Gardening, oils and waters, full moon spell jar, and grimoire work

Week in my shoes; how do I combine spirituality, magical point of view to my everyday life.

It has been lovely; the beginning of summertime is wonderful. Nature show us its vibrant colors and sounds of birds and other creatures around us, isn’t it so nice to have so much activity and joy all over?

I am not all closeted witch, my family members know that I do believe and practice odd things, but we never really say it aloud. We do say that I am pagan and spiritualistic, and they do joke about the witch part. I do not mind, it is just a word, I am more pagan after all. 

With this said, I do talk about witchcraft stuff to my family, do them tarot readings and make them charm bags. My craft tools, books and such are on tables and shelves to seen, not really hiding anything. Only problem I have, and it is the spiritual practicing part. I usually do not get to be alone; I do need a lot of concentration to do these things, and when everyone around, I really do not get that. 

Even though I am very artistic person, you would think that visualization comes easy to me, it doesn’t. I am very great at it when I do something artistic, but when it comes to magical work, it doesn’t come that easily. I am working on that, whenever I can, which has been difficult these days. I am not very good at meditating either, but it is work in progress, and I’m trying to find other ways to make it work.

As a beginning of the summer, most of us are busy with planting and gardening, which is one of my favorite things to work. I do not have huge yard, but it is big enough to get decent garden in it. I have few perennial plants growing in there, but each year I grow new plants, depending on what I want there to be. I have really old red currant bushes (ribes rubrum) that grows along the fence, they are truly old ones, but the amount of berries they give are really something, then I have some chives (allium schoenoprasum) that I planted few years ago and some lilies that grow every year on same spot, but this year I dug up the flowers and gave them to my sister, because I really needed more space to other plants. 

The empty space I got from removing the lilies, I filled up with chamomile, lavender, spinach, cauliflower, pumpkins, and carrots. I do have other vegetables and such, like tomatoes, chilis, and cucumbers, but they are growing in my sister yard. She has more space to put up the greenhouse and her yard is better for that too, it faces the south, so it gets quite sunny and warm. Tomatoes and chilis love that. 

This year I bought some of the herbs as pre-grown saplings, did not have time to grow all of them from the seeds. We went to pick up them from the commercial garden close by. I chose some basil (ocimum basilicum), sage (salvia officinalis), thyme (thymus vulgaris) and tarragon (artemisia dracunculus). I also wanted new flowers and this time I found some summer flowers which name I don’t remember - might have been petunias, and I got two different colors of verbena, and dahlia, which I’ve never liked, but apparently I’ve never seen very good looking one I think, as this one was so beautiful that I needed to have it. 

I did some foraging too, I needed flower materials for smoke bundles. I am trying to find best ones for outside use, which would smell nice and still would drive away mosquitos. For those, I used red currant leaves, and I found red campions (Silene dioica), bittercress (Barbarea vulgaris) and wood cranesbills (Geranium sylvaticum), we have tons of these flowers around here. As I made the bundles, I added few stems of thyme and tarragon with the currant leaves and flowers. I tied them with white cotton twine while thinking and visualizing the intent. 

Earlier I got my package of small jars, I seem to have little bit of addiction to them - though, I have great need of them most of the time. Being excited about the jars, I made few new oils and waters. I wanted to try making palo santo and cedar water and oil, I love the scent of those woods. I combined the wood chips with vinegar, because I did not have any alcohol at the time, for oil version, I used sweet almond oil. I am quite thrilled to see how it turns out. I tried the vinegar with flower water too, which I made from dried hibiscus, calendula (calendula officinalis) and jasmine (jasminum officinale) flowers. 

Also, I got my pentacle charms, I ordered bronze colored and silver ones. I like to use them in spell jars, charm bags, and make jewelry, like necklaces and earrings. I am still waiting for key and tree of life charms; I hope they do come soon. 

The full moon, magical night, there was a lunar eclipse too, but I did not get to see it, moon was too low at the time when the eclipse was going. I do not do anything big on full moons, I keep things simple, as I do every day. I had planned for making spell jar, sort of. I have been seeker for long time, but now I feel that, I am ready to find a deity or deity pair and set my path towards something. That something, is thing that I still do not know what it is, but I will figure it out. 

So, the spell, it was about spiritual connection with spirits and deities, open letter to whomever will interest in. I used jar for the base of the spell, added few herbs - like cedar, wormwood, sage etc, - in the jar with aventurine, amazonite, and tiger eye. On top of it I put in black salt, sea salt and eggshell powder. Before sealing the jar, I included ashes from the piece of paper which had the message I wanted to make, written on it. I tend to burn my written messages, wishes etc., as I believe burning them, sends the message to the realms by the smoke. I sealed the jar with wax from black candle and tied red ribbon with pentacle charm around the neck of the jar. 

While doing these steps, I was picturing the purpose in my mind and connecting to that. The jar is on my altar table, and when it has done it purpose, I burry it to my garden. 

Full moon was also great time to work on my grimoire, I had gotten from Etsy these printable book of shadow pages, I’m sometimes little bit lazy to write down some generic information, and I had planned to add them to my book. 

For newbies, it is quite nice way to get good info and nice designs, but I still think that you should do the research and studying in old fashion, read, read, read, ask questions, meditate etc. To save a time, it’s ok to get basic info pages from Etsy or somewhere else, but for actual magic work and such, I think that writing them on your own is better, as it is yours. At the beginning, it is good to use material that someone else has made, and when you are ready to start doing your own thing, you can always use available ones for reference. 

I attach in my book a lot of basic info, I have really short memory and most of the time, I need to go back and check. I also have other book, it is smaller one, and that holds spells, potions, oils, incantations, prayers etc. It is loosely categorized; I write in that book things that I find interesting and might have later use. 

I decided to try out those subscription boxes, I really wanted to try this witches moon box, but at the moment it’s quite expensive for me, so I ended up subscribing Freya’s cauldron – box, it is UK based and the prize was affordable, no extra cost as I’m living in Europe, will be making review about it when it comes. But, I have looked into that witches moon box and I probably have to try it. 

Blessings,

Jady