Last week
Monday: A friend I do a regular weekly call with (we started as accountability partners in the Art of Money class last year, and decided to continue chatting this year) had an idea for me.
She’s the same person who did the hypnotic regression I mentioned briefly in week 25. One of the past lives there was an herbalist (though not solely medicinal). A really strong visual I got was standing in front of a small set of shelves (about 2.5 feet tall by maybe 9 inches wide), with rows of bottles on it, different sizes (mostly columns and hexagonal, and mostly taller and slimmer) with different kinds of caps and lids.
She brought up the fact she’s been thinking about that, and asked if I’d ever thought about making oils for ritual purposes.
Mostly I have, in the past, thought about it, and then decided I don’t have space/time to do anything with it. However, my current apartment is a bit better set up for some of it than other places I’ve lived, so I spent a chunk of this week looking at some options, what I currently have by way of magical herbs and ingredients.
One of the reasons I have not gone deeper in to herbal magic is that I get deeply frustrated by the vague “We use this because it’s associated with X” with no sourcing at all. I am planning to tackle that by a) research (something that’s been on my list for a while) and b) doing small amounts of a bunch of things in different combos, and seeing how they feel.
The one on my immediate list is an oil for anointing things in the home for blessing/well-being with a side of protection, for the record.
Saturday: Dedicant class went quite well, in the current format, though 90 minutes is clearly about my own tolerance for interacting with a web call (our classes would normally be 3 hours).
We talked a bit about how everyone’s doing, about when structure is helping, but expecting to be super productive (or even ordinarily productive) isn’t helping, and that there is no particular deadline for them finishing their required assignments to be considered for initiation other than the fact that we can’t do initiations while social distancing and that we do not as a tradition, generally do initiations between Samhain and Imbolc.
(Ok, I forgot to actually spell out the “not while social distancing” but.)
This week
I did the non-Tarot parts of the 22 Weeks with the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot last week, but decided to start in earnest this week (today!) because I was waiting on the printed version to get to me. Having structured stuff to do on particular days is in fact a help.
Sunday: We have initiate discussion (athames, yay!) I have a few more notes to make about the list of questions we’re discussing, but I’ve done most of the actual reading and research I wanted to do.
