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Every kitchen has a box of salt. This most common of seasonings is essential to physical health and also the health of your home. With a bowl of salt alone, you can purify your home every day and have a “safe zone” for ritual work. You can leave a bowl of pure salt in any room you feel is in need of freshening; the salt absorbs negativity. Many a witch uses this homely approach on a daily basis early in the day, tidying up and cleansing energy to charge a home with positivity.

In your kitchen, take a bowl of water, freshly drawn and a small cup of salt. Take the vessel of water and sprinkle in as much as you feel is needed. Anoint your fingers by dipping them in the salt water and then around your third eye in the middle of your forehead.

The Intelligence of the Heart is a concept that has come up frequently in classes I have been teaching as well as my meditations in cultivating a worldview of vaccines, COVID, racial injustice and the choices that individuals are making, collectively and independently. And, so I wanted to share some of my thoughts and offer a brief (17min. pathworking) that will allow you to cultivate the spaciousness to nurture that intelligence within yourself.....

The Intelligence of the Heart refers to the concept that was explored by scientist and metaphysician, R.A Schwaller DeLubicz during his studies of Egyptian spiritual and alchemical practices. For most, the concept of intelligence is confined to the physiology of the mind and the sensory experiences that involve the intellect. To the Ancient Egyptians, the “heart”, rather than the brain, was the holder of these attributes of intelligence and knowing. According to Schwaller:

“Our rational mind is unable to grasp the central mystery, he argues, because our “sensory organization clearly seems to be imperfect.This condition can only be alleviated through a “perfecting of consciousness”. (1)

One end of the red cord—thirteen ells long, to match his age—they tied around the boy's narrow waist. The other end they tied around his mother's.

Now, several hours later, they're both starting to go a little crazy.

Everyone gathers to witness what comes next.

Boys aye born, men are made, says the hobman. N, are you ready to leave your boyhood behind and begin the training that will end with your Man-Making?

Everyone laughs at the vehemence of the boy's reply.

With the knife that the hobman has placed in his hand, the boy cuts the cord.

After the cheers and applause, he knees before his mother.

Write your intention on paper and then speak aloud:

Thus I consecrate this candle in the name of [your favorite deity].

Dear Boss Warlock,

I say that when you offer to a River, you should face upstream, toward the River's origins.

My husband contends, though, that to face upstream is to oppose the flow of the River, and that while offering one should face downstream instead, toward the Sea.

Please help us settle this question. My marriage is in danger!

Upstream or Down?

Dear Up,

First off, let me congratulate both you and your husband on your piety. These days, far too many pagans ignore those powerful gods and goddesses that we call Rivers.

Secondly, let me concede that you both offer compelling arguments for your preferred form of River-worship, with perhaps a slight leaning in your favor. As you know, in antiquity, the primary shrines of any given River were generally located at the headwaters, if not actually at the source itself.

Now, when it comes to matters of observance, my recommendation is usually to consult local practice and do accordingly.

This case is different, though, since in this instance, both you and your husband are wrong.

Merrymeet 1997

It's been hot work at Grand Council all day, so I head down to Gull Lake for a quick dip before dinner. What I see there astounds me.

Clearly, word of the wild witches has got out. Every fishing boat on the lake has—coincidentally, no doubt—just happened to drift over to our side, the prospect of naked pagans apparently outweighing that of walleye on this sunny late August afternoon.

Ritual robe hiked up to her knees, a woman sits at the end of the dock, dangling her feet in the water.

Gods, what's with these people? I say, taking off my shirt. I'm half tempted to wave. All this to see a little bit of skin?

Cowans, she commiserates.

Hey, screen me, would you? I ask, crouching.

Anything for a fellow conspirator, she says, raising her arms.

Screened by her back and generous hanging sleeves, I slip out of my kilt and over the edge.

“From my mound, I will bless you.”

As the excavations at Cadbury castle—reputedly the site of Camelot—were about to begin in 1964, the archaeologists were met by a local, an old man who had lived nearby all his life.

“Have you come to dig up the king?” he asked, anxiously.

The royal Ship Burial at Sutton Hoo has long deserved its own epic, and now—in its own understated, very East Anglian way—it has one.

John Preston's The Dig is a shining, masterful novel, but—speaking as a pagan—I can't deny that it raises some difficult issues.

The discoveries at Sutton Hoo have enriched our knowledge of the ancestors and their ways immeasurably, and for this I'm deeply grateful, but it can't be denied that excavating the Royal Mound there also destroyed something sacred, and very important.

Though reconstructed to its original profile, overlooking the River Deben, the Royal Mound now stands empty, stripped of its kingly treasure.

I think of the head of Bran, buried to ward the coasts of Britain.

I think of how Arthur is said, in his arrogance, to have removed it, and what befell thereafter.

The Museo del Oro in Bogotá, Columbia, displays the breathtakingly intricate goldwork images of the ancient Tairona: golden plants, animals, and people.

But the mamas—shamans—of the Kogi, the last surviving cultural heirs of the Tairona, are dismayed by the excavation and display of these objects. Each one was buried, they say, with full intent: as an offering, a prayer, a talisman. That golden ear of corn in the display case was originally a gift to Earth Mother herself, intended to enrich the fertility of the fields. Torn from its proper context, denied its due offerings, what now is to become of the crop?