Six Ways, by Aidan Wachter

It’s been a little while since I’ve done a book review, but today I want to share with you my thoughts on the book Six Ways, by Aidan Wachter. As you may have read in my reflections on July, I went through this book thanks through a book club in one the communities I frequent. Perhaps this review will tell you whether this book is worth your time and effort or better left aside as you focus on different material.

Ancestral Connections: Food

I haven’t written much about ancestral veneration on the blog, and it can be a tricky subject to some, especially if you don’t have a good or healthy relationship with your family, living or deceased. Yet ancestral veneration is often framed as a very big or important element of paganism and related cultural or religious practices. So let’s have a look at one angle to tackle that: Food.

July ’23: New things in reflections

I’ve been thinking hard about what I want with my blog lately. I miss sharing my thoughts with you all, but things I used to do in the past just don’t feel the same anymore. I want to be excited about my research and interests and share that, but also not put the pressure on myself of making it a big thing. So, I thought, why not do a monthly reflection post with all the things I’ve been up to kind of like you’re reading a newsletter with bits and pieces. It’s an experiment, and this will be the first to try that out.

I’ll be covering topics relating to divination, books and creativity in here.

The 10 Deck Challenge

Alright, let’s talk divination decks again for once. It’s been a while. A little while ago I stumbled upon some, sometimes dramatic, social media posts about your top 10 favourite tarot or oracle decks, which you would save from a fire or some other scenario where you’d have to think quick. This challenge naturally gets more difficult the more decks you have. I feel for those of you out there with 50+ decks trying to do this, but even with my “small” collection of ~30 decks, this wasn’t an easy task.

Playing Cards: Dark Revolution & Bright Revelation

It’s been a while at this point since I worked on these decks, but here I am showing them to you in their full glory. In 2020 I started designing these cards, aiming to make some beautifully artistic and elegant designs, preferably something dark. A lot of playing card decks were too… bland for my taste. So having finished a Tarot deck at this point and getting really into Cartomancy with playing cards, I decided to just make my own.

I recently decided to update the photos on the shop listings, so here is a proper show and tell. Better late than never!

Crafting: Devotional candles

Crafty posts are going to be making a bit of a comeback on the blog, so I thought I would start with a practical method to create devotional (offerings) to deity or Others to follow up on my Working with Deities post. This is a relatively simple method I use to create devotional candles as part of my maintaining relations with Others in my practice. This is not a traditional method (that I know of) but was inspired by my practice of witchcraft, and functions similarly to the making of spell or dressed candles.

Working with Deities

This post might be long overdue, but even though this blog never started out with a focus on paganism, a lot of traditional or folk witchcraft touches on the gods of the various religions of the world, new and old. Some people roll into witchcraft never even considering a religious or godly aspect to it, while others wish to integrate the two in their practice. Whatever your motivations to seek out working with deities, I hope this post will help you out!

Symbols: Blood

I hope you are having a nice and relaxing Sunday. It’s been a while since I did a Symbol Sunday but I had a topic on my mind that could fit the bill. So today I want to talk about my symbolic association with: Blood.

Disclaimer: I will be talking about obtaining blood safely as well as making symbolic representations of blood that do not involve actual bodily fluids. If you find this topic makes you uneasy, perhaps sit this one out. The first half will cover associations and symbolic blood creation.

Hitting the Wall in Practice

We all have busy lives and things we want to do and achieve, and like with any skill or habit sometimes that means you hit a wall, get in a rut, feel stuck in a knot and overall just don’t know how to move forward or pick it back up for various reasons. In this post, I hope to give you some angles that might help you pick back up or revise your practice. This is a more practical post, and may therefore not be relevant to everyone. I have added my personal examples in italics if relevant.

Book Review: Rudiments of Runelore, Stephen Pollington

If you have been looking for a relatively condensed source to get started with Runes I think I may have just the book for you. In this post, I will be going over the book Rudiments of Runelore, by Stephen Pollington. This is a small book that focuses more on the historical evidence we have for runes and their development rather than a magic- or divination-focused description, although these topics are briefly mentioned.