#12: The Leo Moon, The Witch + The Wardrobe // DIY CBD Earthly Delights Bath Soak + Magic Tonka Beans
Plus: Rodney Dangerfield, Salty Armchair Humor + Topicals For Tired Ass Old People
Issue #12
Astromotional World Update: Rethinking Health, Trauma + Magic Realism
The Leo Moon, The Witch + The Wardrobe
Rodney Dangerfield, Salty Armchair Humor + Topicals For Tired Ass Old People
DIY CBD Earthly Delights Bath Soak + Magic Tonka Beans
Dear coven,
I was going to send this during the last Mercury Sesquiquadrate Natal Neptune, but I had menstrual cramps. Instead, I am sending it to you on the new Leo moon. Well, three days after.
If you are a man who is reading this, I assume you embrace the divine masculine and feminine because you are not garbage, and encourage you to continue reading. You deserve baths, weed-filled woodland adventures and magic tonka beans, too. Unless you suck. In which case, get the fuck out of my newsletter.
On the new Leo moon, I wanted to set my intentions, but I was lost. I really wanted to avoid negative thinking, but I couldn't. I slipped into a hot bath filled with CBD bath salts from Lord Jones and lit a joint. These are quite nice if you want to treat yourself. However, at $65, they are also extremely expensive. My gift to you: a DIY version below.
After some time, I became feverish, which is to be expected when one takes a bath during the middle of summer. I stepped out and immediately fell. I ran into a cold shower and started to hyperventilate. My roommate had been recently become worried she had come down with COVID, causing me to have an immediate panic attack remembering every article describing every COVID symptom I read since January.
Tim Kinsella’s piece, which published back in March on the heels of the lockdown about narrowly escaping the early warning cries in Italy haunts me the most. It made me flash back to the time that I became severely ill with food poisoning during a college spring break trip in Florence.
After a stroll through the Boboli Gardens, I was stricken with a bout of vertigo, abruptly fainting in the street. Two women rushed over, taking me into a pharmacy where I was handed a small piece of hard candy for my blood sugar and sent on my way. Returning to the hostel, my eyes turned bloodshot, looking like a case study from the 1995 ebola thriller, The Hot Zone.
The hostel was full at check out, but I was too weak to go anywhere. It’s terrifying and disorienting when you suddenly come down unknown malaise, trapped alone in another country with only your suitcase to comfort you and a limited grasp on the language to understand how to treat yourself. The owners were kind enough to put me up in a private apartment, where I read The Joke by Milan Kundera (I was living in Prague at the time) and watching a lot of Italian MTV. But I was so sick I thought I was going to die.
Looking back at the photos, no one would have seen all of those terrible things that happened on that trip: the miscommunications where I was yelled at for making mistakes at the cafe where I wanted to smoke a cigarette and have a capuccino in Venice; the gelateria owners near the Uffizi who ripped me off—because businesses near tourist destinations are typically overpriced traps and I didn’t know; my debit card, eaten in an ATM machine; my deteriorating health and plans that didn’t work out. So many unfortunate things, in fact, it felt like a joke and I never wanted to go back.
I thought I had sworn off Italy forever—that it was a place of bad luck. I can’t imagine how Amanda Knox feels these days about that place—the beautiful country where she both found love and death, punishment and salvation. Yet, I ended up going back on two more occasions and loved it.
That’s the thing about a bad experience: sometimes you need to confront it again and give it a second chance knowing that these things are circumstantial and learning experiences. You survive a terrible moment and it changes you. But you have to change your perception to see the good and the bad from a situation.
I hope we consider that when it comes to judging the populations who blamed and judged for an unknown disease that touched every corner of the world. That the people who are from these places are not necessarily “good” or “bad” though our media and governments would like us to think otherwise.
I bring up this story because when I think about how COVID has created such an palpable environment of fear, uncertainty and tremendous grief, it’s easy to doubt oneself. To wonder if you're being “over-the-top” about COVID scares as life moves on and everyone normalizes this, always with this nagging feeling of knowing that is still there. There’s no real end date. You just have to make sense of it.
It's exhausting to think about, on top of everything else, and as a result, many people are showing the physical manifestations of stress and anxiety.
Fainting in the shower disrupted my focus, and I was pissed. All of the fear came rushing back. I didn’t make clear intentions, and realized that was the sign. I felt sick to my stomach and overwhelmed.
The next day, I decided to restore my body to restore my mind. To make the Jewish chicken soup with potza balls recipe I posted in Issue 4 and lemon-ginger tea. The ways I self-medicate when my body tells me that it has had enough. I shoved a handful of blueberries in my face, sipped water, rubbed CBD cream into my tired muscles and tried to sleep. I haven’t been sleeping well. A lot of people haven't.
It was a helpful reminder to myself in the ways I love escapism, edibles and esoterica, that these are indulgent things that need to be balanced with the real world. That’s how you know your limits: you listen to your body. You take responsibility for the ways you haven’t healed yourself, and you try to be preventative for others.
I know so many of you are struggling right now, because I have been, too. This election is so stressful, which is why I figured this would be a great restorative issue. If we are fighting for lives, then we fight for our health—physical, mental and spiritual.
Depending on your age, you become less resilient to infection. Nutrition matters, and so does your health. While we want to rush forward to this sense of “normalcy,” it’s important to stay vigilant, leaning into preventive self-care. You can be successful, smart, driven and on top of everything, and still need to console yourself over the things you can’t control. That’s totally normal when nothing else is.
Even the most successful people are prone to emotional vulnerability, which is why I normalize empathy instead of shame. Oprah frequently breaks down in tears when having to discuss her painful childhood rape, including most recently with Lady Gaga (Speaking of, here’s a great story on Lady Gaga giving Beyonce a panic attack from smoking too much weed in front of her).
Looking to the moon and stars for guidance can provide spiritual resolve to get through tough times, but your body will always alert you when it’s time to do more. We are blessed to live at a time when there is both holistic treatments and scientific advancements.
We are all filled with inner strengths, because we all deal with different challenges and help others where we can. Lately, I have been calling up friends to remind them what I love about them. Sometimes we just need someone else to remind us.
Complex questions come with a tremendous responsibility. Sometimes herbalism or a pill can help with this; other things require the heavy burden of emotional labor and transformation. I don't judge what people need to do to cope, we’re all on our own path.
Hitting a Backwoods while blasting “Fuck The Pain Away” by Peaches, eating an ice cream cake and giving yourself an orgasm might feel good now, but it’s important to keep an eye on yourself to ensure these temporary distractions don’t become permanent crutches. Strike the balance. Stay focused.
The Leo Moon, The Witch + The Wardrobe
Unfortunately, there’s not enough space for me a deep-dive on Carl Jung, synchronicity and astrology in this newsletter, but The Astrology Podcast has a really excellent overview on this if you are interested in really dense topics surrounding multi-disciplinary methods of divination. It goes deep into the mystical unknown.
In a nutshell: synchronicity refers to “the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.”
To that point, it's about the one year anniversary since I left Ireland, a politically and ideologically fragmented land with a complex intergenerational identity issues still evolving in the modern world as a Jewitch, someone who didn’t neatly fit into either of those categories.
This is where I started chasing weed witches, astrology, Celtic tree calendars, Pagan ritualism, Neolithic holy sites, Chinese, Argentinean and African immigrant populations, mythology and mysticism, while covering cannabis and finishing my book on Hudson Valley and the Catskills after running myself dry, burning out. What a strange time to be doing such complex study.
All of which led me all the way back here to the person I left: a food and travel journalist who didn’t quite know where she belonged anymore. An artist who abandoned her brushes; a trend analyst and scientist without appropriate data. A cosmic Psychic Pisces Weed Witch with a different view of the world that wasn’t going to neatly translate at all times to all individuals, but should: these ideas are intersectional and universal, as they always were.
Around this time last year, I started providing astrological strain-based recommendations via Leafly to help people get through the month in the midst of a very long adventure traveling around the world through the past, present and future. While I was in Belfast, I met with a legendary edibles collective, Space Monkey at the local botanical garden where I was presented with the most incredible infused Zuppa Inglese. Traveling to this far away place and sharing a magical dessert in the most beautiful park for just a few hours was so profoundly special.
Prior to our meeting, on this very Leo moon, I wandered through a C.S. Lewis sculpture garden, where I met the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. C.S. Lewis, a devout Christian, used fantasy as an underlying metaphor for Jesus and the Bible.
For whatever reason, I remembered this today, along with the eerie memory of unintentionally buying Greek delight last week in Astoria—something I normally would not pick up, but coincidentally symbolic. Noah Berlatsky has this Medium piece on The Lion, The Bitch, And The Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis’ Complex Views On Women.
Lewis’ first published Narnia novel, and his most famous, pits the virile male Aslan, aka Jesus, against the White Witch, aka a (literally) cold seductress femme fatale stereotype. The witch uses her wiles to seduce Edmund Pevensie, one of the children from our world who is supposed to save Narnia — and though she uses candy, the link between food and sex surely isn’t lost on a Christian familiar with the Eden story.
The Witch embodies the stereotype of women as sexual, evil, and destructive, but she’s not the only female character in the book. The hero of the story, in fact, is Lucy, the youngest Pevensie.
Interestingly, Berlatsky notes that Lewis’s views and depictions on women in his writings changed later in life when he began a relationship with Joy Davidman, whom he met in 1952 and married in 1966. But mainly the book covers larger ideas of good, evil and transformation. I don’t agree with the depiction, but the idea of spiritual transformation—especially right now—is not lost on me.
Traveling between the Catholic South, the Christian North, and around the UK as Jew at a time of weird parallel discussions of white privilege in the U.S. was a really complex topic around identity and spirituality.
I never quite thought about it that hard before, since I had become interested in this idea of witches simply as unconventional thought. To me, cannabis astrology was both therapeutic, universal and non-dogmatic. Charts are conducive to the elements based on the day that you are born, not gender or race. It's philosophical, scientific, mathematical, psychological, yet considered “pseudoscience” as a result of Western rationalism rooted in Christianity (when we think of what’s considered “rational” as white Christian patriarchal majority thought, it should help to reframe recent discussions surrounding ideological differences and lingering stigmas based on prescriptive ways of thinking).
Is astrology just another trend waiting to die? Hardly. The New York Times has a whole bit on this as to whether COVID will kill astrology, and why didn’t Susan Miller see it coming? She makes astrology pretty clear:
You can’t kill a classic. Nature-worshipping calendars have been universally important to all sorts of ancient cultures pre-dating the Bible and Quran, including Mayan and Chinese Zodiac. To that point, if you learn the ways of planetary alignments, it’s simply offering opportunities, abundance, love and life. The greater meaning of the world and self-discovery through humanism.
Today, in fact, is action-oriented and that is why I am sending this at 4:20 p.m. with the ask that you share this newsletter with any friends or consider a paid subscription.
Rodney Dangerfield, Salty Armchair Humor + Topicals For Tired Ass Old People
As a tired person, I love tired ass old people, and believe that everyone can benefit from self-care and self-respect—none of which I get, just like iconic tired ass old person, Rodney Dangerfield.
I have been using three different CBD topicals, which are really good when your muscles are cramped: Pachamama Pain Cream ($74.99), Satividol CBD roll-on ($44.99), and Ananda Hemp CBD Topical Salve ($23.95). In addition to CBD, you’ll often find anti-inflammatory ingredients used in homeopathy treatments like arnica, turkey tail mushrooms, menthol and capsicum. Sometimes a joint just isn’t enough.
Herbalism and apothecaries. Ahead of the curve and no respect! Speaking of: here is a bit from a 1982 special where Bill Murray plays Dangerfield’s psychiatrist because irreverent armchair humor is back, baby! Pussyweed is doing a series on this right now.
The Weed Witch CBD Earthly Delights Bath Soak
1 cup Himalayan pink salt
1 cup Epson salt
3 tablespoons calendula petals
3 tablespoons crushed orange peels
7 pumps of CBD oil
7 pumps arnica oil
Mix all of the ingredients. Put it into a nice vessel. Use one tablespoon for each bath. Take a bath during a full moon or a new moon. Take a bath when back hurts. Take a bath because you want to cry. Take a bath because it feels good. If you don’t have a bath, start mood boarding the baths you want to take. I do this all the time because I am an international plunge pool/bath expert and influencer. I also make CBD bath bombs.
To get as close as possible to The Lord Jones version, you’ll want to stock up on fir oil, lavandin oil, orange peel oil, eucalyptus oil, lemon oil, and tonka seed extract. This explains why it is $65. You can also throw some fresh eucalyptus or rose petals into your bath that will make you feel like being drenched in milk and honey.
Re: the last ingredient, I’d recommend getting whole tonka bean, technically illegal even though the U.S. is the largest importer in the world, and must be used extremely sparingly due to its toxic nature. The same could be said of sister spice, nutmeg, so it’s a bit of an antiquated FDA regulation.
Tonka bean has the most intoxicating aroma of amaretto and is beloved by pastry chefs and perfumiers from around the world. Buying whole bean is preferred and requires very little to shave using a microplane—which is also how I recommend using nutmeg. In addition to your sumptuous bath, you can also shave a little of this over your morning latte or on your oatmeal.
I first came across tonka bean during a trip to Trinidad where I met an incredible chocolatier named Cocobel Chocolates. She has these gorgeous little bonbons and single estate chocolates that ship free to the U.S. I love that her tagline is “raw, mystic and wild,” as that is generally how I roll.
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