The Magic of the Group

It's a funny old thing. Getting a group of mates around a table for dinner is my preferred night in; it's entertaining, relaxed and life-affirming and although I can pretty much predict what kind of conversations we'll have, I almost always go to bed happy after they've gone. But this weekend, we did the opposite and the result was electric.

The first of the creative dinner parties under our retreat banner, The Sussex House Party took place around that same dinner table on Friday night with a bunch of people we had never met. Bar one; Liz Whiter whose book, The Animal Healer I worked on last year. She heals my animals and we go on strange meditational journeys into places I don't normally go to and I love the fact that she's not like any of those mates I have around the table most weekends. The others were a mix of academics and their friends, Pagans drawn to our key guest, chief druid, Philip Carr-Gomm and people interested in getting out more and nibbling at their own personal expectations. And Philip himself, a curly haired, radiant character whose sheer enthusiasm for life was enough to inspire the entire world order of druidry.

Over the course of the next five hours, we stayed focussed on the subject of magic, spirituality and druidry, touched on personal beliefs and talked a lot about writing. The discipline, the space/time debate, the sharpening, the polishing, the effect of fear, it was all laid out and picked at long after the Madhur Jaffrey spread had been cleared away by my teenage daughter and her friend.

But what was it that created the magic? I've witnessed it many times now and I still can't work out what happens. Can it be something as rare as being honest with a bunch of strangers? Trusting them with the stuff inside your soul? Will it happen when we have a posse of journalists around the table discussing media distortion and climate change? What about the porn-writing night? All I know is that giving people an opportunity to talk beyond house prices, new shoes or gossip at work strikes a match somewhere deep enough in us that makes the whole evening glow.

No-one wanted to leave; it was Philip's wife who rang to remind us that we were heading into the witchy hours and that he should have been home hours ago. What we needed were the bell-tents, a warm evening and a camp fire so that what bonded us around the table could develop into words on paper, plans for books, films, plays.

The summer is coming and with them the bell-tents, the camp fire and more, much more magic.