Most mornings I listen to a brief overview of a book through an app called Blinkish. Sometimes they're great and super informative, sometimes they're boring and sometimes I end up feeling a little cross with the content. It's a great way to take me out of the realm of my own echo chamber and learn a thing that I don't actively take an interest in. This morning though, I got a bit cross with what I was listening to.

The content was of the harmful type that perpetuates the idea of false positivity. That we somehow live trapped inside a Matrix type invention that forces us to live lives that make us feel bad and that what we should do about is WAKE UP! Become more positive all of a sudden and realise what is going on around us.

It carried on to tell me that what I should do is take on healing all the negativity suffered by my ancestors so that I and my descendants can live a positive life. I felt heavy and loaded with responsibility just listening to it. what a ridiculous weight to try and shoulder! 

When people are in a bad place mentally, emotionally or spiritually this kind of content is dangerous. It seems on the face of it to offer a solution to our problems. What it actually does is help you sink tower and keeps you dependant on working harder to dispel something that doesn't exist.


Let's try and see it a little differently shall we?


First of all, yes we are all connected. Not just to each other but to everything smaller than us and everything larger than us. That's a scientific fact. what we're not is a part of some evil construct that is keeping us down. We're all a part of the cycle of life and what we're experiencing right now is a literal death of ideas, beliefs and aspects of life that no longer suit us. Yes it hurts, yes it's horrible to live through but it is an inevitable part of the cycle of life. It's not your fault for not being "woke" enough or not doing your part somehow.


Being forever positive won't fix it. If anything it's likely to make it worse because simply put-being positive like that is toxic, no good for us and really not how life really works. What we need to remember here it that like all things, this is temporary and eventually it will shift again in the other direction. We need the negative, horrid stuff or we don't 6am lessons that we need to grow and evolve. So long as we do whatever is needed during hard times such as dealing with issues instead of ignoring them, helping others that need a hand and being open to changing our minds then that's good enough. 

As for healing the issues of our ancestors, well that's what we are doing collectively as those ideas and beliefs I mentioned earlier get broken down and replaced by new more relevant to mow ideas and beliefs. That's a collective responsibility that will help us as a society to move forward and do better now we know better. Take part in that by doing that just for yourself sure but do not work under the impression that healing the issues of your whole bloodline is what you need to do. First of all that would take more time than you have here on Earth and second of all, all any of us can and should be responsible for is our own actions and behaviours.

For me, this is what my Pagan path is about-learning to walk this-Earth carrying the load of the things that mean something to me while making sure I take responsibility and learn from my mistakes when I make them. It helps me to accept this cycle of life and move with it rather than fighting against it. 

Bright blessings, 
​Sarah x

I didn’t start painting until my forties. Until then all my experience of the arts was in writing plays, novels and political articles. Until I finished my first painting it had never occurred to me that sharing one medium of art could be so different to sharing another.

The things with novels is very few people read them out of obligation. A friend might scan a few pages of something they are not really interested in but nobody is going to sit down and read my 160,000 word novel unless they actually have some interest in the subject. And that works in the favour of the artist. I can post a proud post on social media that I’ve finished my book in complete confidence that only the engaged and intended audience will read it. So I’m only really opening myself up to positive feedback as the audience will self select based on their own interests.

It is a similar situation with the published articles. I write on some pretty contentious topics but most of them are specialised and the man in the street probably doesn’t feel inclined to enter into debate with me. So if I post an article on Facebook I’ll get a couple of comments from people who share my views and very little negative feedback at all. Good for the ego perhaps but not as helpful as constructive criticism.
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So when I completed my first painting and decided to share it I had some misgivings. Aside from the unfortunate fact that it wasn’t very good, it was also the first time I would have to genuinely open myself up to criticism. And criticism in the age of social media isn’t just close friends and family, it involves exposure to a lot of people who have no vested interest in people polite about my work. In my particular case as an anti hate activist it also involves showing people who really hate me my canvases.

Unlike a novel or an article, a painting invites an immediate impression. There is nowhere to hide. I can’t tell people a painting gets better after the first chapter because it is all there on the canvas, exposed and demanding evaluation. It’s the ultimate lesson in humility, putting all that hard work and effort out there for a quick glance and a snap judgement. Even for someone with a lot of confidence, it is a challenge.
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And everyone has an opinion on art. It isn’t like writing which is shrouded in pseudo intellectualism which deters people from being critical for fear of looking stupid. If a painting is rubbish, then people say so. Even the most artistically uneducated person can tell when my perspective is off or when my tree looks like a lollipop. No amount of bravado or bluster on my part will convince people that my rubbish painting is a credible work of art.

All this humility was pretty good for the soul and I dredged up the confidence to show my work to some real artists on art forums and ask for comments on my work. And yes they were hard to hear. Who would ever have thought that artists, stereotyped for their airy fairy ways could be so blunt and brutal when it comes to giving feedback.
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Not just a lesson in art but a lesson in life really. More than anything I have ever done, painting has finally taught me how to be humble. When I picked up a paintbrush I learned how to fail, showcase my failures and still keep failing again and again because my love of art was greater than my ego.

​Rose x

Today as I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed, I came across a meme showing a stereotypical picture of a witch complete with robes and pointy hat that carried the words “True magic is neither black nor white; it is both, because nature is both loving and cruel at the same time. The only good or bad is in the heart of the witch.”

I have all the feels about this statement, and while I essentially agree, to me it is a far more complex subject than this statement makes it out to be so I thought I would explore it today for my musings.
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You see, to me most things work as a spectrum and have multiple aspects that can overlap, compliment or contradict each other. I don’t see that spectrum as a straight line either, I see it more as a circle where the most extreme aspects actually sit right next to each other rather than being opposites - much like a colour wheel I suppose. I can apply this to several human aspects including emotion, behaviour and even our sense of morality.

As a healer, I learned to understand emotion through colour. At first I thought that each one could only relate to one particular kind of emotion and spent a long time confused but then I had a lightbulb moment – each colour had a spectrum of shade and tone, and that related to a spectrum of emotions.

The magic I work then is a whole rainbow of colour in that I see it is as being a practice that is as colourful as I am. It is not black, white, grey, green or any other single colour – it is a spectrum. My practice literally depends on my own colours (emotions, behaviour, morals etc) and how I choose to apply them as much as it does the colour of the magical thing that I’m working on. One day I could be red and the next I might be black or any other colour - and either of those might be a positive or a negative thing depending on the “colour” of my emotions, thoughts or moral sense that particular day.

In other words, I don’t see a duality to my practice, or to the world and its inhabitants – I see multiplicity and multipotential in any number of different colourful nuances.

How do you see it?

Bright blessings,
Sarah x