A Spooky Happening

The year is 2020. A green mist of Coronavirus has descended over the skyscrapers of Manchester, and I am BORED. Where do I go to read about cool things? And possibly have to trawl through pages and pages of people claiming to be Satan himself? Why, /x/, of course.

For those of you who haven’t heard of /x/, this is a 4chan board where people (mostly) discuss the paranormal. Some posts on /x/ are ridiculous, but every so often you come across a real gem – I even wrote an article about one of them! So, /x/ draws me back in time and time again, just out of hope that I’ll read something as interesting as that.

Anyway – back to the story. I was happily browsing /x/ one day when I came across a post. The text of the post wasn’t compelling, something about demons etc etc, but I was drawn to the image posted. The image in question was this:

I felt some sense of anxiety looking at this image. It reminded me of when Lovecraft refers to something as ‘a picture which drives one insane’. I’d never seen anything which inspired so much dread and a gut-wrenching feeling that something was wrong. I was convinced that I’d never come across this image again, so I saved it onto my phone.

A few days passed, and I couldn’t shake that compulsion to keep looking at it. Part of its weirdness was that I didn’t know where it was from, and the art style was just….uncomfortable. In an attempt to make myself feel better, I reverse Google image searched it, and easily found it.

It was a book cover: a book called Chamiel by Edward Pearson. But that didn’t fully satisfy me. I had to see what it was about, as I’ve learned to pay attention to this weird gut feelings, so I headed to Amazon (boo! hiss!) to see if I could buy it. Yes! I could buy it! It was even on sale.

It was reduced to £0.01. This felt wrong, I thought, as I added it to my basket. Wasn’t it a coincidence that I had such strange feelings about a book that just happened to be on sale for one pence at the exact same time? I knew the universe wanted me to buy it. So, in true reckless Frankie Synth fashion, I bought it. I felt like there must be something in it that I needed to read.

It came, and I opened it. The dedication page just said ‘dear John.’ That was it. Just that on an empty page. I already had the feeling that this book was cursed somehow, but I couldn’t explain it, it was a gut feeling. The first rule of cursed objects is to cleanse cursed objects (we’ve all seen Annabelle, I aint having chairs flying around my house).

After cleansing the book and the house, I sat down to read. The book was an adventure novel about archangels, but what stood out to me was the ending (I’ll try to keep it spoiler free): the ending of this book provides a new perspective on the canonical Adam and Eve story, and after reading it, it prompted me to look at my own roots with new perspectives.

Had I not looked at my own roots, I wouldn’t have made some difficult decisions and expelled negativity from my life. That is what this book was trying to tell me. So, thanks good guy universe!

However, that picture still remains a mystery as to why it disturbs me so much. It may be symbolic of my reluctance to do shadow work: the picturesque, dreamlike landscape contrasting with the harsh oppressive shadow is pretty evident. Because I’m apparently a masochist, I may even print it out and display it on my desk to remind me to do shadow work!

What do you think? Does this image disturb you the same way it disturbs me? Do you have any images that have spoken to you?

Frank’s Pandemic of Pandemonium

Helloooooooo everyone!

It’s been a good long while since I last posted here. Firstly, I just want to thank everyone who still visits this blog (I can tell cos ya girl’s got analytics), even though at the moment it feels like this:

Apparently my sigil pages are the most popular, and hopefully I might have time to update the sigil bank. Hopefully.

The thing is, life is really hectic at the moment. I have a full time day job™, work as the social media manager (professional meme maker) for Pagans of the North (as well as writing the odd article for them here and there), and am also doing a course in Coaching & Mentoring, just on the off-chance I didn’t have enough things to do. Also, April was when things started reopening in the UK, so I also go to the gym three times a week.

Add all this together and you get a very tired human.

So, as this blog is at the bottom of my priority list, I actually forgot about it until a notification popped up that I had a yearly fee to pay for the domain name.

I am currently working on a novel too (yeah, really). I’m not sure what my goals for this blog are: I started it to be informative and interesting, but I might begin to post some of my own work on here: poetry, excerpts, etc. I’m taking suggestions if anyone has any!

TLDR: I’m struggling to maintain this blog alongside everything else that I do. I’ll still post whenever I can here, and hopefully get around to updating my sigil bank (after LITERALLY A YEAR),but most of my time and energy is going into my other projects right now.

My first shamanic experience & the willing suspension of disbelief

(NB: I originally submitted this piece to a publication in December, but it got lost in the ether and therefore, wasn’t published – so when I say ‘Samhain was ages ago’, yeah, it was ages ago)

Hey everyone! It feels like a million years since I last uploaded, and with the pandemic lockdown happening, it’s near impossible to stay organised *looks sadly at scattered notebook pages and split ends of hair*. So on Samhain (yes I know, Samhain was ages ago- please refer to the above sentence), I attended a Zoom ceremony as a guest to a local pagan circle.

The only experience I’ve had with pagan ceremonies is YouTube videos and conducting my own at home, so I was very excited to experience a /real/ ceremony with /real/ people. I went into it expecting a half-hour, candle lit, intention setting ritual – with maybe a bit of ancestral stuff thrown in – and whoo, boy, was I wrong.

^{Was low key hoping for this but unfortunately not #justquarantinethings}

Instead, what I got was a two hour shamanic experience, unlike anything I’ve ever done before. It started with drumming, where the hosts played a recording of a steady drum beat, and put us all into a trance state. After that, it was sort of like I was dreaming, but lucid dreaming in the sense that I could control what was happening. Since the vision, I have tried my best to channel the images I saw and follow the advice it gave me.

My vision

In my ‘dream’, I wandered into a dank, moist forest, the smell of soil and rotting leaves around me. I ducked under a few branches, noticing the first sprouts of fungi near my feet. There wasn’t a path, but somehow I knew exactly where to go. The sight in front of me confirmed this was where I should be. There was a toad, about seven feet high and eight feet wide, sitting comfortably under the trees. It’s mottled skin heaved under its gentle breath, and it seemed totally at peace. As I approached, it seemed to welcome me somehow, and in a raspy, deep voice it greeted me. ‘What do you need, small thing?’ The toad rasped. ‘Guidance,’ I replied, ‘and reassurance.’ ‘I am at rest. But I am growing still, despite being at rest. That is my guidance to you. Learn to rest and you will grow.’ Its eyes closed with a booming sigh, and at that point, I knew it was time to leave.

^{I searched for forever to find as accurate an image as possible}

End of vision

So what have I taken from this? It sort of confirmed what I already knew: chill out Frank!

But, to bring us to the second part of this title, this totally would not have worked had I not willingly suspended my belief in order to see this vision. All the time I was in the forest, I was totally aware that I was sitting at home in Manchester in my armchair, but it was as if I shifted planes of existence. To be honest I’ve always been a skeptic of shamanic experiences, but now I completely understand both sides. If your heart isn’t open to the lucid dream, you won’t experience it.

Willing suspension of disbelief is by far the most important aspect (to me, anyway) of any shamanic experience. Have you had any shamanic visions? If so, what were they like? Did they foresee anything or just reassure you that you were on the right path?

Blessed be!

A review: The Kybalion (Centenary Edition)

The Kybalion (Centenary Edition) – The Three Initiates
1908

Welcome to the first of hopefully many book reviews I intend to do on this blog – I intend to cover lots of different topics and themes. Enjoy nerding out with me!

In my manic ‘I want to do a philosophy masters’ phase of mid-2020, I bought this book as my first foray into Hermetic philosophy. I already vaguely knew the term Hermetic, as I’d been reading my Hermetic tarot deck for a year prior to that, but I was yet to actually understand what Hermeticism actually was. (something something…Dr John Dee…something something).

When this book arrived, it looked so cool. It was black faux snakeskin with gold leaf titling, and holding it felt like I was a 19^th Century hermit starting a vast library of antiquities. Another thing that I noticed was that it was quite small, which was a good thing – as sometimes I’m put off by Yellow Pages-esque tomes about philosophy (yawn).

Actual gif of me sorting out my bookcase, circa 2020

However, it took me forever to get around to reading it, and even longer to get around to finishing it. Not that it wasn’t interesting, but it was difficult to bring myself to read something so academic when I had other fiction books to occupy my time. Nevertheless, I finished it, contemplated it, and wrote this review.

This book is very ‘to the point’. It clearly states what the ‘axioms’ (or rules) are in Hermetic philosophy, and even lists them as headers. This is quite refreshing to someone who thinks they are reading an academic text, and really handy for beginners that just want to know what Hermetic philosophy is. The book follows a three part structure: firstly, laying out the ‘rules’ in a bitesize format; then following this with clearly marked chapters expanding on each rule; then a conclusion, which sums up some key axioms and leaves the reader with at least basic knowledge of hermeticism. And really, that basic knowledge was all I wanted! The middle chapters were useful in that there were a few axioms where I was a bit ‘eh…?’ in how I understood them, and explaining each axiom per chapter gave me a way to settle into each one without it being overwhelming.

However, this book seems to assume that I am already a student of Hermeticism, and that made me feel a bit alienated from the subject matter:

‘If you are a true student, you will be able to work out and apply these principles- if not, then you must develop yourself into one.’ (p5)

There really seems to be no intention of non-Hermetics reading this, and so my brain almost responded with ‘ok then I won’t read it, screw you Three Initiates.’ The writing style is interestingly contradicting, as sometimes it can be really boggly (ie. having to read the same sentence over and over to understand it) or it can be overly patronising. Some paragraphs feel like the author is trying to fill the word count, with one whole page of the book being dedicated to explaining why they are using the word ‘feminine’ rather than ‘negative’ – when relating to the opposite polarities of life – and this message could have easily been conveyed in two sentences. On the other hand, sometimes the author will explain one statement through an example, but then give an ‘easier’ example. This may have been a good idea conceptually, but the writing style was just patronising, using phrases like ‘it may help you to get the proper idea (if you consider)…’(p46), as if we, the humble reader, were on a different intellectual plane altogether.

Let’s address the two main elephants in the room here when Hermeticism is mentioned. They either see it as ‘problematic’, which yes, if you view it through the lens of Hermeticism borrowing from lots of different cultural traditions, it can be. However, this book was written at a time when this school of thought was commonplace in Western philosophical culture -just look at the works of Saint-Yves d’Alveydre for example-, and I feel like throwing away Hermetic philosophy based on this and on its association with the (very) problematic Alastair Crowley is wasteful – I may actually write about Mr Crowley in the future as whoo boy that’s a deep dive.

I don’t want to get sucked into the Crowley rabbit hole just yet

The second elephant is the question of Hermeticism being like a cult. I legitimately felt like I was joining a cult for about 30% of my reading time. Sometimes the subject matter, to me, can feel totally cuckoo bananas, but of course that’s all subjective. It’s interesting to me that this book was written at a time where offshoots of Hermeticism were cults – the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was around then (although it seems that the author, William Walker Atkinson -pseudonym, The Three Initiates-, was not a part of this).

To conclude, The Kybalion is definitely a useful book, both as a way to begin reading into Hermeticism and also as a reference point. I’d recommend getting the Centenary Edition, as the introduction includes several other works on Hermeticism as recommended reading – super helpful! If you can look past the negatives that I outlined before, then this book is certainly a good read. It was for me.

7/10 stars!

How I raise enough energy for spellwork in less than ten minutes

One way of raising energy is achieving some kind of meditative state, How do we do this? Some people use shamanic drumming, others use sitting perfectly still on top of Helvellyn (trust me, it’s cold up there).

Yeah, no thanks. (Source)

I use dance and music.

Not just any kind of music, but music that my brain reacts to. There are studies that show certain types of music causing the brain to go into a trance like state, and you can find hours of ‘trance’ music on YouTube just by searching for it:

But here’s the thing: I don’t use either of those.

My top two energy raising genres are folk music, or actual trance electronic music. Folk, as I was brought up on it, creates a feeling of home and high spirits in my brain, and trance…well, I think I just have a natural affinity for getting ‘lost’ in it.

Here are my favourite songs for energy raising. Give them a try and see if any of them work for you!

The way I raise energy is by dancing to this music and feeling the energy from it coursing through me: I am a vessel for the earth’s energy.

Jig of Life: Kate Bush

This is great for me as it taps into the shamanistic drumming, whilst also having a folk dance segment at the end. The words ‘and you will dance with me in the sunlit pools’ are some of my favourite lyrics of all time too. It was really important when I first started and I used this song all the time! Love you Kate ❤

Free Tibet – Vini Vici Remix – Vini Vici

Complete polar opposite, but allowing yourself to sink into this music really works for me.

All Tomorrow’s Parties – The Velvet Underground

You know there’s just those songs where they make you feel like a witch? Well, this one really does. If you recognise it and you’re a big goth like me, you might know it from the end of the Rob Zombie film ‘Lords of Salem’. I’m not going to put The Velvet Underground on this list twice but they also did this song which works really well, too.

Fee Ra Huri – Omnia

Here we are in the pagan aesthetic folk dance genre and I love it. I like to use this one whilst cooking or kneading bread.

Bliss on Mushrooms – Infected Mushroom & Bliss

What can I say? Makes you feel up in the clouds and dancing to this is just….ahhh.

Opening Titles – The Sorcerers

This band was introduced to me by a fellow Witch At Work (WAW) and they’re so nice to just spin slowly to. This whole album is great for it but this is my favourite track.

Hopefully these have given you an idea of what trance-state through music feels like, and how achieving a trance energy is easier than you think!

For more meditative playlists, check out My Spotify Profile (Ignore the old username lol)

Have any song recommendations? Let me know!

5 Must Reads for the Beginner Witch

Early in my journey, I decided the best thing to do would be to go to Manchester Central Library, get everything out of the ‘Occult’ and ‘Alternative Religion’ sections, and just read. I spent hours in the study room, which was honestly so quiet I could hear the guy nearest me breathing. When looking up images to use for this article I actually found a picture of the very room I was in!

I can hear this picture. It sounds like my own heartbeat and someone deafeningly rustling a crisp packet 50 yards away.

Anyway, when I read these, I had to go through a lot of filler – by filler, I mean, I read the whole of Malleus Maleficarum on the offchance I found some spell or whatever. Hint: I found one.

So: what books are helpful? Here’s my top five easy to digest books!

The Almanac by Lia Leendertz

I can’t rave enough about this book. This is a yearly publication, like a diary, and it takes you through each month. I bought the 2020 edition and you’d better believe I’m going to buy the 2021 edition too!

Whilst it doesn’t have spells and isn’t necessarily a grimoire/spellbook. it does have information on moon phases, historical seasonal recipes and even a ‘song of the month’ with the sheet music included! The great thing about this book is that there’s no expectation for you to believe one thing or another – it just gives you information that you can work with. 10/10.

The Complete Book of Incense, Oils and Brews by Scott Cunningham

For a beginner, this is a great book as a starting reference point for herbal magic, and just getting to know your ingredients. If you start off using this like a recipe book, you’ll notice certain herbs popping up and then you begin to learn properly through doing!

The introductions to each chapter go into depth on the actual magic used, so if you use this and the Almanac in tandem with each other, you can come up with some pretty potent spells!

Waking the Witch by Pam Grossman

It wouldn’t be in character for me if I didn’t fangirl over Pam at least once, would it?

I read this book after I became a regular listener of The Witch Wave podcast (also a must listen!). This book is more for /reading/, rather than a reference point like the other two are. It reiterates how magic can be in everything, and how magic is art and art is magic. It also made me feel more comfortable actually identifying as a witch, as culture nowadays tends to see it as a trend that will come and go. A must read!

Seasonal Occult Rituals by William Gray

When people ask me where they can find spells and feel connected to the power of words, I always say ‘read poetry!’ And this book is a collection of rituals, songs and poetry that really make you feel connected – at least they do for me. I use these in my personal practice, and for any group rituals I lead, and there are some really beautiful contemplative verses in here. These aren’t necessarily labelled as pagan or witchcraft, and sometimes need to be edited to suit your individual beliefs, but as a starting point these verses can form great building blocks for if you want to write your own spells.

HausMagick by Erica Feldmann

I’m unsure if I’ve made a post about it before, but my whole home is my altar, in that, I don’t have a specific space, but I use my whole home.

This book is great whether you’re a hearth witch or even just want to decorate in a nice way! It gives advice about what to put in your home, where to position different ornaments for peak energy flow, and loads of other really useful house things! Perfect for beginners and witch experts alike!

Do you have any recommendations? Leave a comment!

Sigil Magick: A Theory

When I first started using sigils, my little skeptical pea-brain was convinced they wouldn’t work. I didn’t think ‘charging’ them would do anything, and I certainly didn’t think that burning them would achieve anything but cinders and an asthma attack. And you know what? None of my sigils worked. At the time, this reinforced to me that they were a waste of time, but then I started reading into it. Millions of witches couldn’t be wrong, could they?

Months passed, and I thought….yeah, I’m going to try and identify why mine don’t work. I went through the steps of what I used to do, and if you like, you can use this as a guide for what NOT to do.

1. Go on Google Images and search for ‘protection sigil’
2. Pick a random one without checking that they have been done with either the grid method or the Witches Wheel
3. Draw it somewhere
4. ???
5. Profit

I’m going to illustrate why the first and second steps are wrong: people draw sigils for all kinds of reasons, and with their own personal methods. For example, I had a shamanic experience and drew my own sigil for ‘healing’ in my trance state. Will that sigil work for everyone? No, because that trance state was personal to me.

If you don’t want to draw your own sigils, feel free to use mine on my sigils page. These have been drawn using the grid method, and so are about as impersonal as you can get, leaving you to imprint your own energies and magick as you use them.

So, why do they work? Here’s one theory that I found particularly interesting:

I was browsing the 4chan /x/ board – which is normally just full of apocalyptic nonsense but occasionally will have the most interesting gems – and came across a post, which I will paraphrase and condense here. I think this is the most accurate explanation to me of how sigils work.

Symbols have no inherent meaning without what is programmed into them. However, the projected programming causes the symbol to carry energy…and meaning projected onto it, if we are open to receiving the already established energy. So too, at all times, are we projecting energy and programming our environment around us…[things] will carry energy.

Anonymous, 2020

Take, for example, the Christian crucifix. For some people, this symbol instils a feeling in them, whether that be through associations, or literally because of the energy they themselves have projected onto that symbol. There’s even a condition called ‘Jerusalem Syndrome’ which you can watch a video on here, where people become overwhelmed and start quoting Bible verses in the street (NB: while this video is good, it is quite skeptical, but the information is there!).

My point is here, that this extends to sigils. If I create a sigil in a trance state, my energy is being channelled into that sigil, and therefore the sigil will retain that energy. If you take an impersonal base sigil, and channel energy into it, that energy will be retained.

Do you have a theory as to why sigils work? Post a comment and let me know!

Mabon is coming: A collection of preparations

As I sit here in my little terraced house in Britain writing this, I can see the cloudy grey sky out of my window and I feel the summer ending. I can feel the leaves turning crunchy and everyone’s back to school photos, and with a little twinge of excitement, I can sense the pumpkin spice lattes waking and stretching their little caffeinated arms. Without a doubt, this is the end of summer.  

Which means that Mabon is coming, and it means that it’s been a whole year (!) since I started fully practising on Pagan holidays. Over the year, I’ve been refining my skills, bought far too many books and qualified in various different aspects of witchcraft and Pagan culture. 

Anyway, with Mabon coming up, I’ve put together a couple of things that you can do if you’re struggling for ideas – especially if you’re in self isolation or local lockdown (like I am, sigh).  

It wouldn’t be a Frank post if there wasn’t some reference to food, and so I’ll start with a bit of kitchen witchery. I got this recipe from The Almanac by Lia Leendertz – an absolute must have for anyone wanting to connect more to the earth and its ways. This recipe was tweaked from another book called Cattern Cakes and Lace. As with any of my kitchen witchcraft posts, you can add or remove spices from this as you see fit, and use spices that you feel are connected to Mabon! I would use woody spices, like nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves.  

Suffolk Fourses Cakes (Mabon Spice Bread) 

675g strong white flour 

1 ½ teaspoons of instant dried yeast 

½ tsp salt 

2 teaspoons mixed ground spice (or mixed Mabon spices) 

2 teaspoons sugar 

175g softened butter 

450ml warm water 

175g currants (optional) 

Sift all the dry ingredients into a large bowl, then add the butter and rub in until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the water and mix until it becomes a dough, then tip it out on a floured surface and knead it for 10 minutes. Put it in another bowl, cover with a teatowel and leave it somewhere warm to rise for 1 to 2 hours (until it’s doubled in size).  

Tip it out and knead in the currants (if using), then divide it into two pieces. Shape them into two loaves and put each in a loaf tin. Leave them to double in size again. 

Preheat the oven to 200C, and when the loaves have risen enough, brush them with milk (to make them shiny) and bake them for 45 minutes. Leave them to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then cool them on a wire rack.  

Enjoy as part of your Mabon feast or leave as an offering! 

Easy Mabon spell bags 

I love spell bags. They’re easy to make, and my home is full of them! A neat trick with certain spell bags (ones containing cloves or other whole spices) is to put a bit of water in the top of a wax burner, and ‘boil’ the bags with the tealight underneath. You can take them out, dry them and then use them again and again! You can make them out of cheesecloth and twine: just put the spices/flowers in your cheesecloth, wrap them up like a parcel with twine and make a little string to dangle them if you want to! I have protective ones in my front window which I hang off the window handles.  

NB: if you do this, be careful of the bag dripping when you take it out! My carpet is a bit stained from the clove syrup dripping off the bag 🙁   

As I mentioned in the recipe, I associate Mabon with falling leaves and woody earthy smells/atmospheres, so for my spell bags, I put in whole cloves, two cinnamon sticks and a ‘stone’ (unsure of the word!) of nutmeg. Hang them around, or use the wax/oil burner trick to make your home smell like Autumn.  

Summon a demon 

Joking! Joking! Please don’t do this – we have enough issues in the world already. 

Thank Mother Earth for the circle of the seasons 

Feel free to ignore this one if you don’t believe in prayer, as I will probably post some poetry at some point. I am by no means more qualified to lead a ritual than anyone else, but I have edited this ritual prayer so the solitary practitioner can read and sit in contemplation, or read to a group of practitioners. This prayer is from Seasonal Occult Rituals by William Gray, and this section is The Rite of Autumn.  

May the light of sunset shine resplendently on us this Autumn equinox. 

Blessed be the sun of Autumn bringing heavenly beauty to the edges of this earth.  

Blessed be light so wonderfully shown to us upon its path of power. 

We stand between the light and shade 

Upon the middle path we made 

Where day and night divide, 

As we have lived and worked and prayed.  

Fire and water bring to birth 

With air, the outcome of this earth.  

So bless the earth on which we stand 

For harvests of the sea and land. 

Roots below, fruits above, ripe and ready for our reaping. Blessed be the earth suppoorting life, and air that brings the breath of life to earth. Let us keep our feet well grounded on our earth however high we hold our heads to the sky. So shall we live as upright souls between both ends of our existence.   

Make a Cerridwen brew 

By artist Adrienne Rozzi

Cerridwen is the Welsh goddess of transformation, so you could probably brew this at any changing of the seasons. This recipe is toxic and so should not be consumed. Instead, you can sit and absorb the vapours as it boils.  

This recipe is from The Complete Book of Incense, Oils & Brews by Scott Cunningham.  

Boil: 

• Water 
• Acorns 
• Barley 
• Honey 
• Ivy 
• Hellebore (you can substitute this with rosemary) 
• Bay 

I hope you enjoyed this post, and if you would like me to write one for each corner of the year (ie. Yule, Ostara, Litha and Mabon 2021), please like, share and comment! 

Little plans for Lughnasadh on any budget

Hey guys!

I hope you all are having a great summer, wherever you are!

I realised that I don’t actually post much about the Pagan holidays as I’d like to, so here we are with some nice ideas of things to do for Lughnasadh.

What is Lughnasadh?

Lughnasadh, or Lammas, is a Pagan holiday held on 1st August which marks the end of summer and the beginning of the harvest season. It is named after the the god Lugh, who is sometimes interpreted as the Sun god, but is also related to the Roman god Mercury. You can read more about Lugh here.

Pick dandelions and make flower crowns

Ok so I started off with the most twee thing on the list. Dandelions and marigolds are very connected with Lughnasadh as they are sun plants, and Lughnasadh is a time of heat and light. They could also be said to invoke Lugh, if you interpret Lugh as a god of the Sun.

Disclaimer: Please don’t pinch marigolds out of other people’s gardens! Dandelions are fine, or any yellow/red/orange flowers.

Here is an easy flower crown tutorial:

2. Bake bread

Lughnasadh is a time for harvest, and so baking bread is great to reconnect at this time. Try baking flowers into the top of it for that extra special touch.

3. Decorate your altar for the holiday

My altar is my whole home, so I decorate with flowers in vases and things that remind me of harvesting – orange flowers, spell bags of wheat wrapped in brown twine, jute cloth garlands, etc. You can find or make all sorts if you meditate and think about what the holiday means to you!

4. Make blackberry crumble or pancakes

An old custom is that it’s unlucky to eat blackberries after 29th September, so eat as many as you can before then! Source They’re super cheap around this time in supermarkets due to being seasonal, or you can go and pick them yourself if they are safe to eat.

5. Make something with corn

Because it’s the harvesting season, it’s the perfect time to eat corn. Literally canned sweetcorn (30p from the right stores). A great tweak I’ve found is to cook the sweetcorn until it’s hot, drain it and put a knob of butter and 1/2 teaspoon of garlic in it.

6. Attend my free Twitch session

Shameless bit of self promotion here, but I will be conducting an online meditation/ritual session on 1st August to celebrate the holiday. Stay updated here.

7. Have a talent show with your friends

Lugh is the god of craftsmanship and talent. So what better way to celebrate him than to get together, drink some red wine and hold a performance where you all take turns? If your country is still in lockdown (I hear ya UK) you can do this over Skype!

8. Have a sports competition

If singing on Skype isn’t really your thing, and you’re not having to stay at home, why not have a sports competition with your friends? The festival of Lughnasadh has been likened to the Olympic games, and so anything that tests your mettle in sport is a great idea!

9. Sing and dance

I do this at every holiday but this is my favourite way of reconnecting with my soul and the universe. Put your favourite music on and just go for it. Have a good time. It’s a festival!

10. Create something

Again, celebrate your craftsmanship by letting your creativity roam free!

Most importantly – reconnect, reflect and look forward to the waning light.

Have a blessed Lughnasadh

Tip: Don’t Hex the moon

You know when you’re watching a horror movie, and the main character goes ‘Yeah I know what will be super fun- let’s get that Ouija Board and see what happens’, and everyone collectively sighs?

I feel like that right. Now.

For those of you who haven’t heard this news, a few days ago, there was a thread on Twitter on some baby witches who had hexed the moon and the fae,

They hexed the moon. And the fae.

This is weird actually, as I felt that something was off on Sunday morning when I was doing a reading for someone, but didn’t find out about this nightmare until last night.

Hexing the Moon

Even if you hate it, maybe it’s too big or silvery or whatever, the moon is such a vital part to witchcraft and also the pagan faith, that to piss it off probably isn’t a good idea. The Twitter thread mentions that the deities associated with the moon are pissed off, but even if you don’t believe in that, sending negative energies into something that provides so much positive energy isn’t going to end well. If you do believe in deities, the moon deity is connected to the sun deity, so well done, you’ve also involved the sun.

What really made me laugh is ‘they’re planning to hex the sun’. What are they, Mr Burns?

Hexing the Fae

There is a great blog post about the fae that’ll give you a bit of background here. I’m not going to sit here and explain the fae because honestly I don’t know enough about them! But they are powerful beings that aren’t to be messed with. Now – imagine hexing them. That could mean especially bad things for the people hexing them, and could even mean that their lines are cursed.

Even the most experienced witches don’t mess with this, let alone witches that are just beginning! There is a later tweet that explains that at least one of them was not a beginner but WHO THE HELL JUST DECIDES TO HEX THE FAE FOR FUN?!??!?!?!??!

It is important to note that the Fae are typically considered mischievous and tricky, and should not be interacted with unless one knows exactly what one is up against… With the Fae, there are no gifts–every transaction is an exchange, and it’s never one-sided.

https://www.learnreligions.com/lore-about-fae-at-beltane-2561643

Why they’d do this is completely beyond me – please someone enlighten me if they know, because….I’m stunned.

So – what can we learn from this experience?

For goodness sake, do not mess with this stuff

So now we’ve established that this has been a terrible idea, lets look at….

My thoughts on this

When you begin, you sort of focus on learning. If you were learning to weld metal, you wouldn’t just turn on a blowtorch without knowing what a blowtorch. Why should this be any different than witchcraft? If you have doubts about what you’re doing, don’t do it.

Those of you who have been following this blog will know that I don’t believe in hexing or cursing. This isn’t because I don’t think it’s real (I really do think it’s real), but I believe that it is wrong to do.

I don’t agree with people who hex anyone, so imagine how I feel about people hexing the moon.

So in conclusion, why? Don’t do this. Please.