Moon Medicine : Summoning Spell

The Lunar Apothecary is filled with small moments of magick in-between the depth work of discovering who you are as a healer and the unique wisdom you bring to the world. The following is a short spell from the course to help you connect with the ancestral current of lunar wisdom.

To summon a Moonwomxn of Old grind up three herbs sacred to the Moon to a fine powder. With this powder go to a place where you can sense a ripple in the veil between the worlds. Once there, draw a triangle with your herbal powder upon the earth. 

Hold your hands above the triangle, mimicking the shape with your own fingers, touching thumb to thumb, index finger to index finger.

Three points
The was
The is
The becoming
Open a path between
I seek the knowledge of the Starry Browed
The Moonwomxn who would share her wisdom

Listen and wait. When she arrives, sing a song of what wisdom you seek. When your time has ended, thank the Moonwomxn for her gifts. Hold your fingers in triangle form above the ground, then bring your palms together. With a quick exhalation, pull your hands apart and then sweep the herbs on the ground to each of the four directions.

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Add whatever you need to the ritual to make it yours. You can also learn more about the phases and signs of the Moon to time your magick in a way that best supports your needs. 

If you're looking for more Moon magick, have a whole series on New Moon magick and ritual that you can explore. And if you're ready to take a big leap onto the path of a healer who knows their own will, dreams, and wild desires, follow me to The Lunar Apothecary.

How to Make Your Own Rose Herbal Coffee

I am motivated by tea.

Yes, I’m motivated by justice and kindness and those I love and the work I do, but I’m also living in an earthy body that craves earthly pleasures. One of those pleasures is hot drinks - whether herbal tisanes, black teas or matcha lattes. So my Rose Herbal Coffee is a recipe that I love to make to help motivate and nourish my body and supports the work that I do.

Rose (Rosa spp), like Gotu Kola (Centella asiatica) is a much-needed herb to help our ancient bodies deal with modern demands. I think Rose is a great herbal ally if you’re an activist and organizer because they remind us that we need to know how to be gentle as much as we need to be fierce. Equipped with thorn magick, my Rose Herbal Coffee recipe supports our emotional wellbeing along with our physical wellbeing. It also includes some lovely gut and liver nourishing herbs to support our bodies inherent ability to release and renew. I add in Cacao Nibs (Theobroma cacao) because I love a bit of a cocoa taste but if you’re not inclined to chocolate or find it too stimulating you can easily remove the nibs and still be left with a delicious tea.

My Rose Herbal Coffee is grounding and helps to draw energy down and out of the body. So, if you’re someone who wakes up feeling agitated and a bit anxious you might find this brew really helpful. Because it’s caffeine-free you can enjoy a cup of Rose Herbal Coffee in the evenings, too, and it’ll help with post-meal digestion.

Rose Herbal Coffee

• 4 parts Roasted Dandelion Root (Taraxacum officinale)

• 2 part Roasted Carob (Ceratonia siliqua)

• 2 part Cacao Nibs (Theobroma cacao)

• 1/4 part Rose (Rosa spp.)

• 1/4 part Anise (Pimpinella anisum)

• 1/8 part Cinnamon (Cinnamomum spp.)

I prepare my herbal coffee in two parts. First, I add the Dandelion and Roasted Carob into my pot of water (about 1 tablespoon of herb to 1 cup of water), bring to a boil, then simmer for about 5 minutes, and then strain. Into that strained brew I add the rest of the herbs to steep for about 5 to 10 minutes. Then I add it some milk of choice and a bit of sweet, but it’s also delightful all on its own. 

Enjoy! Looking for more recipes? You can find all of my recipes and tutorials here. 

Gotu Kola Helps Us To Connect Our Heart + Mind

I’m feeling that post-class glow after getting back from The Plant Sabbat. Stories were spoken, remedies shared, and then we all blissed out together guided by Gotu Kola and singing crystals. Though I would love to easily be able to transport all of you to The Plant Sabbat, sadly floo powder just isn’t widely available and teleportation isn't stable enough tech just yet. What I can do is share some resources and inspire you to circle up with a plant ally to learn from. 

Gotu Kola (Centella asiatica) is less known in Traditional Western Herbalism, but has been long used in Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine. It’s a plant that I love and I think it has some really special wisdom when it comes to navigating the modern world of self-worth and social media. Plants are our ancestors, our guides, and they’re still growing us, so of course they can assist us with managing our tech and social engagement in ways that add to our wellbeing instead of detract from it. If you want the full plant profile for Gotu Kola be sure to sign-up to my Magick Mail where you’ll gain access to the secret member’s only apothecary full of resources for you to use and enjoy.

Gotu Kola is prized as a brain tonic and the herb is incredible at improving cognitive function. The herb doesn’t want us to just live for a long time but to be joyful in our longevity. In the US and a lot of western culture, though, there is an overemphasis on the brain as a seat of logic and a very narrow definition of smart. I’ve always found that Gotu Kola loves to work with other herbs - it not only helps connect the pathways of neurons but make connections with other allies in our lives. One of the ways that Gotu Kola does this is by helping us to reconnect with the intelligence of our heart and not just relying on cultural narratives to rely only on the logic of the mind. That the division between the heart and the mind are man-made but not a reflection of lived humxn experience. 

For my class on Gotu Kola I created a special extract to help create a vibrant pathway between the head and the heart. I combined Gotu Kola with Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) which has a beautiful resonance with the space between the heart and mind, teaching us to dwell confidently in our sense of self and the heart tonic and opener supreme, Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), which guides us back to the wisdom of heart. I wrote the recipe as an extract but you can adjust the herbal parts to easily create an herbal tea. You can also easily make it into an herbal hand, foot or body bath.

Heart + Mind Extract 

Combine the following herbs:

• 1 part Gotu Kola (Centella asiatica)

• 1 part Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna)

• 1/2 part Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)

Either combine separate extracts or blend herbs together and make your own tincture. For extra magick say the following charm while taking your drops:

Heart and mind
Work in harmony
Whole and sacred
Blessed be

Suggested Dosage: 1 - 5 drops up to three times daily.

If you haven't met Gotu Kola yet as a plant ally I hope that this helps get you started on your journey. And if you and Gotu Kola are old friends, maybe this'll spark some new insight between the two of you. Find more recipes here and get free access to even more exclusive content by joining my Magick Mail community.

Vintage Witchcraft : Or the time when Dion told me I was doing tarot wrong…

Perhaps it’s the fact that the clothes I was wearing when I came of age and found myself immersed in the world of magick would sell as “vintage” now. Or maybe it’s because I’m feeling awfully nostalgic about the books that helped raise me into the Witch I am today with the renaissance of metaphysical publishing we’re currently living in. Truthfully, though? I like talking about books (especially magickal ones!) and this is my secret way of doing that.

I’m calling it my Vintage Witchcraft series because it’s not Traditional Witchcraft (which I practice) but something between ye olden days and the influx of esoteric literature that has flooded the market in the past few years. I'm going to write about the stuff that influenced my early craft as well as some older resources that I’ve just started to explore. I’ll share resources that I think remain useful, reminds us of our Witch roots, and maybe even laugh at ourselves and what hasn’t aged well (Does anyone else remember being super excited about magick on the internetz!? Chat room rituals?! The World Wide Web is the embodiment of the Goddess!1!1!! Late night chaos hacks!? Making sigils in MS Paint??)

I’m beginning with a book by Dion Fortune - an author that was a primary guide of mine during my young witchling days. Dion is an important figure of 20th century occultism and her influence is ongoing  - especially within Wicca and many modern Pagan traditions. Her own organization, the Society of the Inner Light, continues on today. If you’ve ever heard the phrases “All the gods are one god, and all the goddesses are one goddess” or “Magic is the art of causing changes to take place in consciousness in accordance with will” those are from Dion. Also, full disclosure that Dion is a creature of her time so some of her opinions are outdated, some hold well, contradictions are to be found, but the theory and practice has aged very well.

I think she’s one of the best resources for learning about traditional psychic self-defense. For Dion, magick was not just for personal development or, as it was for many of her (often male) contemporaries some sort of spiritual ego-fluffing but for community well-being and protection. I read her classic Psychic Self-Defense and The Magical Battle of Britain when I was in high school and these books were fundamental in shaping my view that we have a responsibility as magickal people to invest in the care and well-being of our communities. I think Dion appeared to my young mind as a esoteric Professor X which is one of the other reasons I liked her so much - she was an early advocate for creating accessibility to the mysteries in her own, rather conservative but proto-Pagan, way.  She knew that magick was a tool of revolution, radical organizing, and protecting people from fascist regimes. A great place to start learning about Dion’s work and access a great deal of her material is through the Companions of Dion Fortune website - you can even practice her original Glastonbury-based meditation developed for times of transition and conflict which has been re-adopted for modern use.

Dion's Technique for Reading Tarot

It was reading a reprint of her 1935 book Practical Occultism in Daily Life that I got the idea for this series because she wrote something in it about the tarot that caught my attention. She holds some very common views at the time (including, the idea that selling of divinatory services was not a good thing - a belief that you’ll see hanging around some Pagan circles today still) but what I found interesting was her recommendation for reading the cards. Because it directly counters something I’ve written about as a mistake that tarot readers make.  

Dion talks about the best person to read the cards to be you (something I heartily agree with) or a initiate who specializes in Tarot. She talks about the importance of only using a new deck (something I don’t think is necessary - good cleansing of a used deck is more than suffice in most cases), and to carry your deck with you to help it to magnetize to your energy (I took this advice very seriously as a middle school witch - ask me about my bag of witch books and tarot decks that I hauled around in addition to my backpack). But then she gets to how one should proceed with a reading and it becomes very interesting:

Having got in touch with one’s chosen pack, the next thing is to lay out a divination according to whatever system is chosen, work it out according to the book, and note down the results obtained and the position in which the cards fell. Repeat the process a second time, and a third time, upon each occasion keeping accurate notes of the fall of the cards, and of course, thoroughly shuffling the cards between each lay-out. (1)

Well, then. I’ve genuinely never thought that doing this would be of any benefit and instead is just playing to our need to get the “right” answer that we want to see in the cards. A sort of desperate “if I just keep shuffling the deck it’ll all get better” scenario. But, Dion thinks otherwise. She continues:

If certain cards keep on coming up, and especially if they come up in approximately the same positions, or even if the cards of the same type predominate through the three divinations, it may safely be concluded that the system is working satisfactorily, and a divination may be made on the bases of the recurring cards. But if the three divinations bear no resemblance to each other; if even the balance of the four suits does not remain constant for at least two out of the three, and if none of the Greater Trumps turn up more than once, then it must be concluded that the Tarot is not working for the diviner, and the divination should be abandoned. (2)

Next World Tarot + Pamela Smith Centennial Tarot (Pocket Edition)

She’s not only recommended doing multiple castings of the same spread for one question within the same sitting, but a new way of reading. The act of multiple castings to find out if the path of divination is open up to the querent is something that would have been relatively familiar to other tarot readers of her age. It’s not something that’s too commonly done these days - at least not in the US tarot scene. But it makes me think of Aleister Crowley’s Opening of the Key (OOTK) tarot spread (well, really, ritual and operation) with it’s card counting and techniques used to see whether or not the divination has opened up pathways between yourself and the divine or at least your inner wisdom. Crowley was a contemporary of Fortune and though the two weren’t in direct community with one another there were interesting parallels in their lives (Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune: The Logos of the Aeon and the Shakti of the Age is a great read if you’re wanting to learn more about this and just about two of some of the most influential writers on modern magick and esoteric practice).

After you’ve determined that the path has been open, those cards that have turned up again and again are pulled out and read. Those specific cards are your answer to your inquiry. Having been practicing the OOTK lately, I can attest to the efficacy of pulling only a handful of cards from a spread to complete a reading. But while the OOTK is a beautiful beast of a technique that’s well worth it but a bit time consuming, Dion’s approach is more accessible. 

So, do you think you’ll give Dion’s technique a try? I definitely will. It’s a good lesson in looking beyond what we think are established boundaries (i.e. not doing multiple spreads for one question) into more expansive possibilities. If you do try this technique be sure to let me know in the comments. Or if you just want to talk Dion and your favorite works of her’s, I’d love to do that, too.

Resources Discussed + Further Recommendations

• Practical Occultism in Daily Life by Dion Fortune

• Psychic Self-Defense by Dion Fortune

• The Magical Battle of Britain by Dion Fortune

• Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune: The Logos of the Aeon and the Shakti of the Age by Alan Richardson

• Companions of Dion Fortune Website

• Priestess by Alan Richardson - I've not read this book yet but it's Richardson's biography of Fortune.

• The Magical Battle of Britain by Sable Aradia explores the amazing magickal act and organizing Dion Fortune did to help keep Nazis from stepping upon British soil. Inspiring stuff for those of us using magick in our social justice efforts.

Also, I need your help! There was a fictionalized account of the Magical Battle of Britain that I can't remember the title or author. I would love to find it again so if you happen to know it, please let me know in the comments or get in touch directly. Thanks!

EDIT: The book is Lammas Night by Katherine Kurtz!

1. Fortune, Dion. Practical Occultism in Daily Life. Weiser, 1971. Page 40.
2. Fortune, Dion. Practical Occultism in Daily Life. Weiser, 1971. Page 40.

Moon Medicine : Manifestation Spell

The Lunar Apothecary is filled with small moments of magick in-between the depth work of discovering who you are as a healer and the unique wisdom you bring to the world. The following is a short spell from the course to help you connect with the ancestral current of lunar wisdom.

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Brew a cup of dark earthy tea. 

Brew a cup of deep red tea. 

Fill a bowl with salt water.

Bring both cups out beneath the moonlight. Name the dark water potential and the red water spark. Name the bowl of salt water the mighty sea.

Speak to the dark water your desires to manifest. Speak to the red water the tools you have or seek to manifest your desires. Hold both cups over the bowl and pour the contents of each into the sea, saying:

Spiral and turn, red and dark
Into the sea, potential and spark
From the waters of salt all is born
Desire is known and desire takes form

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Add whatever you need to the ritual to make it yours. You can also learn more about the phases and signs of the Moon to time your magick in a way that best supports your needs. 

If you're looking for more Moon magick, have a whole series on New Moon magick and ritual that you can explore. And if you're ready to take a big leap onto the path of a healer who knows they're own will, dreams, and wild desires, follow me to The Lunar Apothecary.