Hello! Thanks for bearing with me whilst I took a couple of months off, its been a busy, sticky, hot, and miserable Summer, and I know some might disagree with me but I am SO ready to see the back of it, mainly because of the damage the heat and the drought have done to my poor garden… but more on that later.

Where Have I Been?

Apart from melting in my south-facing living room, I’ve been writing and illustrating for a really wonderful project that I’ve been working on all year. I still can’t say much but what I can say is it has really ripped me out of my comfort zone, in a very good way. When I started illustrating for this project I drew flowers the same way I had always drawn them, small and delicate, not much detail but more of a suggestion of what flower it was… but upon scanning I soon realised that this did not translate well in terms of quality, so I was forced to go bigger, to take my time and concentrate more on detail, and to my surprise I’ve gained a lot of confidence in my ability to illustrate on a larger and more detailed scale whilst also keeping my relaxed and whimsical style. When I can talk more about this project I would love to share with you my process from sketching, to inking, to watercolour, and also the myriad of references I used to draw different flora and fauna… the title image for this blog entry is a little taster!

The Garden:

I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that this has been one of the hardest Summers for gardeners and allotmenteers. The early heatwave in May knocked out a lot of my tender seedlings and put a swift end to my remaining Spring bulbs, then subsequent heatwaves made it incredibly hard to germinate seeds and keep them hydrated, the greenhouse went from being a cosy cocoon of loveliness to an unforgiving oven.

One of the best performing flowers on the allotment were the Cornflowers, they tore through the flower plot and almost reached 6ft in height, they all wiped out a lot of the other emerging plants such as the Nigella, Calendula, Hollyhocks, and Strawflowers. A mention to Ammi Majus, Verbena, and Echinacea who I don’t think even really know that the whole county is in a drought, they’ve been thriving… good for them!

This witch was not impressed as the drought kicked in, the ground turned to pavement and formed cracks deep and wide enough to slip your hand into. The sweet peas that I had so diligently grown from seed failed to thrive, putting out only a couple of flower stems before giving up, the apples and plums have seen an influx of insect damage rendering them inedible, and my precious pumpkin plants flowered and then failed to produce fruit. Woe!

My husband and I had tried to prepare for the eventuality of a really hot Summer, we put down tonnes of manure and organic compost to try and keep some of the water in but it was to no avail as this drought was another beast entirely, and between the weather, my husband having two surgeries, and me being busy with my project, the allotment quickly fell into heat-induced dormancy… but there is always next year. I mean, it has to be better next year as my project kind of relies on me being a good gardener…

Life In General:

Apart from the heat I am overjoyed to share that I have been feeling less and less poorly. I mentioned in my previous posts that I had been suffering with vestibular migraine, luckily the intensity of it has becoming less and less as time goes on and I am so excited to be heading back into the world of work (as is my bank account). Unfortunately I am not returning to my lovely book and gift shop which I sadly had to close last year, but instead I am going to be the manager of my best friend’s shop in our little rural town, I feel so lucky! This role still leaves me enough spare time to write my books, illustrate, and share my witchy knowledge on Substack.

This increase in health also means that I can safely start hiking again, and I am so looking forward to the ‘ber’ months when I can shove on my wellies and head out into the woods to forage for mushrooms. I’ve been craving a foggy Autumn morning for months, and although the poor trees are already shedding their leaves due to being so stressed from the heat, I am hopeful that the rich tones of Autumn will heal my poor sun-bleached soul.

Now that I can set aside my own writing I can start to read the writing of others, my TBR is as high as my house but I’m looking forward to the quieter cosy months so I can catch up on all the new reads out there… plus some old ones that have been gathering dust on my book shelf. I’m not planning on taking a break from writing for long as I have two other writing projects that need some attention, one fiction and another non-fiction. I really would love to share with you the writing process for my fictional book, as I think it’s subject would really resonate with a lot of my witchy readers here… more on that later. NaNoWriMo anyone?

The Future:

I am back on Substack now! The break was much needed and I think I have managed to avoid burnout by only concentrating on one thing rather than all the social media platforms clamouring for my attention. Yes, my numbers and engagement might have improved if I had paid them attention, but I’m more focused on quality rather than quantity these days and I don’t know about you but I can clearly see the difference in posts that have taken me an hour to write vs the ones that I slowly research and work on for a couple of weeks.
I’m going to be going back to posting regularly, and I am also toying with the idea of restarting my YouTube channel… Instagram is feeling a bit ‘meh’ nowadays, so I’m still not really sure how I feel about posting on there again, and I am enjoying the break from being Meta’s content slave.

Thanks so much for bearing with me, I can’t wait to get back to posting regularly! Please leave me a comment telling me how your garden is fairing… although if your Sweet Peas are flourishing perhaps keep that to yourself or I might cry!

Laura x

Being chronically ill is exhausting.

Let’s put the illness to one side for a second… the exhaustion comes from the the waiting, the navigation of medical systems that feel more bureaucratic than hippocratic, the endless decision making, medicine testing, appointments, and the long stretches of crippling uncertainty that grinds you down in such a visceral way that is very hard to explain to people who haven’t lived in a chronically ill body.

As witches you’d have thought that we would have stumbled upon a spell to rectify all that ails us, but witchcraft doesn’t work like that, unfortunately. Magickal healing just doesn’t exist and anyone who promises you that your chronic illness can be cured though positive vibes, intention, manifestation, vibration, or a pretty crystal is always selling you something… and its usually expensive. There are real, true and tested ways that witchcraft can help you to live in a very poorly body, and cope with all of the emotional and physical paperwork that comes with that. Witchcraft can give you a sense of control back, a sense of agency in situations where agency is very much removed, it can soothe you during those 3am headache storms, orient you and help you find answers, and give you a clear head ready to advocate for yourself in the doctors office… again.

I wrote a post about Creating with Chronic Illness, and I received a lot of messages about how hard people were finding trying to balance being creative and feeling so sick, a lot of people empathised, and quite a few people asked for more information on how to navigate chronic illness as a witch, so that they could tackle that and leave the creativity for later. So this essay is for anyone who is navigating a diagnosis, a long referral process, treatments that aren’t working, or just living in a body that requires a lot of management. I am someone who is chronically ill with several conditions (vestibular migraine, PMOS, hypothyroidism, LVH) so I know how you are feeling, and I also know how to help you cope a little better.

One more thing before we dive in, everything is designed to be low energy. It isn’t low effort in the sense that I’m asking you to just wave an incense stick around yourself and trust that all will be well, but rather that all the tips have been designed to protect the energy that you do have. This level of illness means that energy is hard won, and precious, and usually spoken for in the form of pain management and basic functioning. Any witchcraft practice that is asking us to spend all of that or borrow it from another important task isn’t a practice that is built for us. The spells and rituals have been carefully chosen and curated to not require sustained focus, elaborate preparation and execution, or physical exertion.

Let’s take a look…

Spells for Waiting Rooms:

We spend an awful lot of time waiting around for appointments or test results, operations or procedures, decisions from consultants and from insurance or benefit companies. The waiting adds to the suffering and the uncertainty is exhausting.

When we practice spell work we aren’t expecting it to magically hasten a stamp of approval on an application, or for a doctor to sit up suddenly in their chair and feel compelled to let you jump to the top of an enormous waiting list of patients, it just gives you somewhere to set your anxiety down whilst you wait. You take the heavy thing that you are carrying and you do something with it, it shifts the relationship you have with the situation helps you feel a little more in control.

For a speedy decision or outcome - Herbal knowledge works well here, find plants that are linked with swiftness and communication. Bay is wonderful for communicating, we witches use it all the time to write our petitions on, laurel is a good choice for victorious outcomes, cinnamon gives everything a swift sparky energy. You might also consider lavender which is associated with air, it can invoke wind energy to hasten decision making. Write what it is that you are working towards on a slip of paper or on a bay or laurel leaf if you can get access, anoint it with some cinnamon oil and burn it over a flame safe vessel. Direct your intention in the form of thinking that whatever needs to happen, happens at the correct pace for you, not for others.
If you can’t work with an open flame then you can either bury the slip of paper or leaf.

For appointments - Appointments are really tough on those who are chronically ill, as are assessments and consultations, basically any meeting about your health is an automatic one way trip to anxiety town. Before your appointment do something really simple to ground yourself and give you a sense of authority over the situation. You might wear a specific piece of jewellery that is charged especially for appointments, and is intended to make it so you are heard clearly. You might anoint your wrists with an oil before you go in, again cinnamon is a great oil for positive energy. Another practice might be you standing in front of the mirror and speaking loudly and clearly into the air what you want from the appointment, what you want to be heard and what you want to be understood.
If you can get hold of fresh honeysuckle I would encourage you to use it. This lovely flower has long been associated with persuasion, and sweetening your words, it helps your words to land the way that you want them too. A drop of honeysuckle nectar on the tongue before you walk into your appointment will make sure that your words reach the person you are talking to in a way that works in your favour, they will hear you clearly. As we know in a medical context being heard is not a small thing at all, it can make such a difference.

For waiting on results - Take a jar (it can be a completely plain empty jam jar if you wish, but if you have the energy you might want to decorate it, or write sigils on it) and designate it as an uncertainty vessel. This is where your anxious thoughts will live as you wait, when an anxious thought pops into your head sit with it for a moment and then write it down, roll it up making sure to roll it away from you, and then put it in the jar. It will fill up, but you can see just how many ‘slips of paper’ you were holding in your head, think that you have already done as much as you can do, your thoughts can live in the jar, not rot in your already tired brain. When you get your results empty the jar and dispose of the contents… you will be surprised just how many of those anxious thoughts didn’t manifest.

Tarot for Navigating:

One of the main things about being chronically ill, that I wish I had understood more about when I was first navigating this strange world, is that you are asked to make an awful lot of decisions with incomplete information, and often whilst unwell. This is where tarot comes in… and please don’t think that I’m asking you to make important medical decisions based on slips of card, tarot doesn’t work like that, it tends to give you answers for your subconscious to think through, cards are always a way to make sense of a situation, never to predict an outcome.

Questions that work well are:
”What is it that I am forgetting to consider about this situation?”
”What do I need to focus on the most right now?”
”What is my gut telling me about this doctor/decision/treatment?”
”How can I best support myself through this?”
There are the sort of questions to ask when you have partial answers and are just having a bit of trouble thinking about them more deeply because of the stress, the illness, or the brain fog.

Questions that don’t work well are:
”Will my insurance/benefit be approved?”
”Am I going to get sicker?”
”Will this medication work?”
”Am I going to need an operation?”
Tarot doesn’t predict the future and trying to get it to do so skews the relationship you have with your deck, it gives you false and strange answers that might frighten you in an unhelpful way when you are already vulnerable. Asking tarot if you are going to die and then pulling The Tower would put even the healthiest person into an anxiety spiral.

A Three Card Spread for Chronic Illness:

The first card you pull represents what is taking up the most space in your brain, and what is sapping you of mental and physical energy apart from the illness itself.

The second card represents what you can work with and do now to feel as comfortable as possible as this illness and all the scenarios that comes with it unfold.

The third card represents what is safe to let go of for the moment. When you are poorly you are often in a hyper vigilant state, I know that when I first started having my heart problems all I would do is track everything, thinking that it gave me some sort of control to know my blood pressure, my heart rate, the number of ectopics I was having, at all times. This third card gives you permission to set some of that down safely and leave room for things that add to your life rather than take away.

Symptomatic Support:

I just want to make a quick point that this section isn’t about herbs being used as medicine, herbs have a real significant effect on your body and if you are on prescription medications you should always check for interactions before you add anything to your routine, even if it seems very safe you should always check. I have done my homework as best as I can but I am not able to check every drug against every plant to see if they are safe, if you are interested in using any of the following treatments as a support for your illness then please do check that you are safe to do so.

For the nervous system - Chamomile and lemon balm are tried and true herbs when it comes to dealing with an anxious nervous system. Lemonbalm grows in abundance on my allotment (mainly because it spreads everywhere I was silly enough to plant it directly into the ground rather than contain it in a pot) and when dried you can use it in a tea along with chamomile, and sweetened with honey, to enjoy when you’re feeling a little fraught.

For pain and inflammation - Ginger is SO good for inflammation, especially when paired with turmeric, you can make teas from them both, or you can press them and take the raw juice neat, with a sprinkling of black pepper and a squeeze of lemons to add to the properties of turmeric. It’s warming, spicy, and when you have it every day it can significantly reduce the inflammatory pressure you feel on your joint.

For fatigue and brain fog - Rosemary has been scientifically proven to help with memory and mental clarity. There is a scent compound in it called Cineole (also known as eucalyptol) it is a natural, colourless bicyclic ether and is the primary active constituent in eucalyptus oil but it is also found in rosemary, tea tree, and bay leaves. Steaming your face with rosemary oil when your brain is feeling like marshmallow fluff helps to clear a bit of the stickiness, and makes you feel a bit sharper mentally.

For really hard emotional days - Baths are your best friend. Unless you are particularly sore from your joints and would find it difficult to get in and out of a bath, you can turn bath time into a soothing and restorative ritual. Epsom salts work well for aching joints, a few drops of lavender for comfort, and candles for focus and for pulling the negative energy out of you. As you bathe imagine the stress and the emotions seeping out of your pores and into the bathwater, the properties and oils you have put into the bath draw out the heaviness, and when you get out it washes away down the plug hole. You may feel slightly lighter emotionally, but do take the time to care for yourself by getting into your softest pyjamas, and then resting on the bed.

A note on tears - You cry a lot when you are chronically ill, and you cry lots of different kinds of tears. Grief filled tears for the body you used to have, frustrated tears for when you aren’t being listened to, happy tears when you have been able to do something you thought would have been impossible. Human tears, especially those that have been shed from emotion rather than actual physical pain, carry an enormous magickal weight in witchcraft. If you find yourself in a heavy crying session consider grabbing a small glass bottle and collecting those tears… I know it might not be what you want to think about in the moment but stored tears can be used in banishing spells, in anointing candles, and mixing into water used to charge or cleanse magickal tools. Please don’t feel like every time you cry you need to be spiritually productive, but just capturing a few tears to use as an ingredient in spells directed towards your chronic illness can help them enormously.

Baneful Magick:

Ok, we should definitely talk about this because anyone who is living with chronic illness knows exactly who I am about to talk about… (it isn’t doctors, this isn’t for them at all as I believe that most doctors are trying their best in systems that are set up to make money rather than take care of people) this portion of the essay is for the people in your life who downplay what you are going through, who call you overdramatic or imply (or say outright, lets face it we’ve all been there) that you are exaggerating, that you are lazy and just need to try a bit harder, or that you are doing aaallll of this for attention.

There are two workings to consider…

Direct their crappy energy elsewhere:
This is admittedly the less taxing of the two, this is where each time that someone dismisses, or mocks, or speaks ill of you and your suffering behind your back the energy is redirected, you don’t absorb it. The negative energy directed at you is transmuted into something useable, something practical, it turns into the right amount of energy needed to bake a tasty cake, the amount of energy to have a long shower, or to walk somewhere for a while without feeling pain, tasks that would otherwise be full of pain and cut short can now be given a bit of extra energy, and add some pep in your step. You aren’t wishing them any ill per se, you’re just redirecting that draining, negative energy. Do this at your altar and speak this intention out loud, your breath should be directed towards a candle with their name carved into it and anointed with cinnamon oil.

Take a walk in my shoes:
This is a tricky one to explain because the goal here isn’t directing hatred and frustration into pain and suffering, you don’t want them to suffer exactly but you want them to know. This working is really low effort so hooray for that, write their name and the phrase ‘Have the day you deserve’ on a small slip of paper, tuck it into the sole of your sock, or into your shoe and then go about your normal day and everything that your ‘normal’ entails… the dizziness, the fatigue, the joints that seize as you climb the stairs, the heart that speeds up just from standing, and the brain that just doesn’t seem to be able to communicate correctly. By the end of the day your chosen denier might have a bit of a headache, they might feel stiff and sore, and out of sorts… unable to place what has happened, confused and weak, but it might just make them reflect on what it would be like to feel like this all of the time. See how they like it.

Lastly…

Your witchcraft practice doesn’t have to be grand, imposing, beautiful or lengthy to be real. Witchcraft has always been about adapting magick to the purpose, needs, routines and intentions of the witch, so you can take that summary and bring your practice to your sick bed, you can fit it into a life that is taken up by medications and appointments, intention counts here more than anywhere else.

Please do let me know if you have tried or are interested in trying anything that I’ve spoken about here, feel free to leave a comment or DM me if you would like to talk more about coping with chronic illness as a witch… I feel like this might become a bit of a series so do let me know if you have an ideas on what I should include/talk about.

Laura ♉︎

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In 1487 a Dominican Inquisitor called Heinrich Kramer had recently been dismissed from a witch trial in Innsbruck by a local bishop. The bishop had found Kramer’s conduct to be legally lacking and also incredibly disturbing as Kramer seemed fixated on the sexual confessions of the women that he was interrogating.
After being laughed out of court Kramer went home and wrote a five-hundred page temper tantrum that turned into one of the most dangerous texts of all time. The Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer of Witches, was a tool that was used to prosecute and execute thousands of people across Europe, a common misunderstanding is that these victims were all witches, but really they were ordinary folk who happened to fall under suspicion like healers, widows, or those just a little too close to the accused, roughly a quarter of the accused were men who were just about different enough to be separated from those the text was designed to ‘protect’.

The Malleus Maleficarum is bound in legality and theology rather than folklore or oral traditions, it was written by a cruel little man who wrote it to normalise the prosecution of a crime he was obsessed with proving existed, and for entirely personal reasons.
Kramer begins by constructing an elaborate theological and legal framework in order to force the hand of the, until now, rather reluctant church, Kramer wanted them to take witchcraft prosecution seriously. Kramer did this by establishing female nature as a primary source of witchcraft, he devoted a considerable amount of energy to his misogyny, arguing that women were less-than, sexually insatiable, deviant gossips and that by their very nature were vectors of corruption. He wrote…

“What else is a woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colours…”

What a weird guy… from wounded ego leapt institutional violence, a pattern that the modern woman is now regretfully seeing more and more...

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Wort cunning is an Old English term for the knowledge of plants, to me it brings about images of old women rubbing green salve onto people’s knobbly hands (I’ll explain why this is partly true later), but really it is an old craft grown from medicine and folk magick, not quite herbalism, or botany, but more like ‘knowing’ the plants in your local landscape so intimately that you can use them to heal, to protect, to banish, to bring, to charm, and to communicate.

Welcome to another essay from The Bower, if you’ve been here a while you’ll know that I LOVE to deep dive into the history, folklore, philosophy, and science of a magickal practice so I can really give you a thorough understanding of it. Today we are going to look at where the term ‘wort cunning’ comes from, what it meant to the people that coined and used it, how the modern witch can practice wort cunning today, but also why this is a great practice for those who don’t want to label themselves as witch, or anything.

Learning about wort cunning changed my magickal practice for the better, I started to see plants less as ingredients on a shopping list and more as singular spirits to get to know and to work with, it now feels like such a richer experience.

The Etymology:

Wort comes from the the Old English word ‘wyrt’, which means ‘plant’, super simple. It is my understanding that it’s a word used to describe a plant in use, so as medicine for example. You will see the word wort in many of the names of the plants that we are familiar with in our practice like mugwort and bladderwort.
Cunning is a little tricker to pin down as a word as we often use it to describe the character of someone who is a bit sly and calculating, and it is often spoken in a negative way, but cunning really means that you are skilful or learned and it comes from the Old English ‘cunnan’ which means ‘to know’. It is a root word that paved the way forward to give us can and ‘ken’ (if you’re Scottish) meaning to ‘know’.
It is a very poetic way of looking at what it means to be knowledgeable, we can learn all we can about calendula but to be cunning in it means to know how it smells when you crush it, to know to pick it on a warm day to extract its oils, how long it takes to dry, to know what ratio is needed if using it in an ointment.
Wort cunning, as a term put together, simply means having practical knowledge of plants, but I think there is a little more to it than that…

Magickal Medicine:

Our modern way of living makes it difficult to comprehend that the medicinal properties of a plant and its magickal properties are not two separate things. When cunning folk would give sick people tonics made from certain plants it settled a fever but also stopped the malevolent spirit that caused it in the first place, it also warded the patients from further attacks. The Lacnunga combines medicine and magick in plain terms, it is an 11thC Anglo-Saxon manuscript that contains the Nine Herbs Charm/Spell and many other remedies, it is a beautiful book that contains a micx of recipes, prayers, invocations and advice like dealing with sudden stabbing pains by boiling feverfew, dead nettle, and plantain in better, and also dealing with a delayed birth by doing several things such as drinking milk and stepping three times over a grave and once over your husband… super specific right?

The Lacnunga and other Anglo Saxon medical manuscripts are fascinating and also very entertaining, and we will come back to them in another essay, but for now we will briefly take a look at the most famous fragment of it, ‘Nigon Wyrta Galdor’ or the ‘Nine Plants Spell’.
It addresses the plants by name, starting with Mugwort, and then speaks to each plant and asks them to remember what it is they are known for. It cements the animist view that these plants are spirits and not just mere tools, that they have a will of their own.
This is the view that cunning folk held, they built working relationships with these plants and after slowly learning their habits and usage they knew what plant would work in specific and unique situations.

Who Were the Cunning Folk?

The cunning folk were a sort of practitioner in Britain and Ireland, and much of Europe, and they worked throughout history all the way up to the early twentieth century, I would argue that they would be well within living memory in some rural places who still would have had use for them, and would have sought them out for various folk medicines/services.
They had many different names such as cunning wo/man, wise wo/man, conjurers… in Wales, where I hail from, there were men known as the dynion hysbys (the knowing ones), would would be called upon in crises, if things were lost, if people or their livestock fell ill, they removed curses, and were overall just a vital part of the community.

Just a little clarification, wart charming is not the same as wort cunning, but in practice wart charming was a heavily requested service that the cunning folk offered. Literal warts (the growths on skin, usually hands) would be rubbed with a plant-based ointment, and then the ingredients would be buried in the hopes that as they decayed and disappeared, so too would the wart.

This part is important to remember, especially in the context of the horrendous witch hunts and trials that killed so many innocent people, common people generally did not consider cunning folk to be witches. Even though their practice overlaps considerably with what witch trial accounts describe, they were often the ones people sought out to help against witches. This distinction is really interesting and can sometimes cause a bit of discourse in online witchy spaces, modern witchcraft uses the title of ‘witch’ so intensely that it appears to have forgotten that other practices came before it. Thanks to the witch trials and the rise of professional medicine there seems to have been a great split between people and the natural world, and with that we have lost a very special way of ‘knowing’. The wort cunner knew so much about her plants because she was around them all of the time, the elder tree next to her home had been there before her mother way born, she knew it intimately, has played beneath its boughs when it was in flower, and picked its berries when it was in fruit, she knew when the berries were perfectly ripe, and recognised the signs that it might enter a fallow year.

This sort of knowledge is so hard to gain because so many of us have moved several times, or our fields and hedgerows have been torn up to build ugly housing estates, as a result I think people struggle to build a relationship with their local plants.

I’m not saying this to be a downer, I am saying it because I recognise the longing that people have, the pull that people feel to little witchy cottages with herbs hanging in the window. I think it is less about yearning and more about a grief, that some people feel terribly the absence of something our 4x great grandmother took for granted. Whilst there isn’t a word to describe this ache, we instead reach for aesthetics to try and capture that feeling, really we should be adopting and adapting the practice of wort cunning for modern times…

But how?
How do we start modernising a centuries old craft? There is a big temptation to turn this practice into a checklist, and I see them all the time online in the ‘five plants to grow for witchcraft’ posts. These posts are great for beginners and usually easily digestible, perfect to read quickly over a cup of coffee if you have a casual interest. It is, however, surface level and it does nothing to assist a budding cunning person. You don’t become knowledgeable by following lists, you do so by getting to know each plant slowly, on a physical level, give the plant time to teach you, pick one to study such as Yarrow (nothing fancy, we’re learning about common and easily obtainable plants, not rare orchids), and then commit yourself to getting to know it for an entire growing cycle. Grow it, if you can, nurture it, press it, crush it, smell it, burn it, drink it in a tea, use it in a salve. After a year you would have gained more insight than you would have done from just reading a flashcard about it, you will be cunning in it.

Another part of this practice is to really get to know the plants in your area, if you have access to a park, a wood, a hill, a beach etc then you will have access to the flora that grows there. List what you spot and then month by month add your seasonal observations. Grab yourself a plant identification book to make studying easier, even plant apps are great, our wort cunning ancestors would have loved to have had the tools that we have in modern times!

It is also a great idea to pick up and study a skill linked to cunning work, this could be learning to extract oils, how to dry herbs properly, how to make tinctures, salves, balms etc. Don’t just exist in theory, learn practically by focusing on one skill at a time, soon you’ll be filling your cupboards with homemade cosmetics and medicines.

A bit of heresy to close on….

You do not need to be, or call yourself a witch in order to do this sort of work, you don’t need to label it at all, wort cunners were often just the women down the road who knew a lot about plants, or a man who could make your cow well again.
If witch is the word you want to use then that is fine too, it is the word I use, but if it feels a bit to serious and heavy then put a pin in it for now and come back to it another time to see how it feels when you wear it.

If you have any wort cunning advice please feel free to share it with me either in the comments, or give me a message!

Laura ♉︎

P.S Please excuse any typos in this, it is HOT in the UK today and I am melting onto my keyboard…

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Every now and again I like to have a lil’ think about what my favourite thing is when it comes to my witchcraft practice… lots of people love the ritualistic side of it, or the deep connection with nature and its cycles, I have friends who enjoy the spirituality of it all, of feeling connected to a spirit or to a deity, there are so many amazing things to choose from but, if I really had to choose, I would first pick my beloved grimoires, followed very closely by potions.

The most joyful part of this craft, for me, has always been about creation, especially physical creations like tinctures, balms, infusions, oils… I love it when the scent of whatever I am concocting fills the air in the kitchen, and how satisfying it is to fill a little glass bottle with something magickal. These sorts of magickal preparations are one of the oldest examples of practical magick, kitchen witchery, folk herbalism, cunning magick, and the hedge witch tradition that I work in has always been about working with plants, just as much as it is about spirit work.

Today I would love to share with you five of my favourite potions that I won’t ever be without… a tea for hedge riding journeys, a tonic for when you need a little bit of courage, an oil for couples massage, and a room spray for focus. All these recipes are complete, with proper quantities and allergy warnings, and explain why each ingredient is crucial to the concoction. Let’s get brewing!

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Last time we spoke about the Magick of Lunaria and how it is an often overlooked plant in a witch’s apothecary, another such plant is Mullein…
It is not an easily missed plant, it stands close to six feet tall with a long staff-like stem covered in cluster of buttery-yellow flowers, its leaves stay low to the ground, pale silver and as soft as velvet.

This is mullein, Verbascum thapus, or witch’s torch. The first time I saw (or paid attention) to mullein it was growing amidst other weeds but looked so out of place amongst them, I picked some of the flowers and a couple of the leaves but was a bit unsure of what I was actually supposed to do with it magically, so I turned first to horticulture, which always gives us useful clues…

The Horticulture:

Mullein is a biennial, native to Europe, North Africa, and Asia, anywhere that enjoys a temperate climate. During its first year of growing the soft silver leaves from a cluster, the leaves are long and wide and have the most curious texture, almost like they have been felted into existence. Its second year brings a long flowering stalk full of yellow flowers that open in succession around July and into August.
It is a plant that doesn’t really require a lot of attention, preferring alkaline soil preferably in a stony environment like a roadside or a path edge. It is tolerant of seemingly all weathers and the seed, when dropped, will stay viable for years, it is a hardy plant that you would have to go through some lengths of neglect to kill, as a result it can be quite invasive so I would suggest growing it in some sort of pot or other container.

The Name:

This plant has an endless list of folk names that leaves no need for guessing as to its purpose…

• witch’s candle

• shepherd’s club

• candlewick plant

• king’s candle

• torchwort

• Jupiter’s staff

The leaves too have their own common names…

• beggar’s blanket

• hare’s beard

• donkey’s ears (I love this one)

• lungwort

• feltwort

• our Lady’s flannel

In Latin it is called ‘Verbascum’, or bearded, a nod I believe to the soft leaves, but our English name, Mullein, is a blend of Latin and Old French ‘mollis’ and ‘moline’, both meaning soft.

The Folklore:

After being dried Mullein stalks were used as torches very early on in our history, pre-Roman, through to the Medieval and into the Early Modern Period. After being dried they would be dipped in tallow which would allow for a flow and even burn, they would be used not just to light the way but also in processions during harvest festivals. As time went on it became known in England as the ‘hag’s taper’, and became synonymous with witchcraft.

In spirituality it is a plant sacred to many Gods who dealt with the dead and who existed in dark places. Hecate is said to raise up a Mullein torch to guide souls in transit, who are moving from the realm of the living to the land of the dead.
Mullein is a protective plant and used to bless and take care of the harvest, the Virgin Mary was said to carry a stalk, anglo-saxons believed that carrying mullein made you brave, so wherever you look in folklore this is the plant that lights your way, protects your path and gives you courage.

The Healing:

Mullein is a known expectorant, which means its properties loosen mucus caught in our airways, this is the plant to pick when dealing with chesty coughs, asthma, congestion, and bronchitis. Mullein can be made into an oil to use in congested ears, garlic can be used in the oil to kill of germs, and the leaves can be dried and then smoked (inhaled) to calm irritated airways. It is a wonderfully healing plant full of an active compound called verbascoside which is found in over 200 plants species, and acts as an anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial.

The Witchcraft:

I’ll admit that I haven’t yet tried mullein medicinally, I have been meaning to infuse it in a carrier oil to use during cough season, but for me I use mullein when I am in need of some courage, if there is going to be some sort of confrontation, or if I am ever in need of guidance on something particularly heavy then I will burn dried mullein along with my other chosen herbs. The other herbs get to work dealing with my issues, whilst mullein deals with me and concentrates on lighting my way.

I love having a stalk of spiritual courage growing on my allotment, just having it there standing tall and proud makes me feel as though I have a brave sentinel watching out for me.

Have you ever used Mullein medicinally or magically? I would love to know how you used it, please leave me a comment if you have or if you have anything else to share about this wonderful plant…

Laura ♉︎

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ALSO IN THIS SERIES…

Today we are looking at a question that I think people genuinely want to ask witches… If magick is real then why aren’t you all rich?

It is a great question, and we witches are asking the same thing… why aren’t all of us living in mansions, driving expensive sports cards, hiring private chefs to cook for us on our super yachts?
We are doing rituals to increase our abundance, we’re putting pennies and basil into our money bowls… surely one of us is a billionaire by now?

I drafted this essay on my allotment using a biro and a cheap pad of paper, the leggings I was wearing have a hole in the knee, a notification pinged on Vinted to let me know that a dress I favourited had been reduced in price… but not enough for me to buy it.

This witchcraft business has a lot to answer for!

Witches do ask for things, we can be quite demanding little imps at times, but the longer that you are a witch the more cautious you get about what you ask for, and what you can offer in return. We all know of a witch who has asked too much, who wasn’t specific enough, and how their wishes came with small print that was so tiny it went unnoticed. Cautionary tales follow witches round like a bad smell, and I myself have my own tale to tell, about a desperate witch (it’s me, hi) asked for a wad of cash for a bill, that then appeared as compensation for a work accident that nearly blinded her husband in one eye.
My husband has the scar to prove it, and I have the mental one.
So after learning a valuable lesson about being concise, I have now also learned to phrase things a little better….

Here are some things I have asked for over the past few years…

• I have asked for swift healing. As a chronically ill girly I know that I am not going to be cured, its just not on the cards for me, and I have made peace with it, but I have done rituals and spells that surround my illness and give me things that are useful when it comes to dealing with it. Blood test results come back much quicker than expected, consultants have listened carefully and have gone out of their way to find answers and to make me comfortable, medications I am given to try tend to show if they will work (or not) very quickly. It has made living in this poorly body much easier, and I will definitely share with you some health-related rituals soon!

• I have asked for space to grow things to bolster my craft and make me a more knowledgeable witch, and as a result I have two large allotment plots right next to each other, and a small orchard plot opposite. They were offered to my husband and I but make no mistake, they were not beautifully finished plots destined for Chelsea Flower Show, they were littered with glass, nettles, old carpet, burnt down sheds and ground as solid and as fertile as concrete. It took five years of sore backs, cuts, and scrapes, failed crops and early mornings to become what they are, and they are now so beautiful and such a joy to us, the universe gave us experience and an intimate knowledge of our small patch of land.

So the pattern, or the ‘deal’, is really noticeable now, the universe is very content to give me what I’ve asked for but is never direct and it never arrives as a cash-stuffed envelope, and it has never offered me the numbers for a winning lottery ticket.

One thing I don’t want to romanticise is scarcity, money really does matter and financial security is a big worry for us all in these ever-shifting times. Anyone who tells you that money doesn’t matter has never had to choose between heating and eating, money doesn’t buy happiness but it bloody well dictates the conditions in which happiness flows more readily.
Witches can, and should, ask for money, when we look back at previous practices we can see that folk magick is full of prosperity work and gives us lots of choices such as money-oils, abundance bowls, herbal blends and candles rolled and anointed in them and then lit during times of financial hardship. So I’m not saying it can’t be done, or we should be afraid of asking, I just firmly believe that the bigger the ask the more small print comes with it. Money at the scale big enough to buy and mansion and a yacht arrives with scrutiny, dependance, and a scale of maintenance that magick alone cannot provide the energy for, wealth that arrives quickly is yanked hard from somewhere else. You have to become someone who doesn’t care about the questionable exchange of energy that is happening… which is another reason why there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire.

So if we’re not going to be billionaires, or even millionaires, what can we do? How can we bring in enough pennies to afford a big trailer of compost for the garden, a weekend holiday with our loved ones, a new notebook for grimoire work, or the spare cash needed to finally fix the car?

Charm Your Name:
My dear friend and I were talking about this spell last year when we were getting ready to record an epsisode of our podcast The Divine Void. The idea is to charm your name so that every time somebody speaks ill of you, or gossips, or thinks or acts unkindly to you, a small bit of money makes its way towards you as a cheeky little exchange of energy, this isn’t malicious on your part, technically it is a binding charm that causes people who don’t like you to become a source of small income.

Money Bowls:
I usually keep my money bowl at the most energetic part of the home, which is the enormous Welsh dresser in my living room. It usually acts as a dumping ground for everyone’s stuff, but it makes a great home for the money bowl, it is full of loose change, cinnamon sticks, and a magnet (some other ingredients too but they are left out for practice privacy), you can fill it with anything you feel as an energy of attraction. The idea behind keeping it in a busy place is so that it pulls any excess energy and transmutes it into money that finds its way to you.

Lastly… a controversial one:
Get Paid For Your Services:
I grappled with this for a while when I first started on Patreon and then Substack, I would feel bad for posting paid content and feel like I was never doing enough to ‘earn’ the money, despite creating more content than other people were offering for much less. It wasn’t until a hateful message landed in my substack inbox did this guilt ironically disappear…
This person flew into a tirade of abuse about me paywalling an article she wanted to read. She was rude, a bit deranged, and called me complicit in allowing companies with links to Epstein to benefit financially (she was a paid subscriber to other substack publications), but mainly she was pissed at me for withholding information from her that she ‘needed’.
Honestly I am so glad she messaged because I gave me a chance to block her… but I also realised that any work that takes me hours of research, and ages to write, where I spend money on resources because I refuse to use an AI generated image, or subject my carefully written articles with lazy copy and paste ‘its not x its y’ rubbish, I should be paid for that.
Just as cunning women were paid for their charms, tinctures, blessings and curses, so too will this witch be compensated for her carefully gathered knowledge, and hard-won experiences… and so too should you.

Ultimately I think there is a huge lack of ‘rich’ witches because we are wealthy in other ways, we are wealthy in knowledge, in experiences, in connections, we are wealthy in the way that we can connect with the land, and we aren’t attracted to the kind of life that is built on the suffering or labour of others. It is so cliche to say that true wealth isn’t found in money, but the money that finds its way to us is earned in a way that stays balanced with energy, and with nature. We require money to live, the extra that arrives is meant for things that makes our lives richer, our rewards are much greater, and I would much rather have a pantry full of home-grown food to share with friends and family, than pose with a Birkin bag on a yacht full of strangers.

If you have any money spells or rituals you would like to share please do comment or message me!

Laura ♉︎

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Whilst on your witchy travels I’m sure you have come across the term ‘hedge witchery’ lots of times, I know that I did when I was first researching my craft nearly fifteen years ago. If you have heard of hedge witchery then you have also come across the term ‘hedge riding’.
I find that hedge riding is a name that is often used in occult spaces but doesn’t really offer up a detailed explanation, when I was studying the ‘type’ of witchcraft that resonated with me the most hedge riding was a term that was either casually dropped into conversation or referenced weakly in written guides, as if the writer assumed that everyone already knew what it meant. Much that is written about hedge witchery sits at either end of the two extremes, at one end the explanations are so vague you can’t possibly do anything with them, and at the other end the explanation is so wrapped up in ceremonial language and secrecy that it fails to explain or capture the essence of what a strange practice it is.

Enter my attempt to explain what hedge riding, or spirit flight, is. I’ll do my best to throw some light on its origins and how people may have achieved it. You may think it a bit dull to look at the history (and the science) of it but it really does help us to understand it in a broader context, I spoke about the importance of researching multiple subjects in order to become a better practitioner here. We aren’t just witches here on The Bower, we’re also amateur historians, philosophers, horticulturalists, and a myriad of other interesting subject seekers. For those of you just here for present-day knowledge, don’t worry, we will also take a look at how to travel, why we should do it at all, and do a bit of troubleshooting, but ultimately I’ll be sharing with you my experiences, what I have learned, and what I would never do again. Experience is the best thing that one witch can offer another, but before we even think about that I have to explain what ‘the hedge’ actually is…

The Hedge:

The hedge is what we witches call the liminal boundary between the very physical world that we inhabit, and the lesser-known Otherworld. There is a sort of membrane between them both that stretches, thins and thickens, ebbs and flows throughout the year, and it is the hedge witch that makes it her business to know how to traverse and work in them both. Historically a hedge witch was a ‘cunning woman’, a wise woman who lived on the edge of villages and towns, not within their borders but close enough on the outskirts to be called upon if needed.
’Riding the hedge’ is the name we give the act of spirit flight, of crossing the boundary, it is a curious blend between shamanic trance and lucid dreaming, but I believe that the ‘travelling’ or state you are in can look very different amongst practitioners.
I do not particularly feels that it belongs in the astral projection genre of travel, nor do I believe it is any sort of guided meditation or past life regression… it feels very much older, and definitely not like you are visualising or imagining it. It is an incredibly special practice, and one that I wish more witches felt confident enough to do…

(One thing I want to touch upon before inviting you to read further is this: this practice involves deliberately loosening the grip that you have on our ordinary reality. For most of us the loosening is temporary and intentional, but if your relationship with reality is complicated (so if you have ever experienced dissociation, or psychosis) then hedge riding might not be the best practice for you to pursue. This is in no way a judgement, and I am not trying to withhold an experience or exclude any group of people, I am just the sort of practitioner who wants to make sure that those who are learning from me stay safe. The practice is completely safe for people who are very grounded, but it is demanding, make sure your grip on reality is secure before you step through.)

The History:

This sort of practice is by no means a modern invention, it appears in many cultures in different ways, shapes, and forms, in fact we shouldn’t really be asking whether or not our ancestors crossed the hedge, but rather how they did it and why.
Of course we need look no further than Nordic traditions where a lot of European magickal practices hail from, and where we get some of our surviving documented material culture. Seiðr (pronounced Say-der) was a form of sorcery, a magickal practice that belonged to Nordic folk and had links to Freyja and Odin, it was a tranced-based practice involving the Volva, or wand-bearers, who were the central figures of this tradition. Also involved was a seer, always a woman, who was able to travel to the spirit world in similar ways that a hedge witch would, she was respected and feared equally. The Volva would sit on a sort of raised platform called a seiðhjalli and, through ritual and chanting, they would enter a trance like state and journey spiritually through the nine worlds, often shapeshifting into animals by sending their consciousness into them. This was considered to be women’s magick, but it was said that Odin specifically sought out this magick as he deemed it useful to know and recognised that the knowledge of it could only be acquired this way.
This is such a fascinating subject and one whose proof of practice survives through grave goods, wonderful items such as wands belonging to the practitioners have survived… oh to have known the secrets of the women who wielded them!

Moving on in time to 16thC Italy we meet the Benandanti, a group of male and female peasants who believed that whilst they slept their spirits would leave their bodies. They came from a province called Fruili and were first suspected by the Inquisition as being a group of devil worshippers, but upon further investigation they came to understand that this group was actually fighting malevolent witches by flying after them in the form of animals. The Benandanti translates to ‘good walkers’ or ‘those who do good’, so they were a sort of magickal christian Avenngers type of group who would fly out on Ember days (the fast days on the Catholic calendar) and to battle to protect the fertility of the harvest!
Historian Carlo Ginzburg wrote down his findings in his fascinating book ‘The Night Battles’, he argued that these confessions from the Benandanti represented genuine folk memory rather than coming from people who had been tortured, or who had been lead to answers through questioning. The group was incredibly consistent, all of them described their animal guides and forms, the battles they fought, and also what it felt like to return to their bodies after a hard night defending the harvest.

In the context of British practice we can turn to Emma Wilby’s fantastic book ‘Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits’ (a must have for any research-led/history-obsessed witch). Wilby describes close working relationships between practitioners and familiar spirits (animal guides, the dead, faeries, etc) she argued that these accounts were not fictitious tales drawn up by prosecutors but existed as genuine folk beliefs and lived experiences of the accused. These were also pre-christian and animistic in understanding and, as far as the practitioners were concerned, as real as can be.

How Did They Do It?

So historical records are telling us that people across centuries, continents, and cultures were getting into trances, leaving their bodies, meeting with familiars, and journeying to another place. But how?

Percussion:
Drumming, banging, tapping, the act of making beats or rhythms appear over and over in so many cultures, and appear in places from Siberia all the way to Native America. The science behind percussion being used to alter consciousness is well documented, sustained rhythmic drumming kept at frequencies between four and seven beats per minute shifts brainwave activity, encouraging these slow waves that tip the brain into something called hypnagogia, this is the space between wakefulness and sleep where brain activity closely resembles REM sleep, and where research has shown that blood flow is directed to areas where movement and decision are observed.

Plants:
Accounts of flying ointments have cropped up in historical documents including witch trial accounts, medicinal recipes, and occult workings. In 1428 an alleged Italian witch called Matteuccia de Francesco was burned at the stake after confessing to have flown to a tree as a fly on the back of a demon, she said her ointment was made with the blood of children which she drank… but I type this with great doubt as she was tortured terribly, and the account was taken straight from what her investigator insisted that witches do.
In Johann Weyers 1563 work ‘Praestigius Daemonum’ he argued that flying ointments were not magickal potions, but rather powerful psychoactive drugs, he noticed that these topical ointments were often said to consist of toxic plants from the solanaceae family such as belladonna. When applied to the skin the alkaloids in the plant (scopolamine, atropine, hyoscyamine) cause vivid hallucinations and out-of-body sensations such as floating or disassociation. When we think of belladonna we think of death and rightly so, when ingested this plant is incredibly poisonous, but we now know that the skin can sometimes absorb what the stomach would not be able to tolerate or process without killing us.
I am not recommending that you use ANY poisonous plants, these plants can and most likely will kill you in an incredibly painful way, I have mentioned them purely to make a historical and skeptical point which is that people smearing poisonous ointments on their skin were like tripping balls. However, the hedgerow has always contained poisons and medicines, and as a witch we should definitely learn the distinction. There are plants that were and are safe and even good for your health and your magick, and can help you slip into the hypnagogic state that I mentioned earlier. This is a state that even medieval Christian mystics have documented, such as Julian of Norwich who said she received her revelations in a state she described as hovering between life and death, neither fully conscious, nor gone.

I would argue that you don’t need anything physical to help you travel, it does help enormously, but often just being able to hold yourself at the edge of sleep is enough.

The Otherworld

What did people expect to find there?
Different cultures have documented the Otherworld in different ways, Nordic practices offer Yggdrasil, an enormous world tree with nine realms including various spirit worlds full of elves, dwarves and the dead, this is a place where your fate was weaved and you travelled via the great tree’s branches.

It is in Celtic lands where we get the term ‘Otherworld’, it is a place accessible through liminal magickal spaces such as hedges, hawthorn trees, faery rings, ancient welsh woods, and burial mounds. In Ireland it is forbidden to build upon or near some of these sacred places for fear of upsetting the fae, the fair folk.
These traditions differ in the geography but they are all humming along to the same tune, there exists a different world alongside the one we know where souls live, non-humans, animals and travellers, just like you and I, roam. These places require guides, demand respect, and look down upon those who enter arrogantly, or carelessly, but in return it rewards relationships with spirit guides and a unique perspective that I have yet to find elsewhere.

Thank you for sitting through that lecture, I hope the extra historical context helps you to understand your hedge riding roots a bit more, but now lets move on to what you are most likely here to learn… how to actually do it!

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Just the name ‘Lunaria’ is enough to make a witch’s ears prick up. The name promises mystery and magick and that was one of the reasons why I first included it in my enchanted garden. The flowers seem to show up a lot sooner than the other ‘border plants’, they coincide beautifully with the hawthorn and apple blossom, and for me that is enough evidence to deem them a faery flower, out just in time for Beltane.

These delicate flowers are a pretty prelude, the plant must have been named for its transformation because after the flower has turned into a round, flat, green seed pod to a dull and biscuit-coloured disc it has one more transformation to go through as the outer valves flutter away to reveal a paper-thin, shimmering silver disc. It is beautifully luminous with a faint iridescence that reminds me of insect wings.

I’ve been meaning to write about this plant for a while, I believe it is one of the few in a witch’s garden that actually looks magickal, you don’t really have to talk it up like we do with sage or rosemary, it looks like it belongs in the pages of a grimoire.

The Name:

There aren’t many plants in the European garden that have collected as many names as this one. In English we know it as

• honesty

• moneywort

• silver dollar

• penny flower

The list goes on.
In French it is known as ‘monnaie de pape’ (the popes money), in Danish it is ‘judaspenge’… the coins of Judas.
I’m noticing a theme here, are you?
There is another name for it in English, with charming origins… ‘Pricksongwort’, in reference to how the silvery discs resemble the notes of Elizabethan music notations. The meaning of its common name ‘honesty’ came from the 16thC, observers commented that because the pod is translucent the seeds cannot be hidden, the plant is honest about its contents.

The Horticulture:

Lunaria is an easy-going biennial and member of the brassica family, it is the prettier cousin of mustard and cabbage. It doesn’t get particularly tall, perhaps 3ft, it bolts in its second year and offers us pretty little four petalled flowers, usually in purple and white. It is an enthusiastic self seeder and an enjoyer of dappled shade, the scent is subtle but is noticeable more during warm evenings which I, as a cheerleader for our night-time pollinators, find endearing.

The Healing:

Historically Lunaria was used as an antiseptic on wounds, to treat epilepsy, and (curiously) to treat bites from ‘mad dogs’. In modern times we now understand that lunaria contains modest amounts of vitamin c, and that is really where its medicinal usefulness ends. She is meant for more magickal things.

The Folklore:

In old European folk magick the plant, visibly coin like, was used to attract fortune so would often be placed in purses, and planted by doorways to attract good fortune.
Lunaria also appears in the recipe for a flying ointment in Johannes Hartlieb’s ‘Book Of Forbidden Arts’. In this book (written around about 1456) Hartlieb (a Bavarian physician) recommends that seven herbs be pick on seven days, each matching the planetary ruler of that day. Lunaria was chosen for Monday, the Lunar day, picked out for what it is rather than what it does, I assume.
In the Victorian language of flowers (floriography) lunaria symbolises honesty and sincerity, and of course fortune.

The Witchcraft:

Lunaria sounds fabulous, but how do we work with it in our practice?
I grow it in abundance at the allotment so I am able to use the flowers in Spring and the seed pods in winter. The flowers I press and use in spells and rituals where I want to focus on honesty, and truth, and gleaning more information from a situation where I think something might be being hidden from me. The pods I use in money and fortune spells… it’s so lovely how the garden keeps growing these little moons for me year after year.

Practically we can use the discs in any sort of money spell, including in vessels such as jars and bowls, and as a main feature of any dedicated money altars. They can act as a good replacement for physical money (if you don’t want to put your coins and notes out on display) and they also easily take ink so can be written on in place of bay leaves. Lunaria can also be used in dream magick and spirit flight, drawing a sigil on the seed pod will help to charge its energy.

On nights where I know I will be ‘travelling’ I will look through one of the translucent discs with my right eyes, keeping my left closed, to see if I can spot any shapes, forms, or anything I should be aware of before I head off to the ‘hedge’.

Please feel free to try this trick for yourself on the next full moon… try looking through a silver disc of Lunaria and decipher what you see, I would love to know what you discover.

Lunaria is one of those beautiful plants with so many magickal uses, I would definitely recommend having a little cluster of them in your witchy garden.

Laura ♉︎

I am lucky enough to have a little orchard of my own next to my main allotment plot, each year I enjoy three varieties of apple, two types of plum, and enough damsons to make a bajillion jars of jam. It is such a special little plot and I love to weave my hedge witchery practice into its seasonal cycles, including decorating the trees with ribbons on Beltane, and wassailing them in the Winter. Right now, my interests lie in how horticulture (the science and practice of growing and tending to plants) goes hand in hand with witchcraft, and how we can learn so much from how a plant grows, where it grows, and when it grows, and translate those findings to become better practitioners. After combining the two my eyes have been permanently opened to just how much magick there is to be found in the science of plants, and visa versa.

Two of the apple trees on the plot are particularly magickal…

Adam and Eve (as I’ve nicknamed them) are planted very close together and are pruned in a way that measures them at just under 6ft tall, which means I can pick all the apples, even at the top (if I stand on my tiptoes and reach as high as I can). The two trees seem to share a little secret, or perhaps an agreement.

They have never in the six years I have known them fruited at the same time.

‘So?’
Some of you might say, but as we approach Beltane and I stand in front of these two little trees it feels so strange to see one so densely covered in blossom it looks like snow, and the other with tufts of green leaves, not a flower in sight. I’ve observed it year after year, one spring Eve will put on the most spectacular display, followed by bowed branches heaving with blushing red apples. In that same year Adam stands next to her, seemingly not up to much except growing his leaves. Then the wheel of the year turns again, as it is prone to do, and the arrangement swaps, Adam flowers and bears fruit whilst Eve sits back and watches.

It really confused me at first, I thought perhaps the Bullfinches had gobbled up all the buds off of one… but then why would they leave the other? Perhaps the tree was dying? But no… it was flowering again… After a while I accepted it as one of those great allotment mysteries like the sudden appearance of horsetail where there was no horsetail before, or where slugs go during the day. Whilst researching my second book (due out Spring 2027 with ) I thought it might be worth looking into why the trees were involved in this back and forth, and what I found was much more interesting than I first anticipated…

This behaviour has a name in pomology (the science of growing fruit), it's called ‘biennial bearing’ and is a mechanism that at its core means that certain fruit trees (particularly apple, pear, and plum) will have an ‘on’ and ‘off’ year. One year it will produce an abundance of fruit, pouring vast amounts of energy into making it, each apple is a vessel for seed and is a complex and sugar-rich fruit. Producing hundreds of them, as Adam and Eve do, is metabolically expensive. Energy is not the only thing that is depleted in the effort of producing apples, specific hormone and carbohydrate reserves also deplete, the tree would have used those reserves to form next year’s buds.

Interestingly the beautiful buds that we see in March/April are not formed in the spring but are initiated in the Summer of the previous year while apples are still growing. When you walk under an apple tree in September, and see that it is heaving with fruit, it is also preparing next year’s flowers, so heavy fruit load = less flowers. The hormones (called gibberellins) produced will suppress bud formations, the chemicals tell the tree that they’ve overproduced this year, which results in a year of rest for the tree which means it can top up its supplies and then get back to the business of apple-making the next year.

Great, so we have the science of it down, and I believe we are now all expert pomologists, but it still doesn’t explain why Adam and Eve, who are planted so close together you might mistake them for one tree, should have fallen into opposite cycles. They share the same pollinators, the same mycorrhizal networks beneath the soil, they’ll experience the same weather, the same frosty mornings and hot dry Augusts… why would they be so out of rhythm in this way?

The most likely explanation could be found somewhere in their history.
I don’t know how old they are, I didn’t plant them merely inherited them, but if I had to take a semi-educated guess I would say they were somewhere between 25-35 years old. At some point in each trees past an event occurred, perhaps a very severe late frost that killed all of their lovely blossom, or perhaps one of them had such a heavy crop one year that it tipped it over a hormonal threshold that the other hadn’t yet reached. Whatever it was, both were pushed into a cycle that offset them by a year.

As a witch of more than ten years, I find myself often leaning towards the more magickal conclusion rather than the more mundane one, so I am aware of the care that needs to be taken when moving from science to symbolism. After all the tree isn’t aware that it is a symbol at all, it is doing what is doing for reasons we have only partially decoded, but symbolic and spiritual meaning is in no way diminished because we have scientific explanations. The moon is pretty much a big rock but you try and reduce it to that in front of any witch… the fact that it is a rock does not take away the effects its gravitational pull has on all water on earth, including the water in our bodies, nor does it take away how it makes us feel when we see a supermoon rising up over the hills. All things can be true simultaneously… but back to Adam and Eve, what do they mean?

I took a little bit of time to sit in front of these two trees, during golden hour when the valley looked like a painting and the breeze was warm rather than bitingly cold as it has been of late. I took the time to watch as their branches knocked together in the breeze and petals flitted between them both, and the first thing I remarked upon is that the two of them together form a complete system. If they were alone each tree would follow that pattern of feast and fast, of on and off, but when we look at them together there are no ‘off’ years, there is always one tree in flower, the allotment never really goes without, and the pair achieve together what neither could manage alone. The abundance isn’t concentrated in one place, their apples are never wasted because we can only just about manage to use up the ones we are given each year, the trees have a relationship where two different rhythms are held and maintained for the good of all of us.

The first lesson I have learned from them is one that focuses on relationships, not just with my wonderful husband, but with anyone I care for or are closely working with to produce something. We tend to see complementarity as a matter of skills, or perhaps temperament… so one person being organised where the other is more spontaneous, or one is more cautious as the other is more bold, but the trees suggest that pace is more beneficial in these relationships. One person might be full of energy and ready to take on everything and anything, whereas the other might be in a quieter period, like a gathering phase… and then they might swap. I know from experience how valuable it is to have a partner who understand this ebb and flow, of being able to let go of tasks to give to another person, or to take on more if you have more energy. Be it in a marriage, a partnership, a collaboration, or pairing you do not have to flower or fruit simultaneously.

The second lesson is seeing fallowing as sacred. When one tree is resting and looks empty it doesn’t mean it is inactive, or useless. It is engaged in restoration, in building up reserves to fund its next flowering. In traditional agriculture farmers would lay one field to rest for the year, they would leave it ‘fallow’, this rest was necessary to keep the field productive, the fallowing was part of the process of farming.

Unfortunately for us creatives and gentle souls we exist in a culture that has abandoned this understanding when it comes to people, it expects continuous productivity from us. The fallow year is seen as stagnant, absent, unserious, lazy, an utter failure. My trees suggest otherwise, when Adam stands in just his leaves I don’t tut and deduce that he’s useless and needs to be chopped down. I accept that he’s given something his all and needs the time to rest… if we could produce the same sympathy in ourselves we too could produce better work, albeit less frequently, but we would allow ourselves the rest we needed in order to create better things.

Just one more thing before you run off to see if you can spot your own resting apple trees…

Trees growing in close proximity to each other, especially in old allotment soil, are likely connected by mycorrhiza, which are a web of fungal networks that pass signals, minerals and sugars between root systems. It is widely known that trees in forests communicate through these networks and with the help of mycelium older trees are able to support younger, or even stressed trees in their patch. If Adam and Eve share such a network then the observed alternation between them is not coincidental, nor a historical event. Perhaps their situation has been negotiated, perhaps there is something unseen and undiscovered between them both where the tree in fallow may actually be providing things to the one growing apples, so that both of them can survive and reproduce.

Of course this is me speculating but if you were to stand in front of them both, and feel their energy, you would be convinced of their partnership, it is as if they are holding each other up, they are very much in sync. I tried very hard in this essay to not walk into a metaphor, but sometimes a metaphor is precisely what is needed to accurately describe, and I feel that this essay might be made up of one entirely!

Please do comment and let me know if you have observed this in any trees, or if you have anything to add or contribute to this mini scientific/spiritual observation, I would love to hear from you.

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Laura ♉︎

As an author and illustrator I am lucky to be able to work pretty much wherever I am placed, anywhere that offers a stable surface and some good lighting… but I am also a witch which adds to the list of my particulars when it comes to finding a good spot in which to practice. I require a more dedicated space that can facilitate writing, witchcraft, and creating art. I recently shared a tour of my studio here on The Bower, but I failed to mention much about the energy of the space, choosing instead to focus on the practicalities, like my huge desk and the feminine decor. I failed to convey the feeling I get when my hand makes contact with the door handle, the fizz of energy that follows, the spark of excitement that I get from knowing I am about to enter the belly of a living thing, a living thing that knows me.

I have been asking myself for quite some time whether I am imagining these feelings, whether I am projecting onto cheap timber and perspex what is really just the comfort of routine, the predictability of habit, and the warmth that comes from being in a place that reflects my taste and aesthetic. I feel that I cannot commit to this reduction of my studio, no more than I could reduce my best friend to a mere acquaintance.

This essay will hopefully help me answer its title ‘Is My Studio Alive’? Could it be sentient? Is a space capable of being alive? Does it know the person that visits and works in it each day? If so, what does it ask of us?

The Romans believed in the spirit of a place, they called it ‘genius loci’, this was a theological understanding that every place from a cluster of trees on a hill to the hearth of the home was inhabited, or tended to by a spirit (or spirits). The Romans made offerings to these spirits, sought out permission to build on these spaces, and even involved them in naming the children that were born there. This idea is not uniquely Roman, in my practice it is referred to as ‘animism’, which is the view that a spirit or a soul is not just a human thing, that souls are distributed throughout our world and include flora, fauna, objects and of course places and spaces. Contemporary philosophers have been debating a more secular version of animism for a couple of decades, some argue that objects are not passive things waiting to be interacted with and given meaning by a human, that these objects have their own existence away from our perception of them. They may have properties we cannot access, and depths we cannot explore, by this philosophical description we land on something that sounds very much like a soul.

In witchcraft we speak of energy as a reality, when we enchant an object we understand that through our own magick it has undergone a change, a change that isn’t symbolic. If this is true of a candle or a bay leaf then it is far more true of a space that has been worked in consistently and intentionally over a long period of time. My studio isn’t neutral and hasn’t been since I scratched sigils on the floor as my husband built its walls, or since I did my first spell in it, or since I penned my first book, The Handmade Grimoire, under its roof. Each act that has occurred in it has left something behind, I hesitate to use the word residue as it implies it isn’t wanted… more like a sediment. Layer upon layer of intention, of life events, of circumstances. It has layers of creativity and magick also, that I believe can only settle when you have a place where it can accumulate.

(NOTE: I haven’t always been blessed to have a space like the studio to call my own, my late father was a soldier and we used to move once a year with the regiment, then I married an airman and the cycle continued up until we moved to this current, more permanent location, so the studio feels like the most precious of spaces to me because, before now, I have never experienced a place of continuity...)

In magickal terms I think of my studio the same way I do my grimoire, as a familiar, a sentient sidekick. It acts as sentinel and keeps watch and wards me as I work in this realm and the next. It holds energy between my visits and absorbs parts of my craft and my creative vision… and, I would argue, parts of my own energy, and the different emotions that I have expressed in that space.

The philosopher Gaston Bachelard asked, in his work Poetics of Space, whit it would mean to seriously consider places as psychological events. Bachelard posited that our homes were participants in our own life’s events, the kitchen where you triumphantly held aloft the first pavlova you ever made is a kitchen that holds the experience, it is a kitchen made up entirely of experiences. Fascinatingly Bachelard argued that different rooms invite different ways of thinking, that the geometry of a room reflects the mind of the one that inhabits it. Researches in environmental psychology have reached the same conclusion, they have found that the spaces in which people work consistently affect the quality of the work produced. When we think about obvious variables such as lighting and sound it seems obvious that they would affect work, but they also looked at more subtler mechanisms such as memory, and association. The room you work in can become a sort of trigger (I spoke about this briefly in my essay on creative rituals), over time, entering a space where you have worked deeply, and successfully, induces the mental state the deep work requires. The room and the worker develop a shared frequency.

There is however a question that keeps popping up for me as I write and research this essay…
I am not the same practitioner that first started working in the studio four years ago. I feel much more experienced, more capable and a lot more at ease with the harder parts of the disciplines that I practice, but I can’t help but separate how much development happened in spite of the studio through my own effort and learning, and how much of it happened because of the studio. How much of my growth was drawn out of me by this space, and how much was held but and encouraged by it? Had the space become attuned to exactly the kind of creating I was doing?

Virginia Woolf argued in ‘A Room of One’s Own’ that a dedicated creative space is not a luxury but a pre-condition, that a sort of self could not fully exist without a space that belongs to it, where conditions for creative thought are maintained and protected. I believe that Woolf was gesturing at the idea that space is a part of what permits the creative self to exist in its most capable form, not just where the self ‘works’.

We are already aware of this in witchcraft, that our tools and ingredients accumulate energy, and that our altars hold on to energy. So too does the grimoire, it acts as a charged object, a thing that thinks. If all of that is true then a space that has been privy to all that magick must be the most magickally charged object of all.

Now that we are reaching the end of this essay I have also arrived at the conclusion that the studio being sentient is not as simple as answering yes or no, that the binary condition of sentience being present in humans and absent elsewhere is not the best way to approach the question. Perhaps sentience exists more on a spectrum, that I am not really equipped to explore but only seem to catch glimpses of parts of it.

What I am certain of is that the relationship exists, there is an energy that moves between me and the space and the work I produce there is markedly different from the work I attempt elsewhere. There is something in the studio that seems to participate in the making, and this is what it means to have a companion space, like Howl and his moving castle, like Mary Lennox and her secret garden, the space becomes something more than its materials through the sustained and intentional relationship.

I believe that this sort of space can be available to anyone who creates with real devotion and effort over time, it doesn’t have to be a summer house, or a particularly large dedicated room. It could be the table at which you write, or the armchair where you crochet… the geography matters less than the commitment. What I would recommend that you do is to explore your space and question whether it already knows you, whether you feel the energy and sacredness of your own genius loci?

Please comment and let me know if you have a special place of your own, or if you have ever explored a place that you feel holds the memories and energies of the people who lived there? I would love to know…

Laura ♉︎

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I’m Laura, an author, who doesn’t have a creative ritual…

Rituals inhabit the land of the disciplined, like the sort of people who wake up at 5am to go for a run, who have accomplished a physical feat before they’ve even properly started their day. That isn’t me, I wake up and simply hope for the best. Yet, each morning I make a decaf coffee, head into my garden studio, open my laptop, put on Classic FM or a deep house dj mix on YouTube (depending on my mood and how I’ve slept) and then I read through what I had written the day before. I do this consistently, to not do it feels like leaving the house without my keys or more purse, but it isn’t a ritual, right? It doesn’t feel grand, or interesting enough to be one…

Long before writers had access to Google Docs and and lattes humans recognised that the mind needed something to signal the shift between normal time to ‘work’ mode. That ‘lock in’ type of feeling, that I imagine athletes get as they do their warm-up routines, or surgeons feel as they scrub in before an operation. The signal is clear ‘it is time to work’. Psychologist call this the ‘pre-performance routine’, and they rely heavily on repeated cues to shift the brain into a more focused state, that it might remain in for quite a length of time. It is conditioning, you are training yourself into a state of optimal readiness.
I am mildly suspicious of the creativity-as-discipline crowd, and believe the prescribing any sort of rigour on art, on scheduling creativity, feels a bit joyless and doomed to fail when it comes up against the fickle nature of life.
…but then again, I’ve never really tried it properly.

The Professionals:

When I read Haruki Murakami’s routine it made me want to shut my laptop down completely. He wakes up at 4am, writes for 5-6 hours, then does some sort of physical activity like swimming, or running 10k. Murakami started with a routine that was less healthy, where he wrote and smoked until his fingers were stained. He came to the conclusion that this routine was not conducive to a long life and was unsustainable for a novelist who wanted to write for a long time. This lead to him creating a healthier ritual, which I understand, reading about the origins of his routine made me balk at it less, and respect it a little more, but as a chronically ill girly, mother, wife, woman who is juggling several roles per day… it isn’t for me.

We move on to a whackier routine, where Beethoven would allegedly count out sixty coffee beans before he would start composing. I’m not entirely convinced that this wasn’t compulsion rather than ritual but we have to respect the commitment.

Maya Angelou has this to say about her writing routine…

“I usually get up at about 5:30, and I’m ready to have coffee by 6, usually with my husband. He goes off to his work around 6:30, and I go off to mine. I keep a hotel room in which I do my work—a tiny, mean room with just a bed, and sometimes, if I can find it, a face basin. I keep a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry in the room. I try to get there around 7, and I work until 2 in the afternoon. If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If it’s going well, I’ll stay as long as it’s going well. It’s lonely, and it’s marvelous. I edit while I’m working. When I come home at 2, I read over what I’ve written that day, and then try to put it out of my mind.”

The hotel room is key here, a place that exists purely for work, that has none of the textures of home life to distract and disturb. I thought that this applied to me and my studio, but the studio is a place for multiple goings on, not just my work as a writer. In fact, it’s hard to get myself to leave the studio most days.

Psychologist Paul Silvia wrote that writers who write a lot aren’t necessarily more talented, they simply write every day without fail. It is the consistency that matters. In his work ‘How to Write a Lot’ he makes the case that protecting a writing routine is the most effective thing a writer can do for their craft. I personally feel that this is quite hard to do, Silvia tells us that we must build this habit, but he doesn’t share how to do it without making it feel as though we are commuting and clocking in at the writing factory. I suspect that this is where the idea of ritual comes in.

When I looked at the ritual of other writers I came to the conclusion that a ritual just as to be consistent, it doesn’t have to be extravagant, only mean something to the writer, or the creative.

Let’s try it out…

I started quite modestly but sitting down to write in the studio, with my decaf as usual, but always at the same time of day. It isn’t the earliest of starts by any means, but 9am gave me enough time to oversee breakfast before school, to ensure my teenager was eating more than just biscuits and left full of something more nutritious, it gave me a little time to get myself ready also. So no, no 4am start for me, some experiments have predictable outcomes.
From 9am until 3pm I wrote, and illustrated, and researched and surprisingly I built a good creative structure, but did have to remind myself to take breaks. 3pm rolled around and I naturally started to slow down, I found myself shutting down my laptop rather than leaving it idle to return to later, I tidied up my paints in the studio and left everything clear for my session the next day. Before I would keep returning to my work in the evening, distracted by making dinner or the loud chatter of my family, half trying to create, half trying to have a conversation.

This might have more to do with the benefits of not being interrupted, but I found this ritual useful as it required nothing strenuous, just me showing up. It also made me look a little closer at what I already do…

I mentioned my daily habit at the start of this essay, and now if someone described it to me I would immediately label it as a ritual. Repetition, transition, it all has the hallmarks of a ritual, perhaps I didn’t label it as such because it didn’t ever feel that serious, it was very ordinary, almost cliche. Coffee and a laptop, how original of me.
Perhaps that is the point though, that rituals done well and often probably won’t ever feel as though they are rituals, they just fit into the daily rhythm of a creative life.

If you are in search of a ritual of your own, here is what I would suggest thinking about…

1. Take a good look at what you already do, it is likely that there is already something there to work with, like a place, or a drink, a time, a playlist. Perhaps you haven’t properly examined it because it doesn’t seem very impressive on the surface. Look again.

2. If nothing is jumping out at you then create a ritual that starts small, begin by lighting a candle that signifies that your work has begun, perhaps don’t begin with a 10k run, that could always be added later. Give your new ritual a couple of weeks to settle in (they need time to bed in) and take note of anything that shifts or grows organically from it.

Not everyone comes to writing and creative pursuits from the same space. You might be the sort of writer who gets to the end of a busy week and writes simply for the joy of it, with no goal in sight, a Sunday spent in a poetry journal or world building. Or perhaps you are like me, who needs to maintain continuity, who is working on one large project that they are contracted to finish. Maybe you are a professional, like a copywriter or a journalist, and the luxury of ritual has long been overtaken by the pressure of output. At what point to ritual turn into labour?
Perhaps, as creatives, it is best to look closely and see if the ritual is serving us, or if we are serving the ritual.

What I do know now is…

I’m Laura, an author, and my creative ritual consists of a cup of decaf in my studio, and a good playlist.

Please feel free to share your rituals with me, I would love a glimpse at what a day in the life of another creative looks like!

Laura ♉︎

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Right now I am lucky enough to be writing my second book. I am also illustrating it, taking photographs for it, and growing the actual garden that sits at the heart of it all.
It is, by any measure, rather a lot, but I am also doing all of this whilst navigating a recent diagnosis of vestibular migraine, a condition that can, with very little warning, tilt my vision, make screens feel unbearable, and make sitting at a desk for any length of time feel like an olympic level event.

Before we continue into this essay (I promise it isn’t a woe is me tale consisting of me whining for ten pages) I feel like I should declare that I am not writing this having emerged from the other side with a cure. I haven’t yet managed to figure out how to properly manage the condition, some days I cope very well and other days I do not. I want to share the notes that I am taking in the middle of it all…

If you are also struggling with a long-term condition you’ll be familiar with the feeling of waking up and not really knowing what you’ll be working with that day. You sit up and mentally scan your body… did I sleep well enough last night? How much energy do I have? How much focus? Any pain? How long do I have until my symptoms flair up? The uncertainty alone is exhausting enough. As creatives so much of our work lives inside our heads before we manage to physically bring it out into the world. For me, vestibular migraine makes thinking hard, it interrupts ideas until I am left picking through half-formed thoughts, mere fragments of my previous thinking power.

What is Vestibular Migraine?
(I’ll slip a brief explanation in here for context, but also in case anyone reading this is experiencing the same sort of symptoms and would benefit from a name for it to take to their doctor.)

When some people hear the word ‘migraine’ they think ‘ooo bad headache’ and picture someone laying in a dark room waiting for it to pass.
Vestibular Migraine is a different beast entirely.
It is a disorder of the brain, a sort of hypersensitive reaction of the nervous system that affects sensory input. I don’t suffer from painful headaches (thank goodness), instead this type of migraine attacks my vestibular system, the network that controls balance, spatial orientation, it basically makes my brain struggle to figure out how to regulate it all.
This results in an intense dizziness that, for me, feels like someone is pulling a rug out from under my feet, or that someone has cut the cables of the elevator I am standing in. This happens mainly when I am out walking, when I haven’t slept, or am stressed… but sometimes when I am sat simply existing.
Then there is the miserable supporting cast of: light and sound sensitivity, ear pain, eye pressure, and of course cognitive fog… which feels as though the switch in brain labelled ‘basic human conversation’ gets completely turned off.
So no… I am not ‘just a bit dizzy’, and no… I can’t ‘sit down for a bit until it passes’.

Also, sadly, it isn’t the only chronic condition I suffer from, but it is the one that causes the most damage to my creativity.

When you finally feel well enough to work the first hour is spent agonising over how you want to spend this borrowed time. Then there is the guilt, the projects stopped just as they were gaining traction, the emails unopened, opportunities passed on, the sketchbooks growing dusty on the shelves. Chronic illness makes sure you always spend your time caught in the crevice between who you are (a creative person) and what you are currently able to produce.
I really would prefer not to spend all my time in that crevice.

I am lucky (apart from the whole illness thing), I have a supportive and understanding husband and thanks to him I am very well looked after so often have a little more energy to pour into creative projects. My husband and my lovely Mum are doing all of the ‘heavy lifting’ jobs in the garden for me at the moment, otherwise there would be no book, but what they cannot do for me is…

1. Write it.

2. Illustrate it.

That is all down to me, and me alone.

Thanks to some trial and error I think I’ve found a system that works for me, at least for the time being during this time of heightened creativity activity…

• Going Analogue: I don’t mean in the sense of aesthetics, of Walkmans, DVDs, and 90’s memorabilia, I’m talking about paper and pen. When screens are starting to ruin my life I turn back to the original tools of the trade and start writing out my chapters by hand. The essay you are currently reading started out in a notebook, which meant all I had to do was quickly type it out, ten minutes maximum spent on a screen. Winner.

• Microbursts of Creativity: I wasted a lot of time waiting for a long stretch of uninterrupted time that would never come. So instead I started to work in short bursts… I would sketch, take a break, outline the work, take a break, and then start the first coat of paint, etc etc. So far it seems to be working, I’m able to get a decent amount of work done, just over a little more time.

• Exploring and Adjusting my Environment: It has taken a bit of tweaking but I now know that adjusting small parts of my environment to fit my needs is doing me the world of good. I’ve adjusted the height of my office chair to reduce the strain on my neck (which is a big migraine trigger). I’ve changed the bulbs in my studio to soft warm lights which is easier on my eyes, I’ve adapted my screens so they are the right brightness, and have a filter over them to reduce strain, and I’ve also started to avoid working in spaces that make me feel worse. I know that although the dining room table is large and convenient to work at inside, that the height of the chair means my head points downwards when I type which increases the pressure on my eyes… it is little insights and findings such as that that can make a big difference in how I feel whilst working.

• Resting as Part of the Creative Process: I don’t just mean sitting on the sofa staring at the wall, I am talking about ‘active rest’, which might look like watching a movie that makes you feel good, even if you’ve seen it a million times, or reading a book that inspires you. Consume the things that are going to feed your work and soothe your nervous system. Ideas are still able to grow when your body can’t do the physical making.

• Making lists based on anticipating tomorrow, not on how you feel today: When I am having a good day and I am energetic and everything feels amazing I feel CURED, my brain plays this awful trick on me where I suddenly feel like I can tackle anything, I create lists full of everything that I’m going to get done the next day, twenty or so items from walking the dogs to writing four chapters. Then tomorrow comes and the energy I had yesterday is all spent up and feels like a distant memory. I look at that hopeful list and can barely tick off ‘brush teeth’. The guilt sets in. So now when I write my lists I anticipate that if I have had an energetic day I’m probably not going to want a list that reflects how I feel in the moment, instead I anticipate that I’m going to have less energy, so I will write down one taks… like ‘sketch hedgehog’. If I get that done and have a little energy left then I will do a little more work, if sketching takes it out of me then I’m not left with twenty other tasks that get forwarded on to the next day. I anticipate that future me is going to have a rough day, and act accordingly.

One of the hardest things has been to shift out of the mindset that creative output is tied to my work as an artist, and getting myself out of the habit of measuring what I’ve done against what I planned to do, that’s something I’m always going to come up short against.
However, I’m still writing and illustrating, and the garden is still growing, it isn’t without cost, and other things are having to fall to the wayside, but art is still appearing in my life so I’m taking that as a huge win against all the medical-related hardship.

If you are reading this and you are chronically ill, or dealing with a temporary illness that is stopping you from creating, just know that there is no right or wrong way to create, even for healthy people, nobody has to do it all perfectly.

If you have any extra tips for this poorly gal please do comment, or send me a message, I would love to hear your advice and your experiences.

Laura

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“Pink?’ my husband raises an eyebrow at me ‘Are you sure?”
I don’t blame him for pausing as he opened the tin of paint, before now the studio walls had been a muted grey/green colour, very calming and conducive to peaceful creation…
In response I stared at the calamine coloured liquid and felt my thoughts shuffle. Perhaps I shouldn’t give in to this whimsical part of me that wants a softer, more feminine space to create in? I got by perfectly well before… and isn’t baby pink a bit childish at my grand age?

Now that you’re here reading this you can clearly see from these photos that I fully gave in to the whim and am now living within the soft folds of a wild rose… welcome to the studio!

The studio is really a small ‘summer house’ situated at the bottom of my garden, it has double doors and four windows, is cosy in the winter and airy in the summer. It is home to all of my artist’s tools and equipment, paints, papers, etc, and it is also home to my altar and witchy paraphernalia. It is part art studio, part writer’s den, part witch’s hut, and I love it.

As you can see it is also very, very pink, which really took some adjusting to right at the start. Each time I opened the door I was met with a strawberry-milk explosion that made me both smile and wince at the same time. Now the colour has softened as I’ve added the artwork, and my ornaments and supplies, it feels now as if there is no other colour that could possibly work in the space other than pink.

My lovely (long-suffering) husband made the desk that runs along the back wall, having the extra space comes in handy when I am working on larger pieces, and when I am writing as I often like to spread my notes and research around me. The back wall is home to a long thin shelf that holds framed artwork, trinkets and treasures, as well as being a backdrop where I have stuck lots of my favourite artwork, to inspire and also act as secret magickal symbology. You’ll notice a lot of pictures of hares, barn owls, and butterflies in my studio… all of which feature heavily in my work and in my witchcraft.

I decided to paint the ceiling with the same pink colour as the walls as I wanted the room to feel as though it was a sort of ‘womb like’ space, a cosy energetic place where creation took place. The gold stars on the ceiling catch the sunlight beautifully and make the studio feel as though it is reacting to the weather happening outside. Each side wall has a couple of shelves attached, one for inks and pen nibs, one for tins of ephemera and stickers, and the other two for a huge washi tape collection that I am no closer to whittling down. Tucked under the shelves are journals, notebooks, sketchbooks and of course my beloved grimoires, all ready and waiting to be reached out for. I have various ingredients dotted around in jars and vases ready for when a spell or a ritual calls for them, a cluster of feathers, a bottle of willow buds, a tiny tin full of hedgehog quills and snake scales…

In the furthest corner is a metal bookcase which looks pretty but is completely useless at its job, journals and books tend to slip through the bars and my paint palettes are always falling down the back of it. It holds on to crates of ink pads in various colours, cutters in fantastic shapes, and as I mentioned paints, paint palettes, pencil pots and sketchbooks. This corner feels fun. There is a little shelf that holds all of my tarot and oracle decks, flower presses, and boxes of ephemera and collage supplies. A little felt rabbit head watches over me as I work, a remnant from when I owned a little book and gift shop in town.

My altar space is a little wooden shelving unit, that wouldn’t look out of place in an old apothecary. This is where the magick is contained, although from time to time it does tend to spill out. Crystals, dried flowers, fossils, shells, and ornaments sit and charge in this space that I cleanse often with smoke, but also with personal possessions such as photos of my family and pets. If something needs charging, or healing, or infusing with a particular kind of magick it goes on the altar shelves. Along the top of the unit is a plaque of a moon-gazing hare, more symbology, a jug of witchcraft tools like my athame and a magnifying glass.

Nothing in my studio is there by accident, it all has a use and a purpose be it in my magick or in my work as an author and illustrator. The magick feels tangible in this space, work flows more easily as if there is a force that percolates creative energy in the air around me. I’m sure if needs be I could work wherever I am placed in the world, but right now this space is perfect, an extension of my soul, and a conduit for creative energy.

I hope you enjoyed this little walk around my studio…

Laura.

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You might be reading this and thinking ‘Laura, you’re not Chinese, why are you writing about Lunar New Year?’

Firstly, I’m not claiming Chinese culture, nor am I an authority, but the folklore and astrology surrounding the Chinese New Year has always been something that has interested me, and that I’ve found helpful to acknowledge it. Chinese New Year is celebrated widely across multiple countries and is observed very publicly… I remember when I was about ten my grandmother took me to a celebration in a small town near us in South Wales, there was amazing food, dancers, and dragons(!!), and the Welsh/Chinese community that put it together were so open and welcoming, it was wonderful to celebrate their culture with them.

I also find it really useful when looking at astrology to refer to my natal chart, my big three, and also my Chinese zodiac (I’m an earth snake!), which I have found incredibly useful when understanding myself on a deeper level. Interest doesn’t equal appropriation, and it is with this in mind that I have been absorbing lots of information about the coming year of the Fire Horse, and boy is this an energetic time!

Chinese New Year offers us an alternative way to mark time, this time of year offers us the later reset that us witches have been going on and on about over the past few months, any chance to reflect again and start making plans is greatly received and appreciated. We also need to acknowledge the collective, when a great number of people get into an energetic state either through mass celebration or grief, the rest of us feel that, and it influences the energies around us, so it’s a good thing for us to tap into that energy and work with it too.

With all this in mind, let’s look at a way to work with that fire horse energy without overdoing it… it’s already strong, and fast, the last the we want to do is accelerate that, we want it to happen in its own time at a steady pace that we can keep up with and respond to.

A road-opening spell is a great way to get rid of energetic blockages that might be stopping us from being able to fully commit to a plan, or is stopping manifestation from fulfilling. This kind of spell is really suited to the year of the horse because it’s about giving that horse momentum, and a clear path to gallop ahead. You may feel as though you’ve been doing all the right rituals, all the right spells, and meditations, you’ve been practicing gratitude, and basically doing everything right but you aren’t seeing any concrete results, this is where a road-opening spell comes in handy. It clears out stagnant energy whilst also navigating you towards a path that is more open and suited to your desires.

Fire Horse Road Opening Spell:

This is best done the week of or around the Chinese New Year, but not on the day of.

Ingredients:

A red candle, a very lucky colour for this time of year and a representative of the fire element.
A piece of paper, the thinner the better, and a pen
Annointing oil
Cinnamon

Method:

Cleanse your space in your tried and tested usual way, but then take a bell and ring loudly around the area you are wanting to cleanse and clear. If you don’t have a bell you can tap the edge of a glass with your pen to create the same clear and pure sound.

Annoint your candle, then roll it in the cinnamon powder lightly, you’re looking to lightly coat it, not smother it in cinnamon.
Light your candle and start to mediate on what it is you feel is blocking your path. Have a good old conversation with the candle, speak out loud to it what you feel the problem is, getting it out into the air will fill the energy around the candle.

When you feel comfortable write your full name around the edge of the paper as many times as needed to create a border, leaving the middle space of the paper blank. In that middle space write what it is you are trying to navigate towards. Fold the paper towards you, and then light it using the flame from the candle, when the fire gets too much to hold transfer it to a fire-proof dish and wait for it to reduce to ashes.

You can dispose of the ashes as you wish, in the manner that you usually do… but it makes for a very potent spell when you seek out a cross roads and scatter the ashes in the middle of them. This is symbolic and ceremonious rather than ‘literal’, and doesn’t mean that the universe is picking from the four road options on the crossroads you have chosen… it’s using the energy that is found at these threshold places to map a better and clearer path for you. It doesn’t have to be a busy road, it could be the path on a favourite walk, personally I like to scatter things on the various connecting paths at my local allotment, knowing that my energy is potent there, as is my connection to the land spirits who can also help.

When you have scattered the ashes take action… this could come in the form of sending an email, responding to someone, reaching out, or even cutting ties with a project. This forward driving action will help the energy to start clearing the path.

The best thing about this spell is it can be done with any subject in mind, money, love, health etc… all you need to do is change the anointing ingredient, and the colour of the candle, to match the energy of the matter in mind, a green candle with basil powder would work perfectly for a money spell.

I hope this spell helps, please do let me know if you use it or modify it in anyway, and if it works for you! Happy New Year!

Until next time,
Laura

What does it really mean to practice witchcraft?

If we strip back all the ritual and mystery behind it we are left with the definition that witchcraft is simply a lifestyle and practice that consists of multiple ways for a person to garner the outcomes that they seek. Of course there are various nuances and ‘styles’ of witchcraft that make it such an expansive subject with varying methods, but really we witches are all working towards the same goal, which is manipulating our energy, our environment, and the energy of those around us to create a life that is close to what we picture as being perfect for us.

This is often a positive endeavour, we fill our year with various rituals to attract abundance, create potions to cure our child’s tickley cough, or ward talismans to protect us on long drives… even in the deepest darkest of practices, where we slip iron nails into the limp muscle of a cow’s tongue to stop malicious gossip, we are doing so to control a very changeable and often stressful life. The life of a witch is an intensive one where we are always on the lookout for signs, opportune moments, messages and ‘feelings’ that point us in the right direction and also put us in the right space at the right time.

Magick takes time, but much like we sow our seeds in early Spring and enjoy the rewards of either fruit or flower in late Summer, Magick also follows a pattern of growth and fruition, and sometimes even dormancy is needed to get a certain result. So what happens when a witch needs to speed things up… what happens when something is urgent, perhaps even a case of life and death or at least feels that way… can we do anything to hasten, to accelerate, to bring something to fruition sooner?

In this (rather lengthy) post I am going to share with you some examples of things that can be done, and materials that can be used to ‘hasten’ spells and magickal outcomes, then we’re going to take a look at the ethics of this subject and think carefully about the pros and cons so that you can come to a comfortable and informed decision whenever you feel the pull to hit the fast forward button. There is a time, and a place, and a reason to be in a rush, but the more informed you are the more confident you are going to be choosing those times, and those places.

Types of Accelerators:

The Witch:
The most potent energy comes from the witch, magick runs through their blood, tingles in their neurons, and sheds off of them with their skin cells, but how is it possible to strengthen spells and rituals when the energy of a witch seems so inward? You’ll be familiar of the historic use of bodily fluids in witchcraft, peeing into bottles with various things inside and then sealing it is a tried and true method of ‘personalising’ spells, but what about speeding them up?

Think of a spell as being sentient… before you put a spell together it is just a jumble of seemingly random things, it is only when you start bringing things together that they form something and begin to work with each other energetically. Much like what happens when we make a cake, flour, eggs, sugar, butter come together to make a delicious sponge… but it is the use of something like baking powder that gives it ‘rise’, a key ingredient that takes it further, and makes it fluffy, quickly.

When combined your spell can tell what it is that you’re trying to accomplish by the ingredients that you have mixed together, it gets confirmation and is kicked into action by your intention so what you have written down on a bay leaf, or what you have whispered through an incense wrapped bottle… but it really understands how urgent something is when you give a physical part of yourself to the spell, when your DNA is added.

This can be done through urine, through spit, blood, hair, and different scenarios and levels of urgency call for different additives (its best for you to research which one can be used for what scenario otherwise this post is going to be very very long!). In a scenario where haste is an issue I would use spit, saliva is quick, often spat out during fast talking or (in theory because we’re not rude) spat directly at something or someone you disapprove of. When using saliva to hasten a spell speak your reason for swiftness, give a detailed account of what is happening and why you need results fast, and then spit into the vessel you are combining ingredients into, your words will have mixed in with your saliva and then into the spell itself.

The Elements:

In spells and rituals we should be utilising all the elements so we have all of our bases covered, but when it comes to quickening the outcome of magick it is best to pick one element that fits the urgency of the scenario. With the elements we should recognise that each one has two parts, one that is nurturing and gentle, and one that is deadly and destructive. Fire warms us, but it also burns down our houses, we need water to live, but also too much of it drowns us, Earth is what we grow our food in, but what buries us in landslides, and then there is air, our breath, our life force that we can give to others to bring them back from the brink of death, but also comes in the forms of life-taking winds that can wipe out an entire town. Working with the elements should never be taken lightly, they need concise instruction and deep respect, especially when it comes to using them to accelerate magick.

Fire:
The best element for bringing something to an end quickly, and permanently. If you are in a dangerous scenario where you need to cut ties with someone quickly (by dangerous I don’t mean physical harm, that is a job for the police, not witchcraft) then fire is the best element to use. Transformation is also the key part of the element of fire, from flame to ash is a process that happens very quickly, so a lot of spells that you do on paper such as sigil work and petitioning work quickly when fire is used.

Air:
Use air when you want to move something away from you that’s not working for you anymore. This could be something that you previously wished for and even did rituals to bring it to you, nothing is ever irreversible in magick and the universe understands the fickle wants and needs of us humans… it just takes a bit more effort to ‘send something back’. You can use breath, or utilise a windy day by sending something back to the universe swiftly. Air is also a wonderful element to use in grief magick, whereby you stand in a secluded area on a windy day and shout your woes into the wind so they are carried away from you, making you feel a little lighter for a while. The faster the wind, the faster things leave, but also you can flip this and use it to bring things to you with the same speed, by standing facing into the wind and calling in the energy you need you can receive it very quickly.

Water:
Water is a life giver, a soft addition to spells that want to nurture and bring about a still peaceful environment. As witches water can be easily imbued with properties and energies, such as energy from the moon during particular phases, or bundles of herbs, and then used in a variety of ways to benefit our craft. But water can also destroy, drown, submerge, and is best used in baneful or protection spells when you want to ‘drown out’ someone’s noise or influence. Freezer spells are the best for stopping a barrage of abuse from someone that you can’t easily cut ties with, such as a family member or a colleague.

Earth:
We use earth to grow and nurture and feed ourselves. This energy is grounding and grounding and growth both take time and are not immediate. In gardening we use accelerators to make things grow more quickly or with more vigour, we add fertilisers to crops, or compost to our garden beds, and the same can be done with our spells. If you are using things like crystals to boost energy in your spells and rituals, this is a form of acceleration, as crystals are of the earth. Charging specific crystals during certain moon phases can bring a swiftness to the results of rituals, or charge magickal tools more quickly.

Plants:

Certain plants already have an energy of haste about them and can be used to produce swift results under the right circumstances…

Nettle:
Nettle is great to use when you want to inflict a short, sharp, shock with your magick. If you have someone who is copying you to the point where it is damaging to your work or reputation, creating a spell in which the person stealing credit for your work is duly punished is made better by using Nettles to hasten the ‘sting’. With copycats the aim of your spell is to either out them as such, or make it so that each time they copy from you there is a transaction in energy where they take a financial hit and you see financial gain, Nettles speed up that process, and add a little pain in the process.

Bay Leaf:
Bay is a wonderful herb to use when wanting to communicate quickly and clearly in a ritual. Writing on a bay leaf and then burning it is a common practice for witches, and its messages are swiftly transported because the leaf burns so quickly. Bay is also a good example of a ‘slow growth for quick results’ plants… Bay Trees are fussy and take a lot of looking after to get them to grow, I have had my Bay Tree for about 15 years and it is still a sensitive skinny little thing, but by slowly nurturing this tree it has spent many years with me, and much time getting to know me and my energy. As a result its leaves, when picked, can anticipate my needs and my energy, which means communication between plant and ritual/spell happens even more quickly than if I was just using Bay Leaves I has bought from the supermarket.

Mugwort:
I recently wrote another bumper post about The Magick of Mugwort, which is full of interesting magickal and horticultural facts about this wonderfully witchy plant. In terms of hastening this plant is great at forming very quick connections with our unconscious, especially whilst we are sleeping. Using Mugwort in sleep rituals opens us up for unconscious messaging, and gives us the ability to better spot signs and messages in our dreams.

Knots:

Knot magick is a cornerstone of practical magick and can be used for everything between bonding and binding (there’s a big difference). You may think of knot magick as being one of the slowest and most time-enduring forms of magick, but in the right context knot-magick can be looked at as one of the most instantaneous of energies.
When you create a knot, either to bind something (or someone) or to fix something in place, you are creating an energy that exists exactly at the moment the knot is tightened. When you pull the string together you are making a decision that says ‘right now’, and through compression the magick/energy is activated, it is the tension that puts the energy into work. It seems obvious to say but the knot itself is the most important part of knot magick, what I mean by that is how it is tied… tight, taut, with no give is a sign that the witch means business, it’s going to take a long time for this knot to break down or unravel, whereas a loose knot suggests flexibility, it can still be undone whether by the witch herself, or through the passage of time and wear and tear. Either way bringing knot-magic into your spells and rituals is one of the quickest forms of accelerators.

Timing:

We witches bang on and on about moon phases, the wheel of the year, the season, even the days of the week… I might even go as far as saying that sometimes I’ll save a ritual depending on the time of day it is. Timing is everything to a witch, and the same applies when it comes to hastening magick, time is already a thing in motion, a river that is coursing forward and uninfluenced by any earthly restraint, it is there for us to use as a tool in our craft.

Moon Phases:

When working with the phases of the moon for acceleration it is best to approach it from an emotional direction. The moon is the ruler of our emotions and we can work with it to speed up our manifestations, desires, and the rate at which we work through energetic issues. Let’s take a look at how each phase of the moon will help us speed our magick up…

Waxing - This phase helps us build up energy quickly, we are usually more receptive to energy during this phase and can more easily recognise signs that lead us in a better direction, getting rid of indecisive feelings.

Full - We are at peak pressure during this phase and our intuition is heightened, we have a great deal of clarity, and with this energy we can release a lot of what isn’t working for us. Shedding emotional burdens makes us lighter and quicker.

Waning - After that process of releasing and letting go we are now free to tie up any energetic loose ends, shedding negative or heavy energy and leaving us free to look forward to what we can bring in.

New - Now is the time for planning, and best laid plans help us get to our destinations much more quickly. A new moon is the perfect time for bringing in positive and vibrant energy ready to propel us forward in a task.

The Seasons:

Each seasons has a kind of momentum that is unique to it, The Wheel of the Year is a wonderful tool for the modern witch or pagan to feel in tune with the seasons and its messages as we move through the year, but saving spells and rituals for specific times of the year is a tried and tested way to match the speed and intensity with which our seasons move life along.

Spring:
New beginnings are synonymous with Spring, as is cleansing and preparing the earth for growing. Spring is also a time of rapid acceleration, in nature we see the leaves of bulbs popping up from the ground, the buds on trees exploding into a froth of blossom, the bees emerge, the birds are busy… it is an industrious time. Ideas or plans for your magick conceived at this time receive a natural boost thanks to the kinetic energy we see at this time of year, now is the best time to think about how to start planning your rituals and spells for the year.

Summer:
In Summer we are making sure we are maintaining magick so that it doesn’t stagnate. In our gardens we are watering our plants in the hopes that we get beautiful flowers or crops, birds are feeding their babies around the clock to ensure their survival, and heavy Summer storms roll in to refresh the land. All around us maintenance is taking place, to avoid lengthy rituals stagnating or stopping altogether, use the energy of Summer to keep things moving forward at speed.

Autumn:
Autumn is the conclusion of events of the year, you should be looking at harvesting or wrapping up your year-long rituals or spells. Plants that you have grown that are now producing seed should be kept an eye on, when you collect their seeds you are already thinking of the spells that need to be done ahead of time, you are time-travelling. You may notice that the results of spells that are done in this month arrive more quickly, nature favours conclusion at this time of year, if you want a spell to come to an end quickly then Autumn is the time to do it.

Winter:
Winter is often seen as the time when we witches do nothing but rest and enjoy the warmth of our homes after a long year of witching, but really Winter serves is purpose as an accelerator but in a different way. There are less variables in Winter, less sporadic growth and change and weather to contend with, what you see is what you get with Winter. For magick this means that we should be working on binding spells, and rituals that require quiet and stillness. Winter offers a protective quality that bolsters magick that in order to happen quickly, requires very little distraction from the noise of birds, the creaking of growing tree limbs, and the lowing of cattle in the pasture.

The Days of the Week:
Culturally the days of the week means different things for different people and places, the names of the days of the week come from gods and goddesses, and their meanings derive from stories attached to them. In the spirit of not turning this post into an actual book you can look up the lore associated with the days of the week in order to interpret what each day means for magick.
In terms of the modern day our days of the week already hold a lot of meaning to us, Sunday (whether you are religious or not) is seen as a lazy, cosy, day of rest for a lot of people, so I would advise that little is done in the way of haste on this day.
Whether you choose to adhere to the folklore of the days of the weeks when it comes to working your magick, or if you like to work with your own schedule, some days are better than others when it comes to accelerating magick.

The Times of the Day:
The same point applies to the times of day, but with a little more structure…

Dawn - The day has begun, nothing is set in stone and any spells or rituals done during this hour have a wealth of energy to pick and choose from. In terms of hastening this is a slow start, and best left for magick that you want to unfold and adapt slowly.

Midday - A confident time, our energy hasn’t waned and we are at peak efficiency during this time of day. Hastening magick done at this time will move through and work with energy confidently.

Dusk - My favourite time of day, and one of the more liminal points which makes it the perfect time for magick that focuses on transformation. The shift from light to dark happens quite quickly so this is the time for quick magick, and divination.

Midnight - Under the cover of darkness we move swiftly to get things done we would rather not be seen doing. A lot of witches like to bury the spent ingredients of their witchcraft, or work with runes or bones under the cover of night because it is seen as the ‘weirder’ or less acceptable part of witchcraft to those who don’t practice. Really the darkness acts as a shroud, it protects, conceals and makes sure that the energy of those that would look upon us and sneer, or spy, cannot reach us. It works well with acceleration magick because at night, there are less interruptions for us to contend with.

The Ethics of Acceleration:

I know it’s been a lengthy post already, and I hope that you’re finding it interesting, but here is where I really need you to lock in and prick up your ears so that you can choose to act on all the wonderful facts and folklore I just shared with you…

As with most things in witchcraft, one must consider the pros and cons, and the ethics involved in manipulating any sort of energy. Time is an energy, and when we choose to adapt it to benefit us in anyway we must be prepared to pay the costs energetically, the majority of witchcraft comes in the form of some kind of trade.

What we are accepting when we accelerate magick is less control, less freedom, and that we enter into the bargain of causality (causality is the principle that a process or an event directly influences another process or event, basically a change in one thing leads to a change in another which can be good, but also could be bad). Basically we are saying
‘Hey universe, I’m in a bit of a rush and I don’t really trust the process here so I’m going to ask to speed things up.’
and then we sit and hope that the universe behaves itself.

Like with any ethical argument, let’s take a moment to looks at the pros and cons…

The Benefits:
Ethically the argument for using accelerators in witchcraft is strongest when urgency is at the forefront of the reasoning behind using them.

If delay could cause someone harm, like protection magick, or in boundary creation, then the universe will see us as acting swiftly to prevent a terrible outcome. You might be warding your sister from an abusive ex, and need a protection talisman to work quickly because she’s only visiting you for the weekend, or you might be facing a bully at work who is chipping away at your energy and you need to do a quick boundary spell over the weekend so you can start fresh on Monday.

Being honest about the results you want is also a way to garner favour when hastening magickal outcomes. If you are doing a money spell under the pretence of being very hard up and needing a flurry of cash to pay your rent, when really you want to just have a big splurge at Sephora, you’re not being intentional in your magick, and it will backfire. Sure you might get a flurry of cash really quickly, but a bill or a sudden expense will snatch that money right out of your purse quicker than you can say ‘kaching’.

Sometimes magick works best when it is done quickly, and not when it is revisited over and over. Cord cutting spells are a great example of this, they are very swift and very final, especially when it comes to severing ties with another person. If a person wants to finally cut ties with an ex they just can’t stop gravitating towards, cord-cutting works incredibly well, whereas doing a love-spell over and over again to try and manipulate and change the outcome of a doomed relationship is folly and won’t work. Staying trapped in a cycle is worse than working quickly to get rid of something that isn’t working out, it prevents years of energetic struggle.

Some situations can happen so quickly that we have no choice but to respond at the same pace. Confidence spells are done over a long period of time, slowly building up a person’s confidence is something that is done little by little, so that after a period of time they are naturally braver… but what if you suddenly have to interview for a job, and their only availability is the next day? Your anxiety spikes, you can’t stop shaking, you can’t think of what you want to say despite being qualified for the job, you need confidence and you need it now! You can adapt the spell to match the hurry that is needed, the results might be short lived but if you acknowledge that then it isn’t too much of an issue.

The Costs:

When we look at the ethical issues with accelerating magick we have to use a mirror, we have to look at ourselves and our motives to see if what we are planning to do is honest, if it aligns with our values, and if it is going to cause some sort of imbalance in our life that is going to cost more energy to correct in the long run.

First and foremost, acceleration magick should not be used to bypass lessons that we can learn through intense emotion. When my father died in 2022 I tried so many spells to ‘distract’ myself or move myself through my grief more quickly, I couldn’t stand to sit with the intense pain that his death had caused… but the hastening of grief only caused the lessons I needed to learn from it to delay, the grieving process became more confusing, it lasted longer, my emotions were more volatile than if I had just allowed the natural progression of grief to consume me as it was supposed to. Emotions are there to be felt, not to be rushed through, we’re going to experience them either way, no magick can stop that.

With emotions in mind I’ll draw attention to how fickle human emotions can be. When bad things happen we often see a surge in emotion that makes us act like an absolute idiot… how many times have you had someone cut you up in traffic and you’ve beeped your horn and flipped your middle finger? How many times have you listened to a friend cry about a partner who has treated them terribly and you get the intense urge to key their car?
We act very impulsively in the moment, a couple of times in my witchy life I have responded in anger to something that has been done to me or a family member, and I’ve stormed to the altar ready to wreak revenge and havoc upon the wrongdoer. Speed can sometimes be the enemy when all of sudden you might get new information about a situation, someone hasn’t been honest about what has happened, a person apologises or the couple make amends… haste reduces the space for error, and the ability to take something back at the same speed.

I spoke about causation earlier, where simply put one thing will lead to another… this applies in hastening magick because if you blindly try to speed up an outcome without specifics you might end up getting another one. The quickest way isn’t always the most desirable. We should always be striving towards growth, but what if the outcome of your speedy spell sets you back, or leads to loss?

Impatience or boredom is not the same thing as desperate need. If you already have quite a few resources at hand, like money, time, space, relationships etc… then you choosing to accelerate outcomes for no apparent reason puts you in a position of greed, which isn’t rewarded in the same way as need. You are taking over and dominating energy that could be put to good use by helping others who have less.

When you use accelerators in magick you are consenting to the outcome being more erratic than you might be prepared for, and the lesson being much harsher and more long-lasting, you must be willing to accept that the outcome might look different to what you expected.
The question of whether or not to use accelerating tools is a simple one that can be broken into two answers…

1. Accelerating will succeed best when the intention is to restore agency, the witch accepts that the universe controls the outcome, and that the witch is acting to restore balance and relief of suffering.

2. Accelerating will not succeed when the outcome of the magick benefits the witch at the expense of an innocent (someone who has not harmed them or others), or when the witch seeks to control the outcome, or at the expense of a lesson that must be learned.

Some Parting Thoughts…

I don’t believe in the ‘threefold law’ (the principle that insists that any energy that is sent out into the world via witchcraft is returned to you three times as much, this applies to both good and bad energy), it is a highlight and a moral compass for a lot of Wiccans and other pagan practitioners but personally I see it as a bit of a tether, and that it can sometimes paralyse a witch’s agency. If I want to hex, it is because of a good reason, it is to balance out an injustice that is happened and I am the person who is best placed to decide the intensity and the duration.
But this doesn’t mean that I’m not careful.
Throughout this essay I’ve offered warning about ‘being honest’ and working with the universe in a way that is truthful and sincere, and you should understand that any negative analysis that I’ve given on acceleration spells does not come from a place of fear of repercussion… it is that if you aren’t honest with yourself, with your witchcraft, with the universe, your magick simply will not work the way you want it to.
Simply put, I don’t want to waste my time, or my energy., and nor should you.

I hope this post gave you some food for thought, as with all my deep-dive essays they consist of well-researched suggestions rather than demands or rules. Whatever works best for you and your craft is best, I hope you feel more informed and confident when it comes to speeding things up a bit if needs be.

My next post is a spell for self love, if you enjoy exploring the many nuances of witchcraft please do consider subscribing, following, or sharing my Substack!

Until next time,
Laura

When it comes to plants very few hold as rich of a history in witchcraft and folklore as our beloved ‘weed’ Mugwort. With its dusty silver leaves, and a catalogue of uses both in medicine and in magick, Mugwort has acted as inspiration for witches, herbalists, folklorists, and enquiring minds for many years.

Shall we take a closer look at what makes this rather unassuming roadside plant such an integral part of witchcraft, and a must-have in your apothecary garden?

The Horticulture:

Mugwort is a fairly ordinary, hardy, herbaceous perennial that belongs to the Asteraceae family. It has these fascinating palm-like leaves, they’re rather thin with a silvery underside that looks like they’ve been painted with a shimmery glaze, and when a breeze catches it you are treated to a delightful metallic flash. Their flowers range in colour depending on what stage of bud or bloom they are in, from deep red to an off white, their flowers are rather inconspicuous and tend to bloom in late summer.
Mugwort typically grows to be about 4 feet tall, and does like to spread so if you do decide you’d like some in your garden, don’t be a donkey like me and sow it direct, instead contain it (much like you would mint) to stop it going berserk.

The plant prefers well drained soil and can be found in disturbed areas such as roadsides and farm tracks. I have observed Mugwort on the beautiful Thames path in my neck of the woods on the Oxfordshire/Gloucestershire border, but also growing happily on the side of the motorway, being buffeted this way and that by heavy lorries. Nothing seems to bother it, but it does prefer full sun and quite fertile soil, you’ll often see it growing alongside Nettle, Cow Parsley, and Cleavers.

Regular pruning or pinching out can help to manage the plant’s growth and prevent it from becoming too leggy and too much of a menace, keeping on top of it like this will ensure a stockier and more manageable plant to harvest. When it is established plant it is drought tolerant and doesn’t need too much attention, it also has a strong aroma which repels certain pests, which makes it a great companion plant for vegetables and other garden plants. I grow mine by the chicken run at the allotment and am pleased to report that we avoid red mite as a result!

Mugwort dies back in the Winter and regrows in the Spring, mulching around the base of the plant can provide extra protection during the Winter months.

The Magick:

Mugwort is known for its ability to enhance psychic abilities, and build upon a witch’s already heightened intuition. It is the plant of the liminal, a herbal bridge between waking and sleeping, between this world and the otherworld, and is often used in divination practices. Many believe in its power in the dream world and place it under pillows to encourage vivid dreaming experiences, and encourage messages.
Mugwort is considered a powerful protective herb. It is used in rituals and spells to ward of negativity, malevolent spirits, and psychic attacks, especially during sleep when our energetic guard is often at it’s weakest. It is believed that Mugwort creates a barrier of energy that shields practitioners from harm.

Mugwort can be dried and then burned, and used in cleansing the same way that you would a sage bundle, it cleanses and purifies spaces, objects, and individuals. The smoke clears away stagnant or negative energies and encourages a balanced, more sacred atmosphere.

Some practitioners use Mugwort in its tea form as in aid in astral projection, out-of-body experiences, hedge-riding, or other forms of shamanic journeying. Its reputation for enhancing altered states of consciousness makes it a favourite tool for those of us wishing to safely explore other realms.
Mugwort is also included in spell work to heighten the potency of rituals and intentions. It is used to empower spells related to healing, protection, fertility, and the exploration of psychic abilities. Mugwort can be used in cleansing water blends to bless magickal tools such as wands, staffs, and besoms and infuse them with protective energy.

Mugwort Dream Tea:

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon dried mugwort leaves
1 teaspoon dried chamomile flowers
1 cup water
Honey to sweeten

Method:

Boil the water and allow it to cool slightly before pouring it into a cup.
Add the dried mugwort leaves and chamomile flowers to the cup.
Cover the cup, longer steeping time can help extract the properties of the herbs.
Strain the tea to remove the herbs.
Add honey to improve the taste, using local honey adds an amazing energy to this drink, an energy that the locally grown Mugwort recognises and can tap into, the same applies for if your camomile is also home-grown or local!
Before going to bed, drink the mugwort tea slowly. Some practitioners suggest drinking the tea about an hour before you plan to sleep.

Remember...

Lucid dreaming experiences can vary from person to person, and not everyone will experience the desired effects. Mugwort can have strong effects on dreams and sleep, so use this tea in moderation and be prepared for potentially vivid and unusual dream experiences.

Consult a healthcare professional before consuming mugwort, avoid it if you are pregnant, nursing, or have any medical conditions!

Please approach the consumption of mugwort tea for lucid dreaming with caution, as it can influence sleep patterns and dreams in unexpected ways.

The Folklore:

Mugwort is linked to protective energies, in many cultures it is believed that hanging mugwort above doorways or windows can keep negative energies and evil spirits at bay. Some also carry a sprig of mugwort on their person as a ward for protection.

In folklore Mugwort has a strong association with dreams, the subconscious, and the spirit world. In Celtic folklore, mugwort was thought to aid in traveling between the physical and spiritual realms, otherwise known as the ‘otherworld’. Placing mugwort under the pillow or in ‘dream pillows’ was believed to induce prophetic dreams and enhance spiritual experiences during sleep, as well as aid in this travel.

In some indigenous practices, mugwort smoke is used to cleanse and purify ceremonial spaces. Its aromatic qualities are believed to uplift energies and create a sacred atmosphere that can be used for various important rituals. It was believed to act as a guide, helping travelers safely navigate through both physical and spiritual realms.

Connecting With Mugwort:

Research The Plant
Learn about mugwort’s horticultural characteristics, historical uses, symbolism, and associations in various cultures. Understanding the plant’s attributes will not only deepen your connection with it, but help you to grow your own crop.

Meditate With It
Spend time meditating with mugwort. Imagine its growth cycle and its energy. Imagine yourself surrounded by mugwort’s protective and intuitive qualities, vision your own roots combining and merging with Mugwort’s.

Plant It In Your Garden
If you have the opportunity grow mugwort in your garden or in a pot please do! Caring for the plant, observing its growth, and connecting with its life cycle can create a strong bond that will be useful when it comes to using it in your magick.

Create Rituals
Take the time to create rituals to honour mugwort’s spiritual significance. Offerings such as infused water, incense, or a few words of gratitude can help establish a connection, especially if this is done during it’s growing cycle.

Use In Dreamwork & Divination
Use mugwort as part of your dreamwork or divination practices. Keep a dream journal, experiment with mugwort tea before sleep, or perhaps take your Mugwort tea before a divination session and see what messages you receive.

Tap Into Creativity
Create art inspired by mugwort... This could be through drawing, painting, writing poetry, or crafting symbols associated with the plant to use in your magick. Pressing the plant in a glass frame is also a lovely idea to decorate your home with the plant, but also bring it’s energy into your space.

Start a Mugwort Journey
If you’re experienced in hedge-riding, astral projection, shamanic journeying, etc, consider using mugwort as an aid to help you explore different realms. Experienced drinkers of Mugwort tea can experiment with different strengths to achieve different results, with caution of course.

If you can think of any other ways to bring the energy of Mugwort into your practice please do let me know… once again do be careful when ingesting the plant!

Until next time,
Laura.

For those that are new to following The Bower Hare, you may not know that I am the author of a rather marvelous book called ‘The Handmade Grimoire’.
Back in 2022 I signed my first book contract and spent a year sitting in my garden studio sticking, cutting, folding and gluing together a massive grimoire, a spellbook, specifically for this wonderful book.

It was a gorgeous process, creating spreads on Ostara, Self Love, Sigils, and Flora and Fauna, it felt amazing to bring together all of the tips and tricks I had learned over the many years I had been putting together spellbooks. It was also a great learning curve for me as a creative, and a writer.

The path of a modern witch is filled with learning and discovery, gathering knowledge that is recorded in the Grimoire, a Witch's personal journal of their craft. A grimoire is a magickal encyclopedia, a living document and extension of the witch creating it, a unique expression of their magickal journey.

In The Handmade Grimoire, I introduce you to the joy of creating a personal grimoire from scratch, and encourage you to seek out new ways to engage with your craft through creative self-expression. Combining witchcraft and crafting, The Handmade Grimoire celebrates a magpie mind, shows readers how to approach their magickal practice with endless curiosity, and how to find the little moments of beauty all around them.

Filled with suggestions on what to include in a grimoire, layouts to try, tips and tricks for where to find materials to use, The Handmade Grimoire gives you permission to experiment and have fun with crafting your own grimoire, and to really engage with it as a mindful activity, that carves out space for your practice in a busy, distracting world. Practical step-by-step illustrated instructions on how to make more elaborate features to incorporate into your grimoire are supplemented with beautiful colour photography of my very own grimoire.

Included in the book are illustrated papers and images to be cut out and used in your grimoire, starting you out on the crafting path and giving you permission to make the art you see in the world around you something truly your own. With a variety of patterns and motifs to choose from, the 80 pages of beautifully patterned papers make it easy to start crafting a personal handmade grimoire straight away.

If you have brought my book, and you haven’t yet had a chance to review it, please do and send me a screenshot, I would love to share some bonus pintables with you! If you buy my book and feel compelled to leave a review, it really does help keep me writing!

If you’ve read it, let me know what you think!

Until next time,

Laura