In this episode I talk to author Raechel Henderson. We talk about how she practices on the astral plane, why witchcraft is serious business, and at the end I tell you how you can win an autographed copy of her book, The Scent of Lemon and Rosemary, over on instagram.
instagram.com/idiorhythmic
facebook.com/raechelhendersonauthor
Be sure to check out this week's sponsor, Full of Intention, a purveyor of handmade goods full of intention for witches, non-witches, and everyone in between.
Raechel Henderson
Author of The Scent of Lemon & Rosemary and Sew Witchy
Welcome back to Your Average Witch, where we meet every Tuesday to talk about witch life, witch stories, and sometimes a little witchcraft. In this episode I talk to author Raechel Henderson. We talk about how she practices on the astral plane, why witchcraft is serious business, and at the end I tell you how to win an autographed copy of her book, The Scent of Lemon and Rosemary, over on Instagram. But first, here's a word from this week's sponsor, Full of Intention.
AD: Are you looking for quality handmade magical items for your practice? Perhaps a dressed spell or altar candle, a crystal bracelet, or a magical oil to aid in your workings? Full of Intention is a purveyor of high quality handmade goods made by and for witches. Bring luck, love, and abundance into your life with a little help from Full of Intention. Shop the online boutique at www.FullofIntention.com. Listeners can use promo code WITCH20 to save 20% on your first order. In addition to candles, oils, and crystal jewelry, the shop also features stunning macrame decor for your home and altar, tea blends, and more, all made with intention. For additional information, online tutorials, and magical content, visit the Full of Intention shop as well as our TikTok and YouTube channels. Links will be in the show notes.
K: Now let's get to the stories.
Kim: Hi Raechel, welcome to the show.
Raechel: Hello, thank you for having me.
K: Would you please introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are, and what you do, and where they can find you?
R: Oh, yes. My name is Raechel Henderson. I am an author and a witch. I am the author of Sew Witchy, Tools, Techniques, and Projects for Sewing Magic, as well as The Scent of Lemon and Rosemary, Working Domestic Magic with Hestia. I kind of describe myself as a witch crafter. I like to bring magic into every aspect of my daily life, but especially in my crafting and sewing and that's what I try to talk to people about- how to make their life more magical. I'm on Instagram, that's the best way to find me. My handle down there is @Idiorithmic, which is a word that means living by one's life, living a life by one's own patterns. And I am on Facebook as well, same name, Idiorithmic. And yeah, that's where you can most easily find me online.
K: Cool. What made you write?
R: Oh, I've wanted to be an author my entire life. Like when I was little, even before I could write, I would scribble things on pieces of paper and pretend I was like a journalist or something. I have been a lifelong reader and have just always really enjoyed the written word. And kind of, while I've always wanted to be a writer, kind of fell into this being published kind of on accident, kind of not. I wrote my first book, Sew Witchy, and I was planning on, and it was just a collection of basically my kind of book of shadows I put together of things I did when I was sewing. And I originally thought, well, I'll just self-publish it because I thought sewing magic was a really niche market topic. And I didn't think anybody was really going to be, I figured like, you know, a dozen people would get it.
K: What?!
R: I did! And so I was going to self-publish. And someone said, well, why don't you just try to get it published? Why don't you just query some... Yeah, just query some publishers, see. And I thought, well, okay, I could give it like six months. And then, you know, if nobody bites, then I'll just self-publish it. And so I went to my bookshelf and I'm like, okay, who do I have on my, you know, where are the publishers of magic books? And I made a short list and I queried Llewellyn and that was, they got back to me and said, yep, no, we want to publish this book and I was like, oh, okay.
K: And you already had it written at that point?
R: I had it mostly written. I had it about 50% done and finished the other 50% after I signed the contract. And it was a journey. I ended up halfway through it, losing my house and me and my family were homeless for about six weeks in the midst of that. I'm taking pictures, and writing stuff, and trying to get the edits finished so I could get them turned in. And then the book came out November of 2019 and I had a whole bunch of book signings and stuff all lined up and then COVID hit.
K: Oh no! Oh no.
R: Yeah, so was it exciting time.
K: Man, that's a lot.
R: It's pretty funny. I just turned the edits for my third book and every single book I've written so far, something has happened. The second book was written during the early, the first six months of the pandemic and then this third book I had to move kind of across the country in the middle of it.
K: Oh, jeez!
R: So yeah. So now I'm just, I joke with my husband. I said, if I get started on a fourth book, we're living in Wyoming now. So I'm like, oh my goodness, then like Yellowstone supervolcano it's going to explode. And I'll just be standing there going, but I have a deadline.
K: Don't curse us.
R: Yeah, he's like, even explodes, we're going to have other, other bigger problems. I'm like, no, you don't understand. I'll have a deadline.
K: What does it mean to you when you call yourself a witch?
R: For me, it's really simple. I use magic in my life. I view it slightly as a, not political, but as a extension of the part of my personality that often is not really acceptable in, I guess, modern society where we're not expected to, there's this uneasy acceptance of major belief systems where, okay, we believe in you can pray, you can have faith, but anything beyond that, then they start looking at you like, oh, you're into that woo-woo stuff.
And having grown up as kind of the weird kid and not really fitting in anywhere, being able to call myself a witch gives me just a better sense of who I am, that there is a part of me that I accept and that I, sure, woo-woo, if that's how you want to call it, but I believe that there's more to it than just what we see and feel and hear and can touch. And that's just me accepting that part of myself in the same way as I give myself the labels of being a writer or a woman or a mother, a wife, that sort of thing.
K: I think it's really weird that it seems like society as a whole has moved away from, if you can have some spirituality, but if you have too much, you're crazy, that's really strange to me that we're supposed to completely block out that part of ourselves.
R: Yeah. And that's one of the things that I have really worked very hard on is getting away from this kind of like compartmentalization of our lives where, you know, you give yourself labels and everything has to fit into that one label and they don't bleed into that it has to be a venn diagram where nothing is actually overlapping. And I really want to try very hard in my life to be like, I am and also, not... I'm a mother and a witch. I am a, I am bisexual and have faith in that there's more to the world than what we can experience. Having all that and also, rather than this or that.
K: Well, being a weird kid myself, I relate. That said, do you have any family history with witches or witchcraft, or do you have any stories or things that you remember from childhood where you think "Nobody in my family called themselves a witch," unless they did, called themselves witches in which case, tell me those stories, but I don't get too many of those.
R: Yeah. Unfortunately, no. I was actually raised Baptist by my grandmother.
K: Me too!
R: Yeah, I know there's, there's a lot of us ex Baptists, too, just for like, witchcraft, yeah. No, my family, like my parents were not, are not religious. We ended up, the kids ended up going to church with my grandparents because then my parents got Sunday mornings off. But I was very much, you know, I did youth group. I taught Bi- vacation Bible school. I did church camp. I was very much involved in that. I have heard stories from my dad's side of the family from my uncle about how there is perhaps a history of seers, people who have had visions and the like and he has had some of that. But no, our family was either, you know, there was the side that was very much non religious and then the side that was very much Baptist religious.
And I remember when I was growing up that I was very much into magic, although it was much more related to like the kind of magic you find in fantasy novels, because I grew up in the middle of nowhere Wyoming where the library was, had a very, had a fabulous science fiction and fantasy section because one of the librarians there was really into that. And like had submitted scripts for like Star Trek The Next Generation and the like.
But anything kind of a culty or witchy was not, they didn't have any of that. So my experience of magic and witchcraft came from fantasy novels, and when I would talk about that being, you know, believing in magic, or I'm a witch or, you know, well, if God created the world in seven days, how is that not magic and how is there, you know, how does that not say that there's magic in the world? I would get various responses that were all negative, especially from the church side of the family where there were very much, you know, the, you know, what the Bible says about witches! and I'd be like, okay, I guess I should just kind of keep this to myself.
K: Can you introduce us to your practice like do you have any daily or consistent rituals that you do?
R: Yeah, I, my practice is very much comes from inside, motivated by how do I feel today? My one consistent practice lately has been doing a single tarot draw in the morning just to see like what my day is going to be like, or what kind of messages that are trying to get to me. But a lot of my practice tends to be... I'm not really big on ritual, or big rituals. A, part of that is just because I have kids and I just don't have the time to do a big to-do. It's a lot of candle lighting, which I use as a way to kind of focus and bring myself, ground myself and bring myself mindfully into my present, just to take a moment, check in with myself, check in with the universe.
I like, I'm an Aries, so fire is a big part of my, my magic casting. So lighting candles, lighting incense. That flick of the match just kind of brings my brain back to, there's magic. And I use a lot of burning for when I'm casting spells. So every day lighting a candle, talking to Hestia, working with burning incense, if I'm casting a spell, it tends to be in the form of gathering herbs together with intention and grinding them up and then burning them on a charcoal burner. And then I do a lot of, I call it mind magic. It's just basically tool-less magic like putting protection around my house is just envisioning the white light boundary around my house, doing a lot of just sending out my intentions into the universe, the meditation, that sort of thing.
K: It feels like our practices are very similar, except that I don't really interact with deity a lot, but sounds very similar to how I do it.
R: It must be a Baptist thing.
K: Maybe.
R: I should, I should do, we should do some sort of survey to say, were you, are you a former Baptist turned witch? What's your practice look like?
K: That's actually inter- I kind of want to do that.
R: I will totally participate in that survey.
K: Now I know you've already gone into this a little bit when you introduced yourself, but how has witchcraft changed your life?
R: Honestly, being able to embrace and practice openly has given me a lot more confidence and a lot more just feeling at home in myself. When you hide a part of yourself from the rest of the world, it creates a lot of space for self-doubt, for dissatisfaction, for unhappiness, and having finally come out and said, you know, and it's a little bit similar, but not exactly similar. It's kind of much more low-stakes. When I came out as bisexual, being able to just say, yeah, no, this is a part of me, and this is what I do, and this is what I believe. And by being able to state that out loud, that helped diminish some of that self doubt and that, well, you know, maybe smart people are skeptical and don't believe in this stuff, and if I believe in it, maybe I'm not that smart. So it's just given me a lot more self confidence, a lot more being at ease with myself as a person.
K: Good, because... that statement made me mad a little bit. I got issues with people thinking I'm dumb. It's a me thing.
R: Yeah.
K: What would you say is your biggest motivator in your practice?
R: My biggest motivator is really trying to live my life as fully and completely as I can. Again, this idea of this, that every part of our life has to fit into a little box, and it's all separate. So we have a, like our work life and our home life and our religious life and our game life or whatever. I worked very hard to integrate all that, and to not have, and have a full, complete life. So when I'm cooking, I'm not just cooking, I'm being mindful of, okay, here are the ingredients. What do I want to foster at my dinner table with my family? When I'm sewing, I want to bring in those, when I'm sewing for stuff to sell, I want to bring in those abundance and money energies so that I can make money to pay bills so that we have food on the table. It's very much just, that's my goal is to live a life that's a little bit closer to what we, our ancestors had, where everything was all together. It wasn't compartmentalized. There wasn't these boundaries. It was much more, I feel like a fully realized life.
K: I kind of, I like that idea, but for me, because I don't feel like I belong in society, I wear a lot of masks and costumes. The one that the, Kim who leaves the house, I don't feel as the same person as the one who's talking to you right now.
R: For a lot of people, that kind of masking is absolutely imperative, and is not only necessary to maneuver in society, but also sometimes it's a safety issue. I do not at all think any less of people who have to do that because for so many years I had to as well. That's kind of for my second book, one of the themes of that is, look, home is supposed to be a safe place and for a lot of people it isn't, but let's make home a safe place where you don't have to put up those masks. You can at least have one place where you can be fully yourself where you don't have to live up to society's expectations. Especially if those expectations are not anything that you're interested in.
K: I was so just talking about that this morning with my husband.
R: Yeah, it's...
K: I was like... I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing with my life because I don't fit traditional, I'm not even traditional, I don't fit current U.S. society standards of "what you should be".
R: It's really hard. It was really, really hard. Like right now I am finally free enough that my family and I were trying to live this magical, creative, non-traditional life and man, it's hard! The self-doubt that creeps in when you're looking at how much or how little money you're having.
K: Yeah, "Are we crazy?"
R: Yeah, when you're like, oh look at my bank balance, yeesh, and you're looking at all the bills piling up and everything. But it's an experiment and I figure that you know I at least owe it to my younger self to at least give it a try.
K: Speaking of yourself doubt, how do you deal with it?
R: So here we go. I have, I've lived with depression all my life, and for the majority of my life it was undiagnosed. And anxiety and the like and I have issues with like, intrusive thoughts. So self-doubt. I call it my jerk brain. that will always pipe up and say, just horrible things to you.
K: Asshole things to you.
R: Yeah, horrible things. Like just the sort of things that if I ever heard anybody say those things to my friends or family I would be, you know, getting a little violent.
K Exactly. There would be a fist fight.
R: Yeah! But one thing that I did, is I turned to magic for that. And what I did is, I created a servitor. It looked like a bird, looked like a raven, I called it Nevermore, and its sole job was to, whenever those intrusive jerk brain thoughts popped up, that it would swoop in and eat 'em. And I had that servitor for several years, and it really helped. And in fact, I've been in therapy too because you know, I believe in medication, and therapy, and also magic, and my therapist was like, oh well this is just, I can't remember what the term was but there's a certain therapy where it's kind of, you distract your brain from when these intrusive thoughts pop up and she's like, oh it's just like that. You're just doing it as a magical spin on it. And...
K: Oh, yeah, because you can't remove thoughts, you have to replace thoughts.
R: Right.
K: And by the way, for people who don't know what a servitor is, I just had to google it.
R: Oh sorry.
K: "A person who serves and attends on a social superior."
R: It is...
K: Or what do you, how do you define it?
R: It's actually it's a concept from chaos magic, where what you make is, you're basically making a thought form that carries out a task. And for me the thought form was this, this bird, thats sole job was to, whenever I had these thoughts, I could call on and say "Can you," or envision it swooping in and eating these intrusive thoughts as if they were like gnats or flies or stuff buzzing around my head. And I would, once a month I would meditate and give it intention and instructions just to kind of strengthen it. And I had it for years, for at least two, three years.
And I will say therapy, medication and this servitor all have helped me, so that I don't have... So that one, I don't have as many intrusive thoughts as I used to, but also now I'm to the point where, when I do have self doubt and the like, I can say to myself "You know, this is not, this self doubt is coming from the outside. It is not coming from the inside. It is, you know, this is how I view other people viewing me, and I'm putting onto them what I think they're thinking of me. And frankly I can't control what other people think about me. So why bother? Why put that energy into that and give it attention?"
K: Holy crap. That's, that's... that's an epiphany. Okay I have two questions.
R: Okay.
K: What, about this servitor. One, did you name it? I'm not asking for the name, but one, did you name it, and two, why did you choose a bird? Did you choose a bird, or did that just happen?
R: Okay. Well I already said the name, and I'm comfortable saying the name now because it's no longer, I no longer have it. I named it Nevermore, and it came out, it just came to me looking like kind of like a raven, but with a mouth that opened up really wide. Because you know, some of that some of that jerk brain thoughts were huge. That you...
K: Did it have teeth?
R: It did not. But it was a large raven, and that's just what came to me when I was first saying okay I'm going to do this, I'm going to give this a try. Yeah.
K: Now I'm now that's what I'm thinking, oh am I going to do this? what's mine going to be?
R: I honestly I totally think that... Again, people should... yes, you should see a doctor. You should see therapy, you... get therapy. You get your medication, and everything like that. But there is a, you know, magical aspect to a lot of the stuff we're dealing with, and why not give it a try to have a magical solution to that? To compliment and to support the medication side, and the therapy side. I was very lucky in that I had a therapist who was open and very accepting about that. I was like like, at one point we're going through a survey and she's like "Okay so do you have, do you engage in magical thinking?" and I'm like "Well I'm a witch..." and she kind of laughs.But she's like "Okay, let's, you know..."
So for people who are looking into therapy, you may have to go through a few therapists until you find one. Again, you will find therapists who are totally fine with, if you're Christian, saying "Okay well you're praying to God about this, and here's some Bible verses," or whatever, but the minute you start talking about crystals and tarot cards and stuff, then they get a little weird about that. So it may take some time to find a therapist who is accepting of that, but I was very lucky. And she was like "Nope, you do what you got to do to help you get better." and I, and she's like "As long as you're taking your medication and we're having therapy too, go for it."
K: Use everything in your toolbox.
R: Exactly!
K: Therapy, medication, magic, it's all in your toolbox. And also: keep trying until you find the right therapist. Because my most, my current therapist is the second one I've had since I've moved here to Tucson. My first one, I really think she might have been a witch, because we, she, I didn't have to explain things to her, that normally I would have to explain. With the, my current one, I'm pretty sure she's not Christian but she's not a witch. But she is accepting of the things, and she will, yeah. Like the magical thinking thing. People with obsessive compulsive disorder, we all know what you're talking about, but yeah.
Find a therapy, find a therapist, people. Find, look until you find somebody who is okay with you being witch.
R: And it's it's okay, too, if you have a therapist who's not working out, it's okay to say that's, no. And find, move on. I ended up having to walk out of a therapy session with a therapist once, and and it's okay. Nothing, you know, you're not, you're not going to get a black mark on your name. You're not going to get detention or anything, you're not...
K: You're not in trouble.
R: Yeah, you're not in trouble for saying "Nope. You know what? This isn't working out."
K: I will admit, when you said that, I was immediately terrified. I don't know that I could do that. But I could not come back after.
R: Yeah.
K: I would ghost that therapist.
I feel like oftentimes, by sharing these kind of, sharing these experiences, they tend to either give people a script where they're like "Oh, yeah, okay I'm gonna follow the script," or it gives them permission.
K: Absolutely.
R: And I you know. So if you're listening now and you're in therapy with a therapist that doesn't work out, I give you permission to find a different therapist, if that's what's been holding you back. Not that I'm any kind of like authority or believe that I, you know, it, I'm really even in any position to give permission, but I also know that sometimes for some people that is something that makes it easier for them.
K: Yep, me too. I'm not in charge of anything either.
R: I'm barely in charge of myself.
K: Exactly. Me too. What would you say is your biggest struggle when it comes to your practice?
R: Finding time. Like, I am a mother. I have two children. I have a house to keep going. I just finished, like I'm writing, so I just finished edits, which suck up every single piece of brain power that I had. Getting the edits done, and oftentimes, you know, having all that... it's not so much finding the time, but finding the motivation, that it's very easy to be like, you know. I I could find a way to make this also to include my magic in this also. but I just don't have it in me to think something up.
Which is why I feel like once I figure something out, that putting it in my toolbox, like it helps. Because I already know. I'm gonna, I need to mop the floors. Well, I'm going to include some moon water in my my mop bucket, because then while I'm mopping I can also have, set the intention of protection and purification and cleansing. I think that oftentimes we feel like we have to come up with something new every time we do magic, and it has to always be novel, and I think that that leads to kind of burnout. And feeling like well, since I can't think of anything, I just won't do it. And I know that for me, that often is the case where I'm just like "I am kind of tired and just don't have it in me."
Whereas if it's something that I've already done before magically, I can fall back on that and be like "No, it's totally okay to do this thing that I've done a million times before." And also, that's part of the magic, is you know, building up that... I don't want to call it residue, but that, that, those layers of the...
K: The half-life.
R: Yes.
K: Like medication. And uranium, I guess. What brings you the most joy in your practice?
R: Oh... When I am in the middle of, even if it's just of a really simple little thing like lighting a candle there's this sense of connection that I have with something bigger than me. I mean that was one of the reasons why for the longest time I kept going to church. Even when I was older and, you know, you get to the teenagers, and that's usually when you kind of stop going. I didn't need to go anymore because my parents were like "Get out of the house," in fact they started to get really annoyed about the fact that I was going to church. Part of what it was, I was going, going with my grandmother, but part of it was that sense of connection to something larger. That I just feel like... a puzzle piece that's fit into the place that I'm supposed to go, and I like that sense of connectedness and that sense of peace that comes with it
K: That sounds so nice. I think I've experienced that? but only fleetingly. I need to do more work. I want that!
R: You know, it... once you start feeling it, and when you take the time to make a note of when you have felt it, it makes it a lot easier to go back to that again, and to recreate those situations where you have that feeling. I often feel like witches are very much like scientists, or should be like scientists, in the idea of what is it that Jamie from Mythbusters says? "The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down..."
I feel like with witches, that's one of the things where a Book of Shadows is so super important and valuable. Where you can sit down and you can write down "Okay, I did this ritual, this how it made me feel," or "These are the times that I have felt that connection," or "I've done this thing or that thing and it's worked."
Because then you can go back and look at it, and be like "Oh. Okay, yeah. I feel more connected when I'm standing in my shower, or visualizing that the water coming down is cleansing me," or "When I am out in the garden and I'm planting something, then I feel that connectedness."And then you can build off of that to start expanding so that you feel it more often.
K: Noted. I'm going to have to do that. I'm so hesitant to write things down, well... Mainly because of laziness, to be honest.
R: It does take some some, some work. Most of my, my, I'll admit that all of my Book of Shadows are not actual Book of Shadows. They are my planners, my yearly planners, where I will write down on the days when I've done stuff. I don't do to-do lists, I do done lists. So I'll write what I've done, and then that way I can go back over and be like "Oh, on this day I did this," or I mean... a lot of it is just, you know. Groceries, and clean the house and that, but also anything that I do that is in any way significant or magical, I'll note that as well.Because then I can always take some time to go back over it.
K: I need to be more like that. Or I need to find the equivalent that I am able to do.
R: Yeah! Look. Book of Shadows, I think that we tend to have this idea that they need to be this really pretty leather bound, beautiful books that we write beautiful calligraphy in, and do beautiful illustration.
K: Not mine!
R: But honestly they can be anything. Like I know a lot of people and for a while there, I have, a I had a separate Book of Shadows that was a Pinterest board. You can do things like scrapbooking or even just writing notes on your phone. I mean it doesn't have to be this very beautifully detailed thing. You just have to do the work. So whatever makes it easier for you to do the work, and if it works for you, then who cares what other people might think of your sticky notes Book of Shadows that is all over your your desk?
K: Mine actually is a very pretty leather bound thing. But inside there's a bunch of sharpy scrawl. And then I only write things down if I am trying to reproduce it later, planning on reproducing it later. Otherwise everything is just spur of the moment, then it goes away. That's, that's also how I cook, and it's equally frustrating in both places later. What is your biggest fear in witchcraft?
R: It used to be screwing stuff up. And I think a lot of people, when they first come to witchcraft they feel like they have to have it absolutely perfect. Now my biggest fear is, honestly my biggest fear right now is that I'll write something and that it'll be wrong or awful. And then people will screw things up or...
K: Cancel you?
R: No I can't say... I don't, like I don't read the reviews or anything like that, because even if they're good reviews...
K: Good for you!
R: I know that I will take it to heart. So that I don't care about. It's mostly, I feel like it's... I have a responsibility to provide the most accurate information that I can, and oftentimes I just worry that I'm going to give somebody some information that is wrong, and then they screw something up.
It's one of the reasons why I love, and also hate, doing the edits. Because then my editors come back and they're like "Okay, so here's all the places where stuff wasn't clear." Or like, most recently I have a thing in this third book about using stones as infusors for essential oils, to, on your altar, and my editors came back with "Oh my god, if you have cats don't do this because it could severely harm or kill your cats!" And I'm like "Oh my goodness, oh no!" I like just felt awful for a while. Thinking oh my god, if I don't... and wondering if I should even keep it in the book, or if I should, you know. We ended up putting big warnings saying "If you have cats, you know, don't do this because..."
K: Or birds.
R: I think I put cats and then pets, so yeah birds would... but uh in my first book I had a bit about using taking your leftover bits of string, and putting it out for birds to use in their nests. And then later learned that that's a no-no too, because it can, the longer pieces can tangle up birds' feet or their wings and it can lead to death. And I'm like oh my goodness. So we have to put a warning in subsequent editions about, about that. Although I think they're, they might be just taking that out of the book for subsequent editions. So that's my big worry in witchcraft, is that I'm going to give people information that is not thoroughly vetted. Which is why I love my editors so much, because they catch that, and then...
K: That's interesting that you have to have a witchy editor to, that's interesting. Other writers would not have to worry about that.
R: Oh yeah.
K: I mean, I mean in some ways they would but, specifically...
R: Well yeah. Especially...
K: That's interesting.
R: I mean well, and as witches we use a lot of, I mean think of like flying ointment. Or some of the other ingredients we will use, where you have to have things saying "Okay yeah, you can use this herb in your practice; just don't eat it or you will die." You know. Having things like that. Making sure that, you know, we let people know. Label your jars, people!
K: Oh my gosh.
R: Because otherwise, if you don't label stuff then you end up not knowing what stuff is. Yeah, it's... witchcraft, is it is serious business! And I think people tend to forget that. Because again, they focus on this whole idea of "wooness" and oh you're just, you know, dancing around naked underneath the moon. Well, even then you gotta make sure that you, where you're dancing around naked that you're not going to get hypothermia, so. Serious business, people!
K: What is something you did early in your practice that you no longer do, and why don't you do it anymore?
R: Big rituals. Like, again, when I first started off I, you know, I, I came into the practice via Cunningham. Which I think a lot of people my age did, because back in the 90s that was kind of... Living Wicca and Solitary Wicca and that was on every bookshelf everywhere. And there was a big emphasis early on, on doing these big rituals, and these big productions.
And I don't do them anymore. Mostly because I'm tired, but also because that's just not how I prefer to spell cast and practice. I know that for some people they like the theater of that, and that's totally cool. If it works for you then, you know, absolutely, get all out, you know, get, break out the ceremonial robes and the jewelry, and call the quarters and all of that. But for me it's, it just never led to that feeling of connection that I get with just, from lighting a candle.
K: Yeah all that sounds exhausting to me. I don't think I have the attention span for it. I'm being absolutely serious.
R: I totally get it
K: There was a ritual that I didn't go to because I was physically unable at that point to go to it, but I think I still might... I might have gone just to see what it was like, but I think I would have gotten bored and distracted, which is not appropriate. So I'm I just, don't know if I'll go this next year even if I can, because I don't want to be the one who's distracting everyone else because I'm being myself. What is your favorite tool in your practice? It doesn't have to be an actual physical object.
R: Right now my favorite tool is my brain. And I say that... I said that out loud and it sounds like really snarky and pretentious. But I do a lot of work on the astral right now. I have in, I have a little idealized cottage that I go to that is basically, if you imagine a cottage in a forest, that's what you're gonna see. And I have done a lot of... it's a place where I go where I do a lot of my, my spellcasting. Where I meet with a lot of the spirit helpers that I work with, and I like it because it's not limited to what I have physically. After having two major moves in four years, I don't have a lot of physical tools. Our last move we had to stuff everything into this tiny little trailer, so a lot of stuff got left behind. But on the astral I can have the big beautiful cauldron, and all the herbs hanging from the the rafters, and all of my tools around me to then do my spellcasting.
K: That sounds so nice! If you could only recommend one book to a new witch, what would it be and why?
R: Oh, that's a really good question. You know what? I'm gonna go with, this is really old school but I'm gonna go with Urban Pagan by Telesco.
K: Hmmm.
R: Because that was one of the first ones that I read after Cunningham, and it has a lot of really great, it's a, a very broad, covers a broad range of topics. Most of the witches I, people that are going to be coming to witchcraft just by number-wise are going to be living in urban spaces. And because it's a more modern take, you don't get caught up on, because again I love the cottage, cottage aesthetic, and the hedgewitch aesthetic of witchcraft, but also I know that a lot of people aren't gonna have access to wild places, or to that kind of area. So having a book that is specifically for how you practice and be a pagan, it also has spellcasting and stuff in it, how you do that as, while living in a city or living in a suburb, I think would be super useful.
K: I'll have to look that up.
R: It is, and it, it is an old book. It's like from the 90s, again with, you know. I think we tend to get caught up on, on the books that we originally grew up with, or, or came into the practice with. And I think it stands up better to the test of time than some of the other books that came out around then.
K: Now you say you've moved around quite a bit. Would you say that environment has shaped your practice? And if you, has it changed, based on where you lived?
R: Oh yeah. So I grew up in Wyoming, and I'm back in Wyoming now. And in between that I ended up living in Illinois, right outside of Chicago for 20 some odd years. And yeah, growing up as a young little witch-not-witch, you know, I learned about herbs, and I learned about how... not how to use them magically, but I learned specifically medicinal properties of various herbs and plants. And I would, you know, you know wander the alleyways and the neighborhood and collect sticks and nightshade and uh dandelions and marigolds and all of that. And growing up in Wyoming, one of the big plants out here is sagebrush. So that's what I grew up with as an aromatic.
And then living in Illinois it's a completely different environment, and different different plants. So I ended up, that's when I ended up in Illinois, when I was learningc really getting into witchcraft and still, and my, beginning my path, and learning all the plants there. Going to parks. I didn't really have access to forests or any kind of wild land, so I would, was kind of limited to what I could pick up from... I did a lot of haunting of witchy stores and occult shops for tools and for ingredients. And now that I'm back out here in Wyoming, I can do more foraging. I'm like 15 minutes away from the mountains, and I'm getting back into learning not only the local fauna and flora, but learning where I can go to forage.
And, and working with the land here, getting reacquainted with it. And I do believe that it may not affect your practice so much, the environment that you're in, but it will affect your relationships with whatever spirits are in the area, in the area. Whatever genius loci are around, what you have, what is available to you tool-wise and ingredient-wise. Like right now I'm living in a college town, so there's two witchy shops that I can go to if I needed like, crystals or herbs or, or what have you. But in other, you know, the town that I grew up in, the closest bookstore was two hours away. So you didn't really, you had to make do with what you could find, as opposed to going out and buying something.
K: Hmmm. How do you pull yourself out of a magical slump? I hear people ask that all the time. "Oh, I just feel like I don't have any magic left anymore and I don't know how to get it back.
R: That's, yeah that's tough. That's... for me, it tends to fall into two categories. Either I go back to what I know, so start simply. Just like, okay, just light a candle. Just light some incense. Take a moment, talk to your, talk to my spirit helpers. The other part of it is, if I don't even have the energy for that, is to just start talking big to myself. And when my brain says "Oh, you know, I'm just not feeling it," just be like "But you are a magic sparkle witch bitch, of course you have magic in you. It's just hiding and you need to, you know, pull on your, you know, witch up and go and do this thing." And sometimes that works. Sometimes just talking big to myself like as if I know what I'm talking about, sometimes I can trick myself.
K: I relate. Do you ever work with other witches?
R: I have not, although I do love talking with other witches. I love sharing ideas and discussing it. I like it as a kind of a support system. I feel like having some people, either witches or at least people who understand that you're witchy that you can talk to, either bouncing ideas off of, or you know, saying "Oh I did this thing."
But I've mostly, I've never really worked with other witches. Mostly just because I haven't been in a place where the witches I know where we're physically in the same spot. Most of my witch friends are people that I've either never met and we just know each other from the internet, or we ended up moving away from each other. So it's mostly just a whole lot of chatting about stuff, not really working together. Not that I'm opposed to it or anything like that, it's just, I've never had really the the opportunity.
K: Who or what would you say are the three biggest influences on your practice?
R: Oh, okay. So this is going to be a little bit weird. The first one is Terry Pratchett, which if you aren't familiar with him, he is, he was an English author of fantasy and science fiction, most notable for his Disc World novels. And he had in there, witches. The most, the one that most people, they know about him is Granny Weatherwax. And he wrote a lot about how magic works that makes sense to me, and wrote about witches in a way that I'm like, no. This is, I, I can see, I know real world witches that are like this. So it's, it may seem kind of weird that it's a fantasy author that's my first number one, but you know. It is what it is.
And then my next one would be again, Telesco, just because again, she was one of, like... I came in with Cunningham. Telesco was the one who just really made sense to me. Like I started off with Wicca and Wicca didn't make sense to me. Or it felt... I'm like, I just came from religion of worship. I'm not really interested in another worship religion. So Telesco was my, the one who taught me a lot of my early, about a lot of my early practice. The stuff that I took to heart.
And then the other one, I guess I'd have to say Markale, who is... Jean Markale, who is a French author, did a book ,I'm trying to see if I can find it on my... yeah. Wrote a book called The Great Goddess, which is a look at, you know, Paleolithic and prehistoric and then later on goddess worship. Which, again, it seems weird because I'm talking about how I'm not interested in worship, but then here's this author who's writing about The Goddess, And all of this just kind of, these authors and their ideas kind of coalesced into what my practice was, and what it continues to evolve towards.
K: What would, what advice do you have for witches who are just getting started? Like they have, they don't even, they might have bought a book and a candle.
R: Okay. Take everything with a grain of salt. Because this witchcraft, because magic is so large, and there's so many different ways to practice it. You're going to have a lot of people who say "This is the way you do witchcraft and any other way is bogus," or you're going to have a lot of people who are going to say "This is how you do this." And I don't think anybody ever gets into witchcraft to follow in lockstep with somebody else's ideas.
I think that you get into witchcraft, and you practice witchcraft, because there is an individual part of you that is looking for a magical expression. So reading, you know, looking, getting information, watching youtube videos, watching tiktok, going on to instagram, facebook, you know, finding discord servers, reading blog posts and books and stuff, that is all fantastic ways to get information, but you should always, always perceive that information, and filter it through your own moral compass and your own goals as a witch, so that you can build a truly individual practice. Because when it's individual, and when it's personalized, I feel like the magic is more effective.
K: Thank you.
R: Oh, you're welcome!
K: That was a good answer. Who do you think I should have on the show? Who would you like to hear answering these questions?
R: Oh,okay. Understanding that I don't know who you've already had on the show, so I may say people that you already had, and if so then let me know because then I can go back and listen, but Matt Auryn.
K: Goals goals goals. I want I want him.
R: Yeah. I think that he's just awesome and his books are great.
K: I've been afraid to ask.
R: Oh no! You should just totally ask. But like that's, that's how I reached out to you. I was afraid to ask people to see if they wanted me on their podcasts, and then I was just like I'll just, I'll just message people. Worst thing that'll happen is they say no. And but yeah.
K: I'm still afraid.
R: Laura Tempest Zakroff is amazing.
K: Yes.
R: There's also, let me, I gotta pull out her book. Jenny Blonde who has a book that just came out called Hearth and Home Witchcraft. She's known as The Comfy Cozy Witch.
K: Oh yeah!
R: She's pretty awesome too. And then the last one, Najah Lightfoot of Good Juju. She's fantastic as well.
K: Cool!
R: I'm telling you all the authors.
K: I will look them up, I'm gonna look them up.
R: All the, all the authors and witches that are on my, when you ask me who, if there's any that I envy, there you go.
K: Oh yeah.
R: Here's all the cool people that I wish that I was, all the cool witches that I wish I was friends with. You should go interview them.
K: Is there anything you else, is there anything that you wanted to talk about or that I didn't ask, or anything you wanted to ask me?
R: Yeah! Well I mean I have my two books that have already come out, they're both by Llewellyn, or from Llewellyn. You can get them on Amazon or from your local bookstore. My third book that's coming out, that'll be out Fall of 2023. Right now I also have a Patreon that, where I post not only sneak peeks of what I'm writing on, but I post about ways to include magic in your in your life, in your mundane life. Also we're gonna be starting up a discord, so that we can chat. And that's really a lot that I'm working on.
K: It is!
R: And then the other thing I'm doing is, I'm doing a project with my husband that is a tabletop role-playing game of magic and witchcraft.
K: What?!
R: Yeah.
K: That's cool!
R: It's called Coven & Crucible.
K: Oh my gosh. That sounds cool.
R: It is very cool. We've been working on it for the last year, we're gonna be doing a Kickstarter of it soon and it is, I describe it as John Wick meets The Last Witch Hunter.
K: Holy jeez.
R: It was...
K: So a bunch of killing, and... there better not be dead puppies.
R: No no no no no!
K: That's why I never watched another one of those movies.
R: Yeah, no. We've been doing a play test for the past year and most of it is a whole lot of... thirsty witches, actually, and people posting the outfits that they're wearing while they're doing cool magic stuff. So it's really fun. It's hilarious watching people take something that you wrote and turn it into a role-playing game.
K: That is cool.
R: Yeah, it's, it is. I've always wanted to do something where I could work with my husband and we've been having a lot of fun with it. When I first approached him I about it "I said hey, you, so do you want to take your our relationship to the next level?" and he immediately said yes, and I'm like "I'd like to, I'd like to, how about we write a role-playing game?" he's like "That's even better."
K: Oh what, I wonder what he thought you meant. Okay at the end I ask two things of my guests.
R: Oh!
K: They, they, they don't know what's gonna happen.
R: Oh...
K: First, recommend something to the listeners. Anything. It doesn't have to be witchy at all, just anything.
R: Oh!
K: Wwhatever you're into right now, recommend it.
R: Oh, okay. So right now I'm into this Canadian series that came out a few years ago, it's called Killjoys. It's a science fiction show my husband introduced me to. It, it is amazing and hilarious.
K: What platform?
R: Right now we're using, you can get it on Vudu, either, you can do it by the series or I think freevee is the other place where you can watch it maybe?h but you can absolutely get on Vudu. It's a, it's just an amazing Canadian science fiction show that's hilarious.
K: Cool the second thing, are you ready?
R: I'm ready.
K: I don't know why I'm doing this to you, I don't know why I chose you to terrify.
R: I'm ready.
K: It's not a big deal. Would you please tell me a story that you love to tell.
R: Okay yes, I will absolutely, I will tell you the story of how, of my daughter's birth, because it is hilarious and awesome. So I, my daughter, she's 18 years old now. First, my first child, I have two of them. And I woke up one morning and I'm like, I'm having contractions. And I knew I was having contractions, but I also knew that a lot of hospitals don't, especially when you're a first time mother, they'll be like "Oh they could be Braxton Hicks." I didn't want to go to the hospital and get sent back.
K: Yeah.
R: So I'm like okay. So in my brain, and I'm like no, I'm totally experiencing contractions, this is a thing. And in my brain I'm like, "You know what? If my water breaks, then they have to bring, let me into the hospital." I don't know why this was like, where my brain went to, but I'm like okay, so what what gets your water to break? And I'm like oh I, you know, heavy lifting. So I'm like I'm gonna fill up the Doggie Dooley before we need to leave, which is the little septic tank thing that, for your dogs. And so I fill up this five gallon bucket full of water and I'm like just waddling over to it, lifting this thing. I'm, you know, nine months pregnant...
K: In labor!
R: n labor, but I'm like I'm gonna do this. And, and, and all of a sudden I feel this rush of warm liquid. I'm like "Hot damn, yes! I totally, my water is broken! We're gonna go to the hospital now, they're gonna be like all right, and deliver my child!" So I waddle back into the house and all of the sudden this little voice at the back of my head goes "Did your water really break, or did you just piss yourself?" I'm like holy shit, I don't know! and so I'm like wait a second. I read that, because I had read everything, like this is my first kid, and, and so I read, first pregnancy, read everything. I'm like I've read the amniotic fluid smells sweet.
K: Oh no.
R: And so, and so I, I went into the bedroom and I pull off these sweatpants that I've lived in for several months, which is the other reason I wanted to like, give birth, because I was tired of living in sweatpants, and my ex walks in on me sniffing the crotch of my pants. He's like what are you doing? I'm like, I'm trying to tell if this smells like sweet or like pee. What do you think? And he's just like, I'm not gonna sniff those. Eventually went to the doctor, went to the hospital, because I finally told the doctor. I'm like, because we had called him, he's like, well tell me when you can't talk through the contractions. I'm like my, my dear, sir I come from a family of talkers. There is not, nothing sort of death will keep us from talking. But I finally I told him look, I was trying to write a note to my neighbor to watch the dogs and I couldn't think of the word through the contraction, and he's like fine, just come to the hospital.
So I get to the hospital and they're like no. Your, your, your water hasn't broken. So I'm like great I just, I just pissed myself on the day of my daughter's birth. This is awesome. And I love telling that story to my daughter whenever I get the chance, because you know. Now she's gotten over the embarrassment of it and just kind of rolls her eyes, but yeah. It's, it...
K: So that wasn't it?
R: No, I, I ended up giving birth to her several hours later. But yeah, I had, I had pissed myself, it wasn't water.
K: Because of the... wow.
R: Yeah. Just...
K: That was some good contracting.
R: Yeah, that and carrying, you know, a full five gallon bucket full of water, waddling across the backyard.
K: But at least it was really labor.
R: Yes, this is true. I was just terrified that we're gonna show up at the hospital and they say nope, you're not in labor, and send me back, and you know. Because hospitals in Detroit are...
K: Did they, or did they hold you?
R: Huh?
K: Did they do that, or did you, they say it didn't break but you really are in labor?
R: Yeah they said you really are in labor, it, your water didn't break. In fact it broke when they were examining me, so...
K: So they didn't send you home.
R: No they did not send me home because by then I was like, I was like please don't send me home. I just want to...
K: Just gimme a baby.
R: Yeah, can we just push this, push this baby? I'm done. She's, she's fully cooked. Let's just get her out into the world.
K: Man. Yeah I would I would love for my mom to just tell random people that story.
R: Yeah she's had, she's had 18 years to get used to just ridiculous stuff.
K: Well it doesn't reflect on her at all.
R: No, not at all. It's not like the time that she started singing, when she was like three years old and started singing Fire Water Burn in front of her grandmothe, when I learned that she will pick up lyrics really really quickly.
K: Ope.
R: And then had to start...
K: Oh thos kids, learning so fast...
R: Yeah that's when I'm, okay, I gotta stop, you know. I gotta adjust my car listening.
K: Well thank you for being on the show and telling stories.
R: Thank you for having me, this has been a blast!
K: I agree, this has been fun! All right, and I will see you on the internet then.
R: Okay. Bye!
R: Bye!
K: If you'd like a free autographed copy of Rachel's book, The Scent of Lemon & Rosemary, be sure to check out the giveaway on Instagram. Look at the caption under the graphic shown in the episode artwork for instructions to enter. And now, Rachel.
R: Yes.
K: Welcome to patreon.
R: Hello patreon! *fade out*
K: *fade in* that, all, all of that said, what do you dislike about the witch community? Leading up to that one.
R: You know, I, I feel like... it's getting better, but it's very... *fade out*
K: To hear more of the patreon episode, head over to patreon.com/cleverkimscurios for a free seven day trial. Get podcast bonuses, videos, recipes, access to the Marco Polo group, and more! There are also tiers where you can get a monthly spell box, intentional handcrafted jewelry that I make especially for witches, and even a special crystal box. Check it out at patreon.com/cleverkimscurios.
Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Your Average Witch. You can find us all around the internet. On instagram @youraveragewitchpodcast, twitter @averagewitchpod, facebook at facebook.com/youraveragewitchpodcast, at youraveragewitch.com, and at your favorite podcast service. Want to help the podcast grow? Leave a review! You can review us on amazon and apple podcasts, and now you can rate us on spotify. You just might hear your review read at the end of the next episode. To rate Your Average Witch on spotify, click the home key, click on Your Average Witch Podcast, and then leave a rating. You can also support the show by going to patreon.com/cleverkimscurios. If you'd like to recommend someone for the podcast, like to be on it yourself, or if you'd like to advertise on the podcast, send an email to youraveragewitchpodcast at gmail.com.Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the moon changes.