#103 - Magic in Prison, Pagan Chaplaincy & Labyrinths with Jacqui Winn | Glitch Bottle

One or two prisoners that I am working with long term are really seeing the benefits of daily practice, daily work. daily offerings, working through that and are actually seeing the most amazing results through their prison centres. Salutations listeners and welcome back to Glitch Bottle, the podcast where we uncork the uncommon in magic, mysticism, and the generally misunderstood.

I'm Alexander F., and today we are so elated to speak with witch magical teacher and pagan prison chaplain, Jackie Nguyen. Jackie Nguyen. All I can say is prepare yourself for a deep and powerful dive of a podcast listeners, one that explores the magical life of people serving sentences in prison. As an inmate, for example, how can you practice magic?

As a prison chaplain, how do you support inmates in their practice? What about support for people who finish serving their sentence and reintegrate into life outside of prison? Can you burn incense or use tarot in prison? And how do you acquire crossroads dirt as an inmate? Well, there's no better person to answer these questions than Jackie Wynn, who is a government-certified prison chaplain in the UK, as well as a witch and magical teacher.

Jackie also constructs amazing-looking labyrinths and uses these as part of her magical path group, which we talk about. And Jackie's also the chair of the Pagan Chaplains Association and has been a pagan for 40 years and a pagan prison chaplain for 10 years, working in seven prisons during that time, and Jackie currently works full-time in multiple prisons. Jackie shares powerful details about working with inmates and teaching magic, as well as integrating Aidan Wachter's Thank you.

with me about Jackie and her work. Without Delaney, this podcast wouldn't have happened. So thank you so much, Delaney. And also a huge thanks as well to the incredible constellation of questions from patrons of the podcast for Jackie, which as usual, deepened the conversation in new in interesting ways. And now to help us uncork the uncommon, let's welcome Jackie Nguyen.

Jackie Nguyen, thank you so much for taking the time and stopping on the Glitch Bottle podcast today. Thank you very much for having me on Glitch Bottle. It's one of my favorite podcasts at the moment, so I'm excited. The honor. is absolutely mine. And when Delaney first told me just about the incredible, impactful work that you were doing as a pagan prison chaplain, I was blown away because

You have these experiences and insights that few of us listening would ever have. But before we get to all of that, Jackie, can you maybe take us back a little bit to your early years? How did you first...

become interested in paganism itself? Well, that's taken me back a long, long time now. So I think as a child, I always had a belief in magic, not that... lord of the rings fantasy novel type magic but i always knew that there was something extra something else i saw things that other people didn't see i experienced things as a young child that other people didn't experience

But I lived in a really non-magical, very straight household. My father was a teacher and later on a headmaster who was an atheist. My mother was brought up a Catholic but extremely lapped, didn't practice. And neither had an interest in religion or spirituality. Same as my sister, she doesn't have an interest in it either. And there's me, the oddball in the family, knowing, understanding. And I'm using words now.

As a 56-year-old woman, the words that I wouldn't have had as a child, these were just feelings that I was recognising. And I was brought up in London, so no access to the countryside so much. But my father's from Norfolk, which is very rural, and we'd go and spend summer holidays there with my grandparents. And they were the ones that taught me a bit about herbs and trees and plants and, you know, birds, my father as well.

The natural landscape for me was always something that drew me. Avid reader, so I read everything and everything I could get hold of. and loved history. And off my own back as a young teenager, I was a bit of an academic, I guess, back then, not so much now. But I remember reading the Irish mythologies and the Welsh mythologies, the Mabinogion, for instance.

And something in there really, really caught my imagination. This is a time, you know, kind of early 80s, there's no internet access, there's no mobile phones. And I heard this thing, witchcraft in particular, and it struck a chord with me. So I tried to find out by myself, buy as many books as I could. And they weren't the books that people may be reading today. I never came across the Chaos Magic books or Aleister Crowley books or any of those. So they were very, very kind of.

what I would call quite easy witchcraft books. Hedgewitch was one of the ones that I bought by Ray Beth, just so that I could teach myself. And I kind of blundered along in that way for many years, just trying to pick out what I thought might be the right way of working. I had a very misspent youth, teenager and in my 20s.

I walked into my first prison at the age of 46 and thought there but for the grace of God go I. Really went off the rails, was a proper rebel. And then settled down a bit and moved to... Still trying to piece together this thing called witchcraft, still trying to piece together, work the moons, work the Sabbath, but not really having any guidance. And then we moved to Gustonbury, which in the UK is kind of spiritual center, pagan center. It's a bit like Sedona.

mixed with Salem, kind of a little bit of everything. And long story short, met some really wonderful people that held my hand for a couple of years and taught me. And then met the most amazing and influential man I've ever met in my life, a guy called Victor Corvo Penfold, who passed away in 2003 at the age of 84. And I... Met him very late in life and he taught me through the Wicca system with a very strong sprinkling of high ceremonial magic and Romani magic. He was full blood Romani gypsy.

one of the big families over here, the Penfolds. And he took me through my first, second and third degrees within Wicca, which I didn't know quite how I felt about it. And on my third degree, Victor. said to me, how do you feel about now having your third degree and being officially a high priestess? And I went, it's all a bit shit, really. And he said,

Thank goodness. Now I can teach you properly. I thought that I wanted to do the Wiccan three degrees and he was trying to put me off. But he said, that's what you want. We'll give it to you. So I had it realised that. It's a man-made title. It's given by somebody. It's not bestowed upon you by the gods. It's not bestowed upon you by spirit. That is earned. And after my third degree, boy, did I earn it.

I earned it the hard way, fingers burnt the whole bit, ego kind of flourished and then got squashed. As I think happens when you follow the degree system, I think it's natural and normal. I worked as Vixa's last initiated high priestess. A friend of mine and myself were his last initiated high priestesses until he died in 2003. And for me, it was a massive wrench.

It was the first person in my life that I'd lost and really felt that grief over. However, as is always the way with those special teachers that we meet, he's still around and I still work with him. very much and I feel that it was him in spirit on some level that pushed me into working in prisons at the moment.

So it's been a long convoluted kind of, as it is, all our paths, you know, they twist this way and that. And I've kind of had experience with Druidry and witchcraft, high ceremonial magic, Egyptian magic, touched on lots of things. But my biggest influence was Victor. And in my teachings, I try to pass on some of his knowledge, obviously with my experience thrown in. So he ran a coven from 1954.

just after the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in this country, I think in 1952, I want to say. He ran his coven from 1954 right the way through in some form or another until he died in 2003. And I run an offshoot coven of that, which is called Raven Circle, which has been running on and off for about 14, 15 years.

So we chose Raven Circle because his magical name was Corvo. So we named it after him. And he's the patron, if you like, of our circle. Sometimes we think... we are on a magical path and this is what i'm supposed to do and everything and here you are literally delving in and by the virtue of your direct experience completely things that you that you didn't even expect were happening

Taking you down a path. If somebody had told me when I was a teenager or in my early 20s, this is going to be how your life pans out, I would have laughed. At that time, I was involved with bikers, Hells Angels, drugs. drinking too much, a party girl, fingers in a few dodgy pies here and there. But all of that experience that I had then, which I had to declare to the prison because I had been arrested a couple of times, nothing serious, I have to say.

But, you know, you have to declare all of that when you go working in prisons. But it gives me, people say to me, do you regret that life? And I say absolutely not, because it gives me a platform for which I can have an understanding. of people who have gone through a lot worse than I ever did. And it was actually losing a couple of friends to drugs that made me step right outside of that life and re-evaluate my life. And that was when I really stopped dabbling.

in my witchcraft and really took it seriously and went right this is what I should be doing and that came through as a dream for me as well it was an incredible dream that I had about leaving everything I knew in the area of the UK that I lived in just outside of London, packing up my job, everything, leaving my family, my friends, everything, and moving to Glastonbury, all on a whim. Didn't know the town, had read about it.

I'd never visited and felt a yearning to go. And I went for a weekend, found a flat, paid the deposit and literally gave up everything. to move to this town. And I had nothing when I moved here, no job, nothing. And my biggest lesson was trusting in the universe. And a good friend of mine, Joy, she said, Jackie, you're here now. You need to start to trust.

that this is where you need to be. And slowly but surely, everything started to click into place for me. So it was an incredibly spiritual experience and one where I learned to trust my guiding. my guiding spirits, my intuition, the gods. So yeah, it was a proper pilgrimage that kind of stopped me in my tracks. And I've been here nearly 30 years. So it's been a long time now.

As your friend Joy was saying, you're here now, this is where you were meant to be. Given this menagerie of experiences and trusting in the universe and being there at that moment in your life, how did this intersect with... being a prison chaplain and working with prisoners and inmates. Can you just share with us how these two kind of intertwined?

Honestly, I had no concept of prison chaplaincy whatsoever. I knew nothing about it. Like most of us, we don't give prison a second thought when we're not in it. You know, people go to prison, bad people go to prison, occasionally innocent people go to prison, makes headlines, you know, but I knew nothing. I had no intention of ever working in a prison. At the time, I was running my own business in Glastonbury.

shop called Witchcraft Emporium, which we ran for about six or seven years, all full of handmade products. And I loved doing it. I loved working in the shop. And a good friend of mine, who's quite a well-known name in Glastonbury, she'd been asked by our local prison. A little prison, and I can mention this one because it's closed now, a little prison called Shepton Mallet, which was the UK's longest and oldest running prison. When it closed, it had been a prison for 402 years.

So it had the reputation of being the longest and oldest prison. She'd been approached by the chaplaincy department there to go in and become a volunteer chaplain. And at that time in her life, she couldn't do it. So she said to the chaplaincy team there, of course, somebody who I've got in mind might be able to do this job. And so she came to me and I'm like, what? Prison chaplaincy? OK, I get it.

pagan prison chaplaincy I only ever thought it would be Christian perhaps Muslim you know I didn't know knew nothing about it so she told me about it she gave my number to the Catholic nun, Sister Anne there, who was incredible. And so I kind of got recruited by the Catholic nun. I went to the prison to have a look round, and it was only a small prison, 189 guys.

all of them lifers. So lifers are settled in their routine. They are quite easy to work with. The first four or five years, they're quite unsettled, but when they come to terms with their sentence, they pretty much just... hunker down and get on with it and I thought I could do this voluntary a couple of times a month is all they wanted a couple of hours twice a month I thought I've been very lucky in my journey with the teachers I've had and the experiences I've had

If this is a way for me to give something back, I'll do it. So my first day, I went in. I had no training. I had no keys because I was a volunteer. So you're literally escorted from the gate to the chaplaincy. They opened a door. There was eight or nine prisoners and they went, off you go. And I kind of had to fake it till I made it, really. But I owe a lot to that first group. They were...

the ones that taught me a lot of what we call in the business jailcraft. They taught me a lot of what is acceptable, what isn't acceptable, what you can and can't say, how you conduct yourself. If I made a mistake... They were older guys. They were very protective. They would say, Jackie, you shouldn't have said that or that's not, you know, it's OK with us. We're safe. However, you don't know who you're talking to. So they taught me more that group.

Then the actual prison service taught me. I've had a lot of training since. And then Shepton Mallet closed in 2013. So I spent two years at Shepton Mallet and it was a really sad day for it. People, staff, prisoners, no one knew what was happening. So we had to find places and spaces in other prisons. At that point, because they were lifers, they were allowed to keep parrots and budgies in their cells.

but they couldn't take them with them. So the saddest thing I've ever seen is these older guys having to let go of their friends. And it was heartbreaking, really heartbreaking. But from there, I went into three other prisoners as paid. chaplain i was told that a couple of prisons really needed a chaplain and i went to look at the first one and i thought oh my god this is real prison it was a higher category it was a category b

I don't know how you categorise prisons in the States, but A is your high security, B is just under C, and then D is what we call open conditions. So this was a Cat B, rough, old Victorian prison. A lot of violence, bad reputation. And I thought, I don't know whether I can do this. It was quite scary, but I found myself saying yes.

And I'm so blessed that I did. And from there, I went into several other prisons over my career. And I'm now working in three. So that's kind of the journey. So it started from me knowing nothing about prisons. Why would I? Why would I want to know? Why do you think, Jackie, given your amazing experiences and going through all this, why is the prisoner population so...

I mean, unless you have those direct humanizing experiences as you did, why is it so overlooked, do you think? Well, because none of us give it a second thought, do we? We just don't. I didn't. I was one of those people that didn't give it a second thought. are behind big walls they are places that we prefer not to think about bad people go there and bad people do go there it's a prison the people are in prison for a reason

Very few that go to prison are innocent, although it does happen. There was a percentage, obviously. But bad people go there and people don't want to think of bad people. And in this country, and I think America has a massive prison population. And I think Britain's being a far, far smaller country. We're not that far away. We incarcerate more prisoners, I believe, than any other country in Europe. So the public want longer.

tougher sentences, cracking down on crime. And so the prison population is getting overcrowded. It's full. And that's largely because the governments don't really want to look at it because

War on crime gets votes at the end of the day, you know, because that's and the public wants tougher, longer sentences because they have no idea about what prison is actually like, you know. So. When I work with prisoners, I've decided very early on, and I think most chaplains will be the same, my job is not to judge, right or wrong, and that means whatever the crime, from the petty criminal...

right the way through up to the more serious. I see the person sat in front of me. I don't judge the crime. There's a lovely notice board outside the chaplaincy in one of my prisons. And I think... One of the Quakers have put a poster up, which says something along the lines of, hate the sin, not the sinner. So I hate the crime. I don't like the crime, but I treat the person in front of me as a human.

a human being with a past, a human being who may have had a dysfunctional upbringing. Not that any of that makes excuses for crimes, because many people have had dysfunctional upbringings and don't end up committing crime. But if you're going to work with people in prison, the only way I can do that is to treat them as human beings. So I will sit with a murderer and I will laugh and joke. There's a professional relationship.

But, you know, you have to humanise. And the same with me. They have to see me as a human being, not just another member of staff. And I think what happens with chaplains is we're not in uniform. We have the keys on our belt. but we're not in uniform. So that takes away a barrier as well. So I think people are just not interested in prison unless...

Either a member of your family is going there or a friend is going all yourself. So I think it's normal not to be. I think it's sad, but I do think it's quite normal. Why would most people getting on with their everyday lives? Even when I lived in a town many years ago before being a chaplain, I'd walked past the big local prison walls and didn't even think about the people living behind those walls. There's a whole society.

going on behind those walls. There are people getting up, going to work. having education, using the gym. There are people who are grieving because a loved one's died. There are people who are angry. There are people who are going through every emotion.

that we do and they're getting on with their daily lives albeit incarcerated but they're getting on with their daily lives as a whole society living behind those walls and yet i never gave it another thought until i walked into one This touches on something that you've written on before, and you just mentioned again about how chaplaincy is often overlooked as well. What does it mean to be a prison chaplain, specifically being a pagan prison chaplain? What's involved there?

Okay, so it's a really multi-layered job and I am really blessed that I work in establishments that have the most amazing chaplaincy teams. So we're multi-faith teams. Every single faith that is recognised by the UK government as a faith or spirituality is represented. So the old rules in this country used to be you couldn't open a prison unless you had a governor, a doctor.

and the Church of England chaplain. So for many years, the only faith that was ever represented was the Church of England. Over the years, other faiths have gone in. So we now have every faith you can think about, including Sikh, Hindu. Buddhist. I've never met any, but the Zoroastrian faith is represented in some prisons. Rastafarian is represented in some prisons. Buddhism, they're all there. Quakers, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons.

Everyone is there in some capacity or other. And the beauty of it is as well, I've learned so much about other faiths and not at any time has anyone that I work with pointed at me or anybody else and went, you're wrong, we're right. It doesn't happen. We're there for those under our care. And the people under our care aren't just the prisoners, it's the staff as well. We look after prison officers. They have a difficult job.

actually, the prison officers, and I take my hat off to them. They keep me safe in that prison. And so we're there for them as well. And that's really important. So there were duties that all chaplains work together to perform as prisoners come in. We make sure the day after they come in, they're seen by a chaplain, they're offered comfort. We check their religious registration to make sure that the correct chaplain will go and see them.

We might help them fill in forms if they're not great at reading and writing. We give them information on the prison, how to access certain bits and pieces, particularly chaplaincy. Grief, so a course called Living With Loss, if prisoners are grieving, we run courses around that. We run faith-based courses. We help with rehabilitation as well. So some of our courses are based around helping.

the wider prison population to engage in rehabilitation within prison. We then have our own faith-based classes. So I will teach each prisoner is allowed two hours a week. of faith-based, either what we call corporate worship or a class, faith-based class. So with the Christians, they get their Sunday worship plus a Bible study perhaps another day of the week.

With us pagans, I'm primarily teaching because we don't need to worship every time we get together. We tend to do Sabbaths and we tend to do, we might do a full moon one month, a new moon the next month, do a dark moon meditation. So we kind of rotate it. So a lot of what I teach are class-based, all the classes. And I'm pretty much left to my own devices with that, as are all other chaplains. Nobody else knows, apart from me, what I should be teaching and how I want to do that.

So the beauty of it is if I get free reign to teach what I need to teach. But as long as certain jobs are done by chaplaincy, because we have a legal requirement to see new receptions. to see those people who are leaving prison, to point them in the right direction, hopefully where they'll get more care in the outside world. We get on and do, a lot of people that we visit are self-harming.

or have mental health issues, or just need to talk one-to-one with somebody. And for me, the interesting thing is that I get called a lot to talk one-to-one with people of all faiths and none, because they see... pagans as being more open, more accepted. I would say all chaplains of every faith that I work with are open, but the pagan chaplain for some reason tends to be seen as being far more

accepting of what we're being told, and we don't necessarily bring religion or faith into it. So if somebody wants to talk to a chaplain about something that's really concerning them, but they don't want any faith-based structure, most chaplains will deliver that.

that was the pagan chaplain that they normally turn to. So I think that's really interesting. And I think the other thing to say is there are only, I think there's only 20 pagan chaplains in the country. This job is really unique. It's really rare. I'm very honored to be one of those 20. But that's also why most of us are running around half a dozen prisons each and are exhausted at the end of the week. We had so many listener questions for you, Jackie, and this leads into a few.

from Douglas of What Magic Is This? And Douglas's first question for you is, how many prisoners, Jackie, do you reckon are interested in alternative spiritualities? I looked up online at work. In June, there were just under a thousand pagan prisoners in prison, but I would say that there are a lot more interested in alternative spiritualities.

We've got spiritual chaplain. We've got so many other types of spirituality that flows through all religions anyway. But I think there's an awful lot of people that when they talk to me as a pagan chaplain. and I talk to them about some of what I believe, they're starting to tick the boxes. Oh, yeah, I believe that. Oh, yeah. And I've had experience of that.

So they don't necessarily want to become pagan, but there's an awful lot that are becoming much more interested in alternative spiritualities. Buddhism is quite big in prison at the moment. People are wanting to... learn how to meditate deeply, to experience that connection with meditation and paganism that Buddhism gives. So I think there's a lot more that would engage with alternative spiritualities in prison.

If it was easier to do so, it's not always easy to do that. And some of the questions I know we're looking at later is about material and what you can use and what you can't use in prison. But I find there's a lot of people, I was speaking to a guy the other day. who is from Africa, and he's Christian, but he was talking about, he's from Benin, and he was talking about the mixture of kind of voodoo and his Christian faith all wrapped up in that.

Now, he would consider himself absolutely Christian, but he has no problem with pulling in some of his older ancestral magical traditions.

as do some of the Afro-Caribbean people that I work with. They are Christian, but they will pull in Santeria or Obia or Voodoo and still work with bits of that. And I find that really fascinating. So the people that you think... wouldn't be interested in alternative spiritualities actually are and they're bringing little bits of practice into that into their everyday life now i would never have met people like that

had I not been working in prison. So it's a massive learning curve for me as well. Jackie, that is fascinating. And I think you just answered Douglas's second question, which is, is it dangerous, Jackie, for prisoners to engage in spiritualities? that are heterodox? I think it depends what he means by dangerous. When I teach in prison, I'm really conscious of what I teach.

There are certain things perhaps I wouldn't go too deeply into. There are certain practices that I would not be comfortable teaching in prison. So I was always taught by Victor, my teacher, that... Obviously, what you put out, you get back. But you have to be responsible for what you're teaching, because if it is then used irresponsibly, it is my fault as much as...

the practitioner, which means I haven't taught in a responsible way or manner. So I'm really careful, particularly in prison, about some of the things that I teach about. Somebody wanted to learn about demonology. And I, you know, I kind of referenced a couple of books and things like that, but I'm not going too deeply into that with them. It's not that I won't talk about stuff because I will, but some subjects I will just go across the surface of.

What they then want to learn when they move through the prison service is up to them. If they can buy books on those kind of subjects, which is some prisons will let you have those books, some won't, then that's up to them. So it all depends what he means by dangerous. It used to be, it's far more accepted in prison now, it used to be that a lot of pagans would get made fun of by other prisoners.

because other prisoners didn't understand it. And I don't know about the States, but in the UK, to use the word pagan is an insult. So in prison in particular... If they call you a pagan, you're godless, you're an outsider, you're a non-believer, you've got nothing, you're not part of us. So a lot of my time has been spent, not so much now, but in the early days, a lot of my time has been spent re-educating.

other prisoners about what you can and can't say about paganism. I say you can't say that now because you're using it in a derogative way. We have X amount of people in this prison that identify as pagan. I'm a pagan chaplain. So you have to be careful with the words that you're using because that is not right. It's a lot of re-educating people about what pagan actually means. So if I hear it now.

particularly amongst some of the gang cultures. I'm a bit like the old school teacher. I go, sorry, miss. And the same with the prison officers. They're much more accepting now. You know, there'd be banter and it'll be like, oh, you're going out on the full moon, Jackie, and you're going to be hugging trees. And I'm like, yeah, that's what I do.

But you have to have a certain amount of sense of humour around it and you can't take yourself too seriously because it's prison. But we are becoming much more accepted within prison now. And that's largely due to the excellent... pagan chaplains that we have and the excellent support that we have from our managing chaplains and the team as a whole. Here you are, learning from Victor.

Going to your first prison as a chaplain, learning about jailcraft, being escorted, meeting with this first group of prisoners. As you're going through this and as you're working with prisoners and as you're going to different prisons. Can you share with us the broad strokes of what was your first magical experience with

a prisoner. What was one of the first times that you can remember where you actually shared about magical practices and how to practice in prison? Yeah. I mean, the first magical practice, I honestly can't remember. I mean, you're going back 11 years now, but very simple magical practices, starting with visualization and meditations. You've got to be careful. As you know, you're teaching this stuff. It's baby, baby steps. I can remember at Shepton Mallet Prison.

which has a reputation, a lot of prisons have a reputation for being haunted, but Shepton Mallet being so old. I do remember our first Samhain celebration. And it was a bit odd because we were doing it during daylight, which is always a bit weird for me anyway. But we managed to persuade the kitchens to cook us a meal so that we could have a traditional dumb supper together.

So I'm there with six of the staunch pagan group there, all older guys. This was the first time they'd worked in ritual for a Samhain with a dumb supper. We set the space. We called in spirit. We set a place for ancestors. We called our ancestors in. And I don't normally see spirit. I sense and sometimes smell. I rarely see.

And it was quite interesting because halfway through a dumb supper, everyone's eating silently. I felt something just to the right of me and I looked over and I saw the outline. of a black guy in an American GI uniform. The Americans were stationed at Shepton Mallet. They used it as a place that they stayed when they were over here during the war. They took over the prison at that point.

And there were several GIs shot there. So a couple of black guys for stealing. And I think even the Native American was shot there. So legend has it anyway. You know what missing legend is how they grow.

And I just saw this image of this guy and he was just shaking his head at me and shaking his head at me. And as I turn around to look at one of my guys, who was the oldest guy there, and we had a bit of a bond because my background was bikers and Hells Angels and he was a Hells Angel, not anyone I knew.

And as I looked up, he looked and he went really startled. Just his eyes opened and I just went, shush, got my fingers to my lips and I said, shush. And then this image faded away, carried on with the Dumb Supper. left some bits and pieces out in the garden. And I said to this guy, I said, what did you see? And he went, I saw some guy in uniform. He said, just for a moment.

And so I asked about this person and apparently there was a couple of black GIs who were shot there. And one was for having a relationship with a woman in the local town. They called it rape, but it probably wasn't. And what I got from this image was I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. Constantly going through my head. So what we did after that, the following time I came in, still catching that Samhain energy, the veils thinned.

We did a moving on for him, which was just beautiful. And that was really lovely. And the guys were very heartfelt with that. And I had to guide them. They'd never done this before. I had to guide them through that whole process of settling the spirit and allowing that spirit to move on and through. And then months and months later, I was at a seance at my house and he came through and said, thank you.

So it was absolutely amazing. So I was able to put the story together. I was able to piece it together. I was able to get the history almost of this person. So that's probably the most interesting thing I can think of. But when we do magic, we keep it very simple, very, very simple. So I teach a lot of folk magical practices.

in prison because they're simple they're the simple practices not magic they can use their laces for instance so it's thinking of outside the box and teaching the really simple stuff and then seeing their faces as things begin to work for them, as magic begins to unfold for them. And when we come to it, Aidan's had a really big part to play in that.

Hearing you share about that, about contacting entities and helping them on their journey, and especially, like you say, some of these people who are literally spirits and helping... rectify the past or at least bring peace to the past, especially like you were saying with this GI who was wrongfully convicted and had this horrible thing happen. When you're doing that, as you mentioned, you try and keep things so...

simple with the basic magical practices. And this leads Jackie into a couple of questions we have for you from Delaney Marie, who I know you are familiar with. Delaney is wonderful. Yes, definitely. And Delaney's first question for you, Jackie, is. Hello, Jackie. What, in your opinion, has been the most challenging aspect of finding resources and magical materia while you have been a prison chaplain?

Everything is challenging about that. You just can't get it. And actually on one level, that's been totally amazing. because it's helping me think outside the box more. It's helping the prisoners think outside the box. We have it really easy in the outside normal world. We can just...

Click a button on eBay and your mugwort turns up or you walk down the road and you pick your own mugwort or whatever it is that you need. We are spoiled rotten and we have it at the push of a button or just walking around the country lanes here. I mean, I'm in the middle of the countryside. I'm very lucky. In prison, I have had to, and it's been tough to begin with, I've had to rethink, not just me, all pagan chaplains, we've had to rethink.

a nature-based spirituality such as witchcraft, wicca, druidry, shamanism, all of those things, because we have to teach all of that, not just one. We have to teach a broad spectrum of paganism. So we have to have information about a little bit of everything. And I've had to rethink, how do we connect? to the world of magic and witchcraft or shamanism or jewelry or whatever in a really unnatural setting. And it was great for me because I've been used to.

getting what I want from the natural world. All of a sudden, we can't do that. So I have really stripped back my own practice as well, which is quite freeing, I have to say. not relying on you have to have this or you have to have that crystal or burn that colour candle. They can't have things like candles in prison. We've had to fight to get them to have incense in prison. And then because our prisons went no smoking five or six years ago, that was a rough ride. No tobacco, so no lighters even.

So any pagan or any religion that is allowed, like Buddhism, for instance, or Hinduism that burns incense as part of their faith, we then had to fight to get them access to lighters. So even a lighter... can be a massive undertaking. So in one prison, they have to sign out lighters at night when they're locked behind their doors. They can burn their incense and then they have to give them back.

And they're all put on what we call a shadow board. So we know how many lighters. In other prisons, they don't even get that. They have to ask an officer and hope at some point the officer's got time to come and light an incense for them. So even the most... basic things you can't have. So what I teach is use what you've got. Intention is everything. The other thing I say to the guys and girls that I work with, because I work with women as well, the other thing I say is,

You lot have got it luckier than I did. I was spoon-fed this stuff. You've got A, a good teacher, but you're learning the hard way. You don't have any of the comforts that I had. So if you continue your practice when you get out of prison, you've actually got a really good footing. You know that you don't need the bells and smells. You know that you don't need any of that. Intention is all. So a lot of the work that we do is what I call mind work. It's through meditation, through visualization.

What I can get for prisoners is things like, well, we did cord magic just a few months ago. And also I'm regurgitating the same stuff all the time, which is frustrating for me. But you get new people coming in and people leave and then new people come in and then they leave. So it's a very transient. Most prisons are very transient. So for me, it's always the ABCs, which drives me insane. But that's where you're at with it.

One or two prisoners that I am working with long term are really seeing the benefits of daily practice, daily work, daily offerings, working through that and are actually seeing.

the most amazing results through their prison sentence so I will teach things like oh god sigils what can I say about sigils the people that are reading Aidan's book now as well that are going through six ways and we were looking at sigils way before that But what I love about Aidan is he takes a page and a half, says it really succinctly and clearly, was I've waffled on for weeks and I've read his book and gone, oh yeah, oh yeah, read that.

So sigils are massive at the moment. And there's some good artists there. There are some of the guys and girls that I work with that have a flair for sigils. So that becomes their main magical practice. So you cannot rely on anything in prison.

Some of the prisons are lucky that we've got some gardens, but even then they're not allowed to take the herbs because the officers don't know whether they're smoking them, whether they're drugs or what, whether they're poisons or what. They just don't know. So any of that stuff. In the group, I might go to the prison garden and pick the herds. And then we might make an incense together or we might do something together as a group. But that stays with me.

that can't go back to the cells for them. So it's really difficult. It's always thinking outside the box and doing the best that you can. One of the guys reading Aidan's book, I think, because I haven't read, what's the second book? Weaving Fate. Yeah, I've got it. I haven't read it yet because I'm working through it with the first book with the prisoners. And I've read Six Ways several times. But one of my guys has gone, listen, I'm so into this. I'm just going to run ahead with Weaving Fate.

Oh my God, what he has done. He bought his black book from Amazon. He spent money on an ink pen and he's made out of matchsticks a beautiful box in which he keeps his pen.

his Feverstone, his Crossroads dirt, and his book. And it is beautiful. And on the front, in gold brocade, he's written a black book, and he's put Aidan's sigil underneath, so the book sits on... the sigil it's beautiful absolutely beautiful but he said can you ask Aidan because Aidan's been great with me he said any questions please let me know he said can you ask Aidan I need to get some crossroads dirt because

I'm in prison. And I said, well, just use what you've got. He went, no, Jackie. I want Crossroads dirt. And he was really insistent. And I said, well, I'll bring some. No. I want to get it. I want Crossroads to it. I want to do this work. It is so important to me. He's a lifer. He's not going to get out anytime soon. So he wants to really dedicate himself to this work. And so I put on Aidan's page and Six Ways page.

What's CrossFit? Loads of people, lots and lots of information came up, suggestions, ideas. And actually, I thought, actually, we've got a labyrinth that I built or helped to build in this particular prison. And I thought at the cross of the labyrinth is a crossroads. So he walked the labyrinth all the way in, all the way in, stood a little plastic spoon. It was the height of summer. So the earth was quite hard and compacted.

And he sat down and he dug out of the centre of the labyrinth some crossroads to it. And he values that. It's in with his black book. So there are ways that you can make things work if needs be. But I prefer just to take all the trappings out of it as much as possible. Jackie, what an amazingly humanizing experience. I mean, just hearing that story about someone who is a lifer and who really wants to dedicate every single day, every single operation, every single instruction to really follow.

to the T. I mean, you are really, Jackie, getting to the core... of magical practice. Because here outside of prison, there are some forums where people are debating not just using incense, but what kind of frankincense? Where is the myrrh imported from? Should I go here? Or what about an obsidian mirror? Something that I should use. And yet here you are returning to the core of magic and something that yourself and Aiden talk about, which is...

Use what is around you. And having that in prison, that is just, that's so wonderful. I think it's really important because they're going to be better equipped as they leave prison to go into quite deep magics with nothing, with the bare minimum. And I think that's also impacting on my magic now. I no longer use. And I used to, years ago, I wanted everything. You know, I wanted the, they say me the one, the challenge. I wanted the whole lot, you know, because.

It has its importance when you're learning on some level, but none of it is needed. None of it is needed. Victor always said to me, you need three things. And he called them the three H's. And he said, it's your head, your heart. and your hands. He said, if you can combine those three properly, then that is where magic is contained. Your head for the ideas, for the knowledge, for the reading, for the learning, your heart.

to drive what that is, your hands to fashion and create because it's a craft, you know, we need to be crafting these things. So your head, your heart and your hands. And that's what I try and teach the guys and girls under my care. They want all the pretties because they can't have them. And so they will buy because they are allowed certain things that the prisoners will allow them. We have something called prison service instructions, PSIs.

And that is how the prison is run. And then it breaks down into religion and what each faith is allowed to have. So they're allowed to buy a chalice as long as it's not ceramic. They're allowed to have, I love it, a twig. a bendy twig as a wand they literally say a bendy twig as a wand because it could be used as a weapon my argument is so can a biro but you know

They're allowed to have an altar cloth. Some prisons allow them to buy little tables for altars. They're allowed to have incense holders, but incense is always quite difficult to get hold of. So there are certain things they are allowed to have and most of them will have the absolute basics. But each prison's policy is slightly different. So they might go from one prison to another and they can't take certain items with them.

Tarot cards, for instance, are quite contentious in prison. They're allowed, but one prison might say no, another prison might say yes. But as a chaplain, my job is to, and I've never really understood it. I understand it, but it seems a bit crazy to me. I'm supposed to risk assess people for tarot because they are allowed to have them, but they are not allowed to read for anybody else.

They sign a compact. If they have the tarot from me, what I will do is I don't read tarot. I read the runes. I know enough about tarot, but I prefer runes. So the pagan federation here, I think it's pagan federation in the States. I don't know. Pagan Federation here, we have to belong to the Pagan Federation to go into prison. That's part of the deal. They fought very hard to get us into British prisons.

They have a wonderful tarot course, so I'll print the tarot course out, but I'll only give them the major arcana first and say, work through that. And when you've worked through that, I might give you the rest, but you have to sign a compact saying that you won't read. And the officers on that wing will have a copy of that compact. So if they catch anyone reading, they're confiscated. I find it quite amazing that the superstition around tarot is quite firm in prison.

You know, there's 78 cards with a picture printed on them, but the amount of officers that won't touch them because they're all the tarot. It's like there's 78 pieces of card with a picture on. But I understand that they can be used nefariously to extort money from other prisoners or vapes or whatever it is they might want. So we have to be careful with that.

As well, Jackie, this leads to another question from Delaney Marie that you touched on, which is, what have you taken away, Jackie, from your experience as being a spiritual leader about the use of materials? And have you found that? prisoners have an excessive collection. No, because they simply can't get them. So they don't have the collections.

they're only allowed a certain amount of books in their cells as well in some prisons. So they don't even have, I mean, some do have a lot of magical books, but also when they're moving from prison to prison, they're only allowed to take a certain amount in the weight. with them so sometimes they come to me with their books to donate to the pagan library for instance so they don't have an excess of anything because they simply can't have that they can't have it

They're living in a tiny room. Some are living with another person. So some are in single cells, if you're lucky. Some are in double cells. So space... is really minimal and they've become really clever at utilising that space, some of them, to get maximum kind of stuff.

But they have very little material, very little. They simply can't get it. They simply can't get it. On lots of levels, I think that's quite positive. Easy for me to say because I don't live in those conditions. But they, as I said before... They have to think outside the box far more. They are learning and understanding that actually the most important thing is intent.

And how you work with energy and how you raise energy. That's what the important thing is. Not all the bits and pieces. And we call it in Glastonbury, we call it magical tat. Not all the magical tat that you need, you know, because you don't need half of it. To your direct point, Jackie, this brings up a listener question for you from Lucid Themes. And Lucid is asking,

Hey, Jackie, when it comes to angelic magic, there's often a mention of requiring purity of body and thought. How can prisoners work around these requirements when being around other troubled people and poor sanitation standards? Do you know what? I don't get too bogged down with it all. They're living where they're living and they have to be able to live with people who have got a lot of mental health issues, people who are violent.

people who don't believe in what we believe in. And you've kind of got to get on with it. You don't have a choice. There's no choice in that. Even for those of us who are working there, you know, okay, we choose to work there, but we're working in those conditions eight hours a day, every day, five days a week. I'm very hot on them using certain cleansing rituals and protective rituals if they want to, and not all of them will. Most of them will just get on and live their lives.

One of the things I really like to practice is something called solar cross protection. A lot of people I know practice it. There's another author that I really like, English author, traditional witchcraft called Nigel G. Pearson. lovely books and he talks about the solar cross and I used to use a form of it with Victor but I really like the way Nigel teaches it and it's so simple it is so simple and I teach this to all of my prisoners

And I do it every morning and every night. So every morning I get up and it becomes habit now. It's like just getting up and brushing your teeth. I do the soda cross. I will do it before each ritual, after each ritual, in my private coven as well as in the prison. And I do it as part of my cleansing ritual when I come home.

And it is simply standing straight and tall and using visualization. So you have to be able to visualize. And that's something I really bang into their heads. If you can't visualize, you ain't doing no magic. It's not going to happen, you know. So no matter how boring you find meditation or visualizing, and I was that awful student with Victor, I thought, I can do it. I can just do it.

And he would say, but one day you won't be able to because you're being too conceited. You need to sit and you need to visualize. And he made me really go through those different kind of levels of visualization. And I'm doing that for my guys as well. So you stand tall and you visualize the sun, if you want.

or solar universal energy, you visualize a ball of flame in the depths of the universe, is the idea. So you've got to really get that. And then with your strong hand, so I'm right-handed, you reach up and you visualize your arm.

lengthening until you touch this astral fire this solar flare and then you pull it down to your third eye and you say from above and when you center all the way down to your belly button and you push with your hand to the floor and you say two below and you imagine that line going all the way through you dissecting you horizontally and then you imagine it coming from your infinite left

And you pull with your hand, with your eyes closed, imagining it coming across your chest and you push it out. And it's a bit like a Tai Chi. You push the energy out and you say to my infinite right. And when you stand with your hands crossed. And you visualize the circle. So it's like a Celtic cross. So you visualize from your third eye to your shoulder, to your sternum, to your shoulder, back to your third eye. And you say, here I stand.

contained and centered and you hold it for nine heartbeats and then you move through your day and for me that keeps me grounded and protected If I feel nervous, if I'm going into a situation, I may reinforce that and I can reinforce it really quickly now. And a lot of my guys will use that in the morning and they'll use it of an evening as well.

There are no baths in prisons. It's all showers. So you can't put salt in a bath and you can't put vinegar in a bath and you can't do any of that. So again, it's showering simply with intent. So I will say... wash your hair, wash your body, do what you've got to do and then stand and visualize the stickiness of the day coming off your body and draining down the plug hole because they can't do anything else.

Some of them will buy salt and use a salt rub for their bodies just if they want to. But you're talking about people here that on average, a good prison wage, because they're working, a good prison wage. It's about £14 a week. That's a good prison wage. So that means things like decent rock salt become expensive. So, you know, you're looking at three or four pounds for good rock salt.

out of a £14 wage, that becomes exponentially more expensive than anything. So they have to be really frugal and very careful. They do keep themselves cleansed. Those who can get incense will smudge. They can pick feathers up and they're allowed to have feathers. So if you see feathers lying around, have them and they'll smudge with incense as best they can. But we have to keep.

the cleansing and that protection side is quick and is simple using visualization more than it is. You know, Jackie, this touches on another question for you from Delaney Marie, who says, Jackie, and you've just brought this up, you use... Aiden Wachter's teachings in your practice with your students. And Delaney's asking, what, Jackie, has been your students' experience going through the self-reclaiming rites?

really profound. I mean, wow. I found it a very profound and moving ritual when I did it and I did it for the 30 days, I think it says in the book. And it actually led me to psychotherapy because it brought up a lot of my stuff. So as a direct result of Aiden, thanks Aiden.

I ended up having a course of psychotherapy, looking at my shadow stuff around forgiveness and around all of that. And it's been really enlightening. So I took it into prison and I took it into prison knowing what it had done. For me, you know, really opened up a whole lot of stuff that I needed to look at. And thank goodness I looked at it. You know, I'm very grateful for that. And I can think of two or three people that I know, including the guy who I told you.

was doing the black book work and had made the box with all the matches. He sat down with me and he was in for very serious crimes and has always held his hand up to those crimes, had never denied them.

and is serving his sentence with the knowledge of what he did and how that's affected people. And we were having a one-to-one session and I said, listen, I want... do this chapter this is self-reclaiming right and talk about it with you and with some of the guys in the group that I think might be ready for this and he looked at it and he first of all as I did looked at it and went oh that's a nice simple little 10 minute

thing to do in my daily practice I quite like it it's really calling to me and I said to him be careful it's put me in therapy you know be careful and he had a really profound and is still working through it. This is an ongoing thing months later. It enabled the most amazing discussion with a load of guys sat around the table. How do we forgive ourselves?

How do we do that past, present and future? How do we do that? And there's no answer to that. There's no right answer to that because I said to them, look, you're not asking your victims to forgive you. Because that's unlikely to happen. Sometimes it happens, but it's unlikely to happen. You're not asking your friends and family to forgive you. You're not asking me to forgive you or the justice system to forgive you.

You're having to find that from deep within. And forgiveness doesn't mean that what you did was okay. You're not saying that. There's a big difference between forgiving yourself something. You're not saying that what you did to bring you here is OK, because it isn't OK. It can never be OK. But what you're looking for is a sense of peace, having done the thing that you did.

I believe unless we learn to forgive ourselves our mistakes, no matter how small or great, we can never truly be whole people. We can never move forward. as whole people. Now, some people listening might go, but why should they move forward as whole people? You know, they've done A, B and C. Why should they? They're still people. They're still human beings. And inside each of us is spirit.

We are part of the divine, whether we have fucked up or not. You know, we are part of the divine. That divine spark rests in all of us. That doesn't mean to say that I'm going to be.

a goody goody you know let's forgive everybody and make everything in the whole world perfect kind of chaplain you know which a lot of people think we are we're there to forgive and forget but that's not what chaplains is about it's about helping people who are spiritual, who have a sense of religion, whatever that might be, to come to terms with who they are within their spiritual tradition, to have an understanding, a deeper understanding of perhaps what they have done.

that leads them here so that particular ritual has had a profound impact there are some people that have read it and went i'm just not there yet I really want to do this work. I really want to read this book. I really want to go through it as best I can. But I'm not there yet. And I never force it. I always say to people, as we work through Aidan's book.

You take what practices you want to take and you do what you want to do. You don't have to do them. You engage with what you want to engage with. And the whole book is really impacting. positively on those people I work with and it's a joy to see because Aidan uses language that they would use. He swears. I love the fact that he swears in his book.

He becomes one of them. He becomes somebody they can actually identify with because they laugh and they go, he said, fuck, you're prisoners. You say it all the time. Yeah, but he says it in the book. Which I think is kind of cute as well. They're seeing a normal everyday man write this amazing book, which is really concise and to the point and takes out all the crap and they identify with it and they feel safe.

within the pages of that book. Because all the way through, Aidan's saying, did you want? Listen, try this. Might work, might not. Give it a go. And that's what they like. I would love to be able to get the podcast into the prison. the glitch bottle podcast and i'm working on trying to get a recording of it so i can actually get it into the prison so they can actually listen to aiden i think would be amazing i'm working on it not sure how that's going to work but i think that

Self-reclaiming right is deceptively powerful when you work it correctly. Because even I went, oh yeah, that's 10 minutes. That's great. I'm just going to add that on to the rest of the offerings and this and that. And that's the other thing that they're all doing, all of them, offerings. They are loving this idea of offerings. And actually, Aidan's book reconnected me to that. I used to do it a lot and then didn't. And then suddenly I'm like, God, this is much easier than how I used to do it.

And the beauty, I think, of paganism is, or any religion, I guess, we never stop learning. So I've learned a whole fresh way of working just from reading Aidan's books. and Nigel Pearson another author that I really enjoy just by reading their books another person's view another person's take on it and this is what's important in prison as well they don't

just have me going, this is what I believe, this is what I do, this is how I do it, this is what I've learned. I want other people to have voices, including the prisoners I work with. I've got somebody at the minute who's been a Jewid for 40 years.

So I'm like, right, come on, you're going to teach next week's class. You're going to tell them about your experiences and how you work. And actually, you know what? We've got a salary in coming up. I've got that covered, but you're taking your, you're going to run. the whole of Yule. You're going to tell me what you want. I will be part of it. But Yule is yours. You're running it. It's about giving them, those people who have got knowledge, a place to share it. And I think it's so important.

I probably spun right around that question a million times and gone off on different tangents. I can only imagine for the actual inmates, being able to work through Aiden's amazing work, but also... Having a teacher and a chaplain such as yourself literally right there to guide them. I mean, it's just wonderful. And you mentioned that offerings are, they are really enjoying the offerings. What are some of the biggest offerings or most common offerings?

offerings that perhaps they might engage with. So they keep it really simple again. So they'll just make two cups of coffee in the morning rather than one. And one of my guys, he really got into it. He's a mixed race lad. He's got Afro-Caribbean roots. And so he understands a little bit about the offerings from his grandmother, but he's never really made them.

And he remembered me saying something a long time ago about, oh, the spirit's like, they've got a sweet tooth. So he makes a coffee and he says, Jackie, I've got four spoonfuls of sugar in it for them because you said they like sweet things. So and they might leave food in prison is not great. They get fed enough. But for them to take a little portion of what they're fed and to give it to spirit is so beautiful.

When they want to really engage with spirit, they might buy a particular, slightly more expensive packet of biscuits, cookies on the canteen. And they'll go, right, I'm going to leave. So they give what they can. They give what they can. And I say to them, the best thing that you can give spirit, the best thing you can give your ancestors, the best thing you can give your helpers is time, time.

So when you make your cup of coffee in the morning and you put it on your little cabinet outer space or the windowsill and you drink your coffee, drink it with them. Talk to them. They're your friends. They're your family. They're your helpers. They're your guides. The best thing you can give them is time. If you can't give them food, don't give them food. They can't use candles because Aidan says water, candles and incense. So they do a cup of coffee or water.

They'll do light and incense. And I say, look, the tip of the incense is fire. So you've got that. You've got the air. You know, you've got that. And they just keep it simple. But what they're doing is they're connecting with a deeper part of themselves also. And some of the conversations they're having with spirit.

When they share them with me, not everyone does. They've had some quite intense experiences and conversations. Somebody said they felt their grandmother come through, who's been dead a long time, you know. and heard words resonating in their minds about what the grandmother was saying to them. One of the stumbling blocks for them was they've had books on Wicca and how-to books and ABC books, the baby books, that says...

quite wrongly, you can't ask for anything for yourself. What a load of rubbish. So they found it really difficult to ask for things for themselves. Can I have? Can you help me with? Can you shine a light on? Can you raise energy around this for me? And actually, when they start to do that, they're seeing things are slowly moving forwards for them. They're not getting out. They're not getting miraculous.

But life is becoming settled. Life is becoming a bit easier. If they're approaching something like parole, for instance, where they don't know whether they're going to get out or go to a lower category prison, they don't know. The future's not in their hands at that point. They often do a lot of offerings around, can you just give me the courage to say what I need to say? Can you give me the flow of words so that I conduct myself properly? Those who might have temper issues might go,

Please, can you help me just to keep a lid on it so I can, you know? So they're really working hard with this. And it's incredible to see. True will, so to speak, in the esoteric sense, starts from right where you're at. I mean, what a powerful message. I think also they're in prison and most of the people I work with should be in prison without a doubt. And prison is a place where you have very little choice. There is no choice.

Sometimes you get a choice of who you share a cell with, but not often. So a lot of choice is taken away from them. So how they choose to interact spiritually is really important. It gives them a little bit of autonomy about how they go about their daily lives as well. So a lot of the guys will have daily ritual like I do. I'll get up, you know, I'll brush my teeth, I'll do my offerings, I do my little 10 minutes.

When I can, I've got quite bad with that lately because I get up at quarter past five and I leave at quarter to six. So it's a bit difficult to try and do it at the end of the day. But it gives them a sense of continuity. It gives them a sense of... time passing. It gives them a sense of being in control of their own spiritual growth. So they have me as a teacher.

They have Aidan as a teacher. They have Nigel Pearson as a teacher. Whatever authors they're reading, they have those teachers as well. But actually, this is one of the few times they can be their true selves in a magical and spiritual sense and take... control and responsibility for their own spirituality and that's really important because other than that they have very little autonomy in the prison that's why they go to prison it's that's what it's partly

the reasoning behind it all. And I think to listen to them speak so eloquently, some of them, about their experiences of their daily practice is amazing. Not all pagans will practice every day. They don't. You have to remember, a lot of the guys I teach would never have come to paganism had they not come to prison. They just wouldn't have encountered it outside. They would not have encountered it outside.

A couple of the guys, including the guy who made the black box and all the rest of it, he said, I hate what I did to end up here, but I'm glad I've ended up here because I never would have found this path. And this path has kept his mental health, as it does for a lot of people, that's another thing to really recognise, is it keeps their mental health more balanced and more stable.

When a couple of my guys who have suffered quite badly with mental health, when they can't work, when they're not making their offerings, when they're not working on a daily basis, they find their mental health teachers. So it keeps them level-headed as well. It gives them a sense of self-care. And that's really important. Jackie, too, in addition to that...

self-care, that self-empowerment, taking it day by day. As you mentioned, the first prison that you were in was... more than 400 years old, especially when you think about the history of prisons and everything that's gone on at these facilities over. decades, over hundreds of years, I think this leads to more of an environmental question for you from Kisa. And Kisa is asking,

Hi, Jackie. I've heard in the magical community that places like prison have a lot of dark, negative spirits attached to them and that these negative spirits often attach to prisoners. Do you agree with this? weird one for me because outside has a lot of dark negative spirits as well and our belief is that those those energies can attach in prison yeah I guess so I guess prison is a place that is

A bit like a bubbling cauldron, if you like. Things are always bubbling. Emotions are bubbling. Tempers are bubbling. And I think there's a lot of negativity. When I first started working in prison, I used to come out such a headache because I wasn't setting up. my magical boundaries and protections. And I would often come home feeling really depleted because you give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give. And actually I'm very sensitive. So you do pick up on those darker aspects.

I give them the basics for them to, we talk about it, we talk about experiences perhaps that they've had in prison from negative aspects and entities. I think... It's a difficult one in as much as there's not a lot you can do about it, except things like the solar cross, except surrounding yourself in light, except using incense for smudging your room, your cell.

for instance, and some prisons are better than others. I work in a very modern prison, which has a very light, airy, modern atmosphere, and that lifts everybody. I work in an inner city Victorian prison, which is... murky on a spiritual level as hell someone like shepton mallet there were certain cells that people did not ever want to be in because there was the legend of the white lady because it was a

They had a female wing there. So through Shepton Mallet, it was built by James, one of the Jameses, whatever one it was 400 years ago, James I, I think. So it was built by him. It's been a debtor's prison. It's been a mixed prison. It's been...

Everything you can think of. It's had men, women and children in there. It's had all kinds of people in there. And there are layers upon layers upon layers upon layers of different energies. Some quite light and bright, to be fair as well, but some very, very dark.

And a lot of prisoners pick it up, whether they are pagan or not, a lot of prisoners will pick it up. But they have no choice but to deal with it in whatever way they deal with it. If I go in and I talk about dark entities, no one's going to thank me for that. So I don't. I try to keep it and play it down. I give them the wherewithal to protect themselves and some will use it and some won't. And it's entirely up to them, but they have to find a way through that.

Jackie, as well, your expertise and your path that you've been on has touched so many people's lives over the years. And I know that the listeners and patrons of the podcast really... resonated as well. And we do have a few questions for you that are personal in many ways. We have a listener question for you from Bat. And Bat is saying,

Hi, Jackie. Unfortunately, this topic is a bit more relevant for me right now than I'd wish it to be, but I'm striving towards acceptance, whatever the outcome. My main question, Bat says, is whether you, Jackie, think There is an ethical way to use magic to affect the outcome of a future court case. I'm not interested in revenge or attack magic. And also, if you know of anyone having successfully used magic to shorten an existing sentence.

I'm also interested, Matt says, in knowing how the experience of incarceration and its effects on the spirit or psyche can be alleviated or mitigated. And for those who I'm sure are curious, Bat says, my case pertains to natural and non-lethal entheogens. That's also saying, Jackie, thank you so much for the work you do and the setting in which you do it, as I'm sure of its exceptional importance there and the deep impact on those who are dealing with this sort of trauma.

an ethical way of dealing with a court case whatever you need to do do it is the way i i would say it and then offer it up you know offer it up and that's how i always kind of hedge my bets a little bit you know I want this outcome, you know, but I want what is best for me and for mine. Recently, I went for a really important job interview that I really wanted and didn't get, but I offered it up with my spirit.

you know, saying this would have been a massive promotion for me. And I said to my spirits, but I will be wherever I am needed most. And I didn't give a job. So I'm staying where I am and it's fine.

So for me, it's about, yes, do whatever work you need to do to influence the court case. Why wouldn't you? I would be doing that. I would be doing it to influence it positively in my favour. I practice traditional witchcraft these days. I don't really... practice wicca in the same way anymore and I think if you feel that whatever it is that you're

going to court for is justified for you then absolutely do whatever it is you can but always offer it up for the greater good that's the way I always work everything is offered up for the greater good use what you've got to do I mean I don't want to sound too shocking, but ethics doesn't even come into it. If I was facing a court case which might end up in prison, I'd be doing everything I bloody well could to avoid the prison sentence personally.

Have I known anyone to use magic to shorten a sentence? No, I haven't. However, I have known people that use magic to make their sentences more comfortable. Again, I had somebody... who needed to go and do a course in another prison and once he'd done that course it would be more likely that he would go to a lower category prison. So it's one more step towards getting out. And he did a very traditional nine knot chord magic.

And he did it. And within three days of releasing the ninth chord, he'd moved. You know, he moved and he's now currently doing that course. He's still in prison, but he came up to me and he went. Wow, Jackie, I'm going tomorrow to go and do this course. And I only released the last of the nine knots two days ago, three days ago, the full moon. So he went.

So to shorten a sentence, no, not that I'm aware of. I'm not saying that hasn't happened. But in the prisons, people I've worked with, no. But magic can certainly produce results in prison. And I think sometimes the trick is for people to look for those results. Sometimes people will go, oh, I did this and nothing happened. And I go, yeah, but this is now happening for you. And that's now, oh, yeah, I didn't think about that.

So it's always about keeping your spiritual eyes open as well. And that's the same for us outside of prison, you know, people, students of mine go, well, I did this and nothing's happened. And I go, well, let's look a little bit deeper at the layers of your, oh yeah, maybe it is happening.

And with magic, things happen the way they should happen, not often the way we want them to happen, if that makes sense. So it's about looking for those. So, yeah, as far as a court case goes, I've done many spells for people who are facing court. And largely they've been successful. Not all, but largely they've been successful. Why wouldn't you do that? It's exactly the same as employing a lawyer. You know, you want your lawyer to do the best job for you.

So why not aid that? If you're a magical practitioner, why wouldn't you aid that? Because I would. Jackie, as well, you've mentioned cord magic a few times. Just for those who are not... As familiar, can you give us the broad strokes of what is chord magic? How does that work?

So I use not magic a lot. I really like it. So I don't know how familiar I'm guessing it's a really well known spell. But here in Britain, we have the by not of one, my spells begun by not of two, it cometh true by not of three, so mote it be. goes all the way through and you tie your knots in a certain sequence and it has to be a certain sequence if we were to tie the nine knots one after the other there's no concentration there's no effort

The idea of cord magic and knot magic in particular, and I love it because of the simplicity of it, is that each of the knots hold the energy of the spell. So you really focus on it. Before I pull the knot tight, I look through the center of the hole and I really visualize the thing that I want and then I pull it. So I'm really trapping it in there.

And then how we do it in the prison is we look at the moon phases. If they're bringing in, we're working on the waxing. If they're letting go, obviously we're working on the waning. So we work it at the new moon to bring in, which is what this person did. And nine days before the full moon. You undo the first knot in order and then you blow it out of the window. And when you wrap it up and you put it back in your pocket, us female witches,

put it in our bra. The amount of things when I go to bed fall out of my bra and my husband's like, oh my God, what have you been up to today? And that's a Romani tradition. They kept a lot of their magic in the women in their bras. And so you release each knot in sequence. So you must always know where your left hand knot is because your furthest left hand knot is your second knot. I put a blackthorn through it or I tie a different piece of coloured cotton to it.

And on the ninth night, you undo your last knot, blow that energy away. And I always, just the thing I do, clap three times, stamp three times, chase that energy out. And then it's quite powerful magic. Really simple. And any prisoner can do it because they've got laces. We can't give them cords because they could be used as a ligature. So you have to be really careful. Again, you can't just give things willy nilly.

but they've got laces. So they often, you know, are wearing their laces with knots in them, carrying that magic around. But cord magic is so simple and so beautiful. and so easily done. And it's really empowering. And I think along with the sigils, I think it has really good outcomes and quite quickly as well, quite quick outcomes. And again, you're not using a lot of stuff.

Sigil, pen, paper, imagination, chord magic, a simple old spell that rhymes your knots and visualisation and you're good to go. And that's how you've got to keep it in prison. To that point, Jackie, we also have, speaking of divination and runes and tarot, another listener question for you from Kevin Carlo, who is saying, Hello, Jackie. One of my lesser worries of going to prison, not that I plan to.

is losing the ability to use a tarot deck. I know a lot of prisons in the US ban them, or at least some certain decks. Seeing as divination could be quite useful in such a place. Do any of the folks that you work with practice divination to help with their own safety or the safety of others? I would definitely watch my back if I pulled the Ten of Swords card, Kevin says. I would.

So as I've touched on before, a lot of prisoners are practicing divination, but they can't read for other people. And I have to be really strict with them on that. That's one of the things I cannot. kind of bend the rules on i have to be really strict because you just don't know what's going on behind you know i see them in front of me but i don't know what they're like behind their cell doors or on the wings all the time at night for instance i'm not there so you do have to be careful with that

In one prison, which is a lower category prison, I've got the guys making their own rooms. So that was great. We literally have a woodwork shop at the prison and I just got them to cut me enough kind of little squares. And then we just used Sharpies, you know, the pens, just to draw the runes on. Dead simple. And they loved that. They loved that. We use runes weekly when I'm working with prisoners.

We use them at the Sabbaths as well. For instance, each Sabbath, everyone draws a rune. I will give them that one rune reading and then they have to write it down in their books. And then at the end of the year, we look at all eight runes as a reading. And that's quite interesting way of using them so they can see what's happened, what might have happened, how those ruins have connected to that whole journey as you go through the Seek the Wheel of the Year.

I've got some that use I Ching, which is something I don't know much about at all. I've come across it, but don't know much about it. There are those guys who love to use tarot. There are some guys from other prisons and other chaplains who have learnt how to, and I don't read it, the omsticks, so the Celtic tree divination.

So, yeah, it happens in prison. And if we can make it, if we can make things like own sticks, which they've made their own, or runes, then that's brilliant. That's a really good, that teaches them. We make a rune, we learn it, we learn the sound of it, we learn how to.

sing it, how to say it. We put our bodies into the shape of it so we can feel that energy. And we go through with 24 runes like that, which is great. So divination happens. Some of my guys, again, not all, will pull a rune or a card. or whatever form of divination they're using on a daily basis. One of the ways I teach them to feel the energy of the runes is every morning pick a rune and then draw it on your wrist so it's over your main artery.

Just go through the day. So it's high enough so that when you wash your hands, it's not going to rub off. And just go through your day and then look at the meaning of that room when you get back to your cellar of an evening and see how that room has helped or deterred or meant something.

They're not making something throughout that day. Sometimes I think prison officers have difficulties around the divination thing because they don't really get it, but they're becoming more and more supportive, like I said before. I've had tarot cards confiscated, and rightly so, when they've been used in nefarious ways, but they won't touch the tarot cards. That was a whole other story. I said, you're six for eight.

you're built like a brick out house and you won't pick up a packet of tarot cards you went nope I think one of the funniest things and this is probably going off topic a little bit so I apologize one of the funniest things I ever had to do in prison was, you know, the runes are often associated with the far right. And that's something we're working really hard in prison to become accepted. For a long time, you couldn't wear a sword's hammer.

because it was seen as a symbol of the far right. But we're going, actually, no, Molnir has nothing to do with that. They've taken it and bastardised it. And now what we're doing is taking it back. You know, we're taking this back. And some prisoner who wasn't in my pagan group, who was a far right extremist, had written a letter.

to his girlfriend in runes. Now, they're not allowed to write in any, you know, they can write in their own language if they're, I don't know, Polish or something like that, but they're not allowed to write in codified forms for obvious reasons. And this letter ended up on the chaplaincy department desk from the security office saying, look, what is this? Does anyone in chaplaincy, some of the pagan chaplain might know what this is? And I went, it's ruins.

And they said, well, how do we interpret? I said, I read them. It's fine. Give me 20 minutes and I'll interpret it. And I hope I can say, you can always cut it out if I can't say this. But I was there killing myself laughing. Managing chaplain was sat, he said, what on earth is up? I said, in all my days as a chaplain, I never thought I would be translating the rooms and hearing and writing down. The guy was talking about how he wanted his wife.

to sit on his face when he got home. And that's as blunt as I can put it. It got a lot more naughty than that. And I was just in... ditches took it back to security and went that's what it's saying there's no security threat all in the life of a prison chaplain so yeah divination happens I think Prisons do get a bit wary of it. But my argument is, I know people that the Romanian traveller community in this country that read palms, what are you going to do? Cut people's hands off.

You can't take their palms away from them. So I have worked with a couple of Romani palmists. So it happens. They just have to sign a compact to say they won't read for anybody else. We do have another listener question for you from Delaney Marie. And I think this touches on self-care, something that you've talked about for yourself and for others. And Delaney's asking,

Hi, Jackie. Another question for me. I wanted to ask what your spiritual bath regime is, as well as your students. Previously, I've worked with vulnerable populations, such as adults with disabilities, both physical and mental. And I found that negative energies or parasitic spirits attach themselves to these assailable individuals. How do you, Jackie, and your students in prison keep themselves clean and protected spiritually?

So for me, again, solar cross all the way, showers, baths for myself. For a long time, I was really neglectful, actually, and just was bringing back so much stuff in inverted commas. and was making myself quite ill and it took a good friend of mine to remind me, Jackie, what are you doing when you come home? What are you doing? How are you getting rid of those energies?

And I was like, well, I'm just coming. I'm knackered and lucky if I get in the shower and then put the PJs on and fall asleep on the sofa. So finding work-life balance in what I do is one of the hardest things and it drives my husband insane. And physically protecting myself now, I'm really on it. So solo cross at least twice a day, morning and night. I'm more a shower person than a bath person. But at least once a month, I will do a bath with vinegar.

salt I use cider vinegar and salt and various herbs that I will put in the bath and I will have that as a magical practice it's not just a bath it becomes a magical practice once a month the rest of the time I come home And I need to take the clothes off that I've been wearing in prison and get in the shower and just deprison myself. Just really get my head out of that. Otherwise, what happens with a lot of chaplains, I think.

All of us come from a place of heart, from a place of caring. It's very easy to bring all of that home with you. It's really easy. and start to think, oh, tomorrow I've got to go and see so-and-so, so maybe I want to do a bit of work and just try and make sure I'm ready to advise this. You've got to have a cutoff point.

And that's one of the things I've learned. When I speak to new chaplains now, they all go gung ho for doing everything. And I'm like, if work finishes at four o'clock, work finishes at four o'clock. That's it. I have a lot of long drives because I'm in a place where there is no local prisons. So I have a minimum of maybe an hour, hour and a half drive each way to prison.

The drive home, I find as much as I, you know, the drive's a drive and it's a pain in the arse, but actually the drive home is a place where I can begin to mentally start to disassociate myself.

So I will go through my day, the first half hour of driving, I'm going through my day. I saw this, I heard that, this happened, that happened. Some of the stories we hear in prison, you can't be... prepared for so you hear some truly horrible things and some truly shocking things and somehow you have to let that settle through the various layers of your

persona of your mind body and soul so that when I get home I'm no longer in prison mode I'm no longer in prison mode I get straight into the shower I wash I use salt scrubs And again, like I tell the prisoners, after I've physically cleaned, I just stand and I let everything and I visualize it all running off and then just step into clean clothes.

I think because I'm working in that environment, those of us who work in prison, they're not just chaplains, but prison officers as well. We're in that environment all the time. And I went to a party a few weeks ago with a lot of prison officers. One of them turned around and made a comment, which I found I hadn't even thought of. And I found it really, this is a person who's non-magically minded. But he said, I think after working in jail for 10 years plus, we get...

as institutionalized as those we are working with. And I had a couple of gin and tonics at that point, and I kind of let it sink in. And it wasn't until the next day where I really started to think about this question. And people have said to me in the past when I'm going, oh, bloody hell, the job is stressful. And this happened and that happened. And it's just, oh, I think I'm just going to get a job in the local supermarket. It's going to be a lot easier.

I then step away from that and go, oh, I couldn't work anywhere else but prison. And actually, I began to understand there's a sense of camaraderie in prison. There's a sense of we're all in this together with the staff. Not so much the inmates, they have their own. But I can't ever see myself. There is no other place on earth like it. It gets under your skin in a way that is sometimes not healthy.

Because we need to learn how to disconnect. We have to do that. And it took me a long time to really work that one out when I was a novice chaplain. It took me a long time. And I remember talking to a manager of mine when I'd heard a particularly dreadful story about why somebody who was under my care had come into prison. And I'd never heard anything like it before.

And my reaction was, OK. And it was a bit shrugging my shoulders and a bit frivolous and a bit OK. And as I drove home, I pulled over. in this little country lane in the middle of nowhere and went, whoa, I never want to hear a story like that and shrug my shoulders. I never want to be that ambivalent when I hear something so shocking.

I don't want to be that person. And I went back to my managing chapkin the next day and I had this conversation with him and I said, I felt really disturbed that I've been working in prison so long and I've heard so many stories. that actually that didn't touch me. It needs to touch me. I need to feel that. I need to work with the person and not judge, but I need to feel that as a human being.

And so from that point onwards, I started to put in place my own regime of disconnecting during the drive, of coming home, of showering, of spending five, 10 minutes, actually probably about half an hour in practice. every single evening that I get back from work. And that includes some of the AIDS and WACTA stuff as well, which I really like. And then I can then step into mum, wife.

friend, whatever's going on that evening, you know, and I can step into all the other aspects of myself. That is not just prison. And I think what drives my husband insane as well, bless him, he's so lovely, he's so long suffering, is the fact that... All my friends are either, he's pagan as well, but a lot of my friends are prison. So when we get together, it's prison stories, it's prison banter, it's prison humour. Or we're watching stuff on TV.

Oh, this is good. It's about prisons in America or about prisons in, you know, wherever. Let's have a chat. Can you just take yourself out the prison gate? That is so fascinating. And tell me if this is even the same at all, Jackie, but I remember chatting with a few paramedics who work the night shift in cities, large American cities who... work very late at night. And they've seen so many things, car accidents and medical issues.

And they share something similar because I remember asking, well, how do you maintain that level of empathy, professionalism, and sanity? And they said that... A lot of it, too, is about the camaraderie that you have with your colleagues, but also having a sense of humor, even in a very difficult situation. How do you balance that where you want to be empathetic and also have a sense of humor at times?

And the sense of humour, I'm guessing, if it's anything like prison humour, is dark. It can be really dark. We find ourselves laughing at things that we should not be laughing at. or having jokes about yeah so it's dark sense of humor and on a level that keeps you sane it keeps you sane it normalizes in inverted commas to a point what you're doing

And even amongst chaplains, there's a darker sense of humour. It's more so amongst uniformed staff, which I really get on with all my uniformed staff, but you have to have a dark sense of humour. You can't shy away from... I thought it was quite funny when a murderer told me off for saying the word fuck. And I'm saying in a minute, well, it's a bit miss.

You're a woman and you're a chaplain. And I went, and you're sexist. So you can't let bad language deter you. You can't let dark senses of humor deter. It keeps you sane to a certain degree. And I've sat down with good friends. I have a really good friend, a prison officer friend of mine, who's part of my coven. He's a druid. So it's a really interesting aspect to have a pagan officer. It's a really interesting aspect. And we've talked about this dark sense of humour. We've talked about...

our coping mechanisms with this. And he's saying, well, you know, the gods have a dark sense of you. You know, why shouldn't we? And I really get it. I really get it. It keeps you sane. And it's a bonding exercise between colleagues as well. I'm relying on the amazing officers that I work with, and they are truly amazing, to keep me safe.

I'm relying on them to say to me, so-and-so needs to see you or don't go and see so-and-so right now. They're not in a good frame of mind. It's not safe for you to go and see so-and-so now. Do you want me to come with you? So these people keep me safe and they have the greatest respect in my book because it is not a job. It sounds weird. I work in prison.

it is not a job i would do prison officer is not a job i would do they are at the forefront of all of the crap you know and none of the praise unfortunately Or very rarely do they get any of the praise. They're amazing, amazing men and women that I work with. And a massive thank you to all prison officers stateside. Wherever this podcast goes out, you're all an amazing bunch of people.

I certainly second that for the prison officers and the work they do and the amazing work that you do. And one of the things that highlights how impactful and powerful the work you do is, is as amazing... A job that you do every single day, working with inmates and prisoners, that's only one side of the coin. The other side is the work after someone has finished a sentence.

And after someone is back in society, quote unquote, and there's a potential for a recidivism rate and for going back into prison. And to that point, Jackie, we have a listener question for you from Charmaine. And Charmaine is asking, Hi, Jackie, I want to thank you for the work that you're doing. As someone who's struggled with addiction, I've experienced firsthand the lack of resources available to those serving time.

Thank you. Rehabilitation and recidivism are both hot topics within the legal systems in Western cultures. As most of us here know, one of the first things one discovers along esoteric paths is the admonition to know thyself. As we unpack the many layers of this phrase, Charmaine's saying, also encounter an element of taking responsibility for one's own fate path.

and the ripple effect our choices have as we navigate our journey. So Charmaine's asking, Jackie, what if any difference have you seen? these teachings have on the rehabilitation of inmates and on recidivism rates? It's a really difficult question to answer, mainly because people.

often come into prison, discover paganism, and are pagan for this day, and then they get back out and they go back to whatever life they've led. So I see a lot of the same faces coming through, particularly in the inner city prison that I work in.

a cat b local prison so they're coming straight from court into prison and they go on to other prisons or they're doing short sentences and then they're out and i see the same faces one or two of them i say like like my bad pennies you know you're back again you've turned up again So one or two, I would say, have been really successful. The difficulty is...

I am never going to know. I cannot have contact with anybody I've worked with outside of the prison, so I'm never going to know. And that used to frustrate me, and I've got really okay with that now. I'm never going to know whether someone is doing okay or not. I only know when they're not doing okay if they come back through the door. And that's always a bit disappointing, but it is what it is. I think the problem with pagans going through the gate is there is nowhere for them to go.

So, unlike Christians, where there are churches, where there are buildings, where there are, if you're Jewish, there's synagogues, if you're Muslim, you've got, God lost the word for it. Oh, mosque. Mosque, thank you very much, because my imams will be up in arms with me. You know, you've got places and communities to go to. Paganism here isn't that structured. So, you know, I run a coven, but I run it from a friend's house. You know, we can't do that. There are moots that are held in pubs.

And I will often find out where all the local moots are. And depending on the prisoner, if I think it's OK, I'll send him to a moot. And I might Facebook message whoever is running that moot and say, look, so-and-so is coming. The difficulty is... is getting it set up properly for pagan prisoners. And that's their biggest concern. Where do I go to, Miss? Where do I go to once I'm through the gate? And it's such a difficult question to answer. And it's really frustrating.

So part of what we want to do with the PCA, the Pagan Chaplains Association, along with the Pagan Federation, is working with other associations outside. There's one that we work with called the Welcome Directory. who are faith-based, I believe they're Christian-based, I'm not sure, I'm doing the work, the courses with them now, where they will offer training on safeguarding for people who run moots or public events to allow people who are ex-offenders to come to these places. The problem is

A lot of pagans just don't want the responsibility. They say, oh, you know, we won this, and I get it, we won this moot, people come and, you know, we've got 30 or 40 people. And when I say, well, you don't know those 30 or 40, where are your safeguarding measures of that? If you can accept some ex-offenders, we will give you the safe, the welcome directory will engage and teach you safeguarding. But the problem with pagans is they don't want the structure.

So it's really difficult to find places that are structured enough and we're failing miserably. We are failing miserably. The PCA are really trying. And we're brand new. We only set up a year ago. So we're brand new. And remember, there's only 20 pagan chaplains. So it's never going to be a big organization, you know. So we're going to try to work closely with other.

already established groups out there who are trying to reach out to spiritual and religious communities of all faiths and the one spirituality they're finding next to impossible to engage. are the pagans. And I find it really sad. I get it, but I find it really sad that we're not having the space and time to give to ex-offenders.

who could truly make a difference with their lives if they continue to follow their path. When they get out of prison, they've no longer got a weekly regular meeting with their chaplain. They've no longer got the impetus to get them out of their cells and doing something. And I think a lot of the time it falls by the wayside and then they go back into bad habits, back into... other forms of crime or whatever and end up back in prison because there aren't

the places to go. And I think the question also was talking about the fact that there's no real consideration about drug rehabilitation and stuff like that. And I find that really difficult. So I'm massively in favour. of legalising all drugs so that we can use revenue for that to actually put into our prisons, put into rehabilitation, put into all of that side of stuff to actually raise revenue. But whether that happens in this country or not.

Who knows? But it is worrying because there is nowhere for pagans to go. Before I worked in prison, when I was running my coven about 15 years ago, somebody came and joined the coven and said, look, I am an ex-offender. I was in for drugs. This is what I was in for. I've been out and clean for four years. I really want to continue. And we welcomed him in. He was very honest with us. When a prisoner is released in this country, they're often released on what we call license.

So I don't know, if someone gets eight years, they serve four and then they'll have four years out on license. And sometimes depending on their crime, there are restrictions that they can and can't do in that four years. And that also doesn't help them.

to find that kind of spiritual family that a lot of them are looking for. A lot of them think that they're going to go out and they're going to join covens or they're going to join Druid groves. And I have to be really brutally honest and say, listen. your practice will be solitary, mostly. So actually, I try to get them to do as much solitary practice in prison as possible.

It's hard for them sometimes because having a group of people there, having a spiritual community feeds us. It feeds all of us. But I say you need to get used to being solitary now because the chances are, depending on what their crime is, the chances are. that you are going to be solitary on the out. So if you're a sex offender, and I work with a lot of sex offenders, the chances are they're going to have to work solitary. So they may as well get used to it in prison.

coming once a week to the pagan group is the icing on the cake but unless you're doing work in cell by yourself for yourself and the other thing is i say use me you've got someone with knowledge here you use me Suck everything out of me that you want, knowledge-wise. Because you might not have that on the out. Because people, if you're a sex offender, you have to declare. If it's on your licensing conditions, if it's not, you don't have to. But you have to declare that.

How many people are going to say, yeah, come into my coven. You've been in prison for rape or for child abuse. We'll have you in the coven. But the best will in the world, that probably isn't going to happen. So I'm very blunt and I'm very direct with them and say, listen, get used to working solitary because that is likely to be the way that you will continue to work. Yeah, that is incredibly...

powerful and heavy points. And it seems, as you mentioned, there's the funding issue and the legalization issue in terms of redirecting those resources. But then there's also, as you say, Jackie, there's... the structure issue, which is something that, again, I would have never thought about that, but it's so true. It's like, even if you're doing a lot of solitary work in prison, there is a structure, there's a group meetings, a community, but then you get out and...

You've got nothing. If you're a Christian, you'll have churches that will welcome you. If you're Muslim, you'll have mosques that will welcome you. And it's beautiful to see it. And you can see massive changes in people when they have that spiritual community around them. It really helps.

And I'm not saying all pagans will turn their backs because pagans don't want to turn their backs. But it's not, you know, they often don't feel that they want to structure their covens, their meetings and have someone who's doing safeguarding. You know, someone who's contacting the prison and it suddenly becomes something that to a lot of pagans is quite anathema, that structure, that doing it by the book, that, you know, we're trying to re-educate, I think.

or working towards re-educating people on the out. And now that the world is opening up a bit more from the pandemic and we are having pub moots and stuff in this country. One of the things I want to do in the new year is to go out and with training from the Welcome Directory via the PCA is actually give lectures and talk. to people about what that might look for for their group if they will allow ex-offenders to come through. But I think we're a long way off from that, unfortunately.

You know, Jackie too, we have another listener question for you from Charmaine, because I think this touches on whether you're in prison or whether you are outside or through the gates, as you say. Charmaine is asking along the same vein, Jackie, the majority of inmates struggle with mental health challenges of one kind or another. And Charmaine's asking, have you, Jackie, seen a difference?

in the way that inmates approach these mental health challenges when following an esoteric path. In all of these questions, Charmaine says, I'm largely considering the outcome of the many magical or mystical paths one may choose. as opposed to the more widely accepted and encouraged monotheistic Abrahamic religions, which are prevalent in Western culture.

There was a lot of mental health in prison. Sometimes I'm working with people and I'm thinking, why are you in prison? You need to be in hospital. This isn't the right place for you. It's really difficult. They're often the ones that also pick up the darker energies. They're aware of them because they're very open.

I think it's a mixed bag again. We're all individuals anyway and we're all going to react to our paganism and our mental health in different ways. I work with people who their daily practice absolutely keeps their mental health.

on track and keeps them balanced absolutely I work with those that are quite sporadic with their practice and their mental health can be quite sporadic there is help in prison for mental health but there's not the help that I would like to see there I think for me the meditation goes a long way for healthy mental health having that time of stillness and quietness even if you're just being

still and quite with yourself offerings working with spirit working with your allies absolutely helps with their mental health i've seen inmates improve with their magical practice and i've seen some not it's an individual thing what we're learning in prison is that faith, no matter what that is, whether it's pagan faith or Abrahamic, doesn't matter what it is, impacts positively on people in prison. It impacts positively on their experience of prison.

And it often impacts positively with their mental health. Not all the time, because mental health is, we all have mental health and we're all in flux somewhere. You know, hopefully most of us are fairly balanced. It ebbs and flows like everything else. One of the things that I always remember was working with a guy who was particularly prone to self-harming. Self-harm is big in prison, so he's particularly prone to self-harming.

and he wanted he was very serious about wicca he was he was practicing wicca he was very serious about that and had been practicing a couple of years before I met him, so he'd come from another prison via another chaplain that I knew. So we kind of talked about the two chaplains, where he was at with his practice.

We had a one-to-one and he'd cut his arms quite badly and they were bandaged up and we talked about why and we talked about how and what was going on for him. And then I said to him, because I'm quite blunt. I try not to mollycoddle. They have to get used to life, you know. And so I said, so you follow the Wiccan path? And he said, yeah. And I started with Wicca.

Not my path now, but I have the greatest respect for it. It's a great place to start. I said, so how about, and it harmed none? And he went, pardon? I said, how about, and it harmed none? Eight words that we can... you know creed fulfill and it harm none do what thou will because i haven't hurt anybody i haven't i haven't hurt anybody and he got very panicky i mean yes you have hurt yourself he said but no no no it doesn't mean me i said and it

Harm none. Nobody. Nothing. Nada. Harm none. Look what you've done. You've harmed yourself. I said, now, I'm not... pointing a finger at you this is your way of coping this is your mechanism but you're telling me you don't want to do this anymore so you need to go away and meditate just go meditate on the wick and read you know

And it harmed none. And I have to say, for about two or three years, he did not harm himself. When he did, I fully understood why he did it. And we talked through. It's a coping mechanism for a lot of people. It releases. tension anger energy it's that release and he worked out other ways of doing that through meditation through path working which which he actually wrote some really good path workings that we still use in our class today so

That had a real impact on him. And I think sometimes if you can find a way in magically in whatever practice that they are working through, if you can find a way in, you can affect someone's mental health to a point. You can positively impact it to a point. But mental health is mental health and it will often and always rear its head at some point.

Once they start to understand that they have input into that, that they don't have to just wait for somebody else to soothe them, they can do it themselves through different practices, it certainly helps. But mental health is massive in prisons and it's a really, really difficult subject because...

It will impact one person worse than another. And sometimes somebody might be really bad, but for six months they might be on the level because they are practicing daily. And I have one person that I know that if he doesn't put his daily practice in... It will impact his mental health quite badly. And those magical techniques, Jackie, those ways of working with inmates and prisoners and getting them to a place where they do develop healthy habits.

and healthy rituals. This is reflected in many ways, Jackie, but it's really reflected in The use of labyrinths. And I would love for you to share with listeners about both inside the prison and outside the prison. What is a labyrinth? How do you build a labyrinth in prison? How do you do it outside? I mean, just give us the broad strokes. So I am obsessed with labyrinths. So, you know, do you remember the film? You probably don't know how old you are, but a lot younger than me.

Close encounters of the third kind, when he's constantly building the mountain, yeah? Well, that's me and labyrinths. I'm constantly, I did them in mashed potato and I draw them and I do them. I'm totally obsessed with labyrinths and I've got tattoos of them. totally obsessed with labyrinths they are in a nutshell a tool of self-discovery they're a journey to you in the most intimate ways actually labyrinths for me are a journey to self-discovery

and to your true self, and to Godhead as well, that spark of the divine that we have within ourselves. When I was in Shepton Mallet Prison, when I was a volunteer, I've got a canvas labyrinth that I drew, that I worked on about 12 years ago.

And I was talking to the guys about labyrinths and they were like, it sounds vaguely interesting. You know, what do you do? I said, look, I'll bring it in. I'll just bring it in. So I brought it in. It's about four metres by four metres. And I laid it on the chapel floor and they all looked at it and they were like. It's just a bit of paint on a canvas. I went, yeah, it's all it is, a bit of paint on the canvas, but walk it.

And I often play some evocative music. And this time I was playing some Celtic music. And they walked it and they enjoyed it. And there was one younger guy there in his 30s that was in for murder. And he was a bit surly, a traveller lad. He was a Romani traveller lad.

irish traveler and he looked at it he goes looks like shit and i went listen walk it or not it's entirely up to you so he said oh i'll give it a go and he walked it and as he walked it he was holding on to his thumbs and he was really tense and just really every he just looked a bit like a tin man walking from you know wizard of oz it was really kind of very stiff and angry i sensed the anger coming off him but as he walked in

Literally, as you walk the path of a labyrinth, they wind this way and that. And I watched his energy slowly unwind. And he slowly became more fluid with the way he walked. And he let go of his thumbs and his hands were open. And as he got to the centre of the labyrinth, there's a cross point. and on that cross point you stand either side of the cross point with the arches of your feet going over the intersecting line and the idea is as you walk you create a vortex of energy

without even thinking about it. And you stand in that vortex at the very center of the labyrinth. And in the tradition that I was taught, I was taught by Druid Grove in Spain, in the tradition that I was taught, when you stand at the center of the labyrinth, the energy flows clockwise. up to father sky and anti-clockwise down to mother earth and you are the conduit between the two so you often hear voices have spiritual experiences

have answers to questions, or more annoyingly, more questions are given for you to answer. And as he stood in the centre, a piece of Celtic music compilation CD thing I was playing, one track stopped. And the next track started. And it was a beautiful Irish lullaby. And this lad, I say lad, it was in his 30s, this young man, his eyes opened and he burst into tears. And I went, whatever's wrong? And he said to me,

My grandmother used to sing this song to me when I was a wee baby, a wee boy, and she's been dead these last 10 years. So it really is a place of evoking so much stuff. When you walk a labyrinth. You release all of your tension into it. You release all of your stress, everything that you can think of. The labyrinth just allows you itself to just take it away from you.

transmutes it you can never have a negative experience in a labyrinth you have a difficult experience you can have an emotional experience you can never have a negative experience in a labyrinth My labyrinth has been walked by murderers, by sex offenders, by drug addicts, by you name it, it's been walked by them. And when I take it out of prison and I have it for courses outside of prison, everybody comments.

How beautiful this labyrinth feels. Now, if I told them who'd been walking it, and I do at the end of the course, they're like, really? Have you cleansed it? No, I don't need to. it does it it's self-cleansing it i don't need to you know so the labyrinth for me It's a really magical space and it becomes a liminal space, actually, a space within which we stand between this world here and that world there.

a space a bit like the circle that we create when we're working magic that when you stand at the center all things are possible you can ask you can reach out you can welcome in Anything that you need to get rid of or bring in, it's beautiful. And I talk more about walking a labyrinth, but finger labyrinths are just as powerful. I like... the immersiveness of walking a labyrinth. But you can draw or use little hand-held finger labyrinths and have the most amazing experiences as well on them.

And I first started using labyrinths or learning about them must be a good 16, 17 years ago. I've been really blessed in as much as I pre-pandemic. I was flying out to Spain three or four times a year and teaching witchcraft out there and had formed a group in Vitoria in northern Spain up in the Basque country. So there was an offshoot of my coven in Spain, which is great.

And before that, I was working with a Druid group with a good friend of mine, Grassi, who is a phenomenal woman. And what she doesn't know about labyrinths is not worth knowing. And I did a Samhain course there with her. and her group and her labyrinth was out in one corner of this vast room that we were working in and during the lunch hour and the Spanish are great they have a three-hour lunch hour that's great for me complete with siesta I would so be Spanish if I could.

I said, look, can you tell me about this labyrinth, please? Because it's actually starting to really affect my vibrational energy in a really amazing way. And I don't know what it is. So she said, Cece, come here. He goes, you walk the labyrinth. So she got a whole druid grove together and they were dressed in these beautiful white robes and they had me simply walk the labyrinth. And as I walked it...

I found myself almost in a dream state whereby my guides came in and I have two guides, both of which are very American. And I don't really know what my connection is to the States, but one. Victor called to me when he was alive still, who's a Native American. Forgive me. I turned around and went, that's a bit corny. Native American guide, really. But she's with me.

And the other is my animal totem, which is a mountain lion. Again, not native. And I found my guide came in. She came in at the front. My lioness came in the back. And we walked together. And by the time I'd got to the centre, I was sobbing. I mean, sobbing, proper, snotty-nosed. proper hiccuping, tears, sobbing. And I stood at the centre and I was shaking with the energy of it and the raw emotion. And I said to Grassy, what's happening? And she said, just walk on out.

But you have to go out the way you came in. You can't just walk straight off. So I came out and I just fell into Grassy's arms. She's older. She's a mother figure for me. I fell into her arms. And then she said, okay, go and have a shower, put your makeup, pack on because you're teaching in an hour, you know, get yourself together and we'll talk. And to this day, I couldn't tell you what the tears, I mean, proper, like a child would cry.

But my God, I'd let go of something that had been holding me back and I could feel it in my solar plexus. And it was almost like the labyrinth just went, I'm going to take that. I'm going to take it. And when you stand at the center, you look around and it's the Pueblo Indians. Actually, they work with labyrinths, but they're much square. They're the square ones. And they say that when you stand it. And I love it.

The arms of the great mother enfold you. So you see the two arms of the labyrinth come round and it holds you in a safe space. And because you're working in that liminal space, magic in a labyrinth is...

beautifully stunning. So my coven will use them, particularly at Samhain, to indicate that we are walking to the underworld. And you literally... walked we have somebody playing the dread lord of the shadows which i love he's got a beautiful mask of the horned god and it's all it's the only time our coven really gets into sacred drama usually we're just scruffy little witches that just get on and do it

Salain is pageantry. So a prison officer, Druid, is built. So he's dressed with a mask. He questions, why do you want to cross to the land of the dead? And we have to give an answer. And if he doesn't like it, you don't go. you cross over and as you go to the cross rather than walking back out again you walk straight off into the underworld where we scry we work with our dead we have the dumb supper we welcome our dead in we do all of that at the end of all of that

We go back onto the cross and we walk back out. And that's indicative of coming back from the underworld, back into the world of normality. And you feel the difference in your body when you walk a labyrinth. You feel the difference when you're walking to the other world and when you're coming back. to this world and it's really profound often people feel they're dead walking with them I've seen people we did a funeral memorial of a coven member's best friend who died

And she said, I want to take, she felt stuck. She died of a, she was a suicide and she was stuck. So she said, I want to take a different center of the labyrinth and I want the coven to open up the gateways if possible and let the spirit go. And as she walked, I saw her. just hold her hand out behind her. And she held a hand. You could see her hand just around the shadow of a hand, you know, a heat wave of a hand in hers. And she said, she's reluctant, but I'm going to, and she pulled her.

And she just let her, just beautiful labyrinths for me. I've practiced some of my most profound magic with them. So I've had two now built in prison. Because I would take my labyrinth into prison and the guys have just gone, oh my God, whoa, that's amazing. How can we access this more often? So one of my private prisons, which is a modern prison, had a piece of land.

that they wanted to put something in as a memorial garden or a peace garden. So I said, can we have a labyrinth? I researched and they're about three and a half to 4,000 years old. They're having a massive resurgence since the 1980s. And the states in particular are massive with labyrinths. You know, they're really, really embracing them coming over here now. So I did a whole research on labyrinths in universities and hospices.

hospitals, old age pensioners homes, you know, places like that where they're having positive impacts and did the research, costed it up, put it towards the governor, the director of the prison who went, yeah, go ahead. And we all worked, Chaplaincy, Horticulture, Safer Custody, other departments all worked together to build this labyrinth. And it was beautiful. And we've got the prisoners involved. So now the labyrinth outside when the weather's...

This is the UK. When the weather permits, we work out in the labyrinth. Because the labyrinth, it holds within it the symbol of the circle, which is power contained, and the spiral, which is power raised. So when you're working in a labyrinth, you've both got the circle and the spiral. But what you're doing is you're meandering. And that word, I think, is beautiful. It's a lovely, magical word.

you're meandering you're looking at all possibilities you're looking in all directions so one of the things the labyrinth teaches us is In modern society, we are so obsessed. We're getting from A to B in the quickest possible way. I'm here. I want to be there. I want to be there tomorrow. Great. And we can do that. We can do that.

But when you're concentrating on that over there, you're blinkered. That's all you're looking at. And you get there. Brilliant. You've got there. But what have you learned? The labyrinth says. Take your time. I'm going to take you with the first path of a labyrinth takes you as close to the centre as you're going to get. And then it takes you right the way away from it. So you are now going, oh, well, I want to be there, but I'm now over here.

But what we're doing is we're learning. We're learning to listen. We're learning to see. We're learning to understand. You know, we're learning so much. And these are some of the life lessons that labyrinths will teach us. I often use it when I have the room because my house is small. I've got nowhere to put a four-metre by four-metre labyrinth down. I work with poppets a lot. It's one of my personal favourite magical ways of working.

And I'll often put the cauldron in the centre of the labyrinth, build my poppet, make the attachments, do whatever I have to do, walk it into the, put it into the cauldron, put the lid on it, walk straight off. Leave it to cook for however long it's cooking.

come back on, take it out, walk it out, and then do whatever I have to do before dismantling the puppet. Spell work, dream work. If people want to really connect with their dreams, to draw a labyrinth and to trace it just before you go to bed. Get to the center, take your finger off so you're not retracing your finger. You take your finger off, go to sleep, dream, record your dreams, wake up the next, record the next morning, put your finger back on the center and then come back out again.

So you're bringing yourself out of that dream state. There are so many ways that you can use labyrinths. They are phenomenal. By meandering. I love that word too, by meandering and by plugging into these ancient esoteric pathways. It is so powerful, Jackie, just to hear you share about that, where you had your own very deeply personal experience going through that. And you had one of the inmates who's serving a sentence for murder.

In a matter of moments, going from being extremely skeptical, almost disparaging about a labyrinth, to actually walking the labyrinth, and in a matter of moments, being reduced to tears. Absolutely. He was a great artist and actually my labyrinth stayed there for a couple of months and he asked permission to paint the elemental triangles on the corners of it.

And so he did. So I let him do that. He became completely obsessed by them and would walk it as often as he possibly could. And again, his mental health as well in prison. Those people that I know have mental health conditions, some of them say, can you please...

Take me to the labyrinth. Most of these prisons, they can't just wander over to it. They have to be a member of staff to escort them. So I will set time aside during the day if I know that someone's struggling and say, OK, I'll sit here. I'll hold the space. And it's a big labyrinth in that prison. It's a big.

outdoor labyrinth takes slow walking quarter of an hour to walk in quarter of an hour to walk out so it's big you know if you're walking it purposefully and and i know somebody one of the guys there that says When my mental health is feeling frazzled, that's his word, I love it. When my mental health is feeling frazzled, the labyrinth just calms it down, puts my mind, it puts things into perspective.

And again, you can see the physical difference as he's letting go. Or when he stands in the centre and he has that light bulb, you know, like the cartoon light bulb moment, and you can see him go, oh, that's what I've got to do. Okay. Yeah, okay. And you can see the way he's walking out is a bit more kind of buoyant, a bit more bouncy. They love it. What's interesting about the labyrinth, and correct me if I'm wrong, is you mentioned it is self...

Cleansing. I mean, asking someone to cleanse a labyrinth is like asking someone to clean a bar of soap. I mean, it's self-cleaning almost. Can you share a little bit more about that? That's amazing. The energy is always positive. So what I was taught was wherever you place a labyrinth, and we've got a labyrinth outside of our Church of England church in Glastonbury, St John's. And if anyone wants to look up any labyrinth books, if you can find any books by Sig Longren.

a fellow American. He's brilliant. He divides his time between the States and here. He built the labyrinth at St. John's Church.

And we've always had a lot of people. There's a big drug problem in a lot of towns, but Glastonbury seems to be where everyone's kind of got muddled up in. And just outside the church, there's a lot of... benches and we call the guys and girls that sit there who are all drinking we call them the benches and there used to be a lot of fights out there there used to be quite a lot of trouble a lot of needles and it was really quite difficult now they're still there they're still doing their thing

but it's really much more peaceful there. So wherever you put a labyrinth, it emanates out healing, peace, positivity. Some people will cleanse a labyrinth, and you can. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't feel the need to, because I know as people walk it, when they don't know it's been in a prison, they go, my God, this feels so beautiful. It just feels so welcoming and so full of love.

And when I tell them at the end of it, well, it's been worked by murderers and whatever, they go, really? And I'm going, but they're people too. And they're still full of love. They may have done things, but there are. anathema to most of us but they're people and they're people trying to figure out life just the way we're trying to figure out life you know they're just people and inside each of those people is the element of the divine is that spiritual spark

It's there. Whether you're a murderer, a rapist, a vicar, a nun, it's there, you know, at the end of the day. And I think that's a really big lesson for people. And the labyrinth inspires the labyrinth. connects us to each other, connects us to the divine and that's why in the medieval days a lot of churches began to build labyrinths. So in Europe and in this country there are churches that have them.

I think the most famous one in Europe is probably Chartres, just outside of Paris. And it's a very different shaped labyrinth to the one I work with. I work with what was called the classical seven path labyrinth. But in Chartres, it's a beautiful, beautiful shape. And I'm probably, I don't speak French, but my Spanish is better. So it's probably not pronounced quite right.

But they would have used it for prayer and for contemplation, and they would have been places of dance as well within the old medieval church. And then when things got a bit more Puritan, well, you can't dance and worship because... God doesn't like dancing in his worship. So it then became a place of penance as well. People would walk it on their knees or if you walked it a prescribed amount of time, it was like walking to Jerusalem to do your pilgrimage.

The church embraced labyrinths as well. But some of the earliest ones in this country are down in Cornwall, which is right down in the north of the country. in a place called Boss Castle, which is very witchy because Boss Castle has the country's only witchcraft museum, which is just phenomenal. It's fantastic. And just outside Boss Castle was a place called Rocky Valley and on the side of one of the cliffs there.

the rock faces what i love is somebody male or female three and a half thousand years ago sat there and carved two perfect labyrinths about that big and i can trace my finger in the 21st century around the grooves in the rock that that person made three and a half thousand years ago. So labyrinths are a little bit like stone circles. And I think you mentioned that in one of the questions as well, in as much as they are said to be a map.

or a pattern of the universe held within that circle, held within that space, that sacred space, that liminal space. So where the stone circles were built, they weren't built willy-nilly, they were put on top of energy lines. energy contained within the circle and if they were aligned to planets or the sun or the moon or whatever that's a map of the cosmos held within and the labyrinth is very similar to that it becomes a map of the cosmos.

And the way that I work, I often work with the elements, the five classical elements, earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. So each path you walk through has an element attached to it. So you can work with that element on that path. So I say to people, if you've got a problem, an issue, I don't know, let's say a prisoner is facing parole and he might be nervous about that. So in my tradition, we bow three times before we enter the labyrinth for all the paths that we have walked.

for the paths we are walking and for all the paths we will walk. Good, bad and indifferent, we're giving honour to everything as a whole. And the first path you walk on is the path of fire. And you might say, whatever's going on in your mind, Give me courage. Fire's about courage, isn't it? Taking that fire in the belly. Give me courage to face this parole. Give me courage to do the things that I need to do. Give me courage to be open and honest.

And so from the path of water, fire rather, you go into the first path of water. I'm trying to trace it in my head. And that's an inner path of water, but one of the biggest. And so we can say, okay. What emotions are being brought up? What are my inner emotions around this parole coming up? How am I feeling? Where am I feeling it in my body? What are the deeper stuff? And then from the first path of water, you walk into the second path of water, which is the outside circuit.

Okay, so I'm going to ask water to soften my outward emotions here so I can be calm, so I can present myself in the best way. And then you go into the second path of fire and you might go, okay, this is about transformation now. I need to transform some of these feelings that I'm feeling, perhaps. Or I need to transform the way I was going to act in parole. Maybe I need to think about something else. From that path of water, you go into the smallest path, which is Earth.

Tiny path of earth. Earth, we're creatures of the earth. You can stand there for a moment and go, just give me some strength. Just give me some grounding here. Let me feel my two feet firmly planted beneath me. And then you go into the two paths of air. Air is about analysing. It's about what words can I use? How can I make my thoughts clear? What can I do to help myself in this problem? And then from there, you go up to the path of spirit.

which kind of, it's hard to show you without a diagram, which kind of fits in like that to the path of Earth. So it goes in, and that is spirit in whatever way you see it, but it's also the male principle, the God, as it... fits into the path of earth the goddess so it's a sexual union between god and goddess that point and when you turn clockwise and when you stand on the cross right at the center and you stand with

as relaxed as you can with the arms out is an open-bodied posture with your eyes closed and I see people in that energy starting to spin sometimes or fall forward And you can work and manipulate their energy. I've learned how to stand away from them outside. And if they start to fall forward, I just push. And I'm not touching them, but they come up. If they start to fall backwards, I just go.

And I pull them forward and it works every time. And that's where you get clarity at the centre of the labyrinth. That's where you get your clarity, answers, questions, how you feel. Then you have to take that out and walk back through the labyrinth, analysing, thinking, feeling, emotionalising with all the elements again as you come out. And as you come out, you back out on the last part of the path.

You give your three bows in thanks. You sit down for 10 minutes in meditation so you can assimilate it all. So working with the elements is great. And I can also see where people stumble on an element. And I further then in my mind, divide the labyrinth into four, give them the four directions. So if somebody stumbles on a path of water in the quarter of Earth, I might say, OK, life's a bit sticky, a bit muddy. What do we need to do? Maybe we need to get some air.

for you maybe we need to blow some air got to work with the element of air perhaps to start freeing you up a little bit so you can read and analyze people as they walk a labyrinth in the tradition that i've been taught But it's also important to say that there is no wrong way to walk a labyrinth. I use it in a way that I've been taught. You can just walk it for the sheer hell of it, for the sheer hell of it. Children love it. They will run around those things. You know, they adore it.

I mean, my daughter was at school. She had a little three-path labyrinth that would fit in our living room. And sometimes she'd get bullied or sometimes she'd have a hard time because she was the pagan kid, you know. So we'd put a little cauldron in the centre with a lollipop or a suite.

She'd write down the thing that she wanted to let go of, you know, that was annoying her or making her angry. She'd walk the labyrinth, pop that into the cauldron, put the bitter in, take the sweet out, we'd burn it, and she'd come out again. And it's just for her to let go. They're fascinating. This could be a three, four hour podcast just on labyrinths, my love. This is so fascinating. I really hope the listeners appreciate that as much as I do, because it almost seems like...

When you walk a labyrinth, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jackie, that there's this, I don't know, weaving and unweaving of the self. There's this spooling and unspooling of the thread of consciousness. Would that be somewhat fair? Absolutely. Absolutely. There's always that sense of ebb and flow, weaving in and weaving out. We learn so much about ourselves in a labyrinth and we have a choice. We can just leave it there and not bring that out with us. But that's kind of stupid. Why do that?

So you have to bring that out with you. And each walk, we learn that the walk is never over. You know, in my belief system, death isn't the end. So the walk, the labyrinth that is our spiritual journey is never over. And all magical knowledge worth gaining is worth taking time over.

There's no point, as many people do, and I live in an esoteric town full of what we call cloak poses. We have our own little euphemisms here. It's great. Glastonbury is like a little bubble. But they've read a book. You know, they've sat in an armchair. They've read a book.

And they might be very scholarly and they might be able to regurgitate Crowley at you. I couldn't. Why would I? He's boring. We might be able to regurgitate all that stuff, but they're not actually doing anything. They're just very good at memorising stuff, you know. So for me... It's about taking the time to learn, to be in your magic, to live it. This isn't something we pick up and put down. This is not something that we pick up like a book, read it, close it. I've done that, read that.

That's great. I know that. No, you don't. You know what somebody else knows. Now you need to experience that. And that's the important thing. And the labyrinth teaches people that, you know, come and experience your spirituality. Come and experience actually yourself. Because how many of us, whether we're magically minded or not, how many of us actually experience us? Most of the time, we're running away from us. We're living in a society.

That doesn't really like us spending too much time with us. You know, plug into Netflix. That's great. Watch Amazon, go down the pub, get drunk, you know, whatever. But we're not spending time with ourselves. And that's what the labyrinth, that's one of the things it certainly taught me because I'm the world and I can preach this and go, you've got to spend time with yourself and I'm crap at it. My life is busy. So one of the biggest slaps in the faces was, you know, Jack, great.

Teach this stuff, you know, try living it. And that was one of the biggest things a labyrinth said to me. Yeah, brilliant. You're doing good work and it's great. Let's pat you on the head for that. It's absolutely fantastic. Live it. whoa you know big lesson I knew it but I'd kind of forgotten it as we all do in the day-to-day living of running around trying to pay the bills bring the kids up you know not beat the husband up too much and

All of the good priorities to have. But living the labyrinth, I think that's absolutely such a powerful point, Jackie. Speaking of teaching and working with others, can you share with us about your Magical Path group? What would you like people to know in terms of the groups that you lead and also courses or anything that you'd like the listeners to know about?

So my primary group is my coven, Raven Circle. We're small, with only eight of us. We have an inner circle and an outer circle. That doesn't mean to say that the inner circle is more important than the outer circle. The inner circle are those of us that live locally, that can meet regularly. outer circle have been students of mine that live in other countries. We've got somebody in Canary Islands, somebody in Munich in Germany, people in Spain.

that will come to Zoom COVID meetings, which we kind of set up throughout the pandemic because we didn't want to lose touch with people. So we have a physical meeting a month and a Zoom meeting a month so everyone can come. So that's my primary focus outside of prison. Magical Path is sorely neglected by me. I am really bad at social media. I really don't keep on top of it. I have fits and starts with it. Magical Path was and is an idea for a book that I've got, which is really not.

It's a long birthing process, put it that way. But what I wanted is to share some of my writings, my thoughts, my ideas on magic and how I work and advertise courses and things that I run through it. So I'd probably be doing an awful lot more. work with that if I was on it and actually updating. I'm just not very good at self-publicizing. But it's a little space on Facebook where you can just go, there's only, I don't even think there's 2,000 people on it. It's a really small little space.

where I will publish some of my ideas around the Sabbath, some of my thoughts, some of the experiences I'm having, very haphazardly at the moment, and advertise courses to engage people to come and explore. And actually, I've tried to run courses pre-pandemic.

And it gets really difficult because a lot of the people and magical paths are from all over the world. So it gets really difficult. And actually the courses really took off during the pandemic. I've been super busy because I learned to use Zoom. You know, I'm not the most. kind of IT-minded witch at all. So I thought, Zoom, let's give it a go. So I ended up rewriting a lot of stuff. And it means that I have students from all over the world, which is great.

There tend to be beginner courses. So I've run a couple of beginners, intermediate and working on a more advanced, which is being a little bit more problematic. But I'm having a break this winter because I spent the whole summer teaching every single weekend. Didn't give myself a break and I got exhausted. I thoroughly enjoyed it and met some great people. But it's, again, learning a new way to teach magic. So I had to relearn how to teach this stuff in prisons.

And now I'm having to relearn how to teach it through the medium of Zoom because a lot of it is hands-on stuff. A lot of it is get your hands dirty, give it a go, see what works. So I've had to really learn how to think outside the box. People don't want to sit watching me do some knot magic or making a puppet. You end up feeling like you're a cookery instructor, you know, flower, water, you know, this herb, that herb, mix it up.

So it's making it as hands-on as possible, making it interesting and not too lecturing. So I've had to really work that out. And I think I've got quite a good balance. People are loving them. So Magical Path for me will one day, one day be a website as well.

And a blog is what I'm hoping, but it's finding time with all of this. So at the minute, come along, have a look at it. It's a sweet little page. Leave some messages, write some stuff. It's a place where people can put their own thoughts down as well. But don't come expecting any great magical knowledge because I'm so bad at keeping it up to date. In your engagements with...

inmates, with the groups that you lead, that is a chapter in this book. And it's such an honor to hear about that and about the impact that you've had. And can you share with us, Jackie, just overall? What are two or three of the biggest misconceptions that you think people have about serving a sentence in prison and practicing magic? What are maybe two or three things that...

People might have an idea in their heads about prison and magic. And maybe what are some things that they should be keeping in mind to overcome those misconceptions? I think when people think of prison, it's full of misconceptions. had an idea of what prison was like before I went into prison and then discovered the reality was nothing like I had thought. Prison isn't easy. It's not supposed to be easy but it's also quite brutal at times.

And it isn't supposed to be brutal. That's not what it's about. Prison is often, people think it's often about punishment. And it is. We're taking people off the streets that are harmful sometimes to others. But actually what it should be is a place of rehabilitation. And whilst prisons work in this country work really hard towards rehabilitation, I don't think it works. I think it's a broken system. And I think...

It's probably around the world. I think some of the best prisons I've read about, the Scandinavian ones, where they say, you know, your punishment is coming in, your punishment stops at the door. The rest of your sentence is about rehabilitation. That just doesn't work anywhere else. And I take my hats off to them. It's brilliant. Practicing magic in prison is vastly different to what anyone would expect it to be.

I mean, why would people even expect people to practice magic in prison? I didn't. That in itself is, you know, people are coming or listening to his podcast, understanding that that's what we're talking about. But up until that point, people might go, you practice magic in prison?

Very British phrase. I was gobsmacked when they said, come and be a witch in prison. You know, it was like, what? Pagan's prison? What? So that's massive. And the fact that it is not easy for them in prison to practice magic. They have to let go of everything that they've read. Those pagans that come into prison who expect a certain level of, I must have this, this, this, this, and this in my magical armory.

And there are those people in prison who have come to paganism who read all the books going, you need a yellow candle with some this, that and the other. They have to then unlearn all of that because you're just not going to get it. One of the things that I've really taken from my prison practice and have made it part of my daily practice is that you have to do most of your magic here. So as Victor would teach, head, heart, hands, it has to mostly come from here.

It's not going to work otherwise because, you know, we have to teach that intention is absolutely everything. And Aidan sums it up beautifully by saying, use what you've got. Simply use. what you've got. I've had people drawing, I think there was something about three coins that Aiden uses in his second book.

And my guy who wanted the graveyard dirt was getting really, really kind of frazzled about that. You know, I got three coins. They don't have money in prison. There is no money in prison, you know. So he drew them. He drew them. He drew three coins. I gave him a five pence piece because he's not allowed to have money. So I had it with me up in the Chaplaincy and he kind of drew over them to kind of get it and he cut them out, you know, and that's what he did because he can't get the coins.

And people on Aidan's page were saying, oh, why doesn't he give tobacco? There's no smoking in British prisons anymore. So, you know, it's giving what you've got. So it is literally making do with what you've got. And I think... I would like people to take from this podcast an understanding that there are people behind those big walls, those big fences. There are people who are genuinely trying to change their lives around. Not all of them.

But there are people who are genuinely trying to change their lives around, genuinely trying to plug into spiritual practice, genuinely trying to have a magical practice to have something that they can hang on to. that will make their time and their lives better. And to give those people a thought, you know, a thought. In America, I don't know what the prison system is like there, but perhaps if there's a prison near you.

What books have you got that you can donate? Pagans in prison don't have libraries. They don't have libraries because we're not understood. So simply getting books has been a nightmare. There are some prisons that allow prisoners to order books of Amazon, which is great because they can, I write book lists and say, this is good, this is good, this is good, this is good. We've got all of Aden's stuff in, you know.

Looking forward to his third book. He messaged and said a little while ago that a third book would be really good for prison practice because it's all about up here. We can't wait to get that. So what can you do as pagans for pagans in prison? It's easier for us here because we have pagan chapkins. I don't know whether you have pagan chapkins in America. I think they have them in Canada.

But I don't know whether you have chaplaincy services in American prisons that allow for that. But it might be that if you spare a thought for those prisoners who are wanting to identify as pagan, donate. Donate books. We've all got the crappy little how-to books that we looked at decades ago on our bookshelves that we're no longer pulling out and using. See if you can donate them because these things are really difficult for people to get hold of.

So it's give those people, no matter what they've done, most of them should be in prison. Most of them, I don't want living as my next door neighbour. I'm being honest. They are fellow spiritual human beings. What can we do to help? Jackie, that is so powerful. And listeners, definitely check out the links in the video description about the association and ways to support. And also, I love that idea, Jackie, just about...

If you have books and there is a local prison or someplace that you can donate them, what a wonderful way to make an impact there. Is there anything else, Jackie, that you really want to leave listeners with that maybe we haven't touched on yet or anything else? a tiny little bit about the pagan chaplains association because it's really important oh please absolutely we are a small small association there are only i think 16 of us within this and it's

brand new baby, baby, baby steps at the minute. We've got a GoFundMe and we have raised not a lot, maybe 650 quid. It's not a lot. And what we're trying to do is raise money for, I know it sounds really, really small, but pagan diaries and pagan calendars in prison. All other faiths have charities that will send in Christian diaries, Muslim diaries, stuff for other faiths. Pagans have always put up with printed stuff that I've given them or other chaplains. And we want them to have something.

as small and we're designing our own diaries the pcm we're designing our own calendars as well but what we need is the money to help print those up So if anyone can just, if it's just a dollar, two dollars, whatever it is, whatever, it's all gratefully received and it will all go to improving the stuff that pagans can get in prison. And we're starting with baby, baby, baby steps.

That is absolutely lovely. And definitely make sure to check out the links in the descriptions. What a wonderful way to have a positive impact. Witch, magical teacher, prison chaplain, just a fountain of information and wisdom. Jackie Nguyen. Jackie, thank you just so much for taking the time and sharing your wisdom on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me here.

Listeners, it is hard to have words after that. That was absolutely powerful. It was deep. It was also an incredible reminder of just a glimpse of the entirely different universe that inmates live in and practice magic in, as well as the world that Jackie shares about.

being a pagan prison chaplain and the vital role that she and others play. I also want to thank each and every Glitch Bottle patron on Patreon. You are so amazing and so smart and you have the best questions which as always take the conversation And if you'd like to claim your...

You can always listen to full Glitch Bottle episodes on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker dot com and stitcher radio as always this is alexander f reminding you to invoke often uncork the uncommon and keep the light