People of Spirit – A Tribute to Meggie Kynsa (Paul Needham)

Just before Winter Solstice 2024 we lost one of the elders and most distinctive characters from the north east of England’s pagan community.

I first met Meggie around 10 years ago at the Northumbrian Gorsedd gatherings at Dilston Physic Garden, organised by fellow OBOD Druids Victor Ball and Marc Johnstone when Meggie was still known as Paul. We shared a love of good mead and Meggie would frequently bring their favourite Lanchester Mead to share at the feasts after the ceremonies, alongside my various Lancashire Mead Company varieties. Meggie had considerable gravitas in the ceremonies and was always fascinating to chat to afterwards. The King of Swords from the Rider-Waite tarot was the avatar on Paul’s Facebook page and that summed them up perfectly – a sharp, enquiring mind, a love of knowledge and a fair-minded, humane approach to the world. But just like the King of Swords, Meggie did not tolerate fools and could be fearsome – they gave jobsworth bureaucrats, attempted online scammers and right-wing born again Christians short shrift in no uncertain terms. As Meggie said in their own words:

there’s nothing I enjoy better than a good blast at some pathetic troll who doesn’t like what I stand for.

But if Meggie discovered that you and they were on the same wavelength, you would be treated to fascinating stories, information and anecdotes which quickly made clear their considerable intellect and how knowledgeable and widely read they were. I can still hear in my mind’s ear Meggie’s delighted guffaws between sips of mead while recounting the latest stupidity, absurdity or hypocrisy that they had had to deal with.

Another attendee at the Dilston Druid ceremonies was author and Wiccan High Priestess Harper Fox, who also organised her own ceremonies at the Physic Garden with her Craft Bryneich (North Hills) Gardnerian coven. Meggie joined Craft Bryneich and rapidly moved through the degrees.

Alongside their Wiccan studies, Meggie was a regular attendee at many of the pagan moots around the north east and instrumental in helping to organise The Wear Valley Moot which met at The Stanley Jefferson Weatherspoons pub in Bishop Auckland and The Gateshead Pagan Moot which mainly met at The Cafe Under the Spire in Gateshead, and it was going along to that Moot which introduced me to the cafe, which is possibly my favourite cafe in the north east, if not the whole of the UK.

Meggie publicised both moots online, always producing amusing and clever event postings on Facebook such as this one:

During lockdown Meggie helped to keep things going with online moots and mutual ‘bumping into’ other moot members outdoors in secluded places in a socially distanced way. But the joys of meeting up properly in person can be clearly seen in this photo taken at the first in-person Bishop Auckland moot in October 2021 after almost two long years of Covid isolation.

As well as paganism, Meggie had an enthusiasm for all things folk and traditional and every year (apart from 2020 due to Covid) would post a list of local country shows and fairs in the north east.

It could be argued that this is not very Pagan, so why am I posting it here? Well, the word Pagan originally meant a country dweller, and country fairs are very close to the country, and are inspired by the harvest, which is part of the Wheel of the Year and the seasons that we all celebrate in our Sabbats. So get out of town and up close to the crops and the animals, and the people that raise them … In any case, people who only go to purely Pagan events should probably get out more.

They would visit as many of them as they could throughout the summer, plus stately homes and gardens and other places and events throughout the north, taking lots of photos which they loved to do.

Here is Meggie in the Pond Garden at Lilburn Tower in Chillingham in June 2018:

I stood under the giant leaves in the Pond Garden a told a passing visitor that I felt like a gnome standing there. He took a photo and has just sent me it through.

By late October 2021 Meggie had attained their Third Degree ordination in Gardnerian Wicca with Craft Bryneich and at Samhain that year a new Gardnerian Coven – The Heart of Brigantia Coven – was born with Meggie as High Priest / Priestess.

At Mabon / Autumn Equinox at Thornborough in 2022 the Mandua Briga OBOD Seed Group held a small ceremony in the Central Henge after the main ceremony and we invited the Heart of Brigantia Coven to join us, which they very kindly did.

At Beltane and Mabon 2024 the invitation was generously returned to join the Heart of Brigantia Coven‘s ceremonies there and we enjoyed the excellent rituals that Meggie had written, meticulously presented and choreographed, resplendent with beautiful flowing fonts and colourful images related to the season. Each encompassed a talk by Meggie – a piece of thoroughly referenced research they had done about that particular point in the Wheel of the Year – and seasonally appropriate verses from poets of the calibre of Emily Brontë (spelled of course with an ‘ë’ and not a slapdash ‘e’ in Meggie’s scripts), William Shakespeare and – which came as a surprise to me – Aleister Crowley. Always wonderfully old school and in self-confessed true Victorian style, Meggie would send out a final copy of their ritual scripts to all participants for their records and would ensure that everyone was correctly addressed on them with their pagan rank. Meggie clearly put so much painstaking effort into their ceremonies that when participating in them this made you want to perform at your absolute best in order to honour that.

There is still a part of me that simply cannot comprehend that I will not see Meggie again at Beltane at Thornborough this coming year, perambulating across the Central Henge like a stately galleon in full sail, wrapped in voluminous swathes of fabric and sporting a pointy witches hat, surrounded by their coven members, for whom Meggie was a dear and respected friend as well as High Priest / Priestess. To think that we will wait another life to drink wine from the horns my friend. I wish you a good journey to The Summerlands. Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again.

Elegy for a Dead Witch (by Doreen Valiente)

To think that you are gone, over the crest of the hills,

As the Moon passed from her fullness, riding the sky,

And the White Mare took you with her.

To think that we will wait another life

To drink wine from the horns and leap the fire.

Farewell from this world, but not from the Circle.

That place that is between the worlds

Shall hold return in due time. Nothing is lost.

The half of a fruit from the tree of Avalon

Shall be our reminder, among the fallen leaves

This life treads underfoot. Let the rain weep.

Waken in sunlight from the Realms of Sleep.

Meggie Kynsa (Paul Needham) 5th April 1950 – 17th December 2024

by Liz