I had to miss the druids autumn equinox celebration on Primrose Hill today but my lovely friends sent me some gorgeous photos. “I have conversed with the spiritual sun. I found him on Primrose Hill.” (William Blake) 🌞

Morning coffee view.

The colours of beachcombing

Asemic writing landscape.

"Witch Fetish (Portrait of Maggi Hamblin)" by Arhur Lett-Haines Mixed media. 1962

"Three circles." Concrete and found driftwood charcoal

He spells sea spells on the sea shore

Six black stones.

Currently very much enjoying the prophecies of Robert Nixon, aka The Cheshire Prophet, whose verses are so fabulously alive!

Driftwood lines #asemicwriting #asemicpoetry #chaosmagick

Today's hagstone.

Conversation with the shoreline.

I was recently gifted a copy of my own book that ws found secondhand and covered in annotations! I haven't done much to promote my book recently but if you fancy taking a spirit-haunted walk on the South Downs Way with me, there are some links below...

A beautiful beginning to the day.

Sultry would be a good word for the top end of Langstone Harbour these last couple of days. Thick haze, opressive heat, ancient landscape.

The most mercurial of birds.

Swimming under a full red moon has been a really moving and powerful thing these last few days.

Dreams of Witches edited by Christina Oakley-Harrington is such a great concept. An anthology of writings, mainly Victorian, on witchcraft, magic, paganism and so on which would have likely been known by Gerald Gardner and the original New Forest Coven that created Wicca.

These dead ivy tangles at Kensal Green Cemetery look like something from a 'spirit painting'

The next stage on my pilgrimage around the Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London, this time moving widdershins around from Highgate I find myself in Kensall Green. A completely different vibe. A suspended, silent place. Everything here is lingering.

Miserere Nobis

I made a folding bone throwing divination mat. Not complete yet but getting the hang of it as I go along.

Create an incantatory sigil. Write an invocation (here from a PGM call to Hermes, cut the lines into sound chunks, (not necessarily syllables) then rearrange them into a chant-able sequence...

A friend recently found a copy of my book "Paths of the Dead" for sale secondhand and ... someone has covered it in notes, many of them very perceptive, and I have never felt so ...read!

Had a really good day today running my "Extreme Restraint" poetry workshop in which we sampled the delights of cut-up, found, redaction and erasure poetry. Lovely bunch of participants who really threw themselves into it.

@ianmcdougall.bsky.social Strange grafitti in the chancel of St Martin on the Walls in Wareham.

Swimming under this moon a few days ago. This photo is unfiltered, it looked just like that.

A lame fox. Back leg coathangered from its hip, nose as low as the flapping foot. A broken guide, a wounded instinct.

At the end of the month I have to give a bit of a talk about Radclyffe Hall's poetry so I decided I finally ought to read The Well of Loneliness... so far so good one chapter in!

Kathleen Raine, often at her best with a short beautiful thought on which to meditate, with an image from the natural world to ground it.

Would love to see you at this poetry workshop I am running in a couple of weeks time. Contact the bookshop to book a place. Please share widely.

"Invocation" by Kathleen Raine

The tentacles of Highgate?

A huge stand of Rosebay Willowherb behind and over some of the graves in Highgate Cemetery.

Part two of my pilgrimage around the Magnificent Seven Cemeteries in London, Highgate West. Near tropical today, but cooler than than being out in the sun.

The net houses at Hastings in broiling heat today.

A definite theme in the bookshop in Hastings today!

Rempstone Stone Circle in Dorset. Despite being quite close to the road it is a small sanctuary, a sacred space of quiet and depth. Bronze age. Made, uniquely, of local sandstone not sarsens. Half destroyed in the 18th century.

Come on people! Visited the stunning Rempstone Stone Circle below Nine Barrow Down in Dorset today and found is nearly shrouded in nylon and plastic. Removed the worst of it. The shells, stones, feathers, fine, whatevs but this other stuff would have stayed in the locale forever.

Was delighted to pick up this early impression of Kathleen Raine's first poetry collection today. Imagine having your first book illustrated by Barabara Hepworth!

Boxgrove Priory today under sultry skies.

I would probably have bought this book on 'Brazillian Voodoo and Spiritism' anyway, but opening it up to discover the posthumous Jake Stratton-Kent bookplate basically turns it into a relic!

Sky like a painted ceiling this evening as the last rays of the solstice sun brushed the clouds.

I am going to be running a poetry workshop called "Exreme Restraint" in July. Please share it around a bit if you are one of my poetry tweeps.

St Hubert's Church, Idsworth. One of my favourite places in the world, this shallow valley full of scattering swallows and the mewing of buzzards. Sultry this morning in a building heat under a lid of low clouds.

A door from the Bloomsbury Group's rural sanctuary in Sussex at Charleston, decorated by Vanessa Bell.

The book covers designed by Vanessa Bell on display at "Charleston at Lewes". I have been to all the exhibitions there since it opened and they haven't yet been less than excellent.

Just found these two random photos of flints on the South Downs on my phone.

"The wound of kingship is exile" - Anthony Powell in 'The Fisher King'

An amazing perambulation of the East Side of Highgate Cemetery today. The first of a kind of pilgrimage of the Magnificent Seven to be done this summer.