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End of the Year Portals
I have always had a fascination with portals. Gates, doors, windows, entryways, doorways, holes, archways, hallways… any sort of portal, really. They delineate where one place ends and another place begins and the portal itself is in between places. The amazing thing is when you see a portal is that once you go through it, you are no longer where you once were. Being no longer where you once were, you are, in some small way, no longer who you once were. Things are entirely different once you pass through a portal. You move from one place to another and change from one person to another. To move through a…
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The Witch’s Jar – Good and Bad
Hallo all! So, I was thinking about this after writing my last piece on the cleansing and blessing rituals I enjoy for Samhain. For those of you unfamiliar with the Witch’s Jar, let me tell you about it. It’s a curse where you take odious things, such as urine, feces, rusty nails, broken glass, and noxious substances, a photo of your target, a baneful wish for them, and place them all in a jar. Before sealing the lid, you speak your ill wishes for them into the jar, then seal it up – not just by placing the lid on it, but buy wrapping it in plastic, duct tape, or…
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Writing on Samhain
So, those who ask me what Halloween traditions I celebrate are told about two very similar rituals that I do. One is to let go of the old and cleanse myself of their energies, and the other is to bring in the bounty of what I want for the next year. The rituals are very similar, though there are some very important differences. Both of them involve grabbing a pen and some paper and writing out my desires. To cleanse, I write out all of the things I want to let go of. Things that hurt me, things I thought or felt, nightmares I may have had, memories I no…
