Category: Sabbats

Categories
Sabbats

Yule 2022

Merry Yuletide to All Who Celebrate!

I seriously could not be happier to welcome in a new season. Fall 2022 was a complete and total PITA (pain in the a$$).

Feel free to use the graphics in this post on your own social media. Please credit @NotebookWitch on social media, or @TheNotebookWitch on Instagram.

How I Observed Yuletide for 2022

I celebrated the Sabbat this year by:

  • Finally getting all my outdoor holiday decorations up (and they’re STAYING UP until Imbolc!)
  • Doing two readings for the Bell Street Chapel Unitarian Universalist Church’s Yuletide service this past Sunday
  • Taking a BIG step to (hopefully) usher in better changes for me at my job (hoping the higher ups see the [Yule] light…ha! — thanks to my friend Ellen for the pun idea)
  • And, as always, writing a post for my blog for the Sabbat. (I am not the self-ascribed “Notebook Witch” for nothing!)

Where the Heck Did the Flying Reindeer Come From, Exactly???

At the Yuletide service this weekend at the Unitarian Universalist church I started attending in October (and I really need to do a blog post about this!), we also learned about the origins of the Christmass tropes of reindeer, red and white furtrimmed attire, and flying through the night sky.

Of course, it is all related to pagan customs from Arctic-adjacent regions. According to Danielle Prohom Olson’s essay, “Doe, a Deer, a Female Reindeer: the Spirit of Mother Christmas,” the female reindeer drew the sleigh of the Sun Godesss at Winter Solstice and “the Ancient Deer Mother flew through winter’s longest darkest night with the life-giving light of the sun in her horns.”

The red and white fur trimmed costume of Santa comes from red and white amanita mushroom, which was ingested by female shaman in far north, and that is how they would “take flight.” 🍄

Fascinating!

Merry Yuletide!!!

Whether you’re flying through the night sky on mystical fungi or just cozying up with a thick sweater, hot cocoa and cookies, I hope you have a very Merry Yule!

Five Hours of Holiday Music

PS If you’re looking for a pop-genre-expansive holiday playlist, I make one up each year, and it’s called “Yule Love This Playlist 2022” (or whatever year). Here’s the link to this year’s: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7oN6qUdxYpMzbHKEGD6JydZ6ev-417R1&feature=share

Categories
About Sabbats

Samhain 2022

One Year Since Notebook Witch Was Started

Smahain graphic for your social media – Facebook cover photo, Twitter post, good old Tumblr; feel free to use! Please credit @NotebookWitch (@TheNotebookWitch on Instagram)

Happy Samhain! It’s officially been a year since I woke up and decided to start that witchcraft blog I’d been mulling over for a while! And how is it going? Well, in truth, it’s okay…I’m actually writing this opening part of the post a month after Samhain because, as I’ll explain in a moment, this year has been RIDICULOUSLY busy.

Still, I’m glad I’m finally fitting in a time to make yet another Samhain graphic, which you are welcome to use for your social media. (Bonus, since I didn’t post it this year on my own social media, I can use it for next year!)

Why Samhain Is a Good Time of Year to Start a New Adventure

It’s the New Year! In a witch-y sense. Samhain is the final harvest holiday so it’s the end of one year of rest, sow, grow, then reap. The quietude of the resting period is a great time to make plans for the future.

I don’t save resolutions for the start of the calendar year. I do them at various times throughout the year. Like in September, since I work in higher education, I do a New Academic Year Resolution each year. It may or may not be directly related to work. Sometimes it’s a thing to help me be more productive at work, like KonMari-ing the office. Sometimes it’s a thing to make a better work-life balance for myself, like do Tori Amos’s post-show skin care regime each night (failing at that elaborate regimen, but at least I’m at least washing and moisturizing my face before bed, as opposed to falling asleep in my makeup and waking up look like a member of the rock band KISS).

My Samhain resolution this year is to get a 10-minute walk in each afternoon. But last year, it was to start this website…

A Year Since Notebook Witch Started: Samhain 2021-Samhain 2022

So, why have I been so busy? Well, I did take some time out around the actual Sabbat to make a Facebook post about what has kept me from being more prolific in official blog posts. And with that preamble, I’ll copy and paste below.

I started Notebook Witch right around Samhain last year. I’ve built the website, established the social media accounts, and posted a decent amount of blog posts.

Not bad for a year in which I also:

  • started working in-person again (hour commute each way)
  • moved (albeit up one story but no matter how far you go, it’s still a pain)
  • moved my mom up from New Orleans
  • started another book club (Tori Amos Book Club)
  • kept Boston Austen Book Club going
  • expanded Boston Poetry Marathon to a hybrid event
  • kept the fundraiser aspect of BPM going and raised almost $1000 each for the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund and Rhode Island’s The Womxn Project
  • won a seat on my city’s Democratic Committee
  • was sick with the worst (non-covid) virus I’ve ever had
  • had a bad break up; was sad; started trying to date again
  • started “The Artist’s Way” and kept up with my Morning Pages almost every day
  • was tested for ADHD and diagnosed with inattention issues due to anxiety and ‘porr sleep hygiene’
  • started going to therapy for my anxiety
  • worked on better sleep hygiene and practices
  • started becoming a morning person
  • lived my plain old day-to-day life with chores, errands, grown up tasks, and the all-important rest

Hmmm. Before I listed out all those things, I hadn’t even realized how much I’d been up to and was kinda feeling bad I hadn’t had more posts up on the blog. Now I’m surprised I was able to do anything at all! ☺️

Well, thanks to everyone who is supporting the page! I appreciate your interest as I explore what’s going on in the witch and modern pagan community-at-large, what’s going on locally, and what I’m up to on my own as a solitary eclectic neopagan witch.

Here’s to whatever else I get up to in the next year of Notebook Witch!

Categories
Sabbats

Mabon

big changes in a new season

Mabon 16×9 Graphic for Facebook Cover, Twitter Post, and Social Media in General

Here’s a cute little graphic I made for the Mabon sabbat. Feel free to use it on your social media to observe the holiday. If you do, please credit Bridget Eileen at Notebook Witch.

About the Sabbat Mabon

The Autumn Equinox has arrived to the Northern Hemisphere and by golly have I been going through from sweeping changing with this season that ushers in sweeping changes!

Mabon signifies the end of summer, the start of Fall, and the winding down of the growing season. The apples, squashes, pumpkins and Halloweeen decor is coming out. The swimsuits and beach chairs are getting stored away.

Sweeping Change

Though Spring cleaning is a well-known custom, the start of the Fall season is also a good time for sweeping up and battoning down for winter. Many witches often do ritualistic cleaning, including a deliberative sweeping ritual.

My sweeping change is in fact much bigger and more metaphorical. I have a new neighbor in the 2-family home that my mother and I own: my mom! She lived in New Orleans for a dozen years and has now returned to New England. She is retired and wants to be closer to family now. She’s really close to me–just a stairway apart.

In all the chaos of moving my own belongings to the second story apartment and moving my mom out of New Orleans and into the first story apartment, I have not had much time for Notebook Witch blog posts.

Remember to Follow Notebook Witch on Social Media

I have put up a few posts on my Instagram account, which is @TheNotebookWitch. I didn’t have time for much in New Orleans during this trip, save for packing up my mom and getting some delicious food.

I did, however, get one visit into the New Orleans Healing Center in St Claude, and bought some lovely things at the Island of Salvation Botanica there. I took some photos and plan to do a blog post about it sooner rather than later.

Blog Plans for the Rest of 2022

Notebook Witch will remain in “soft launch” mode for the rest of the year, given the moving circumstances. And given that things are very wild at my day job. It’s chaos everywhere, it seems.

My goal is to at least observe each Sabbat with a post here at the blog. Here’s hoping I can stick to that!

Categories
Sabbats

Happy Lughnasadh!

the word Lughnasadh in Gaelic looking font in foreground, graphic of corn stalk and wheat stalk in background @notebook in corner
Lughnasdh graphic for social media, credit: Notebook Witch

Lughnasadh, Half Way to Fall

Happy Pumpkin Spice Season! Hahaha. I am a fan of pumpkin spice flavored things. Since I’m a New Englander to my core, I like to go to Dunkin for my pumpkin spice drink of the season. My order is a little fancy though: medium iced coffee, with 4 pumpkin, 2 mocha, and oat milk. It feels like I’m drinking Pumpkin Milk…or something.

Lughnasadh graphic for social media PNG file

What is Lughnasadh?

Since we’re halfway between Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox, neopagans, witches, and others celebrate this midpoint between the seasons with a sabbat, aka holiday.

Lughnasadh is pronounced LOO-nah-sah. (There’s a series of videos on YouTube that help with pronouncing sabbats, including Lughnasadh. They’re very helpful!) It is the first of the harvesting festivals. The other two harvesting festivals are Fall Equinox, aka Mabon, and Samhain (sow-een), aka Halloweeen.

Lughnasadh is often symbolized with wheat, corn, or other grains, since those things are harvested around this time. That is why the graphic I made has wheat and corn in it.

Lughnasadh story size graphic

Lughnasadh is also called Lunasa and also goes by the term “Lammas.” You can learn more about the Celtic origins of the celebration from this informational post at the Boston Public Library blog: https://www.bpl.org/blogs/post/the-origins-and-practices-of-lammas-lughnasad/

Lughnasadh Graphic for Social Media

Anyone can use these graphic for their Facebook banner, Twitter post, IG story or whatever they like in order to commemorate the Lughnasadh sabbat on social media. (If you can magick it into a video, go for it, since that’s all that Instagram is paying attention to as of August 2022, in order to compete with TikTok. Wah.)

Please credit @NotebookWitch on most social media or @TheNotebookWitch on Instagram, if you use this graphic.

Happy Harvest!!!

Categories
About Sabbats

Happy Ostara! Spring into Notebook Witch: the Blog

To my Northern Hemisphere readers: Happy Ostara! To those in the Southern Hemisphere, I hope your Mabon is deliciously autumnal.

help yourself to using this Ostara graphic as a Facebook banner or Twitter post, etc, in order to mark the Sabbat. Please credit @NotebookWitch, or @TheNotebookWitch on Instagram, if you do use it.

Blog Now in “Soft Launch” Mode

I conceived of this blog around Samhain 2021, so we will count that as the Official Start Date for NotebookWitch.com. But I set up the “soft launch” of this actual website that you’re looking at in March 2022, so we’ll call Ostara the soft launch date!

Now that this website is built, I’ll be posting on witchcraft and related topics about my neopagan spiritual practice here at NotebookWitch.com.

Where the Posts “Spring” from

(Are you sick of my Ostara puns yet?) Before starting Notebook Witch, I had previously published witch-related blog posts at my long-standing arts and culture blog, AnArtsNotebook.com.

I’ll be migrating those posts here to “Notebook Witch by Bridget Eileen” as one of my many projects to build up this blog. So, you will see some posts that date to before today. That’s because they were originally published at An Arts Notebook. But the soft launch start date of Notebook Witch is Ostara 2022.

As I work on republishing the witch-related content from my other blog, you can read previous blog posts on witchcraft and witchery at: https://www.anartsnotebook.com/search/label/notebook%20witch

I’ll be moving those posts to this blog, and of course adding lots of additional content, as time progresses. Stay tuned for more content to come!

Categories
Sabbats

Reflections on Imbolc

How My Name Helped Me Find My Spiritual Practice and Identity

Imbolc graphic banner 16:9 dimensions for Facebook cover, Twitter post, and other social media. Feel free to use! Please credit @NotebookWitch on social media (or @TheNotebookWitch on Instagram)

Imbolc, the Festival of the Deity Brigid, Is Also My Spiritual Identity Anniversary

Imbolc is one of my favorite and most personally meaningful holidays. It is the anniversary of my realization that my spiritual identity, my “religion” so to speak, is as a solitary eclectic pantheistic neopagan witch.

Imbolc is also the celebration of the spiritual figure from whom I got my name–in the sense that my great-grandmother, and a whole bunch of other Celtic folk were named Bridget, Brigid, Brighid or some variation thereof, in the Saint/Goddess’s honor.

It was learning about the Catholic, and syncretized parallel Pagan, holidays celebrated on Feb 1 that got me down a click hole, in which I learned more and more about this spiritual practice, neopaganism and witchcraft, which is now such a meaningful part of my day-to-day existence. And every new thing I learned during all that reading on Feb 1 had me saying, “Yes, exactly! That’s what I’ve always thought! I believe that, too!”

And then =✨magic✨= just like that, I discovered I was a neopagan witch. And so much clicked, so much of the world and my place in it suddenly made far more sense than it had before.

My Name and My Destiny

My name became my destiny. Or my destiny gave me my name, to help me find out who I was. Either way, now I’m here and glad for it. I am grateful for the “meant-to-be”-ness of who I am, starting from the moment I was born and named.

This is a really special day for me. And it’s a great day for us all in the northern hemisphere, since it means we are halfway to Spring!!!

Blessings for #imbolc2022 💐 Happy Saint’s Day to all the Bridgets of the world. Spring is just around the corner!!

Categories
About Sabbats

Samhain Announcement: Notebook Witch, a blog about Witchcraft

Announcing a New Blog by Bridget Eileen, “Notebook Witch: Notes on Witchcraft and Witchery,” online at NotebookWitch.com

An Exciting Halloween & Samhain Announcement…

I’m listening to the Patriots game and monitoring the street traffic for the signs of Trick or Treaters. It is Fall in New England, for sure. And this year, I have a new exciting endeavor to look forward to.

But first, I want to let you know you can use this Samhain sabbat graphic above for wherever you want to observe the holiday online! I usually use it as my Facebook banner, and I make a Twitter and Instagram post from it. Please just credit @NotebookWitch on most social media, and @TheNotebookWitch on Instagram.

Samhain Resolution – New Blog from Bridget Eileen: Notebook Witch

Throughout the coming months I’ll be building this new blog, NotebookWitch.com. It is a collection of notes on witchcraft and witchery.

As I build up the site, I’ll also be copying relevant posts from my other blogs which fit the theme here and re-publishing them on Notebook Witch, so that this site can be a comprehensive collection on all past posts on witchcraft and neopaganism, as well as new content I create along the way.

More about Notebook Witch

A bunch of circumstances came up that have happily brought me to this “Eureka” moment of creating a new blog solely dedicated to witchcraft and witchery.

While I love having An Arts Notebook, it presents me with the issue of being far too broad. In all my research on successful blogging, I repeatedly hear that a focused topic and theme for a blog leads to more views and engagement.

Though it’s fun to blog for blogging’s sake, I do want engagement. I want my writing efforts to be meaningful to any viewers who might encounter my posts, just as it is meaningful to me as an author of the posts to put in the effort to create and share the work.

When I found myself blogging most often about my spiritual practice at An Arts Notebook, I got to thinking. Since it is what I’m most motivated to write about–and in my offline life, it’s what I spend a lot of time on, because it is most meaningful to me–why not “lean in” to that?

So, I have come up with the really happy solution to the dilemma of creating a more-focused blog by starting Notebook Witch: Notes on Witchcraft and Witchery.

How to Create a Witch Blog

I started in “soft launch” mode. I’ve got:

  • social media accounts: @NotebookWitch almost everywhere except
  • @TheNotebookWitch on Instagram (long story about why its not the same as everywhere else)
  • a URL that matches the social media handle
  • a vague sense of a plan to launch and will develop it more firmly as I build it
  • an email address TheNotebookWitch@gmail.com
  • neopagan/witchcraft content from An Arts Notebook that I can transfer to the new site

The rest of the plan involves:

  • launching this new website using a WordPress.org template
  • hosting the site through Pair.com
  • gathering more followers
  • creating a contact list
  • building and scheduling a focused content plan
  • building and implementing a strategic communications plan

I’m excited about this new endeavor, more than I have been about any writing I’ve done in a while, whether for communications purposes for the orgs I work or volunteer for, or my blogging, or creative writing. This new project has me the most jazzed up and ready to work.

Social Media Handle @NotebookWitch

In the meantime, you can follow the new accounts at Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter at @NotebookWitch, and on Instagram at @TheNotebookWitch (I’ve given up on getting plain old “NotebookWitch” back after I got inexplicably Zucced while developing my new account. Don’t know why I got targeted while all those white supremacist accounts thrive, but whatever; I digress.)

Follow “Notebook Witch: Notes on Witchcraft and Witchery” on Social Media

Stay tuned for more witchcraft and witchery posts on social media NotebookWitch.com gets developed.