Welcome   ____________________________________________________________________   In This Issue…   Crystal Connections covers Sacred Space in the work place with ideas and photos.     In many of your rituals you will want to invite Deity, learn to Call the Divine in this month’s MagickalArts.     Learn all about Roses in this month’s Notes from the Apothecary.         ThriftCrafting: Witching on a Budget Reviews the Book “Witchcraft on a Shoestring: Practicing the Craft Without Breaking Your Budget” by Deborah Blake, for us this month.   and much, much more…   ____________________________________________________________________  …

Sacred Space In The Work Place In a world that seems to be drama riddled and financially obsessed, its easy to become disconnected spiritually. I worked in the financial industry for 17 years until I had become so spiritually depleted that I chose to leave that line of work. I recently started working for a local therapist who gave me my own office and encouraged me to create a sacred space, so I did exactly that. I have one shelf lined with raw stones, mostly for their beauty but also because of their metaphysical properties. This includes Carnelian, Garnet, Petrified Wood and Calcite to just name a few. Carnelian is…

Calling to the Divine   In many of your rituals you will want to invite Deity to stand as witness, assist and/or enliven the work of your celebration. These God forms may vary from that of familiar archetypes to the pure essence of what the Divine means to you personally. This singular act will set the tone for what follows. You may find the terms “evocation” or “invocation” used as the process for bringing the energy of Deity into sacred space. Invocation or Evocation? The act of invocation is one of inviting Deity to be present. To invoke is to call to one’s self the specific energies that are desired.…

  Kiara: Episode 11 Moira returned to her tree with an uneasy mind., but the effects of being around her grand uncle Mandral quickly dissipated. Of those who fought alongside the Dwarf mercenaries, he had been chosen to stay on the home world to command the mercenaries. He could look to the council of elders for advice, but everything would be left for him to decide. Faeries do not have leadership in the sense that most races do. They once had kings, before their magical power became so great that any form of leadership became impossible. The line of kings were still much respected though, as their magical powers were…

Women & Goddess Meditation   It is an understatement to say that life for women is stressful.     Every day, we are called upon to play different roles in our lives.  We are over-worked, over-stressed, pulled in ten different directions.  Everyone makes demands on our time, simply because we are women and it is *expected* of us.  As women, we also learn very quickly that the world is a dangerous place for us, simply because of our gender.   Daily, we experience a constant barrage of thoughts from without and within our own minds.  This is called “monkey mind”, the constant chatter to which we listen and, once again,…

Notes from the Apothecary: The Rose   I’ve temporarily veered away from my series on trees as I was inspired to write about the rose. There are some beautiful rosa rubiginosa which have been flowering in the grounds of my son’s school for several weeks before I wrote this article, and they are so beautiful. (image left: rosa rubiginosa, source Wikipedia). My six-year-old boy has been enchanted with these gorgeous flowers, and I have had to plead with him not to pick them all as he decided ‘they are all for mummy’! Walking through Hamsterley forest we came across several varieties of wild rose, and again in woods local to…

Spiralled Edges: To Take Responsibility I’ve spent these past three months looking closely at what some call the Four Pillars of Magic: To Know, To Will, To Dare, and To Keep Silent. To be very honest, I have never really thought much on these nor felt it necessary to apply them to my own Pagan or witchcraft practices. However the task at hand was to discuss ways that they applied in my own life on my blog, and I have gained a lot of new insight into myself along the way. You can read all of those posts over at Writings of a Pagan Witch within The Pagan Experience 2016…

  Under the Midnight Moon Dancing lights, twinkling lights Around the come again Dancing in circles, in spiral circles The Faery dance of yore They come, they go They circle about They call your name to them “Come dance with us, come play with us Under the Midnight Moon”. ~Vivienne Moss~ I find myself standing under the full moon, majestic in all her luminescence. A gentle breeze caresses my bare shoulders, peppering me in goose bumps. The night air has an unnerving feel about it, causing me to look about in trepidation. A soft melody permeates the quiet darkness; I am certain I hear panpipes and the most enchanting of…

Smudge sticks Merry meet. With the gifts of summer in full bloom, it’s a wonderful time to make smudge sticks. A tradition I’ve adopted from First Nations is to burn bound bundles of dried resinous botanicals for cleansing and purification. At the Summer Solstice, I picked a variety of botanicals: two kinds of lavender at a friend’s house, mugwort at the back of a cemetery, a rose from my garden and juniper from the bush behind my condo. Chances are good that you can find enough ingredients to make at least one smudge stick. Other possibilities frequently mentioned for the making of smudge sticks include white sage, cedar, pine, rosemary…

Domnu (Photo Credit: www.tianaart.com) Not very well known, Domnu is the Ancient Mother Goddess of the Fomorii, ancestors to the Celts, before the arrival of Danu and the Tuatha de Dannaan, by whom, it is said, She was overthrown. Domnu was in the *before time*, deeply asleep in the abyss in the land of mist. She spoke the spell: “I am Domnu the spirit that moves in the abyss beyond time, My face is desire, my eyes sees all, my pain is loneliness, and my womb give birth to all, And my breast will feed the voided, For I am Domnu mother and bringer of life and bringer of death…