Bones For Your Health: Metaphysical Energy Work with Bone

On March 17, 2015December 8, 2023 By benebellIn holistic food, Magical in the Mundane, personal, traditional witchcraft6 Comments

Shank Bone 1

I love bone soup. Beef shank (that is mostly bone), a lineup of dried Chinese medicinal herbs, shallots, and carrots go into a big pot with water and is simmered for a whole weekend. The broth that results is magical. Serious! With the end result, we used everything but the bone. The fat skimmed off would be saved in the fridge and over the course of the week, used for stir-frying vegetable dishes. All the goopy herby junk would go to compost. And, well of course, the broth would be used for the most amazing soups and noodle soups you’ve ever had.

But those bones. What to do with the bones? Finally found a use.

In the past month, I opted to time my broth making to the lunar phases, once over the first quarter, a waxing moon, again through the full moon, and a final time through the waning moon, for a total of three cleaned shank bones. I noted how after the long, arduous cooking time for the broth, the shank bones pretty much could be pulled out of the pot clean, just as you see it above. I then rinsed them in rain water (the rainfall being perfectly timed where I live, if I might add, so that I could do that) and then buried the bones in sandalwood and sage ash, which I’ve collected over who knows how many times of burning sandalwood or sage here around the house, plus a quartz crystal for good amplifying measure.

The bones will then go through a few more processes this Friday through the new moon, which coincides with the first day of spring. So not only is the bone broth that I’ve made good for my health, but I’ll be able to put these bones to use, too.

Continue reading “Bones For Your Health: Metaphysical Energy Work with Bone” →

Candied Kumquats for Soothing Sore Throats and Coughs

On March 10, 2015March 31, 2015 By benebellIn holistic food, personal11 Comments

Kumquat tea is the best for sore throats and coughs. You make that by first drying out fresh kumquats in the sun for a few days, then storing in an air-tight glass jar filled with sea salt. Let that sit in your basement for at least a month. When you want to make the tea, you remove a couple of the dried, preserved kumquats from the jar (that has been sitting in your basement for a month), steep it with boiling water, and add a few spoonfuls of honey for a great home remedy to cure sore throats and coughs. I’m not a big fan of kumquat tea or jars of salted fruit that’s been sitting in my basement. So I present to you candied kumquats, a great alternative. It still works and in fact helped soothe my sore throat and dry cough that I came down with over the weekend.

The fruits from our kumquat tree are pretty small, so I halved them only. If your kumquats are larger or like the store-bought ones, then you may want to quarter them. I pulled out all of the interior, which can be reserved for making tea or tossing with dark green leafy salads (either kale or baby spinach salads). The skin is the sweetest part, so I only make this candy with the skins. Continue reading “Candied Kumquats for Soothing Sore Throats and Coughs” →

Blue and black, white and gold? The parable of the elephant, witness testimony, and the relationship of artist and critic.

On March 5, 2015May 3, 2016 By benebellIn Holistic Tarot (book), personal, tarot, tarot community3 Comments

Jardim Zoológico de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil. Source: Daderot via Wikimedia Commons

One summer in my childhood I was forced to attend a Buddhist camp at a monastery where we woke up at the crack of dawn to do shaolin and meditate, ate vegetarian, prayed our gratitude to everyone we knew and ever met before we could eat said vegetarian food, and had to sit in uncomfortable cross-legged positions while listening to lectures.

There was one lecture I remember when a monk told us the parable of four blind men who came upon an elephant, felt it, and were describing the elephant based on what they were perceiving. I’m totally paraphrasing the details here, based on memory, but the point remains the same. One blind man came upon the elephant’s trunk, another the belly, another the leg, and another the tail, and each one concluded matter-of-factly about the whole character of the elephant based on that one part they were feeling. The elephant is long and cylindrical… No, are you crazy? The elephant is flat and wide… No, no, the elephant is like a column or pillar…

Continue reading “Blue and black, white and gold? The parable of the elephant, witness testimony, and the relationship of artist and critic.” →

The Witches Tarot: Deck Interview (and Review)

On March 2, 2015May 16, 2015 By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, divination, tarot12 Comments

Witches Tarot 01

I totally swiped this deck interview idea from Kate at Daily Tarot Girl. Read her blog post about it here. I was gifted the Witches Tarot, a deck created by Ellen Dugan and illustrated by Mark Evans. It’s a Rider-Waite-Smith based deck with photographic digital art that is a near seamless blending of realism and fantasy.

The cards are 2.75″ x 4.60″, a typical size for tarot, though perhaps a smidge smaller, which means they shuffle great in my hands, fan out just beautifully across a tabletop, and are very easy to work with. It’s published by Llewellyn and has a pretty standard Llewellyn/Lo Scarabeo cardstock quality. For an RWS tarot practitioner who likes modern digital art, the Witches Tarot would make an incredible workhorse reading deck.

Witches Tarot 03

The cardbacks are so pretty. There’s a galactic vibe to it and at the center, the triple goddess symbol, with the waxing crescent, full moon, and waning crescent moon. The backs are not reversible, however, as one edge is reddish and the other bluish. I’ve opted not to read with reversals when using this deck.

Now, without further ado, let’s interview the Witches Tarot with Kate’s suggested questions.

BENEBELL: What is your main mission or message in this world?

WITCHES TAROT [WT]: Page of Swords

The page is represented by a tall, thin teenage boy on a green plain. He wears a talisman with a hawk around his neck. This card, per the Companion guidebook is about thinking quickly and active decisively. However, use wit, not brute force. Per the traditional attribution of the card, that of messages, the hawk symbolizes messages. What an appropriate card to respond to the question with! In the Witches Tarot deck is embedded Ellen Dugan’s message, a message about her belief systems, her traditions and how she has integrated those traditions with the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, and a quick and natural wit about the deck’s style that will attract its followers.

Continue reading “The Witches Tarot: Deck Interview (and Review)” →

Triggering Creativity with Tarot: Replay of a Free Webinar

On February 27, 2015April 24, 2023 By benebellIn divination, free download, Holistic Tarot (book), personal spirituality, professional tarot, promotional, tarot, tarot community, tarot symbolism1 Comment

On February 21, 2015, North Atlantic Books hosted a free webinar where I talked about intuitive-creativity and tarot. You can check out a replay of the webinar above.

About the Webinar

Albert Einstein attributes his most ground-breaking insights not to logic or mathematics, but to intuition and inspiration or, as artists and writers often express it, to the muses. However, the one trait believed about the muses, about how intuition and inspiration hits us, is that it comes only when it comes, almost divinely, and the artist or writer cannot call upon it at will.

Yet through tarot, learn how to harness intuitive-creativity at will. Tarot facilitates the transcendent experience needed for the muses to speak to us. Learn how to use tarot to trigger your intuitive-creativity and apply the tarot fundamentals taught in my book, Holistic Tarot to remove creative blockages.

Preview_Slides — Presentation Slides Preview

In this 45-minute webinar that will be invaluable to any artist or writer, I’ll be lecturing about how to use tarot cards as an intuitive and inspirational tool for creative and artistic passion projects. The lecture will cover attunement, how to exercise the intuition muscle, and specific techniques for using tarot spreads to read about your creative projects.

When I say “intuitive-creativity,” I’m talking about the muses, about divine inspiration, about that “a-ha” moment. Learn how to use tarot to identify your creative focus, mind-map your project trajectory, perform character analysis if you’re writing a novel, explore the themes of your project in greater depth, and generally trigger your own inspiration with tarot card imagery.

Download the Handout

There is also a handout in PDF format that goes along with the webinar. Please be sure to download it as reference for the techniques and exercises discussed during the webinar.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE HANDOUT

Preview_PDF

Tarot and Socioeconomic Class: My Thoughts After drawingKenaz

On February 27, 2015May 30, 2025 By benebellIn cartomancy, divination, opinion, personal, professional tarot, tarot, tarot community, traditional witchcraft13 Comments

Thorn Mooney recently shared her thoughts in her vlog, “Paganism, Tarot, and Class.” You really should watch her video first before reading onward, but to give background for my thoughts here, I’ll try to recap.

Mooney talks about witchcraft as a practice occurring lower down on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a practice that is more concerned with practical applications, like talking to the dead, love spells, money spells, or getting jobs. She uses the phrase “real world, tactile, necessary things.”

Those who endeavor into the esoteric or metaphysical, she says, are more concerned with self-actualization, per Maslow’s hierarchy, which is at the top of the pyramid. They’re working through long-term emotional or spiritual concerns, striving to be their best selves, and can endeavor with these concerns because their basic physiological needs have been met.

She then talks about how all that translates in her professional tarot readings. She has found, per her own experiences, that those who request readings from her online tend to ask about issues relating to purpose in life, spiritual direction, meaning, connection to deity or deities, which she acknowledges are very “important,” but “not critically important in the sense that, oh, ‘I might be evicted from my home tomorrow'” important.

::nods:: I get that.

In contrast, reading requests she gets from the shop she works at (i.e., in-person readings, I presume), clients are asking questions like “I don’t have any money to afford a lawyer and my ex-husband has filed for full custody of my kids and the court hearing is tomorrow. What is going to happen? Am I going to lose my kids?” or “My child is physically ill and we can’t afford healthcare. What do you see happening to us?”

“I am obviously not qualified to offer legal or medical advice,” Mooney remarks, “and yet I am repeatedly put in the position where I am asked to provide input, and technically [that input] is not from me, it’s from the cards, but that’s a really blurry line.”

Mooney continues, describing the nature of these lower-level-per-Maslow’s-hierarchy questions as “gritty,” noting that it’s rare for someone in that context to be asking her about finding higher meaning in the world.

And Mooney hypothesizes that it’s tied to socioeconomic class.

Continue reading “Tarot and Socioeconomic Class: My Thoughts After drawingKenaz” →

New Faces of Tarot: BuzzFeed Article

On February 26, 2015May 16, 2015 By benebellIn cartomancy, divination, professional tarot, tarotLeave a comment

I wrote a Community Post on BuzzFeed about the Millennial generation of tarot professionals. I reached out to my arm’s length network of both tarot professionals and the professionals of other industries who seek the counsel of tarot professionals.

In retrospect, I regret not having interviewed male tarot readers. I will have to make up for that in future work that I do, somehow. Considering other recent articles on tarot, like “The Tarot Card Reader” in the New York Times blog or [the not as recent] “Psychics: The New Therapists?” that BuzzFeed published two years ago or the interest in The Atlantic about fortune-telling and the law, I do believe the practice of tarot is on the verge of a new phase.

Well, it has been for some time, with the interest in the intersection between tarot and psychology, spearheaded by folks like Art Rosengarten, Katrina Wynne, Kooch and Victor Daniels, among others.

Now Millennials are really making tarot trendy, from The Wild Unknown tarot deck garnering a ton of attention from the fashion blogosphere to tarot being taught as a creative writing tool in MFA classes.

For the longest while, whenever tarot made an appearance in Hollywood film, it would be ominously. Some of the depictions I’ve seen in recent years have been, at the very least, neutral, and on a few occasions, in a manner that tarot professionals would find much more agreeable.

Please join in the discussion on tarot in the comments section below the BuzzFeed article, direct link here.

I was a guest on “Out of the Fog,” hosted by Karen Hager

On February 25, 2015May 16, 2015 By benebellIn divination, Holistic Tarot (book), tarot2 Comments

“Out of the Fog” with Karen Hager, on Empower Radio

Karen Hager, an intuitive guide and psychic channel, hosts an impressive radio show, “Out of the Fog” that airs every Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. PT (12:00 p.m. ET) on Empower Radio station, with syndication on both iHeartRadio and Stitcher. She has interviewed William Gladstone, Chris Saade, Melissa Virtue, Suzanne Mathis McQueen, David Meltzer, Bob Sima, Dr. Michael Lennox, David Christopher, among many others who represent the modern spiritual movement.

So imagine my surprise when I was on the lineup for “Out of the Fog.” What a wonderful experience! I enjoyed every minute conversing with Karen and once you hear her show, you’ll have it bookmarked on your iHeartRadio app., too!

CLICK HERE to download the mp3.

Or CLICK HERE to the permalink on Empower Radio to listen to the program.

Deck Review of the Tao Oracle Cards by Ma Deva Padma

On February 24, 2015May 16, 2015 By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, I Ching, oracle deck, tarot28 Comments

I’ve fallen in love… with the Tao Oracle deck by Ma Deva Padma published by St. Martin’s Press. This is the I Ching oracle deck. It’s a deck of 64 cards based on the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching Book of Changes. Padma’s paintings are emotional, textured, and fully expressive of each of the hexagrams they represent. A quote from the artist: “The evolution and creation of my paintings is sparked by a deep and intensely personal journey into the realm of the subconscious — the kingdom of archetypes and the home of mysterious symbols.”

The deck is beautifully packaged in a sturdy high-gloss box. It comes with a 310-page perfect-bound guidebook that contains the author’s personal interpretations of the 64 hexagrams. St. Martin’s Press really out-does the more popular tarot and oracle deck publishers du jour. I cannot praise the quality of this deck enough.

Continue reading “Deck Review of the Tao Oracle Cards by Ma Deva Padma” →

A Review of the Efflorescent Tarot

On February 21, 2015May 16, 2015 By benebellIn cartomancy, deck review, tarot23 Comments

Efflorescent Tarot Review 00 Intro

The Efflorescent Tarot is a self-published deck by artist Katie Rose Pipkin that you can order through Etsy. It comes in two options, colored as shown in this deck review or black and white. View all card images, in both black and white and color at Pipkin’s website here. The deck name could not be more appropriate, because the artwork here truly represents the efflorescence of Pipkin’s extraordinary artistic talent. I have a particular weakness for ink-drawn decks and the Efflorescent Tarot is an incredible demonstration of the medium.

Efflorescent Tarot Review 01 Box Exterior

The deck comes in a white box made of thick cardstock, which is relatively sturdy but not indestructible– by the time my order reached me, there were already a few minor dents in the box. A full-color reproduction of the Ten of Pentacles appears on the lid. I love Pipkin’s rendering of the Ten of Pentacles here.

Efflorescent Tarot Review 02 Only Explanation Card

There is no little white booklet and the only introductory material that accompanies the deck is that single card you see in the above and below photos. That’s all you need, really. The Efflorescent Tarot is a Rider-Waite-Smith-based deck and if you’re familiar with RWS, you’ll read just fine with this deck, no explanations needed.

Efflorescent Tarot Review 03 Packaging

I would not call the deck a clone, however, because Pipkin does deviate from traditional RWS imagery in a few of the cards to give her own interpretive spin, like the Ten of Pentacles on the lid that you see above and also in a few other cards, which I’ll mention later. All card images are available for your viewing pleasure on Pipkin’s website here.

Continue reading “A Review of the Efflorescent Tarot” →

benebell wen

Author: benebell