Feral Wisteria

[little-witchys-garden]

Don’t step in a cats shadow

I was told this a lot by my music teacher who was more then just a bit quirky because she believed if you stepped into a cats shadow that you’d see what a cat sees and a cat can see things that don’t wanna be seen. the same thing goes for looking into a cats eyes.

[stuckinapril]

i will never elaborate because i don’t even understand what i just said

[malefixium]

[ofthecunningflame-deactivated20]

I wouldn’t want anyone to click on this link and search from a database of thousands of free books, many of which are about witchcraft and occult practices…

[stellawitchcraft]

lammas

[starcrystal-healing]

Study tips for herbalists

A lot of people ask me about how to start learning about herbs and which courses are good, so I decided to put this together for you guys!

Resources

Herbmentor.com

Here are a few useful herbs that are good to start out with

Check out my recommended books

Paul Bergner has excellent information and courses available here

The East West School of Planetary Herbology is a great place to take courses

The Lunar Apothecary is a great for leaning about herb magic and lunar herbology

This website will help you to find local plants (USA only)

Bear Medicine Herbals

Herbcraft.org

Herbal Remedies Advice

Tips

Check out local plant societies to see what activities they have planned. Some of them offer free plant walks that will help you to get to know your local plants

Start experimenting with your (safe) local weeds first. For many of you, this means sorrel, dandelion, plantain, violet leaf, and ground ivy.

Get your warnings and safety information from reputable books and herbalists, not social media (tumblr). There are many rumors on this site about what is and isn’t poisonous, please don’t believe everything you read!

Keep a few materia medica books on hand to check for contraindications and safety instead. My go-to books for checking whether an herb is okay with me are located in the recommended books post above

Pick 1 herb a month to really focus on. Keep in mind that you can do a lot with a few herbs, some of them have dozens of uses

Learn about your herbs by tasting and using them, not just reading! Personal experience is more important than book knowledge (except when it comes to safety)

Equipment

JARS (check the thrift store for cheap finds)

Alcohol - I usually use 80 proof vodka for tinctures but you can also use brandy depending on what you’re making

Oils- I like grapeseed oil and coconut oil

Funnels

Cheese cloth for straining herbs

Kitchen scale

French press (easy way to make loose leaf tea)

Idea of what to start making with herbs

Bruise/injury salves

Bug sprays

Calming tinctures/teas

Digestive tinctures/teas

Pain tinctures

Fomentations

Poultices

I probably forgot a lot of stuff so Ill be adding more in the future!

Read this on my website

[purplebuddhaquotes]

“You will be too much for some people. Those aren’t your people.”

— Unknown

[lovepeacexxoo]

The power of bay leaves🍃

[feralwisteria]

A tiny glimpse into my personal apothecary. My vials of components, tinctures and infusions.

[herawell]

“People don’t understand the word r u t h l e s s. They think it means ‘mean.’ It’s not about being mean. It’s about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B. The line that goes from motive to means. Beginning to end. It’s about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. Not caring about anything else but the perfection of it.”

Mary I of England, 1516-1558

[ingridrichter]

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”

— Leo Tolstoy

[quotemadness]

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

— Leo Tolstoy

[a-quiet-green-agreement]

–Alexander Theroux

[feralwisteria]

Relatable. Not 100% but relateable still.

[fruitgushers]

if you arent someone the church wanted dead 300 years ago are you really living

[loving-villanelle]

i’m someone the church wants dead today

[feralwisteria]

Not even just church. Most civilized forms of cohabitation want me dead also.

[lohver]

sometimes people pretend you’re a bad person so they don’t feel guilty for the things they did to you

[the-broken-stones]

Pinrose took the starter witch kit off of its line.  It also released a list of frequently asked questions:

- Artwork used in the kit was purchased by Pinrose on June 24, 2018. The Print Usage License (P-EL) covers use on products for resale and never expires.

- Per the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, Salvia Apiana (White Sage) is not classified as threatened or endangered. The sage that was planned to be used in this kit is sourced from a Green America Gold Certified company. The sage is grown in the wild in California and is sustainably harvested and sold by Native American owned and operated businesses.

- The product did not reference ceremonial smudging or ceremony circles.

I’m a little bothered by this because the only articles I could find about the product were reactionary:

atheists whose sole purpose was to mock people with alternative beliefs. 

witchcraft blogs who felt like they were being slighted. 

witchcraft blogs aimed for gatekeeping the community- as though we don’t have enough of that. 

The product was not listed on the Sephora website. I would not have thought to look at the Pinrose site because it was being billed as the ‘Sephora Witch Kit.’ 

I was waiting for more information to arise about it before I formed much of an opinion on it, because literally the only information I had on it was a single, medium resolution photograph. 

This is a small thing, really, but it is part of a larger conversation about reactionary politics in the witchcraft community and how we respond to coming out of the shadows. 

Do we want to be normalized or not? I hear people talking all the time about how great it would be if we didn’t have to practice in secret, if our beliefs weren’t something that people gawked at, if there weren’t so much miscommunication about us (both as secular practices and as religious practices.)

But when something happens to bring witchcraft and folk practices into a mainstream conversation- being marketed as a product, a celebrity being open about their practice, a person speaking out on behalf of their community, a TV show or movie about magic- it is met with insistent resistance from people within our community. 

Why? 

“Because that’s not what witchcraft is,” the community cries. 

Do you know what witchcraft is? I have never quite been able to pin down a singular answer, even for myself, in the decade that I’ve been practicing. And if you ask two people of the exact same practice, their answers might differ between them, too. 

I can see wanting to have a choice in how we’re portrayed, but the fact is that the world is going to see us as weirdos who either curse every person who looks at them the wrong way or hippies who spend too much time smoking pot to really do anything else. 

I’d like to see us get this mad about the TERFs in our community. The abusers and manipulators in our community. The racists and Nazis in our community. I see so many ‘they’re allowed to be witches/pagans too’ to pretend that this isn’t a problem. 

It’s so easy to focus on something like the mass-marketing of our beliefs because it makes us feel like we’re being cheapened. But I don’t know how to say this kindly- the entire New Age section of the book store cheapens us. So many of the books on us are plagiarized from each other, many of them are leaked or misinterpreted coven secrets with a price tag on them. 

Wicca, Paganism, and Witchcraft has been mass-marketed since before I was born. The witch starter kit I was given as a budding pagan came with a pentagram, a bottle of Wiccan Blessing Oil (even though I wasn’t Wiccan) and a black candle. It’s not that much different from a rock, some sage, and a tarot deck. 

This is the world we live in. If it can be marketed, it WILL be marketed. We have to move on from that. 

If we want to be able to practice openly and freely, we have to allow things that will progress normalization. We are constantly in our own way. 

[feralwisteria]

One of those rare moments when I find a tumblr post that brings the community back down to earth.

I appreciate this post because it points out how getting butt-hurt about trivial things is preventing the witch community from being normalised and considered just another set of beliefs. Walling our community up does no one any favours. It makes us seem austere, standoffish and alienates us from our peers.

When so many witches complain that they have to practice in secret because they fear the repercussions of people finding out, we should aim to normalise witchcraft rather than be so intensely against allowing mainstream channels to aid us in dispelling the negative impression people have of witchcraft (created by centuries of fearmongering).

At the same time, it’s hard to expect witches to try and take a few monumental steps forward when the community is in a civil war over claims of appropriation, minute practice/custom details and gatekeeping to the point of god complexes. No wonder we almost got crushed into extinction by Christianity and now lurk in dark corners of the internet- we’re incapable(and definitely unwilling) of normalising our practices and thus always end up misunderstood and ostracised.