A Jupiter talisman, drawn in its hour
Thursday, first hour after sunrise: the hour of Jupiter on Jupiter's own day. I drew the talisman on a disc of blue card, with the sigil traced from the magic square of Jupiter, the planetary symbol, and one short line of intent for the small bookbinding business I keep failing to grow.
Banishing first, then the invocation, then a long quiet stretch holding the image in mind until it felt charged rather than merely drawn. Wrapped it in silk and put it in the drawer with the invoices, which seemed like the correct office for it.
Diary entry: "Self-conscious for the first minute. Then not." That's usually the sign it worked.
Electric kettle apothecary
Dorm potion setup: one electric kettle, one mason jar, one botany textbook. Tonight's blend is Mentha × piperita (peppermint), Melissa officinalis (lemon balm) and a few dried Rosa petals, steeped five minutes with the lid on so the volatile oils stay in the cup.
I know exactly what every plant in my mug is, down to the genus, and that's the whole point. My first year I bought a "witch tea" online with mystery ingredients and I am still mad about it. Learn your plants, friends. Latin names are a love language.
Down on the Lizard there's a green-and-red stone called serpentine, mottled like an adder's back, and you'll hardly find it anywhere else in Britain. When it's wet on the beach at Kynance, it glows.
I don't take pebbles off the beaches anymore. They're needed where they are, holding back the sea. Instead I bought a little offcut from one of the old turners' workshops, polished on his lathe.
It sits on the windowsill by the tide table. When a storm's rolling in, I hold it and watch. Something about a stone that was once the floor of an ancient ocean makes the waves feel less personal.
Three months of reading over your shoulders
I've been lurking here for about three months. No religion, no practice, just a lot of reading at 1am. I wanted to say thank you, and share what I've noticed from the outside.
First: almost nobody here is trying to convince anyone of anything. I honestly expected to be recruited. Instead people answer questions and then go back to their gardens and their prayers and their tea.
Second: on the surface the practices couldn't look more different. A Sikh truck driver reciting scripture at a truck stop before dawn. A Wiccan casting a circle in their kitchen. A Quaker sitting in silence. A rootworker sweeping her porch. But underneath, so much of it seems to come down to two things: paying attention, and saying thank you.
Third: the people who've been at this for decades are the ones most comfortable saying 'I don't know.' I found that unexpectedly reassuring.
My grandpa's anniversary is in a couple of weeks. For the first time, I'm thinking about doing something to mark it. No idea what yet. But I think I've learned from all of you that it doesn't have to be impressive. It just has to be sincere.
Thanks for letting me read over your shoulders.
Spring in Melbourne, which means the morning libation on the balcony can finally happen without a jacket. The jacarandas are thinking about it.
Same order every day. Wash hands in khernips (water, a pinch of salt). Light the little oil lamp for Hestia in its glass chimney. Pour a splash of watered wine into the libation bowl. Then the Homeric Hymn, read aloud in a terrible accent:
'Hestia, you who tend the holy house... come now into this house, and bestow grace upon my song.'
She gets the first offering and the last, always. Lamp out before I leave for work. A goddess of the hearth would not approve of me burning the flat down.
Kusti before the kettle
Before the kettle goes on, before the phone, before anything: wash hands and face, stand facing the light (the sun if Leicester allows, which is rarely, otherwise the little divo lamp on its steel tray), untie my kusti and tie it again while I say the prayers. The cord goes three times around the waist, for good thoughts, good words, good deeds. Two knots in front, two at the back.
My mother taught me when I was seven, at my navjote. Mostly I was worried about getting my new white sudreh stained. Thirty-four years later the whole thing takes three minutes and it is the only time of day nobody asks me for anything.
The kettle, as always, can wait.
Hesiod would be very confused in Melbourne
Hesiod says to plough when the Pleiades set at dawn. They're getting there: every morning this month they hang a little lower in the west as the sky goes pale. In Boeotia that meant autumn, mud and wheat.
In Melbourne it's spring. My neighbour is already building tomato cages, because round here everyone plants tomatoes on Cup Day. Same stars, opposite season.
I've stopped trying to force the old calendar onto the southern sky. Now my notebook has two columns: what the stars meant in Greece, and what the land is actually doing here. The gods seem fine with it. Hestia has never once asked which hemisphere her hearth is in.
Starting the Yule mead
If you want mead for Yule, you start in early October. Today's batch: three pounds of local wildflower honey, a gallon of good water, a handful of raisins, the peel of one orange and a packet of wine yeast. Everything sanitized like a surgeon, because the wights may be patient but bacteria are not. Airlock on, jug wrapped in an old wool blanket in the corner of the shop.
The kids helped stir. At the blót they'll get spiced apple cider, same pour, same toast. Mead isn't a personality. It's honey and time and paying attention, which is most of what I know about worship too.
Chalk on the doorstep
Every morning, after kusti and before work, I do the chalk. Parsi women have drawn designs on the doorstep for generations: you fill a little tin punched with holes with white chalk powder, tap it along the threshold, and the pattern falls through. Fish for good luck, flowers, neat rows of dots.
My mother did hers in Bombay on a stone step polished by eighty years of feet. I do mine on a concrete step in Leicester that the postman walks through by half nine. It doesn't matter. It's a welcome, a blessing on whoever crosses, and a reminder to start the day with something beautiful, even if it only lasts until the first delivery.
My neighbour's boy thinks it's for hopscotch. I've decided not to correct him.
Karkade for Bast
Karkade is hibiscus tea, and in Egypt it's everywhere, cold in summer and hot in winter. I cold-steep mine: a big handful of dried hibiscus in a jug of water in the fridge overnight, then a spoonful of honey stirred in the next morning. It comes out the deepest garnet, which feels right for a lioness.
The first small glass goes on the shrine for Bast, who receives it with what I imagine is polite feline indifference. I drink the rest over the week. My partner calls it "goddess juice" and steals it constantly.
(Footnote, because I can't help myself: I don't claim this as reconstruction. It's a modern Egyptian drink and a modern devotion, and I think she's fine with that.)