Who am I?

As a kid I grew up by the coast in Sydney, Australia, lost amongst the rocky cliffs between Balmoral Beach and Chinaman's Cove. I don't remember anything much between the years of 3 and 11 but I think that's 'cause nothing was very interesting. All I know is that I learned to read and write and these became an addiction.

When I turned 11, however, everything started to happen! I won Book Week of the Year for Australia, got my photo taken with the mayor of Mosman and was awarded a pictorial dictionary which, of course, I read from cover to cover because it was, after all, a book.

My grandmother moved into the house with me, my sister and our mother. My grandmother's name was Marionna Potter and she hailed from Co. Cork, Ireland originally, was well-travelled and ran the Rembrandt Hotel in Kings Cross back when the Cross was cool. She read cards and tea-leaves and rocked my world. Other things that year? Two near-death experiences (drowning and electrocution), the reading of "A Hundered and One Ghost Stories" to name just one book of the supernatural genre; I had a strange, ghostly visitor in the dead of night (he wore a top-hat and an over-coat) and I held my first seance. Oh, I also started to get interested in boys.

My teen years are a blur. It was the 60's so who remembers too much? I do remember Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King dying and could recite The Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde, in its entirety.

I spent Sundays at protest rallies to bring the troops back from Vietnam, loved the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Jimmy Hendrix, art galleries, hanging with the crowd in Rowe Street and reading poetry in sultry coffee shops. I wrote a lot of poetry back then but, so did everyone.

I stopped doing seances when they got really, really scary.

I discovered sex and feminism.

At 17 I began training with the Independent Theatre in North Sydney and hung out there for three years thinking I'd like to direct. I was still writing and, by then, up to my spiritual eyeballs in Witchcraft. Then at 20 I had my first child: Adam. Did that change my life very much? Well, I'd never known love like it so, of course, but otherwise ... nah.

All through my 20's I was writing, reading Tarot and doing Numerology; studying both my life's path, Witchcraft, and everything Celtic. Well everything I could get my hands on really.

I met anthropologist and author, Neville Drury, during a stint at what was then Harper and Row and he was, apart from a very good friend, responsible for the publication - many years later - of my first book The Way of the Goddess.

By the time of my Saturn Return I was reading Tarot full-time, had my own rather large coven and was in with the who's who of Witchcraft.

Not long after that I got it together with a partner and had two more kids - Jarrod (son) and Serenity (a daughter - lucky for her! Long story). We moved south to the highlands of Victoria, I started another coven and also began the workshops that came to be known as Tarot Collectives where I taught many, many people over many years, had two books published and learned silversmithing from the esteemed master of metal, Russell Pethebridge of Yandoit in Victoria.

Oh, these are my kids BTW:

In 1991 I made the most important move of my life - to Byron Bay. My Tarot clients followed me and others found me. I've never had a holiday except for living! My kids stopped being cling-ons. I also began training in a Martial Art. Most recently I have studied Iai-do and aquired the grade of 2nd Dan.

I began more Tarot Collectives, averaging two a year, and wrote more books. I also joined the gym and wrote a handbook on nutrition and body-building.

Yep, that was me then.

I also began organising events and productions, beginning with The Wild and Wise Women's Festival. That was a blast except there were no men.

After that a few of us sat around and had a hard-arsed rant about St Patrick and how the early Catholic church in Ireland (everywhere really) banned music, arts, clothing styles, traditional living and language, so a few of us decided to hijack St Patrick's Day that year and have a street festival knowing that a community's village green is the place where differences should just be thrown away.

Everybody said it couldn't happen because we didn't do much advertising and the idea that "Nobody pays, nobody profits" was dumb. Except it wasn't! Live bands from morning till night, food everywhere and a street parade where over 3,000 people joined in ... and not one scerrick of rubbish anywhere when it was all over.

That's where I first met me ol' mate Willy McElroy whose band, the Wild Zinnias, cancelled a Brisbane gig to play on the day. Willy, many years down the track, has helped me learn some passable Gaelic.

I went on to:

What am I passionate about?

The art of clear communication, history, mythology, the legends of 'Celtic' ancestry, debating with strong-willed, good-humoured people, all the wild things and all the wild places, the sea, the sea, the sea, and a sense of humour. I'm known to be pretty outspoken on matters pertaining to the sustainability and guardianship of earth and the rights of all species to self-determination and I prefer the company of animals to most people.

One of my major studies over the past twenty years has been the history of the usurpation of indigenous people through invasion and subsequent colonisation - mainly since the Roman Empire - and the history and mythology of Ireland and Britain in particular.

Most currently -

I live 10 minutes from Byron Bay on the north east coast of NSW, Australia. I read Tarot most days for people from all over the world and am writing all the time.

That's the short version of my life.

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