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#173 – The Yule Issue
A Very Merry Yule We’ve got correspondences, recipes, poetry, and much more to help you prepare for your Winter Solstice. In Book Reviews: The Sacred Herbs of Yule and Christmas Mama, What’s a Witch? Psychic Skills for Magic and Witchcraft Herbana Witch: A Year in the Forest Mushroom Medicine Oracle Mindful Souls Subscription Box Nature Devotional Listen to the Universe You Have the Magic 2024 Calendar and Planner — and more! In This Month’s Articles: Yule Correspondences Notes from the Apothecary: Snowberry Celebrating Yule in the Kitchen with Skarlett Pagan Prompts: Coping with Overwhelm Spiritual First Aid
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Deck Review – Kitchen Magick: A Recipe Deck for Witches by Carla Torrents Murcia
Deck Review Kitchen Magick: A Recipe Deck for Witches by Carla Torrents Publisher: David & Charles 52 Cards Release Date: June 27, 2023 This a very pretty set of cards with lovely pictures. The little pamphlet inside gave a nice, simple explanation of the wheel of the year and a nice measurement conversion chart. They are not without their problems however. The print is very small. I had to wear readers and use a magnifying glass to read the recipes. On some of the cards, the background colours and the text is too similar in shade and that makes it even harder to read. The cards are…
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Communing with the Essence
The Layers of Awareness and Our Essence Coherence — Communing with the Essence requires telling the truth. We must move with and through the layers of thinking, feeling, experiencing, believing, and perceiving in order to naturally and organically arrive at deeper states of awareness. We feel weight to feel weightless. We feel held to feel free. We feel alone to feel closeness. We sense the noise to sense silence. We become present to our life to feel present with others. Our Spirit embodies as a mortal human to know its immortality. We feel lack to feel full. We feel abundant to feel what’s missing. We forget to remember. To…
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Book Review – The Sacred Herbs of Yule and Christmas: Remedies, Recipes, Magic & Brews for the Winter Season by Ellen Evert Hopman
Book Review The Sacred Herbs of Yule and Christmas: Remedies, Recipes, Magic & Brews for the Winter Season by Ellen Evert Hopman Publisher: Destiny Books 344 Pages Release Date: September 12, 2023 I love this book and look forward to making it a staple in our seasonal workings. Plus, this will make a great gift for kitchen witches, herbalists and herb lovers alike. One of the explored traditions that I loved was of Mummers as I grew up watching the Philadelphia Mummers Parade each year. Included is a beautiful Yule ritual to the Goddess that I look forward to working this year. As a kitchen witch I…
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Tarot with Lady Saoirse
Yule 2023 Bright Blessings! As Yule approaches, you might be thinking of which decks you would like to buy to give to loved ones as gifts- and you might be thinking of which decks you hope to get as Yule gifts yourself! Instead of focusing on cards this time, let’s set them aside and discuss the runes. Yule, is after all, named after Odin, and Odin was the one who gave mankind the runes. Some people say the runes are just letters of the alphabet some smart Heathen incorporated into a new form of divination at some point. Others say that Odin intended the runes for people to use to…
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Spiritual First Aid
Magick for Dealing with the Holidays Last time I went over what to do in one of the many different spiritual emergencies you may find yourself dealing with. In this installment, I want to talk more about how to use magick to deal with the craziness that life throws at you. Since this is the Yule issue, I am going to do a deep dive into how to use magick to cope with what can be the most emotionally charged time of the year- the holidays. Holidays are usually joyous occasions marked by joy, frivolity, and feasting, but for many others the holidays can be extremely emotionally triggering or overloading.…
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Create a Mindful Life to Know Thyself
The wheel of the year turns to Yule or Winter Solstice. In the Northern United States, we have watched the leaves fall, our daylight grow shorter while our nights have grown longer. Frost has covered the ground and remaining leaves. We may or may not have had snow and ice. But we have the return of darkness and the natural introspection that comes with this time of the year. Our ancestors would gather around fires and practice rites and rituals to encourage the rebirth of the Sun and the return of longer days. We can connect with our ancestral wisdom by honoring the old practices. Turning off the lights and…
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Witch Hunt
There are witches all around us. You can find them anywhere… The Witch on Wheels has been documenting her findings. Meet: Elaine Lockhart Elaine Lockhart is one of very few hereditary witches I’ve met, and she is grateful to have had the opportunity to embrace all that is magical from an early age. Her family has been practicing the Old Ways for six consecutive generations. Elaine is the fourth generation of this oral tradition that stretches from her great-grandmother to her grandchildren. “We have our own moral and ethical codes,” she said. Yearly celebrations revolve around the cyclical nature of raising cattle (mating, birthing, changing pastures, etc.). In…
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Pagan Prompts no. 3: Coping with Overwhelm
PROMPT: How do you cope with overwhelm? Are you good at it, and do you have strategies for it? Do you see it coming, or feel like you are hit by it unexpectedly? Is it related to burnout, or something you can prepare for better in the more relaxed times? When you do find yourself overwhelmed, do you turn to your Craft to help? Or does it demotivate you from practicing altogether? by it? I hope those questions aren’t overwhelming in and of themselves… but these are important factors to consider. Often, overwhelm creeps up on us before we notice it. Being able to take a step back and look…
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Celebrating Yule In the Kitchen With Skarlett
Yule, Winter Solstice, Saturnalia…whatever you decide to call your Mid-Winter Festival, the facts remain that these disparate Pagan celebrations welcoming the re-birth of the sun are times to celebrate and to feast. It is a time of renewal and reflection as we look forward to the warmer days ahead and of life re-newed. This was especially important to those in northern climes where Spring was a far off dream and you may as well make merry now as life was uncertain and you may not get the chance to later. The time for these festivities usually takes place between December 20th to December 27th depending when the sun reached the…
