WEAVERVILLE – “(Writing) is aloof what I do,” said H. Byron Ballard, the self-proclaimed “Village Witch” of Asheville.
Ballard, who has accounting six books, appear her latest, “Seasons of a Magical Life: A Agnostic Path of Living” in July. She has been announcement the book at signings throughout the region.
While she has maintained a abiding antecedent of content, it wasn’t until ten years ago that she absolutely absorbed herself in her writing.
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“I formed in a bookstore for abounding years, and I abdicate in 2011 to address a book,” she said. “My aboriginal book came out in 2012. My big affection is Appalachian folkways and folk magic. So my aboriginal two books are about that. I had a book appear out in February alleged ‘Roots, Branches & Spirits: Folkways & Witchery of Appalachia.’ So I’ve got three books on the subject.”
According to Ballard, the abstraction of Appalachian folk abracadabra often refers to age-old healing practices, or folk medicine.
“‘Folkways’ is the byword best bodies use,” she said. “It’s things like the adeptness to abolish warts, and to do hands-on healing, to cure headaches. It has to do with a lot of herbalism. That herbalism, a lot of it came over from Britain. They best up some of it from the Pennsylvania Dutch, and again bottomward actuality with the Cherokee. So there are a lot of influences on it.”
In Ballard’s view, Appalachian folkways are decidedly absorbing because of the region’s affluent accustomed history.
“I address about the folkways of Southern Appalachia,” she said. “Appalachia is a huge arena – it starts bottomward in Georgia and goes all the way to Canada. The Appalachian Mountains are amid the oldest in the world. Two of the oldest rivers in the apple breeze through actuality – the New River and the French Broad.”
According to Ballard, “Seasons of a Magical Life” is meant to be acclimated as a apparatus to become added in tune with the world.
“It’s about deepening your spirituality,” she said. “But absolutely what it does is animate bodies to accede the alikeness we accept with the planet. We alive in a biosphere. We are not actuality to aloof booty whatever we appetite out of the planet. It’s about deepening an accustomed alikeness to the apple that we alive with and on.”
Ballard said the book follows a account agenda through the aeon of the seasons.
In befitting with the affair of naturalism, “Seasons” brings a added ecological approach, the columnist said.
“It’s about backwoods farming, and deepening your adherence if you’re afterward the aeon of the agronomical year,” she said. “So, it takes you ages by ages and talks about if you’re on a baby acreage or a baby captivation – or if you’re in an accommodation or wherever you are – how you can get in tune with the aeon of the seasons and absolutely feel the affiliation to the planet that we all accept that we’ve affectionate of lost.
“(In ‘Seasons’), I allocution added about the folk abracadabra convenance – I allocution about the agriculture practices and some of the superstitions that are captivated about that. The Ballard ancestors has been actuality aback the backward 1600s.”
Ballard’s ancestors on her dad’s ancillary barrage from Madison County.
“My dad’s bodies are from Reems Creek, for the best part, and additionally California Creek,” Ballard said. “Right off 19/23 on the way to Burnsville, there’s a Ballard Acreage Road, and that’s area the ancestors acreage was years and years ago.”
Ballard said her analysis for her books has mostly appear from contiguous experience.
She has accomplished for years at The Amoebic Growers School, an Asheville-based nonprofit alms applied and affordable amoebic education, its website said. Ballard has accomplished burghal agriculture at her home aloft the River Arts District in Asheville.
Prior to the pandemic, Ballard would about additionally appoint in acreage work, traveling aback to England and Scotland from area her ancestors originated afore advancing over in the 1600s.
“I’ve been calling myself a spell catcher,” Ballard said. “Until COVID hit, every added year I’d go to the borderlands amid England and Scotland. I’d absorb a ages there accomplishing acreage work, aloof talking to people.”
According to Ballard, there is a accurate affection for folk abracadabra amid association in Western North Carolina, and Asheville in particular.
Still, she wonders if some of the acceptance stems from a broader cultural trend.
“It aloof depends,” said Ballard, who has been practicing abracadabra for 50 years. “If you go on TikTok appropriate now, every 17-year-old is a witch. It’s a big fad. I’m the one who’s accepted for saying, ‘Here’s how you can convenance witchcraft: it doesn’t amount what clothes you wear, or how abounding tattoos (you have).”
Ballard said back she campaign she generally hears bodies acknowledgment to her about Asheville’s acceptability as a “witchy” place.
“I biking all over the country and bodies go, ‘Oh, you’re so lucky. You alive in Asheville, and it has such a active agnostic community,'” Ballard said. “I go, ‘Listen up. We congenital that abuse association brick by brick 25 years ago. Afore we congenital it, we congenital the bricks. We’ve been architecture on this association for, easy, 30 years.”
Ballard defines abracadabra as “the art and science of alteration the actual as able-bodied as the airy through the force of your abilities and will.”
In accession to her books on folk magic, Ballard has additionally contributed autograph to a cardinal of anthologies, she said.
“Everybody has a way that they action their life,” Ballard said.. “The way I action my activity is through words. Afore this, I was a playwright. I did a lot of playwriting 25 to 30 years ago. So I’ve consistently been a writer.”
This commodity originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville’s ‘Village Witch’ H. Byron Ballard talks new book ‘Seasons of a Magical Life’
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