wayofnight

[wayofnight]

“’ Witchcraft is a little like gardening, something like cooking; it is a little bit of everything starting off with the basic ingredients. We are the stew or potage in the cauldron, the roots, the trunk, the leaves and the tree. It is dependent on ourselves how we flourish or wither with the winters storm'”

— Robert Cochrane (quoted by Shani Oates in The Star Crossed Serpent) accessed on The Starry Cave Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold

[wayofnight]

“Tis not in the high stars alone, Nor in the cups of budding flowers, Nor in the ‘redbreast’s mellow tone, Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, But in the mud and scum of things There always, always something sings.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson.

[wayofnight]

Kirn baby or corn dolly, a harvest festival decoration at the Church of St James the Great, near Aslackby, Lincolnshire, Great Britain. Photo © by Maigheach-gheal and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons.

Photographer’s text, in part: “As it was considered unlucky to cut the last sheaf of the harvest, the growing stems were plaited into a corn dolly and felled by the reapers’ thrown sickles. The dolly was then dressed and garlanded, carried home in procession and kept through the winter in the farmhouse or church to ensure a good harvest next year. The custom was a survival of pagan rites[….] These appeased the corn spirit or fertility goddess who took her final refuge in the last sheaf.

"Variously called the kirn baby, the mare, hag or maiden, the dolly was woven into many elaborate shapes.”

[wayofnight]

x

[wayofnight]

[wayofnight]

“Queen of the Sabbat” - 32″ x 40″ mixed media painting on reclaimed canvas - from the Witch Heart series, 2016 I believe. 

[wayofnight]

Thirteen Rosehips Tea Hex

We make a tea, or so it seems, of thorny beauties luxury. A hollow bone for ancestors, a barrow of buried consequence. A pair of fungi, inscribed with titles, sigils, provenance.

Then bury the pair, on opposite sides, under a dead man’s tree. Six rabbit bones to bind the wight, as it a heart protected. A snail shell to seal that shade which time somehow neglected.

A razor, sharp as cunning folk, a blade for death’s undoing. Four henbane pods pregnant with seed, to soak them bittersweet. Thirteen sliced rosehips in a bowl, with henbane seed conceit.

The rosehips drink of love’s despair, a curse of blood’s imbuing. We sing three times the rhyme that follows, while the rosehips dry. That whomever takes of this tea, they must surely die.

“Bitter sweet the tears, never long the years. Drink deep of devil’s fears, that [victim] disappears!”

[wayofnight]

[wayofnight]

[wayofnight]

Alexandra Dvornikova.http://allyouneediswall.tumblr.com/

[wayofnight]

Sentinel

[wayofnight]

Beacon 2

[wayofnight]

Dovecote

[wayofnight]

When I was princess...

[wayofnight]

Arousing Delight, Arthur Rackham

[wayofnight]

In danger of extinction: Hare.

[wayofnight]

Eared by Ilya Gomyranov