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H. Byron Ballard, is a Folklorist, Author, Priestess and Teacher. She has served as a featured speaker and teacher at several festivals and conferences, including the Sacred Space Conference, Pagan Spirit Gathering, Starwood, Hexfest and many others. She serves as senior Priestess and co-founder of Mother Grove Goddess Temple and the Coalition of Earth Religions/CERES, both in Asheville, NC. She podcasts about Appalachian folkways on "Wyrd Mountain Gals." Her essays are featured in several anthologies, and she writes a regular column for SageWoman Magazine. Her books include four on mountain folk magic. The first was Staubs and Ditchwater, and the most recent (2025) is A Feral Church: A Guided Journey to Find Magic, Kinship and the Goddess.

Byron grew up in the country in North Carolina; she only saw the Goddess within the soil, trees, water and wind around her in Appalachia running in the mountains and playing in her family’s small orchard playing with crawdads and salamanders. Outside in nature is where Byron felt the divine most strongly. She sometimes saw the Goddess as anthropomorphic. Byron never saw the divine in male form. She calls herself an Animist at heart and also a polytheist.

Her grandmother and several cousins had the sight or prophetic dreams and also the ability to interact with spirits- even though their religion was Methodist. These abilities were deeply ingrained in the culture that Byron grew up in. Appalachia’s energy is deeply magical and broad and often manifests in deep spirituality which permeates the culture. It also has some of the oldest mountains in North America and two of the oldest rivers flowing through it in the world. There many different kinds of religion there. The intersection of Indigenous, African Scottish/Irish, Welsh and German cultures contributes to a unique Appalachian spiritual culture.

We chat about Byron’s newest book A Feral Church. She wrote it after the death of Carol Christ and her work was a great inspiration to Byron. She decided it was time to write another Goddess spirituality book. This book takes us Solstice to Solstice on inner and outer journeys to meet spiritual beings and connect with the Mother Goddess. It’s about stepping out of domesticity and accessing your wild essence in our own hearts. We encounter spiritual beings who teach us about aspects of our wild spirits in different parts of the world.

We chat about her role as a Priestess at the Mother Goddess Temple In Asheville NC which is a 501c3 church. She does interfaith work and outreach as well as holding Sabbats celebrating the wheel of the year with her community there. Byron believes that the Goddess is the root and foundation of all of us and from that we do the work that we are called to do in these perilous times. The Goddess is much needed especially for Women. Byron ends our episode by giving us a truly beautiful Goddess meditation for love and support. More about Byron at www.myvillagewitch.com

Tune in and be enlightened!

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In this episode, I am very delighted to speak with Patricia "Trish" Telesco!
Trish is a passionate Author and fusion cook. She has been a part of the Neo-Pagan community for nearly 40 years. During that time, Trish has written several books including Victorian Grimoire, 365 Goddess, A Kitchen Witch’s Cookbook and her most recent book, Cooking with the Kitchen Witch. Her Wiccan, Witchcraft, & Pagan books provide real and practical information on magick, spells, rituals, Shamanism, animal familiars, Gods & Goddesses, Kitchen Witchery, and Earth-based spirituality. Trish considers herself a Kitchen Witch whose love of folklore flavor every spell and ritual. She believes that your kitchen is a sacred space where you can elevate even the most mundane meal prep into a spiritual ritual. Trish lives in Western New York.

*Trish will give us some Kitchen Witch Tips at the end of the episode! *

We begin by chatting about Trish’s childhood where she played in fields behind the house growing up and talking to trees as a young Pagan Witchling. She tells us that her grandmother would get up at 5am to bake amazing fresh picked berry muffins that woke the family up in the morning. There was something in the love of her baking that influenced Patricia. She remembered her mom’s roast beef and the sacred way her mom created it in their family’s kitchen and her dad baking his delicious cookies.

Trish really didn't discover the magic of cooking until she got married and realized she could not cook. And she got a cookbook from her sister and made every single recipe in that cookbook for a year. The more Trish cooked the more she loved cooking and playing with the recipes. It became …FUN. Thats when her Kitchen Witchery journey started brewing!

She wrote a small newsletter for friends and family offering recipes and after contracting a case of adult chicken pox; she had the idea to write her first and very popular Kitchen Witchery cookbook over 30 years ago called: A Kitchen Witch’s Cookbook. She sent the manuscript to Llewellyn books, and they loved it. Her cookbook was published and it set the pace for Kitchen Witchery on the literary market.

Trish has written and published over 50 Witchcraft and Pagan books as well. Trish tells us that writing is who she is. She then took a little time off and after that she wrote a follow up cookbook. We chat about her new book: Cooking with the Kitchen Witch - Magical Recipes from the Hearth and what a Kitchen Witch is.

Staging, presentation, and decorations are also a part of creating kitchen magic and feasts - especially to celebrate the seasons and the Sabbats with your family, friends and community. Trish gives us some ideas on plating or placing food on the plate as it corresponds to the elements to draw in the energies of each direction and culinary astrology. We chat about how the visual impact of food is witchery and as Trish says: we eat with our eyes.

Trish is very committed to creating her recipes to make sure that they will last through the test of time. She has worked and experimented with food to create her unique culinary magic for several years. Her spellbinding new kitchen witchery book: Cooking with the Kitchen Witch - Magical Recipes from the Hearth invites us to nourish not only our bodies but our spirits. And Trish’s love language emana

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