The Hagstone Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

In this month’s episode of The Hagstone, Chaise Levy sits down with Scott Richardson-Read to trace the living force of story shapes nations, roots itself in land, and moves through communities as something more than metaphor. Beginning with the claim that “all we ever really have is story,” the conversation travels from Scottish political identity to digital worlds, from local hillsides to role-playing tables, asking what holds people together when institutions falter.

Drawing on folklore, landscape memory, online gaming culture, and oral storytelling practice, they explore story as a form of belonging. We track how shared imaginative space also for identity to be tested, inhabited, and transformed. The episode considers how a wide variety of otherworlds can function as contemporary mythic terrain, how communal storytelling generates a kind of “group body,” and how the teller becomes less an author than a mouthpiece for something moving through the room.

Ultimately, the conversation gestures toward a radical reorientation: imagination is not escape, but participation. Story is not distraction, but ground. What would it mean to recognize narrative not as illusion, but as the medium through which reality becomes livable, contested, and enchanted?

New Theme Music: Taliesin, written and performed on Tenor Guitar and Mandolin by Chaise Levy

Scott Richardson-Read is a working-class writer, folklorist, and alternative cultural historian with a deep connection to Scotland’s folk heritage. As the creator of Cailleach’s Herbarium, a platform dedicated to reviving and preserving Scottish folk traditions, Scott has spent years researching and sharing the stories, practices, and beliefs that define the working-class and animistic roots of Scottish culture. His work reflects a blend of deep archival exploration, oral history, and personal experience in the landscapes of Scotland.

With a background steeped in human rights, ecology, activism, and traditions, Scott’s writing bridges the past and present, offering fresh insights into the enduring significance of folk belief. Through his decades-long journey, he continues to advocate for the preservation of Scotland’s sacred sites and cultural heritage.

When not writing, Scott is often found exploring Scotland’s wild spaces, old libraries, and archives, drinking tea with his cats, or engaging with the vibrant communities keeping traditions alive.

You can find Scott’s work on his website Cailleachs Herbarium or in his incredible 2025 book Mill Dust and Dreaming Bread: Exploring Scottish Folk Belief and Folk Magic.

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In this months episode of The Hagstone, Chaise Levy sits down with Chad Andro of Radical Elphame to explore what Chad calls fairy apologetics, a reexamination of fairy lore that pushes back against fear-based, extractive, and overly dualistic approaches to the Otherworld. Drawing from folklore, Romantic poetry, animist philosophy, entheogenic experience, and personal practice, the conversation challenges the modern tendency to demonize or sentimentalize fairies, arguing instead for a relational and ecological understanding rooted in openness and transformation.

Together, they explore the collapse of strict boundaries between this world and the Otherworld, critique capitalist and colonial mindsets that seek to control spiritual experience, and trace how Romantic figures such as William Blake preserved a vision of fairy as a force of fullness that holds joy and terror, innocence and experience, creation and destruction in dynamic balance. The episode ultimately asks what it would mean culturally and spiritually to re-engage fairy not as danger or fantasy, but as a living mode of relationship with the animate world.

Connect with Chad Andro

Instagram: @radicalelphameSubstack: Chad Andro Podcast: Radical Elphame, available wherever you listen

New Theme Music: Taliesin written and performed on Tenor Guitar and Mandolin by Chaise Levy

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On this week’s episode of the Hagstone Podcast Chaise is speaking with Z. Hudelot. Z is an educator, historian, researcher, and a forager working at the intersection of folklore, folk practice and scientific study. It is a fascinating and wide ranging conversation covering Z’s work with the Mycoheterotrophs (including the Ghost Pipe), gnomes, Paracelsus, mummer’s plays and so much more. If you want to know more about the HMS Terror Z. has offered up this article.You can find Z on Instagram at : gnomecunningYou can also find Z’s lecture at the 2024 Viridis Genii Symposium on Mycoheterotrophs here.

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This week on the Hagstone Podcast Chaise sat down with Nay Noordmans of House of Gnomi on Instagram to chat all things Gnomes. The conversation moves through topics of connection to place, the benefits of working from folklore to develop relationships with the ecology, and the ever present question are the Gnomes just mushrooms after all?References in the episode include:

* A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits by Paracelsus

* Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirit, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide by Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling

* Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants by Claudia Müller-Ebeling, Christian Rätsch, Wolf-Dieter Storl

* The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications by Christian Rätsch

Nay recommends that anyone interested in all things gnome, and mycology check out the work of gnome_cunning on Instagram, especially the workshop they gave on Ghost Pipe Mushrooms at Viridis Genii Symposium this year. You can find a lecture recording here.You can find Nay’s work on instagram at @houseofgnomi

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Albert Shiell is a practicing folk magician and seiðkarl from Lewes, Sussex, England. Today he lives in Reykjavík, Iceland where he spends time in the land and working with spirits. He is the author of the two books: Icelandic Folk Magic, Witchcraft of the North and Icelandic Plant Magic: Folk Herbalism of the North. His work focuses mostly on the union of Iceland magical plants, folklore and magical staves.

We speak to him about his life, about grimoires, plants, and what it is like to take spirit flights through the Icelandic landscapes.More of Albert’s work can be found on his website or his Instagram:

https://pellarcrafts.com

sussexpellar

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Marcus McCoy

A student of plants since he was a child, Marcus R. McCoy holds a A student of plants since he was a child, Marcus R. McCoy holds a degree in Transpersonal Anthropology with a focus on the ethnobotany of magical plants. He is the progenitor of Bioregional Animism, and has published his works on the subject of plant teacher shamanry in Reality Sandwich. Marcus has also been published in Verdant Gnosis Volume 1, and is one of three editors of the book series. Marcus studied south american vegetalismo for many years, which is where he started his focus on perfumerismo. He is a professional perfumer and proprietor of House of Orpheus and alchemical practitioner, studying with Robert Bartlett. Marcus is also an established blacksmith and metal artist with special interest focusing on the occult art of herbal quenches working within the context of alchemical philosophy and folk magic. His smithy is called Troll Cunning Forge, and he produces custom made occult iron work for the occult community. Marcus is also a teacher of folk magic and has ongoing classes on the Botany of the Dead as well as the folklore of the magical projectile. He lives in the forests of the Olympic Mountain range in Washington with his lovely partner in the cunning crafts, Catamara Rosarium.

https://viridisgenii.com/symposium-organizers/

https://www.instagram.com/trollcunningforge?igsh=Z3l1eGI1eWVreGtz

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Audrey Nova di Mola is a Queens, New York City-born oral tradition storyteller, lifelong writer/artist, creative facilitator, and sacred space-holder; a wing-footed accompanist through the wilds of the deep heart.

She is underworld-grown, grounded in the learnings of her descents and dedicated to carrying the revivifying waters of re-story-ation into our modern society. The sacred ecology of earth, story, spirit, and community were what literally saved her life. Through her mythopoetic heart-work (adventurous, care-oriented online/in-person gatherings, 1-on-1 journeys, and unique mythic-inspired support) Audrey offers wondrous embodied experiences with the old stories in the oral tradition as well as journeys into the urban mythic and our own personal legends. They are uniquely enriched by her somatic sensitivity, mental and holistic health advocacy, and inborn capacity for “seeing with the eyes of the heart.”

For over a decade (15 years and counting?!), Audrey has been lovingly gathering souls to safely/bravely and artistically explore their inner and outer landscapes. She has hosted and curated many (MANY!) multidisciplinary events, workshops, and performances such as Nature of the Muse, Church of the Sacred Body, How We Create & How We Cope: Intersections of Art & Mental Illness, and countless outdoor happenings for hundreds of thousands at Socrates Sculpture Park, the waterfront art-park and community space where she served as Director of Public Programs from 2016-2021.

Prior to more fully living into the dream of carrying the old stories, Audrey’s performative artistic career has spanned theatre, movement, song, and the spoken and written word. This encompasses arts journalism and writing/editing, four books of original poetry and prose (most recently “WILDLIGHT” and “The Book of Legend”), a few brief but utterly depth-full years in the core ensemble of Gurdjieff-inspired experimental theatre company, Dzieci (2019-2021), offerings in venues both intimate and massive (from The Cathedral of Saint John The Divine to the School of Myth in Devon UK to the addiction treatment center in her neighborhood), work published in Mad in America and Dark Mountain Project, and large-scale immersive art and poetry graffiti installations including “trusting the inmost angel” and “go slowly, see miracles.”

Audrey holds the mythic “both/and space” of depth and play, warming light and fertile dark. She is assistant to the first Steward of the Mythsinger Legacy Project, gratefully and enthusiastically carrying on the work of her late great storytelling teacher Daniel “3D” Deardorff; was the resident storyteller for Dr. Sharon Blackie’s Mythic Imagination Network from 2022-2023 (and continues to be featured on her popular “The Art of Enchantment” Substack!); and has deeply enjoyed immersive courses with Dr. Martin Shaw, Francis Weller, and Perdita Finn, among many others.We encourage those who find this podcast moving to check out this piece of writing Audrey shared with the northern spirit house, entitled knowing your own mythology: the life saving act.

Find her in the Turtle Hut. Search your heart, you’ll Know the way.

Find her in the digital otherlands here:Instagram: @wildbodydreaming

Substack: Audrey Nova di Mola

audreydimola.com

Join Audrey and Chaise for an exploration of suicidality and madness, stringing a weave between personal and mythic stories.

September 22nd, 2024 at 11-2 PM EST / 8-11 AM PST on Zoom

REGISTER HERE

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This month on the Northern Spirit House Podcast Chaise speaks with Roy Arthur Blodgett. Roy is a naturalist and writer currently living in Jerusalem Valley, within the ancestral homeland of the Lake Miwok. In the episode they speak about the braid of the love of language with the love of the land, what the duty of the poet might be in these times, and the possibilities of becoming “of a place.”

Roy Arthur Blodgett is a naturalist and writer currently living in Jerusalem Valley, within the ancestral homeland of the Lake Miwok. His work explores the intersections of natural and cultural history, power and privilege, ancestry, memory, and human responsibility in the cosmos. Roy is a graduate of three years at Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education, where he studied nature connection, social and environmental justice, permaculture, and traditional ecological knowledge, among other devotions. In addition to being a writer of poetry and prose, he is a certified wildlife tracker, master herpetologist, novice woodcarver, herpetoculturist, and an enamored apprentice to all that animates this world. He has self-published two chapbooks - Usal Beach to Ferndale (2015), and Soil and Shadow (2018, with Heavy Letters Press) - and has completed a third, Five Years, which is soon forthcoming. 

You can find Roy online at https://www.royarthurblodgett.com or on Instagram @roy_arthur

Greetings dear subscribers of the Northern Spirit House,

Andreas and myself are so grateful for the last 18 months we have shared here on substack. Your comments, engagement, submissions, and continuing of the work fill us with joy and keep wind in the sails when the seas of life get rocky. We are writing because we are going to turn on a paid subscriptions function of the substack. All essays, and our monthly podcast will remain free for all but in the coming months we will begin sending out essays on practical matters such as ritual development, spell-work, connecting with land-spirits, utiseta, and so much more. If you would like access to these practitioner invitations you can join us around the Hearth Fire. Any contribution supports the both of us to bring more life and energy to this work, as well as supports the thriving of both of our families.With deep gratitude, and spell-songs of blessing surrounding your life.

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Simon Hodges has a lifelong love affair with both myth and non-duality - a combination he attempts to make sense of in his newsletter the Linden Bower.

He organises storytelling locally and for disadvantaged groups, and writes for a living. His work with story focuses on the electric contact possible between ourselves and the nature to sustain inspiration in a disordered world.

In our conversation, Simon takes us on a journey with a traditional story from Friesland in the Netherlands. We talk about how it amplified certain realisations at this stage of his life and contact with the intense wideness of Friesland.

We talked about wonder as the base camp of experience and how stories can return us to it.

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For Episode 4 of the Northern Spirit House Podcast, Chaise sat down with Lien de Coster to speak about the practice of Utiseta. Lien is a Soul-centric Ceremonialist, Nature Connection Mentor, and Permaculturalist based on the West Coast of Sweden. Lien’s love of the landscape and story was born at the end of a cobblestone street in Flanders and has been a golden-thread leading her ever since. Through Leaves of Lien Lien is reviving the practice of ‘sitting out’ (Utiseta) as a vital pathway for those longing to become of place. As well as developing place-based grief rituals, pilgrimages, and soul-centered mentoring.

Lien’s upcoming Utiseta on the West Coast of Sweden is linked here:The Well of Memory: July 27th- August 5th

More info on this Winter’s Tears of Amber and Gold (a place-based grief ritual) can be found here:Tears of Amber and Gold

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