-
Notes from the Apothecary
Notes from the Apothecary: Stinging Nettles Called nettles, stinging nettles, or common nettle, this jagged-leafed plant is a hardy little medicine cabinet packed with folklore and magic. Urtica Dioica is the scientific name for the most commonly recognised species, and it’s found all over the world in hedgerows, woodlands, and anywhere where there is space for it to grow. Gardeners may hate nettles for stinging their fingers unexpectedly when weeding, and anyone who has been out hiking in shorts knows what a nettle sting on the leg feels like! But these feisty and fierce “weeds” have more uses than you would imagine, and can easily be forgiven for…
-
MagickalArts
A New (Witch’s Year)! The Space of Integration Happy July and the Space of Integration Between…. We’ve just celebrated the Summer Solstice and now have an opportunity to rest in the weeks between before the next Sabbat of Lammas and the Autumnal Equinox. How we choose to use that time can serve us in unexpected ways and deepen what we have carried from our experiences of those previous Sabbats. In that spirit, I would like to invite you to just simply breathe into this month of July. This month is the pause before each inhalation and the fullness before each exhalation of breath. We can choose to…
-
Notes from the Apothecary
Notes from the Apothecary: The Orange Oranges: juicy, bright globes filled with vitamin C and sunshine. The orange is a citrus fruit that’s one of the most cultivated fruits in the world, and may have been cultivated by humans for around 2,500 years. The sweet orange as we know it today is a hybrid of mandarins and pomelos, and is very different from bitter oranges, the likes of which often line the streets of towns in Mediterranean countries. I once made the mistake of plucking and peeling a juicy looking orange while in Spain, only to have my mouth shrivelled by the intense bitterness! Sweet oranges, in comparison,…
-
The Sacred Spoon
Balancing Meals – Heart Chakra Vinegar Roasted Greens The heart chakra represents and manages love, compassion, understanding, patience, and above all empathy. A closed or blocked heart chakra can show itself as a lack of empathy, depression, anxiety, and stress. An open one helps us connect to nature and those around us. A well balanced heart chakra is important in our day to day life and helping your family have a balanced one should be of high importance for a happy and healthy home. In this recipe we have a lot of benefits for our loved ones. It is packed with vitamins A, B6, and C along with healing…
-
Bees in Folklore, Religion, and Superstition
This is an adapted extract of a video I did recently for Pagan Aid to help raise awareness of their campaign to raise money for Bees for Development, an organisation that helps some of the poorest communities in the world create livelihoods through beekeeping. You can view the original video here. There are over 250 species of bee in the UK and around 4,000 native species in the United States. Even humble bumblebees have at least 24 separate species, from orange and black red-tailed bumblebees to the classic white, yellow, and black tree bumblebees. However, it’s the honeybee that gets the most attention, generally, when it comes to…
-
Peeking in the Shadows: Crafting a Book of Shadows and Light
This month continues a series of exploration about Our Relationship to the Divine…. Our Relationship to the Divine Part Two: WHO Calls to Me? …. The Divine flows within me. The Limitless All supports me. All Beings of Spirit and Essence are my teachers. I AM the corporeal out-picturing of the Divine’s desire… When we approach Deity through ritual, devotion or meditation it is with the understanding that there is no need for an intercessor or intermediary for they are both within and without our spectrum of experience. With that being said, however, there is still the need for respect and continued efforts at establishing a working relationship…
-
The Sacred Spoon
Balancing Meals – Throat Chakra Blueberry Lemon Pie The throat chakra controls our ability to express ourselves and live our truth. An unbalanced throat chakra may express itself in an inability to speak one’s mind, even when offered a platform to do so. Also creative issues such as writer’s block, or not having the wherewithal to work on an art project. In family settings this can be witnessed as a child backing away from a club they’re just not feeling into right now or a spouse procrastinating a work project when they’re usually very strict about a timeline. Even something as seemingly small as your child not writing…
-
Notes from the Apothecary
Notes from the Apothecary: Lilac Lilac is a flowering shrub in the olive family, Oleaceae, cultivated in many parts of the world including all across Europe and North America. Robust spikes of delicate yet strongly scented flowers come in colours ranging from purples and pinks through to blues and whites. I’ve been writing Notes from the Apothecary for over 6 years now, and some months I struggle to think of a plant that’s magical, seasonal, and of interest to our readers worldwide. I had no such struggle this month, thanks to the wonderful fragrance that stopped me in my tracks as I was out playing with my 3-year-old…
-
MagickalArts
A New (Witch’s Year)! Summer Solstice 2021 Welcome the Summer Solstice! Welcome the Longest Day! Welcome the Inner Journey with a Ritual of Awakening… I usually craft a personal working for the solstices and the equinoxes using the solar energies as the continuous energetic thread. Below is a simple ritual that you may use to celebrate the Solstice as an awakening to and reaffirming of the solar energies that are part of our inherent make-up. Each of the workings I do serves to enliven and increasingly strengthen the solar current. It is this current that I use for energetic protocol and workings. And, it is this current that…
-
Peeking in the Shadows: Crafting a Book of Shadows and Light
This month begins a series of exploration about Our Relationship to the Divine…. Our Relationship to the Divine Part One: In Search of the Divine …. The Divine flows within me. The Limitless All supports me. All Beings of Spirit and Essence are my teachers. I AM the corporeal out-picturing of the Divine’s desire… A shared goal of seekers on any spiritual path is that of revealing the Divine. What the definition of that word – “Divine” – is carries the weight of personal perception, experience and what we have learned from our community, society as a whole and observation of an interface of communing that resonates…