Witch Wisdom For Magical Aging

• Presents four loving, feisty old witches, one for each season, who share earth-honoring wisdom, rituals, and spells to help you embrace your journey through the sacred latter half of life • Filled with magical recipes, inspiring ceremonies, playful activities, and meaningful meditations You are invited into the magical world of four loving, feisty old witches, one for each season, who share earth-honoring wisdom, rituals, and spells to help you embrace your journey through the sacred latter half of life. In the season of Winter, the earthy Root Witch reminds us that bodies are made for pleasure and that Winter is made for dreaming. She offers spells, rituals, and ceremonies to reframe your perspectives on aging and promote acceptance of your changing appearance. She also shares secret recipes for a healthy, happy body, focusing on preparations that help maintain and restore hair, skin, and bone. In Spring, the airy Winged Witch offers a witchy approach to spring cleaning, both in the traditional sense and in self-understanding and relationships. She shares recipes and rituals for jettisoning the dead past, discovering your own authentic style, adding magic to your clothes, and feathering your nest so it feels like home to your spirit. The fiery Summer Merwitch helps us to be more joyfully creative, with activities and wisdom to help overcome the obstacles that prevent us from fulfilling our creative dreams. She honors the senses, encourages us to embrace our sexuality, and gives us ways to express our fiery anger cleanly and powerfully. The watery Autumn Kitchen Witch shows us how to honor our harvests and our ancestors, how to make peace with death, and how to make every meal a celebration of life, with magical recipes and rituals that bring joy to the soul. The Kitchen Witch also explores several goddesses and wise old women from folklore who can offer templates for a rich and spiritualized maturity. Offering practical and enjoyable ways to make aging an empowering, magical, and transformative adventure, this book of spiritual guidance will help you love yourself through the aging process.

A book of recipes, spells, and rituals for celebrating our connection to the Earth and her seasons. • Redesigned to focus on all eight pagan holidays. • Includes new spells, rituals, and meditations, as well as 80 vegetarian recipes. • Written by practicing witch Cait Johnson, coauthor of Celebrating the Great Mother (12,000 copies sold). The beliefs of Wicca are rooted firmly in the earth--in the gradual circling of her seasons and the bounty and blessings she provides. In Witch in the Kitchen: Magical Cooking for All Seasons, practicing witch Cait Johnson celebrates the sacred in each season with more than 80 soul-satisfying and appetizing recipes. In engaging and inviting prose, the author provides rituals, spells, and meditations for the eight pagan holidays, inspirations for creating a kitchen altar, and ways to prepare for each season. She offers ideas for decorating your kitchen with objects of power and magic--eggs symbolizing fertility in spring, dried orange slices as reminders of the sun in mid-winter--to align our bodies, spirits, and senses to the pace and mood of the Earth's changes. Above all are the recipes for delicious, sensuous salads, soups, main dishes, and desserts made from ingredients in tune with the Earth's seasonal gifts. Serve Stuffed Acorn Squash and Fig-Apple Crumble at a Samhain gathering; celebrate Winter Solstice with Pomander Salad and Savory Yuletide Pie; welcome Imbolc with Sprouted Spring Salad and Magic Isle Pasties; or share the harvest at Lughnasad with Spicy Stir-Fried Greens and Sunny Peach Pie. With its recipes, rituals, and reminders of our ancient connections to the seasons, Witch in the Kitchen invites you to honor yourself and the Earth and delight in the magic that comes from sharing good food with good company.

• Shares the author’s inner adventure to face aging, illness, and death, along with hard-won wisdom on the art of resting, happiness, and letting go • Draws on stories from different spiritual traditions and offers strategies, tools, and ways of thinking to navigate the challenges of aging • Reveals how to examine your fears and regrets, declutter the mind of negative thoughts, and reframe reality with the powerful tool of unconditional self-love Presenting a clarion call to the aging to awaken before they die, Kamla K. Kapur explores how we can become warriors on the spiritual path in order to embrace and prepare for the truth of our mortality and the ultimate triumph of conscious living and dying. Set in both California and India, Kapur shares her inner adventure to navigate the hazardous battlefield of aging with the aid of spiritual guides that pilot her to safety and offer hard-won wisdom on the art of resting, happiness, and letting go. Revealing the arc of her own self-discovery, she examines her own shadows, fears, anxieties, and regrets, decluttering her mind of disempowering thoughts and reframing and co-creating her reality with the powerful tool of unconditional self-love. Drawing on stories from all traditions, Kapur demonstrates the power of self-examination, vigilance, and intentionality to have a successful old age and offers strategies, tools, and ways of thinking to ensure mental, physical, and spiritual strength to meet aging’s challenges and transform from the people we once were to the ones we are becoming on the penultimate stage of earthly life. Encouraging readers to proceed on their own journeys of awakening, Kapur describes how to confront, express, and embrace your darkness, consciously and honestly, to move forward into the ever greater wholeness of being that incorporates our animal, human, and divine nature. She shows how to make the final course of an ardent, empowered, and courageous journey into God’s heart, revealing how the privilege of aging is to fully experience this precious, painful life and to achieve vitality, satisfaction, and joy in the life we are fortunate to still have.

Crone's Book of Magical Words (previously published as The Crone's Book of Words) by Valerie Worth is the book you've been waiting for! In its pages are over 125 spells, incantations, and charms. If you can think of a purpose for a spell, it's probably in this book. Need a spell to summon a ghost? Or perhaps you want the opposite: a spell to free a house from being haunted. They're both in this book. Do you need something to help you lose weight or have longevity? You'll find them here. Or perhaps you want to pass through a locked door. It's all in this book. Even if you don't know a thing about magic, you can use this book. The spells are easy, poetic, and evocative. For example, to cure a wart the instructions are: "Stamp within a silver cup mullein and houseleek together. Stir them with a sparrow's feather. Let it draw the juices up; Twenty times upon one day, brush them over the excrescence; Under sunlight dry the essence--Soon the wart must shrink away." The range in this book is phenomenal. You'll find a simple fertility charm and a way to conjure with smoke. You'll read about how to bring rain and how to stop rain from falling. You'll learn how to tell fortunes with sand or with tea leaves. This is more than just a book about magic, it is a folklorist's bonanza. If you're ready to win another's love or to sweeten someone's disposition, if you want to turn hair long and golden or discover tree spirits, this is the book you must have. Whether you have been doing magic for a long time or are a beginner, this book is a must.

In this earthy, practical and wise volume, Telesco offers sound advice on magick and spirituality as they coincide with everyday life. With the lessons and insights she has gained over the last eighteen years, she explores a variety of issues that are key to every witch's growth, while also demystifying many modern myths about witches.

Redefining the concept of the mature Wiccan, this title seeks to turn her into a positive model for the Elder Wiccan women by showing the Crone to be a powerful symbol that embodies all phases of a woman's life (Maiden, Mother, and Crone). Complete with suggestions for crafts, journal writings, rituals and meditations to reinforce the positive aspects of becoming a truly wise woman.

A Witch's Book of Wisdom is the ultimate grimoire of folk spells, offering a unique selection of magical solutions to many of life's problems. Hearken back to a time when the solution to life's problems could be discovered by having a chat with the local wise person. These folks were undoubtedly skilled in the magical arts and knew just what to prescribe for their client, depending on whatever obstacle they happened to be facing at the time. In the modern era, the proverbial village has grown into a global community, leaving many curious witches to their own devices when it comes to finding the magical solution to a problem. Learn magical techniques to overcome fear and find lost items. Discover the magic of pathworking and learn how to work with poppets. Explore the magic of knots, then sneak away to the kitchen for a bit of kitchen witchery. Step back in time and allow the simple ways of magic to unfold in your everyday life.

Traces the history of good fortune traditions from sacred divination to modern gambling • Reveals how dice were originally considered sacred objects of divination and details the techniques and meanings of a dice oracle • Looks at medieval grimoires for fortune-telling and other divination traditions, including those using cowrie shells, bones, coins, cards, sticks, and stones • Examines how dice became a means of gaming and gambling and how gambling gave rise to specialized lucky charms Some believe that our future is predetermined, while others assert that we have free will and our future can take many different courses depending on our actions. In ancient times, it was believed that the will of the gods determined people’s lives, and divination or sacrifices to the gods could change or improve one’s future. Of the deities devoted to luck and the future, the Roman goddess Fortuna is most famous, having two shrines in Italy where divination was conducted under her guardianship. Tracing the history of the culture of good fortune from sacred divination to profane gambling, Nigel Pennick explores the many ways people through the centuries have sought to divine the future, ensure protection, and draw the full benefits from days of good omen. He shows how dice were originally considered sacred objects of divination and reveals the divinatory geomancy techniques and meanings of a dice oracle. In addition to dice, he looks at how cowrie shells, bones, coins, cards, sticks, and stones can be used to form meaningful patterns for interpretation and how these cultural divination practices were often accompanied by texts or oral traditions that explained the meanings of the patterns, such as the Chinese I Ching and the West African verses of the Sixteen Cowries. He also looks at medieval grimoires for fortune-telling, lottery books, and dice books. Exploring how dice became a means of gaming and gambling, the author details the forms of trickery and “crooked dice” used in games of craps by cheating gamblers and the Dream Books or Policy Books that served as oracles for those who played the “Numbers Racket.” He examines how gambling gave rise to specialized lucky charms, luck-ensuring rituals, and even mascots. He also explores the emergence of ideas of randomness as they relate to divination and magic. Revealing how divination and gambling are two sides of the same coin, the author shows how, whether you are a gambler relying on Lady Luck or a diviner querying the gods, we’re all looking to Fortuna in the quest for a better, richer life.

• Explains the importance of creating a direct personal connection with Nature and how it is key to becoming an elder who will go on to become a wise Ancestor • Presents exercises and rituals to awaken and deepen your animistic connection to the world and help you intentionally craft yourself as a fit elder • Explores deep spiritual work with the Sacred Self, including shadow work and trauma honoring, as well as practices to help you heal your family line For millennia people connected with the Ancestors as part of their regular spiritual practice, seeking wisdom and inspired vitality from those who came before. Each member of a community grew up guided by sage elders, naturally walking the path into fit elderhood themselves and, upon their good deaths, becoming wise, capable Ancestors to whom their descendants could turn. Revealing how to restore the path from fit elder to wise ancestor, S. Kelley Harrell explores the spiritual, cultural, and ancestral aspects of aging well and presents practical exercises and rituals to help you intentionally craft yourself as a fit elder on the path to Ancestorhood. She explains the importance of creating a direct personal connection with Nature and of respecting the spirits who surround us, including asking their permission before engaging them in ritual or healing work. Exploring the concept of animism and how it is key to becoming an elder who will go on to become an Ancestor, the author shares exercises for awakening and deepening your animistic connection to the world around you as well as rituals for embodiment and grounding. Examining the most powerful obstacles to dying well, the author explores deep spiritual work with the Sacred Self, including shadow work, the initiatory rite of heartbreak, and how to honor the traumas that created your shadow parts and their dysfunctional patterns. She looks at Ancestor work, including forging a supportive connection with our Sacred Parents, the first Ancestors, as well as specific practices to help you heal your family line. She shows how recognizing that you are Nature, part of the sacred order, allows you to begin rewilding and how honoring your own sacredness, the divinity of your inner cosmology, allows you to identify and value what you have to offer your community as an elder. Showing that initiation into elderhood is the work of our lives, this book explains how, through personal introspection and engagement with the living world around us, we can cultivate our unique way to elder well.

“One of the most engaging memoirs I’ve read in ages. The wise and feisty voice I've come to know and love in Elizabeth Cunningham’s Maeve Chronicles fills these pages and carried me away. Anyone who has forged an independent path through the luminous moments and deepest shadows of a soul-filled life will recognize their own spiritual adventures reflected here.”—Mirabai Starr, God of Love In this intriguing spiritual memoir, The Maeve Chronicles author Elizabeth Cunningham traces her dynamic faith journey and its relationship to her writing. As the daughter of an Episcopal priest, author Elizabeth Cunningham was born into community, sacred story, and the mysteries of prayer. For her, “If a writer is one who writes, then a ‘prayer’ is one who prays.” As such, her praying is dynamic, a dance between many opposites—active vs. contemplative, community vs. individual, human vs. wild—and Cunningham sees the divine as both incarnate and transcendent, an intimate beloved and a vast mystery. When she prays, Cunningham is both audacious and reverent, asking tough questions of God—raging, listening intently, and dancing and singing ecstatically. Her storyteller’s imagination opens a path from the known to the unknowable, from despair to wonder. In this nonfiction debut, Cunningham recounts both her lifelong spiritual quest and her ongoing spiritual questions. Her journey takes her from her childhood church, with its ornate liturgy, to the silence of Quaker meeting; from her ordination as an interfaith minister to an eclectic, earth-centered community where she served as priestess before becoming a hermit, of sorts, making a church of her own backyard. Candid and passionate, Cunningham’s memoir invites readers of all faiths—and doubts!—to explore what it means to live life as a prayer in the beautiful, imperiled world we share.