{"id":8000,"date":"2016-04-30T08:24:28","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T14:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8000"},"modified":"2016-04-30T08:24:28","modified_gmt":"2016-04-30T14:24:28","slug":"its-only-a-tree-it-cant-hurt-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8000","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;It&#8217;s Only a Tree. It Can&#8217;t Hurt You!&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xDq1sczXr_4\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Plus &#8220;You&#8217;ve been watching too much television&#8221; and other undying lines from a &#8220;teens in peril&#8221; screenplay.<\/p>\n<p>So who is\u00a0 the writer? That well-known <a href=\"http:\/\/www.controverscial.com\/Stewart%20Farrar.htm\">Wiccan author Stewart Farrar <\/a>(1916\u20132000), slipping a little bit of a Craft-y message into this 1975 episode of a British show called <em>Shadows. <\/em>(<a href=\"http:\/\/adventuresinwitchery.blogspot.com\/2016\/04\/shadows-witch-bottle-1975.html\">A tip of the pointy hat to Veles at <em>Adventures in Witchery<\/em> for leading me to it.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>From the 1950s to the late 1970s, when he turned more toward writing purely Wiccan books in collaboration with his<a href=\"http:\/\/www.witchcraftandwitches.com\/witches_janet_farrar.html\"> wife Janet<\/a>, Stewart Farrar put his hand to everything: occult thrillers, magazine journalism, television screenplays \u2014 even a pseudononymous bodice-ripper romance, just to see if he could do it. His novel\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0312781725\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0312781725&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=soutrocknatub-20&amp;linkId=XLSELJ2RQWPGJUXN\">The Sword of Orley<\/a><\/em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0312781725\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" \/> remains one of my favorite examples of how reincarnational memories<em> ought to be<\/em>, if only life were more like books.<\/p>\n<p>I got to know Stewart around 1977, and at some point suggested to him that Dion Fortune&#8217;s book of short stores about an English magus, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1578633370\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1578633370&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=soutrocknatub-20&amp;linkId=CZRND62Q7QD4MK2U\"><em>The Secrets of Doctor Taverner<\/em>, <\/a>ought to transfer well to &#8220;the box,&#8221; as he called it.<\/p>\n<p>He went so far as to investigate who held the copyright \u2014 which was her esoteric order, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fraternity_of_the_Inner_Light\">The Fraternity of the Inner Light<\/a>, and its directors apparently had no interest in licensing a television adaptation.<\/p>\n<p>A pity \u2014 they would have made a perfect 1970s TV show, when occult topics were in vogue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plus &#8220;You&#8217;ve been watching too much television&#8221; and other undying lines from a &#8220;teens in peril&#8221; screenplay. So who is\u00a0 the writer? That well-known Wiccan author Stewart Farrar (1916\u20132000), slipping a little bit of a Craft-y message into this 1975 episode of a British show called Shadows. (A tip of the pointy hat to Veles [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,153,29,12],"class_list":["post-8000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-england","tag-television","tag-witchcraft","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-252","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1102,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1102","url_meta":{"origin":8000,"position":0},"title":"Review: Stewart Farrar: Writer on a Broomstick","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Stewart Farrar was constantly writing (journalism, fiction, radio and TV scripts, and more) and recording events--even notes on every Wiccan circle in which he participated. When he and Janet visited our home in 1991 (their first speaking tour in the US), he narrated each day's events into a micro-cassette recorder,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1097,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1097","url_meta":{"origin":8000,"position":1},"title":"Book Posts in the Works","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I am spread a little thin these days, and the below-zero (F.) weather the last few days threw some complications my way too.Two book reviews are in the works. Here are the previews:\u2022 Stewart Farrar: Writer On A Broomstick, The Biography of Stewart Farrar by Elizabeth Guerra. Workmanlike biography of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Druidry\"","block_context":{"text":"Druidry","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=druidry"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4296,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4296","url_meta":{"origin":8000,"position":2},"title":"Dr. Taverner and the Dreamer&#8217;s World","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert Moss, novelist and noted writing on dreaming, has a series of posts on his blog about Dion Fortune's Secrets of Dr. Taverner.\u00a0 Supposedly, the occultist\/psychiatrist Dr. Taverner is based on a real doctor whom Fortune knew in the early twentieth century, and the \"secrets\" are retellings of actual cases.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreaming\"","block_context":{"text":"dreaming","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-Dh6uFHl3QdQ\/T6rt2unN13I\/AAAAAAAABf0\/w5O0w8S8jQ8\/s320\/Dr%2BTaverner%2BRoyal%2BMagazine%2B1922.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9099,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9099","url_meta":{"origin":8000,"position":3},"title":"&#8220;Come Out and Fight Me for My Throne . . . &#8220;","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 . . . says Janet Farrar melodramatically in this 1977 broadcast from the Irish national network Raidi\u00f3 Teilif\u00eds \u00c9ireann. Author and screenwriter Stewart Farrar and his wife Janet, both from London in England, met through witchcraft and founded their own coven. In 1976 the couple moved to Ireland, accompanied\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14159,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14159","url_meta":{"origin":8000,"position":4},"title":"Revisiting Initiatory Wicca: Are They Still Scourging?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 29, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"As you can see, this conversation was recorded last spring, but I got around to listening to it only this month. Both Rufus Harrington and Judith Noble come from initiatory British Wiccan traditions. A psychotherapist by profession, he is also a trustee of the Doreen Valiente Foundation, which protects and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Amsterdam\"","block_context":{"text":"Amsterdam","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=amsterdam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/scholars-meet.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/scholars-meet.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/scholars-meet.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/scholars-meet.png?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":626,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=626","url_meta":{"origin":8000,"position":5},"title":"No marker for Wiccan veteranA\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"No marker for Wiccan veteranA Wiccan sergeant from the Nevada National Guard was killed in action in Afghanistan. Now his widow runs up against the Veterans Administration's refusal to permit a pentacle marker on the graves of Wiccan veterans, notes the Las Vegas Review-Journal (Link may expire, so I will\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8000"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8004,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8000\/revisions\/8004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}