pretend you know what you're doing and the rest will follow

>> That looks like something a faerie would offer to entice you to stay

It tastes like it, too. Rich, sweet, floral, spicy. You’ll either love it or hate it. Unfortunately, coming from someone who’s drank enough of these that I may as well start growing orange butterfly wings, it isn’t quite good enough to remove the taste for all other food. Perhaps one day.

Milkweed umbels are like giant weak-limbed spiders draped on top of each other, once they’re cut from their plants. They’re beautiful to look at and smell, but a little ghastly to harvest, in my opinion.

(I didn’t! I’ve never turned it into syrup or made drinks with it before! I wasn’t expecting the color change and no one is talking about this online so I genuinely don’t know what chemically happened with the milkweed)

Everyone go make some milkweed syrup immediately, if you are in a place where milkweed is abundant, I must know if this is an inherent property to the milkweed, or indicative of me fucking something up in creating it.

Milkweed syrup recipe:

-Harvest 2 or 3 cups of milkweed umbels, by going out in the morning and cutting them off as close to the stem as possible. Inevitably there will be some milky sap, but we would like to minimize this.

-Pour about two cups of sugar into the container with the umbels. Shake to cover completely. 

-Wait 24 hours. The sugar should be fragrant, floral and vaguely spicy, somewhat reminiscent of carnations. After that time, dump the sugar and blossoms all into a pan. Add about two cups of water to the pan.

-Heat and stir until sugar dissolves, let it come to a boil. Here is where our experience may differ. The color of the syrup, to me, changed from green, to mauve, to red, to brown, throughout the boiling time. It should not boil for too long, we don’t want to reduce the liquid, just extract flavor. 

-Turn off the heat and strain the syrup into jars. Let cool.

For the drink:

-About three ounces gin. You could use vodka, but why would you?

-An ounce of milkweed syrup.

-Shake these up with some ice in a cocktail shaker, pour it into the glass. What color is your drink? Mine was a spring chartreuse. Is yours the same color?

-Take some tonic water (or plain seltzer, if you used vodka). Pour over the top of the drink. Does it change color? What does it change to? Mine changed to pale pink. Does yours?

Work with what’s around you. Don’t be tied down. (Also, can we just retire correspondence lists? There’s more than enough of them at this point and learning the theory behind why plants are associated with certain traits is far more interesting and practical than just memorizing a list.)

I need help, I'm trying to make rose oil for my witchy friends but every time I make it, it smells moldy? Curious as to why, I have a rose, chamomile, lavender oil mix that smells okay i think. So I'm pretty sure the issue is the roses. However for the purpose of getting info here's what I use:

Olive oil (carrier oil)

Wild Roses

Orange fragrant Roses

Hybrid Tea Roses

Purple Floribunda Rose (plum rose)

A disclaimer: I’m no historian or expert, just a layperson with a passion for the occult. I wish more people knew about the history and context of the ideas they believe. So, in the interests of sharing, I’m writing a series of brief posts on key ideas and people in Western occultism.

Part Zero: The Greeks

This is a long-ass post. Hop in the Delorean, we’re going back in time!

So how far back can we go when we’re talking Western occultism? If you wanted to, I think you could probably take a study of occultism as far back as the earliest traces of human religious ritual. But for simplicity’s sake, we’re gonna start with the Greeks. Two of them in particular: Plato and Pythagoras. (Because otherwise this could get insane.)

Milkweed umbels are like giant weak-limbed spiders draped on top of each other, once they’re cut from their plants. They’re beautiful to look at and smell, but a little ghastly to harvest, in my opinion.

(I didn’t! I’ve never turned it into syrup or made drinks with it before! I wasn’t expecting the color change and no one is talking about this online so I genuinely don’t know what chemically happened with the milkweed)

Everyone go make some milkweed syrup immediately, if you are in a place where milkweed is abundant, I must know if this is an inherent property to the milkweed, or indicative of me fucking something up in creating it.

Milkweed syrup recipe:

-Harvest 2 or 3 cups of milkweed umbels, by going out in the morning and cutting them off as close to the stem as possible. Inevitably there will be some milky sap, but we would like to minimize this.

-Pour about two cups of sugar into the container with the umbels. Shake to cover completely. 

-Wait 24 hours. The sugar should be fragrant, floral and vaguely spicy, somewhat reminiscent of carnations. After that time, dump the sugar and blossoms all into a pan. Add about two cups of water to the pan.

-Heat and stir until sugar dissolves, let it come to a boil. Here is where our experience may differ. The color of the syrup, to me, changed from green, to mauve, to red, to brown, throughout the boiling time. It should not boil for too long, we don’t want to reduce the liquid, just extract flavor. 

-Turn off the heat and strain the syrup into jars. Let cool.

For the drink:

-About three ounces gin. You could use vodka, but why would you?

-An ounce of milkweed syrup.

-Shake these up with some ice in a cocktail shaker, pour it into the glass. What color is your drink? Mine was a spring chartreuse. Is yours the same color?

-Take some tonic water (or plain seltzer, if you used vodka). Pour over the top of the drink. Does it change color? What does it change to? Mine changed to pale pink. Does yours?

If you want a “spirit companion” or a guide, go and learn to conjure yourself. Or, even better, communicate with the land, plants and energy around you in order to attract one and make a bond. Working with spirits is an important, intimate practice, and robbing yourself of making that connection yourself is only going to negatively impact your own learning and experience.

Many spirit conjure shops on Tumblr dot com charge outrageous, scam-level prices, claim to have “hundreds of spirits” waiting to be sent to their “new homes” (which sounds a lot like trafficking, if you ask me, when they make posts like “x spirit has been waiting to go home with someone for 6 months now!” Edit: My favorite is when they then go “x spirit has been waiting for a while, I’m gonna list them 20% OFF! ! ! !” As if they’re the back rack chocolates the day after Easter.), and claim to have “exclusive contact” with certain “species” and will go out of their way to claim that another shop is “copying” their “exclusives.” (Which, again, is absolute BS.) Not to mention, there is a very high chance that the “spirit” that you are being sent isn’t a “spirit” at all, but your own placebo fueling your desire to be delivered a “magical ring holding a super powerful archdemon who is TOTALLY going to be your best friend and hold your hand while you go to Target.”

Invest in your own skills and power as a practitioner.

Don’t throw $500 at someone on the internet to do it for you.

Unfortunately jar fermenter is in use for the dandelion wine, so the thoughts I had about mulberry wine will wait another year. But I can make mulberry liqueur, which should be nice. 

Because it's fascinating to me how ideas get rehashed and how people influence each other