Episode #16 – Show Notes 

On this episode, we start out by giving many shout-outs to various witchy online stores or brick and mortar stores that we love and follow!  Here are just a few:

Ritualcravt in Denver, CO
Open the Cellar Door – Etsy shop
The Wicked Griffin – Elder Futhark inspired silver jewlery
Alchemy of Avalon Tea – so delicious!
Fern and Fungi – Sarah Ann Lawless, wildcrafted awesomeness
La Diablerie – Scarlet’s own creation – also can be found on Etsy

So on the latest episode of the podcast, I talk about my personal Samhain ritual that I did which involved the baking, consuming, and burning of soul cakes,  The “somber cookies” I would definitely make again!  While Samhain evokes the thinnest of veils, I see no reason why you couldn’t make soul cakes and hold a ritual for those that have departed at any time of the year.  Sometimes, contemplating those that we have lost to another realm is a good exercise whenever you need to do it.  I would be happy to share a basic recipe that I found.  My soul cakes weren’t necessarily the prettiest I have ever seen, but the texture was great and overall, I think they accomplished everything that I needed them to accomplish.  Without further adieu, here it is!  I adapted this somewhat from a recipe I found at The Wondersmith, a beautiful site if you have time to visit.  Her soul cakes are gorgeous!

INGREDIENTS
1 cup of dried mixed berries, plus extra to decorate
3/4 cup liquid to soak them in – I used Chai tea, you can also use Amaretto or orange juice
3 cups flour (gluten free works as well!)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. freshly-grated nutmeg
5 Tbs. softened butter
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. molasses
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 egg
1/4 c. milk or almond milk

Before you begin, start soaking your dried berries.  They should soak for an hour.
Whisk together the dry ingredients (except for sugar) in a medium bowl.
In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugar, and molasses until creamy. Beat in the egg, vanilla, and milk until well combined.
Add the flour mixture in small amounts until everything is incorporated. Strain the berries and add them to the bowl, gently mixing until incorporated. Place the dough in the fridge for at least an hour.
Preheat oven to 375F. Prepare your baking pans with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Drop rounded Tbs of the dough onto the cookie sheets and gently press to flatten with wet fingers. Decorate with leftover reconstituted berries.  Makes about 2-3 dozen regular-sized cookies.

Celebrate life and honor the dead,
Blackbird

Inside me now are two daughters; two sisters. My family is full of women. My mother has three sisters, I have a sister, my mother’s mother was one of three sisters. Sisters both powerful, like torrents.

My sister has a voice like a chainsaw and a mouth on her that cuts deeper than any sharpened steel. Amber eyed and wild haired with deep olive skin, she is not unlike the Greco-Roman Furies; Allecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera all at once. On the cusp of both Ares and Taurus, she was born with all the war-like ferocity of the former and the unmoving stubbornness of the latter. My sister is a force unto herself.

I am a Cancer in the most cardinal of senses, with emotions that flow and ebb like the ocean’s currents and an indomitable shell.

In adulthood she and I have learned to navigate the turbulent ocean of our relationship, sailing together on a ship made unbreakable by trials of squalls and hurricanes. But it was not always so.

I am older, but she was always taller and bigger and stronger and physical in a manner I was not as a child. Her weapons were on the surface: a keen mind, an unfailing sense of self, a ruthlessness I often admire. My sister forced me to forge secret weapons, to guard myself with an expertise only siblings can teach. Your siblings, if all goes well, are with you from birth to death. They know you before you are a fully realized vessel, when you are nothing more than wet clay, and they are there with you through the wedging, throwing, and firing of life and adolescence. Siblings have the experience to see through the facade you present to the world, cutting through your walls to the very foundation of your soul, because your foundation is their foundation.

No one understands my soul as intrinsically as my sister and no one knows her soul as intrinsically as I; it is a bond that cannot be replicated that brings with it a power often abused.

As children my sister and I would fight and bicker and push and pull. She would scream, her voice like a maelstrom, so I would turn away, ignoring her outbursts and refusing to acknowledge her. Thunderous yelling was her sword and my contemptuous silence my shield.

I can recall the worst fight we ever had was at Girl Scout camp in elementary school; we were living in Seattle, she was six and I was eight. I pulled her hair, wrenching her to the ground; she had said something that finally broke me, though now her words are lost in the haze of childhood remembrance. I rolled on top of her and pinned her down, but she wouldn’t stop speaking, so I grabbed the closest thing to us, a sock, and I shoved it in her mouth, hellbent on silencing her.

The Girl Scout leaders had to call my father to come pick us up early from camp, they’d never seen two scouts fight as viciously as my sister and I were capable of. We were bloodied and bruised and exhausted from the force of our violence when my father came to retrieve us.

I will never forget that car ride home. He wouldn’t look at, our father wouldn’t even say a word to us- which was jarring as my sister inherited her ability to yell from our Italian bred, Brooklyn born father.

He didn’t speak and we didn’t speak, allowing us to stew in the fearful anticipation of the punishment he’d surely deal out when once we’d made it home.

At the time it was late winter, early spring in the Pacific Northwest and it was cold and damp outside. My father demanded, barely even able to look at us such was his shame and rage, that we go into the winter-dead garden and pull weeds. In silence we did this. Tears streaming down our faces, our chests racked with sobs, our gloved hands cold and shaking: forced into camaraderie in our punishment.
I can’t tell you how long we were out there, time flows differently when you’re a child and even more so when you attempt to recall your childhood.

Finally my father came out of the house and he looked between us, disgrace painted across his stern features, and ordered us to face each other saying,

“That is your blood and if you don’t have your blood, you don’t have anything.”

And we cried.

​~Lily

Sasstrology: Out of Your Element

Here are my suggestions for air, fire, and especially water signs to try out some earth vibes. Capricorn, Virgo, and Taurus, treat yourself to what comes naturally.

We all have our stories, our image, our brand that we tell ourselves and others about us.  Immersing yourself (sometimes literally) in something that is completely unrelated to that can launch you right out of those egoistic fictions into that space where real transformation takes place.  At the very least, getting right up close to that which makes you feel uncomfortable, icked out, or afraid can help to get to root about why you feel that way in the first place.

Make it a sensory experience

-In leiu of a seated meditation, go for a walk outdoors.  If temperature permits, walk barefoot on the ground or grass.  Studies show that walking outdoors barefoot can book mood and immunity.
– Get dirty!  Put on a facial mud mask, but rather than slather it on and check your facebook, draw sigils on your body, take note of the smell and texture, pay attention to the feeling of it drying and cracking on your skin.

​
Use it as a sacred object

– leave a bowl of salt on your alter or as an offering to your spirits or ancestors.  Salt never goes bad, so no problem if you leave it out and forget about it!
– Put a pinch of salt on your tongue to ground after a ritual or journey or whenever you’re feeling spacey.

Go Deeper

Contemplate the dark side of earth. It’s easy to think of the earth as passive and still, but volcanos, landslides, earthquakes, and drought can devastate in an instant.  Even when the earth appears still, the soil and fungi under your feet and constantly rotting away and breaking down the remains of organic life.

​Watch a documentary or research a not-so-cuddly earth diety like Pele, Coatlicue, or Ereshkigal.

Get out there and do some un-fun but necessary chores to clean up after the human race.  Dedicate an afternoon to pick up roadside trash on your block, trail, park or cemetery.  Keep going even if you get dusty, bored, or people look at you weird.  Flower bomb a vacant lot.

~Scarlet

image: Clytie, Louis Welden Hawkins