Bill Bruin

Beauty abounds, even in the most mundane of places. It's moments like this, in their rapturous numinousity, for which I am eternally grateful.

It's a train of thought that has led me to seriously examine how I navigate modern technology and media in relation to my spiritual and magical practice, and what I choose to allow into my space through those mediums.

​Yet it seems many practitioners see technology as somehow insulated from the occult or the magical when I wager it's the opposite: there's an eeriness to technology precisely because we give it our attention, a resource that is coveted in both the digital and supernatural worlds.

Just as the witches and sorcerers of old had methods of vetting and barring certain spirits from entering our homes, should modern practitioners also be conscious of technological means of entry and how to curate them?

​We are all aware of the impact things like social media have on our mental health, but what is its effect on more subtle layers? What is the impact of streaming violence and conflict straight into your homes on a little device we all carry around in our pockets?

Something I've been thinking about lately is that as magical practitioners, we are often deeply concerned with what we allow into our space. We curate energies, bar certain spirits from entering our homes, and purify our spaces and belongings, but what about more modern, digital means of entry?

​We are all aware of the impact things like social media have on our mental health, but what is its effect on more subtle layers? What is the impact of streaming violence and conflict straight into your homes on a little device we all carry around in our pockets?

One of the toxic legacies Neopaganism has inherited from the Romanticism that birthed it is the separation of "pristine wilderness" and "urban sprawl".
There is no such dichotomy, all land is sacred and all land is tainted, this is living in the Anthropocene. We need to sit with this truth.

The Glastonbury Town Hall mural by the incredible Faye Suzannah is a truly exquisite work of repeating patterns that harkens back to antique hand-painted wallpaper.

You can find more of Faye's work at www.fayesuzannah.co.uk

I moved here from Wales nearly six years ago now, it has such a rich history of mythology and folklore.

It's self inflicted, I'm a sucker for a new technological gimmick... And a sucker for punishment too, apparently.

Incomprehensible book of instructions in hand, muttering blasphemous curses as the lights overhead pulse and flicker, a growing sense of dread in the impenetrable darkness that my ambition has overreached my grasp...

Setting up the smart lighting isn't going as well as I had hoped.

Rain lashes the fields and hedgerows of the Somerset Levels, and as the river Brue creeps over its banks and spreads across the land, so I pay a wary homage to the Morgans, beautiful otherworldy maidens who dwell within the churning mire, and lure unwary men to a watery grave.

Nostalgia is the lens we look through so we don't see ghosts, but they were always there, in the red around the edges of our rose-tinted glasses.

I'm Bill.
I'm a Sorcerer and Awenydd who primarily follows a Welsh and Brythonic cosmology.
My practice is largely informed by hauntology, psychogeography, and the interplay of folklore, landscape, and people.

A dragon lives in our rafters. Facing towards the heavens, his fearsome visage drives away wayward spirits who would dare to creep into our homes through its rafters.
​Or at least that's the idea. I'm no artist, but I tried my best, and so does he, keeping a diligent, if slightly cross-eyed, watch.

As the spirits of storm and wind rattle and rave outside our little house on the hill, beating at its gables in feral fury, we give thanks to the gods of solid doors and firm roofs, of good builders, and good luck. How lucky we are to share this little port in the storm, safe as houses.

Settling down for an early evening with a glass of nocino and a little research, I've been struggling a lot lately with executive dysfunction. I haven't been able to read, write, or do much of anything that nourishes me, but there's something about November's dark nights that brings me renewed awen.

Remember Bristol is for you, not just for Jesus.

It's still remarkable to me as a practicing sorcerer how working craft towards one defined end goal often triggers a cascade down through several other areas of my life: like cogs in a machine, the movement of one piece sets others in motion in different far-flung facets of my existence.

Just as the Tor looms over the town of Glastonbury, so do the derelict chimney stacks of Beckery Road and Clarks Village still tower over the landscape. Often overlooked by the pilgrims that travel here, there is every bit as much power in the shadow of these last vestiges of a lost era of industry.

Since moving to Street five years ago, every November I dress my altar with leaves from the ginkgo tree that grows in town.
It's not native to this land, neither am I, but its leaves fall each year and enrich the soil of the land it grows in. I hope I enrich this land in some small way as well.

Why am I here and why do I do this to myself? These are questions that apply to my new Bluesky account but also, like, my life in general.