Folk Remedies For Illness

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

✨ 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.

It’s a cold, rainy day here and I’m feeling a bit under the weather, so I thought I would share my “get well draught”. It’s warming and comforting and the most reliable thing I have found to make me feel better when I have a cold (except for sudafed).

I use; - A small handful of fresh mint - A teaspoon of fresh ginger or half a teaspoon powdered - Quarter of a teaspoon of chilli powder - Quarter of a teaspoon of cinnamon - The juice of half a lemon Stir clockwise and strain before drinking.

The best thing about this “tea” is that you can make it to your own tastes. Today I’ve added lemongrass and if I have it and feel like it I add honey. This tea is great if you have a sore throat or blocked sinuses. You can double or tripple the ingredients and brew in a pot on the stove and put your face in the steam for added benefits.

Extra points for drinking it from a cool mug that makes you feel badass!

Mutha-f*in’ Mead Season!!!!!

I had to scrape frost off my car today. You know what that means?!

Gaddang right! MUTHA-F*IN’ MEAD SEASON!

There’s nothing like a topped-off mug of mead to cheer the heart and magically induce goodwill in your guests. I can personally attest to the lack of familial holiday drama this cup of godly deliciousness provides!

Time to stock up on muh mulling spices because mulled is the *ONLY* way to have mead. Get yo’ cookbooks out to take notes, I’m about to lay some kitchen witchery on you!

*~*~Mulled Mead Tips~*~*

 “Crock pots are the modern cauldron,” as my mum likes to say. They are perfect for keeping any hot drinks at optimal serving temperature. I recommend a “low” setting. If you’re in a pinch for time, using a saucepan is fine. If you do have to do this stove-top style, be sure to keep an eye on it as you do not want it to boil.

Of course, homemade mead is great if you can swing it. Unfortunately, we can’t all keep fermenting jugs in our closets. Store bought mead is fine (I like to use Chaucer’s brand). HOWEVER, thou shalt not use carbonated mead, neither shalt thou use any mead containing food dyes. And the number of dyes in thine mead shall be zero.

In the cauldron of your choosing, you will pour your mead (assume one 24-26 oz bottle for four moderate servings), and the following spices:

- 2 or 3 cinnamon sticks

- 1 Tbsp coarse ground allspice

- ½ Tbsp nutmeg

- 2-4 tsp fresh ginger (feel free to modify to your liking)

You may use a mulling filter bag or go without. 

If you are doing this on a stove-top, allow your winter potion to simmer for at around 15 minutes before adding a little extra honey and serving. Adding honey to the crockpot will require an extra stir, as you don’t want it to settle at the bottom before dissolving.

You can try adding fruit like orange slices, plums or apples. Have fun with it! 

Bright blessings upon you in the coming holiday season!

I think something people have to realize first in trying to reconstruct historical magical and religious practices is that belief=/=worship. Many traditional witches believe in Christ but don’t worship him because they’re not the same thing. And certain historical pagan religions did believe the gods of their neighbors were… something! But acknowledging something as existing and venerating it are two different things.

Hey if any of you guys are interested in demonology at all to any extent, grimoire.org is the most amazing and well-sourced resource I’ve ever seen, it cites everything from multiple historical grimoires, has a publishing timeline for them, displays sigils, has a section set aside for each demons powers, even lists similar demons, and it’s all very easy to understand the way it’s set up. Can not recommend it enough, it has more demons and more info than I’ve seen listed elsewhere

Storm Witch Tip:

A storm is likely to come when:

deciduous trees flip their leaves due to wind direction

birds fly low in the sky, and go quiet

there’s a southerly wind (in the US)

there’s a red dawn in the east

layers of nimbus clouds move in opposite directions

the morning grass is dry of dew

an earthy scent rises from the soil and flowers

pine cones remain closed

a halo rings the moon at night

nights are warm in winter (cloud cover insulation)

smoke swirls and descends, instead of a steady rise

Remember, low pressure brings wet weather.

Hot Toddy for Good Health and Cheer

So, hot toddies are my absolute fave drink (read: alcoholic drink) for those cold nights where your hands are freezing and you’re feeling a little run down. They’re also a remedy for colds in one of my friend’s family, and who am I to argue with folk remedies? But I also like to put a little ~woo~ spin on it.

So, what you’ll need:

A large cup of tea (my favorite is chamomile, for its healing and sleep-inducing properties)

Honey (again, something I associate with healing in the magical as well as mundane)

A lemon slice (purification)

A cinnamon stick or a little sprinkle of cinnamon, if you can’t find cinnamon sticks (healing and strength)

Whiskey! Or liquor of your choice. I mean, you don’t have to, but this really gives it a kick. (originally distilled for medicinal purposes, I think whiskey is great for a healing drink)

Brew your tea like you normally would. Squeeze the lemon into the drink, and visualize it purifying you of any illness; add the honey (maybe in the form of a sigil if such is your jam), and focus on how it will trap any negativity and bring sweetness. Add a splash (or two or three, hey I don’t know your life) of the whiskey, thinking of it killing any foul microbes that might be lurking (this is not how it actually works in the body, though I think it’s a great visualization) and filling you with warmth (it may just be vasodillation, but it’s still a great feeling on cold nights).

Finally, take your cinnamon stick and stir either clockwise to bring in good health and happiness or counterclockwise to banish illness and negativity. Whichever feels right for you is the one I would recommend. For some reason, I tend to do clockwise when I’m just in it for the whiskey and good feelings and counterclockwise for my common colds.

Add or modify to your desire, but this is the basic outline of my hot toddy for good health and cheer!

☀️🌿Litha Lavender Thyme Chicken🌿☀️

Hello my greenies! I have here a recipe to celebrate Litha! I am recovering from the removal of all four of my wisdom teeth and am unable to feast accordingly. I hope everyone can celebrate and eat for me, so I have here a favorite chicken recipe that I have especially during Litha and many times during the summer.

I will put the corresponding meanings of all the ingredients for the recipe at the end of the post and hope everyone enjoys my recipe. I hope to be posting more soon!

***You can use these ingredients for a whole chicken, but the amount for the coating will need to be adjusted and so will the cooking time. There are many websites that can tell you how to prepare a whole chicken, if that is also what you are looking for.

Ingredients

3 or 4 chicken breasts (I use 3, but I think the recipe would work with four as well.)

1 tbsp of dried lavender

2 tbsp of dried thyme or 4 sprigs of fresh and pulled off the stem.

drizzle of olive oil or coconut oil

1 tbsp of garlic powder

1 and ½ tbsp of onion powder

3 tbsp of honey

1 whole lemon.

dash of salt and pepper

dash of oregano

Directions

If lavender is not crushed, crush until powdery. Then in a small bowl, mix lavender, thyme, garlic powder, and onion powder.

In a separate bowl, place the three chicken breasts and add the salt and pepper. Mix well and after drizzle the oil, honey, and fresh squeezed lemon juice. Mix thoroughly.

Place in the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Make sure all parts of the chicken are covered.

Cover the bowl and let the chicken sit for three hours in the refrigerator.

Once complete, stir the chicken in the bowl again and then place the chicken into a roasting pan and sprinkle oregano on the tops.

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Place the chicken in the oven and bake for 45 minutes, make sure you flip after 23 minutes. When done, take the chicken out and let it sit for about 5 minutes before you eat. While it sits begin the chant.

“With the heat of the day and kiss of the night, summer bring love and spirit to me. Let me feel the child-like dance. Let me embrace myself.   I am my own fire.”

While speaking these words allow yourself to hold in the heat inside you. Let it move around through your system and on your skin. Rise that heat up into your neck and float around your head. Then have it come out of you, so now you only feel a slight glow. Have this warmth embrace your house and everything in it until that happiness is surrounding you.

Then enjoy your meal!

*I always find that this meal goes well with some honey garlic potatoes, thyme roasted carrots, Zucchini casserole, and fresh baked flaky biscuits.

If you decide to make this recipe please send me pictures! Although I can’t eat any solids at the moment, I would feel satisfied just by seeing everyone else enjoying their meals. I hope you enjoy this recipe and have a special Litha!

- Kenzie

ingredient correspondences

dried lavender - love, protection, healing, sleep, purification, and peace.

dried thyme - wards negativity, purification, healing

garlic powder - healing, protection, purification, guards against negative magic and the envy of others.

onion powder - prosperity, stability, endurance, and protection.

honey - binding properties, love, and used in offering rituals.

lemon - cleansing, spiritual opening, purification, and removal of blockages

oregano - joy, strength, vitality, and added energy