Thoughts

Self Love Candle Ritual

Love spells are two-fold spells, first you must love yourself, and then you share that love with the world. This short spell is the start of that process.

Please feel inspired to carve runes into the wax. Sandalwood incense, apples, cinnamon, roses, honey, and copper coins are also good additions to the ritual space.

Take a moment to think of 3 or 7 words that clearly state your intent and insert them in the blanks below. Examples: “attracting a partner who I can be open and trusting with” “loving myself completely ” “strengthening my relationship with ___” “protecting against harmful relationships.”

Speak these words to your candle. I think saying these words out loud is the most important part, even if it feels goofy, or you need to whisper them. Speak your magic.

“Creature of wax and wick please aid me in ____”

“Creature of earth and herb please aid me in ____”

“Creature of stone and bone please aid me in ____”

And then as you light it “Creature of fire, please kindle this flame and aid me in ____”

Visualize all your good qualities (kindness, sense of humor, etc.) becoming a visible and tangible part of your aura. See them as a bright light that seeps from your skin and dances in the space around your body.

Sit with the candle and meditate for 15 to 20 minutes. I like to stare into the flame and watch it dance. Use this time to connect and see your candle as a living creature. Continue to hold the visualization in your head as you sit. Note any stray thoughts that come up, acknowledge them, then let them drift away

After I’m finished meditating and visualizing, I like to let the candle burn for another hour or two in the room I am in. I imagine the candle filling the space with magic and the magic seeping into every fiber of my being, into my clothes, my skin, my hair.

Perform this ritual as often as needed until the candle is gone.

Thanks to Tip of the Moon.

Ritual of Release

Jenny Heston · 5:01 pm ·

Another way to honour the ancestors at Samhain is to pay respects to everything in your past that has led you to this place, physically and metaphorically, spiritually and emotionally.

Take a handful of dry leaves, or incense with charcoal bricks, along with a fireproof bowl (unless you have a hearth or wood burner) and some matches.

Extinguish all the lights in your household and spend a few moments sitting in silence, in darkness.

Open the windows to let in the night and feel the breath of the underworld around you, the raven wings of the goddess as crone, the Cailleach upon your cheek.

Hold the leaves, and using your imagination, pour all the deaths you have felt over the year, all sorrow, pain, anything negative, into them.

Face the darkness, not as something to fear, but as an ancient friend that you have met many times before.

Then when you are ready, light a single candle and feel the brightness that this brings.

Throw the leaves or incense, into your bowl or onto the fire, and watch them burn.

Relight every candle in your home from the flames.

For more rituals, crystal magick and kitchen witchery – treat yourself to The Magickal Book of Samhain.

Blessings.

What is the Creatrix Circle?

Jenny Heston · 4:47 am ·

Massive Greetings and Welcome!

The doors are now open to the Creatrix Circle!

As many of you know, I have been on a Spirit guided journey for the last while where I was being told to take the years of learning, knowledge, experience and bring to life the Creatrix Circle. Which is exactly what I’ve done (not that I had a choice lol!)

This past year has brought huge changes to most everyone in all different shapes and forms, and it is has become more evident on a global scale that connection, community and support are sorely needed.

Thus it’s even more vital and more pressing than ever to come together with each other in community, in circle and to really reconnect with the deep, true, ancient piece of ourselves. The wise one, wild one, witch one, Goddess!

To grow and expand, walk in the light and the dark, to embrace the deep inner knowing and build community, embody our power and magic. To help the healing that needs to happen.

As the quote says:

Now is the time
This is the hour,
Ours is the magic
Ours is the power.

If you’re curious about what Creatrix Circle looks like and what’s available, or you want to deepen your connection to the seasons and walk the path of the Wheel of the Year. Today the doors open and we welcome all who wish to join us inside.

Threshold

Jenny Heston · 10:33 am ·

What if a Threshold isn’t a place that you cross, but a place that you pause? A place that transforms you?

With everything that has happened in the past few months, we are at a place of Threshold. I don’t know about you, but you can feel it in the air, in the energy of the people around you and in the collective consciousness. As the old “normal” crumbles (but is certainly fighting to stay), there is a sense of fear filled with expectation.

A Threshold. And one that is going to last months, not be crossed in a day.

But what the heck is a threshold?

I don’t know about you, but I grew up with the idea of Threshold being something that you crossed. For example “the husband carried his new wife across the threshold”, or on New Years Eve it was all about who would cross the threshold first?

According to Mirriam Webster dictionary:

A threshold is:

a) a plank, stone or piece of timber that lies under a door sill.

b) a gate or door.

c) the place or point of entering or beginning.

Often, when encountering thresholds, we talk as if our work is that of successfully “passing through” them. We speak of “making healthy transitions.” We seek out advice and support as we decide which thresholds to lean into and which to resist. The goal, it would seem, is figuring out how to travel forward in the right way. But what if we looked at it a different way?

“A threshold is a space to imagine a new way, and a new self. Not moving or pushing but sitting and cultivating… The goal is to allow you space and time to reflect on your past, present, and future. To imagine a new beginning…” Rev. Sara LaWall

Our Jewish siblings live with a heightened sense of threshold every day. Their practice of hanging mezuzahs at their doorways calls them to pause and be more intentional about what they want to bring with them and what they leave behind as they cross between their home and the world.

Imagine how your days might be different if you took a sacred pause at the doorway to your home and asked yourself, “What do I want to bring with me and what do I want to leave behind (or keep out) as I cross over?” How does my home, myself and my family need to be protected from the energy I picked up from the world today? How might my day be better if I bring some treasured value of mine with me to work or school today?”

The Celts have a tradition of having a bowl of water next to the door (and in my case a spell under the door sill), and before you enter your home, cross your threshold, you dip your hands in the water and shake off anything that is not needed.

Also, within the Celtic traditions, a threshold is a thin place. It’s a term that is used to draw our attention to those spaces and moments when “the veil” between the ordinary and the sacred grows porous and we encounter the world and ourselves in a new way, even a transformative way.

I personally feel those spaces almost daily when I’m out in nature, or sitting in a 400 year old church. It’s the place and space where you rest into the threshold between worlds.

And that is the energy that is swirling now. An invitation to pause, to relax into the space and embrace ourselves and the world in a new way, a transformative way. This is the place of the ineffable: the stuff we can’t express because it’s beyond the power of language to do so. Explanations aren’t merely useless; they threaten to get in the way. The experience of a thin place feels special because words fail, leaving stunned silence.

Think about the moments you have experienced where thought floats away and the feelings that rise inside you are so powerful and so life changing, but to try to describe them to a friend is impossible.

If you are willing to stay in this place of Threshold, you will change, your life will change, the world around you will change. Are you willing? Are you willing to open yourself up to an unknowing, leaning into something that is ineffable and allow it to transform you?

A super simple exercise to remind you of your willingness is to live it:

Alter something physical near the entrance of your home so you are reminded to pause as you go out and come in. Don’t worry about literally hanging something on your doorway, although you can if you want.

Maybe just change the location of your key bowl or key rack. Maybe move the place where you put on and take off your shoes, locating it instead by a chair that reminds you to physically sit down for 20 seconds longer and reflect rather than rush out or in the door. Whatever it is, use your “doorway change” for at least a month to make you pause and answer the all-important threshold question:

What do I want to bring with me and what do I want to leave behind (or keep out) as I cross over?

Big Blessings as you play in this liminal space.

4 Easy Rituals to Celebrate Beltane – and a Visualisation!

Jenny Heston · 1:11 am ·

I love Beltane, I love it because it is fiery, passionate, intentional and produces results!

Beltane was thought to be one of the more important festivals of the Gaelic calendar. Beltane is a Fire Festival. The word ‘Beltane’ originates from the Celtic God ‘Bel’, meaning ‘the bright one’ and the Gaelic word ‘teine’ meaning fire. Together they make ‘Bright Fire’, or ‘Goodly Fire’ and traditionally bonfires were lit to honour the Sun and encourage the support of Bel and the Sun’s light to nurture the emerging future harvest and protect the community.

Beltane celebrates the height of Spring and the flowering of life. Earth energies are at their strongest and most active. All of life is bursting with potent fertility, look at the trees around you – (if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere), they are bursting forth with bright green leaves and the little sparrows are back as well as the robins. Abundant fertility, on all levels, is the central theme.

The Goddess has reached her fullness and is the manifestation of growth and renewal and shows up as the May Queen, Flora, the Goddess of Spring. The God emerges as the Young Oak, May King or as Jack in the Green. They fall in love, the union is consummated and the May Queen becomes pregnant. Together the May Queen and the May King are symbols of the Sacred Marriage, the union of Earth and Sky. If you have ever read “The Mists of Avalon” you will know what I am talking about. “This is the night of the Greenwood Marriage. It is about sexuality and sensuality, passion, vitality and joy. And about conception. A brilliant moment in the Wheel of the Year to bring ideas, hopes and dreams into action. And have some fun!”

On Beltane we honor nature’s oldest love story. Beltane means bright fire, and in earth-based traditions, it represents the handfasting, or marriage, of the God and Goddess and their eternal embrace. In ancient lore, the two are separated all winter long, and their reunion on Beltane is celebrated with food, drink, and multi-colored maypoles, which symbolize female energies wrapping themselves around the male form. The world comes alive in color to celebrate their love. This is a holiday of union, a celebration of the divine balance in the union of masculine and feminine. Having reached maturity through their long separation, Lord and Lady now come together as one.

Have you ever seen a Maypole dance? If you have never seen a proper Maypole dance done, I highly recommend it! A phallic pole, often made from Birch (why Birch you ask – Birch is regarded as a feminine tree and Deities associated with Birch are mostly love and fertility goddesses. It is one of the first trees to show its leaf in Spring), was inserted into the Earth representing the potency of the God. At the top there would be a glorious wreath, most often Hawthorn flowers and the flowers represented the Goddess. Hawthorn is a deeply magical tree and is one of the three trees at the heart of the Celtic Tree Alphabet, the Faery Triad, ‘by Oak, Ash and Thorn’. Traditionally Beltane began when the Hawthorn, the May, blossomed. It is the tree of sexuality and fertility and is the classic flower to decorate a Maypole with.

The dance around the Maypole represented Their unity. Ribbons of Green, White and Red hung down from the top of the pole and each young woman would take an end and dance. As they danced around the pole they would weave in and out and through whilst holding onto their gorgeous ribbon. This weaving represented the Spiral of Life and the union between the God and the Goddess. It’s moving artistry and glorious fun!

So if you haven’t gotten it yet, Beltane is a festival of flowers, fertility, sensuality, and delight. The Beltane fires of yore were a time of revelry, pairing and celebrating fertility (there were lots of babies born 9 months after the celebrations!) Also, cattle would be led between two fires for protection and to encourage a strong, fertile herd. People believed the smoke and the ashes from the Beltane fires offered protection and fertility. Holy wells were visited and feasts were had. Rowan was often used in Beltane festivals as it’s a tree of protection and healing. Branches of Rowan were placed as protection over the doors of houses and barns at Beltane to protect from increased Faery activity as they woke from their winter slumber. Sprigs were worn for protection also. Rowan berries have a tiny five-pointed star on the bottom reminiscent of the pentagram.

So all in all a great time to celebrate, set intention, fertilise either self or ideas and have a grand jolly time!

But I guess the question some people have is – “Why bother marking the day?” Good question, and my answer would be because it connects you to something bigger, older and deeper than our modern day to day.

I love the way Donna Henes puts it:- Ceremonial observance adds lucid layers — depth, dimension, drama and distinction — to our lives, making the ordinary seem special, and the special, extraordinary. Through the practice of ritual we are privileged to experience ourselves as prepared, present, passionate, principled and potent. When we set aside the quality time and claim the psychic space for ceremony, when we assume the authority to do so, we are able to transform our perceptions, our perspectives, our experiences, and in the process, our reality.

Does ritual have to be long, drawn out, complicated and require a shed ton of things you don’t have in your home? Some people believe so, but I don’t. To me ritual is performed when I make food for those I love with the intention of it being nourishing and a dish of connection. It’s also in when I routinely smudge and energetically cleanse my home, or in the Epsom salt tub that I draw up for one of the boys with the oils that will help them.

So with all that being said let’s go explore 3 simple rituals for Beltane. The first one is the egg charm (and I most certainly do this at Easter) and it is so easy to do. The second is a tree blessing, which I love and will be doing. There’s also a very simple dandelion renewal ritual – if spring has sprung early enough for you. And a glorious fun thing to do is a Faery offering!

Here is a lovely guided visualisation/meditation to help you really release and tap into this amazing time. Enjoy!