Categories
Sabbats, etc.

Mabon 2024

Happy Fall to Everyone in the Northern Hemisphere and Happy Spring to Everyone in the Southern Hemisphere!

Happy Mabon to all who celebrate! Happy Autumnal Equinox to people of the Northern Hemisphere! (Happy Spring to the Southern Hemisphere people!)

We read fall poems and sang fall songs at Bell Street Chapel to mark the occasion. I have joined the choir, plus I suggested a couple of the poems to read, so I ended up getting up 6 times during the service. Busy, but very fun!

Then MumBetty & I got crepes and tea from Schasteâ. I tried a new-to-me delicious Pu-erh Tuo Cha Tea, and the Eggs and Tapenade Savory Crepe. Delicious!

Next the Boston Austen Book Club had our Summer meeting (one day after summer). As noted, it was an “easy one,” where we just discussed screen adaptations of Austen. I still haven’t watched Fire Island. I have to get on that! Next month for the Fall 2024 meeting, we’re discussing a murder mystery, just in time for spooky season, with Halloween and Samhain coming up. The titled is “The Murder of Mr. Wickham” by Claudia Gray. I’ll have an event page up soon!

And finally Betty and I watched football, and I helped her with her chores. I bribed Baby with a bunch of Greenies and peanut butter, and was able to do a dry shampoo, tail hair clipping, dingleberry removal (gag), and a thorough eye gunk wiping (also gag but not as bad).

Additionally I made a seasonal playlist of fall-ish feeling Tori Amos songs. You can find the playlist on my YouTube Channel, and the playlist is called “A mos, Tori for Fall.”

(YouTube Music only sorts alphabetically or by recently saved and you can’t choose the letter you want to go to from the list, you just have to scroll. Since I listen to Tori so much, I manipulated the listing for her so it would appear at the top by using her last name with a space after it. Silly but it works!)

And I mixed some of my body oils to create two new, lush scents for Fall: Vetiver, lavender, and patchouli for one; and rose, patchouli, and amber for the other.

And you bet I am well stocked on Pumpkin Spice flavored things for my coffee, because I am a Pumpkin Spice kinda witch. Heh heh heh.

I also made these graphics on time-ish, for a change!

Including this one to use as a YouTube banner…

A very busy sabbat!

Have a Happy Fall, Y’all!

Categories
Activist Witch Sabbats, etc.

Lughnasadh 2024

Happy Lughnasadh! I am celebrating by taking a trip with my Witches of Weymouth to Salem at the end of the month.

I’m also working on my “Liberty Spell” from now until about 5 days after Samhain AKA doing what I can to volunteer time for the Harris / Walz campaign.

If you’re interested in supporting the Kamala Harris Kamala HQ campaign, here’s some helpful links!

Categories
Sabbats, etc.

Litha 2024

🌞 Summer Is Here!!! 🌞

Happy Litha to my fellow Northern Hemisphere modern pagans and witches. Happy Yule to the Southern Hemisphere ones!

As a Cancer, you know I’m jazzed for summer.

As a triple water sign (Cancer-Scorpio-Scorpio), you know I’m jazzed for beach time.

I’m always a little late with my Sabbat posts. It’s its own tradition now 😆🫣😜 But then once I get on it, I end up making a bunch of other updated graphics for the site, such as this new banner.

Anyway, I do have a long hybrid vacation/staycation coming up. I don’t know if I’ll have time to post more as a result, but who knows?

Hope you have a great summer, all!

Categories
Other Holidays

Please Do Not Wish Strangers a Happy Mother’s Day

A Public Service Announcement for Mother’s Day

Repost from An Arts Notebook, Bridget Eileen Madden’s arts, culture, and entertainment blog

As we approach Mother’s Day, I would just like to give the following advice: please, do not wish *random women* a “Happy Mother’s Day.”

Of course, for any person who you know for certain is a mother and will be happily celebrating mother’s day with their family and loved ones, definitely *do* wish them a Happy Mother’s Day.

However, for a lot of women this is a complicated and not necessarily celebratory day. A person may not be able to have kids, or may have recently miscarried, or may have sadly lost a child, or–in my case–may have never met the person with whom they’d like to settle down and have children. They may have recently lost their mother, or be estranged from their mother, or never knew their mother. In such cases, hearing someone, however well-intentioned they may be, say, “Happy Mother’s Day!” gives a stinging, painful tug at the heart.

For a long time, while my mom lived in New Orleans and I in New England, I stopped going out in public on Mother’s Day. Having no kids, I just didn’t feel like being around those who were celebrating. And I don’t want to ever be subjected to any strangers who might wish me a Happy Mother’s Day again, like those times it happened in the past, which precipitated my desire to stay in for the day.

Now that my mom is my downstairs neighbor, and she is getting on in years, I do love celebrating Mother’s Day with her. But there are a lot of people for whom this day is complicated and perhaps painful. So, best not to make assumptions, however well intentioned.

If you want to be nice, saying something like, “Happy Springtime!” should do the trick just fine. The purpose of your desire to wish someone a “happy something or other” is to show kindness & manners. For some, skipping the assumption of their happiness in motherhood is the best way to do so.

…for some, skipping the assumption of their happiness in motherhood is the best way to show manners and kindness during Mother’s Day…

So, if you know of people who could use this very kindly given advice, please spread the word! Thank You and Happy Springtime!

Categories
Sabbats, etc.

Happy Beltane 2024

I’m a bit late with my traditional Sabbat Graphic, but I made a Beltane one, finally. This holiday comes at the second busiest time of year at work, so my celebration is usually delayed, and this year was no exception.

This weekend I will start what I am hoping becomes a long-standing tradition, where two of my friends from high school and I get together at each other’s houses for the sabbat to talk witch-y stuff, and life stuff.

We have gone out to events and such, but we wanted to start going to each other’s houses, so that we don’t have to spend and arm and a leg to do witchy things. Plus, I have so much stuff at home–crystal ball, crystals, tarot, books, tea, plants, decos. I just want to be able to appreciate all that I already possess, and share it with my dear friends.

I am looking forward to the weekend celebration. I hope your Beltane has been a good one!

Categories
Sabbats, etc.

Happy Ostara 2024

Happy Ostara!

I hope your first few days of Spring are going well.

The blustery wind actually blew my storm door open until it broke 😳🌬 Guess we’re still in the “lion” portion of March — I’m ready for som lamby weather! How about ewe? (Ah but I love a terrible good bad dad joke.)

Ostara Blessing for the start of this new season 🐇🥚 

Happy Equinox to all!

Categories
Sabbats, etc.

Happy Imbolc 2024

Imbolc Is My Favorite Sabbat, and It IS Because I Am Named Bridget — Sort Of

Imbolc is my favorite Sabbat, and it IS because it’s in honor of the deity I was (in a sense) named for—but there’s more to it than that. The bigger story is that because I am a Bridget, I learned about modern and Celtic paganism, the alleged syncretism of Brigid/ Bridget, and the feast day/ goddess day in honor of this Celtic figure when my friend wished me a Happy Bridget Day on February 1, 2011.

After Kara did that, I went down a Wikipedia click-hole while working at the library that night, and the more I learned about modern paganism, the sabbats and modern witchcraft, the more I said to myself, “Yes! Exactly! This is what I have always thought!”

Whether about reincarnation; the fact that sexuality in absolute terms has no morality tied to it; the sacredness of nature; the connection of spirituality and smashing the MFing patriarchy/ kyriarchy; the prevalence of pantheism; and many more aspects that fall under the umbrella terms of modern pagan and modern witch, I found myself finding 🔥myself🔥 with each new click and read through.

Within a year, I had come to wholly embrace this identity. A year after that, by summer of 2013, I was fully out of the proverbial broom closet and openly expressing my modern paganism.

And today, lucky number 13 years later? I have this project: this slow-growing blog. Writing is how I process my thoughts and express myself. I do a lot by long hand, hence the moniker “Notebook Witch.”

I’m also grateful that I have made more friends in the witch community, and become closer to existing friends, knowing we share similar witchy ideas. And I am a Unitarian Universalist witch, so I have that community as well.

Happy Imbolc to all who celebrate. May the spirit of Bridget and Brigid be infused with this wintry time and the fire of the goddess bring hope for community, communion, and connection for us all. 

Categories
Other Holidays Sabbats, etc.

Merry Yuletide and Holidays 2023-24

Merry Yuletide! Season’s Greetings! Happy New Year!

What do Hannah Waddingham, Snoop Dogg, Blossom Dearie, Bad Religion, Leslie Odom Jr, Tori Amos, Ella Fitzgerald, Zooey Deschanel, Fred Schneider from the B52’s, Louis Armstrong, Weezer, Sam Smith, Run DMC, Diana Krall, the Living Sisters, The Teskey Brothers, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings…to name a few people…all have in common?

My epic holiday playlist!

My gift to you all is “Yule Love This Playlist 2023” available on YouTube Music:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7oN6qUdxYpMTtQlVEOk6F87k17W_gM7j&si=TXy17FqJuryBnHbm

Categories
Sabbats, etc.

Ostara 2023

Ostara sabbat graphic for Facebook cover, Twitter post, and other social media. Feel free to use on your social media as well! Please credit NotebookWitch.com.

Spring Is Here

Happy Spring Equinox, northern hemisphere friends! Hope you’re having a lovely early autumn, southern hemisphere folks.

I felt like making a sabbat banner with a vintage vibe this year, for no particular reason.

It was a relatively mild winter in southeast New England. How about you? What things are you excited for, for Spring?

My Spring Plans

I’m looking forward to planting a stellar, burgeoning herb garden this year.

I’ve got ideas in mind for my container garden: LOTS of lemon balm, since Sweet Melissa is good for so many things but can really overtake a garden, trustly old chive and scallion since they’re first to arrive to the party and one of the last to leave, and low maintenance.

And then I hope to do a raised bed in the side yard, with a lot of different varieties of herbal plants. I was looking at past photos from my patio garden in Federal Hill Providence, and it was so abundant! I want that again.

We shall see! Happy planting and planning, gardeners! Spring is here!

Categories
Modern Witchcraft Other Holidays

Strawberry Moon Declaration

I Am a Solitary Eclectic Pantheist Modern Pagan Witch and I wholly and fully repudiate the religion I was originally baptized under

Reposted for the 50th anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision.

Note: this post was first published in 2018 (at my arts and culture blog), when former Justice Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. Though he was a reputed centrist, he knowlingly retired when the political powers in place in the Legistlative and Executive branches who would nominate his replacement were hardline conservatives, intent on seeing Roe v Wade overturned. His replacement was Brett Kavanaugh. I knew in my bones what was to come, though I had hoped I would be wrong. This spiritual declaration was one of many ways I did and continue to do what I can against the threat of liberty and bodily autonomy, which the overturning of Roe v Wade signifies with the Dobbs decision.

The Catholic Church Has No Claim to Me as a Member Despite My Baptism and I Declare Myself an Apostate Who Wholly Repudiates the Catholic Church

For today’s Strawberry Moon 🍓🌝❤️ I declared my un-baptism from the Catholic Church, on the website notme.ie 🇮🇪 Joining and declaring your apostatehood on that website is only symbolic. Canon Law makes it really difficult to remove yourself from the official tally from the Catholic rolls. But on this day especially, with the announcement of Justice Kennedy’s retirement, I want it shouted from the mountaintops, or at least all over social media: I am not Catholic. 

I do not believe in the tenets of the Catholic Church. I am not Christian. I do not believe in monotheism as conceived in the Abrahamic religions. I do not believe in sin, nor in the devil as conceived in the Abrahamic religions. I believe you should do right by yourself and others based on your own inherent morality and not for or on behalf of a religious entity. Further, I do not believe that sex and sexuality have any inherent morality in absolute form. I believe that to assert actions regarding sex and sexuality have inherent morality has lead to much of what is wrong in this world, and it needs to stop. 

I am a pantheist: I believe there is a spirit in all living things. I am a modern pagan, and I observe the Celtic earth-based holidays. I don’t think magic is a hocus-pocus imaginary thing; I think it’s often science intuited and not yet proven. “The myth is proof of fact.” Further, and most importantly, I believe that if you harm none, you can do as you will. 

I am pro-choice. I am pro-women’s rights. I am pro-women as dynamic, whole, wholly capable beings who need not feel shame for their body, or feel any inferiority to men, or feel they are only vessels for children, or feel that taking pleasure from their body and in their bodies is wrong.

To my mind, and to my spirit, I feel that any of the good that comes social justice work done by factions within Catholicism is, unfortunately, moot. While I will always have an affinity, admiration, and love for the legacies of certain figures within Catholicism who have informed much of our current notions of justice, equality, and love, such as St Francis of Assisi and the spiritual figure I was named after, St Brigid of Kildaire, they and their likenesses have always been outliers of the institution of the Catholic Church. The church itself chose to focus more on hate: for women and pregnant people by being anti-choice, for children by enabling predatory priests, for the LGBTQ+ community by focusing on Augustinian & Thomistic notions of sexual activity sanctioned solely for procreation, and for all those stances taking precedence in Church doctrine and politics over, “Love thy neighbor.” 

I am not Catholic, and I denounce the Catholic Church, and all anti-choice entities–religious or otherwise–for focusing vehemently on the politics of a pregnant person and/or woman’s right to choose what to do with their bodies, over all other concerns; for bringing the very real impending threat of the end to this democracy that has brought–along with the bad–so much of the good we have in this world. 

Consider this a schism. Consider me a heretic. Consider me an apostate, wholly and fiercely repudiating such a loathsome, hateful, destructive institution. 

I love this earth. I love justice, equality, and freedom. I am a pantheistic solitary eclectic modern pagan witch. That is my declared spiritual practice. 

It is so ordered ⭐️