Hedge Riding: The Art of the Hedge Witch

Bringing the Hedge back into Hedge Witchcraft, working with liminal spaces and the Otherworld

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Joanna van der Hoeven

Joanna van der Hoeven

  Joanna van der Hoeven is a Hedge Witch, Druid, and a best-selling author. She has been working in Pagan traditions for over 20 years. She is the Director of Druid College UK, helping to re-weave the connection to the land and teaching a modern interpretation of the ancient Celtic religion.  

Posted by on in Paths Blogs

It's been a while since I've posted on here, mainly because I've been working on my new book about Hedgewitchcraft, out in October 2022! While I get back into the swing of writing here on this channel, I'd like to share a video with you that I made this month, about the liminal places, which are so important to the art of hedge riding. x

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Hedgewitch? Priestess or Priest? You decide.

You will often hear the terms Priest and Priestess used within Wiccan traditions. In Wicca it is often noted that each practitioner is a priest or priestess of their tradition, after studying and learning its ways. This is a way of saying that within the tradition, we have no need of an intermediary between ourselves and the divine, and so we can all become a priest or priestess of our path.

In some initiatory traditions, one can only call themselves a priest or priestess after having obtained certain levels of training with the Craft. Hedgewitches or Solitary Wiccans, alongside many other solitary forms of Witchcraft, train themselves, sometimes with the guidance of a teacher or a group and then working on their own, with all due diligence in research and practice. Initiation comes directly from the gods and goddesses themselves, not through another person. Should you wish to refer yourself as a priest or priestess, I would highly recommend that you study and practice for quite some time before taking on that title, as it is not something to be taken lightly. Modern Wicca and Witchcraft often uses the length of time as a year and a day of study before certain levels (degrees in coven training) can be obtained, and this can be a good rule of thumb to go by. You have to truly live your religion or spiritual path, each and every day, in order to really understand and come to know it inside and out. Otherwise, you are just paying it lip service, and any titles or roles that you decide to take on can be hollow and meaningless if the work is not put in wholeheartedly.

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Personal Evolution of a Hedge Witch

Enchant your world. That is what Witchcraft does, each and every day. It brings magic to the mundane, and allows you to open yourself to the wonders that the natural world holds all around you. 

I have been a Witch for as long as I can remember. I have always been enchanted by the sound of the wind through the pine trees, or the last rays of the setting sun illuminating the sky. I have a special rapport with animals, and often have prophetic dreams. I feel the rhythms of nature flowing around me and through me, and have always honoured the cycles and the seasons, though I may not have always had a name, ritual form or tradition to describe it fully.

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A Brief History of Witchcraft: Part Two

When the Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1951, people started to come out of the broom closet. Gerald Gardner was one of the first, who was mentioned earlier. Gardner was the one who came up with the word, Wica, to denote his spiritual path.

Naturism was a big fashion in the 1920s and 30s, and Gerald was a naturist (hence the skyclad part of his particular tradition of witchcraft). There was even a naturist camp that opened up near his home. He became involved in the Rosicrucian Theatre, and later came across Masonic (Fellowship of Crotona) practices and the work of Margaret Murray, which he incorporated into his ideas for this spiritual path. With the help of Alistair Crowley, he came up with beautiful poetry for his tradition, which was also a contentious point for one of Gardener’s High Priestesses, the aforementioned Doreen Valiente. Gardener created the witch tradition that he was seeking, and Valiente wrote it down eloquently and made sense of it all.[1]

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A Brief History of Witchcraft (Part One)

Witchcraft has probably been around as long as humanity has in some form or other. It can take many forms, from a shamanic and animistic practice to one that uses very formal and complex rites, rituals and correspondences. At the heart of witchcraft, is the ability to create change in the world, to take control of aspects of life and the natural world in order to bring about the desired outcome.

It is difficult to separate witchcraft from religious or spiritual traditions found in the history of ancient humanity. As we simply do not know what they believed, we can only make assumptions based on what we find through archaeology and anthropology. There are tantalising examples of cave art from our Stone Age ancestors, where we see human beings with animal qualities performing rituals of a sort. We believe that they saw the feminine principle in the divine, based on findings such as the Venus of Willenorf (from around 30,000 BCE) to examples of goddesses from the Nile region in Egypt such as Nathor figure (from around 4,000 BCE). We assume that the cave paintings and statuary/figurines represent god/goddess images, or their priests/priestesses, however, that is still an assumption. The rites and rituals that may have accompanied these items would have elements of what we know today as witchcraft perhaps evolved with them. At the very least, we can deduce from the artwork that they had religious or spiritual traditions, but what exactly these were in anyone's guess.

It's yet another assumption, but one many are happy to make, that throughout history there have been those who have been seen as different, as set apart from the normal lives and routines of others, whether it be in a tribe or community. These people may have had highly developed sensitivities, and were able to predict the weather perhaps (I personally always know when the pressure is changing from a high to a low front; I can feel it in my head and my ears pop!). They may have had a near-death experience that grants them an ability to deal with death and the dying. They may know where the herbs grow that heal certain wounds. Notice that I say "may" in each of these sentences, because we just don't really know for sure, and it would be irresponsible for me to say otherwise.

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Faeries and Liminal Places

So, apologies for being so long since my last blog post! I’ve been burning the midnight oil, with my new book being launched on 8 July. Now I can take a step back, as I’ve done all I can, and wait to see how the book is received. It’s an anxious time, but also an exciting time for most authors, an in-between time. These liminal times seem to be a recurring theme in my life. And not least to do with the denizens of the Otherworld.

There are certain times of the year when I feel closest to the Fair Folk, the Faeries, the Twlwyth Teg, the Sidhe, however you wish to call them. Beltane and Samhain are the usual portals when the veils between this world and the Otherworld are at their thinnest, but the time around Summer Solstice and high summer also holds a great and powerful bridge that spans across to take us into the most enchanted of places. The long twilight nights are ideal for communing with the Otherworld, and it’s lovely and warm enough on a summer evening.

As a Hedge Druid and a Hedge Witch, I have found several places around where I live where I feel a certain magical quality exists, one that is most definitely fey.

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