Des' Healing Foods: Cinnamon Sugar Yellow Squash

💐Picnic witchcraft guide💐

Sandwich correspondences

Fruit correspondences

Vegetable correspondences

Tea correspondences (sun tea, tea in general, floral tea)

Flower correspondences- can be used as decoration, for flower crowns, as a fun nature activity (collecting them respectfully, of course), and edible flowers can be used for deserts, drinks, and salads!

Desserts- here’s some witchy dessert recipes, perfect for any picnic!

(Tiny strawberry pies, cranberry pistachio shortbreads, cardamom pear cake, ginger and fig tart, apricot coconut bites, and lavender tea bread)

Locations- fun witchy locations for picnics include:

🌹a botanical garden, floral garden, or any sort of garden (perfect for fae, floral, air, green, life, spring, and summer witchcraft)

☀️a sunny open field/area (probably has wild flowers!, great for air, sun, floral, and weather witchcraft)

🌙⭐a night picnic under the stars and moon! (Perfect for lunar, nocturnal, and cosmic witchcraft)

🌳a park (great for all witchcraft, very versatile)

🌊💧a beach, pond, lake or near any body of water (perfect for water, sea, and love witchcraft)

👻a cemetery (perfect for death, spirit, medium, and floral witchcraft. Just make sure it’s allowed and you’re respectful of graves)

🌲A forest (perfect for forest, tree, nature, green, earth, and hedge witchcraft, here’s some tree correspondences)

Other witchy picnic ideas:

Stones/crystals to bring- it depends a lot on location and the general theme of the picnic! But a few favorites of mine are:

rose quartz, opalite, any aura quartz, sunstone, agate, tigers eye, and selenite (especially peach selenite)

Scents- I like to focus on scents a lot during picnics. It can make the experience so much more enjoyable! Location once again plays a huge role, but you can always spray your picnic blanket with essential oils, use strongly scented herbs or flowers, use a specific perfume, or even a specific tea that smells good. Some scents I like to focus on during picnics are:

lemon, orange, grapefruit, lemongrass, strawberry, orange blossom, gardenia, rose and lavender

Bring some little spells or offerings with you! A picnic in nature is the perfect time to do a little crafting, especially love, self care, fae, peace and happiness spells. And you can correspond your picnic with the intent of the spell!

It’s also a great time for devotional offerings and any other offerings, especially fae offerings.

Put together a picnic spell- an entire picnic can be a spell! Everything from location, to drinks, to food, and the extra stuff you bring along can be in it.

🍑Have fun picnic witching! 💐

SAMHAIN SOUL CAKES RECIPE

Souls cakes are small round cakes which is traditionally made for Halloween. Originally the poor would knock on doors of wealthier families begging for leftover soul cakes, in turn for a prayer. And thus the trick or treating tradition began! A great offering for the dead, and your family at that matter.

Ingredients:

3 ½ cup flour

½ cup white sugar

½ cup brown sugar

1 cup cold butter

A pinch of salt

Splash of vanilla

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp cinnamon 

2 tsp all-spice

A pinch of ground cloves

1 tsp baking powder

2 eggs 

Dried cranberries/currents/raisins

Candied Orange Peel

A spoon full of honey

3 tbsp almond milk

¼ cup chopped hazelnuts 

For a simple frosting:

3 tbsp softened butter

3 tbsp cream

1 tsp vanila extract

Red or orange food dye

¼ cup powdered sugar

¼ cup almond milk/alternative milk

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. 

In a large bowl combine flour, spices, salt, and baking powder. In a smaller ball, rehydrate your dried fruit with apple cider vinegar (sounds weird, but trust me it soften the tart bite of dried fruit).

Cut cold butter into the flour mixture until it becomes evenly crumbly. Mix in sugar and eggs. Once completely combined, add your almond milk, dried fruit and candied orange peel. Add in hazelnuts and honey. 

Kneed dough until it becomes solid, if you think it’s too liquidy, add in more flour. If it’s too dry, add in more almond milk. 

Once you’ve got your dough, plastic wrap it, and put it in the freezer for 15 minutes. Kneed the dough out, roll it, and cut them into circles. I personally use a biscuit cutter, and that works fine ~ Although you can use a knife or a cookie cutter as well!

Place them on baking sheets and with the flat end of a knife, make crosses that come to look like plus signs. Not too deep to cut the cookie in half, but not to shallow or else it will fade away while baking.

Place them in the oven for 25 minutes, or until done. While baking, combine your frosting ingredients and beat with a fork. Shovel into piping bag with a thin tip.

Once the cookies are out of the oven, let them cool to room temperature before frosting. Now with your festive orange or red or even black frosting, pipe along the cross to define it. You could also skip the frosting all together if your not a frosting person - but I suggest it since these cakes are not overly sweet.

\ Garnish to your liking and serve for a tasty Samhain! \

~ Blessed be, Angel….

✨ How To Wake Witchblr ✨

We’ve all seen the hashtag #wakingwitchblr or the term itself at one point. Still, I found that there’s a lack of info on what you can actually do to make witchblr more active. 

So I took it upon myself to create a list of things that anyone can do to revive our amazing community! Enjoy !

1) Don’t Like, Reblog instead 📣

There’s nothing inherently wrong with liking a post, it’s just that due to how Tumblr works, liking a post does virtually nothing. Reblogging, however, lets that post be seen by more and more people. The surefire way to revive witchblr is by reblogging as many witchy posts as you can. 

But what if some posts just doesn’t fit into your blog’s theme, even though you want to support it? Well, you have a couple options:

Reblog anyway. Diversifying your posts actually makes your blog more interesting. You can always tag it as ‘off-topic’ if the different theme bothers you that much.

Create a reblog/spam account! I have one and it is so simple. The post may not gain as much traction compared to if you RB-ed in your main blog, but trust me when I say a single reblog goes a long way.

Share it on other social media. See that arrow-like button down there? Click it and you can share the post anywhere. Send it to your witchy discord servers or your insta groupchat !

 2) Get off the ‘Top’ page. Go to ‘Recent’ 💌

AKA reblog from lesser-known bloggers.

Not only will you support fellow witches creating content, this also give you a chance to talk to them and find your place within Witchblr! Which brings me to my next point…

3) Interact with The Community 💬

If I’m a witch who wants to move away from Tumblr, there will be only one thing that can stop me, and that’s the friends and connections that I’ve made here.

Join online covens and discord servers, ask your witchstagram and witchtok friends for their tumblr url, and just have fun together. 

Interacting with other witches, making friends, even just giving compliments or advices. This is what makes us a community. It’s what makes us stay here. If we don’t interact with each other, than we’re just a bunch of people who likes the same thing without any connection. That’s not witchblr.

4) Diversify Your Tags 🎪

There is a kind of… exclusivity, when you look through the hashtags of witchy posts. Witches only ever tag with “witchblr”, “witchcraft”, and “magick”.

This creates an accurate, non-spammy post, but it is also a post that will only show up on other witches’ dashboard and no one else’s. The community will never grow in this way because there will be no new people finding the community. It’s just an echo chamber.

Instead, diversify your tags. I’m not telling you to tag your ritual oil with ‘cars for sale’, but if you made a travel altar yourself, there’s nothing wrong in tagging it #crafting, #diy, #handmade, etc. 

Non-witches will then find the post and potentially become interested in the community, thus making it grow.

5) Make Original Content 🔮

Original content is the backbone of any community, and witchblr is dying because we’re not producing any. So if you want to revive witchblr, make content of your own.

No, it doesn’t have to be well thought-out. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be good. Original content can be anything! It can be you posting about a witchy thing that happened. It can be your drawing, or a picture you took. It could even be memes???

Or it could be a ‘how to wake witchblr’ post that you wrote because you have a script due 3 weeks ago and somehow this is your idea of procrastination

The point is: just click that ‘Make a Post’ button, and make a freaking post !

6) Share This, and Add Your Own Tips! 🖤

Now that you know these, it’s time to let other people know too ! I put a lot of thoughts into this post, but I have to admit that these tips will only work if everyone in the community is doing it. 

If you have other tips or ways to make Witchblr more active, feel free to reblog with your own addition too.

I love this community, and if you’re reading this post I’m sure you do as well. It’s not gonna happen overnight, but I know that we can be as active as we used to be. We’ve got the heart, we just need the action.

☀️ Yule Energy Sun Spell ☀️

Recently I’ve been feeling burnt out, and I was struggling to find a spell to do on Yule, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone!

feel free to alter this spell as needed

ingredients

☀️ a gold/yellow candle

☀️ orange, lemon, and grapefruit* slices, preferably dried

☀️ one full orange

☀️ a cup or chalice

steps:

☀️ lay your fruit slices in a circle around you and your altar and say: “with each slice that i place, i make this circle my sacred space.”

☀️ light your candle

☀️ grab your full orange and wave it through the smoke, visualise the energy of the sun transferring into the orange

☀️ once you’ve decided you’ve waved in the smoke for long enough, take your orange and squeeze its juice into the chalice/cup

☀️ when you have enough juice to drink, stop squeezing and drink all the juice

☀️ once finished, thank the sun for lending you his energy and blow out your candle

…and there you have it! Merry Yule!

* you can substitute these with any citrus fruit, lemon, orange, and grapefruit are just my preferred fruits for this spell

Quick Project: Associations

Take a sharpie pen, and write associations on the back of your spice jar labels. 

This will help for quick reference while cooking as to what intentions are going into the pot, so it were.  You can reinforce them by focusing on them, and just being generally aware of what is going in.  

Use the white spaces of the labels to your advantage.  This doesn’t have to be pretty, after all, most people just have regular run-of-the-mill plastic spice containers. 

This isn’t a substitute for a more practical list in your Grimoire/BoS, but it can be a quick and dirty trick. ;)

Author: Elizabet Wynnter Blog: The Spiral-Path Please do not remove Author or Links

Actually useful shit to have as a witch

You really don't need all the fancy bullshit every tumblr influencer will ever tell you to use. Here's my countdown ofaxtually useful shit.

A pocket knife, preferably with a wood handle. Use that bitch for everything, enchant it, carve symbols in it. It will absolutely be your best friend.

A good bag or backpack with a couple of plastic or ziploc bags in it. If you ever run off into the woods to find minerals, bones, plants, etc. A set aside bag and some things to store your treasures in becomes a necessity.

Basic divinatory sets. You don't have to buy fancy shit, learn to divine with playing cards and dice, or learn geomancy, lithomancy, or rune casting with homemade sets. A tarot deck is nice, but it isn't necessary when you've got so many other divinatory aids available.

A nice sized chunk of scrap cloth. When you process dried plants or sort new ones, that shit can and will get everywhere. A scrap piece of muslin or linen can help contain all of that mess and make clean up way easier.

A stash of good rocks. Draw sigils or symbols on those babies and leave them in the garden, the windowsill,property boundaries, under the stoop, etc. You can never have too many good rocks.

A pendulum, for fucks sake. The cards are going to be vague as hell when you're trying to figure out yes or no questions, and using a candle to communicate with spirits is really fucking hard outside. If you can't afford one, find a nice chunk of pointy quartz and learn to macrame.

A workspace. Everyone talks about having big fancy altars, but no one mentions that you need a good surface to do all your work on.

Storage, so much storage. I'm not talking about mason jars and pill bottles, I'm talking about where you put all the things you put in those jars. Having a workspace with drawers is immeasurably helpful.

A broom and water source. You're going to be cleaning up after yourself a lot, it's helpful to have a jug of water and a broom that stays by your workspace.

A mode of cleansing. I make a salt concoction to scatter around my workspace on short notice and store it close by.

On that note: SOMETHING TO CANCEL SPELLS WITH. Eventually, something will go wrong. You'll want to end that spell immediately. Have something to do it with.

A strainer. If you don't have a blender, rub dried plants across it to get a powder. If you do have a blender, you can strain that powder with it. Either way, if you intend to powder shit, get a strainer.

Small trays. It makes drying flowers so much easier if you have a small metal surface to contain them with- then just stick those suckers in a southern window and let em go.

Yarn/string scraps. Having a box or drawer of scraps makes trying this up to dry easier and a bit less wasteful.

A stash of offerings for whatever you work with. Honey for fae, coins for graveyard gatekeepers, alcohol for ancestors, etc.

Protective talismans or charms. Once you're into all of this stuff, you'll likely stick your nose in something you shouldn't. Having basic protection with you or in your workspace is incredibly important. A key and hagstone with red string is simple and effective.

A lighter- so many people forget the most basic shit. You're going to want to light shit on fire if you're a witch.

And a last tip- if something is too hard for a mortar and pestle, a plastic bag and hammer works too.

Baking a brioche on a stormy afternoon. A slow living approach.

We had a stormy day last week. The weather was gloomy and it was really windy. I decided to bake a Brioche. Bread making is such a great activity to slow down, and brioche are such a decadent treat. 

Making brioche was really hard for me the first couple of times, and I wish I watched videos on how to make it. 

 Brioche makes wonderful food for any celebrations of the pagan year! You can adapt the recipe to your need and add the flavours and herbs. They are perfect for you feasts are they are the embodiment of the little luxuries, the little extra we enjoy on a celebration day! At the end, I give you some ideas to adapt the recipe to each of the sabbats!

Prep time: 40 min

Rest time: 1h30

Proving time in the fridge: a whole night

Cooking time: 25 to 30 min

Material needed:

A standing mixer with a hook or a hand mixer with hooks. If you don’t have any of those, you can mix by hand but it is going to get really messy and it is much longer.

Ingredients

2tsp dry yeast

4tbsp milk

1tbsp suger

250g plain flour

30g sugar

125g butter at room temperature

3+1 eggs at room temperature

1tbsp Cointreau or Rhum

Recipe

Activate the yeast by mixing 2 tsp of dry yeast with 4tbsp of luke warm milk and a tbsp of sugar. Mix well and let it rest for at least 15min. The yeast is activated when there is a fluffy foam on the top of the milk.

In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, salt and butter together until crumbly.

In a small bowl beat 3 eggs with a tbsp of Cointreau or Rhum.

Add the beaten eggs and the yeast to the crumbly dough.

Start mixing with the robot for at least 5 min. The dough is ready when it is smooth, silky and sticky (don’t worry about that)

First proving:

Cover the bowl with cling film and let the dough rest in a warm place. Near a radiator is really good or in the oven at minimal heat (no more than 30°C / 86°F). Let it rise for about 1h30 or when the volume has doubled. If there is a wind draft, the dough will never rise.

Second proving:

Once the first rising is done, punch the dough to remove the gaz accumulated. At this point the dough is really sticky and that’s normal, don’t be tempted to add more flour. Cover the bowl again and let it rest a full night in the fridge. The dough will rise a bit again.

The day after:

Pre heat the oven at 180°C/350°F

Sprinkle flour on your worktop and start rolling the dough in a large cylinder. Cut it in 3 equal parts.

Roll each part in a long sausage, then braid them together.

Beat one egg and spread it on the braided brioche with a brush. It will make the crust gold and shiny

Bake 25 to 30min at 180°C/350°F

A few important tips:

This dough has a lot of butter that make is very sticky. That’s why the nigh in the fridge is very important. It makes the dough hard enough to be manipulated. Try to work quickly so the dough stays cold.

If you don’t have room temperature butter, shred the butter with a cheese grater it will do just fine.

No alcohol? No problem! Try to perfume the brioche with vanilla or orange zest!

Sabbaths celebrations ideas:

Mabon - 20th-22nd September - Add some sliced apples to the dough before the first proving time

Samhain - 31st October - Add a tsp of pumpkin spices to the flour.

Yule - 20th-22nd December - Add orange zest and orange juice to the mix instead of the Cointreau

Imbolc - 1st February - Don’t change the recipe it is perfect for this celebration day!

Ostara - 20th-22nd March - CHOCOLATE! Add chocolate chips to the batter before mixing everything together

Beltane - 1st May - Use 30g of honey instead of sugar

Litha - 20th-22nd June - Again, you can use honey and also add oranges. Maybe brush a bit of orange marmalade when it is straight out of the oven

Lughnasadh - 31st July - Add Strawberries / Raspberries / Blueberries to the mix before the first proving time

The Light.

a tarot spread for litha.

1. The Heart.

The heart of the sun is your center. This is where you hold all your truths. Do not live in fear any longer. Let this card be your constant reminder that the time has come to be the person you truly are.

2. The Air.

The rays of the sun can be felt all around you within the warm summer air. Let this card be your constant reminder that you have been reborn as a being of strength and unwavering positivity. When you feel the warmth of summer, remember you are a new creation.

3. The Light.

Let the light of this new day chase the shadows of doubt far away. Know that there is nothing you cannot obtain. Let this card be your constant reminder that you have the ability to achieve your goals.

You can use this method of drying herbs for flowers too, as long as you’re delicate and don’t break them!

Pronunciation Of The Wiccan Holidays

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The names that are generally used to denote the Wiccan sabbats (as well as festivals of many pagan traditions) come from Gaelic (both Scots and Irish), Welsh, Norse, and Anglo-Saxon. There are variations of pronunciations for each one.

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Samhain (31 Oct)

Irish Gaelic for "summer's end." The standard Irish pronunciation is "sow-in" with the "ow" like in "cow." Other pronunciations that follow with the many Gaelic dialects include "sow-een" "shahvin" "sowin" (with "ow" like in "glow").

The Scots Gaelic spelling is "Samhuin" or "Samhuinn." There is no linguistic foundation for saying this word "samhane" the way it might look if it were English. When in doubt, just say "Hallows" or even "Hallowe'en."

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Yule (21 Dec)

Norse for "wheel." It's pretty much pronounced just like it looks, although if you want to make a stab at a Scandinavian sound, it'll be more like "yool" and less like "yewl." This is the winter solstice.

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Imbolg/Imbolc (1 Feb)

Irish Gaelic for "in the belly." Pronounce this one "IM-bullug" or "IM-bulk" with a guttural "k" on the end. Other names include Candlemas; Brighid (pronounced "breed"), who is the Irish goddess whose festival this is; and Oimelc (pronounced EE-mulk), which means "ewe's milk" in Scots Gaelic.

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Ostara (21 Mar)

Saxon name for a maiden goddess of spring, loosely connected to Astarte and Ishtar. This one's easy -- "o-STAHR-uh." Other names include Eostre (say "OHS-truh" or "EST-truh"). This is the spring equinox.

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Beltane/Bealtaine (30 April)

Irish Gaelic for either "fires of Bel" or "bright fires." If you want to try it in Gaelic, you can say "bee-YAWL-tinnuh" or "BELL-tinnuh." Unlike Samhain, this word can within the linguistic structure of its language of origin be pronounced like it looks -- "BELL-tane" -- without totally abandoning its original construction. Other names are Walpurgisnacht (vawl-PUR-gis-nahkt) and May Day.

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Litha (21 Jun)

Norse or Anglo-Saxon for "longest day." You can say this one just like it looks, or you can try for a Scandinavian sound and say "leetha" with the "th" more like a "t." This is the summer solstice.

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Lughnasadh/Lunasa or Lammas (1 Aug)

The first is Irish Gaelic for "festival of Lugh" (a major Irish deity); the second is Anglo-Saxon for "festival of the loaves" ("hlaf-mass"). Don't panic at that spelling; the second (which is modern Irish as opposed to old Irish) tells you all you need to know.

Say "LOO-nah-sah." (Some people maintain that the Scots dialect says it "LOO-nah-soo.") Lammas is just like it looks, "LAH-mus."

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Mabon (21 Sep)

This is believed to be a form of the Welsh word for "son." Therefore, it would probably be pronounced "MA-bon" with the "a" like in "mass." However, most Wiccans and pagans say "MAY-bon." This is the autumn equinox.

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Article Source : https://clubs.ncsu.edu/spm/FAQ/11pronounce.html

Image Source : https://www.instagram.com/p/B4aX5vVHBX_/?igshid=llpzumjzbbcb