1. You describe the shadow as “the stain that remains from all the unpleasant, mournful, or even traumatic things that we encounter in our lives; the things that happen to us; and how they affect our behavior unconsciously ” Just to ground this conversation, on the journey to wellness, can the botanical shadow work tools you teach in the book be used to complement more conventional approaches to mental and physical health, such as psychiatry, talk therapy, and conventional meds?

Oh, absolutely! It’s very important that these things be taken into consideration, because they’re complementary practices. Wellness isn’t just one thing, one modality, one way, because every person is not only different but even siblings growing up in the same home don’t have the same experience, therefore you can’t expect every person to have successes with a single polarizing treatment. Some people have complex trauma, some have chemical imbalances, some have both, or neither. Talk therapy, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), Electro-conducive Therapy (ECT), clinical support from medications, and even research into psychedelic drugs are all showing incredible results. 

We can no longer afford to hammer all of our square pegs into round holes. People are individual, their experiences, traumas and needs are too. 

The stain metaphor refers to the fall sidewalk in my neck of the woods. Oak leaves turn brown in the fall after they’ve called from the trees and when left to lie on the sidewalk, they stain the concrete. By the end of the season, sidewalks are littered with the ghosts of oak leaves past, reminding us that they were here just a moment, but their impact lasts so much longer. Just like trauma. 

2. How does “integrating our shadow” work?

Though “shadow” as a word seems dark, the work we are doing is anything but. Integrating our shadow means rather than indulging in drugs, sex, alcohol, gambling and other vices to distract from the pain of trauma, we are sitting with our shadow, the trauma of the past in order to make peace with ourselves.  This isn’t about forgiving our abusers, their forgiveness is between them and their faith, or non-faith. It is not our job to heal our abusers. Our responsibility is to the you that was harmed, to nurture the 7-year-old the 13-year-old or the 30-year-old who Experienced the pain, trauma and loss.  To sit with them in their pain and grief and let your inner you know that you did nothing wrong.  That you are going to sit here with them while the both of you heal.  Our shadow self is not an enemy to conquer, but a child that needs soothing, an adult who needs an ear to listen. Integrating the shadow is the way that we show up, not for the abuser, but for ourselves.

3. Are there any reasons you might discourage people to begin a practice of botanical shadow work?

I’d discourage anyone who thinks that shadow work is an easy, magic pill that will magically make their lives “all better.” Botanical shadow work is the gentle introduction to plants that want to go with you into the dark, so that you don’t have to face that darkness alone.  There is nothing in the dark that you haven’t already faced, conquered and beaten. All that lies in that darkness is fear. The plant spirits are there to act as lifeguards. No one can do this work for you, but at least you can have a hand to hold while you face the dark together. 

4. Can you explain to us how plants—the spiritual allies of the botanical realm, as you say—help us? The metaphor I find myself reaching for more often than not, is that of Catholicism. Note, I wasn’t raised Catholic, but my mother was. As intercessors in spirit, plant spirits are more aligned with saints, they are helping to act on our behalf. To stick with that metaphor, the difference between the rosemary in your garden versus the over-arching spirit of Rosemary would be the difference between a local parish priest versus the pope.  The rosemary in your garden is going to have the knowledge of your area, climate and goings-on.  But the spirit of Rosemary is going to carry the magic of all rosemary. 

How do they do their work? One of my favorite maxims is that energy cannot be created nor destroyed.  In magic we are working in concert with the natural world, to create desired outcomes. Magic is a system, not a religion. So it can work alongside any faith-path. We are only changing the shape of that energy to accomplish our goal.

If you have two oak trees, where one is grown on an organic farm in Denver, and one is grown in a swamp outside Baltimore, they’re going to have two different life experiences, but they will both carry the same magical associations of the spirit of Oak. You might collect fallen leaves from the Denver oak to facilitate strength and new beginnings, while the swampy oak can give you the strength to let go of that which no longer serves.  They’re both still oak. They are still ready and willing to help you with the associations we understand from oak, but they can be called upon to 

Why did they develop the power to help human beings? Did they always have this ability or did they evolve alongside us? 

I don’t think that they developed the power so much as the shape of that power changed alongside evolution. When humans (and porto-humans) started paying attention, they wrote it down.  There are records of magical attributes of plants, seeds, flowers and resins as long as recorded history. 

Is it really true that “the plants we seek offer everything we need,” as you write? 

That’s a definitive yes. Because humans and plants all underwent evolutionary change through the same process of millions of years, we have always depended on plants and other animals to feed, clothe and nurture us.  Medicinal plants didn’t suddenly become medicinal in one day, we as humans relied on trial and error to understand our plant and fungi allies.  “This one tastes good, this one killed Bob, and that one made Bob see God before he died.” We rely on the work of the infinite humans who came before us to understand the world around us, just as all science is built upon the work of scientists that came before then.  We are simply refining the process of the scientific method. 

5. Intuition, an inner narrator or “little voice,” smell, sight, hearing, touch, taste. What mode of communication do our spiritual allies and plants use to communicate?

If you’re seeking plants with vitamin A, perhaps your body needs help with cell turnover. If you’re craving perfumes with patchouli, perhaps your spirit needs a bit of grounding.  The hard part in modern society is standing still long enough to listen for the messages our body and the environment around us is/are communicating.

The little voice is conscious, consciousness, and very gentle signals, just like hunger, thirst and longing, they take years to understand from infancy, but we do get there. One day it may be a new plant appears in your garden that you never noticed before.  It’s not that the plant magically appeared, it’s that the outer noise lowered the volume enough to notice that plant, and it’s in the noticing that we can begin to understand why it chose that moment.  Whether ‘it’ is your consciousness or the spirit of the plant is for the observer to understand.  

6. Just to give readers a sense of how you personally engage in shadow work using your toolkit, can you walk us through a recent occasion (or two) when you felt the need for a boost and what exactly you did?

A few years ago I was doing a regular energetic cleansing of my home. Good spiritual hygiene and all that. During this process I noticed a stand (stand is the collective noun for plants) of poke plants (Phytolacca americana) suddenly appeared.  Did they appear overnight? Certainly not. But I hadn’t seen or noticed them prior, and they were certainly tall enough to have been noticed earlier.  I started to think what the message could be.  Poke is poisonous, and poisons are a protective measure. If it can protect itself, it can protect you.  So if the poke is in my back yard (therefore behind me) and it’s a protective plant, what do I need protection from, that I can’t see? After some work, I realized I had a stalker and Poke was warning me. I was able to be on my guard, and escaped a potentially deadly encounter.  I firmly believe if Poke hadn’t warned me, I wouldn’t be here, giving this interview. 

7. It feels important to stress that throughout the book, you encourage readers to improvise: if one approach doesn’t resonate—”if florals aren’t your jam”—take a different approach. At one point, in a discussion of altars, you write: “Take a look at the buffet of options in front of you and remember there isn’t a wrong way to try to engage the shadow aspect of ourselves, so jump in and try your hand. See what happens.” Can you speak to the idea of taking ownership of shadow work? 

The work of being human means having ownership over our choices, and the decision paralysis that can come with trauma. I want to make sure everyone who picks up this book that you know yourselves better than I ever could. I can give you all the tools I have, but you have to be the one to employ them. One of the issues with approaching something as difficult as facing our ‘demons’ is that feeling that if everything isn’t just so, the work won’t work. This leads to a paralysis of another kind.  I’ll start tomorrow when I have a new journal.  I’ll start tomorrow when I have the right candle. I’ll start next full moon for the right vibe.  Done is better than perfect. 

8. You offer guided trance journeys in the book, where adventurers use an inner start screen and head off to parts unknown to meet botanical allies. These journeys seem to incorporate some visualization techniques. Please talk about trance work, what it offers, how to develop it, the places you can go? 

Trance work sounds so formal. What Botanical Shadow Work provides is the tools, frame work, and most importantly the permission to set out on your own and meet yourself where you are, instead of waiting for the perfect time to be that idealized version of yourself.  Trance work offers you the sense of safety within your own head that life and trauma can take away from us. It gives us the certainty of safety that not everyone was raised with, or experienced in childhood. Because you can use it to go anywhere.  Literally. Trance work can take you to parts of the world you have never seen, to places no one has ever seen, including times, eras or epochs that no human has ever seen. This isn’t just imagination. 

How can you tell the difference between a true journey, and a projection? The element of surprise.  If you are planning a journey back to a prior / past life, and you see a friend of yours there, you recognize their soul, even if they look different then, but you KNOW THEIR SOUL, that genuine moment of surprise is what tells you this is really happening, even if it is taking place inside your head.  On the other hand, if you “were a princess in a tower, and everyone loved you and you lived happily-ever-after-the-end” it’s a projection.  There is no unexpected moment, no detail that made you go, “hrmm” and nothing to shock you out of the narrative you have in your head, it’s just a nice story you’re telling yourself. You have to give yourself permission to be. To feel. To experience. 

9. Early in the book, you write: “The plants we have a relationship with can be incorporated to help deal with our shadow or overindulged to mask it. As a society we experience botanicals allies on a daily basis, but overindulging in them because we are ignoring our own shadow can have real world consequences.” Can you help us understand that statement a bit further, please? 

Just as anything in our physical plane can be indulged in or over-indulged in, so can they be incorporated to the determinant of our shadow self.  You can ask the sprit of Poppy to help you sleep, that help is needed because we need our rest to recover from the daily wear and tear on our bodies.  We can be prescribed medicines that are based on the poppy plant to help after a surgery or injury, but that same poppy-based medicine can become an addiction that dulls our senses to the pain of the past to the point of losing ourself, our families, our loved ones, or even our lives. 

10. You write, “Witches, magicians, Pagans, and all of us varied magical people, as well as many others, are fighting to break the generational curses wrought by the generations that came before us. We take the poisons that were fed to our parents and our parents’ parents, and we turn it into magic.” 

What is the current state of witchcraft? When the history of Paganism and witchcraft is written, how will scholars look back on this early-twenty-first century era, with all its technology and connectedness? 

That history is being written today.  We live in a time where we have never had more access to information, to connection and to each other, and yet we are increasingly lonely. We are using our access to record the experiences of the world, and the history being written daily, because every day is a new “unprecedented time.’ Because we are taking so many steps to be historians, we are losing touch with our neighbors. We are making sure that the world understands what is happening, while locked behind our own doors out of fear of the unknown, and fear of the hatred that has been inflicted on minorities, seemingly since the beginning of time. The only people talking about the ‘good old days’ are vastly misunderstanding what life is like for women, People of Color, LGBTQIA+ people and the disabled. I am a member of 3 out of 4 and can only talk about my own experiences, but even within communities that hope to bring light to the disenfranchised, there is still room to grow.  

11. We live in trying times. What attitude, what fighting spirit, what mindset do we all need to embrace to make the universe a better place? 

To ensure we continue to endure, to fight and succeed, we have to be willing to fight for those that have less than we do.  Period.  “A rising tide lifts your boats.” -JFK

The rise of political hate follows a lull, making prejudice, racism, bigotry and the like feel emboldened to act, but rights are not pie. There are not fewer rights for you, because your neighbor has gained rights. Lesbians being able to marry takes away nothing from your marriage.  Disabled people gaining access to buildings takes away nothing from able-bodied visitors. Equity and Justice should be what we are fighting for, not getting the first spot in line so no one can take something from you.  

The continued rise of white nationalism targets everyone ’other,’ POC, minority religions, the disabled, Two-Spirit and third gender people.  It is our job as compassionate humans to make sure that we see our neighbors. We are looking over their fence to make sure they have enough, not to make sure they don’t have more than us. Lead with kindness and curiosity, but don’t be afraid to fight for what’s right, even if it costs you.

12. The author of eight books, a deeply knowledgeable practitioner of British Traditional Witchcraft,  horticulturist, certified aromatherapist, medium, and trance witchcraft instructor—what’s next for you? May we humbly ask to hear a little bit about your life and what you’re working on now?

I have always been a creative person.  I wanted a book with my name on it before I could write my name. I’ve been going non-stop for ten years at this point, so it’s time to refill my bucket, so to speak.  

I’m painting more. I’m photographing botanical portraits again. I have a collection of watercolor botanicals I’ve worked on for years. I’m writing a novel.   It’s time to have surgery on my shoulder, by the time you read this, I’ll be recovering nicely, but I had to cancel my book tour to recover, so I’m getting to know my fans through Skool and have put up a number of classes that are ‘on demand style’ classes you can take any time, day or night.  No waiting for a reply email, with a special code, just fun topics, expansive ideas and safety for the fans I care so much about.

https://www.skool.com/amy-blacktorn-school-of-magic-7076

I can tell you, that I hope my next project to be released, has a little bit of all of me, a peek into the future of Amy, as a whole.

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When attempting to connect to the collective unconscious, one of the most challenging parts of opening ourselves to our psychic gifts is quieting the conscious mind of day-to-day chatter that permeates our thoughts, even when we attempt to relax.  To do that, let’s establish your very own ritual designed to help you engage all of your senses and keep you present at the moment.  That ritual is known the world over for connecting people to their inner selves;  I’m talking about tea.  Lavender is known the world over as a sedative herb, capable of reducing anxiety.  Chamomile is calming, internally as well as externally. Reducing external stimulation is another factor in keeping the link with the inner realm connected and reducing caffeine intake can aid that goal.  Blending your teas can be a satisfying way to connect the threads of the things you’ll learn here today.

Lavender is one of the most common anxiolytic herbs on the market today.  Lavender is so synonymous with herbal medicine that it is one of the most commonly adulterated essential oils on the shelves, not because of the cost to produce but to keep up with demand.  Adding a quarter of a teaspoon of lavender buds to your tea is enough to bring out the warm, flavor of this herb.  Though this lovely purple bud is a flower, it won’t add a traditional floral taste to your tea.  This member of the mint family adds a sharper mintier note in the camphor family, closer to the note of rosemary and bringing the air of nobility to your tea ritual. By adding an anxiolytic herb like lavender to a psychic tea, you not only relax the active parts of the mind that are apprehensive about a potential outcome of the divination but allow the active part of the brain to quiet and allow the subconscious to step forward.

In emotionally charged situations, people reach for chamomile for its calming effect.  Chamomile works both aromatically and physiologically.  Chamomile is soothing to muscles and tempers alike.  Chamomile also causes blood vessels to dilate, for this reason, consult with doctors if you are on blood pressure medications or blood thinners. The calming effect of chamomile will allow meditative qualities shine through and along with breathing techniques, enter an altered state of consciousness.  For those not familiar with the flavor of chamomile, it gets its name from the taste, which loosely translates to, ‘ground apple.’

The last piece to this puzzle in linking tea and the sixth sense, in turning up the volume on the inner voice.  One of the ways to do this is by reducing the external noise created by caffeine.  I’m not saying that it is harmful to anyone, I’m not a doctor.  I’m stating that if you want to get in touch with your inner mystic, you can’t be wired for sound on Monster energy drinks.  You’ll be hearing sounds, but your inner voice.  The best way if you choose (free will is a beautiful thing!) to reduce your caffeine intake for this exercise is to create an herbal tea base.   Most people hear ‘herbal’ and think mystery plant matter that tastes like dust and is a vaguely green/gray color.  The best herbal tea base to use that blasts those assumptions out of the water is Honeybush or “Red Tea” (Cyclopia species) it grows in South Africa. It is caffeine free, and unlike its caffeinated cousin, it does not bitter if over steeped.  It has a neutral/sweet flavor and is delightful as a stand-alone tea or as the base for all teas, fruity, herbal, spicy or sweet!

Another way to link your practice is to bring some elements of the natural world into your daily practice.  Simply having tea is a balm for the soul.  Having a calming cup, a few minutes of focused breathing, and practicing opening the mind to intuition  By regularly exercising the psychic link, it becomes second nature.  Blending teas can provide a satisfying way to connect calm, center and collect your thoughts before beginning the journey inward and I hope you will try it if not for your own sake, for the sake of the people your inner voice may help.

*Make sure to take the time to write down any recipes you come up with so that your results can be duplicated at a later date.

**Neither lavender nor chamomile is recommended for pregnant people in the first trimester.  Please consult your pregnancy professionals before taking any teas, herbs, essential oils, or supplements during pregnancy.

Get to know the author!

Amy Blackthorn is the author of, “Blackthorn’s Botanical Magic” an encyclopedia of magical aromatherapy as well as many others.

You can follow her on:

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Pagan Community Notes on The Wild Hunt

CLEVELAND—On Sunday, July 2, well-known author Amy Blackthorn will present the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick with a signed manuscript of Scott Cunningham’s The Complete Book of Incense, Oils and Brews. Just inside the document is an encouraging note from Raymond Buckland himself. Blackthorn is making this donation so that museum visitors can revel in this piece of history and glimpse into the mind of the Wiccan trailblazer.

In addition to the presentation, Amy Blackthorn will be holding a lecture on magical self-care. Tickets for the event can be purchased here.

Amy Blackthorn is a professional intuitive and the bestselling author of Blackthorn’s Botanical Wellness, Blackthorn’s Botanical Magic, Sacred Smoke, Blackthorn’s Botanical Brews, and Blackthorn’s Protection Magic. The founder of Blackthorn’s Botanicals, she has a certification in aromatherapy and was ordained by the Order of the Golden Gryphon. Amy lives in Delaware. Keep up with Amy’s book news at amyblackthorn.com and view her tea shop at Blackthorns Botanicals.

Located at 2155 Broadview Road, Cleveland, Ohio, The Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick first and only museum in the United States to celebrate witchcraft and the occult, and their related cultures.

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Now available for preorder at

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Indie Bound

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Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) for love, peace and health

Tangerine (Citrus reticulata) for purification of those winter blahs, physical energy and joy

Patchouli (Pogostemon cablin) for Physical energy, sex and money

Find additional ritual anointing oils in, ‘Blackthorn’s Botanical Magic’ by Amy Blackthorn. Available now.

You can also find ritual teas at Blackthorn’s Botanicals.  Get 20% all purchases of teas, classes, spell candles and oils through May 15th 2021 by entering code Plants at Check out.

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What has been getting the best of my thoughts and actions lately?

I was trained in a traditional coven from the time I was eighteen.  Though I left the group after a personal tragedy, I still remain friends with most of those people, twenty years later.  The litany was always, “Who does it serve?” We were encouraged from the time we were dedicated, through the priesthood to examine our thoughts, our believes, to challenge our egos, our beliefs and our coven hierarchy to examine why we do the things that we do.  We were challenged to make sure that our actions were in the best interest of as many people as possible.  In service to the Gods.

I’m often asked why I write on certain topics, why I create the art that I do, and how I got to where I am today.  The long and short of it are, that I want to help people.  Whether it is a goal of writing a book, starting a coven, or growing as a person, as well as a Witch, I want to help people grow.  Facing the things that we fear allows us to dig deep and examine both why we feel the way we do, and how we respond to those fears, the impact that our actions have on others.

“Shadow work” is a term that has been on the public mind since March 2020, when pandemic shutdowns had the populace at large struggling to cope with their inner demons in the face of isolation. Facing the things that harm us, both in the physical and emotional well-being is the name of the game.  We fight so hard to not have to look at ourselves that we invent new problems. Facing my fears is just as difficult for me, as it is the next person.

Adding the next layer of seeking to pay service to the gods, can make the struggle even more poignant.  Now we are no longer simply looking in the mirror, we are looking for the gods in that same mirror.  I’m an author, and a public figure, yes, but I’m also doing the best I can to make the world a better place, every single day.  Whether it is a small gesture, or a large one, and I feel like we can all do something small, each and every day, even from within the confines of lockdown, to make someone’s load a little lighter.  Not for ourselves, but for everyone else.

In Her Service,

Amy Blackthorn

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There’s still time to get your copy of ‘Blackthorn’s Botanical Brews’ preordered!

Weiser Books has thoughtfully provided us with a 30-page preview complete with preorder links.  You can read and download it here.

A little birdie suggested the audio book might be available at the same time as the physical copy and digital copies.  No promises, but here’s hoping.

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I was able to snag this GORGEOUS oracle when I was scrolling the #BotanicalMagic thread on Instagram a while back, and I’m finally getting around to sharing how LOVELY it is.  If you haven’t gotten to follow @Leila_Olive on Instagram, you’re missing out.  It comes boxed in a heavy duty cardboard box.  I love keeping decks in their original boxes, but often the soft boxes don’t last long and I wind up transferring them into the Ipsy makeup bags that come monthly.  This is a box I can use for years to come.

The back of the guidebook reads, “Unveil your Prophecy, Botanical spirits to light the way. LeilaOlive.com

The cards are simple and elegant.  They give the name of the botanical (Cinquefoil) and the larger font is reserved for the key word for the card (Enchant) 

There is a faux gold leaf on the edges that gives the cards a nice look, but it rubs off easily.  I like the look of gold leaf, but it rarely stands up to the hype.

The backs of the cards have an entrancing Pythia motif and helps differentiate between the Pythia Tarot (another review later!) and the Oracle.  

As Blackthorn is my last name I was tickled to see it included in the oracle.  It instructs us to let go of the things that frighten us and hold us back.

The soft colors of the background make it easy on the eyes for long days as a reader, and the card stock is thick enough I don’t feel like I’m playing with cheap playing cards.  I’ve added this to my professional reader basket that I take with me for readings and I’ll be using this for a long time to come.

*I was not paid to do this review.  I paid for the deck and @Leila_Olive has no knowledge I am doing this review.  She’s just awesome.

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Due to popular request, Amy’s in person classes are being video’d and put online for fans out of reach.

Blackthorn’s School of Magic is now open! Keep an eye out for live classes as well.

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How did you get started with essential oils?
I started with essential oils after about ten years of practicing magic and had just gotten started in my horticulture studies program. I was looking for a way to work with the plant materials I was studying on a year-round basis, but also to preserve the materials I had an abundance of. I headed to my local natural foods cooperative and found a rack of essential oils and dove right in. The history of the materials as they related to the history of perfumery really enticed me, so I grabbed every book I could find, non-fiction and even a fiction book called, ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’ by Patrick Suskind and John E. Woods.

What made you decide to write a book on the subject?
It’s funny what makes each person write, isn’t it? I decided to write a book on the subject of aromatherapy after a death in my extended family. It was a great aunt whom I had never met and was already elderly when I was born. I returned to the family’s Catholic church where my mom grew up to attend the church service for this woman my mother had loved, but I had never encountered.
I arrived before my mother, but after my uncle’s family who were no longer Catholic but had converted to another sect of Christianity. I was a little anxious that my aunt would cause a scene about my being in a church as my family knew I was a Witch and had caused a scene at a previous family funeral. The longer I sat there, the more anxious I got.
Until they wheeled the casket in, with the attendants, and the priest. Suddenly, I was as calm as I’d ever been, I was centered, I was focused and I was ready for a ritual. It was as though someone had thrown a switch in my brain. It took a good minute for me to piece it together.
You see, in my very first coven, my high priestess was raised Catholic. So before every ritual (every full moon, and 8 holy festivals a year), we cleansed our ritual room with frankincense and myrrh, the same incense she had growing up in the Catholic church, and the same incense I encountered that day. My brain didn’t know the difference. My brain just knew it was time for a religious observance and switched gears on me without me having to think about it. I signed up for a clinical aromatherapist program the next day and started writing about my experiences with scent that night.

You have a company, Blackthorn Hoodoo Blends, that creates blends of teas. Why tea? I started working with tea six years before I launched my company because I feel that tea speaks to the soul of people in a way that nothing else does. Tea is comprised of the vital nature of the plants. When you pour that water over the leaves you can’t help but take a deep breath. My aim in taking that time is to encourage people to turn their morning ritual into a ritual.
I had just left a toxic job at a security firm and I knew that if I was going to move on to the next thing successfully, I needed to make room for it in my life. I needed to clear out the baggage left behind by the old job. Anyone who has ever had to put in their two weeks notice knows how that feels.
My first morning as a joyfully unemployed woman, I knew I had to get back to the roots of my magic to make that room. I dug out the big cauldron that I burn my candles in (fire safety!) and my bottle of Vanvan oil for clearing out junk and bringing new opportunities your way. I thought this must be one of the fastest spells I’ve ever worked because the doorbell rang before I even lit the candle. I laughed all the way back to the kitchen after signing for a package from the postal worker.
Then the funniest thing happened. When I got back to the kitchen, I went to light my candle and I was overwhelmed by the scent of the lemongrass in the oil and all I could think to myself was, “If only I had a tea to sip while my candle burned, I could keep working on my working while the candle burned and did its job.” and Blackthorn Hoodoo Blends was born. A week later I had 15 blends, and now four years later I have over 55.

How do you go about creating a tea?
When I go about creating a tea, we have the genesis, an old hoodoo formula I’ve been making into oils for twenty years, ‘Justice, Power, and Peace’ is similar to my recipes for empowering blends like Just Judge and Boss Fix. It’s hard to do 1 to 1 recipe because the oil recipes call for things that aren’t edible, so I have to go back to my other materials, recipes and notes to help inspire me for things that have the same power, use and intent to get the job done. Run Devil Run, for example, nothing in that recipe is edible, but the banishing power of black pepper makes for an incredibly powerful banishing tea, and since black pepper makes sweet things taste sweeter it has a great flavor profile and is an easy drinking tea without the added sugar. You can drink these teas just because you want something good in your body. Magic is all about your intent so you can tap into the intent behind these blends, or you can just enjoy some Money Draw tea because it tastes like a popular fruity breakfast cereal.

Ever notice how things meant to clear negative energies stink? Do you think smelly is just a universal repellant? (because that’s my super scientific working theory)
A lot of people talk about how materials meant to clear negative energies to stink, but the stink is in the eye (nose?) of the beholder. There are two schools of thought here. The popular school of thought is that the stink will drive the nasty spirit back to where it belongs, and keep it away from you, and your home. The lesser known school of thought is that working with smells that the end user finds pleasant is infinitely more effective, for a few reasons, A) they’re more likely to use it. It can’t work if it just sits on the shelf. B) they’ll enjoy using it, therefore creating a happy environment which is more difficult for a nasty spirit to cling to. C) You’re more likely to ‘vibe’ with something that’s going to work with you anyway.

Given how stressful life seems to be for everyone lately, what are some aromas you’d suggest to help us all chill out?
Chill out, Cheer Up!
3 drops grapefruit essential oil (Citrus paradisi) to heal, protect, renew
3 drops lavender essential oil (Lavandula angustifolia) for harmony, peace, strength
3 drops peppermint essential oil (Mentha piperita) to purify, release, lift spirits
2 tablespoons witch hazel
Place essential oils and witch hazel in a 2-ounce pump spray bottle. Cap it and give it a good shake. Unscrew the cap and fill it the rest of the way with cool water. Spritz well and often to banish melancholy and irritability and bring peace and centering.

What advice would you offer to someone looking to start working with essential oils?
Research, take classes online, or with an instructor. You can never know too much about this. It can seem overwhelming. Instead of buying a kit with 10 or twenty oils in it and trying to learn them all, pick three and learn everything you can about those three. Use them for cleaning your kitchen counters or for magic. Use them for everything the books tell you it’s safe to, but know those three inside and out, before adding another. Just keep it simple and you’ll keep yourself from getting overwhelmed. You can do a thousand things with one oil and this book.

What are some things people should look for when shopping for essential oils, particularly if shopping online? Look out for clear bottles, that means they’re likely fragrance oils. The same goes for if the oils are all the same price. If the company offers a lot of organic essential oils, that’s a good sign, but you’re going to pay a lot for the option. If you’re looking to buy oils that are really expensive, melissa, rose, jasmine, sandalwood etc, get the smallest quantity you can buy and quality test it yourself at home. Put a drop of oil on a piece of watercolor paper. Come back twenty-four hours later. Is there red dye smeared on the paper from the rose oil? There shouldn’t be. Does the paper look like someone carried home french fries from the local greasy spoon? It shouldn’t. (For more info on quality testing at home there’s a chapter in the back of Blackthorn’s Botanical Magic.)

What’s next? Do you have any projects my readers can look forward to?
I’m happy to say that I’m back working with Weiser on my next book! Sacred Smoke will be released Oct 1st 2020.  They’re so great to work with, I just couldn’t stay away, fans of this book will be dying to get their hands on this next book.

Parting shot! Ask us here at The Magical Buffet any one question.
What’s your favorite sense memory related to this time of year?

It’s not tied to a specific fall memory, but kind of general amalgamation of memories. Thanksgiving dinner cooking smells. That warm, toasty kitchen filled with the aroma of roasted turkey and the fixings. I don’t take the holiday seriously because let’s face it, Thanksgiving is a horrible lie because our ancestors were total dicks to the Native Americans, but the food. Oh the food.

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