Herbal Spell Paper Grow or gather your herbs, meditate and empower them, etc. as you normally would. Tear strips of white paper while thinking of your intent to make special praying paper, and soak it overnight. Place about ½ C of paper pulp in a blender, and then add it to a sink or basin filled with water. Add a few pinches of your chosen herbs, and direct energy and intent into the mixture. Much nicer to have incense, music, etc. to aid in putting you in a magickal place and helping you to feel the energy and creation that is taking place. Using a screen or press, follow the normal paper making procedures. If you like, once the paper has dried, roll it into a scroll and add a specifically colored ribbon to seal the intent and designate the paper as special. Top of Page Bookbinding (Leather & Glue) 1 packet (1/4 ounce) unflavoured gelatin 3 tbls. boiling water 1 tbls. vinegar 1 tsp. glycerine 1. In a pan, add gelatin to boiling water. Stir until gelatin is completely dissolved. 2. Add vinegar and glycerine. Stir until well mixed. Makes about 1/3 cup. For larger projects, double the recipe. How to use it: While the glue is still warm, apply a thin layer with a brush. This waterproof glue is excellent for binding leather to leather. It also makes a good flexible glue for use on paper, or for gluing cloth to cardboard when making notebook binders or scrapbooks. Stored in a tightly capped plastic or glass jar, this glue will keep for several months. It will gel in the bottle after a few days. Warm bottle in hot water to reuse the glue. Top of Page Party Favors Start with an empty toilet tissue roll.  Pick off all of the paper. Cover the roll itself with three or four layers of plain white tissue paper; do not overlap over the edges of the roll.  Put a "cracker" in through the roll. (Crackers can be bought at craft stores.)  Place a surprise inside - for example, foot lotion for someone who is on his or her feet all day; jacks for a little girl, a toy car for a little boy, a pacifier for a baby, etc.  Now cover the entire roll with one layer of tissue, overlapping about three inches over the edge of the roll.   Where the overlap occurs, put an occaision appropriate sticker. Top of Page Smelly Jelly Jars 16 oz jar of liquid potpourri 1 box of Knox Gelatin ¼ tsp Potassium Sorbate (to prevent spoilage) 3 jelly jars Directions: In an old pan, mix 8 oz of liquid and all 4 envelopes of gelatin and potassium sorbate. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly, until dissolved. Remove from heat and add remaining liquid potpourri, pour into the jars and let cool. DO NOT put the lids on the jars until the gel has cooled and set! This recipe makes 3 jelly jars, not quite full. Add lace over the top of the jar and decorate to your liking. Just let it sit, with no lid, and enjoy the fragrance. Top of Page Dream Pillow Once upon a time, sleeping beauties laid their heads on pillows perfumed with sweet rushes and dried hops, that is how these little pillows got the name of dream pillows. All households made wide use of herbs and spices in pillows and sachets, for both the fragrance and medicinal value. Day pillows would release a portion of the fragrance each time someone leaned back against them, dream pillows were placed under the regular pillow or inside the pillowcase. These were used mostly to help promote sleep and pleasant dreams. Even today you can visit many stores worldwide and find dream pillows for sale. Materials Needed: 2 pieces of your choice of material, any size or shape Herbs and Spices (your choice) Stuffing (optional) Needle Thread Essential oils (your choice) Zip Lock baggy Ribbons and lace (optional) Instructions: Making your own dream pillows not only save you money, but using essential oils increases their effectiveness and makes reviving them so much easier. The day before you are going to make the dream pillows take the herbs and spices you have chosen for stuffing and put in the zip lock baggy. Now add several drops of the essential oil or oils of your choice. How many drops to use depends on the size of the dream pillow and the strength of the herbs and spices you are planning on using. With herbs and spices three to four should be sufficient, but if using stuffing fifteen or twenty would be better. Seal bag and shake well to disperse all the oil, leave over night so that the oils will be absorbed completely. For sleep dream pillows use chamomile, lavender, neroli, marigoram, valerian, nutmeg, or hops. All of these essential oils help promote a restful, goodnight sleep. For the day pillows you might want to consider matching the essential oils with the herbs and spices you have used, or make and match a different fragrance to each different room. Nice ones to start out with are lemon, clary sage, geranium, and sweet orange. To make your dream pillow all you will need is two pieces of material, any size or shape that you want. Stitch along three sides of the material, then turn it right side out, leaving an opening large enough to add herbs, spices or stuffing. Take the herbs and spice or stuffing out of your baggy and stuff this into your dream pillow, when you have it filled about 3/4 full fold over the ends and stitch closed. After a few weeks if your dream pillow seems to be losing all its fragrance, here is a way to revive it: open a small corner of the pillow and add a few drops of your essential oils onto the herbs or stuffing and stitch back closed. If you don’t want to go to that trouble then just put a few drops of essential oils on the outside of the pillow and let dry. With creativity and imagination you can make wonderful tailor-made gifts for family and friends. You can decorate your dream pillow with a number of odds and ends, left over ribbons, buttons, and lace. Sweet dreams. Top of Page The Healing Poppet Gather together some small sticks of applewood and fashion them into a human type frame, cover with green cloth { cloth should be made from cotton }, to form the poppet. Fill the green cloth with the following items: Angelica Eucalyptus Ginseng Life Everlasting Peppermint Spearmint Wintergreen *Note: Coarsely ground herbs would work best for this. Now, attach a photograph of the person to be healed by the poppet. Begin the spell during a 'Waning Moon.' Put the poppet on your altar next to a black candle. With your magickal knife inscribe the person's name into the candle also their ailment/illness. Light the candle. While holding the poppet in front of the candle chant the following words: "I take away hurt, I take away pain From your body, this illness I drain." Now, visualize the illness leaving the poppet { anotherwords the poppet represents the sickly person }, and flowing into the black candle, let the candle burn all the way out. Place the poppet in a safe place and bury the remains of the candle far away from your home. Top of Page Rain's Magickal Roach Motel Let’s say something is coming at you that you don’t want: someone’s negative energy, the occasional stray addictive craving even people with good recovery get, someone’s cold you may have been exposed to, a malicious lawsuit, even a danger of physical violence or a deliberate negative “sending” – anything you want to stop before it gets to you. Important: This is a spell of capture, so, don’t ever use it on a person, only on any of his or her negative energies you find yourself needing to block. And, of course, it is assumed that you’ve done the mundane legwork: leaving the abusive situation, hiring a lawyer, calling the cops, treating your addiction, etc. This spell works, but it’s not a substitute for basic forms of self-preservation. Now, go out and find yourself a clinker, a witch burr (the prickly spherical burrs from sweetgum or sycamore trees), a big, rough, knotty wad of twine, or anything else hard or rough that has mazelike, sponge-like, or Swiss-cheesy inner passageways. Or, if you’re of the dark-humored persuasion, you can just use a real Roach Motel. Whatever you decide to use, this will be your trap. Place the trap in the center of your altar, and light a black or dark blue candle and some incense of a “tough,” darkly protective scent, such as myrrh or dragon’s blood, in the north. In the south, light a pink or other pretty, innocent pastel colored candle and some sweet, floral incense (rose is great, and the combination of rose with myrrh or dragon’s blood will make your house smell good for days). Cast a quick circle and cut a door in the south. Sit down on the north side of the altar, facing south, and ground and center yourself. Concentrate on the deep safety of your connection with the earth until you can really feel it. Know that nothing can hurt you here. Invoke Hecate, Oya, or another strong crone goddess or hunter/warrior god of your choice. Picture the negative energy, or germ, or malice, or other negativity coming in from the south door, drawn by the pretty light and sweet incense. Watch it get intrigued by the trap and decide to wander in. See it going deeper and deeper in, getting hopelessly lost and confused or, as in the case fo the Roach Motel, stuck like a bug in gooey adhesive. Since it is something that wants to hurt you, gloating is appropriate and Margaret Hamilton imitations (“Now I’ve got you my pretty! Ahhh-hahahahahahahhhhh!”) are even better! When you are sure the negative energy or entity really can’t get out, blow out the pink candle and douse the sweet incense. Say thank you, earth your energies, let yourself out the south door, and seal the circle from the outside. Let the black candle and dark incense burn themselves out. Later, after they have, take down the circle, earth the power, and put the trap away someplace, wrapped in dark cloth. Most can be re-used a few times; if one begins to feel “full” or stale, throw it in a rive or lake (thanking the water) or some bleak place nobody walks (thanking the earth even if it is covered with concrete). Top of Page Sealing Wax Needed: 1/2 oz (weight) beeswax 3 oz (weight) blonde shellac flakes Dry artist’s pigment of fresco colors, in the hue of your choice Aluminum foil, for molds Prepare the molds by shaping several layers of aluminum foil into rectangular molds, about 1/4” wide and 6” long. Lubricate the molds with cooking oil. Melt the beeswax in a microwave oven. Add the shellac flakes and microwave again, stirring every 30 seconds until the mixture is melted (about 2 ½ minutes total). Stir in the dry pigment, judging the amount of color to add by the color of the wax. Pour this into the molds and let cool. Use the finished wax sticks to form a unique seal for an envelope by holding a flame to one end of the stick, holding the wax downward at an angle. Put 10 to 15 drops of wax on the envelope’s closure of the flap. Wait a few seconds for the wax to cool, then, moisten your metal seal and lightly press it into the soft wax. Top of Page