Handmade Herbal Amulets: Gifts of Healing, Gifts of Love

You will experience years of enjoyment from tending your garden, as Voltaire taught us in his masterpiece, Candide. You can share that pleasure with your friends and those you love with gifts from your garden. Your good intentions will be returned many times over. I keep a stock of small muslin drawstrings bags for creating amulets. If you are a crafty kitchen witch, you can make the bags, sewing by hand and stuff the dried herbs inside.

For courage and heart: mullein or borage

For good cheer: nettle or yarrow

For fellow witches: ivy,  broomstraw, maidenhair fern

For safe travels: comfrey

For fertility: cyclamen or mistletoe

For protection from deceit: snapdragon

For good health: rue

For success: woodruff

For strength: mugwort

For youthful looks: an acorn

Amulets should be kept on your person at all times, in a pocket, in your purse or book bag or on a string around your neck.

Comfrey, the One-herb Pharmacy

Comfrey Comfort

 Comfrey is beloved by kitchen witches and is one of the best-known healing herbs of all times. It has even been referred to as “a one-herb pharmacy” for the inherent curative powers.  Well-known and widely used by early Greeks and Romans, its very name, symphytum, from the Greek symphyo means to "make grow together," referring to its traditional use of healing fractures. Comfrey relieves pain and inflammation. Comfrey salve will be a mainstay of your home first aid kit. Use it on cuts, scrapes, rashes, sunburn, and almost any skin irritation. Comfrey salve can also bring comfort to aching arthritic joints, and sore muscles.

Lavender Comfrey Cure-All Salve:

3/4 cup comfrey infused oil

1/4 cup coconut oil

4 tablespoons beeswax

10 drops lavender essential oil

Combine comfrey and coconut oils. Heat the oil and wax together until the wax melts completely. Pour into a clean, dry jar. When the mixture has cooled a little, but not yet set, add 10 drops of lavender essential oil which is also an antiseptic. Seal the jar and store in a cabinet  to use anytime you scratch yourself working in the garden or want to renew and soften your hands and feet after a lot of house and yard work.   One note, use it on the outside of your skin and it will work wonders but if a cut is deep, don’t get it inside the wound. Let your physician handle that. Comfrey is a miracle plant for healing; in combination with the lavender, this power duo will restore your spirit along with your skin.

Fire Power Ritual

I am inspired by the teachings of the brilliant Yoruban priestess, Luisah Teish, who told me she keeps a votive glass candle burning in her fireplace at all times to “harness Magic Fire in another way” . On the next full moon evening, gather a group around your hearth or build a bonfire on the beach or a beautiful fire in a safety-certified fire ring in a park. Ask everyone to bring a glass- votive candle, preferably one of the seven-day candles you find at grocery stores or metaphysical shops. After everyone is comfortably seated around the fire, speak aloud:

We call upon the power of fire.

We call upon the power of the sun.

Lend us your strength and might,

On this blessed Full Moon night.

So mote it be.

  

Next, go around the fire and let each participant tell a “fire story.” This can be a personal story of fire or where they are needing power and support in their lives.  After each story, the storyteller lights a personal candle from the fire and gives thanks for the fire that warms us and keeps us alive.

Clearing the Decks for the Brand New Year!

Cast Out the Bad Energy: Community Gathering

Here is an ancient way of casting out demons and bringing new tidings for your friendships and family. Buy a big bag of dried beans and invite all your friends over. In ancient times, many pagan people—from the Greeks to the Incan Indians—believed that beans contained evil spirits.

Ideally performed during an eclipse when that which is hidden is revealed, procure bags of beans and invite your tribe over.  Go to your roof, a hill or wherever you can “get high.” Give everyone a handful of beans and start throwing them down one at a time, with each toss calling out whatever you want to kiss goodbye—a job, a bad relationship, whatever your personal demons may be. After you have discarded all the discord from your life, you and your friends can celebrate the lifting of your burdens. this is a fantastic way to clear the decks for new energy in the New Year. 

Bright blessings to you and Happy New Year!!!