In the centre of the labyrinth...

...drying some sage bundles for home-made smudge. 
 

...also, still drying the hare´s tail. Not sure how I will use it but it was too pretty to discard.

Lavender Bundle...

I harvested my lavender today and used some of it to create this. Here is the method:
Use an odd number, 13 or more, of long stems of lavender, freshly picked on a dry day, and about 1 metre of narrow ribbon in a suitable colour. Make a bunch, lining up the base of the flower heads. Leave an 20cm length of ribbon free at one end, then tie the stems together just below the heads. Gently bend back each stem until the flower heads are enclosed by the stems. Take the length of ribbon you saved and weave it under and over each stem, travelling around the bundle several times until the flower heads are covered with ribbon. Tuck in the short end and tie to make a hanging loop. Tie a bow with the other end. Trim the stalks and the ribbon.

My first ever homemade candle ...

 
 ... it´s made from recycled old candle stubs and I even made my own wick. I´m pretty pleased with it.

Finished my wand

I've been working on this wand since I gathered the materials in 2003. Today, I finally got a result I am satisfied with.



The wood is English Oak and the feathers are Little Owl. Both were collected at a place where we were camping, near Fareham. (The owl paid many early morning visits to the oak tree we were parked under.)



For a while, I just held onto them with no clear idea in mind. Then at Spring Equinox 2004 it came to me to make a wand with them, as the stick has a lovely curve at the end that makes it comfortable to hold. At first I just made a rough point and tied the feathers on with red thread and that was it.



Frequently, the stick-wand was neglected and ignored but I kept coming back to it and felt I could make something very personal with it. For a long time I toyed with how I could attach a small crystal to the point but it never felt right. Then, after I'd used it during the Spear Ceremony (see my Hallowquest blog at http://myhallowquestjournal.blogspot.com/), at Solstice, I decided to sand the point until it was sharp and the other end until it was smooth enough for me to draw a rune on it.



I decided I would burn the rune Algiz (for spiritual protection) on the end. This was the first time I'd tried pyrography and, after a little practice, found it not too difficult, albeit a little dangerous! I then burnt a small hole where I hold it and sealed a tiny piece of quartz crystal with some beeswax candle. This got around the crystal thing rather neatly I thought, as I have the energy of the crystal, without a cumbersome attachment problem. The beeswax was from the remains of the candle I burnt at the Solstice ceremony, which fits my current efforts at recycling wherever possible.
I thought I might have finished then and sanded the wand lightly and rubbed it with a lump of beeswax Snr Antonio had given me. As I was doing this, I discovered that a raised area near the tip was beginning to look like the head of a snake. I was suddenly fired with passion about how I finally wanted the wand to look. I used my penknife to cut out a snake's body, coiled around the wand with it's tail near the hidden crystal. Then I sanded again and finally set to work highlighting and decorating my snake with pyrography.



I felt an adder design was appropriate for several reasons:

• Snake is one of my totem animals. I have snake medicine "within" and have felt it's power increasingly in recent years.
• Snake's power is "transmutation", the ability to transform one thing into another. Very appropriate for a witch's wand, although I have no intention changing anyone into a frog!!
• Caitlin and John Matthews, in their Hallowquest book, explain that adder is one of the totem animals of Celtic tradition. It represents the "Goddess of Sovereignty in her dark phase". It is depicted in the Arthurian Tarot on The Cauldron (trad. Temperance) and Sword 2.

So, after another light sanding and oiling, the wand was ready for the feathers again. I had to renovate the feathers a bit using steam. I tied them together with the thread that had been placed around my wrist at the Kali Temple in Kolkata. The priest had made it clear that I shouldn't just throw the cord away, so I was glad to find a use for it. I used the power of 3; 3 knots around the feathers, 3 times around the wand and 3 knots to secure it. The melted remains of the beeswax candle was used to bind the ends.

Now I have just to create a consecration ceremony, which I plan to do tomorrow at new moon.

One final aside: there was a tiny bit of cord and wax left, so I thought it best to destroy these by fire. As they burned I visualised a nest, with a flaming heart in it's centre. The ashes looked like a distorted sheep or goat. I took the ashes outside and offered them to Kali. Now the next bit sounds like an exaggeration but I assure you it's true. At that very instant, a massive whirlwind blew across our land - enough to slam doors and blow debris into the house!

I want to Paint

These are some sketches I did for a painting I would like to create; trouble is, I don't know anything about painting and have no idea where to start.

The theme is a stylised me (plenty of artistic licence here!), surrounded by my 9 totem animals. They are in the 4 cardinal directions plus within, above, below, left and right. I had this idea of Wolf howling at the moon; night sky becoming day, merging into water with Dolphin and Beaver, the stream running down below the roots of the tree and opening to another world below, wherein Elk resides. I've seen many paintings that successfully combine day and night, this world and the Otherworld etc. that inspire me, but I need some help to get this to work.

I also can't work out how to get Turtle and Lynx to hold my hand. It just looks weird.