Bärentraube.

🌷🐸Ostara🐰🌿

I love this time of year! Spring is one of my favorite seasons. Life if returning to the earth and my birthday is a few days after the equinox. Here’s how I’m celebrating this extra special time of year🌱🥚

Colors🌈

All pastel colors! I like to emphasize yellow for daffodils, blue and green for new life, and pink for the other spring flowers

Altar decorations🐰

🐣Animal figurines/stuffed animals lambs, chicks, deer, frog, and bunnies are great choices for this time of year. You can even make clay figurines of the animals you see around you.

🥚 painted or plastic eggs

💐Flowers/Plants/Seeds/Sprouts

🌷A vision board/representations of things you wish to get done

☀️Solar symbols

Spell themes🐸

🌱 Renewal

💫Cycles

🌳Balance

🍃Getting rid of negative thoughts, cycles and patterns

Plants 🌱

🌼Daffodils (my favorite)

🌷Tulips

🌱Crocuses

🌺Hyacinth

🌿Thyme

💜Lavender

🌳Rododendron

🌸Hellebore

Food 🥘

🍳 Eggs

🥛 Milk

🥐Baked goods

🥖Bread

🍵Peas

🥕Carrots

🍋Lemons

🥦Any in season vegetables where you live

Ways to celebrate 💐

🎨Paint eggs with friends

🌳Go for a walk, taking notice of the new spring plants and animals

🌅Wake up at sunrise and hear the birds chirping

🍰Bake and cook while putting your intentions into the food

🌱Start your garden by filling an eggshell with dirt and planting the seed in the eggshell. Say your intention while planting so it manifests as the seed grows

🖌Make Ostara themed art, doodles, and crafts

🧺Have a picnic or tea party

🎵Sing, dance, and make music

I hope everyone has a wonderful Ostara and let me know if you try any of these🐣

Magie der Bäume: die Kiefer

Shadow Work Skills to Develop

Shadow work can feel very…vague to talk about. There’s a bad habit of just kind of handwaving things and hoping people figure it out on their own. Part of that is that it’s so intensely personal. It’s so hard to come up with things that will work for everyone. The other part is that I want people to experiment and add to what we know about shadow work so I don’t want to be too prescriptive in how I teach others to do it.

So, for this post I wanted to dig into some of the most basic skills I use in shadow work in the hopes it’ll help people no matter which methods or paths they take.

Describing Events Neutrally

I put this one first because I think it’s the most important and the more difficult. Our emotions cloud how describe events to ourselves and others. For us to look critically at actions or words, we really need to be able to describe them without intent or emotion. Now, I’m not saying to leave that out entirely, I’ll get to that next. But you have to be able to get a clear view of what was done. This is so important when working with anything that might be triggering. We are too used to describing events with the goal of justifying thoughts, feelings, and actions and in shadow work it helps to break that instinct where you can.

When you can describe events neutrally to start with, it’s easier to see whether the feelings where in line or out of line with what happened. Were you way over reactive? Maybe under reactive? It’s easier to judge that when you have a neutral account to work with.

To practice, try listing out some events as they happen neutrally. An example might be after a tense interaction with someone, listing out what was said and done. If you can, get someone who was there to look at it and someone who wasn’t there to look at it and see what they say as far as how factual and neutral the account is.

Naming Feelings

Many many people cannot tell you what they’re feeling. There’s a myriad of reasons for this but no matter where it comes from it hurts shadow work. Your mood is like an internal weather system, you need to be able to do shadow work that’s appropriate for the weather. How you dig into things if gonna be different if your reaction to feeling trapped is to give up and binge movies or to lash out in anger. Gotta know what you’re working with.

It’s absolutely vital that you practice naming your emotions in day to day life. I did a week where I had an alarm go off five times a day and I wrote down what I was feeling in a note on my phone. A lot of my entries were “I’m not sure”. The practice showed me how often I have no connection to my feelings at all and prompted me to get to know them better.

Try using a feelings wheel or a feelings chart at least once a day to get used to checking in with yourself and putting a name on it.

Defining What You Want

We live in a society that has a very complicated relationship with wants. People often say we live in a consumerist society but we don’t often talk about what that’s done to us psychologically, to be so consumptive. There’s a lot of morality around them too that we internalize. We identify strongly with what we want. We define ourselves through our ambitions and our goals. But it means what we really want gets lost in the pursuit of shaping our desires to be acceptable or admirable. We ignore our desires that don’t fit with our narratives which is such a block to shadow work. How can you work on what you won’t let yourself be conscious of?

You have to understand that you and your desires are not one in the same. Just because you really want to enact violence on someone for what they’ve done doesn’t make you a bad person or a mean person or what have you. It’s a natural human desire. That doesn’t mean that’s it’s justified just that you are not bad for having those thought or desires. This extends to other things people don’t like admitting they want – finding other people more appealing than their partner, wanting someone who’s wronged them to suffer, wanting more for yourself even if it means someone else goes without – they’re all desires we have from time to time.

Practice writing what you want out on paper. Remind yourself you don’t have to act on it and that it’s better to be aware of it so doesn’t sneak into the driver’s seat. It’s important to break the idea that we’re owed what we want or that we have to act on what we want. Desires, much like feelings, come and go. But they’re important to be aware of while they’re here.

Taking Responsibility

I still am unsure of how to describe how to do this. It’s really distress tolerance at it’s core; learning to be okay with not being okay. Because where I see people going wrong with responsibility in shadow work is that they either explain everything away with context or they go it’s all my fault and it’s so terrible I can’t do anything about it.

Part of taking responsibility is being able to answer the question “What do I owe in this situation?” If your answer is always nothing, you’re wrong. We are social creatures, we’re only here because we evolved the intelligence to work closely and creatively with other members of our species. We do owe each other things in any interaction. It’s important to practice thinking about what those things are. Equally important is thinking through what you don’t owe as well.

Practice sitting with your mistakes when they happen and trying to think what’s owed in this situation. Shadow work depends on our ability to take responsibility for the roles we play in what keeps us stuck.

Pattern Recognition

I don’t know that I have much explicit advice for this category other than it’s incredibly helpful. Seeing your patterns is really key to zeroing in on automatic behaviors or thoughts. Pattern recognition is kind of like playing Minesweeper. It gets you a little closer to what you’re trying to uncover without having to step right in it and maintain yourself to be reflective.

Journaling can be really great for this. If you see yourself writing about the same actions or feelings or thoughts again and again and again. Going back through old conversations where you’re venting might give you some clues.

Whenever you find yourself frustrated you keep doing something, take note. When are you doing these things? What does it offer you? What does it protect you from?

We don’t do things repeatedly if they don’t serve us in some way which can be hard for us to admit.

Compassionate Problem Solving

So you’ve dug up these unpleasant truths about yourself, what’s a shadow worker to do? The only way forward is compassionate problem solving. Which is best summed of for me as working with yourself, not against yourself. I’m reminded of permaculture – the problem is the solution.

An example of this in my own life was ADHD. Once I finally realized what I was dealing with was ADHD, I spent several months ignoring it completely and being shocked when I couldn’t will myself to be “normal”. I felt a lot of shame. It was only when I started accepting where I was at and then going okay what can I do that things started to shift. “Okay, if I know I’m gonna forget my keys what can I do?” I put spare house keys and car keys in my car so when I inevitably forgot them somewhere I could call AAA and I’d be able to drive home. “Okay if I’m gonna forget my papers what can I do?” I made digital backup galore so I could access them and print them off at the last minute on campus. My life got so much better with the approach.

Wherever you’re at there are things you can do to make it better going forward and it’s important to get creative and stay reasonable. Getting triggered frequently? Make sure you have a cool down list of some kind on your phone. Too scared to grab groceries by yourself? Grab a buddy or order them and pick them up. Spending too much time in bed because you’re depressed as shit? Set a 5 minute timer and do one thing to make your life better. Literally all of these are personal examples.

There’s always something you can do. Small wins are still wins. Count them. There’s no need to be cruel to yourself while doing shadow work. Practice coming up with at least three different ways to respond to issues that you face. Even if you know a solution isn’t the one you’re gonna take, get used to putting out more than one “right” answer. In shadow work, there’s always more than one path.

Conclusion

I hope this is helpful. A bit rambling, but I think I could have used a post like this when I was starting out. Shadow work gets very individualized, very quickly, but I’ve yet to talk to anyone who wasn’t using at least a few of these in their personal shadow work journey. Hope these skills and how to practice them help!

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Tarot cards cheat sheet, I found these Tarot stickers online which is what I had been waiting for before I could start on these.

I'm debating on whether I want to put borders at the top of some pages because they seem very plain and need something, any input would be appreciated, even if you think I should keep it plain

Rübenlaternen (im Deutschen Rübenlichtle) mit eingeschnitzten Grimassen sollten den geliebten Verstorbenen den Weg weisen und gleichzeitig unleidliche Bewohner der jenseitigen Welt fernhalten. Diese Bräuche finden sich heute noch in Form von geschnitzten Kürbissen, Lampions und Laternen wieder. Verzierte Kürbisse (die Kelten selbst kannten keine Kürbisse) sollen ihren Ursprung in der schon christianisierten keltischen Tradition haben. Hier waren sie gedacht als Abschreckung gegenüber Elfen und Feen, die auf der Suche nach Kindern waren, die sie für würdig hielten, ihre Welt zu betreten. Besorgte Eltern höhlten die Gewächse aus und ritzten Zeichen und Fratzen hinein, die durch ihr schreckliches Aussehen alles Böse in die Flucht treiben sollten. In der Samhainnacht wurden Rüben (später Kürbisse) mit einer Kerze darin nun nicht mehr als Wegweiser ans Fenster oder vor die Tür gestellt, sondern dienten dazu, mißgünstige Naturgeister und unheilbringende Spukgestalten fernzuhalten. Es war zudem nicht ratsam, sich umzudrehen, wenn man Schritte hinter sich vernahm, denn die Verstorbenen konnten einen leicht versehentlich mit auf die andere Seite nehmen.

Wissenswert: Dabei muss man beachten, dass die vorchristliche jenseitige Welt oder keltische Anderswelt nicht gleichbedeutend mit der christlichen Hölle oder dem christlichen Himmel war, sondern ein Ort, an dem Götter, Ahnen und Feen wohnten und wo der ehrlich Suchende große Weisheit erfahren konnte. Die Anderswelt war ein Ort der Wunder, der aber auch große Gefahren barg, was die sichere Rückkehr betraf. Neugierige, die an Beltane oder Samhain in der Anderswelt verschwanden, waren nicht etwa Geistern und Dämonen zum Opfer gefallen, sondern einfach im Bruch des Zeitgefüges zur falschen Zeit am falschen Ort und landeten daher schon einmal auf der anderen Seite.

Aus: Das magische Jahr

t.me/HueterderIrminsul

Grimoire/book of Shadows decoration ideas and ideas of what to put in them:

I struggle sometimes with what to write in my grimoire, so I thought I’d write a list to help myself and others :) and even though I keep my personal grimoire plain on the covers, I will include decoration ideas because not all people want theirs plain, and the decoration could also be for the inner pages :)

Decoration:

📖 paint the covers a colour or pattern that gives you energy

📖 a picture collage

📖 a pressed flower and leaf collage

📖 draw sigils, which are practical as well as pretty

📖 draw a pendulum or ouija board in your book, which is also functional as well as decorative

📖 washi tape borders, book marks and page keys!

📖 when writing in your grimoire, you can separate bits of information in boxes. Using coloured pens/pencils or patterned lines looks nice :)

📖 carefully paint the edges of the pages. I like it when this is done with metallic paint but the colour is a personal choice :)

Content ideas

✨ write a list of trees, types of animals, flowers etc that you feel a connection to if you think nature is important to your craft

✨ you could also do a list of objects in general

✨ write magical recipes that you like into your grimoire and what properties you feel the finished product has

✨ a list of your crystals and stones and what vibe they give off, and their properties

✨ write about solstices if you follow them

✨ when you do a spell, I recommend writing down your method and what result you got, for future reference. This way you can repeat the spell easily and it can be tweaked if necessary :)

✨ write about deities you have a connection to, if any

✨ write about your familiar if you have one

✨ If you feel drawn to a certain type of animal, you could write about what animal you have this feeling towards. It may be worth looking into getting one if your situation allows it! I believe that the animal I feel drawn to (more so after practicing witchcraft for a while!) could be a future familiar for me. For example you could write about how to care for them, whether they have any magical connotations, and name ideas if you think you’ll get one! :)

✨ tarot card spreads

✨ results of tarot/pendulum/ouija sessions

✨a list of sigils so you can remember them (they don’t have to be activated if they’re just for reference)

✨ if you feel drawn to a particular tarot card or one of your pendulums (if you don’t have multiple pendulums that’s fine! You could write about the one you have) write about it and how it makes you feel

✨ magical correspondences of herbs

✨ general information about the path you follow (or if you are eclectic, parts of each type that interests you :))

Obviously there is way more to write about and way more decoration ideas! Feel free to reblog and add ideas if you have any!!

New pages!! I love my new board

Erle (Alnus glutinosa)

Heilwirkungen: desinfizierend, zusammenziehend, fiebersenkend, schleimhautpflegend.

Die Erle wächst in Auenwäldern, oft an unzugänglichen, nebligen Orten, im Wasser stehend. Sie gehört zu den Birkengewächsen; es gibt mehrere Arten, die sich zwar im Aussehen, nicht aber in der Anwendung unterscheiden.

Dass sich so unheimliche Sagen und Geschichten um sie ranken, liegt sicherlich an ihrem Wuchsort und ihrer Erscheinung. Sie liebt Feuchtigkeit & hat kein Problem mit stehenden Gewässern. Venedig steht größtenteils immer noch auf jahrhundertealtem Erlenholz.

Sie wächst gern allein und wird groß mit ihrer schrundigen Rinde & ihren knorrigen Ästen, die an lange Hexenarme erinnern. Ihre Wurzeln reichen tief in die Erde, sie steht fest & verbessert den Boden, indem sie Nährstoffe aus der Tiefe nach oben holt. Ihre Blätter werden gut mit Stickstoff versorgt, was sich an der schwarzgrauen Verfärbung im Herbst zeigt. Mit ihrem Laub & ihrer Krone, die viel Licht durchlässt, lockt sie zahlreiche Kräuter, Pflanzen & Tiere an, sodass sie von Leben umgeben ist. Wird sie verletzt & dringt ihr Saft an die Luft, verfärbt er sich rot, was ihren weiblichen & etwas unheimlichen Charakter noch unterstreicht.

In den alten Geschichten verkörpert die Erle die Kraft des Urweiblichen, die durchaus nicht nur schöpferisch, sondern auch zerstörerisch wirken kann. Als ihr Gegenstück galt die Esche, die vornehmlich für das männliche Prinzip stand. Unsere Vorfahren entzündeten Feuer in einem Erlengefäß, das sie mit einem Stößel aus Eschenholz so lange bearbeiteten, bis Funken sprühten.

Überliefert ist die mittelalterliche Sage Wolfdietrich, die um 1221 aufgeschrieben wurde, vermutlich aber viel älter ist. Hier erscheint eine schrundige, wilde Waldfrau, die »Erlenfrau«, auch raue Ilse genannt, bedroht Wolfdietrich & zwingt ihn, sie zu »minnen«, also zu lieben. Dreimal muss sie ihn teils übel traktieren, bis er schließlich nachgibt, sich seinem Schicksal fügt

und ihr folgt. Das Handeln wird belohnt, denn sie verwandelt sich in eine Traumfrau, die Sigeminne, die ihren wahren Kern nun enthüllt. Wir kennen den »Erlkönig« von Goethe, bei dem vermutlich ein Übersetzungsfehler vorliegt: Sein Erlkönig beruht auf dem dänischen Ellerkonge, was auf Deutsch Elfenkönig heißt.

Dennoch: Der sagenhafte und unheimliche Zug der Erlen passt gut in diese Ballade. Hauptsächlich verwendete man die Erlen zum Färben & Gerben.

Das Holz konnte nur für Brückenpfeiler verwendet werden. Es ist gut haltbar, solange es im Wasser steht, trocken ist es den Holzwürmern eine begehrte Nahrung. Holzkohle stellte man auch aus dem Holz her. Die klebrigen Triebe hängte man früher in den Häusern als Fliegenfänger auf, das verlieh ihr auch den lat. Namen »glutinosa« (klebrig).

Die zusammenziehende und desinfizierende Wirkung der Rinde & der Blätter dient der Nutzung als Gurgelmittel bei Erkrankungen der Mundschleimhaut: Dafür 2 TL getrocknete Blätter & Rinde 5 Minuten in einer Tasse Wasser kochen. Dieselbe Mischung kann man auch als Umschlag auf eitrige Wunden oder Ausschläge geben. Hildegard von Bingen empfahl, Pflaster aus Erlenblättern auf Geschwüre zu legen.

In der Erlenrinde findet sich fiebersenkendes Chinin. Knospen & junge Blätter ergänzen einen Smoothie wunderbar, aus den jungen Blättern lässt sich mit Öl, Knoblauch, gehackten Nüssen, Zitronensaft & Salz ein köstliches, tiefdunkles Pesto zubereiten.

In der Gemmotherapie steht ihre heilende Kraft für die Schleimhäute im Vordergrund. Das Mittel wirkt nicht nur auf die Atmungsorgane, sondern auch auf den Verdauungstrakt, die Harnwege & den Genitaltrakt. Auf den arteriellen Teil des Blutkreislaufs übt es eine stärkende Heilkraft aus, es schützt die Gefäßwände und verbessert die Blutversorgung im Gehirn. Somit ist die Erle auch ein gutes Altersmittel & hilft auf der seelischen Ebene, den Überblick zu bewahren.

Die Erle ist die blutende Heilerin, die bemüht ist, die Schwere zu nehmen & Frische & Leichtigkeit ins Leben zu bringen.

Bettina Hauenschild.

Blick in die Zukunft: Orakel.

In der Oberpfalz blickt man mit Hilfe der Erlenblätter in die Zukunft: Güte und Umfang der Krauternte werden anhand des Zustandes und der Vitalität junger Erlenblätter bestimmt, ein grundsätzlich schlechtes Jahr kündigen schwach belaubte Erlenstauden an. Genau anders herum in Mecklenburg „Ellernholz voll Knöpfe bringt volle Töpfe“. Im Voigtland wird die beste Saatzeit bestimmt: „Wenn die Erlen spitzen wie die Mauseohren, säe Gerste; wenn ihre Triebe sind wie die Sauohren, ist es zu spät“. Sinkt in Finnland ein ins Wasser geworfenes

Erlenreis auf den Grund, ist Gerste zu säen. Je nach Ausschlag der weiblichen Blütenstände ist in Estland Gerste zu säen, Roggen dagegen mit den männlichen Kätzchen.

J. Andreas Volland.

Weißdorn- Der Weg zum eigenen Herzen.

Gudrun Dieta Walcher, 2021.

I am not kidding when I say I want to run away into the woods to live amongst the moss and all the woodland and fairytale creatures.