I hope you’re having a good end to 2015 as we head into January. Thankfully we got the Avalon album recorded and released, as going into December Carrie ended up with recurring sinus infections that have seen her in hospital 5 times for short durations and it’s still touch and go. We would like to both thank well wishers as Carrie makes the road to recovery.
Two albums, a lot of songs and now it’s time enjoy playing them to audiences as the light returns and we now have a full set list and more, as we emerge from a winter of huge rainfall and very little in the way of clear skies into and out of this solstice just past.
Our thoughts are with those with lost homes as the flooding of rivers scored record breaking levels in some areas. Some of this is a reminder of what us pagans know too well. Trees and hedges soak up water and drink gallons of it by every individual trunk. These are being taken away by intensive farming but also a lack of dredging in places where the towns have needed and depended on them in order for them to have grown but without fear of silting up over many decades of neglect. This water could have been dealt with by trees and sensible river maintenance.
Digging up dirty energy, despite overwhelming and consistent warnings of established after effects as far as Australia to the USA, our most powerful people have played the proverbial ostrich time and time again. Fracking doesn’t work and is stacked with ignorance and profit over sense and care. Toxins, house taps and rivers with flames, even radioactive discharge with no real idea on what happens to all the healthy water needed to then produce toxic water at the other side.
Some of our most sacred wells and ancient sites are actually in the zones approved for exploration and as more and more aquifers and other water sources fall to poisoning, so even the richest people, even with a personal stockpile of water, will eventually run out of a clean supply. That’s why we have seen peaceful demonstration in Cheshire and notably Upton Community Protection Camp, where a strong protest of all those giving up various time they can from many places and with a great supporting team off site…. they have all put fracking on the map. This particular site is right next to a school and even those with money at the centre of their living, insurance companies and estate agents, all have either made it difficult to give protection cover to properties and the houses themselves have seen their market value often dramatically reduced. This is even in areas where test drilling is only taking place, where the many rows of wells to potentially follow on in multiple drilling platforms.
We did a song called the Warriors Call (Pagans against fracking) and a more general one on the first album, called Fracking Hell. On the second album, we have the songs White Spring and Chalice Well, recorded at a time when the map for fracking licences to explore-drill had a zone marked as open to interest in the Mendips, the water of which feeds into ancient places such as Glastonbury, Wells and the Somerset levels. If you buy the Warriors call single, for £3 or choose more, we send this straight to our fellow pagans.
https://dancinghare.bandcamp.com/track/warriors-call
It will add more money (you can buy their t shirts, patches and other apparel or just simply donate) to funds to assist in travel and sustain a presence and awareness in countless ways.
We do not want our songs about the sacred wells to become laments and memoirs of that which used to be, where there is a well (and this matters in the whole of the UK) that is now dry that wasn’t before fracking or that same well or a river too poisonous to drink from anymore. The white faded spring? The chalice garden, where visitors can only look with sadness at the pipes where water used to flow “Unsafe, do not drink” (there was a well but we don’t like to mention it much these days, as it makes us sad it’s not there anymore)
“Pagans and druids, join together in hands, for water and forests in our scared land”
Love and light from Matt and Carrie
Jan 2016
Dancing Hare 