Hey, y'all! I'm @hillbillybubbeleh / @sheydmade! It's nice to meet everyone! My name is Keziah, but people also call me Kez, Bubbeleh, and Bubs. Feel free to use any of these!
@sheydmade is my main blog and home to all of my articles and essays about all things witchcraft and magic (follows/likes will come from sheydmade), while @hillbillybubbeleh is my personal sideblog where I write about my own personal practice, daily life, and communicate with friends and community.
You'll find a thorough introduction below, divided into these sections: about me, about my practice, about my Judaism, the JewBu of it all, and frequently asked questions. 🖤✨
:𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖒𝖊:
♒ February baby in my 30s + a middle sibling.
🌈 Panromantic, asexual, nonbinary // they/them or she/her, but I actually don't care if I'm called he/him or anything else.
⚜️Born in, raised in, still live in the Southern US, and I quite like my accent. // My family is and has been all over, up, down, and under the South, particularly in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
🧿 Mixed (Black/white). // Preserving and keeping family traditions, histories, and stories is important to me, as is ancestor work. // My family background is varied. My white side is predominantly Austrian, German, French, and Irish & British. My Black side is mostly West African (specifically Nigerian, Ivorian, Ghanaian, and Sierra Leonean). As for Black diasporic heritage, mine is largely Louisiana Creole and Ark-La-Tex Creole; African American Peoples of the South Carolina Piedmont, Piney Woods Mississippi, and Pearl River Basin; and the Afro-Descendent Peoples of Grenada, St. Vincent, and the Grenadines. I'm always working to deepen my connection to myself, my family, our cultures, and the world around us, so you can find a lot of posts pertaining to those cultures and peoples on this blog.
🏡 As of 2026, I am a homeowner and landowner. I live in a 126-year-old house called Luther's Cottage on land that was once the location of the largest slave pen in my area. I am the first person of Black descent to own land here.
🖤 Full-time caregiver to disabled family members (🧿 קײן עין־הרע), while also living with my own disabilities and chronic illnesses. I post occasionally about my experiences as a caregiver, and about my life with myaglic encephalomyelitis and fibromyalgia.
📚 I enjoy studying and learning languages. Technically, I'm a polyglot. Some of my other favorite subjects to study are history, religion and theology, astronomy, psychology, and botany.
♟️ I'm also a vegan, a lay environmentalist, an avid reader, a dedicated meditator, a musician, a hiker, a chess player, a gardener, an excellent cook, and a baddie full of chutzpah.
:𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖒𝖞 𝖕𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖊:
I'm a witch, a practitioner of...
folk/traditional/folkloric magic
conjure & rootwork
mysticism
divination
dream interpretation
mediumship
magical herbalism
spirit work.
I keep traditions and crafts that I'm connected to through familial links and through my cultural, ethnic, & racial identity. These include...
✡️ Jewish folk magic & mysticism
⚜️ Southern US magical traditions
🧹 Black diasporic magical traditions
🕯️ and various European traditions (specifically Ashkenazic, French, Irish, & British).
I was introduced to witchcraft through divination by my grandmother 🧿 (קײן עין־הרע) at a very young age, when she began teaching me how to use penny pendulums and to read cards in her familial tradition. I didn't start experimenting outside of divination and learning about other witchcraft for about a year after that. My first foray into other forms of witchcraft involved crafting charms and protection magic. It's been 25+ years now (26 years of divining, alongside 25 years of witchcraft) and I've cultivated a practice I feel very deeply connected to and am quite passionate about.
I describe a large portion of my magical path as 'rolling deep with the spirits' and keep a very spirit-led, tradition-based practice, but I'm also very much a scholarly, tome-collecting, history nerd of a witch. Much of my magical journey has grown from my love of preserving the traditions and beliefs of my family and near ancestors and the cultures, creeds, and lands from which they come.
:𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖒𝖞 𝖏𝖚𝖉𝖆𝖎𝖘𝖒:
I am a deeply spiritual, mystical post-denominational/trans-denominational Jewess (🍉) with a strong connection to my Jewishness. My Judaism plays a key role in my beliefs and how I interact with and move through the world around me, including how I interact with magic and spirits. My yiddishkayt is rooted in ♫ traditioooon ♫; the preservation of folklore, mysticism, cultural traditions; and in doikayt. I'm also a lay scholar of Jewish folklore, mythology, mysticism, demonology, angelology, and history. 'Round my neck of the woods, I'm the resident mezuzah mounter, translator, blessing bestow-er, fill in "cantor" (I'm not a cantor, but I can sing and know all of the songs, so I'm the substitute in our shul lol), and Jewish folklorist.
I'm Ashkenazi, predominantly Alsatian Jewish, Austrian Jewish, and Galician Jewish. I often use Yiddish in my practice and life, and am currently working on translating many prayers and texts into Yiddish as a liturgical language. I have a strong love of keeping cultural, spiritual, and religious tradition alive and/or remembered in my own practice and daily life. Also, I adore Ashkenazi food, so you can expect lots of that, especially around holidays, on this blog.
I'm often asked, especially in witchcraft community, how "religious" I am. I'll repost (and condense) my answer from this ask to address that here.
"I'm not sure [...] how one measures "religiousness." [...] If we're talking branches of Judaism, I don't subscribe to one in particular, as I'm not a fan of labels. [...] I keep shabbos, keep kosher, keep holidays; [...] have even been tasked with writing lessons and leading study groups for my old synagogue's Talmud study hall, lead a Midrash study group with my new community, have served as one of the only local bar/bat mitzvah/b'mitzvah tutors in my area, have dedicated much of my time and my life to the study and preservation of Jewish folklore, history, mythology, mysticism, and culture [...]. All of that being said, I don't, personally, feel that any of this — how one labels one's self or how "observant" one is/is deemed to be — is a fair measure of "religiousness." Personally, I consider myself very spiritual and have never put importance into labelling myself. It matters more to me to keep certain traditions and to truly connect to myself and my Jewishness/Judaism than it does to keep labels..."
:𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖏𝖊𝖜𝖇𝖚 𝖔𝖋 𝖎𝖙 𝖆𝖑𝖑:
📿 While I'm an observant, practicing Jewess, I'm also a Buddhist, often called a "JewBu" (✡️☸️). How is one a Jewish Buddhist, many ask. JewBu and Jewish Buddhist aren't schools of Buddhism, but are a way of either labelling a dual-faith practice, of marrying Jewish identity and Buddhist practice, or of acknowledging a Buddhist practitioner's Jewish roots.
I keep shabbos, keep kosher, keep holidays, and keep Jewish traditions, but I also practice Buddhism. I consider myself a student of the Buddha and a student of the world, I follow the Noble Eightfold Path and the Five Precepts, and I actively utilize Buddhist teachings and techniques in my daily life to cultivate mental clarity and discipline, compassion and loving kindness (mettā), enlightenment and wisdom, and the cessation of suffering. I meditate and have been doing so for several years, trained in both Theravāda and Mahāyāna Buddhist meditation practices; I follow Buddhist and Jewish ethical practices, with heavy emphasis on harming none (ahimsa), helping all (paropakāra/dāna/tzedakah), and pursuing equity and justice/"the repairing of the world" (tikkun olam); and I am an active participant and member of both Jewish community and the Sangha.
I have experience in both Mahāyāna and Theravāda study and practice, but I maintain a Mahāyāna Buddhist practice. I have two temples that are integral to the foundation and growth of my Buddhist practice — a Chán Buddhist temple, whose daily meditations (of the Wei-Yang lineage) I have attended (for all but one week) for going on three years (though I've maintained my own at-home daily meditation practice for much longer), and a Thiền Buddhist temple of the lineage of Master Hua; both are Mahāyāna temples.
:𝖋𝖗𝖊𝖖𝖚𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖑𝖞 𝖆𝖘𝖐𝖊𝖉 𝖖𝖚𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘:
[This section is currently UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Peep #ask bubbeleh / #ask hillbillybubbeleh / #ask sheydmade for more]
🧿 "WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE/RECOMMENDED TAROT DECKS?" + + // For beginners and newcomers to tarot, I recommend finding a deck you connect to or feel drawn to instead of focusing on any of the "you have to start with RWS" vs "you have to start with Marseille" discourse. // As for my personal favorite decks that I use the most often, they are the Inversion Tarot, Tarot de Marseille, Penny Dreadful Tarot, the Lilien Tarot, & the Medieval Scapini Tarot. I also often use regular playing cards and the Blue Bird Lenormand.
🧿 "DO YOU HAVE ANY TIPS FOR NEWCOMERS TO MEDITATION?" // Don't be discouraged if you struggle with meditation, and keep coming back to the practice. You build meditation skills through cultivated, repeated practice and dedication, so it will take time for it to feel more natural. Remember, our brains have been trained to go, go, go; so it's completely understandable and expected that we would struggle with meditation.
🧿 "IS HOODOO A CLOSED PRACTICE?" + // Yes, hoodoo is a closed practice. If you are not Black, you do not need to touch hoodoo or Black diasporic traditions. The history and context here is significant. Hoodoo is the product of enslaved Africans being forcibly taken from their homelands and having to cling to what culture and traditions they could keep alive in new lands surrounded by new faiths, new beliefs, new landscapes, etc., which is how hoodoo came to be birthed in Black diaspora, created by African-Americans. It very well could have been lost to time, and would have been had slavers and the systems that empower them had their way. Hoodoo and similar Black diasporic folk traditions became not only a vital connection to the roots of its practitioners, but also a tool of liberation. Hoodoo came to be used as a means of pursuing liberation from slavery and protection from slavers. It is therefore incredibly disrespectful to think it any way appropriate to partake in hoodoo or similar Black diasporic traditions if you are not of the Black diaspora.
🧿 "IS KABBALAH A CLOSED PRACTICE?" // Yes, kabbalah is a closed mystical practice within Judaism, so one should be Jewish to practice kabbalah and any other form of Jewish mysticism. Kabbalah is an esoteric school of belief and practice within Judaism. Its aim is to procure enlightenment, to reveal or uncover ancient esoteric teachings and meanings within Jewish scripture, to come to understand and better connect with Jewish divinity, and to explore the divine aspects of ourselves and the world around us through mystical means — a scholarly, mystical, philosophy-heavy realm of Judaism that was formalized in the Middle Ages (though it finds it roots in earlier schools of Jewish mysticism). Judaism and Jewishness is intrinsic to kabbalah. Thus, kabbalah is a closed Jewish practice.
🧿 "HOW CAN YOU BLEND BEING JEWISH AND A WITCH?" + // I simply am Jewish and a witch. They have both always been facets of my identity, so there was no effort put into bringing them together. Also, they were already together! There has always been magic in Judaism, but, unfortunately, there were points in our history where we tried to hide or discard that magic in an attempt to make Judaism "fit in" more, and [...] we nearly lost a lot of beautiful, unique, wholly Jewish concepts and practices that many Jewish witches are now reclaiming and bringing back to the forefront of their practices.
🧿 "ARE YOU A JEWBU?" + + + // Yes. (See section 'The JewBu of it All' about for more information)
🧿 "HOW DID YOU COME TO BUDDHISM?" // I grew up in a multi-faith family. My father was Buddhist, and my aunt is Buddhist. She always had a large, beautiful butsudan that I remember being so drawn to and asking questions about whenever I was at her house. She was always honest and open about her practice if we asked about it. So, seeing Buddhist practice and presence in her home was one of my first memories of being introduced to Buddhism. Once I started in school, I went to a school that was heavily multi-cultural, and many of my closest friends throughout school were also Buddhist. Later in life, my older sister became interested in studying Zen Buddhism, and she maintained a practice for a while.
As for me coming into Buddhism myself, that didn't happen for a while longer, years down the line. I just started reading up on it one day after finding a book that interested me. Then I took notice of how many Buddhist temples there were in my town whilst out and about, and then I started looking into the temples and their services, their classes. That interest and curiosity opened a door for me that I'm glad to have stepped through, because taking those classes and eventually accepting the Buddhadharma, taking refuge, finding my Sangha ended up changing my life in such a beautiful way. The rest is, as they say, history.
