#door charm

[tattooed-alchemist]

My door charm of the Sun, crafted from a fresh-cut hazel branch with young catkins on it. 

[tattooed-alchemist]

Although I just made a new door charm at the equinox, I’d been thinking of making a new one for Samhain since before my busy week, and so I did my crafting ritual. I drew an alchemic tile from a velvet bag, and okay, Mercurius you want, Mercurius you’re gonna get.

The sunflower is still drying after being picked from the backyard on the 1st, I didn’t ever think a sunflower would become a door charm, but I get how that plays into the magickal mechanics now that it’s happened.

Fresh-cut rosemary, protection and remembrance. Dried mullein blossoms for the lower crossing lines, a pair of unlit hag’s tapers.  The U of rosemary tucked right into the string holding the sunflower on the back.  It was tricky to find a couple stems long enough, but freshly-cut they bent just enough.  I wanted to use the blooming rosemary and not the non-blooming shrub, which has slimmer, more bendy branches, and so I accepted a certain amount of woody stem cracking.

Ideally, the sunflower will hold together long enough to be an offering to the birds at Yule, and I’ll make the next one then.  Hmm, clearly last year’s quarterly schedule just stepped up to every turn.  Not surprising really.

[nwmysticprincess]

[tattooed-alchemist]

My Harvestide alchemical tile draw came up Silver, and I crafted the door charm from freshly-cut hazelnut branches out of the backyard.  While Dissolution, Separation and Distillation all represent the ‘solve’ aspect of alchemy, by the time you get to the Distillation of Silver, it’s a fine discrimination, not a broad filtering.  

When I hung the charm, I noticed a spider on the front door, and it didn’t completely retreat when I began changing things.

[tattooed-alchemist]

I had a tiny fireplace fire and made a new charm for the door using branches trimmed from both of the front yard rosemary bushes, and all the trimmings have new growth on them.

[tattooed-alchemist]

An approximation of my Winter Solstice vigil: fire tending, cider mulling, incense offering, saffron weighing, saffron paste-making, alchemical rune drawing, door charm crafting, and the piercing and studding of one orange-clove pomander.

Due to being a morning person and waking up early on Saturday morning, and my body deciding that napping was right out before or during the vigil, by the time it was over, I had been awake for 26 hours and 55 minutes.

Chances are I’ll wake up again after only about 4 hours of sleep.  Ugh.

[tattooed-alchemist]

I missed posting the new Beltane door charm. A grille is one of those more obscure pieces of alchemical equipment. Tells me there will be more ‘doing’ in this phase of the Wheel.

This is made from hazelnut branches and pear wood.

[tattooed-alchemist]

Crafting the equinox door charm of the alchemical symbol for the process of Composition was tricky but worked in the end.

Hazelnut wood and flowering branch tips from one of my rosemary shrubs.