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Notes from the Apothecary
Notes from the Apothecary Special: Five Antiviral Plants to Eat at Home *Disclaimer: Eating any amount of plants and herbs cannot protect you entirely from catching any sort of illness. Healthy eating is great and boosts your immune system but should complement, not replace, good hygiene, prescribed medication, and safe social distancing measures where appropriate. Take a holistic approach to your well-being and always follow guidelines from medical practitioners and qualified experts. Stay safe! Even prior to the current pandemic, there has been a lot of scientific research into what sort of plants might have significant antiviral properties. Antiviral plants are plants which help boost your body’s…
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“Self-Love Ritual for When You Don’t Get It Right the First Time” An Excerpt from The Junior Witch’s Handbook by Nikki Van De Car
Fulfillment will never be achieved without some failure along the way. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be all that fulfilling, would it? Failure is an integral part of the process of reaching satisfaction and happiness. That doesn’t mean it’s a pleasant experience. Whenever we fail at something—and particularly when it’s something we really want to be good at—it hurts. We feel all kinds of emotions, and may decide that this failure along our journey means that we’re not good at this, that we’re never going to be good at this, and, sometimes, that’s there’s something wrong with us because we weren’t successful this time. Sometimes it helps to…
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WitchCrafting: Crafts for Witches
Easy DIY Floating Candles Merry meet. I like using floating candles on my altar because I know the water will prevent a fire – and because they emit an enchanting light. Yes, you can buy them, but crafting them is easy using a variety of objects: walnut shells, many seashells, bottle caps, a mini muffin pans, vintage tart tins. The easiest way to make them is to melt tea lights by placing them on an electric coffee cup warmer. Once the wax is liquid, move the wick from the tea light to the middle of the mold, and carefully pour the melted wax into the walnut shell, clam shell,…
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Witch & Popcorn
Indian Horse Years ago, I was a tour guide at a place called The Olentangy Indian Caverns in Delaware, Ohio. It’s a small cavern, and so the tour script had to be good. We could not just take people on a LONG walk underground for an hour. You can walk the whole thing is five minutes- not counting the breathless climb back to the top! After being hired, the first thing we were given was our employee handbook, and tour script. We could not give tours until we demonstrated to a staff person we knew that script. I realized, after doing this for a few Summers on my…
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Retha’s Crystal Reflections
How Can My Crystals Support Me Now? I was going to write this months column on something completely different, then I thought….instead of suggesting new crystals to try, maybe sharing some tips on how to work more with the crystal allies you already have would be a better route to take. With the way the world has drastically changed over the last couple months, many are on very limited budgets, and many can’t purchase new tools right now. That’s OKAY. You don’t need any funds for sparkly new crystals (unless you can afford them- and if so, ROCK on!) As long as you have a piece of quartz, you are…
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Video Book Review – Your Goddess Year: A Week-by-Week Guide To Invoking The Divine Feminine by Skye Alexander
Video Book Review Your Goddess Year A Week-by-Week Guide To Invoking The Divine Feminine by Skye Alexander 224 Pages Learn more about why this book is a must have in this special video book review by Robin Fennelly. Enjoy! Your Goddess Year: A Week-by-Week Guide to Invoking the Divine Feminine on Amazon *** About the Author: Robin Fennelly is a Third Degree Initiate within The Assembly of the Sacred Wheel Tradition and serves as High Priestess of Coven of the Mystic Path, the 12th Coven within the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel Tradition. She teaches and facilitates classes for the Pagan Experience Study Group that serves as foundation for membership within Coven of…
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So Mote it Be
The first time I saw a honey locust tree, I was both intrigued and terrified. Three-inch thorns poked out from around the trunk of the tree at all angles. Near the bottom, you couldn’t see the tree trunk at all for all the thorns. There was no way anything was going to harm this tree! I walked up to it and gently touched a thorn. It was extremely sharp, but it wiggled under my touch, so I pulled a little. It popped off the tree and landed in my palm, as if it was a gift. I wiggled a few more thorns, and though most were firmly attached, the tree…
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Jazz’s Needle
BElieve in YOUrself (and the struggles I had) This is my first submission for a crafty needlework article and I almost started over as this project was not my favourite since I had many struggles with it, but the one I chose kept telling me to believe in myself, and so I persevered and finished it. I will walk you through the process and my obstacles and end with the finished item. My next one will be a very pagan one as I have already started designing the pattern to stitch and am looking forward to being able to actually show off my stitching ability. I feel like even though…
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GoodGod!
Meet the Gods: Babalú–Ayé Babalú–Ayé, the God of Healing in Santerian practice and Yoruba religion, is an Orisha. God checker.com describes an Orisha as “a spirit cocktail with a slice of saint and a tiny dash of divinity for flavor.” A few – including Babalú–Ayé – were worshiped as gods. Babalú-Ayé translates to “Father, Lord of the Earth.” What began with a single tribe in Nigeria spread to many tribes all along Africa’s western coast. He is closely associated with infectious diseases, and healing the physical body, wealth and possessions. In West Africa, smallpox, Ebola, leprosy, influenza and HIV/AIDS epidemics are affiliated with him. He works to combat…
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Celebrating the Old Ways in New Times
Celebrating the Old Ways in New Times for June 2020 (pic by AmberAvalona on pixabay.com) Bright Blessings! Believe it or not, it will be Summer Solstice before we know it! What warmer weather we are having that at this time a month ago! Many of us will be merrily working away at our gardens! For me, having pulled a raised bed, I won’t be planting as much- and I learned a very ugly truth meaning I might not plant hardly anything at all. I still live in the condos- truthfully, we may be stuck here as long as another year- if not longer. Long boring story- sigh. Normally,…