🌾🍞🌻🥐🌽🌼✨🍾🐝🍐🥖🌩️🍃🍯🌿🍺

Wishing you happy Lughnasadh!

🌾🍞🌻🥐🌽🌼✨🍾🐝🍐🥖🌩️🍃🍯🌿🍺

Lughnasadh, also known as Lammas, is the midpoint between the Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox. It takes place from sundown on July 31st to sundown on August 1st, and is the first of three harvest festivals.

"Lughnasadh" refers to the youthful Celtic warrior god Lugh (father of Cú Chulainn) who created the festival (and funeral games) to honor the sacrifice his foster mother Tailtiu made in order to make Ireland fertile.

"Lammas" is the contraction of "Loaf-mass", the old name of the grain harvest.

Now is the time of the year for baking all sorts of breads, pastries, and pies, or start fermentating batches of beer, mead, or ale!

Sometimes a witch isn’t sure enough of a situation to directly curse or hex a frienemy. A witch may be very suspicious, divination is giving mixed signals and their intuition is clouded. Maybe witch has ethical issues or fear around taking offensive action. Maybe they fear retribution because the frienemy is a magic user too. In these cases, a reflective spell is in order.

What you need: 1-A return to sender label or stamp 2-Something from the target–something they gave you, their photo, or something they wrote and signed. Maybe even an email they sent you. 3-A mirror or small pieces of mirror (broken pieces or craft mirror pieces are great) 4-A cloth, envelope, or box and string or ribbon to wrap it all in. 5-A tag or label to address the from and to (from your frienemy to you)

Package the item from your target and the mirror together based on your intuition. Sometimes I wrap a picture face down on a mirror or I glue pieces of mirror inside a box or I secure them on the outside of a package. Then after you have assembled the package address it and affix the return to sender stamp or label over the package.

The entire time you are doing this realize that you are simultaneously creating a mirrored energetic barrier against the target too. You at this point want nothing from the target bad or good. All of this is being reflected. If your target suddenly has a run of terrible luck–check with your divination if it came from the spell reflecting their ill will back on them. The same if the target has a run of good luck, use divination to see if they were wishing you well.

This spell not only works to reflect but it also helps you determine the intent of the target towards you when the signs are uncertain.

PBW Witch Shop!

It’s a strange time for us at Portland Button Works. Our primary business is making custom pinback buttons, but with conventions canceled and gathering discouraged our primary is business is at a complete stand still. On top of the Covid-17 pandemic and a “stay home” order in Portland, we were forced to move out of the warehouse we had called home for 4 years. It’s a shame because we just updated our website and our next focus going to be making our shop as more of a community space. We had such great plans! I guess is sort of good we lost our space because in a few months, paying rent was going to get difficult in this climate.

Selling our catalog of items like our pre-made button designs, books, zines, tarot decks and other stuff has always been more of my hobby to be able to sell things I like and it was only about 20% of our business. While it was only 20% of our business, it was a large portion of physical things in our shop, so we had a lot of things to move. In the last week we moved 400 square feet of things from our shop into a 120 square foot spare room in our home, the spare room where I stated making custom button and selling zines over a decade ago. I guess we are now working from home like a lot of people.

I know not everyone has spending money right now, but if you do and you have thought about buying some of the books or zines or buttons shown above or anything in our catalog, right now would be a really great time to check out our PBW Witch Shop or even the rest of our catalog of zines, buttons, or other things.

Also, we have access to buying books through book trade distribution. If there is a book, witchy or otherwise, that you would like to purchase from a small business and not from Amazon, get in touch. This may take a week to get and it will cost cover price, but we can order any book by a major publisher.

If you are in Portland, Oregon we can arrange for a contact-less pick up.

If you don’t have any money to spend, hey, neither do we! You can still help us out. You can reblog this post or tell your friends who are looking to get some witchy goods that they should take a look at our shop. Also, if you have ever bought anything from us or even if you have read any of the zines or books we carry or even if you were gifted one of our buttons you can leave reviews of those items on our website and it helps us out.

We would appreciate any help you can throw our way, together we can get through this!

Here’s a link to the PBW Witch Shop!

Added Sigil Witchery to the catalog even though I’m more of a traditional sigil person but I wanted to check it out. I also got this goofy cat tarot back in stock.

Got both of these back in stock this week.

**Reminder that "smudging" is part of a closed practice. Please call it smoke cleansing.

🌱Some helpful tips to keep healthy house plants🌱

Wheel of the year and different rituals and activities one can manifest for the sabbats.

Ive been a bit under the weather. Here’s a poster about medicinal herbs, many of which im using now. 

✨Natural Hair Magick✨

🌒💆🏻💆🏽💆🏾💆🏿🌒 Please note this post is for BLACK witches. Black witches please feel free to add! Non-black witches please don’t add. Thanks! ☺️ (These can be adjusted for those with relaxers too of course!)

✨keep moon/sun water in your spray bottle

✨use your correspondences and assign intentions to your hair oils & moisturizers.

⚫️DEEP CONDITIONING⚫️ ✨choose your deep conditioner ingredients based on intent or how they make you feel.

✨while waiting; visualize issues in your life getting softened and smoothed out.

✨during detangling (I detangle w deep conditioner), visualize physically removing stress, neg feelings from your life.

✨washing it out activates intentions.

🖤SHAMPOOING/CONDITIONING/CO WASHING🖤

✨if you section your hair to shampoo/co wash it, assign each section on an aspect of your life you’d like to reflect or work on.

✨as you work shampoo/conditioner through, visualize obtaining what you want out of the ritual.

✨as you wash it out, visualize negative energies in your life spinning down the drain.

⚫️PROTECTIVE STYLING (nighttime wrapping)⚫️

✨twists, braids, Bantu knots, etc. can be used for knot magick.

✨set your intentions for the next day when styling.

🖤PROTECTIVE STYLING🖤

✨similar to nighttime wrapping knot magick, but used for longer term intentions.

✨sync protective styles to the Lunar cycle.

✨my boyfriends mom told me to clip my ends on the New Moon

✨choose hair colors to match intent.

✨use moon water & oils to match intentions when you dip braids.

⚫️ACCESSORIES⚫️

✨color magick can be used for scarves, turbans, beads, rubber bands, headbands, etc.

✨charge/enchant scarves & bonnets for good sleep/prophetic dreams.

i have been fucked up ever since i took a mythology class in college and learned that the greek mythology we know today is not only deliberately patriarchal (i mean duh) but was put in place specifically to abolish the matriarchal religion that came before it, nearly all traces of which were systematically erased. AND, the reason the modern west is so obsessed with greek mythology specifically is that it aligns so closely with our own patriarchal values. like we are literally taught greek mythology IN SCHOOL, that’s how hugely important it is in our culture. (i mean think about it… there is no real benefit to placing that much emphasis on greek mythology specifically over any other part of history)

learning this literally ruined greek mythology for me lmao

artemis and aphrodite are the classic madonna (virgin) and the whore

athena is deliberately stripped of her femininity in order to be goddess of wisdom, springing fully formed from zeus’ head instead of being born from a woman

hera is the jealous, vindictive ball and chain, etc etc.

and the kicker? pandora was a revamped character from an older myth, in which she created every single thing in the universe, good and bad. she didn’t just open a box and ruin everything by not being able to follow orders. pandora literally means “all-giving”. and in the greek mythology we know today, she’s the first woman on earth and manages to fuck things up for everyone. sound familiar? like eve, maybe?

i don’t have sources because i learned this in a college class like 3 years ago but if anyone has access to their college’s academic database and wants to source this for me that’d be awesome. i haven’t tried but i’m guessing you’d be hard pressed to find info about it on google.

here’s a book i’m reading abt it that i picked up at a half-price bookstore. it’s a bittersweet read. there’s references inside the front cover, too, for further reading.

Thank you for adding this! Reblogging so y’all can see it

This book is the bomb diggety.   Bittersweet read indeed.

This may be slightly controversial, this post is about how as a bioregional animist and folkloric witch the use of things like “correspondences” don’t work for my practice. While I didn’t address it in the article, I feel all practitioners of magic could benefit from putting away correspondence charts for a while. 

This was a good read. While I agree with the underlying idea that old tired correspondence lists aren’t doing anyone any favors, I also like to believe that someone somewhere added things to correspondence lists because of their personal relationship with the plant, or because of the doctrine of signatures, or because of a plant’s medical efficacy. I really liked the point about plant changing and think a lot about how people are changed by their environment too. Some plants grow well in some places and not others. Some are fine in some places and invasive in others.

I too bought all the jars and exotic herbs I had no relation to when I first started witchin’ only to find I keep going back to the plants that I’ve grown or have relationships with.

This just really taps into a deeper problem of witchcraft by rote or witchcraft without critical thinking or a deeper curiosity.

THE WAIT IS OVER MY BOOK IS OUT COME BUY IT HERE

https://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/268210/Furiously-Prognosticating

AND IF YOU LIKE MERCH COME DROP BY HERE

https://www.redbubble.com/people/daneasmund/collections/1072318-normal-horoscopes?asc=u

FEATURING PRINTS OF @charminglyantiquated S FANTASTIC ILLUSTRATIONS IN CONVENIENT TAROT CARD FORM

(THE HARDCOVER EDITION WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR ANOTHER WEEK OR SO BUT STAY TUNED)

THE HARDCOVER IS AVAILABLE NOW

WE ARE SO CLOSE TO 100 COPIES SOLD

Do your tarot cards stick together when you shuffle?  Do you have a hard time pulling out the card from the deck?  Are your cards old and worn out?

LET ME TELL YOU GUYS ABOUT FANNING POWDER

It’s made of zinc stearate, it costs about three bucks for two ounces – which will more or less last you a lifetime – and you can buy it online or at basically any magic supply store.  (Er, not the witchy kinds, though.  Which is ridiculous, because it’s really useful and I’d buy it if they’d stock it.)

Anyhow!

Fanning powder is made to put onto cards and make them “fan” better.  This is especially helpful on old, worn out decks, or…well, see how my Vampire Tarot is sticking together so much that I can literally just stand it on end?  Yeah, sticky, clingy cards are annoying, and fanning powder decreases friction between the cards so they’ll slide together really nicely.  It’s commonly said that fanning powder makes decks “like new”, but in this case, it’ll be better than new!

There are different ways to use it, and you can find videos on youtube of people demonstrating them.  My favourite method (although, not the one I use, come to think of it) is to toss some cards in a paper bag, sprinkle in some fanning powder – it doesn’t take much! – and shake, shake, shake señora~ Then you just take them out and dust them off. 

Now, me?  I just lay out my cards, sprinkle some across them and then shuffle it up.  (Be careful though, because you probably don’t want to inhale this stuff!)

But, long story short, fanning powder has saved more than one deck I thought was a lost cause, and it’s how I get away with beating up the ones I have so bad.  SO YEAH JUST THOUGHT I’D LET YOU GUYS KNOW~~

Hey Goblins, uh

Did you know, that you can make an AWESOME journal for your adventures ALL ON YOUR OWN from a cereal box and paper/scraps that you likely have at home/can get from friends or family/you may find around your environment?

They’re called Junk Journals and they’re my entire life.

Im gonna do my best to walk you through how to make one! First, get you a mini cereal box! I use boxes from those cool multipacks of cereal that you can find at Walmart!

And then cut it out so it looks like this! (I already had one cut, so I’m gonna use that)

That “nutrition facts” side is gone become your spine!

Next, find some paper to use to decorate your cover! I was lucky enough to be gifted a bunch of scrapbooking paper, so I’m gonna use that, but you can also use newspaper, paper from books/magazines, junk mail, napkins, paper towels (excellent texture), etc!

Go ahead and glue that paper to your box (to cover the cereal logo) and cut it out! It’ll look like this;

Next you need to find your pages! Again these can be anything! Junk mail, envelopes, receipts, food wrappers, magazine/book pages, scrapbook paper, computer paper, construction paper, ANYTHING. Just grab a whole bunch!

You’re gonna want to fold them in half and cut them to the size of one of the covers of your box, and layer other pages inside of it to make your signatures, like this!

Each signature should be about 7-10 pages. You don’t want them too thick, otherwise the inner pages start sticking out when folded in half. You’re gonna have a LOT of these signatures, as you wanna fill the area in the spine as best as possible. For this one I’m using 7 page signatures. Here’s a pic to show just how much paper you’ll need

Each of these signatures are 7 pages, 6 signatures have only filled about half of the spine, so I’ll need probably 6 more.

Next you gotta figure out how you want them in your journal. Personally, I like to sew them into the spine, but you can also keep them in the spine with rubber bands, so you can have removable pages! (Be weary that rubber bands may break over time! So you may want to always keep extra bands near it to replace in case one snaps. This is why I prefer sewing them in) I find it best to look up on YouTube how to sew in signatures, just because having someone walk you through it where you can see what they’re doing is easiest. If you can’t access YouTube, there’s plenty of text tutorials on how to sew in signatures online, or you can message me! I’m not gonna go too into detail, but here’s the jist;

Okay so I’m a forgetful gob and I hecken forgot to take pictures as I was going along kahshshshsh

But essentially, I sewed in the pattern similar to the one I drew. The dots are where the needle goes all the way through to the back. I also like to use rubber band as an extra mode of support but you can do one or the other. I also like both cuz I can tuck stuff in em between the pages. Since I didn’t take more pictures; I’d really recommend looking up a how-to on YouTube or w/e if my badly drawn diagram isn’t clear enough (heh sorry about that)

Next, I glue fabric to the spine. It spruces it up quite a lot and holds the rubber bands in place, plus it give more support to the spine since there’s gonna be a lot of strain on it.

Only 10 photos per post, so I gotta post this and reblog it with the rest.

Here’s the journal with the fabric on the spine, I decided to go ahead and glue the excess to the rest of the cover too, cuz I liked how it looked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Next step?

DECORATE the pages! I haven’t decorated this one yet, but here’s some pages I have completed!

Have fun with it! Make tuck spots and hideaways. Add folders and envelopes and make tags and things that dangle. Decorate the covers and the spine and make it your own! Add things as you find them! Anything! Even candy wrappers! This is really the ultimate goblin journal!

I hope y’all enjoyed this mini tutorial =3

Honestly @gayestgoth I’m not sure how you don’t think it’s goblin. In my opinion, using garbage to make something cool is very goblin. And not only that, you can make these with ANYTHING.

Here’s one where I decorated the cover with actual leaves

I regularly use materials and litter that I find while out in the woods. I pick up all sorts of paper, receipts, scraps, cloth, advertisements, broken beer bottles, etc to use in my journals. And because I’m picking these things up, there’s less litter in the woods. PLUS I’m recycling. And I press plants into them.

Half chewed papers? Go for it! I set the corners of pages on fire before cuz I liked the burnt look! (Do with caution) chew ya own papers! Make it unique!

And shinies?

I’ve got plenty! I use all kinds of clips, wire, beads, buttons, pins, coins, etc in my journals. Half of which, I find in the garbage.

Hell,

I found the upholstery fabric I used for the cover of this journal in the garbage!

So how is this goblin?

How is it not?

Marjoram

Can I grow it?: Yep! Marjoram is a lovely garden plant that grows to be about 12-24 inches tall and loves full sun or partial shade. You can grow it indoors in pots or in your yard. Not to be confused with oregano, which it is sometimes called, but which is also its own separate plant. [x]

Can I ingest it?: Sure! Marjoram has a beautifully delicate flavor and makes a great addition to meats, vegetables, breads, teas, and more! If you’re not allergic to it, marjoram is safe in food quantities.

Can I wear it?: Absolutely! It’s very common in many skin products like soaps, usually as a scent.

Can I heal with it?: Yes! Marjoram is used for coughs, colds, digestive troubles, headaches, and sleeping issues. Some people use it for other, more serious condition, but there isn’t really enough evidence for me to report it here with any confidence. In medicinal doses (meaning concentrated) it is likely safe for short periods, but long term use at medicinal doses may harm your kidneys and liver. Medicinal doses may also be dangerous to pregnant people, people with bleeding disorders, and children as it may make you bleed. If you are scheduled for surgery, it may also be dangerous to take at medicinal doses, and is something you should discuss with your medical team. Additionally, it may interact negatively with lithium, so if you need to take lithium for your health, be careful and likely stick to food doses, and definitely talk to your doctor. [x]

Can I cast spells with it?: Absolutely! It is used for protection, love in established relationships, and good fortune. It can be worn in sachets to ease grief, and taken in teas (if you’re not allergic) to aid sleep and bring peace.

Note: This is part of my series on herbs and is not medical advice, just a pragmatic warning. Please always check with your healthcare provider, especially for serious conditions, and seek actual medical attention before trying anything yourself.

If you’ve found this is useful, consider buying a witch a cup of coffee?

The Book About Plants.