Setting the ancestor table a week early
Samhain is a week out and I've already started the ancestor altar, because if I wait I'll be doing it at 11pm on the 31st with a flashlight again.
This year: Nan's reading glasses, a tin of the butterscotch she always kept in her coat pocket, my uncle's terrible fishing hat, and a photo of a friend from my old coven who crossed in spring. One white candle in a deep glass holder on a ceramic plate, well away from the curtains (lesson learned in 2011).
For the night itself I'm planning a dumb supper: one empty chair, that plate served first, and the whole meal eaten in silence. If you've never done one, it's stranger and gentler than it sounds.
One stone every sabbat, twenty-two years
When I was initiated, my High Priestess gave me one piece of advice I've actually kept: at every sabbat, wherever you are, pick up a stone. Not a special one. Whatever's at your feet.
Twenty-two years later it's a big glass jar on my altar, mostly hidden by cat hair. Gravel from a festival car park. A slate chip from Wales. A crumb of concrete from the hospital car park, the Samhain I spent in a waiting room. A perfect white pebble from the beach, the year my mother died.
Samhain is a week away. I'll add one more, and before that I'll tip the whole jar out on the kitchen table and remember every single one. It's my book of shadows, in stone.
Inventory of my crystal collection
Three river rocks my nephew gave me, one amethyst point, a chunk of something the label called 'aura quartz' that I now have questions about, and a blue glass marble. The marble is staying. It has seniority.