Updated Tea Flavors

Presented in a 6 fl oz tin.  Roughly 14 cups of tea depending on preparation strength.

-Van Van Tea: The most popular Hoodoo oil in a Tea form.  Lemongrass tea removes Obstacles with just a hint of cinnamon and caffeine. Defeat Mercury Retrograde! Purification.  Banishing.  Ritual Preparation. 

-Fiery Wall of Protection: Surround yourself with this caffeinated, protective fire. Reading the 23rd Psalm over your tea, optional.  This cinnamon and ginger blend helps fill in the gaps in your defenses.  

-Come to Me: This spicy milk and honey flavored tea is a love drawing blend to bring the right lover your way.  Just a hint of cinnamon flavor means it is good with or without sugar and the rooibos base means no caffeine. 

-Peaceful Home: This comforting, caffeine free blend of vanilla, lavender and peppermint will help you focus on the path you need to get your house in order.  Bring peace back into your home with this comforting blend.  It’s your favorite cardigan with a hint of lavender. 

-Helping Hand: Feeling hit from all sides?  Get a leg up with this caffeine free blend.  Energetically promote healing, calm and boost your luck too! Soft mint and vanilla lifts you over the hurdles life brings your way. 

-Meditation: This fulfilling, herbal blend of herbs will  get you to the right state of mind.  Calm a racing mind and unwind.

-The All Seeing Eye: Boost your intuition with nutty flavors of wisdom and higher self.  Caffeine free blend turns your third eye into a magnifying glass.

-Gossip Stop: Others using their words against you? This Lemony fresh blend includes slippery elm to let their words pass you by and Burdock will keep their mud from sticking to your good name. It’s caffeine free too!

-Crown of Success: You deserve Success!  All your hard work is paying off with this soft and spicy blend of citrus and delicate florals will have you in the right frame of mind to get out of your own way and a bit of caffeine to help you achieve your goals. (Color Purple and Gold)

-Adam and Eve: This sultry black tea blend is perfect for all matters of love, faithful partnership and attraction.  This mildly caffeinated blend has enough vibrancy to keep you and your special someone up until the job is done! 

-Florida Water Tea: This blend of Clove, Orange and a hint of lavender will leave you energetically cleansed, lightly caffeinated and ready to take on the world!  Great with or without sugar!

-Triple Fast Luck: This light mint and vanilla blend paves the way and cinnamon brings your good luck on in a hurry.  Lightly caffeinated and great for a gentle morning ritual, brings good luck all day.   

-Holy Spirit: A lightly floral and green tea base with a soft, soul quenching taste.  Cleanse your space and yourself with this blessing tea.

-My-Tea Tea:  This mighty blend boosts inner strength with an empowering (and caffeinated) blend of Chai, cinnamon, ginger and lemongrass.  Instead of leaping tall buildings with a single bound, you’ll be picking them up to walk under them.  


http://blackthornhoodooblends.com

Of Green and Glass: Dealing with Loss

Of Green and Glass:

Where Down to Earth Solutions and a Glass Edge Meet

By Goewin GreenWitch

Dear Goewin,

            It’s Samhain, and I’m conflicted.  I have always adored this holiday, and have since I was a child.  It was always more than the candy, and the chance to be someone else for the night.  I truly believed, even as a child that the Spirits I saw during my daily life were more easily understood at “Hallowe’en”. 

            My conflict comes from the series of events from the last year.  You see, my brother died this past spring, and it’s not clear as to whether his death was accidental or a suicide.  The police say there were drugs in his system and he stumbled onto the train tracks in his back yard.  Since no one knows for sure if it was an accident or not, it’s causing a lot of problems in our family. 

            My other brother makes things worse, by announcing that because he is recently “saved” he believes that our brother is burning in hell for having committed suicide.  Apparently he found Jesus last month in jail and that makes him an expert. 

            I’d love to celebrate Samhain and Honor him as I would any of my beloved dead, but I don’t feel his is “really” dead.  I’ve seen him, his spirit, a few months after his death, not in passing but for extended periods.  He asked me to tell our father that he was okay.  My dad has just now started to seem like his old self and I don’t want to hurt him further by mentioning it.

Do I know if he committed suicide?  No. I was too mad at my brother for dying to speak to him when he appeared to me. So all I know is that he says he’s okay.  Obviously (to me) if he can pop in to say he’s okay, then he’s not burning in hell.  Some might say that this was just my imagination brought on by grief, but I really believe it was him. 

            I feel bad that I wouldn’t talk to him when he showed up so unexpectedly, and he hasn’t come back.  How do I go about my Samhain plans feeling like I’ve abandoned my brother when he needed me?  I can’t tell my father he’s okay.  My mother and other family members have seen ghosts and communicated with them, so I know he would believe me, but I don’t want to remind him of his pain, either.  Do I mourn a suicide victim, or just the victim of an accident?

-Sad at Samhain

           

Dear Sad,

            That’s an awful lot to process for one person.  Any one part of that is enough to upset someone, and for you to be dealing with it at once can be hard.  I know you got dealt a crap hand in all of this, but you’re going to have to figure out a way to deal.  Life isn’t always fair, but I can tell you are a tough cookie, and you’ll do fine.  Let’s take this piece by piece. 

            Your brother’s death is a hard enough problem to deal with by itself.  It’s hard to have closure when you know the how of his death, but not the why.  I know it’s hard to talk about; suicide is almost as much a taboo in the Pagan community as it is in the mundane. 

Not many people know that there is a Goddess just for suicide victims.  Ixtab is a Mayan Goddess, who is believed to carry the souls of suicide victims in her heart to Paradise.  I’m sure if suicide were involved, she carried your brother in her heart to a place where he could rest and deal with what happened before moving on. 

I know you want to honor your brother’s memory by letting your father know he is okay, but I think the time for this is down the way, after he has had time to overcome his grief at his loss.  

With the common belief in reincarnation and the Summerland as a part of Wiccan and some Pagan beliefs it’s common to hear that victims of suicide weren’t capable of dealing with the lessons they chose for this lifetime and that they’ll need to repeat them in the next.  Whether or not he was an accident victim or not, I firmly believe that his coming to you to let you know he was okay was the important part. 

            Your brother’s assertions about heaven and hell come from his desire to exert some control over his loss and his own feelings.  Even though it is hurtful to you to hear him say these things, it’s merely his way of dealing.  It doesn’t make it right, but I hope that helps you understand where he’s coming from. 

            Samhain is the perfect time to let him know that you love him and miss him.  You can set up a special ancestral altar, and give photos of him prominence. Talk to him as if he were standing in front of you.  I’m sure wherever he is, he will hear you.  Don’t muddy your celebration with feelings of guilt.  You responded as many people would.  Samhain is the time to celebrate the times you enjoyed with your loved ones, not to concentrate on their death.  On this day he is not an accident victim, or a suicide victim, he’s your brother.

Of Green and Glass: Make (Martial) Arts, not War

Dear Goewin,

            I’ve been on the Wiccan path for quite a few years now, and recently started attending Tae Kwon Do classes with my kids.  It’s fun for us, and I like being able to do something with them, instead of dropping them off somewhere.  How do I reconcile my enjoyment of martial arts with what I have been taught about the Rede and rules governing “harm none”?
                                                                                                            -Martial, not Mean

Dear Martial,

            Doing things with your kids is not wrong.  Enjoying activities that get them out of the house, away from TV and video games is not wrong.  While we’re at it, protecting yourself is not wrong!  

What is wrong is the people in the world that think it’s  okay to get what they want in the world by taking it from other people.  Every day I see it.  Even in this “small town”.  On the news each night, I see people kicking in doors on other people’s homes, to steal and do whatever they like to get whatever they like.  

That does not mean that you are somehow a “bad” person for wanting to protect you and yours!  The Rede may say “Harm None” but allowing someone to come into your home to hurt you, or your family, steal from you and abuse you and then to walk away unscathed?  That’s harm.  That person is going to go do it to someone else, and then their harm is on you as well because you allowed this person to continue harming others.  Let's not forget, there are plenty of Wiccans who don't even follow the Rede, but that's a topic for another day.

Does this make you a “mean” person?  No.  You are not going around kicking puppies, right?  Then to Tartarus with them.  Does this mean that you are looking to get into a fight “just so you can use what you know”?  Absolutely not.  I’m sure that by now you have gotten that from your instructor. The aim of martial arts is not to start fights, but to be able to avoid them. 

            

            I’m sure you have no moral objection to carrying an umbrella in case of rain, am I right?  I look at martial arts in the same way. What you learn in the dojo and its real world application is a tool.  You have it in case you need it, not so you can use it every day.  I feel the same way about responsible gun ownership, but that’s a different topic.  

The bottom line here is, don’t ever let anyone tell you that it is not okay to protect your family in the way you see fit, as long as it is responsible and legally protected.  They don’t have to live your life, or protect your family, that’s your job.  If it feels right to you, go for it. If it bothers them that much, they don’t need to be your friend. 

Boldness & Magic

Step Up!

     “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:




Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”

-William Hutchinson Murray (1913-1996), from his 1951 book entitled The Scottish Himalayan.

http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth12.htm



     I learned this as one of the belt creeds in my Martial arts training. (Even with the wrong attribution.) But the point for me wasn't the person who said it. It was this "stop living for everyone and everything else" mentality. Stop waiting to live your life. Grab life by the balls and do something with it.  

     When in my teens a dear friend once said to me,"If you're bored, you are boring."  I have lived my life since that moment, to never be bored again.

One Golden Rule, slightly tarnished

The Wiccan Rede
From Pagan Prompts

While I know some of you are not Wiccan, I do know that lots of people follow a 'golden rule' of sorts. Do you follow the Wiccan Rede ("And it harm none, do as you will.")? Or some variant of?
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Part One: To Rede and Rite.
I taught an entire class on the Rede at one point; as a teaching duo. Neither myself nor the other instructor follow the Rede. Several students in the past have been shocked into silence at that statement. The assumption by one student was clear. "Well you don't have any morals!", she stated with her lower lip thrust out.

"I most certainly do", I assured the class. "'Rede' means 'to advise' and is not, as many new Wiccans assert the Wiccan version of the Ten Commandments." The student in question spent the rest of the class standing against the rear wall, arms crossed, and a scowl on her face.

Whether or not you follow the Rede, finding your own morals and making the choices for yourself, is what is important. We find our moral centers at different times in life, and through our own set of experiences. Some feel it is wrong to take a life, period. Our Soldiers and Law Enforcement are occasionally called upon to take a life in the line of duty to spare others. This is not a duty they take on lightly, but for the good of all. Whether or not you agree with a single action by police or military, they are doing what they feel is right for everyone.

Some Wiccans come from Traditions where they teach you to "do what is necessary", instead of refusing harm; a previous Tradition of mine is one such. It was founded by former abuse victims, who saw nothing wrong with binding those intent on doing others harm. We were taught that to refuse harm in the name of the Rede, rather than face evil and stop it was just as wrong. Again, it comes back to forming your own guidelines, rather than depending on an all encompassing rule.

An oft quoted movie once stated, "There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men." Good people stand by and allow evil things to happen so often, the phenomenon has its own name, "Genovese Syndrome". It may be hard or scary to come to the aid of another person, so stopping the harm before it happens to someone else could be the next step.

Living as best you can isn't so bad, is it? Gathering together with your fellows and celebrating your lives, trials and tributes is beautiful. The full version of the Rede is a beautiful poem. It has great ideas, and hints for living your life. For example: 'Elder be the Lady's tree, burn it not or cursed ye'll be.' Elder is a purgative, if you burn it, it will make you sick.


Part Two: Black and White, Not always right.
On the flip side, we have Victor Anderson's quote, "White magic is poetry. Black magic is anything that works." The idea of attributing color to magic is a popular one, but lacks vision.

Is healing "white" magic or "black" magic? Most of my students respond, "white". However, if your healing ritual prolongs someone's suffering in a losing battle with cancer, the line is no longer as clear. Buying someone flowers sounds like a nice thing to do, but if I'm only doing it so that I can butter you up to tell you I side swiped your car in the parking lot, the line between perceived good and bad gets thinner.

The reason I agree with Victor Anderson is we aren't omniscient. No matter how well we try to see the outcome of our spell work, there is always some possibility that we can not see. Need a job, do a spell, right? However, if you do a spell, are you keeping a mother of three on unemployment? If you work to get a specific job, are you closing the window to an even better job? If a spell is needed, make sure to leave room for the Gods to give you better than you can dream of.

Let's be clear, spell work is a LAST resort, not the first. If you really need to get your supplies out and connect, light some incense and meditate or cast circle and talk to the Gods.

In closing, it's not the Rule that should be Golden, it's you.
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And in Blog related news, my Aphrodite post goes live July 13th!