My latest guest, H. Byron Ballard, joins me on this episode for her second visit to the Home to Her podcast. Byron is a ritualist, teacher, gardener, and author of multiple books, including "Staubs and Ditchwater: A Friendly and Useful Introduction to Hillfolks’ Hoodoo;" "Earthworks: Ceremonies in Tower Time;" "Seasons of a Magical Life;" and the forthcoming "Feral Church." Known as Asheville, North Carolina’s village witch, Byron specializes in folk magic and folkways of the surrounding Appalachian Mountains where she and her family have hailed from for four generations. Byron is also a senior priestess and co-founder of the Mother Grove Goddess Temple, a nonprofit church with a focus on the many forms of the divine feminine.
On this episode we discuss:
- What it means to live in deep relationship to place - both the gifts and the challenges
- How the work and the death of the late thealogian Dr. Carol P. Christ inspired Byron's forthcoming book, Feral Church, and why she feels it's so important that we have new books of thealogy (spelling intentional) that celebrate the Goddess
- Why it's important that we understand that the Goddess and her many incarnations represent much more than patriarchally lauded values such as softness and femininity, but also ferocity and immense power.
- The linkage between the concept of begin feral and the Divine Feminine.
- The need for "hearth church" and other homegrown, emergent practices for engaging with the sacred that can continue to exist and flourish as patriarchal systems crumble around us
Notes related to this episode:
And here are a few more details about this show and my work:
- If you’d like to know whose ancestral tribal lands you currently reside on, you can look up your address here:
