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One of Mother Nature’s most effective healers is aloe. When I lived in colder areas with frost and snow, I grew aloe in a wide pot with good drainage and placed it in the sunniest spot in the kitchen, where it thrived with very little water. I am truly fortunate to live where it never gets below freezing, so I have a towering aloe in the left garden corner that is growing to tree-like proportions. When anyone in the household gets a burn, a bug bite, a rash, a scratch, an itch, or a sunburn, I march back and grab a piece, slice parallel with its flat side, and apply the juice liberally. We use it as a medicine as well as a beauty application for facials, hair gel, and skin massage and feel so blessed that all this heavenly healing is utterly free of cost. Aloe propagates through baby plants sprouting off the sides; you can repot the “babies” into little clay containers and give them as gifts to your circle to share the healing energy as well as protection and luck

 Earth Day is here, and in many globally conscientious folks’ minds out there, every day should really be dedicated to Mother Earth and treating her well. Even if you hadn’t had time over the weekend to participate in a riverside cleanup or other related project, simply getting outside, going for a walk, and picking up a piece of trash to deposit in its proper receptacle, is one small act of kindness that does make a difference that you can perform. I’d also add chatting up a neighborhood squirrel or robin, just for the heck of it. These suggestions are actually brought up in a lovely part two of a conversation with my podcast guest, Stacy Schuerman, on the latest episode of Women Who Howl at the Moon.

 You’ll notice that Women Who Howl has its own SoundCloud page now, for newer episodes from 2024. This is part of a transition phase, where all new episodes will be moving to Podbean, and in turn, becoming more readily available to folks on Spotify and iTunes, broadening our podcast audience. The older archived episodes will still all live at “Scenes From a Soundtrack,” SoundCloud page, for your listening pleasure. Stacy is a psychic, medium, and spiritualist who is always a pleasure to listen to. Be sure to check out her episode. You can find out more about Stacy at: https://www.spiritualiststacy.com/

Dear Boss Warlock,

I'm cooking up my first batch of flying ointment, but I'm having a really difficult time finding the human fat that I need for the recipe.

I'm not into human sacrifice, and I'm afraid I just don't have the stamina for grave robbing these days.

Not to mention: how do I reconcile this with 'An it harm none'?

Stymied in Sturgis

Dear Sty,

Grave robbing? Human sacrifice? Seriously, Sty, how 1980s.

(Oh, we were earnest in those days.)

People are fascinated by Minoan clothing, but they're also confused by it. I thought I would take a little time to explain and show you some images from Minoan art so we can all enjoy the lovely garments the Minoans wore.

Please note that this is a two-part blog post (Part Two coming next week) but it's NOT divided into men's vs. women's clothing, because there is considerable overlap in some of the styles of clothing worn by different genders.

In Which Miss Bunny Finally Gets Her Witch-Name

All my cats down the years have come to me with other names: out-names, you could call them, names for everyday.

Though sometimes it's taken a while, they've all got proper witch-names eventually.

I acquired Miss Bunny (AKA the Bun, Bun-bun, the Bunster, Bunny Butt, and—of course—Bad Bunny) just after Lunasa last year. Being a Manx cat with a stumpy little tail, the name fit well enough, but—from the beginning—it struck me as a prose name, a name-from-without.

“Well,” I thought, “the inner name will come.” The first lesson of Witchery is patience.

To reach the new place, sometimes you have to get out of Dodge first. In the course of a recent road trip, it occurred to me: A Manx cat needs a Manx name.

(Closely related to Irish, Manx is—was—the Celtic language formerly spoken in the Isle of Man.)

Presto!

Bonnag is the Manx name for a kind of sweet tea loaf. It's the Isle of Witches calque of bannock, the pan-Celtic griddle-bread.

And thereby hangs a tale: a stumpy bunny tail, presumably.

Bannock is an old and interesting word. (Every word's a story.) In the Anglian dialect of the Hwicce, the original Anglo-Saxon tribe of Witches, it was bannuc: one of Old English's rare handful of Celtic loan-words. (The Scots Gaelic version is bonnach.) This, in turn, derives ultimately from Latin panis, “bread.” There must be a story here, too—it's hard to believe that Britons didn't make bread until learning how from the Red Crests—but that's another tale for another day.

MONTH: JANUARY

LUCKY DATES: 3, 10, 27, 31