Initiation

Initiation is a memoir that reflects on the moral and ideological changes of the last sixty years. Written in a perennial voice de Angeles, witch, rewilds her own story and transforms cultural stereotypes into the language of myth.

Witch people, like magicians and sorcerers, conjurers, druids and hoodoo hexers, like cunning women and cunning men, kadaichas, shamans, manitous, angakoks, curanderas, bruxas, noadis, enchanters and shapechangers are needed in this world. They are the stories not bound by dogma or displayed as relics in a museum. They cause disquiet. They summon questions but it's not their way to give answers. They take us to the wild and the frightening places. The cave entrance under the ice at the base of that crevasse. Blue handprints on the rock face imprinted with an ochre of confusion. By people we cannot name and from a time we cannot confirm. Once Upon a Time people. People of the reindeer. Volcano people.

Born in 1951 and put up for adoption, de Angeles was sold by the church for £300. She was always going to be a problem.