What is Moonlit Hedge?
What about this particular word combination has brought me here to launch this endeavor?
Sometimes a phrase gets caught in your mind and the sticky filament of neurons that make up the web of your brain just won’t let it go. For years that has been the case with Moonlit Hedge for me. Nagging me. Teasing me. Imploring that I spin it out into reality.
For the longest time I had the desire to create a metaphysical store that I didn’t really see anywhere else in the world. Something that provided quality products made by artisan crafters who were personally invested in elevating the overall experience of the craft. I’d become overwhelmed by the base materialism in the general Pagan community and felt like mass produced junk from China wasn’t just a bad approach but an actual insult to the depth of connection that I and others had with the craft. As the years have gone by I’ve been pleased to see others who felt the same call as I did emerge, driven by their love and passions. As it turns out, I never had the money to launch nor the real drive to operate a store. I wanted to see the thing I desired in the world more than create that thing myself. Painfully introverted, it’s impossible to imagine how exhausted I would have been had I succeeded in realizing it.
But while I flirted with that idea, the name actually came even before then. The fully-embodied, ecstatic and experiential practice of witchcraft, variously associated with terms like seiðr, hedge riding, hedge walking, soul flight among many others, where one takes leave of their mundane senses in order to retrieve occult, or hidden, information, commune with spirits and find pathways to healing all coalesced into one idea for me, one perfect phrase, during a period of frequent lunar divination, journeywork and pact building with land spirits.
It’s from that early vision that I began to recognize that hedgewalking wasn’t simply about crossing a boundary and coming back. Some people actually live on that spiritual edge, virtually incapable of inhabiting anywhere else, and perhaps I was one of them. I had spent my youth as a punk, a goth, a rabble rouser, an activist, a poet. Deeply bothered by the status quo, I frequently became estranged from people, even those who shared similar interests. The metaphor of the witch on the edge of the village? More like the witch on the edge of the world. In some ways it can be seen as a story of struggle with depression or anxiety but the depression was a result of how lonely and angry I had become rather than the other way around. Thankfully, I eventually went through a period of personal reclamation. I discovered the practice of Chöd, a method of re-integration of the alienated parts of oneself created by Machig Labdrön, an eleventh-century female Tibetan Buddhist teacher, and reinterpreted by Lama Tsultrim Allione in her book “Feeding Your Demons” as well as through the work of Victor Anderson with his Iron and Pearl Pentacles. Suddenly things began to fall into place. The parts of myself that felt too foreign or weird in the context of the culture that I was living in became proud parts of myself. Rather than sources of shame or alienation, they became empowering.
But the practice is ongoing, it never ends, and rather than a story of reunification of the other with the overculture, it’s a story of standing with poise at the edge, reifying my position. The hedgewalker is someone capable of reorienting their universe around that outsider, othered place and treating it with gratefulness, understanding and love. It’s recognizing the importance of standing strong to fill the classical, Promethean role of bringing through hidden knowledge, but also being a beacon to those who are struggling with their own identities that have been splintered and can hopefully offer some help or even temporary shelter on their own unique journey.
It’s taken years, decades really, to come to this point of uniting with and loving who I am rather than dragging myself for not being like others. There are more of us on this particular crooked path than we realize. It takes great strength and courage to step away from the manufactured, competitive and maddening social structure that promises so much and delivers so little but I see a sea-change happening, at least in the working world, at the moment that offers some hope.
So, what is Moonlit Hedge then? It’s where we can come together, discover and learn, it’s real and unreal, it’s my cottage sitting amongst the awesome array of stars. Just one point among many in hir firmament. I’ve got the kettle on, join me for a cup of tea.
Funny, I was wondering this myself the past few days. Beautiful ❤️🌟