Sunrise Mountain

Sunrise Mountain is a misleading name for this place, not because it isn't a mountain, but because the sunsets from its peak are so much more magnificent than the sunrises! There is no place in my home town where I spent more time growing up or that holds more magic to me than this mountain except for the woods in my own backyard. There is so much friendly forest energy in this place that if you let yourself, you could be lost in the forests whispers and embraces for hours, days or forever. There is a pull to this area that drives me to visit in times of great stress, great happiness, in sorrow or when I am seeking solitude. Whenever I wander the well worn paths to the peak or the wild unruly trails through the forest at the foot of the mountain, or sit on one of the boulders gazing out at the horizon, I can feel something watching me. It has never felt malicious nor mischievous but patient and tender, it feels as though the forest itself is watching over and protecting me while I am in its vicinity.

I was disheartened when I realized the last time I had visited the mountain was before I was married and felt the familiar tug on my heart to return. When I was visiting home, I made visiting the mountain at sunset one of my top priorities. I bundled my love, my brother and his girlfriend into my car and we lost ourselves, under the ever watchful eyes of the forest spirits who dwell there, on the mountain top for a few hours.

If you bring binoculars, you can see the house I grew up in from here on a clear day.



The setting sun...

The rising moon...

The 30+ more photos of the ridiculous amount I took are over on my Flickr page if anyone is interested in seeing more.

Now that you've seen one of my magical places, I have to ask my dears, what places are magical and special to you? Feel free to tell me in the comments, or if you feel so inclined, blog about them and leave me a link so I can come visit them virtually.

You can take the witch out of Jersey...

but you most certainly cannot take Jersey out of this witch! It felt so good to be home that I almost dug my claws into the craggy North Jersey mountain tops and refused to come back to flat as a pancake South Carolina. But, I came back and have been here for a few days but have been fairly quiet while I unpack, re-adjust and pray to every weather deity out there that summer has finally gone for good and I've seen the end of 90 degree days for a few months.

As we drove through 7 states and made our way up the long stretch of road that is I-81 North, my mind buzzed with excitement. In a short (ha-ha) 12 hours I would be back in the mountains on Northern New Jersey, seeing my friends, giving the siblings noogies, eating real pizza, wandering the forests that have been a part of me since I was a wee witchlet who was unaware of the fact that she even was a witchlet. I was filled with anticipation, but at the edges of my mind apprehension began to creep in as I realized the number of people who we needed to see was easily triple the number of days we would be there and as is often the case with these things, no one had the same days off.

About half way through Virginia however, I stopped caring and enjoyed the quiet drive through the Autumn colored mountainsides. I relaxed and vegged and thought about the upcoming Mabon sabbat and gave thanks for the fact that I was going home. While it was a bit surreal waking up every morning in a hotel room 15 minutes from my old apartment, it was pure bliss to get outside and have it be chilly and to be able to see the beginning of the leaves changing over. It felt good to drive the back roads I know like the back of my hand and not have to turn on the GPS at all for the first time in ages. It felt amazing to...

Eat at several of our favorite diners


Fool around with my kid sister. She ended up getting 7 stitches in her finger the day after this, making her the first kid in our family to ever get stitches.


Hang out with my (not so) little brother


Spend the day with the friends I've had for 20+ years.


Visit the mountain that holds so much energy, forest life and magic to me and which I have been visiting often since I was a little girl.


To celebrate these crazy kids getting hitched. They've been together for 8 years or so and are two of my favorite people. And, they know how to throw a hell of a wedding.

It felt so good to be surrounded by so many of the people we love and to be able to go out with the friends we've had forever that it's bittersweet to be back here in South Carolina, so far from all of those things and people that make New Jersey home. I know right now I have the same loneliness and blues I had when I came down here 6 months ago and know it will pass. Home will always be right there waiting for me whenever I need to go back to it and that gives me great comfort.

Practical Magic

When I signed on to be a part of the Practical Magic blog party, I had never seen the movie so decided what better way to celebrate than by sitting down and watching it for the very first time! I had however, not anticipated the fact that I would be in a hotel room in my home state of New Jersey and not in my cozy apartment in South Carolina with all of my witchy wares and herbs and would be unable to do much aside from simply watch the movie.

However, I had no idea how difficult it would be to get my hands on a copy of the movie to watch it nor how deeply it would effect me. After much consternation and a bit of my love's wizardry I was able to watch the movie this afternoon and I was so happy to have been able to watch this after having a few days surrounded by the important and special women in my life. Had I watched it a week or so ago, before we came up here, I may have viewed it in a completely different light. After watching it this afternoon however, my heart was filled with happiness and I shed more than a few tears. The movie focuses even more of it's time on sisterhood, of the blood and friendship varieties, than on magic. It made me realize I'm blessed to have an ever growing number of beautiful sisters in my life both near and far to send me support with the flick of a broom! As for my blood relations, I can tell you my sister is absolutely the Gilly to my Sally.

The other thing that caught my eye and tugged on my heart was the honest way they approached and portrayed certain aspects of witch craft. I particularly enjoyed the conversation between Gary and Sally regarding the craft and the gorgeous spell book within the family's home. It is that spell book and it's beautiful pictures and flowing scripts, the vast array of spells with their thick pages that most inspired me and I believe that once I get back from my vacation here and settle in again, I will set to work creating something unstructured and beautiful all my own as well as writing a few new spells.

It will be the perfect way to reconnect to my path and take some much needed spiritual time for myself. I'll happily post my progress as it comes along as well as any other Practical Magic inspiration that sneaks in after I've returned home.

Until then dear hearts, thank you for stopping by. Remember always throw salt over your left shoulder, keep rosemary by your garden gate, plant lavender for luck and fall in love whenever you can.

Cackles, Cauldrons and A Party

Shhh... I know I said I wouldn't be online. But this is just a wee post inviting you to an enchanting Halloween bash!

Northward

I'm making my way home today. The sun is shining, the weather looks awesome up the East Coast. I have a belly full of pie and coffee and my ipod is at the ready to entertain Joe and I for the next 12 hours.

I'll see you all in about a week. I'll have a post for the Practical Magic blog party, but otherwise I'm avoiding the internet while I'm away.

Take care, lovelies!

To lighten the mood a wee bit

Since my last post is so negative, I've decided to brighten things up around here by sharing some of my new paintings as well as show you all the completed sorceress painting I posted back when it was in it's sketch and preliminary stages.

Nut is the Egyptian Goddess of the Sky, who swallows the sun each evening and gives birth to it each morning. She is the mother of several deities in the Egyptian Pantheon, including Isis and Osiris.

Typically, she is depicted either stretch across the sky with her body covered in stars with her brother-husband Geb, the Earth beneath her. She is also sometimes depicted as a great star speckled cow and occasionally a many teeted sow.

I've had the image of her swallowing the sun buzzing in my head for a little over a week, so I chose to depict her in my own style as she prepares to swallow the sun.

Demeter is the Greek Goddess of vegetation, fruitfulness and the Harvest and is often associated with corn. It was she who taught humanity how to sow, care for and harvest the grains and vegetation we rely so heavily on for nourishment.

I represented her here as a harvest goddess and included a small tribute to her daughter, Persephone.

And finally,

The sorceress is complete, after several hours of painting. I'm incredibly pleased with the way she turned out, especially the tones of her face and the flow of her hair. I liked her just as much when she was in her blue and brown stage as I do her final stage.

Now I'm off to attempt to paint those pesky male deities and start packing for my trip home. Only one and a half days until we hit the road!

Work in Progress Wednesday - Neighbors

Those of you who are friends of mine over on Facebook have probably read my incredibly profane rant about my awful upstairs neighbors. For those that haven't, let me take a moment to explain my situation to you. My husband and I moved into our gorgeous apartment with it's gorgeous view and fabulous layout in March. For the first month we were here we didn't even know if we had upstairs neighbors... we never saw or heard them.

It turns out, we did indeed have neighbors. A fact I was alerted to by the presence of a stinky nicotine and tar colored puddle of liquid that mysteriously appeared on my porch. Upon a quick glance up, I discovered it was dripping from the porch above me. I went over to the complex office and alerted them to the problem. I also photographed the mess to have proof that I wasn't making it up. Around this time we also decided that our neighbors couldn't possibly be human, rather elephants who enjoyed wrestling and doing laundry at 11pm most nights.

The dumping of their ashtray cleansings happened twice more and twice more complaints about their lack of courtesy (as well as the dirtying of my patio furniture and the fact that had I not been inside getting a drink I would have had the offending liquid dumped on my head) as well as their noisy habits were lodged. Things were fine for a bit, until this afternoon when I came home and it being a gorgeous day wanted to paint on my porch. A simple enough goal to achieve, correct?

Perhaps. If your neighbors didn't dump a gallon of milk on their porch and subsequently onto yours. My table, chairs and half of my patio are covered in sun baked sour milk. You can bet your ass this witch has had it. I took pictures, printed them and stormed over to the office. I was told the manager herself will be calling me back today about the problem and they will be taking care of my neighbors this time.

Right, just like the previous three times?

I'm frustrated. I'm annoyed. I want to fling cat poo onto their porch and see how much they like it. I also don't want to move to another apartment complex... I love this one and just finished unpacking and organizing everything maybe a week ago. If the universe is going to be fair, the 6 obnoxious elephants packed into the 2 bedroom apartment upstairs should be the ones to leave, not us.

In the meantime, I'm open to any suggestions to dealing with this be they mundane or magical, because I'm seriously getting ready to fling hexes along with the cat poo. Are there any good protection spells or banishing spells you know of that may help? How about ways to get them out of here so I don't have to leave, aside from documenting everything they dump on my porch which will really only help me out if I decide to break my lease.

I'm trying to pack for my trip and work on some new deity paintings of Nut, Cernunnos, Lugh and Demeter but this aggravation is really getting in the way of my motivation.

Breathe.

Home. That's where I'll be if you need me

I wanted to take the time to thank you all for your kind and supportive words and energies. I'd get you all into one big group hug if I could I appreciate you all so much.

Now, to let you know where I'm going on this mystery trip I mentioned in my previous post...

I'm going home.

We're packing up our bags for a little over a week and making the 12 hour drive to that grand old Garden State, with it's kitschy beach towns, greasy spoons and diners a plenty, abandoned places galore, pesky deer who jump in front of cars, disco fries, the weird smell when you cross the Delaware... home. For the first time in 6 months. I cannot even tell you how loud and hard my heart is singing for it. To be back where it's chilly right now and the leaves are just starting to turn yellow, orange and red. To see my family and my obnoxiously lovable siblings:

I'm the lightest haired one, on the right

and spend a day, an evening, or a few with some of the best friends I could have ever asked for, one of whom is getting married two days before we come back to the South...

I didn't realize how homesick I've been as this spring and summer have flown by in a flurry until just a few weeks ago when I've been pining to see my parents, to eat a taylor ham egg and cheese sandwich, to give my kid sister a noogie, to drive to the middle of nowhere to have pints with friends, to go to a diner or drive to the coast just to watch the ocean. I'm ecstatic that in a few short days I'll be there and I know the time will be over far too fast so I plan to spend as much time doing the things I miss with the people I miss as Hypnos and his sleepiness will allow.

New Moon Magic

Found on Flickr

Many new moons have come and gone with my only knowledge of their happening occurring when I take note of the calendar. I'm not tremendously sensitive to moon phases and usually just keep an eye on it to tell what phase it's in. Yesterday's moon however, was a pretty exceptional exception to the norm.

The moon began tugging at me almost a week ago. I had an extraordinarily terrible day at coffee-bucks and came home feeling worn out, worn thin and wanting to just crawl under a rock and wait with the fairy folk for humanity to sort itself out before coming out again. I sat on the patio drinking my tea, sniffling from my cold (I'm much better now, thank you for all of your energies and concern!), feeling generally miserable when a tremendous calm enveloped me. I went and pulled a card from my Paulina Tarot Deck and drew the Eight of Pentacles which, especially in this deck, is a card that sings to me of creative endeavors and learning as you go.

Saturday while we were at the Apple Festival, Joe looked me straight in the eye while I was slurping down an Apple Slushie and told me to quit my job and focus on art while I look for something I'll enjoy. The thought of doing so and losing the financial buffer my crummy job affords us completely terrifies me, so I tell him very simply that I can't right now. When we get home he proceeds to draw up a budget while I paint and shows me that even without me working, we can accomplish all the things we want to, it will just take a few months longer. He tells me he has faith in me and my art and wants me to be the kind of happy I am when people don't treat me like I'm a 4th class citizen, tell me to 'go fuck myself' when I ask if they have anything smaller than a $100 and occasionally throw hot coffee at me because they asked for too many Splendas and it's disgustingly sweet. (True story... it's happened to me twice, once because of the Splenda thing. With my temper, I'm surprised I'm still employed.) I'm still terrified of the loss of funds however and didn't give my notice the next day.

When I went to bed that night, I asked Mother Moon to help me find my way. I told her I feel irresponsible and like a quitter for wanting out of my job so desperately after only a few months. I asked for a dream, a feeling, a spark... anything to help me know what the right move is. I fell asleep and remembered not a single one of my dreams. I forgot all about it.

Until yesterday, when I was invited via Etsy to participate in a local arts and crafts show in late November. It's a smaller one being held in a high school, but they had a successful event the last two years with over 50 crafters. I think it will be a great way to get a feel for shows to start with something smaller and to be personally invited to participate made my week!

Last night I did a ritual for conviction, personal strength and courage in new endeavors and sent my thanks out to the universe for all of the subtle nudges and in your face shoves it's given me this past week. I also joined up with Mrs. B and a horde of pagans to send supportive, positive energy to help each other with new beginnings and renewals.

Today I'm writing up my resignation letter and will be done with cofee-bucks in Mid October. I normally wouldn't give a month's notice, but I'll be going on a trip for a little over a week, which I will tell you all about in another post as this ramble is quite long enough.

The Sorceress - A WIP

Do you all recall my sorceress sketch from a few weeks ago? Well, I've sat down today since my fever has broken and I am sore and tired of laying around, to lay down the first few layers of watercolor on her.

So far, I'm enjoying how she's turning out although I'm not sure how she'll progress from here. I intend to make her raven haired and need to work on her skin tones a bit more, fingers crossed I don't make a mess of her.

Watercolor is a medium I hardly used growing up and I've certainly had no formal training in it aside from flipping through a book once. Once I started using it to slather backgrounds and random details into my journal I became more or less addicted to it. I've still only read that one book and I'll let you all in on a little secret; most of what I do is made up as I go along. I pull bits of color theory out and use a few of the layering techniques I use when I do pencil or pastel work, but mostly I'm just learning as I go and I adore it.

I'll be calling it an early night however and leaving her to rest for a few days so I can kick a little more of this awful cold out of my system and enjoy Apple Fest in Hendersonville, NC tomorrow. I'm sure it will be nowhere as huge or chaotic as Apple Fest in Warwick, NY but I intend to enjoy it nonetheless.

Have a lovely weekend, dears!

Work in Progress Wednesday - Casting Out a Cold

Happy Wednesday, lovies! I hope you've all been creating and doing wonderful things! Let me know what you have in progress either in the comments or on your blogs. If you blog, share the link in comments so I can be sure to visit you!

I've been struck down by quite literally my 6th serious cold in the past 6 months. This time my husband caught it too and we spent an ever so romantic evening last night lounging on opposite ends of the couch sneezing, wheezing, sniffling and sipping tea. We went off to our day jobs feeling equally crummy but something odd happened when I came home... he is barely stuffy, runny, wheezy or sneezy. It's as if he wasn't ill yesterday at all.

I, on the other hand, can barely breathe from my simultaneously stuffy and runny nose, have quite the raw throat, am coughing, red nosed and generally worn out. Also, my sinuses are being effected a bit too strongly by gravity and leaning over is putting far more pressure on the front of my face than I'd like.

I have imbibed more than a dozen large mugs of tea, most stirred with copious amounts of honey and lemon. I've sprinkled cinnamon on top of a few cups of the herbal stuff when I wanted something less bitter. I've been consuming food as usual and resting whenever possible, but I know from past experience that colds tend to linger with me for what feels like an eternity.

Tomorrow I have the day off and plan to get plenty of rest, rejuvenation and tea interrupting only to make a trip for fresh chicken soup and to ship something out. Friday, however, I need to be up and out of the house at 5:00am and as such need to be feeling well enough for a solid night's sleep. I'd also like to be healed enough to make it through my final marathon shift before the new availability I submitted goes into effect and still have enough energy to go to Apple Fest in NC this weekend.

So my dears, I'm asking you all... what do you do to cast out a cold or to gain yourself a few hours of relief?