˚ ༘ ೀ⋆｡˚ 𝑴𝑶𝑶𝑵 𝐎𝐁𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

🌙 Your Solar Return Moon in The Houses

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 1st House

This year, the shape of your face becomes a confession. Every glance, every tremble, every hesitation, it’s all written across you before you can explain it away. Your body becomes a diary you never meant to open in public. You are learning that true strength is not hiding the bruise, it’s standing there anyway, unmasked, uncurated. Your emotions will demand a seat at the front table this year. Will you let them in or keep translating yourself into what you think the world can handle?

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 2nd House

This year, your heart will cling hardest to what feels stable, even if it’s crumbling underneath. You will measure love by what stays. You will mistake absence for betrayal, and presence for safety. But the real earthquake will be discovering that your security was never outside you. It was never the hands that held you, the job that paid you, the voice that praised you. It was the quiet agreement you make with yourself to stay, even when everything else leaves.

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 3rd House

This year, your emotions will move faster than your words can catch. You will reach for language like a life raft, trying to organize, explain, rationalize every flicker of hurt. But not everything aching inside you will want to be named. Some wounds will need silence, not stories. Some longings will pulse too wildly to fit into clean sentences. Your real work this year is not to speak what you feel, it’s to sit inside it until it teaches you its real name.

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 4th House

This year, the architecture inside you will shake. Foundations you swore were permanent will shift beneath you like sand. The heart you built walls around will start tapping on them from the inside. You are not being asked to rebuild the house. You are being asked to stay inside it, even while it falls apart, and trust that not everything collapsing is meant to be mourned. Some things crumble because they were never truly yours to begin with.

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 5th House

This year, your heart will rebel against its own walls. Long-forgotten songs, abandoned dreams, half-buried joys will hammer against your ribs, asking to live again. You will be asked to create, not for survival, not for success, but because creation itself is how your soul breathes. Love will feel dangerous in its wildness. But this danger is not your enemy. It is the threshold you must cross to find yourself again.

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 6th House

This year, healing will not arrive with trumpets or fanfare. It will slip in quietly, in how you feed yourself when no one is watching, in how you forgive yourself when you fail again. You will be asked to make rituals out of repair. You will be asked to meet your body not as a machine to be punished into worth, but as a garden still learning where the sunlight is. Tenderness will save you long before discipline ever does.

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 7th House

This year, your heart will be measured by how bravely it can stand alone. Every closeness will sharpen your edges. Every silence will stretch your longing. You are not being asked to merge. You are being asked to sit across from yourself, across from them, and whisper: “I will not disappear for your comfort.” The real work is not finding someone who chooses you, it’s learning to choose yourself without needing a witness.

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 8th House

This year, grief will have your address even when you didn’t send an invitation. You will grieve futures that never happened, versions of yourself you quietly abandoned. But mourning is not a detour. It is the soil from which something unimaginable will grow. Your emotions will drag you underground, but only to teach you how to rise through your own ruins. You are not losing yourself, you are molting. And what comes next will not apologize for its power.

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 9th House

This year, your heart will become a pilgrim. Longing will stitch itself into your chest like a compass, pulling you toward things you cannot explain. Familiar comfort will start to itch like an old skin. You are not lost. You are outgrowing maps that were too small for the real horizon inside you. Trust the ache to move, to wonder, to wander. You are not betraying your roots by reaching beyond them, you are honoring the parts of you that were born to run toward the light.

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 10th House

This year, the world will see your heart before it sees your work. Every ambition will be braided with emotion. Every goal will taste different once you realize that success without soul is just another kind of emptiness. You are not being asked to climb faster. You are being asked to climb truer, even if it means leaving behind ladders built by someone else’s expectations. Let your life be built from longing, not just labor.

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 11th House

This year, your heart will recognize strangers before your mind catches up. You will find pieces of yourself scattered across new communities, friends who feel like old prayers being answered. But you will also grieve the spaces where you stayed too small just to belong. Hope will hurt before it heals. This is the year you stop editing your dreams to be more digestible and start living so loudly that the right ones find you.

🌙 Solar Return Moon in the 12th House

This year, the tides inside you will rise before the world even knows a storm is coming. You will be called inward, back into the corridors of your own undoing and becoming. Healing will happen behind closed doors. Grief will turn into gardens long before anyone else smells the flowers. You are not invisible. You are incubating. Trust the darkness you are passing through. It is not the end of you, it is where the next version of you is being quietly written.

"Never fear chaos because out of chaos something is always born. Instead of worrying about a chaotic situation, I await the birth. When your mind becomes chaotic—or when my mind is—it is because it is impossible to see the whole".

Carl Payne Tobey in The Astrology of Inner Space

things to release on a full moon

fear of change 

searching externally for answers & not searching within

negative energy 

the belief that you’re not good enough

comparing yourself to others

clinging onto things

letting go of the need for approval from others

fear of criticism & judgement

old beliefs that no longer serve you

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The Fields of Asphodel: The Afterlife from a Pagan Perspective

Originally posted on nightshadeandroses.wordpress.com.

Death is often a topic avoided by polite company. It is one of the most mundane taboos in American culture, something that is avoided and shunned at all cost. This is made apparent by the ways in which we treat the dead and dying, often opting to shunt the elderly and the terminally ill into medical facilities rather than allowing a home death. Oftentimes, we do not even discuss death unless someone is actively dying and we can no longer avoid it.

Much of why we avoid death is fear. And that fear is certainly valid since, despite how deeply we may believe in an afterlife, we can never know for certain if our view is correct. Or if there is an afterlife at all.

As a child, I was terrified of death. At night, I would spend hours staring up at the ceiling, scared that I would one day die unexpectedly in my sleep and that staying awake would somehow prevent Death from coming for me. That fear of death stayed with me throughout my childhood and into my young adulthood (though I stopped fearing that I would specifically die in my sleep, thankfully.)

Most of my fears stemmed from the various unknowns around death. Growing up in a not-totally-religious home but with a Christian father, most of my ideas about the afterlife were from a Protestant Christian perspective. I was taught that when I died, I would either go to Heaven or Hell, and that I needed to obey God and accept Jesus Christ as my savior in order to get into the “good” afterlife.

“But what if I’m not good enough?” I would often ask my Dad. Or “but what happens if someone is mostly good but isn’t Christian?” His answers, while meant to be comforting, often scared me more. They often boiled down to “don’t worry about it; just pray.” For someone like me who always struggled to connect to the Christian God, I found the silence during my prayers as confirmation that maybe I wouldn’t have access to the “good” afterlife.

Even after I officially converted to Hellenismos/Hellenic polytheism, my view of the afterlife and of death remained mostly unchanged: I was still afraid of dying and of what would happen after. But, as a devotee of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, death isn’t exactly something that I can wholly avoid. So, I was forced to confront my fears head-on, diving into the Hellenic myths surrounding death and the afterlife.

What I discovered of the Underworld was entirely unlike my conception of the Christian afterlife. In the Underworld, all souls except for those who are exceptionally great and influential are seen as equals and granted the same afterlife. The dead are able to wander throughout the Fields of Asphodel, great misty meadows filled with sweetly-scented flowers. Those who were exceptional in their lifetime are able to celebrate in the Elysian Fields, which is blissful and heavenly.

While the Underworld is a lot more somber than the idea of Heaven, I find solace in the fact that I won’t be condemned to burn for eternity regardless of what religious beliefs that I hold (as Tartarus, the closest equivalent to Hell, is reserved only for monsters and the truly wicked and irredeemable.) I also enjoy the concept of all people being equal in death. Not only that, but the afterlife is not necessarily eternal; the concept of reincarnation was present in various ancient Greek mystery cults like Orphism and the Eleusinian Mysteries. So while the afterlife may not be as exciting as Heaven, I won’t be trapped there forever. I will be able to be reborn and live a new, different life. So while I’ll no longer be “myself,” I will be able to forge a new life filled with experiences, opportunities, and growth to nourish the essential part of me that lives on between incarnations. Life is not seen as a preparation for Death in Hellenismos; life is meant to be lived fully, completely, piously, and beautifully. Life is meant to be lived for its own sake.

I won’t deny that all of my fears of death are gone. There is still that fear that there may be nothing after this life. It could be a void, like the emptiness of a dreamless sleep. Even though this may be the case, I am less afraid of that possibility. Because followers of Hellenismos are encouraged to live to their fullest potential rather than treating life as a dress rehearsal for what comes after, I am more content with the time that I have. With that, I know that when I am old and dying someday, I will be able to look back without regret or disappointment of what I may leave behind. But if there is an afterlife, I look forward to wandering the Fields of Asphodel, the domain of my Queen.

If you enjoy my writing, please consider supporting me at patreon.com/nightshadeandroses orko-fi.com/nightshadeandroses!

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Tarot Cards and Their Meanings

Wands:

Ace: Beginnings, birth, energy, self-image, new opportunities

2: Potential, planning, choices, contemplation

3: Long-term, foresight, putting things into motion

4: Rewards, celebrate good times (come on!), teamwork, home

5:Competition, conflict, brainstorming

6: Praise, self-confidence, recognition, role model

7: Defense, threat, perseverance

8: Progress, energy, swiftness

9: Perseverance, wounded, guarded

10: Responsibility, burden, stress or success

Page: Adventures, inspiration, ideas, journey, desires

Knight: Risk-taking, experiments, travel, fun, passion

Queen: Creativity, independence, friendly, optimistic, beauty

King: Leader, pride, energy, charisma, passion

Cups:

Ace: New feelings, awakening, imagination

2: Equality, respect, harmony, sharing

3: Friendship, celebration, fun

4:Withdrawal, indifference, boredom

5: Sadness, mourning, disappointment, regret, suffering

6: Kindness, caring, memories, childhood

7: Fantasy, illusion, creative brainstorming

8: Travel, retreat, spirit quest

9: Contentment, host, wish fulfillment

10:Happy home, shared love, peace, family

Page: Sensitive, gentle, Imaginative, kind

Knight:Romantic, flirt, artist, emotional intensity

Queen: Empathetic, sensitive, emotional, psychic, mother

King: Wise, calm, emotionally mature, father

Swords:

Ace:Truth, intellect, communication, clarity

2: Standstill, mediator, indecision

3: Loss, sorrow, betrayal

4: Rest, mental restoration, reflection

5: Defeat and self-defeat, irritability, arguments

6: Support, moving, retreat, mental healing

7: Gathering information,mental tests, strategy

8: Helpless thoughts, limiting beliefs, excuses

9: Worry, anxiety, insomnia, repressed thoughts

10: Finished, closure, give up

Page: Curious, student, intellect, thoughtfulness

Knight: Debate, explorer, rushing, revolutionary

Queen: Truthful, self-aware, teacher, intellect

King: Objective, intelligent, assertive, fair, logical

Pentacles:

Ace: Healthy beginnings, investing, grounded, opportunity

2: Play, changes, multitasking, adapting

3: Planning, employment, teamwork, assistance

4: Stable, saving, cautious, boundaries

5: Unstable, illness, supportive friends, lack of security

6: Charity, generosity, giving back, assistance

7: Assessment, trial and error, editing, feedback

8: Repetition, precision, commitment, meaningful work

9: Luxury, discipline, earned rewards, fruits of labor

10: Wisdom, home, wealth, legacy, home

Page: New project/job, Student, new studies, cautious

Knight: Loyal, dependable, hard working, practical

Queen: Mother, Fertile, down to earth, nurturing, protective

King:Wealthy, successful, loving father, stubborn, practical

Major Arcana:

The Fool: Trust, Beginning, open minded, innocence

The Magician: Will, personal power, intention, resourcefulness

The High Priestess: Inner Wisdom, Meditation, spirituality

The Empress: Mother, creativity, nurturing, sensuality

The Emperor: Power, structure, stability, father

The Hierophant: Responsibility, knowledge, teacher, belief system

The Lovers: Sexuality, union, love, cooperation

The Chariot: Determination, Control, momentum, competence

Strength: Courage, Strength/ inner strength, survival

The Hermit: Guidance, wisdom, perspective, solitude

Wheel of Fortune: Luck, expansion, destiny, change, movement

Justice: Ethics, law, balance, fairness, accountability

The Hanged Man: Release, waiting, surrender, sacrifice

Death: Regeneration, ending, closure, transformation

Temperance: Experimenting, creating, combining, compromise

The Devil: Limitations, attachments, commitment

The Tower: Sudden shock, chaos, destruction, questioning beliefs

The Star: Renewal, peace, optimism, boundlessness

The Moon: The shadow self, dreams, confusion, intuition

The Sun: Playfulness, acceptance, personal growth, enthusiasm

Judgement: Transition, maturing, reviewing

The World: Integration, connection, wholeness, completion, options

Hey guys! It’s been a long time but I’m working on some posts for later. I’m probably am going to work on a reversed version of the cards for next time. Thanks for reading!- Samantha

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Meditation steps and tips for beginners

Professional meditators always have a Zen garden: https://www.amazon.com/ICNBUYS-Japanese-Censers-Pushing-Diameter/dp/B01II9PHI4

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New acquisition

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Secular Altar Themes

Season: Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn

Weather: rain, snow, fog, etc.

Biome: aquatic, forest, desert, grassland, tundra

Element: Earth, Air, Fire, Water

Celestial: Moon, Sun, stars, planets, etc.

Divination: display your methods of divination. If you work with Tarot/Oracle, highlight a certain card and its meanings

Healing: display whatever tools you use for your healing methods

Animal Focus

Color Focus

Crystal Focus

Material Focus: all wood materials, all copper, all glass, all porcelain, etc. Kitchen Witches can even have a whole tea set on their altar to Craft with

Witch Type: if you identify as a specific type of witch, you can coordinate your altar to that. See here for inspiration

Spell Type: love, wealth, prosperity, luck, growth, strength, protection, etc.

Aesthetic: whatever you like, Pinterest has inspiration for you

None: no strong theme at all! Just all your materials in one place with a cleared Craft space

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Grimoire Ideas📖✨

   since i’m starting to work on getting my own Grimoire better organized and figuring out what i think fits best in it for me, i feel like i should log some ideas that have helped me in my journey in hopes that it could help someone else just starting out. but just remember that your Grimoire is your own and personal to you and you alone so you don’t need to put everything in if it doesn’t vibe well with you or doesn’t fit into your craft. your book should hold things that are personal to you and your craft and what you believe and you don’t need to have every bit of knowledge in your book.

✏️ an index/table of contents ✏️ a blessing ✏️ a protection sigil and/or spell to keep from wondering eyes ✏️ your personal creed or rede/the wiccan rede(if you’re wiccan) ✏️ personal goals/13 goals of a witch ✏️ personal correspondences/things personal to you ✏️ your beliefs ✏️ your daily rituals ✏️ the different types of magic ✏️ the different types of divination ✏️ any gods, goddesses, deities, or spirits you worship/follow  ✏️ information on any gods, goddesses, deities, or spirits ✏️ crystals 》 meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ plants/tress/flowers 》 meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ herbs 》 meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ essential oils 》 meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ incense 》 meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ candles 》 meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ chakras 》meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ auras 》meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ elements(earth, fire, air, water) 》meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ runes 》meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ magical symbols 》meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ feathers 》meanings 》uses 》correspondences ✏️ crystal grid ✏️ pendulum board ✏️ sigils 》how to make them 》how they work 》how to charge ✏️ moon phases 》correspondences 》what they’re good 》what the mean  ✏️ moon phase calendar(preferable something that can be removed or changed easily)   ✏️ magical times 》hour 》day 》week 》month ✏️ moon water ✏️ sun water ✏️ zodiac 》correspondences 》dates 》characteristics  ✏️ mythology of your heritage/culture and/or area ✏️ mythologies of interest ✏️ mythological creatures ✏️ star chart ✏️ constellations ✏️ celestial events ✏️ planets/celestial bodies 》meanings 》uses 》correspondences 》mythology 》relation to magic ✏️ cheat sheets ✏️ tips/reminders ✏️ spirit works ✏️ basic concepts 》banishing 》binding 》cleansing 》grounding 》ect. ✏️ altars 》what they are 》what they’re used for 》what you need 》basic set up 》plans ✏️ familiars ✏️ tools in your practice ✏️ spirit work ✏️ spirits ✏️ personal/family traditions ✏️ animals 》which animals you connect with 》spiritual powers of animals ✏️ spirits guides ✏️ sabbats 》solstice 》equinox ✏️ recipes 》spells 》potions 》teas 》cleaning products 》natural remedies 》powders 》oils 》beauty 》 body scrubs 》ect. ✏️ spells 》self love 》curses 》hexes 》protection 》banishing 》ect. ✏️ tea 》meanings 》uses 》correspondences 》spells 》recipes ✏️ rituals ✏️ visuals 》drawings 》pressed flowers/herbs/plants 》photos ✏️ meditation ✏️ a secret code or alphabet  ✏️ gardening ✏️ list of words and phrases ✏️ books 》ones you reference & find helpful ✏️ experiences 》spell work 》divination 》spirit work 》banishing 》tarot readings 》ect. ✏️ spiritual diary ✏️ magical diary ✏️ dream log ✏️ spell log ✏️ anything else you want! literally! it’s your book and its always good to customize it to you! if you feel like it should be in your book, then go ahead and put it in your book because that’s what makes it special!

            ***correspondences =things such as 》elements, colors, symbolism, planets, astrology, anatomy, ect. really anything else important tied to something.

   obviously you can pick and choose whatever works best for yourself and your craft, and i don’t even have some of these in my own book but still thought they would be helpful to include for witches like me who are just starting out who need ideas of what their books can hold! i’ll probably start posting more about my grimorire and how i keep it organized as well!

   if you think i’ve missed anything feel free to add on more ideas to pass on to your fellow baby witches!

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