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The word “glamour” was originally the word for the ancient art of shifting one’s appearance and its effect on the beholder, which over the centuries became linked to the idea of “enhancing one’s beauty through artifice.” The arts of magic can still be used to accomplish this purpose; bear in mind that the truest beauty comes from within. You can enhance it greatly with this charm. This ritual is best performed during the waxing moon. Gather up:

Vervain, thistle, chamomile, and elderflower

For a couples of hours one day this year, I needed to be beautiful. Of course I did all the usual beauty things like putting on makeup and so forth but that wouldn't get me as far as I needed to go. I needed to be beyond beautiful; I needed to be glamorous. 

Glamor is magic. It's not a coincidence that it's both a word for a certain sophisticated sort of beauty and also a word for the innate shape changing magic of the fae. 

It's one of the witch's most important powers.

Glamor.

Glamorie, glamory, glamorye: n. The art (and craft) of making others see what you want them to see, and (by implication) think what you want them to think.

In common usage, the term implies “...making others see what isn't there.” “She's got him glammed,” we say.

But in fact, the term is neutral. Glamor can be the lie that tells the truth. Ask any artist. A painter can take a piece of stretched cloth and some paint and make you think that you're seeing a landscape.

If you want to learn glamor, watch those that are good at it: make-up artists, actors, demagogues.

As a storyteller myself, I can tell you for certain that narrative works a very powerful glamor.

This beat-up old knife may not look like much, but if I tell you that it was Sybil Leek's athame, well...it sure looks different than it did a few seconds ago. Glamor = resonance. In some ways, the history of the modern Craft is a glamor: a worldwide glamor now several million strong.

It's tax season which is every bit as wretched as you expect it to be.  I'm on my feet for over nine hours a day in the goddamn copy room which is both a safe haven and a prison, depending on the day.  My book doesn't come out until August which feels even farther away the closer we get to it somehow, probably because I could have had a baby and a half in the time I'm sitting on my hands waiting for it to come out.  I mean, I'm trying to get launch events together for when it comes out but I'm like Ali Sheedy in The Breakfast Club dumping her giant purse out all over the table and no one wants to sit by me.  No.  One.

I very nearly had, like, the awesomest event ever put together but we had irreconcilable differences over how the bar tab would be handled.

Shirley calls for me to join in/ Next to Fabra’s sweet tenor/ But I don’t see a place for me/ And I’m too quiet to be heard/ But I’m only in time / A sojourn/ With no reasons why—/Just my melody/ So I’ll sing good too/ So I’ll sing good too/ So I’ll sing good too. . .

The intertubes are positively clogged with how to care for trembling, frightened introverts.  I say that as someone who is sometimes a scared rabbit herself, as you all know by now.  Naturally, this makes everyone who does not self-identify as an introvert ask when does anyone care about how to care for them, the non-introvert identified?

I’m reposting this because it’s getting to be that time of the year for starting to plan how awesome you’re going to be in the new year.  You can definitely do this course in a self-guided manner and all the prompts are now posted here.  

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