How to Be a Little More Witchy This October ✶

And keep it after October.

Perfume before bed.

Tea after work.

A candle while you cook dinner.

Pulling a tarot card every morning.

Writing down your dreams.

Taking five minutes outside at dusk.

It doesn't have to be ancient to be a ritual. You can invent one.

And I think that's the part of witchiness I actually love most.

Not predicting the future or doing elaborate spells. Just paying attention.

To seasons. To smells. To intuition. To little coincidences. To the moon overhead and the rosemary growing outside and the strange things your grandmother believed.

October ends with the Hunter’s Moon, which reaches full just after midnight on October 26. The name has long been associated with the season after the harvest, when the bright autumn moon helped extend the evening light as people prepared for winter.

Which I think is much more romantic than simply getting a notification on your phone that says full moon tonight.

Humans have been watching the moon to mark seasons and time for thousands of years. Across cultures, we've filled it with stories, gods and goddesses, omens and rituals.

You don't have to believe the moon is doing anything to you to find something magical about that.

Rosemary for protection.

Lavender for peace, love + a little good luck. (Practical Magic girls, you may continue saying lavender for luck.)

Bay leaves for wishes.

Basil for love + prosperity.

Pick something already growing in your garden or sitting in your spice cabinet and spend ten minutes learning what people once believed about it.

I love remembering that herbs weren't always something we bought in tiny plastic containers at the grocery store. People grew them, dried them, cooked with them, made remedies with them and passed down stories about what they could supposedly do.

One of my favorite ways to turn that into an actual little ritual is tea.

Choosing your herbs. Steeping them in hot water. Adding honey. Sitting down long enough to drink it. It's basically potion-making!

A weird coin. A little charm. A shell you found. A stone. A ribbon tied around something. A crystal that called to you from across the metaphysical shop.

It doesn't necessarily have to do anything. You just have to decide it's lucky.

Which, historically, is kind of how lucky things work.

Keep it in your purse or pocket. Touch it before something important. Decide that finding it means something good is coming.

Sometimes the ritual is simply deciding that an ordinary object isn't ordinary anymore.

Bake bread. Dry oranges. Press flowers. Make perfume. Mend something. Grind herbs with a mortar and pestle.

There's something inherently witchy about taking a handful of ordinary things and turning them into something else.

And when you start thinking of your kitchen as your hearth and your Dutch oven as your cauldron, suddenly making a stew, baking focaccia or adding rosemary from the garden to dinner feels incredibly ✨ witchy ✨.

A cardinal appearing outside the kitchen window.

A song playing when you were just thinking about someone.

Repeating numbers. A strange and vivid dream. Wind chimes ringing when there doesn't seem to be any wind.

Write them down. Take a photo. Send them to a friend.

I personally love when my coven sends me the little signs they're noticing. It lets me in on their magic. 🪄

Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe it isn't.

It's more fun to leave a little room for maybe.

There are thousands of them and they're wonderfully strange.

Some people believed you should always put your right shoe on first to avoid bad luck.

One old superstition says that if you've left the house and have to turn around and come back, you should sit down for a few minutes before leaving again to break the bad luck.

Whistling has been said to summon spirits.

And one piece of old folklore claimed that leaves swirling around in the wind could mean the devil was nearby.

Which is exactly the kind of completely unnecessary information I would like taking up space in my brain.

Put orange peels, cinnamon sticks and cloves in a pot of simmering water.

Burn incense while you clean.

Put bells on your front door to ward away any evil eyes.

Clip some rosemary and put it in a tiny vase on the kitchen counter.

Open the windows for ten minutes and let the old air out - we love a little lüften~

Put on music instead of the TV.

Burn some sage or palo santo to reset your space if things feel stagnant or uninspired.