Potions, lotions & aging gracefully

Now that we are actually going to have another "Practical Magic" movie coming out, and as we've just passed the Lughnasadh/Lammas turn of the wheel toward the mellowing of summer into the first hints of autumn light...here I am contemplating things through the lens of cronehood.

With the ((ahem)) not-so-modern science of herbal scrubs and tallow balms, the tech advances of red LED lights, and rose quartz Gua Sha stone tissue massages before breakfast, who needs a glamour spell?  Midlife crisis has been pushed out to 50 or even 55 now.  Heck with the speed of life today and the way we can alter our female hormones through medication or sheer stress, it can take longer to actually get to the shores of menopause and cronehood.

I was 53-1/2 years old when my biology finally caught on to the idea that motherhood was not anywhere on my bingo card.  Hot sweats to be cooled by midnight margaritas.  

That, and I didn't meet the man of my dreams until I was way past the usual sell-by date stamped invisibly on my forehead society.  He's a gem that thinks my Venus is more Willendorf than DeMilo but loves me for every squishy bit of it.

And this late-in-life edition of my romantic story arc has also renewed my interest in how the Goddess energy within me has come back to me with a face of a much more femme fatale version of Aphrodite than a girlish giggle or batting of eyelashes.  She's teaching me that seductive arts don't leave you, the energetic rush doesn't dissipate merely because you can no longer wear CFM pumps.  

There is less attention paid to rising hemlines and more emphasis on worshipping your loving partner for their successful life experiences.  The wisdom found in having become such a virtuoso kisser, how to treat ones partner with respect and yet still appreciate that he has learned the art of being both a gentleman and a savage in a way that a younger version couldn't master.

For me, I recognize that there really is beauty in each crinkle at the corner of my eye, carved there from a well-worn track of laughter and sometimes squinting incredulity at the idiocy of some of the shit the kids say today.  Every curve, however ample some may now be, that I possess, I have earned.  Some of it through learning to become a fabulous cook and some of it because I may well be a shapeshifting as lazy housecat on occasion.

Getting older as a GenX witch and knowing the weird/wyrd road that brough modern paganism into this bizarre mutation of Tiktok and underground retro traditionalism forcefed by socio-political agendas and taffypulled media narratives, it is both exhausting and liberating to behold.  I find myself laughing at the inside joke of "to be silent" is so much easier when you don't want to participate in the funhouse mirror of the bullshit that exists in paganism now.  It is polarized and warped so much, I have a deeper appreciation for wanting to just be left the hell alone to live in a cottage in the forest and culling my own herb garden in peace.

Once upon a time I had thought to teach, to hold a coven again, to write a book.  Now?  Why bother.  Bots and ChatGPT will just make it seem like it has all been said and done before.  No seekers come forward to work through experiential training.  No one gives a damn about lineage or consistency of practice alongside generational teachers.  And frankly, I don't think I want to expend the energy on the short attention spans I see around me.

It is ironic that the window of things being something joyfully passed down skipped out of town just when I was eligible to be one ready to pass it, like getting stuck with the pentacled hot potato.  Now it is passe.  

Kind of reminds me of the way I feel about thrifting and antiquing.  There are so many glorious treasures that have been discarded in all their gently patinaed, wabi-sabi goodness, and most of the world doesn't even seem to notice their value.

Like me.  I find I feel like that from time to time too, that because I've reached "a certain age" myself, I'm now sprinkled with the invisible dust and relegated to the knicknackery on hidden on the back shelf.  

But jokes on you.  I may well be happier here, among the dusty things.  The solid things that were hand made by artisans and not meant to be disposable and easily replaced or trendy.  The things that get more beautiful as they change and age and get more mellow with time and softness.

My witchery has grown like that too.  Like a garden that has matured and has gnarled, curled branches...roses blown wide apart with trembling petals and wavy edges....moss and mushrooms...soft pathways underfoot from being trod over decades.  It is less about discoveries and new exploration than it is about books as old friends and teas/tisanes that taste like honeyed brandy.  Familiar and dark and deep and cozy.

I've become the Aunts, not Sally or Jilly.  And I'm fine with that.

LEMMINGS FOR LEMURIA, a just-say-no campaign

From the files of "I'm an older pagan and I've never heard of this newfangled shit before...enlighten me or get yer crystal ball off my lawn!!" ---I ask you:

WHAT THE HECK ARE 'LEMURIAN CRYSTALS'??!?!?

They're all over the internet, gang, and I'm going to tell you the gods' honest truth....they're a scam. They are just regular old quartz crystals with a good new age backstory. Maybe they have a better marketing team and some nice slick photos, but they are no different than the bulk stuff you bought already when you decided stones were good to have around for energetic purposes...or because they look really pagany, boho or hippie awesome.

Who was the marketing team that came up with the unfounded, unable to prove claim that these gemstones have the energetic frequency which links them to the "lost continent of Lemuria" or some dumb bullshit? Does the lazy intellectual pagan connoisseur realize that's like saying your buying seashells from Atlantis?

Are those sly Etsy sellers the same ones who are hocking chemically dyed geodes and claiming they're really that neon magenta color? Or slices of agate the color of peacock teal? Or the resin poured into perfect symmetrically-terminated points with 24k gold inclusions? I mean, Mother Nature makes some pretty cool colors all on her own. Why should we suffer the insult of having a lacquer spray on every stone make it as iridescent or man-made titanium clusters treated to look like an oil slick, just so that they can say they are energetically aligned with the ancient rainbow properties of Avalon/Narnia/Pleiades? No, my friends. We don't have to tolerate FAKE MAGIC and FALSIFIED TOOLS just because some jerk thinks we're too stupid to notice.

Aesthetics are nice, but nature worshipers should be able to forego the fugazi in favor of the real deal, served in all its realness yo.

Yet every few years we see these bandwagon jumping sellers with marketing degrees and slow moving stock, drumming up these dumb sales pitches so that they can repackage stuff to a buying demographic they only half-heartedly understand and about which they really don't give a damn. A sucker born every minute, or so says the astrological charts right?

Don't buy into the bullshit, man. 

Say no to the plastic amber with impossible inclusions. 

Skip over the too-perfect-to-be real resin replicas. 

Tell the hipsters on Etsy and the hawkers at HomeGoods that you're on to their scheme and you are savvy enough to know that crap, no matter how cleverly 'updated' is still crap. 

If you buy a Lemurian crystal point on Wish that is as big as your forearm, don't be surprised when you don't get an energetic chakra download from the ancient Akashic records but instead have a kinda cool doorstop.
Buy real. Be real.

Yours, Mine and Ours: Is borrowing ok or disrespectful?

Co-opting, or adopting something for one's own use is pretty common in the pagan community.  It is a natural part of learning what is useful in your immediate surroundings or what you've learned from other people already doing herbal or rootwork in your area.

Then there is the tendency of late to decry "cultural appropriation" for every thing that may have cross-over usage in another culture or context.

I believe this is a slippery slope.

While I understand that arbitrarily stealing things from other cultures can be seen as insulting or demeaning, it seems that the great American melting pot is just that...a mixed breed of amalgamated and mutated recipes.

Mindfulness and respectfulness are where we are often lacking, folks.  If an object, gesture or practice holds sacred significance to a particular culture or race or tribe or group, we aught to be careful in our haphazardly adopting portions without taking care to respect the original context and society from which it is derrived.  We should be reverential in our adoptions and usage, and not just bastardize something because it appears to be cool, kitschy, trendy, or superficially aesthetically appealing.  And if we don't fully understand the idea or item in its original context, we really shouldn't just make up our own way of dealing with it out of expediency or a half-assed research citation.

Take the idea of smudging for example. 

I've heard on more than one occasion that using a sage or sweetgrass bundle is potentially disrespectful to First Nations people, as they had a specific protocol and ascribed usage for burning these in ceremonies which are sacred to them.

Well, I would counter that while this is very true and documented as a usage, it may also be said that sage as an herb is not just to be found in the Americas.  It is native to the Mediterranean and was widely used in many ways by our European ancestors in culinary, medicinal and likely magical ways too.  There may be many cultures that have used this herb in similar ways.  So in my opinion, burning sage as an offering or use in magical parlance is not under the sole domain of the First Nations folks and if you are aligned with any number of other groups that also burned sage and other herbs as incense, offerings, gratitude gifts to deity or spirits, then you should be able to use it for similar purpose.

Conversely, the dream catcher --- THAT has origins that are solely a part of Native American culture. 

Thus, I personally would not include it in my random Boho home decor, let alone my personal magical workings without some serious consideration about why I feel sourcing this as a focus without the historical authenticity, intention and....dare I say it...permission to adopt something sacred and use it in my own way, a way for which it was not originally intended by design or spirit.  That smacks of disrespect.

It would be like taking the Eucharist (communion wafers) out of the Ciborium at my local church to use them in my cakes and wine ceremony in circle.  Just because they are imbued with sacred power in the context of a Christian setting and now I want to 'borrow' some of that energy to align with the new context I'm ascribing to them in my own usage....that doesn't make it respectful of the Christian traditions nor does it really provide any "oomph" to my circle rites.  It is not a congruent usage or contextual meaning.  It is piracy of another culture's spirituality.

This, too, is one of the concepts that I'm not sure cherry-picking eclectic folks really grok.  Sometimes this same idea comes in with regard to mixing pantheons of deities or parts of the historic celebrations of a mix of cultures without doing research first to see if they are truly able to be co-mingled without being disrespectful.

Now don't get me wrong, even ol' Gerald liked to adopt things from different cultures, it is true.  But there, I believe, he did research....heck, he actually spoke with tribal elders of said cultures about what they did and why...before he borrowed elements of their teachings to supplement what he was passed by his upline elders.

It is all about being mindful, respectful and thorough of research.  It is not about "gee, that looks cool or sounds like something I should do because I saw somebody else on YouTube do a 5 minute video about it.

If nothing else, the Craft is a life-long study and practice.  It is a school of hard knocks and a school of opening doors.  You should do your best not to learn the hard way, if you can.

Witchbots and the almighty pagan dollar

Do you believe the stuff they'll peddle to the unsuspecting consumer?  

It was bad enough years ago when there were a lot of "repeats" by authors sharing a lot of the same info in a new dress and calling it the latest Witchcraft incarnation.

Now, just like robocalls, spammed phishing emails and bots in every chat room trying to snake-oil sales pitch you into buying into a fad, commercialized, trendy version of whatever it is you just google-searched....  

The asshole marketing folks are ghost-writing regurgitated witchcraft literature and making it available on the bargain-basement cheap.  

They're using fake names, usually with the unobtrusive "Lisa" plus a surname that sounds like they're a relative of a legit, well-recognized and well-respected pagan author, witchcraft old-guard leader or occult visionary.  

It's almost a given that this is so that their garbage gets more hits in the Google and Amazon search engines when you type in said REAL author/leader/occultist name, tempting you to believe into the associated fictional and bot-generated product reviews.  Yessir, step right up and BUY! BUY! BUY! your way into spiritual greatness in timing faster than your average Prime delivery truck.

The saddest part is that the unwary seekers out there will fall for this crazy bait and think that they're getting a good deal.  

They can well-afford 10 of these instant generated bogus books for the price and effort of tracking down just one book by a reputable author, whose labor of love and experiential wisdom will be overlooked in the avalanche of BS bot books.

This all sounds so familiar...          ((queue wayback machine sound effect))

Golly gee, why should I spend the time and effort to find a teacher?  And then have to wait a year-and-a-day or more to learn 'the good stuff' when I can just send in my cashiers check (or now just whip out my credit card for an ongoing Patreon subscription) and buy online classes with someone who sounds legit and has good lighting on their YouTube vids? 

Because, my darlings, caveat emptor.  Those old sayings about "you get what you pay for" and "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is"....those apply here too.   

Just as you'd thoroughly investigate a potential in-person teacher to see what their background is, how much training they've had and from what level of expertise and experience they're coming from, DO THIS WITH WHO YOU READ TOO.

Isn't it better to have spent your time reading material from a diligently researched and well-practiced source than from someone who just ((POOF!)) arrived on the scene a few weeks ago with no background check available into their credentials?  Don't be duped by these books conveniently bearing a name that sounds a lot like someone who DOES deserve respect and who HAS really been afforded respect in their field.

Riding coattails of real witches when you're just an advertising jockey who is trying to beat the numbers game in book sales, all the while not truly caring about your target audience...that's what is really....uh, bogus.

Headscratcher: Nevermind the misspelling man behind the curtain

It really is annoying when ever I hear or see the red herring terminology like this little gem I found online, by someone in my area who promotes himself as a local leader and is taking students, for a minimal fee, to teach Craft:

"I call what I teach, a modified form of Gardinarian Wicca. What that means is that I use traditional methods for teaching, and very traditional forms for ritual. Any Gardinarian coming to my ritual would immediately recognize it... The difference is that I have modified some elements in ways that work better for me. This is the basis of Witchcraft..."



Yeah.  That.

So my fellow pointy-hatted scholars....how many things are wrong with this diatribe?  Let's count, shall we?


ONE:  This guy charges for training in the Craft --- this in and of itself tells me that he hasn't had British Traditional Training, because if he had, he'd know we don't ever charge for training.  It is bad form, bad juju, bad manners.  If he is teaching his own form of the Craft, he can do what he likes in so far as charging for it ---although as a potential student, how would you know the value of the teaching is worth the cost of the class?--- but his stuff isn't BTW-based then, since he's ascribed a financial value to it.


TWO:  Spelling it 'Gardinarian' is a sure-fire way to say you are either too lazy to spell-check Gerald Gardner's name and thus the namesake tradition....or else you were being purposefully sneaky by not using the correct spelling, thereby giving yourself the ability to say "I used a variant of old Gerald's name to denote my stuff is a variant of the real Garderian tradition."

That latter bit then brings us to...


THREE:  Saying your stuff is a variant of something to which you are not privy is ridiculous.  It is impossible to truly know what encompasses Gardnerian traditional Craft practice unless you are an initiate of that tradition....so how can you say yours is a variant of something you do not know first hand??!?  Moreover, you wouldn't be exposed to all of the teachings of a Gardnerian tradition unless you were brought all the way through to 3rd Degree, and then given permission to teach it, with duly made oaths to not expose what you've been foresworn in your practice and revelatory experience to others, unless they too are proper people, given similar initiation into the tradition and likewise foresworn to protect it?

Thus, what we have here is someone once again wanting the "pagan street cred" of claiming knowledge of things he may only have barest gleanings about, then making assumptions and suppositions about those little bits and then "making it his own" in some fashion and claiming his is a "modified version" of the whole encompassing reality of a tradition to which he isn't a member.


DOES THAT SOUND LIKE SOMEONE TRUSTWORTHY ENOUGH TO TEACH YOU THINGS ABOUT SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION AND GRACE?  LET ALONE CHARGE YOU MONEY FOR THE PRIVILEDGE OF HIS DEIGNING TO SHARE HIS INSIGHTS WITH YOU?

I think not.

But there are folks like this out there, gang.  Still.  They think people like me --the people who call them out on their verbal slight-of-hand and dubious integrity in Craft teaching--- they think I AM A BIG MEANIE POOPYHEAD.


With all due respect, I'm just protecting my tribe, my tradition, good sir.  I'm doing what my oaths say by shining a big spotlight on you.


And if you DID have the initiation you claimed to have, you'd know this.  You'd know better.

Go do you your own Craft thing.  Go teach others, and do so with all good intention and aplomb.  I applaud you and wish you all good success.


Just stop trying to ascribe some vague notion of that my tradition, however you may bastardize its spelling, is a "stamp of approval" toward what you're doing.

A bit belated, but no less heartfelt…HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2014 was pretty bumpy for a lot of folks out there, and I’m definitely in that camp. But tough as it was, I believe it was far better than the year that proceeded it because each one of us sort of hit upon the same idea in our own way….authenticity.

Yes, the past year contained a lot of hard-won lessons. And painful though these personal trials were while we were in the thick of them, it was only after managing to fight and push through them that we learned how powerful and illuminating the value of living authentically truly is.
Midlife-crisis my ass….midlife AWAKENING!!

So many of us approached our lives last year in a constant struggle to “slap on a Band-Aid and keep going,” trying to muddle through situations and circumstances that were not actually feeding our passions or our spirits; doing things because we felt we “ought to do them” and not because we truly wanted to do them or saw wisdom in continuing those old patterns….just being coerced or being lazy by playing the half-hearted old role for sake of not making waves.

But then, something happened. A crux and monumental stand-off occurred between psyche/soul and notions of “ought to“ when deep down we felt otherwise. Something shifted and the epiphany hit us squarely on the noggin: that just “going through the motions” of standard, garden-variety life wasn’t satisfying to anybody, least of all ourselves. Nobody wants to participate in that cardboard cut-out, baby…in our deepest desires, we all want vibrancy, deeply moving, extraordinary L-I-F-E!!!

And that’s why I am so looking forward to what 2015 has in store.

Yes, it will carry the all inherent wisdom of everything in my life which proceeded it. But if I can be brave, trust that I learned from my past experiences -- the good and the bad--- and then, with patient resolve, ACTIVELY CHOOSE everything I actually WANT to be a part of my life from now on (discovering what those people and things are, and admitting them is a big step)….and not allow myself to auto-pilot my way along or meekly accept whatever is doled out….only then I can create a life worth enjoying and being happy to participate in. Who’s with me??!?!

So I’m certain that there will be much to experience and enjoy in these next 12 months. There’s going to be some missteps, sure, but those will be on my terms too, not things I’ll be settling for.

This year will not be another one filled with corrective measures and survival mode….it will be about being brave, and honest and asking for what I want and not being afraid to really make hearty attempts, sometimes multiple attempts, to get it. Brand-new adventures and following through on dreams I’d shelved because I didn’t think I’d ever get around to pursuing them.

So I’m grateful for 2014…and grateful to see it in the rear-view mirror, getting smaller as I move forward.

Here’s hoping my friends, family and co-pilots in life embrace their own authenticity and we will enjoy with great mirth and reverence all the places our lives intersect, overlap and run parallel.

Be blessed and be true,
Albiana