The Kitchen Witch’s Way Is Live!

Greetings, fyne readers! Did you know that in addition to poetry, I also put words together in book form? My most recent endeavor is about a skeptical, bitter young woman who crosses paths with a Kitchen Witch and her magical worldview. What a fun story to write, and it has come to pass that the first twelve perfectly imperfect chapters of The Kitchen Witch’s Way are now available for viewing on Ream! Ream is a serial publishing platform that is entirely free to join—although you can put a penny in my cup if you want to support—It’s like Substack but for book authors only. Join me if you deesyre! Here’s the link: https://reamstories.com/sabbathmaiden

And here’s a longer description of the story:

Regina is a rational agnostic with a life-long restrictive eating disorder. She hasn’t yet been able to find her way to freedom, and she’s tried damn near everything.

Everything, that is, but magic.

Somehow, Regina has suspended her disbelief and has come to find her way to studying with Ingal, a strange old woman in a quirky mountain town who goes by the title of Kitchen Witch. Regina has sought out this woman because she’s tired of her cold and measured life, and she’s hoping, one last time, to shift her mind about things. Things like finding hope and relief from her constant struggle with food and body. Things like…her lifetime resistance to receiving love.

In the wilds of Ingal’s magickal herb garden, Regina begins immersing herself in The Kitchen Witch’s Way, the old woman’s grimoire. Along with these writings, a strange crow, a fabulous bohemian caravan, and an unexpected heart connection with the town’s farmer are making it so Regina can’t quite ignore that there’s something powerful, maybe even magical, going on. And that perhaps, with that magic, she can finally find her way to freedom.

Welcome to the town of Mostly Falls, where the story of The Kitchen Witch’s Way, begins.

Just so you know, for health reasons I am taking a short break from uploading new chapters, but please do navigate your way to the site and let me know what you think. Get cozy, wander your way through, make a comment that you made it to the last chapter, and I’ll know it’s time to get back to posting. Hope to see you there!

Ps. If you’ve any difficulties getting to/around the site, please comment and I’ll guide you through the crossroads

Blessed Mabon

Blessed, blessed Mabon

Blessed, blessed Autumnal Equinox

Light and Dark, equal

How will the Descent

Serve our Transformation?

And blessed, blessed Spring Equinox to my Southern Hemisphere friends :}}

Transforming Symbols

I was once asked

“What symbols were you born into life with?”

And immediately,

I thought of her

Head spinning, pea green hurling from mouth

Her

That’s the symbol I was born into life with

Literally, mother thought it was cute

Not realizing it was her life symbol, too

She named me with this

Woman, small, weak, victim

Possessed by unknown forces she’d never control

Her story, now was

My story

Always looking for a savior

But

Not even Big Daddy

Could do the job

Forever doomed

That was the symbol

Better just accept it

Take your meds

Hope for normality

And tell no one

Well

My soul wasn’t having it

And soon, I was a girl possessed by

An eating disorder, not some ancient demon

(Well at least we’re progressing here)

But it was basically the same story

Try as hard as you can

But no one, not even yourself

Will be able to save you

Accept it

Take your medicine

Follow your meal plan

Don’t trust the lies your body tells you

Hope for normality

And tell no one

Again, the soul rebelled and wrote a memoir

Told everyone

Went off meds

Left the nine to five

And tried its hardest

To trust the sacredness of this body

All the while battling whispering voices

You’re crazy

You’re possessed

Your body is trying to kill you

No one or thing will ever rescue…

Still, the soul persisted

The soul

Wanted another symbol

I was hard at work on this,

When one day

A great pain terrorized my core

Memories of my mother, once more

Travelling from doctor to doctor

Trying to find the cause

Trying to find the cure

But ultimately

Finding nothing

Crazy

“We’re sorry lady

We’ve got nothing to offer you

We’ve done all the tests

And there’s nothing there

So just take these medications

And learn how to manage”

Her story

Her symbol

Woman, weak, victim, possessed

Powerless

And doomed

Well, this pain, it found me too

As will the ancestral symbols

And at first, I was her

Looking for cures, looking for causes

And finding none

Empty looks in doctor’s eyes

“Sorry”

Her story

Had become my story

Once more

But again,

The soul wouldn’t settle

And it put all of its shamanic, witchy tools to the test

Trusting, visioning, chanting

Trying to transform

Trying to transform the symbols

Symbols born into this life with

Symbols it just couldn’t accept

The question came one day

“What would you like your life to symbolize?”

And I looked back

At a life of so many other people’s symbols

And I decided

To call in my own

From possessed to compassionate de-possessor

From anorexic to vibrant, wise and magical kitchen witch

From crazy, chronic illness throwaway patient to

Somatic healing, dreamworker and sexual abuse recovery mentor

This is what I’d like my life to symbolize

Symbolizing

The transformative journey

The decades long struggle

The persistent, never-give-up-on-myself

Stubborn goat-like fighter

The one who refused to accept the label

Of what so many of her lineage died still tortured by

A transformer of symbols

Steadfast by my own sacred soul’s side

Believing that there is more

Believing that my body is wise

Visioning another way

Communing with the Old Medicines

This journey to transform

Finding a path to heal, for all my relations

This is what I’d like my life to symbolize

To be the ancestor that finally finds resolution

Or at least the one

That will die trying

Thanks for reading!

What symbols were you born with/into?

What would you like your life to symbolize?

The Kitchen Witch

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

She throws off the sheepskin

Stretching her wiry body that’s been through so much

She smiles, taking in this simple home she’s created

A hearthfire crackles in the corner

The scent of woodsmoke fills the air

She

Is happy

Shuffling into the kitchen

Before her are odd shaped and gleaming

Glass jars filled with all sorts of herbal beauties

Golds and greens and sunflower yellows

One in particular calls her aim

Trusting

She pulls down the shining canister

And shakes a bit of the plant into a pot

Cold water trickles from the well-sourced tap

A match hisses as she brings the stovetop to life

Humming and stirring

She’s thinking of magic

All of the things she’d like to bring in

Stories are words, words given meaning

And speaking them, infusing

Like matchlight, will bring them to life

What stories she wonders

Does she want to create and dance in today?

Here she lies focus, here she sings into being

The Kitchen Witch

She dances in the kitchen

She thinks back to times

When this place was but a cage

She recalls the journey, the transmutation

From being assigned to duty here

From being accused of poisonings and torture here

Through the epigenetic spirals

She’s arrived, finally

To delighting in creation here

At her healing cauldron

For her

Only for her

And when she wishes,

She crafts things here for others

And when she wishes

She invites the young ones

So struggling with nourishment

And body

And being alive in this cold, confusing world

Sometimes, when she wishes

She sits them right down at her splintering wooden table

And they drink tea

And talk about dreams

And look out the window onto her garden

The Kitchen Witch

She remembers

She re-members

She hums and she stirs

She focuses her stories, her words, her

Spell-ing

Into the waiting and willing plant potions before her

She feels the soft fur of the familiar brushing against her ankles

She smiles

She is grateful

For this long road

And how the magic

Of the Kitchen Witch

Found its way

Into her heart

Emanations

From the Zero

All pervasive, fullness, emptiness

Electric whizzings throughout the whole

Comes the One

Centration

The definition of Self

Some say this Self is unique

Never having existed before

A state-of-the-art singular embodiment

Of the Universe

This One, then

Becomes attracted to another

Be it in flesh or mind,

This One becomes the Two

Setting its focus, day and night

Something grows, resulting

Between the One and its focus of

Desire

This Two begets the Three

This Three

Formed by the uniqueness of the One

Formed by the desire and passion of the attraction

Begins to grow, stabilize

All is well

The garden flourishes,

Bright blossoms reveal

The Sun shines

Suddenly great tremors cross the land

Violent shooting crevices slicing

The petals, the careful tended formation

Torn to shreds

The Four becomes the Five

It always comes

This necessary destruction

Devastated, the One stares down

At the mess of the garden

That focus, that desire, that beauty

Gone, gone, gone

And has two choices

To wish for the Four, to pine

For what once was

Or to leap into the terrifying unknown

To trust, to release, to open

To what wants to now become

With risk of the next severity

To take on, and into the Six

Granted the abyss is crossed

(These choices do not always move forward)

Here the One lands in a shimmering light

Where all filaments connecting, felt, seen, heard

Beating, beaming, filling with gold

The Five has become the Six, overflowing

With the Great Fool’s knowing

That this too shall pass

Surely, as if by mode of prediction

The Six feels the illusory beams dissolving

The center standing strong

But all else, everywhere, flounders

Here again, a question

Dissolve into past’s bitterness

The inevitable victimhood of the Five

Or make another leap

Choose the vision quest

Dream a new dream to reach for,

Rack the mind for meaning

Turn inward, reflection

Reframing initiation

Again?

This then, is the choice of the Seven

Holding onto these reins

Staying centered, open, alive

Feeling the great void, the risks

All that has been

In the Silence, in the Seven

The One begins

To receive

Codes, new language, receiving

A symbolization of The Journey

It takes root, the One becomes scribe

Pages and pages of the tale

Begin to gather

In the Eight, the One somehow knows

The task will be to bring all of this into view

To give it life, to walk it out into the world

But first, the One also somehow conceives

That time in the Nine is necessary before the birth

The Nine of absorption, of preparation

Of sinking into subconscious terrors

That may protest

In the Nine, this One tends

To all that was forgotten

And, again as if prediction

The One arrives into the Ten

Feeling, knowing

It is time to bring their understandings forward

To serve, to deliver, to shine

This great brilliance they have maintained, bellowed

On their path of unfolding

Here, at the Ten

The One walks daily, humbly beaming

And knowing, that soon

Into the Zero

They will become again

If then,

This whole structure is truth

We can see that to

Know Thyself

We can see that to

Follow true desire, true passion

Is what turns this whole Wheel

So if it fits, if these words somehow spark alive

Tend to that unique flame within you

Follow its yearnings, imaginings

Even if it is so very dark

Believe and trust it is there, with all of your will

And that you too, have a great and burning orb within you

Keeping all of your planets alive

Follow it, let it lead you through the night

And may the journey of Emanation hold you

On this wild, devastating, brilliant and unbelievably

Beautiful ride

Grimoire: Sacred Space

Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva on Pexels.com

What if

The deep hunger for emptiness

The torturous aims to achieve

Were the only ways she knew

To create space for herself, within herself

The only way

To approximate a clearing of the maelstrom

Energies

Voices

Visions

Ancestral beggings

Unaligned cords and commitments

His energy

Swirling like a tangle of poison

A burden, forced to carry

In her pit

What if

This was the only way she knew

To feel clear?

What if

Releasing cellular matter

Kilo by kilo

Actually felt like releasing

Old imprinted matter

That no longer serves?

Matter she had no choice to receive

Mother, her energy

Her energy

What if

She could create

An equally powerful tool

To clear, to clean, to build

Space

Without destruction

To create

Space

Without suffering

To create

Space

For her full, joyous being

Kicking those freeloaders out of the window

To let in the light

To take up root and grow

Large

She only knew

The tool of going without

She only knew

The feeling of nothing

Hovering in her stomach

As a sort of power

To claim her space

But ironically

This tool, precisely applied

Only destroyed her

What if, instead

She poured her obsessive, meticulous

Attention

On magick

On psychic realm protections

On creating shimmering boundary

Crafting space

Space

For the altars–

The Dark Goddess Altar

The Inner Child Altar

The Altar of the Shadowy realms, exalted

Occupying her hands

And her minutes

And her mind

With teachings

And community

And reminders

That her body is not broken

And that she is not confused

And that this roiling mass within her

Does not belong,

And that she has the power to clear it

To claim her own space

To tend her own altars

To make room for the brilliance of life

Urging to live through her in Beauty

What if, instead

Of arranging every single molecule

Every single gram, second, kilo

To somehow engender the feeling

Of the deep, deep certain emptiness of hunger

What if, instead

She occupied magician’s mind

Throwing down pathwork

Fighting valiantly for

The creation of true space

Sacred space

Defending

An incomparable

Uniqueness

A remarkable

Glistening starlight

A temple, lined with offerings

Her sacred space

Her

Sacred

Space

Of Skin

Grimoire: Bone Magic

Something a little different this week, my friends! Here is an excerpt from the semi-fictional grimoire in my upcoming novel, The Kitchen Witch. Enjoy!

BONE MAGIC: HONORING THE LOVE OF BONES

There is a particular fondness for bones amongst many with eating difficulties, mostly in seeing them jut out from oneself as proof of ultimate thinness. While glorifying thin bodies is obviously a twisted carryover from our fashion worlds, I also feel it has more sacred roots.

In many cultures around the world, there is what is known as the Crone figure. This has often been portrayed as the ugly, wicked old woman in the forest in our contemporary times. However, in other cultures this archetype held great power and respect rather than disgust. The Crone symbolized facing death, destruction and the dying of the old to make room for the new. Many stories described her, sitting by a fire, throwing sticks and stones for divination, her countenance adorned with various feathers and skeletal pieces from animals. She was also often skeletal looking, not for fashion’s sake, but to depict one on the edge of life and death, working with those mysteries.

The Crone worked with death, strove to understand it. Her bones, both protruding from her body and adorning her body, represented this connection, this acceptance of this great Mystery of our experience as humans.

The Crone honored the bones. I’d like to propose that one struggling with a restrictive eating disorder, who spends so much effort in looking for, searching for her bones, is a Crone in hiding. I propose she is not looking for thinness for the sake of being thin, but that she is searching for this Crone within her, to see its evidence within her and the collective psyche. She does not know it, but if she survives the initiation, she will become the Crone.

So, in honor of the Crone, in honor of our searching, starving, scratching, and seeking her to reveal herself through our skin, I present this chapter. It outlines some ways to take this love of bones, and this yearning for Crone, and to embrace it, create with it, learn from it in life-giving ways. That instead of twisting this deep yearning into a practice that is literally killing off the potential to honor the Crone’s wisdom, instead we will embrace it.

Grimoire: Honor The Need

Photo by Umut Saru0131alan on Pexels.com

Honor the need

A need to feel clean

A need to create safe containers

A need to clear toxic energy

A need to be involved in ritual

A need to be near the line

Of life and death

A need to see the bones

A need for a way

For a simple, primal constitution

To deal with choice overwhelm

In a world with too much everything

A need for clarity

A need for an altered state

A need to not feel so fucking lost and confused

A need to find a way, any way

To say NO

These needs

Once funneled into decimating compulsions

Found a way to be transferred

These needs

Honored for their message

Somehow transformed

Into wild and witchy practices

Done naked in the moonlight

The need to clean, cleanse, clear

Found other ways to release

Found other ways to abstain

Found other ways to create space

For vision, and safety and the

Ability to scream no

Found other ways

Instead of this flesh-theater

The daily behaviors, and the stage on which it

Struggled, desperately, to communicate

I sit at my altar

Cleansing smoke swirling in the air

Measuring my ingredients down to the gram

Chemical reactions will not occur

Without the precision I’ve honed

This is necessary

For alchemy

Humming, chanting

I use sharp knives

To slice through invisible cords

That attempt to suck my lifeforce

From all directions

I cut them, I clear them, I burn them

Have found another way

Ritual

I write out my fears

Cleansing

Measuring

Simplifying those words

Putting containers around them

Saying it all, as intensely as I starved it

Creating a safe space

A container for the raw truths

To finally find your eyes

Ritual

I press record

Blink, blink red on the microphone

I transform dark emotions

Screaming

Screaming out

What I used to use withering to express

Ritual

I hunt down carcasses

I watch the skin peel off bone

Bubbling in brine

I hold the festering mass

And finally, the clean remnants

I wear upon my chest

These are only a few of the ways

Honoring the need

And transforming them

A need to feel clean

A need to create safe containers

A need to clear toxic energy

A need to be involved

In Ritual

A need to be near the line

Of life and death

A need to see the bones

A need for this simple, primal constitution

A need for clarity

A need for an altered state

A need to not feel so fucking lost and confused

A need to find a way, any way

To say NO

I’ve found it

I keep finding it

I’ll probably always be at work

In this candle-lit laboratory of the imperfect realms of healing

But first

And always

And forever

I remember I must

Honor

The need

Grimoire: Start Where You Are

“But what about the food?”

The young girl asked

The old, wise eyes gazing back upon her

“All of these philosophical waxings

All of this spiritual idealism

But what

About

The

Food??

I’ve talked too long

And thought too much

And tried my best

To daydream of better days

Beyond the constant need to measure

Beyond the fear of eating different foods

Beyond the rituals, the timings, the incessant hopelessness

That I’ll never be free

But I can’t see

I can’t see beyond

This cage

What

About

That?!?”

The old woman smiled through the bars

Deep compassion and a wry spice, wrinkling

She took a breath, and said

“Start where you are, dearie

That’s howcome you can’t see out

You must

Start inside

“Start inside, blessing all the furniture

That makes up this sacred mind-home

Although it is a cage

It has, after all

Kept you very safe.”

Peppered braid moved across shoulder

As she looked out to field

“If you measure, bless those cups

If you weigh, bless that scale

If you time-tick, give offerings to the sacredness of Chronos

If you eat the same thing

Every single day

Scour the grimoires

For the enchanting qualities of these foods

See where they are speaking magic

To you

Stir clockwise

Prayers for freedom, release

Into the liquids you can consume

Carve spells for change, vision

Across the same, hard bar

You consume over and over again

Like the slaves in deep dark territory

Rolling cigars with dirt and leaves for Legba

Start…

Where you are.”

The girl looked at the woman

Who stared out to the field

Girl-mouth agape

And devouring

The words she never knew

She needed to hear

Those blasphemous and wild

Life-giving, not enabling

Trickster words

“Start

Where you are”

And so,

She retreated from the small opening

That looked out to the woman

And her eyes, and her smile, and her

Spice

She turned and looked around

At the blank and dismal walls

Of her tiny, tiny world

She lit a candle

Holding it up to it all

And start

She did

Grimoire: Coven

Wandering for decades

Through the murky bogs of normality

Yearning, keening, comparing

Kicking, screaming, wailing

Reducing, rebelling

To find my place in it all

Somehow I’ve arrived

At the Order of The Zig Zag Path

Wolf-like, growling

Strange wings, cawing

Occasional hands

Have dared touch my flesh

Steering, holding, guiding

The realness of them, shocking

They lift me

Then

They are gone

Loosely, we are networked

By a fine, gossamer thread

A webbing, worldwide

A simple tug (I have to ask)

Will bring these hands

To mine in times of need

Many years I’ve travelled

And lines of insanity I’ve toed

Wandering far from this web

Withering, dissolving, slobbering

Blade in hand, at the ready

When always, they are there

It’s taken half a century

To see

That without this web

That without this

Coven

I would never have made it

As odd birds cannot fly to safety

Alone

There is always a wind

There is always a strange rising that guides them

There is always

Another

Without this,

Chilling winters

Turn beating hearts to stone

We need bodies

We need circling

We need

Support

Especially those called

To walk the edges

To take study in risky hedges

To turn the different Way

We need

Coven

Coven may sound

Like some fantastical irrational

Dreaming

And in part, we are

But this webbing also includes

The real rays of diagnostic

The trained elders guiding mind

The white walls of safe places

When blood may come

From our own hands

These too

Are Coven

For those who have been called to

(Most likely kicking and screaming)

The Order of The Zig Zag Path

Cannot do this

Alone

We have both rational, hard structure

And spirit guided deep wildness

To weave as we navigate the road

Where nothing is normal

Where pain cannot be dissected and removed

Where reoccurring trials of the flesh

Are seen as lessons, and gods, and great

Rootlets winding through ancient futures

This

Without Coven

The mind, in the stew of normality

Will be torn, reduced, tamed

Confused, anesthetized

Until our wild eyes and hearts

That know The Way

Expire in the freezing snow

Odd birds cannot fly to safety

Alone

There is always a wind

There is always a strange rising that guides them

There is always

Another

Without this,

This Coven

Mass hysterical illusions

Those chilling winters

Will

Turn our beating hearts

To stone

Find the webbing, dear one

Tug it

Let yourself

Be held

And diagnosed

And nurtured

And guided

And re-membered

And dissolved

By the straight numbers and the tests

Keeping your shining organs alive

And by the very, very strange ones

The ones you know

Let yourself land here

In Coven

Not

Alone