Hex and Muse

Why do we let children dress as tiny monsters, knock on strangers’ doors and demand chocolate under threat of mild vandalism? This spooky season, we’re unwrapping the history of trick-or-treating,from soul cakes and prayers for the dead to masked mischief-makers and the great suburban scramble for Freddo Frogs. There are disguises, doorstep performances and a bargain that’s simple, slightly extort...

For the first ever Hex + Muse Book Club, we’re stepping inside The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, a world of ancient prophecies, secret passages, and spectacularly bad decisions. First published in 1764 and widely regarded as the first Gothic novel, this short but dramatic tale begins with a doomed wedding and a giant helmet falling from the sky. What follows is a tangle of dangerous ambitio...

In this episode, we explore the spring equinox below the equator - from longer evenings and flowering wattle to nesting birds and unpredictable weather. We look at the difference between the equinox and Ostara, how to build a seasonal practice around what’s actually happening where you live, and why balance doesn’t have to mean giving everything equal time. The episode finishes with a simple equin...

What happens when we look at the world and ask it to answer us? In Part II of The Art of Seeing, we leave the Oracle of Delphi behind and follow the quieter, stranger history of divination through bowls of water, dark mirrors, birds in flight, marked lots and ancient oracle bones. We step into the candlelit world of John Dee and Edward Kelley, explore Dee’s mysterious obsidian scrying mirror and i...

High on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, beneath the gaze of Apollo, people once climbed toward Delphi carrying questions they could not answer alone. In this episode, we follow them up the Sacred Way to meet the Pythia, the woman believed to speak with the voice of a god, and explore the strange, beautiful world of prophecy, ritual, myth and interpretation. Because sometimes the hardest part is not...

What if a grimoire was never simply a book of magic? Long before they were hidden behind glass in museums or wrapped in stories of spells and secret societies, grimoires were companions to everyday life. They gathered remedies, dreams, prayers, recipes, observations and the quiet moments their owners refused to let slip away. Part history, part reflection, Ink, Memory & Living Magic traces the...

There are stories that refuse to stay still. Medusa has been carried through centuries as a monster, a warning, a figure placed at the edge of fear - and yet her story has never settled there. In this episode of Hex & Muse, we return to Medusa with care, tracing her origins in ancient Greek mythology, her transformation through the writings of Ovid, and the way her image has moved through art,...

As the Northern Hemisphere turns toward the light, we arrive at the spring equinox - known in many pagan traditions as Ostara. In this episode of Hex & Muse, we explore the stories, symbols, and seasonal rhythms that shape this moment. From ancient myths of return and renewal to the folklore of hares and eggs, we trace how these traditions have travelled through time - eventually forming what...

In this episode of Hex & Muse, we step into the Scottish witch trials — where thousands, most of them women, were accused and executed under the Witchcraft Act of 1563. Through historical research and recorded testimony, we explore how fear became law, and how ordinary lives were transformed into accusation. This episode was inspired in part by the work of the Witches of Scotland podcast:   ht...

Through the Gilded Eye - Witches, Goddesses & the Power of the Gaze How has art shaped the way we see witches and powerful women? In this episode of Hex & Muse , we step into the painted worlds of Circe, Lilith, and the witch archetype to explore how female power has been framed across centuries of art history. From the spellbinding tension of John William Waterhouse’s Circe Offering the C...

A new rhythm is taking shape. In this episode of Hex & Muse, we explore where we are right now  on the Wheel of the Year, beneath the Moon, and between the closing energy of the Snake and the forward momentum of the Horse. Blending folklore, astrology, lunar symbolism, and seasonal awareness, this episode reflects on clarity, endurance, and the quiet preparation that shapes what comes next - a...

This short episode marks the final page of Season One of Hex & Muse - a gentle closing ritual for a year of folklore, magic, art, and storytelling. I’m taking the rest of the year to finish uni, slow down, and actually breathe through the festive season, but I’ll return in the new year with fresh stories, rituals, and the beginning of Season Two. Thank you to everyone who has listened, shared,...

In this haunting and beautiful episode of Hex & Muse, we step into the storm that changed the world. Born of lightning and grief, Mary Shelley dreamt a monster into being and in doing so, gave birth to modern horror, science fiction, and a mirror for the human soul. Through thunder over Lake Geneva, the ghost-story challenge at Villa Diodati, and the heartbreak that shaped Frankenstein, this e...

As spring blooms in the southern world and autumn deepens in the north, the veil thins across both. Tonight, Hex & Muse crosses that unseen border to meet Nicnevin - the Hallow Queen of Scotland. She rides through centuries of poetry, persecution, and myth: from Renaissance verse to witch-trial confessions, from the moors of Fife to the snow-clad peaks of Ben Nevis. Part goddess, part ghost, p...

Once upon a midnight dreary... In this special reading, Hex & Muse drifts through the flicker of candlelight to meet one of literature’s most haunting visitations  Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. First published in 1845, this gothic masterpiece still beats with the same dark music: grief, longing, and the ache of a soul that cannot let go. Told in rhythmic, hypnotic verse, The Raven is a séance i...

From silent trick films to technicolour queens, from broomsticks to suburban sitcoms, from horror’s hysteria to feminist reclamation - cinema has never stopped conjuring the witch. In this episode of Hex & Muse, we trace her journey through a century of film: the haunted illusions of Georges Méliès, the fevered beauty of Häxan, the vanity of Disney’s mirror-obsessed queen, the domestic rebelli...

What makes midnight so powerful and why do crossroads, mirrors, and doorways seem to hum with the same strange energy? This episode of Hex & Muse drifts through folklore, superstition, and the quiet psychology of liminal spaces, tracing how the witching hour became a symbol of transformation. From ancient rites and whispered superstitions to the ways we still navigate change today, it’s an exp...

In every tale of the witch, something moves just beyond her body - a cat’s green eyes, a hare in the fields, a raven circling overhead. These are the familiars: companions, protectors, and echoes of the witch’s own spirit. In this episode of Hex & Muse, we walk with them. From the witch trials of England and Scotland, where imps and “witch’s teats” became deadly evidence, to the enduring image...

In this episode of Hex & Muse, we step into the velvet dark - the hidden places within where our secrets, wounds, and unclaimed power wait. This is shadow work: the witch’s art of facing what has been buried, not to banish it, but to bring it home. Together we’ll wander through myth and folklore - Inanna’s descent to the underworld, Persephone crowned in shadow, Baba Yaga at the forest’s edge,...

On the night of September 7–8, 2025, the Corn Moon rises in Pisces - and slips into shadow. For eighty-two minutes, the world will witness a total lunar eclipse, the Blood Moon burning red across the skies of the southern hemisphere. In this special episode, we explore the Corn Moon’s springtime meaning, the eclipse’s transformative pull, and the dreamlike waters of Pisces. You’ll also be guided t...

What if your altar wasn’t a shelf   but a moment?  A gesture?  A stone in your coat pocket or a candle stub you keep lighting on the floor? In this episode of Hex & Muse, we step into the quiet beauty of modern devotion an ode to the altars we carry through daily life. From the history of sacred spaces to the rise of domestic ritual, we explore how meaning is made in the smallest of places: a...

Freya is not a goddess who can be contained. She is beauty and battle, silk and steel, grief and golden desire. In this episode, we step into her meadow of myths where amber tears fall into the sea, falcon wings carry her between worlds, and a necklace forged in fire becomes a symbol of sovereignty. We’ll wander through her stories: the Brísingamen, the cat-drawn chariot, the meadow of Fólkvangr,...

Not all fairies have wings Some wear moss for cloaks. Some will bless you. Some will curse you. In this episode, we step beyond the glitter and into the older, stranger world of the fae. From the light and shadow of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts to the hidden lines of fairy roads, we’ll walk through mushroom rings that may never let you go, meet their cousins in Iceland, Japan, and Slavic rivers,...

The witch’s garden is never just a garden. It’s a threshold where roots touch the underworld, blossoms reach for the divine, and every leaf carries a story. In this episode of Hex & Muse, we wander through a green world of memory and protection, of potions stirred at the hearth and charms tied under moonlight. From rosemary’s quiet guardianship to basil’s welcome at the door, these are the pla...

This episode is dedicated to the people of Palestine. If you're able, please consider donating to humanitarian relief or signing a petition to demand ceasefire. Bearing witness is powerful- but action, even small, is sacred. Long before the witch hunts scorched through Europe, there were the cunning folk- midwives, herbalists, diviners, and wise women who walked the hedgerows between the seen...