Little Things

That's all I'm doing lately. Creating little things. Making small gestures.
Playing with rocks and plants and essences.

I'm feeling a great knot within me unwind.
And a greater connection with my inner being.
This is a time of gentle shifting, but deep shifting.
Six and a half years after my son Patrick's death and I feel like I am finally beginning to know who I am now in a world without his living presence.
And, after raising four children, beginning to know the shape of my new life sharing a nest with only my husband.

Much of what I'm doing lately flows from work in Athena Perrakis' Magical Sabbatical. It will overlap with Pixie Campbell's Autumn SouLodge..and at the Winter Solstice I will begin the yearlong Apothecary Circle.

Lots of circles! Lots of shifting...Blessed be!

 a purple dyebath...plain ol' Rit Purple...

 ....and a dozen lovely purple muslin bags...for treasures and medicine and gifts....

 ...my Blue Moon altar charm, made of a moonstone angel and a ceramic bead gifted by a SouLodge sister last year, steeped in the energy of Athena's Blue Moon ritual and a night in its Light, strung on waxed linen with two lapis lazuli beads and sterling spacers...posing with rough lapis lazuli......

....chunks of rough lapis lazuli, which came all covered with white dust (in the left and center parts of the tray), and which, scrubbed and scrubbed (on the right), shows beautifully the intense blue stone and the glittery pyrite....

 ...purple fingernails....

 ....and wanting to make every little thing beautiful, I've covered my matchbox with Hundertwasser (upcycling the images from my tear-off daily calendar)......

....began this collage weeks ago and took it up again just before time to play with essential oils and make potions...it was interesting that I had saved all these elements earlier and they perfectly amped up the energy of potion-making....

 ....lots of the magic coalescing here...these are the petals from the only sunflower that bloomed for me this drought summer, one precious petal and a shard of citrine went into the oil I am calling Ouverture Calme (Calm Opening), a mixture of tangerine, sandalwood and bergamot essential oils in sweet almond oil, all worked on a thick piece of bark I lightly sanded and polished with beeswax.....

..........Ouverture Calme and an as-yet-nameless mix of patchouli/peppermint.... along with a mason jar filled with the dried petals of flowers in my little first-time garden this summer....left outside to steep in glorious Full Harvest Moon  light....

.....THIS Moon, with great magickal circle shimmering around it.... *



*picture credit to my friend Bethany Sweitzer