Under the disseminating moon, which is the phase after she is full, it came in kitchn witchn so I moved into apple medicine with some mulled apple cider to consecrate my hearth.

I had recently started my practice again. For me that’s a recovery term about day at a time living which includes sacred prayer or mindfulness time and journaling. I needed to practice, after having a babe 4 mos ago and now making a home/stead for 4 littles and a community, I had to be responsive to my emotional body and active imaginal coming through.

Active imaginal is a Jung term, sacred imaginal (how to access the collective oversoul, as in Celt’s Other Side or Other World) is my vernacular for it. Working with image in Psyche. I was having some images and synchronicities, so I started a new notebook, tracking the moon and my own personal moon of menstruation. Noting the tapestry as it weaves itself. This is my book of shadows or grimoire practice at times, though to me it’s never been a label thing just a need to sort of sacred record keep… Root tending and annal keeping, if ya dig.

Through that process some old books I’ve not worked with since ?? when I lived on the upper shore over a decade back, like 07 ish is my guess came back to me and so too the zest from Winter 02 to 03, when I first really started w kitchn witchn and herb work. It got me jazzed to consecrate my kitchen as the hearth of our new home.

And too, as it goes for me, to deepen heart to womb to heart work, as the heart womb is/can be the hearth of the body, the earthbound soul.

Anyhow it is the dark moon. Overnight Friday she comes new again, starting the lunation that will bring the longest darktime of the year, Winter Solstice. Thus, Yule tide arrives now.

A more perfect time for Hearth Love I cannot imagine!

So happiest Yule tide friends, here is a recipe for hearth blessing. Can be tweaked for libation prep by adding a dessert wine, whiskey or brandy etc; or focused specially on the personal womb or womb-heart connection, or connection to divine feminine love through apple magic for body consecration etc.

Mulling mix is pretty easy to find right now from the grocery, we are rural and ours isn’t fancy– and a half gallon of apple cider. 1/2 dozen honeycrisps sliced and peeled. Apple medicine is a fast ship to the Goddess, Aphrodite and Venus, and the Morrigan 3 for me. As with all the ingredients here, correspondences are personal first of course. Apple medicine and goddess work is rightly, as in it will right things if they are amiss in your presence. Like a quickening of what you don’t work out you act out. Ahh but such is the witchery no? So be mindful in your work. Add honey instead of cinnamon for powerFull anecdote to support magical womb-healing work.

Anyhow handful of the mull mix, sliced apples cinnamon and the cider, plus some near boiling water to cut the level of sweetness to taste all on the burner bring to a medium heat, create chant to correspondences below . I don’t share my chants as I create my own personal ones outright so you’ll need to come up with your own prayers, chants, intentions etc on your own. Some of these correspondences came from an ol fave book Cottage Witchery by Ellan Dugan.

Cinnamon for prosperity and a happy home, orange rind for energy and vitality, also I call in by the orange the summer sun~for really this is a Solstice preparation, the return of the sun~to tend the hearth that is, symbolic of the inner light, the inner organic Love. Cloves for protection, allspice for money and overall good luck. And then yes, …Apples, for the depth, the sacred source feminine.

I prepared this for my love and I the weekend before I was set to have family over to the place for the first time to entertain over the holidays. When fam arrived I re-activated the magic with a “hearth fire” candle I found at Marshall’s, pictured here w the mulling spices left over.

Happiest new moon friends, and a blessed and happy Yule tide! May your heart light, your inner hearth, glow through the dark and night.