New Items Listed Today: Herbal Spirit Dolls And Amulet Bags

Herbal Spirit Dolls:
In the learning of Herbal Witchcraft, connecting with the spirit of each plant we use is essential to reach a deep knowledge of its magickal and medicinal properties.These series of dolls have been created to help you connect with the Herbal spirits. Each doll, male of female, measures 10 cm/4 inches, and has been customized by me with artisan-dyed fabrics, our handspun yarns and my collection of beads, trims and novelty yarns and threads, making it a unique creation. Each doll comes with a 100% organic sample of the herb it represents and a small printed scroll about the unique nature of these dolls, making it a beautiful gift for your most loved Witchies .

Sandalwood is a sacred wood for many cultures. Its fragrant and sensual scent has captivated the souls of artists, mystics and witches alike – it is also a wonderful charm in love spells, to add passion and power to a relationship.

Solomon’s Seal root gets its name from the fact that the roots create a new ring every year, symbolizing the seals of a magician. King Solomon is one of the most famous figures in ancient Witchcraft, and is much revered in African-origin traditions. His knowledge of magick and wisdom turned him into a legend – it is said that he had power over demons and evil entities, thus all magickal items related to him are known as powerful protectors.

Rosemary – the holiest of all herbs! Rosemary cleans, purifies, protects and puts negative energy a mile away! There are too many uses for Rosemary to be cited here, as it is, to me, the most magickal mediterranean herb and has been related to spiritual and medicinal matters by all cultures.

Vervain – the fairy herb if there ever was one . This herb activates your psychic powers, eases spiritual blocking and has been devoted to all Goddess worship on ancient European witchcraft. A magickal, sweet and generous spirit.

Crocheted Amulet Bags:


Fernando handspun this yarn and I turned the yarn into a fairy amulet bag – you can’t get more handmade than this! Both the fringe and the cord for hanging have been made with the handspun yarn and organic hemp cord, and adorned with beads and cowrie shells for extra magic and cuteness . The cord is long enough so you can keep it on while wildharvesting, and the crocheting has been made very tight so you don’t loose your little treasures! The bag measures 8 x 6 cms/ 3 x 2,5 inches, a bit bigger than a egg.

The egg shape comes from the idea that an egg is the beginning of all life, a symbol of future abundance and growth – many amulets during history have used this shape in their advantage. Handspinning the yarn add a lot of energy to this work, which will be perfect for your medicine charms, totems, stones, herbs, etc.

Today’s Custom Spellwork

Every time I make a new spell, I ask the Orishas for permission, approval and suggestions – usually one of the Orishas takes “charge” of the situation and, during my meditation, I get a clear image of what the Orisha wants me to do. It’s taken years to eliminate my own pride and prejudices about spellwork and just do what they ask – hey I’m a proud Witch … but after many successful spells that were completely out of the norm, I started learning to be more humble. I have been asked by the Orishas to make many things to make a spellwork that, at first sight, wouldn’t look like a regular spell – I have been asked to paint murals on my customer’s house, to sing for the Orishas, to feed them very specific meals, and of course to create all kind of protective objects for my customers.

This time, Yemanya asked me to make this jewelry and the wanga packet you see below, beside the regular spellcasting that, unfortunately, I was not allowed to photograph. Yemanya is very jealous of her secrets!

Wanga/Ouanga packets are very similar to Hoodoo’s mojo bags, but they are even more powerful. A wanga should always stay by the altar and not be carried around as a regular amulet, as carrying may make you feel dizzy and unsafe.
Wanga are working energies like amulets, but they are also used to help the Orisha/Lwa connect with the practitioner; they are filled with herbs, charms and many other odds and ends related to each Orisha/Lwa

There is also a form of wanga made only for worshipping, to please an Orisha/Lwa, which is bigger and much more adorned. They are given to the Orishas/Lwas during their sacred days, or to get a special favour. I may make some for the shop soon, but for today, I’m off to have some rest and crochet the evening away; I want to recharge for tomorrow as I have an important reading to make for a dear friend, and being exhausted won’t be of any help – and what could be better than a good hour of crocheting while listening to my fave witchy radio podcasts…

New Batch Of Herbal & Medicinal Products Listed

We’ve been locked in the Witchy Kitchen the past few days preparing a new batch of medicinal and herbal products that have been listed today – what you see in this pic is more or less a third of the batch! So far we have listed:
- Rosemary Tincture;
- Rosemary Herbal Honey;
- Peppermint Tincture;
- Peppermint Herbal Honey;
- Muscles & Bones Anti-Ache Ointment;
- Four types of herbal milk bath salts: Aphrodisia, Reconnection, Relaxation and Rejuvenation. The baths are for sale in two formats; one type of salt + a batiste bathtub sachet, or four smaller bags of one of each type + paper tea bags. There are detailed uses and info on each product in the listings. You can find all these products at the Apothecary section of The Hoodoo Shop

Honestly, I am in heaven in the Witchy Kitchen. A lifetime of love for herbs is finally coming up together, all my sources of knowledge fusing into one magickal stream of healing – my grandmas’ knowledge, the books I have read, my own experience growing and making alternative treatments for friends and family. Fernando is enjoying it a lot too, and you should see him working – talk about meticulous Taurus LOL…

New Print Available: The Horned God

Yesterday I made this painting for Fernando, as a way to apologize for not having finished the big Horned God painting that is eternally a WIP … the frame was made by him using the wood from a canvas frame – I can’t find canvas sheets for a decent price here, so I buy framed canvas and take off the frame for working. As you know I love to work on small size paintings; this one is 9×12 cms, smaller than a postcard.

I never get tired of painting Horned gods, goddesses and spirits. For many years, they have been an essential and returning icon on my work. I have a small collection of images depicting Pan/Dyonisus that I have been gathering since I started reading the work of Nietszche when I was a teenager; his texts on Apollo and Dyonisus really captured me. Of course, Eliphas Levi’s Baphomet was also a love at first sight. Goat herding has been a tradition for the Canary Islands since the times of the Guanches as our geography doesn’t make it easy to herd cows or sheep – goats eat all our harder, desertic plants without a care and are fit to jump on rocks on our ravines. I guess it’s written on my DNA that goats mean survival, wealth, food, clothes and future for the clan.

The painting is not available, but you can find postcard size prints of it at The Hoodoo Shop at Etsy.

Witchy Kitchen Finished!

Being homebound for couple of days hasn’t been so bad after all – we finished the witchy kitchen in our witchy room! After building the table from scratch to fit the space we had and beautifying it with the curtains, upcycled from a vintage bedspread, Fernando started working on the wall lamp, also working from scratch and recycling leftovers from other projects. He worked six years as an electrician so he has built up a good amount of discarded supplies that were in good use – we have used them for years for our own electrical needs, and to help friends waste less on theirs.

I love the primitive look of it, it goes wonderfully with the rest of the room. It even has an antique switch he had been saving for something special . If you look on the first pic, you can see he also added four plugs for mixers, herb grinders, electrical scales or whatever we may need near the table.
Then we started cleaning and testing this almost antique over-counter kitchen we found when we moved here (and were just saving in case our own kitchen broke) – talk about dirty work! There was grease on everything, so much grease that the gas would not reach the burners. But, after a lot of patience and elbow grease, it was working! Here you have it already cooking some herbal concotions.

Total cost: around 20 € (around 25 $), 15 of them to buy the connector for the gas tank. Another crafty-frugal task finished! Can’t wait to start working tonight on some good ol’ herbal medicine…

Note To Customers, Please Read

The Canary Islands are under alert for tropical storms for today and tomorrow. Power outages are expected, so please be a little patient if you can’t reach us. All orders made during this weekend will be shipped on Wednesday – sorry if this causes you any inconvenience, but it’s not safe to drive to the post office in this weather. Do not worry, we are pretty safe , just homebound.

Imbolc In The Canary Islands: The Virgin Of Candelaria

Imbolc arrives with the first big rains in the island. The sky is grey and cloudy and it’s been pouring all night. May seem insignificant, but for us this rain is the FIRST through all Winter, so it’s quite a change for us.

I would like to send a big HAPPY IMBOLC to all our pagan friends worldwide. We are not too fond on celebrating the “wheel of the year” in a traditional way, mostly because our weather is so different and we cannot relate to a European-style calendar. Right now, the islands are in full bloom because of our soft winter, and it makes no sense to celebrate the beginning of the year with the symbols of a culture that is buried under snow right now. For us, the land sleeps during the summer, when it’s so hot and dry that our landscape becomes desertic – so, we make our celebrations our way and pay little attention to the traditional Imbolc rituals.

In Spain, Imbolc is also the day of the Virgin of Candelaria, patroness of the Canary Islands. The Guanches called her Chaxiraxi, a very common female name here. Chaxiraxi means “mother of the sun” in Guanche language. It is believed that the original statue was found in the year 1400 (almost 100 years before the spanish conquest) by two Guanche sheperds in a ravine in the town of Güimar; they were trying to put their goats inside the cave where they slept, but the goats started behaving crazily and didn’t want to enter the cave; when they approached the cave to find out what happened, they saw the image of the Virgin standing above the cave. At first, they thought it was a living woman; one of the sheperds tried to throw a stone at her to make her move, but his arm was paralyzed; the other, scared, tried to stab her, but ended up stabbing himself. When they finally touched the statue, their wounds and paralyzed limbs healed.

Knowing that there was something supernatural there, the image was taken to the Mencey (King) Acaymo, who built the first chapel for her. That original statue is now lost – it disappeared during a flood in 1826; the great sculptor Fernando Estevez was hired to make the image of Chaxiraxi that you can see in the pics, which was restored in 1972 by Ezequiel De León. It resides in the Basilica of the city of Candelaria, where every year thousands of Canarians visit her and worship her. She is believed to be a specially generous and miraculous virgin and her cult is ever growing. In Santería, Chaxiraxi is closely related to Yemanya, as her history and myth have always been closely related to the sea.

Saturday

Today I got up early to list a second batch of chromotherapy bracelets I made last night, because the first batch almost sold out in one day! I love making this bracelets – aren’t the colours gorgeous?! At the same time, I’m reducing my monster-size bead stash – double happiness.


I also listed this Dos Aguas (Two Waters) bracelet set – Dos Aguas (Two Waters) is the name given to the energies of Yemanya and Ochum, Orishas of salt and sweet waters, when working together. Many sons of Yemanya are sons of Ochum too, thus I created this set of bracelet for their combined worship.

You can wear one on each wrist, or simply add them to your altar as an offering to the Mother Orishas!Each bracelet is made over a copper wire frame and is adorned with ten hand-wrapped cowrie shells and beads in the colour ranges of the Orishas. The cowries rest gracefully on your hand while wearing it, they look gorgeous on! 7 inch long with and extra chain extender that adds another inch, for extra voluptuous wrists like my own . Brass lobster clasp.

After the listing I joined Fernando upstairs to work on some new tables for the herbs – we can’t have pots on the floor because of the dogs so we are always making more upcyled tables while our garden expands, and actually tables are a very good way for us as we can catch sun or shade as we want in the moving of the seasons. I got a few pics too:

Unidentified succulent.

Aloe, overflowing with progeny .

Lady Kyra, just being Her Royal self.

One of the tables we built, using a TV stand structure and some wood a friend gave to us. It is covered in plastic (upcycled bathroom curtain) to make it a little more rain-resistant.

Good Morning, Friday

Aaaah Friday, even though we do not live a “normal” week anymore, I still feel a happy chill when you arrive! Too many years being a student I guess .

We woke up extra early today as Friday is one of our shipping days and we had a lot of orders to ship. Fernando left to the post office with them while I listed a new batch of chromotherapy bracelets that I made last night at The Hoodoo Shop

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Chromotherapy is based on the concept that colours heal and restore our physical and spiritual balance.It has a very long history in the fields of alternative medicine; in the 10th century, physicians like Avicenna were already working with it. As a painter, colour is essential for me. I have always been very sensitive to its vibration and healing properties; using this knowledge and my experience in chromotherapy, I have created this line of jewelry for you.

Today I will most likely be painting more wooden items as Fernando is building a wall lamp for the “witchy kitchen corner”. Fridays are usually a free-flow day for us; I’ve been wanting to work on some leather pouches for the shop, and the day of Venus is a wonderful day for creating beautiful new projects, so sketching some designs could be a perfect activity for today. I will let the Muses set the mood and then we’ll see…

Have a wonderful weekend !!!

New Handpainted Items Listed

Isis Wooden Spoon Ornament

Being so close to Africa, the egyptian myth has always been of great interest to us, specially to my husband. The Mother Goddess Isis has been worshipped all over the world during history, as her enchanment and mystery actually grow with time. I know many of my witchy friends work often with her, so I went for it and well, I’m super happy with the results . The piece has been painted with a luxurious Nile Blue on the back and sides, and a warm Gold Ochre on the front. The handle has a small hole for hanging; the piece measures 30 cms/ 12 inches and it is varnished with a soft satin water varnish to add durability and for easier cleaning.

The Green Man’s Pentacle Altar Dish

Surrounded by wreaths of Ivy and Rowan, the Green Man stands over a pentacle, blessing it and filling it with power and intention. His mask is made of tropical palm leaves, representing the union between this European myth and my own upbringing besides the coast of Africa.
The wooden dish has been painted and varnished on all sides to avoid scratching. It measures 12 cms/ 4,6 inches and about 3 cms/1 inch tall. You can use it as an ornament, as a plate for offerings, to keep your favourite gemstones, etc.The dish is made from solid pine wood at Pontevedra, Spain. It has a wonderful weight and stability due to its thickness.

The Hare Goddess Original ATC

I have to admit that I have a thing for Moon Goddesses – being a Cancer, the Moon changes my mood, my body and my magick on its course – being a Witch and a herb gardener only make the Moon even more important in my life – if possible . One of a kind ATC (Artist Trading Card), painted with acrylics on fine arts grey cardboard and backed with a signature+date certificate. As all ATC’s, this piece measures 2,5 x 3,5 inches. As acrylics are very light resistant, it can be framed (my advice is without glass), or presented as it is on a stand.10×15 cm/ 4×6 inches prints available on a separate listing.

You can find all these items at The Hoodoo Shop at Etsy.