This summer has been interesting.  Not the good kind of interesting, either. Lots of fighting and strife in the household, lots of weird and bad feelings permeating our otherwise extremely happy home.  I blame a lot of things. Sandy, for starters. This house was literally full of shit and water for a brief time, and while we bleached the fuck out of the physical, I'm sure it left some metaphysical grossness laying around.  Plus, every time we fight, we spin a tapestry of bullshit negativity and it has a way of collecting.  You've walked into places and felt this, everyone has. A foreboding, a nasty vibe, a "get me the hell out of here" kinda thing.  Conversely, my house has always been a warm, welcoming, inviting environment, where people are greeted with love.  I want it to stay that way, and lately, I feel like it's been slipping off into weird territory.

Time for a cleansing/banishing.  And not just any ordinary sage and drums cleansing either.  I'm talking like a mega house douching, the likes of which these walls haven't seen since just after we bought the property, back in 2003.  A giant high colonic for the oogy nasty vibes.  Cleaning on a mundane level, bleaching and sanitizing, then going through and doing it on a spiritual level.  That'll be on the next new moon.

Thirteen days later, on the full moon, we're renewing the protections.  Again, it's been a long time. Last time I did something on this magnitude was when the Witnesses were hassling me.  Not Luiz, but me.  He came along later, and I sort of slapdashed some more protection for him, but nothing of this scale.

I've got to shop for it, plan for it, make lists for it, think about it, build energy and store it, and make ready from now till then.  I've already spent a great deal of time and energy reading cards about it.  I want to make sure my intentions are pure, and I'm not trying to control any one person or element, but do something for the greater good of this house and all our loved ones that live here or pass through here.  It's exhilarating to undertake this. I just went upstairs through all my old herbs and materials, and cleaned out half of the ones that have gone to dust.  I found some really wonderful nostalgic items, left over from when I was a baby witch, in the 90s.  I sniffed all the resins and incenses, and along with the spellwork, I'm getting my shit organized again.  Everyone in the house is on board and into it, which makes it even more satisfying.  I need a few dozen certain kind of candles, and Irv volunteered "hey, wanna run to the candle factory in the Poconos on Sunday?"  I am over the moon.

Shopping for this stuff has never been easier. I got most of my herbs in one fell swoop from Mountain Rose Herbs, except red sandalwood.  This mystifies me, because they have fucking random hard to find stuff like agrimony, boneset, henbane, dong quai...but no sandalwood?  Not even listed on their site.  I'm going to have to bite the bullet on that one and go to Earth Spirits in Red Bank, and I loathe that place.  Well, that's not fair, it's been good to me, but I hate those new-agey emporiums, and I'm not fond of the dude the runs the show.

Either way, this is exciting.  I'm loving the process. I'll be even happier with the results.