Folkloric Traditional Witchcraft Of The Blackthorn Ways
In Newquay Cornwall - Readings - Workshops & More!

Exploring Witchcraft is all about my experiences with witchcraft as it turns from pagan, wiccan to more traditional and Cornish witchcraft that has no religion. I explore the many areas from divination to baneful herbs, spirit communication and working with a familiar spirit forms to earth energies delving into folklore to find answers to the many unfulfilled questions in witchcraft today.

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My name is Steven J Taylor and I am blessed to come from a family of spiritualists, our heritage is that of Romania, British Gypsy for 6 generations starting when my 8th great nan Mary Vane who left the Vane family after her father Henry Vane of Cleveland, 1st earl of Darlington rejected her as she ran off with a Gypsy boy, that was my 8th great grandfather Gorge Clark born born in 1728. By all accounts it created a great scandal and nearly ruined the Vane family with them losing there home. The vanes were all earls and barons. Henry my 9th great grandfather married Lady Grace Fitzroy the daughter of Charles Palmer Fitzroy my 10th great grandfather. Charles is the illegitimate son of King Charles the 2nd which makes my lucky number 13th great grandfather the one and only King James the 1st of England and 6th of Scotland, the man that killed over 200 witches, changed the bible to state "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". He wrote the infamous book on demonology.  My ancestors go way back from then on, we have many kings and queens from all over the world some accused of witchcraft even killed for it.

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However it was my great nan Bella who was the last of the Romani / English gypsy line which was known as the Clark line. We cant get any further back than 1700s with this family line but Bella told the many stories of her grandfathers coming from Balkans and settling in the UK,  however she ran away from her family in the early 1900's. We have always been told it was either because she was going to be sold as a servant or she was in an arranged marriage and when she ran away she ended up becoming a servant to a large house in Sunderland Tyne and Wear. Either way she ran away from her family at the age of 15 years old.

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Bella was taught the many ways of the traveling woman, divination, old charms, she worked with plants and herbs for healing and so on. Bella never called herself a witch, to her witches were different, they believed they walked hand in hand with witches in the old Romani traditions but Bella never used the term. Others called her a witch on many occasions my mum recounts in many of her stories about Bella and growing up with Bella. I on the other hand embrace the word and I am the first in our family to use the term openly and I believe that is due to how society now sees witchcraft in the UK.

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Bella taught my mum her ways as my nan Vera married a man of the church, a minister. But  Vera my nan she wanted her daughter to still know of the family ways and traditions even though my nan was a devout Christian woman. But my nan Vera had the gifts and she knew how to use her psalms and a candle and I write of this in my book I am currently working on at the moment. Bella, later in her life was in the same spiritual church as my Gran, my fathers mother. This is how my mum and farther met. I was brought up around the spiritualist church, spiritualism and folk traditions. So my background is one of folk practice, spiritualism and traditions that I would later mix with tradition witchcraft and Cornish tradition witchcraft after I moved to Cornwall. 

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I am personally drawn to the darker aspect of my traditions and practices. I stepped out from folk practice and stepped over into the left hand path as part of my study. I do work with the witches devil, the old ones and I created my own tradition called Nox of Tenebris Luna tradition which is a folk sorcery based tradition and is based upon working with spirit, Higher etheric beings known by some as angels or daemons or high magick along with low magick or peasant magic, that of folk practice. You can see this when I work rituals such as creating The Gateway to work with spirit familiar tile with crossed keys which opens a gateway to speak and work directly with a spirit familiar and it can work as an anchor in this realm. This is taking a folk tradition of a spirit familiar and the crossed human bones used in necromancery but I worked the ritual with sigils and gateways along with planetary alignments to create a way of operating with a spirit known as the spirit familiar, a aid of sorts that requires payment for advice and working together.

 

My tradition is based around the Blackthorn and working with its spirit, its seeds, its wood, thorns and fruits, we use its sloe wine in our rituals, we drink from blackthorn cups, we use ritual bowls made of blackthorn wood and its pins play a role in our initiation ritual. The pins and seeds are also used for divination work, the plant is worked with for its oils and we make incense from the plant. We do not use any kind of wand, but we use a stang made of blackthorn, a cane known as a blasting rod made of blackthorn. The handles upon our blades are made of blackthorn. I can't give all of the information away about our tradition which is a small tradition, a small coven here in Cornwall.

 

Nox of Tenebris Luna is a black moon tradition meaning I work large rituals on a black moon, one of the most powerful aspects of the moon phases and its connection to death, the old ones and the blackthorn tree and the spirits that surround it, live within it. Our tradition is a divination tradition where we speak with ancestors, old ones and spirits each black moon. Each month we make time to make offerings, feed the dead and by outsiders its seen as a death tradition, similar to La Santa Muerte yet we are very different but we can see the common ground.

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When you see many of my Instagram photos you may notice the black skull with the silver crown and the candle. That is for my ancestral line. Ancestry plays a major part in my practice and I work with my ancestral spirits. My ancestry is key to my craft, my path and heritage and practice.

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