Saturday, January 28, 2012

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.

3 comments:

  1. Ill definitely be checking that out once its all up and running. :-)

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  2. I can't wait to read more!

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  3. Congratulations to you two, and blessings on your new work.

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