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Fiona’s Life’s a Witch
An Interview With Fiona Horne
By Suzanne Maxim
Like most, my first experience of Fiona Horne was in the early 1990’s as the lead singer in DEFFX. I can remember her prancing around on stage, tossing those long golden locks (flash backs of Anita from ABBA singing “I am the girl with the golden hair …”, come to mind). She wore teeny bits of next to nothings in outrageous shades of fluoro and she exuded heaps of attitude. By the mid 90’s DEFFX was enjoying Top 40 chart success and Fiona’s star was rising. It was around this time that a good friend of mine revealed to me that Fiona called herself a Witch.
Naturally I thought she was joking, so I had a good laugh and made some comment about her taking too many drugs. But my friend was deadly serious. There she stood, wearing her usual long black flowing frock, garnished with layers of unbelievably big silver jewellery and glaring at me from under her mop of wild red hair. I began to put two and two together and realised, for the first time, that my friend was speaking from personal experience!
I was so naive back then (not much has changed really) but with songs like “Spell On You” and an Album titled “Magick”, Fiona’s Witchyness really shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. It didn’t take long, however, for surprise to turn to intrigue and with it, my own spiritual journey changed from its Easterly Path towards the direction of Western Mysticism. Then DEFFX split up and Fiona Horne seemed to disappear in a puff of smoke, Poof!
But on February the 7th 1998 Fiona popped back into my life. Don’t bother being impressed by my remarkable powers of memory because that’s my birthday and I was given a copy of her first book “Witch: A Personal Journey” as a present. As I held that book in my hot little hands I was once again filled with intrigue. Just how personal are we were going to get here? And what’s with the snakes? Was I going to be turned to stone before getting to reading the first chapter. “Quick, turn away!”
Fortunately I did get to read the first chapter, in fact I read the book from cover to cover and discovered an accessible earth based spirituality that made a whole lot of sense to this city girl. For me, her refreshingly down to earth manner lifted a dark veil on the Mysterious world of the Witch.
A year later, while holidaying in Byron Bay, I found Fiona’s second book, “Witch: A Magical Year”, on a shelf in a Newsagent (that’s Byron for you). Barely having had time to digest her maiden offering, I found myself reading more of Fiona’s down to earth intrinsically Aussie Neo Paganism, complete with a “Magickal Makeover” illustrated with some very cute photos of Fiona at home and performing rituals.
Now, a little more than a year later, Fiona has written and released her third book “Life’s a Witch: A handbook for Teen Witches”. I don’t mind telling you that I’ve well and truly left my teenage years behind (thank Goddess) but I did however, find the book none the less intriguing. I wanted to know what motivated this once ‘rock diva’ and self confessed Witch to churn out 3 books in as many years, I wanted to know why she had written a book for teens and I wanted to know what demographic she was planning on targeting in her next book. So I decided to hitched a ride on her “Life’s a Witch” book signing tour to get my answers from the lady in person.
But it was a daunting prospect so I decided to call on my friend Tim Hartridge whose knowledge and experience of the Occult is only preceded by his exotic taste in clothes. As it turned out, Tim had made Fiona’s acquaintance on more than one occasion so it became a bit of a reunion.
We met Fiona in a back room of Adyar Bookshop. Adyar is a Mecca in Sydney for all things metaphysical, spiritual and, dare I say it, New Age. We didn’t have long to wait for Fiona’s arrival but when she walked in, there was not a pentagram or ankh in sight but she was wearing black. We asked Fiona what drove her to write “Life’s a Witch” and what plans she had for her next book.
“You know I respect the fact that people enjoy my books but I don't enjoy writing them. Like it's not something I do because I'm passionately driven to do it. Well, to be honest, I am passionately driven but I don't make a living out of it. It's not something that drives my career. What drives my career is my TV, radio and music. I don't intend to churn out a book a year. As far as I'm concerned it's most likely the last one, I'm over it, I've said what there is to be said now it's up to everyone else to do their own thing.”
Damn, I’d left my crystal ball in the car but this sounded like ‘famous last words’, if ever I’d heard them. Okay then, so why a book targeted at teens and what’s this Teen Witch Kit all about? After all, it’s obviously going to be a contentious issue because people are bound to ask if it’s appropriate to give this kind of stuff to 13 year olds.
“I think it's really appropriate to a 13 year old, believe it or not. I mean it's an introduction to Witchcraft, it's not an initiation, a big difference. It's not just a pointless marketing tool … really I've created the kit more for the people that are reading books and are drawn to it but are scared to start. Because that's where I was not so long ago, even all those years ago when I met you Tim, I was always scared to like actually go and do something. I would worry that I would do something wrong, or worry that it wouldn't work. It was too much to remember, too much stuff, you know, like too confronting.”
“Life's a Witch was written because it pretty much directly answers specific questions and feedback I got from teens. You know things like parents and school and peer pressure and the fact that they see all this stuff on Charmed and Sabrina, you know. What's real, what's not. How do I know I'm real when everyone at school picks on me and says I'm a faker. At least they know that this book is directly addressing that stuff. I simplify circle casting, because they are going to try circle casting anyway. But I've said, okay if your parents find that you have a 12" knife, ie. your athame, you can use a feather or your finger or you can make a wand. How can you invoke the power of fire if your not allowed to light candles in your bedroom. What do you do when you burn incense and your Dad thinks you’re smoking pot. How you can create the altar you're having when you’re not having an altar, the claytons altar? It’s not about defying parents … but really we're talking Wicca, we're not talking about other paths, we're talking specifically Wicca. It's nature worshipping, it recognises not only the masculine principles of divinity but also the feminine, you can embody that within and without. You can work magic and do spells but I emphasise that spell casting is probably the smallest part of Witchcraft, the fun part to a degree. You know, before anyone criticises the book why don't they just read it. And before anyone has an issue with the kit, why don't they just have a listen to it and have a look at it?”
But what sort of person would take a Teen Witch Kit seriously, surely not anyone involved in Occult Spirituality? So what’s in this kit anyway?
“The CD component of it (the kit) is a guide to a ritual. I do have them cast circle but it's not a full blown thing at all. Like there are no cakes and ale, there's none of that sort of stuff, it's a real basic thing of just creating a sacred space and declaring the elements present … there’s a symbolic way of doing that by lighting candles. It's more just to indicate that witchcraft, or Wicca in particular, is nature orientated, a nature worshiping tradition. And to just really emphasise that the journey itself is more important. They are not even doing a spell, they are doing cord magic, very basic cord magic. Imbuing the cord with power, getting used to the idea that you can empower a certain object with your will and your intent and hold it in there. Really, when they get through the ritual, there's just a little bit of spoken word information about witchcraft, I just talk about the basic laws and stuff.”
“And then, when they get to the end, if they have comprehended the ritual and they have been sufficiently moved by it and responded to it, they will be compelled to create their magical name. Now that magical name, because of the way I tell them how to make it up, is a specific Wickid Witch magical name specific to this magical experience and it gives them access to a web site which is like a chat room. And only those who have done the Wickid Witch experience and got to the point where they comprehend it and are sufficiently moved by it and understand how to work out the password, get access to the site. I get on line every full moon for a couple of hours.”
This sounded like a pretty big commitment on her part, so we wanted to know what gave Fiona the idea in the first place.
“What inspired me to create a thing like this was because of the feedback, like the traffic on my web site over the last 12 months. The message board became like a chat room, so many teen witches you know. Kids that really identified with the word Witch, getting on there, swapping spells, swapping stories, swapping ideas and asking me specific questions. I really just wanted to create another area for them to get together.”
Arggh, just as I expected, these kids are only interested in casting spells, hexing their ex-friends and making the high school heart throb fall head over heels in love with them. What about the spirituality?
“Kids come up to me and say they love doing nature spells, they like being outside. I can imagine Teen Witches out under a starry sky doing a ritual more sooner than sitting inside playing Nintendo or sneaking into a pub under age. That's not to just whitewash the whole Teen Witch thing and say, ‘Oh they are all sweetness and light out there doing lovely things under the full moon.’ I think there is so much pressure on teens now to compete as adults in an adult orientated world. They have got the power of the consumer dollar like never before. Such pressure on them , and they are forced to live almost like robots. But they are still kids, that's the thing. You know a Teen Witch will come up to me and say I made an offering to the goddess last night. I think teens are capable of a lot of things and capable of complex spiritual thoughts. I mean, look at traditions like Buddhism, a new Dal Lai Lama is taken in when they are about 2 years old or something.”
“In the book I actually mention how I'm atheist in a sense, I don't believe that the God and Goddesses exist in their own right. I believe they are projections of our consciousness, it's like the collective conscience and concepts of egregore where things can amass a certain kind of potentiality. Quantum physics describe it as a relationship between the observer and the observed, one doesn’t exist unless the other one notices. It’s that kind of energy that I feel I’m tapping into when I’m invoking presences but in the book, I don't go into any detail like that at all. I do talk about the fact that there are Goddesses and Gods and how their presence can be experienced inside and outside. I talk about how I believe they are metaphors and projections of our consciousness. But I guess, in a nutshell, I’m just trying to get kids to feel good about themselves. I had shitty teenage years, when I look back at my teenage years, they were hideous. If I had been a Teen Witch I would have done it so differently.”
What’s that old saying, “Youth is wasted on the young” not a truer word, but who in their right mind would want to be a teenager again?
Fiona was starting to sound a tad bit defensive, so maybe the endless interviews were starting to take a toll. Maybe Fiona been subjected to some criticism already?
“No not really, no. I don't care about criticism. You know I did an interview at ABC radio today and they asked me, don't you think you are getting in there while the kids are young and vulnerable. And I said, but let's put things into perspective, when I was 7 years old I was given a copy of the Children's Living Bible. And on the 2nd page of Genesis it says women are doomed to bear childbirth in pain and suffering because they are the source of all evil and sin. That was given to a 7 year old. I've never written anything as fucked up as that in any of my books. I mean that's seriously fucked up!”
“But you know this is where I find all this criticism hypocritical. But having said all that, there are the young ones that are impressionable but you know I honestly think that those kids read my other books anyway, and they are going to read whatever they want on the net.”
I don’t know about you but I find it difficult to imagine Fiona as a good little Catholic girl, still it could explain why Fiona is such a spiritual woman now and why she was drawn to Witchcraft in the first place.
“I've been interested in Witchcraft for many years but I kept it very quiet. And I didn't feel confident that I could discuss my interests articulately enough anyway, because there are so many stereotypes. But probably when I found out about my adoption, where I came from, I realised what my direct blood line and ancestry was. I don't believe in reincarnation as such, I do believe in inherited cellular memory though. And now I can see that's why I had that experience with past life recall, my Jewish ancestry. Like the gypsies from Hungary where my parents came from, there's all that sort of stuff … “
“Just putting that into context, I write about it in my first book in the deja vu chapter. I knew when I was younger, specific things that would happen, to do with exerting my will and effecting change but not having any way of describing it. But growing up in the bush, that sense of nature being sacred and heaven being here on earth … surely there wasn't anything inherently disgusting about being human and evil about sexuality. But it made sense to me, I'm a practical logical person. How many Catholics have become witches, I mean, just about all, all Wiccans were Catholic once! Which isn't to say that it’s a knee jerk reaction against religion. But I’m quite eclectic, I'm drawn to quite a few different spiritual paths. Well not drawn to different paths but I can see where a lot cross over and mesh together. And for that reason I’m interested in Judaism because of where I come from. The rituals of Judaism marry well with Wiccan rituals.”
At this point Fiona’s publicist whizzed in, told us that our time was up and whisked Fiona away for yet another leg in the book signing tour. So Tim and I made our way downstairs to grazed over the cheese and biscuits and join the throng of waiting fans.
Adyar Bookshop is generously proportioned, as a far as a books shop go, but it’s not much of a function room. The small space cleared for Fiona’s talk was already over flowing with a decidedly motley crew, many clutching their well read and obviously treasured copies of Fiona’s previous offerings along with the sparkling new copies of “Life’s a Witch”. There were bodies everywhere, some sat expectantly on the carpet while the rest spilled over into the isles between the shelves and some were lingering in front of the Western Mysticism section talking in library whispers. Tim and I felt quite at home.
As we waited for Fiona to appear, I found myself musing about these obviously dedicated fans. I wondered how many remembered Fiona from her DEFFX days or if anyone had a DEFFX CD amongst their CD collection. Judging by the abundance of youth present, I had my doubts. But I was sure of one thing, Fiona Horne’s complete Witchy trilogy would be there on the home bookshelf taking pride of place amongst the Starhawk’s and Scott Cunningham’s and all would be personally signed by the “Divine Diva” herself.
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