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As a Goddess-centric Witch, I am always looking for new ways to connect with the myriad of global goddesses. Even though I know that I can have powerful relationships with different goddesses from the comfort of my home, I’ve also got a bit of a travel bug, so when I am wandering in new places, I try to hold myself open to spiritual experience and divine intervention. Sometimes, though, I only realize how magical the experience was after the fact. I'll be exploring these different experiences and goddesses on this blog.

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Making a Pilgrimage Without Leaving Home

There are so many delightful goddesses of love who’ve sprung to mind this week as we approach Beltane. Bast, the lady of wild revelry; the May Queen in her many guises; Hathor, lady of the dance; and, finally, shining Aphrodite, in all her golden glory.

It’s been a life-long dream of mine to travel to Crete, Cypress, and Greece, and although I haven’t yet made the trip, I can’t get golden Aphrodite out of my mind this time of year.  She’s not a goddess I know well, nor is she one I work with on a regular basis, but there’s something about May Eve that demands a little extra love and revelry.

Without really planning to, I found myself honoring Aphrodite and, at the same time, transported through time and space earlier this week, and I want to share my happy accident with you.  While not strictly travel related, I still feel that I made a pilgrimage of sorts this week, and the ease with which I accidentally transported myself away from the mundane and into the magical surprised me. Although I am usually conscious and careful of the magic I am making, sometimes the accidental moments are exactly what I need.

Did you know that rose-infused water (which turns your bath a lovely pink shade if it’s homemade) combined with Epsom salts and baking soda (just a cup or two of each) turns your bath into a temple pool, complete with murky green water? This was a surprise to me when, on Sunday night, I decided to spice up my detoxifying bath with a jar of rose water I’d been steeping since March. I'm still not entirely sure why it happened, but I've learned to just go with happy accidents in magic (something I'm still learning in my day to day life). If you want to try to replicate this strange, sacred, pool, you can add any essential oils you’d like to the mix (I used tea tree and peppermint), and once you’re in the water, you may find that your mind begins to drift and float away.

It was easy to imagine I’d crept into a sacred hot spring somewhere, and the longer I soaked in the water, the more my thoughts wandered to Aphrodite. Maybe it was the odd chemical reaction paired with the season, but whatever the cause, I rose from my bath feeling renewed and rosy, my thoughts circling around various stories of Aphrodite and her oceanic renewal. It was as if I’d made a sacred pilgrimage without ever leaving home, something that is all too likely at this time of year when energy is high and barriers are low.

Someday, I would like to travel to the lands Aphrodite first delighted in, but for now, I’ve realized that small, unconscious acts can be just as transporting and laden with magic as purposeful pilgrimage.

May this May bring you many beautiful surprises. Namaste and bright blessings, friends!

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Jen McConnel first began writing poetry as a child. Since then, her words have appeared in a variety of magazines and journals, including Sagewoman, PanGaia, and The Storyteller (where she won the people’s choice 3rd place award for her poem, “Luna”). She is a poet, a novelist, and a goddess-centric witch with a love of all things magical. Her first nonfiction book, Goddess Spells for Busy Girls: Get Rich, Get Happy, Get Lucky, is out now from Weiser Books. A Michigander by birth, Jen now lives and writes in the beautiful state of North Carolina. When she isn’t writing, she teaches writing composition at a community college. Once upon a time, she was a middle school teacher, a librarian, and a bookseller, but those are stories for another time.

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