Speaker 1 00:00:00 With me today. I have Ben Stimson, who's an author and a podcaster and a mental health therapist and all kinds of things. I've got a massive array of things. Too many things. So many. So welcome. It's lovely to have you. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what kind of which you are, if you are one?

Ben Stimson 00:00:23 Yeah. So I my background is I'm from North Wales myself. So I'm based down in Northamptonshire right now. But mum and dad are from the north, from Manchester and Yorkshire respectively. And I spent 30 years of my life in Canada, so I just moved back about six months ago to the UK, fulfilling, like fulfilling a lifelong long dream to come back. And it's hard to say what kind of which I am, because it's so integrated. Like I have got fingers in a lot of pies. A lot of my work is with ancestor work and spirit work. So spirit work tends to be a big part of my practice. but I'm starting to really reconnect with the folkloric roots, right? Get my hands dirty, get back into crafting and doing things again.

Ben Stimson 00:01:08 So now I'm back in kind of the area that I come from. It's working with the plants of our shared folklore and working with the landscape. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to answer that question. Sorry, I'm just a witch.

Speaker 1 00:01:20 I'm a bit of one of those witches as well, which pulls bits and bobs from here and there. But it is about following your instincts, isn't it? And your intuition.

Ben Stimson 00:01:27 Yeah, yeah, those little nudges I work a lot with weird and so, like, literally have it tattooed onto my body. So I tend to do a lot of weird working, becoming conscious of those little connections and what little strings they can pull and manipulate. So that tends to be a big part of my practice too. What's weird weird is the Scandinavian Germanic concept of fate. And unlike this kind of Judeo-Christian or classical concept of fate, where you have the three sisters who are constantly on top of everything and affecting the world. The Germanic concept of fate is unraveling all the time.

Ben Stimson 00:02:07 So if you look at, like the Icelandic sagas, for example, or so in Scandinavia, it's Earth. Whereas in in Germanic and Anglo-Saxon it's weird, and it's this idea of the tapestry constantly being woven in the moment. So we might have an idea of what the pattern will look like in the future, but we don't know all of the steps to it. There's also this sense that destiny is not necessarily predetermined. What we do now will affect that destiny in the future, even if we have a sense of what the bigger destiny of a vague destiny is. Every step along the way contributes. Every thread of the tapestry creates that image, and we can add new things to that to create smaller images along our way. So it really is a sense of an unfolding and which I find a lot more empowering. There's no one central deity that is controlling everything. There's a sense of responsibility there, too. There's also a sense of understanding that sometimes we're just caught in an eddy that began before we even arrived.

Ben Stimson 00:03:15 Somehow we got caught up in that eddy, and we're just going to have to go along with it. How we react and respond to what's happening in the present is what would be classed as heroic in that system, versus putting up our hands, saying, it's in the hands of fate. Now we'll know fate is our hand.

Speaker 1 00:03:31 Oh my God, I can't believe I've not not come across that before because it does make sense. I do have these shoes with a hole like we're on a journey and we can't have a say in what happens, because you're always making decisions, aren't you?

Ben Stimson 00:03:42 All the time. And so when you look at, like the Icelandic sagas, for example, this idea of premonitions come up a lot because there's one, one scene in one particular famous saga where Where a soldier has just killed one of the main characters or one of the main people, and the wife of that individual comes out and she's holding a shawl, and he gets a premonition that at the end of a shawl, because there's blood, the person he's just killed, his blood, is at the end of the shawl.

Ben Stimson 00:04:09 He says, my death is at the end of that shawl. And go figure. Later on, the wife who was pregnant with the son of the character who's been killed, she swaddled him in that shawl and shows him that shawl and says, this is the blood of your father. And so literally at the end of that shawl is his own death, because that son grows up and then goes in and causes and takes revenge. Yeah. It's huge. Yeah. It's big. Yeah, it's too big. Becoming aware of premonitions?

Speaker 1 00:04:34 Yeah, totally. I'm gonna. I'm gonna write that down. I'm gonna look that up because I cannot believe I've got to this age and not knowing about this. What?

Ben Stimson 00:04:41 And you're so close to York. Come on.

Speaker 1 00:04:43 Yeah, I know, but I don't very much leave Leeds. I'm very much stuck in my way. You mentioned you lived in Canada for 30 years. How has it been a witch over there? Are they a quite open minded?

Ben Stimson 00:04:58 I would say so.

Ben Stimson 00:04:59 Yeah. Where we are. So where I was at was about two hours from Toronto, and the local pagan scene in Ontario is very connected to the East Coast pagan scene. So I'm trying to think there's a huge festival in Pennsylvania. It's upstate New York. It's one of the most famous all of the major people and elders from the pagan scene over there used to go there. They'd been going to since the 80s, and it's although it's a massive continent. It really is a huge continent. A lot of people are really connected. They tend to travel a lot. A lot of the authors over there tend to travel a lot, and so it's a lot more integrated than the UK, where like you, people don't tend to move from where they are. It's always been fascinating to me when I say, oh, you're over in Manchester, do you know so-and-so in Chester? No, I never met them before. It's not even 45 minutes. What do you mean?

Speaker 1 00:05:51 Yeah.

Ben Stimson 00:05:52 Yeah. It's fascinating.

Ben Stimson 00:05:53 Like over here. Right? We've got a very strong north south divide, right? A lot of the events in the south don't tend to integrate really, with the events up in the north. Er, and so you have writers who, you know, are writing on the same topics, and they may only see each other at one conference in Glastonbury every year, and that's it. Whereas in North America people are moving around. There's a lot more connection. There's a bigger online space, and a lot of the elders grew up together. There's a lot of of connections there. But it is it's a different system because obviously we were we're settlers in a settled land, in the colonists land. There is always that discrepancy with cultural appropriation of how much can we really connect with this landscape, knowing that our ancestors came here and we're settlers on this landscape, it's a different thing. And yet, that being said, there are traditions like Appalachian folk magic, southern conjure, hoodoo, a lot of Celtic, Scots-Irish, granny magic, a lot of traditions that came from Europe and have survived for 300 years, whereas we have died out in the old world.

Ben Stimson 00:06:55 So it's a very different, although familiar form of magic and being a witch over there. People are really finding themselves. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:07:04 Did you find yourself wanting to come back to Blighty? Was there pull to come back to like your motherland? Did you feel it?

Ben Stimson 00:07:10 Yeah. Very much. Very early on. So neurodivergent. I'm also gay. I'm queer. And I've since come out as non-binary. There's a lot of things that make me different than a lot of people I grew up with. I always like to explain this to people, and they always get it. I wasn't British or Welsh until I moved to Canada. Culture shock for me was such a huge thing, and one of the ways that I dealt with that as I was eight years old when I left, it would have been maybe less cruel if I had been younger and didn't have strong memories of this place, but I did. And one of the ways that I really connected was through TV shows like anything to do with King Arthur.

Ben Stimson 00:07:48 Robin hood. Any of the stories from over here? And of course, like in the 90s, so many of the TV shows for kids were based on British folklore and all of that. Right? So I really connected with the folklore as a way of solving that sense of home. That's how I got into magic. I watched The Mists of Avalon and it was like, wait, we can do this? What? And 2001, I started practicing and. And so then that became like as part of a spiritual practice for me. It also fit with where I came from. It was a sense of identity for me. So I've always wanted to come back and it's getting worse in Ontario. So I was like, why not? So I started working towards it. Luckily my professional stuff transferred and so I started building a UK client base and here I am now, six months being in the UK and I'm not even sure how that's gone, but it's been perfect.

Speaker 1 00:08:37 A little bit here that you've found who you are and grounded in your identity and stuff.

Speaker 1 00:08:40 It's lovely. Is that well, you were there. You mentioned you were right in this book, which is the main reason you're on The velvet, because you want to tell us this gorgeous book. It's beautiful looking.

Ben Stimson 00:08:53 Isn't it beautiful? Yeah. Really pleased. And it's called. I've doves and ravens for Witches and Whites. Book of whales and the borders. Oh.

Speaker 1 00:09:02 Is there a story behind the name? I was reading, I was pondering this.

Ben Stimson 00:09:06 So I started writing this originally for a different publisher, and my relationship with that publisher fell through. I wasn't I wasn't really interested in working with them anymore. And so originally it was a full volume for Wales, Scotland and England, and I had enough material. I could separate it out because what I noticed was in the diaspora, there was a lot of ideas about what traditional witchcraft and the folklore of witchcraft was. And when you actually go into our sources of folklore, quite a lot of it is either made up or it's not kosher or it's not.

Ben Stimson 00:09:41 It's not really traditional. You get those elements, definitely, but it's not traditional. So people are creating practices out of this folklore that isn't traditional, and it's not even traditional to the folklore that came over and was implanted over there. So I thought, you know what? Let's start to put this together. So I started putting it together, wrote it together. And so originally I called it Wise Ones, and it was all of the countries. When I ended up approaching History Press, I separated it all out. And originally this was going to be called Saints and Sinners, because the culture of Wales is so embedded with Christianity. Christianity of Wales really goes back to the Roman period. It wasn't like the Saxons who had to be converted and then they formed their own form of Christianity. And then I sat with it. And as I started looking at the motifs for a very particular Welsh motif, and it's concerning legendary magicians, we're thinking like Michael Scotus, we're thinking of Freya Bungy, we're thinking of like Freya Bacon, right? Johan Faustus.

Ben Stimson 00:10:43 Those sorts of stories. And in Wales in particular, there's one very specific story where when the magician is coming to the end of his life, he tells his family to take out his innards, his lungs, his heart. Different versions in different stories. And his stories applied to 15 of these different magicians. It's a widespread motif, and he says, I want you to watch to see if a dove or a raven comes, and if a dove comes to eat of my offal, then it means I've gone to heaven. If a raven comes, it means I've gone to hell. And just that image there, the dove and the raven was just. Oh, I just couldn't get it out of my head. So I changed the title to that. And then Ellie, who was the editor I worked with, also happens to be the artist, and I didn't know this until much later, and she came up with this beautiful image of a Welsh witch. Yeah, I was really pleased. And to be fair, like, I know you just had the Three Ravens podcast on.

Ben Stimson 00:11:41 There was some real debate about whether or not I could call it this, because their book was coming out around the same time, and it may cause confusion. So they went to bat for me, or the editor went to bat for me and sort of doves and ravens. It is.

Speaker 1 00:11:55 Yeah. No, I love it. It's a good name. And I must admit that as a witch buying a book, I would definitely buy a book called Doves and Ravens and not so much Saints and Sinners, because that's a little bit like.

Ben Stimson 00:12:07 I know.

Speaker 1 00:12:08 It makes me good. So it was a good move. Good move. And I knew there'd be a good story about it because it's such a wonderful name. It must take a long time to create this book, because I had to read, and it is so full to the brim of magnificent stories.

Ben Stimson 00:12:22 The process to write it once I pinned down how to and I also transparency here. I also have an academic background in medieval history and classical history, and that's only from a few years ago.

Ben Stimson 00:12:33 So I know how to do research. I know how to work with research materials. And so my process with this was to basically collect as many of the folklore, like written materials that I could and lay them out from oldest to newest and then go through, because what you can do is you can go through and find key terms. You can find the original versions of story and then follow that through the telling in order to see how the how the story changes and evolves. And so that's how I've written this book, is by showcasing all of those different or as many of those different editions as I can, to show how the stories that we take for granted if we just open a regular folklore book, how that has been affected by retellings, and it's been very effective in learning how not only stories evolve and grow, but also how in each century, because we're really looking at the 1700s to like the end of the beginning of the 20th century. A lot of these stories have been found through that quickly they evolve, why they evolve and what really is big in these stories.

Ben Stimson 00:13:40 So that's cool. It was a cool process to do, but it did. It took about four months of every single day. Luckily it was like middle of winter. I didn't have that many clients at the time, and I was staying in my parent's house so I could just focus on that, so I it was a boom.

Speaker 1 00:13:53 Did you find like what influenced how a star is retold? Is it a case of how it's recorded? Did you see patterns while you were doing it?

Ben Stimson 00:14:01 Absolutely. This is true for England and Scotland as well. But for Wales in particular, you're looking at each century, right? So you have to look at the different sources. Some of the juiciest gossipy stories that could find were actually from gentleman's magazines like the tabloids of their day. So, you know, it's juicy. I'll give you a very good example. Right. So, Mary Bateman, you know, the Witch of Leeds hometown girl, she has a book written about her that came out after her case had concluded.

Ben Stimson 00:14:31 And when you really look at it, it is just tabloid, right? And it's I think it's the rueful tale of Mary Bateman, evil Mary Bateman and her ex. Right. And you look at that. And that is actually where a lot of the mythology of Mary Bateman comes from. But when you actually look at court records, a lot of those details are not in there. But that's what sticks in the mind. So with this, you've got those gentleman's almanacs, you've got them folklorists, antiquarians, you've got those nationalists who are going out there to find these stories because they are important for national identity. You've also got reverends going around, so you've got churchmen who are going out there again for a very similar purpose. One of the most famous collectors was Doctor Eliason, and he was he was such a remarkable man. He was a reverend in the Church of England, Church of England or Methodist. He was a methodist Church of England. But whenever he went to another reverend, because he was like travelling around, he would ask them what some of the local folklore was and he'd collect it and write it down.

Ben Stimson 00:15:27 So a lot of the stories that we take for granted nowadays wouldn't have been preserved if he hadn't done that. But you also had those reverends who were going around because they were anti superstition. They wanted to stamp it out. So what would they do? They would write a huge, big, long tract detailing every single thing about that particular superstition or story or folklore and print it. And then with the caveat, well, this is evil. We shouldn't be believing in it, ironically preserving it for the future.

Speaker 1 00:15:53 Everybody's got that angle.

Ben Stimson 00:15:55 Everybody has their angle. And this is important because when you start to look at multiple sources, when you start to see multiple versions of the same story, those angles really come true. So like Mary Trevelyan, who is a travel writer from the late late 1800s, early 1900s, she's very well known because her book happens to be very available on places like Sacred Text or online. She was writing as a travel writer in order to get people to come. So when you look at her versions, they have details that don't exist in any of the other versions.

Ben Stimson 00:16:31 They make for compelling stories, but they're not quite kosher. And yet, that being said, she also wrote down stories that nobody else wrote down. So we have to be careful with those stories. But because they've just been accepted as lore, they've just become part of folklore. I caught her out once. If I didn't do this project for England, Wales and Scotland all at the same time, I wouldn't have noticed this. There's a particular witch that she's written down in, written about in Southern Down, which is down just south of Cardiff, and the naughty woman, naughty, naughty, naughty. She had lifted and plagiarized that exact story. Just changed the names and spaces she was writing in the 1890s. She had taken that from Horne's table book and the original. The original, which was a witch named Bertha up near Lake up in the North Dales there. Exact same text from 40 years before, and it was based in Yorkshire. And I'm like, oh, Mary Trevelyan, what are you doing here?

Speaker 1 00:17:31 I get it.

Ben Stimson 00:17:33 But of course, plagiarism was a big thing in the Victorian age, because, you know, a lot of people like there was no such thing as copyright back then. So people doing it all the time.

Speaker 1 00:17:41 And people just wrote what they wanted. Do I know of fact? Check it. You're not going.

Ben Stimson 00:17:46 Back and looking at as many sources as we can. Exactly. But again, it's folklore is perpetual. Folklore is perennial. Some of the older characters in the pubs would have been doing the same thing. To get a laugh and a pint.

Speaker 1 00:17:58 Yeah, yeah. What I love about your book as well is that you've you've set it out in a really helpful way. Some stories are quite small and you can dip in and out and some are a few pages and the map. I love the map because that helps you recognise where everything is and like visualise there's pictures in it and stuff. Like as a dyslexic person these things really help.

Ben Stimson 00:18:18 I wish that I could say and then claim to that, but that is actually me following other folklorists way of doing it.

Ben Stimson 00:18:25 There's some beautiful.

Speaker 3 00:18:26 Oh, here we go. People are going to know this book as soon as they show it. Jennifer Westwood's Albion.

Speaker 1 00:18:32 Oh yes.

Ben Stimson 00:18:34 Yes, it's essentially the same way. Right. She has listed these stories in where they come from and also have maps so that you can actually go and visit. What I did differently with this is instead of saying, I don't know, like Rotherham, there was a story about a giant bear. I've actually laid this out by the individual practitioner, which is really important because people are wanting to know about the individuals. There's like three core ingredients to a memorable story, especially for those of us who are neurodivergent. Right? Place name and story place the story. It becomes a lot more memorable. And if we've got a really vivid idea of the character, it becomes a lot more memorable even more. And then you've got all three elements there, and you can actually go and go to these places and see these places and almost experience the presence of those individuals.

Speaker 1 00:19:27 Yeah. No, I love that. It does help me a lot. One of the stories that sticks in my mind. I've wrote it down. Where is it now? Where is it? Somebody rescued a witch from drowning, and she gave the rescuer a ball that had snakeskin in it. Do you remember it?

Ben Stimson 00:19:41 Yes, yes, it's one up in Melbourne. One up in. In Anglesey. And yeah, he went down. He saw her drowning and he went down to, to get her out and came out and, and that ball is allegedly still in the family somewhere. It was supposed to go gone down to Australia I believe. And it was seven feet since of the witch's ball protection. Right. That was one of the married civilians.

Speaker 1 00:20:03 Oh, God.

Ben Stimson 00:20:05 Yeah, I know right. This is where it's I know, right? And yet, that being said, this idea of miracle balls is a motif in other parts. So there's another character of the character. I say character, but these are many of them are semi-legendary, semi historical.

Ben Stimson 00:20:19 There is another individual from Mid Wales called Old Griff and Old Griff lived in like the 1950s 1940s, and he was visited by a woman who wrote a book on him and his Miracle Ball. He had a miracle ball that was almost like some kind of a crystalline ball, and he would use this for healing. Now, of course, this is way past, like the actual, like, cunning folk in hospital age. She was a spiritualist herself. So there was also that sense of crystal healing in that. And yet balls were a motif which his balls were all over the place. So it's okay. Yeah. Even if it's not kosher. There may have been something very silly, but it's a good story too. And when you go to the cromlech, the standing stones overlooking that bay stand where he's supposed to have stood, you could almost imagine looking down and seeing this woman praying about in the water.

Speaker 1 00:21:10 Yeah, and I love that. It was. I think you said it was four years ago.

Speaker 1 00:21:13 It were last registered where it was. So that really enchanted me. Like, oh, that's not long ago isn't it?

Speaker 3 00:21:18 Well, Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:21:19 Where is.

Ben Stimson 00:21:20 It now? And when you look at it, we've got I think a lot of people, especially North Americans, tend to think of which law and which is as being centuries ago, like the 1600s during the witchcraft trials. But we have those stories all the way through. A good example of this is Lizzie Beattie, the Brampton Witch, and she lived in the late 1800s, like 1890s, when she was supposed to have passed away. But she had a tea set that she gave to her. I can't think who he is now, but he was like her steward, or he was her caretaker or something like that. And she gave this tea set and said, this tea set has to be like, keep this in the family because it will protect you. And so it's been passed down through the family, and now it's somewhere in, I want to say somebody in Carlisle has it right now.

Ben Stimson 00:22:04 There was a news report written about it a few years ago, and that's only a hundred years ago. But she was like full on, like she had glasses that she uses her peeps skills with scrying glasses. And she had her playing cards that she would be doing divination with and people would give her things because they obviously didn't want to get her wrath. So it's very close to our modern time.

Speaker 1 00:22:23 It is enchanted tea set.

Ben Stimson 00:22:27 Yeah. And enchanted tea. Yeah, yeah. Lizzie Batey of Brampton. Yes.

Speaker 1 00:22:31 Do you have a favorite witch that sticks in your mind that you can tell us listeners about?

Ben Stimson 00:22:36 Yeah. So one of my favorites and I dedicated the book to her is a woman and she's a historical in-hospital, a historical fortune teller from North Wales, Denbigh. So I come from very close to Denbigh, and her name was Bella for a big Bella. And we know that she was a historical individual because a travel writer actually met her and did a little piece of her in 1802, 1803, and she would basically go around the markets of North Wales, and she would be doing fortunes for people.

Ben Stimson 00:23:07 She would be doing astrology sometimes. And she reminds me like the way she would talk in this little description, she could she reminds me of some of the people I know, right? Some people we know. So she's really cool. What happened with her, though, after she died? Because she was so well loved. Is then the legend started by 50 years, 60 years after her death. Suddenly she was not just a fortune teller that was going from marketplace to marketplace. She was suddenly part of a landowner. Witches. So the witches of Anglesey and she was their leader. Or she was like, really connected in and with stories in the 20th century of her being cannibalistic, that she would kill children. So that's how quickly the legends grow. But just because she's so close to where I come from and she's a hometown girl, she's she's very special to me. Yeah, I love her, I love her, and I wonder if there is a gravesite. I want to track down her gravesite because I know it's somewhere in.

Ben Stimson 00:24:00 I'm gonna say it's in Saint Asaph or somewhere like that. And I want to go and lay flowers at her grave.

Speaker 1 00:24:05 Oh.

Ben Stimson 00:24:05 Like vaguely. Yeah. Yeah, because I think that would be nice.

Speaker 1 00:24:08 She'll have a gravestone there. Wiltshire.

Ben Stimson 00:24:10 Oh, yeah. I should hope so. She was. This is where you can really get the both gendered and the class distinctions in these stories, because you really get that sense of that. The idea of the little old witch on the edge of a village being poor, that definitely comes through in the folklore and that definitely comes through of a history, too. I think that we can appreciate that in the 20th century, 21st century, because how many people we know who are of lower income, who live maybe in council housing or on housing estates that are doing terror readings in order to generate some money too? I definitely know people like that. That's what makes the folklore really real to me, because it mirrors modern life.

Speaker 1 00:24:49 This is a bit of a geeky question, but because.

Ben Stimson 00:24:51 Okay.

Speaker 1 00:24:52 Whales and dragons are like, obviously close knit. Is there any dragons in your book or any dragon inspired stories? There's none.

Ben Stimson 00:25:01 Nope. This is what's surprising, right? A lot of North Americans have asked me the same question. Of course, the dragon is really a big symbol for whales, but it's a very ancient one, right? It really comes from the era of like, Arthurian tradition and like a Mabinogi, right? Whereas a lot of the stories in this book are really only from the past 400 years, 500 years. Right. And so I think there might be one story where snakes appear, but the majority, yeah, dragons don't appear. It's an interesting thing. It really shows the multi dimensionality of this tradition. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of the people in this would have been called dragons in their local communities.

Speaker 1 00:25:38 But all dragons just surprised me that actually Wales is very witchy historically. I wonder why that is. Is it to do with the hills and the mountains? Because it's very like organic and natural surroundings.

Speaker 1 00:25:54 Do you think there's I don't know, I'm trying to ask something about the landscape of Wales.

Ben Stimson 00:25:58 If I get your question correctly, there's two pieces. One, I would say when you look at the stories in this, a lot of them are very similar to the stories of witches in Scotland and Wales. And when you look at like when the two sequels of it's eventually come out next year, sometime you can see that there are as many stories, different motifs. But like every village has had its own cunning man or cunning woman, wise people and witches. Right. What's really important with Wales is the understanding that magic was not seen in the same way in Wales as it was in England. In England and Scotland, the idea of which was especially coming from the trials, was that they were unhuman. They were demonic by nature. They were not. They were no longer human. In Wales, however, the idea of a witch, even the word which was imported from English, the idea of magic in Wales was what you did, but it didn't determine who you were.

Ben Stimson 00:26:55 So you had dinner, hospice, the knowing ones who either the cunning folk and cunning women who would be going around healing charming, they would be using their astrology to to find lost things, but they would also be cursing as well. And that wasn't necessarily seen negatively because it was how you used those curses. Magic was something everybody did in Wales in the same way that it was in England and Scotland. But the laws were different, and so there were only actually five witch trials in all of Welsh history, as opposed to the 400 500 in in English history. And it surprises people. People like know they were being burned all over the place. That's not actually true.

Speaker 1 00:27:35 That's my favourite fact that only a handful of lovely witches were getting hurt in Wales.

Ben Stimson 00:27:41 Yeah, and most of them didn't like most of them were not killed or hung for it. They were tried, but they weren't killed. A lot of them were acquitted. And of the five that I like have been again documented. And that doesn't mean that there weren't more after that.

Ben Stimson 00:27:56 There's one story where it may have been that the town took justice into their own ways, but there's no physical evidence. It's just a story. Right. But magic was seen as a resource. What was more important for the communities there? Because they're isolated, they're in the valleys are up in the hills, right up in the mountains was actually about feeling right. They wanted to stop thieves from going and stealing. These are very tight knit communities. Oftentimes they were all related to each other in some way. So if you have a thief going around stealing things, that's going to destroy social cohesion a lot more, much more damaging than if one woman may have wished the butter of somebody else and or still milk or whatever it was. Theft was much bigger, and we can see this reflected in the laws. Welsh law, up until English England imposed their own laws, was much more on theft and the quite severe for theft. Witchcraft? Not so much. So it surprises people. But that, I think, speaks to the lack of understanding of Wales as a culture in history.

Speaker 1 00:29:03 Is there any specifically Welsh magic folklore tradition that you see today that you know is from all the history that you've been looking at?

Ben Stimson 00:29:14 This is a thing. Being away from Wales for 30 years. I've been back and visited, obviously, but I haven't been embedded. There is a great deal of interest right now for like in Druids, for example, a lot of interest in like the old Welsh, England's and England's are like the rhyming poetry that are also used for charms. That's part of the Eisteddfod tradition. So the Staffordshire tradition is the Welsh national cultural event of Welsh language, and you see them all over the place with the National Eisteddfod, which kind of goes from place to place. Then you've got the regional and a lot of Welsh speaking kids will have have grown up in that in that world, and a lot of magic is coming from that. Morris Darling is a really good example of this, right. And her book, when you look at her books and I know Murray. And if Murray is listening to this.

Ben Stimson 00:30:04 Smack me later on if I get this wrong. But a lot of her stuff is about teasing out and refining and bringing and representing like a vision of what witchcraft could be. We know that charming has continued, and there are traditional charm is still about. There's a lot of people who are still trying to refind it. And that's what this book is really for. This book is to bring together all of these sources, because a lot of the folklore also documented authentic Welsh recipes and spells and charms, particularly using things like the Bible, for example, or the Bible as a magic book. And that has continued. But I don't know if people would look at that and be like, oh, that's witchcraft, or oh, that's magic. In the same way. Like I've been part of a Cuban Santeria tradition in the same way that like an old school Cuban abuela grandmother would say, no, I'm a good Catholic. Okay, well, what's the egg doing at the doorways to to clean people off? Well, cognitive dissonance is a thing, so it does exist.

Ben Stimson 00:31:06 There is also a history too. So one of the most famous cunning men of Wales was a man called Doctor John Harris. And he formed a dynasty of cunning folk. So he's a people like the people in the community he'd come to if you needed astrology done, if you wanted to have the charm written to stop witches from attacking your kids. Whatever. Right. If you lost something, you would go and they would do divination. And his house is still there. He still has relatives who are who know that he was in their family tree in the area of Carmarthen, in Panchkula. People can actually go there. And up until the late 1890s, one of his great granddaughters still lived in the house. So that history is still there and is still part of the folklore. Whether people practice it probably do. And my friend Bret Holyhead, he said that he met an actual authentic Welsh charmer at one of the conferences one year, and I believe him, but I think that it's one of those it's very family tradition, very in and of course people practicing things.

Ben Stimson 00:32:01 So grandparents did just because it's superstition or it's something lucky to do. So it's hard to say. It's hard to say if that's not a cop out to say no.

Speaker 1 00:32:11 I know, and we do things, don't. We're just because we're brought up with it. It's like a family tradition. My last guest, Kaitlyn, was saying, when you get a purse in Edinburgh, they have to. I can't remember what they called it. They have to put a coin in the purse for the baby, and that gives them look throughout their life. And that's gorgeous. Them little bits of witchcraft I really love, just tiny little things.

Ben Stimson 00:32:33 It's little things, right. And it's sort of like when you see what was that kilim turnover. Yeah. The yeah I like Callum Turner. He's good. Yeah. We have it as part of the culture. We have it as part of the culture coming up to the New year singing Auld Lang Syne or we used to do this and I think it's a very northern thing, going out the back door and coming in around to the front door.

Ben Stimson 00:32:54 Yeah. It's a ritual.

Speaker 1 00:32:55 Yeah, yeah.

Ben Stimson 00:32:56 It's that check. If you look at it that way.

Speaker 1 00:32:58 And don't do your laundry on New Year's Day, an excuse to get out and do it. Chores?

Ben Stimson 00:33:03 Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:33:05 And of course, we can't talk about magic and whales without mentioning the goddess. Do you want to say it? How do you say it?

Ben Stimson 00:33:12 Yeah. Kevin. Yeah. Give it away. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:33:16 I can't say anything. If it's.

Ben Stimson 00:33:17 Oh, I know my accent. Honestly, I have four different accents. I have a northern accent. I have a Welsh accent. I have a neutral British accent and then a Canadian accent. I don't know where I am until I start speaking.

Speaker 1 00:33:30 I can hear the Welsh in this interview.

Ben Stimson 00:33:33 Kevin Quinn is an interesting character because she shows up maybe in a lot of historical records. Christopher Hughes, who is the Anglesey Druid Order head, has done a wonderful, wonderful book looking at. Okay, there's this black Sal figure in this particular legend if it's not connected and black.

Ben Stimson 00:33:53 So of course is it's something that occurred when I was associated with it. Must be the same character, right? So you can see how over the centuries, her character developed and became more and more. But she is connected to flint aged Lake Bala in North Wales. And people go there all the time. There's like a lot of Welsh practitioners go and lay offerings and do ritual there. I know Christopher Hughes does and I still have to make pilgrimage there. I was so close. I was in Wrexham when I first came over and I was so close, but we ended up not going. But I still have to make it over there. But she is a huge figure and she's a huge figure because she's well known outside of Wales, particularly in neopaganism. She became this really big central figure, and I feel like a lot of people didn't really know what she was. Because, again, people are relying on sources that have been created by other sources but have been written by people that weren't Welsh.

Ben Stimson 00:34:46 And so now that we have a lot of really good, grounded Welsh writers putting information out there. I feel like her visitors sense, anyways that she's becoming more well-known in that way. I like to think of her as the great catalyst, so she's very alchemical. She is. When you see the chase. So for those who don't know, the story is that she had a really ugly son, Maureen, and she wanted to give him as much as she could to give him a good head start in life. She knew that he wouldn't be beautiful, but she could give him wisdom and she could give him inspiration and that would be valued.

Speaker 1 00:35:27 Excuse my shoddy internet, having a little paddy there.

Ben Stimson 00:35:30 Because in that society he could become a bard and a bard connected to to the kings or princesses, I should say. So she devised. So Kevin is the wife of the lord of Tegea, who is, if we look at it, the god of that lake. He. His castle is supposed to be inside the lake itself.

Ben Stimson 00:35:48 And so she is his consort, and so she gathered all of these herbs in order to start a brew that would take a year and a day to complete. And she found a boy and a blind man, and set them to tending the fire for her as she went around and into her rituals and her gathering, and continued to stoke for fire. And just as the year in the end day, just as the ending was coming. Suddenly three sparks of inspiration, 2 or 3 drops of inspiration emerged out of the cauldron, carried the one's cauldron and and the boy green back. Little green sucked his finger and he ingested. Those three were all like the distillation of that year long process. All of the other liquid turned into poison, which is an alchemical process. And then the cauldron burst. So Sheridan was livid and chased him. But because he had ingested his magic for his inspiration, he was able to change his form. And so he chased each other around North Wales or around the area, and every time he changed into something, she changed into the other natural predator of that, he changed into a fish.

Ben Stimson 00:36:58 She changed into an eagle. He changed into a corn of barley. She changed into a black hen. And then she ingested him. She held him inside. She became pregnant with him. And nine months later he was reborn. And he went on to become the bard. Taliesin. It really a powerful story. Yeah. She's great. She's really cool. And again, she's connected to the landscape. You can go to the lake that she did this in. And same with all of the other stories in this book. You can go to these places. They're not just somehow in the ether. They're in the landscape. So go there.

Speaker 1 00:37:35 Do you work with her in your magic?

Ben Stimson 00:37:38 I do, and I don't. It's one of those things I have a court of spirits and deities that I work with. They tend to be ones that I see in my life. So like Hermes is a really important one because he's a lord of communication. Communication has been an issue in my life because of my accent, because of my dyspraxia.

Ben Stimson 00:37:57 I had to go through speech therapy being understood, but also in counseling like he's he's omnipresent. Same with weird. This idea of working with weird, as I was saying before, right? Really identifying it in my life and seeing how it has affected me. And I start to work with it and start to connect with it, carry it when I have worked with before. But it's not as strong. And yeah, it's convoluted, but she is a powerful spirit. She's certainly a spirit that is very present in Wales. I'm because I'm in Northampton Insurance. It's a little different down here. It freaked me out when I was starting to connect with the spirits of this landscape, because I tried to work with the spirits of whatever landscape I'm in that feels really it feels appreciable. It feels respectful, but sometimes it can be a little tricky because it doesn't feel like there is anything here in Northamptonshire here. I freaked out when I first moved here because the landscape is felt to me, very dead. It felt like nothing was going on and when I came to realise is actually the whole landscape, here is the landscape of the crossroads, because it is the Midlands and people move.

Ben Stimson 00:39:10 People have to move through Northamptonshire, particularly in order to get up to the north and get over to East Anglia, go over to Wales right in Birmingham. And so it is literally the crossroads. And I've always been at the crossroads in my life. So of course it was a familiar feeling. It wasn't what I was expecting. So that's how I tried to work. So I've carried when because I haven't been there yet. She's very theoretical to me. I think when I actually go there and experience and lay my head down to the earth and obey myself, I think I'll see if that's something that I if I get a calling to work that. Yeah. Oh, that makes sense. I feel like I just went on and on.

Speaker 1 00:39:47 Okay, that is amazing because I agree as well. I do feel the same.

Ben Stimson 00:39:50 It is. It's a very weird zone because it's, as I said, crossroads. And that web of fate, literally the web of destiny is really something that I've worked a lot with and it's very familiar.

Ben Stimson 00:40:01 So it caught me off guard when I came here and it felt so familiar, even though I'd never been here before. It's a very different energy from, say, going up north. A couple of months ago, I went to visit Knaresborough and of course stopped off to say hello to to our lovely mother Shipton. Right. I went to Wales and there's an energy of Wales. I went to Glastonbury a couple like a month ago and there's an energy to Glastonbury. Not sure what kind of energy it is, but it's an energy, right? But here it's just again, it was that familiar feeling and it caught me off guard because I was like, really? But now I'm here. Now it makes sense. And the spirits here are of that crossroads. And so it feels empowering being in this landscape.

Speaker 1 00:40:42 Are you staying there? Are you going to go back to Wales?

Ben Stimson 00:40:44 I'm gonna stay here. Yeah, I'm going to stay here. I it would be a long journey for me to get to places like Tread Wells.

Ben Stimson 00:40:50 I just went into a talk at Tread Wells last week, and there's a lot more opportunity for me, at least now, to go and do stuff. I wanted to be in a place where I could. I could have a good radius because of my work, because of the of my research. I want to have access to those places it makes sense to be in, at least not maybe exactly where I am now, but within the radius of this area. But I did when I came up to Leeds. I did love Leeds. It's just so expensive.

Speaker 4 00:41:16 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 00:41:18 How lovely.

Speaker 1 00:41:19 Can you tell my listener where we can find you?

Ben Stimson 00:41:22 So you can find everything on Amazon.com? You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, really at Ben Stimpson author. And I've got my podcast on there. I do have a load of my talks on there too. So the Treadwell talk is on there as well. And yeah, you can find my books online. You can find it at the History Press or my first Llewellyn book online at any of the retailers that you can buy books from.

Ben Stimson 00:41:47 Also, go to your local bookshop in order to them. They can usually get it too. So yeah, you can find me. Reach out if you have any questions or any interesting facts you want to share, and I look forward to it.

Speaker 1 00:41:58 What's your podcast called?

Ben Stimson 00:41:59 Essence Podcast with Ben Stimson. So I've had people like Dave Hubbard has been on there, I've had Maturin, I've had Laura Tempest Zakharov, Amy Blackthorne. A lot of the North American ones are on there, and so I'm going to be revamping that and starting to to speak to UK practitioners. So I'd love to have you on if you'd be interested. It would be a joy to have another conversation with you.

Speaker 1 00:42:20 Thank you very.

Ben Stimson 00:42:21 Much and put you in the hot seat.

Speaker 4 00:42:22 Oh, God.

Speaker 1 00:42:23 I'm not.

Speaker 4 00:42:24 I just feel like.

Speaker 1 00:42:25 I'm not that brainy. Like when I get in on the spot, my brain just goes.

Speaker 4 00:42:28 By.

Speaker 1 00:42:29 And there's nothing in there.

Ben Stimson 00:42:30 Oh, it's all good.

Speaker 4 00:42:31 It's like tumbleweeds.

Speaker 1 00:42:33 You mentioned books as well, so you got two books so need to see the book before we let you.

Speaker 3 00:42:39 The other book.

Ben Stimson 00:42:41 It's called Ancestral Whispers A Guide to Developing Ancestral Veneration Practices, a very different type of book. This is true Llewellyn Worldwide, and it is a guide to developing ancestral practice. So one of the practices I was connected with, as I said, was Sukhumi and the ritual practice from West Africa based in Cuba. And a huge part of that is working with the ancestors. And when I started to work with my own British ancestors, I saw that there was not really anything written out there that didn't come from a practice already. So a lot of there were a lot of books, but it's like, how do you do ancestor veneration in Chinese tradition? How do you do ancestor veneration and hoodoo? How do you do veneration? Right. So this book is a guidebook to developing your own practice with your own spirits, your own ancestors, regardless of who you are. And it's really a it's almost like a therapy session between you and your ancestors. I was quite proud of it. Came out about two years ago now or something like that, and I'm still quite proud of it.

Ben Stimson 00:43:40 It's my baby. It's my first born. I bully it as much as I can, but it's good.

Speaker 1 00:43:45 I need to get that in my vast collection.

Speaker 6 00:43:48 I have no idea what you mean.

Speaker 1 00:43:50 I don't know, I could tell. Ben's got a massive bookcase absolutely full to the brim of books. Which. Mine's there. It's not quite as impressive.

Ben Stimson 00:44:00 It's pretty good going, though. Yeah, it's very aesthetic.

Speaker 1 00:44:03 I know I've got a pile next to my bed, which ain't so aesthetic. It's like a tower. Anything else you'd like to add?

Ben Stimson 00:44:11 This book? As we talked about this book and the sequels, eventually, when they come out, is designed for people to actually go to the places. I've tried to include as many of the actual physical stuff that people can go and visit in the book. And it's designed really, so that people can take detours, or if they're going to Wales for a weekend, and particularly for people in Wales to go to other parts of Wales to go and uncover these stories.

Ben Stimson 00:44:35 Because witches and the witch ancestors are all around us, we may just not know about them because they haven't been written. The stuff hasn't been collected. If you buy the book, go to the places. Imagine you're in the story itself and and connecting commune. That's really what one of my big goals was for people to actually visit the country, because it is one of the best countries in the world. I'm a little biased, but it is one of the most beautiful in my opinion. And and I loved it. And yeah, for 30 years I had massive life. And so now I'm over here with this handy guidebook that I've done. I've got places I need to go. Yeah, that's what I would add. Thank you for having me on. It was wonderful talking to you today.

Speaker 1 00:45:13 Could you say something like, I don't know, a sentence in Welsh? It'd be great to finish the podcast with something like that.

Ben Stimson 00:45:21 Do we even like doing dusky? Come. Like so. I don't speak Welsh, but I'm learning Welsh.

Ben Stimson 00:45:28 Thank you. Thank you.