Dark Moon Alchemy

Posted in Botanica Products, Folk Magic, Herbalism, Witchcraft & Magic with tags , , , on December 16, 2009 by Sarah

It is the dark half of the year and the king and queen of the underworld rule. It is also the dark moon, a perfect time for notions and potions having to do with ancestors, dreams, and the underworld. So once the sun was set I gathered my herbs, resins, and oils and made Ancestor Incense & Oil for calling and communing with the spirits of the dead as well as Dream Incense and Oil for dream magic, working with Morpheus or Artemis, confronting nightmares, lucid dreaming, and astral travel. Now they are sitting in the window under the moonless sky to draw in the power of the dark moon.

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Homemade Absynthe

Posted in Brewing, Entheogens, Recipes with tags , , , , , on December 15, 2009 by Sarah

Those who regularly follow my blog know I virtually have a brewery in my home – I blame it on my Black Irish grandfather who was always brewing beer and wines in his cellar. I mainly brew mead, but I will soon add beers and ciders to my repertoire. At the last mead party one of the ladies with a more anarchist bent showed us how to make infused Absynthe using herbs and vodka. The following method is not for true Absynthe which requires a distillery to make, but it is an easy method anyone can try at home. It can be used as just an alcoholic beverage, as ritual aid to reach ecstatic trance, as a libation for the dead, or as an aid to commune with the dead.

As a warning note, Absynthe is something to try once or twice or as a treat, DO NOT drink it on a regular basis as the wormwood is addictive and can cause severe poisoning resulting in permanent bodily damage.

Infused Absynthe

1 oz dried chopped wormwood
1 tbsp angelica root
1 tsp hyssop
1 1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/4 teaspoon caraway seeds
1/2 tsp crushed cardamon
1/4 tsp fennel or anise seeds
2 cups of white sugar (optional)
1 litre of Vodka (40 + proof)

Add the wormwood to the bottle of vodka and let it infuse for 5-14 days , depending on the strength and bitterness you want, shaking at least once every day and then strain out the wormwood. For the next step add the rest of the herbs to the bottle and pour in the strained wormwood-vodka. Allow to infuse for another 5 days, again shaking the bottle every day, then strain and drink or add the absynthe to a pot with 2 cups of sugar and heat until boiling and all the sugar is dissolved, then cool and pour back into the bottle for drinking. This turns it into a liquor and makes it much easier to swallow without making horrible facial expressions from the bitterness!

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Regulation for Canadian Witches?

Posted in News, Paganism, Witchcraft & Magic with tags , , , , , , on December 12, 2009 by Sarah

The biggest Pagan news story being spread around in Canada is about a Toronto woman who claimed to be from a long line of witches and mediums… oh and she also scammed a lawyer out of $100,000 because she also told him she was channeling the spirit of the lawyer’s dead sister who had come back just to make him successful in business. It also turns out what she did was considered illegal by Canadian law. In section 365 of the  Canadian Criminal Code from 1892, under the “False Pretences”  section it states:

365: Pretending to practise witchcraft, etc

“Every one who fraudulently

(a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration,
(b) undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes, or
(c) pretends from his skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found,

is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.”

The penalty is a $2,000 fine and/or six months in jail depending on the severity of the case. Many of the news articles and comments resulting from this story are asking how does one know if the witch they call on is real and is there any regulation for witches and fortune-tellers? The answer is no, there is no regulation or method of determining a “real” witch from a fake one in Canada.  My question as a professional witch is can “real” witches sell their skills and services without getting arrested in Canada if the client decides they don’t like you or your results?

Now I realize there’s a big difference between knowingly scamming someone out of a hundred grand and just charging someone $15 for a tarot reading – but the legal consequences could still be the same if the client squealed. How do professionals protect themselves? In United States law one has to put disclaimers on all services and supplies; something to the effect of “this item is a curio only and we do not certify its effectiveness” and also “There is no 100% guarantee that spells or services will work, they are for entertainment value only”. These disclaimers are more to protect the professional than the client so the client can’t come back and whine later that the magic didn’t work and get the witch or diviner in trouble. However, in Canada there are no such stipulations. The only loophole for the professional to walk away free is to prove they are not faking their magical practice and do not believe themselves to be lying about their abilities. If you can prove this in court, you would get off scott free.

However, being Canadian, we are also naturally very scared to offend anyone even if what they are doing is illegal – so I doubt a professional witch like myself selling my wares and services is going to get charged and arrested over the thousands of so-called psychics advertising in phone books, newspapers, and on the internet across Canada (I’m pretty sure 1 in 500 of them “might” be real). The best way to cover your ass however, in both the US and Canada, is to be a certified member of a Wiccan of Pagan group or have a clergy license. Also, if you are active in your local community and others have seen you hosting or participating in rituals… you have nothing to worry about.  So the lesson here is, if you want to be a professional witch you better be involved in your local Pagan community! You can’t just decide to make supplies or sell your services to make a quick buck if you have no actual practice or belief behind it. I know so many local “Pagans” who are not really spiritual at all, but are the first ones to sign up for any event or festival with vendors and who are the first to steal the true spiritual crafter’s ideas and sell them the following year for more money. Would you like a wood wand crafted and empowered in a traditional way by a devout witch, or would you like a piece of rotting deadfall chewed on by a dog with some glass beads glued on to it? These are the idiots that deserve to pay the fines. Religion isn’t about profit dumbasses.

Now I wonder, if Neopaganism becomes one of the bigger religions of North America and the government decides to regulate professionals, what would the test be like? Do you think they’d look for witch’s marks and poke us with pins? Or would we have to answer complex theological questions about our faith and practice? Would they try to make us prove our powers? Do they make reiki practitioners? They don’t… they just make them get malpractice insurance once again to protect them from the clients and not the other way around. We really do have a strange legal system! I wonder what a witch’s legal certification would look like?…

On a side note 365 (c) of the Canadian Criminal Code gives away that in the 1800s there were enough practitioners of folk magic (most likely immigrant cunning folk from Europe) to warrant creating a law to prevent them from acting fraudulently. The practice of finding lost or stolen items is a classic practice of cunning folk from the 1800s and earlier usually involving using a bible, scissors, and a sieve… or other folk charms the likes of which can still be found in Long Lost Friend. This is further supported by the presence of grimoires in Quebec and Ontario from the late 1600s to the late 1800s. Canada is no stranger to magic and witchcraft!

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Syncretism as Religion

Posted in Articles, Folk Magic, Paganism, Witchcraft & Magic with tags , , , , , on December 11, 2009 by Sarah

What do Robert Cochrane (Roy Bowers), Victor and Cora Anderson, Robert Graves, Gerald Gardner, Manly P. Hall, Johfra Bosschart, Madame Blavatsky, and others all have in common? They were syncretists. Syncretism is the belief that the majority of the world’s religions can all be reconciled; that what they have in common is more than what they do not. Within syncretism is a feeling of harmony, unity, and overall love. Syncretism is not a modern belief, it was shared by ancient cultures – the most well-known being the cross-over gods between the Egyptians and Greeks and also the Celts and Romans. They didn’t see anything wrong with this as either their beliefs, teachings, or their blood told them their gods are of the same origin. Some believe all gods originated from Africa, others the Middle East, and others yet from the Proto-Indo European. Put the cultures of these regions on a timeline and you’ll see that all of the above are right, they just represent different evolutionary periods through early pre-history.

Most definitions found of syncretism call it “an attempt to reconcile different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion.” That word “attempt” is always in the definition no matter where I seem to look.  I suppose it isn’t easy to live in harmony and love, but one needs to do better than just attempt it.  I am coming out of the polytheistic closet – I am a syncretist and an animist. I believe all of the world’s religions stem from animism and it is getting harder and harder for modern scholars to prove otherwise thanks to recent research conclusively linking modern witchcraft and folk magic practices to ancient shamanism which is deeply rooted in animism. If you listen to the descriptions of the pantheons of the different Pagan cultures but do not mention the names of the gods, you will begin to see a pattern. I believe if you take all of these pantheons and cosmologies and create a template that if you stack them upon one another they will match – not perfectly as everything can corrupt and change – but pretty darn close. I am not a pantheist or panentheist as I believe in more than one god, but there is only one sun, one moon orbiting the earth, one venus, one mercury… you get the picture. I am not saying all religion is the same as there are obvious cultural differences that are a large factor, but I am saying they are similar and share the same origins – it is only their evolution over time that has separated them. This is why folk magic (aka witchcraft, aka shamanism) fits so well into any and every religion and why every religion practices it – yes even Christianity.  It is not because folk magic is a practice or a trade devoid of religion, no, it is because it is the root of every religion and therefore inseparable from it no matter how much faith evolves through time.

I believe as many ancient cultures do, that the universe was created from one god who the Greeks believed was pure love and the Celts pure awareness – he had to be destroyed in order to create and so every solar system, planet, and life form in the universe is a piece of that first god. Even scientists will tell you everything is made from nuclear star dust from massive planets to the smallest organism on Earth. We truly are all connected – the Norse called this connection the Web of Wyrd -  in Buddhism it is Indra’s Net. I believe the gods do not have human faces dwelling in a heaven separate from our world, instead I believe our world and the unseen worlds overlap.  I believe the gods so often worshipped in human form are truly the earth, its greenmantle, the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, and that the fey found in so many cultures are the spirits of plants, animals, and our own ancestors. The gods and spirits are constantly all around us, under our feet, in the sky, on our dinner plates. Our world of modern technology and only going outside to go from place to place has robbed us of our deep bond with our own world and our gods.  So few still feel awe over a sunrise, a full moon bedecked with stars, the budding of spring, the beauty of a wild animal, or the whispers of the wind passing through the trees… So few are thankful when they eat and drink the greenmantle for dinner every night – the wine and vegetables on your plate are the blood and flesh of the Green Man; Dionysus, Osiris, Baldr, Persephone, Tamuz, Jarilo…

Syncretism is not a popular belief in Neopaganism. I have met with many violent responses in sharing my beliefs with others in the Pagan community, so I admit I have been very hesitant to share my cosmology even on my own blog. I do not understand this attitude as syncretism was born in ancient Paganism, the ancients themselves saw absolutely nothing wrong with it and even their literature reflects these beliefs such as the quote shown below from The Golden Ass, a work in Latin from 200 CE.  I think it is mainly an issue of hard and soft polytheists not being able to reconcile their beliefs and a syncretist just makes it harder for them!

“First I bathed in the sea seven times, as Pythagoras taught us. Then I called upon the goddess, naming her Demeter, Aphrodite, Artemis, Persephone, Isis, and Queen of Heaven.” “Her hair was long and heavy. A chaplet of flowers crowned her head, over which shone a full moon supported by vipers and sheafs of wheat. Her robe was multicoloured: white, yellow and red. From left shoulder to right hip she was draped in a sash of gleaming black, tasselled, plreated, embroidered with silver stars and red-gold moons. In one hand she held a golden rattle; in the other a golden bowl. Along its handle an asp hissed, ready to strike. She wore sandals of victorious palm fronds. Perfume from her body floated over me.’I am Mother Nature,’ she said, ‘queen of the living and the dead, world, heavens, seas, and underworld. Every people know me by their own name: Artemis, Aphrodite, Persephone, Demeter, Hecate, Ma-Bellona. But in Egypt I am Queen Isis.’”

–Lucius Apuleius, The Golden Ass

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Balms, Salves, & Toads

Posted in Botanica Products, Entheogens, Folk Magic, Folk Medicine, Herbalism, Wildcrafting, Witchcraft & Magic with tags , , , , , , , , on December 10, 2009 by Sarah

Today was a day of making healing balms and magical salves. Even after ordering all those herbs and wildcrafting in summer and fall, I still had to go into the woods to gather some Oregon Grape roots to substitute for Balm of Gilead, which is out of season until May, and also some Juniper tips as I had run out of Juniper oil for my Pain Balm recipe. There they are above freshly harvested (yes I ritually harvest even for medicinal plants) and washed and in the picture below both plants have been processed by hand.

I only started the process of the healing balms today as it will take a week to make them. I stuffed the herbs for each recipe in recycled glass jars and then filled them up with olive and almond oils.  I made five different varieties instead of my usual trio; Wildcrafted Healing Balm (made with only native plants),  Arthritis & Rheumatism Balm, Sore Muscle Balm, Hemorrhoid Balm (for pregnant ladies and uncomfortable men),  and a gentle Eczema Balm to get rid of the rashes without using scary cortical steroids. They will be left in their jars on a window sill in sunlight and moonlight for a week, then I will heat them gently in the oven for a few hours, strain them, add beeswax and essential oils, and lastly pour the balms into their glass jars and make pretty labels.

What I did finish today was a Toadman’s Salve I’ve had absorbing the sun, moon, and stars for a couple weeks. What the heck is a Toadman’s Salve? Well, a toadman is a folk magician who draws their power from toads. Toads are usually their familiar and most often this person is also a hedgecrosser. Salves and ointments have been used by shamans and witches for goodness knows how long – some as offerings to the spirits & gods and others to travel to meet them. This salve I made is used for such persons to rub upon their brow, eyelids, neck, chest, hands or feet in order to shapeshift into a toad (no it won’t turn you or anyone who touches it into a toad -nice try), to walk between worlds, or to commune with or call a toad familiar.

This is essentially a flying ointment; dandelions, chamomile, toadflax, and toadstools all have a long association with toads in magic and folklore. I also added some calamus root as an aid for flying as it is a marsh-loving reed and has been used in ancient flying ointment recipes from the Bible and classical Greek sources. The toadstools are fly agaric skin and a wild native magic mushroom (I sooo can’t say that on Etsy, hmm secret ingredients?).  To extend its shelf-life naturally and to make it smell good I added rosemary, cedar, and vetiver oils. Behold it’s golden awesomeness and the eerie blue light created from sunshine through the herbed oil:

Today I strained the oil three times: once through a wire mesh sieve and twice through a very fine sieve. Then added shaved beeswax and heated the jar to melt it. Once the beeswax was incorporated and I tested the consistency, I then poured the mixture into small jars and allowed them to set and solidify. Then I made labels using an old woodcut with toads – and there they are pictured below finished. I should have some for sale in the Botanica tomorrow.

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