SHOW NOTES:

DAILY TAROT CARD

Eight of Pentacles

Meaning: When the Eight of Pentacles turns up in a reading, it tells of a time for practical knowledge, determination, and skill. This is a moment of hands-on training or of intense study with your career or the magickal arts. Here is an opportunity to immerse yourself in a creative project such as art or writing.

Being focused, disciplined, and diligent with your project, you will put all of your skills to good use. By combining all of your gifts with hard work, there will be success. This is not a card of fame; this is a card that reminds you of how effort, focus, and creativity often bring growth, gain, and a sense of accomplishment. This card can also show up in a reading when there is a long, involved project nearing a successful completion.

Spell: Deep Sleep

Color of the Day

SILVER

Incense of the Day

CLARY SAGE

Winter’s long, dark nights can support our sleep, which benefits every aspect of our mental and physical health. Like flower bulbs beneath the cold winter soil, winter rest helps us replenish our energy before the more expansive months of spring and summer.

To support deep and restful sleep, cleanse a black tourmaline in bright sunlight, sage smoke, or running water. At bedtime, hold it in your right hand and sense its calming, grounding vibrations moving through your entire physical body, all the way to your toes, your fingers, and the crown of your head. Feel your muscles release and notice that you are safely cocooned in the crystal’s protective energy.

Continue to hold the crystal in your hand (or otherwise close to your body) as you sleep, tonight and any other night that you’d like to support your sleep. During the day, set the crystal on a bright windowsill to cleanse and recharge it in the sun.

Magical Correspondences for Monday

Anointing Oil: One drop each of lavender, geranium and Bergamot essential oil in one teaspoon of base oil. Or just three drops of geranium if there are budget constraints. Ylang Ylang is lovely all by itself.

Herbal Tea: Jasmine: Night-blooming jasmine is sacred to the moon. 

Mugwort is a magickal tonic that heightens psychic awareness and inner vision. 

Three tablespoons of the dried leaf to a good size pot should be kept warm on the stove. Don't brew it too strongly, sweeten with honey. Chamomile is a substitute.

Herbs & Plants: Chamomile, mugwort, lavender, honeysuckle, white flower pedals, gardenia, white poppy.

Incense: Sandalwood, Nag Champa, Jasmine, Amber and Rose

Colors: Pale blue, lavender, silver and white

Crystals: Moonstone, Pearl

Yule Traditions and Symbols

Wassail derives from the Old English words waes hael, which means “be well”, “be hale” or “good health”. It is a strong drink, usually a mixture of ale, honey and spices or mulled apple cider. When pagans went into the forest to fell the great oak for the Yule log, they would anoint the tree with wassail and bedeck them with wassail-soaked cakes, thus the ritual of wassailing was born. At home, the wassail would be poured into a large bowl during feast time and the host, when greeting his or her guests, would lift a drink and wish them “waes hael”, to which they would reply “drinc hael”, which meant “drink and be well”.

Carolling was also a popular Yule tradition when young children honoured the Winter Solstice with song. They would go through the villages, singing door to door. The villagers, in return, would reward them with tokens and...