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I was born and raised in the Appalachian foothills to a "traditional" and working-class family. My mother had me at age 16, and the extended family was a clan-sized group, providing me with 6 great-grandparents (from both paternal and maternal), all four grandparents, plus a host of aunts and uncles. Many cousins would come along later, but I was the first grandchild, a position of some clout and a bit of responsibility, it turns out.
For instance, I held the ceremonious power to dub each new grandparent with their official title, which would follow them for the rest of their lives, through many future grandbabies. I mostly kept it simple with Papaws and Mamaws, traditional where I'm from. I did have the honor of dubbing my maternal grandmother as "gang-gang", a nym she would wear proudly, indeed become primarily known by, for the rest of her days. We said goodbye to my gang-gang in 2020 (not COVID), and the preacher used her proper name "Gang" throughout a rather beautiful Eulogy.
That little digression probably tells you much of what there is to know of Ash L'har. I am a small piece of a greater whole, part of my family and an extension of the genealogy and geography this people have emerged from.
Most of my peeps are Irish, with a dash of German thrown in for that occasional blue-eyed child, of which I'm an example. Also, on both lines - paternal and maternal - you'll find a healthy dose of Native blood. Both my mother and my father had grandmothers with full Cherokee blood.
Left to our own devices, the former Europeans who settled these mountains and hills and forests and rivers would have gotten along just splendidly with the Native tribes of Cherokee and Crow who lived here before white folk came. Trade, celebration, even marriage were all shared between the Scotch-Irish settlers and indigenous people for decades before Andrew Jackson put the natives into exile. I often wonder why my predecessors allowed that to happen; I suppose that's a tale for another time.
Where was I? Yes, the biography.
Goodness my apologies! I haven't been very biographical at all thus far, now have I? To be fair I do think I emphasized the value I attribute to family.
Somehow despite being raised in the Appalachian Protestant Christian tradition (think Southern Baptist, not so uptight and each church has autonomy) I ended up closer in my thinking to the Pagans from the motherland. Make no mistake, an Appalachian Tradition akin to the old Celtic ways is ALIVE and well in these hills as I type this bio, but my family has never been privy to said ways.
My mother had an open mind and somehow, intuitively, knew how to raise an oddball recluse of a son. My magic to this day she encourages, with an occasional, and I suspect contractually obligated, reference to Jesus.
So that's what I do, what I am. Magic. In these hills and the towns set upon and between them, I live, as in eat-sleep-breathe my magic and the pursuit of better and more interesting operations and processes.
Occasionally I write about it because I want to share what little I have with other Seekers of the Arcane Way. In fact, I was told to do so by my Other Mother, who you may know as Antaia or Hecate or Zu, Inanna, the Goddess with the Hounds, et. al.
I hope you find something useful and that can move you from among my humble works.
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