#quefefe

Beltane has a reputation problem. Not a bad one exactly, but a narrow one. Most of what circulates about this sabbat online leans heavily into the bonfire aesthetic, the flower crowns, the fertility symbolism, and the goddess language. None of that is wrong, but it tends to crowd out the more functional, folk-rooted side of what May 1st has historically meant.

In older practice across Britain and parts of Europe, Beltane was a serious threshold. It marked the beginning of the light half of the year and the shift into the full growing season. Livestock were driven between fires for purification before being moved to summer pastures. Household fires were extinguished and relit, sometimes from communal bonfires, as an act of collective renewal. The maypole wasn't a decorative ritual. It was a community act, people moving together around a shared center, binding themselves to the land and to each other for the season ahead.

What that points to, practically, is that Beltane is a commitment sabbat. The planning that started at Imbolc, the tentative growth of Ostara, it all gets tested here. This is when you stop turning something over in your hands and actually do it.

That has real implications for how you work the sabbat. Some worth considering:

Your kitchen is your hearth. Cleaning and resetting your cooking space with intention at Beltane is a legitimate folk practice, not a stretch. The hearth was the center of the home and its condition mattered.

Braiding is old protective magic. Thread, yarn, fabric strips, it doesn't have to be fancy. Braid in what you want to carry through summer and hang it somewhere it'll stay.

Step outside before you open any correspondence list. What's actually blooming where you live right now? That's your Beltane materia. Folk magic has always started with what's at hand.

Check your wards. If you set protective work at Samhain or Imbolc, it's due for a refresh.

The full breakdown is in the carousel, five practical approaches that don't require anything dramatic or expensive.

Very rough draft snippet from you’ve become all I’ve lost, my new Darkish!Harry Hartwin fic. It will NOT be TGC complaint at all because it was outlined in March, and I don’t feel like reworking the entire story to fit TGC. Plus after the movie I want to write Part III or IV of my kiss me series :)

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“Jesus, fine, say your piece. After all you have a date with yourself and your latest Bad Dragon purchase, I don’t want to keep you.” Harry grouses.

Merlin’s eyebrows crawl on top of his head before he throws his head back and laughs. Every time he goes to say something to Harry, he just sets himself off all over again, until he is holding his stomach with one hand and wiping tears away with another. 

“How the fuck do you know about Bad Dragon? Jesus,” he says as he calms down.

“Don’t be absurd. I am fifty-five years old. I have been an agent for more than half of that. Between honeypots and my own off mission proclivities I have had more kinky sexual encounters than you have had fantasies.”

“I doubt that, I have a very active imagination. Fuck, Bad Dragon. I needed that laugh.”

End-of-month reflection prompts tend to fall into two categories. The first kind asks you to inventory your accomplishments — what you finished, what you started, what you can check off. The second kind asks something harder and more interesting: what actually happened to you this month, underneath the surface of everything you were doing.

These three prompts are the second kind.

May's theme at Morrigan's Crows has been growth — not the motivational poster version, but the real kind. The slow, unglamorous, occasionally humbling kind that doesn't announce itself until you look back at your journal from three months ago and realize how much has quietly shifted. We spent the month talking about lifelong learning in witchcraft, the Dunning-Kruger effect in magical practice, why long-term spellwork compounds in ways that single workings usually don't, and how to layer intentional magic without smothering what's already in motion.

These prompts grew out of all of that.

The first one asks about the growth nobody else could see — because May tends to reward visible bloom, and the quieter kinds of tending can go unacknowledged even by yourself. The second one asks about impatience, which in a month focused on patience as a skill felt like a necessary counterpoint. Impatience isn't always anxiety. Sometimes it's pointing at something true about where you don't trust your own work yet. That's worth looking at directly. The third one asks about revision — the small, sometimes embarrassing moments where something you thought you understood turned out to be more complicated than that. Those moments are some of the most useful data your practice will ever give you, and they're easy to brush past if you're not watching for them.

There's no right way to use these. Write a paragraph, write a sentence, sit with the question while you drink your coffee and don't write anything at all. Learning what a question stirs up in you is its own kind of answer. All of it counts.

The Flower Moon is the traditional name for May's full moon, and this year it rises in Scorpio. Which is about as layered a combination as you can get in a single lunar event.

Flower Moon names come from early American almanac traditions, used as a practical way to track the seasonal calendar. May's moon earned its name from the explosion of wildflowers across the landscape at this time of year. The name carries a quality of abundance and visibility, things that were quietly growing all winter are now undeniably present.

Scorpio adds a different layer to that. Where the Flower Moon is about what's blooming outwardly, Scorpio asks about what's blooming underneath. This is a fixed water sign with a deep association with truth, transformation, and the kind of emotional intelligence that comes from being willing to look at things directly rather than around them. Scorpio full moons have a reputation for intensity, but that intensity is almost always in service of clarity. They show you what's real.

Together, these energies make this one of the most genuinely useful full moons of the year for witches doing serious long-term work. Not the dramatic, burning-it-all-down kind of Scorpio energy that gets written about most often, but the quieter and more powerful version: the one that asks you to see what actually changed in you this season and to claim it without apology.

The ritual in this carousel reflects that. Instead of a release working, which is the most common full moon practice, this one is a rooting ritual. You write down something you became this season and you bury it. Not to let it go. To plant it so deep it becomes foundation.

The shadow work prompts, magical tools, and affirmation in the carousel are all built around the same thread. And if you want an outside perspective on what this moon is illuminating in your own life, the 6-Card Full Moon Tarot Reading in the shop was built for exactly this kind of check-in.

Find it at morriganscrows.com, along with the rest of the shop.

April's full moon is the Pink Moon, and it falls in Libra this year.

The name pink moon has nothing to do with the color of the moon itself. It comes from wild ground phlox, one of the earliest wildflowers to bloom in North America each spring. It grows low, spreads quietly, and shows up before most other things have decided it's safe to. That timing matters. This is a moon about early blooming, about what comes forward before it feels fully sanctioned.

Libra as a full moon placement gets underestimated. People hear Libra and think gentle, aesthetic, conflict-averse. And Libra does rule harmony and balance, but a full moon in any sign amplifies and illuminates. In Libra, that means the full moon is shining directly on your scales and asking whether they're actually balanced or just performing balance.

There's a difference, and most of us know which one we've been doing.

The shadow work that fits this moon is relational and honest. Where have you been accommodating things that don't deserve accommodation? Where have you been smoothing over friction that was actually trying to tell you something? Libra energy can be so oriented toward keeping things even that it sometimes mistakes self-erasure for compromise. This full moon tends to make that visible whether you're ready for it or not.

Practically, this is a good moon for anything involving clarity in relationships, honest assessment of what you're giving versus receiving, and releasing the version of yourself that needs everyone around you to be comfortable before you're allowed to need something.

The ritual in this carousel uses two pieces of paper and fire, which is accessible but not trivial. Write what you've been giving on one, what you've been getting on the other, hold both, and burn the one that's heavier. It's a simple act with a direct point.

Tools that work well with this moon: rose quartz for self-honesty rather than self-soothing, lapis lazuli for saying the true thing out loud, black tourmaline if something needs to be cut. Herbs: rose, yarrow, spearmint. Colors: dusty rose, deep burgundy, pale gold.

The full carousel walks through all of it, including shadow work prompts and an affirmation with some backbone to it.

May correspondences, gathered and ready for you.

Correspondences are one of those foundational witchcraft tools that can feel deceptively simple on the surface — a list of stones and flowers and animals assigned to a month — but they carry a lot more weight when you understand the thinking behind them. They're essentially a map of energetic resonance. The idea is that certain things, by their nature, carry qualities that align with particular intentions, seasons, or spiritual forces. Working with correspondences means you're choosing tools that are already tuned to the frequency you're trying to work in, rather than working against the current.

May's correspondences reflect the month's particular character — alive, generative, a little wild, and carrying the memory of what was seeded in winter.

The stones this month are agate, emerald, and carnelian. Agate has a long history in folk magic and protective traditions, valued for its stabilizing quality and its association with grounding scattered energy. Emerald has been linked to growth, abundance, and clear vision across multiple traditions going back centuries. Carnelian is warming and activating, it's historically associated with courage, motivation, and forward movement, which makes it particularly useful in a month that's asking you to build and grow.

Lily of the valley is May's flower. It's traditionally associated with returning happiness and the quiet sweetness that follows a hard season. Small, shade-tolerant, and persistent, which feels appropriate for a month about growth that doesn't always look dramatic from the outside.

The animals associated with May, beaver, cow, and elk, share a quality of patient, sustained power. None of them are flashy. All of them are capable of extraordinary endurance and purposeful work. There's something worth sitting with in that, especially in a month focused on long-term skill building and tending what you've planted.

The deity correspondences this month are wide-ranging and worth exploring individually. Aphrodite and Dionysus bring desire, beauty, and liberation. Gaia anchors everything in earth and the physical world. Horus and Osiris carry themes of protection, resurrection, and the cycles of death and return that run underneath all growth. If one of these names pulls your attention, that's worth following — even just reading about them is a form of practice.

Use what fits your path. Correspondences are suggestions, not requirements.

June is one of those months that asks a lot of you if you're paying attention. There's a new moon, a major sabbat, a full moon, and a day of real historical significance all packed into about four weeks. Here's what's coming and why each date is worth your attention.

June 14 — New Moon in Gemini

New moons are traditionally the beginning of the lunar cycle, the dark phase where intentions get planted before they grow. Gemini is Mercury-ruled, which puts communication, language, and the movement of ideas at the center of this one. If there's something you've been circling around saying or writing or beginning, June 14th is a natural starting point. You don't need a full ritual — even a written intention or a quiet moment of honesty with yourself counts.

June 19 — Juneteenth

On June 19th, 1865, enslaved people in Texas received word that they were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Americans have honored this day for over 150 years. It became a federal holiday in 2021. Today it's worth pausing, learning, and directing your energy and spending toward Black-owned businesses, artists, and creators — in this community and beyond.

June 21 — Litha

Litha is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year and the peak of solar energy in the witch's calendar. It's a fire festival, a celebration of light and power at their height. It's also a turning point — after the solstice, the days begin to shorten again, which gives Litha a bittersweet undertone that a lot of practitioners find more interesting than the straightforward celebration. Solar magic, confidence work, visibility, and protection all sit well under Litha energy.

June 29 — Strawberry Full Moon in Capricorn

The Strawberry Moon gets its name from Indigenous Algonquin traditions marking the strawberry harvest season. In Capricorn, this full moon carries a grounded, structural energy — Capricorn is concerned with ambition, long-term building, and the kind of discipline that actually gets things done. Full moons are traditionally times for release and culmination. Under Capricorn, that might mean releasing what's blocking your progress or taking honest stock of whether your actions are aligned with your actual goals.

June gives you a lot to work with. Take what's useful and let the rest go.

When most witches talk about ancestor work, they think of bloodlines, family trees, and names that can be traced on a map. But not all ancestors share your DNA—some share your struggle, your resistance, and your defiance.

This Samhain, the veil thins and the dead draw near. It’s the perfect time to remember the ones history tried to silence. Queer ancestors who loved in secret, carving out joy in a world that punished them for it. Women who labored, resisted, and bled for rights they were denied. BIPOC ancestors who built empires with their hands, their backs, their lives—while their names were erased from the record. Workers who rose up, demanded more, and were buried in shallow graves, their cries echoing long after their bodies turned to dust.

These are the ghosts we can’t ignore. And they are ancestors, too.

Ancestor work isn’t limited to blood ties. Ancestors are those whose battles you inherit, whose sacrifices ripple through your life, whose survival made your own possible. If you are queer, femme, marginalized, a witch, or simply alive in a world shaped by those who came before—you are carrying their fire.

So how do you honor them? Create space on your altar for the forgotten. Light a candle for the nameless. Speak their causes aloud, even if you don’t know their names. Dedicate your Samhain ritual to more than family—dedicate it to lineage. To survival. To the ghosts who shaped the path you walk today.

Because ancestor work isn’t only about who made you by blood—it’s about who made you possible.