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To prepare the way for letting new opportunities enter your life or to focus your attention on existing friendships, set up an altar where you can concentrate your energy and clarify your intentions. If you already have an altar in place, incorporate some if the following elements to enhance your relationships with others as well with yourself. The more you use your altar, the more powerful your spells will be.Your altar can be a low table, the top of a shelf, or even a shelf. First, purify the space with the smoke of a lit sage bundle. This is called “smudging” and is an essential part of witchcraft. You can use wild sage or purchase it in any herb store. Once you have smudged the space, cover your  altar with a  pink-colored scarf or cloth, and place pink and white candles in each of the four corners. (Pink is the color of affection and White represents purity intention) Place rose quartz and calming fluorite stones around a vase of fresh flowers often with poppies, daisies, whatever connotes fun and friendship to you.

 As a centerpiece, place on the altar a photograph of your friends or an image that represents abundance for you in your life.

Heathens were known for high grooming standards, in comparison to other European peoples. They even had a day of the week set aside for ritual bathing, Laugrdagr, which later became Saturday. How much this custom was influenced by Rome and Byzantium is an open question, but the question that intrigues me right now is: what did they use for fragrances? Or did they not use them?

My new fascination with perfumes and my lifelong study of heathen history intersect here. I didn't recall ever seeing any mention of what perfumes the ancient heathens made or wore, either in the Viking Age or before. But I thought that possibly it was because I was not seeking that information when I read about those times.

Oh, and another thing: never ask an oracle—and especially not the Bones—readily falsifiable questions. That's not what they're for, and it shows deep disrespect.

Say you ask...

(Puts hand behind back)

“How many fingers am I holding up behind my back?”

(Brings hand from behind back, showing three fingers raised)

...and then you throw the Bones to see whether or not they get it right.

Assuming they even deign to answer—and they may just tell you, in effect, to go f*ck yourself—you'll get “One,” you'll get “Two,” you'll get “Four,” you'll get “Five.”

Will you ever get “Three”? No, you won't. Not ever.

Remember, this is the oracle of the Horned, god of witches, and—you'll pardon my Anglo-Saxon—he's a bigger f*cker than anybody.

So a rede to the Wise: don't f*ck with the Bones, and they won't f*ck with you, OK?

Each color has its own energy you can use for positive purpose in your craft. Whether it is candles spells or an attention-getting protest placard, a thoughtful approach to using color will greatly abet your magical workings,

 White: Protection, purification, peace, truth, binding, , happiness, spirituality and tranquility

A Lost Poem from Book XII of the Greek Anthology

So fiery is his seed, they say,

that, in his potency, he kindles

men and women both,

and they bring forth. Well,

so they say. Man to man,

I'd gladly put it to the test.

The red eggs are cooling on the table.

My father picks one up, an unreadable expression on his face.

"What did you use to get this color?" he asks. “My grandmother used to make eggs that looked like this."

I'm back East for Spring Break. Easter is coming.

“Do you want to dye up some eggs?” my mother asks.

Of course I do. If you need eggs dyed, pumpkins carved, or trees trimmed, call Steve. That's my niche in the family ecology.

“Sure. I'll show you how we do it in Minneapolis,” I say, obnoxiously.

We gather up all the old skins from the onion bin and throw them into the pot, along with the boiling eggs.

1980. That was the year of the first All-Pagan, All-Natural Spring Equinox Egg-Dye.

I'd been reading up on dyeing eggs using natural dye-stocks. That year we used onionskins and tumeric. (This year will be the 45^th Annual Egg-Dye. Our repertoire has expanded considerably since then.) Tumeric produces a bright, sunny yellow; onionskins a rich Minoan red.

It was the latter that gave my father that tender moment of deep memory.

Somehow, this scenario seems to me the perfect metaphor for the whole New Pagan project: the recovery of lost, ancestral wisdom.

In Which Our Intrepid Blogger Meets Up with a Rattlesnake in the Woods, and What Happened Then

Actually, I never even saw the rattlesnake.

Hearing it was enough.

Let me admit just it up front: snakes scare me.

(I can't help but feel that, as a pagan, this constitutes something of a moral failing on my part, but there we are.)

That's why my first encounter with a rattlesnake in the wild surprised me so much.

“You be careful in those woods,” said my Aunt Bernie, “this is Snake Country.”

Well, I'd known the woods for years and felt perfectly at home in them. So, bushwhacking down the old overgrown logging trail, I wasn't being particularly careful that day, or even paying much attention.

When I heard the rattle, my first instinct was to laugh: it sounded exactly like a baby's rattle. Exactly.

I stop and stand still. I look and see nothing.

A sense of utter calm descends.

You know the old story.

The holy man is sitting by the river one day when he sees a snake borne along on the current. He grabs a stick and fishes the snake out of the water. It's stiff with cold, practically dead.

The holy man opens his shirt and puts the snake in his bosom. Slowly, the warmth of his body revives the snake.

Then it bites him.

“What the f*ck?” says the holy man. “Here I am, a holy man, filled with love and compassion for all living beings. I save your life, and your response is to bite me? What the f*ck?”

The snake looks at the holy man.

“Dude,” he says, “I'm a snake.”

The logic was inescapable.