Guest Blog: How the Psychos Stole Samhain by Nimue Brown

You know how some articles seem like they could have been written just for you? Well this one actually was! I invited Nimue Brown to write this article because I knew she'd do a great job of it. Enjoy!
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Paul asked me to write about the horrification of Samhain, which I think is a decidedly interesting topic so, here goes! Of course every year the decorations seem to get that bit more grisly. I’m sure there’s more gore about than there was when I was a child, but it goes with a wider cultural trend. Films that would have been rated fifteen for violence twenty years ago would be twelves now, and we are regularly exposed to far more horrific images and content than ever we used to be. One of the effects is mass desensitization. Not a day will pass without each of us hearing a story about death, seeing a corpse (all be it a theatrical one on the TV) or otherwise encountering the unpleasant. Violence is like a drug, and to have an impact you need ever stronger hits.

At the same time, our actual lives are becoming cleaner and more sanitised. The odds are that unlike many of your ancestors, you’ve never seen a dead person lying in the road. You may have seen animal road kill, but whizzing by in the car is not the same experience as being out there, smelling it and seeing the gory details. Unless you have a very specifically corpse-orientated job, the odds of you seeing dead people are slim.

Go back a hundred years or so, and death existed alongside life. Humans died where they lived, not ‘away’ in some mysterious home or hospital. Animals died where they lived, too, with the annual pig slaughter being a notable feature of life for many people. Hunting and fishing meant killing things, and again, the majority participated. We had public executions, too. The hideously injured, the people disfigured by accident or disease, or birth defects would very likely have been begging on the streets in significant numbers, or living exhibits in freak shows. A trip to the madhouse was once an amusing way to pass an afternoon.

I can only guess at what it might be like to live alongside death and suffering in this way. I rather assume that death would acquire a degree of normality. It was so normal for our ancestors to lose children and babies to disease and accident, so normal for women to die in childbirth, and for someone to be hanging at the crossroads. We’ve replaced all of that with stylised TV murders and a horror genre that is taking over Halloween as its major festival.

For pagans, Samhain is at least in theory, a festival of the dead. But that’s not the dead in a dripping organs and chasing you with an axe sort of sense. We can honour and celebrate the dead, remember them and share their stories. However, most of our children, pagan or otherwise will be just itching to smear fake blood on themselves and get out there seeking the thrill of alarm. Go back a few decades and children were free range creatures. We had bicycles and dens, we went out and we did stuff. Much of it pointless, messy and full of risks to make the health and safety conscious blanche. The modern child is not allowed to take risks. If they get a bruise you can expect an explanation from the teacher. A cut is a source of shock and alarm. We keep our children so safe that many of them will die from obesity induced heart failure, at this rate. We let them do so little that is real. What real things in a modern child’s life will make their heart race with fear? What real thrills, dangers and adventures are they allowed to experience? For many, the answer will be ‘none at all’. Instead, we let them watch things that are far more horrific than we would have encountered as children. Computer games are ever more graphic, violence on the screen is normal. And of course the lovely, unreal horror-fest that is Halloween gives it all a once yearly focus.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against horror. I like the horror genre. What we have currently isn’t ‘proper’ horror though. It isn’t about shivers and creepy, uncanny feelings of dread. Modern horror depends on visceral ick, on gore and body parts, and depictions of pain that are often pornographic in nature. Have you noticed how fine a line there is between film depictions of pain, and sexual ecstasy? You could be forgiven for thinking they are one and the same thing.

A person living a real sort of life doesn’t need the thrill and adrenaline rush offered by modern entertainment. A real life provides that, leaving entertainment to furnish you with good stories and food for thought. The more we push into visceral horror, the more we move away from uncanny narratives. Now, the uncanny is rich with mystery and possibility, but visceral ick is just a scenario in which bits of human anatomy end up places they were not designed to be. There’s no mystery. There is instead a horrible kind of banality to it, and as I said before, the more you’ve seen, the more extreme the next round has to be in order to get your attention, partly because it’s also so unreal. As with any drug abuse, the consequences are profoundly unhealthy.

I’m all in favour of reclaiming Samhain – not for some kind of fluffy, sanitised round of ancestor worship, but for proper fear. There are plenty of things out there worth feeling uncomfortable about. Eternity always makes me very nervous, along with infinity, just for a start. Mystery is by its nature laden with the potential for danger. The unknown is both fascinating and unsettling. Death remains the ultimate mystery. So many things in our culture, are designed to make death distant and to help us imagine we can beat it. Death needs to be part of life, needs to be faced, needs to be feared, not in the adrenaline pumping rush of another zombie chainsaw sequence, but in the deeper, more important fear of that which we do not know. The more time we spend with our safe, tame visceral ick, the less time we spend with the big and truly frightening existential issues. What does death really mean? That ought to scare us. It ought to terrify us into living properly, and fully, but instead we play at being corpses and settling down for another evening of watching people pretending to die.
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Thanks very much for writing, Nimue.

To read more of Nimue's fab insights, check out her blog - Druid Life or buy her latest book on Druidry
Druidry and the Ancestors…

Nimue is on the look out for more writing projects and she'd like to write you something, if you’d be willing and able to find it a home on your own site or another space.

She can do articles, poetry and flash fiction to order, and will try her hand at any topic, within reason. If you would like something for your blog, magazine, website, egroup or any other space, please get in touch with Nimue, and let her know what sort of thing and what sort of length, and if its remotely feasible, I’ll bet she'd do it. Try her - go on, I dare you.

SFS Relaunch!

Hello there!

It gives me great pleasure this Midsummers Eve to announce the relaunch of the good ship StoryFolkSinger! 
May she and all who sail in her be blessed!

Earlier this year, I took a six-month sabbatical to gain some clarity regarding how I direct my creative energy. Having done that, I hope you will be pleased to learn that I'm looking forward to spending some of that energy in continuing to produce podcasts and performances which aim to build communities.

Last year, I produdced six podcasts, all of which can still be accessed here on this blog by clicking on the link to the "Podcasts" page and soon will be available again on the StoryFolkSinger website which is still in dry dock for some re-vamping. 

The intent with which I started the podcasts has transformed somewhat (as have I!).

At the beginning of 2011, having spent a year in near seclusion from recording the album Passing Fayre, my audience and I were not as familiar as we once were. The goal of releasing a song, a story and a poem every month in podcast format seemed like a good way to interact more frequently with my listeners.

In August of Last year, I had a significant encounter with the Goddess, Diana which led me to work creatively with the cycles of the moon.

Last winter, I began to suspect the reasons for my need to be a performer. So much of the entertainment industry is driven by the self-serving human ego and for my part, vanity was impeding the flow of that creative spirit the Druids call "Awen".

This Springtime a series of encounters helped me to see that self aggrandisement can be a true principle provided that the way in which one builds oneself up is by lifting, encouraging and ennobling others.

This has led me to reconsider my position as a performer and understand that I have a vital role to play in building community - even if that community is temporary or a small sample of a much wider community. My focus as a Bard is on celebrating that which is durable, sustainable and worthy in the world.

With that in mind, I am available! Please get in touch via paul at storyfolksinger.co.uk if you would like me to help you create a memorable moment with your community using story, song and music!

Many thanks,
Paul Newman.

SFS6 - Building Community

(Song) Not in My Name
(Song) Samhain Song
(Story) The Demanding Rose
(Song) Blackbird
(Song) Sheffield, Where I Belong.

Download link: StoryFolkSinger 006

Picture by U.S. govt., via Wikimedia Commons

A Fair Day's Work...

What are you worth?
Impossible isn't it.

What is your time worth? Is that easier to judge?

Does it vary depending on what you are doing?

You may be paid the same as your co-workers but have different skills / knowledge...

Now compare that to other countries. Are you worth more or less than a human living there?

As an artist, teacher and performer, I charge different rates depending on the circumstance.

Sometimes (as is the case with teaching) I charge an hourly rate as recommended by the Musicians Union. As a performer, the rate I charge is affected by the number of paying audience, the budget of whoever is hiring me and again an hourly rate.

As Pete Townshend pointed out in his recent John Peel Lecture, everyone entitled to work in the U.K. as an employee is entitled to a wage based on their work by the hour including actors and musicians. This is not the case with creative work which is essentially self-employed.

As an artist, the work I do is done mostly for the love of the thing itself and is it's own reward. Now that anything visible or audible can be instantly digitized, stored, reproduced and globally distributed - then made accessible free of charge to anyone with internet access, it is increasingly hard to be paid enough to make a living from selling your creativity.

We could argue ethics and morality all day long - and I am grateful for anyone who values my work enough to pay for it - but the bottom line is that people will do what they can get away with and just as many of us used tape recorders to tape radio and  TV programs, so now do we stream or download on demand.

Is this a bad thing?

It is still possible that a songwriter could do an afternoon's work and if the material is catchy enough, they need never work again.

Is that right?

Our current financial system rewards one person with poverty and one with luxury for performing the same task. One need only compare the wages of Doctors, Nurses, Teachers, Cleaners, Chefs, Mothers and Fathers with Bankers, Financiers, Stockholders and Footballers salaries to know that the problems we are experiencing point to the need for a radical rethink of one word: value.

What do we value? How do we value? What is life sustaining? Life affirming? NEEDful?

Let us put first things first in our own values, then perhaps we shall find as it says in the Bible that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

#OWS What's The Way Forward?

All over the world folks are occupying the financial districts of their hometowns. Why? Because the humans who have controlling interests in the worlds resources are not being wise stewards.

People want their dues and I salute any non-violent movement that tries to obtain justice.

We must find a better way to live together.

It's tempting to try and simplify the situation into us against them, but this is so much more than that.

The aftermath of every violent revolution, war and regime change throughout history show that positive, lasting change only comes when people sit down, talk honestly about their problems and work together to find solutions.

There are so many ways we can be part of the solution.

Change may not be happening on our doorstep, but it needs to.

Wars are being fought in Africa right now for the resources needed to make the computer I'll buy in a couple of years to replace the one I'm using to write this blog.

We are a global village.

The biggest revolution that must take place is the one needed within our own hearts and minds.

Unless we can learn to listen and respond to each other in compassion, all the regime change and legislation in the world will not improve the lot of anyone.

We must reach out to each other in understanding.


One of the ways I have been privileged to be involved in building community this year was through a project funded by the City Council's Summer of Sanctuary programme.

Artists from all over the world came together in a recording studio for one day to create a piece of music with a theme of "Different Pasts, Shared Futures".

I was there primarily to make tea and film the event, but it was truly amazing to see people from different cultures, life situations and artistic backgrounds find common threads of humanity and create a piece of music together in one day.

It reinforced my belief that people from anywhere can live together and create community.

Here is the video of the song taken on that day.



It's a sad fact that most of the recording artists have left their home lands because of intolerable conditions in one form or another.

I am very privileged to live in a country where values like freedom and democracy have meant more here than in other countries.

It is clear however that those values do not yet represent in reality what they mean in the hearts and minds of the British people.


This is a time of great change. Oil is running out. Food supply is not meeting world demand. Change will come for all of us.

Whatever your situation, wherever you live, I hope that we will always find ways to reach out to those around us and understand each other with respect.

May those who need to be heard speak up and be heard by those who need to hear.

May we find ways to build sustainable, happy communities.

This is my prayer for the coming new year*.

So may it be.


*For me, the new year starts with the festival of Samhain on 31 October.