Grimoire ~ Page 2 of 24 ~ CraftTalk

Salt is Not One Thing ~ The Different Faces of a Practitioner’s Most Essential Tool

Written by Keeper July 23, 2026July 8, 2026

If there’s one tool that appears across more magical traditions than any other, more than candles, more than crystals, more than any specific herb – it’s salt.

Salt preserves. Salt purifies. Salt repels. Salt grounds. Salt marks boundaries. Salt has been used as currency, as offering, as weapon against the unseen, as the final act of consecration, as the thing you throw over your shoulder to break bad luck before it settles. Every culture that has had access to it has found it indispensable both in the kitchen and in the sacred.

But practitioners often reach for whatever salt is on the counter without thinking much about what they’re working with. Salt is not one thing. The type matters. Not because there’s a wrong choice, but because understanding what you’re using deepens the intention behind it.

Sea Salt

Harvested from evaporated ocean water, sea salt carries the energy of the ocean. Vast, moving, alive, connected to tides and moon cycles and the primordial waters from which life emerged. It’s excellent for cleansing and purification work, for rituals tied to emotion and intuition, for anything connected to the feminine principle or lunar energy.

Practical Magic & Foundations

Witch’s Day ~ Celebrating the Craft on July 21st

Written by Keeper July 20, 2026July 18, 2026

Every July 21st, a quieter holiday shows up on witchy calendars alongside the bigger Wheel of the Year festivals: Witch’s Day. It doesn’t have the ancient pedigree of Samhain or the astronomical precision of a solstice ~ and that’s actually part of what makes it worth talking about.

What Is Witch’s Day, Exactly?

Unlike Sabbats tied to the sun’s position or Esbats tied to the Moon, Witch’s Day is a modern observance. Its exact origin is genuinely unclear ~ it shows up on pagan and Wiccan calendars as a day for celebrating the Craft as life, practice, and religion, but there’s no single founding story or tradition behind the date. If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not missing a secret ~ plenty of longtime practitioners have the same question about where it came from.

That ambiguity is worth sitting with rather than smoothing over. It’s not International Witches’ Day (that one lands November 16th, closer to Samhain and Hecate’s Night). It’s simply a day that’s been claimed, informally and collectively, by people who wanted a moment to say: this practice matters, and so do the people who keep it alive.

In that sense, Witch’s Day is less about a specific deity, tool, or ritual and more about recognition ~ for a path that spans everything from generational family traditions to solitary practices built from scratch, from ceremonial magic to kitchen witchery to nothing more formal than paying attention to the moon.

Why This Year’s Date Carries Extra Weight

Astrology & Cosmic Guidance

Barbault’s Basket ~ What the Sky Is Building Toward on July 20th

Written by Keeper July 19, 2026July 19, 2026

If your feeds have been full of talk about a rare planetary “basket” this week, you’re not imagining it. Astrologers are calling this one of the most talked-about configurations in decades ~ and it’s peaking right now, with the Moon adding its own layer to the story on July 20th.

Here’s what it actually is, what André Barbault got right before, and how to work with it without getting swept up in doomscroll energy.

Who Was André Barbault?

Barbault was a French astrologer who spent his career studying the outer planets ~ Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto ~ and how their long, slow cycles line up with major turning points in history. He built something called the Cyclic Index, a way of tracking how clustered or spread out those planets are at any given time, and cross-referenced it against centuries of historical shifts: wars, revolutions, economic collapses, and periods of rebuilding.

What he’s credited with getting right:

Astrology & Cosmic Guidance

The Cancer Super New Moon ~ Your July 14th Reset

Written by Keeper July 13, 2026July 12, 2026

On July 14, 2026, the sky hands us something rare: a New Moon in Cancer that’s also a supermoon, arriving while Mercury spins retrograde in the very same sign. If the last few weeks have felt like everything soft in you needed a place to land, this is that place. The Basics ~ When: July 14, 2026, at 5:43 AM EDT (2:44 AM PDT)~ Where: 22° Cancer~ What makes it “super”: The Moon reaches this new phase close to perigee, its nearest point to Earth, making it one of several super new moons in 2026. You won’t see it (new moons are always invisible), but its pull on tides, and on us, is a little stronger than usual.~ The twist: Mercury is retrograde in Cancer and sitting right on top of this New Moon, which changes the whole assignment. Why This One Feels Different Cancer is the Moon’s home sign, so a New Moon here is the lunar cycle’s version of coming home. It’s the first New Moon of summer, landing just weeks after the solstice sent the Sun into Cancer too. Normally, a New Moon is a green light. Plant something new, set an intention, move forward. But with Mercury retrograde layered on top, the energy turns inward instead. This is less about launching and more about finishing what got left half-said. An apology you didn’t send, a conversation you keep replaying, a room in your home or your heart that’s still in boxes. What to Focus On ~ Home and sanctuary. Cancer rules the literal and emotional idea of home. Small, tangible changes to your space count as real intention-setting right now.~ Family and roots. Old dynamics, inherited patterns, and unfinished conversations with family are likely to surface. The invitation is to notice them, not necessarily to resolve everything at once.~ Emotional security. Ask yourself plainly: what actually makes you feel safe? Not impressive, not productive – safe.~ Revisiting, not restarting. Because of the Mercury retrograde overlap, this is a better moment to reopen an old project, relationship, or idea than to start something brand new. A Simple Ritual You don’t need anything elaborate for this one: 1. Dim the lights and light a candle if you have one.2. Write down one thing from the past that you’re ready to release, and one feeling of “home” you want more of.3. Sit with both for a few minutes before you do anything else with them. No fixing, just noticing. For Cardinal Signs Especially Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn – particularly anyone with planets around 18–26 degrees of these signs – will likely feel this one most strongly, since cardinal energy responds fastest to lunar shifts. Cancer placements get a personal new-year feeling. The other three cardinal signs may feel a quieter nudge toward unfinished business in partnerships, career, or home life. Curious how this lands for your own chart? A close look at your Moon sign and any planets near 18–26° of Aries, Cancer, Libra, or Capricorn will tell you exactly where this energy is landing for you. Read More Mercury in Retrograde ~ What It Actually Is, What It Actually Does, and Why Everyone Panics Mercury in Retrograde: Navigating the Cosmic Tides

Lineages of the Craft

Margaret Murray ~ The Grandmother of Wicca

Written by Keeper July 8, 2026July 8, 2026

In 1921, a fifty-eight-year-old British Egyptologist published a book that changed the history of witchcraft. Not because it was right, but because it arrived at exactly the right moment with exactly the right idea, in exactly the right voice.

The book was The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology. The woman was Margaret Alice Murray. And the idea, that the accused witches of the early modern witch trials were not deluded, hysterical, or innocent victims but actual practitioners of an ancient pre-Christian religion that had survived underground for centuries, was, as subsequent scholarship would show in some detail, largely wrong.

And yet.

Lineages of the Craft

Mami Wata ~ The Water Spirit Who Carries the World Between Worlds

Written by Keeper July 1, 2026July 8, 2026

She rises from the water at night.

She is impossibly beautiful. Her hair is long and falls loose around her shoulders. Her eyes hold the particular quality of deep water, dark, reflective, suggesting depths that the surface does not reveal. She may wear a snake coiled around her body like living jewellery. She may have the tail of a fish where her legs should be, or she may appear entirely human, more human than any human you have ever seen, which is itself the sign.

She is Mami Wata. Mother Water. And she has been present in the spiritual life of West and Central Africa, and the African Atlantic world, for longer than any written record can reach.

She is not a goddess in the distant, untouchable sense. She is immediate. Capricious. Generous and dangerous in equal measure. She takes lovers and brings them fortune, or she takes them entirely. She heals. She curses. She appears to those she chooses, often without being asked, and the encounter changes the person forever.

To be chosen by Mami Wata is not

Astrology & Cosmic Guidance

The Strawberry Moon ~ Journal Prompts for the First Full Moon of Summer

Written by Keeper June 28, 2026June 30, 2026

There is a particular quality to the light in late June.

It lingers. The days are long past their longest point, the summer solstice falls on June 21st this year, but the warmth still feels unhurried, unrushed, as though summer has just arrived and has not yet begun counting the days until it leaves. The earth is in full production. Things are ripening. The green has deepened from the tentative brightness of spring into something more substantial, more settled.

And on Monday, June 29th, the Strawberry Moon rises.

The Strawberry Moon is the first full moon of summer, following soon after the June 21st solstice. The name comes from a number of North American native tribes. Among them the Algonquin, Ojibwe, Dakota, Lakota, Chippewa, and Sioux. Who used it to mark the moment when wild strawberries reach peak ripeness and are ready to be gathered. The name is not about what the moon looks like. It is about what the land is doing when the moon rises.

Because the June full moon stays low on the horizon in the Northern Hemisphere, its light passes through a thicker layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to glow with a golden or reddish tint. So it does, in fact, look a little like a strawberry, deep, warm, close to the earth. But the name came first from the harvest, from the act of going out into the fields and finding what was ready.

That is the energy of this moon: ripeness. The recognition of what is ready. The act of gathering.

Lineages of the Craft

The Wu ~ China’s Female Shamans and the Tradition That Was Almost Erased

Written by Keeper June 17, 2026August 19, 2026

Before Confucius. Before the dynasties that gave China its recognisable historical shape. Before the texts that would define Chinese philosophy and religion for millennia – there were the Wu.

They danced in long-sleeved robes until the spirits entered them. They spoke in the language of gods and communicated the will of the dead to the living. They performed rain ceremonies, healed the sick, drove off malevolent forces, interpreted dreams, and predicted the future through divination. They were called to the oracle bones, the ancient Chinese practice of writing questions and submitting them to flame. And their voices were recorded in the inscriptions that survive as some of the oldest writing in the world.

And they were, predominantly, women.

The wu (巫) ~ the word translates as shaman, sorceress, spirit-medium, or ritual specialist depending on context and century,

Practical Magic & Foundations

How to Seal a Spell ~ Closing the Work and Locking It In

Written by Keeper April 8, 2026July 12, 2026

Most witches spend the majority of their energy on the beginning of a spell. The intention. The tools. The activation. The moment of casting feels like the whole thing. And then the spell just… trails off. The candle burns down, the mood dissolves, and the practitioner wanders off to make tea with the working half-open behind them.

This is one of the most common reasons spells do not land the way they should.

Sealing a spell is not a formality. It is the act that completes the circuit. Without it, the energy you raised does not fully release into its work. It lingers in the space around you, or it leaks back into your field, or it simply dissipates without direction. The seal is what tells the magic: this is done. Go do what you were sent to do.

If you have read our How to build a real spell, you already know that closing is the final step in the structure. This post goes deeper. Into the different ways to seal, what each method does, and how to choose the right one for the work at hand.

What Sealing Actually Does

Witch's Bookshelf

The Egyptian Book of the Dead ~ What It Is, What It Does, and How to Work With It

Written by Keeper April 2, 2026July 12, 2026

It is not a book of death. It is a book of becoming.

The title was coined by a German Egyptologist in 1842 – Das Todtenbuch – and it stuck, even though it misses the point entirely. The ancient Egyptians called it Reu Nu Peret Em Hru: “The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day.” A manual not for dying, but for moving through darkness and emerging on the other side transformed.

That distinction matters. It shapes everything about how you read it.

What It Is
The Book of the Dead is a collection of spells, prayers, hymns, and ritual instructions used in ancient Egypt from roughly 1550 BCE through the first century BCE. A span of over 1,500 years. It is not one fixed text. It is a living tradition: a pool of around 200 spells from which individual copies were assembled, personalized, and commissioned for specific people.

No two copies are identical.