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H. Byron Ballard, is a Folklorist, Author, Priestess and Teacher. She has served as a featured speaker and teacher at several festivals and conferences, including the Sacred Space Conference, Pagan Spirit Gathering, Starwood, Hexfest and many others. She serves as senior Priestess and co-founder of Mother Grove Goddess Temple and the Coalition of Earth Religions/CERES, both in Asheville, NC. She podcasts about Appalachian folkways on "Wyrd Mountain Gals." Her essays are featured in several anthologies, and she writes a regular column for SageWoman Magazine. Her books include four on mountain folk magic. The first was Staubs and Ditchwater, and the most recent (2025) is A Feral Church: A Guided Journey to Find Magic, Kinship and the Goddess.

Byron  grew up in the country in North Carolina; she only saw the Goddess within the soil, trees, water and wind around her in Appalachia running in the mountains and playing in her family’s small orchard playing with crawdads and salamanders. Outside in nature is where Byron felt the divine most strongly. She  sometimes saw the Goddess as anthropomorphic. Byron never saw the divine in male form. She calls herself an Animist at heart and also a polytheist.

Her grandmother and several cousins had the sight or prophetic dreams and also the ability to interact with spirits- even though their religion was Methodist. These abilities were deeply ingrained in the culture that Byron grew up in. Appalachia’s energy is deeply magical and broad and often manifests in deep spirituality which permeates the culture. It also has some of the oldest mountains in North America and two of the oldest rivers flowing through it in the world. There many different kinds of religion there. The intersection of Indigenous, African Scottish/Irish, Welsh and German cultures contributes to a unique Appalachian spiritual culture.

We chat about Byron’s newest book A Feral Church. She wrote it after the death of Carol Christ and her work was a great inspiration to Byron. She decided it was time to write another Goddess spirituality book. This book takes us Solstice to Solstice on inner and outer journeys to meet spiritual beings and connect with the Mother Goddess. It’s about stepping out of domesticity and accessing your wild essence in our own hearts. We encounter spiritual beings who teach us about aspects of our wild spirits in different parts of the world.

We chat about her role as a Priestess at the Mother Goddess Temple In Asheville NC which is a 501c3 church. She does interfaith work and outreach as well as holding Sabbats celebrating the wheel of the year with her community there. Byron believes that the Goddess is the root and foundation of all of us and from that we do the work that we are called to do in these perilous times. The Goddess is much needed especially for Women. Byron ends our episode by giving  us a truly beautiful Goddess meditation for love and support. More about Byron at www.myvillagewitch.com

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