Friday 13th & Beltane 2018

Welcome to the newsletter with a bit of a difference. I suspect Beltane will be delayed up here by several weeks. I am beginning this newsletter at home whilst watching the snow fall, knowing it’s another day the shop renovations are on hold…of course it is… Mercury is in retrograde, there are traffic lights outside the shop, no parking all the way down the High street and everything is being delayed/mislaid/misunderstood… surprise surprise!! Oh well, it is what it is!! We now have a new up-to-date opening date… more on that later…

Beltane is, according to the calendar, at dusk on 30^th April, going into May Day on 1^st, but should be whenever the Hawthorn actually flowers to announce summer, which I suspect will be extremely late this year, considering winter seems to have lasted approximately 6 months and counting!! Spring is trying to fight through but failing at the moment, but I suspect once the Easter school holidays are up, we will begin to warm up a little…always the way!

To celebrate Beltane, I like to light a fire and celebrate the summer’s arrival the way it should be done, and always when the Hawthorn flowers, following Nature rather than calendar. Up here it can be up to 3 weeks late but might be June before it flowers unless the weather system changes direction again and it warms up drastically. This was the time to have fun with friends and celebrate the warmth of the Sun on the run-up to Midsummer and the longest day but from where I am sitting typing this, having just gone out for a walk in that bitter, cold, damp wind, it is a long way from this point! You can tune into the Website on the Beltane Sabbat page for more ideas on what to do if and when it finally gets here, so thought I would run with a couple of fun bits instead.

 My magickal cup of Coffee and so much more…

The aroma of freshly ground beans is to die for, and the smell of fresh coffee wakes me in a morning, my 1^st cup of freshly brewed coffee setting me up for the day. I love my coffee, not the instant variety (wouldn’t touch it if you paid me), but fresh roasted beans from all over the world. I like to buy beans from small plantations to help their local economy and small farmers, not multi-nationals, and grind them at home as I go. Whilst inhaling a new bag of gorgeous smelling beans, I started to wonder what else these wonderful little gems of pleasure could be used for?

I have yet to see coffee naturally on the plant, and was gutted to find that when I was on honeymoon in Hawaii last September, I was staying not far from a coffee museum and plantations containing one of the best coffees in the world and was due to be harvested– Kona beans. I did drink it but didn’t put together that it was actually grown there on Big Island! DOH - a missed opportunity!! However, I bought some home and it just wasn’t the same with Scottish water even though it ours is very good water…it just shows it’s all a matter of climate!!

Thinking of coffee and its ability to get me moving in a morning, coffee beans must do the same, and it stands to reason (magickally) that beans can help get our finances moving too. Fill a shot glass with freshly roasted coffee beans, infuse with abundant vibrations and place in your money corner or, if you have Ganesh or Buddha to attract abundance on your altar, place another glass as an offering to your deity of choice and ask them to help. This stems from African-Cuban voodoo, where they offer their local beans to their deities and ancestors (and no, ground or instant coffee won’t work)!

Coffee has also been used in voodoo to cleanse a person of ‘bad juju’…add squeeze of lemon, handful salt & 2 cups strong coffee to a jug. Run a nice hot bath, perhaps warmer than usual, add the coffee mix and soak for 15-20 minutes. Let the water go, staying in the bath whilst it drains. Repeat every night for a week.

In the shop, we use our tin to inhale the aroma of fresh beans for clearing our nose when we have lost it after smelling different oils and also if we need a wake-up boost, so another thing you can do is to actually have a nice, fancy glass jar of coffee beans sat on your desk, and when tired or feel overworked and under stress, open the jar and inhale the aroma of beans for a few minutes to get your brain moving again.

After consuming all that lovely fresh coffee, so as not to waste those used coffee, I collect the grinds in a tub and add to my flower beds in the garden to help feed the plants. In my head, this surely must be an ecological fertilizer, as they were just going into the recycling anyway. It must also make for really motivated worms too!! We return pearls to the sea for sympathetic magic to bring abundance to us, so returning coffee grinds to the Earth surely works on the same basis and the Earth will help enrich our lives as we help enrich her soil!

Another use of the used coffee grinds is as a natural exfoliator…better than these Nano-plastic ones now plaguing our oceans. Half-fill a small pretty jar with some used coffee grinds and stir in a little natural oil like sunflower, olive or apricot kernel to make your own exfoliator. Use as you would normally as a facial scrub, rinse and moisturise, and store in the fridge or a cool dark cupboard. Make fresh every week.

In Turkey, extra strong coffee is served in little glasses, and I discovered on my belly dance holiday some years ago, men conduct the readings called tasseography, at the table. It is done exactly the same as for teacup readings but with the coffee grinds at the bottom of the little glasses!

Maybe now you will view your morning coffee with new eyes and your beans and grinds a little different!

 Lucky for some… let’s look at Friday 13^th…

I love finding out about the base of superstitions over centuries and this superstition actually contains two!!

Friday (Freya’s Day) has since biblical times, been regarded as the unluckiest day of the week, ever since Adam & Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden! The Bible continued this theme with the start of Noah’s Great Flood, and the final dig at Friday became Good Friday, when they crucified Jesus, and it became a day of abstinence! Friday’s deathly position continued as ‘Hangman’s Day’ through the centuries, as criminals were executed on a Friday, nicely before the weekend! Because it became known as a day of endings, superstitions began to arise regarding Fridays and especially around new beginnings: don’t begin a marriage, a new journey, project or job! People wouldn’t move house on a Friday – Friday flit, short sit!! I came from a fishing community; fishermen had to face up to the elements so would never tempt fate & set sail on a long trip on a Friday! Maybe this is also why Friday was the day to eat fish and abstain from meat! Even Chaucer wrote “And on a Friday fell all this mischance’! Did you know there are even superstitions about cutting your nails or hair on a Friday – bet that come from the witchcraft trials as there is a lot said about what witches can do with your cast-off hair and nails!

Then we come to the number 13. It is said that the 13^th day of any month is the unluckiest day of all to embark on a new enterprise, or marriage, or to set out on a journey…just like Friday! It has been associated with bad luck for hundreds of years. Scandinavians believe this because Loki was their 13^th Mythological demigod, who caused the world to be plunged into darkness! Christians have always thought 13 unlucky following 13 people at the table of the last supper on the 13^th and the 13^th person at the table was Judas the traitor… with Good Friday the next day! As a waitress, it was always seen as unlucky still to have 13 people at a table so we always set an extra place! Many buildings don’t have a 13^th floor or even a room 13 and some airplanes refuse to have a 13^th row! It is even said that you are cursed if you have 13 letters in your full name…how long did they work on this to make the crime fit the bill…  but Charles Manson, Adolfus Hitler and Theodore Bundy to name a few! Folklore even put 13 steps to the gallows, though it is also said 12 up, and 1 down! Now put that with Hangman’s Friday…are we getting the gist?

 And so, to Friday 13^th - the unluckiest day of all…

The origins of this superstition is set around Friday 13^th Oct 1307. It was believed the Knights Templar protected the Bible’s Holy Grail and they also became the 1^st ‘Bank’ carrying ‘paper’ money between countries for safety as they spread the good word! Philip 1V of France got into debt with the Knights after war with England, conspired with Pope Clement V, and on this Friday 13^th, charged the Knights Templars with Satanism, sentenced them to death and ceased all their monies, scattering escapees to the far corners of the world to avoid torture and death!

With all the superstition over ‘Friday’ and ‘13’, put them together and you have…the unluckiest day ever! Or is it? Maybe witchcraft has a lot to do with this, and their fear back then of witches and wild women in a male society. There are 13 moons a year, which mean women menstruate 13 times a year (this really scared men back then!). Covens had 13 members and worshipped the Moon. Friday was named after Freya, which means ‘lady’ in Norse, and she is the Goddess associated with love, sex, beauty, fertility, gold, war and death, all things that give women power to be who they want to be and not to be messed with, hence why Friday is also known as Witch’s day!

On a good note, any baby born on Friday 13^th is said to be a lucky baby, as he/she will prosper in anything they do.

 Turn around your finances on Friday 13^th…

Here is a good luck spell for Friday 13^th…perform every time this comes up in your calendar…

Remember the saying “Find a penny, pick it up and all day long you’ll have good luck”? We are going to take 13 pennies (copper carries speed), bury them in the garden (or ground near your home) and simply say as you do:

The 13^th is lucky on this Witch’s day so these 13 pennies will bring it my way.

I cast this spell for money today, as will work best now, so I say

These 13 little pennies out my purse today, will bring new money come what way

This will harm none in any which way, as it is lucky to be done on this 13^th day

Shop re-opening…Friday 13^th April of course…

So, as a Witch, Friday 13^th is a good day and not one to be feared…a perfect day I think to re-open the shop!!I love to laugh in the face of adversity so opening the shop on a dark moon with Mercury retrograde on Friday 13^th …why wouldn’t I? The Scottish weather has caused such problems and delays to the renovations that I am not at all ready to relaunch, but my lovely regulars won’t care so I am doing it anyway…just because it is when it is!! What’s a little chaos on a Mercury retrograde dark moon on Friday 13^th…so let’s feel the fear & do it anyway??

Moon times…

New Moon: Mon 16^th Apr @ 02.58 hrs  Full Moon: Mon 30^th April @ 01.59 hrs

New Moon: Tue 15^th May @ 12.48 hrs   Full Moon: Tue 29^th May @ 15.20 hrs

New Moon: Wed 13 Jun @ 20.44 hrs

Bright blessings and see you soon from Chris (alias the Green Witch)