Ever wonder what its REALLY like to be a witch? Deborah Blake shares the inside scoop and talks about her newest book, Llewellyn’s Little Book of Witchcraft.
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TRANSCRIPT
Jim Harold
We’re going to talk all about witchcraft on today’s edition of The Paranormal Podcast with Deborah Blake.
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This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.
Jim Harold
Welcome to The Paranormal Podcast, I am Jim Harold and happy holidays to all of you out there and we appreciate very very much you taking time at this busy time of year to listen to our show and we’ve got an excellent one for you today with Deborah Blake and we’ll be to that in just a moment. I just wanted to take a moment seeing that we’re in the holiday season, to tell you that if you listen via Apple Podcasts or you know someone who listens specifically via the Apple podcast app, that we now have an option for gifting a subscription to our Plus Club Spooky Studio Plus on Apple Podcasts and this is only for the Apple Podcast version. So if you know someone who’s a listener, but isn’t a subscriber to Spooky Studio Plus on Apple Podcasts, then I want to encourage you to gift them a subscription this year. Apple gift cards are available almost anywhere you buy gift cards and these will work for a subscription in the Apple Podcasts app too. So you just buy them the gift card and they can use it to purchase a subscription to Spooky Studio Plus. Again this is only on the Apple Podcasts version in the Apple Podcasts app and I appreciate it very very much. And of course if you say “Hey, I just want to become a member, Jim. I’m not gonna gift it. I’m gonna give a gift to myself!” Well, you can do that very easily, go to JimHaroldplus.com click on the banner and there you’ll have all the details for all the different versions of The Paranormal Plus Club. JimHaroldplus.com and we thank you so much and now on to this interview with the very interesting Deborah Blake.
Well, we have one of our favorite guests on the subject of witchcraft and there’s a recent book out. It’s called “Llewellyn’s Little Book of Witchcraft” and we’re talking with Deborah Blake the author and she’s been on our shows many times. She is the author of over a dozen books on modern witchcraft including the “Little Book of Cat Magic” and “Everyday Witchcraft” as well as the acclaimed “Everyday Witch Tarot” and “Everyday Witch Oracle” decks. She has also written three paranormal romance and urban fantasy series for Berkeley and her new cozy mystery series launches with “Forbidden Fatality” in 2021 or did launch I should say. Deborah lives in a 130 year old farmhouse in upstate New York with numerous cats who supervise all of her activities both magical and mundane. She can be found at DeborahBlakeauthor.com. Deborah Blake, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us.
Deborah Blake
Thank you so much for having me back and I will have you know that I do have a cat right right next to me at this very minute supervising me doing this because apparently they don’t trust me to do podcasts on my own either.
Jim Harold
We all need as much help as we can get. But actually you don’t. Yeah, I do, you don’t.
Deborah Blake
No, I do too. I do too.
Jim Harold
So quite simply what is the concept of Llewellyn’s “Little Book of Witchcraft?”
Deborah Blake
Well, they have an entire series of “Llewellyn’s Little Book of” fill in the blank. You know, they’ve got one on you know moon magic, and they’ve got one on the day of the dead, and they’ve got one on herbs, and tarot and… And the “Little Book of Witchcraft” is pretty much covering the basics of witchcraft. It’s it’s a great intro book ,for people who are you exploring or you know, because it is a cute little hardcover which I just love this series because they’re all these cute little hardcovers, so they make great gifts, hint. But you know, if you happen to know somebody who you know is interested in exploring it, you know it it does cover things like oh, you know, what what do we believe and you know, the the variations on witchcraft’s theme is what I like to call it, because there are as many different kind of witches as there are witches. There are many sort of styles of practice and so I talk a little bit about you know a bunch of the sort of main ones so that if people are trying to explore they know what some of the options are. And then I talk about the Sabbaths which are our holidays many of which are actually the basis of you know, the holidays that people are more familiar with now and the lunar cycle so the full moon and things like that. Then I talk about daily practices and witchy crafts because I like crafty things, divinations, so it covers a lot of basics. But it also, because you know, I never want to write a book that is only useful for people who don’t know anything about witchcraft at all. There’s also a whole bunch of spells and tips in it, fun activities which is one of the hallmarks of these “Llewellyn’s Little Book of” is they’ve always got you know these actual things you can do and and fun little tips that you know, you can just open the book anywhere and go, “Oh, that’s a cool piece of information.”
Jim Harold
Right, that sounds very neat. Now. Let me ask you this I mean since we’re kind of talking about a book here that is kind of a 101, let’s just start with one of the most common, you know, a lot of people have misconceptions about witchcraft. If you had to name a top few that you’d like to shoot down, and take the opportunity to shoot down, maybe shoot down a few, because I know that a lot of people are like “Ooh, witchcraft is spooky.” So tell us from your perspective what are some of those main misconceptions that people have.
Deborah Blake
Well, you know the first one the most obvious one is the wicked witch. I mean, you know me, I’m hardly wicked at all and any wickedness about me is not associated with witchcraft in any way. It’s just my natural charm, but you know, people think of witches as this sort of malevolent you know, they’re going to do something terrible to you and the truth is that most witches are just people like everybody else living their lives and what they use witchcraft for is to improve their own lives. To, you know, to create positive change in their lives and in the lives of the people around them. And, you know, frankly, you know, they could be bothered to be going around turning you into a toad even if you deserved it. But yeah, that is a myth that was basically started as a political move because when Christianity moved into Europe and the pagans were already there, they wanted to take over and in order to get the pagans out, they basically said mean things about them. You know, it’s a little bit like politics today if you pay any attention to that kind of thing is. There’s a whole lot of finger-pointing and “Oh, you know that that cow of yours that stopped giving milk. Well, did you notice that that old lady down the street who was an herbalist who you’ve been going to for her wisdom for years, looked at you funny last week? Well, she’s a witch and therefore is the cause of your cow not giving milk.” I promise you if you have a cow and it’s not giving milk, it doesn’t have anything to do with witches. Unless you know, they’re really thirsty. But yeah, so that’s the first one. I mean are there wicked witches? There’s mean people in any…
Jim Harold
Right I was going to say there could be a wicked witch and there could be a wicked Lutheran.
Deborah Blake
Right. Yeah, I mean I’ve never met a wicked Unitarian I have to say or a wicked Buddhist. But yeah, in general there can be bad people in any bunch of people, but for the most part, witches are nature worshiping. They follow a god and goddess instead of just a god, which you know upset a lot of people back in the day and doesn’t make some people happy now. But yeah, there’s no wicked and it’s sort of as an adjunct to that the whole that they worship the devil. Well, first of all, the devil is a Christian concept. Witches don’t for the most part actually believe in the devil. So we’re hardly going to worship somebody we don’t believe in that would be just silly and a waste of time. So so yeah, there is no devil worship, there is no sacrificing of babies or farm animals. You know, we may pour a libation of cider out on the ground to say thank you to nature, that’s, that’s our big sacrifice. We could have been drinking that cider, but we’ll drink that today and I guess the only other one is that whole idea that a witch might cast a spell on you. I’ve done a number of podcasts as you know, and every once in a while I’ll be on a podcast that is not done by somebody who is particularly witchy oriented. They’re just paranormal oriented like yourself and so they may or may not know that much about witchcraft. I had a conversation with a couple of guys, I don’t even remember who it was at this point. It was a number of years ago, but we had a lovely chat about witchcraft talked about the same kind of things you and I are talking about and whatever book I had out at the time and at the very end one of the guys said “Yeah, I’m actually kind of scared of witches” and I thought well then why did you have me on your podcast? And I just said to him, “You know, the witches are not going to do anything to, they don’t cast spells.” For the most part they do not cast spells on other people. And you know again, they don’t cast spells for malice. I mean if you had a friend who was a witch and you were sick you might ask them to do a spell for healing and if you gave them your permission they would do it. But that’s yeah, we’re we’re just like everybody else pretty much except that we happen to have a different spiritual path and you know believe in magic.
Jim Harold
You mentioned earlier the Sabbaths explain what the Sabbaths are.
Deborah Blake
So a Sabbath basically is a holiday and there are eight of them in our seasonal calendar and there’s two solstices and two equinoxes the same ones that you know cultures had been observing pretty much since the dawn of time. You know summer solstice, the you know, the winter solstice, the spring equinox and the fall equinox are the main holidays. And then there are what we call quarter cross days which fall midway between two holidays. So for instance between the fall equinox and the winter solstice is Samhain, which is where Halloween came from. And Samhain is a celebration of, it’s actually that our new year and it sort of celebrates the end of the last year and the start of the next year and we say it’s the time when the veil between the worlds, the world where we live in, the world beyond, is the thinnest and so we often you know put up an altar for our beloved dead, and we may speak in appreciation of our ancestors, or try and talk to them and you can see where Halloween came from this holiday where you know, the veil is thin, ghosts, spooky things, witches obviously, and and so yeah, it is I find it really fascinating how many of the mundane holidays or the currently practiced Christian holidays were actually derived from one of these eight original sabbaths. And again, they’re mostly a time of celebration. We usually do a ritual and a feast, the feasts are usually the fun part. We do whatever’s seasonal and available at the time. Like my group everybody brings a dish and passes it so it’s it’s very communal. Some witches who don’t belong to groups just celebrate by themselvesand you know are appreciative of whatever focus there is for that holiday because we call it the Wheel of the Year because you’re basically looking at what the energy of that season is. So in fall you would be celebrating the fall seasonal things.
Jim Harold
Now I’ll ask you this, which one is your favorite and why?
Deborah Blake
Actually Samhain I think. To me, it is the witchiest of all the holidays. It’s, for those of us who practice the craft which is what we call it the witchcraft, it’s we are I think the most in touch with our witchy selves on that day. And it’s sort of funny because that’s the one day of the year we can dress up as witches and nobody notices. But it’s also the that was my first Sabbath that I ever went to. The woman who ended up being my first high priestess, invited me to come to her house. She was having a few people over, you know, and she’d been inviting me to things for years and I’m not terribly social and I’m especially not great with people I don’t know. I’ve gotten better, you know all these years of being an author and going to conventions and things. So I went to her house and there were like 30 people which to me is not a small gathering. We had this lovely feast and people kept you know coming up to me and hugging me and saying things like “Marry me”, which is a witchy greeting and I’m like, “Oh my goodness what did I get myself into” and then we went outside in the dark and I was, it was my first ritual circle. And when I was in that circle once the circle was cast, which is how we sort of separate the spiritual space from the rest of the world, something changed. I could feel the difference and I reached out and the god and goddess reached back and sort of went “Well, took you long enough!’ and so for me, that was the start of this journey that has taken me in a direction I never expected my life to go. So it’s a it’s a real special kind of day for me because every year I remember that.
Jim Harold
We’ll return to this fascinating conversation with Deborah Blake right after this. The Paranormal Podcast is brought to you by Grammarly. And when it comes to writing, Grammarly is there to support you from start to finish because even if you’re a good writer, and I consider myself to be a pretty good writer, sometimes it’s just difficult. It can be hard. It’s just kind of like “Whoa, why can’t I why can’t I get ideas? Why can’t I make this work?” But Grammarly is there to help you because for over 10 years Grammarly has been powered by AI technology you can trust to help you across all the places where you write the most. And now Grammarly helps you do even more. With one click you can easily brainstorm, rewrite, and reply with suggestions based on your context and goals so you can improve productivity for you and your teams. And I gotta tell you, Grammarly helps me every week. I do my email newsletter. I think we missed last week because of the holiday. But generally I write a column for that, and even when I think “I have it nailed, I don’t have to put it through Grammarly” and that’s like “Oh let’s put it through Grammarly and see what they say,” and they always make it better. They always make it better. I swear by Grammarly it is a great, great service. Very useful and again, I’ve been using Grammarly way before they ever advertised on this show. Now let’s say that you’ve been assigned to say “Hey give us 10 possible taglines for this video thumbnail on this YouTube video that we’re going to post for our company.” Well, you can literally type in the prompt, “Give me 10 possible taglines for a video thumbnail.” And sometimes what I find is it gives you a bunch of ideas and then it even spurs your creativity and gets you thinking and maybe mix and match. Or let’s say you you need to polish your writing. Well, Grammarly can help paraphrase and rewrite to be more concise instantly. You can say “improve it”, “shorten it” and it’s magic it does. Listen to this, what if you have a big presentation coming up? Why not let Grammarly create a personalized outline to get you organized so you can transform your ideas into a compelling presentation. And that’s the thing, I look at it as you’re working back and forth with the technology and with Grammarly that’s how it works best. It’s not doing it’s your work for you, but it’s helping you it’s a partner and the best part is that it’s free to use. Start being more productive at work. Go to grammarly.com/podcast to download for free today. That’s g-r-a-m-m-a-r-l-y.com/podcast and we thank Grammarly for their support of The Paranormal Podcast.
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Jim Harold
Now you talk about the lunar cycle and the moon I think is all even in people who don’t know a thing about witchcraft, I think has always been associated with witches and maybe what is perceived the mystery of witchcraft. How does the moon come into play?
Deborah Blake
Well, I mean it’s sort of interesting because as important as these sabbaths are, witches are likely to focus on the moon, especially the full moon, than even the sabbats, because for us, the moon is this is the symbol of the goddess who we worship and the way it changes also marks the sort of change and flow of the energy around us. So that at the full moon the energy is at its highest and if we were going to do say an important witchcraft thing we would probably do it on that night. And then you have the waning part of the of the cycle which is from the day after the full moon or a couple days after the full moon because it it really is pretty full for about three days, and that goes all the way to the new moon and during the waning part ,as the moon gets smaller and the energy dwindles, we may do magical work for things we want to get rid of, things we want to make smaller. So if you were going to do prosperity work, that would be the time of the month you would be doing to get rid of debt, as opposed to bringing in more money. And then when you hit the new moon, that’s a good time for doing new starts of things and then from the new moon back to the full moon Is the waxing part of the moon cycle and then you’re going to do magical work for increase. Which is you know things you want more of so if you wanted to do again your prosperity work you would do how can I get more money or you know find a better job or whatever? And so the energy of the cycle and you can tell that witchcraft is all about these natural cycles. That’s why I call it a nature-based religion or spiritual path, some witches are more comfortable with religion, some people say spiritual path, whatever you want, whatever you like. But one of the major focuses of modern witchcraft and we believe the older witchcraft, although, you know, there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know about it, is this connection with the patterns of nature with the flow of nature and how we can tap into that natural energy that natural flow, rather than fighting against it. Which you know, in modern life, we’re very disconnected from nature in a lot of ways. I mean I live out in the middle of nowhere so i’m a little more connected to nature than some people. I have a big garden, I have lots of trees in my yard. I have critters of every kind, well no bears yet, I’ll leave those to other people. But for people who are not connected to nature, witchcraft gives them an opportunity to find simple, easy and meaningful ways to re-establish that connection. And that’s you know, one of the things that I try to do in the Little Book of Witchcraft is give people simple suggestions. I don’t like to make it complicated, life is complicated enough. I don’t really feel like witchcraft needs to be complicated because most of us at best, have five or ten minutes where we can sneak in doing something spiritual in a day or a week or whatever. So the simpler it can be or the more connected with your own life that you’re living already, the better.
Jim Harold
So, can you give us an example you talk about in the book daily practices? Can you give us an example of a for instance of, maybe a daily practice that you or someone else might do another witch?
Deborah Blake
Well, here’s one of my favorites, which I started doing many many years ago and again trying to keep things simple, I used to try when when I was still sort of exploring my path and trying to figure out what worked for me and what didn’t work for me, I wanted to do a little ritual every night. I wanted to light a candle at my altar and just say thank you to the gods for whatever I been gifted with, through the day, even if that was just the strength to deal with the stuff that I was gifted with that wasn’t that great. I was always too tired and I didn’t do it and I felt really bad about it. Then I realized that I didn’t actually have to stand at the altar and light a candle. And so now what I do is I get into bed and I turn out the light and as soon as I turn out the light, I just talk to them. I just say “God and goddess, I greet you at the end of another day and thank you for the many blessings of my life.” And then I thank them for home and food and cats and whatever specific things have happened and ask them to, continue to watch over me. Super simple daily practice literally takes five minutes or less and you can do it in your pajamas.
Jim Harold
Now this question occurred to me and as many times we talked i’ve talked to other people who were involved in witchcraft and are witches, I’ve never asked this question but you seem like you’re well positioned to answer it. You know, I think that you know if we think about other walks of life, a plumber, a lawyer, a podcaster, whatever it might be, you might say “Well, that person’s very good at what they do, that person not so much.” I even think of sports. You think of a quarterback. There’s some really great, there’s Patrick Mahomes and then there’s whoever’s currently playing quarterback for my home team the Cleveland Browns, but well, actually we’re having a good year as of this recording. We’ll see how the rest of the season plays out, but our quarterback play has not been great, but anyway point being, I’ve never thought about this, but you were saying well, you know this time of the year you do this and different moons and so on. I was like “Boy, she really knows what we’re talking about.” Do you see that in witchcraft? I mean, not to to be nasty about it, but there’s some people who really know what they’re doing and there’s some not bad witches as in terms of evil, but in terms of just not very good at practicing witchcraft.
Deborah Blake
Of course, I mean, you know, there’s always, there are people for whom there it is a natural gift. No matter what you’re talking about, whether you’re talking about a musical gift, or yes a sports ability, or whatever. There are people who are say psychic, like i’m a professional tarot reader because I happen to have this gift. And you know, lots of people read tarot. Some of them are better at it than others because even if you study really hard you may or may not be able to make up for the lack of the gift. And there are certainly people who are probably better at casting successful spells. Some of that has to do with focus and focus can be learned. A lot of witchcraft, the people who are good at it are, like with many other things, are the people who have been practicing for a long time. I made some mistakes when I was a young newbie witch. All right, I wasn’t that young, I didn’t come to it until my late 30s. But when I was a middle-aged newbie witch, uh, you know I made some rookie mistakes because , there were things I hadn’t learned yet. Some of the witches that I respect the most, there are a number who of course, you know write about it and so they’re visible and you can see them, are people who really spend a lot of time and energy working on it and of course, they’re going to be better at it. Now mind you, there are some people even authors, who I don’t think are if they let’s just say ,their style does not appeal to me. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not good at it. It just means that it doesn’t resonate with me in whatever way. And whether that means that what they do only works for like a few less amount of people or if they’re just more concerned with being a famous witch than they are with being a good witch, you know, that’s but yeah. I mean, it certainly is something where not everybody is going to be as good at every part of being a witch. For instance, I have my group, Blue Moon Circle, and I’m really the only one in the group who is comfortable writing spells and rituals. Every once in a while somebody else will put on a ritual which is great then it gives me a break from having to lead, but A. I’m a writer; B. I majored in psychology and theater, which you know if you think about ritual, psychology, theater and then I got my certification in Secondary English Ed. So Psychology, Theater, English Education, those things are pretty much, you could design a writer witch with those things and that’s part of why i’m more comfortable with it. But it’s also just It you know, it’s a gift. It was something that you know, I was fortunate enough to have writing spells come easily to me. Somebody who can’t write their own spells or who isn’t comfortable writing their own spells, isn’t necessarily any less of a witch or any worse at being a witch. I mean, that’s why I write books is so the people who aren’t comfortable with it , they can go, “Oh, look! We just got the “Little Book of Witchcraft” and it’s got all these cool spells in it. And this one’s exactly what I needed!”
Jim Harold
Interesting, interesting. Now, divination that’s an interesting one to me because I think most people are attracted to the idea of like knowing what’s going to happen in the future and that kind of thing. Although I mean, I think maybe a lot of people don’t think necessarily of divination as witchcraft. is essentially any form of divination witchcraft in some way?
Deborah Blake
Not at all. I mean there are plenty of people who read tarot or Runes or whatever, who are not witches. The you know, the witchcraft part of it is you know, there there are a lot of witches who use divination, it certainly comes with the territory, although not everybody does by any means. But you know, if you take a hundred witches and put them in a room together and a hundred non-witches and put them in a room together you may get say five people of the non-witch group who are like, “Oh, yeah, I own a tarot deck” and probably 75 people in the witch group are going to go, “Oh, I have six tarot decks.” It’s just, it does tend to sort of come with the territory. But no, plenty of people do divination and divination is associated with many cultures. I mean there are you know, if you look back at various cultures across the world, almost all of them have some form of divination. Whether it’s, you know, reading the bones, or the I Ching or whatever it is. People always want to know, I think that’s a human trait that we we’re all full of questions to which we have a hard time finding the answers sometimes and if you can go to your your nice, village wise woman and say “All right, what do the cards say or you know the chicken entrails or whatever?” I I personally do not use chicken entrails very messy.
Jim Harold
I love your wit. It’s always on point, it’s always on point.
Deborah Blake
Well, and that is something that if people like a little bit of humor with their witchcraft, I’m the person for them because even in the serious books there’s there’s there’s a little humor of my fiction, my non-fiction, it sneaks in everywhere because that’s how I cope with reality.
Jim Harold
Now i’m not going to ask you to give away the goods here people need to get the book and so forth But you have a classic prosperity spell. Can you just tell us a little bit about that and why it’s your classic prosperity spell?
Deborah Blake
Well, it’s actually my classic prosperity spell because it is something that i’ve put out for years that I’ve shared with people a lot because it works so well. It was in my very first book “Circle Covenant Grove” and I wrote it for the group back, “Circle Covenant Grove” came out 2007 and actually just got reissued by Cross Pro Books, bless their little hearts, because it’s been out of print. But it was based on the first year of practice with my group. I liked that spell so much that i’ve sort of put it in lots of different things so we can we can actually share that one. We can, I don’t mind doing it that we won’t tell them all the other spells, but since this one is pretty readily available, and this is one that I would do like if I was going to do a craft fair, I made jewelry for many many years. Or if, there’s there’s just sort of a general need for prosperity. Extremely simple. I purposely wanted one that was short enough that I could memorize it. I mean, it’s fine to read it out of books, but you know if you want to have something you don’t have to read off a piece of paper. This is my classic prosperity spell: “God and goddess hear my plea, rain prosperity down on me. Bring in monies large and small, to pay my bills one and all. Money earned and gifts for free, as I will so mote it be.” It’s very simple. But see if you listen to it, it says money earned and gifts for free, the reason for that line is you want to give the universe some wiggle room to maybe give you prosperity in ways you hadn’t thought about. For instance, you know, I don’t want to just specifically say “Okay, you know, let me have another book contract.” Although that would be nice. But you know if like this last week I had a whole bunch of very expensive vet bills. I had a kitty that was sick and had to go back and forth and get tests and all sorts of things and you know I basically just sort of said “Wow, you know, it would be it would be really great if you know money would magically show up to help with this because it was a lot and it wasn’t in the budget.” And a friend sent me money without me asking to help defray the bill. It was just, and it wasn’t because I said a spell. I didn’t say a spell of of any kind of formal kind. I basically just sort of went pretty please and she thankfully, was somebody who who loves my work and you know, she’s she’s one of my patrons on my on my Patreon, because I have a Patreon. She just said, you know, she happens to have some money, bless her, and so she just said “Here, I want to help with the with the vet bill and here’s a gift.” So yeah, it’s good when you do a spell not to get too specific, because you want to leave an opening for the universe to allow for free will from wherever.
Jim Harold
Yeah, and honestly, I gotta be frank with you. That’s the way I find life works is that, you know, sometimes you’re so fixated on this one outcome that you know, all my problems will be solved if this happens. And then somehow your problems are solved, but it comes from something out of left field you weren’t weren’t even expecting. And I think that’s so true. We limit, we’re very, most people, and I put myself in this category, very tunnel vision and we think this is the one path to whatever I desire and there’s a lot of different paths.
Deborah Blake
Well, you know, I never intended to write non-fiction. I wanted to be a fiction author and it ended up I was ,but it came second, not first. This was sort of accidental because I was paying attention when you know, the gods basically went “You should write this book” and I went “What, what’s that now?” And you know people went “Yeah, that would be a good idea” and I went “Are you sure, real?” So yeah, it’s you have to be listening and you have to be open. Those are one of those lessons that I think you learn from experience. In other words, when you get old and and just from you know, hopefully paying attention. Yeah, instead of saying “I want x job”, say, “Well, you know this job looks great but what I really want is a job that will give me enough money to live on and will be satisfying and I will enjoy.” And you may get a job that was not at all what you expected.
Jim Harold
Now let me ask you this, I think when people think of witchcraft people who are non-practitioners, people looking from the outside, they think about it for big things like “I want the love of my life. I want you know that…”
Deborah Blake
Okay, stay away from love spells. That’s Deb’s one piece of advice, don’t use it for love spells, bad idea.
Jim Harold
Okay. I’m glad that came up. I’m glad that came up.
Deborah Blake
Yep, it can it can backfire. It is very hard to do a love spell without interfering with the free will of somebody else. This is actually one of one of my little bugaboos, because there are lots of witches who do love spells. There are whole books that are nothing but love spells, but how do you cast a love spell without somehow interfering with the free will of another person, which you know many witches believe is a bad thing, not all. That’s that’s one of those things we argue about. You know what I tell people to do is an open to love spell make yourself more receptive to love maybe you know ask the universe to put you in the right place or make you aware if the right person happens to walk by you. But never ever do a love spell that has say a particular person’s name on it. Go ahead. Ask me how I know. Remember I talked about mistakes I made when I was a newbie witch? Well, yeah, it’s a bad idea. But the other thing is what I what I say to people is don’t cast a spell that you wouldn’t want cast on you. I mean right say you say you were dating somebody you were about ready to get married and they said to you. “Oh, by the way, ha ha funny story I cast a love spell on you, you know a year ago” and then you’re sitting there saying well, “Do I really love this person? Or do I only love them because they cast a spell on me?” And so if you wouldn’t want someone to do that to you don’t do that to someone else.
Jim Harold
I mean, you know, wouldn’t you think you’d want somebody who loves you because they love you not because you manipulated them?
Deborah Blake
You think so except people want what they want. It’s a thing. And you know, I, from my own experience, when I was younger and I made my mistake I was I had convinced myself that this was what the universe wanted, that this person was supposed to be with me, he just hadn’t figured it out yet. Well, it turns out he was crazy as a bed bug and maybe the universe wanted to teach me a nice lesson which I have learned obviously, so yeah. But you were saying about smaller things.
Jim Harold
Right. I am looking at car karma, for example.
Deborah Blake
Oh, yeah. Well, you know the here’s the thing about magic. It’s everywhere and it can be used for the smallest or largest things. Most witchcraft stuff for me, is about how you live your daily life ,how you walk your talk. And it doesn’t necessarily mean casting a formal spell. You know, one of my favorite things to do is is what we call kitchen witchery. So say you want to you know, keep yourself and your family healthy during the winter cold season and everything else season you may take some herbs that are associated with healing and add them to your soup. And then as you’re stirring your soup, you don’t have to say a formal spell you just focus on your intention of making this soup full of healing energy and you might do things like stir it, you know, nine times clockwise, you know which is sort of a magical thing. But yeah, very little daily things, you know witches work magic or witchcraft into their daily life in lots of little ways and some bigger ones. I do a yearly protection spell on my house and my car and I do it in the in the autumn, you know before the winter hits and I just mix together a bunch of herbs and some sea salt and things bless them ahead of time. And then I walk around the outside of my house and the boundaries of my property in front of my mailbox and the end of my driveway and basically just bless them with protection energy and hope like hell, you know, everything holds together for the year.
Jim Harold
Well one thing that’s held together is Deborah Blake’s interviewing skills. She does a great job. She’s always such a great guest and it’s been fun to talk to her about “Llewellyn’s Little Book of Witchcraft.” Deborah, just a another fun session with you. You always got so much great energy and so much information. Can you tell us where we can find you and find “Llewellyn’s Little Book of Witchcraft”?
Deborah Blake
Well, “Llewellyn’s Little Book of Witchcraft” can be found pretty much anywhere. I mean, obviously you can go to llewellyn.com and find all of my books there. It’s also available online and you know any of the reputable places that you would buy books. You can go to your local independent bookstore if you are lucky enough to have one and ask them to order it for you if they don’t happen to have it on their shelves and they will happily do that. You can even ask your library to order it and they might do that. You know, not everybody can afford to go out and buy every book and I understand that. So yeah, you can you can pretty much find it anywhere that you would normally look for books. This you know, it is also available as an ebook. It’s such a pretty book I think you really want the actual hardcover in your little hands, but that’s just me, but you can get it as an ebook. And you can find me almost as many places, although you cannot order me from your local store. Probably, we’ll see we’ll see if I get another book contract. Maybe it’ll be possible. But uh, if you go to my website, which is deborahblakeauthor.com. Deborah spelled the long biblical way d-e-b-o-r-a-h in case people aren’t seeing that, deborahblakeauthor.com there are links to all of you know, I’m on Facebook, Twitter, which I refuse to not call Twitter, draw on the line. Instagram. I’ve just started on TikTok. I’m not doing a lot there yet because i’m very confused. You know, as I said, I have a Patreon so you can find that if you want to support me and get little extras that other people don’t get, special cat pictures. Very important. I have an Etsy shop where you can get signed books if you want them and you know some of the jewelry that I sell and like I have a few little witchy kits things like that, but yeah, if you go to deborahblakeauthor.com you can find me there and frankly if you google me, I come up a lot. I’ve been doing this for long enough that it’ll come up with links to things. So yeah, I’m not, I am not hiding.
Jim Harold
Well, we’re glad you’re not. We’re so glad to have spoken with you today. Deborah Blake and the book is “Llewellyn’s Little Book of Witchcraft.” Deborah, thank you for joining us today.
Deborah Blake
It was a blast. Thank you.
Jim Harold
And we thank Deborah for coming on the show and sharing her perspective and her work. I think even if you’re not from a specific faith tradition. I am not of the faith tradition of witchcraft, but it’s always interesting to hear the perspective of people who have different beliefs. I think that’s a valuable thing for all of us and we’re so glad Deborah could spend some time with us and we thank her very much. And we thank you for tuning in I hope it is the happiest holiday season ever and also, I hope that you will in your gift giving check out my Mausoleum of Merch, jimharold.com/merch, jimharold.com/merch, over on the Etsy side there. We have some great new merch and things. We’ve never been able to do personalized and autographed Campfire books for me, T-shirts, hoodies, zip hoodies, pullover hoodies, a whole expanse of different things. I hope that you get to check that out at jimharold.com/merch and we thank you so much. Happy holidays to you and yours and we’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week everybody. Bye.
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