Stirring the Cauldron

It's that time of year again, and Saint Nicholas isn't the only saint or deity that is known to be associated with Christmas.  Some will be familiar to you and others may not, but they all have their place this time of year.  So sit back and get acquainted with some of the others who share the spotlight with Saint Nicholas. 

Teacher and writer Jen McConnel is the author of several books both fiction and non-fiction.  Her titles include The Red Magic Series and Spell Book & Scandal, and when she was last on Stirring the Cauldron we talked about her non-fiction book,  Goddess Spells For Busy Gals.  On this visit, she gave us a crash course on the ins and outs of spellwork.  

This is Amy Blackthorn's  practical and personal guide to wellness and healing. Blackthorn, a master herbalist, aromatherapist, and prolific author, explores methods of wellness management using both mystical and mundane tools and techniques. The book features essential oils, plants, meditation, tarot, astrology, and personal sigils tailored to your own specific needs and circumstances. She also describes her own journey to well-being and shares the lessons she’s learned, including how to develop healthy mind-body habits and to stop relying on fear and shame-based rituals for self-care that ultimately produce results that are the very opposite of what is desired. Instead, Blackthorn’s Botanical Wellness supplies holistic solutions that enable you to lead your best life.

Inspired by a Vision of Awen depicting a spear, a flowering branch, and a horned serpent emanating from three drops of wisdom, surrounded by three worlds, Christopher Penczak received a teaching to reconcile many disparate parts of modern Witchcraft into a cohesive body of magickal lore for personal evolution and enlightenment. Experimented with and expanded upon, this lore is now shared through his book The Three Rays of Witchcra!: Power, Love and Wisdom in the Garden of the Gods. Striving to weave the diverse threads of his personal practice together, the Three Rays provided Christopher with a powerful framework to bring together modern Wicca, Traditional Craft, Druidism, Theosophy, Qabalah, Shamanism, and alternative health into a greater whole. The text outlines a model of the universe based upon the forces of Power, Love, and Wisdom. Associated with each is a ray, a path we can travel spiritually and evoke energetically. Known as the Straight Line, the Bent Line and the Crooked Line, each offers different magick, knowledge and mysteries. Each ray is associated with a race of spiritual entities with whom we can partner, including the angels, faeries, animal powers and ancestors. "... an offering full of angels and fairies, gods and humans, diverse yet connected and each with their own powers and wisdom." - Sorita ďEste, author of Hekate Liminal Rites, Practical Planetary Magick, and The Guises of the Morriga"

It has been a long time since Scott stirred the cauldron with me, and it was finally time to catch up. For a number of reasons,  lots of things have changed in the Dearly Departed world both personal and in  business.  The old adage that we always hear at this time of the year, " the old makes way for the new." rings true again.  As always, it was a fun hour talking with Scott, hearing some interesting Hollywood tales, finding out what's new and hearing his answer when I asked him about one of his most embarrassing celebrity moments.    

They call the holiday season "the most wonderful time of the year,"  but for those who are missing loved ones when the holiday season comes around, it can be the most difficult time of the year..  , Echo Bodine is here with us tonight to help sort things out and answer any questions you might have that go along with that Empty Chair Syndrome that we hear so much about this time of yea. .Psychic Mediium Echo Bodine was here with us to help sort things out and answer any questions that go along with that Empty Chair Syndrome that we hear so much about this time of year.  Do our loved ones on the other side band together and celebrate just as we do and  have their own celebrations or do they perhaps sometimes pop in to join us in our celebrations? Tune in and find the answers to those questions and many more.

Von is the author of a series of Ancient Wisdom Scrolls,  an innovative series  of eight scrolls that allows modern readers to learn like the ancients.  The first scroll in an innovative series that allows modern readers to learn like the ancients examines past lives, not only the fact that we have all lived before but also that we will do so again. Explore the key evidence from clinical studies and case histories of people who remember previous lives with remarkable clarity and accuracy. Learn how many people catch glimpses of their past lives in lucid dreams, daydreams, visions, deep meditation, and near-death experiences. Examine the impact that key books on the subject, like the Tibetan Book of the Dead, are now having in hospices and with conscious dying as a way to approach physical death in a heightened state of awareness. Study this fascinating subject by unraveling the scroll and reading the text within.  The second scroll, Lucid Dreaming, will be available as well.  Von explains about the scrolls in depth and then we talked about the subjects of Past Lives and Lucid Dreaming. This is one of those show where just typing out a quick blurb about the show doesn't do it justice.  Listen In.

While Mabon is our Pagan Thanksgiving, the majority of Pagans celebrate Thanksgiving as well and along those line both holidays revolve around pretty much the same basis, so I asked Marius Stormcrow to join us this Thanksgiving day to talk about Pagan Spirtuality and Prayer.  Listen in and you'll see how similar the Pagan and mundane worlds are.in many ways.

This year I am thankful for all the listeners of Stirring the Cauldron and the guests who come on the show each week, so I invited some of your favorite guests  to send messages for the holiday season. which  run throughout the show along with some very vintage music, a little magic and holiday lore.

Harold Roth is a leading authority on plant/herbal magic.In his last visit to Stirring the Cauldron, Harold share his book, The Witching Herbs,  an in-depth exploration of 13 essential plants and herbs most closely associated with witchcraft--13 because it's the witching number and reflects the 13 months of the lunar calendar..  Roth is not only a successful gardener, but also a magician and scholar of the occult so this time around, we took the subject one step further and talked about plant magic in general and that made for another interesting and informative show.