Nightmares

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.” Erica Jong

As my son has gotten older and is trying newer and scarier things, I have been having nightmares. Nightmares that I bet are not uncommon amongst parents- nightmares of not being able to "save" my son from danger. Nightmares that horrible people are doing mean or cruel things to him. Or he runs out into the street and I am not able to catch him before he is hit by a car. Or a nightmare that has him fall out a window, just out of reach.

I know from experience that these dreams are not prophetic. I have enough gift dreams to know what they feel like as they are happening. No- these are anxiety dreams. My son is growing up and I am realizing that I won't be able to protect him from everything all the time. He will experience pain, heartache, and sorrow. And there is nothing I can do about that fact. And it is painful to me.

Other parents- how do you handle it?

Boline

My partner and I have been thinking about offering certain Witchcraft goods and services for a while now, but have been hesitant. We are not the "we make big bucks off of the Craft" kind of people. We don't associate with those folks nor do we want to become those folks. We value our gifts, our relationships with the gods and ancestors, and consider this kind of work a blessing and duty. We are often turned off by the opportunists making money off of the Craft and paganism in general.

In the past, we were content to do quiet work for friends (and friends of friends). But we still had the incessant nagging feeling to reach out to more people. Now that we are in a new place with very few traditional Witches in our area, we felt perhaps that time has come to offer our gifts to our new community. The nagging has only gotten stronger since returning to my partner's place of origin- Appalachia. The land spirits are poking him to follow the Wyrd. I too have been dreaming, almost every night, of a life that involves tangible work with my hands and heart that serves others.

Witch bottle from 17th century.

While we are making some of these offerings available on Etsy to the global village, we are offering far more to our local geographic community. (Witchery is more of a village affair, after all.) And while Etsy can only do basic cash exchange type commerce, here at home in our new community we value and encourage barter, the gift economy, and fair trade.

My partner is incredibly gifted at divination- both tarot and runes. I am a creative and powerful spellstress- I can make charms, talismans, witch bottles, candle spells, and more that pack quite a wallop (if I do say so myself).

I am so excited to grow my own magical and medicinal herbs and create my own remedies and toiletries. Excited to become more tied to a piece of land (and its cycles) and how it can give to me (and I to it). I am going to be making tinctures, balms, oils, lotions, sachets, poppets, wreaths, and much more with all kinds of plants, curios, and such. Making blessing soaps, floor washes, wards for folks' homes, candle spells, and the like sounds like a fabulous way to spend some time each week. Growing Reishi and other medicinal mushrooms, mugwort, and henbane.

I will also be using the Etsy store (and this blog) to share my homeschool curriculum. I start writing units this semester and will be selling .pdfs of units as they happen.

While the Boline Etsy store won't be fully operational until after our move next month we are offering a limited number of services until we are up and running at full speed.

Happy Birthday Cora Anderson!

Today's post is an updated reprint from last year. Happy Birthday Cora. What is remembered, lives.

Victor and Cora

Today would have been Grandmaster Cora Anderson's 97th birthday, had she not passed on Beltaine four years ago.

She was an amazing, gracious woman who taught me quite a bit as I got to know her in her last year of life. I was beginning my training in the Faery Tradition when I heard the call that she needed frequent visitors. I went almost once a week for the last year of her life and got to know her. She generously shared stories with me about the Craft, her late husband Victor, other initiates in the tradition, and lore. She answered my many, many student questions with humor and folksy wisdom.

Her hospitality was legendary. While her husband could be somewhat of a hothead, she always insisted that anyone in their home (jerk or not) was shown hospitality and generosity. That did not stop her from having very pointed opinions about people however- and the Cora I knew loved to gossip about it later!

I also learned about grace under pressure from Cora. Her entire life she had been a strong, practical woman, supporting her family with hard labor and caring for her husband and son. After a series of strokes that left her mostly bedridden, she made due with life in her mind and on the astral. She would often talk about dreams visiting Victor and how she was sad to wake into the same hospital bed (at home). While her body had stopped working the way she wanted, she lived a full life in her final years- the way a powerful Witch should.

The Cora I knew- I took this photo.

She still had very particular ways she wanted things, and as a caregiver and visitor, I strived to do things the way she wanted- giving her the ability to arrange her world as she desired it, even if her body could not make her Will manifest anymore.

Cora's favorite food was pie. In the end, when she was unable to eat lots of foods, chocolate cream pie was still a favorite and I would bring her some from time to time.

Cora hosted Thanksgiving in her home for the Tradition, even after being bedridden. There were always several varieties of pie. At her funeral service, people brought dozens of varieties and people ate pie in her honor. The year after she died, my former Craft home in the Bay Area (Casa Vesperus) hosted a "Cora Pie Day" on her birthday.

Another pic of Cora and Victor.

I miss her very much. When I first started to visit her, I thought that I was doing her a favor. Our visits were awkward at first, since we did not know one another before her strokes. By the end, when I was visiting her in the hospital (the last time I saw her was April 30, 2008- the day before she died), we were friends and I knew I was going to miss her terribly. I do.

This Is Your Brain on TV

What TV does to brain chemistry:



This is why I am so looking forward to having our own TV free space very soon. Rowan is being exposed to too much TV, in my opinion. He knows character names, asks for them, and when I tell him he's had enough "crack" for the day, he says, "More? More crack?"

Sometimes I come home when his grandparents have been watching him and they have been watching a violent movie or TV show. Rowan doesn't pay as much attention to those shows as he does to children;s programming, but who is to say he hasn't seen someone get shot? I am glad that he will not have that opportunity after we move for a long time.

A Bathroom Rug and Fiber Basket: Craft Success!

Cutting up tees.

I completed the rug and fiber basket that I was making for my new bathroom (when we get our new place in Columbus). It matches our new fabric shower curtain and ceramic toothbrush holder I got from Etsy.

This was the most tedious part.

If you remember, I was creating these things really frugally, as my main material were old tee shirts no one wanted anymore (and were therefore free). These were stained, bleached, holey, and ill fitting and were in bad enough shape that I would not feel comfortable giving them to a thrift store to sell. What to do? Repurpose!

The backing, trimmed in purple
duck tape, with pattern
drawn on it.

I ended up spending about $15, which in the end will get me about three rugs (one latch hook, two crocheted) and a fiber basket. All I had to buy was a latch hook tool, a large plastic crochet hook, and the latch rug backing. Hooray for recycling!

Finished!

A close up.

I'm not gonna lie, the two crochet rugs are more rough looking (because they are made using small scraps of tee that are pieced together, rather than longer pieces of tee) to make into a continuous "yarn". I had scrap that I pieced together after I was done making the latch hook rug and figured, "Why not make throw rugs out of this?" They will be be perfect situated under my birds' cage to catch debris. I will take pics of those when I am done and show you those, too. But bird cage rugs don't have to be gorgeous- they have to be there to catch parrot poop. So I am pleased.

The basket.

The latch hook rug is gorgeous and awesome and ready for display (if only we had moved already!). It feels luxurious underfoot and will make an awesome bath mat. Rowan likes it too. It is being put away today, but everytime he saw me working on it he would say "Mommy rug- for NEW bathroom!". 

Yesterday, I went to the craft store and got a few more items that I am going to need for projects I have planned. I got some good fabric scissors to take with me (I have been borrowing the ones you see here!), as well as some waste canvas- for folks that do not do needlework, this allows you to embroider a patch onto clothing of anything that you want- making your clothes colorful and unique as well as mended in one fell swoop!

Another view of the basket.

I got some silver sequin trim and the letter "K" (the sequin trim is going to deck out the K - our family's last name initial) and will then be put into a baroque style frame (updated by spray painting with contemporary colors). This will be a part of a wall display of pictures and other memories of our family, which will be above a beloved dead altar and house altar for the main living space.

(I prefer beloved dead altars in dining areas- so that food and water offerings to ancestors are a natural extension of what you are already doing- feeding the living.) We may also place the piano in the dining room (We have a piano!) and place pictures of our living and dead there as well. If you remember, my beloved dead altar is pretty large and intense.

What are you working on?