Category Archives: The Wanton Witch

All things wyrd and wonderful.

Activism and Agitation, Life, The Wanton Witch

Grief and Long Covid

Leave a comment

One of the saddest things about being in #LongCovid support groups, is new people who join who have gotten the condition in the last 6-9months, hopefully looking for a cure or treatment to get back to living their life.

They are frequently shocked to find there are no treatment protocols for #LongCovid approved by the HSE. All the clinics do is offer referrals to treat post covid consultations & symptoms.
We don’t even have the basics the NHS has about trying antihistamines.

When all the post covid conditions have been catalogued, & somewhat medicated, there is nothing for the crippling fatigue & brain fog.  For for the condition of #LongCovid it’s self.

None of the research being done in other countries about MCAS or microclots or viral debris, has been accepted here.
So they then want to know what supplements people are on or have tired, as Dr’s won’t talk abut or recommend them.

But while some of them may help, a small bit, none of them touch the chronic nature for #LongCovid

The latest thing we are now being told is, that our immune system is not behaving cos we are stressed, to quit #LongCovid support groups & try just to get on with our lives.

To be mindful, & work to get our parasympathetic nervous system to chill. So pretty much blaming us for our condition.

There are also people who are confused & then angry that they have gotten #LongCovid when they have been vaccinated, and if there is a vaccine, why isn’t there effective treatment.

They go through the entire cycle of grief. Which I know I am still in about how #LongCovid as restricted my life. I cant work, I have chronic pain, chronic fatigue, 7 new medical conditions I am on medications for and cost me a significant romantic relationship.

I understand their hope, hurt, disappointment and anger.

We need better led #LongCovid clinics, many infectious disease consultants do not want to be dealing with Long Covid.

And the HSE has to stop looking for the lowest cost ‘treatment’ for #LongCovid and the Dept of Social welfare keep not approving people for invalidity or disability payments.

Every time you get covid there is an increased risk you will develop #LongCovid even if vaccinated, many people new to the support groups were completely unaware of this & feel public health messaging let them down.

We are being ignored, written off, blamed, and gaslight about having the chronic condition with is #LongCovid.

At least 1 was 45 when I got it 3 years ago, I had lived some what of my life, unlike those in their 20s and the kids who have #LongCovid.
Right I am off to take my evening meds and extra pain killers cos this weather makes both the chronic pain and chronic fatigue harder to deal with.

Activism and Agitation, The Wanton Witch

Strokestown, abortion stigma and me.

Leave a comment

Novemember 2012, nearly 6 years ago, was the first time  I came to stay in Strokestown, Co. Roscommon. I had passed through it before on the bus out to stay with friends in Balllina. I know I am that strange Dublin person who actually travels outside of the Pale.

My friend Lora O’Brien had asked me to come and be a speaker at a two day Goddess conference in the Visitor centre in Tlusk. where she was the manager.  I had agreed to do this before the death of Savita had broken and that Saturday I was in Strokestown and not attending one of the vigils and Marches which sprung up all over the country. I knew how many there were as I was at the time the sole admin for the Irish Choice Networks website and I kept updating the list there and on the ICN facebook page.

I kept my speaking commitment and on the way down in the car I got talking with friends about abortion and about what had happened to Savita, about the law here and about the restrictions the 8th Amendment put in place.

When we arrive into Lora’s the conversation continued after she had welcomed us and made us tea. She said that she didn’t think things were going to change as abortion wasn’t really such a common thing, as sure none of her friends had had an abortion.

I looked at her and smiled and said “Hi I am one of your friends and I have had an abortion”. That was the first of many, many conversations I was to have with friends over the coming months. While the vast majority of my friends knew I was very prochoice, I still hadn’t disclosed that I myself had travelled.

From November through to the end of January 2013 I told more of my friends, I had those conversations. I am blessed they were so supportive, and so at the meeting at which the name of the Abortion Rights Campaign was announced, I publically stated for the first time in person to a room of mostly strangers that “I had an abortion”.

This all started in Strokestown, which I came back to visit frequently, even spending summer holidays here with my children and celebrating Winter solstice and Summer solstice with friends and family.

And here I am again in Strokestown, today as Roscommon For Yes launches as we finally have a referendum to Repeal the 8th Amendment. When I said I would travel to as many counties as possible I contacted a range of groups and let the schedule evolve as it would. And so the first place I find myself invited to is Strokestown.

Its funny but for me personally not surprising as this place is for me connected with the Goddess I have the deepest connection with that of the Great Queen also know as An Mór-Ríoghain or The Morrigan.

The Warrior Queen, the Battle Crow, the Goddess of Sovereignty. And that is what we have been fighting for the rights of sovereignty over our own bodies. The last few years haven’t been easy, hell the last few months have not been easy, but I know She has had my back. So I am happy to make this pilgrimage here. 

I have always smiled when some have called me the Witch involved with the abortion rights campaign, yes I am a pagan, I have never hidden it. I spoke about it on the @Ireland account at the start of the week when I was a curator, Lora did too.

There are as many pagans in Ireland as there are Jewish people according to the last census, we are people just like everyone else, who’s spiritual life, helps us through the hard time and helps us celebrate the good times.

So I am delighted and honoured to be here in Strokestown today.

Aisghair Abú

 

 

Thank you to those who donated to my Fundme who made this trip and blog post possible.

 

The Wanton Witch

A prayer on the eve of the General Election

Leave a comment

This evening (sunset) I will be lighting a candle for Ireland and it’s people as we go to the polls tomorrow to elect new Members of Dáil Éireann.

946098_10151835340031121_1696531710_n

 

I will work so that the new Teachta Dála we elect tomorrow, will work for the good of the land and the people. That they will heed the plight of those who’s lives have become more miserable over the last 5 years due to the regressive policies.

I will also work that all those who can vote tomorrow take the time to do so, that we have close to or more then 75% turn out. We are an old country but a young sovereign republic, we are not yet 100 years old, unused to governing ourselves, but there are times despite all it’s failings I have been proud of this country of mine.

I hope that the will and compassion of the People which was felt in the Yes Equality referendum will once again lift us all up tomorrow.

 

The Wanton Witch

Féile Draíochta 2014

Leave a comment

Féile Draíochta 2014 was awesome and even more so that my brats were there and helping out as minions and raffle ticket sellers. It was awesome to have them hanging out with other kids of pagan parents and for them to see that there is a community of people who are pagan, that while they are personally agnostic I think its important they seem community other then that of the local parish as their only model of community. They saw people all all ages, and several babes. Everyone who they encountered had time for them and didn’t speak down to them.

10629653_10152304594396332_4932886390293686398_n

I would very much recommend coming along to this, if you get the chance it’s always the first weekend in October.

I got my face painted, which is one of my own traditions and  the Dice Lady was lovely to deal with.

10347252_10152358197586121_7042102886664300228_n

The Wanton Witch

Wexford Echo — Deirdre laughs off white witch tag – Wexford Echo

Leave a comment

Wexford Echo — Deirdre laughs off white witch tag – Wexford Echo.

THE NEW Wexford Co. Council will, no doubt, be an interesting entity with none of the candidates more colourful that People Before Profit Allicance’s (PBPA) Deirdre Wadding who is the first openly Pagan councillor in the country.

Cllr. Wadding, a long-term socialist activist, took the final seat in the Wexford district on Sunday night after a long, two-day count. A vocal campaigner, she has made her mark through her work with the Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes and was approached by PBPA on the back of that.

She polled an impressive 599 votes on the first count and picked up a number of large chunks of transfers later in the day.

Laughing off the description of ‘white witch’, Cllr. Wadding said that she was one of 20,000 pagans across the country but, as far as she knew, was the only one now serving as a councillor.

“I did ask the Irish Battle Goddess Morrigan for victory today and I have a crow’s feather in my hair as a reminder of her.”

The outspoken campaigner has been in PBPA for eight months but had initially said ‘no’ to joining up as she felt she was better off on the outside. But, she said, at the party launch Richard Boyd Barrett spoke about the people who didn’t want to go into a party and cited them as the people his party really wanted.

“My motivation isn’t that I want to be in the council. I want to affect change from the inside and the outside. I will still be getting involved in people’s problems, whether it’s a matter of civil rights, taxes and charges or anything else. That is my work and it will continue. I fully intend to be out on the street and be active. But it is a bonus that we will also have a voice on the inside.”

While she is part of an alliance made of left-wing socialists, activists and others, she said that at the doorsteps she was often mistaken for an Independent candidate: “We don’t have a whip system and I went into the party as a socialist activist.”

Regardless of being a party politician, if even in the loosest sense of the phrase, Cllr. Wadding said that she was not surprised by the drift towards the less mainstream parties and Independents: “The government did half of our work for us. A lot of what I got at the door was ‘As long as you’re not Labour, Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil’.”

She added that she was a first-time candidate for a brand new party that a lot of people had not heard of before, all factors which made her performance all the more impressive.

The Wanton Witch

Holloween and Community.

Leave a comment

I’ve not been blogging much of late, that is due to getting involved more in my local community.
I’ve recently become a member of the Board of Management of my local community center and a member of the events committee. We started small with a end of summer disco when the kids went back to school and
have work our way up to more ambition event.

Today was one of them. It went well I am shattered, we had two fire tenders, one from the civil defense who let the kids climb on board and use the mini hose and one from the on call Dublin fire brigade who, who did a talk on safety at Holloween. We had the order of Malta ambulance and the kids got to be strapped down on the strecher and the Community Garda came with a Van and the kids got to sit in the driving seat and be locked in the back.

This time of year our emergency services can face a lot of flack when they are called out esp Holloween night, hopefully some of the out reach we did today will mean there will be less of that in years to come.

Then we had the disco and face painting, colouring in competition, costume competition. We had over a 150 kids attend it was a great community even I got called the Pumpkin lady by the kids due to my T Shirt. It was very worth while. And I am so going to veg out and watch scarey movies wiht my kids for the rest of the evening and have a drink or two.

The Wanton Witch

Oweynagat: The Cave of Cats.

Leave a comment

I finally did it.

One of the places that is said to be most connected with The Morrigan is The Cave of Cats
at the Rathcroghan complex in Roscommon. It is said that she comes tearing out of the cave at Samhain.
The Cave is part of an underground complex which is said to connect this world the one beyond.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathcroghan#Oweynagat

It was into the depths of that cave I finally went today. The place it’self has intrigued and terrified me
from when I first heard about it, same with the deities which it is associated with.

Today I crawled down into it’s depths and sat leaning against it’s cool walls in the most complete darkness I have ever known.

I am still processing all that happened but I found a Stillness in the Cave and so far it has stayed with me.
I will write up more about the sites and the work being done there by those charged with tending the sites.

Activism and Agitation, The Wanton Witch

StandupIreland and Occult Ireland.

3 Comments

StandupIreland is a group which seems to have formed in November 2012 and who’s focus is on reopening the Vatican Embassy here in Ireland after it was closed in the wake of the child abuse cover up by the Roman Catholic Church.

They state on their website http://www.irelandstandup.org/index.html they they are a lay group of Catholics which are working together and they are very active on twitter.

And that is were I have interacted with them. They have been very active as the XCase Legislation is slowly making progress and they started interacting with me after some of my tweets had been RT by the Irish Choice Network account. This was aprox a year ago and I tweeted that I was going out to an Occult Ireland meet up and this seems to fascinate them. So much so that a year later they are still trying to bemirch me and other people who are pro choice by asking if they are are going to Occult meetings with me.

https://twitter.com/IrelandStandUp/statuses/346044456098750464

sui

It would seem that those behind StandupIreland seem to think that going to Occult meetings or having anything to do with the occult is wrong and something to try and belittle someone over and try and ‘taint’ others by association.

I am baffled by this. I am out as being a pagan and Witch, I’ve been a moderator and admin for pagan communities and a member of the Occult Ireland forum for nearly 7 years. I’ve gone to moots, meet ups, Sabbaths, have run workshops, given talks, have been a speaker at a weekend pagan/Irish spirituality conference, have written the forward for Lora O’Brien’s latest book A Practical Guide to Irish Spirituality
have been staff manager at Féile Draíochta (anyone who knows me can easily pick me out in the staff photo).

None of these are anything I am ashamed of and I don’t see why I have to be. Ireland has a long history of it’s citizens being involved in the Occult. Indeed the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn which is considered to be the greatest single influence on Western Magic and Occult systems and even Wicca had many Irish members.

Two of the most notable are W.B. Yeats and Maud Gonne. They were magical partners before she was married and their Occult correspondences are on view to any who may wish to read them as part of the W.B. Yeats exhibition in the National Library of Ireland on Kildare st. There is a virtual tour of the exhibition online which can be viewed here http://www.nli.ie/yeats/main.html

gdwby

It seems that in trying to dream up a better Ireland they searched for all possible tools. I don’t think that they would have wished an Ireland into being which was one that lacked diversity and derided their own spiritual explorations.