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Another World is still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose and now it has gone- and it's never coming back.
We have the power of gods to destroy our home. But we also have the chance to become something we cannot yet imagine,
and by doing so, lay the foundations for a future we would be proud to leave to the generations yet unborn.
What happens if we commit to a world based on generative values: compassion, courage, integrity?
What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil - and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves (so we have to do the inner work of healing individually and collectively), between ourselves and each other (so we have to do the outer work of relearning how to build generative communities) and between ourselves and the Web of Life (so we have to reclaim our birthright as conscious nodes in the web of life)?
We can do this - and every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being. We have all the answers, we just (so far) lack the visions and collective will to weave them into a future that works. We can make this happen. We will. Join us.
Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.
If we're going to emerge into a just, equitable - and above all regenerative - future, we need to get to know the people who are already living, working, thinking and believing at the leading edge of inter-becoming transformation.
Accidental Gods exists to bring these voices to the world so that we can work together to lay the foundations of a world we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.
We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.
Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.
Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda's Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
Find Manda on BlueSky @mandascott.bsky.social
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/
On FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/MandaScottAuthor
Manda: Hey people, welcome to Accidental Gods; to the podcast where we still believe that another world is possible and that if we all work together, there is still time to lay the foundations for that future that we would be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. I'm Manda Scott, your host and fellow traveller in this journey into possibility. And this week we are journeying right to the edge and beyond, because it is time to let the wild Gods rise. And yet this is easy to say and a lot harder to do. But if you were offered a portal, a way to step into the other worlds, to reconnect with all that we have been and could be, would you take it? If you're listening to this, you are almost certainly steeped in the mechanical world of our culture; we all are. But it doesn't have to be like this and it certainly doesn't have to be like this all of the time. The other worlds are alive and present and wild and just within reach. All we need are doorways, places where the veils between the worlds grow thinner. And then route maps to take us to and through these portals. Of course, there are many of these. Some of us have places where we go to sit day after week after month after year after decade. Places we walk where the lapwings fly, or the toads grumble, or the lichens coat the rocks. Some of us dance or sing or hold spaces for each other, to find the endless recreation of the web and the inter becoming moment, the dependent co-arising of the magic of life. And many of us go to books. And it's one of these that we're visiting today. Wild Folk by Jackie Morris and Tamsin Abbot is not just a work of art, it's a delight on so many levels. And it is explicitly a portal to the wild at the heart of the world.
Manda: I am fairly sure you don't need an introduction to these two amazing women, but just in case; jackie Morris is an artist, illustrator and wordsmith. She is astonishingly prolific, alone or in collaboration, she has written and illustrated over 40 books, including classics like The Snow Leopard, Song of the Golden Hare and one of my favourites, East of the Sun, West of the moon. More recently, she and Robert MacFarlane co-created The Lost Words and then The Lost Spells, and I am delighted to say they are working on a new book on birds, which will come out soon.
Manda: Tamsin Abbott has been creating painted stained glass panels for over 20 years. Her work is influenced by this ancient land and how we're connected to it; the hills, the woods, the plants, birds and animals that live alongside us, and the world of myths and fairy tales that we have spun around it. She's been on BBC Countryfile, appeared in many of this country's foremost magazines and exhibited in our leading galleries. As you'll hear, they collaborated on Wild Folk after a chance encounter at a residency in Devon. The result, I swear to you, is a work of pure magic. I had so much fun in this conversation with two people I could not respect more highly. So come along and join us as we delve into the what and the how and the where and the who and the why of this astonishing act of co-creation. People of the podcast. Please do welcome Tamsin Abbot and Jackie Morris, co-creators of Wild Folk.
Manda: Tamsin Abbot, Jackie Morris, welcome to the Accidental Gods podcast and thank you both for coming together, which is going to be a wonder and a joy. So we'll ask Jackie first and then Tamsin, how are you and where are you on this beautiful autumnal day?
Jackie: I am in Herefordshire, in Tamsin's house. I don't live here all the time, but I seem to be spending a lot of time here. We've just been on the road together from Hereford to Scotland, so there's a weariness about our bones. But we've also been visiting the most amazing stones together, where our ancestors have left marks and messages. And it's been beautiful. So I'm kind of ready to go and do some writing, trying to gather my thoughts and looking forward to talking with you.
Manda: Thank you. I want to talk about Scotland because we were up in Islay recently and it was gorgeous. Just to go home and breathe Scottish air was wonderful. So we're just up the road in Shropshire. We should wave, actually we should meet, at some point. Tamsin, you're obviously in Hereford. We know this bit. How are you today?
Tamsin: Yes, I'm in Herefordshire. I'm upstairs. I'm fine. I have been rebooted by Scotland. So we've had quite a stressful few months, a long few months and my creative energy was about at minus points. So I have been refilling and not working during that time, but on holiday really. So I'm good, I'm great. And I love this time of year. Absolutely love September, october.
Manda: Yeah. And at the point of recording it was the solar eclipse two days ago, and then we just passed the equinox yesterday. So we're in that liminal space between the worlds. It feels really magical and a really good time to be talking about your book, which, just because we are sometimes on video (sorry, people on audio, you're not getting to see the book), people on video are getting to see the wonder of this book. It's absolutely a beautiful thing. So we're going to be talking about Wild Folk, which you crafted together. But before we get there, Jackie, tell us a little bit about how you guys came to be working together in the way that you do.
Jackie: Well,I guess I met Tamsin's work first, in a diary called Earth Pathways Diary. And I was really taken with this work which was made on glass. And then not long after that, we met in person. There used to be an amazing art fair called Art in Action, which happened in Waterperry Gardens in Oxfordshire. And they would invite different makers to come set up their studio and do their practice in front of an audience. It was absolutely exhausting because it was like being on stage for four days.
Manda: And having to be creative in front of people. Scary.
Jackie: Yeah, I got used to knowing what I could do. Like, I would take a painting like the one that's behind you, to the point where it was ready for gilding, and I would gild it. Because that was something, it's really showy when you do that, but it doesn't take a great deal of my brain power. So I could still talk with people. And Tamsin came along with a friend of ours called Hannah Willow, who's a jeweller. And we met. And you know when you meet somebody and you just know that there's your sister that you weren't born to. There's that phrase 'friends are Gods apology for family'.
Manda: Oh, really?
Jackie: I have got a sister who's very lovely as well, so. But it was a good meeting. And then we we met a few times after that. Tamsin came to my house and we went for a long walk on the coast path, because she was going to do some work for me, with me, for a garden gate that I had. And the idea was that whatever we saw, she would weave into the images. We just happened to see, like, everything on that walk. It was astonishing.
Manda: What sorts of things?
Jackie: Well, all the wild folk came out to greet us, from badgers to foxes to buzzards to seals. We didn't see a hare, there's very few hares in Pembrokeshire, but just about everybody else was there really.
Manda: And are they all in your gate now? Can we have a picture of your gate?
Jackie: I will find a picture of my gate. It was supposed to be just a garden gate, but I asked a friend of mine who's a woodworker to make it, and I wasn't very specific. And she me what was essentially a cathedral door for my garden gate.
Manda: Fantastic. Okay, we definitely need a picture. We'll put it on the show notes and on the website, people, once we have it, it will be up there. Thank you. So this feels like we could already take threads, but I'd like to ask Tamsin, then, with that as your foundation, how did the two of you come to begin to write Wild Folk or to craft Wild Folk?
Tamsin: Well, yes, to craft it really. By the time the idea became more than just, well, a thought, we'd known each other for maybe 12, 13, 14 years, I can't remember exactly. And we were down on Exmoor, staying at this incredible house called Northmoor House, and it was kind of like an artist retreat, writers, artists retreat. So we were spending time on our own in the day, either just thinking, walking or writing and drawing, whichever you know was the right thing to do at the time. And Jackie's then publisher, John Mitchinson, was also there. And I was talking to him because I knew that he had a friendship with Alan Garner, who has been a great influence on both of us. And I was showing him some work that I'd made around the Owl Service, some stained glass panels which were going to be for an exhibition. And he looked at me and he said: 'we should really do a book together; these would look great in a book'. And so I thought, well, yes, you know, that would be fantastic. And also, I was really keen to reintroduce colour into illustration because there has been a wonderful, um, kind of bent towards like wood engravings, linocuts, very, very strong graphic images, particularly around the telling of folk tales and things. But, you know, I just thought there's room here for something else.
Tamsin: So John, being as he was, he was trying to think, oh, you know, what tales could we use? How could we find tales that we don't really need to pay somebody to write? Maybe traditional tales that would work. And Jackie was standing literally behind his right shoulder like a little monkey.
Manda: Right. Going hello?
Tamsin: Hello! I've got some tales. I've got some stories. I've written some already. I've got ideas for other ones. And I was worried because I knew that Jackie had such an enormous amount of work on, that I thought, oh, she can't do another project. But she was definitely up for it, jumping up and down. So I said, well, oh, let's do it with Jackie. And so we went and sat down on a bench overlooking the forests, listening to the deer and later the tawny owls. And we came up with a title, Wild Folk. We came up with a structure of seven tales that would be including shapeshifting, resilience.
Manda: And owls.
Tamsin: And owls. Yes, exactly. With a nod to Alan Garner, of course. So that's how it began.
Manda: So interesting.
Tamsin: Yeah.
Manda: Okay. And again, so many threads. I'd like to come back to why were things being illustrated in black and white? Hold that thought. But we come on to Jackie now. Tamsin has already said you had a lot of work on. Tell us a little bit about what you've been doing around language and the resurfacing of words and all of the work that you had on at the time. Just before we do that, tell us when it was that you had this conversation, because it's going to be a few years ago now.
Jackie: Yeah, I think it's three years ago. It was three years and it was autumn. It was around this time of year, really, because the trees were still green, but they were just beginning to blush with the gold, weren't they?
Tamsin: I wouldn't be surprised if it was exactly three years ago. You know, it's just one of those things. It could be.
Manda: And if you were listening to deer, you were probably listening to the Stagg bellowing, so you're getting into the rutting season, so that would be around now.
Jackie: Yeah. And Exmoor is a place that I absolutely love. I live in Pembrokeshire and well, I used to. I seem to be just nomadic at the moment, but home is in Pembrokeshire by the sea. And we don't have many trees there. The ones that we do have grow about a foot from the ground sideways. Really twisted thorns. They're all woven by the winds, they're beautiful.
Manda: So for people who don't live in the UK, because at least half of our listeners are elsewhere, this is on the West coast, south west coast of Wales, where the wind basically the last thing it touched was the US more or less; it kind of skirted around Ireland and it's coming straight in. So yeah, not much grows very tall there. We know that Mona was an oak forest, Anglesey, which is at the north coast of Wales, so it was possible at one point to have big, big trees there. It's just that once they're all taken down, it's hard to re-establish them.
Jackie: Yeah. And there are beautiful places where the trees still come down. I'll tell you what's gorgeous is Ty Canol, which is near Newport, and that's like wistman's wood, but more so. So you've got those beautiful, beautiful mossy boulders with the small oak trees that are really ancient and twisted. And then you get that bluebell blush beneath them. And you can see the sea from there, so, you know, it's possible. And the other thing is it's surrounded by Rowan trees. So it feels utterly magical.
Manda: Very magical. Right. Yes, I can imagine.
Tamsin: And for me, that is where Blodeuwedd comes from. I mean, it might not be correct, but for me that feeling of her energy is Ty Canol, Pentre Ifan, that sort of region of Wales.
Manda: Brilliant. Oh, this is so interesting. Well, non-welsh people, you're just going to have to accept that this is going to be a very Welsh focussed podcast. But the wild folk are everywhere; Wherever we are in the world, they are still there. And each geographic place will have its own variations and iterations of these.
Jackie: Should I answer the question that you asked me about what I was doing?
Manda: Yes.
Jackie: Um, I spent the last, I guess it's ten years now, working on a trilogy of books. The first of which was The Lost Words,the premise for which was the deletion of certain words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary in 2007. So it's a slow burn, this one really. And the words that were deleted from the dictionary were words like bluebell, adder, otter, acorn.
Manda: Basic things.
Jackie: Yeah. Conker. And, um, I was asked to sign a letter by, um, a poet called Gerald Rose. And the letter was just requesting that the words be reintroduced, because we felt that how can you teach a child that bluebells are really important and should have rights, if that child grows up to be a town planner and this is a word that wasn't in the dictionary, because a bluebell is just not important. How are they going to prioritise that over human housing? It was so important to me, and I just thought that maybe the way to get around this was to make a book that celebrated these words. And my idea was just to have a dictionary definition and the gold leaf icon. And I wrote to Robert MacFarlane and asked if he would write an introduction to the book. He then wrote back and said that he was very busy, but he wished me well. And then about four weeks later he said, I just can't get this idea out of my head. And we started working together on a book called The Lost Words. I did the pictures and he wrote the words mostly because he's not very good at colouring in. I know, it's surprising, isn't it?
Manda: It's hardly colouring in, what you do, but anyway. And they were beautiful. Because he was finding all the old words. We've got a framed version of the otter one downstairs. And it's gorgeous. All of the words for otter that existed around the UK. It's so beautiful. I literally stand and watch it sometimes, just to let the unknowing of it soak into my bones. And that this is this is part of our heritage that is gone.
Jackie: Yes, so much language. I work a lot with a poet called Mererid Hopwood, and she was telling me that in Welsh dialects, there used to be a word for how a leaf turns on a tree when it's going to rain. And she said, one thing is it's one word in Welsh, not how a leaf turns on a tree when it's going to rain. But the fact that our ancestors were observant enough to actually see this happening, that they have a word for it. And that kind of connection with the outside, you lose that through language. Anyway, so it was really important for me that these words were brought back into schools and then children could teach them back to their parents. Which is what's happening, which is wonderful. Then we did a book called Lost Spells, very similar, and we just finished a book of birds. And Birds are my thing. For me, they were the first time I came outside of myself and saw life other than human. And I've always loved the shape of birds, envied them their wings and feathers and just the absolute glory of them really.
Manda: Right. Beautiful. Thank you. So Lost Words and Lost Spells is out. Is the birds book out and I just haven't seen it?
Jackie: No. Birds comes out in May next year, and it's very different. The writing is exquisite. It's a strange form of poetic prose. I hope it will absolutely enchant people who don't see birds and sing to the souls of people who love them.
Manda: Okay, we might come back in next May. So, Tamsin, tell us a little bit about what you were doing creatively before this, because I'm guessing you were not actually at a loose end either, looking for a new project.
Tamsin: Ah, no. So I've been incredibly fortunate that I stumbled across the medium of stained glass, quite by accident a long time ago now, nearly 25 years ago. In fact, 25 years ago, I attended an evening class at Hereford College of Art because I'd just had my second child and a friend thought that I needed to get out more.
Manda: Okay.
Tamsin: And actually, my father was a vicar, so I had grown up going to churches and I had been familiar with stained glass, but I hadn't really connected with it at all. And as a medium, I thought it was, although beautiful to look at, to work with not a kind thing. Cold, brittle, sharp, dangerous compared to things like textiles and wood or paint, which are much more tactile.
Manda: Had you been working with those before? Because you didn't become a stained glass artist with the skill that you have out of nowhere.
Tamsin: I'd always wanted to be a painter and a printmaker. I had been put off going to art college. I did art A-level and English and it was the early 80s and I just looked around at everybody that was going to art college, and I didn't want to be with those people.
Manda: I need you to talk to Faith. She was just like that. Yeah.
Tamsin: Because I just loved nature, and it sounds so corny now. I like drawing animals and trees and I didn't want to be in a geometric grey and black and red environment. And I'm very pleased, actually, that I didn't go because other people I know that did it crushed them.
Manda: Right. I can imagine.
Tamsin: So I went off gaily in the end to Stirling University and studied English literature. And I specialised in medieval literature. So I lost myself in that world.
Manda: Different language.
Tamsin: Living on a farm in Scotland, yeah, different language. Images of, well, obviously there was stained glass as well, but I didn't kind of pick up on it. And then sometime later, I met Mike Abbott, who became my husband, who was a green woodworker. So I learned woodworking skills. I learned how to make chairs and was constantly, always painting, always doing classes in printmaking as well. But weirdly, it was the stained glass that stuck. And I always thought I would come away from stained glass and get back to what I thought I was meant to do, which was maybe printmaking. But eventually I realised; I was giving a talk about stained glass and all my influences in making my work, because I had come to be quite well known and recognised within the stained glass community. So instead of doing a talk at a mothers union or something about how you do it, people knew how to do it, so it was how I did what I did and why. And as I was going through all my influences and how I worked, I suddenly had this light bulb moment that I actually see now in stained glass. So I see images and how they would be created, and I see branches as lead lines, and I actually have always seen leaves and foliage as if it was nature's stained glass.
Manda: For the people who are on YouTube, I'm just holding one up. We might be able to put some of the pictures in the show notes for people who are listening to this, rather than watching it. It's so beautiful, honestly.
Tamsin: So for some reason, I think when I started out making things to sell, I was making very small little panels, nearly all with animals that all felt to me like totem animals. And I felt for someone to hang that in their window was like a protective spirit between the realm of inside and outside. And also just how people connect to, I suppose, animal spirit. It's much harder for people to connect with an image of a person, because that has all sorts of overlays of prejudice or, you know. But an animal is that animal. And even if it's a human interpretation of what that animal is and what qualities it has, it's a very powerful thing. And I've never really understood it. I never really understand why somebody makes connections with other people. And I think maybe it's just that for me, when I'm inspired, if it's just going out for a walk and then I come home, or whether it's from things that I read when I was six or whatever it is that feeds into that. And then when I'm making the work, I have that emotional transportative feeling, which some people call being in the zone. And if those things happen, I think that it will work. It will be read by somebody else, or maybe by lots of people, and they will hopefully get that initial like powerful, uplifting or connecting feeling. So I still don't really know how it works. So it is magical.
Manda: But we don't have to, do we? That's exactly it. And if we try and unpick it with our heads, we'll lose the magic. I want to come back to you. Go on. Were you about to say something else?
Tamsin: Well, no. So that's what I've been doing for about 20 years. Selling my work very successfully, mainly through galleries. I'd got to the point where I did some commissions, but not many, because I just was able to make what I wanted and it would make that connection. And also I'd been on a couple of Countryfile's on television and been in sort of Country Living and all of those kind of magazines. And also the other thing was that I think that people in cities and towns could have, again, this window; it's a window in a window and it's a portal. And then that can for them give them a different outlook from what's outside their window.
Jackie: I do love that Tamsin's is for other people. For myself, I realised recently most of my work is about shapeshifting. I did a book called The Snow Leopard, which is a creature who's part human, but also all snow leopard. Selkie stories I have lived in. And when I was a child, although I wanted to be an artist, I also wanted to be a bear. And lots of people told me that I couldn't be an artist, but nobody had the sense to tell me that I couldn't be a bear. So I have bear shapeshifting stories as well. And I paint these creatures because that is the only way I can become them. And it's the same with writing as well. You have to be so much of what you're writing. So for me it is escape into another shape, another form, where I want to be anything but human. I guess maybe that translates for other people as well, but mostly it's very selfishly, it's just for myself.
Manda: But then you too are very successful, and and it seems to me that what we're exploring, where we're getting into the edges of, is how do we help 21st century people to engage with the web of life in a way that is real? And that we're bringing them beneath the level of our cognitive minds, because our head minds in our culture are trained to reject this. Who in their right mind was writing a dictionary for children and took out otter and acorn and adder? Who? How disconnected do you have to be to think that that's useful and okay, because it's neither of those things. And yet what you both were already doing and now have done with Wild Folk, is open these portals that Tamsin was talking about. And whether you're doing it for yourself or other people is broadly irrelevant, because when people see the images that you both make, it's not, I think, a conscious choice. You would have to work very hard to stop yourself, at least stepping to the edges of the portal and having a sense that there is something much bigger than human culture at play in the world, of which we can take part, with which we can take part, if we can find the ways to let go. And you're offering people the ways to step in, which is an enormous gift. For a lot of the work that I'm doing is how do we create a 21st century initiation culture, which is fully connected with the web of life, so that we can ask, 'what do you want of me?' and respond in real time? And increasingly, I'm realising that the only way to do this is to step past our cognitive mind into the part that responds to wildness.
Jackie: And I think for me, Tamsin said this the best. Tamsin, if I misquote you, please say: as well as putting colour back into folk stories, and the reason they are black and white is because it's cheaper to print.
Manda: Okay. Yeah. Capitalism at act.
Jackie: Yeah, it's that simple. You know, maximum profit, minimum outlay. They're also very human centric. And for us, the wild folk are the fish, the otter, the hare.
Manda: Yes.
Jackie: I'm trying to remember all the creatures in our book now.
Manda: The owl.
Jackie: Yes, the woman who would rather be owl.That story always hooked for me on... I don't know whether you read The Owl Service?
Manda: Yes.
Jackie: In Alan Garner's story, he says she would always rather be flowers than owl. And I thought, well, that's written by a man. And I'm telling you, this woman would always rather have claws and wings than petals, thank you. So trying to do that story from the point of view of somebody who was ripped from the Hillside and moulded into something that she didn't want to be, so that she would be a perfect wife. And then when she took agency into her own hands, she was punished. But what a punishment! I would take that any day, of being turned into an owl.
Manda: Yeah. That's so interesting. Okay. We're about to get really geeky about Alan Garner. So those of you who haven't read Alan Garner, he was writing way back in the middle of the last century, of the last millennium, and he is still one of the greatest living writers, I would say. I think that The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and the Moon of Gomrath changed my life as much as any other writing I have ever read. When I was a kid, The Owl Service terrified me, so I've never gone back to it. And reading your book, I thought maybe I should. But I also remember reading Alan Garner's autobiography, the name of which one of us will remember at some point. It'll come to me, it was something like Wild Gods, but it wasn't that.
Manda: And when they made the Owl Service into television, which they did, they didn't dare make the Moon of Gomrath, I think it would have been too seditious. But they made the owl service and he had a complete meltdown, and he went to a therapist who said, did you write the book in third person or first person? And he said, third. And they said, and did they make the television in third or first? And he said, first. And I still have not dared to go back to it to find out what it was about the change in person of the owl service that undid him so completely. Because it sounded very profound. Because the owl one that you painted, Tamsin I looked at it and I thought, yes, that's the owl service. It's going back to when I was probably eight, and I read that book and it just went deep into my soul. And it was so scary that I never went back. And I don't know why.
Tamsin: Because it is scary.
Manda: Is it? Can we can any either of you give the gist?
Tamsin: It's really terrifying. I think the nearest thing to it is The Exorcist.
Manda: Oh, really?
Tamsin: Scratching and something being released.
Manda: Right. Okay. Maybe we need not to frighten the listeners anymore. Listeners, it is a good story.
Jackie: Can I tell you my story about the owl service?
Manda: Yes. Please do. Yes. This podcast is going in all kinds of new directions I wasn't expecting. Go for it.
Jackie: It was a hard pack book, and it had the plates that the owl service is named after at the end, that she draws the owls from. And I got partway through reading this book, and I could not read it anymore because I was terrified. So I put it back in the library, and I was even scared walking past the library because I knew it was in there. And then when I was about 44, I found a copy in a second hand bookshop, and it was the same copy. And I opened the end papers. And there the terrifying plates were there. And I thought, right, I am 44 years old and I am a grown up, and I'm going to read this book. And I did read it, but it was still quite scary, really. It's wonderful how he does it, because he's not it's not the kind of nasty dark, that a lot of people write, which is easy to write. It touches deep into your psyche to a deep fear.
Tamsin: It's eerie.
Manda: I'm really glad I'm not the only person who was scared of it as a child. And yet his facility with language, the rhythms of his sentences, the power that he evokes in his writing, one of the few people that I've ever read to match it is you, Jackie. Because he tapped into something very old and very raw and very wild. There's a bit of the moon of Gomrath that I occasionally read, when I just need to remember what it is to have the marrow of my bones sing. But Wild Folk is doing this too. And so I'm guessing that Garner was quite an influence on your writing. And I'm wondering who else has influenced your writing?
Jackie: I read a lot, and mostly I tend to move in the circles of fantasy fiction. I don't know about influences for writing, really.
Manda: Okay, that might be a hard question. Some people just know that and some people don't. And if you don't, that's fine.
Jackie: I just want to say that I'm going to take that little last bit of this podcast, and I'm going to hang on to that, because I love your writing and thank you so much for that.
Manda: Okay. You're very welcome. Well, I was just going to read a little bit of this. I just genuinely randomly opened it. I'm at page 46 and it's The Black Fox's Tale: 'The black fox lived in the place of deep greens in summer. Leaf light, air textured with birdsong. So many small voices and waves of song that rose and fell like a tide with the light. She shifted into shape formed from smoke. Wild spirit out of ashes into the heart of the wildwood. Shadow. Shade. Guardian. She remembered sunshine on skin, wind in her long dark hair, the time before flames. If she became a symbol of courage, resistance, it was despite him, not because of him.' And I think you could not write that and not be in love with a fox, and be in love with the wild world all around. And somehow, if we could get copies of this with the beauty of the pictures. Tamsin, honestly, they are heartbreakingly beautiful or heartrendingly beautiful. If we could get copies into the hands of every MP, every CEO of every company. It would do more than me going, guys, we need to put Monsanto out of business because otherwise the world is toast.
Manda: It would just happen because it would be impossible to keep going with the destruction, when we knew the living life of the wild, that that we're losing so fast. And yet, if we give it a chance, it regenerates so fast. We're doing regenerative agriculture on our little 28 acres. And honestly, watching soil grow makes my heart sing. You can make soil happen and you can watch the life and you can hear the owls and you can see the insects growing. And we're surrounded by industrial agriculture and it's heartbreaking, because you can see what would happen if everybody decided that it was okay to let things live. And that it doesn't stop us living too. And that somehow this seeps out into our bones. Because you're not proselytising, you're not trying to change anybody's mind. You're not trying to tell anyone that we need a new economic system, or a new business system, or a new farming system. You're just letting them fall in love with the words and the beingness.
Tamsin: I think also Jackie's writing, I mean, the book is called Wild Folk, Tales from the stones, and I think Jackie's writing comes from the very earth. It comes from the stones. And people think that these are old tales. I mean, 1 or 2 of them are based on old tales, but the black fox, you know, we just did a sewing workshop this morning with other women sewing black foxes.
Manda: Yes!
Tamsin: Yes, I know, and they were going, oh, is this an old Herefordshire folk tale? And there was a great discussion, and obviously it wasn't, but there was an actual like, oh, well, you know, we've got the black Vaughn and we've got all of these, but not the black fox. And Jackie's writing has that ability to be ancient and ageless all at the same time.
Manda: Yes. You've got the rhythms of ancientness. Okay, so I was going to come back to Tamsin, but since we're on this thread, let's stick with it because otherwise I'll lose it. So one of the things that I've felt, because I skirt the edges of old folktales, is that they tended to be heteronormative and patriarchal, and they were very much sustaining the old system. The boys always got beautiful girls, and the girls basically got the frog or the thing that looked like an ogre. And if they worked really, really, really hard and diligently and were very good little girls, their life might not be utter hell. And I just got so cross, I walked away. And I'm sure for all the people who are about to send me emails in all caps, please don't. My email thread is just too unspeakably bad, and I've taken to getting to the end of every week and throwing it all in the bin, on the basis that if it mattered somebody will send it again. So please don't send me emails telling me how wonderful the old folk tales are. I am aware of that. But they are still heteronormative and patriarchal. They are still, whether we like it or not, grown out of the trauma culture because we didn't start writing until the trauma culture was here, with Rome, in these lands, in the islands of Britain.
Manda: And they may have roots that go back to a time when we were an integral part of the web of life. But they're often rooted in agriculture, which is the enslavement of the land. And they often take for granted power hierarchies. And what I love about your tales is that the kings are often really evil people. I just deleted a whole bunch of words I can't say on the podcast, and they do really badly because they make terrible moral mistakes based on the fact that they believe in power hierarchies. It's so beautiful. And your Selkie tale is a tale of release and love and generation, not the usual Selkie tale of man meets selkie, steals skin, slightly regrets it, but never mind. Which fundamentally seems to be the title of a lot of the Selkie stories that we get. So obviously I live in a political world where every moment has some kind of political agency to it. To what extent were you deliberately subverting old tales, and to what extent were you just writing what arose from the Land for you?
Jackie: When I go into schools, I often tell a very short story, which is mostly to the girls, which is if you find a frog, don't kiss it. It's a waste of a good frog. Because nobody needs a prince, let's face it. I also feel that, there's a book by Richard Powers, overstory, where he said, no amount of argument can change a person's mind. Only a good story can do that. And when I'm writing what I'm trying to do is answer questions that I have inside my head. But usually what I find in the trying to answer them is more questions. So you answer some, but you get more. But the part from the Black Fox that you read was written in Shropshire, it was written probably not far from where you live, in a very small hut that had a wood behind it. And for two days I had been trying really hard to listen to birdsong, so I guess that's what influences my writing. It's the language of the more than human creatures around us, the other than human creatures. Trying to understand my own thought process, trying to find a way through stories to change. I never liked the stories of the heroines sitting waiting to be rescued. So in my East of the Sun, West of the Moon, not only does she do all the hunting, but then when she's kind of lived up to all her things that she felt obliged to do, she decides that actually she doesn't want to marry the prince.
Manda: Yeah, I know, it's glorious.
Jackie: But she fell in love with the wind. And who wouldn't? So for now, she's off with him. Trying to find other stories, trying to find other ways. Because I'm not really satisfied often with what is offered. Certainly not what we were offered when we were children and girls were expected to be nice and safe. And my children, when they were growing up, we used to have that phrase, what's the magic word? And the magic word is 'now' not 'please'.
Manda: Wasn't that out of the Addams Family? I think so, yes. What's the magic word Wednesday? "Now!". Yes, I think. I might be wrong. Again, please don't email me. Tamsin, I wanted to come back and talk to you about totems, because you said you grew up in a Christian household. Let's not head down monotheist roots because I'll just get cross. But at some point you got a spiritual, it feels to me, a living connection. Whatever we call it. Spirituality then becomes a very loaded word I've discovered, but there is an aliveness to the land. There is an aliveness to whatever we're going to call the web of life. And there are access points in the three dimensional consensus reality. Places where you can go, where the where the veil feels thinner. And what it seems to me you're creating with your images, are places where the veil can feel thinner, simply by being in the presence of what you've made. And this might be my projection, perhaps I am just believing all this and pushing it on to you, but it sounded like we were almost there. And I'm really curious to know what your experience of this is. Does that make sense as a question?
Tamsin: I think so. I'm very honoured that you're saying all of those things and almost am going to go into tears, but not quite. So you're all right. Let's not talk about Christianity, but I do wonder. I was fortunate I had a good father who is what I think of as a good Christian. And I wonder whether there's a way that we are that is sensitive, I would call it a sensitivity to other. Now, it might come out that you become a Christian through that. But for me, there's so many ways of that. It's not about trying, that's the difficult thing, is if we try sometimes it doesn't work. And I suppose some people do it through prayer or whatever, but a repetitiveness sometimes. Of walking the same walk and seeing a place through different seasons. Of hanging out washing on a line. Of going to a stone circle or just a tree. You know, in the woods up here, which is not a special wood, it's a bit abandoned; I had my mother tree and my father tree, and they're both crabapple trees. The mother tree is almost gone now. But she's not dead. She's hanging on in. And the father tree was very strong and is now being rather rattled by winds. They must be ancient for crab-apples. I really don't know how that translates into work. I think where I've been lucky is that I stumbled upon this material, glass. And I think even though in the book it's a photograph of glass and thanks to Jackie, we might talk about that later, the glass was photographed against natural light, against the sky. So it has a real natural element included.
Tamsin: But glass has a tradition of storytelling. You know, it's also alchemical as a material. It's neither really a solid or a liquid. You can see through it, but you can look at it. That's the material. And I feel like that is a tool that I unwittingly stumbled across. With regard to what I paint and how I can try and get that, I don't really know. I can't really answer how that happens. I just know when it's right. It does come back to connection. A very dear friend of mine died; one friend died ten years ago, it was a couple, they were artists, they lived in Shropshire, and the other one died 6 or 7 years ago. And actually, through their deaths, I feel like the connection that I already had or feel that I had, went another level. So instead of being just connectivity to the land and the earth and the underneath and the animals and the birds and all of that, it then went cosmic, but it went down. I don't know. I'm just muttering and mumbling. It's really difficult to explain it, but I just love the fact that you got it and that other people are getting it. And people are saying this is like a box of jewels. And the jewels to me are the connections to the real jewels, which are life, you know, the world, the everything. Beyond the world.
Manda: The fact that you know, when it's right. There's something in the marrow of your bones. There's that sense of rightness. And I am imagining with Jackie, we're going to come to Jackie in a moment, whatever creating we're doing, there's an integrity to it that you pare away and you pare away, and what's left is what's right. And that needs to be beyond our heads, because if our heads knew the answers, we would not be in the place that we are. So I think that's a perfectly lovely and fine answer. Thank you. So, Jackie, Tamsin cued us up there to talk about the photography. Because these are made in glass and yet the images in the book, the production quality is beautiful. The book itself is a beautiful thing. And if you hadn't told me they were made in glass, I probably wouldn't know, because probably I don't know enough about these things. I suppose if I was going to look at something like that, I can see that as a stained glass window. People who are listening, you just have to accept that it's a big double spread in the book, and it's absolutely glorious. And it's got a stag and a whale and a barn owl and all kinds of life in there. And it's got thick black bits that you can see, that's going to be the iron holding the glass together. Tell us a little bit about the process of bringing this and putting it actually into a physical book. We might talk a little bit about the rest of the publishing process while we're here.
Jackie: Yeah. I'm going to talk about you now, Tamsin. Actually, the thing about this is the glass itself is miraculous. Because what Tamsin is working with is mouth blown sheet glass. So to get your head around that. And glass being stone that is heated to incredible temperatures, blown into a cylindrical shape and then flattened out in heat, that is just phenomenal. So each piece of glass is a work of art before Tamsin starts using it. She makes it much more. But then somebody had this idea that in order to get the images into the book, we should take them to all the places, because all the places are real places in the book. Like Wayland's Smithy and Mounsey Castle, and that we should take them to the real places and photograph them in situ. When I say we, I mean, Tamsin.
Manda: Good idea. You can do it, right, Tamsin gets to do it. Okay.
Tamsin: Jackie's idea. Tamsin. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Jackie: Fortunately for Tamsin, this pulled back a bit. But it was still this thing; if you photograph, you see the surface of the glass you see through the glass. If you put them on the light box to photograph them, then something is lost. So then I will hand over to Tamsin now, because she was the one that did all the work. I just had this really good idea. And then, I think, Tamsin, you just take it from here like you did before.
Manda: Please do.
Tamsin: Yeah. So fortunately, we decided not to take them to the places. Because the thing about glass is, obviously it's see through. So if you took a photograph in a forest, you would just see the forest, or you would lose all the images and the colours of the glass. So we narrowed it down that I would take the photos, or somebody would take the photos against natural light. And I was racking my brains because there are about 90 pieces of glass in here, or 90 panels, you know, some of them are multiple pieces. And I hadn't done what's called leading them all up, which is putting lead around the edge and then hooks so you can hang them. But even doing that creates all sorts of difficulties, with them blowing in the wind, or somebody has to hold them. And then one day I was looking through Instagram and a friend of mine, another glass artist, had a photograph of one of his panels and it was just floating against the sky. And I thought, how did he do that? So instantly messaged him and said, Simon, how did you do that? And he said, "if I tell you, I'll have to kill you". Which Instagram did not like at all. They nearly removed him for hate speech and it was in a private message. Anyway, fortunately they didn't, and it was so simple. Basically, he'd got another big sheet of clear glass and rested it upon two chairs and underneath looked up, took the photograph of the panel resting upon it.
Tamsin: So I went out and I bought a shower screen, nice big toughened glass, and rested it on a bench and a table in the garden. And I got a mattress to lie underneath, and I'd got a black cloak to put over me to try and reduce reflection. So I had to wait until the sky was perfect. Which means it was not a blue sky, it was not a dark sky.
Manda: Kind of 18% grey.
Tamsin: It was grey, but with the sun coming through, light filtering through. And then rush out with all the pieces of glass and make sure that the photograph didn't have a reflection of the camera upon it. You know, because especially the darker ones, because they're basically like a mirror, it took me a long time, because I just had to keep going in and out and doing it when I did it. And then also there were nice things I could do as well, because we've got fantastic designer Daniel Street, and he really understood how glass could be so beautiful and a new addition to the kind of designer range, as it were. So he said, can you take some photos of the sheets of glass on their own, before you've painted on them? So then I did that and sometimes I get a bit of a tree in the side or clouds. So yeah, the natural world is really in there. But it was a bit full on and it was a bit....Yeah. Only when I saw how good it was did I forgive that Jackie Morris.
Manda: And it is. It is amazing. I mean, I should have been able to count them anyway, but there's over 90 of these, that you had to make and then photograph. How long did it take you, Tamsin?
Tamsin: Well, the original intention was to do a double page spread and a single page spread for each story.
Manda: You've done quite a lot more than that.
Tamsin: Yeah. It's just that Jackie's words have so many images, just like bursting out. It just seemed mean not to really do more. And also, I wanted the book to have a goodly amount of pages and to be something really special. And it just needed more. And so I just kept going. It wasn't really a question of, you know, I'm only going to do this, because in fact I didn't get paid for anything, but that's another story. But yeah, I just kept going, and I could keep going. I'm still making work around this book, which is just for sale. You know, it doesn't dry up. It's kind of so fruitful.
Manda: Alright. So I do want to find out from you both what you're doing next. But just before that, can we bear to look into the publication process? Because it is an astoundingly beautiful book. And there was something that I thought when I first saw it was quite revolutionary about the process of publication, that has since possibly not worked out quite the way any of us intended. Do we want to talk about that, or should we just ignore it and move swiftly on? Actually, what I'd like to look at is how people get it and where we are now with it. Either of you. Jackie, you want to talk to that?
Jackie: I think we can talk about it a bit. Unbound had a model that started very well. And it was a way of connecting Readers to authors right from the off. So the premise, I guess, was that you pitched your book really to a reading audience, usually through a video. And then if people liked the idea of it, they would support you. There were many levels that people could come in on. So the book is £25, and you could simply buy a book. Or for £35, you could buy a signed book. And all those people who pledged, two years in advance of publication, would have their name in the back of the book. So if you look in the back of the book, there's a long index of people who supported the book. Also originally there was a platform where, as you were doing the work in progress, you could talk to your subscribers, keep them informed. It was a really, really good thing. And it was supposed to give authors a fairer deal, and it worked really well until it didn't.
Jackie: I've done 8 or 9 books, I guess, with Unbound, and I did earn some money. But things started going awry round about the time when you would get your royalties, which is how we all get paid. And there were always very kind of legitimate excuses as to why there was a delay. And then things kind of critically unfolded in what was termed maladministration. So at some point, we'd oversubscribed massively, you know, we had tremendous support from people and we'd raised a lot of money. But because of this maladministration, all that money was gone and it looked as if everybody who had supported us would not get their book. And we hadn't been paid anything. You know, Tamsin in particular had spent all this time working on the images for the book, which couldn't be for sale. So she hadn't been doing the work that would feed her and her family because there's only 24 hours in a day and you can only do so much.
Manda: Why could you not sell them? Just very briefly, why could you not sell?
Tamsin: Oh. I didn't even answer your previous question. I spent about 18, 20 months making these pieces. In between, I was making some work for sale, but not as much as usual. So I couldn't sell the pieces as I went along, just in case anything needed to be photographed again.
Manda: Okay. Right.
Tamsin: And because the intention was to have an exhibition of the work with the book launch.
Manda: Right. That makes sense. But you've been able to sell them since? Just a secon, are they for sale now?
Tamsin: So we did get a book launch. We did get a book, yeah, just.
Jackie: We did get a book first. The day before the book launch, we picked up our first edition copies from the distribution centre. So it was that tight.
Manda: This is not how it normally is, people, those of you listening.
Jackie: No, it isn't how it normally is. So we had arranged this wonderful book launch with a gallery bookshop called Seven Fables on Exmoor, who were there at the birth of the book. They were part of the residency, when Wild Folk was born, and they rented a beautiful place called White Rock Cottage in Simonsbath. And it was turned into this chapel to the Wild Gods on Exmoor and with tamsin's glass hung in all the windows. And it just had such a presence of peace about it. Miraculously, we had the book. And, you know, there are things that you could say about Unbound, but they didn't skimp on the production. It is beautiful. And they constantly allowed us more and more pages. So together we crafted this very beautiful thing, which was released into the wild at White Rock Cottage. The first evening, Tamsin and I had set up studios in two rooms in this cottage. There was jewellery based around the book, so kind of amulet bracelets and then the windows, like I said, like a chapel to the wild gods. And in the evening we all went back to Northmoor and Chris Jelly, who was the last person to lock up, he was just coming around the corner and it was twilight and out from the roof above our studios a white owl flew low across the land. And it was like we had this kind of absolute blessing, after all the kind of worries we'd had about letting people down, not having a book. The whole opening not happening. It was just like this little gift from the wild gods for us. There was also a white hare on Exmoor. What a miracle.
Tamsin: And black foxes.
Jackie: And a black fox.
Manda: Because in The White Hare you dedicated it and I can't remember who to, but to someone who was there when it happened.
Jackie: Yeah, that was Chris. It was Chris Jelly. And he knows what was there when it happened and what happened. Yeah, a few people know.
Manda: So you guys have never been paid for this? Is that what I'm hearing?
Jackie: Yeah. The company have gone bust. Our agents filled in all the administration forms, and basically we've been told that there's no money. So even though they owe us vast amounts of money, we're not going to get any. But we do have all our stock. So we have been selling copies of the book direct to bookshops. Bookshops have been amazing. They've been really supporting us by buying direct from us. What happens when a publisher goes into administration is all those books die; so the ISBN is cancelled, the books are pulped.
Manda: Flip!
Jackie: I have 15,000 backlist books, which, if another publisher, Graphic, hadn't stepped in, all of those books would be pulped. All of those resources. Wild Folk book would have been pulped. Tamsin and I have taken control of our stock of Wild folk so that we can sell direct, and we are beginning to make money from it. My backlist has been taken by Graphic, but in America they can't take my backlist. So all of my backlist in America, which had been selling really, really well; so well that unbound only so much money, it's a bit... I'm not going to cry because it's only money. But what isn't only money, is all of those books are going to be pulped. And that hurts, that really hurts.
Manda: It's obscene!
Jackie: Fortunately, we have a publisher, it's not quite there yet, but nearly there. And hopefully he is going to take the stock of Wild folk. So it won't have been printed in Turkey, transported to America, put into a warehouse and then pulped.
Manda: This is actually functionally insane, because if that company owes a lot of people a lot of money, these books are... That's like deciding to burn gold bars because you don't want to transfer the ownership. That's actually functionally insane. Okay, so predatory capitalism working as intended. And we need a new system. We all know this by now.
Jackie: But isn't it amazing? Isn't it amazing that this book, which was birthed more or less without a publisher, the resilience in it and the strength in it and the connection with the readers and the support of the bookshops. And being able to very swiftly, hopefully find an American publisher to take it on in America. It's just an astonishing thing that it has a strong will to be in the world, which astonishes me.
Tamsin: I think one of the stories that is coming out very strongly is the Black Fox story. And to me, in my head, sometimes this book is like a box of the most incredible jewels, and at other times it's this little fox cub that's biting and scratching, and it's not going to be abandoned to die. It's getting out there and it's going to survive, and it's going to be strong, and it's going to take everybody down in the best possible way.
Manda: It's the Wild Gods rising. You've got that at the end of the book, the Wild Gods rising. And the wild Gods are not going to let it unrise.
Jackie: I'll just read that bit. It's the mantra at the back of the book, that says: Let Wild Gods rise, land seek skies, through turning year of swallow flight and blossom bright, while wild trout swim in waters clear and lichens map the ancient's tomb. Lark flies, curlew cries at moons rise. And raven speaks and spirits rest while seals sing for soul's ease. Land, sea and skies; let old Gods rise.
Tamsin: Let Old Gods rise.
Manda: And then that last phrase just goes down the page, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It's so powerful. So for people listening to the podcast and people, if you want a present for someone over the winter season, this is absolutely outstandingly beautiful in every way. I genuinely mean this. Where is the best place, we can put a link in the show notes, where do people get it?
Jackie: You can only buy it through independent bookshops, which is a bit of a glory because it's not available on Amazon. But independent bookshops; and we have a growing list of those who are supporting us are stocking it. I'm trying to keep a list at the front of my journal on my website of shops that do have it who are willing to post it. We're hoping that soon we will have the contract signed with the American publisher, and then it will be available in America as well. I mean, international post is getting so difficult now. It's so expensive. But some of the stockists will post abroad. We could sell singly, but I would rather support a bricks and mortar bookshop and share. That seems to me to be the best way of doing it. We are a community, really. Writers need bookshops, readers need bookshops, and I am both a writer and a reader and I want to see them thrive.
Tamsin: Yeah. And also what has been happening is that readers are going into their local bookshop and asking for it, and then they are ordering it. So that's the way for it to get out there.
Manda: Okay. All right. So if it isn't in your local bookshop, people, here is your homework for today: go and ask them and buy several copies. And then they'll have extra that they'll show people and then that's the way exponential growth happens. Just briefly from both of you. What next? Where are you heading creatively now? Together or singly? Tamsin, let's start with you.
Tamsin: Well, I've been a little bit burnt by this in some ways, and felt like I didn't want to do another book for a while. I think Jackie and I will do another book together. I've got exhibitions and things locally in Herefordshire and In Wales. At the moment we're both taking part in an exhibition called Memento Mori, which is in Wells and opens on the 31st of October. I think I'm just drawn to making slightly bigger pieces of glass than I had been before. I think it's slightly changed how I work and what I want to do. But I'm just still making stained glass in my workshop, which is where I'm happiest. Jackie is the storyteller of all time, and we have travelled together and she is a communicator. I think I'm still really wanting to be just quietly hunkered down, hiding away, making things. Yeah.
Manda: Making beautiful things. Yeah. Making portals into the other worlds. Tamsin, this is really important. People need those portals. Genuinely. So thank you.
Tamsin: Thank you.
Manda: Jackie. So we've just heard from Tamsin. Is there going to be another book? Is there something else in the meantime?
Jackie: I'm tempting Tamsin into another story, which is also super shapeshifting, about a woman who can be everything because her mother had been flowers on the hill, became a woman, and then had a night or two of passion with her lover. So when she was turned in to an owl, she was actually carrying a child, which is turned into an egg. And because her mother has been all things and everything, she can be too. And I'm hoping that she will be a bridge between the human world and the wilder world, and help people to understand that they are not alone in this world. That they themselves are not individuals. Because even within our own bodies, we have so much life that is not human. And I'm not sure where it's going yet because, I don't know whether you do this with your own writing, but mine seems to happen organically, and I have to shut up and listen and let it tell itself.
Manda: Yeah.
Jackie: And there's a phrase that I keep having running through my mind, which is, you know, you don't want to sit idle, but don't push the river.
Manda: Right.
Jackie: So that's writing wise. And then I have signed a contract for another book with Hamish Hamilton, which is a book about eggs. It's about birds eggs, and it's about how humans used to go nesting, taking the eggs from the nests. And this used to be considered to be a thing that was. Okay. So, you know, it's okay for us to go and take somebody's child.
Manda: And blow it.
Jackie: Do unspeakable things with it so that we can keep it. It's not an egg, then, it's just a shell.
Manda: In a drawer somewhere.
Jackie: Yeah, and it used to be, um, socially acceptable, but now it isn't. So it's using that as a metaphor for the fact that humans can look at their behaviour, can realise that it's not acceptable and can change. And this is a very simple thing. So what other things might we look at? We think that we can't change, but actually you just have to imagine a different way of being and then action it. So that's the next book. And it's going to be like an Observer's book of eggs. But it's going to have stories about that. It has this big essay in the beginning, which is about the possibility for accepting your actions, seeing where possibly your actions are wrong, and change. The possibility of change. Change for the better.
Manda: Right. Fantastic. I'm writing so many potential titles down here, so I'll sort out what and where. Right. That feels like a really good place to end. I have so many more questions. We could continue to talk about this all day, but we are way over hour. So is there anything in closing, Tamsin and then Jackie, that you would like to say before I thank you for coming on to the Accidental Gods podcast? Tamsin, anything that we haven't said that you want to say.
Tamsin: I can't think of anything. I'm just so delighted that so many people are making a connection with this book. It's the thing that is really making it worth having done it.
Manda: Right, right. With all of the havoc that entailed. But yeah, we know the predatory capital model is broken and it's just demonstrating that that can be the case. And yet the life of the world can continue to flow and emerge. It's such an amazing metaphor for what's happening to our world at the moment. Jackie. Anything from you?
Jackie: Yeah. I mean, for me, what I love is once a book is finished and it's no longer yours, then it goes out into the world and it belongs to anybody who touches it. Any reader who has it. And what I'm loving is learning about it from our readers and hearing their experiences and where it's helped people.
Manda: Yes. Jackie Morris, Tamsin Abbott, makers of this amazing book, I'm going to hold it up one more time; creators of Wild Folk, thank you so much for coming on to the Accidental Gods podcast, and I look forward to talking again when the next book is out.
Jackie: Thank you.
Tamsin: Thank you.
Manda: Well, there we go. That's it for another week. Huge thanks to Tamsin and to Jackie for taking the time to come and talk to us, but more for putting in that enormous effort into creating a book that is genuinely a portal into the other worlds. I defy anybody to sit with this book of an evening by the fire, and not end up feeling the wildness of the world just a touch away. All we have to do is step through. Nothing is ever going to drag you through, but the openings in the essence of who we are, that recognition that we are so much more than our conventional world allows us to be, is what gives us the access to the greater things that we could be. That we have been throughout most of our evolutionary history and that I believe we need to be again, if we're going to become something greater than we are now. Something that's actually going to thrive and flourish as an integral part of the web of life. All the things that we talk about all of the time, and yet just talking about them doesn't take us there. We can understand the need to step into the web of life, but finding out how to do it is harder. We can meditate, we can journey, we can dream, or we can pick up a book of genuine beauty and let that transport us. So there are links in the show notes to where you can find the book, and to all of the places that you can find Tamsin and Jackie.
Manda: And quite clearly, I am encouraging you to do this. If you're looking for something that you want to give to people as a gift beyond price, then this could easily be it. So please do give yourself the gift of exploring all of the wonder of this. And that's it for now. We will be back next week with another conversation. In the meantime, huge thanks to Caro C for the music at the head and foot and for this week's production. Thanks to Lou Mayor for the video, to Anne Thomas for the transcripts, to Faith Tilleray for the website and all of the tech behind the scenes, and as ever, for the conversations that keep us moving forward. And as ever, an enormous thanks to you for listening. If you know of anybody else who wants to step close to the portals that transport us beyond the world of consensus reality, then please do send them this link. And while we're here, if you could take the time to subscribe, give us five stars and a review on the podcast app of your choice, it really does help us to match the algorithms. It lets us reach other people who might otherwise not find us. So let's go for it. And we will see you next week. Take care and thank you and goodbye.