?

28/10/2023

Which upcoming lunar and solar eclipses are visible in the United Kingdom and what do they look like?