As many of you know, thanks to Jason Mankey’s post on upcoming festivals, there are many amazing opportunities to attend pagan events this summer! Personally, I am teaching at a few of these festivals this year (PantheaCon and TempleFest), but one of the ones that I am most excited for is the Salem Summer Symposium. Anyone who lives in or near Salem MA knows just how crazy it can get during October, but sometimes it can be difficult for the witches in the area to get to the m

Blackthorn Hoodoo Blends is a business that mainly focuses on the creation of magical teas. It was started by Amy Blackthorn (author of Blackthorn Botanical Magic) who I had learned about by listening to her interview on Down at the Crossroads. In her interview she talked a bit about her business, her book and her teas and I was instantly interested. There are few things that I love as much as magic, but tea is one of them. I went right to her website and ordered a Panacea Po

The Ophidia Rosa Tarot is an absolutely beautiful deck created by Leila + Olivia. A relatively small and independent company, the bio on their website says the following: “Leila + Olive is an artist-run line of botanical talismans, illustrated by hand with an eye towards mysticism. Creator Nicole Rallis, a New York visual artist, cultivates each piece from her lifelong enchantment with plant magick into full-grown tools of divination.” Rallis then talks about her love of work

The redwoods sang to me the first time I saw them. I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, looking over a book of photographs when I first saw the redwood forests. I didn’t have words for it then, but I felt my heart reach out toward them. Like something familiar that I hadn’t realized I missed until I saw them again. At that moment I knew that I would see them again someday. In 2018 we were finally reunited. Almost two decades later and I was finally able to see them i

PantheaCon 2019 ended about a week ago, and while I wanted to write this a lot sooner, it took me a little while to wrap my head around all of my experiences from this year. I’ll be honest that I was a little nervous going into PantheaCon this year. There had been a lot of public drama and hate being thrown towards those attending. However, I had an obligation to go as I was teaching a workshop this year and running the hospitality suite for the Temple of Witchcraft. I’m real

Amici Mortem (Friends of Death) is an emerging interdisciplinary alliance of healers, ritualists, artists, activists and writers working together to transform our cultural practices and theory surrounding Death in this unprecedented time. Amici Mortem feels the urgent need to reorient ourselves towards a sacred, intimate and complex understanding and relationship with death, dying, the dead, extinction and climate change in this new epoch called the Anthropocene. Strategicall

Every year around this time is when I start to go a little stir-crazy. The below zero temperatures, constant snow and slush of New England tends to turn even the most extroverted into hermits. My focus tends to waver, a begin to feel more and more lethargic, and I know that it’s time for an awakening. Earlier in the winter I tend to focus on kindling the fire within me to carry me through the winter months, which I tend to refer to as Harvesting the Sun. By around February it

What Does Magic Feel Like Growing up, I was constantly surrounded by ritual and magic. The room felt different when the incense was lit, the space was cleared and ritual began. I understood the shift in energy and what it felt like when work was being done, but I didn’t yet fully understand how to manipulate it. The first time that the feeling of magic truly clicked with me I was sitting under the bright lights of our middle school stage. We were mid orchestral concert and ap

A few years ago, I was challenged to learn a divination system that I had never dabbled in before. Having practiced for most of my life I found this pretty difficult. I received my first tarot deck when I was about eight years old, I got into pendulum work, oracle decks, runes and scrying shortly after. Some of these worked for me, some of them didn’t, but it made it difficult when faced with having to learn something completely new. So, I decided to create something. What is

The nights grow longer and we retreat within. Deeper and deeper we move into ourselves. Though I usually welcome the introspection of winter; I often find myself fading more and more as the days go on. In New England the sun begins to set earlier and earlier and it’s not uncommon to hear grumbling and wistful sighs over the lost time in the day. If we are living mindfully then it’s a good opportunity to take advantage of this time to look within. It is also a good time to fin

Witchcraft is a tricky thing. Most of us who follow the path of witchcraft would agree that it was less of a choice and more that the path called to us. While this is true for many, it is also important to remember that you alone are sovereign over your true will. Paths, deities and spirits may come knocking and it may feel like there is no choice involved, but do not let the ego of being chosen get in the way. You always have the power to say no. Whenever I talk about choosi

There are few things that I love more than stationary and journals. When I was little I used to go crazy for journaling supplies, notebooks, pens, etc. My mother owned a small bookstore on Essex Street in Salem Mass and I would watch the people coming through and make up wild stories about them. When you are a child surrounded by books, your creativity can only be satiated by other people’s word for so long. Soon enough I found myself cutting up paper backs and using yarn to

Each year thousands of people gather at magical retreats of every kind. Each year I personally try to attend as many of these as possible. This past February I attended PantheaCon and as we near the end of August we are preparing for the Temple of Witchcraft’s TempleFest. Attending these places of immersive magical learning has made me think quite a bit about the things that I do each time to prepare myself. Here are just a few of the tried and true preparations that I do for

I went into this year knowing that it would be a hard year of witchcraft. I was going into an intensive year of shadow work at the Temple of Witchcraft as well as Sacred Fires tradition. I carry a lot of trauma from my childhood and while I had mentally processed it and rationalized everything, I hadn’t actually emotionally processed anything. There are a lot of articles on shadow work out there, particularly from those fairly new to their paths, and I am going to be very hon

For as long as I can remember I have been surrounded by books. In my earliest years my mother had a bookstore on Essex Street called the Black Cat Book Guild. I grew up on the store’s floors mixing together baggies of leftover herb crumblings and drawing pentagrams on paper bags. I spent a lot of time pouring over old musty books with yellowed pages and writing my own stories. I would later own my own library full of books that my partner vehemently refuses to help me move. I

Credit: Mohamed Nohassi | CC0 Creative Commons A friend and I were talking recently about how we individually experience the Gods. We also spoke about how we had seen numerous people share their experiences as well. Since then, I keep coming back to the idea of polytheism. I find it fascinating that almost everyone seems to perceive the gods differently. I personally don’t identify as either a hard or soft polytheist. Like in a lot of my witchcraft (and arguably my life in ge

Mercury retrograde is one of those things that people love to hate. We all moan and groan as it begins to rear its head and we brace for the worst. I will be honest that I usually don’t tend to get hit too hard by the effects of it. Over the years I have learned that the best thing you can do is take the time to sit back and allow it to pass. This time around has been difficult though, and it seems like it’s hitting a lit of people a lot harder. My day job involves assisting

I have been hearing and seeing a lot of variations of the phrase “I can’t” in witchcraft lately. What really astounds me about this is that is starkly pushes against the grain of what witchcraft is. One of the reasons that I work so hard in my own path is that witchcraft gives me the power to stand up and say “I can, and I will.” At what point are we feeding so much into what we believe we can’t do, that we are essentially cutting off and limiting our own ability? Now, don’t

It never ceases to amaze me how there are people who actively pursue a magical practice who fight so hard against the idea of change. I recently attended TempleFest 2017, which is a fully-immersive pagan retreat hosted by the Temple of Witchcraft. While I was there I attended a panel of several pagans who I greatly admire and I listened to them speak about the idea of personal power versus self-enlightenment. While there were obviously differing opinions at times (a panel wou

Something that has always struck me as particularly odd about the pagan community is the fascination with the spirits of far off places when local spirits are standing right in front of us and staring us in the eye. I have a couple of ideas as to why this is, but when it comes down to it you are a product of the energies and spirits that you were raised around and those spirits are a product of the people and land that they inhabit as well. Chances are you probably have more