Lammas Altar

So this is my altar for Lammas:

Like most of my altars, it has my usual suspects towards the back, such as my element jars, Tibetan singing bowl,and God/Dess candles (red for God, amber for Goddess).

The altar cloth I am using is an orange/gold/blue scarf, which I think shows the transition into the harvest season.

I moved the incense burner towards the back and have been using incense for my offerings this month.

Below that, I have my yellow offering bowl with a bit of flour in it to represent the first harvest. I wrapped my prayer beads around it, which you can see as the gold and black beads around the bowl.
The left of the bowl has my ceramic wheel of the year, with Lammas almost at the top.

The right of the yellow bowl is a small heart shaped box, which I found for a dollar at Michael's craft stores. I am using it to hold my two of my pendulums, and will be painting it later so it looks nicer.

Rose quartz on the left, carnelian to the right

On either side of the altar, I have a few stones, which I chose by using my carnelian pendulum. This is my first time using my pendulum to help me decorate my altar, and I really enjoyed it, so I will probably do so in the future. Because I used my pendulum, the stones I put up there are not necessarily just for Lammas, but also to help me out personally.

Another part  of my altar that reflects my personal life instead of the holiday is the Tarot card I placed down in front.

I started working at my new job yesterday (and its going wonderfully) and I put the Ace of Pentacles down to reflect my financial growth, as well as to help motivate me to get working! I put a chunk of raw clear quartz on top to amplify the energy of my altar as a whole.

Changing my altar from Litha to Lammas really gave me a sense of calm, like I was shaking out the cobwebs a bit. I think having my pendulum help choose the crystals helped create this sense of calm, and I also like how I focused a bit more on my personal life, rather than just choosing symbols for the holiday.

I hope this helped give you some ideas for your altar. Thanks for reading!

Update

Hey everyone, I'm so sorry I haven't posted in a while. If I'm being honest with you all, I've been struggling with my depression, and it has killed my motivation to do anything pagan or witchy.

BUT! I have just put up my  Lammas altar, so that will be coming up a little closer to the Sabbat. I also have a lavender 'pleasant dreams' witchy craft coming up, so the second I get all the necessary components (I'm missing witch hazel, which seems kind of ironic to me) then I will do that and get that up here on my blog as well.

In other more mundane news, I had my volunteer orientation for the local animal shelter yesterday, and very excited to begin helping out my community. I've looking forward to this for a month now, so I'm glad its finally happening.

I also start my job on Monday! This is a huge relief to me, because I've been unemployed since I graduated college, and its very difficult to pay for my rent without a source of income.

So in short, I am still alive and (fairly) well, I just haven't had much to report or blog about. Hopefully I will get my altar post up early next week (I'm thinking Tuesday), and then do one about my actual Sabbat celebration the following week.

Thanks so much for reading, and hopefully now that my life is getting more productive, I will be more productive as well!

Thoughts on Respect and Offering Ideas

I have discovered that a lot of my practice is based on the idea of honoring and respecting myself as well as the God/Dess, spirits, and ancestors. The ancestors one is especially important to me, because without them I would not even exist. I spend a lot of time lately thinking about how I am connected to to them as well as to other spirits, and I always feel that they deserve a lot of respect.

It is strange to me to watch a show such as Ghost Adventures (my guilty pleasure) and see how they try to contact spirits around them. A lot of their tactics involve yelling or threatening spirits, and I feel like I go the other way about it.

Whenever I try and communicate with spirits, or even just pray, I end with a thank you, and often a kiss. The kiss is something that came to me while praying when I first started out my journey with Paganism, and is my way of offering love back to the world. It has inadvertently become a big part of my craft. I kiss my ring after asking for protection, kiss my divination tools after using them, and kiss the air to seal my prayers. I have a tattoo in memory of my great-grandmother, and I kiss that as a way to honor and show that I miss her.

Again, it comes back to how I feel these things should be approached with respect. For me, another part of that respect can be given through offerings, so I thought today I would give you a list of some of my offerings:

• Drinks: This one was how I started out with offerings, because its usually something I have readily available. Whenever I would make tea, I would pour a little in my offering bowl. I would also leave small amounts of wine when I had that, and I have read recently that a lot of people leave out water for the spirits.

• Food: Like drinks, this is good because its readily available. I don't really use food a lot as an offering, just because its never really felt like something that I wanted to offer. The only time I really used food was when I wanted to leave an honoring for the aforementioned great-grandmother, in which case I offered a food that I knew she liked. 

• Incense: This is the type of offering I have been doing lately, just because I have collected a lot of incense and wasn't burning it nearly as quickly as I thought I would.

• Body: No, I don't mean offer up your body (unless that feels right to you), what I mean is use physical actions as an offering. For example, lately my favorite offering is dance. I will turn on a song and dance in their honor. I like this a lot too, because it is a way of offering things without needing any actual thing. This means it can be good for people who can't afford physical offerings, or who are still 'in the shadows' and are unable to leave things out.  It doesn't even have to be dance, you could run in their honor, sing, do yoga, etc.

• Art: I have yet to do this, because I am not very good at art, but I have known people who do devotional drawings or poems as a means of offering.

• Pretty Much Whatever You Can Think Of: If you think it would be something good to offer, chances are, it is.You can usually tell if its been accepted or not, and if you are unsure, you can use divination to confirm. I have friends that use pendulums to help determine what offerings they should leave. One friend asked what that spirit would like to be offered, and it told her lemons, so whenever she gets a lemon with her water at a restaurant, she uses it as an offering. Another friend offers Swedish Fish, so it really depends on you, and your relationship with who you're making offerings to.

I hope this helps give you some ideas for possible offerings, and again, its just a few things I have done, or have seen others do.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week!

Tea Witchcraft (That's Not Just Tea)

So, as a witch, my herb collection is severely lacking. I don't have any lavender or bay leaves, really I just have a few kitchen spices and that's it.

I do, however, have an rather large amount of loose leaf teas (mostly herbal).

Really, just a lot of tea.

So I often charge and drink tea as part of my practice. However, I think that tea witchcraft can be used for things other than straight up tea. So here are two things that I did in the past week that involve tea. Hopefully, they will help you form some ideas of your own.

Tea Craft #1: Vanilla Chai Cake

A while ago, my mother told me that I could use teas in baking (or cooking, in theory) by replacing whatever water the recipe called for with tea instead. I tried it out this week because I had company coming over, and decided to make a cake with the intention that people be sweet to each other.

I followed the cake recipe found here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/simple-white-cake/

The recipe calls for milk instead of water, so I decided to use chai since I read that chai is easier to prepare in milk compared to other teas. In addition, chai is delicious and sweet, so I thought that it would definitely add to my intent.

I used a 1/2 cup of  milk like the recipe called for, and added a large teaspoon of the chai I was using. I brought it to a low boil, and simmered it for ten minutes. You have to stir it every so often to prevent a skin from forming on top of the milk.

After the ten minutes, I poured it back into the measuring cup.

Here you can see the color it ended up after steeping, as well as the name of the chai itself. I found that after simmering, a bit of the milk had evaporated, so I added a touch more milk to bring it back up to half a cup.

After I had mixed the rest of the ingredients that the cake called for, I added the chai to the recipe. You can strain the tea leaves out of it, but I decided to leave them in to make the cake a little stronger with the chai flavor.

I stirred it all together, then baked it. After it baked and cooled off a bit, I frosted it with chocolate icing (again, focusing on the sweetness) and topped it with rainbow sprinkles. As I frosted and sprinkle-ed it, I repeated my intent over it several times.

I was so excited to eat it, I forgot to take a picture of it all done! But here's a picture it with some slices out of it.

It ended up being probably the most delicious cake I'd ever eaten, and I will absolutely be making it for lots of events in the future.

Tea Craft #2: Self- Love Bath Salts

My new apartment has a bath tub in it, so I am planning on taking Full Moon bath rituals. This month I wanted to focus on self-love because, a) I think that is something that people can always use, and b) I've been feeling kind of down since the move.

I love this craft because its so easy, and chances are you already have everything you need to make it: some sea or Epsom salt, a jar to keep the finished product, and some loose leaf tea.

I used two different types of herbal teas, and Epsom salt. I would have preferred sea salt, but I had Epsom salt on hand already, so that's what I used. I used a mason jar to store it, again because its what I had.

The teas I used are called Namaste and Really Raspberry. Namaste has small rose buds and chamomile, which are good for self-love and relaxation. Really Raspberry has (you guessed it) raspberry, which is another good loving kind of fruit (in addition to being my favorite), as well as hibiscus.

I also chose these teas because I know they will make a very pretty pink bath.

First. I added the Epsom salt to the jar, a little less than half way. Then I alternated scoops of the two teas on top.

I added the tea so that the total jar contents were about two thirds of the way full.

Finally, I shook it all up to mix the salt and the tea. As I shook I focused on my intent of giving me self- love.

It looks much prettier in person, and hopefully with make a lovely bath.

Both of these crafts were super easy, and I hope it helps you come up with some crafty ideas of your own, whether or not they involve teas.

Thanks for reading!

Litha/ Midsummer Altar

Litha/Midsummer was Sunday, and here it was a very rainy day, and also my boyfriend's birthday, so I didn't do too much for it. I baked a cake and kind of dual-purposed it as a birthday cake/ sabbat cake, and I lit some Amber incense as an offering (which smells so good!).

My altar was thrown together kind of haphazardly, but I really liked how it turned out!

My altar is very  summer-y, since it is for Midsummer, and so the colors and items reflect that. I used a green and gold scarf I have as an altar cloth, and kept the usual constant items on it, such as my singing bowl, prayer beads, God/Dess candles, and element jars, I added an incense burner to it, and may keep it on there as a constant as well.

I divided it up into sort of a God side on the left, and a Goddess side on the right. So on the left:

I have a stick to represent masculinity, the Sun card from my Original Rider-Waite deck, my carnelian pendulum, and my wheel of the year. On the right:

I set up my crystals in a sun-ish shape. I chose stones that I felt reflected the season, so there are a lot of greens and earth tones, such as fluorite, jade, red jasper, malachite, Botswana agate, smoky quartz, etc.

I put a yellow offering bowl in the center, again to be reflective of the sun.

I hope you had a great Summer Solstice, and a great rest of the week!

The Big Move

Hello from my new apartment! I recently moved, hence the lack of updates. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up more regularly.

Lately, I have felt drawn to graveyards, and have been considering spirit work. I'm not sure yet, but it something I will be researching. This is important to note, because there is a cemetery across the street from my new place, and today I walked through it.

I have been wanting to go into spirit work lately as a way of honoring those who are departed, as well as connecting with my ancestors. So I have decided that at the very least I want to go to the cemetery on New and Full Moons to visit with the spirits there.

When I went today, it was just to introduce myself. I took an offering and left it at the front gate. I left three pennies, a nickel, a dime, and a quarter.I also left my camera at home out of respect, but may take some pictures later when I feel more comfortable, and I silenced my cell phone.

 I went pretty early in the morning, and the groundskeeper was cutting the grass so I didn't stick around too long. However, it felt like a pretty powerful place, and I will go there again in a few weeks,

In addition to that, today is the New Moon, so I will be doing a cleansing/blessing of the new apartment. I will post that on here soon, as well as my Litha/ Midsummer altar.

I hope things are going well with my readers, and if you have any experience with spirit work, please let me know!

Full Moon Celebration

Tuesday night was a Full Moon, and I met up with a friend to celebrate it. First we met at Panera Bread for dinner and to discuss our beliefs. After that we tried going to a few metaphysical shops, but they were all closed. So finally, we ended up at our local Unitarian Universalist church for a Full Moon Labyrinth Walk.

The church has an outdoor labyrinth design in their courtyard, but since it was rainy out, they moved the walk indoors. They had a large mat that looked like this:

The idea of a labyrinth is that there is a set path, so its not like a maze. As you walk you can pray, or reflect, or meditate. For me, its a very calming experience, and it helps me to feel centered.

My friend and I walked it a few times, then brought our Tarot cards in to the hall by the labyrinth and did a few short readings.

I found my old Tarot deck from when I was around 12 or 13, so I am trying to connect with them. Here is a photo of my cards from this deck: The Mythic Tarot.

The top row got cut off a little, but they are The Empress, The High Priestess, and The Hermit. I am very glad that I found this deck, and look forward to using it as well as my Original Rider-Waite.

My friend has a set of Edward Gorey cards, that I wish I had gotten a picture of, because the artwork on those is very interesting and dark.

It was a great night, and I encourage others to search for local events in their area. I think the UU churches are a great place to start.

Talk to you next week!