New Moon in Scorpio | Moonthly Energy Report — Spirit de la Lune

Good Witches Homestead

This New Moon in Scorpio is a very intense and emotional one. Many of us have been feeling the depths of this New Moon for several days now. Not only is it election time… but both the Moon and the Sun are in Scorpio right now. This means our inner world and outer world are both feeling that intensity and rawness that Scorpio can bring.

Venus is just now getting out of Scorpio, but you may still be feeling her, as Venus is still in her “Shadow Period.” Venus, the planet of love, has been retrograde in Scorpio the house of darkness and transformation since October, and won’t go direct until the 16th of November.

This will take a lot of pressure off of our relationships, as we are able to see things a bit clearer with the balancing help of Libra. Just as Venus goes direct, Mercury goes retrograde…

View original post 259 more words

How to Regenerate Your Body, Mind, and Soul with the New Moon in Scorpio

Dear all,

The New Moon in Scorpio this Wednesday is one of the best astrological events we’ve had since the beginning of the year!

This New Moon in Scorpio aligns with both Neptune and Pluto in a very harmonious way at the same time when Jupiter (also still in Scorpio) connects to a powerful energetic vortex in Cancer.

This translates into a huge energetic support for those of us who are ready to deeply transform our lives — like the Phoenix — one manifestation of Scorpio energy — rising out of the ashes.

Good things are on the horizon and the more we consciously work with this energy — the stronger the manifestation will be.

So how do we do that?

Continue reading “How to Regenerate Your Body, Mind, and Soul with the New Moon in Scorpio” →

Third New Moon of Autumn 2018

THE GOOD SIDE of BEING DOWN

Good Witches Homestead

The anatomy of anger, envy, sadness, and fear

Negative emotions do us a great favor – they save us from ourselves.
They’re mysterious signals, that oftentimes surge for “no apparent reason”, urging us to pay attention and change what we’re doing. Emotions that generate unpleasant feelings have been called sins (anger, envy), rejected in “polite” interaction (jealousy, frustration), or identified as unhealthy (sadness, shame). Culturally we’re taught to suppress these feelings, or medicate them, and punish ourselves for feeling them. Because these feelings are mostly seen as unpleasant, they are often called “negative” emotions… although “negative” is a misnomer. Honestly, if you think about it, emotions are not inherently negative or positive, they simply are a feeling to situations that happen. In esoteric practices, for example, they are distinguished by much more than whether they feel good or bad. Beneath the surface, every emotion orchestrates a complex expression of changes in motivation…

View original post 1,139 more words

BUILD YOUR OWN ALTAR Using These CEREMONIAL HERBS

Good Witches Homestead

Day of the Dead: Ritual and Ceremony

Little is firmly known about the particulars of today’s holiday since the limited sources available are either folkloric literature like the Celtic sagas or Roman authors who would have likely “trashed” the traditions of a culture with which they were often in conflict.

Although, you can kind of imagine what really went on back then. Different cultures around the world gathered in a ceremony to honor their ancestors on and around November 1st. This sacred day was often known as a cosmic aperture, where the veils get thin, and the souls from “the other side” can contact us with more ease. There’s plenty of written experiences where people have encounters with spirits or ancestral anecdotes from all over the world regarding the ceremonial processing of these mystical energies. Samhain, for example, is very well known as its a three day ancient Celtic pagan festival…

View original post 814 more words

Varieties of Spirit Mediums

November, Autumn, Fall

Good Witches Homestead

“The name ‘November’ is believed to derive from ‘novem’ which is the Latin for the number ‘nine’. In the ancient
Roman calendar November was the ninth month after March. As part of the seasonal calendar November is the
time of the ‘Snow Moon’ according to Pagan beliefs and the period described as the ‘Moon of the Falling Leaves’
by Black Elk.”

Samhain:

“This association of death with fertility provided the theological background for a great number of end-of-harvest festivals celebrated by many cultures across Eurasia. Like Samhain, these festivals (which, for example, included the rituals of the Dyedy (“Ancestors”) in the Slavic countries and the Vetrarkvöld festival in Scandinavia) linked the successful resumption of the agricultural cycle (after a period of apparent winter “death”) to the propitiation of the human community’s dead. The dead have passed away from the social concerns of
this world to the primordial chaos of the Otherworld where all fertility has its roots…

View original post 796 more words

This Wild Mushroom Is No Longer Recommended For Eating

Greetings!

With only a handful of weeks left in 2018, I’m hitting the road one last time this year to offer a few exciting events. During these programs, I’ll be discussing the bounty of mushrooms and other foods associated with one of my favorite groups of trees: oaks! Here’s the current schedule:

November 5, Clemson, SC: South Carolina Upstate Mycological Society
November 7, Atlanta, GA: Mushroom Club of Georgia
November 12, Slippery Rock, PA: Bartramian Audubon Society

For more information on these events, check out the Learn Your Land event calendar.

Moving forward, let’s talk about the Angel Wing (Pleurocybella porrigens).

In older field guides, this fungus — which looks a lot like a small oyster mushroom — is listed as edible and good. In more recent guides, this mushroom is accompanied by the warning: not recommended for eating. And according to many credible sources today, the Angel Wing is considered poisonous.

And not just mildly toxic, but deadly poisonous.

So how did it happen? How does a mushroom go from being “edible and good” to “poisonous?”

Well, that’s the topic of today’s brand new video. In it, I discuss the controversy associated with a species once widely touted as an edible mushroom. Check it out!

I missed the opportunity to photograph this tiny green mushroom back in June, hoping that it would reappear during a more favorable moment in the future. Fortunately, it did… and I was able to spend a few precious minutes with this little green slimer last week. Check out this recent Instagram post to hear more of the story!

Click to view post

Thanks for reading and watching, and as always, thank you for your support!

-Adam Haritan

BE A HERBALIST THIS FALL

Good Witches Homestead

Autumn is the time to ground down and return to our inward selves. After the ethereal light and abundant days of summer, we start to prepare for the darker days ahead. It’s the best time of year to set intentions, get quiet, create and manifest dreams, and to re-commit to healthy habits–the simple things that add up to a healthier state of being.

Wherever you are in the world and whether you experience a dark winter or not, honoring the seasons within the body is one of the most fundamental practices within herbalism.

1. INVITE WARMING, GROUNDING AND NOURISHING RITUALS BACK INTO YOUR LIFE

From a holistic, traditional standpoint, each season is characteristic to an element or quality within nature, and we should guide our lifestyle choices to support the season. For example, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, this season marks the beginning of the Yin (cool, watery, deep) part of…

View original post 618 more words

The Samhain of our Lives

The Druid's Garden

Just last week, we had our first hard frost. After homesteading for a number of years, you grow to be vigilant for the signs of the first frost. The air smells different somehow in the two or so weeks leading up to it. The bird and wildlife patterns change. The nights have a crisp bite to them that they didn’t even a few days before. And then, just like magic one day, the frost is there, glistening in the morning light. The garden radically changes overnight–even for those things you covered–the entire landscape lies in disarray.

Sunrise at First Frost

I could feel it on the air, and for the last few mornings, have been going to to see if it had arrived. That morning, I turned the corner and first saw it first on the strawberry patch–white and glistening. The frost is beautiful, magical, and yet, destructive. While the…

View original post 1,466 more words