Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum

Although I just made a new door charm at the equinox, I’d been thinking of making a new one for Samhain since before my busy week, and so I did my crafting ritual. I drew an alchemic tile from a velvet bag, and okay, Mercurius you want, Mercurius you’re gonna get.

The sunflower is still drying after being picked from the backyard on the 1st, I didn’t ever think a sunflower would become a door charm, but I get how that plays into the magickal mechanics now that it’s happened.

Fresh-cut rosemary, protection and remembrance. Dried mullein blossoms for the lower crossing lines, a pair of unlit hag’s tapers.  The U of rosemary tucked right into the string holding the sunflower on the back.  It was tricky to find a couple stems long enough, but freshly-cut they bent just enough.  I wanted to use the blooming rosemary and not the non-blooming shrub, which has slimmer, more bendy branches, and so I accepted a certain amount of woody stem cracking.

his friend: wait, what was mission number one?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wideopenspaces.com/rock-stacking-natural-graffitti-ecological-impact/amp/

BUT

If you see one of these rock piles on an established trail, do NOT for the love of god kick it over. In places where a trail forks or moves over features like talus fields, trail crews sometimes build cairns to mark the trail where spray painted blazes can't be used or would be easily missed (e.g. on rocks that commonly become wet, painted blazes are harder to see).

There are multiple takeaways here:

1) Making cairns yourself is BAD. Don't do it.

2) Cairns are not ever properly used in rivers.

3) If you see a cairn on a trail, LEAVE IT. If it does need to be removed, the trail crews working for the National Forest Service/NPS/AMC/whatever or Rangers will remove it when they do trail work.

If you only ever read one post of mine, please make it this one. YESTERDAY my mom and I were hiking in the Pemigewasset Wilderness of New Hampshire, and on the trail we hiked there was a fork with half marked by a cairn so hikers knew to go the right way to pick up the blazed trail. If someone had removed that we probably would have been fine because there was an old logging road on the other side eventually leading to the road going through the notch, but elsewhere that could have killed us. It's very easy to get lost in wilderness, and no matter how prepared or experienced you are it can prove fatal.

TL;DR, please note this statement by the National Park Service.

(I am aware this statement specifically is from NPS, but this goes for your National Forests, State Forests, etc as well.)

Photo tax:

if you’re not feeling up to it here’s the gangsey telling you to juST DO IT

bonus: 

Hayley Atwell and Emma Thompson at the premiere of The Children Act, London, 16 August 2018

THIS. KILLED. ME.