Hours of the Tide: Hypatia's Day

Hours of the Tide: Hypatia's Day

Monday, March 10, 2025

“Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.”- Plato

Educators are my heroes.  They are my family.  I work for them, in higher education institutions.  In my daily life, I spend most of my time surrounded by students and educators, facilitating and organizing their operations.  I value the service of education-- any form of it, more than almost any other service.  Education is one of the nobler pursuits, and a benefit to humanity.  Access to it, by anyone and everyone, should be a social obligation.  It should be a ritual we never forget.  Not just for ourselves and the future generations, but for everyone who suffered in the name of accessible education.

Hypatia of Alexandria’s story is a misunderstood but tragic one. I honor her day not because of some wild narrative about her being the 'oyster-flayed martyr of pagans'.  She wasn’t.  She was by all accounts a pious, respected, middle-aged, Neo-Platonist scholar, orator and philosopher who taught maths and astronomical sciences in the open to people of different classes and religions.  She was bludgeoned with rooftiles and burned due to her affiliations and associations with controversial social and political figures of the time.  She was collateral damage caught in the religious and political ignorance of the burgeoning Christian unrest around her.  Hypatia is closer to a martyr of intellectuals and educators.  Of those who were charitable and creative and wise, caught living in an ignorant time and place.  And those who suffer from guilt by association.  And those who are wrongfully humiliated.  And those who abhor mobs and adore math.  And those crushed under the oppressive wheel of Abrahamic religion.  A far deeper role than ‘pagan saint’.

Hypatia represents the consequences of education in the face of political upheaval and mob zealotry.  She represents the cruelty that befalls the innocent when ego, religion, toxicity and anti-intellectualism take hold of groups… or entire lands.  Like right now.  We are seeing the same rotten corruption gnaw at the peace of the world around us.  We are seeing a rise in hatefulness for the charitable.  Hatred against those who provide humanitarian aid. Hatred against simple arithmetic and recorded history.  We are in a land that is returning to a flat-earth; where sticks turn to snakes and the sun stands still and those who do good work are least respected.  And are crucified for it.  Sounds... familiar.

There is a sickness to finding pleasure in an echo-chamber.  Especially an insidiously anti-humanitarian, pro-greed campaign to strip and mine the land like parasites feasting on flesh.  I don't know what it will mean to the generations to come to be so deprived of progress and forward-thinking in such a swift move, but I believe that the wheel of this cycle has long been turning, and always will.  Did Hypatia wonder, in her last, fearful moments, if the violent, bigoted mob before her would ever come to see reason?  Well, they didn't.  Her world, like ours, was one overridden with angry, fearful, hateful people who do not truly understand what suffering they bring into this world.  I hope to see the pendulum swing back.  Or maybe see the string cut.

“If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.”- Epicurus

I wonder if Hypatia’s ghost rubs her forehead in frustration and laments, “Do these fools ever learn?”  I’d say she died because the powerful, self-interested, ignorant always seem to win.  Because the separation of church and state should be a divide so deep a sea could fill it.  Because blind faith makes even good people follow evil men, and sanctify and justify those evils without knowing what they do.  Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding, as Henry Drummond so eloquently says.  Today I am grateful that ignorance could not destroy the legacy of intellectuals like Hypatia.  The fact that we’ve been educated on her existence is proof that the preservation of knowledge continues onwards.  Will we fail her, in this generation, by, going backwards?  By burning heretics and witches and midwives?

"We can be true to her memory only if we recognize the life she led as well as the death she suffered."- Edward J. Watts

So, in Hypatia’s spirit, go forth and protest.  Teach.  Teach.  Teach.    Walk unafraid knowing what brutality awaits the thinking man.  Teach; with rationality and reason, with openness and scrutiny, with peer-reviews and primary sources-- whatever it is you have to offer.  Indulge your curiosity and stop to listen to the teachers today.  Teach every soul you can reach who can hear you.  Offer it freely.  Rebel against the mob and keep the knowledge flowing.

Waxing Moon in Leo.  Moon's Day.  Sun in Picses.

Books that have been stimulating my mind:

• Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher- Edward J. Watts
• The Hanging Gardens of Babylon- Stephanie Dalley
• Inherit the Wind- Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee
• Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others- Stephanie Dalley
• How to Win Friends and Influence People- Dale Carnegie
• The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way- Sara Ahmed
  
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind- Yuval Noah Harari
• The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined- Steven Pinker
• Orphic Hymns

Read more »

Hours of the Tide: Valentine's & the American Love Witch's Altar

Hours of the Tide: Valentine's & the American Love Witch's Altar

Monday, February 17, 2025

From the Book of Work

Not long ago, they say,

Love magics were commonly referred to as 

projects, fortunes and tricks

They are sweet and spicey and seductive

They are prickly, piercing and poisonous

In colors warm, wild, rich or mild

The hours of this work is midnight

On Fridays and Mondays

Under full moons, and in total darkness

in bedrooms, basements, groves and cellars

And done on any holy day-- Hallows and May Day are best.

The tools of arte are apples, mirrors, figure-candles and combs; cups, dolls, pins, roses and heart-shaped leaves and winding wools, love roots, shears and elixirs; eggs, handkerchiefs and some foot-tracks; love-herbs, drugged wine and perfume, spellbooks and lodestones, diamond rings-- and sweetening jars full of sugar or honey.

The mirror is the center; all work before her is great;

capture moonlight in her and shine her on a lover to ensnare them;

eat an apple before the mirror as you comb your hair.  At the ninth stroke, the visions begin.

The tracks and tacks will avert, the wool and lodestone will draw,

the wine will entangle, the sweet jar will persuade and the elixir will arouse;

the apple and comb-- these are conduits,

and the egg or the ring are diviner's tools-- with water as their vessel,

But the mirror-- ever the center, all work before her is great.

Like the merfolk and Venus knew very well;

the mirror reflects more than love and beauty;

it portends danger, shows you your heart’s desire,

and catches souls.

Read more »

A Charm Against Growing Rot

A Charm Against Growing Rot

Sunday, February 2, 2025

 

Should a great disease of disruption,

a rotten smell of corruption,

arise around your countrymen,

who let this feral evil in;

and now your neighbors flee their home,

again to somewhere else to roam,

and these traitors to Liberty's words,

are acting like entitled turds;

weave a charm to help your homies--

to hide them from the slave hunters and their cronies.

Remember who made this country free;

and bind all facists, so shall it be.

• Fennel (seed or pollen)
• Powdered or crushed oregano
• Black mustard seed
• Eucaluptus root fed on florida water for 9 nights of the waning moon
• A folded prayer of some kind
• In blue flannel
• With a red eye, exed out with red thread
• Annointed in bergamont oil, keep away oil
• Blessed on the altar, fed words of escape and subversion
• Hidden in the home or car of the needy
  
  
• United States folk magic against jackboots their ilk
• For anyone interested these kinds of projects for any particular reason.  This charm is about connection.  Make it with a friend.  It is not a sheild; it is a reminder-- of something beautiful, fragrant and warm-- the human experience.  Let it be that and pour your hospitality into every stitch.

Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic by Catherine Yronewode

Read more »

Hours of the Tide: Hag's Night

Hours of the Tide: Hag's Night

Saturday, December 14, 2024

The Hag of Winter;

In all her terrible beauty

rides on wind and night--

with hoard and host, and hunt

and unholy sight

She the Witch Queen,

Lady of the Hill,

and wife to the frost;

A night,

A light,

To honor your ride.

Hag's night in my path takes place on December 11th-- but I hadn't time to post on that day.  I've been avoiding my duties for a while.  Part of me feels like I have to be woken up.  Jolted.  Taken from comfort and thrust into the cold.  On a creative level at least.

I'm so asleep.  Escaping.  But always, right under the surface-- an incessant desire to create something... or I suppose, express something.  Art, of course, is one of the most common and accessable forms of magic and can conjure, dispell, invoke or abjure as we see fit.  Art will transfix or trick the eye; it will outrage with fury and flame, or evoke wonder and stillness.  It is a powerful magic that anyone and everyone can do and had wild effect.  Remember that when in doubt.  It's magic.

Think on this in the dark, when the hag comes riding.  Think of all you could create... and fly with it.

Read more »

Pistols and Pokeberry

Pistols and Pokeberry

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

"Moonshot" by Via Hedera, 2024

Guns and witches have history.  These weapons were supposed to have been used to fire shots of silver or hair at our familiars or our shadow-selves.   These silver bullets or supposed hair-balls were thought to combat witch-dogs, witch-turkeys, witch-hogs and witch-hares.  Pokeberry would take care of the bewitched hog, while silver was a good remedy for a hare or a doe.  Asafoetida (Satan’s weed) and barleycorns are both referenced in the Frank C. Brown collection for their disenchantment capabilities over firearms, and needles with lye loaded into a gun were intended to do the same.  Or, if one needed to get rid of a bewitchment, they could draw the witch or write her/his name on a tree, or on a paper shaped like a heart, and then shoot the image itself, or with a witch-bullet (a type of apotropaic hairball, see more here).

"To the witch was ascribed the tremendous power of inflicting strange and incurable diseases, particularly on children, of destroying cattle by shooting them with hair-balls, and a great variety of other means of destruction; of inflicting spells and curses on guns and other things,--" -Cross, Tom Peete. Witchcraft in North Carolina (p. 9). [Chapel Hill] : The University. Kindle Edition. 

I’ve hesitated to discuss guns in folk magic because they aren’t a part of my lifestyle.  Not volentarily at least.  It never feels like the right time you know?  Because of all of the mass shootings.  Because of the outright threats against public figures and private citizens.   Because of the unease the clockwork of these events brings in my specific country.   I support my country’s constitution and value the art of weaponry deeply, but I also grew up Southern California in the early 90’s…  Violence, especially gun violence, was a source of terror for me frequently as a child.  I even had little rhymes I had made up to help me feel safe, ones I still say to myself when I hear that dreadful clap in the night. It’s just another tool of blood and war magic—which I suppose I appreciate, but all the same, not my personal tool of passion. Or magic.

When it comes to our folklore and the folk magic of liberty, protection and steadfastness, a pistol or a rifle is one of our magical and spiritual tools—like it or not.  And on another note— Southern and Southeastern USA folklore does have more than its fair share of charms regarding the creation of a witch through shooting a silver bullet at the full moon.  I’m not saying it’s how we make witches… but it is one of our strange ways.  It is specific to us.  We climb to hilltops and shoot through handkerchiefs at a full moon to become servants of the Man-in-Black and his jaybird.  I touch on a bit in my book, and I encourage you to embrace the facinating notion that firearms are intrinsically linked to our cultural history so also our witchlore.

I have a deep respect for people who hunt their food and defend themselves; I suppose that’s what I always hoped guns would be used for; practical purposes.  I grew up with ethical hunters; folks who used every icky and squishy part and never took more than their pantry freezer and the shelf date could withstand.  We regularly got gator and elk from cousins when there was enough to share, and damn was it good.  My perspective has long been ecocentric and respectful to the system as I see it.  It’s the violence between us humans I find so distasteful and terrifying.  I see the art in sharp-shooting, in weaponry-enthusiasm, engineering, in the history of liberty behind the weapon, the beautiful mechanics of this revolutionary tool and the practical applications it's brought into our lives.  A weapon of liberty and opression; it's quite the nuanced matter.

American hero Lt. Holloman's modified M1911 pistol; with a “sweetheart".  On loan, Tukwila WA: Museum of Flight

The human need for apotropaic charms are a deep and personal interest to me;  a unifying force shared and syncretic between so many culutres and peoples.  Who knew that guns have a lot to do with magic, and with witches?  Guns were used to shoot silver bullets at the images of witches or at haunted cattle, they could be bewitched by one touch from a witch.  The Frank C. Brown collections, Journals of American Folklore and a few of the general folklore collections of the 20^th century have a bit to say about guns and witches, surprisingly.  According to these sources, guns were especially prone to witch-tampering.  So, I suppose I see why practictioners of old would want to learn some basic gun-bewitching, for their own sake and that of their friends, family and familiars.  

We witches had a knack for quelling gun violence I suppose.  Our ancestors often thought it was in the nature of charmers, bewitchers, enchanters, witches, sorcerers or conjure folk alike to pass their hands over guns and cause them to misfire, or otherwise faulter in some way.  In some cases, these suposed rifle-hexers would bewitch a gun so that it could fire at no beast (likely because witches move in or are served by animal-shaped familiars and as it happens, there are plenty of tales Southern U.S tales of a hare or rabbit catching a bullet and a suspected witch being found with a corresponding wound in place of the hare).  Witch-men and witch-women would mutter simple hexes or other incantations to make a gun useless to hunters.  Even a witch in one’s presence might make the weapon ineffective to fire.  Likewise, one simple charm referenced in Brown's collecion references a wife who was reported to cause her husband’s gun to fail by knotting the corners of her apron.

Witches could reportedly also bless a gun or charm it to never miss as well.  Luck played a large role in the matter of North American gunlore I’ve found; the idea that the capricious spirits of the world could make this weapon powerful or useless seemed to be of some worry to some of the common folk.

Notable Gun Auspices: reported in Popular Beliefs and Superstitions: A Compendium of American Folklore: Ohio edited by W. Hand

• To dream of firearms means trouble
• Bad luck to point an empty gun and bad luck to look down the barrel
• Stepping over a rifle is bad luck (especially a woman doing so, apparently)
• Good luck to fire a shot before hunting
• Save your first shell for good luck
• Blood of the first kill blesses the barrel
• Some would bullets before loading for luck
• Running water and silver shot will rid the weapon of witching

To Make a Gun Useless: reported in the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore Vol: VII: [7904]

• Brown’s bit of Illinois folklore claims that a gun can be enchanted through a tree-knotting spell.  A hickory sapling or withe is tied into a knot by the charmer in the name of the devil, and the gun was not to operate until the knot was undone.
• One can enchant another’s gun by taking a bullet from the gun, tying it with string and hanging it from a willow over a stream where it will shake in the stream.  As it’s kicked about by the water, the gun was supposed to become shaky and waiver until the bullet is untied.  Again, this hex is done in the name of the devil.
• To rid a gun of bewitchment however, it was reported that allowing the water from a stream to pass through the barrel would wash the witching away.

Gun Bewitching: reported in Daniels' Encyclopedia of Susperstisions, folkflore and the occult sciences of the world

• To Prevent Every Person from Hitting the Target- Put a splinter of wood which has been hit by a thunder bolt behind the target. No person will be able to hit such a target. 

• To Cause Rifles or Muskets to Miss Fire- Speak these words: Afa, Afca, Nostra, when you are able to look into the barrel of some person's gun and it will fail to discharge; but if you desire it to give fire, recall these words backward.

• To Prevent a Person from Firing a Gun While You are Looking into the barrel- pronounce the words: Pax Sax Sarax.

Firearm magic has an unsettling wildness and indirectness to it despite the very art of it being aimed and intentional.  Typically, a blade swung is with focus and with great limitation.  But a gun… One second of time passes and lifetimes are changed irrevocably.  I suppose that's why I'm facinated by the natural way that we as humans have used magical practices as a rebellion and reaction against this very tool of rebelion and reaction.  The way we merge our natural and unnatural fears with our spirituality and creatre tools meant to avert evil, facinates my restless mind.  Spiritual and physical protection-- how do we change as we percieve it?  What power comes of it?  The metaphysical potential of protection magic against any weapon, or the use of hexing-magic to prevent the operation of weapons is a part of that fabric of New World folklore so many of us are working to preserve and restore-- the actions and reactions of time and change.  I make no commentary on what this means in our social climate.  I'll keep muttering my protective charms and wishing for a kinder world.

Correspondences of Gun magics:

• Realm: Hilltops, graveyards, homesteads, woodlands, battlefields
• Elements: All (fire in spirit and air in travel, water to purify and restore, born of earth)
• Sphere: Mars, Luna
• Moon: Full
• Metal & Stone: Silver, lead, galena
• Apotropaic herbarium: Hickory, wllow, asofoteda, barley, pokeberry
• Animal associations: Rabbits, hares, hogs, deer, hounds
• Colors: Gunmetal grey, matte black, blood red
• Symbols: Hearts, skulls, stars, crosses, prohibition sign (circle with slash)
• Gifts: Rebellion, opression, survival, violence, choice, consequence, steadfastedness
• Annointing: Blood of the first kill, kiss from the owner, hickory lye, streamwater, silver, hair

-Cross, Tom Peete. Witchcraft in North Carolina
-Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore
-Daniels, Cora L. Encyclopedia of Susperstisions, folkflore and the occult sciences of the world
-Botkins, B.A. Treasury of Southern Folklore
-Hand, Wayland D. Popular Beliefs and Superstitions: A Compendium of American Folklore: Ohio

Read more »

Hours of the Tide: The Feast of First Grains

Hours of the Tide: The Feast of First Grains

Friday, August 2, 2024

You'll all be toasted tea soon enough.

And food for the dead, the devil, the dark.

And all traditions will pass onwards.

As they do.

I was never big on Lughnasa and Lammas; they aren't big parts or even really known parts of my culture and are not part of my regional celebrations, but, the Feast of Grains, High Summer and the Feast of Bread and Roses all occur at this time of year, and so it gives me something much like the bread-tide to look forward to.  

This year, I grew my first ancient grain garden, specifically in the name of the Harvest Mother.  Amaranth, barley, wheat, oat, poppy.  They grew small, but well, and this first harvest is just the offering portion.  

I wonder what the equinox will bring...

Amaranthus Day

Waters of blessing.

Grain of the eternal beloved..

Blade of death.

Flame of life.

Oh mother grain, may we honor the dead and feed the living.

Read more »

Hours of the Tide: Thieves' Night

Hours of the Tide: Thieves' Night

Thursday, July 25, 2024

Sin-mother of sharpers and shylocks, sharks and showmen.

She is the Headless One, and all schemers love her,

She has no qualms, or troubled thoughts for those that come to bother.

Gambler

Thiever

Cheater

Deceiver

On this dark night, we built your altar.

We made an offering at your shrine;

of stolen coins and drugged wine.

A knife for the threat, a key if you're slick;

Loot from a bet, cards for the trick.

All I ask is you keep the ne'r do-wells from me,

And if I'm the swindler, let me get away free.

Or as Leland recounted in the Gospel of Witches:
"O Goddess Laverna,
Give me the art of cheating and deceiving,
of making men believe that I am just,
holy, and innocent! Extend all darkness
and deep obscurity over my misdeeds."

Read more »

Fireweed. Willowherb. Healer. Herald.

Fireweed. Willowherb. Healer. Herald.

Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Fire. Morning/Midday. Midsummer. Masc/Fem. Mars/Venus. Warrior.  Healer.  Sky-reacher.  Herald of summer..  A pink syrup.  A violet dye.  A brownish/beige tea.  A calm after a fire.  A rage of color after a stormy season.  Standing tall, and blooming in an upward spiral towards father sky.  A clock for summer and the witches who trace their paths by the change in the land as the sun and moon do their dance.

Fireweed/Willowherb syrup. (true color).  

I have come to regard fireweed highly. She is the herald of Midsummer in my region; growing tall, proud and plentiful wherever she likes. For the last few years I've taken up making candied flowers, syrups, teas and tinctures of her.  But syrup, especially mixed with a little honey and served on plain vanilla ice cream, is a favorite.  I harvest her from my own rain garden where she constantly tries to overshadow my Ficus and rush-- she longs to touch the Venus at the center of the Venusian rain garden. She is passionate and belongs where loving and clawing things grow.

In my work, her element is fire, her tide is morning and Midsummer, her moon is whenever, her nature is Venusian and Martian, and she follows strife with hope; balances grief with remembrance, and brings a wild healing to her every touch.  She is famine food in the PNW and is known to bring the fire of life to the dying. She ever reaches to the sky. Flame and Wind. She is respected here. 

Does willowherb play a part in your work come summer?

The syrup recipe is same as my spring sweet violet recipe; lemon, water, sugar, a handful of fresh flower -- balanced right? Four elements.  In other ways as well: earth grows the herb, which is boiled in water, over a fire and requires a good deal of time in the cooling air to achieve color harmony.

Give her 13 (witching) hours still in a warm dark place (like an unused oven) and bottle her up.  Keep in the fridge about 3 weeks.  Some folks have a sensitive stomach to the plant so be weary if you're knew to her. Especially if making tea from the leaf.

Read more »

Hours of the Tide: Fortune's Day

Hours of the Tide: Fortune's Day

Monday, June 24, 2024

 

It's Fortuna's day.  Specifically, the Roman goddess.  But I admit, Fortuna didn't keep her old clothes when she crossed the pond.  Like all the gods who came to America, she transformed a bit.  Fortuna, these days, is usually just called Lady Luck.   The personification of fickle fortune and the blind wheel that turns all our times.  We will rule, we rule, we have ruled, and we do not rule again.  That is her law, that is her way-- and it's natures way because that is simply the way of things.  Luck isn't fair and Fortune favors at random, no matter what the old adage says, because life and nature and the cosmos isn't fair.  She may wink at the bold, but whom she favors is a mystery eternal.  

Much like Lady Justice and Liberty in the post-Classical age, Fortuna also personified in the divine feminine here in the West as simply "Luck" or "Fortune".  And like Justicia and Libertas-- the old Roman divine personifications of those very concepts, her image is an established part of our own short history, culture and mythos.  We pray to them without knowing it sometimes.  We hold these concepts as gospel sometimes.  Even Christian judges will have a statue of Justice in their hall, with her sword ready and her scales held high.  Luck's name is ubiquitous with wealth, gain, fear and loss.  There are songs about her.  There are rituals for her.  Are Fortuna and Lady luck the same entity?  Depends on your point of view. My culture derived the concept of Lady Luck from the Roman Fortuna so that's how I've always seen her.

Lady Luck, she's an obvious favorite of mine.  I am particularly fond of entities which personify very specific subject; and when those personifications cross seas and interweave with cultures and metamorphosis with the tides of time, they create these incredible stories.  Lady Luck as a general concept is a globally popular one, and is different anywhere you go.  

In the States, Lady Luck is a blind broad tossing coins, spinning a wheel and making asses of us all for our hubris-- or sometimes-- blessing us with blind gain.  She could be your best mate or your worst foe.  Truth is she's neither.  Ever.  She has many modern temples; they're called Casinos and her names are uttered in every single one with plea and ploy. We drink to her and toast to her beauty and grace.  Or, we catharsis by cursing her name and her very existence.  She doesn't care either way. She has dedicated sacred sites too, where pilgrims march by the millions annually; Los Vegas, Atlantic City.  Men and women beg and plead for her.  They blow over dice and pray over cards.  They grip their tickets in madness and zealotry. I attend services at the local temple on occasion; BINGO night and slots mostly.  She seems especially blind to me at the poker table.

And for others, those who do not worship by gambling, she simply whispers and nods.  For those ones, Lady Luck is that desperate wait for a promotion.  Or she is that hope that one's teenager will pass their driving test.  Or that joyous feeling on a wedding day when the sacred contract is made (one of her older domains of protection).   

Sometimes she stills the wheel, sometimes she spins it madly.  She's an idea of something we can almost grasp, that we may grasp, that we have grasped, and that we may never grasp again.  Sum Sine Regno and all that jazz.  So, on this tide, I honor Fortuna yet again; with honeyed milk and fresh poppies, with wheat grains and barley, with coins and companions.  All I ask is that you smile a little on me, while I reign, until I cannot reign again.

Read more »

Hours of the Tide: The Feast of Hares

Hours of the Tide: The Feast of Hares

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Another Pink moon rises, and with it, the feast of rabbits and hares.  Sadly, the pickins' were slim this year and I just didn't feel the need or desire to do my flower fry.   I don't even know why.  I walked with the fields and flowers, and even picked a few for the altar, enjoying the sense of sacrifice.  But when I got home, the tide felt... less food-oriented and more about transitions.

From the Feast of Hares through the end of Floralia is my "flower feast tide"-- usually an ideal time for some of the best spring edibles in my area.  But instead of physical eating, I feasted on the sense of growth and beauty I feel around me in my personal work-room.  In my lovely green-and-pink witching-room, my kniolas black Ipomoea moonflowers grow.  Small, lovely, and ever so brief.  They live a day to enjoy the moon and sun, and then pass as if they had never been there.  I won't get a new generation from these indoor blooms, but the incredibly feminine, passionate, gripping power they bring into my space has been quite a learning experience..

I took time to garden; transitioning pots to the outdoors to catch the fresh new rain to come.  And I sat with my rabbits; Bosley and Sherman.  They reminded me of the warmth and kindness and change around me.  So, they got a little but of fresh green oat and barley grass from my Holy Grains garden.  A quiet tide with family-- loved ones.  My commitment to observance of hours and tides continues, even challenged by my own lazy will in the midst of all this sadness, war, anger, change...  I keep to the hours.

My newest venture with fellow witchy-people has really helped me recuperate my sense of socialization.  I really love Lisa and Tania for that.  Shout out to Coleman of Dark Exact Tarot for linking us magical folk together.  It's cold out here in the Northwest, I'm blessed to have found such warmth with you all.  May the rise of the Floralia, Walpurgis, Beltane and May Day be everything you need, and bring every bit of fire that warms me.

Read more »

Oh, Fortuna

Oh, Fortuna

Saturday, April 20, 2024

Luck, Be a Lady Tonight

Luck, let a gentleman see

Just how nice, how nice a dame you can be

I know the way you've treated other guys you've been with

Luck be a lady with me.
-F. Loesser, American Lyrical Magician

The only answer...

No matter who you are, who matter where you are from, I wish you the blind favor of Fortune and the friendly company of the lucky toad.  Wherever you are; may Luck be a kind lady to you.  She, for all my faults, has been kind to me.  She is Venus's dearest friend after all; my Deydez, my passionate, Glittering Star of Virtue.  My sphere of birth.

Fortune.  She has blessed me with a life fairer that many.  Fortune, along with The World Soul works with the Fates themselves to weave the holy theatrics of our lives and deaths, and rebirths.  Fickle, and unflattered.

For about 25 years, I've dedicated  portion of my practice to acknowledging the Fates, Fortunes and Ways-Between-- in particular because I am a Diviner and no great feat of Fortune should go unpaid.  Oh, Fortuna.  Be kind.  To a world blind and stumbling, peek beneath your sash and wink at the down trodden, seen just low, where you lift the fold a bit.  Oh please, smile on them, the many, the majority, who sit beleaguered and unseen.  Oh you, who winks at the soil and those rooted deeply there, or buried there; please smile, and drop thy coins in flagrant disregard of sister Fate's plan.  Smile upon the souls of the World, beloved by Hekate, and take that precious moment to smile.

O Fortuna

velut luna

statu variabilis,

semper crescis

aut decrescis;

vita detestabilis

nunc obdurat

et tunc curat

ludo mentis aciem,

egestatem,

potestatem

dissolvit ut glaciem
-Orff

Read more »

Winterlore: In Memoriam: A Drunk Witch

Winterlore: In Memoriam: A Drunk Witch

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Night-flyer by Via Hedera
linocut stamp

 An Ode  to Phoebe Ward

by Via Hedera

Bitch.  I wana be you.
You fun, son of a gun.
Gutter queen,
often seen
making bulls flee, way over the hagerleen.
Through a hole, over a creek;
Inspire the bold and scare the meek.
Ride men, drink sin.
By Satan below,
with his fiery glow;
I wana be you
Before I go.

You know what I love most about folklore, fairytales and fables?  The sense of identification we find with the figures we discover.  For some, the idea of a witch and the legend surrounding them means more than the facts, and over time, what is fact and fiction simply becomes folklore, legend or myth. I spend most of my time combing books.  I collect and hoard them, and I read them day in and day out taking notes on everything I find of any interest. As the cold wanes, I hunker down into my books even deeper and enjoy the stories and tales that help pass the time as we wait for the sun's return.

“It is known that she was a woman of bad morals.”

I have to say, I really love falling in love with a folktale witch.  Cross recounted a tale of the supposed Northampton Witch of North Carolina, Miss Phoebe Ward in the Journal of American Folklore, and it was later picked up and further distributed through the Green, Brown and Hand collections, giving it some popularity.  This folk narrative was highlighted in Elizabeth A. Lay’s folk superstition drama/theater piece When Witches Ride: A Play of Folk Superstition.  Supposedly, this 19th century witch was famed for the misfortune she brought to those who turned her away, (like the fairy from Beauty & the Beast), and embodied much of the superstition we love about witches here in the West.

What I liked about the witch in this narrative was that she represents the best aspects of witchery; this unashamed, unpredictable, cunning creature who could be near death in the freezing cold and still charm a man into giving her booze and a fire to sit by.  The idea of this woman engenders affection in me.  The tale says that she died very old, surrounded by a life of scandal and superstition, fear and fable.  I want to go out like that.

Phoebe was a beggar, an old woman, presumably a white American person, possibly a traveler, who made her living off of the rare charity of others.  The account states that the general atmosphere around her was fearful and negative; with people said to need to perform all acts of inhospitality in order to get her away from their homes where she was well-known to overstay her welcome.  People were seemingly quite cruel to this old beggar woman, sticking pins in the chairs they offered her and burning foul odors to drive her away- this was done using pepper, an old remedy for driving away evil spirits, devils and witches, and I suppose, poor old women.

"Through thick, through thin, way over in the hagerleen"

The transformative skin-slipper is very much the quintessential new world witch motif of old, a definite throwback to the most classic fears regarding witchcraft that happen to be shared across cultures (as magical concepts are want to do).  I find the skin-slipping witch to be the most fascinating one, a kindred spirit. 

Correspondences of her variety of hag:

• Keyholes, doors, chairs
• Hexes, enchantment, tricks
• Brandy
• Winter
• Fire, Wind
• Cow, horse, toad

For these new world witches of old tales, the slipping of skin was quite literal- the skin came off by means of a grease, ointment in combination with an incantation of some sort, or some kind of ritualistic movement like turning round in three circles.  The witch flew either as a beast, succubi, force or spirit- and the skin would be quite literally left behind, or otherwise, the “skin” could be interpreted as the body itself while the spirit flies away.  But Phoebe Ward had more gifts than sheer skin-slipping- that art is basic to our kind, and Phoebe was no basic bitch witch.

Among other mysterious gifts presented within the brief narrative of this folktale witch, Phoebe could:

• Ride people at night as a nightmare
• Fly through keyholes
• Ride animals at night until they are spent in the morning by making them leap rivers
• Make a bull jump a river with an incantation which when disrupted or revoked, caused the animal to fall

A witch like this could be warded off by:

• Horseshoes hung over entrances
• Sieves hung over keyholes (she’d have to count all the holes before entering)
• Needles stuck in her ass by way of chair
• Pepper burned in a fire or stove

Maybe the idea of Phoebe was just a way to express the narrative of witchery, maybe it was a hogwash tale of nonsense spurred up to to give folks some good fun.  Maybe, just maybe, Phoebe was a bonafide witchy woman (or amalgam of women) who went out like a solid boss.  I’m not sure I care, I kind of just like knowing that this personification of American witchy superstition has a name, has the wisdom to help pass along to the next generation of witches.  So here’s to you, and cheers to you Phoebe Ward the Northampton Witch of lore. 

May we meet someday on these nocturnal flights, somewhere far away from b'needled chairs... 

When Witches Ride  by Elizabeth A. Lay
Witchcraft in North Carolina by Tom Peete Cross
The Journal of American Folklore: "Folklore from the Southern States"-by Tom Peete Cross: Journal of American Folklore V XXII
The Silver Bullet, and Other American Witch Stories by Hubert J. Davis

Read more »

Hours of the Tide: Blessing of the Seeds

Hours of the Tide: Blessing of the Seeds

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

From garden dibble to rusty sickle, the Green Lady watches and blesses all within her purview.

You, oh Earth

Who, in utter darkness; crushing and tearing,

opens new life to the sun

and feeds the dying

the dead

and the living,

You, Mother

kiss my seeds

and make them fertile as you.

I spend this Hour of the Tide honoring the Sacred Sickle; the bringer up of grains; the blood that scours the land.  Rye, oat, wheat, barley, poppy, amaranth; this harvest season will have the hours marked in deep commitment.  

The Summer Mysteries are still... well, a bit of a mystery to me.  I'm planning my garden with great intensity, and taking the time to weave and mend things. It gives me a sense of hope for the future.  There is a spring to come, one that will bring up the green and bring out the pollen and poplar fluff... I intend to work my garden with great care, and find gratitude in every process, every life, every death.  I intend to find meaning in what I make, what I eat.  

So, to you, oh mothers of land and harvest, I beg: breathe over these sleeping things, and give them life.

A Weaver Witch's Cauldron:  from lucet to hook, from loom to spindle, from nostepinne to nalbinding-- baby, I've got the magic.

Read more »

Winterstide: Wool & Loom

Winterstide: Wool & Loom

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

"Spider spider, is that web for me?"
"Of course!  To hold you tenderly."

Merry Witch's Night.  What is it about winter that brings out the domestic magic in me so hard-core?  Is it the constant cold and darkness?  The silence?  The short days that need filling with work before the long night sets in?  Maybe all of it.  Winter gives me a strange energy.  A buzz.  A rat-like change of spirit.  Maybe my shadow self does change shape this time of year; from a rabbit in spring, a mole in summer and fall, to a rat in winter.  Scurry scurry, with lots of hurry, stirring pots and tying knots.  I've been boiling pears in butterscotch and brandy, whipping berries with heavy cream, layering dough and stuffing jars with the last fruits for oxymel.  I need to be careful with all of these brown-sugar and pine cinnamon buns, I'm plumping up on 'nog and dough.

I've spent the summer dying new wools with poke and walnut and verbena... I've been washing my old threads in saining water and rewinding them around their white bones.  And, I finally whipped out my spindles and hooks and bag of old fibers and am about to undertake a project I haven't heard of anyone else doing before.  I'll be using a seasonal fiber common to the Northwest but woefully underrated, and I collect it annually.  I've finally thought of a neat idea for my fibers.  

While I practice, I reflect.  When I reflect back, I start to pull at old threads and wonder.  I don't regret much in my past, except the things I didn't do sooner.  The projects and progress I've undertaken these last few years have overwhelmed me and I've discovered a renewed desire for total independence and self-sufficiency.  I want to weave things, create bonds and wind lost threads back together.  For now, it starts with keeping my working-wools in good shape and getting them ready for a brand new year of absorbing my work.  That's their purpose after all; to bind and hold all the magic they touch.

Never doubt the power of Red Thread.  It is a popular magic.  It's well known around the world that a string or rag or spool of red has a binding, connecting, banishing, petitioning and protective power.  Red thread connects the fated, red thread leads us through the labyrinth of life and death, red thread binds the dead, red thread winds a trick and pulls the future towards us.

I don't know how you choose to wind your wool, but mine goes round bones much of the time.  Simply because they're smooth and never catch on the wool and hold the spirit of life and death.  Wrapped in wool, like muscles and sinew round a skeleton, reminds me of what it means to give body and substance to something.  My wool feeds from the energy, and you can feel it-- a cold strand in each thread.  Horse-chestnut-dyed wrapped around horse-tooth, poke around chicken, rue around rabbit bone...  They bind up around the bones and sit ready at hand-- never to be snipped, only to be wound and unwound with each charm, with every fortune.

Spin. Measure. Cut.

Fate is funny.  They are funny, I should say.  Or at the very least, they have a wonderful sense of humor.  Sick.  Cold.  Cutting.  She who weaves, she who measures, she who cuts...  Parcae, Norn or Fates; whomever is spinning the threads, they seem to have a way of laughing at us, crying with us, sympathizing blindly.  The Fates, as I know them-- as an American metaphor and personification of destiny, are unseeing things, just like blindfolded Fortuna (Lady Luck).  They are not too closely scrutinizing, they seem to be following some greater directive, one given in the textiles of destiny, by Lady Luck, and by Trivia-- by the triple-facing, terrible Queen we witches adore.  It is the Soul and Chaos directing the triumvirate of weavers and cutters.  They're all in cahoots, they've ensnared us all.

Weaving was taught to me by my favorite teacher, Missa.  You may have seen her name mentioned in my acknowledgements section of my book.  She taught my sister and I so much; how to card and spin fibers, how to dye and soften, how to weave on fingers or looms.  Spinning wheels, drop spindles, indigo dye, frame looms, pin looms, round looms, lap looms, beading looms, wool, cotton, flax-- when a teacher of great creative and domestic skills is in your midst, love that person, for they are teaching your children some sacred magic.  Because of her, I expanded past crochet and into appreciating how my textiles get made.  My sister is a quilter and seamstress of great skill.  I... was not so gifted with the complex things, but I was always very good at simple; lap looms and drop spindles, crochet hooks and embroidery hoops.

Looms are phenomenal magic; framework magic.  What does a loom mean in sacred work?  As part of the everyday domestic arts, kitchen and hearth witching, homemaking and artistic innovation, the weaving of things is pure magic.  The tools used for this creative work are like any other tool or arte.  The scissors, the hook, the needle, the wool, the hoop, the loom; they all serve a purpose in magical practice.  The hook is ruled by earth, and is feminine, and generates the energy of activity, strength, protection, binding, protection, creation and community.  The frame loom is balanced, genderless, and holds a supportive, creative, guarding energy; it says to the witch; all things are temporary, and fate's boundaries, while ever present, are changing.  My looms are usually handmade from a wood with containment properties; something with masculine scent, with Solar or  Jupitarian energy.  So, oak or walnut usually. They are usually square or round, but never rectangles or triangles (preference).

I will rule,
I rule,
I have ruled,
I am without rule.

The divination aspect usually comes in with the weaving of shapes and lines.  The colors; the weave; the mindless loss; the focus; the feel; the texture-- all of it induces a state where the mind sees... things.  Past.  Present.  Future.  There are secrets in those threads as they cross and knit.  And the little vibrations-- smallest shimmer of life in every fiber, catching the air and electricity all around it. The stress on the knot, the wind and unwind.  It's  a trance inducing set of moments; senses engaged in a rhythm, a focus.

from my scrapbook of shadows

I really love all threadwork-- in particular; sacred embroidery, and knot-magic.  Love knot magic and Winding-charm fortunes are some of the more popular Halloween, Mayday and Midsummer folklore in the US, and I'm fond of the way it preserves in our practices today.  I adore the connection between calling visions of love, summoning spirits and winding a simple ball thread.  The connection between binding a charm and knotting a cord; it's such symbolic, simple, accessible magic.  Could be a shoelace, could be a sacred band of woven silk-- doesn't matter, both will get the jobs done admirably.  It's a deeply intentional magic.

The Fates are always at work; they are Fortune never stop their wild rhythm.  Winter is for them, I suppose.  And on this Night of Witches, I honor the raveling and unraveling of life, and death.  We are caught in it, all of us, and so, let us learn to manipulate these harmonies, and tangle them as we go.  Let us make something from the balls of chaos in our lives, and undo the structures we've woven.  Set the knots, pull the knots.

My books of work (grimoires, cunningbooks) are all full of knotwork, threadwork.  It's... a connection many of us practitioners share.  I wonder if most folk witches in America have a special spool of wool or ball of yarn or twine?  I wonder if we all keep some stock of cord to cut and crochet and quilt...  Are we all just knotting our hexes and whispering our rhymes?  I'd like to think it's a connection we're all sharing on a folk-spiritual sense.  I'd like to think that the pluck of the harmonies these threads weave can be felt, resonating against the work of others.  Maybe it's the kind of magic that can draw us to one another.  

I wind, I wind... who holds?

Read more »