News

What is kitchen witchery? This is a person who performs beautiful culinary magick right in the heart of the home, the kitchen! A Kitchen Witch is sometimes referred to as a Cottage Witch. 

So many magickal things can happen right in our kitchens! Go into your kitchen right now and have a gander at the mundane and then think MAGICK! There are so many magickal, witchy tools hidden away in there and most are very easily accessible to us today. Do you have a wooden spoon? Make it your wand! A Cauldron? If you have an actual cooking cauldron, sweet! But do not fret if you do not have one, just pull out a Dutch oven, a pot, pan, or baking sheet. A wine glass could be your sacred chalice. Spices? Just about every spice & herb is filled with a magickal correspondence!

Welcome to our collective favourite season, witchy folk! Perhaps that’s a generalization, but the Autumnal vibes are an absolute mood in the spiritual community, and for so many reasons. This season we have two Sabbats to celebrate; the first of those is Mabon, otherwise known as the Autumn Equinox, and the hemispherical counterpart to Ostara, in which we celebrate the Spring Equinox. 

Not only is Autumn the season of flavoured lattes and pumpkins, it is the season of the colours of the Earth – oranges and reds and browns, greens and glorious yellows. We have beautiful harvest vegetables and burgeoning berries; a veritable feast of offerings from our beautiful Mother Earth to celebrate. 

For Mabon, we focus on the beginning of the end of the harvest season and the descent into wintery darkness. Spiritually, we are reaching the closing-down portion of the year – as the days get shorter and the evenings are longer, we assess the outcomes of our labour (physical, financial, emotional, spiritual) across the past twelve months. Summer is celebration, and Autumn is when we reap what we’ve sown. So, as we draw towards the end of this summertime haze and commence the darkening and hibernation periods, we’re beginning to wind down business and take stock of what we’ve achieved. 

Seasonal altars are a great way to focus our attentions and intentions towards that for which we are grateful, and the things that we want to manifest in our lives. Not only does the season dictate our physical activities, it also directs our spiritual lives, and the altar is the witch’s way of centring that energy.

With so much to love and celebrate about Autumn, let’s take a look at some traditional (and not-so-traditional) items to feature on our altars during this time. 

As the lockdown eases around the world, and we are slowly allowed to get outside more, it has been precious to see the sunshine making an appearance this month. Litha 2020 is promising to be a little more flexible than Beltane, and, while we can’t necessarily do all the things we might like to do to celebrate this Sabbat, we do have the freedom to breathe in the air of Mother Nature and observe the growth and abundance that the Earth provides in the Summer. 

There is some difference in precisely when Litha is celebrated, according to different traditions. Astrologically, Litha occurs at the time when the sun is at its highest point, which, in 2020, occurs on the 24th June. However, Litha is traditionally celebrated in many traditions at the midpoint of the Summer (Midsummer), which occurs on June 20th or 21st. As with all things spiritual, there are no hard and fast rules about how you conduct your own practice, so go with what feels right for you. 

We are in the midst of an historic event. Essentially, we are all, as a global society, experiencing the same traumatic event. Of course, there are different levels to which we experience this trauma, depending on our location, our wealth status, our access to facilities and treatment and so on, but for absolutely everyone who is feeling anxious, depressed and stressed during this global pandemic, I want you to hear this: you are not alone. 

A study conducted in late March found that 22% of all UK adults were feeling anxiety surround the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of us, worldwide, are in some form of lockdown, shelter-in-place or isolation, and we know that this can negatively impact mental health, even for those who do not usually suffer from anxiety or depression. On top of this, we have financial and economical strain, we are separated from our family and friends, and lack certainty about what is yet to come. So, as spiritual and witchy folk, how can we combat this mental strain and take the best possible care of ourselves? Well, we have a leg-up: we have magic.