Reading List

Fantastic eerie short about what happens when the woods love you back. (Misogynist? Kinda, yeah; Blackwood made some overt and implicit choices about the female protagonist of this one, but it's still a very readable story)

Oh crikey - this, this. Just so good. It is getting close to Christmas-time, and something seems to be after plucky rural boy Will, emanating from the earth and folklore. Children's eerie - frightening all the way through, and with the mood of a dream, slipping in and out of history and time. I think I have more of the book highlighted for my Commonplace than I do not. Wonderful read as well - for middle children and older. Incomparible to the previous book in the Sequence, Over Sea, Under Stone, which I thought was pants.

Viewers who like to avoid content by problematic authors should be aware that the writer of the original book was convicted for something absolutely heinous.

Oh crikey. I watch a lot of things like this, but this blows them out of the water. Two boys become involved in goings on in the hills - timeslips, standing stones that move, giants, sleepers. Mature and tender, and containing one jawdropper of a scene in particular, i loved every moment of it. Highly recommended.

Based on a book, which I liked less; the book feels like a jumble, but the serial has a moodiness that draws all the scrappy parts into an overarching mood of the landscape waking up.

One has to draw one's own red lines about content by problematic people - and in this case 'problematic' is an inappropriate understatement. Normally, one ends up weighing the quality of the work, the heaviness of the problem and the capacity the person has to do continued harm. This serial is one of my favourite things I've seen for the project; I if loved it any less, I might weigh the author's behaviour more. But at least he is dead.

It's this, the thing that we do; it's this. Everybody should read it. I loved every page.

Very unsettling Haunted Generation serial, about a group of children in the Welsh hills in the holidays going slowly strange in the land and the folklore. Dark, adult, artsy and odd. Contains some spooky ceramic. Not really for children. I didn't love it, but its a key text in this tradition of British pastoral weird. Based on a book, which I liked far better.

implicit mental health themes

Worth your time: a short teleplay about a writer suffering writers block, migranes, depression and visions from the soil in an isolated cottage. Atmospheric and symbolic, with the nature of the mystery pleasingly unresolved, and with wonderful sound design.

Flashing/Strobing; gore and threat.

This is 90 minutes of uninterrupted "that thing that I like" - psychedelic pastoralism and people going mad in the wilderness. It's actual horror, so skip it if you struggle with this but it's extremely recommended otherwise. Trippy forest gestalt minds, emanations from mysterious stones, the proufound disabling that comes with the loss of your shoes, and mushroom spores. My friend who also does this kind of paganism rates this as a personal favourite influence.

Read in Weird Woods: Tales from the Haunted Forests of Britain ed. John Miller. Short and spooky story of a man getting lost in sinister fairywoods. Fabulous.

I initially categorised this, wrongly, as children's - because I think these are the books with which it best fits. Fantasy and adventure stories, that are fiction and have a certain strange something about them. JS&MN is particularly tied in with a mythos of the north and has some excellent fairy content, as well as being something of an outlier in the historical fiction genre in making a proper protagonist of a working class black character of the Regency era. Something a bit more grown up than the children's selections and very good. And spooky! Such a foggy book. It's worked its way into my mythology, and will surely do the same to yours.

Wonderful book, a masterpiece. In an alternative regency England, magic is revived by two very different magicians, and fairy-things lurk at the threshold. First of all, just a damn good read, written in a faux-Austen style but filling in some of the gaps of Austen's worldview too. Some of the best fairy writing I know, eerie and beautiful. Lunar&Stellar, Land (fairylore)

Wonderful. Spoken word over ambient, the record of a day's walk along an evocative coastline: following in the path of musicians, filmmakers, and historians. Extremely us, essential listening. The right kind of trippy. Recommended for people who are not yet sure what "Stellar" is.

sexual violence, moderately graphic

I was psyched to give this a glowing recommendation, right up until the last ten minutes or so; I'm cranky at the use of sexual violence, I can read its intention within the film but feel its cheap regardless. Aside from that, a by-turns bucolic and fractured image of a rapidly-vanishing little village, mostly lulling you through image and sound - meditative, a nice thing to screen and to ponder; perfect, really, for the concept of the Reading List, for "sermons" you can attend by doing nothing more than sitting, if you're a person who can do little more than that. And yet - and yet - here we go. Requiem is iconic, and that's unquestionable. I liked it, I guess, but when your film is a sensory jumble to provoke and evoke ideas in the viewer, what you're left with are those impressions; and my impressions were - I'm pissed off about the use of sexual violence in pagan film - and this is an especially egregious example. Begrudgingly, it gets four stars, for being bang on topic and nicely made. But view at your own discretion.

It's that thing I like, and lots of it. Big computers, stone circles, hippy cults, post-apocalyptic landscapes, and just a pervasive strangeness; if you're uncertain about what I mean when I start discussing the weird 70s, you could do worse than watch this and ponder. And just a great film, as well. A professor is trying to find his missing grandaughter, in a near-future Britain which has become strange. There are ley lines. I go back and forth on the other Quatermass serials, but the consensus seems to be that they're folk horror adjacent; Quatermass II is that characteristic mix of the rural with the industrial installation, and the Pit - the Pit is so, so good - is about things unburied. They're all good telly

Transparently autobiographical, this book veers between awkwardly written observations of the daily life of an over-sensitive aspiring writer (whose name is DEFINITELY not Arthur) - and weird happenings in the countryside, cast in luminous, frightening prose. When that happens, it definitely rivals The Great God Pan for intensity and awe. Read, and copy out the best passages into your Commonplace Book, and then never read again.

An anthology of short stories about eerie goings on in the woods. Ideal! Stories that stood out to me include: The Name Tree by Mary Webb, Ancent Lights by Algernon Blackwood, and The Man Who Went Too Far by E.F. Benson

I found this very moving, and it helped me solidify a lot of what I wanted to do at an early stage (especially the theme of the Solar vs Lunar, the outsider and the establishment; the ancient truth coming up from the fen; the importance of a heretical christianity to the pagan tradition in Britain) and plus, it's just Great. Whatever you do, don't tell Dave what I've done with his work: he'll be furious

Love that this stuff was just put on the telly in the 1970s on a Saturday. It was a time when public broadcasting had faith in its audience: contemporary television patronises the working class, is rooted in a snooty assumption that the ordinary viewer wants the cheapest and stupidest things. The 1970s teleplay tradition believed you didn't have to talk down to the everyday viewer. You could put challenging plays on in prime time slots, and make that kind of culture available to all. When you trust your viewers, they come along with you.

rape and suicide, both quite vivid

Ehh; so it's on trend - a long-lost tragedy in the rural landscape remembered by a medium, surrounded by impassive men recording her - with some nice collaged techniques. But I didn't like it - too straightforward in plot and insufficiently interesting in delivery.

I've got to say, I'm not fond of Stones, but it's probably essential viewing regardless. Its THE definitional example of a particular kind of 1970s kids weird and pagan-scientific vibes. By the standards of the time, it's stagey and slow - and it really benefits from you watching it one episode at a time every week as it originally aired. It was NOT made to be bingewatched. But its imagery is spooky and memorable. And it's changed how I felt about Avebury too, which is no longer merely a stones experience for me; but one which includes the surrounding village and churchyard, not merely a strangeness of stones but how odd it must be to have a village inside them.

Weird Britain marginalia - a short advertisement for driving holidays by car and the Shell petrol company, which features poet Betjeman talking reassuringly over historic shots of Avebury. Short and sweet, but for completionists only.

Twitter microfiction about the strange little town of Hookland. Short but sweet and very us; and some of the writing, especially by Nolan, is just gorgeous. My Commonplace Book is filled with quotes. Southwell uses his position in the twitter folk horror scene to set a very strong line about racist and classist behaviour in the space, which is also very cool. Link

Unsettling serial based on the book Marianne Dreams, and in turn the film Paperhouse. A disabled boy and girl start meeting one another in their dreams. Non-essential, but worthwhile and I enjoyed it a lot. Scary.

Racist? Oh yes, very yes. And weird ideas about gender too, before you give this to an actual child.

Compellingly weird - but really good, especially in its depiction of amoral, strange fairy creatures, and the unexpectedly successful idea of an island made from stories. The racist subplot about Native Americans is irredeemable and would need removing before giving to a modern child; but once you start contemplating taking the scissors to it, it's sort of hard to know where to stop, because the gender stuff is also...very...odd...but I think it's this weirdness that gives the adult reader something to chew on. If you're short on time, then just read the opening chapters until the children arrive at Neverland, because this is both most iconic and useful. My edition also contained Peter Pan in Kensington Park, which isn't worth your time; whimsical sentimental victorian fairy stuff for children, but without any of the oddness and memorability of the main book.

persistent background racist vibes

I disliked this book; it's for children and unlike some authors, there's little here to appeal to adults - all "fantasy", no "weird". I'm fed up of horrible little posh children in books, and this text is an especially egregious example because all the rural locals are baddies, and it's inexplicably racist too - inventing ways to bring in evil Arabs and the joys of colonial expansion. It's sort-of on a par with Box of Delights and Narnia (and owes not a little to Enid Blyton); and one is suddenly aware of why Garner was so angry when he wrote the Owl Service, which is the answer to books like this in which the mumsy housekeeper and rural lad who speaks strange are not permitted subjectivity.

So yes, notionally relevant - a story of Arthurian secret buried in Cornwall - but I would only recommend this to parents of children (age 7-10), and then only with the caveat that surely this tale could have been told without getting weird about race.

BBC adaptation, and very close to the spirit and content of the book. I warmed up to this eventually; the first section, I wanted to strangle the children, but I loved the (totally OTT unsubtle draggy) White Witch, and Aslan was incredibly well done; I loved the slowly thawing landscape, I suppose I hadn't thought about Narnia as a springtime watch rather than a winter one; and the kids are, ultimately, really good in their roles. They do the book justice. The late 80s is the era of begrudgingly finding a small role for some black people somewhere, and I have some Questions about the politics of the most prominent black performers being Aslan's attendents who are also some kind of animal? It's a bad choice, and uncomfortable. But, all told, this is a solid adaptation and a nice way to spend an afternoon. Spiritual content? Not really, or nothing distinctive that I picked out. Sometimes, it's nice to feel like a child in front of wintery weekend telly.

Really charming, trippy part-animated, part-acting BBC adaptation of the story - short but sweet, and weird. I love the imagery of the Snow Queen's face filled with stars.

Of-the-era, but lacking true magic. Jean Marsh is always great as an evil queen. Took me ages to get through because i kept wandering off.

I loathed this. Abyss preserve us from horrible posh little children waddling smugly around the landscape having jolly adventures. Better known as the television series, which is a Christmas favourite. In the case of both this and the series, I did not read it at the right age to have any real fondness for it. A chore to finish reading.

Not as good as the television adaptation but alright.

See also: Marianne Dreams and Escape into Night. Film version of the story, and in my opinion the least effective. I love some of the cinematic images here, and yet the film is less scary and cops out significantly. The protagonist's main terror experienced in the dreamworld is a monstrous version her own father, who pursues them with an axe; and yet in the waking world, this is explained away as unhappiness that pa is so often away, and the child apologises to him for having had bad dreams. This seems like it is not the way that story was pointing, and it peters out towards a reassuring ending in which the nuclear family is restored.

Wait a century for a film about interwar fairies, then two come along at once. 1997's other adaptation of the Cottingley Fairies story. This one is for children, and based directly on the history. It has a mature mood, dealing with the trauma of war and with cameos by interesting figures of the period, and a cutesy mood aimed more at adults who do not believe in anything than for children or escapists that take the existence of wonders as a given so the story can progress. I watched this in a double-bill with Photographing Fairies (1997), which is better.

Cor blimey. I was recommended this Moomins episode by a friend, an unsettling piece about the Lady of the Cold. Does not disappoint and will be on my own Winter Queen watchlist. Source for this story is Moominland Midwinter (1957) which I should also find and read. Live-action episode, in Finnish.

Pants; the first episode of the series that hasn't been solid gold and, by any standard, very generic and bland. A couple of nice lines, here and there.

Short but sweet little children's chiller - about children encountering witchlore on a spooky rural holiday - of special interest because the author is Stewart Farrar, actual witch and co-author of What Witches Do. I liked it.

Bob Fisher's essay on the Haunted Generation was extremely influental to me. Here, he puts out lovely little radio music shows with some of the sounds and textures he sees as essential to that mood - folky, cosy, a touch unsettling, very autumnal. I love it.

The Christmas ghost tradition for the under 12s. This film has a nice focus on the human tension between the villagers who have been there for generations, and the people from the city who have moved from the city. Astercote is a mythic missing village, like Dunwich. I can see why this hasn't come to the iconic stature of Owl Service or Children of the Stones, but at the same time, I thought it was reallly rather good. Review available. Based on a book, which I haven't read. Unlike a lot of our children's media, this one is actually suitable for older children (8 - 12)

oh, i loved this. West Country Tales is such an underrated series; quiet, beautifully written - really more like a radioplay with pictures - and gently really spooky. This is about an older woman in a large, empty house, set in her ways, who starts suspecting there is something in her house. No spiritual value, really, but perfectly done as an eerie short.

Found through a Bob Fisher recommendation - not really rural, but definitely creepy. Adapted as Escape into Night. Learn more

upsetting

Hoo boy. Nasty little teleplay from the Dead of Night anthology series. Some intensely middle class yuppies have bought a lovely rural cottage and are having a nice dinner party; but the past is afoot in the timbers. Openly socialist, and uncompromising. Despite a budget of nothing and well-constructed acting, writing and direction - it is harrowing and scary, and successful as not just ghost but weird fiction. I'll be watching this again. With a stiff gin. There is also a radio adaptation of the play, which I look forward to listening to soon.

Spooky little children's short set at an abandoned train station

Pre-empting the 70s hauntology music trend by quite a few years, this is cited by Bob Fisher, Simon Reynolds and others as an especially affecting example of the genre. It's never had that impact on me, but it is pretty good; recommended only for fans of the genre or for those exploring this area. Its energy is broadly Lunar-Stellar, something of memory, something of grey, great to space out to.

The article that changed my life! And you can read it at his blog, which is jam packed with this stuff. What if there was something odd about childhood in the 1970s, something that was very, very haunted...

Web-friend of Mark Fisher, Reynolds explores the trend of retro music - from reproduction concerts and the music Hall of Fame, to the influence of youtube and hauntology. This is a great read, you're constantly learning something new; but isn't an immediate priority unless hauntological music is a specialist area for you. For this reason, 2 stars; but if I was rating for my personal enjoyment, I'd give it 4. Related to Disconnection as well - he discusses how the internet has shaped our perception of time, the way we enjoy music, and the way we remember.

First album in the Ghost Box series, featuring songs that would be reprieved on the (better) album the Willows. Connesseurs only.

My basic take on Belbury Poly is that there is one exceptional album in amongst all of this, with there being a standout or two on every album. On this one, it's probably Pan's Garden or Scarlet Ceremony. I do listen to this stuff, well, constantly - so Owl's Map is on my rotation - but I wouldn't start with this one.

A little folky, a little spooky, and a little ambient: I like this one very much. The Willows and Caermaen both making reference to rural weird fiction; the sung words of Caermaen is assembled from the voices of long-dead folk recordings to create a new melody sung by ghosts. Not essential, but my favourite Belbury Poly album, and a good place to start with retro-1970 hauntology music.

Heavy film, with suicide theme, scene of sexual violence and violent images

I really enjoyed this, tho I wouldn't describe it as Fencraft-essential. I found it powerfully dissociative, though, so that's really part of the Lunar-Stellar path - if you've never exerienced dissociation before, it might be instructive to watch this. Besides that, it's a predominantly Solar film - about connectedness, the loss of it, and its perversion. Review at the link.

IMO, triggering content for anyone with a self injury history

Quiet, straightforward folk horror about hysteria and standing stones. I liked it, but wouldnt prioritise it (for either cineaste or spiritual reasons)

Very scary, for fans of horror only

Really nice contemporary folk horror, drawn directly from witch trial transcripts - giving the mythos a strange, unfamiliar vibe. With a particularly Stellar current, relating to the inability of this family to survive the wilderness and its fears. Of special interest to those who like traditional witchcraft.

Classic Hammer horror, based on the Wheatley book, about a Holmes-ish aristocrat investigating Satanic goings on in the forest. Absurdly posh, but scary too.

fundamentally conceptually racist (anti-Black)

Early folk horror - written by Nigel Kneale. Nice creepy rural village, good scene-setting for forms of community creepiness, great climactic scene; but pulpy and very racist. Review available at the link.

one scene of very strong sexual violence; ambiently soft-core porn mood; quite scary

One of three films identified as "the unholy trinity", establishing and defining the folk horror genre. BoSC was my favourite of the three, with an unsettling grungy mood and great traditional witchcraft imagery; but is definitely sexploitation pulp, with a nasty misogynist undercurrent. Still, it sort of works, because certain sexualised fears/hysteria about women have always been part of witchcraft in the cultural imagination, both in the Tudor period and in the witchcraft revival and now; and it's in a similar zone to The VVitch in capturing the sort of film a person of the 16th century might have made about witches. Recommended for fans of boobs.

Review forthcoming, but its very good. It's a comedy. You can see why generations of pagans have taken this one to heart, the seductive realism with which Summerisle is created, a utopia always just out of reach. And it's soundtrack is gorgeous in its own right.

Picked this up at a charity shop because it had a 1970s font and a picture of a ferret on the cover; has a similar literary energy to like, an airport novel. I liked it: a man inherits a polecat after the murder of her owner, who may have been a cunning man. Lots of tidbits about networks of the traditional witchcraft cult, otherworldly powers, as well as the awkward small-town reputation he slowly accumulates. Persistently a bit weird about foreign people, in various different ways. Definitely part of the trend, probably not worth seeking out specially, but read it if you see it.

A three hour documentary about the folk horror genre. Mostly worth your time for scribbling down the titles as they appear. For a film this long, it has very little to say; look forward to insights like "folk horror...is about the landscape...". Divided into sections, I found the parts on American and international folk horror far more compelling because of their unfamiliarity. Begrudgingly, you had probably better see it - but you are probably better off getting a list of featured films and seeing them instead.

So, so good. Recommended as a meditation on Walking, the importance of just being present in the land for developing gnosis; a slow and steady, incredibly creepy little landscape horror story, I think everyone should watch this one.

Strong suicide theme throughout.

Just *squeaking* into the bounds of allowable films for the project due to the presence of a spooky rural pub - love a good spooky rural pub - no, I would not watch this for spiritual insight, but yes - it is a masterpiece, perhaps the most iconic version of a werewolf story.

I really liked this one, recommended. A slowburn creepy story; review available here. You can't get it on DVD, more's the pity - it deserves a good restoration (though somebody is distributing a VHS rip), so watch it on youtube at the link.

The original; I liked it, but not much to say spiritually.

Playscript. Published in "New English Dramatists 7". Simmering tension among strangers working as apple-pickers, and old, bloody superstitions. Plays are always best watched, not read; and this has a lot of written-out-dialect, as well as being quite disorienting and odd. I basically wouldn't recommend you read it, and it has minimal spiritual value; though, I suspect it's rather good on stage (in a horny sort of way)

one scene of sexual violence; pulpy gore throughout

Superior pulp trash, a very fun folk horror adaptation of a very bad Bram Stoker book: not really on theme, but I enjoyed it. An archaeologist uncovers a mysterious temple leading to cult shenanigans. Stars a young Hugh Grant as a toff with a destiny, and a young Peter Capaldi, and an evil diva snake aristocrat.

Suicide theme (lighthearted, encouraging, but not depressing)

Very good, though non essential, supernatural biker pulp flick. Acid dreams, stone circles, surely the true inspiration for the song Don't Fear the Reaper, and just incredibly watchable, anarchic, moreish. I'd probably categorise this as maybe psychedelic pastoral or psychedelic folklore rather than folk horror exactly, but you'll definitely know what I mean, it's British weird for sure.

Children's movie, absolutely one of my favourites, you won't learn much from it but it's always good to have "cosy little villages with a creepy edge" content on your mental roster. Rare Fencraft children's film you could actually show your children! Review at the link.

Hanging theme and imagery throughout

Absolutely wonderful; a great adaptation of my favourite M.R. James short story. Worthwhile, too: that trick with the binoculars as a possible magical method.

Flashing throughout and some difficult suicide imagery.

I'm too impatient for Tarkovsky, so this is really all my fault; big fan of a good dead-wife-on-a-spaceship movie though and passionate about the George Clooney Solaris remake. Anyway, this is that but with explosions. Classic 90s disaster-event-effects movie, with a smarter better movie hiding somewhere. Sam Neil and Lawrence Fishburne are always a good time, but not the unsettling Stellar space weird I had hoped for. Also, my husband informs me that this is the plot of Warhammer 40k.

Great read. The use of sound in weird fiction, to represent uncanny presences which are both impactful yet formless, surely starts here; and the mood of this text is Kabbalistic, with a specifically brilliant depiction of what it might look and feel like. SolarLunar/LunarStellar. Inessential, but invigorating, and also I sedoretu-ship it.

Unsettling, erotic, measured and satisfying goings on at the stately home/spa. Entry in the Ghost Story for Christmas series; for completionists only.

Short story collection later linked into the Cthulu mythos; more decadent macabre than weird, and overall quite underwhelming. Only one of any potential interest is The Demoiselle d'Ys; but overall, Chambers' inability to write women, meandering style, and lack of Fencraft-specific interest dominates. Can't say I quite got over the hideous politics on like page 3 enough to give the rest of the collection a fair shot either.

An antiquarian goes dabbling in things that ought not to be disturbed.

Bless Mark Gatiss: he's getting there. I am happy there is someone working in British telly who values the same, strange things that I do, but I wish it was anybody but Gatiss - who is still developing as a writer and director. His works always lack a certain something. This is the first of his Ghost Story for Christmas revival series to have frightened me, and I thought it was good.

What's there to say about this? Sapphire and Steel are a series of science fiction ghost stories, related to place and specifically to the time-breaking qualities of objects when jumbled up from dissonant eras. Time loops, fractures, skips and spookiness ensues. This is a big influence on me: it's about a kind of haunting, and it conveys an eerie mood really well.

It's never exactly pastoral or pagan, but we don't need things to have a forest aesthetic and robes to be spiritually meaningful - or, we shouldn't. S&S makes the list because it's landweirdy: it shows that an object...a room...a forgotten place...can all be the trigger for something in the known to break, and let time flood through. The Reading List has several goals - among them, things we can borrow for ritual. This is usually thought of as a design for a costume or a symbol for an altar or a poem. S&S is more about mood and technique - how could we set out to splinter time like this, and what would it feel like when we did?

I think Sapphire and Steel is significant enough to me to put it on the must-watch list. There are six Serials, each a single story split out into lots of episodes. Particularly good ones are Assignment 1, 2 and 6. Don't worry if you pick up an episode and don't really understand what's going on in the backstory: I assure you, watching them in order only enhances your uncertainty.

Cult Estonian horror film which is the peak of 70s design (technicolor post-Soviet interiors plus synthesiser? omg). A police officer goes to an isolated skiing resort and attempts to solve a murder as things get weirder and weirder. As film it's a masterpiece; as spirituality, it's inessential, but has a lot of good Solar vs Stellar stuff about mortals clinging to establishment roles and certainties in the face of the immense and inexplicable. Based on a book. Oh my, can you imagine living in a place like that?

Intriguing lost film about nice yuppy couples having a supernatural horny murder dinner party at their little rural cottage. A sort of Abigail's Party meets The Exorcism. Really tenuous connection to anything us.

I really enjoyed this; creepy goings on in a little village and the far beyond - but it's not notably weird or pagan.

Found through a Hookwatch, this is the pilot for an un-made series about government paranormal investigators looking into Lovecraftian thingies. Basically, not good. Unless you're a Paul Darrow fan, in which case it's 40 minutes of Avon chewing the scenery and you will love it. Budget is minescule, even by British telefantasy standards.

Really nice film. A couple try and run a walking tour in a little Norfolk village, dedicated to the works of a little-known woman writer of weird fiction. Nicely scripted ensemble piece, and rather like The Ghost Room, it is a meta-reflection on the figure of the narrator and the horror writer. Also, an early Peter Capaldi film. Creepy. Not essential, but a really good example of weird landscape fiction, and a good watch.

Artsy film short - 20 minutes - about a Londoner abruptly plagued by the appearance of a mystery tower on the skyline. Quiet weird fiction, with a dry wit, and lots of location shooting, and feels like a student film. Not sure how this got into my to-watch folder, but I'm glad I saw it.

But what of Mary E Wilkins Freeman? Evelyn Henty? Olive Harper? Elinor Mordaunt? Lettice Galbraith? BM Croker? Johnny Mains began his mission to shine light on the forgotten female ghost-story writers four years ago, when he was putting together an anthology of obscure fiction.

Article discussing little-known women ghost writers. Review

One of a set of books from a publisher of niche short stories, weird fiction rarities. Nothing on-theme here - which was a shame - but I loved this collection, some were extremely scary.

horror movie with slasher elements - violent imagery

Just squeaking onto the scope of this list by virtue of

1. a witchcraft subplot
2. it's the 70s
3. I adored it.

I was unexpectedly shifted by the Changeling-descent-into-the-underworld theme appearing in the final sequence, a sudden fairytale like logic (and plus, it's about fragile ballet dancers: always a good Changeling mood). Suspiria is a "real" horror movie in the giallo tradition - it is properly scary in places (though of the kind of scare that is good fun "screaming into your hands while peering through your fingers", rather the kind of modern horror that sets out to permanently disturb); and features several women murdered in novel, nasty ways. It's also got a touch of the Weird to it, in the use of sound-as-monster; and I guess the intensity and vividness of the colours and symbolism speaks to a kind of inner, spiritual place. Look, I really wouldn't go seeking this one out as your first Changeling text, but I will be revisiting it because it whispered something to me.

one brief scene of sexual threat

The contemporary "reinvent fairy tales for teens but gritty" trend was preceded by films like this, A Company of Wolves and Labyrinth. Rediscovering fairy for a more mature audience, but not losing sight of its wonder. This film is promising but simply doesn't land - too emotionally and politically simple, a heroine that's hard to connect to, too grim and dour. Nevertheless, it is probably worth your time watching it. It's doing its best with a miniscule budget, and has effective imagery, and is pleasing in a gothic fashion. But it's not a patch on Snow White and the Huntsman, e.g. What is good (for Winter Witch things) is the utter delight of Sigourney Weaver as the evil stepmother - bringing a sinister humanity to the whole thing.

Yes, the one with David Bowie. Jennifer Connelly is fantastic, and the film's magical wisdom is unironically excellent. Good on the Good Folk, Re-Enchantment, or the Changeling narrative. Just perfect.

Adaptation of a story in Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber (also on this list). Wonderful, strange, and very influential for me on Changeling things. Recommended. Interesting one to view side-by-side with Labyrinth - a friend noted the ways that that film does the same gothic puberty tropes, but ultimately defends the protagonist's right to be and stay a child, to have fantasies about adult pop stars but be safe from their reality as well, and for that to be an expression of will and independence. I love that reading so much.

Didn't hit the spot for me in the same way as the film.

Extremely creepy. A girl's diary is found, in which she recounts her encounters with entities in the landscape and the folklore of the adults around her.

I am blessed with good friends, and one in particular who has recommended me all sorts of 'creepy goings on at the theatre' films - which I adore. This is the weird leakling through after a young ballet dancer unsure of her next career moves finds an abandoned stately home belonging to a prima ballerina who once danced Swan Lake. Much, much better than Black Swan - a more sumptous gothic mood, with few surprises but atmosphere in spades. The film is from the perspective of the male protagonist, not the ballerina herself, making the whole thing a male gazey affair. Does this deny the ballerina her subjectivity, or successfully deliver a men-looking-at-women experience? It's an interesting film to watch alongside The Red Shoes because where that is about a ballerina's obsession for her art, this begins with a ballerina choosing to leave the competitive world of the craft (but it comes for her anyway). Is it religiously relevant? Not really, you've got to be pretty far down the 'haunted ballerinas as spiritual narrative' hole to find the meaning in it - but it is great.

Based on the 1917 novel of the same name by author Mary Webb which came to my attention due to The Name-Tree. This story is in a similar line: a girl associated with untamed wilderness is tamed and domesticated by men. An uncomfortably childlike, unsophisticated rural free spirit/fox furry gets in and out of relationships with a chaste, unmanly village vicar and a rapacious, lusty aristocrat who likes mastering horses and killing foxes

This film will only work for you if you are horny in some very specific ways, as the narrative contrives to trap the protagonist in minimally consensual encounters over and over again, within a bodice ripper gender world. This will strike the viewer as either unfeminist - or unhappily relatable if you yourself are the sort of person who cannot work out what they want so that every choice you make of your own free will ends up feeling a bit like a rape or a trap regardless. I suspect Webb's original is more nuanced about what this all means, but I couldn't help but find it irritating.

I've been very influenced recently by Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent by Katherine Angel. Her key idea is that consent politics presupposes a woman can clearly know what she wants, and then clearly articulate 'yes' or 'no'. But this is a highly unnatural expectation. Isn't it more human for us to not know clearly our own desires, or to only work them out in the process of trying? This idea really spoke to me; and I connected to Gone to Earth's depiction of desire as a series of poor bargains, inescapable pressures, coerced consent, & where ultimately getting assaulted a lil bit is far less bad than living within the superstructure as a whole where your agency is so constrained. I think the instinct to damn the film as 'unfeminist' might be based more on our own fantasies of how we want people to experience and articulate their desires, rather than how they actually do; or, at least, how I do.

Filmed by my fave directin' duo Powell and Pressburger, in luminous technicolor with notably gorgeous use of colour, and their characteristic touch of whimsy and the otherworldly. Some great imagery. A complex text, and not a priority. I don't think I liked it; and yet I am still thinking about it, I think the discomforts it brought up in me were interesting ones. For Powell and Pressburger, see also my beloved The Red Shoes

Look alright I really love this one. It stands out from the crowd of "gritty fairytale for Tweenagers" because the cast is great, the special effects are creative, it's well paced and structured, and it hits emotionally. I've seen it a handful of times, and it lands in a way that Snow White: A Tale of Terror never does. The reimagining of Snow White is well done too, keeping her "traditional characteristics" - kindness, friendship with animals - but making them work in a way that's sincere. I'm a huge Kristen Stewart fan. It's not essential viewing, but if you want a Snow White adaptation it's easily my fave. The sequel is also a pretty good time!

The first ten minutes of this is a masterpiece, and it's also pure undadulterated Changeling energy in like, the most intense form I can think of. I remember not loving the film as a child, and after this point the energy lapses; young Tom Cruise isn't quite compelling or cute enough, and the decisions made about the visual appearance of the big bad are disappointing (you got Tim Curry and you just want him to be a monster-face Christian devil? why not go full yaoi persephone and make him like, a really cute bishonen?)

Still, it is worth watching - and it manages to be dark without being grim or miserable in the way that Snow White: A Tale of Terror is. Mia Sara is great and under-used, in comparison to Cruise's drabness; and I also think it's interesting as a Changeling narrative (Lily breaks a taboo, but in this case it's one that should have been respected) and as a princess narrative (Lily's entitlement causes the land to suffer, rather like real-world monarchy).

But look, faced with that choice, I'm gonna stay with Tim Curry and be Queen of Darkness...Legend has some scenes which will be upsetting, even for older children; the unicorns are in peril throughout and the mood is troubling (and by 'older children', I mean me). Apparently, the director's cut is less choppy?

A father is due to take a drive for work, missing his daughter's recital. He and his family have ominous dreams about a car crash on the way

Unexpected little premonition thriller.

I wonder if this film was an influence on Twin Peaks? It opens with a girl going missing in the woods (this theme is never really explored again) and an extremely unsettling sequence of spookiness on the path. Later on, there's a shot of the stairwell in the domestic home that's soused in menace - an unforgettable image from the series. Finally, there's a queasy sexuality about the protagonist's relationship to his daughter - including lingering near her bedroom door in the dark, for reasons never fully stated.

The actual spiritual content of this seems quite slight - just some images and feelings - but what images. I won't stop thinking about this one for a while.

Read in Weird Woods: Tales from the Haunted Forests of Britain ed. John Miller. Gorgeously written: a woman whose only love is an orchard becomes the target of a power-play by a wealthy landowner who is buying it. All sorts of Changeling themes going on here, including a poem and some jawdropping imagery. Webb was, in her own era, regarded as a very important novelist - but seems to be comparatively forgotten now. I'm now looking forward to reading her more.

CW: vague aura of sexual threat

A wonderful film; and I enjoyed it more than the book (I haven't seen the new series). Dreamy, and one of the classic "young women become strange in the landscape" texts. Very scary. Glorious, unsettling; Landweird, but also good for our Changeling and Solar-Stellar themes. Just, a really damn fine film. I probably wouldn't choose it as a top choice spiritually, but from a cinematic perspective it's one of the best in our collection. I recommend the Director's Cut - it's tighter and more tense.

Very good overview of where the Cailleach can be found: in poetry, folklore, and related figures. A straightforward read that doesn't impose too heavily on the reader which the "correct" answer is. The biggest insight for me when reading was that the Landmother, overall, should probably be understood as linked to the Cailleach first and foremost, as her role is wider than just a "winter goddess".

Iconic unsettling Public Information Film; and in the dreadful pop culture pagan recesses of my mind, I associate him with the Lunar-Stellar and sees him as vaguely Landmothery.

Part of the lesson of the Lonely Water is the Solar-Stellar call to be more like children - in this case, the Public Information Film children of this, Apaches and others, which depict children as running riot and unsupervised in the natural world. While drowning in a littered bog is not wholly advisable, part of the inspiration we are to take from it is to ask ourselves - when did we last play in such a way, even as adults, that this might be possible?

The figure of an ambiguously protective/dangerous figure at the fords who presages death, or of women haunting lakes and rivers, is a prominent part of British spirit lore (in Fencraft, we tend not to assume deities have a fixed, human-like gender, unless we have a very sure sense of them being an ascended ancestor). So, you know. I'm really not joking about the potential of the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water as an important part of our spiritual heritage.

Lovely rural ambient, lilting piano and sheep in the distance. Dreams of the summertime.

Read in Weird Woods: Tales from the Haunted Forests of Britain ed. John Miller. An artist retreats to the countryside and communes with the landscape. Pan themes, homoerotic, wonderfully written. The Solar-Stellar (earth) path calls us to immersion in the natural world, rather like this.

Not good, but important. One of those Rosetta Stone texts which act as a key to the whole mystery: one cannot fully understand the folk horror or weird fiction that followed it, without first encountering it. This is the story of a strange man who discovers his wild, primitive longings are manifestations of a mighty Pan-Earth Consciousness. It's too long for the concept - Blackwood might, perhaps, as an early writer in the genre felt more need to explain fully what he meant by all his ideas, where a modern reader is more familiar with them and does not need so much detail; and it lacks narrative power. I'm here for 45 repetitive chapters about how all expressions of nature and the ancient gods are interlinked expression of a deep, hidden, living Earth soul, but he doesn't land the mood or the purple prose; effectively frightening moments are fleeting. The racist implications are fully on display (Blackwood is quite clear that primitive people or cultures are more alert to the Urwelt than the 'civilised', a term he uses as a synonym for 'contemporary British lifestyles'); and it's additionally quite homoerotic, which was most of the enjoyment I had from the book. Who among us has not found ourselves unaccountably fascinated by the presence of a man who gives off a certain indefinable sense of how big he is...?

Anyway: not good. It's very clearly within our trend, although in this text the sublime is only ever beautiful and spectacular - never horrifying, and that detracts from it for me. Overall, I found reading it a chore. If you could get it down to 30 pages, I'd be more favourable towards it. And yet it does feel like an important early text for the development of key themes in this kind of fiction.

A book of short stories; two including Pan, but all of them broadly Solar Stellar in theme - about getting out of the hum-drum and confining, and into pastoral peace and independence. I love Forster, and these are all good premises but so-so as literature.

The Story of a Panic is intrusively racist about Italians (lord, I am becoming bored of typing "Oh this book is great but just so you know, it's really racist"; an acquaintance online who's an academic of the Celtic Romantic period mentioned that English writers from 1880s-1930s tend to be particularly awful, and that's a period of literature I'm really into), and the last story Road to Colonus is weird about Greeks. Bleh.

So overall, this book is relevant and has some really nice imagery; it's clearly responding to the same Machen-esque landweird trend, and part of a broadly Forster thing about the inability to be gay within a domesticated middle-upper late-Victorian society. But I felt quite ambivalent about it, even during the parts I liked: it feels artificially written, not divinely inspired.

Three CD collection of the best of the weird folk of the late 60s/early 70s. Hey Haptalaon, it's that thing you like! This is just the perfect collection of sounds, earthy and spooky and underground. Grapefruit record has an incredible set of releases: Dust on the Nettles (acid folk), Milk of the Tree (female vocalists), Strangers in the Room (fok rock) anthologies of the vibes of this sort of mood, and are fantastic to throw on in the background while you're still curating your own playlists.

In A Series of Unfortunate Events, we learn many works of fiction by major authors are, in fact, written in codes that hide in plain sight within libraries. This is the only explanation I can think of for the Secret Glory, which is almost unreadably bizzare. Did I like it? Well, it's: the semi-autobiographical story of a dreamy kid crushed beneath the pompous, establishment triviality of a boys boarding school, who was once taken by his father to the hidden resting place of the Holy Grail. Sounds great. Kinda is great, in parts; but he starts slamming the racism bell hard in the final few chapters, and dribbling into digressions about the menu of London pubs which only make sense if you assume there's some kind of word cypher lurking within the text.

There's stuff to like about this book; and from a Fencraft perspective, the school is a perfect Solar image - authoritarian, mundane, controlling, and set up to mould young people into team-players who love their school song, rugger, and are ready to take up roles behind desks in defence of the Empire. The existential horror of this is well drawn; and Machen's always good at rural weird mysticism, of which there is a fair bit, and which is the protagonist's release valve for the everyday misery of what he's being shaped into. It's notable and upsetting how many authors in the lore - really up through the 70s and 80s - still seem to be consumed by thinking about the cruelty of their school days; it suggests something deeply traumatising in the way we did (and do) schooling which is upsetting to reflect upon.

But I can't overstate how peculiar the final quarter of the book is (as well as casually repellent). There's a better story in here somewhere.

(When I started this project, I used the word Lovecraftian a lot as a shorthand. I'd now use more informative terms - like cosmic or Weird - for what I meant by it, and I made a well-intended commitment to remove racist authors like Lovecraft from the reading list (Lovecraft's works aren't quite right in any case) in favour of non-racist ones, like Arthur Machen for example. lol. lmao.)

Very lovely. Solar, tending Solar-Stellar: sounds like Englishness and the afternoon. Blissful. One of my personal favourites. My review at the link.

A major influence on me from a very young age. Trippy pastoralism, psychedelic sunlight, golden afternoons by dreaming rivers,and imagined days. Relationship to Wind in the Willows and Pan. I'm aware that this was a real trend of the period, not only this band or album, but I've yet to find anything to match it. Look also at poster art of the period.

Long; Pan imagery; good.

A delightful Web 1.0 website dedicated to ambient music - with a radio, key albums classified, and lots of little web burrows to vanish down. I tend to experience ambient music as a Lunar-Stellar thing (it's often dissociative), but there are other moods here. I especially like his 'earthycrunchy Sonic Paganism' tag.

Horror-style true history series about two explorers ships becoming stranded in the Arctic in the 1840s. Honestly, this didn't really vibe with me and I can't put my finger on why; I love a good Age of Sail story. I think, in part, it just didn't deliver on the type of horror I wanted. Which is to say, I was looking for a kind of Lunar-Stellar existentialist horror of the ice, the isolation and the empty ocean. It didn't land, and instead was more focused on the human story and slowburn interrelationships on the crew. I did finish the series, however, and other people I know adore it - including horror afficianados who really vibe with the body-horror aspects of it (and body horror, of course, is also Lunar-Stellar). So, I definitely commend it to you. Based on a book, which I have not read, but which reportedly puts more focus onto the key theme of colonial imposition on indigenous worlds.

claustrophobia, drowning

Is it a sea story? is it a cave story? is it an ice story? It's all three, and it's horrible, and brilliantly presented online journalism.

Diary of a stranded sailor attempting to make it home across the ice after has boat is trapped.

Utterly gripping - especially as the reader has no idea whether Albanov published his own diary, or went missing and it was put into print posthumously. And terrifying. Albanov is a beautiful writer (it is very sad that the other half of his journal vanished).

An important book: Boukreev was painted as the "villain" of an Everest tragedy by the author of mountaineering classic Into Thin Air. Given the hostile conditions on such a dangerous mountain, it seems a little tasteless to scapegoat a single person for a tragedy; the reality of extreme mountaineering is that death happens a lot. It's only human to want to assign blame, but I believe unkind and unproductive. In this book, Boukreev attempts to set the record straight by retelling the events from his perspective. It's fairly sparsely written - Boukreev was a mountaineer, not an author, writing with the help of a friend in a second language. Into Thin Air, written by a journalist, is easily the better *book*. But this is comprehensive, and it's worth reading both.

I literally read all these mountain books in about 48 hours while staying somewhere with an unusually well-stocked library. Dyatlov Pass is not only a mountain disaster, it also has "fortean" elements of strangeness. The combination of mountains and an unsettling, perhaps supernatural, mystery, is the essence of approaching the Stellar. Elements like the haunting recovery of a camera filled with eerie photos; the possibility that sound itself, whipping over the mountain, caused terror and death; mystery military installations; radiation; tantalising signs of assailants who vanished into the snow; and so forth.

I remember this as one of the least good books, but one of the most relevant incidents for our purposes, because of the eeriness.

A popular non-fiction book about a controversial incident of a climber being left to die on Everest. It's been a while since I read the mountain books, but I remember this one as being fairly lightweight and somewhat sensationalist - being focused on a single, rather horrifiying and "marketable cause celebre" death. I personally think the sensationalism surrounding the death of David Sharp is a little overstated. Far from being the tale of 40 people ignoring a climber in distress preferring to climb a mountain, the accounts of Sharp by those who saw him last are a tally of people who did indeed stop, and attempt to help. That they could not reflects more on the hostile environment of the mountain than the callousness of climbers. But callous individualism is a Lunar (trending Stellar) characteristic too, the becoming less-than-humane in the attempt to become better-than-human; the state of only seeing your self, or the state of only seeing your goal, or of seeing yourself and discovering something horrible about it. Stood opposite the Solar, it is the revelation that people aren't all that: the profound absence of togetherness and support.

One of the best-known examples of the "peril up a mountain" genre. It's very good, and focuses on the first-person survival experience over documenting a moment in mountaineering history. The only one I own. The descriptions of the mingled beauty, terror and isolation of being alone, and knowing death is inevitable, but still seeing nature nontheless, is a very Stellar sensory. In a later book, Simpson notes how frequently people will message him for morbid interviews about what it feels like to know you're going to die; it's rather an unforgettable feeling (and I'm familiar with the bizzare social ettiquette of people asking about it), and it's governed by this path between the Moon and the Star, blasted white by the snow and black by the empty sky.

Beck Weathers narrowly survived the 1996 Everest disaster. This non-fiction book isn't as well written or compellingly horrifying as others I've read, but it nevertheless stood out. Weathers and his wife alternate chapters, telling of his earlier mountaining adventures as well as his fateful near-miss. It does a good job of depicting the "mountaineering mind" - the drive that takes people into extreme places, and the strain it puts on their families.

Of all the mountain memoir's I've read, easily one of the best. The Himalayan mountain climbing industry is underpinned by local guides, and this book focuses on their lives and eperiences. Clearly written, essential decentering of Western protagonists, and packed with interesting stuff about mountain culture, religion, language. Bit less visceral existentialist horror than others in the genre, but this is no bad thing; and what stands out is the spirituality of the mountain guides as well as the complex consent of those who work in this job. All in all, maybe not essential to learn about the LunarStellar, but a really good read.

Gimmick horror: it's filmed and set in a haunted mansion, flooded in a lake, tempting urban explorers to scuba dive. Fun concept, but dear reader, let me tell you: it was not scary.

Sometimes when I am alone in my house, I get a sudden jolt of sensation that my own house is beneath the water - or slowly flooding - and I might encounter a shark lazily wending its way through my hallway, or gushing black sea-water might surround my bed and swallow it. Merely being reminded of the sea can bring on the terror. I don't like the dark blue Lush bathbombs because I loose sight of the bathtub floor. It is trivial to frighten me on a topic of this kind, and the film's failure to do so is a fundamental error. In fact, I found the house rather beautiful. So not a good film about the terror of drowning, which was it's potential relevance to a Reading List. But yes, it is pretty cool that they built and filmed it irl.

So close, so far. There's far fewer films about the horror of the sea, either its natural and physical horror, or horror of a cosmic and weird kind. Abyss is one of the few. You can feel two wolves within this film, one hoping to be 2001: A Space Odyssey but Wet, the other yearning for the more Speilbergian Close Encounters/E.T. vision of the alien - a source of wonder and (comforting) moral judgement on man - a sort of contemporary take on angels. Anytime the Abyss is doing the former, it is strongly recommended - a film which communicates well the practical difficulties that humans face in the depths, from pressure sickness, to the cold, to panic, to the dark. It just can't resist the lure of the 1990s Hollywood feelgood big-budget disaster-movie. That said, I do still recommend it - because there are far too many films about the sea that don't even consider its cthonic qualities at all.

Biography of a father-and-son SCUBA diving team who met with tragedy exploring a mysterious U-Boat. A better read than Deep Descent, but does not quite hit the spot for our purposes; for completionists only. I basically think the kinds of people who are sufficiently into SCUBA to want to write about SCUBA are not natural poets, if that makes sense; it's a retelling of a fascinating true life story, but not art.

There's only two films I've ever left the cinema before the end, and one of them is Gravity: I had a full on panic attack with about 10 minutes to go and spent the rest hyperventilating in the foyer. A good time? Absolutely.

You should definitely watch Gravity, a film about a space-shuttle technician who gets disconnected from her craft and must survive. In Fencraft we analogise deep space to deep seas and vice versa; they express the sacred meditation on the inhospitibility of nature and the infinite. This is the perfect film for reflecting on it, a visceral survival horror where the behaviour of gravity itself is the primary antagonist - alongside the cold, the dark, the ticking down of an oxygen meter. At one point, the protagonist declares "I hate space!" and dear viewer, you will too! I finally watched the whole film in the safety of my own home, and spent the final twist of fate yelping nope nope nope nope nope into my duvet. A fantastic time was had by all! What a film!

If you get the opportunity to see it in a cinema, take it. It's also the one film I've seen in 3D where I felt like it enhanced the experience.

Sea horror by the director of the VVitch? Sign me right up. What I loved about this film is how it pulled one into the mood of the period. The VVitch was based on real witch trial transcripts, giving the film a novel and strange mood - unlike contemporary traditions, but deep inside the neuroses of the past. The Lighthouse does the same trick with diaries, and so this puts us right into the psyche of someone who believes ill-health is a consequence of the demon drink and too much masturbation. Isolated, paranoaic and peculiar. That's rather how it goes in the Lunar-Stellar - when one is too far away from other humans, and begin to be overwhelmed by strange notions.

Psychological thriller about a mystery alien presence at the bottom of the sea. It passed an afternoon, and the performances were good, but it very much wimped out on both the sci fi and the potential for weird (instead of just horrible). About on par with the Abyss, but that film has far better sea horror content. I wouldn't look it out

Non-fiction account of explorers on the shipwreck known as the Everest of SCUBA diving. An interesting story, let down by an unflamboyant writing style; not recommended for this project unless you are a completionist. There are so many spooky Andrea Doria stories and somehow, this doesn't hit the spot in telling them.

The great classic of the cosmic sea, and a fantastic read. A wet, sepulchral mood throughout, oppressive both verbally and in its imagery. I've failed at pulling quotes out, because it doesn't seem to work out of context: you need that great weight of words bearing down on you like the empty sea. It's hard to know whether to recommend it or not, because in many ways it's not specifically for us; but on the other hand, there's really no better way to meditate on the ocean than this.

Less than 10% of the sea has been explored. If you're not yet profoundly terrified by this, spend some time on this reddit dedicated to images which will encourage a phobia of the vast and fathomless cold. The subreddit has, lamentably, gone down in quality; but you should use the links on the side to find the "exemplar" posts and start with them. Browse on old.reddit rather than reddit or new.reddit for best impact.

Disliked extremely strongly. Self-satisfied, expensive, not-Stellar, insufficiently sensory, middle class and incurious. Do you know what is good and you will learn a lot from? My review of this terrible book.

Memoir about a woman who gets out of a depression by getting a goshawk. It's a good read, some of it about the alien perception of animals; but there's a lot of background here too on T.H. White (author of Sword in the Stone), which is also good general knowledge for the British tradition of pastoralism and exploring myths.

Adventure travel writer and naturalist writes from different places he has visited which are particularly 'wild'

I didn't love this book; and yet when I go back to it for quotes, I find I have highlighted many more sections than I really want to do the labour of writing into my Commonplace Book for. Macfarlane's style doesn't especially speak to me - I don't feel the numinous in him - but it is interesting, and I like what I learned about the world. And the politics and idea-world of wildness and of wild places is of interest to us. I suppose if you have the tidiness of mind to actually scale a mountain safely, you come to lack that certain cosmic dreaminess in talking about it. Mostly, I was struck by Macfarlane's description of Roger Deakin's cheap-as-chips-in-the-nineteen-seventies run down Tudor house and acres, with the little railway carriage for sleeping in and the indoor and the outdoor coming together under his beams, brooding unhappily on what I would do for such a house to call my own.

I'm so glad I saw this. Extremely gentle Brit comedy about two friends whose lives revolve around metal detecting. Ordinary lives and eccentric blokes, love for the landscape and the peace and quiet of going for a walk in the fields then a beer with friends, and the mystery and wonder of knowing something's beneath your feet. This series is really very good, and it's got a touch of magic to it as well. If you watch only one episode, make it the Christmas Special (2015). Crook was also the maestro behind the wonderful recent Worzel Gummidge, so worth keeping an eye on. Thank you to Room 207 Press for turning me on to this one as a potential folk horror.

One of my top recommendations for Tolkien! A short story, available in various Tolkien short story collections. Quietly magical, and all about the virtue of walking - and the strange places you stray to - written at the borderlands of Middle Earth and faerie.

One of a collection of fragments in which Tolkien tries to explain his theory of being a Sub-Creator; not his best explanation, nor his best poem either.

Wonderful short story, precient about the internet, and a passionate call for a return to the natural. One of my most-read, and extremely quoteable.

Practical guide on disconnecting from smartphones and social media, phrased as a philosophy to help you build lasting habits. I like it: it works for me, and is structured around practical steps. A good friend did not like it, and found Newport's earlier book - Deep Work - covered similar ground, but with considerably more power and depth; I look forward to reading it. Really, the significance of Digital Minimalism for me is - it's the anti-internet one I bought, and so it's the one that's physically on my shelf, the one I pick up and re-read whenever I am struggling with my Disconnection practice. Any book that provides that function for you will serve.

Excellent longread about the practice of a "solo" - sitting alone in a natural place for 48 hours. The purest essence of what it is to Disconnect, and the sorts of altered states we hope to reach by doing so. Read it at the link.

This book transcends conversations about the internet - touching on attention, time, the natural world, productivity. There's good parts about Walking as well as Disconnection; being solitary vs being connected; the politics of living in communes; she has a social conscience, always returning to the idea of how these practices can be balanced against our responsibility to others and the world. She has an interesting critique of merely quitting Facebook. It's quite diffuse too, lots of interesting bits but never quite synthesising into a single argument - in many ways, an inattentive book, but you sense that Odell knows how all these parts fit together for her, and it's that which makes it thought-provoking rather than didactic; but I found it ultimately quite frustrating too, like it needed more time to sharpen into a clear argument.

Really good, short article summarising some of the key themes in resistance to the internet - from mental health, to unpaid labour.

Harris is a former Google employee who now campaigns for a more ethical internet; he's politically liberal, with all the flaws that can bring, but his podcast is still a goldmine of interesting interviewees and new ways to become paranoid about the internet. Meaty, ideas stuff and nicely produced. The rest of the website is also worth dipping into. Listen here

Sadgirl is part of the Yesterweb scene, which tries to recapture some of the "fun" of the early internet; this manifesto is a goldmine of articles about the modern internet's worst features, and how older internets (or internets of the future!) could better serve its users. Great collection.

When I talk about the web, I quite often hear instinctual replies like "oh but i like the internet because...". This list of essays helps to clarify my position: I'm not opposed to the good parts of the internet but I am deeply troubled by its flaws, and facing those is essential. Read here. There's also a collection of manifestos from Yesterweb netizens, writing about their own visions for a better internet. Unfortunately, the Yesterweb social community is not such a great place - increasingly, reactionary-dominated; but the idea transcends it, and is a call for you to begin building it rather than to centralise with particular people.

Carr argues that technology unavoidbly shapes the way we think to accomodate new tools. He begins with the invention of books and the clock - not mere luddism - looking at the way our individual minds and our culture adjusted in response to them. He notes his own dislike of how the internet has impacted his thought process, and yet - like most people - is not opposed to it as a technology, nor would he desire to go backwards in time. I learned a lot from this. My takeaway idea for Disconnection is that if "the internet is doing something to my brain" - that I should have more agency over what. It is common in ceremonial magic in particular to enneagram your own mind, designing habits and ways of thinking to get your mind/magical energy under your will and available as a tool to be directed. The internet is an exterior force which shapes our moods and way of thinking, but as magicians we should be in control of what comes in and out. We should be conscious about what we are doing to our brains, and shape them towards our goals (which, sometimes, might be the same as the internet's goals for us; and sometimes not)

I disliked this; even as someone very amenable to Lanier's argument, I don't think he lands it. His political understanding feels unfinished and, consequently, this book lacks power

selkiegirl wrote an album as part of a magical working and attempted to teach magic through TikTok; she writes about how being that online was detrimental to her magic and heart, and the dynamics underlying it.

I wrote a response to the essay here and also here

Yes, that Chumbawamba. This is a nice introduction to English rebels and their music throughout history - from the Peasant's Revolt, via the Diggers, to the Chartists, poaching, and the Miner's Strikes. A spiritual tradition to do with the land is unavoidably political, so we'd like to pre-emptively discourage an attitude of ethnic nationalism and look to the history of dissent, revolt, and ordinary people fighting for the good of all. Listening to the album has introduced me to a number of interesting new areas to study; and it's good to have songs to learn.

Rediscovering the hidden is Landweird: and this is no more true for gods and secret rituals than it is for the hidden lives of forgotten people. In this case, it's Black Britons - mostly unrecorded in surviving folk songs, just as their own songs have not survived for us. Morrison imagines them into being, and her music is beautiful; but you will not be surprised to learn, at times harrowing too. I popped it on as I often do, as the background to other project work, not thinking anything of it until it began crawling up on me and the room got cold and cold and cold.

One project goal I will never fulfil is to have a more diverse range of writers and musicians. The reason for this is obvious - these themes attract certain kinds of nostalgic/nationalist weirdness, certain kinds of people who are permitted to speak on place and others who might as well never have existed, for all that has survived of their words or names. And yet, it is a shame: because the land is a contested thing, it is a thrilling thing to make troubled and strange again; to dig up those dissonant narratives. There's a potential liberalism to it that has to be avoided (making the strange simple again, through simplistic narratives such as 'Britain has always been diverse' which are comforting, but tell us very little). Morrison is of particular Fen interest because she describes her work as 'restorying' - she has to make up the songs and make up the words and thoughts of people unrecorded - and we tend to see that as more spiritually potent than a history which survives.

Charming short pop-political book asking if England even exists (and if it doesn't, what should we put in its place?) Thought provoking, and a nice overview of the rise of Englishness culture in the 00s. I got a lot more out of this than I expected. Though I think the author should have addressed land-romance in fascism; he describes the sense that the real country is elsewhere as a particularly English malaise without noticing that it was a key plank of 19th C romanticism of folk culture that then fed Nazi ideology, which seems like a glaring flaw in a book about the politics of national identity. Reviewed on the blog.

Firecracker of a political documentary, as Shoard travels around the countryside asking - who owns it? Why? And how can we make it more open and collectively managed. I love this documentary: many of the issues she raises are still live today, and there are some incredibly punchable faces in it as various Lords of this and that try to explain why they should have more land than anybody else.

Ownership of the countryside is a key political issue in Fencraft, for a couple of reasons. It limits our ability to Walk; it poses a threat to the survival of archeological remains and the natural world; and additionally, although this is not really a spiritual thing so much as a moral one, limited ownership of land forms the basis of persecution of Travellers, and a threat to their traditional way of life. Watch online here.

New folk songs in the traditional of working class international solidarity. Fantastic, stirring stuff, but you will need a hankie. It's hard to hear this album and not feel, somehow, far braver than you did before you began. It's particuarly notable for updating the tradition of "hero ballads" to include contemporary people - like the first black woman to recieve an MBE, or a Teeside grandfather who attepted to drive a bus of food to refugees stranded in Europe. Their song Benefits Street - not on this album - is also a must-hear. If you only have ten minutes, start with Ghafoor's Bus and Place Called England. Its relevance to Fencraft is this: to make a religious tradition which is, essentially, nationalist - rooted in the heritage and lore of a specific country - but creating new narratives of place and people which don't define a single person or culture as "English". I believe we need to do that *proactively*, not *reactively* - not merely banning white supremacists and putting out statements, but consciously trying to make the argument within our faith for why this is our strength. For that, I recommend this.

Mindblowing stuff. If you're used to the fragmentary and odd recordings of the Mabinogion or Eddas, you have no idea what's waiting for you. The Kalevala is a poem of the ancient myths of Finland, compiled from the folklore still present in the early 1800s. The clarity of the poetry perhaps this indicates it's been more generously edited, but it's still a work of wonder: creation of the world and ancient mighty ones wandering the land. A big influence on Tolkien, and just a delight to read. I have a new Penguin Classics edition (trans: Eino Friberg; ed: Jukka Korpela). I love it so much. Also, the metre used in my translation means you can sing it using Mike Oldfield's tune of the 'Song of Hiawatha' from Incantations

Can't recommend this highly enough. Irish mythology is messy and contradictory; these two experts talk you through it, one story at a time - telling new versions of the tales, then exploring the language and history of each. Fantastic. Essential listening for your basic mythic education.

The most prominent surviving British text of the Anglo-Saxon period. I have J.R.R. Tolkien's translation, which is functional and direct - aimed at learners to be an accurate translation. There's also the recent Seamus O'Heaney poetic adaptation, which attempts to put the reader in the "mood" of the original text.

Like most of our lore, the poem is Christianised, with a sense that both audience and poet would have had a strong grounding in Biblical knowledge.

Things of note: Hereot, the Solar village under attack by strange things from the (Stellar) fen; Hrothgar is a Winter King, with a sense of strength and fading and loss rather than a hero and protector; the association with the wetness of the Sea and the Fen with creatures from outer darkness.

A collection of ancient prose texts from Wales - stories of heroes and (presumably) gods. The Mabinogion is very odd, and might be at its most accessible in an adapted version (either for children or adults), where someone has pulled the threads of the tales out.

The mythological texts of the Vikings: in Poetic and Prose form - The Poetic Edda is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous poems, which is distinct from the Prose Edda written by Snorri Sturluson. England has forgotten its gods, but as far as we can make out the Anglo Saxon deities such as Woden had something in common with the Viking deities as set down in the Eddas (even if many myths and specific local variants have also been lost). You had best look out some advice from the Heathen or Asratu communities for how to approach reading these. I have a nice modern penguin edition of the Poetic Edda, but I found it basically unreadable - it's allusive and vague. I did a lot better reading a nice adapted version, summarising the stories and characters; and then going back to the Poetic Edda with a sense of what was what.

Television movie following the life of Merlin - really memorable, especially for its intermingling with fairy-lore. The cast is great, as is the overall mood. Wonderfully 90s rave-goth fairy costume design too.

I saw this film when I was very young, before I really read any Arthur, and so it is THE Arthur for me - and as I've grown older, I've remained in love with its sincere, whole-hearted storytelling, and its symbolic, dreamlike style. There was clearly more than one mushroom, and more than one tarot pack, on the set when this was being made; and the design is both historic yet fantastical. Fundamental to my vision of the Sun King. My review at the link.

The Robin Hood. Accept no substitutes. Essential viewing. This series is Solar-Lunar over Earth, Robin as Lightbringer. There's also some good inverted Sun King stuff here (depictions of what it looks like when the rule of the State goes awry), as well as a little bit of Solar-Stellar pastoral drop-out bliss of the land, and a quite astonishing quantity of Landweird. And it's fantastic television, and the music is great. Proper 1970s unambiguously occult kids teatime entertainment. Review at the link.

Little known, and fascinatingly of-its-time: half 60s bombast and po-faced earnestness, half 70s grit and moral ambiguity. No magic or knights - this precursor to the "dark, realistic retelling" trend makes Arthur into a Briton warlord, trying to hold together a Celtic alliance against the invading Saxons (with the help of his brother, Kai, an orphaned Saxon). I wouldn't view it for spiritual content, but it's nice enough filler for an evening (good to stick on while you're knitting). 20 minute dilemma-of-the-week stories in which Arthur is making deals, securing resources, and adventuring about with the series' generous budget for horses. Fundamentally misogynistic, but quite nicely costumed and with a plausible sense of place. Brian Blessed turns up, of course.

Interviews with the director namechecked influences such as Excalibur and Labyrinth, so perhaps my expectations were too high. I didn't vibe with it at all, and without Patel's strong performance holding it together - he's charismatic enough to sell anything - it wouldn't have worked at all. There are some good bits, but as a film it just didn't land, and it flunks out on some important themes of the original. Still. It's interesting, but not interesting enough; a film needs a heart, not just image.

Sir Gawain goes on a quest after the challenge of an otherworldly knight, and becomes trapped in an etiquette game in a mysterious castle. Wonderful, and highly recommended. A faithful-to-the-book adaptation, with much of the original language - filmed with earthy natural light, sincerity, and a little bit of eros. Really, the perfect Boxing Day watch (as the story is set in the period around Christmas and New Years). Cosy and quiet, the way these things often are, but that's a mood I love.

I like it more than the 2021 film, all told - its more coherent and doesn't chicken out on the sensuality, and is closer to the text (which isn't always a virtue - loose adaptations can be great in their own way - but Green Knight (2021) wasn't)

I read this in the Tolkien translation, which feels accurate and elegant. Due to the time of the year in which the poem is prominently set - Christmas to New Year - I associate this poem with the Winter King/Snow Queen cycle. In particular, Lord and Lady Bertilak as the festive, fairy manifestation of the couple that embodies the merriment of Christmas, unlooked-for and defiantly existing in the midst of cruel winter and and want. My reading, based more on Landcraft than the text - although I think the text does evidence this - is that aged Morgana Le Fay, and elegant Lady Bertilak, are one and the same person, and rotated onto the Winter Witch. These aspects seem more compelling to me as lore than the Green Knight himself, but he exists in tension with Lord Bertilak as a kind of Winter-Summer duo, and if one was to stretch the point one would see Gawain himself as related to the Lightbringer (of a rather more white-Lunar character, due to his purity). I didn't love this poem, but it does feel certain and fixed in my cycle of yearly reads.

Read in the Tolkien translation. A touching (but over-long) poem in which the poet encounters his dead child in Heaven, and dialogues with her about salvation and God. Some possible Changeling things here (the tragic dead girl of ballads; falling asleep in a forest; a vision of the otherworlds), but too much intricate Christian theology to be of real interest.

Fun Biblical apocrypha: an ancient text which narrowly missed acceptance into the canonical Bible in any major Christian sect, lurking landweirdily about the fringe. I love that sort of thing, and the text itself is compelling and strange. I associate St Thomas (both Doubter and Twin) with the Lightbringer; his saints day is the Winter Solstice. And so this set of vaguely heretical gnostic wisdom, attributed as the actual sayings of Jesus, at once familiar and unknown, there's all sorts I like about it.

An interconnected set of short stories about fairy kingdoms and their inhabitants. I can't wait to read more books by this author. Her fairies are capricious, baroque, whimsical and strange, and her writing style is gorgeous.

Extremely good. Modern British film is crammed with this kind of tantalising-but-not-quite-there forgotten film. Beginning with the Cottingley Fairies as inspiration, this is the fictional story of a photographer who thinks he might have discovered fairy-beings in the woods - a Weird and frightening experience of the sublime. There should be more films that use fairies in adult horror narratives; the only other one I can think of is Torchwood: Small Worlds (2006), a surprisingly good episode in an otherwise variable series by horror TV genius P.J. Hammond (see also: Sapphire and Steel). This film feels flawed, but so close to greatness. One of my favourite discoveries.

(Fencraft HQ especially appreciates the subplot about the horror of snowy mountains)

Witchsploitation. A pair of girls travel to a remote castle to land a contract in a modeling agency of a mysterious lesbian, who hopes to recruit them into a coven.

Nothing especially memorable to this one: I tend to get swoonier over the stately homes than the skirts. I suppose there's something true in the association of aristocratic landowning and black magic: when one has a certain amount of money and power, one can get away with all sorts of eccentricities and evils. That's England! I found the ending surprisingly bleak.

A contemporary witch craves love, and uses magic and evil means to try and find it

Lana del Rey does Witchsploitation: a knowing, retro-yet-politically-post-tumblr look at the longing for heterosexual love. Biller not only wrote and direct, but hand-made and collected the costumes and props - a level of devotion I adore. She sees herself as a feminist filmmaker, and the gender politics here are a pleasing mess. More or less, she's an anti-sex-work feminist with a personal love of burlesque and high fem aesthetics, who dislikes the reclamation of exploitation cinema as feminist and yet is clearly enamoured enough of the genre to get mad about it. I love that too. It is the nature of authentic gender to feel all screwed up, and there's a lot here I relate to about enjoying womanhood while also feeling ambivalent about it. Every image is gorgeous. Biller shot on 35mm using traditional processes to get the perfect colour and softness, and spent seven months hand-making a pentagram rug; and oh, do I appreciate it. No religious content to speak of, but it is art.

Romantic fantasy. A witch puts a curse on the generations of a family, then reincarnates in the modern day to cause havoc for the newest son in the line...

Veronica Lake stars as a sexy nuisance and witch who sexually hassles a man into loving her. That's the film, but she's a frothy delight so I guess if that's your kink it's OK. The special effects are especially lovely - filled with a sense of wonder and whimsy.

not not porn

There's a significant overlap between the pagan film & sexploitation genres; both are cheap to produce but have a big impact by trading on the lurid and shocking; and both have overtones of peering into the forbidden. This brief documentary is a puff piece for Alex Sanders, founder of Alexandrian Wicca and aspiring cult leader, surrounded by babes, and demonstrating the secret rituals of the Wicca. To my eye, they're fairly accurate, at least to what the rites are written down (who knows how often they were performed like this in reality). But look, this film isn't about secret magical knowledge; it's about beautiful, naked women, of which there are plenty, and lots of fivefold kissing and intimations of the Great Rite in true. Saucy! There's a running joke about how the venn diagram of LARPers, RPG players and kinksters is a circle, and one wonders the extent to which some of this early paganism functioned as a form of fancy swingers party for the embarrassed.

I really like this film. As a document of Sanders and this era's craft, it's very cool. As an imaginative piece, it combines beautiful lighting, evocative costumes and ritual language, and far-out 1970s experimental sounds. And we can all have a little peep at nude bodies, as a treat. Viewers should be aware that it has an overarching mood of (straight) soft-core pornography which may, depending on the viewer, be uncomfortable or undesired, or insufficiently spiritual.

A woman having nightmares which blur into her real life as she is stalked by a killer and joins a witchcraft coven

Combining dream horror, witchsploitation and slasher themes, this film is never quite as successful as it could be - its dream sequences are creatively filmed, but it feels like a pale imitation.

Fantastic, perfect witchsploitation nonsense. Nun/witch/lesbian blasphemy takes over a convent. The first half sounds like dialogue your goth girlfriend might have put on her myspace as a 14-year-old, and is wonderful. The second half - focusing on religious torture - is more of a downer, and the film has intermittent racism which is true-to-the-witch-trials-period but nevertheless really ugly. But Alucarda herself is great, & I guess I'd like to see a remake expanding on the interpersonal stuff from the first half.

Romance. Modern woman and witch who runs a shop and lives as part of a witch subculture uses magic to steal a man's heart.

This film adores its lead, so if you like looking at Kim Novak or slinky 1950s ladieswear you are in for a treat. This film is extremely 50s - from the fad for exotica to the interiors and clothes, and the protagonist's modern woman who breaks up an engagement but then does not herself wish to marry. The witch subculture - other ordinary people in town, who meet up at nightclubs and can cast spells - is vaguely sketched and all the more tantalising for it. Just a film, but a nice one.

This is a really nicely written book, if you're interested in the topic; just pleasurable to read. JRRT didn't have a very exciting life, but Carpenter has a wonderful style to make up for it. Only for people specialising in JRRT, but very recommended if you are.

Non fiction with lots of pictures, exploring the real world landscapes and the stories and myths which formed locations in the work

I didn't get a lot out of this and yet I feel like it deserves a high rating anyway. What does that mean? I'm uncertain. Tolkien is underrated as an illustrator, and good copies of his own drawings are the real treat in this book. And sometimes it's nice to just read something dopey - it's lovely to look at, and sometimes that's all you need

I find Tolkien's unfinished and fragmentary works far more charming than his full ones: it's either the Hobbit for me, or some scrap on the back of an exam-paper he dashed off with a smudgy pencil. I suppose this was an early indication of my attraction to Landweird, for it is not clear if these ideas are no longer in the mythos or merely abandoned and never polished up - and I find that really compelling, far more so than the coherent (but lifeless!) Silmarillion. This book has some very nice imagery of the Cottage of Lost Play as a framing device for an early draft of the first chapters of the Silmarillion narrative. The latter is less interesting to me than the unfixed strangeness of the Cottage itself; but it is not generally recommended. Its niche Tolkien.

A collection of non-fiction essays written by Tolkien about the biology and geography of Middle Earth

Bet everyone who ever snarked about why the Elves hadn't overrun the world with children if they were immortal is sorry now. Tolkien thought about this - in great detail - and now you get to hear about it. What a Tolkien researcher thinks is interesting and what a reader does have very little overlapping, and this book is a slog. There are some nice bits - Tolkien's visual descriptions of the Lord of the Rings characters and some worldbuilding things about elven souls. What comes through more strongly than ever is the importance of language, and how intertwined linguistics is with every part of his world. This book is so much less good than you want it to be; I am a Tolkien completionist and I found it a chore.

An encyclopedia of gods, heroes and minimally-recorded spirits from the British Isles

I have this as an ebook, but I really want it in paperform - it deserves to be leafed through at leisure. England has forgotten its gods: and remembering/reimagining them is central to seeking the Landweird. For this reason, it's a very good one to have in your collection. How good is the History? I can't say but these are names that survive on little more than a potsherd, or in a couple of lines in an Old Irish text, so I would argue that - from a Fencraft perspective, at least - getting the history correct is the least concern.

A series of interviews with people living in a little English village, at the moment the old ways of living were passing away: a blacksmith, a farmer, and so on. Readable and unsentimental, I loved every page.

Fencraft lore returns and returns to the image of a lovely little village - it's so central to England's imaginary of itself - and Akenfield is an essential palate-cleanser for that mythos. Living in the country was basically, pretty horrible, due to poverty, and nobody wishes to return to it. How do we integrate that into the fantasy: what is appealing about it, and how could we build those things without a return to old problems? See also the film Akenfield

A film adaptation of a social history book. With an amateur cast and improvised script, it follows a young man trying to decide whether to stay on the land following the steps of his forefathers or go abroad to Australia. Woven through is the voiceover of his grandfather, a farmhand from the 1920s. A slow film, all about texture and mood, meditating on the fantasy of the little English village. Not a fantasy film, but the little village is such a deep part of the national mythos it ends up feeling underpinned by magic all the same, including the landweirdiness of overlapping voices and times.

The book and film are quite different - one is a drama, the other a literal history book, but of the two the book is the one I preferred and feel is more essential. I may be a cineaste but, tell the truth, I struggle with slow movies, preferring flashy cult pulp. If you enjoy sedate and atmospheric works, this may be more for you.

Hutton has two books on druids. Blood and Mistletoe is a brick, exploring the world of the druids in great detail; the Druids is basically the same research for the pop-history audience. You should read at least one of them. The Druids is the lighter work, but structured in a very cool way: themes like "The Wise Druids", "The Barbaric Druids" and "The Green Druids" ask what evidence there is for this in history, and where this narrative came from. I read and enjoyed Druids; I unwisely tried Blood and Mistletoe straight after, and found I was druid-ed out. But strongly recommended, both as pagan history as well as a lesson in historymaking.

Oh, the sheer luxury of owning a new hardback book. Parker explores the Anglo Saxon year, using quotations from Old English poetry to explore their worldview and culture. Very accessible. As such, this is really valuable: as a souce for Commonplace Book snippets and for meditating on time and the weather, and a great one for your Reading Bookshelf for the ease of merely re-reading the chapters each year.

Sober documentary investigating real witchcraft, including interviews with Doreen Valiente and the like

Delightful in every way - from its record of our history, to the serious patrician tone of such a silly subject. The most unforgettable part is an elder high priestess explaining her coven do not do nudity in the woods because it is wet and cold. The delights of being British!

Unsourced youtube clip of a program in which the Farrars answer questions from the studio audience. Sometime in the 70s or 80s. A nice historical document - you'll be familiar with their description of the Craft, and the audience ask pretty good, informed questions of them. It's kind of cool to imagine the historic moment in which Neo-Paganism was breaking the mainstream and appearing on chat shows.

The writings of Ross Nichols, Chief of the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids. An interesting read, for completionists interested in this strand of history. Nichols is influenced by Christanity and Welsh folklore, and there are a couple of parts of this that I still use.

A light, personal description of these three ways of praying - what they are, how you use them.

I've been meaning to read this one ever since I started the work of creating a reading list - I suppose the idea of learning how to pray was appealing to me. Lamott is a Christian, although she intends to write in a more general humanist way for any audience. I liked it! But I think you will get as much from the title as you do from the text itself.

An anthology of essays about the beginning of the occult age - including essays on Theosophy, Dion Fortune, Pamela Coleman Smith, Egyptology, psychology, and colonialism

If you're interested in this period, then very strong recommendation. It helped me tie together strands of what was going on in this period and I feel stronger and smarter for it. The key idea I am going to carry with me is the fascist implications of 'cleanliness' in occult thought.

Key old text in Kabbalah, conveying in writing from a Jewish perspective how the things of our universe came into existence.

Because I realised I'd never actually read it. What did I get from it? Not much: I've not done Kabbalah in over ten years, and even then not very seriously. No reason for you to read it for Fencraft either. I really enjoyed the way that the sounds and organisation of the alphabet itself was given a mystic significance.

Fantastic read. Valiente was there when Gardener was doing his thing, and Cochrane and Sanders too - and herself played a part in rebuilding witchcraft in the UK. Valiente is a great writer, and does well at finding out the facts and investigating wild claims. I think every Pagan should have read this at least once, it's as near as we have to a primary history of those days.

So this book is notable for being one of the best surviving records of Cochrane's craft/Clan of Tubal Cain. Cochrane is grouped with traditional witchcraft, and Valiente reports that his rites were more intuitive than structured. For my part, I was surprised by how Wicca-adjacent it felt, or at least, it didn't satisfy me. It's a practical focused book, with descriptions of rites and tools, and to fully understand you should look out Cochrane's other writing which is around online. All in all, for completionists only.

Zine series of pop-academic essays on folk horror/british eerie/weird archeology topics - gorgeous design. There's something about the tone of Hellebore which doesn't set well with me, a certain competitive edge, but perhaps I'm projecting my envy through it, or my discomfort at the increasing number of purchaseable products coming into the forgotten-folk-horror scene (it's not forgotten underground counter-occulture if it's being branded and marketed as a product niche); but it's a good place to pick up new references.

Short, beautifully assembled documentary on Delia Derbyshire's life and works, with a wonderful soundscape. Watch on youtube at the link.

Biography of Kenneth Grahame, author of Wind in the Willows. Very readable; you get a pretty unambiguous sense of why he wrote what he did, I think, the sorts of unhappinesses and impossibilities that lead an adult to spend so much time writing about happy Mr Mole and a golden afternoon that never ends. Inessential, but I'm glad to have read it. What is it with children's authors and being absolute beasts to actual children?

Short but satisfying documentary-film featuring Garner; nothing new here, exactly, he's still odd and prickly about class and psychic about the landscape and speaks evocatively and strangely about the craft of writing and is a bit weird about violence towards women and wants to talk about his Vibes. And a fantastic creepy beginning. A good watch; and on a par with 1973 documentary All Systems Go!, which is more or less the same thing. I found this on youtube, where it will likely still be available.

Autobiography of Machen; tedious, not recommended. Its best legacy is the Belbury Poly song 'Far off Things' on the Willows