Honey & Sugar oh so sweet!

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2 Honey & Sugar oh so sweet! When it comes to simple but amazing magic, nothing works quite like honey. Well, maybe sugar. Honey and sugar are awesome to work with. You can use them like little tools of their own in jars and bottles or you can work them ritually and them use them to cook with so you and other can internalize the magic. Mmmmmm, kitchen magic! Honey and sugars are used for what s called sweetening magic. We use them to help sweet people to. But it doesn t have to just be used for people, we can sweeten the Universe to us as well. Honey and sugar jars are one just one way to work with this sweet magic. You can also make oils, powders and cook the magic. A lot of what you re going to learn in this session of the Cosmic Wisdom Camp may look familiar to you if you ve ever ventured into the folk magic tradition of Hoodoo. What I m going to teach you and what we re going to work on is kind of a nontraditional form of Hoodoo. One thing I can tell you is this is super simple, very practical {as folk magic often is} and easy to do. If this is your first time trying magic, you re going to find this gentle and fun process is perfect to get you started. We re going to spend this week just learning what honey and sugar jars do. Week 2 we ll talk about using different kinds of sugar devices and use some. Week 3 we ll talk about honey and make our first honey jar together. Week 4 we ll be tracking effects of the work and talk about other ways we can carry on our sweetening magic while the jar does its thing.

3 A few notes about tradition and materials Before we get too far into the magic we re going to explore over these 4 weeks I wanted to again stress something I ve already said While many of these practices are rooted in traditional southern folk magic and hoodoo I ve also adapted some of these practices and made them more modern for the eclectic spiritual babe. However, with that said, there are certain things that remain the same as they always have - and with good reason. I believe in magic being adaptable. Even hoodoo has grown and adapted as you ll learn this week. It burns me to now end to see magical practitioners refuse to grow and experiment because of tradition. This is one of the many reasons that I have never settled into a single tradition and instead have always favored the path of my own personal tradition. But this is also why I wanted to take bit of time this week to tell you some of the history of this work. It s important that we know where something came from if we re going to adapt it into a new age. A Note About Using Honey & Sugar In truth you can use any quality honey or sugar you wish, but I prefer to use organic honey, raw when possible, and local whenever avaliable. The energy in your main ingredient matters and honey that s been overprocessed or had other things added to it {chemicals and such} is best avoided when possible. If you re vegan, sugar magic might seem a little tricky because most sugar products, incliding white sugar, aren t vegan. Look at health food stores like Whole Foods for vegan evaporated cane sugar which isn t heat processed and filtered through bone char like traditional sugar.

4 What Honey & Sugar Can Do The first we need to do is learn what this whole honey and sugar thing is all about. These rituals using honey and sugar are thought to be some of the oldest forms of folk magic. Bottle magic was long used the world over and each kind of ritual varied based on where it originated and ultimately who worked it. Many of them became family rituals because each family had their own preference for herbs and ingredients. One reason this kind of magic were so popular is that they could easily be worked in plain sight. A candle burning next to a bowl of sugar, a jar of honey with herbs it in kept on a windowsill - none of these things might have looked out of the ordinary yet they could work extraordinary magic. Originally honey wasn t even used. Honey was a something that was not commonplace for the average household, however sugar was. A small cup or bowl filled with sugar would be used instead. You d place a piece of paper with the name of the person you wanted to sweeten up inside the sugar and then burn a candle inside the cup. Another version was to hollow out an apple and place honey inside along with the name paper. Then it would be buried in a flower pot and a flower planted in the pot. The flower or plant would that the place of the candle in this case. Where the candle we use today helps radiate the energy and work we re doing the flower or plant would do the same thing as it grew. Later in the 19th and 20th centuries things like sugar packets, honey and other syrups and sweeteners would be used because they became more readily available in the supermarkets. This also gave way to people working more cooking magic - what we often thing of as kitchen witchery today. You could bless and charge a serving of molasses and use them to bake a bread or cookies to give your intended target. Eventually the honey jar that we re going to work with later on became the most popular form of this kind of magic because it was easy to work with and hide when needed.

5 Why Honey & Sugar? Honey and sugar are naturally sweet substances. Just like how we pick specific herbs or oils because of their natural energies, the natural energies of honey, sugar, molasses and other sugary based syrups are all focused on sweetness. You might wonder how you pick which to use - should it be honey or sugar or something else? And what kind! In the centuries past, and still used by some practitioners today, you would pick the kind of sugar based on the kind of person. You would use brown sugar to sweeten someone who had a dark skin color while white sugar would be used for those with light skin. I know that today a lot of people take a bit of offense to this, but it does have some merit. It s that principle of like attracting like, which is going to be used a lot with this kind of magic. But this is certainly not a rule or requirement! Any kind of sugar or sugar based syrup works for this kind of magic, but in my experience different forms of sugar have different sweetening effects. - White Sugar - great as a general sweetening ingredient - Brown Sugar - works well for sex magic - Honey - perfect for anything that you want to have last or that needs to be worked over time like love, money, and success - Maple Syrup - for magic around home and family, especially when you want them to stay close - Simple Syrup - great for general sweetening when you want to add a little more binding and longevity to the work - Molasses - this one is that I have mixed feelings and experience around Molasses is black or at the very least an opaque amber brown. I have used molasses with great success in sweetening magic that involve more of a binding element. This gets into a whole other topic that we re not really going to cover here, but I don t tend to find molasses to be the best when it comes to sweetening per se. But, hey, you may find it works differently for you so if you want to try it out please do! A HUGE no-no that you need to be aware of is mixing water and sugar and using this inside a jar for a sweetening ritual. It s not that there s anything wrong with mixing sugar and water except for the fact that it will ferment and potentionally explode inside a sealed container. So under no circumstancse should you do this. NO! no no no! OK? Good! Don t want you to blow up that pretty face of yours!

6 Sweeten the World! So you might be wondering what some of the instances may be that you d use sweetening magic. Most people right away think of love and romance, which is the obvious, but you can sweeten almost anything. Your Love Life reconcile with your quarreling partner, turn an indifferent person into a love interest, keep romance going strong in a marriage or relationship, keep bitterness at bay. Your Home for a peaceful home, love among all the family members, sweetening your children {to you, to each other, or just to make them kinder}, to sweeten up a landlord or property manager when you re either looking to rent or buy a place or if you re having problems with them - even on your neighbors when you ve been having problems with them. Your Work for job interviews to put the odds in your favor, to make good impressions on your boss and gain his or her favor, on your co-workers to keep them from targeting you with gossip or backstabbing, to simply make everyone at work a bit happier and less stressed. If you have your own business you can use them to attract more customers, to attract positive networking and partnerships and to draw money to the business. Your Money sweeten up banks and loan officers when you re in need of money, to draw in a steady stream of cash. Your Legal Troubles sweeten up lawyers, judges and juries to side in your favor, use it on anyone involved in red tape around anything that you re dealing with. Your Online Life attract people to your social media pages, your blog or your business by making it sweet - like drawing flies to honey.

7 Let s Work It Out See this bee? This is Busy Bee! When you see him it means there s an activity for you to do! This week s first activity focuses around planning, digging in and getting your head right before your work. This is a key before doing any kind of magic, you have to be clear in your thoughts and intentions. As we work through these 4 weeks together you re going to have the chance to make a number of different sweetening devices. Don t worry about the devices yet, since we haven t covered that, but for now look at each of the areas below and jot down and people or situations that you think could use some sweetening. Print out this page and start jotting down your ideas! Love: Home: Work: Money: Legal Troubles: Online Life:

8 Principles At Play There are a few magical principles at work when we do this kind of magic. Just to give you an idea of how this all this works, here are some of the magical principles that are at work in these kinds of rituals. Sympathetic Magic This is the idea that everything is connected and what happens to the part happens to the whole. You ll see this as we talk more about the ingredients we use in this work. Principle of Correspondence This says that the you can influence something based on how it relates to or resembles something else. This is how poppets {aka voodoo dolls} work. But it s also part of how picking and using herbs works. Homeopathic Magic This tells us that like attracts like, something that is a big part of the process of working the petitions for sweetening magic. You ll see we use a phrase during this that asks the person to become sweet to us as the honey or sugar is sweet to us. Contagious Magic This is kind of a blend of a few other principles but it says that things that were once in contact with one another, once separated, can still influence one another. This is part of why we use personal concerns in this work. Don t worry if you don t have any real experience with working magic and ritual. Sweetening magic is one of the easiest, kindest and most forgiving forms of magic that there is. This is the kind of magic I like to help people with when they are making their first attempts at ritual because you can rarely go wrong with it. Don t worry about not understanding the principles I ve shared up above either. They re just there for you to understand that there s more than just wishy thinking going on here.

9 Personal Concerns When we re working magic that is going to influence someone else, or even ourselves, we need to have some kind of tie to our target. It s a way of saying Hey, this is who this magic should flow to. This is sympathetic magic - it s the idea that when something is done to a part it effects the whole. When we do magic to target someone specific we use things that are part of them and that carry their essence. The best personal concerns are things like hair, finger nail clippings and bodily fluids. But we can use anything that captures their essence including handwriting, photos and pieces of clothing. The next inevitable question you might have is Does it matter what I use? Yes and no. In truth it doesn t matter because anything that will connect to there person you re working on will do, but certain kinds of personal concerns for specific kinds of work are ideal. I ll leave your imagination to run a bit wild with that. Another common question How do I get some of these things? Hair from a hairbrush. A picture from a Facebook page. Handwriting from a birthday or Christmas card. Saliva from a napkin or cigarette butt or even the bristles from their toothbrush. Sometimes you have to get a bit sneaky when you re working on someone else but it can always be done. When you re working on yourself the three best personal concerns to use are hair, saliva and blood. I know blood might skeeve some people out, but blood is as close to carrying your pure essence as you can get. But DNA is carried in everything, so use what you feel comfortable with. Also keep in mind the size of what you re using and how you re using it. If you use a photo it has to be able to fit in your jar.

10 Looking For Signs I wanted to bring this up now, before we get into doing the real work, so that you know what to look for and how to find signs of process with your work. Look for signs in 3 s. In 3 days you should start to see signs that you ritual has started to work. In 3 weeks you should see some clear sign of progress. There should be movement of some kind, bigger than what you saw in the initial days. In 3 months you should see a final result. You may see your results faster, or it s possible that it could take longer for certain kinds of work. At 3 months, even for far range work, you should have solid changes and results. What happens if you see nothing after 3 months? Time to start over! Sometimes we start a ritual before it s really time for it to manifest or things just may not have be aligned or someone s free will just may have changed the course of events. Know this - magic can always help but working magic is in no way a guarantee that you re going to get what you want. There can be a lot of guesswork with working magic - guessing when you re going to see results and how things are going to play out. Use this Signs of 3 as a way to track your work but also use divination tools like tarot, runes, crystals and oracle cards to see how well the work is going and if there is anything you can do to help it along.

11 Herbs and Oils For the work we re doing you ll need herbs and oils along with the personal concerns and petition papers for your intentions {we ll talk about those next week}. I wanted to share with you some ingredient blends for different kinds of work that you might want to do. In hoodoo the word condition is often used to describe the problem that needs to be fixed. As in you have this condition of being broke and you need to bring in money. You ll find that when you look at hoodoo magical oil blends they re often called condition oils and herbs might be called condition herb blends. I m keeping things simple here, and trying to give common or easy to find ingredients as much as possible. On the next page I m going to share with you blends that use 3 ingredients so as to not overload you, but you are very welcomed and encouraged to use your own blends and add ingredients that you want to use. Be Careful! One way to work with some of these rituals is to eat the sugary substance or use it in baking {we ll talk about that more next week when we play with sugar}. Many herbs are edible but many others are very toxic. Be sure that if you re going to work with something you plan to eat to give to someone else that you know what you re using for herbs and that all are edible. When it comes to oils you can make your own by either mixing up essential oils or using gently bruised fresh or dried herbs placed in a carrier oil {olive oil is a good place to start} and slightly heating it to draw out the oils from the herbs. Frankly, if making your own oils isn t something you re interested in doing over the long term, I recommend buying oils from Lucky Mojo Curio Co. We ll be talking about using oils next week.

12 Love Love {general} - rose, patchouli, jasmine Sweet New Love - catnip, lemon balm, damiana Fiery Sexy Love - ginger root, cinnamon, catnip Kiss Me Quick {love in a hurry} - vanilla, orris root, cardamom Reconciliation - rose, balm of gilead, lavender Home Life Peaceful Home - Motherwort, lavender, flax seed Faithfulness - honeysuckle, skullcap, raspberry leaves Sweeten a Teacher - Solomon s Seal, bay leaf, sage Money and Work Sweeten The Boss - gravel root, allspice, basil Fast Money - lemongrass, bergamot, cinnamon Better Business - allspice, basil, five-finger grass Steady Work - gravel root, guinea peppers, basil Money Stay With Me - chamomile, comfrey, thyme Legal Situations Judge + Jury Sweetening - Little John root, licorice root, slippery elm Get A Loan Granted - five-finger grass, fenugreek seed, licorice root As we work together over these 4 weeks if you have a specific situation come up that you want to work a ritual for we can always work together to come up with an herbal blend. Tip! Many of these herbs you can find in the local supermarket or healthfood store. Sometimes you can find some of them as herbal tea. For incense you can get licorice root tea. If you can get tea bags of this you can use the contents of the tea bags for your work. Of course you want it to be just the herb and not a bunch of other things otherwise you ll have to try and sift out the stuff you want from the rest of the tea bag.

13 Resources and Supplies Here is a list of some supplies for the weeks ahead. This is largely to give you a head s up because you ll be making choices on what specifically you need like herbs, oils and candles as we go. It all depends on what you plan to do with your work. This week look around your home and see if you you already have these things around your home, use what you have; no need to buy more if you don t have to. But here s what you ll roughly need: Loose Sugar {white and/or brown} and Sugar Packets Honey Maple Syrup Cigar box Small canning jar {4oz Ball canning jars are perfect} Candles {4 chime candles, tea lights, at least one pillar candle} Pictures of people you ll be working on Personal concerns Paper for petitons {parchment if you can get it} Herbs Oils String or thread Popsicle sticks Pens, markers You ll also want a reference book for magical herbs. If you don t have something that you use now I highly recommend picking up a copy of Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic by Cat Yronwode. It s chock full of both herbal info as well as hundreds of rituals and charms for using those herbs. You ll also learn the various folk name for different herbs. For example Gravel Root, which Iuse for any kind of money or work related magic, is also known and more commonly sold as Queen of the Meadow.