Quiet, now

Monthly newsletter, January 2025

Read on for news of a new oracle deck coming in September, two new courses and a handful of events for 2025. This message will likely be truncated by your email provider, so please click through to Substack and read it in your browser. And while you’re there, do join the conversation and leave a comment!

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Dear friends,

Well, if that was Christmas we’ve had it, as my old Aunt Meg used to say. Possibly the weirdest two weeks of the year, though I do love that sense of time-out-of-time, which I think you probably only fully appreciate if you spend the holiday in a largely solitary way. And now, as always, I’m bracing myself for the onslaught of a busy new year and am already mourning the slow fading of the long dark. If I had it all to do over again I should become a reverse snowbird, I think – chasing winter around the world, instead of summer. A firebird, then?

The run-up to Christmas was busier than I usually allow, with a couple of trips to London in the month beforehand, and those after a heavy schedule of events throughout autumn following the publication of Wise Women. I had a delightful first meeting with my agent Jane and the team at Duckworth Books – one of the UK’s oldest publishing imprints still under independent ownership, and with a fascinating history – of which my longstanding publishers, September Publishing, have very recently become part. (September, still doing what it does best under the leadership of my brilliant editor Hannah MacDonald, is now an imprint of Duckworth. Which is excellent news: I love a good indie publisher more than anything.) September/ Duckworth are producing a beautiful new edition of If Women Rose Rooted – more of which in next month’s newsletter, when it hits the shelves – and will be publishing my next book in spring 2026, so there was plenty to discuss.

This was followed by a long Christmas gathering with the eclectic membership of the Association of Jungian Analysts, of which I’m now an Honorary Member. I drank prosecco, told a story for the dark days, and despite the finest efforts of the godforsaken, crumbling fragments of the British railway network to prevent it, returned home tired and happy the next day. Albeit arriving at a different station from the one I had left, which required a rescue rush across the Pennines and back again by David, because my car was in Penrith whereas I was now in Darlington. (A mission to accomplish! And it was accomplished! – his very favourite thing in the world.)

Since I’ve always been the kind of person who has to gibber alone in a darkened room for a good fortnight after a single and not especially taxing night out, the last two soft and silent weeks have given me some much-needed breathing space. Time to take stock, as well as to build up strength and stamina for what’s going to be a busy six months ahead as I complete that next contracted book. You’ll find me fully engaged here as usual, but otherwise chained to my desk with gritted teeth and glazed eyes, as I try to knock 40,000 words of now-seemingly-random notes into a coherent 80,000-or-so-word book. It never gets any easier, this writing malarkey (or maybe I’m just getting old) and I think I’m going to need to take a nice long break after this one. Trouble is, I say that every time, and then two months after I’ve handed the final manuscript in (or, in the really irritating cases, two months before), a voice will persistently be shouting inside my head and I’m away again, whether I want to be or not. Every time I’ve finished a book, ever since If Women Rose Rooted, I’ve declared that I’m all emptied out, have nothing more to say, and will never write another book ever again. But every single time …

So, January. As I’ve written here before, I don’t believe in New Year resolutions. But I do believe in resets, and throughout my life they’ve developed a habit of occurring in early January. It’s Epiphany, after all: the time of revelations. This time last year, I was writing a quite different book, until I woke up one morning and realised it was all very wonderful but it wasn’t the book I needed to write now. That was rather a large reset, and I’m still very cross with it (though the original book will get written. Sometime. Please just not as soon as I’ve finished this next one …).

But anyway: that allergy to resolutions means that I’ve been avoiding the many New Year-themed articles that have shown up on Substack over the past few days, no matter how lovely and heartfelt – because they have a tendency to exhaust me, even with their genuinely good intentions, through their determination to offer us things to fill up our already-teeming days. Most of them just make me feel guilty for my lack of energy and application. So you all will be receiving no to-do lists or helpful suggestions for becoming busier from me. I will be receiving no to-do lists or helpful suggestions for becoming busier from me. I’ve deleted the ‘reading recommendations’ section of this month’s newsletter and replaced it with a short poem. Me, I’ll simply be quiet, now. Just tuning in a little more closely, amidst all the built-in busyness of writing days. Making space for my active imagination practice, no matter how easy it always is to drop it when everyone and everything else insists on needing me more. Chattering back at the jackdaws and gazing adoringly into the river. Looking for signs. Insisting on enchantment. Cultivating porosity. Just like my gentle Chase here (in the image below), always finding something I love to turn around and smile back at, along the winding path.

I do want to take the opportunity of this first newsletter of the year, though, to thank you all for your company here at The Art of Enchantment through 2024. There are now over 46,000 of you, with 15,000 joining me here over the last year, and an increasing number of paying subscribers who want to deepen their work with the mythic imagination and join in the community conversations around the issues I work with. It’s such a pleasure and a privilege to be able to afford the time to write and speak about whatever is arising for me, in between books – especially the topics and ideas that will never make their way into a book, but which are important to me and which have found a friendly and open home here. I’m looking forward to working with you all in 2025 – and especially, to our exploration of women’s faith and mysticism over at the Temenos chapter of The Hearth.

Meanwhile, here in the Beauteous Vale, the quietest couple of months of the year are ahead of us, and I’m grateful for it. For the solitary tracks and the silent fells, with only the barn owl for company in the early mornings. The giant who lives on Mallerstang Edge is in full winter hibernation, and Granny Birkett, the limestone witch up on the moor, only emerges from her burrow now to shriek in the throes of the occasional storm. And so, as always, I wish you all the quietnesses and richnesses of whichever season you’re in, wherever in the world you are.

Sharon

Introducing The Fairy Tale Heroine Oracle

Finally, I’m delighted to be able to tell you all that I’ve been working with the lovely team at Hay House/ Penguin Random House on a second oracle card deck, to follow up on The Rooted Woman Oracle. The Fairy Tale Heroine Oracle reflects elements of my original conceptualisation of ‘The Fairy-Tale Heroine’s Journey’, which I’ve written about extensively here at The Art of Enchantment over the past year. It’ll be available worldwide from September 9, and it’s now available for pre-order.

I chose the very brilliant English artist Amanda Clark to illustrate this one, because I’ve been a fan of her folklore- and myth-inspired art for many years now. Take a peek at the gorgeous cover above and the two stunning images below (have you ever seen such an evocative glass mountain??). It really is going to be a thing of beauty, and I can’t wait to hold it in my hands. You can find out more about Amanda’s art here. And here’s the publisher’s description of the deck:

A magical 48-card oracle deck from the bestselling author of If Women Rose Rooted and Hagitude, drawing on the transformative power of fairy tales to help you believe in the possibility of change.

Humans are natural storytellers, making sense of the world through tales. Fairy tales are the finest teaching stories, holding rich, deep lessons that show us a pathway toward change and how to live more fully in the world. At their heart is transformation.

Sharon Blackie, an award-winning writer, psychologist, and internationally recognised teacher in the field of mythic imagination, has explored the power of fairy tales for over two decades. In The Fairy Tale Heroine Oracle, she distils this wisdom and knowledge into 48 cards that unlock the archetypal power of these tales. The cards are divided into four suits, each of which represents a critical aspect of the heroine’s journey – and your journey, because you are the heroine of your own life.

Tasks cards represent the work that must be undertaken by the fairy tale heroine to grow and transform, and ultimately to reach her goal.

Places cards depict the magical locations through which the heroine will have to pass—and in which she’ll be tested—during her journey.

Guides cards characterise the allies and antagonists she’ll meet along the way.

Tools cards portray the objects that empower her to fulfil her destiny.

The archetypal images, characters and motifs at the heart of this deck act like keys to unlock your inner wisdom, and will offer comfort, guidance, and inspiration at every point of your long, winding journey through life.

Find out more, along with pre-order information, at this page on my website.

Teaching in 2025: two new courses

Just a quick note about these courses: Although for many years I designed and offered a whole series of successful courses, workshops and membership programs through my own websites/ platforms, I’ve recently discovered that I don’t have the energy to do all that any more. It takes too much time away from writing, which is my primary purpose. So these days, I restrict myself to partnering with a tiny number of institutions and organisations I know and respect, who have good credentials, and academic/professional as well as mythic/imaginal excellence at their heart. I don’t ever now participate as a guest teacher in other people’s compilation programs. So, because I have such limited capacity as well as a contracted book to complete, the two courses below are the only ones you’ll find me offering in 2025. (And the only other way of working with me this year will be through a paid subscription to this Substack, with participation in the conversations and various live online sessions I host here each month.)

Finding Ourselves in Fairy Tales, at Pacifica Graduate Institute

BEGINS MARCH 12

I’m delighted to be running my popular program 'Finding Ourselves in Fairy Tales: A Narrative Psychological Approach' for another year at Pacifica Graduate Institute; this will be the third cohort. This is an 8-month online Graduate Certificate (with CECs available, if you can use them). It consists of prerecorded lectures, monthly live 90-minute sessions with me, and an online forum for student discussions. The program is open to all, and is suitable both for clinicians and for individuals who are interested in deepening their personal work with fairy tales and the many forms of narrative and storytelling.

This unique program draws on my academic and professional background as a psychologist and folklorist/ mythologist, and offers an archetypal approach to understanding and working with fairy tales. We’ll use my conceptualisation of the Fairy-Tale Heroine’s Journey as a framework for exploring the archetypal feminine in fairy tales and the ways in which these stories can illuminate the process of individuation. We’ll excavate fairy tales to interrogate our self-narratives, identify problem-saturated stories and externalise them, and then learn to rewrite them so that we can more fully participate in the process of our own becoming.

Complete program details, registration and other info here: https://extension.pacifica.edu/graduate-certificate-finding-ourselves-in-fairytales-2025/.

(All enrolment and related queries to Pacifica, please, at the email address at the link – not to me and not in the comments here.)

The Soul’s Code: Calling and Its Necessary Angels

BEGINS OCTOBER 9

Dr Gelareh Khoie, who was kind enough to help me out on a 2024 cohort of my fairy tale program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, has just launched – alongside a team of sterling collaborators – a remarkable program of online offerings through The Kosmos Institute. She calls this new venture ‘an academic locus for the transformation of individual and collective consciousness which occurs through engagement with emergent and ancient knowledge systems within the interdisciplinary precincts of Mythology, Esotericism, and Archetypes.’

One of The Kosmos Institute’s key areas of study focuses on the work of James Hillman, the prominent post-Jungian thinker and writer who was the primary founder of the depth psychological approach known as Archetypal Psychology. As those of you who’ve been around my work for a while will know, Hillman’s writing on the primacy of the image has been one of my greatest influences. So I’m delighted to be joining Tom Cheetham and Glen Slater as a teacher on this extensive curriculum centred on James Hillman’s work, by offering a four-week online program in the autumn. Although I’ve been writing and teaching on the concept of ‘calling’ for many years now, this will be a very much deeper dive into the ideas around it – from Plato to Hillman and beyond. I’m really looking forward to this one; calling is a subject I’m especially passionate about. Course description:

The Kosmos Institute (online), four Thursdays from 16.00 – 17.30 UK time, October 9 – 30, 2025

In his bestselling book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, archetypal psychologist James Hillman declared: ‘Each person enters the world called.’ Each of us, in other words, has a ‘calling’: we came into the world – to this particular place, at this particular time – for a reason.

In this four-week program, we’ll delve deeply into the concept of calling, and work with ways of revealing and remembering what it is that we’re here for. To express our calling is to allow ourselves to uniquely express one mode of being, one unique way of embodying what it is to be human, one facet of the creative life force of the universe. How might we uncover the unique gift that we each bring to the world at this time?

Complete program description, registration and other info here: https://www.kosmosinstitute.org/the-souls-code-calling-its-necessary-angels

(All enrolment and related queries to the Kosmos Institute please, at the email address on their website – not to me nor in the comments.)

2025 talks and events

I had planned to take things a little easier on the events front during the first half of 2025, while I complete that next contracted book – but although I’ve turned down a bunch of requests, there still seems to be plenty happening. It’s all crept up on me! Here’s a list of what’s coming up:

January 11, 11.00 – 13.00 Eastern Time. Online lecture: Jung Association of Western Massachusetts. ‘The Post-Heroic Journey’. Book here.

February 6, 18.30. ‘Wise Women’. In-person talk, Westwood Books, Sedbergh. Book here.

February 22, 15.30 – 17.30. Online lecture: Cambridge Jungian Circle. ‘Hags and Wise Women: an archetypal analysis of older women in European myth and fairy tales’. Tickets here.

March 13, 16.30. In-person talk, ‘Wise Women’ at Words by the Water festival, Keswick, Cumbria. Details TBC.

May 5, 12 noon. In-person talk, Wigtown Spring Book Festival. Details TBC.

May 10, 10.30 – 12.00 Central Time. Online lecture: Minnesota Jung Association. ‘Hagitude: an archetypal analysis of older women in European myth and folklore’. Book here.

June 26, 17.00 – 19.00. Online lecture: ‘Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now.’ Ukrainian Psychotherapeutic League. Details TBC.

November 22, 14.00 – 16.00. Online lecture: ‘Older Women in European Myth and Fairy Tale: An Archetypal Analysis.’ The Guild of Pastoral Psychology (UK). Information here.

Monthly newsletters here at The Art of Enchantment are free for all; the rest of my original work product here is paywalled. If you’d like new exclusive content from me in your inbox each week, do consider becoming a paying subscriber. I firmly believe that professional authors should be paid for access to their writing – writing is my full-time job, i.e. how I make my living – but as someone who grew up in poverty I also believe in trying to make my work accessible to as many people as possible. So if you are genuinely unable to afford a full subscription but think this lovely community is for you, drop us an email at sharon@sharonblackie.org and we’ll give you a 50% discount on a year’s paid subscription. (That makes it £35, at current rates.)