Where is Witch Mom?

Hello, y'all! Sorry it has been a month since my last post. Witch Mom has been taking a back seat to Boline Apothecary and my call to heal  in this last month and the attention is creating some really wonderful things!

Boline Apothecary now in three retail locations, with two more in the works. I have three workshops to teach in October in November. I did two farmer's markets this summer and will be doing two more this winter (indoors, of course!). I have increased the number of products I offer (last year, I started with 5, I now have 60). I have been written up in a small local publication and have started to make even more local contacts that will be important next year (growers, beekeepers, store keepers, journalists, market managers and more)!

Most importantly, I am furthering my healing abilities with Boline and answering the call of my patron to heal. Boline has reached more people in need that I ever did as just me, Lily. I have done one-on-one consultations with several here in C'bus for their ongoing conditions and feel like I am helping. And even bigger news- I am adding to my healing abilities by entering a master's program for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCN, which includes acupuncture, Chinese herbalism, cupping, moxibustion, and more) this week!

I am all at once excited, anticipatory, fearful, and intimidated. I got my textbooks for the quarter last week and have been doing the first week's assignments (I got my syllabus in one class already- surface anatomy.) and... wow. I will be memorizing a LOT of stuff. Unfamiliar stuff. Time to brew up some brain tonic! Good thing I have some ginko, gotu kola, peppermint, and rosemary (my fave blend for such a thing!)- and Boline will probably sell the stuff as "student helper"!

My TCM program is three years long. I will likely post here about what I am learning both in class and outside. I will also post about the other aspects of my life: I continue training with my apprentice and teaching my son the Craft. We are organizing a rite for Samhain. And I encounter interesting information that gets added to my theological knapsack weekly.*

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* Last week on The Forum (A wonderful BBC radio program), they were discussing breath. A scientist there was studying "breath prints", explaining that each person has a unique exhale, based not only on the air that they inhaled, but their unique biochemistry and what they have consumed through their digestive tract. They are as unique as fingerprints. I have been, since a wee tot, using deliberate exhales as an offering to our sap-kin and green-kin. Sometimes it was an unsolicited offering. Sometimes I offer this in exchange for taking a part of the plant for medicine. Now I understand it is not only food for the plant, but also a personalized gift, that could only come from me.

Teaching Children the Craft: Every Friday

Every Friday, before "Friday Family Fun Night", we do a Red Meal with Rowan.
This is a rite where we make offerings to the gods of our Craft and the ancestors/Fae. We can ask for blessings, protection, or gifts for ourselves or others at this time or simply make the offering.
We do this at a tree in our backyard.

Getting ready for the rite.

Hootie the owl is joining us.

So is his "owl nut".

Outside, ready to begin.

Simple.

Enlivening the area.

Until the horn cup gets a stand, we use the tree itself!

Afterwards, Rowan wrapped his owl nut in a leaf "like Totoro" and placed it on his altar.

After this rite, we go inside and start Friday Family Fun Night. My partner wrote a poem we recite (below), we light a candle, and spend time as a family. Sometimes we go out, but mostly we stay in and play games, watch movies, have dance parties, or do puzzles. It is needed decompression time. We touch base as a family unit and stop all work. In this way, it's like shabbat in the Jewish tradition.

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All week long we toil toil

Weaving, spinning, singing, growing
So we set the cauldron to boil

And pour it out, Love ever-flowing

When Frigg's Eve comes,
one out of seven
Our work we set aside
And together, Kunnings Three, at home we do reside.

Hand-in-hand and heart-to-heart
we set the lights to mark its start:
Friday Family Fun Night!!!! (chanted over and over, usually holding hands and stomping a lot)

A West Virginia Lammas

For Lammas, my partner (who is also a Witch in my trad) and my apprentice headed to West Virginia to be with kin and friends for ritual, camaraderie, work with my apprentice, and more. (Rowan got to spend the weekend with his Nanny and Pap Pap and was spoiled rotten there- so we got some precious adult time ALL WEEKEND!)

We arrived on Friday, and enjoyed cocktails al fresco in a Witch's garden. My friend (with whom we stayed) is not only a Witch but an herbalist (we have so much in common!), too. I brought her some seeds and some jewelweed that I wildcrafted. She gave us a tour of her medicinal and decorative plantings. Her tiny town is a progressive artsy bastion in West Virgina, and this weekend was their "Literary Festival". We toured historic downtown and saw gorgeous art and then headed to the old cemetery in the downtown for a candlelight reading of Lovecraft!

Listening to tales of the Elder Gods...

Our friend HAD to show us this grave marker. As a child in that town, all the kids said that if you looked at it at midnight, you'd die. What's a Witch to do? You can't NOT take up a challenge like that!

She is spooky, no?
One of our number joked, "Don't blink!" (A Doctor Who reference for those who don't get it.)

Graveyard shenanigans!

Saturday, we woke early and I helped my friend at her farmer's market. She sells at her town's market like I do (and when she visited me, she helped at my booth, too!) She has some recipes that she has shared with me and vice versa. I was so happy to see she used my facial scrub and bug spray (and it sells in West Virginia as well as Ohio!). The market was really great- they had a live music jam session, organic food, and crafters ( jewelry, knitting, and amazing beeswax candles!). I was gifted a pair of gorgeous wrist warmers and bought a beeswax pillar candle for Lilith's altar at home.

Look at all that good stuff!

Lilith's gorgeous smelling candle.

After the market, we went and got food for our potluck feast after the ritual that evening. We made chicken tikka masala, and everyone else made wonderful Indian and Thai food, too. We went 45 minutes up a mountain from town to visit other Witches who live on former commune land in a gorgeous, hand-built artful home (where we had our Lammas ritual). Then we feasted.

Afterwards, my apprentice sat alone in silence in the woods for a couple hours. We were preparing him to meet his Fetch, and so we prepared a space for him to do so. Being out in the mountain woods where the animals noises are deafening in the dark was an amazing experience for him.

Sunday, we slept in. That was amazing. My apprentice and I went on a wildcrafting walk with my friends and we harvested red clover, yarrow, heal all, and mandrake. 

Wildcrafting in a nearby meadow.

Witches doing Witchy work.

We had a big communal breakfast after our hike. Scrumptious local sausage, organic fruit, potatoes and eggs.

Breakfast was yum!

The requisite silly picture.

The farewell pic.

(They also gifted me some nettles that they grew- so I left with more than I brought!) West Virginia is a treasure trove of plants!

We stopped in Wheeling on the way home to pick up a gift for Rowan: two turtles!

Today, we are getting to know our newest family members and letting them sun and graze outside. How did you spend your Lammas?

Teaching Children the Craft: The Red Meal

So many paganish-Witchy types do "cakes and wine". In our tradition, we drink red wine and eat a dark bread as a reminder and tribute to a male and female dyad, and offer it to the Pale People (the dead) when we are through.

As you know, my son is being brought up in the Craft, so last night (Saturday, which is auspicious for such a rite) we had him participate in his first one. He is three, and was excited when we asked him to be a part of it. He got to sprinkle/clear the area around the tree in our backyard, walk hand in hand with mama as she carried the lamp widdershins, recite some Very Important Words, take sips of wine (!!!), a bite of bread, and pour out the wine onto our tree at the end.

Something felt very right about sharing this simple rite that we do from week to week with my young child. He got to belong to our family in a new way, participate in something bigger than himself, and learn about our Ways. It was a step beyond putting shared PB & J on the plate for the dead in our dining room.

What rituals and rites do you do with your children? How do they respond?

Graveyard Work

As part of our work with ancestors, we (my apprentice and I) have started visiting graveyards.

One in rural Ohio was particularly special. It is a pioneer graveyard, never plowed, and has become a state wildflower preserve. The graves start in 1816 and end in the 1890's. Many were infants and women who died in childbirth. There was an entire family, who was wiped out by illness, too. Hard times on the prarie back then.

We had to pull back the wildflowers to get shots of the grave markers.

Most of the markers are under these prairie flowers. Only tall ones and ones near cleared paths are visible.

See how high?

Purple Cone Flowers and Royal Fly Catcher

This was a particularly gorgeous stone.

A Mason! I always like getting dirt from these folks.

Hello Milkweed, my friend.