Tangible Witchcraft: Making Ink

Making your own inks for magick spell writing or taking notes is a great idea. Using a special pen and ink for your magickal workings is one way of putting you in a different place- one ready to work magick and communne with the divine. I use a special pen and ink when doing oracular work.

One way to make a special ink is with oak tree galls (click for images). What are "oak galls"? They are balls on the trunk or branches of an oak that are created by the larvae of wasps and are found on oak trees. 

Galls are irregular plant growths which are stimulated by the reaction between plant hormones and powerful growth regulating chemicals produced by some insects or mites. Galls may occur on leaves, bark, flowers, buds, acorns, or roots. Leaf and twig galls are most noticeable. The inhabitant gains its nutrients from the inner gall tissue. Galls also provide some protection from natural enemies and insecticide sprays. 

But for our purposes, they are used in healing, in Witchcraft charms, and to make ink. This ink lasts forever and has been used to make some of humankind's greatest works: Bach's Concertos, Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings to name but a few.

Here's how to make the ink: 

1. Collect a handful of galls, choose ones with holes in them (so you know that the insect has made its escape). 
2. Grate them as fine as possible. 
3. Put the galls in half a pint of water & add in some rusty nails. 
4. In an old pan boil gently for 15 - 20 min. (This is the smelly step!) You can also choose to have it steep for days without boiling. It creates a purple-black or brown-black ink.
5. Cool, then strain through a coffee filter & store in a jar. 

This ink keeps indefinitely (if you find mold growing on the top- no worries- just strain it and rebottle it).

For more great ideas on Witchcraft DIY, check out my pinterest board.

What We Create; How We Worship

As a Witch, I am mindful of the life, expectations, and situations that I create. We are ultimately responsible for all we say and do, and the passive world view of "things just happen to me" is anathema to a Witch. Witches make things happen, regardless of the circumstances they are dealt.

While I did not choose my patroness, I accepted her (she does not give much choice, ha!) but her affect on my personality and choices are profound and far reaching. She is so much a part of my life that her altar is in my living room, on the mantle. Anyone who visits will see her and know her presence. She is a hard mistress- one that does not suffer fools nor the weak. She will tear you down in order to build you back up, better and stronger than before. The road has been grueling and one tinged with loss.

I feel a shift coming- not one that would leave Her behind completely, mind you. But one that is coming, nonetheless. The last five years of my life has been leading up to... this. The chaos of training and shaping myself into a Witch (and divorce and having a child and starting grad school, and, and and...) until you hit that ultimate beginning... initiation. Now, after my initiation and moving across the country  I am starting a new life in earnest.

A new life? I have a son that I am educating about life and Witchery. I have started a business that is small but steady. I am in the position at a UU church that I did not expect to be in until after graduation. (I still have work in grad school, but most of it is independent study that coincides with my new position.) My homestead had a decent start this year and will get an infusion of time, money, and energy in the fall and spring with the addition of bees, raised beds, a greenhouse, and a relaxation area in the backyard. I hope to build a brick oven and grill, even.

All this sudden abundance and ease was not easily won- but Lilith made me as strong as I am (by ripping everything that came before to shreds, mind you) to get me to this place. But sometimes I find it hard to enjoy. Witches revel in earthly delights- the body, the senses, the world around us in its beauty. But I have been struggling for so long that I am in the mindset of "nose-to-the-grindstone" all the time. It's time to switch gears and enjoy what I have accomplished.

It is time to dance, make music, have raucous sex, and eat amazing food. It's time for abundance and happiness; parties and games. And I need someone to show me the way. There is someone calling me (who I have avoided cultivating a relationship with up until now): Ganesha.

This chubby, gentle, and wise deity is pretty popular in Hinduism and even among other non-Hindus- for good reason. He is kind and wise (and teaches in ways completely unlike Lilith).

He is a patron of letters and of learning; he is the legendary scribe who, using his broken tusk, which he often holds, wrote down parts of the Mahabharata epic. As I am learning a new Welsh Traditional Witchcraft tradition this year, continuing with grad school and herb learning, and training in visual art this year- he seems appropriate for this time of my life.

His appetite for sweets is legendary and offerings of them are often left at his shrines. His altar in my home has been erected on a third of the living room mantle (Lilith gets most of it, of course.) and he currently has offerings of flowers (Zinnias that I grew myself), dark chocolate, and incense. I also keep my drying paintbrushes there, my sketch pad, and my current journal for my coven training. We have the most lovely vintage statue of Ganesh- large and delicately carved from sandalwood in India. It used to belong to my partner's beloved Witchcraft teacher, now dead. It is there on the mantle, with offering plate, incense burner and small vase for his flowers.

He likes to revel and have a good time: dancing, eating, and mind and mood altering substances are all his domain. He celebrates life and beauty. I need his influence as a reminder to what is important.

As the remover of obstacles, it is he whom worshippers acknowledge first when they visit a temple. Pray to him and have the way cleared for you to accomplish your Will.  My main obstacle at this point is me and my old patterns that do not serve as well as they have in the past. Ganesh, I pray to you to help me remove these obstacles so that I may experience joy.





I am still working out what it means to have deities that are so unlike one another wearing different cultural clothes in my life. I tend to be of the mindset that gods are larger than what we assign to them and that each culture tends to see, like the room of blind men, only a part of the elephant. The gods of Faery are different from those of the Welsh trad I am currently studying, which are different from a few others that I work with: Lilith, Ganesh, Samovila. It's all confusing and glorious and a constant discovery.

Do you work with Ganesh? How do you offer devotion (or do you)? I see devotion as a way of getting the positive attention of a beloved. Wooing, if you will. How do you see it?

Manifestation Spells

Miscellaneous old spells.

As I have been unpacking here in the new house, I have found several old spell remnants of mine. One dates back to 1992! Back then, I was living in Boston, MA and my landlady was an old hermit-y Witch whom I adored. On secular New Year's Eve that year, we did a spell where we burned away the old things we did not want in her fireplace and wrote and kept things we wanted to cultivate in our lives.

I have come across these ragged pieces of paper several times since originally packing them away in pouches and am astonished at how my young Witch self had the foresight to cultivate these things (I was a mere babe back then of 22). This is why I have kept these scrawled-in-the-dark-on-the-back-of-old-tax-forms-spells. Here were my life goals back then:

1. Be satisfied at the end of each day.
2. Work towards my perfect world, one step at a time, starting with myself then with others.
3. Work towards my ideal life.
4. Appreciate others more.
5. Look towards my spirituality and take time for it.
6. Love and be loved.
7. Stay healthy!
8. Make my home wherever I am.

I think that I have been moving these ways in my life since that moment. I needed to move from Boston to San Francisco to Oakland to Columbus- but I made my home in each of those places, fully. I have been a spiritual seeker in all these places, finally finding a spiritual home in Faery Witchcraft, Cunning Craft, Conjure, and Unitarian Universalism.

Found these spells packed in my manifestation cube
which is a tool of mine. It is shown here with a
spell available for purchase at Boline.

My ideal life is an integrated one- and my seeming disparate interests of religion, herbalism, urban homesteading, the Craft, working with kids, homeschooling my son, and community building are all coming together in my new home and with my new store, Boline. Living this life does indeed make me satisfied at the end of the day. It also keeps me and mine healthy and creates the kind of world that I want to live in.

It's not all done and checked off my list, though. I still work to be in right relation with others in a loving way. This is my struggle. I am gruff, blunt, and often misunderstood. I am a "do-er" that offers advice and assistance when folks often just want a sympathetic ear (to me, that just feels like not doing anything about a problem and wallowing! My baggage, I know.)

I also found two other spells which I cannot print here, as they are more private (ahem). I also found two sigils that I created that I would meditate upon first thing in the AM- a simple self spell where I would envision the sigil written in fire across my third eye. Witch meditation is so unlike my Vapassana practice!

Do you keep old spells around? What do you do with them?

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.