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oh so people have been making their nails look like pretty and polished stones, why am I only finding this out now!!!

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A spread for the new year! Enjoy <3

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Honey & Honeybee Magic

Magical Properties of Honey

Love & Kindness: The sweetness of honey is reflected in the sweetness of its magic. If you are looking to heal relationships and increase positivity, consider using honey. 

Health: There is medical-grade honey for a reason, it promotes wound healing, especially for burns (Mayo Clinic). However, I am not advising you to use honey medically without first discussing it with your doctor. In the more magical sense, honey can also be used for spiritual healing. 

Wealth & Bounty: Honeybees actually produce an excess of honey and when humans collect it, it improves the health of the hive. Use honey in your practice to welcome extra wealth. 

Magical Associations of Bees

Cooperation & Community: Bees are one of the few truly eusocial insects. They care for their young and communicate with each other through dancing. Through the work of many, tiny bees can produce large hives and large amounts of honey.

Femininity: Female bees are the core of a hive. They care for the young, pollinate flowers, exchange information, and are the only bees that can sting. A queen bee is a female bee that has been fed royal jelly as a grub. Worker bees represent the importance of women in a society. 

Renewal: Bees are hardly seen during the winter and their arrival in Spring represents new beginnings. They are a sign of good things to come. 

The Sun: Not only do bees emerge in the brighter and longer days as Spring approaches, but they also navigate using the sun. Additionally, their golden honey is reminiscent of the sun. Honey or bee imagery would be helpful in spells related to the sun. 

Magical Things to do with Honey

Leave jars of honey in the full moon to imbue them with magical energies

Mix honey into your tea to promote health and positivity 

Share honey with someone you want to develop a relationship with, romantic or platonic

Anoint a candle with honey in money spells

Place a jar or bottle of honey on your altar when you are hoping for a raise or bonus 

Bee Related Offerings

Mead

Milk mixed with honey 

Beeswax candles or wax melts 

Honegar

Honey cakes

Flowers

Other Thoughts

Buy local honey if possible! A lot of grocery stores or farmer’s markets sell them. 

If you are interested in beekeeping, consider raising a species other than honeybees. There are many species of bees that are invaluable pollinators and we need to work to save them!

Warnings

Honey should not be given to babies under 1 year old (Mayo Clinic). Some people are allergic to bee pollen in honey, be cautious. 

Sources

A Witch’s World of Magick: Expanding Your Practice with Techniques & Traditions from Diverse Cultures by Melanie Marquis

Ostara: Customs, Spells and Rituals for the Rites of Spring by Edain McCoy

Mayo Clinic 

Blessed Bee! Using Honey in Magic and Ritual by Amanda Mennis 

Personal Experience

Images from Pixabay

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Hand Painted / Hand Carved Skulls

White Bone Store on Etsy

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I hope it's okay if I hijack this post... I started a group on Facebook for witches who are struggling with mental and physical conditions that impact their practice. It's been a great way for witches to connect with others who are struggling and finding it hard to keep up with being a witch.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/390357429333702

So I used to be a practicing witch but due to fatigue and depression I'd fallen off practice so hard that I don't even meditate and rarely read cards anymore.. do you have any advice for how to fall in love with magic again?

Start small. Don't feel like you have to rush back into full capacity, or take on everything you used to do all at once. Start with one little thing you enjoy that you can do regularly.

If you can't get in the right headspace to meditate by yourself, pull up a guided meditation and follow along. The muscle will rebuild.

Some aspects of your craft may not come back, and that's okay. You didn't fail, you've just shifted gears since then. Don't make yourself do something you're not passionate about because you used to be into it. Leave that space open for new experiences and paths that are more you!

If you spend a lot of time looking at content from other people's practices, take a step back so that you don't compare yourself to their level of activity. Social media gives off the impression that witchy content creators are constantly in the zone, and that's just not true.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, focus on the munane. Really experience the food you eat. Try to spend time getting comfortable in silence without music/videos/podcasts in the background. Drink water. Clean your space. Tend to your nest. Taking care of our physical selves gives us more energy to care for the spiritual.

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Drying herbs and flowers may or may not be something of interest. Here are some tips for those who are looking to dry their own harvests and gatherings.

Air Drying:

Air drying typically works best with herbs that are low moisture like rosemary, oregano, dill, lavender, etc.

Herbs like mint, basil, chive, are best put into an oven or dehydrator.

Be sure to trim them at a slight angle so the center of the plant is protected while drying.

Gather together a decent sized bundle. Anywhere between 7-10 branches/sprigs, typically, and tie them off with string or a rubber band even. The smaller the bundle, the faster they’ll dry.

Hang the bundle, stem-side up towards the ceiling, for about a week or so. The cooler and darker the place, the better.

Herbs are ready if the leaves/flowers crumble easily.

Harvest Tips:

If you are using the herbs for food, the best time to harvest them is right before the plant begins to flower. You can prolong the harvest by snipping away the flower buds as they appear.

Essential oils are concentrated in the leaves early in the morning before the sun can release them into the air so early morning is the best time to harvest.

Cut away healthy herbs, remove the sickly and dried/wilted leaves, and shoo away insects. Be gentle!

If you rinse the herbs, PAT DRY CAREFULLY!

When it comes to seeds (dill, fennel, etc), place the flower heads (once cleaned from stems) into a paper bag or Tupperware container and have fun shaking!

Oven Drying:

Clean up leaves/seeds/etc and place them onto a cookie sheet (I usually use a shallow one. I believe mine is less than an 1 inch?).

Put herbs in an open oven on low heat – less than 180 degrees F – for 2-4 hours. (I cannot stress the low heat! You WILL burn them otherwise.)

Herbs are ready if the leave crumble easily

More Notes:

Oven drying takes out some of the herbs potency to more will need to be used in cooking which is more than fine.

Store in labeled, dated airtight containers like canning jars, plastic storage containers or freezer storage bags.

For best flavor, keep the leaves whole until you are ready to use them, then crush.

Dried herbs are best used within a year.

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Tarot, Nicolas Bruno

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Sukiicat

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Hey my fellow witches I need advice!!

So I'm a closet witch & I live in an urban home setting, meaning if I wanted to do offerings.....I don't have anywhere to bury them.

The only way I dispose of them is the trash bc there's literally no other way. Is there a creature or other respectable way I can dispose of biodegradable offerings?

Please let me know, and thank you!

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good morning

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What Native people say about the use of sage: you can use sage, but you cannot smudge as nothing you are doing (waving sage around) is actually smudging. Smudging is a ceremony and you are, we promise, not smudging. Please buy sage from either us, or someone who sources the sage from us. White sage may not be considered endangered by the US government but corperate sourcing is making it difficult for us to source sage for our own religious purposes. Let alone to sell it.

What white people hear: never use sage ever, don’t ever buy it, don’t own it, don’t even look at it.

Look, y’all. There’s a couple of facets to my talk today.

1) Yes! You can buy sage! You really, truly can! Buy it from either native sellers (go to a powwow! Eat our food, buy our stuff, watch some dancing!) Or buy it from a seller who sources the sage from native people. Pick one. And no, buying it from 5 Below doesn’t count.

2) you CANNOT smudge. This isn’t just you “shouldn’t”— this is a YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF SMUDGING. Waving a sage stick around your doorways IS NOT SMUDGING. It is smoke clensing. Smudging, depending on the tradition and tribe, could easily have dancing and drums involved. You, as a white person, do not have the cultural BACKGROUND to even know how it works. At all. Period.

3) please, for FUCKS SAKE, stop making posts here on tumblr where you tell other white people about cultural appropriation and what they can and cannot do. Please stop, your license has been revoked because none of you bother to get the facts right. We native people are FULLY CAPABLE OF DOING IT OURSELVES. Consider instead: a) reblogging our posts where we talk about it! We’re here! We have made posts!! b) Making a post that states what we said and then LINKS BACK TO US. Screenshot with a link if you must. Stop centering your own voices in these conversations. You are already centered in everything, stop centering yourselves in a native space.

I’m tired of this nonsense, y’all.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk ™

——

Help Support a Native artist?

Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/jnwampler

Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/khanji

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Calling all witches!! Theoretically, if I were to put crystals in my essential oil diffuser/humidifier. Would that help spread the energies of the crystals around the room. If that makes sense I don’t know. But I have the strongest urge to put my obsidian in my essential oil diffuser and I don’t know why. I don’t know if it’ll do anything. 

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Here is your daily reminder that witchcraft is not a replacement for actual medical intervention.

What’s a good crystal for headaches and sinuses? I’d appreciate it if you suggested any 🥺

Mucinex plus ibuprofen. And if you have a neti pot that helps. But boil the water and let it cool first. Because I have a house filled with crystals and I find them far less effective than mucinex and ibuprofen.

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A spread for the new year! Enjoy <3