#botanical magic

Moodboard for Evergreen Academy by Heather Schneider. Pictures from pinterest. If you're the photographer, please let me know.

Book synopsis under the cut.

Today, I went to visit an area where I've observed colonies of Monotropas, such as Ghost Pipe and Pinesap. They are some of my closest botanical allies, and I like to check on them to make sure they haven't been damaged or prevented from re-seeding.

I was happy today to find them beginning their upward climb through the soil, and took the spent flower stalks and seed pods from last year to use in this year's devotional work with the Ghost Pipe.

It occurs to me that once the punches slow, maybe it’s time to catch my breath and to write again. I haven’t updated in forever. I forgot I had something to say. I forgot what I had to offer. That’s how it goes isn’t it? We forget who we are and our deities bring us back to our own heart time and time again — if I let them. (And I don’t always let them)

I may give an overview of what’s happened since I’ve not been updating, but right now I feel it’s so important to talk about rest. It’s winter here and in NE Ohio, that means dreary weather, no sun which means drastic drops in vitamin D, seasonal depression, grey skies during the day, and early night and late morning. I’m eager for spring, but it also occurs to me that maybe I’m not ready for spring.

Since Christmas Eve, there has been one breakthrough after another after another after another. I’m exhausted. Even healing is hard work. At the time, I was high on the spiritual experience. I was high on prayer and companionship with Spirit and my ka-tet. I knelt in prayer and wept and I stood and I felt better. Sometimes I would sit in the shower under the hot water and cry and pray. There was always an answer, and usually one I didn’t expect or one that caught me by surprise. It was the great purge, cleansing and packing the wound so it could heal and the healing has been coming in waves. And now, I’m tired.

The thing about any high, spiritual or otherwise, is that we have to come down eventually. I keep my head in the clouds, but it’s time for my feet to return to the ground. The last month may have revolutionized my heart and mind and spirit, but I still have to cook dinner, and go to work and doctor’s appointments, and pick my daughter up from school, and all of everyday life.

For the last week or so, I’ve felt like I’ve been doing something wrong. I didn’t feel the 24/7 spiritual connection, my prayer has been falling away, I don’t feel like I’m being propelled forward by some unseen hand. The answers aren’t strong and punchy and life-altering. They’re quiet now if they come, like whispers instead of screams. Well I assumed that was because I wasn’t listening hard enough. I was distracted. I wasn’t praying enough or praying wrong. What happened? Where did God go? Where did my deities go? What did I do wrong and how do I get it back? Sound familiar?

I was laying down wrapped up tight in a blanket the other day just paying attention to my breathing and thinking of the morning I had spent with my friend. We had tea and breakfast together and then prayed and meditated together and it was wonderful, the recalibration that I needed, but it still wasn’t *the same.* I hadn’t had any earth-shattering realizations, hadn’t cried in a while. I felt that my healing had stalled — then I realized… this was my chance to breathe. I had been begging the Universe for weeks to slow down and give me a chance to catch my breath and I’m usually given what I ask for. The problem is I don’t always recognize, acknowledge, or accept when it comes.

So perhaps I don’t need to pray in such a prescribed and structured way multiple times a day at set times, pouring my heart out with my face pressed to the ground right now. Maybe it’s enough for now to keep Spirit on my mind and say a prayer of thanks and ask for direction. Right now I don’t need to figure out who and what I am on this side of all this healing. I don’t need to plan my life, define my vision, implement strict spiritual routines, and generally be ON all the time. I asked for a chance to catch my breath, and here it is.

So I’m going with it, or doing my best. Rest takes practice just like anything else, especially in this American capitalist dystopian nightmare where we’re brainwashed into believing that we’re only of value when producing. Anything else is a waste of time, we’re taught. I’m a rebel though, so I take naps. I take bubble baths. I read for pleasure. I cuddle my wife and friends and just exist. Rest is a rebellious action, and somehow knowing that makes it a little easier to justify to my brain.

I haven’t given anything up. I’m still studying and praying and doing magic and lighting candles and all, but I’m doing it in such a more gentle way. Instead of trying to work myself into a perscribed structure, I let the patterns work themselves out around me. They’re still forming and falling into place. Some will stick and some won’t and that’s ok. I don’t need all of that to be “spiritually successful” whatever the fuck that means. If my deities and my God have not left me these last 33 years, they’re not going to leave me if I take a nap after work instead of praying.

I’m telling you, listening to your body is rebellious. If I’m tired, I sleep, so much as I am able. When I’m hungry, I eat. When I feel a little lost, I pray. When I need comfort, I ask for it. I make time to play. And I have faith. I have faith that my deities don’t have to be in my face in order to be present. I have faith that if I reach out to them at any time, that they will still be there. They aren’t going to leave me. In fact, at a time when I didn’t have to capacity to commit to my deities, Loki and Sigyn committed to me. Sigyn told me shortly after starting to work with them that there was no place I could go, no distance that I could run that they wouldn’t find me and bring me home. I needed that then, so so much, and I need it now in a different way. It gives me permission to take a break and just breathe.

I may drift a little off course, but I’m not going to fall off the edge of the world, back into the darkness and emptiness. I’m just — I’m floating. That’s what I’m doing. Ok let me explain that. My family camps at a nearby lake over the summer and we do a ton of swimming. There’s a bunch of little cousins splashing around in the water, some of the older cousins on the boat deck grilling and drinking beer, or sitting in the water gossiping. Now, I do love to swim, but I don’t breath well and I get tired easily. My *favorite* thing to do is to swim out a little ways from the group and lay on my back with my eyes closed and float on top of the water. Sometimes a small wave will wash over my face and I’ll sputter and stand up, but I wipe my face and go back to floating. On occasion, I have to come up to make sure I’m not drifting too far from the group, or far enough out that I can’t safely swim back. But I just love the peace of hearing the water and the birds and the laughter and feeling the sun over my body while I float on top of the water.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take a break from the deep diving that wears me out so much and I’m going to take advantage of the dark, sleepy, dreary time and the snow and cold that drives us inside, and this time when nature is resting and waiting for green and sun again, and I’m going to float and rest and breathe and have faith that my deities will hold me in that safe place.

🙏🏻

Here is a poem I wrote in the shower last night

Prayer

This poem is a thank you.

Thank you, Spirit, for turning me upside down.

It’s easier to write about love now

than it is to write about fear,

easier to write about mending hearts

than old scars.

Everything I once held near

seems so far removed now,

flung out into the depths of the cosmos,

beyond the stars I still cannot dream of reaching for,

farther than the east is from the west.

It will never be fully gone,

but it doesn’t gut me

every time I take a step forward anymore.

Still, I forget to pause and thank you.

See, I’ve always loved circles.

I love how they have no beginning and no ending,

no corners to try to peer around in the dark,

no jagged edges to make me bleed.

Everything is laid out bare, right in front of me

over, and over, and over,

and over, and over,

and over again, so it’s no wonder

how I got trapped in them for 33 years.

I’m still running in some of those same old circles,

afraid to cut ties, because if I cut too many of my heartstrings

I may just unravel again

and I’m tired of surviving my own heartbreak.

I don’t know who I am anymore,

but I know this freedom is well worth

the uncertainty of identity.

Thank you for turning me inside out,

that is to say everything inside me

that I kept tucked away

is now on display for the world —

my face, my song, my stance, my poise,

my bright eyes and covered hair,

an open hand pouring out.

Everything that once shielded me

has been brought back inside for healing.

These brick walls have been disassembled.

I’m using the old stone to build bridges and platforms now.

This poem is the closest thing I have to a prayer, so thank you.

Thank you for holding my hands

while my beloved and I searched for the right words.

In church as a child,

they taught me to talk to God

like he was my best friend,

but I don’t know how when my best friend is a stranger

wearing 7.8 billion of their favorite masks

as we all fumble along to their music in the firelight.

This poem is the closest thing I have to a prayer,

so please, take it and take *me*.

I don’t know who or what I am anymore.

I’m okay with that most days,

but it means that I don’t know what to offer you

because I don’t know what I’m made of.

This is the closest thing I have to a prayer.

I know it’s really just a poem,

but at least we got a couple of the letters right.

So take it, and take me.

Green Witchcraft: Strawberry Quartz and Strawberry (fruit)!

Wild Strawberry – fragaria vesca Hello my witchy friends! I’ve got a new sketchy herb and magic rock here for y’all, inspired by last night’s strawberry moon – STRAWBERRY QUARTZ AND STRAWBERRY! Strawberry quartz is a new stone to me, one I just started working with when I began to research crystals that could be sacred to the goddess Voluptas. Though classic rose quartz is definitely also on…

Datura Spirit Medicine for Allies

“Datura looks beautiful, inviting, not out of place in a 'safe' neighbourhood garden, but if you cross their boundary, so help you.” 

“In a balanced plant community, the presence of ally plants keeps the fauna from attacking the more vulnerable plants disproportionately. Many poisonous plants are medicinal in small, careful, dosage. Datura is no different, and neither is her spirit medicine. Just like daturas poison is also her medicine, using our privilege in careful and considerate ways can heal the parts of our communities that have been damaged by the beasts. Or...we use our privilege to poison those below us, thinking that it will starve the beast and save us from it, but really, it only makes the beast hungrier and we end up letting it consume everything.” 

- Kai, TheRestlessWitch

So, instead of just reblogging a witchtip related to spring or something...I’m going to post about a current project that I’m working on.

It’s something anyone can make, looks impressive as hell. Is customizable to your craft, location, folklore etc.

And, in a pinch where you need to do some Witching quick, you can grab it and go.

Today’s post is...

Making an Herbal Grimiore