In Your Hands, Ophelia.

When learning basics, most of us want to rush through and get to the good stuff. When can I start summoning things! When do I get enlightened! When do I light candles with the poooooooooooooowers of my miiiiiiiiiiiiiind!

Let's say you've been a good little hearth witch worker bee. You've learned to iron crisp pleats in your apron, you cook so good your kids don't bitch about it, you can pull a Flylady drive by cleaning no problem-o, you can sew a button and a button hole.

Where's your prize? What's the carrot? How do you power up?

Here's the secret to 300 Level Hearth Witchery: Your hands.

Let that really sink in for a minute so you can understand how shit scary this system of kitchen witchery is. You don't have thousands of years of recorded historical tradition and practice to rely on. You know why? While holy men (and an occasional woman) were busy in their ivory towers, you were busy being pregnant, sowing the fields, burying your children, churning butter, burying your spouse, jarring, canning, sewing, creating fabric, laughing, crying, fucking, and dying. Because you were never given the luxury to do anything more than that.

Do you think that these midwives, these hedgewitches, these stregas were any less holy because they were not given the luxury of a life of contemplation, my hedge sisters, my blood? FUCK. NO.

You are not any less holy or profound than your brethren who now spend their lives in contemplation, meditation, and book discussion.

You are too enmeshed in the business of living to have the luxury of devoting your life to a system, even a modern one. Even if we had one we'd be too busy to follow it. You have children to feed, clothe, and entertain. You have a hearth to manage. You have food to put on the table. You have a day job that you bust your ass at. Your sister is short on rent. Your brother is crying. Your kid needs a new pair of shoes and your spouse needs new buttons on her shirt (again).

You need to be like Ophelia. You are more than a drowned sidenote to some emo prince's trip. Natalie Merchant's Ophelia. You need to be a novice rebel girl sweetheart demigoddess mistress circus queen. A tempest cyclone, a goddamn hurricane.

And there is no manual, my darlings. No manual at all. We have no proven structure giving us a safety net, no meditational structure to hold us up, no spirits to compel. All we have is our hands. Your hands to grind herbs from the kitchen from the grocery store with a mortar and pestle you got on sale at Target. Your hands to light candles and say prayers to your gods. Your hands to call whatever phone tree you're in charge of. Your hands to scribble down a recipe, a receipt for whatever spell you came up with on the fly to use with your iron will. Your hands to bake bread. Your hands to sew. Your hands to write. Your hands to put in soil. Your hands for your children to hold. Your hands covered in blood, sweat, tears, and vomit.

It's all you're given in this path. It's not glamorous, you'll not win in an occult power dick waving contest. But you'll get shit done. You'll work hard. You'll be able to charm or hex, you'll see results. You'll have the grace that is found in simplicity, even in magic.

Your hands. That's it. End of lesson.