Witch's Almanac

Thursday

2/23/2012

Hi: 43°

Rain. There is a 90% chance of precipitation. Cloudy. Temperature of 43°F. Winds ESE 21mph. Humidity will be 89% with a dewpoint of 40° and feels-like temperature of 35°F.

Lo: 34°

Scattered showers. Cloudy. Temperature of 34°F. Winds W 27mph. Humidity will be 77% with a dewpoint of 28° and feels-like temperature of 22°F

	New Moon: February 21, 5:35 P.M.
	First Quarter: February 29, 8:21 P.M.
	Full Moon: February 7, 4:54 P.M.
	Last Quarter: February 14, 12:04 P.M.

today's moon 3%

Decorating

My magic room has recently gone through some changes.  I have rearranged furniture as you might know if you read the post about needing to be in front of the window.  Well, one thing always leads to another and next thing you know another bookcase (this makes three almost filled with books) moved in,  a rocking chair (for building energy for spells and sometimes just to rock) and a "work" table, small vintage child's table. This is where I put together spells, do tarot readings, etc.  An old dresser from another room has become my altar and a good one it is because it has storage.

There are lots of "stuffs" associated with Witchcraft, aren't there?  Well, at least for the modern witch.  I store my homemade oils in the small cubby in the dresser and various tools in the drawers.  But as for the herbs - there are too many, so they are in my herb cabinet in the main part of the house along with the other non-magical seasonings.  You'd have to have a pretty big magic room to store all the stuff.

This room is a tiny room.  In these era houses, it seems that they always have one very tiny room, along with a couple of regular sized bedrooms.  Sometimes the tiny room has a closet and sometimes not.  Luckily the magic room does have a closet.  I think these rooms may have been designed to be baby nurseries or a very young child's room.  In modern houses, children have their own private good-sized bedrooms, but back in the day of this house, children shared rooms, and sometimes they shared them with more than one other child.  And everyone shared one bathroom.

This house has 1.5, but the .5 one was added much later.  People just didn't bathe as much back in the day and when they did they did not follow it up with hair drying, straightening, makeup, electric shaving and whatever else keeps one in the bathroom for an hour.  People took turns.  They shared. Many house hunters today would consider this lack of bathrooms (especially those who require ensuite baths) a deal breaker and that's why this house was not in big demand, lucky us. Now, that said, our plan/dream is to create a guest cottage using the detached garage.  Keep fingers crossed and candles burning.

The closets in this house are quite large compared to most of its era.  A lot of these houses had shallow closets with hooks for the clothes, because people did not own half as many items of clothing back then as they do now.  No hairdryers, curling irons, straighteners, makeup and large wardrobes and yet - they still survived.   Go figure.  I handle the closet situation simply by scaling down and storing off season clothes away.

Magic

The reorganization of the magic room is complete (for now) and the room is awesome.  The small space is perfect for magical work as smaller spaces contain the energy easier.  And I'm surrounded by books.  *cue the harps.*  The latest spell work involves love and I've been busy gathering the ingredients.  Currently I'm on the hunt for crystallized ginger which may or may not be easy to find around these there parts. I "happened" upon some awesome amber honey the other day, so that is covered.  I need a whole vanilla bean, which again is usually not a problem but here?  Maybe.  Oh, well, the hunt is part of the fun.

 This spell also calls for saffron, but I may have to substitute that because (a) expensive and (b) probably not available without a great deal of travel.  I never worry about substituting because let's face it - our ancestors did it all the time and also? It sharpens your magical skills. Substituting means learning what aspect of each ingredient is really being used in the spell.  Is it the scent?  Is it the category- such as flowers, barks, roots? Is it what it represents - such as a picture, a coin, a sweet thing, etc.? 


Surprises! 

Yesterday the delivery man came - and the package was for me!!  My best friend sent me a birthday gift, a beautiful silver Celtic bracelet. (will take pic) You never appreciate mail deliveries as much as you do when you live in outside the US.  I am still awaiting the arrival of my new Amazon book, which I will be happy to share my opinion of on a later post. When waiting for a new book, the daily trip to the post office (we don't have mail delivery) becomes a big event.


Looking Forward

I wrote a blog entry for the Pagan Blog Project which is posted every Friday - that's TOMORROW.  The letter we are currently working on is "D" and so I wrote an entry about The Devil.  :)  Don't miss it - there are movie clips and everything...

The first issue of the "Witches' Work  Newsletter" will be out hopefully by tomorrow or Monday. Keep tuned.

Have a great day!

 © Aine O’Brien - Please do not use without permission

Black Crow Tarot Readings