IT IS hard to quantify the rise in interest in Wicca and witchcraft, both of which are forms of paganism. The last Census in Britain was in 2011. Even then, increases in both were noticeable, however: the number of people in England and Wales identifying as Wiccans had risen almost two-thirds over the previous decade, to 13,042, concentrated among young people. It’s become popular for news outlets to profile the apparent rise in modern witchcraft , yet the magic has been with us all along; the tendency for witches to identify as pagan is what’s actually new — this side of the medieval period, at least. My own daughter and son often asked me questions about God and various religious beliefs as they were growing up. I would answer them honestly and to the best of my ability but I did not make much of an effort to take them to church where they could truly learn. I did not want to force that upon them. But we did talk about God and Christian beliefs often. I tried to teach my children that there literally is no right or wrong way to worship. C.S. Lewis's own account of his early years reads like a list of books, along with a few people, that shaped his life. Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898, the younger of two sons. His parents Albert and Flora were both keen readers. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis describes himself as "a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstair indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books."

Then there are others who will follow more of a Wicca or more traditional Witchcraft path but will choose Jesus and Mary as their patron and matron deities. Last Tuesday, author and witch J. Allen Cross tweeted out some advice for white people who want more BIPOC speaking and teaching at their “magical witchy” conferences. One of his pieces of advice was, “Stop branding all witchy/magical events as specifically ‘pagan’. A great deal of our folk magic is christian based and the pagan branding makes us and our magic feel unwelcome .”Some people go to church and read the bible but also use oracle cards and work with the cycles of the moon.

Domestic animals, though, obviously had something like a personality. Lewis thought that when humans tamed animals, in accordance with their God-given dominion over them, the animals became more themselves.

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Whatever works for you is what is right for you. It’s about your own relationship with the divine all around and within you. The trend appears to have crossed the Pond, albeit in less politicised and attention-grabbing form. The industry monitor Nielsen Book Research says that UK sales of books on mythology and the occult have doubled in the past five years, while sales of books in its “Alternative Belief Systems” category have risen 13 per cent in the same period — double the growth of general book sales. The third book in the 'Space Trilogy' is called That Hideous Strength and set on Earth. It describes and extrapolates what Lewis saw as the evil ideas in contemporary science, personified in an organisation called (with heavy irony) N.I.C.E. One former pagan who is considering ordination and asked to be named in this article only as May encountered Christianity at university where mutual curiosity created “a lot of overlap” between the memberships of the pagan social group and the Christian Union. Now a funeral minister who identifies as a High Anglican, May says she has “blended” her beliefs with her old beliefs rather than leaving them all behind.