Psychic Hag

   ↪ Emoji spell: “I will sleep peacefully and wake up refreshed.”

🌿Sale Extended through November🌿

If you missed it, I extended the sale from the end of October to push through November! This is a great time to pick up gifts for the holidays to avoid any shipping delays!

All vintage/misc is 20% off and Hel Mary statues and art are 10% off! Some select items may not be discounted currently if they are new or I can’t cut corners with costs 😅

IG: dhdivination

I'm an artist and witch of 12+ years who makes handbound books to YOUR specifications. Want a specific fabric or design on the cover? Say no more. Want a custom-inspired binding pattern? Easy peasy. Something affixed to the cover? No problem. Get creative with it!!

For the occultists among you, I can and will accomodate "odd" requests such as putting your personally made sigils or other symbols of your craft under the covers, working magic into the knotwork of the binding, etc. so please don't hesitate to ask!!

As for artists, this is one way to step up your portfolio game- make your artbook its own work of art!!

check out my etsy shop, or DM me here on tumblr to discuss your particular needs and get a quote.

The Mabon or Autumn Equinox is a holiday that takes place from the 21st of September to the 24th of the same month.

⛤The autumn equinox divides day and night equally - here we should all take a moment to pay homage to the impending darkness.

We also thank the sunset light, as we store this year's crop of crops.

The Druids call this celebration, Mea'n Fo'mhair, and honor the Green Man, the God of the Forest, by offering libations to the trees.

On this holiday it is appropriate to dress in elegant clothes and dine and celebrate in luxurious surroundings.

It is time to finish the old jobs and prepare for a period of rest, relaxation and reflection.

⛤ Pagans celebrate the aging Goddess as she passes from Mother to Crone, and her consort, the Lord, as she prepares for death and rebirth.

⛤The feast of the autumn equinox is also known by other names: Feast of the second harvest, Feast of Wine, Feast of Avalon, Autumn Equinox, or Cornucopia.

The Teutonic name, Winter Finding, spans a period of time between Mabon and October 15, which is the New Year in Old Norse.

The Romans celebrated a festival dedicated to Pomona, the goddess of fruit and growing things.

However, the most famous ancient myth comes from Greece. The autumn equinox marks Persephone's return to the underworld:

⛤In ancient Greek mythology, the beginning of the fall is closely linked to the story of the abduction of Persephone, also called Kore or Cora. Daughter of Demeter, goddess of earth and fertility, she was kidnapped and taken to the underworld to become the wife of Hades, the god-king of the underworld. After a period of mourning and struggle, Demeter eventually brought her daughter back from Hades to the light, but only for six months of the year. Each fall, Persephone must return to the underworld to spend six months with Hades. During these months, Nature withdraws.

⛤Mabon is a relatively modern neo-pagan celebration, which takes place around the September equinox.

⛤In the 1970s, the American author Aidan Kelley gave new names to the six pagan holidays rooted in the ancient Celtic tradition and added two new celebrations proper to the September and March equinox.

These holidays are celebrations based on the cycles of the sun.

⛤Inspired by a proper name derived from the Welsh word mab / map, meaning "son" or "boy", Kelly chose Mabon as the name for the autumn equinox celebration, and founded the ceremony he had composed for the festival in the Greek myth of Persephone.

⛤Mabon celebrates the second harvest and the start of winter preparations, and it's time to respect the impending darkness while giving thanks in the sunlight.

⛤Druids and pagans also flock to Stonehenge, the famous 5,000-year-old site in Wiltshire, and Castlerigg, another megalithic stone circle near Keswick, Cumbria, to watch the equinox dawn.

⛤The Christian church replaced many pagan celebrations with Christian observances. The most famous is Christmas, which replaced the ancient Yule festival around the December solstice.

⛤The closest Christian celebration to the September equinox is Michaelmas, also known as the feast of St. Michael and all angels, on September 29th. In this period, the feast of St. Michael is mainly observed in the Catholic church.

⛤Centuries ago in England, the time around the feast of St. Michael also had a commercial side: servants were paid wages after the harvest and workers looked for new jobs at job fairs that also became a place for celebrations.

⛤Mabon is a time full of magic, all connected to the changing seasons of the earth, this is the Second Harvest, the Fruit Harvest and the Great Thanksgiving.

⛤The Goddess is radiant and the God eventually dies with her gift of pure love with the cutting of the last grain. As the grain is harvested in abundance during Lammas and reaches completion, we enjoy the abundance of fruits and vegetables at this time.

⛤It is time to thank the waning sun for the richness of the harvest that has been bestowed on us.

⛤Sometimes it seems like every Holiday calls for thanks, and it really is: every spin of the Wheel brings both inner and outer gifts and insights, so Mabon is a celebration and also a period of rest after harvest work.

⛤In terms of your life path, it is time to reap what you have sown, time to look at the hopes and aspirations of Imbolc and Ostara and reflect on how they have manifested.

⛤It is time to complete projects, to clear out and leave what is no longer wanted or needed as we prepare for the descent, so that winter can offer a time for reflection and peace.

⛤And it's time to plant seeds of new ideas and hopes that lie dormant but nurtured in the dark, until spring returns.

I'll be posting more Mabon related content during the week so stay tuned for spells, rituals, prayers, history and affirmations!

Hopefully, you'll have a great Celebration this year too!

⛤Isidora⛤

"Filet of fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye Of Newt, and Toe Of Frog, Wool Of Bat, and Tongue Of Dog, Adder's Fork, and Blind Worm's Sting, Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing. For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble" - Second Witch, Act IV Scene I, William Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Though, Shakespeare was a master of manipulating words, he doesn't get credit for the macabre sounding ingredients in Macbeth's witches' brew. In fact, as long as mankind has been using plants for food and medicine, we have given them interesting folk names. Throughout history, commonly used plants and herbs have been given different names based on certain attributes of the plant, it's growth habits or even specific reasons it was used for. Common dandelion has been called bitterwort, for it's strong and bitter taste, blowball and puffball because of it's seeding habits, lion's tooth for it's deeply serrated foliage and piss-in-the-bed because of it's diuretic properties. Depending on where you live, you may call Glechoma hederacea creeping charlie or ground ivy; it's also gone by gill over the ground, runaway robin, and lizzie run up the hedge because of it's aggressive runners, cat's foot for the shape of it's leaves, alehoof because it was commonly used in the making of beer and ale, and field balm because it has been used for as a general heal-all herb for balms, salves and teas for thousands of years.

Witches were specifically careful to guard their herbal secrets. They came up with odd and grisly sounding folk names for the plants they regularly used, like eye of newt for mustard seed or wool of bat for moss. Many historians believe that witches used these gruesome sounding names so that their spells and herbal remedies could not be easily copied. Back in Shakespearean times, those who were labeled as witches were usually herbalist, midwives and healers; their livelihood often depended on their knowledge of herbs and their uses. Therefore they created secret code names for the plants they used.

In some cases certain body parts were used as code for the part of the plant used in a spell or herbal remedy. For example, "eye of…" would usually refer to a round shaped blossom or seed of a specific plant; as in eye of newt, which is simply mustard seed. In some cases, an animal name was used in place of a plant name, just like the "newt" would represent mustard plant in eye of newt. Below I've listed some of the common body parts in witchy plant names and their meaning, as well as commonly used animal code names.

BODY PARTS AS PLANT PARTS Eye- Blossom or Seed Heart- Bud or Seed Beak, Bill or Nose- Seed, Bud or Bloom Tongue or Teeth- Petal or Leaf Head- Blossom Tail- Stem Hair- Dried Herbs or Stringy Parts Of Herbs Privates, Genitals Or Semen- Seeds Or Sap Blood-Sap Guts- Roots or Stalk Paw, Foot, Leg, Wing or Toe- Leaves

PLANT NAMES AS ANIMALS Toad- Sage Cat- Catmint Dog- Grasses, Specifically Couchgrass Frog- Cinquefoil Eagle- Wild Garlic Blue Jay- Laurel Hawk- Hawkweed Lamb-Wild Lettuce Nightingale- Hops Rat- Valerian Weasel- Rue Woodpecker- Peony

Secret codes among witches and herbalists There are many other animal/plant associations, and even associations to gods and mythological beings, that were used as plant code names. Like folk names, witchy plant names would have changed by region and era. By combining a body part and an animal from simple lists like these as a code, a witch or herbalist could keep the ingredients of their spell or remedy secret. For example a witch who wanted to sell her herbs might list the ingredients of a tea for insomnia as rat guts and blood of lamb, instead of just valerian root and wild lettuce sap. This would not only prevent the customer from just growing their own valerian (which is actually heliotrope) and wild lettuce, but it also had a much more official witchy sound. Even though these names were crude and sometimes vile, they made the healer sound more legit and gave the tired consumer confidence that they finally found the one magical cure.

Some of these names are still in use today! These days, there are many almanacs of magical herbs and herbal grimmoires available online or at bookstores, that list out Witch Herb/Plant names and even details their uses. Just for fun, I will leave you with a list of some of my favorite witchy plant names.

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