Today was spent in a bewitching, shadowed dreamlike mist, walking through an ancestor’s graveyard. Collecting headstone moss to secure secrets and to work a glamour. Moss favors growing alongside decay, so on and around a grave and headstone is divine… Moss creeps slowly, it blankets and conceals the headstone underneath. Thus, tis used to hide secrets, keeping one’s magickal workings undetected, or to cast a “veil” of invisibility around a situation.
I also gathered branches between two headstones from a very old and gnarled cedar. Graveyard cedar acts as a direct bridge to the afterlife. It is highly valued for spirit communication, and invoking deities associated with death and the underworld. While standard cedar protects, graveyard cedar creates an exceptionally fierce boundary. It is often used to ward against harmful spirits, active curses, or psychic attacks by leveraging the protective authority of the dead…
By the easiest and sunniest of definitions… A green witch is said to be a practice-based nature witch, herbalist, and healer, whose magick centers upon plants, earth energy, and natural cycles. Think “Practical Magic”vibes. But indeed, there be a darker realm.…
Visions of a hedge witch that I once knew, returns me to my early childhood days. My parents rented the lower-level duplex from a very elderly and frail little lady by the name of Edna. Edna’s door to her place was completely unlike the other, as if it came from the distant past. A beautifully detailed shimmering brass handled old wooden door, with a shiny oval etched glass window, and a very dusty and tattered lace fringed curtain that draped across. Up the old worn creaking staircase was a place lost in time. Full of spider webs, candles, victorian lace and doilies, plants, and cats… I know not their numbers.
She wore an old wicker gardening hat, with a deeply faded flower puggaree, and tiny gold wire-framed glasses. Her eyes were an eerie ghostly gray, resembling the eyes in Victorian photos of their dead. Her hair was a pale butter blonde, wispy and wild, put up loosely by hairpins into a French twist. Wrinkled, almost distorted and twisted features had she, always hunched over in a very innocuous way. She wore a frayed baggy sweater over her flowered linen dress, with a vintage paisley apron every day.
She owned a double-lot property hidden away behind a great manicured hedge. One half of the property was traditional, with the lofty house covered in sprawling woody nightshade. Solanum dulcamara is most often used magickally as a home protector, as well as an aid in working with the Goblins and the Fae. The other half of this property, was Edna’s garden…
This crooked little woman looked by all appearances as if she could barely walk, yet somehow she alone tended to her garden every day. My father mowed the grass and trimmed those perfect hedgerows of hers, but everything else was under her command. She had exactly nine garden beds,in three rows of three, ahh a true haegtesse she surely be. Her garden every variety, every texture and hue, bewitching to the senses, this one must construe. But I wonder to this day, how many could ever truly see, what really did her biding in that garden.. that is beside me.
Salutations on this evening of Saturn.🪐 Tis a death-like stillness within these woods tonight, thus the birds screech as if doomed. The heat has finally stilled, so every window in this cottage has been flung open. I long to feel that brisk cool breeze, I long for the decay of fall…💀🍂
One of my spirit boards… just as my tarot decks, each one of my boards has its own abilities. The planchete on the center of this board, as you can see is legless, and takes more energy to move from a dead stop than those with legs. I had suddenly out of the blue, felt that I should work on this board the other night; the communing was a bit dark… but enchanting indeed.
As soon as I placed my fingers on the planchete, my torso began to sway in soft circles, and from there the planchete took off. My fingers actually hanging on slightly to the back end of the planchete as it moved briskly across the board. The energy was strong, almost electric, being quite quick and jerky, but that told me a few things. Some more telltale signs began to appear, one being that darker wood spirits aren’t necessarily the best spellers…
Today was brutal hot, so I made up a Dark Moon ✨🌚✨ charcuterie board for dinner. With black grapes and cherries, black bean caviar, rye crackers and some Blueberry Goat Cheese (Chèvre): A tangy, spreadable organic goat’s milk cheese rolled in or blended with blueberries and vanilla… Enchanting.
As dusk begins to set into these woods I’ll be lighting the deck torches, sipping an iced tea brew 🍹 of organic green tea, black raspberry leaves🍃and a bit of mugwort to enhance dream states. I’m doing a Flowers of the Night 🌸🦇 Oracle reading amongst my Daturas on the deck. Their sweet and exotic scent fills the air and transports…
Things to do on a Dark Moon night in a witch’s wood. 🔮🌿✨
Well, this Summer Solstice brought with it some magickal moments indeed. I never know when or why, but it is certain to reveal in some way when I am not expecting. When my mind is somewhere else, how one sees a glimpse out of the corner of their eye, never when gazing directly. That’s because it isn’t meant to be seen by all, but rather for those who have an eye for it. By that I mean witch sight, a second sight that is learned and practiced, and comes to us in its own good time. It is a understanding of how everything is interconnected, and the ability to blend this world with the other. When this becomes achievable their world becomes visible… and everything in it.
Today was a magickal day of sunlight and shadows, with winds that sounded as crashing waves. After a three-day rain, the winds came bursting forth from nowhere, as sunlight streamed through, flickering like a candle flame between the shadows of trees.
Today be the first warm spring day of the season. High 70’s today, so I shall be taking plants and trees out onto my deck, getting everything set up for the season, and planting some seeds… planting season. 🪴🌱
In astrology ♉ and magickal tradition, Venus rules over gardens, orchards, flowers, and agriculture, specifically focusing on cultivating beauty, fragrance, and abundance. Planting seeds… particularly flowers and fruit-bearing trees is a direct way to work with Venusian energy. Venus rules fragrant and beautiful plants such as roses, lilies, violets, lavender, birch, and apple trees.
Walpurgis Night, or Hexennacht is the Germanic word for the Witch’s Night. May Day Eve, the night before Beltane when witches, spirits, and demons are thought to roam the night skies. A celebration for the thinning of the veil between the worlds, and the concomitant rise in all our magickal abilities. A gathering at Brocken Mountain, the highest of the Harz Mountains of north central Germany. It is there that bonfires are ablaze, frenzied tantric dances ensue, and the darkest of beings are in attendance…
It has taken me years of diligence to achieve this night’s flight, and the first few were what nightmares are made of. However once mastered, I must say this dark night is by far my favorite. I don’t actually get on my broom and take flight, in its stead a spectral flight. That in essence is the first hurdle, to be in two places at once, keeping a greater focus on the ghostly realm. If at any time your focus shifts, your back in your body in a heart beat.
I experience the bewitching night in visions, a series of flashing scenes. A sequence of continuous views, some within the dance upon the hill. The bonfire warms my body, and the screeching of diabolical creatures fills my head. I see these creatures and demons, and at times they’ll send visions as well. So another hurdle becomes learning how to decipher, or chance becoming trapped in their web.
When I return its a time of contemplation, as I sift through it all once again. Then its off to my May Day celebrations, for it’s Beltane once again.
At present it may be a woods of frozen snow banks slowly melting, but spring is indeed still in the air. The sunlight 🌞 has returned! The afternoons now have sun beams streaming through the windows, and the sunsets are well past four. I find myself lost in thinking of a Mad Hatter tea ☕I want to make, doing readings by the glow of dawn,🔮 and taking flight with my Fetch the hare… I love spring. Things to do in a witch’s wood. ✨🐇🌱
Raven Wood 