Tag Archives: Wicca

One Was Always Enough.

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What’s your biggest dream?

When I first started this website and began yelling into the void that is the internet, I had one dream.

Not a book deal.

Not a viral post.

Not thousands of followers hanging on every badly punctuated sentence.

Just one person.

If something I wrote found its way into the right hands, at the right time, and nudged someone towards hope instead of despair, kindness instead of bitterness, or courage instead of fear, then I reckoned the whole experiment would have been worth it.

That was the dream.

The internet has a funny way of making us believe that numbers are everything. Views. Likes. Shares. Subscribers. As though the value of a thought is measuredby the size of the crowd listening.

I’ve never been convinced.

History is full of quiet conversations that changed lives, while the loudest voices were forgotten before the ink had dried.

Over the years, I’ve had a few messages from strangers. from people who stumbled across a poem, or one of my rambling posts at exactly the moment they needed it.

“Thank you.”

Those messages mean more than you’ll ever know.

Because every single one reminds me that words still matter.

Not because they’re mine, but because honest words have a peculiar habit of finding the people they’re meant to find.

If anything I’ve written has helped you laugh when life felt heavy, think when the world demanded outrage, or believe that tomorrow might just be a little brighter than today, then you’ve given me something far greater than any statistic ever could.

You’ve allowed this grumpy old poet to live beyond his original dream.

So thank you.

Thank you for reading.

Thank you for sharing the journey.

And thank you for reminding me that even when it feels like we’re all shouting into the void, sometimes the void quietly whispers back.

Stay safe

Bc

We Did This In Eighteen Minutes

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The Earth has been writing her story
for around four and a half billion years.

Mountains have risen,
oceans have learned the language of the moon,
forests have breathed in silence,
and life has patiently rehearsed
every possible way
to exist.

Then we arrived.

If all that time
were folded neatly
into a single year,

humanity
wouldn’t appear in January,
or July,
or even Christmas morning.

We would step onto the stage
with barely eighteen minutes
until midnight.

Eighteen minutes.

That’s all we’ve needed
to crown ourselves kings
of a kingdom
we didn’t build.

We point at our cities,
our satellites,
our machines that reach beyond the stars,
and call it progress.

Yet somehow,
the hands clever enough
to map distant galaxies
still struggle
to protect the soil
beneath their own feet.

We’ve spent fortunes
looking for another world
while treating this one
like somewhere we’re only passing through.

In those eighteen minutes,
entire voices
have fallen silent.

Species that survived
ice ages,
volcanoes,
asteroids,
have not survived us.

Every extinction
is another verse
removed from Earth’s oldest song.

And still,
the forests whisper.

The rivers remember.

The wind carries warnings
we keep mistaking
for background noise.

Hotter summers.

Stronger storms.

Longer droughts.

Skies that burn.

The planet isn’t seeking revenge.

She’s showing us
the consequence
of forgetting
that we belong to her,
not the other way around.

But this isn’t the end
unless we decide it is.

Because every generation
inherits a pen.

Some use it
to sign away tomorrow.

Others
write a different future.

Every tree planted.
Every river restored.
Every choice made
with something beyond ourselves in mind
becomes another sentence
in a story worth continuing.

Perhaps our eighteen minutes
will not be remembered
for how quickly we conquered,

but for the moment
we finally understood

that the greatest measure
of intelligence
was never how far
we could travel from Earth—

it was whether we learned
how to stay.

(c)BobChristian

We’re All Being Sculpted

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Do you think we’re shaped more by our experiences or by who we are?

This is one of those questions that sounds wonderfully simple.

Until you actually stop and think about it.

At first glance, most people tend to fall into one of two camps.

Some believe we’re born with a certain personality and that’s pretty much who we’ll always be.

Others argue we’re products of our environment—that life writes the story and we’re just the paper.

Personally?

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

But not in a neat little 50/50 split.

If I had to choose the stronger force, I’d probably say experiences do more of the sculpting.

Not because who we are doesn’t matter.

It matters enormously.

Our temperament, our natural way of seeing the world, our strengths, our vulnerabilities, the way our brains are wired… that’s the raw material we begin with. Some people are naturally cautious. Others adventurous. Some seem to feel every emotion at full volume while others process life more quietly.

Those foundations are real.

But foundations aren’t the finished house.

Life gets to work after that.

Every friendship.
Every heartbreak.
Every success.
Every failure.
Every act of kindness.
Every betrayal.

Each one leaves a mark.

Sometimes those marks are barely noticeable.

Sometimes they’re deep enough to change the entire landscape.

I’ve often found myself looking back at moments I’d rather not have experienced at all, only to realise years later they quietly taught me something I couldn’t have learned any other way. Pain has an odd habit of becoming perspective, if we’re willing to let it. Failure often teaches resilience far better than success ever could. And the people who hurt us sometimes end up teaching us the sort of compassion we never imagined we’d possess. Those aren’t lessons we’re born with. They’re earned.

That doesn’t mean everyone responds to the same experiences in the same way.

Far from it.

Give two people the exact same childhood and they’ll often become completely different adults.

Why?

Because experience doesn’t happen in isolation.

It passes through the filter of who we already are.

The naturally optimistic person may see hardship as a challenge.

The naturally anxious person may experience the same hardship as proof the world isn’t safe.

Same event.

Different interpretation.

Different outcome.

That’s the fascinating part.

Life isn’t simply happening to us.

We’re constantly interacting with it.

It’s a conversation between our nature and our experiences, with each shaping the other over time.

Perhaps that’s why human beings are so wonderfully complicated.

We’re not born as blank slates.

Nor are we trapped by the person we happened to be at birth.

We’re works in progress.

Still learning.

Still adapting.

Still being quietly reshaped by the people we meet, the places we go, and the moments that catch us completely by surprise.

So yes, I think experiences probably do more of the sculpting.

But the sculpture still depends on the stone you started with.

And maybe that’s the beautiful part.

No two pieces of stone are ever quite the same.

Stay safe,

Bc

Still Learning… Thankfully

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Are you a lifelong learner?

I’d like to think so.

Not because I have a wall full of certificates, or because I’m forever signing up for courses, but because life has a habit of reminding me just how much I still don’t know.

The older I get, the less interested I become in being right all the time.

I’d much rather understand.

That might sound like a small distinction, but I think it’s an important one.

Learning isn’t just about collecting facts. It’s about allowing new experiences to reshape old opinions. It’s about listening to people whose lives are completely different from your own and being willing to admit they might have something valuable to teach you.

Some of the greatest lessons I’ve learned haven’t come from classrooms at all.

They’ve come from raising children.

From loving someone.

From making spectacular mistakes.

From living with autism long before I understood I was autistic.

From photography, where standing still and really looking at the world often reveals beauty everyone else walked straight past.

And, of course, from books.

Books have introduced me to worlds I’ll never visit, people I’ll never meet, and ideas that have quietly changed the way I see life.

One of those ideas comes from the Buddha.

Whether you see Buddhism as a religion or simply a philosophy, there’s something deeply refreshing about the idea that we’re all works in progress.

The Buddha didn’t really teach that life should be comfortable.

He taught that it could be understood.

The Four Noble Truths ask us to look honestly at suffering instead of pretending it isn’t there. The Eightfold Path isn’t a quick fix or a self-help slogan. It’s a lifelong practice of becoming a little wiser, a little kinder and a little more compassionate than we were yesterday.

I like that.

Not because I expect to become enlightened.

Let’s be honest—I still lose my patience when technology decides today is the perfect day to update itself.

But because it reminds me that growth isn’t a destination.

It’s a direction.

Too often we think learning stops when school finishes, or when we retire, or when we reach a certain age.

I think that’s when the real education begins.

Every conversation teaches us something.

Every mistake offers a lesson—assuming our pride doesn’t get in the way.

Every challenge asks us whether we’re prepared to adapt or whether we’d rather stay comfortably wrong.

For me, lifelong learning isn’t about becoming the smartest person in the room.

It’s about becoming a slightly better version of the person who walked into it.

If I can go to bed tonight knowing something I didn’t know this morning…

If I can understand another person’s perspective just a little more…

If I can show a little more compassion than I managed yesterday…

Then I’d call that a day well spent.

After all, none of us ever truly finish learning.

And perhaps that’s one of life’s greatest gifts.

Stay safe,

BC

The Weight We Choose to Carry.

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What’s one habit that has improved your life the most?

f I had to choose just one habit, it would be meditation.

Not because it gives me all the answers, but because it helps me stop fighting battles that only exist in my own mind.

For a long time, I held onto anger. I replayed conversations, revisited old hurts, and carried resentment far longer than I probably should have. I thought holding on somehow made me stronger or somehow proved I was right.

It didn’t.

It only hurt me.

The people or situations I was angry about often carried on with their lives while I carried the weight. Looking back, it seems like such a waste of energy.

Meditation changed that.

It didn’t erase the past. It simply taught me to observe my thoughts without becoming trapped by them. It reminded me that I always have a choice: hold on or let go.

Most of the time, letting go is the better option.

Not because what happened doesn’t matter, but because my peace matters more.

These days, I still get frustrated. I’m only human. But I no longer give anger a permanent home. I acknowledge it, learn what I can from it, and move forward .

That small daily practice has made me calmer, more patient, and far more present.

Funny really. I started meditating to quiet my mind.

What I discovered was that the greatest benefit wasn’t learning how to be still.

It was learning what was never worth carrying in the first place.

Stay Safe 

Bc

Ps here’s a scribble I wrote on this subject some time ago

https://bob-christian.com/2025/07/05/the-art-of-letting-go/

The Right Book at the Right Time

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What’s a piece of media (book, movie, song) that changed how you see the world?

This is a very tough choice, truth be told.

There’s obviously The Watchmen, my first ever graphic novel, which started a lifelong love affair with comic books that’s still going strong today.

Then there’s String Theory for Dummies, the book that accidentally sparked a conversation with what is now Mrs Bob.

Both of those deserve posts of their own, and I’m fairly sure I’ve rambled about them before.

But if I had to choose the one piece of media that genuinely changed the direction of my life, it would be…

Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham.

This book came into my life at exactly the right moment.

At the time, my life was an absolute mess. I was going through a particularly nasty breakup, carrying around a lot of anger, hurt and resentment. Looking back, I also realise I was an autistic man who hadn’t yet been diagnosed, trying to make sense of emotions I simply didn’t have the tools to process.

Then someone showed me kindness.

A witch, who had once found comfort in the very same book herself, passed it on to me.

It wasn’t a book about casting spells that changed me.

It was a book about responsibility.

About balance.

About understanding that every action has consequences.

The lesson that has stayed with me happened shortly afterwards.

My ex broke into my home, took a lot of our belongings and trashed much of what she left behind.

The old me would probably have jumped in the car, driven straight over there and made the whole situation infinitely worse.

Instead, something clicked.

For the first time, I understood that anger wouldn’t repair my home.

It wouldn’t replace what had been stolen.

It wouldn’t heal what had happened.

All it would do was make me ill, and give the people who had hurt me the satisfaction of knowing they’d got exactly the reaction they wanted.

Walking away wasn’t weakness.

It was peace.

That one lesson changed everything.

It led me to read more about Wicca, which in turn eventually led me towards Mahāyāna Buddhism. Although they’re very different paths, both encouraged me to slow down, look inward and understand that my mental and physical wellbeing are deeply interconnected.

Those philosophies helped me become a calmer person.

A happier husband.

A better father.

A better grandfather.

They’ve also influenced the way I write, the way I see people, and the compassion I try to show others.

Without that one book…

Without the kindness of the woman who first placed it into my hands…

I honestly don’t know where I’d be.

There’s every chance I’d have let my anger make decisions for me.

And when anger starts making your decisions, the ending is rarely a good one.

Sometimes the books that change your life aren’t the bestselling novels or the classics everyone studies at school.

Sometimes they’re simply the right book…

Arriving at exactly the right time.

Stay safe,

Bc

Autumn Whispers

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What is your favorite season of year? Why?

If you asked me which season of the year I hold closest to my heart, my answer would come without a moment’s hesitation: autumn.

There is a magic in that turning of the Wheel. Summer’s relentless heat softens, mornings arrive shrouded in mist, and the world transforms into a living tapestry of gold, amber, and crimson. Nature seems to pause, taking a long, slow breath before the hush of winter descends.

I have always found comfort in the cooler air. The oppressive heat of summer gives way to crisp walks through the woods, to the scent of fallen leaves that carries a nostalgia that words can barely touch. Autumn asks us to slow down, to reflect, to reconnect with the rhythms of the natural world that too often pass unnoticed.

But my love for this season runs deeper than the beauty of its colors or the relief from heat. Autumn holds my favourite of the eight Sabbats: Samhain.

For many, Samhain is simply Halloween, a time for costumes and candy. Yet in the Pagan traditions, it holds far more weight. Samhain marks the close of the harvest and the onset of the darker half of the year. It is a transitional season, when the boundaries between worlds thin and the veil between the living and the dead grows fragile. It is a time for remembrance, for reflection, for honouring those who came before us.

There is profound comfort in this. In our modern world, conversations about death are often avoided, yet Samhain asks us to face it, to embrace it as part of life’s natural cycle. It reminds us that those who are no longer physically with us continue to shape our lives through their stories, their wisdom, their love.

Each year, as the nights lengthen and the leaves drift from the trees, I pause to remember my ancestors, family, and friends who have passed. I light candles. I share stories. I offer gratitude. In doing so, I feel tethered not just to those I have known, but to the countless generations who have honoured this season long before my time.

Autumn teaches that endings are not to be feared. The falling leaf is not only a symbol of death but also a promise of renewal. Nature sheds what is no longer needed so that fresh growth may emerge when the time is right. There is wisdom in that, a lesson I carry with me throughout the year.

Every season has its own song, but autumn speaks most clearly to my soul. It is a season of reflection, of gratitude, of transformation. A season of remembrance. A season of quiet mystery.

And as the veil thins and the year leans toward its close, I find myself once more beneath an autumn sky, listening to the whispers of the ancestors riding on the wind.

Stay safe,
Bc

Finding Faith Without Following the Crowd

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Do you practice religion?

That’s always a slightly awkward question to answer, because the honest answer is…

Sort of.

I suppose the easiest way to explain it is that I have a belief system rather than following one strict path. It’s a mixture of Buddhism, witchcraft, and a lot of personal reflection and soul-searching along the way. In fact, I even wrote a book inspired by some of those ideas called Spells and Scribbles.

Now before anyone starts clutching pearls or reaching for holy water, let me say this clearly: I have absolutely no issue with mainstream religion whatsoever. If someone’s faith helps them become kinder, more compassionate, and more understanding of other people, then I genuinely think that’s a beautiful thing.

The problem only starts when belief becomes a weapon.
When it’s used to shame people.
Control people.
Exclude people.
Or hurt people for simply existing as themselves.

That part never sat right with me.

For me personally, I’ve always preferred finding my own path through life rather than being told exactly what I should think or believe. I’m not particularly good at blindly following rules anyway — anyone who knows me will probably laugh knowingly at that.

Buddhism appealed to me because there’s no angry deity standing over you with a clipboard waiting to condemn you for being human. At its heart, Buddhism recognises something incredibly honest:

Life involves suffering.

Not because we’re evil.
Not because we’re broken.
But because being human is messy and painful and complicated sometimes.

The whole point seems to be learning. Growing. Trying to become a little wiser, a little kinder, a little more aware of ourselves and the impact we have on the world around us.

Nobody is expected to be perfect.

You just do your best.

And if you stumble?
Well… you learn from it and keep going.

That makes far more sense to me than the idea of eternal punishment for simply failing at being human occasionally.

Then there’s Wicca and witchcraft, which drew me in for completely different reasons. I love the connection to nature, the seasons, the moon, the idea that the earth itself deserves respect rather than ownership.

There’s also something deeply comforting in the balance of it all. Masculine and feminine energies existing side by side, neither above the other, both equally necessary. The world works through balance. Nature teaches that constantly if you stop long enough to notice.

Honestly, both paths seem to meet in the same place eventually:

Be mindful of your actions.
Take responsibility for the harm you cause.
Show compassion where you can.
Try to leave the world a little softer than you found it.

That feels like enough spirituality for me.

The older I get, the less interested I am in who has the “correct” religion and the more interested I am in whether someone is kind to waiters, animals, strangers, and themselves.

Because I suspect whatever magic or enlightenment exists in this world probably lives there far more than it does in arguments about doctrine.

Stay safe

Bc