Estimating Time Using Tarot

October 15, 2018March 11, 2019 J.1 Comment

Tarot reading really isn’t a definitive snapshot of the future. Nothing can be, really. It’s pretty much like the CliffsNotes version of a potential future, should everything that’s currently happening stay pretty much the same. Even so, I’ve never really had a problem with getting very accurate readings. I’ve had people I’ve read for (does anyone else feel weird about calling them “clients”? Just me? Okay) send me messages in tears, because things panned out just like I reassured/warned them.

The fact that the future is so malleable doesn’t mean you can’t try to get a time frame, though. Much the opposite, really — using tarot to estimate when something is going to occur isn’t terribly complicated. I’ll give you an example:

I was talking to someone who was antsy about their job. They were working on a project they weren’t able to abandon, for someone who was uncooperative and difficult. How long was this going to be like this? How long did they have to keep putting up with this situation?

I flipped a card.

“Ten months.”

A few months later, they came back. They’d been getting some hits on their resume, and one looked particularly promising. How would things turn out if they accepted?

I pulled a few cards.

“Eh. Looks like a lateral move, so… not great?”

The next day, they came back. After asking for more details, it looked like their pay wouldn’t change, their commute wouldn’t change, and their work wouldn’t be any more fulfilling. A lateral move, indeed.

A few months later, they came back again. It was nine months since the first reading, and they’d just been informed that, a few weeks from then, they were being transferred to a much better area, and a much less problematic project.

“Cool!” I said (though I really wanted to do a fist pump and some kind of touchdown dance).

Anyway, this shameless self-backpatting is just to illustrate that estimating time with tarot is pretty simple. There are a number of ways to do it:

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Herb Haul! (Kind of.)

October 11, 2018October 6, 2018 J.Leave a comment

Well, less “haul” than “restock.”

I like restocking this time of year. Like I kind of got into in my post about cleansing your energy for fall, this is a really renewing time of year for me. It also has several other things going for it, like:

Being right after NoVA Pagan Pride, so I can buy my herbs there and actually see/smell what I’m getting. A lot of places don’t stock hard-to-find herbs (or particularly pungent ones, like asafoetida), so I have to get them online. While I’ve found a really good online supplier, I do still like to see my herbs in person.
Being right after summer. A lot of great herbs are ready to harvest in fall, but it’s also nice to get all of those summer herbs that’ve had a few weeks to dry.
Being right before winter, when I’m going to need herbs for teas and cough syrups.

Pride was the 29th of September this year. I debated vlogging it, but couldn’t really make myself do it. There’s just a feeling there, you know? I like talking to vendors and meeting people, I love the atmosphere. It’s too much fun for me to have to focus on getting video. My extroversion doesn’t do that great when I keep it behind a camera, it sucks the joy out of socializing.

But! I did use the opportunity to visit Phoenix Rising Apothecary‘s booth to stock up on a lot of the magical herbs I use most often, and a fair amount I need for a specific project. (If you’re up on your herb lore, you can prooobably take a guess of exactly what that is.) So, while the idea is still somewhat fresh in my mind, I figured I’d make a post about what I decided to stock up on, and the magical properties of each herb.

Agrimony. I use it for banishing and uncrossing. It’s very efficient at returning evil to its source, it’s pretty much a mirror for other people’s bull. Some consider that “baneful” magic, but that’s in the eye of the beholder — in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with returning something you didn’t want, need, or ask for!

Asafoetida. This is another excellent banishing herb — possibly the strongest of them. I’ve had a tough time finding it, because many sellers don’t want to keep it in stock. It’s pretty pungent, with a smell that falls somewhere between garlic and skunky cannabis. It’s a very earthy smell, and not necessarily bad, but it is very strong. It disperses negative energy, banishes, protects, and exorcises.

Dittany of Crete. Dittany of Crete is a relative of oregano, and can be tough to find because it isn’t widely grown. I use it for divination, spirit work, and divination, and it is the primary ingredient in one of my most-used oils.

Feverfew. A nice protective herb. Also used to bring good fortune, and for spiritual healing. I don’t use it often, but it’s one herb I’d like to get to know better.

Fumitory. This is burned to exorcise, and sometimes used for prosperity magic. It’s one that came recommended by the seller, and I decided to give it a try. It’s likely to make its way into a banishing incense.

Lavender. If I could only have one herb for the rest of my life, lavender might be it. It’s cleansing, peaceful, draws love, protects, and is virtually indispensable in dream magic.

Lemon Verbena. This herb adds a boost to whatever herbal mixture it’s included in. It purifies, cleanses, draws love, and ignites passion. It’s also very good at flipping bad luck!

Mugwort. I use mugwort primarily for divination and dream magic. It’s also used for protection and healing. Before scrying, I wash my mirror or crystals in an infusion of mugwort in distilled water. (If that’s not practical, you can also use it as a spray and give them a little mist.)

Mullein. The hag’s taper. It frequently grew along the edges of properties, giving it a strong association with borders — for this reason, it’s frequently used by hedge witches. I use it for spirit work and psychic pursuits, but it’s also used for strength, protection, and healing. It is also sometimes used as a substitute for graveyard dust.

Star Anise. I use these fragrant, star-shaped seed pods as power herbs. Keeping four at the corners of your altar is said to boost the power of your spellwork. They’re also used for good luck, and keeping one on you can ward off the evil eye and prevent misfortune.

Vetiver. I love vetiver. The warm, earthy spiciness is my favorite fragrance, and most of my favorite perfumes use it. It’s useful for hex-breaking, protection, prosperity, and luck. It’s also a very efficient power herb. Some use it for hexing, but, from my experience, it is better at breaking them than laying them.

Wild Cherry Bark. I have an idiosyncratic relationship with wild cherry bark. I never really used it until a few years ago, when I used dream magic to divine the ingredients for an oil I wanted to make. I didn’t know anything about wild cherry bark when it came to me in a dream, but I looked it up… and it was perfect. Most sources I’ve seen list it as a love herb. I’ve used it in an offertory capacity, for healing, and for animal magic.

There are still some others I need to get. (Cinquefoil, for one, and centaury!) For now, this is enough to get me through the next couple of ideas I have kicking around in my head, plus some extra for any magical emergencies.

Witchcraft

Autumn Rituals for Getting Your Energy Right

October 8, 2018November 18, 2018 J.Leave a comment

Not gonna lie, it doesn’t really feel like fall. Like, as I’m typing this, I’m also sitting in a tank top and shorts, drinking ice water while I wait for my place’s maintenance dude to come fix the air conditioner because it’s supposed to be near 90°F. Butts.

Nevertheless, the autumnal equinox has passed, so it is (at least technically) fall. It’s the end of the year, Samhain’s coming, the veil is thinning, and the weather will hopefully be cooling off soon. All of these things make this the perfect time to let the past year’s badness go, cleanse yourself and your stuff, and get yourself ready to face the next season right.

Do a Solid Fall Cleaning

Everyone’s familiar with “spring cleaning,” but I love fall cleaning. Besides, most places seem to benefit from doing a good, heavy, deep cleaning more than once a year, you know? So, let’s get ready to turn this into a ritual that will cleanse more than just baseboards and the dark, forbidden area under the fridge.

In a lot of magical practices, hoodoo especially, floor washes are a pretty important tool. You sweep your house, fill your mop bucket, add the floor wash of your choice, do the appropriate spiritual bits, and mop your home from back to front. You can buy floor washes prepared, but I usually skip them and add lemon juice or herbal infusions to mine instead.

(It should also be noted that my apartment is tiny, so I get by with one of those reusable spray mops more easily than an old-school mop and bucket situation. I feel a little more confident in spray mops if I know exactly what’s going into the reservoir, so I don’t end up with a solution that’s going to damage my reservoir or pads. YMMV.)

So! If you don’t have a ready supply of dried cleansing herbs in your cabinets, here are some purification herbs that are likely ready for a fall harvest:

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divination · Witchcraft

A(n Actual)”Starter Witch Kit”

October 4, 2018March 11, 2019 J.Leave a comment

Note: This post contains some affiliate links. These links let me earn a small commission for each sale, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping to support this site, as well as rad people who make neat stuff.

After Pinrose chose to pull their Starter Witch Kit amidst a heap of (justifiable) controversy, it got me thinking.

“Self,” I says to me, “If you were going to put together a kit for a beginning witch, what would you put in it? If someone asked you to design the Starter Witch Kit, how would you have done it differently?”

And then I started brainstorming.

While I object to the attempt to use witchcraft as a way to sell perfume samples, I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with including perfume as a way to help beginning witches start to connect with witchcraft on a practical level and begin practicing regularly. I mean, I use perfume and cosmetics as part of my practice. Besides, just look at the origins of the word “glamour!”

So, if Pinrose had drafted me to come up with a kit for baby witches, here are the things I would choose instead of their sage/rose quartz/pastel tarot deck/perfume samples combo.

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Environment · Plants and Herbs

Is Bti water safe to drink? Or, Natural Pest Control for Paranoid Plant Keepers.

September 29, 2018November 18, 2018 J.1 Comment

So, plants.

I have a lot of them. What witch hasn’t kept a pot of something on a windowsill somewhere, you know? In a previous incarnation of this blog, I talked about everything from trying to grow a rosemary bush, to collecting cacti, to that time my aloe plant absolutely would not stop reproducing. In short, I really like plants.

Unfortunately, my place doesn’t have any outdoor space to speak of. (None that I can use, anyway.) As a result, I have roughly one plant per 20 ft², and counting. The trouble is, not all of them are cacti — I also have a number of tropical plants that become really, really unhappy if they aren’t kept moist. I live in a very humid area, which they seem to enjoy, but…

Fungus gnats, though.

Fungus gnats like moist soil. They deposit their eggs in it, and, before you know it, you’ve got masses of annoying, tiny gnats swarming around all of your plants. They’re not the only bugs that really dig on some wet dirt, either. When you combine plants that need to be kept moist with high humidity, it’s pretty much the ideal breeding ground for all kinds of tiny, annoying pests that are super enthusiastic about living in your pots.

Gross.

I try to use natural pest control. My space is small, so I have to minimize my ability to inadvertently come in contact with pesticide. I also have two cats, so I really, really need to keep their exposure risk as low as possible. Since I don’t really have an outdoor hose/spigot I can use, any watering or diluting I do has to be done in either my kitchen or bathroom sink. Also, I try to avoid releasing any more pesticide/fungicide/herbicide into the sewer system than I absolutely have to.

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life · Neodruidry

… And this is why I shouldn’t rush.

September 24, 2018October 1, 2018 J.Leave a comment

I celebrated Mabon the other day. Like most of my celebrations, it was small, short, and simple — lighting candles at my altar, sitting quietly, giving thanks, remembering the meaning of the season.

All of which are actually super difficult to do if I’m feeling anxious.

I have a tendency to try to push through things when I’m not feeling well. (Let’s be real, though. If I waited until I felt well, I’d never get anything done.) I’ve long held that rituals are not necessarily for me — true piety is observing them even when I’m not personally getting anything out of it. Prayer does not always have to be a refreshing, uplifting experience to have value. Sometimes even meditation is difficult work, but it’s work that I have to do.

The thing is, the ritual structure I follow has a kind of built-in way to tell if I’ve completely effed it or not. Tripped over my words too badly? I’ll get told. Unacceptable offering? Oh, I’ll hear about it. This isn’t something that’s been a problem before, luckily — even when my offerings have been small and simple, I’ve always been given signs that they were good enough.

It doesn’t help that it’s a structure I’m not entirely familiar with yet. It’s a bit more complex than what I used for most of my life (read: winging it), and the formality of it trips me up on occasion. To be honest, if you had come to me a little over a year ago and said I’d be doing things this way, I probably would have asked what you were smoking.
I digress, though. That’s a story for another time.

Anyway, for this ritual, I was confident! I had these fancy little cakes, I placed them in the offering bowls, I sat and said the words… and I rushed through them because holy butts anxiety sucks super hard and I felt like I was about to die.

And then came the divination.

I use tarot cards for the divination portion of my rituals. The particular deck I use (the Animalis Os Fortuna deck) is pretty helpful here. In addition to standard tarot meanings, the animal imagery of this deck gives it extra layers of meaning that allow the cards to be interpreted in a way that’s more conducive to this particular type of ritual divination.So I shuffled, drew, and…

Not only did I get called out, I got called out with The Moon. The warning, anxiety-indicating Moon, of all things. Like a big, black-and-white finger pointing right at my clenched hands and racing heart and going, “WTF?”

Crap.

I concluded the ritual, now wondering what I’d done. Sure, I had tripped over my words, but corrected myself. I’d said the wrong words at some points, but corrected that, too. But, while I’d been willing to offer fancy cakes, there were two things an impending anxiety attack kept me from offering — my attention, and my time.

I ate something, drank a little water, and waited for the feeling to pass, resigned now to having to repeat the ritual. I had no cakes to offer this time, just clean water and some sweet oil. But I took my time, I spoke well, and I let the anxious feelings dissipate.

And this time, even with my offerings as simple as they were, it was accepted.

There is no physical offering valuable enough to make up for an unwillingness to give my time and attention.