Seasons of Witchery

I have been working in my gardens non-stop for the past few days, getting ready for a full moon/sabbat celebration with my coven. I always enjoy having the ladies from the coven over, and we end up in my gardens for Beltane every year, which is wonderful. The best thing about having a garden is to share it with others.

This is a great season for magickal gardening. My roses are flourishing, the foxgloves and yarrow are in bloom, and my snapdragons are trying to outgrow the foxgloves at the moment. The snaps are huge this year—some stand taller than the foxgloves. Even my twenty-eight-year-old son commented on them when he came over to cut the grass for his dad the other day.

While I weeded the perennial bed my son took a break in the shade, looked over at me incredulously and asked what sort of spell I had done to the snapdragons. My answer was a slow and secret smile, which he returned with a serious stare. Then I tipped my sunglasses down to look at him, asked him if he was new or something, and we laughed for a long time. "Good grief, mom," he said. He rolled his eyes at me, and went to the shed to dig out the string trimmer. It does my heart good that my children, who are now all adults, accept the magick in our lives so easily. They did grow up with it, after all. Before my son started up the trimmer he walked over to the perennial bed I was working in and bent over to look at the snaps a bit more carefully. At the moment they stand close to three feet tall.

"These are the same plants from three years ago; I thought they were annuals. Did your coven do some crazy full moon magick to these snapdragons last year?" He asked with a grin, while he ran his hands over the blooms.

"Absolutely," I told him, with my tongue firmly in my cheek, and continued to pull weeds. Then he asked me if I knew that the full moon this coming weekend was a "Super Moon." I reminded him that the correct lunar term was actually perigee, meaning the time when the moon was the closest to the earth during the calendar year.

He only grinned at me, slipped his sunglasses on, and started the string trimmer with a flourish. He shouted over the string trimmer that he hoped we would behave ourselves, and with a laugh he went off to trim around all the perennial beds.

I sat back on my heels and chuckled as he moved around the lawn with the trimmer. A breeze blew in and brought a bit of coolness to a near-ninety degree afternoon, a bit warmer than typical for early May. But, if I have learned anything over the years, it is that nature has its way. We can either hang on and enjoy the ride and work with her cycles and seasons or fight against them. I personally prefer to embrace the magick of each season. There is always something new to learn.

This respect and fascination for the seasons and cycle of the year was the driving force behind writing my newest book in my Witchery series, Seasons of Witchery. As a gardener and a Witch I wanted a different look at the wheel of the year, one with new ideas on how to celebrate the sabbats both simply and in tune with nature.

This book has eight chapters, one for each Sabbat. To make the book more special, we begin our journey and the first chapter at Midsummer. I sure this is shocking and completely different to some folks, but I am a gardener, after all. If we are celebrating a solar calendar and the natural wheel of the year, then let's start with a bang. What better time to kick off a book on the wheel of the year and earthy magick than when the garden is in full swing and all around us are growth and possibilities?

In Seasons of Witchery you will find a bit of history and lore on each sabbat, and simple and enjoyable suggestions for celebrating them with friends, family, and coven. There are decorating ideas, seasonal recipes, and of course journal notes from my enchanted garden through the year.

Each of the eight chapters contain seasonal rituals and natural magick aligned with the holiday. There are my personal musings on the wheel of the year and sections about my own coven, including how we celebrated, changed, and grew over the course of the year. At the end of the eight chapters you will find a handy appendix on the sabbats and their magickal correspondences, as well as a glossary.

This book is filled with practical magick, humor, and garden witchery. It can be read at any time of the year, and you will find plenty of new ways to incorporate the magick of the seasons in this book, from surviving holiday stress (it comes in October for Witches) to embracing the wild hunt at Yuletide. How about butterfly magick in the heat of summer, honoring the Green Man at Beltane with an all-green garden, and a slightly snarky guide to surviving the local Pagan Pride Day? (Awww, come on, you know that's going to be fun!)

Tired of the "same old, same old" when it comes to celebrating the sabbats? Then come spend some time with me and read Seasons of Witchery. I can guarantee you will never look at the sabbats in precisely the same way again.