As Above, So Below

My first peak and my first dive. The town of Anilao in Batangas is just a two-hour drive away from Manila but it brought me to entirely different worlds. In just one weekend, I did two amazing things which I have only just dreamed of doing: climbing a mountain peak and scuba diving. What's even more fun is doing it with fellow, earth-loving pagan friends.  Local mountaineers rate Mt. Gulugod-Baboy (aka the "Swine Spine") as one of the easiest peaks to climb but we still ended up with Bikram-yoga sweat after just a few minutes uphill. After about an hour and a half of huffing and puffing and taking short breaks to catch our breath, we finally emerged from high grass and were surprised by how different and beautiful the mountain-top...

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Making Magic Ink for Paper Talismans

I ran into this wikiHow about making ink out of teabags, and I thought how nice it would be to make some for writing symbols on paper talismans. Of course I'm not happy with just making normal tea ink. So I added some bay leaf and star anise and lemon peel and rose petals into the brew. Those sort of happy, positive, love-and-light magic herbs. It ended up smelling so sweet I could imagine rainbows and stars coming out of the tea. Using it as ink is quite a bitch though. It's not very "clingy" on the material I used, which is the back part of a document suited for my spell, and the stupid "ink" keeps feathering out on the paper. Using a nib pen is also another matter. I didn't realize those things need some mad skills to write with. My...

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