Today I was wandering the woods and stumbled upon the surreptious bloom of bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis.
There is much folklore, Native American historical uses, and purposed medicinal information (some quite dangerous) floating around about this plant.
In our general area, southern Indiana/western Kentucky, it sprouts mid-march, blooming for only a day or two in the same month, leaving the greenery to grow the rest of the warm season.
Bloodroot is one of those plants that people easily walk past. Low to the ground and not exactly spectactular, it hides amongst the mayapples (Podophyllum peltatum) and other short spring plants before being hidden by scrubland.
Its root-like rhisome releases a bright red sap, hence the name, when cut or broken. It's HIGHLY recommended that you handle with gloves as people can have a severe skin reaction when handling it.
Thank you! My hub got it for me several years ago. It's been through many a ceremony, used as a wrap on cool spring evenings, a blanket to sit on at concerts..... well travelled.
My hexing group is meeting on April 6th to practice raising and pushing energy in a cone of power. We've done this on multiple occasions, but I wanted to switch things up this month and have them focus on elemental energy.
We will do a short, guided, meditation for each of the four main elements. They will write for 4-5 minutes on their meditation and what connections, or interruptions they feel.
Afterwards, we are going to focus on raising specific types of energy by focusing on one element and its attributes while we raise our cone.
The purpose is for them to feel how the different types of energies flow through them. For some, fire energy might feel quite natural, and to others, it might be harder to move. When working with a group, sometimes you might have 1/2 the group raising fire energy and the 1/2 air energy to feed it, depending on your purpose.
The goal is to have a cohesive, working group where everyone is cross trained, but also allowed to practice resonating with their natural inclinations so they can flourish, and in turn, the group can flourish.
We've all got a lot of work on our hands this year with it being election year. #HexMAGA#HexTrump
The Witches Chair from the Mermaid Inn, Rye, East Sussex.
Judith Blincow the owner of the Inn has this to say about it, ‘It is a seventeenth century chair which used to belong to a witches’ coven and has a curse on it.’ We always tell people not to touch it.’
Can we talk about burnout and/or boredom in the craft?
It feels like I haven't been expanding myself lately. I spend a good bit of time preparing events for our community every month with three other members. Our paths are all different so we take turns leading the events. I partially started doing this thinking I would find others who follow a similar path to mine and we could do group work together (not as a coven but as a circle).
@KentuckyConjurer I feel disconnected from the large community too. I find it ironic that the community has such rampant scarcity consciousness. They'll spend on supplies and trinkets and then bitch that a teacher wants $20 for their workshop on a topic they spent years mastering and that they're giving their time to teach and share.
@KentuckyConjurer Yeah, I mean I am a scientist and herbalist by trade and ingesting essential oils is basically like using a nuke to kill a house spider.
Looking for an adult craft idea for Spring Equinox. We planted seeds last year so not that.
I thought about maybe having each person weave their own little next out or lemongrass, then decorate mini eggs with what they want to fertilize in their life over the growing season.