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Green Man mask Merry meet. Beltane celebrates life at the peak of spring. The earth is bursting with potential, passion, vitality, joy and fertility. It’s when Flora, the May Queen falls in love with the young Oak King, also known as Jack-In-The-Green and the Green Man, and they consummate their union. During celebrations, you often see men wearing a mask of green leaves. They can be made of dyed leather, papier mache and clay. Elaborate ones can cost more than $200. To prepare for your ritual, consider making one for $4 from the dollar store – or for free if you have the materials on hand. I started with a…

There are places around the world that not all would call *sacred*. I would hazard a guess that Witches and Pagans see the world differently than most, and would call sacred many things that the mundane world does not. Today, I write of two of them, both visited on a recent drive from FL back to my home in MA (US). You will notice that this column is mostly photographs, as they speak much louder than anything else I might say of these two magnificent places — gifts to us from the Goddess Gaia. All photographs were taken by Joe Stanley, Jr. and myself. The Angel Oak, South Carolina, US…

Art by: Boy So Blue Graphic Arts and photography With all the right wing and reactionary posts which have seeped into many pagan groups in this last year, I have been forced to reappraise my own position. I did not feel comfortable posting to pages that shared narrow-minded and bigoted views. I stepped back for a while and looked to my own beliefs. I realised that participation in group activities is not totally necessary to re-affirm our own personal stance. I turned my focus to what is important to me as an individual. I have friends from many mainstream religions and I detest Christian bashing as much as any other form…

Notes from the Apothecary: Birch Image: A silver birch from my own garden, hung with fat balls that feed birds and squirrels alike. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the birch the ‘Lady of the Woods’, and I am inclined to agree. I have always found this tree to have a very feminine presence. At a sacred wood that I visit from time to time, there is a crossroads of tracks and on one side there are great, old oaks, and on the other slender but gnarled, ancient birch trees. This place always feels like it is a meeting point for male and female energy. Not a point of balance exactly; more…

Spring Cleaning! First a quick chant to get you in the groove…..Thanks to Mid-Stride Moxie!   What better way to start a new season then with aromatic, healthy, safe ways to clean and fragrance your homes. Here are a few recipes to help you get started:   Mold Buster 2 teaspoons Tea Tree essential oil 2 Cups Water Add to a spray bottle, shake before using. Apply to mold and mildew, do not rinse off. Nothing works as well for mold and mildew as Tea Tree.   Scented Sheets to Help Sleep Sheets scented with Essential Oil of Lavender help to induce sleep. There are a few ways to accomplish this.…

  A Witch on a Celtic Path Celtic Triad: Three things to be avoided by the Wise: expecting the impossible, grieving over the irretrievable, fearing the inevitable. Witchcraft is often described as a new age religion, especially with the emergence of Wicca, the religious practice strongly associated with modern witchcraft, in the 20th Century. However, you only need to look as far as the nearest fairy tale anthology to realise the term witch has been with us for millennia, in many different forms. The Old English words wicce and wicca were used for female and male magical practitioners as far back as 890 CE. This shows us that witchcraft is…

When You Are Unable to See the Signs I don’t know about you, but I know this has happened to me and more than once – lay out a spread of Tarot cards or playing cards or some other divinatory devise – and nothing. Either the meanings elude you or the cards have no relation to one another or to the positions on which they landed or to the entire situation at hand. If this is just for me, I can just put it all away and wait for another day – when maybe I’ll be “seeing” a little more clearly – but if I am with a client, then…

Since we are at the time of the Spring Equinox and new growth, let’s talk about a Minor Arcana card that tells of new growth of the heart: the Three of Cups. The Three of Cups is a Minor Arcana card, so we know right away that the message offered by this card will most likely be more immediate in nature, or will most likely be connected to more day-to-day issues. The easiest way to get a decent understanding of a Minor Arcana card is to examine its number, or in the case of Court Cards, its rank, and to examine its suit. In this case, we are dealing with…

Offerings, Not Sacrifices Merry meet. People have jokingly asked me about what I sacrifice on my altar. Occasionally, the person isn’t joking. While a long involved response is not practical in a social setting, I wish to delve into the topic a bit in this column. To sacrifice means to give up. In that sense, I sacrifice money when I donate to a charity and I sacrifice sleep to spend late-night hours on the phone with a friend in need. An older meaning of sacrifice is to make sacred. When our ancestors dedicating something to the gods and goddesses during a ritual ceremony, such as a cow or a deer,…

                               WELCOME   ________________________________________________________________________________   In This Issue…     An Interview with Ellen Evert Hopman. Ellen is a druid, an herbalist, and a prolific author. She runs the Willow’s Grove shop through her website. She also runs a course in herbalism for those wanting to learn the marvellous powers of plants.     SpellCrafting: Spells & Rituals has information on  labyrinths they offer a sacred space for introspection. In the shape of a circle, it also holds magic.     Aromatic Life features Lemons. Lemons might seem an unlikely addition to the Witch’s armoury but they have a good…