Thursday December 22, 2011
Return to the cauldron
My friend and ghost-book author Marla Brooks invited me as a return guest on her Stirring the Cauldron online radio show's holiday edition, for December 22nd. This would be my eighth guest appearance on the famous para-x Thursday evening program.
Reverend Tim Shaw (who also hosts the Black Cat Lounge show on para-x), and Marla called me in almost moments before the hour, with music blasting away, making it tricky to hear them. Tim spoke about a Ufologist guest of his who'd not only been Born Again, but went the whole Anne Rice lost-mind route, and that now anything UFO related the guy believes to be demonic in nature. Sad really...
We went live at six past the hour.
The show went quite well, as Marla and I discussed various pagan, wiccan and witch'y Yule traditions, as well as the dark legend of the vicious Icelandic Yule Cat which we'd discussed the previous Yule show; the free-verse translation of Vignir Jónsson's of which Marla requested I read aloud. As I could not monitor the chat room during my reading, hopefully it went over well.

Marla had also sent along a request previous to the show: So... here's another easy task for you. I'm going to be talking about the difference between wassail and wassailing, and with wassailing usually comes an incantation, so since you are the actor, I'm going to ask you to recite it. This is one I found that dates back a very long time, which is probably why it sounds a bit strange to modern ears... but I'm sure you'll give it your all, lol."
Here is what she provided which I recited:

"Here's to thee, old apple tree,
That blooms well, bears well.
Hats full, caps full, Three bushel bags full,
An' all under one tree. Hurrah! Hurrah!"

Though not having it instaneously handy, I kind of messed it up a bit, accidentally omitting the Hurrah/s...
We barely touched on one upcoming event to which we both looked forward (along with numerous regular friends in the chat room): BBC America airing this year's Doctor Who Christmas Day episode (The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe), airing on the 25th, the same day as in England; normally such a new episode wouldn't be available in America for a week or three, but I was able to get in a few solid Doctor Who references...
As always the hour raced by; Marla had me give out my information and that of The Paranormal View, when, noting we had about five minutes left to the hour, I realized we'd not spoken of Krampus, a Christmas-time entity about which I'd only just learned: Krampus, about whom Marla had never previously heard either.
After the show, Marla and Tim and I "re-did" the last bit about Krampus and such.
In a day or two the show was uploaded as the podcast to become available to which to listen and/or download...
Tim had indeed seamlessly edited the ending to elimate the gaffed ending, and I felt it was a shame I'd neglected to Skype-record the call which would have been able to provide the "alternate ending," as it were...