Llewellyn's 2012 Witches' Companion

by Llewellyn

  Adjust your schedule. Simply said, do less. Don’t overcommit, and respect the season’s slower pace. Focus activities on the home front. Now is the time to settle into books, projects, and other activities that require a long span of time. Have family game nights or invite friends over to share the fun.

  Adjust your environment. Invest in good lead-free candles for atmosphere, and if you have a fireplace, stock up on dry, seasoned wood. Light the area you’re living or working in, but leave lights off through the rest of the house. Turn the thermostat down to 65 degrees—leave blanket throws on chairs and couches, and wear slippers to keep your feet warm and layers of fleece or wool sweaters for toastiness. Make your bed with flannel sheets and thick blankets and spreads.

  Purify your surroundings. Many houseplants are valuable for purifying the air, particularly peace lilies, rubber plants, and spider plants. You might also invest in an air purifier for the bedroom and main living spaces. On warmer days, open the doors and windows to let fresh air in.

  Embrace winter herbs and spices. Burn incense or diffuse oils in scents of cinnamon, clove, cardamom, pine, or cedar. Sip herbal teas or fresh-made Chai. Simmer a kettle of hot cider or mulled wine with fresh ginger, cinnamon sticks, star anise, whole cloves, cardamom pods, and thin slices of citrus.

  Eat for the season. Focus on grains, legumes, and warming root vegetables. Carrots are excellent for digestion, parsnips support the lungs, beets furnish elemental iron, and sweet potatoes are full of vitamins and fiber (and are delicious mashed with butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar!). Try a hot cereal of oatmeal or buckwheat topped with sautéed apples or dried fruit. Enjoy roasted meats, homemade soup stock, and mugs of rich hot chocolate, each with a warming pinch of cayenne. Stewed fruit, crisps, and cobblers make delicious winter treats.

  Pamper your body. Enjoy warm baths, adding 1 cup Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate), 1 teaspoon olive oil, and a few drops of essential oil to each tubful. Try lavender for relaxation, or thyme or rosemary for invigoration. If your skin is dry, replace the Epsom salts with colloidal oatmeal (or blend oatmeal to a powder in your food processor). Consider a weekly “spa night” in which you pamper yourself from head to toe.

  Feed Your Mind. This is a perfect time to dive into magickal study, work on garb or tool craft, or read the stack of books that’s accumulated on the nightstand. Keep a daily journal to track your activities and monitor winter’s progress.

  Stay active. Engage in slower-paced exercise, such a yoga, Tai Chi, or swimming. Take bundled walks through your neighborhood, watching for seasonal changes.

  Serve the tribe. Take care of your own family, but reach out as well. Winter is a powerful time to do volunteer work in your own community.

  Celebrate! Honor Yule, Christmas, Imbolc, or whatever holidays sing to you. The winter holidays are the perfect time for lights, gifts, and greenery: be merry and rejoice!

  Are you ready to hibernate? Honor winter’s rhythms and you’ll feel the magickal and health benefits that come from slowing down and embracing the season as a restorative time of quiet, rest, and reflection.

  Resources

  Harlow, John. “Race to Be First to ‘Hibernate’ Human Beings.” Times Online. May 27, 2007. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article1845294.ece.

  Nesse, Randolphe, and George Williams. Why We Get Sick. The New Science of Darwinian Medicine. New York: Vintage, 1996.

  Susan Pesznecker’s bio appears on page 56.

  Illustrator: Rik Olson

  Magical Ecotourism

  Denise Dumars

  Call it ecotourism, voluntourism, or whatever you will, it sounds like something that politically correct Yuppies have the time and the money to do before they go back to their armed-response guarded homes in gated-community suburbs, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought when I first heard those words many years ago. At that point, I never would have imagined I’d be moved to do just that, and do it specifically for “my people”—people who mean something to me because they are my magickal brethren and because a particular place in need, New Orleans, is part of my family history.

  According to the International Ecotourism Society, ecotourism is defined as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.” And according to New Orleans Online, voluntourism is defined as “folks of all sorts using their vacations and breaks to help those in need.”

  I know what you’re thinking. “But I only get two weeks’ vacation a year! I’m tired! I can’t spend the whole time scrubbing mold out of houses in the Lower Ninth Ward or picking up clumps of oil on Gulf beaches. Isn’t that why we have celebrities to build new houses there? And besides, I don’t have the money to travel that far.”

  I can and will address those concerns. But first, consider your magickal brothers and sisters. It’s their environment, too, and as members of what the Religious Tolerance website calls a “neopagan, Earth-centered religion,” I think we owe Earth some moppin’ up, to say the least. On my trips to New Orleans, I learned that in some ways, the magickal community there was as decimated as the general community, flung to the four elements, if you will. Groundbreaking and important people in occult New Orleans were forced to move away when their homes were destroyed and jobs lost. Some of those who helped define the unique magickal community of the area in books, tarot decks, and with public rituals are now far away. Here’s my New Orleans story, as of 2010.

  Falling In Love with NOLA

  In the summer of 2005, I had already made plans to visit New Orleans (NOLA) during the Christmas season. Then on August 29—five years ago to the day as I write this—Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, and the levees that were supposed to save New Orleans from flooding were quickly breached as the hurricane moved inland. Eventually 80 percent of the city would be under water and more than 1,800 people would die.

  Ecotourism is defined as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.”

  The rest of the story may be history, but the suffering continues. New wounds were opened on April 20, 2010, when British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing eleven workers and spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

  But back in the summer of 2005, my travel plans were shattered and my heart broken. My dream of seeing the city where my father’s aunt Josephine had been a nun for sixty-three years, where important people in the magickal community lived, and where some of my ancestors had settled after being expelled from Canada was gone like the levees that were supposed to have kept the flood waters at bay. Here in California, we didn’t really know the truth about what was going on or what the long-term effects would be—to some extent, we still don’t.

  At the time, there was nothing I could do but give money to the fund that Pacific Unitarian Church was collecting for distribution by the UU church in New Orleans (our Iseum holds its seasonal rituals at PUC). As it turned out, I would not travel to New Orleans for the first time until spring 2009. I would return for Yule in 2009 as well.

  My first trip to New Orleans was exploratory. Tourism was way down and we were determined to spend our tourist dollars where they were most needed. That meant tours given not by huge companies but by locals; magickal supplies and souvenirs bought at real voodoo and occult shops; food and drinks purchased at historic but not upscale eateries and bars. We walked most of the time, or took the streetcar or bus. We asked a lot of questions. We got a lot of answers, and New Orleans took us in.

  There were only five people on the Haunted History Cemetery walking tour that took us through the French Quarter and into St. Louis Cemetery #1, where many noted early residents of New Orleans are buried, including Marie Laveau and some of her family. The tour guide thoughtfully explained how to leave an offering for Mamzelle the
proper way, without desecrating the grave as many had done before by marking X’s on it with chalk or brick dust. There were plenty of offerings there already: Mardi Gras beads, flowers, candy, gris gris. Most of the above-ground tombs were in disrepair, some rather startlingly so. The only other sign that anyone had recently visited any of the individuals was the crypt of someone I can only call Mr. Chicken Foot, because his tomb was decorated with some of the familiar chicken-foot based charms one sees in some voodoo shops. A powerful aura of “send back that evil to the one who sent it” came off of his tomb. We were told that the Catholic archdiocese was in charge of maintaining the cemetery, but it didn’t look like anyone had maintained it in a long time.

  The French Quarter was virtually the only part of New Orleans spared the worst of the storm. Though it was not yet summer, the heat and humidity were punishing, and even at night the temperature dropped only a little. I was sad to learn that there was no tour available for St. Louis Cemetery #2; it is not a safe cemetery to explore on one’s own, so on our next trip we may try to hire a private guide (read: bodyguard). We eschewed the other Haunted History tours, such as the Voodoo tour, as we already knew where to find the real thing.

  It is somewhat sad to say that the best-preserved part of old New Orleans actually is the French Quarter, because the Quarter itself is falling apart, sinking into the cypress logs beneath its foundations. I doubt that anyone would be surprised if the corpses of Jean Lafitte, Marie Laveau, Duke Philippe d’Orleans, and Huey Long all suddenly walked into the Pirates’ Alley bar (which is right behind the beautiful St. Louis Cathedral) and ordered an absinthe, a cigarette, and a souvenir T-shirt. After all, that’s what I did after attending Christmas mass and lighting a candle for my late Aunt Josephine, or Sister Ignatius as she was known in the order of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

  I was determined to meet some real practitioners of Vodou and also to meet some homegrown Pagans. My hometown of Los Angeles is a competitive place that can host heated rivalries among magical groups, so I was unprepared for how often we were made to feel welcomed. On a particularly blistering day, we stumbled into Voodoo Authentica, and my husband promptly fell asleep on the couch in front of the altar for Yemaya. I was a little taken aback, but Brandi, the owner, told me “Oh, yes, I’ve slept on that couch many times. It’s very comfortable.”

  Voodoo Authentica was not the only place that made us feel at home. On our next trip to NOLA, we were invited not only to an authentic voodoo ceremony but also to the Winter Solstice ritual of the NOLA Merry Meet group of Pagan organizations, which includes a woman named Ty and her group Lamplight Circle. (I got in contact with this organization through a Yahoo group.) It took place by a wonderful street fair on Esplanade. I’d never before eaten Coq au Vin from an open-air booth! We needed to get to the French Quarter afterward and were given a ride there without even having to ask.

  Mambo Sallie Ann Glassman of the Island of Salvation Botanica and La Source Ancienne Ounfo had invited me to their ritual, but there are so few flights into New Orleans that I could not get there early enough to attend. Her rituals are open to the public—as long as you participate. As for donations, Sallie Ann says, “money, energy, expertise, and ideas” are all appreciated. She is currently applying for (and getting!) grants to built a much-needed community center/food co-op. After visiting several neighborhoods in New Orleans, my husband and I found a Walgreens on almost every corner. One can buy decent fried chicken and cognac at the local gas stations, but as for full-service grocery stores, well, we couldn’t find any.

  My second visit to New Orleans, around Yule, had taken on a somber tone due to the death of Theo, a close Iseum friend. I remembered how Theo had literally given someone the shirt off his back on an ecotourism visit to the Yucatan. A worker at his hotel had complimented him on a rather colorful shirt he wore one day, and before he departed for home, he washed it and gave it to the man.

  Saving money on our second visit, we stayed at the Canal St. Guest House. It was lovely, but a house behind it lacked a roof and large vines covered it like a Mayan ruin. I saw this frequently, even four and a half years after Katrina: whole neighborhoods of empty foundations and ruins of buildings overgrown with foliage. The airport shuttle would not drive us to our guest house, as it was beyond Claiborne Street. Gang graffiti included voodoo veves. The only post office was miles away. Many of the boutiques of the Garden District, including Leilah Wendell’s famous Westgate Necromantic shop, were gone.

  Canal Street streetcars had only just started operating again during our Yule trip. There was no streetcar named Desire, but we did take one called Cemeteries, which took us to the City of the Dead at the other end of Canal. I called my co-priestess Lori Nyx from a coffeehouse that had a botanica/marijuana dispensary on one side and the Oddfellows Rest cemetery on the other. “You won’t believe where I’m sitting right now,” I told her. “I’m having coffee next to the Santa Muerte statues and sitting close enough to touch someone’s headstone.” You can’t make this stuff up!

  Alone, I sat on a bus through Treme to visit Sallie Ann in the Bywater (this was not the Ninth Ward but was Ninth-Ward adjacent); the bus passed through some incredibly poor neighborhoods, and I was depressed. We’d been told not to go to the Lower Ninth Ward alone, to only go on a guided tour, as though it was a war zone. I was too sad to visit the devastated neighborhood on this trip, even to see the nice, shiny celebrity-built houses.

  It was threatening rain when I left Sallie Ann’s and the temperature was dropping fast, so I called a taxi. I made friends with the driver—one of my Cajun people—and he helped me out several times during my stay, including carrying heavy luggage down flights of stairs and picking me up at the place no airport shuttle would dare to go.

  My husband left—ironically for Theo’s beloved Yucatan—the day before I did. So on my last day, I saved my money for the reduced-price cab fare my driver promised me and walked all the way to Rampart Street to visit the Voodoo Spiritual Temple again. On our previous trip, my husband, an award-winning photographer, had taken pictures of Priestess Miriam’s altars in the temple for free and sent them to her to use in any way she wished. Priestess Miriam’s assistant remembered me, and I told her that I wanted to give an offering for my late friend, Theo, on Ellegua’s altar, since he had been particularly fond of Ellegua. She agreed, and I followed her through the store and into the private temple out back. She then surprised me by saying that it was quiet, so she was going to let me stay as long as I wanted. She left me alone, and I spent time at every altar, leaving an offering of money and sometimes a petition, lighting candles, talking to the loa, the orishas, the gods.

  I cannot wait to go back to New Orleans, and hopefully help to build something for the city, the way the city has already built a home in my heart.

  Getting Involved

  One can learn a lot from voluntourism and ecotourism websites. On the Volun-Tourism website, I learned that New Age publisher Inner Ocean pairs with the company Brilliant Voices to bring tourists to help conserve the environment and culture of Maui, including its spiritual practices. What a great place to feel good about traveling to! Mainstream travel guides never used to mention magico-religious rites as destinations, and if they did, it was only a listing of re-creations of “native rituals” geared solely toward nonbelieving tourists.

  But things have changed! Even the upscale travel magazine Condé Nast Traveler, as part of a larger Pico Iyer article on travel to the holy land, inset a companion article that includes such information as how to make contacts to visit Candomblé terreiros in Brazil. I can’t say I’ve ever seen this before. Frommer’s New Orleans guide helped me distinguish ahead of time the voodoo sites that are the real thing and not just tourist traps, and they turned out to be right on the money.

  Search the Internet for similar offers. If you are a student, check with your college to see what … may be available for funding your s
tay at an ecotourism or voluntourism location.

  You don’t have to be in a movie star’s tax bracket to help out, either. Remember those free pictures my husband took? I’m a writer; I can publicize ecotourism—and that’s what I’m hoping to do with this piece. What talents do you have to contribute? And anyone at all could get involved with Travelocity voluntouring grants. Travelocity provides opportunities to apply for $5,000 grants for the purpose of “voluntouring.” Their very Pagan-

  looking mascot, the Roaming Gnome, says “Make it Earth Day, Every Day.” Search the Internet for similar offers. If you are a student, check with your college to see what grants or internships may be available for funding your stay at an ecotourism or voluntourism location. You might even earn college credit and some work experience in the deal.

  As Priestess Sallie Ann Glassman says, “It is the duty of human beings to repair, rebuild and transform the world.” We who belong to Earth-centered religions need to get right on it.

  Resources

  Dougherty, Margot. “Divine Destinations.” Condé Nast Traveler. September 2010. 78–80.

  Herczog, Mary. Frommer’s New Orleans 2009. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, 2009.

  International Ecotourism Society. http://www.ecotourism.org/.

  Iyer, Pico. “The Magic of Holy Places.” Condé Nast Traveler. September 2010. 77–78.

  New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation. “Voluntourism.” New Orleans Online. http://www.neworleansonline.com/neworleans/voluntourism/index.html.

  Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. “World Religions; Neo-pagan Religions.” Religious Tolerance.org. http://www.religioustolerance.org/witchcra.htm.

  Travelocity.com. “Travelocity: Voluntourism.” http://www.travelocity.com/TravelForGood/ca-guide.html.