Upcoming Enchantments Events to mark down!

 Good Afternoon,

Well Spring is upon us and it's time to get up, get out of the house and start moving our bodies with the rhythm of the awakening earth! 

The following events are interesting and you may wish to attend:

Ostara Celebration at Enchantments.  This upcoming Saturday, March 30th at 10 am we are hosting an Ostara Celebration with a Spring ritual, and pot luck feast. Please call Enchantments at 860-791-6033 to make sure there is space available and to find out what you can bring to the feast!  The Ritual starts at 10 am and the celebration goes until noon. There is no cost for this Celebration.

Intro to Pagans, Witches and Wicca at Manchester Community College, is a four Monday evening short course that I ,Ms. Faith,  teaches to help you understand the basics about Paganism, Witches and Wicca. This course runs from April 8th to April 29th and the class is held from 7-9 pm. The first three classes are held at MCC and consist of Power Point presentations allowing for questions and answers. The fourth class is a potions workshop held at Enchantments where each student gets to make their own potion and learns the recipes for other potions that can be made at home. If you are interested and there are still spaces available please call the college at 860-512-3232 and register with a credit card over the phone. The cost of the entire course is $65.00.This course is held in classroom GPA GP155 in the Great Path Department of MCC.

Grill-A-Pagan.  This is a panel being held on Sunday April 14th, at the UCONN Student Union at 2110 Hillside Rd, Storrs, CT in Room 104 and it is a question and answer period for two hours from 2 - 4pm. A moderator will accept questions from the audience to pose to the panel regarding Paganism, Witchcraft and Wicca. Tthe audience will be made up primarily of members from the UCONN community. I will sit on the panel along with other Pagans from CT to answer questions. It would be great to have you in the audience! I don't believe there is a cost for this event. 

These are the events that I, on behalf of Enchantments, will be participating in over the next month or so. I hope you can attend, I look forward to seeing you there! 


Peace and Happiness 

 


© 2010-2013 Faith M. McCann. Portions of this blog posting may include materials from my book “Enchantments School for the Magickal Arts First Year Magickal Studies.” For more information, see www.enchantmentsschool.com or go to the title of tonight's discussion and click, it will link you to my school's website. Please note that the copying and/or further distribution of this work without express written permission is prohibited. If you know someone who would like my work, please send them this link. 


 If you or they would like to be included on our daily email distribution list send me an e mail with your email address to be included. If you ever wish to unsubscribe to this blog, please contact me and you will be immediately removed from our list.

Happy Ostara!

Good Evening!

Tonight I am posting two discussions. The first is the latest happenings with the kittens of Enchantments and then this one, a discussion on Ostara.

Ostara, The Spring/Vernal Equinox. This day is of equal lengths, both daylight and darkness. Each day from today  onwards will become a bit longer with daylight hours and a bit shorter with dark hours. We are in the midst of spring and heading towards summer.

Remember the discussion we had at Imbolc, approximately six weeks ago? It was about planning what you wish to harvest in your life later in this year. Where Imbolc was about planning, now Ostara is about planting the seeds, to get you started. Think about what you wish to bring to fruition later this year. Perhaps its a better job you wish to have by the end of this year. This is the time to be 'planting those seeds', which could mean updating and filling out your resume, going on interviews, or speaking to the right people to help you progress up the ladder of success.

For those that wish to become more magickal, to live and experience the magickal life, you've thought about it, planned for it, now plant the seeds by taking classes, reading magickal books, practicing casting circles, casting candle spells and attending events with like minded people. 

Enchantments will be holding an open circle for Ostara on Saturday, March 30th ( a bit later than usual, but we are planning on having the circle outdoors, if possible). Please feel free to attend, if you can. We follow up our open circles with a pot luck feast, so if you plan to attend, please call Ms. Faith at 860-791-6033 during business hours to find out what we need brought to the feast. We also need a call so we can plan for the correct number of people to attend. Also, if you have a hand held instrument, such as a hand drum, tambourine or maracas, feel free to bring them for the ritual dance part of the circle.

So start thinking about what you wish to have manifest in your life later this year, and then decide how you will plant the seeds for that to manifest, and Happy Planting!


Peace and Happiness!

 
© 2010-2013 Faith M. McCann. Portions of this blog posting may include materials from my book “Enchantments School for the Magickal Arts First Year Magickal Studies.” For more information, see www.enchantmentsschool.com or go to the title of tonight's discussion and click, it will link you to my school's website. Please note that the copying and/or further distribution of this work without express written permission is prohibited. 


If you know someone who would like my work, please send them this link. If you or they would like to be included on our daily email distribution list send me an e mail with your email address to be included. If you ever wish to unsubscribe to this blog, please contact me and you will be immediately removed from our list.

The Kittens of Enchantments Saga continues . . .

Good Evening,

This is a picture of Baby Boy Shadow, one of the kittens of Enchantments. He was born along with two brothers and a sister on December 8th, 2008. I wanted to share his story with you because today he went for his tri-annual wellness visit to the vet and I started to think back to the evening they were born.

For those who are not aware of the kittens of Enchantments, on October 22nd, 2008 their mother, a small black cat with a white tip on the very end of her tail walked into Enchantments and came right up the stairs, along with a few students who were coming to class, and walked into my office. She proceeded to curl around my ankles, I had been standing in my office talking to a student, and started to purr. I looked down and said "Well, hello!"  What a brave little cat to come into a strange building with people she didn't know. It was still  warm out, that October and I put her back outside in case she had just wandered away from home.  But I decided, if she was still around in the morning, considering she was a black cat and Halloween was just around the corner, that I would take her in, just for her safety.

This is Calli, a tiny little mama cat that had some amazing, big babies!


Well, the next morning she was still there, hiding in one of our outdoor cauldrons! I brought her in, fixed her  up with food, water and litter box and welcomed her to Enchantments. A few days later it became apparent she was pregnant. I took her to the vet and made sure she had medical care and then on December 8th, she started to give birth. Myself, along with Ms. Laurel who also works at Enchantments, acted as midwives as Calli (the name I gave the small black mama to be) gave birth to four perfect, beautiful kittens.  Baby Boy Shadow, pictured above and again further down, was the last to be born. He came out completely black, like a little shadow, and was by far the smallest of the bunch.

I remember he was slow to strengthen in the beginning. He was slower than the others and ofttimes just laid back and looked weak and sickly. I brought him to the vet and they said he was generally healthy, just small and a typical runt of the litter.   Later that day he was just laying on his side and he looked very listless and weak.  I went home and couldn't help thinking about him. Later that night, it was quite late, I decided to go back to Enchantments to check on him. The mother cat had moved all her babies into the warm closet in my office, where she felt safer, and I saw the little one looked even more listless. He just laid still in my hand when I picked him up.

I thought about what I could do magickally and decided to take down from a hook one of my cloaks, an emerald green cloak, that I had worn in ritual. I knew green was the color for physical healing and I thought the energy from the cloak might be just what the poor little one needed. I put the cloak on the floor of the closet and placed mama and babies on it. I held the littlest one and felt healing energy flowing from my hands into his tiny little body, then asked the Goddess to bless him and to make him stronger. I laid him down and went home that night.  When I got home I lit a candle and again asked the Goddess for her help in making Baby Boy Shadow stronger and healthier.

The next morning I went to work and had a happy surprise! Baby Boy Shadow was tumbling around with his bigger brothers and sister and nursing with much more vigor than he had before. In a few weeks he was as big as his siblings and he had a voracious appetite.  As a matter of fact, Shadow was the first kitten to climb up a large bag of dry cat food (generously donated by a fan of the kittens) chew a hole in the corner of the bag and start to chow on the dry kibble! We had to take the dry food away from him as the vet said it was too early for him to chew dry food and he could choke! But it certainly didn't stop him from trying.

I thought of Baby Boy's earliest days today when he was at the vets and he weighed in at a respectable and healthy, for him, 16 lbs! The vet said he was larger boned and had a larger frame than his siblings, so 16lbs was a perfect weight for him. He outweighs his siblings and this is from the 'runt' of the litter who got a magickal start in life. Not to be outdone Raffie weighs in at 14.5 lbs, Mickey at 15 lbs and Gabbie (the girl) a not too shabby 10 lbs!

This is Baby Boy Shadow today

The vet said the kittens are healthy in all respects and should live long, happy lives! They will, if I have anything to do with it, .  .  .  and I do!






 Peace and Happiness


© 2010-2013 Faith M. McCann. Portions of this blog posting may include materials from my book “Enchantments School for the Magickal Arts First Year Magickal Studies.” For more information, see www.enchantmentsschool.com or go to the title of tonight's discussion and click, it will link you to my school's website. Please note that the copying and/or further distribution of this work without express written permission is prohibited. 

If you know someone who would like my work, please send them this link. If you or they would like to be included on our daily email distribution list send me an e mail with your email address to be included. If you ever wish to unsubscribe to this blog, please contact me and you will be immediately removed from our list.

Let me say it again , all sage is NOT the same when it comes to cleansing space!

 Good Evening,

Ofttimes in my humble  little witch shop, Enchantments, located in Manchester, CT USA, I come across a customer who is looking for sage. Specifically, for sage bundles used for burning to clear negative energies from a space, room or building, even for the body!  Invariably I run across many who have been sold, from other shops, the wrong sage!  Not that these shops are doing something unethical, just many are misinformed due to a book published many years ago that was more vague than specific.

Let me explain in detail. The sage that has notoriety in clearing an area of harmful, negative, frenetic energies is called desert sage also known as sage brush or tumbleweed.  The Native Americans would start prairie fires years ago to clean out the old, stagnant and dead weeds and brush allowing new growth and flowers and plant life to take hold and bloom. Unfortunately the confusion comes from another common name for desert sage which is white sage.  Here, on the East Coast, white sage is commonly known as garden sage. My research reveals that several decades ago, 'white sage' was listed as the sage for cleansing and clearing in a popular new age book. This white sage'  was misinterpreted on the East Coast as the local Eastern garden sage, which is also a culinary herb.  They are not the same!

Yet, many magickal stores will sell the garden sage wrapped in bundles for clearing purposes. In truth, the magickal property of garden sage is longevity and aligning with ancestor energy, NOT cleansing or clearing. It even smells bad, in my opinion and the order lingers and is not a pleasant experience. Whereas burning desert sage has a different herby smell and causes an area to immediately feeling lighter and more open.

Know your sage! Here's some photographs to help you determine the correct sage for your purposes:

The above picture is desert sage in its natural habitat where it grows out West in Arizona, California, Nevada and in other Western United States.  The lower photo is desert sage wrapped in a bundle meant to be burned and smoldered. It has long, slender whips of branches and looks more like hay or grass bundled together.

The next two pictures are of common Eastern Garden sage and has wide white leaves (hence the misunderstanding) and the bottom photo shows a sage bundle with the wide flat leaves easily identifiable.

Now, having written this discussion I'm sure to get all sorts of naysayers telling me I'm wrong, but I don't come by my information lightly or without credentials. I use the research and knowledge of one magickal soul that has sadly been lost to us, Mr. Scott Cunningham.  I reference his wonderful book "The Encyclopedia of Magickal Herbs" where he discusses the magickal properties of many herbs, plants, grasses and trees. For those of you who are familiar with Mr. Cunningham's work, I am sure you'll agree he really was a notable scholar when it came to magickal herbs and plants. I refer to his teachings proudly and stand by my opinions on burning sage for cleansing purposes.  But hey, if you've often used garden sage for cleansing purposes and it works for you, Great! Keep using it. It's harmless and you must do what you feel is right. But if you're up for trying something new, I would give desert sage a chance, you might be pleasantly surprised!










© 2010-2013 Faith M. McCann. Portions of this blog posting may include materials from my book “Enchantments School for the Magickal Arts First Year Magickal Studies.” For more information, see www.enchantmentsschool.com or go to the title of tonight's discussion and click, it will link you to my school's website. Please note that the copying and/or further distribution of this work without express written permission is prohibited. 

If you know someone who would like my work, please send them this link. If you or they would like to be included on our daily email distribution list send me an e mail with your email address to be included. If you ever wish to unsubscribe to this blog, please contact me and you will be immediately removed from our list.

Clearing your life to move forward magickally

Good Evening,

I think many of us wish to eliminate things in our lives that no longer serve us, so that we may better live our lives.  But the energy by which we do this can hinder us or help us along. What do I mean?

Do you hold grudges? Keeping the anger, resentment and negative emotions directed towards a person or event would be holding onto that energy and allowing it to work against you, slowly and at times imperceptibly wearing you down,  making you tighten up, becoming less open, loving, accepting and making you more distrustful, bitter, jaded and hard.

Now, this doesn't mean we need to forgive and forget. Not at all. Somethings can't be forgiven, instead I accept them. Now, I don't mean acceptance as condoning something, but accept that they have happened, put them side and move on.  especially when what has happened can't be changed in anyway by you. remember, we can only change ourselves and many times we can only change our next response to a situation.

It's not necessarily a good thing to forget either, lest you wish to set yourself up for similar disappointments and heartaches down the road. By all means use the experiences or dealing with certain people to teach you. Then don't forget the lesson. Just put aside the anger, the hatred if there was any, the disappointment and sadness.  Take the lesson and allow it to help you make other choices in your life.

This goes for people also. Some people, frankly, are not healthy to have in your life. Period. Whether they are blood relatives or not. Keeping them either on the peripheral or removing them completely from your life may be a healthy choice for you to make.  But I never think of removing someone from my life as a failure on my part, but a success!  As I grow older I know who and what I wish to spend my life on and I refuse to waste precious time and energy on those who are not healthy for me to be around. We are not meant to get along with everyone. Some people have agendas that for us are unhealthy to be a part of. By not having them in my life, I am happier, more whole and my life is much more they way I want it to be. 

But, does it take a bit of courage and strength to initiate a removal of a person or circumstance from your life? You betcha! And no one will do it for you, it's up to you.  Magickally you can use black candles to help eliminate the negative energies from your life, which may include a person's specific energies. We also use smudge sticks to clear an area, building, room or office of harmful, negative energies but ultimately the removal of yourself from a harmful situation or the removal of a harmful person from your life will come down to you. 

Peace and Happiness




© 2010-2013 Faith M. McCann. Portions of this blog posting may include materials from my book “Enchantments School for the Magickal Arts First Year Magickal Studies.” For more information, see www.enchantmentsschool.com or go to the title of tonight's discussion and click, it will link you to my school's website. Please note that the copying and/or further distribution of this work without express written permission is prohibited. 

 If you know someone who would like my work, please send them this link. If you or they would like to be included on our daily email distribution list send me an e mail with your email address to be included. If you ever wish to unsubscribe to this blog, please contact me and you will be immediately removed from our list.