On The Craft of Boundary Magic

Protecting this precious patch in our imagined wildwood

Welcome back to the wildwood, and to the rusty old mailbox overgrown with ivy. If this is the first time you have visited here then you may wish to open this invitation. In finding your way to All The Wild Magic I trust that you have arrived exactly when you were meant to. This letter is for you.

Would you care to take a seat on the mossy knoll beside the mailbox? The knoll is dried by the day’s sun, and soft; a mound overgrow with star moss. Have a look under the shade of the ferns beside it and find a bottle of rose and elderflower soda, left there for you.[1]

The soda is made from petals of the wild rose and creamy umbels of elderflower, brewed for a week with spring water and honey. If your heart needs tending today, the rose will tend to you.

Dog rose is an ally of mine, and grows abundantly in the northern English wildwood where I live. It has delicate, pale pink petals that can blow away in a strong wind. It also has thick, arching stems with thorns sharp as fox’s teeth. This is not the many-petal rose of the cultivated garden, but the ancient rose of Celtic legend; one that finds a way to thrive and flower even in the densest of thickets, and whose thorns can easily draw blood.

When I first arrived here at Hazel Cottage my heart and body were in need of tending (as we get to know each other, I will tell you more about this) and I found that I was drawn to sit in a natural arbour deep in the wood. The arbour was made of tangled hawthorn and arching rose stems, some dead and some living. On the woodland floor around it grew purple dog violets and aromatic ground ivy. There, protected by thorns on all sides, I felt safe.

Sometimes real, physical boundaries like the protection of a thorny arbour are needed. There is power in knowing that no one can sneak up behind you [2]. But what about when you need boundaries of a different kind?

In my first days at Hazel Cottage I felt welcomed by the deep enchantment of the place. It seemed clear that I had arrived here for a reason, and that the land itself had beckoned me. I had work to do, but ancient and wild places can be complicated; they are often a cauldron that swirls with many presences, human and non-human; physical and non-physical; each with its own direction of travel and intention. Locks and keys are all very well, as are hedges, gates and thorns, but sometimes protection of a different kind is needed, and this is where boundary magic comes in.

The word ‘magic’ can mean many things, and I hope to write to you about it in depth, but for now, I invite you to simply think of it as the power inherent in a strong and clear intention, which can be amplified by repetition and renewal, and by asking others for help.

Here at Hazel Cottage I walked the boundary of the little garden in those first days and muttered whatever words came to mind. As I went, certain phrases began to stick, to strengthen and to rhyme, and these I repeated until they became a charm of sorts. The words were dense with my intention to keep harm without and love within. I made offerings to the trees on the boundary: small green stones from the Scottish island of Iona. I stated an intention to live alongside the trees in reciprocity. This was my boundary magic, and it helped me to feel safe. When I am away from the hut I imagine this magic as a glimmering and impenetrable net, strong and finely woven.

Since those first days I’ve renewed this magic many times whenever I’ve felt the need to: during a huge storm when the woods were loud as an ocean; when planting a thorn or plum tree to make the physical hedge thicker.

So, as we meet here in this wildwood of deep imagination, how will we perform some boundary magic to keep these stories and exchanges protected? To ask that our meeting place only be found by those with sound intention? Your words and offerings are most welcome, and I would be delighted to know what they are; please do write back to me.

Here at the hut I close my eyes and imagine planting a dream rose at the boundary, beside the stone stile; one that will spread and sprawl over time until we can eventually make medicine from the flowers.

With warmest wishes,

Sophie

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[1]In these correspondences, my intention is that we will conjure things together in this place of deep imagination, and that they will, in that mysterious way of the things inside dreams and stories, come to exist in a place beyond the tangible.

[2] In the woods there are others ways to know when you are not alone too, which I will write to you about at a future time.