Practical Witchcraft: Dirt Poor Witchcraft pt. 2 - Candles.

 Dear Reader,

An altar lit by wax candles is a romantic image. Some people have the space to make a grandiose job of it. It can be really impressive. And then there's what they show in the movies where the back room of the spooky spell shop turns out to be a cathedral of sorts with hundreds of candles and elegant icons. (That movie back room has to be a TARDIS because every spell shop I've been in has a back room that's barely big enough to turn around and spit in.)

If you're in the position that I'm now in (the landlord renewed the lease and said no candles or incense) or you simply can not afford actual candles even from the discount store, this post will give you some ideas on how to work around this.

The first suggestion I have is a little on the pricey side for initial payment but as a long term budget expense, it actually turns out to be less expensive than buying candles in bulk every few months. Get a package of electric tea lights. "Burn" them only for the duration of your work. As soon as you finish your spell or prayer session, turn it off to conserve the battery for the next use. And screw anybody who says you can't use a candle over again or that electric candles will screw up the magical energy of anything.

Experience has shown me that electricity in the vicinity of any magical item serves to increase it's capacity for use. They act like spiritual batteries/capacitors that release the energy when you put them to use. And unlike a battery or a capacitor, they won't explode if you try to push too much energy through them, they'll simply ground the excess. But I digress.

My second suggestion is a bit cheezy but it works. Take some colored paper, make a tube of a suitable length. Glue together. Add a flame shaped bit at the end that you've determined is your top. With this version of a 'candle' you are going to focus elemental fire energy into the candle until it feels 'full'. Remaining on the altar, this paper candle will be continually replenished by the high magical energy quotient naturally present in the altar space. Shrines are also places of high magical energy that can recharge these.

My third suggestion is take an item associated with elemental fire energy and place it on the altar. Citrine is a good stone to use for this because of its association with the Sun. Equally good to place on the altar is lava rock. This includes: obsidion of all varieties, lava stones, and pumice. Any igneous stone is a good choice as well because they are formed in the Earth under high heat and pressure, and they will carry traces of that heat in their matrix.

Happy Lunar New Year (a day late)

 Hi, everybody!

I have not abandoned this blog. I have been struggling with what is seriously looking like 'Long Covid' with all the brain fog, exhaustion, and the fever that won't quit since October of last year. (Yes, I will be discussing this with my primary care doctor when I see him at the end of the week.) I have sat down to write posts and forgotten what I was doing in the middle of the process. Being too much of a perfectionist, I just can't post a half completed piece. It is taking me longer to do my writing across any platform. My brain is struggling to get words right. I keep having to check my spelling on common words, names, and pretty much everything because of the brain fog.

My anxiety is creeping upward. I am deeply concerned that I have become unreliable and that it will have horrific consequences. (Good gods, that was harder to spell correctly than it should have been. Took me 4 tries.)

My charity work has been put on pause because I really have to finish my eldest son's sweater. I am a quarter of the way done with it. I knit slower now and drop more stitches. This thing is in garter stitch but here I am struggling with it. Ugh.

No video post this week. Sorry.

 Dear Reader,

Aside from the fact that I am recovering from a migraine due to a major shift in the weather, the lawn company is here and a tree removal service is working across the street. I thought my place was loud when we had all the fans going earlier in the year. Good grief, these folks might as well be in my living room with all the noise. At least the yard is going to look nice, I guess.

Loud got redefined. I'm not sure how to describe it as exceedingly distracting and a bit obnoxious. Fortunately the tree companies come around only twice a year to trim stuff for the power company. For some reason, the lawn company was a few days late. It was raining for the last few days, so that's probably it. But I didn't plan on have all of that noise when I was trying to record a video. I attempted and on playback, I was barely audible. It was kinda impressive, to be honest. They were louder than my kids.

Herbs, tools, & treasures: My Bag of Tricks.

 Dear Reader,

I'm not sure how many people carry their history literally with them. I'm not sure how many people carry fetish objects (the religious use of the term) to allow them to reach out to their spiritual guides and allies. I have what I like to call my Bag of Tricks. It's a small bag that can easily be hidden if necessary. It holds in it the things I need to call my spiritual allies to me, to reach out to my familial dead, and to reach out to the life of the land. Now, I'm not going to identify which item is which because these things must be secret for them to work properly. But here's a picture of it.

Practical Witchcraft: Dirt Poor Witchcraft pt. 1- Don't buy expensive herbal products, look at the ground and your spice cupboard.

 Dear Reader, 

I apologize that this post is a day late. I'm still trying to reorient myself timewise after being sick for about a month. If you're like me you don't have an extravagant budget to get all the latest herbal products recommended by the big name folks in the pagan and witchcraft community. Don't panic or think you can't do that money drawing spell that you planned to help your budget a bit. You have options that you may not have realized were there.

Now before I give you a list of some of these options for you to consider, I want to recommend a couple of books that have been extremely helpful in my process of 'wildcrafting' magic. I honestly don't know why folks call it wildcrafting when it's the way it has been done since antiquity. Intimate knowledge of the land and what is there to use is how everything was done in the 'old days'. (Now, I won't say that the old days were better, after all people were dying of curable disease because they didn't have antibiotics, for example.) 

The first book I am going to recommend to you comes in two volumes. I can't recall if it is still in print, I think it is. It is M. Grieve's A Modern Herbal. This book is a bit dated as it was initially published in the 1930s, but Margaret Grieve took an academic approach to her topic matter that is timeless and easily understood. This book also has some print images in the style of James Audubon's artistic images of plants.

The next book I recommend is more current (having come out in the early '00s). The Nurse's Guide to Herbal Remedies is a book chock full of information that ranges from how to use a given herbal remedy to medications derived from it and things that contraindicate with it. I can't recall the author. The book got stolen from me about three months after I got it. To say the least I wasn't pleased. I may have the title wrong, but that is what my gut is telling me is correct.

The third book I recommend is The Encyclopedia of Medical Plants from Andrew Chevalier. This book has high quality illustrations of the plants that he discusses. It's basically a step down from The Nurse's Guide to Herbal Remedies. It does not get into what medications you should not mix it with or what medications are derived from it. But it does tell you what a given plant is used for, what parts are used, and how to prepare them for use.

Finally, I recommend is Cooking with Herbs and Spices by Andi Cleve, et al. This is a book I cross reference with the Encyclopedia of Medical Plants. It works very well to allow me to use my spice cupboard to treat minor ailments. While herbalism is awesome and can work very well, it is a supplement to modern medicine, not a substitute. 

With these four books in your library, you have the ability to step outside and look in your own yard or garden for the plants that will help you. In some cases, however, you need to check with your state's department of environmental conservation to make sure that what you're planting isn't an invasive plant in the region. If it is, put it into a pot and keep it under close watch. Don't allow seed pods to fall into your garden or fluffy seeds blow off to the four corners.

(Posted late because of my kitchen disaster) Divination: Rune Study - Gebo

 Dear Friends,

The rune Gebo (also known in some parts as Gifu) is a very important concept in ancient Northern Germanic cultures. It was, you could say, the backbone that served to help hold the culture together. Gifts were given often and served to cement social bonds. It is claimed that the All-Father advised "It is better to give too little than too much." Sounds like odd advice.

When living in a culture where gifts are given and debts can be incurred on the basis of what kind of gift is given, this is where the advice of the All-Father is actually really smart. In the ancient lands of old, visitors were given gifts of new clothes (and towels if they were wet from the weather). This was not because of the fact that the host was so delighted to see them but because it was a big part of basic hospitality. At the minimum, a poor host would give their guests food and drink.

These gifts put the guests into debt to their hosts, ensuring that they would behave properly while during their stay. A similar weight was on gifts given as part of marriage contracts between two families. (Mind you, during this era if a man assaulted a woman, she was free to cut off the offending part and nail it to the wall as a warning to others. Divorce was also a thing.)

Peace gifts were also a thing to in this era. They were given to cement the bonds between rulers. To refuse a peace gift was almost tantamount to declaring war.

When interpreting this rune, there are two things I keep in mind. This is one of the irreversible runes. That which is a blessing to one person may be a bane to another. (Think of the infamous white elephant story.) The most important thing for interpreting this rune is context. If it is in near proximity to runes known for benevolent influence, it is safe to assure that the gift coming is a good one. If it is in near proximity to runes known for malevolent influence, the gift coming should be handled with great caution and awareness that it might be a poison pill in disguise.

Update on the Charity Works.

 Dear Friends,

I have no words to express my gratitude for your support. The preemie hats are due to go to a rural hospital that the big program I was a part of missed. I may start making more preemie hats to send to the other rural hospitals in the area. I'm still deciding.

I am in the process of locating local organizations that would distribute scarves to the needy. It's not quite as easy as I thought it would be. I am not going to be defeated by people being hard to contact and such. If I have to, I'll show up on their door step with a box of scarves and say 'Hi, you help people in need. Winter's coming, these will be useful.'

Having just gotten over Covid, everything I've made thus far is going to go through a wash on high heat (thank goodness acrylic can stand it and just gets softer with it). I think I have about a medium load of stuff to wash. It feels like it should be more, but all of these hats are so small.

I am also working on a preemie layette. I've been writing down the pattern. I'm going to include a note with it requesting that they hold onto it until Nov. 7 (approximately) so that the preemie born on my birthday gets their first birthday present from someone who was a micro-preemie. I'll be including a card for the family of the child. This idea hit me as I was wrestling with some super thin yarn. And it struck me as so perfect a way to close this project for me. A bit of love and good will to someone who is fighting the good fight from another who fought that fight is always a good thing.