Lucy Cavendish is a writer and a witch and an oracle reader and creator, and a surfer and a nature lover. We first met in the nineties in magazine circles, as we’ve both been journalists and editors, but we reconnected in 2002 when I interviewed her about her gorgeous Oracle Tarot deck. Since then we’ve travelled to Glastonbury together, done rituals together, written three books together – Faery Magic, Mermaid Magic and Witchy Magic – done a lot of festivals, and drunk a lot of tea.
Lucy’s other books include White Magic, The Lost Lands, Spellbound: The Secret Grimoire, Witches and Wizards and Book of Shadows & Light. She’s also created several oracle decks, including the Wild Wisdom of the Faery Oracle and Oracle of the Mermaids with Selina Fenech, plus The Alice in Wonderland Oracle, The Faery Forest Oracle, Oracle of Shadows and Light, Magickal Spellcards, The Faerytale Oracle: An Enchanted Oracle of Initiation, Mystery & Destiny, and many more. She’s also started a magical podcast, The Witchcast, for dreamers, misfits, seekers and believers, revealing the real-life magic in supernatural shows and movies, reporting on witchy news, exploring occult history and offering insightful oracle card readings.
And in a beautifully serendipitous moment, we’ve both released faery tale books. Lucy’s Magickal Faerytales: An Enchanted Collection of Retold Tales is a gorgeous selection of re-imagined faery tales that restore their pagan wisdom. In addition to the eleven classics, it includes an original story, plus faerytale-inspired spells, fascinating histories, spine-tingling secrets behind the familiar tales, and more. Beautifully illustrated by Jasmine Becket-Griffith, this hardcover edition is definitely one to keep and savour.
What inspired you to write this book now? While I was working on The Faerytale Oracle, I knew I wanted to begin writing a book of faery tales, really explore them, and perhaps be fortunate enough to return some of their lost magic in the retelling. Faery tales help us with the difficult journeys into the dark forests that all of our lives must take. They show us how to change, and when, and they initiate us, in a deep way, into new stages on our lives, whether from girl to woman human to animal, or spirit to flesh. They are wonder-tales that show us how to survive, how to thrive, how to reclaim our true selves.
What do faery tales mean to you? 
To me, faery tales are about survival. Surviving our families, most often, and being sent out into a world which is hostile, and navigating the new worlds in which we find ourselves, without bitterness or rancour. And so I find the tales not only frightening, magical and enchanting, but hopeful too – hopeful because there is nearly always a kind of transformation that occurs at a deep level, due to the courage displayed within the heart of the children, or the princess, or the girl in the tower wondering how she will ever turn a pile of straw into gold. This storytelling inspires us with the same courage, and tells us that, no matter the hardship, we can continue to be ourselves and find our way to freedom. It may seem a grand thing to say, but I believe story, especially magical, enchanted story, can set us free. Stories give us back our minds, help us conquer fears, and take us away from, as WB Yeats so beautifully said, “this dull world”.
One of the things that makes your book so unique is that after each of the faery tales, you explore the magic of each one, including the symbols, tree wisdom, old spells, folklore and history. It’s there for readers to delve into, so that we come to know the deep, rich history that lies within the tales, and which lies within your own ancestry too. Discovering the magic woven into each of the stories is a fascinating and fulfilling way to enter into their mysteries an enchantment. Each story is a well of wisdom, ready for you to draw from and quench your thirst for spirited adventure.
And you wrote an original faery tale too, The Ninth Wave, a beautiful story of an ocean-yearning young girl in search of answers about her mother, and about herself. When I was young, all I wanted to be was a mermaid, to be able to breathe under water and stay in that weightless bliss, the warmth of the magical currents. I loved so many aspects of the Hans Christian Andersen story The Little Mermaid, but it left me cold in other ways. How could he make her endure so much pain? The description of the pain she felt, due to her becoming a human, horrified me. Why was she so ready to give up the beauty of being a mermaid, to me the most amazing possibility, simply to win the love of a prince, a prince she herself had rescued? And why, when he did not return her horrible, sacrificing love, was she turned to sea foam? It is a beautiful, dreadful faery tale, about losing your voice, abandoning yourself, inviting terrible pain in the desire for love. So I wrote The Ninth Wave as a kind of antidote.
Connect with her on Facebook here.
Listen to her new podcast, The Witchcast, here.
And come chat with her on Wednesday April 1 at our online launch.
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