The Country Witch hosts the 15 Days of Welcoming the God Blog Party!

My dear friend Willow Silverhorse will host an awesome blog party at her page starting March 15th. It'll be all about welcoming the Spring and the God. In her words:

"This blog party is about welcoming Spring and the God. Remember this is the time that the God is reborn and I want to welcome him back this year and for many years to come. If you want to participate I need guest posts about anything to do with Spring (spells, memories, your garden, stories about the God, etc.) so contact me through my contact page with your contribution and I'll get a date to you. If you want to sponsor a giveaway please contact me asap so we can work out the details. If you're a sponsor I'm giving you full control of how you want the giveaway ran, basically you can boss me around and I'll gladly do what you ask ;). Let's start organizing this party guys! I think we're going to have so much fun this year!!!"

So what are you waiting for?? I'll surely have one of my Gods to be given away, and maybe one or two extra goodies... ;)

Let's party! :)

The Weekend in Black & White

... Another weekly meme I was missing. Love to see how differently things can get when we see the world in Black and white sometimes!

This is the sky viewed through my window, a couple of weeks ago. A beautiful storm was coming:



For more B&W posts, visit here and join the fun. See you next week!

Priceless

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." ~Frederick Douglass


"Many things we need can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time his bones are formed, his mind developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is today."~Gabriela Mistral


"There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all."~Jacqueline Kennedy


"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."~Victor Hugo, Les Miserables


"The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things."~Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose


Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.~E.P. Whipple

ABC Wednesday - F is for Futhark

Hello, everybody! Oh I missed ABC Wednesday, can't believe it's already on Round 8! Hope all is well with you guys, and I do hope this year I can make the whole round, not missing a single letter. Oh well... I have already missed the first ones, I know... But here I am, bear with me... ;)

As usual, I'll try to stick to pagan-related ABC posts here. Can't wait what everybody else came up with!

This week the letter is F, and F is about the Futhark runes, which I really love dearly.



I use the Elder Futhark runes set mainly for meditation/advice purposes. It is named after the sound of its 6 first letters (F, U, Th, A, R, K), and it's the oldest set of runic alphabet used by the Germanic people back in the 2th century - there's a controversy on this, since we can't say for sure when or by who it was originated, but it must have been since the beginning of this era.
One cute note is the commonly established origin of the word rune itself, the German word raunen, that means "to whisper". It brings the touch of magick to the alphabet.

In the beautiful Nordic mythology, the God Odin sacrificed his eye - and basically his life as he knew it - to get the ultimate wisdom, as described here.

See you all next week! ;)

The giveaway winner's choice - Nuit

This weekend I created Karen Pau's Goddess, Nuit, the Egyptian Mother Goddess of the Skies.



I made her sacred bowl of water as a central embroidery, with yellow stars being poured from it along with the Moon and the Sun, and I filled Her with nutmeg, one of her sacred herbs. She's already on the way to Her new home! ;)

Deities everywhere

>> Warning: long post! <<

Hello, everybody!

Thank the gods, I've been creating more babies than I can post about! ;) I have friends/costumers who are constantly challenging me to bring new deities to life. While I love recreating the "old" ones with all the care they need, it's simply a pleasure to start a new Goddess or God. I have the feeling that another piece falls in place in this huge spiritual puzzle every time a new deity is born.

Sooo... Last year I had the chance to add some new girls and boys to my collection.

A couple that was deliciously good to play with, were the Wonder Goddess and the Super God - you know who they are in fact! ;) They're the only ones I couldn't list at my Etsy shop for obvious reasons, but are already at their new homes:





Among the new Goddesses, I had Epona, with Her horse with a loosen thread mane, and two little birds on the arms, filled with rosemary. She looks cute! :)



Nike came with golden wings and a laurel wreath proclaiming the victory for those in need, filled with dried laurel leaves:



I loved adding all the four hard tasks to the sweet Psyche (Lucas was indignant with her mother-in-law, by the way, lol!), and loving butterflies, I loved embroidering Her main symbol, with a Phi in disguise on her antennas. I filled Her with jasmine:



I had my first Voodoo Goddess ordered! As a tradition that is still a mystery to me, it was wonderful to research and create Erzulie Freda (filled with red roses), what a powerful, but hard-to-deal-with deity!



Then came the Gods...

Ares, full of anger, craving for blood, and filled with a pinch of black pepper:



Apollo... This was another sweet one to create. Music and art are some of my favorites:

Zeus, with his lightning and filled with sage, was hard to say goodbye, my little witch loved Him (I'll need to make him one soon):



The adorable Eros with His Psyche landing on his arm, filled with red roses and drieed apple:


On Poor Hephaestus (I always felt so sorry for his sad fate!) I put a little piece of real chain over his forge, and a pinch of calendula in the filling:



So far, that's what I have new at my Etsy. Hoping to create a new whole set of deities with all the suggestions you all gave me at the last giveaway! ;)
Oh and I'm finishing Nut, the giveaway winner's choice! By tomorrow afternoon I might have Her posted, She's getting sweet...

Thank you all who had the patience of scrolling down all this long post, and wishing you a great week!

Putting things in the right perspective

Those who know me here, know that I'm an optmistic witch. Almost a Pollyana. I tend to see the light even in the darkest tunnel (much for the despair of some, lol), and I seldom let grey thoughts to invade my mind. But sometimes I doubt myself. I don't feel like I will be able to change my life in the direction I want. I don't think I'll ever move from where I am now. I doubt my ability to create my own path, I doubt my capacity of renewing myself. Sometimes a black veil covers my eyes. Oh well, I'm human. But I fight this feeling hard and don't let it get the best of me. I light a candle, I invoke the Goddess, I call the God, I ask for strenght. I breath. I stop and look at my little witch, that smile always on his face, the faith he has on me... he trusts me, he thinks I'm wise and strong and I can do anything. Seems like since he was born he feels this way about his mom. So I take a deep breath, take off the veil from my face, and I can live another day as it must. I feel okay again. ;)

... And the Winner is...

Congrats to the lucky winner (of course you will all have to watch the video to know if you were the lucky one, lol!)! I'll create your deity still this week, keeping you posted!

Thanks everybody who joined the fun! And also thank you for all the great ideas you guys gave me, I have some awesome deities to work on! ;)

Soon we'll have another giveaway, stay tuned!

Little witch's dream...

We have this old habit at home of waking up in the morning and, during breakfast, talking about the dreams we had the previous night. Lucas is constantly amazing me with the descriptions of his dreams, for the colorful sites, the funny childish stories, and many times, the deep symbolism they have.

Today we talked a lot about death, ghosts, the ones he had already seen at home (a talk that crossed the day!). He told me and made a couple of drawings about his last one... I'd love some insights here... :)

So we were at a lake in a long wooden boat with two telescopes onboard. A black regular one, and a yellow magical telescope that showed everything that couldn't be seen at unaided eye. With it, Lucas watched a island, and to get there, we had to cross a tunnel that could only be seen with the magic device.



In front of the island, there was a big floating house with 7 floors:



Once inside, he met an old lady with white hair in one of the rooms, sitting by a desk full of pieces of paper and a can of pencils. She told him that her husband had died and was haunting the house's visitors for years.

... So the ghost (an old black man, very strong with defined muscles) came and started trying to haunt him too, but he failed, since my little witch wasn’t afraid of him, just wanting to help. They went to one of the rooms, where they had a talk about the reasons why the old man was being so bad (he can’t remember exactly this part! gah!). After the talk, the ghost thanked him and said he didn’t need to haunt anybody else again. He would live in the house but in peace.

After that, we jumped into the boat and came back home. End of the dream.

Sometimes I wonder...

Of connecting and working

One wonderful point about working at home (let's see how long I can make it this way, though...) on my Goddesses is exactly being able to feel connected to Them all the time on a very special way.

When I start a new deity, or when I'm recreating one for a customer, there's something that changes inside of me. I don't work on any specific room of the house. It can be my bunkbed, the family room's sofa, by the kitchen's table, outside, chatting with my son... What matters is the respectful way I deal with it. As if the deities would endlessly start being reborn at every stitch, at every change of thread color, at every pinch of herb I add to their filling. Slowly stretching, opening their eyes under my touch.

It really makes me feel good to organize what I need, and start making the symbols that will be embroidered, to comfortably sit and keep the flow of the needle, stitch after stitch, until a Goddess or a God is ready. It's a bit of a inner trance, if you know what I mean, but that doesn't disturb me to what's happening aroung. As (thank the gods, knock on wood) I'm constantly getting new orders, it's an endless connection that pleases and feeds my spiritual path on a special way, that matches everything else I do as a Wiccan.