As autumn approaches, it brings with it shorter days and cooler nights. This makes it the perfect time to experiment with warming essential oils, such as cinnamon, clove, ginger, cardamom, and black pepper. One of my favorite combinations contains cassia (cinnamon), clove, and sweet orange essential oils. It just smells like autumn to me! You can diffuse this blend or add a few drops of each oil to an oil burner and let the scent fill your home. You can also mix these oils into a water-based spray. When doing this, I like to add some Moss Agate chips or small tumbled stones to the bottle. Moss Agate is a stone of rebirth and is great to use during seasonal changes.

Autumn also means the start of the school year for those with school-aged children, or for those who recently returned to school as students or teachers. This can usher…

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Ozark Encyclopedia – H – Hair

Ozark Encyclopedia – G – Gunpowder

Ozark Encyclopedia – G – Greases

Ozark Encyclopedia – F – Frogs and Toads

Sacred Tree Profile: Sassafras’ Medicine, Magic, Mythology and Meaning

The Druid's Garden

The fall months are coming and the leaves here are just beginning to turn. Apples are starting to ripen, nuts are starting to fall. And with a quiet walk through the fall woods, you might be lucky enough to see a sassafras (sassafras albidum) in her fall splendor. She will be decked head to toe in yellow, orange, red, purple, and magenta; an old sassafras tree in full fall foliage is certainly a sight to behold. With her wavy trunk and twisted branches, Sassafras makes no apologies about her ability to stand from the crowd. Her four variable leaf patterns (mittens (right or left), single leaves, double mittens) help show her flexibility and charm. While Sassafras is not present in the traditional Ogham or other Western Magical Traditions as she is distinctly an American magical tree, she is a powerful tree with much to offer us.

An ecoprint I made…

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Druid Tree Workings: Working with Trees in Urban Settings

The Druid's Garden

Maples growing up through grate–been there for years!

I walk down the sidewalk of a street in the small town that I call home. As I journey, I see a crabapple friend with ripening fruit, her leaves rustling in the gentle breeze. I reach out to her, and tell her I look forward to harvesting some in the fall. She is pleased, as her fruit is largely ignored, and delighted that I will return. I see others along my walk: horse chestnuts, lindens, mulberries, serviceberries, balsam poplars–many trees that are different species from the forests where I often tread. Finally, I walk across a grate and wave to the maples growing up from below, in the four foot space below the grate and the drainage channel and into someone’s driveway. These urban trees are often shaped by humans in ways forests are not: an odd growth habit becuase of pruning…

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Spirit of Spider {Animal Totems}

Good Witches Homestead

Role: The Weaver

Lesson: Balance

Element: Earth

Wind: West The Quest Within

Medicine: Illusion

Communication. Creativity. Divine Inspiration. Illusion. Balance. Nurturing Instinct. Mystery. Wisdom. Magic.

NAVAJO CREATION STORY

“In the beginning, there was the dark purple light at the dawn of being. Spider Woman spun a line to form the east, west, north, and south. Breath entered man at the time of the yellow light. At the time of the red light, man proudly faced his creator. Spider Woman used the clay of the earth, red, yellow, white, and black, to create people. To each she attached a thread of her web which came from the doorway at the top of her head. This thread was the gift of creative wisdom. Three times she sent a great flood to destroy those who had forgotten the gift of her thread. Those who remembered floated to the new world and climbed to…

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Rituals and Activities to Enhance Creativity and Support the Bardic Arts

The Druid's Garden

This is my song, this is my voice,
These are my words, this is my choice.
Hear me now, take heed of my words.
Love me now, and your spirit will fly.

Hear me in the howling of the wolf,
My voice is the song of the Bards,
I am the power that helps the salmon leap,
I am the very first breath of a child.

From Damh the Bard’s Song of Awen.

It has been a long journey into considering the role of the bardic arts in the druid tradition and the role that creativity plays in spirituality. I realized that one final thing was missing from our discussion–a set of practical exercises and rituals that you can use to better work with the flow of awen and embrace the path of the bard. And so, to finish out my long series on the Bardic Arts in the…

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