Where have all the witches gone?
Over hill and under stone.
You shall not find them inside a house,
but if you are quiet as a mouse
and walk softly on the forest floor,
you will find them at the otherworld’s door
by grove, sea, and crossroad, places of power,
working their magic at the appointed hour.
No, you shall not find them inside a home;
in the wilds is where they roam.

eltuinn is always a big event in my local community. We placed offerings of woods into the bonefire and invoked our gods. We poured the ashes of our dead and of 20 years of fires into the pit. The May Queen passed on her crown of flowers and twisted hazel wand. The Stag King was killed in single combat in the field before us all, naked, his body carried away solemnly by the men into the forest. The King is dead! Long live the King! The new Stag rides the maypole and hunts down his bride and they are wed. The twenty-two foot maypole is risen, the luscious redhead and I dug its entrance into the earth, the women crying out in pleasure as the men lower it into the pit. The colourful ribbons spill down and we dance, weaving the feminine and masculine together in spirit and song.

In the darkness of night we build a wicker man to represent our dead king. He is large and tall, the flames leap and devour him, rising high above our heads. The Bear looks at me and then runs and jumps the fire. He collides head-first with a morris dancer and his sharp staff. Blood into the fire and blood covering my hand, trickling down my arm as I hold the wound closed. Blood on the earth and blood on the leaves. The land isn’t satisfied with twenty years of dry wicker men. We dance, we drum, we drink blackberry mead and damiana liqueur. We massage each other with flying ointments of bear and bird fats. Cloven fruits are offered with mischievous eyes. We disappear into the woods. I come home blooded, broken, and bruised, my feet stained with sacred ashes and my dark hair tangled with leaves. I sleep and when I awake it is time to run away again, this time to a river surrounded by mountains for a large gathering of shamans.

he drive to the BC Shamanic Conference site is like entering another world, all ocean, mountains, and islands as far as the eye can see. The title of this year’s event is Return to the Forest and what a beautiful, blooming forest we returned to. The arbutus and the elders were in flower – white against green and red. So much love, smiles, and hugs upon arrival and it would continue on for the whole week. I was overwhelmed with love and my heart broke open. Such wondrous people come to this event each year.

The fire ceremony is my favourite ritual. If the local shamans had a god it would be Grandfather Fire. The lightning is called down until the flame leaps up and it is passed around and then placed in the sacred fire pit, decorated with spices into mandalas of red and saffron yellow. We are all given bundles of sacred woods to offer to the fire. “Grandfather Fire, I offer you the wood of the sacred cherry tree!” He devours the woods and grows bigger and bigger, hotter and hotter until it is unbearable to stand too close. We shout in celebration at his arrival. We drum and dance, breathe fire with rum, and pass around cigars, blessing each other with smoke and rolling them up the women’s bared thighs. Florida water and rose water are thrown in the air over us. We dance until we are covered in sweat and it boils from the heat. I pour red wine into the elder’s hands and he places them over my breasts and then covers me in powdered red cedar so it looks like I am covered in blood from cheek to navel.

That night I help the Wiccans put on their traditional NROOGD ritual and perform the tale of Cerridwen’s cauldron and the birth of Taliesin. A bridge is built between the Pagan and Shamanic communities. We are not so different. The shamans laugh and chant and spiral dance. They adore the greeting dance and kisses, eyes shining in the firelight. Fantastical animals hung from tall poles and people donning animal masks and costumes form a procession sunwise around the fire; raven, owl, heron, eagle, salmon, goat, bear… The people dance, leap, and mimic the animals they bear.

A First Nations hereditary chief came down from the mountains in the north to speak to us, to build a bridge of his own. His voice was loud and strong, his purpose clear. It didn’t matter how much he once disliked us and our ancestors for taking the land and destroying families and tribes. We are all destroying our world and he wants his grandchildren to have a future and knows we must all work together for it to be so. Don’t we all want the same thing? For there to be a planet of beauty and kindness left for our descendants? He beat his drum and sang louder than I had ever heard anyone sing like the inhuman song of a mountain or a rushing river.

I taught of the traditional ritual entheogens of Europe titled “Rediscovering Ancestral Plant Wisdom“. I taught why and how they were used by our ancestors and why and how we should use them today. I took away fear, hoping to replace it instead with respect and reverence for belladonna, datura, henbane, mandrake, monkshood, mugwort, wormwood and yew. Many had never heard of or used these plants before. At the end of the lecture and discussion I gave them a choice of smoking mugwort or using an ointment of mandrake or wormwood and then we all lay down in the warm sun while my friend Nikiah beat her drum. We went on a plant journey to meet the spirit of the plant and to seek its wisdom, sharing our experiences after. I was in awe of what a good reaction I received from everyone, how detailed and vivid their journeys were, how they felt the strong pull to work with plant spirits.

My friend Nikiah taught of sacred beekeeping and told us to listen to the message of the bees. We are destroying nature and the bees have been trying to show us. We need to listen and make things better for them, for us, and our children. We listened to a recording of the inside of a beehive, we inhaled the deliciousness of beeswax and the smokey vanilla sweetness of propolis resin, we tasted honeys, propolis tincture, bee pollen, and mead, and we bathed ourself in honeyed water. We journeyed to meet the bees and received wisdom and advice.

I went for a long hike deep in the woods along the river with Michael Dunning. He is a dark Scottish pixie full of fire and mischief. I named the plants and trees for him as we spoke of magic, initiations, our communities, our lives, and our shared connection to Scotland the sacred Yew tree. The air was sweetly fragrant with balm of gilead resin in the air and false lily of the valley low to the ground. I saw its broad leaves rustle and reached in to the darkness, pulling out a large, fat american toad. I have never seen a toad so big. I released it to the leaves and river-wet ground once more. We took it as a good sign. At the end of the conference, the Bear gifted Michael the yew and wolf bone ritual blade we’d made together. A fitting gift for such a teacher.

I lost a dear family friend while at the conference and so Christina Pratt’s ancestor ritual held very deep meaning for me. That day and all that night it poured rain for the first time all week. Pouring down tears of the dead, tears of the descendants. I let out all my sorrow and grief, burning it in the fire and cooling it with soothing water. We all dressed in white, faces painted white, and became the dead — the dead to our descendants so far ahead of us in the future. Beautiful mandalas of white powder around Grandfather Fire decorated with branches of cedar and white tea lights. We sang sweet songs in Gaelic, hands over our hearts, and then we drummed and we danced in joy becoming the living once more. I stayed up late talking softly by the fire with good people.

I came home with mead poured over my feet and rosewater down my back. My hair smelled of tobacco and woodsmoke and the hem of my dress soaked with water and earth. I did not the sleep the last few days of the conference. I stayed up so late each night not wanting it to end, dancing or smoking damiana and rose petals with others. I went home with my heart and soul beaming love from all I’d received and I shared that love with my mother and grandmother on Mother’s Day when I returned.

 blinked and it was time to head once more into the woods, this time to Lake Sasamat in the mountains for the Gathering for Life on Earth Festival. Many times we danced around the fire by the lake to drumming under the stars. Many times we hid under the porch by a smaller fire, laughing and talking, the lovely Kerri playing her fiddle. I remember the men and women, naked, painted each other with red ochre and blue woad and how the men carried a bull skull and the women a horse. We processed to the fire, to the lake and we invoked the Dagda and Macha into the skulls. We danced and we sang, faster and louder until a painted warrior fiercely drove a sword into the centre of the fire at the climax. We ran to the dock and lept into the cold waters of the lake, shouting and laughing, the blue pigment disappearing from my skin. The sword stayed in the fire all weekend long, eventually bending and twisting, like the ancient swords found in bogs left as offerings by our ancestors, until we let it slip into the lake showered with milk, ale, barley, pollen, and flower petals. The Coru Cathubodua recited a prayer for peace, prosperity, sovereignty, good actions, happy children, happy land… It was beautiful, like a cool salve on an angry wound.

I remember the men and women splitting up for the mystery rituals. The men shapeshifting and teaching brotherhood, the women calling the Queens of old to find the power within ourselves to be warriors in our lives, to be strong, to know we are not alone. I cast the circle with my bear drum and a booming voice. We invoked Hekate to be our gatekeeper and guardian, burying offerings of honey, spirits, pollen, and flowers for her in the earth at the foot of the altar of rocks and rotting logs covered in the she-wolf hide and mare skull. We passed a cup of my strawberry liqueur and invoked the Queens long dead, following the river of blood back through time to speak to them. We spoke blessings for each other, for ourselves, and for our descendants. We danced with weapons around a fire to the beat of drums – some with daggers, some with swords or spears, and others with axes. We howled like wolves and owls. Some women cried, some women laughed. We left the circle, heads held high for each and every one of us is a Queen. We walked toward the lake to meet the men. We sang them songs of beauty and of the moon and met them, each sex standing in a line facing each other. The women sang to them a chant of Thorn’s: “We are beauty and we are darkness. We are light and we are change.” Then we looked at each other in silence for a moment, the moon and stars in our eyes. “Attack!” I shouted and, much to their delight, we showered the men with kisses.

There was axe throwing and archery, bellydancers, musicians, and then all strange manner of vendors and fortune tellers at the goblin market – some trading rune and tarot readings or goods for songs and memories instead of money. There were temples consecrated to Aphrodite and Pan, gods and ancestors invoked, and many an offering to the spirits of the land and the lake buried and poured on stones. It was the simple things I loved most: swimming in the cold lake with nymphs and the honey covered kisses by the fires at night. It was both chaotic and beautiful. I have much love for my community and the magic that happens when we all come together. I came home smelling of elderflowers, honey, cedar, mud, and lake water. I do not wish to wash my clothes now, for how they smell of forests, fires, and flowers, but soon will come June and summer and more adventures.

“For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight.” Liber Al vel Legis 1:16

“Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me.” Liber Al vel Legis 1:51

Day two of the feast of Liber Al vel Legis. Towering conifer mountains dusted with snow and shrouded with smoke loom in the North. The lush verdant greenmantle pushes up from the black earth, erect and pollen-covered. Fat juicy rain drops fall despoiling virginal flower petals with sky-god semen. The air is heavy with the sticky, sweet, amber smell of balm of gilead, redolent and thick like incense burning in a courtesan’s bed chamber. We come together again, right before the setting of the sun. We speak of the troubles of growing belladonna and the stone carver shows his pipes of dragons and serpents in hard stone leaving us wide-eyed. There are sacraments of cinnamon liqueur and wines with a savoury feast of peppered chicken, hummus, salt and crunch, ginger cookies and cake. The smoke of tobacco and herbs curls around us. The words of the second chapter are read by Holly this night in her singsong voice. Sloan shuffles the Thoth cards, places them before me, and I cut to reveal the five of disks.

“I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self. The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.” ~ Liber Al vel Legis 2:22

Who am I to deny the words of the Book of the Law? The Poisoner comes home with me. The moon is dark and the spirits are restless and hungry. Sometimes they crave something more primal and the offerings of sweet incense, liqueurs, honey, and sticky tobacco aren’t enough to sate them. The deep rhythms of Wardruna play softly. Rose incense burns. Anointed with oils of amber and sandalwood I recline in front of the altar and the silver words of Valiente’s invocation pour off my tongue. “Thee we invoke by the moon-led sea, by the standing stone and twisted tree. Thee we invoke where gather thine own, by the nameless shrine forgotten and lone…” And there he is at my feet with a satyr’s debaucherous grin. His voice of growl and smoke recites Crowley’s hymn of Pan to Artemis in reply. He kisses me for each stanza, starting at my feet, sliding between my legs to kiss my thighs and breasts, and then lastly a full kiss on the lips. We take our fill of pleasure with each other until we are sated, exhausted, and the hungry spirits too are silent.

“By the force of the fashion
Of love, when I broke
Through the shroud, through the cloud,
Through the storm, through the smoke,
To the mountain of passion
Volcanic that woke —
By the rage of the mage
I invoke, I invoke!

By the midnight of madness: —
The lone-lying sea,
The swoon of the moon,
Your swoon into me,
The sentinel sadness
Of cliff-clinging pine,
That night of delight
You were mine, you were mine!”

On day three of the feast of Liber Al vel Legis we share sacraments of smoke, mead, and wine. My senses are a swirl of rose mead and vetiver, ambrosia and dark chocolate. The Book of the Law is read by Sloan, loud and fearsome.  After, he draws us each a third and final tarot card from the Thoth deck. He interprets them all for us as we feast. The last card I draw is Art. His reading is blunt and dead on though he couldn’t have seen inside my head. The advice is good and I will take it. I was sad when the feast was ended – it is a joyful thing to see your friends and eat and drink with them for days in a row. We all stayed a bit later on the last night I think, saying our farewells until Beltuinn is upon us and we meet again for magic and mischief in the wild wood.

“For perfume mix meal & honey & thick leavings of red wine: then oil of Abramelin and olive oil, and afterward soften & smooth down with rich fresh blood. The best blood is of the moon, monthly: then the fresh blood of a child, or dropping from the host of heaven: then of enemies; then of the priest or of the worshippers: last of some beast, no matter what. This burn: of this make cakes & eat unto me. This hath also another use; let it be laid before me, and kept thick with perfumes of your orison: it shall become full of beetles as it were and creeping things sacred unto me. These slay, naming your enemies; & they shall fall before you. Also these shall breed lust & power of lust in you at the eating thereof.“ ~ Liber Al vel Legis 3:23-27

I go into a trance-like state when the book is read. Some parts stand out more than others. The third chapter stood out the most for me like a raven’s call in a forest.  It is dark with the voice of a heartless warrior mingled with wafts of Babalon’s perfume.

“But let her raise herself in pride! Let her follow me in my way! Let her work the work of wickedness! Let her kill her heart! Let her be loud and adulterous! Let her be covered with jewels, and rich garments, and let her be shameless before all men!” Liber Al vel Legis 3:44

Did you burn your first copy like throwing spilled salt over your shoulder to avert a curse, black heretical ashes staining your fingers?

There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
Love is the law, love under will.

I experimented with new recipes: a pure belladonna ointment with a menstruum of pig fat and an ointment of fly agaric mushroom caps and mandrake root with a menstruum of bear fat. The belladonna ointment is still undergoing testing to see if it is safe for use, but the second one is now available in the Apothecary as Soma Flying Ointment. It is excellent for ecstatic rites of intoxication, drumming, and dance. Use for sacred ceremonies and spirit work or to work with the World Tree.

I filled a big order for Ixaxaar who requested flying ointment samples to go with the forthcoming issue five of Clavicula Nox which will be focused on experiential witchcraft. It will include an article I wrote on seership, intoxication, and ecstatic ritual along with my original illustrations.

I crafted a new batch of Forest Spirit Ointment for the first time in a year. A dark fairy ointment of toadstools, enchanter’s nightshade, oak ash & thorn, fern seed, the herb of Robin Goodfellow, rowan berries, and other folkloric herbs of seeing and working with spirits. Many customers have had success using this ointment to the aid of searching for bones, plants for specimens or foraging, and seeing wild creatures and otherworldly spirits normally unseen.

Porta’s ointment has been renamed as Sabbat Flying Ointment to reflect the folkloric nature of its solanaceous herbs for flying out of body to an otherworldly witches’ sabbat. It is available in two sizes: the usual 30 ml tin and a smaller 15 ml tin. Witches’ Ointment is also back in stock – our most beginner friendly ointment excellent for use with divination practices such as tarot, runes, scrying, bone throwing, or seidr. It is also an excellent choice for hedgecrossing, protecting your body in this world and your spirit in the otherworld.

Now to finish a double-strength mandrake and bear fat unguent for the Shaman to incorporate into a men’s mystery ritual, and to finish testing the belladonna ointment and perhaps consider creating a pure datura ointment as well…

Wild violets taste like green and purple; clean and fresh, they are like clover, budding leaves, and sunlight. The sun came out for a brief, warm flash and brought spring with it, suddenly, everything blooming like an unexpected orgasm. I found an expansive patch of viola adunca a short walk from my home and buried my face in the sweet purple fragrance. I picked every flower I could reach finding bright red lady bugs hugging the leaves and watching honey bees make love to pollen-covered stamens.

“All flowers growing in untrodden dells and shady nooks, uncontaminated by the tread of man, more especially belonged” to Venus and Diana. — Thiselton-Dyer

It is no surprise that violets belong to Venus and the water element. They are so sweet and delicately feminine, their shy purple heads hiding in shady, moist places under trees and near water.  Peaceful, healing, and soothing, when carried or eaten violets will protect from wicked spirits and help to heal wounds physical or spiritual. Mixed with lavender they create a powerful potion of love and lust. Make a wish on the first violet you see and it will be granted. Eat violets to change your luck for the better. To dream of violets means your fortunes are about to change for the good. To see violets bloom in autumn means disaster and misfortune.

I took home my treasure of delicate purple beauty and researched how to make a violet syrup. I was disappointed in what I found. Most syrup recipes aren’t meant for something as delicate and fresh as a flower and the boiling process in the recipes would destroy the colour and the flavour… so I made up my own recipe and I’m happy to say it was a success! For the best results, pick your flowers in the morning just after they’ve opened but before the sun burns away the fragrance and work with them right away.

WILD VIOLET SYRUP

• Pack a 1 litre canning jar with fresh violet flowers
• Add 4 cups of distilled water and 2 tbsp of spirits (40% or more)
• Seal jar and infuse for 24-48 hours – shaking a few times each day
• Strain, squeeze remaining liquid from petals and discard petal pulp
• Measure resulting infusion
• Heat until just boiling and add 1 part sugar per 1 part violet infusion
• Remove from heat as soon as sugar melts completely
• Cool and add 1 tbsp of spirits per 1 cup of liquid
• Strain through cheese cloth
• Store in the fridge

Pick as many violet flowers as you can and really pack them in – the more you have to work with the stronger in taste your syrup will be. By only heating the infusion long enough to melt the sugar, you preserve the strong violet colour, taste, and smell.

Now that you have violet syrup, what to do with it? You can pour it as is over top of vanilla or coconut ice cream or have it for breakfast with pancakes, waffles, or crepes. Brush the layers of a white cake with it, letting it soak in well, and ice with a white butter cream and garnish with candied violets for a gorgeous and simple violet cake. Pour it over wild flower pound cake crumbled in a bowl and add booze, custard, and whipped cream to make a violet trifle.

WILDFLOWER POUND CAKE

• 1 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cup pastry flour
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 5 eggs, separated
• 1 1/2 cup icing sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup edible flowers (violets, roses, pansies)

Cream butter. Sift flour and baking soda and gradually add to butter. Beat egg yolks until thick and lemon coloured and add sugar to them gradually. Combine the two mixtures. Beat egg whites until stiff and gently fold into the mixture, not stirring. Fold in the fresh flowers – the more colourful the better. Pour batter into a greased loaf or cake pan and bake for 1 hour at 350°F. Cool for one hour before eating. Serve plain with butter or eat with ice cream.

Add 1 tbsp of violet syrup per 1 cup of soda water to make home made violet soda. Diluted it is a pale lavender colour and tastes divine. Use it to mix drinks as the violet syrup would pair well with a plain mead, vodka, white rum, gin, or brandy to make your own creme de violette. Mix a Blue Moon cocktail by combining gin, lemon juice, and violet syrup or a Moonlight cocktail with gin, lime juice, cointreau, and violet syrup.

Give it away as gifts or hoard it for yourself. Violets and dandelions are the earliest spring flowers here alongside Japanese cherry blossoms and oemleria, but soon there will be more to come. Try making other flower syrups to celebrate the blooming of spring: magnolia, hawthorn flower, elderflower, Oregon grape flower… With summer will come the wild roses, fireweed, clovers, honeysuckle, and yarrow.

I think next year a small batch of violet mead may be in order…

There have been late nights of infusing flying ointments in the stove, my home redolent with the scent of sticky sweet poplar buds and the fresh spring air pouring through the open windows. There have been trips to suppliers on sunny days to gather new ointment tins, fragrant beeswax, and papers as black as night. There have been long evenings spent designing and printing labels and prints of my black and white artwork full of skulls and poisons.

The results of these days and nights were new batches of flying ointments in lovely tins featuring my artwork matching the poisons within each unguent – belladonna for the aves ointment, mandragora roots for mandrake ointment, and henbane for the traditional flying ointment. The ointments sold out quickly with their new pretty black and white feathers. I will be able to make more in about a week. I still have some Witches’ Ointment left in the original green glass jars for any beginners or lightweights who want to incorporate ritual entheogens into their magical practice.

I made two collections of cards and prints with my artwork, one featuring poisonous plants and one with the theme of skulls. Though they have sold out in the shop before I could write this post, I still have supplies and will be making more collections after the long weekend. There are still things to carve and more art to create. With the sun has returned my inspiration and drive to create. And now to enjoy this beautiful, warm spring day with loved ones and a feast. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday with your family and friends!

I have been busy plotting, working on new illustrations, and making plans for my art. I want to make my occult drawings available as prints, cards, talismanic ephemera, and locally screen-printed t-shirts. I will be moving away from colour and be working purely in black and white (…maybe with the exception of red sigils now and then).

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology I was able to turn some of my pyrography into high quality illustrations to add to my body of work and the products I plan on making. I do a lot of one-of-a-kind woodwork and usually only one person gets to take it home to enjoy. This will be an excellent way for lovers of my art to be able to own their favourite piece in a different incarnation.

This week I pulled out my leather, my sewing kit, and my specimens of poisons and bone to craft fetishes used to aid in working with the dark goddess Hekate. I cut up squares of raw black silk, laid them upon the pelt of a black wolf, and filled each square with specimens of mandrake, monkshood, yew, and snake skin and bones. I cleansed them with the fragrant smoke of palo santo and then tied them up into little bundles with black cotton thread.

I’d been playing with creating sigils this past week and chose a simple crossroad and key sigil to include in the bundles. I pulled out my magical inks and my calligraphy dip pens and set to work. The symbol is meant to open doors between the worlds and to access the World Tree.

I stitched up pouches of softest black leather, folding the corners into the center and sewing them with black silk. I stitched a leather tie onto the corner of the flap to wrap up the bundle with. I cut slits into the pouches and laced more ties through them, adding bone skull beads to the ends and used the ties to bind antique keys to the bundles. I made the keys removable so they can be used in ritual.

Now that the pouches and their contents were ready, I carefully tucked all the sacred specimens and the folded sigil inside and then carefully and tightly wrapped up each bundle, tucking the end of the tie back into itself.

And the bundles were ready, simple and elegant. They can be carried during ritual, whether it is for Hekate, the dark moon, or the ancestors and the underworld. They can be used to open a door between the worlds by laying out the the sigil with the key on top – in the woods, a graveyard, or on your altar. They can be carried, tucked in a pocket, or laid on an altar to aid in working with the dead. Whether these Hekate bundles are used for necromancy, transvection, or rites of the dark goddess, they will well serve the witch who keeps them with care and employs them often. I hope I’ve inspired you to create your own fetishes for your arts of Witchcraft. May the flame between the horns guide your hands in the forging.

TO HEKATE

by Yakov Rabinovich from The Rotting Goddess

Pre-Christian, pre-Olympian, pre-Titanic Hecate
world-tree planted in Asia Minor
gate-guard of the worlds,
keyholder to the three reams,
gross seated mother, lions at your sides,
fostering nurse of all that’s young,
female heap of big fat attributes,
cruel, non-rational mistress
of slain corn-kings, sacrificed children,
castrated temple-males;

you glide into Greece after Troy’s fall,
Hecate-Enodia riding down from Thessaly,
leading the angry horde of ghosts,
planted yourself at the crossroads;
your torch began to smoke, then flared up,
making night noon –
world-tree Hecate, your roots reach Hell’s
downmost altitude to suck the power
of the buried dead. Eater of filth,
goddess of darkness, grimly silently
munching on corpses, Hecate,
regaled with incense of goat-fat, baboon-shit,
garlic; honored with gutted puppies
and rubbish rites;

Hecate, in your oakleaf crown shaking reptile dreadlocks,
around you hellhounds yowling sharp and shrill,
so meadows tremble, river-nymphs scream,
their waters rush backwards up the stream-bed
and dive affrighted down their own fountains;

with witches I dance around you,
naked, snake necklaced,
hair in the wind, gashing blood from arms:
sex-crazed hags with false teeth and hair,
young girls, gloriously pornographic,
stir the cauldron of ugly oddities,
throw in magic salads gathered in the graveyard–
a brew with power to draw babes screaming
into existence, or hurl them howling hence.
The witches lay hold of you, Hecate, World-tree,
shake, make tremble on your branches
the planets suspended
like rare and fragile fruit.

I’ve been busy working on poisonous amulets to list in the workshop tomorrow at 4pm PST. Here’s a sneak peek of new creations from the workbench. If anything calls to you keep in mind original pieces tend to sell out in a few hours.

Mandragora medicine amulets of forest green leather and golden sinew with a bone skull closure – painted with an original mandrake sigil in gold. Each one contains pieces of atropa mandragora root.

Hekate ritual bundles of soft black leather stitched with black silk into pouches with wrap ties, skeleton keys, and bone skull beads. Each pouch contains mandrake, monkshood, and yew (all sacred to Hekate), a hand drawn sigil for crossing between the worlds, and features a removable key for opening the doors of the otherworld.

It has been a year and a half since life as I knew it ended and I was reborn anew. Many things have changed since then and perhaps I have the most. My philosophy for my new life is to always choose adventure: to say yes when fear and my reclusive nature tell me to say no. One of my magical tenets is “if you’re not scared, you’re not doing it right.” In this past year I’ve done a lot of things that have taken me outside of my comfort zone: I’ve loosed my heart to lust and love, I’ve done more public speaking and public rituals than ever before, I’ve written articles and posts that I was terrified to publish, I submitted art and writing to beloved publishers when I’d once been too shy to do so, I travelled more than I had in the past seven years, and I more deeply committed myself to the path of magic.

In this new life I have discovered that life is for adventure and adventure is the point of living. We are all The Fool standing on the edge of the precipice and we should always jump hoping for love, laughter, kinship, adventure, and joy no matter how many times we fell and hurt ourselves before. If we follow our hearts with the innocence of pure intent and ignorance of expectation it will take us to deep and wondrous places in the soul, revealing to us sights and experiences we cannot yet fathom. If you have been feeling stuck and stagnant, trapped and scared, I plead with you to choose adventure and to say yes when you’ve always said no. Kiss the girl, go on the trip, work for yourself, write the book, go to the party, the festival, the ritual, the concert…

It was last-minute, unplanned, unexpected, but I said yes and drove down through Washington, Oregon, and California to Pantheacon in San José in February. My good friends and road trip companions Jan and Grant twisted my arms and the lovely Morpheus‘ hospitality cinched the deal. The waxing moon was a cheshire cat grin in the night sky and foretold all the mischief we would get into. We met with friends on the drive there and back: a group of shape-shifting mystics eating a centuries old feast at the Bors Hede Inne, visiting a mandrake witch and her elderberry wine, consorting with shamans, and having beers at a pub in Berkeley with warrior priests, staying with a family of archers and orchards and delicious home-cooked meals, feasting in lavish Moroccan fashion in Portland, and resting in a hidden cabin, cozy by its wood stove, in the forests of Washington on the way home.

Pantheacon was a labyrinth and mosaic of people, paths, costumes, rituals, teachings, and chaos. Three thousand Pagans in one place is a lot of Pagans. We stayed with the Coru Cathubodua. We hung tapestries on the walls while they set up the altar to the Morrigan with black and red and weapons and wings. We warded the room with holy water and whispers and shields. We helped in their rituals where we could, chanting and drumming, my fingers painting spirals of blue woad onto warriors’ skin. The Coru’s kinship ritual was the highlight for me, bringing tears to my eyes and strength to my heart. “As long as I draw breath, I will take my stand. The heart is the only nation.” The Coru truly live what they teach and I’d only ever felt such a sense of kinship and hospitality with close family before meeting the amazing members of the priesthood. I am so very happy they are coming to The Gathering Festival this year to host our main rituals.

I will forever remember the power of two fierce-eyed warrior maidens dressed in blue shifts and painted with woad dancing with sword and spear inside a circle of hundreds, the sound of hammers striking an anvil in Brìghde’s forge to heal the wounds of many,  the sight of a raven named Gimble nuzzling his human father’s nose with his beak, the taste of homebrewed chocolate beer while beautiful fairy women sing, and the profound sense of comfort and kinship I felt with those who surrounded me. At Pantheacon I healed old wounds, made new friends, talked beautiful women into arm wrestling, conversed deeply on ancestor worship, seership and love, and truly had an adventure. I returned home changed for the better, but still myself. There’s nothing like an adventure, stepping outside and away from your life for a time, to show you your path from the eagle eye view and to set your feet back upon it knowing you are walking in the right direction. I came home with a bursting, grateful heart and the confidence to go on the other adventures I have planned for the coming year.

What adventures are you plotting?