Building a Better Book of Shadows

When I first started getting interested in magic and neopaganism, I did a decent job of keeping journals about my own experience, but I didn't write down the things I was learning from other sources. I read voraciously, and I drew on my own knowledge of local folklore. I just didn't take notes. Part of it was the fear of it being discovered. I think I was also worried about committing to it without a reasonable amount of study. I wanted to know what was out there before I made up my mind.

For me, longhand writing has a different power than typing. Sure, I put my blood, sweat, and tears into typed work. But writing is serious. I have to commit to using up paper and ink, to choose my words carefully, to move my hand and arm (which is fucking hard with my health issues). The level of involvement with the text is so much higher. That's why I purposely avoid handwriting text that I'm going to edit heavily: I don't want early drafts to survive.

A Book of Shadows isn't usually edited, but it does evolve over time, and organization can be an issue, so of course keeping it digital is a great choice. But I have to do things the hard way. So instead of doing the reasonable thing, I determined to write out everything I want to include in my BOS by hand and organize it in a binder, with the goal of recopying it in a suitably pretty blank book down the road.

Yeah, magic doesn't fix bullheadedness.

Why the effort? you're probably asking. Believe me, I've asked myself the same damn thing for months now. The simple answer is that my words are how I manifest magic in my life. Whether I type them or speak them they have power, but to write them out by hand gives them a soul. If I suffer (or just have more pain than usual) for my art, that gives it that much more oomph. It shows just how serious I am about what I do.

So yes, I may be making a very impractical choice, but I honestly feel that it is the best choice for me. However you go about keeping a Book of Shadows, or whether you keep one at all, is up to you. What matters is that you put your heart into what you're doing.

The Scent of a Witchy Woman

Think about which of your senses you use most. Maybe you're a visual person. Or maybe you're like me and you focus on sounds more than sights. And of course touch is a huge source of information for our brains to process.

Unlike sight, hearing, touch, and taste, smell is subtle. If you're breathing through your nose, you're smelling something. Thing is, you don't always consciously think about what you're smelling, but even then, smell is having a subconscious effect on your mood. This subtlety makes scent a neat component to use in workings.

I'm not saying that you can't do magic without incense or candles or oils. Not even close. But I will say that not having control over the scent of your work area makes it very hard to focus. If you don't believe me, try working in a small room with a gassy dog.

I've found that meditating on a perfume and charging it with the trait I want it to enhance is a simple but powerful way to put a little magic in my day. For example, I have one perfume that reminds me of a wedding bouquet. I charged it with thoughts of sweetness and serenity. I use it for family gatherings and any time someone needs comfort or encouragement.

In theory, it'd be stronger if I mixed the scents myself, but I much prefer to let designers do the work for me. Good perfume isn't just a few scents splashed together. That shit is complicated. Rollerball containers are the way to go: a dab'll do you, so even though they're small, you're getting enough to last you for a while, especially if you aren't wearing it every day. And honestly, don't worry about traditional correspondences. What matters is what emotions and associations the scent has for you.

So go forth and let your nose add some magic to your life.

Friendly Neighborhood Murder

My spirit animal is, without doubt, the crow.

That sounds so faux hippie: spirit animal. But "totem" makes me think of totem poles, which are cool but so far removed from my experience that I feel weird using the word. "Spirit" fills the abandoned barns of my world, thick as the humidity, stubborn as kudzu.

Crows aren't very popular. They can be regarded as a bad omen. Their cawing isn't very pleasant. And on a more practical note, they will tear up a garden. All the farmers around here hate them.

Our produce has been safe from crows, even though there's a murder of seven who live here. I see them pestering hawks in flight over the fields. They congregate outside my bedroom window, six on the ground and one standing guard in a dead pine tree. I love to watch them hop and strut, feathers shining in the sun. I listen to their calls and pay attention to the meanings.

I didn't choose them myself. The crows chose me. At 22, I began to dream of them. One morning a murder of at least twenty roosted on the roof of a building I was walking past. As I grew closer, they began to caw. When I was on the sidewalk beside them, they all began to carry on. It was so loud. As I walked further away, they grew quiet. At first I thought they were angry, afraid that I was a threat, but as I learned their calls, I realized that they were greeting me. I've heard the same lazy squawk each time a member of my local murder lands next to another.

As a witch, it's important to be able to get to the truth without popular opinion clouding my judgment. Crows have a shitty reputation, but the more I study them, the more I see just how incredible they are. Crows are intelligent. Their language is complex. They have impressive problem-solving skills. The fact that they are smart enough to trick other creatures causes them to be labeled as cunning, which has a negative connotation. To me, this cunning is creative survival. The crow works with what it has.

If you have crows near you, take some time to observe their behavior. Even if you don't have a connection to them, you can learn to interpret their calls. Let them alert you to changes in the environment. Their watchfulness can benefit you as much as the rest of the murder. Also, let the crow inspire you to try unconventional methods of problem solving.

Blessed be!

The Black Side of Gray

I don't buy into the all positivity, all the time hype. Yeah, positive thinking is great, but it's unrealistic. Besides, I wasted two decades of my life trying to banish all negative thoughts and actions, and my life kind of sucked, so now I'm doing things the gray way. Love and ultimate good is still my aim. That said, sometimes folks deserve instant karma. When protection spells for myself or my loved ones aren't enough, a lesson needs to be taught.

What about the Threefold Law? you ask. Well, let's just say I never specified that I'm Wiccan. Honestly, I don't want to go medieval on anyone's ass, but this has been a long time coming. Even the kindest people have breaking points. Christ himself went on a table-flipping rampage. And we all know I'm not particularly Christlike in spite of all the effort I put in.

Still, I'm not going to completely destroy someone's life. I know people who deserve it, but they're (hopefully) not a threat anymore. Right now I just need something along the lines of... hell, I don't know. What's the protocol for verbal and emotional abuse? It's bad, but I found physical and sexual abuse plus the former two to be much worse. So how do I treat someone who's only doing half as bad, but still bad enough to really fuck up my life?

The other issue here is keeping it quiet. I would love nothing more than to get my hex on with all the drama of a Hollywood movie, but when you live with the person causing all the trouble and they don't necessarily know that you practice, it's kind of stupid to make lights flicker and sacrifice a chicken.

I know that the practitioner's will is the most powerful part of a spell, and that if you put enough effort and energy into your work, you don't necessarily need to worry about the moon phase or how many ounces of x herb to grind. That said, I like having some tools to focus my mind. Sigils are kind of my go-to thing right now. The creative energy charges them, and if you carve them on a candle or burn the paper you drew them on, there are no traces left. If I combine this with offerings to and an invocation of a goddess who protects and/or avenges women, I'm thinking that might pack the extra punch I need. And of course I'm going to bind it. I don't know why returning the favor to someone who's victimizing me would ever need to come back to haunt me, and I'm pretty sure the consequences are worth it at this point, but I still need to make sure it only affects the individual.

Any thoughts or recommendations? I know magic is a last resort, but believe me, I'm out of other options.

Muggle Dating is Hard!

It's easy to see why Secrecy is included in the Witch's Pyramid. Practitioners of magic have not always been very popular among their peers. Hell, persecution is still a problem around the world. Thus most witches keep mum about their, shall we say, extracurricular activities in muggle company.

This is becoming a problem for me.

I have been trying to find a magic-friendly fellow to date. Okay, not necessarily to date--I'm a hopeless romantic, so finding someone to stay with the rest of my life, or at least a significant part of it, is pretty high on my priorities list. And because I am both insistent on open communication and horrible at lying, I cannot start seeing someone who isn't at least magic-friendly. I can come right out and say I'm Pagan, at this point. But a witch?  Goddess have mercy on me if I say that to the wrong person!

In my corner of the world, magic is pretty actively discouraged by a significant portion of the community. How's a witch to find a nice, Pagan guy in a place where they're all so deep in the broom closet one can't find them? Spells haven't been able to draw them out yet, but based on the inbox of the Internet dating service I'm using and the blatant staring on the streets, Aphrodite has been listening to at least part of my petition. (Thanks, Aphrodite!) And no, I haven't been harming others. No mind control in my magic! But apparently I need to be a little more specific.

I suppose I just have to keep my head down, keep reworking my spells, and go about my business as usual. It's not like I don't have plenty of other shit to deal with in the meantime. But hopefully I'm getting closer to my goal of meeting a great partner, and until then, I'll just have to find clever ways to gauge a potential match's opinions on magic without giving myself away.

The Reason for the Sneezin'

I love spring. Really, I do. The trees come back to life overnight. Flowers blossom everywhere: in yards, in fields, in the cracks in the pavement. Frogs croak all night and birds sing all day. It's cool enough to be refreshing, warm enough to be soothing, and the wind bears the scent of honeysuckle. All of nature is celebrating Ostara and the Spring itself...

...by fucking.

The baby bunnies darting across the yard are the product of rabbits, who are known for--what else?--screwing like rabbits. The chicks at the store hatched from an egg, that ancient fertility symbol that is found in every nest, coop, and birdhouse this time of year. And that golden powder dusting the hearts of flowers (and your car)? Pollen, which is basically plant sperm. 

It's hard to worship nature when nature is basically blowing its load on you. 

You'd think I'd be having Shitty Pagan Syndrome again, worrying that I'm failing by not toughing out my allergies and communing with nature. Surprisingly, no. I can tolerate low pollen levels, but when all the world seems to be reproducing at the same time, I feel completely justified in staying inside and popping benadryl like M&Ms. I do venture out, though. Pretty flowers sometimes overcome my dislike of breathing plant sperm. 

Enjoy this season of renewal and rebirth. Just don't cast when you're in an antihistamine-induced haze.

Flower Pic-ing

Probably half of my phone's memory is filled with variations of my hand holding a flower in place while I snap a picture of it. I like to identify wild plants, especially flowers. How could I not? They're the epitome of the Divine Feminine as expressed in nature. After a decade and a half of hypermasculine Christianity with a fondness for giant new buildings, I need the sacred wildness of Mother Earth. So I store up pictures as references and learn what I can.

To the right is an Asiatic Dayflower I found while walking on the edge of the woods near me. It's said to bloom only one day out of the year. That may or may not be the case. What I can say about it for sure is that it's a member of the pea family. And sure enough, it has little legumes in pods that look like the seeds inside of a green bean,

They're edible, apparently, but I don't know of any medicinal or magical uses. When I found them last year, I pressed a few and offered the rest to the Goddess on my altar. (At that point, I didn't really have a patroness, so they were for the Earth Mother in all her aspects.)

This here on the left is a Muscari, or Grape Hyacinth. I used to think they were ugly until I heard someone compare them to Faberge's work. Sure enough, they are gorgeous up close. Do you see the little white edging on the fully-opened bell in the center? It looks like crochet lace.

Again, no idea of any medicinal or magical uses. I will point out, though, that Hyacinth was the curly-haired youth loved by Apollo, and thus the hyacinth is sacred to him. I don't know if the Grape Hyacinth is included, but I imagine that using these to honor Apollo would probably not hurt his feelings.

They're also a great decoration for an Ostara altar. If you find them growing wild, as I did, you can dig up the bulbs and transplant them to your garden. Just give them extra TLC so they aren't shocked beyond recovery.



And the little white bloom here is... something. It almost looks like a wild violet, but the way the petals behaved looked more like the Asiatic dayflower. It nestled in the grass like the niphredil of Lothlorien. While I was sitting down after getting tired out, I noticed this one beside me and picked it to get more familiar with it.

So what is this flower? I'm sure I'll sit down and do the research sooner or later, but I think that particular blossom had a much simpler purpose: to add a little beauty to a moment when I wasn't feeling very well. Sometimes a tincture or a salve or a spell isn't what you need. Sometimes you just need to sit a minute with the Divine and reawaken what's divine in you.