Cista Mystica

04/01/2026

It feels like a different kind of darkness this New Year. It falls like a cloak around 4.30pm in the afternoon and that’s it for the next sixteen hours. This isn’t a darkness that street lamps can do much with. It seems to be demanding attention. Seems like you could put your tongue out and taste it. It’s not quite sinister, but down here in the sodden hills of Devon, it’s certainly substantial. Not dappled, not playful, but calling something forth.

I was walking the country lanes a few nights ago and a strange thing happened. It was about five minutes from absolute dark, and I could just about make out the pale track ahead of me. For some reason I stopped, I can’t remember why. From just a foot behind me, I heard a voice.

- How far is it to the red box?

I turned and saw a woman, likely in her late-thirties, in an antique man’s overcoat, slender and with her eyes tight shut. Like she was talking to me from the middle of a dream. She must have been walking silently behind me for some distance.

- Do you mean the phone box?

- Yes.

- I’m not sure if any of them work anymore.

- Oh I think they do. I don’t have a phone but I need a phone.

- Well you’d be looking at about another half mile, just on the corner past the Bay Horse Inn.

She seems almost frozen to the spot, or adrift in some process not available to me. I wonder if she is a faery. She doesn’t want to walk into the town. She wants to stay in the dark. I give her my phone and she slowly dials in a number. She holds the phone to her ear but now her eyes are open and she’s looking directly at me, pained, tired.

- Mum. Me. I have the stranger’s phone.

I know she wants me to bear witness to the moment, so I hold the gaze.

- It can’t be like this anymore mum. Can’t. Look what you’re doing.

Whatever is on the other end speaks for a long time. The girl keeps trying to half-heartedly interrupt. Little sighs.

- Mum, mum, stop mum. The stranger’s phone. I’m going to walk towards you now. Unlock the door.

And with that she stops the call. For another moment she just closes her eyes again, like she’s moaning but can’t be sure. She’s delicately unmoored then returns. She gives my phone back and I realise we’re wearing the same coat. I speak.

- Look after yourself love, God bless you. Happy Boxing Day.

And she’s gone, like she was never there.

So strange, the things life causes us to witness. A Ghost of Christmas Present.

*

What Shape Are You In?

I’ve decided to make the stroll day walks for a little bit now. I attract that other frequency of encounter, and for now I’m putting a prohibition on it. It’s possible to do that. I’m peering into that wintery light hopefully.

Of course, boundaries is all part of the old tradition of ‘beating the bounds’. I’ll come to that in a second.

Right now, these stomps are a big part of every day. I slip into my Levi’s and tweeds, find a scarf, comfortable boots and head out. There’s the thrilling chill of the wind over the fields and the parish bell chiming every now and then. The sky is slate grey, the spidery, leafless trees straight from a fairy tale. It takes about two hours, I never rush. After about ninety minutes the body starts to query quite what is happening, and may start to veer towards home. Mutiny. Keep going my friends. Maybe there’s a pie, or a mug of tea, or even a pint of red beer at the end of it. For me there’s certainly a properly zonked-out nap urging me on.

Here’s a little English history.

Alfred the Great had ‘beating bounds’ mentioned in his laws, and there’s even talk that it was originally formed in a Roman festival called the Terminalia, in deference to Terminus, the god of landmarks. There would be sports and dance at boundary places (star jumps and arm wrestling on the boundary of Buckfast and Buckfastleigh, anyone?) and for anyone less fit you could leather into cakes and wine.

This kind of thing was not unknown to the Norseman who brought their own charmingly Viking variant, and by the time of Henry VIII’s reign it had descended into a rather rowdy ale feast that had gone from ‘solemne and accustomable processions into a right foul and detestable abuse’, (from the mouth of a preacher). Priests used to deliver a divine blessing to encourage the green fuse of the parish harvest, where there may also be fasting, small pilgrimages and particular prayers. To walk the boundaries installed a mental perambulation in your head in a time when maps were scare, and also to check the other village wasn’t taking liberties. The community held a folk memory of the shape, nature and charisma of its parish.

Of course, not all of us can walk. But it can still be a wonder to take an imaginative stroll around the edges of our own character...

Beating The Boundaries Of Ourselves

01/01/2026

Good cheer this New Year! With abiding thanks to all you lovers of myth, books and beauty for sailing with us at Cista Mystica Press these past 7 years! A few glimpses of what has been in many ways a vintage year. We're looking forward to the next chapter, with all manner of good things coming in 2026 – not least the release of Liturgies of the Wild. From all of us at Cista Mystica, thank you for your companionship along the way. We cherish it. Onwards!

drmartinshaw.com/
martinshaw.substack.com/
penguin.co.uk/books/477131/liturgies-of-the-wild-by-shaw-martin/9781846048913

28/12/2025

Being but men, we walked into the trees
Afraid, letting our syllables be soft
For fear of waking the rooks…
Dylan Thomas

In the old Asterix comic books there was always a fear the Celts mentioned, that the ‘sky would fall on their heads’. An abundance of good fortune would always invite the opposite to swiftly distribute its energies into the community. The sheer vivacity of a decent Christmas always has me looking over my shoulder and talking quietly, evoking that brilliant Thomas line about ‘fear of waking the rooks’.

In the last three weeks three of my friends have buried their mum, step-mum and another their dad. I met the last on the street just a minute ago, and he said something like: I’d be just as sad if he’d died in April, but he’s still close right now this Christmas, so put down your bags and come to the pub. He’s brought his sorrow into the bustle and poignancy of Christmas, with rooks-a-swirl, sky-falling and all of it. Let it all in. Clink the glass, eyeball the embers, stroke the dog.

I have a bit of the old Celtic fear myself heading into 2026, being an ‘old Celt’ and all. The big book finally coming out, the tours, the work at Cambridge, the sheer degree of opportunity – modesty aside – it gets me whistling through my teeth. I can see the tent pegs of the sky being slowly removed by a spirit-hand and the whole thing preparing to land on my curly head. Whenever there’s a significant advancement of opportunity in my life it spins me out a little. And there’s always some cost.

It’s not imposter syndrome, just a bigger playing field. I went twenty years storytelling without a mic on my lapel, and for a while I loathed the amplification. But then – as recently as the recent Irish tour with Tommy and a brilliant sound engineer – I grew to grow into the possibilities vocally offered. Don’t have to shout all the time. It took a while, but it’s about adjusted into the new situation. Please pray for me that I can actually absorb and enjoy all of these good things.

And one thing I do know, is that the bloody rooks are always woken, softly spoken or not. It’s their gig. And especially around Christmas.

Yesterday I was in the east, up in Norwich. There’s been some illness in my own family that required attendance, and now I’m back, but not in that warm cosy zone we generally wish for. I feel anxious – this may have changed by the time you read this – and the juxtaposition of stress and jolly can create such an out-of-body sensation.

On the train journey back and forth I saw hundreds and hundreds of faces, many worn or clearly struggling. It was like a Rembrandt street sketch. The fact the trains were full beyond capacity certainly wasn’t helping, and people had packed as if they were taking at least three months off. I was surprised to see the return of the enormous rucksack, rather than something with wheels on. I do love wheels on a long journey.

But carrying some burden myself, I was oddly moved to be part of this large, struggling mass of bodies trying to get home. The visible distress mirrored my own state and it was an odd kind of relief.

To state the obvious, there’s something rather climactic about Christmas. It brings everything to the surface. Joy, loneliness, gluttony, sacrifice. I can sometimes feel all of that within an hour. I’ve never been able to produce ‘on demand’ romantic feelings on Valentine’s Day, equally I’m never quite sure what Christmas will produce. I find myself awake in that tough stretch between three and five-thirty am, attempting to pray, drifting, stressing, coming back. Turning the pillows, fretting. Alone. The glee of Old Scratch circling the bedroom...

The Balance of Frivolity

18/12/2025

Last call for the Christmas post folks! ✨The Cista Mystica grotto is brimming with parcels of stories & delights, ready to load up the sleigh. Final orders in by 6pm (UK time) today to catch the UK Christmas post 🔥✨🔥✨🔥
drmartinshaw.com/cista-mystica-press/

11/12/2025

There was once a young harpist of tremendous skill, playing for a group of monks at Clonfort, St Brendan’s monastery. Though he enjoyed playing for the monks, he kept craning his neck around to see if Brendan himself was listening. It was Brendan’s confirming gaze he sought. The musician spoke up:

- It would be a delight to play for the great man, I have three tunes especially I think he’d like.

An older monk smiled at his enthusiasm but replied:

- Brendan is not in the mood for human music, nor has he been for seven years. He actually has two balls of wax with a thread between them, and every time he hears music, he places them swiftly in his ears.

The harpist regarded this as the kind of challenge he liked. Biding his time, he slipped through the monks, eventually found Brendan and enquired if he’d listen to him. Brendan gave him permission to play inside the church after the lad persisted. On doing so, Brendan immediately put the balls of wax in his ears. The harpist piped up:

- I’d prefer it if you were not inoculated against my music in this way.

Kindly, Brendan removed the balls of wax, and gestured for the harpist to play his three pieces. The lad put all his feeling and technique into the music, summoned every last upswelling of soul he could muster. He was determined to move the great man. Maybe a tear, or a smile, or at least a misty glance at something none of us could see. When the beautiful music finished, Brendan quietly reinstalled the balls of wax in his ears. This was not the kind of response the musician was used to. Still, Brendan sweetly said:

- May you get into heaven playing such music. A blessing on you.

The harpist appreciated this, but responded:

- That’s very kind. But I have to ask about the balls of wax. Did you not enjoy it?...

Read on:

Don't Listen To Everything Out There

01/12/2025

✨December is upon us! We're delighted to share news of new arrivals at Cista Mystica Press in time for the Christmas post ✨

Fresh in – a handsome new edition of Stag Cult and the Bardskull hardback. Stag Cult was a bit of a hit over at the London Review of Books a few years ago, and I’m very pleased with our edition.
To celebrate their arrival, I will be sat in the library with my quill and copies will be signed until Christmas, and can also be ordered along with a limited edition hand-printed Inner Seer book bag in the Christmas Visionary Bundle https://drmartinshaw.com/product/christmas-visionary-bundle/

Suggested dates to place orders to catch the Royal Mail Christmas post:
Thursday 4th Dec – AUS/NZ/Non-EU
Wednesday 10th Dec – US/CAN/EU
Thursday 18th Dec - UK

✨✨✨

01/12/2025

Tonight’s lightning has put out
Our artificial light. A candle serves,
If not to read by, clear enough to pray.
- Kathleen Raine, A Winter Night

“We are not pristine little islands, unassailed by influence, heading relentlessly to existential individuation, but tug boats delightedly banging into each other in the bay-of-life. God doesn’t want us as lonely as many of us wind up being.”

Making Adjustments

About thirteen years ago I sat outside a Welsh pub with the poet Tony Hoagland. Tony was the far side of a wilderness vigil up in Snowdonia, so was more than entitled to a pint. I’d picked him up from Bristol airport then we’d wended our way through innumerable little lanes and B roads till we found ourselves triumphantly up in the hills.

Tony had repeatedly asked to be taken to the most profoundly ancient, knee- quakingly, fairy-filled spot that I knew for his vigil. The most mystical grove. I knew exactly the place. As we stood in its misty dimensions, late afternoon, surrounded by oak trees and strange little gusts of wind he looked at me and laughed, “You have got to be kidding me.”

Fair to say, Tony was led to a more suitable spot about a mile away, with views of both Caer Idris and the Irish Sea. For four days there was barely a peep out of him. For a character that could be as extreme as Tony, it was touching to see him exhibit a touch of self-care when it came to his fasting spot. When all glamour of having some big Otherworldly experience has died down, it was longing for a much more grounded encounter with himself, the earth, maybe even God that he was after.

Anyway, the pub. It was at this pub that we started working on Celtic poems and stories together. Mostly I interpreted them and Tony arranged them on the page, so generally they were in stanzas of some kind. Once every few weeks we’d read them to each other on Skype, and adjust accordingly. We both loved the experience, and I learnt an awful lot from it. How to parade sentences from every kind of angle before they settled their feathers.

Well, Tony is in the Other Place now, and it’s early morning in Devon. The sun has risen over the high hills and the sheep look grateful, thick coats half riven with frost. There’s a little bit of blue sky but it won’t be lasting, which Tony would have liked.

Tony loved a grey day, with nothing much happening. Nothing to pull you from the desk away from the delight of playing with words. This wouldn’t suit everybody, but for our man, it was perfect. He worked hard for his success and I’m pleased to say he got plenty of it. He’d often start writing early-doors in bed, four or five cushions behind him, lamp on, hair – what was left of it – like startled tufts of bog-grass, his laptop precariously on his duvet, beavering away at his anarchic and oh so brilliant lines. Then later, the revisions, many revisions.

I’ve loved these last couple of weeks of closing my door on the world, and just bedding in. I’m engaged in endless small but deeply satisfying tasks of housework, often moving piles of books from one side of my library to another. I have a little colour code system for them, but when I really start to work up a steam they do go wandering onto the wrong shelves. I’ve brought down a bunch of old Celtic poetry books, the kind we used to work on, and I’m having another dive, all these years later. I can see Tony on the sofa, suggesting turning two stanzas to one, or sighing happily at all the relentless teenage angst of the love poems. This is part of my work, to walk through the door at the bottom of my cobbled yard and out onto Skellig Michael, or Narnia, or an Icelandic longhouse.

Overwhelming Love or Something Like It

I’m going to share a few here, see if you remember some of the feelings that are so bursting from these lines. In this first poem, there’s a Welsh young girl searching for her fella. Even the birds get involved – a hint of ancient Bardic verse – and a sense of youthful determination...

We Are Not Meant to Be So Lonely

23/11/2025

It’s a funny old world when the notion of a pilgrimage seems oddly radical, but last weekend at Walsingham, that was how it felt.

And we got our work cut out for us: anyone that made it likely wrestled Storm Claudia all day Friday just trying to get into Norfolk. It was about eight hours all in from Devon, and it’s fair to say I was a little deranged by arrival. I met old companions for a fat-headed, creamy Guinness in the back room of The Bull as we stared wide eyed and compared harrowed notes on the buffeting winds, scandalous detours and endless sheets of black rain. We had friends coming in from Canada, Holland, Scotland and all over, so we were praying them safe through the fury.

I was also Keeper of the Keys at St Seraphim’s Orthodox chapel, so in the swirling dark of early evening I was shown the ropes by Joanna – a friendly face – in the rock’n’rolling weather. That little chapel would provide me with tremendous, prayerful solace in the good natured but relentless bustle of the weekend. After a tossing and turning night I was heartened to see a few of us had actually made it through the weather and were gathered for a little pilgrim walk up to the Slipper Chapel.

From Henry III onwards Walsingham became a major shrine in Northern Europe, and a place visited by Kings, Queens and a steady stream of folk looking for peace, healing and depth of feeling. It was a name familiar to Christians all across Europe. Pilgrimages were of course good for business: inn keepers, shoemakers, boatmen to name but three all felt the benefit. There was a route from Shoreditch all the way to Walsingham, roads often being repaired by charitable work from the Religious Houses.

The Milky Way was known as the ‘Walsingham Way’, because the stars were meant to illuminate the pilgrim paths, known as ‘Greenways’. This was a period when the very roads of England were made holy by crosses going far back as Anglo-Saxon times. Some marked their way to shrines, needed when crop was high across the fields and you couldn’t see a thing. There was estimated to be more than five thousand crosses accompanying our tracks and roads at one point.

Well, like pilgrims of olde, we eyed each other friendly-like and prepared to walk to the Slipper Chapel.

My sister Anna gave a beautiful welcome and some reasoning for what we were about to do, and then off we all shuffled, the day suddenly much calmer, and the fields shimmering bright with all that fallen rain. Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, and all sorts of folk simply seeking a deeper life.

I managed to find a bed for a couple of hours, and then it was time to be back at the Parish Hall and for the wider day to begin. Spotting my mother, father, brother, sister, heroic nephews and one beautiful niece in the assembled horde brought a delighted smile to my face.

First up we had Lucy Cooper giving us some wider context for the whole notion of pilgrimage. Lucy is a fabulous writer, and also editor at the small press Cista Mystica. She walked us through some of her own considerable experience of ‘intentional strolling’ (maybe I just created a new phrase), and gave us all a lovely flavour of the west of Britain. Afterwards we chatted for a little while around the strange rebirth of interest in Christianity, and the urgency of our times. In the absence of my old friend Paul Kingsnorth I talked a little about the abiding notion of the Machine, and the possibility of being an Angel in the Machine ourselves. How do we move from the Machine to the Merrie?

Small Intentioned Steps Matter

Please don’t mistake this for me assuming one stomp across some soggy English fields eradicates the endlessly displayed and often terrifying spiritual turbulence of our age. But even so, one has to direct one’s feet somewhere, and this is, after all, Good News.

When you are lost in the forest it is tiny little breadcrumbs, small intentioned steps, that can lead you home. Circling darkness, and only focusing on circling darkness can lead to absolute paralysis. The weird titillation of paranoia. Drink some freshly squeezed orange juice, put on a James Brown record, spend an hour polishing your shoes. These things help.

I repeated something at the Merrie I wrote here a few weeks ago – the Devil hates a hand-made life.

Demons Want To Be Needed. Don’t be a life coach for a Demon’s self-esteem issues. If you want to disturb a Demon, a Machine, or a Monster, think about making a hand-made, human-sized life. Sometimes things are simpler than we may think. Find the Angel in the Machine, not just the Demon. Be the Angel in the Machine if you can. It’s radical to be a pilgrim...

Cheering On The Saints To Come