When I was ten years old or so, I convinced my parents to give me some money to do yard work. There was a massive bush that ran along our fence line — it was so big, I would crawl inside and use it as a spacious fort. My parents wanted it trimmed, but I decided to remove it entirely. It had branches bigger than my legs, but I was armed with loppers and confidence. At some point in the struggle, our neighbor, an older gentleman, walked to the fence, observed my work, and said, “Son, you are certainly ambitious.” He helped my cut through the thickest trunks and I proudly dragged the remains to the street for waste collection.
The point is, I’ve had a long history with ambitious DIY projects and it’s no different with magickal tools. I’m just as likely to pull out a chopsaw as I am to pull out a sewing machine. I’ve made wands, altar cloths, pentacles, besoms, bags, deity statues, runes. bowls, beads, mirrors, jewelry and more. I’ve worked with a variety of materials… clay, fabric, wood, bone, glass, leather, and metal.
I don’t always have much of an idea how to do things so much as a desire to try. And not everything comes out looking great. My altar cloths, for instance, are crooked… my deity statues looked rather peculiar… and my bowls are lopsided. Those imperfections are what make them interesting.
Aside from the imperfections, there’s so much more personal energy put into these creations that they work better in my personal practice. My wand is my wand – I made that thing. My rune set speaks to me so loudly because I crafted them.
And then, of course, there’s this website, my music, and my YouTube channel. My articles, videos, and songs are all each their own massive DIY project.
Okay, but seriously, the most ambitious thing happened a few years ago. When Selene and I bought our first house, it had terribly depressing carpets. We ripped it all out and put in laminate flooring.
I was really excited when we finished our first room, so I had Selene take a picture of me sprawled out over all of our wonderful work.
It was hard.
Good morning and happy Monday, friends!
There were a lot of things this week! Or at least it feels like a lot of things.
I posted my new song, Echoes, which is now available as a music video on YouTube and also pretty much everywhere that you can stream music. The song features one of RAV’s Vast drums — Later this week, I’ll be posting the full “tips” video that I made for them.
I finished Episode 8 with Deoborah Lipp, along with the corresponding article. And a highlight clip video of Thorn Mooney from Episode 7.
And we had finally had our adventures in creating flying ointment.
This was our first time really making a flying ointment as a coven from start to finish. We used one of Coby Michael’s recipes that contains Belladonna and Wolfsbane. It was a little unnerving working with such baneful herbs at first, but we approached them respectfully and [mostly] took proper safety precautions. My biggest concern came when a bunch of aconite-infused wine suddenly vaporized in my face, which of course I accidentally inhaled, and then wondered for about 10 seconds if I was going to die. As a bonus, we now have an entire set of tools set aside and labeled for baneful herb usage — this will avoid any cross contamination.
Coby was kind enough to provide some last-minute guidance on how to correctly increase the concentration of our mixture. He does an excellent “Flight School” class on this topic usually once a year, so you can pop over to his website if you’re interested.
The entire process took close to 6 hours from start to finish. It was good coven bonding time — we talked and drummed and put lots of energy into our creation.
In mundane news, Selene and I found ourselves at TurtleFest 2024. We had no idea this event existed — and yet it’s so close to us and SO gigantic. It was like entering a turtle universe.
Some of the turtles made me sad, though. Many of them were amputees. Unfortunately, my dream of surfing a giant sea turtle on the open ocean will have to wait for another day.
Oh, hey, you know what? You’re going to find Fluid Condensers part 3 in your inbox later this week. Are you excited? I’m excited.
Cheers!
Aerik Arkadian 
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