Dear Reader,
I know that I'm trying to get back to daily posting and here I am saying that I'm taking a week off. This week has a ton of appointments and such scheduled that interrupts my writing time. As such, I will be back next week (gods willing and the creek doesn't rise) to give you your daily posts. I really need to get my calendar into order. I scheduled too many things in one week. Ugh. See you next week, y'all.
Dear Reader,
There is no video post this week because the apartment sounds like an airport again with all the fans. I'll hope to get one up next week if the weather cooperates.
Dear Reader,
My garden is overflowing with apple mint. It's a wonderful plant that has a lot of the same properties of regular mint. It just has a subtle apple aftertaste. Apple mint goes wonderfully with ham. It can be dried and used to make a soothing and relaxing tea that helps with sore throats, just like regular mint. In the dried state, apple mint's apple-like notes are not as strong. This seems to be the reverse of what usually happens when you dry something. I don't know why. It could be there's a problem in my drying technique.
I'd post a picture of my garden right now but it's raining. Apple mint is a plant that can be started from a cutting rooted in water. I have found that if you root it in water, you'll want to plant it shortly there after. You don't need to apply rooting hormone to get this plant to put out roots. In the ground, apple mint produces runners and will spread that way to take over your garden. If you don't want apple mint popping up in the middle of your hostas like mine is, when you plant it, put it into a bucket with some holes in the bottom. Make sure the bucket is deep enough that the runners can't get out the holes at the bottom. Then your mint will fill up the bucket and not take over the garden.
Dear Reader,
Way back in February, I did a post about Air Elementals. I have finally gotten my proverbial ducks in a row to write the next installment of this series of posts. This week we're meeting the Fire Elemental. Now, as I have said in my earlier post, this is not a comprehensive guide. This is an introduction and a guide to working with these spiritual beings.
Where Air Elementals are associated with slyphs, Fire Elementals are associated with salamanders. This is an association that goes back a long way to Medieval European thought. When wood was collected from the forests and put on the fire, the salamander that was living under it that had been collected with the wood, would come crawling out of the fire. This made many people think that salamanders lived in fire and were coming literally from the fire, not the wood. This idea became so prevalent that it stuck with us into modern occult thinking. Some people substitute the salamander with dragons. But, that doesn't really change much except the iconography of the spiritual being.
Fire Elementals are mercurial in temperament. They are the spiritual embodiment of fire, which means they can be warm, welcoming, and soothing or they can be destructive, terrifying, and harsh. The magical tool associated with Fire Elementals is the Athame or the Sword. (Others associate the Wand or the Stave with Fire, placing the Athame or the Sword with Air. It depends on the tradition you're following.) They're typically viewed as hailing from the South. Candles are especially associated with them because, well, fire.
Invoking Fire Elementals can be a fairly routine experience. They make excellent guardians. They can be good advisors because of their ability to shed light upon hidden things. And they are excellent at destroying things, because fire does that. When invoking the Fire Elemental for protection, you should do so with courage. They respect courage and view people with it favorably. If you're not feeling particularly courageous, still invoke them if you believe they will provide the best protection for you. Because the act of invoking the spiritual aspect of raw fire to protect you is an act of courage.
Appealing to Fire Elementals for assistance with problems is a mixed bag. They're somewhat chaotic in their workings. With patience, however, you can get a solution to your problem. It may not manifest in the manner you expected, however.
Dear Reader,
This is the first time all day I've had a chance to sit down at the keyboard and attempt to type up a blog post. I'll be posting the practical witchery topic post tomorrow (working with Fire elementals) as well as tomorrow's scheduled topic. In the meantime, I hope you've all had a productive and wonderful day. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. Errand day rolled a natural 20 and my dodge was a critical fail with a 1. I really need to increase my dice pool or something.
The rune we're looking at this week is pretty optimistic. Dagaz is present in the Elder Futhork and the Anglo-Saxon Futhork. No one knows why this rune was dropped from the Younger Futhork. Much of what we know about this rune's place in history is due to its presence in the Anglo-Saxon Futhork. It is from the Anglo-Saxons that we have the rune poem that describes the qualities associated with this rune.
Day, the glorious light of the Creator, is sent by the Lord;
it is beloved of men, a source of hope and happiness to rich and poor,
and of service to all. - Source: Wikipedia
The rune Dagaz is one of the irreversible runes. It is associated with good things, as seen in the rune poem translation quoted above. This rune is parallel in meaning as the Sun card from the Tarot. Unlike the Sun card, however, Dagaz has very few potential negative connotations. This rune speaks of hope during times of trouble, happiness, and success. It also speaks of sudden enlightenment and the revelation of hidden things. The rune can also indicate the timing of events, suggesting that an event will be happening in the immediate future.
Dear Reader,
As I had announced earlier in the week, my new book is coming out. The Veiled Witch's Ritual Book, Vol. 2: A Lokean Devotional is now available for purchase.
Dear Reader,
I just finished writing and editing the second volume of The Veiled Witch's Ritual Book. This book's focus is on Lokean devotional practices. It's a slim volume and will only be available as an ebook (unless there is sufficient demand for it to be a paperback, all y'all have to let me know if you want a physical book for this one). It is currently being reviewed by the publisher. I will let you know when it is ready for sale and post a pic of the cover.
Dear Reader,
Today was an emergency dentist trip with my eldest son. Tomorrow is going to be busy with family stuff. As a result, I will be delayed in my posting the next installment on working with Elementals and posting about another interesting thing I have kicking around here. In the coming week, there's going to be at least one more delay in posting due to this dental stuff. I'm trying really hard to keep going with my daily topics but stuff like this makes it hard.
I appreciate your patience and your readership. Life always gets complicated when you least expect it to.
P.S. The dental stuff isn't severe but we must go through the motions to make sure that it does not become a severe problem.
Today we are looking at the rune Eihwaz which stands for the Yew tree. Eihwaz is also known Eoh or Eihaz. This is a rune that is present in the same format in the Elder, Younger, and Anglo-Saxon Futhork. It is an irreversible rune.
It shows up a both a vowel and consonant. As a vowel it is associated with an 'I' sound, as a consonant is it associated with 'X' and 'Ç'. The association with 'I' is found more in the Elder Futhork and the other letters are found predominantly in the Anglo-Saxon Futhork.
It appears to have no connection with Nazi occultism from what limited research I can do, which I find curious. For the yew is a tree of death. Some associate the yew with the world-tree Yiggdrasil. Through this association, it is associated with Odin as well. It is theorized by some scholars that Eihwaz is a bind rune of Isa and Jera. It is unclear what this would change about the divination meaning of this rune if it is indeed a bind rune.
Eihwaz is like the Death card. It speaks of a spiritual period of rapid change and upheaval. It can speak of an actual death but typically it is focused on the stripping away of old and outmoded thought forms and concepts in our lives. This interpretation is based on the fact that the Yew tree is inherently very toxic in all its components and was used for making weapons of war. (Yew was an especially good wood for making bows if you're taking from the heart wood of the tree. The berries are particularly toxic and most birds will leave them alone, from what I have observed in growing up with yew trees around my parents' house. If you burn yew, stand upwind from the fire because the smoke will be an irritant to your lungs and can cause a serious reaction.)
Dear Reader,
I may have mentioned back in April that I was working on a Lokean devotional. Well, my brain decided that a massive depressive episode was necessary and that screwed up getting the thing done that month. April is the first Camp NaNoWriMo of the year, July is the second one. I have about a third of the first section of the book done. It's not going to be very long and my goal is not 50k words. My goal is to write for an hour every day until this thing is finished. On the days where I can get more than an hour worth of writing in, I'll do so. It's just been difficult because the kids are very distracting when they're around and when I'm not working on my writing, I am doing stuff to keep the household running. It's just a difficult month to do Camp NaNoWriMo. (By the way, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which officially takes place in November.)
I'm working on it, it's just going slowly. Hopefully it won't stretch into August because I have books to edit slated for time in that month. We'll see. I'm doing my best to post daily for the July for Loki meme over on my other witchy blog. It's not going that great because I am kinda short on time for writing across multiple platforms.
Dear Reader,
I had planned on doing a video about the Catholic style rosary but I simply am not going to have the time with all of my errands that I need to do before the kids get home from summer school for the day. I will try to get it done tomorrow along with my weekly random recommendation (it'll be a book review this week). I'd do a video when the kids were home, but they are a couple of hams who want to be on the screen too. Some day, I'll convince them that fart sounds in the background as I am discussing something really isn't appropriate. Today, I know, will not be that day. We started today with fart sounds and fighting. It's going to be a long one.
What I am holding in my hand is a delightful spinning tool. It is called a ring distaff. It is designed to go over your pinkie finger and be held with the rest of your hand. Fiber is wrapped about it and drafted out between the thumb and forefinger just like with a wrist distaff.
While much of my stuff is focused on Viking era things, this distaff design comes from their contemporaries, the Romans. The first thing I noticed immediately about this is that it is the perfect size for a wand.
As I do incorporate spinning into my magical practices, having a distaff that can double as a wand is awesome because it makes it easier to project my intention into the fiber and thread. It just goes to show that any stick like item can make a good wand. (The ring distaff was made by Dan Tracy, my mother-in-law gave it to me as a 'happy 4th of July' gift. I have some spindles from him, and crochet hooks too. His work is really great.)
Note: this is not a paid endorsement, I just think his work is great and he's a semi-local artist.
Dear Reader,
There's a popular practice of putting gem stones (precious and semi-precious ones) into water to make an elixer that 'absorbs' the magical qualities of the stones that you can drink to acquire something of that essence. I can tell you right now, this is a terrible practice and a great way to poison yourself or someone else. You don't know what stones are water soluble and what ones are not. If you're using alcohol, the likelihood of dissolving something goes up because alcohol is a very good chemical for dissolving things. It's one of the reason why it is used in cleaning products.
If you want to infuse the energy of your gem stones into your elixers, there are much safe ways than dunking them into a solution and waiting to see what happens. Just as you can transfer energy from one item to another by creating a magical tie through the use of a wand and focused personal energy, you can do the same with gem stones and your water or alcohol base. Make sure that all other ingredients of your elixer are potable and safe to consume if they're going into the water or alcohol. Other wise, draw your energetic tie from the item sitting in your work space to your solution and let it sit until you can tell the energy has hit its saturation point.
Be safe with your elixers and potions. Remember the basics of chemistry and home chemical safety (i.e. never mix chlorine with ammonia or urine). And make sure that everything that you're putting into the elixer is safe for consumption. You can use energetic ties to build up the resonant energy in your elixer for all other components. That's what you're doing when you steep them in the liquid.
Dear Reader,
Due to various factors beyond my control, I am unable to present a post this week on runes. Look for a post about runes next week. Today's post was typed up Sunday evening as I was working on getting the kids settled for the night with Beloved's help. The 4th of July festivities kinda made things chaotic around here all weekend. I'm anticipating a bit more chaos today because it is the day before the boys start summer school.
Thank you for your patience and check out tomorrow's post about Practical Witchery. It should be up around 12pm Eastern time (if everything goes right in the morning).
Dear Reader,
If you are of the inclination to make things for charity (like how I am making preemie hats for my local NICU), skip the fancy yarns and go with basic acrylic yarn. It is hypoallergenic. It washes easily at any temperature and can handle a bit of bleach with out the colors fading too much. It also is warmer than wool when dry (a bunch of us yarn nerds did an experiment about three years ago making cozies for coffee mugs to determine what yarn worked best for insulation. Acrylic was the clear winner followed by wool/alpaca blend).
There's long been an argument that acrylic yarn isn't too good for projects that are going to be against the skin because it's really abrasive. This might have been true 30 years ago, but changes in technology and how acrylic yarn is produced have created yarns that are just as soft as lightly spun cotton and woolen spun Merino wool. Acrylic yarn doesn't have the spring or the memory of wool yarns, which means it is less prone to stretch when worn and will be less inclined to shrink when washed. (Honestly, I have yet to have an acrylic project shrink on me when I've washed it. And I've been working with acrylic yarn now for over 13 years.)
If you are concerned about the scratchiness of low cost acrylic yarn, wind it into a skein and soak it in a basin with fabric softener for 24 hours. Then rinse the fabric softener out before washing it. Make sure before you do this process, that your have tied your skein of yarn in at least three places or it will become a tangled mess as you run it through the washing machine and dryer. (Yes, you can throw acrylic into the dryer on high and that will help soften it up too but that process takes longer than the soak with fabric softener.) You do not want to use acrylic yarn treated in this fashion for garments intended for individuals with sensitive skin, such as babies, because you never know who is going to react to the fabric softener.
Acrylic blends are a risky proposition. They can have the traits of both fibers but they introduce a potential allergen into the mix. Tread carefully with these yarns. If the recipient isn't allergic to the second fiber blended with the acrylic, you're in great standing. If there is an allergy, don't use it no matter how small the percentage of the second fiber is in the blend. Having experienced an accidental allergic reaction to yarn that I was unfamiliar with, it's no fun and can be a serious problem for people with severe allergies. Fortunately, mine was mild and my skin just got itchy and red. Some people have a serious allergic reaction. This is why I avoid mystery yarns when I'm crafting for charity and stick with acrylic that I know is 100% pure. Sure, that grab bag of 5lbs of yarn at the second hand shop looks like a great deal, but you don't know what's mixed in with it all. Play it safe.
Happy crafting!
In this video, I explain where I stand in my faith, give a picture of how I see Filianism relating to Heathenry on my blended path, and try to explain the radio silence from the conservative orthodox Filianic community since 2013. Let's just say that politics got mixed in with religion and it got a little ugly. Now, however, they're starting to be more active on the internet again so perhaps more open discourse can happen between everybody.
