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Local Magic isn't just dependent on what's around us - it's created by our relationship to what's around us. It mostly doesn't come from books, or even from careful thought or cleverly crafted ritual; it comes from going out and relating to what we find. To hills from which we can see the moon rise; or to streams that can only be glimpsed where they briefly emerge from beneath the concrete that covers them; to local parks or backways; special trees or seasonal events such as seedpods, flocking birds, particular flowers.

I just spent a week at California Reclaiming WitchCamp in the Mendocino Woodlands north of San Francisco teaching Local Magic with Tarin Towers. We taught a form of localised magic that - while we practiced it in the beautiful redwoods - could be picked up, taken home and put down in any environment; suburban, city, desert, farmland or another forest. This is the whole point of Local Magic - it's local to where you are and although the system, or structure can be taught, the content is all dependent on what's there. 

What is the seasonal magic in your location?

In the Blue Mountains, where I live, seasons are very pronounced by the colours around us.  We have an interesting mix of native and imported trees and the blend between the two creates bright palates in among the steady grey-greens of eucalypts, tree ferns and native grasses. Earlier, in spring the tea-tree blossoms were so prominent in places it was a sea of white with their pinky-red centres and when they began to give way the gum trees put out sudden new growth; all their tips that danced in the breezes looking red in the sunlight; it felt like I was watching the shift from spring into early summer in that colour change.

I walked in along the front driveway, past the lawn where we had once had an entire Aztec Empire, through the kindergarten section that looks tiny though I remember it as a whole world and round the corner to what I think of as the main part of the school. In the buildings I saw what I would have said I never noticed; hexagonal buildings, open plan classes, exposed beams, different levels. These are the buildings that framed my learning, my engagement with life, ideas and other people. This is the setting in which I learnt to think, to act and to become.

I have a secret garden. Well – it’s not actually mine – and it’s not entirely secret.

Magical places aren’t always accessible – in fact inaccessibility can make them seem more magical – and our places of local magic may even belong to other people. That garden so stuffed full of roses in summer that it spills over the fence, into the air and the senses of everyone passing by; that glimpse of parkland through high, barred gates; rivers that are inaccessible or bush land areas fenced off for regeneration. It’s a different sort of magic, maybe, when we can’t freely come and go; to me it seems a less related magic; I receive something from the place, maybe I am able to offer something but it all happens at a respectful distance. These places may even feel like my allies or teachers, but I feel less that I would have a casual conversation with them, it’s a less intimate relationship, maybe than a place I can freely walk or sit or swim.

We walked through an avenue of flowering tea-tree, small clustered white stars that formed a processional way. As we kept descending we met them singly, these scrubby but momentarily beautiful trees placed occasionally by the path or at turn below us on the hillside. By the pool the waterfall tumbled into there were another two tea-trees, guardians that greeted us as we stepped from the path onto the rocks around the pool. It was close to Beltaine and the flowers seemed a celebration of that. My son and I were discussing the girlfriend issue; how this was missing in his life.                                                                                                                                   ...

In magic sometimes we raise power deliberately; for healing, change or to charge a specific intent. Another way of working with energy is through the inherent power of places we’re connected to. By spending time there and getting to know special places sometimes we may find or access an energy not so much raised by us as granted to us, at least in that moment.

Places that are magical and also local to me have a special place in my heart. They become familiar, known not just as special events but in all their moods because I’m able to visit them easily and often, in a variety of conditions. I build up a deep, layered relationship with these places and I feel the magic or ritual I do there is held as part of that relationship. It’s as if these places talk with me, when I visit we pick up an ongoing conversation of the deepest possible kind; where I am a part of them and they are a part of me.

White sulphur-crested cockatoos have been my personal totem for years. In the wild they are a noisy, curious, intrusive bird that many people regard as pests, in spite of their beauty. They have a tendency to destroy verandas and windowsills (retaining their habit of ripping up dead wood to get at the insects they expect to find) and their call is loud and raucous. I’ve always loved them, although until recently I hadn’t lived anywhere they existed in large numbers. But now I’m living in the Blue Mountains I find myself surrounded by them.

It’s an interesting concept – that I’ve become local to my totem. I’ve chosen, eventually, to live where they live. As if I’ve been courting them for years and finally we have a good enough relationship that I can move in, onto their territory. I remember swirling flocks of them above me in the blue sky in a forest of ancient Antarctic beech, and I remember them out above the valley on previous trips to the Blue Mountains, climbing and swooping through the mist at my own height as I stood at a lookout. I made up a story about that harsh screeching call of theirs; how it was the sound that ripped open the night of the universe, back at the very beginning of time, and their gold-and-white heralded the the coming of light. They are iconic light-bearers with that white body and yellow crest, yellow blushing the underside of their wings.