The Faerytale Apothecary

It is a bittersweet joyousness with which I share the beginning story of JackHat SuperCat with you. For it arrived into being at the time of my Beloved Cat Husband of over 15 years, Mr Dave the Merlin’s departure for shores to be newly explored.

In honouring Mr D’s remarkable life, I invite you to relish in the delicious delight of the story that my Beloved Human Mr T entangled me in the weaving of.

It’s a true treasure of a thing and leaves just one question for you, dear listener/reader.

What might the next installment sound like? Where would you take the story?

Send in your recordings, your essays, your jots and notes, your ink spills and word rambles, and I will collate them all together for a special winter jumble of voices and adventures.

For, I feel, Mr Dave the Merlin would have it no other way.

Mr T himself lives in a small cottage in the Bay Area of California where he designs and maintains gnome friendly gardens that incorporate native plants, which are also friendly toward birds and bees. He is a part time astrologer who loves viewing the night sky from the desert.

His recent interest in giving voice to story has emerged along with a rekindled interest in song. It has been helped along from having had the events of his life lovingly mirrored back to him as story, and the gentle encouragement of his uncensored voice.

Find out more about his interactions with the plant people at tegardendesign.com

Welcome old and new, to the old and new.We began this Spring with a new cycle of story experimentation. There is no neat telling from beginning to middle to end but an unceremonious dropping into one of the silent moments between the established words of a tale. We are leaving the reassurringly known maps behind and opening up to, not where we might want to go, but where the story decides to take us this time. The invitation is to surrender to the journey.Don’t try to find the neat edges of it, but let it envelope you in a foundness rather than a lostness. And where you go after it leaves you in some new location? Well, that is up to you…

(image by Edmund Dulac)

the cracking of bones

the breaking of skin

yowls that do not know if they are delighted or desecrated

you are in flux

unknowing of yourself anymore

nothing will stay in phase long enough to be grasped

held on to

you are released from obligations

yet steady

regular

metronomic

for now anyway

what is the original mould of you?

what shape of love is in you?

who are you meant to be?

press play….

I am always delighted and humbled and in awe of the people I get to share with you here. So imagine how gleeful and grateful I was when the incredible legend of storytelling that is Laura Simms offered up this tale for us as an extra special bonus on a cold January Full Moon.

We both felt that across the world, particularly in North America, an extra large dose of Story Medicine was needed right now.

Laura had this to say - “The Crystal Cup is a revision of a fairytale from Vietnam. I recorded it in 1979 with Weston Woods, Old As The World, Fresh As The Rain. I have not told it since. Given our world today, I found it a story with tremendous heart and significance.”

I truly feel honoured that Laura called forth the story again for us now.

Please join me wrapped in favourite blankets with favourite mugs of steaming drinks as we drop into the richness of what is shared…

With love

Elizabeth Jane of the Faerytale Apothecary

Laura is an internationally acclaimed storyteller, writer, teacher and humanitarian. She combines traditional stories with personal narrative. She is artistic Director of the Hans Christian Andersen Storytelling Center in NYC, and served as a Senior Research Fellow for Rutgers University Peace Center under the auspices of UNESCO. She is a founding member of the Healing Story Alliance and serves on their programming committee. Laura saved a zoo in Romania and won the Sesame Street SUNNY DAYS AWARD for work with children worldwide. She received the Hasbro September 11 Grant creating a manual for storytelling for children in crisis, and a training for storytelling and trauma. She is a certified dharma art teacher, and senior meditation instructor in mindfulness awareness practice. Presently she has five books and many recordings. Most recently Laura worked for the Fetzer Foundation Sacred Story Project. She continues to work with The Constellation. www.laurasimms.com

Image by Silvia Gaudenzi from Pixabay

Intro music by Audiobay from Pixabay

Outro music by viprodmusic from Pixabay

I am always delighted and humbled and in awe of the people I get to share with you here. So imagine how gleeful and grateful I was when the incredible legend of storytelling that is Laura Simms offered up this tale for us as an extra special bonus on a cold January Full Moon.

We both felt that across the world, particularly in North America, an extra large dose of Story Medicine was needed right now.

Laura had this to say - “The Crystal Cup is a revision of a fairytale from Vietnam. I recorded it in 1979 with Weston Woods, Old As The World, Fresh As The Rain. I have not told it since. Given our world today, I found it a story with tremendous heart and significance.”

I truly feel honoured that Laura called forth the story again for us now.

Please join me wrapped in favourite blankets with favourite mugs of steaming drinks as we drop into the richness of what is shared…

Laura is an internationally acclaimed storyteller, writer, teacher and humanitarian. She combines traditional stories with personal narrative. She is artistic Director of the Hans Christian Andersen Storytelling Center in NYC, and served as a Senior Research Fellow for Rutgers University Peace Center under the auspices of UNESCO. She is a founding member of the Healing Story Alliance and serves on their programming committee. Laura saved a zoo in Romania and won the Sesame Street SUNNY DAYS AWARD for work with children worldwide. She received the Hasbro September 11 Grant creating a manual for storytelling for children in crisis, and a training for storytelling and trauma. She is a certified dharma art teacher, and senior meditation instructor in mindfulness awareness practice. Presently she has five books and many recordings. Most recently Laura worked for the Fetzer Foundation Sacred Story Project. She continues to work with The Constellation. www.laurasimms.com

With love

Elizabeth Jane of the Faerytale Apothecary

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Intro music by Audiobay from Pixabay

Outro music by viprodmusic from Pixabay

I am secretly delighted in ways I do not fully intellectually understand that the calendar year ends with a New Moon. My ancientness knows though. Feeds on the ways of natural cycles that follow no logical human order.

One of the dear friends and some time mentor that reminds me of these soul nourishments is the fantastical Sarah Mooney.

Sarah produces a weekly podcast called Mooney's Mythic Podcast. I would highly recommend curling up with her each week to be transported on rich and luxurious magic carpets of words

She graced us all with her words for the Winter Solstice last season and returns once more for a glorious dive into the winter darkness within.

We dare you to not get comfortable, to be niggled by your discomfort, and walk with us anyway through an ending that is also a beginning…

It is with gorgeous delight that I am happy to share another dear friend in the form of Irish designer for TV and Film Damian Draven agreed to co-create a Tea for us.

He said 'while tapping into memories ushered by Betty's ingredients and listening intently to my heartbeat I was drawn to a rhythm that ebbed and flowed with the drumming of my ancestors. Then taking a pause, it was at this moment that clarity ensued me to write these words...'

I encourage you to let yourself fall back into them, surrender to them, feel into what they awaken in your own inheritances.

Damian is also a film director, contemporary artist and exhibiting member of the RGA (Reading Guild of Artists). As a journeyman he takes great inspiration and perspective from his travels for which he cites ‘Momentum is king because inspiration can come from anywhere or anyone but the trick is to look behind the curtain for a different narrative, a different energy...’.

Damian’s work can be found here www.instagram.com/damian_draven

It was such an incredible experience to co-create this tea with Tracy Chipman. She is a quite profound Story Channel who can carry the medicine to such remarkable depths, traverse the Underworlds that many dare not tread or even contemplate navigating.

A part of what makes these tea recordings feel so very special for me is that when we sit to speak them, neither of us knows what the other person is going to say. They will give me the title of the tea, I will let them know only the ingredients that have shown themselves to me and that is all we know of the other before hand. And yet they always feel so beautifully woven into being.

Tracy Chipman, (she/her/they) MA is a healing artist, author, a TRE® provider and oral storyteller weaving with ancient & new experiences inviting us into deeper connections with ourselves and life. She resides in northern Wisconsin, occupying the traditional territories of the Ojibwe peoples. In March 2023 Tracy published her first book, Borealis Mundi - Resting in Place, Loss & Grace. She'll be collaborating with Jackie Singer in Oxford on November 10 facilitating a day-long women's retreat - Open Your Ear to the Great Below. More info and to register by November 8 here. For more about Tracy's work in the world, please visit her website https://www.tracychipman.net/

It took me some while to pull myself back into the everyday again after this one, take your time, be gentle, but do make take this extraordinary tea with us…

I have been watching a squirrel through the study window here at the cottage, my but doesn’t that sound grand! Really my study is a desk in a corridor by a window, a window blessed with visitations from the blue tit gang peering in, the rabbit family arriving for their tea, the solitary muntjac deer making a rare visit (it literally lives at the bottom of the garden in the brambles) at exactly the right time - like a dance party for my child self and my birthday. And of course, squirrel. Watching squirrel reminded me of another squirrel I met in another place at another time….

I am utterly thrilled to share that both Willow and Agnes agreed to come visit with us once more in order to create this autumnal joy of a brew.

If you missed when they stopped by last time, you can listen here.

To find out where they might have led our muddy skirts for this October New Moon, simply press play, then join me in hoping they will come calling on us again.

Willow is a Shaman, a Hedgewitch, Tree Witch, a Wisewoman and Druid. She is also a Shamanic Teacher of Healing and the Old Ways. Willow loves nothing more than to be deep in the mysterious Wildwoods connecting to ancient Ancestors and the magic and mystery. She is a Mother of 2 and Grandmother of 6...who delight in her magical nighttime fairy tales! You can find out more about her on her website -www.shamanicwillow.co.uk