Dear Ms. Q,
You know you are right, I should make it easier to try and find things among my posts and I have been a bit inconsistent with my indentifaction tags to find the posts.
So what I'm going to do is go through all my posts on this blog and if I find that a number of them have the same type of subject matter then I will put in a "tag" or "label" to make it easier to find them under one subject.
For example all my posts in regards to Graveyard dirt and all its variations now include the simple tag of "Graveyard Dirt", anything dealing with Railroad spikes and other subjects will have the same simplicity of the one key word to help you find every post relating to that subject.
So I will go back to my old posts and include the "Key Word" to bring up all posts that is even remotely speaking of that key subject, but the other tags which would identify the post further will remain the same.
Now this will take some time so be paticent with me. I'm not a young person with very nimble fingers for typing.
One or two other things that I need to also make clear is that I will be updating posts as well, with perhaps a secondary post or follow up post that will explain somethings further or add further information as I come across it in my notes or reviewing taped conversations that I've had with members of my Granny's group.
Some of these tapes were on originally reel to reel tape (very old school), and then later onto cassette tapes, some have deteriorated, so that I had to have a tech friend of mine do his best to retrieve it onto CD. I was lucky that some of Granny's friends lived to be very old or were able to pass on some information to their daughters or in one case their son.
As I go over the printed transcriptions, I am struck at how simular the uses, formula's, rituals are that appear in other sources, but I've also discovered that over the years substitutions were made if an herb or something could not be found, that worked just as well. In some cases even better.
Certain prayers in the Catholic cannon I've found work very well, espeically if they are recited as they were written Pre-Vatican II style, the rhymth, cadence, or to use a musical term the beat of a prayer or chant is important to set up the mind energies to an elevated point.
Another thing that I'm doing bit by bit is adding links to pages that I will create so that certain reference things such as candle colors or colors in general and their meaning will be available for quick reference and those pages will be updated as well, so it will be important to check back from time to time.
This will be also for herbs, stones or crystals, uses of the moon phases, Waters, oils and other things as I think of them, in addition to improving searching using the tags.
Touching briefly on substituting things, such a thing is not unusual, certain herbs that are found in the middle East, or certain parts of Europe or Asia were not found locally grown here, so finding something simular would be incorporated. Now a days many herbs have found their way here to the United States and are being grown but some are still speicific to their original growing region and cannot be grown here for some reason.
I remember how my Granny always wanted to grow plumeria which grew in the Hawaiian Islands and try as she might was never successful. That's just one example, but thanks now to the internet we can obtain the essential oils, resins, or dried herbs that we need.
But most of what we need can be found in major Supermarkets, espeically since most major Markets have increased their ethinic foods and spices selections, which can help many practioners.
And now because we are more aware of being enviormentally conscious it is important to us to use things that will bio-degrade into the earth, cotton cloth or muslin, cheese cloth or linen will eventually degrade into the earth, simple cardboard boxes or boxes made of wood, brown paper bags, cotton twine will all break down in time. If you are using glass-enclosed candles, once they are done and burnt out completely, you can re-cycle them in your recycle bin, the heat from the blast furnace will purify the glass element.
And that is another thing that I will cover, what do you do with items from a spell or ritual when it has been completed, I'll cover that in another post or several posts.
Blessings Ms. Q
