Witchy Reads

Here's a video I made back in 2014, where I showcased some of my favourite books on the Craft.
These are still top of my list, but they've been joined by a few other notable reads.

•  WITCH - Lisa Lister

                                   Life changing, breath-taking, Unleash your wild Witch. Cannot tell you to read
                                          it enough.

• Mermaid Wisdom; Enrich Your Life With Insights From The Deep - Brenda Rosen

                          This might not be everyones cup of tea, if you're not into faery magic or mythology,
                              but as a woman, this book was a great resource for life skills. By using mermaid
                              mythology, and exercises, Brenda teaches you how to embrace that siren in you.

• Garden Witches Herbal; Green Magic, Herbalism, and Spirituality - Ellen Dugan

                                          One of my newest author discoveries (suggested to me by my fellow witch
                                               sister) if it's by Ellen Dugan, I'm going to read it. With an affinity for
                                               nature worship, and herblore, Ellen has plenty of books for you to
                                                choose from.

                                                         She also has a few fictional series, which are amazing.
                                                   The Legacy of Magic series, is delightful and witty. You can tell it's

                                                     written by an actual practitioner, and that seems to give these books
                                                       more sustenance.

Hope you find something here that interests you!
If you're looking for a book, on a specific subject within the craft, or about herbs, oils, drop me a message, and we can chat about the ones I've read.

Blessed Be,

Jade

xoxo

Maybe we've met before...

Sharing these musings from an older blog I had, that have been playing on my mind recently.

-------------------------------------

In last weeks Parlour class with Veronica Varlow, we were talking about past lives, and connecting to the otherside.It's not something I've thought of often...honestly hardly at all.
Mainly because to think about things like reincarnation - creates questions about the death of this lifetime...and I'm a bit of a wimp really.

I do like the idea of reincarnation...the idea that we've all wandered this land for centuries, as French courtesans, maybe an inmate in bedlam, an Egyptian queen, a farmer, a healer in Salem.
 It brings new guidance to the meaning of fate. True love, those friendships that you're unexplainably drawn to.
How romantic is the notion that you have walked this earth a number of times, and each time you are drawn towards this person/these people. You unknowingly travel in their direction, a connection of old souls that will last for eternity.Maybe there was a life where you couldn't find each other?
Maybe it's this one.
And your ancient soul is wandering lost - seeking each other out. 

Does it not explain some of our irrational fears? Odd things that bring a shiver down our spine...those moments your heart beats a little faster in unknown fear.
Perhaps your fear of things wrapped around your neck, is because in a past life you were hung from the gallows.
Or by chance your fear of deep water, that thing inside you that you can't push passed to swim just a little bit further, maybe that is because you drowned in a past life...maybe not even you, maybe someone you were close to.

But you see, thinking about the concept of past lives opens up even more questions. Do our family lines stay the same? Is my mum in this life, also my mum when I was basking in the sweaty heat of ancient Egypt? Did I have siblings in a past life? Where are they now? Do our familiars return to us, life and life again? Or even family members on a different level of reincarnation in the form of the family cat?
It's a bit sad to imagine that we only get this family in this lifetime. 
Once. The connection a temporary and frail thing to be cherished.

Does the cycle end? Is there a time when we are done on this earth, and move to the Summerlands? Are ghosts those who are done with the transitions, preparing to move on?
Questions we can only fathom a guess at.

I have a strong call to vintage clothing, Marie-Antionette ball gowns, medieval gowns. Certain eras of fashion really draw me in.

I have always been drawn to Egypt, an odd infatuation since childhood. Somewhere I was lucky enough to visit recently. I was not struck with typical de ja vu, but when I was in certain areas, and I saw the atrocity of pollution in the Nile, or the demolition of dessert landscapes - an unexplainable sadness came over me. A sadness I had no right to feel, and all I kept thinking was 'this isn't right'.

At the tombs and the pyramids, as I discreetly trailed my fingertips along the stone, and the paintwork. Those thousand year old paintings of sacrifice and pharaohs - they spoke to me. My knowledge of heiroglyphs is fairly limited, and whilst I can manage basic sentences, I knew I shouldn't have been able to understand the depth and emotion on these walls...but I could. I felt it deep in my stomach.When I stood under The Notre-Dame in France, in the cloak of midnight darkness, with a fire-breather lighting the night-sky, causing odd shadows to skitter across the church. The flames lapping at my skin, cutting off the bite of the wind. A simple thought and emotion came over me;
Home.
I'd never been there before, but I walked the cobbled streets with some mysterious knowledge for my guide. I never got lost, meandering down side-streets, a sense of contentment filling my heart.

We all have moments like this.
Don't we?
Unexplained.
That feeling that we've met before...

Well maybe we have.


----------------------------------------

These thoughts have been rekindled in my mind after reading the book 'WITCH' by Lisa Lister. This book has been a life changing experience for me, and is something I'd love to fully dive into in a future blog post. 

 But I mention it here, for Lisa's connection to her witch ancestors, something, she claims, lies inside every woman. She talks in depth about how when performing an initiation ritual in a cleansing well, fully immersed in the water, she could hear the screams of the witches that were drowned before her, could feel their panic, and sense the onlookers around her, despite being locked inside alone.
She talks about this being an ancient connection, birthed in our womb, and passed down to every witch (there's a little witch in every woman)

Thoughts??

Merry Part,
Jade
xoxo