Midsummer celebrations vary a great deal. In the Sakha Republic, they tie a horse to a pole and dance around it, or bet on reindeer races. In Portugal, you can hit your neighbour on the head with a plastic hammer, which amusing habit I think should be much more widely practised generally. In Norway children…
Category: cocktails
Dream A Little Dream of Me
“Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?” – Edgar Allan Poe “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” – Ernest Hemingway Hey there all you cool cats and kittens – let’s make a Love Dream! This is a spell to…
A Frigga BlĂłt with Runes & Lagoons
Today is the day of Frigga’s Blot – much more than just the wife of the All-Father Odin, she is the goddess of prophecy & silence, wifehood & motherhood. She is a sky goddess, responsible for spinning and weaving the fates.  To celebrate Frigga this Friday, a domestic setting is appropriate, as she is closely…
Magic Tonka Beans: Illicitly Delicious
The fragrant tonka bean is a native of South America, a product of the cumaru tree (dipteryx odorata). They have a lovely vanilla-almond-slightly fruity aroma, and in hoodoo traditions these sweet-smelling beans are used for love and money magic. It’s said that you should work with them in only in odd numbers. They can be…
Rhubarb, or The Magic Stick
Rhubarb is a very ancient plant. When rhubarb began to grow, the Dead Sea was just getting sick. When rhubarb started out, history lessons were called “What is happening right now”. When rhubarb was discovered, rainbows were all in black and white. And so on…  You get what I’m saying. Rhubarb has been used as…
Revels with the devils on Walpurgis Night
Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight? At Samhain AKA Halloween every October, the boundary between our world and that of the spirits becomes thinner and often breaks, allowing supernatural forces to hold sway for the night. At the exact opposite side of the year, on April 30th, the same is true of…
Throw a Wicker Man Party for Beltane!
Beltane is one of the best festivals of the year in my opinion – a celebration of fire, flowers and creativity! It’s also the backdrop for the 1973 Christopher Lee gem The Wicker Man, the film about a hapless policeman investigating a missing child on the mysterious Scottish island of Summerisle. If you’ve never seen…
Flora & Faunus
Sex! Now that I have your attention, we can explore the festival of Floralia, which is held between April 28th and May 3rd, symbolizing the renewal of the cycle of life, and kicking off our Beltane celebrations.  It is celebrated with flowers, drinking, hunting, games, and sex. See, it didn’t take me long to get…
The Green Man Cometh
The Green Man is a mysterious chap. A nature deity, he is usually depicted as an anthropomorphic form composed entirely of lush, green vegetation; his face sprouting leaves instead of hair and branches streaming from his mouth. Interestingly, though he appears to be obviously pagan, the Green Man peers out from the architectural details of…
Nice Weather For Ducks
It’s raining a lot in London at the moment. I don’t know why anybody would be surprised by this, because April is famous for April showers.  But people constantly comment and complain about it, and quite honestly, as you prepare to leave for work to the sound of gusts of wet wind crashing against the…
The New City Witches Cocktail Coven 