The Mystic Moon in the Sherwood neighbourhood of Nottingham is a splendid shop filled with all kinds of pagan and spiritual goods. There are books, candles, crystals, cauldrons, statues, herbs and incense, oils and resins, jewellery and a good deal more besides. I can thoroughly recommend it. Not only is it a well stocked witchy shop, the owner and staff are very knowledgeable and a lovely group of people – you are guaranteed a warm and friendly welcome. There is also a regular tarot reader, healer and classes on different subjects.

I was scheduled to run a one-day class entitled Elements of Magic in October 2014 and was delighted with the group of people who turned up for the day’s event who were all so nice and the room which is set aside for workshops has a lovely atmosphere. It was a great day – in my intuitive, not-very-well-planned way, I guided everybody through a variety of elemental exercises to show how each element can be used for magical purposes. Air included blowing bubbles and the whole room, with the sun streaming through the window, was lit up with an array of hundreds of bubbles in all the colours of the rainbow. For water, we drank a small glass of it, then I wrote love hearts or reiki symbols on the bottom of the cups and the water tasted very different. For earth, we used short wooden sticks, wool, silks, cotton and ribbons and feathers to tie into Mexican God’s eyes, holding our intention in mind each time the wool was wound around the sticks. Fire was a little tricky as it wasn’t possible to light candles in the venue.  Instead we used fiery colours, talked about the power and magic of the sun and I showed the group how to channel anger out of oneself like a lazer beam to get rid of anger/aggression before dealing with an issue magically. There were lots of other things we did too, but these ones particularly stand out to me as I look back on it. For the element of spirit I used coloured sweets (M&Ms and Skittles) as a form of divination – just to show that whatever we happen to have to hand can be used in some way as a magical tool. We looked at the way colours fell next to each other or the patterns formed by the sweets.

I’m a very intuitive, imaginative person and creative too and used a few techniques that I made up previously or on the spot because that’s just the way I work. When I started on my witchy journey, there were no teachers for me to learn from so I got used to improvising and relying on my intuition.

So, here I was teaching a class on elemental magic with skittles, kids bubbles and scribbling on the bottom of plastic cups when suddenly one man smiles widely.

‘There isn’t a word to describe you is there?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Eclectic witch is the closest I suppose.’

‘I know what you are!’ He said, getting excited. ‘You’re a jazz witch!’

‘Yes,’ cried out another man. ‘That’s it exactly!’

These two men had hit the nail on the head – I don’t particularly like much in the way of Jazz but I knew what they meant and it fits perfectly. Just like jazz music, I’ll use a bit of this, a bit of that, disregard the rules, put things together that don’t normally fit. I improvise, making up everything as I go along, chucking away the carefully written ceremony and winging it. I suddenly have an idea that’s completely off the wall and I run with it.

So there we go – I’m the jazz witch! I have kept in touch with lots of people on that course, some of them have become very good friends, including the two adorable gentlemen I am now proud to call my good friends, who came up with a new form of witchcraft just for me.

JAZZ WITCH!