Hello magical people! It is Practically Magick with your host Courtney Pearl. That's me. I am jumping on today just to give you a midsummer hello and a little help in navigating your summer solstice magic. Let's start our episode with pulling a card and I am going to use the Seasons of the Witch Oracle deck for Litha.

A lot of witches and Divination Cardamansi practitioners use this these series of decks because it's really fun to change them out as the wheel turns, the wheel of the year. They have these beautiful gold and purple and blue depending on the holiday or festival. They have this really cool foil on the side. So we're going to pull a card for Litha which is coming up very very soon. At the end of June we have a turning of the wheel and the longest day of the year which we're going to talk about in today's episode, why that is important, why that matters.

Is this calling me out? You guys, how many of you need to be reminded of hydration? In a drought in Utah. Yeah we're in a drought. It's a whole thing.

It's all over the news. But let me read to you what it says. There is more to the story that be mindful of what hides beneath the surface. Is that not the truth? Especially when it comes to hydration.

I mean you don't even know you're dehydrated until you're having heat stroke and multiple health issues and you start wondering why you're so fatigued and why you feel nauseous and why you feel crappy. You know different things that can happen in the heat. For me personally hydration is a really really personal thing that I need to work on. Constantly constantly tracking my water and trying to figure out if I'm getting enough and it never really is actually never really is enough. Well friends it is summer.

Not officially. I mean obviously the summer solstice begins the summer but in the Celtic calendar they consider Beltane to be the start of summer because it is coming into the light half of the year and and it is when you know the last of the planting is done. So I work a lot with the healing cycles of the year and Litha or summer solstice is a really important one because people often ignore it quite honestly and it is hard. I'm going to be honest I've got three boys as most of you know who listened last season that we did of Rising Moon Minerals. Shout out to my co-host Jaime.

If you were watching last season we had the best time recording every week in Rising Moon Minerals cute little crystal shop talking about crystals every episode and don't worry if you're wondering where's Jaime what's going on she's still around. We are definitely going to be involved in this season and you are going to see her again don't you worry. We love them over there at Rising Moon Minerals and I've got a lot of things cooking on the on the back end of what's going to come out in Practically Magick for this season but back to summer you guys know I have three boys they're all school age kids and even as I sit here recording this I'm just hoping that they're not tearing the house apart while I said mommy's got to go record for a couple minutes you guys you know you'll be good you'll be fine hopefully you know you're all right and it's tough because you think that as kids get older they're going to need less vigilance less supervision they're going to be a little bit more independent and you can kind of handle your business handle things you need to do and that's always the case at least with my kids they require quite a bit of constant vigilance and get into trouble quite a lot in fact just today I took my eyes off of them for a minute to get some work done on Prism Healing working on rebranding relaunching a lot of cool stuff for my business Prism Healing and while my back was turned they got into the honey another sticky honey all over my kitchen could be worse could be worse yeah put me back into reality it could be worse so for all of you who are trying to remain magical remain calm work on yourself work on what you need to do and it is summer and you've got kids and you are their primary caregiver as well and all of the things that you're juggling just that and that there is nothing better to invite self-reflection and healing than a hard hard time so if you're going through a hard time or adjustments but that is another invitation to your own self-awareness and your own healing I am going to be going back through the archives and revisiting some of the old episodes and we're going to go back and re-touch on or reintroduce the topics that started Prism Healing and Practically Magick the podcast so you might remember when the first seasons came out if you've been watching and listening you know there's a lot of really great topics but maybe they were a little bit you know less interesting and engaging to to listen through them and so we're going to revisit some of those and have a really good time and have some more discussions so let's talk about Litha so if you're a little bit new to the pagan wheel of the year calendar and how to how to celebrate those things for a lot of people who are deconstructing a religion or deconstructing what they had when they could grasp the community the certainty the instruction that came with being part of a religion and maybe wanting to grasp something I think the wheel of the year is a great place to start I mean it's very open-ended it's still very there's a lot of history behind it so it really helps you if you are from a Celtic or Nordic region of have that ancestry it really does help to feel connected in a way that can be those things it can connect you to your ancestral practices indigenous practices you know a lot of people they appropriate and the truth is if you are from a northern European ancestry there is a lot of culture that was lost to you as well and your ancestors when colonization took over that part of the world and so reconnecting with it reawakening it rediscovering it and remembering it can be such a powerful experience so I do that through the wheel of the year and when the wheel turns at the solstices the equinoxes and the Celtic fire festivals that puts you at a celebration every six weeks something new to learn about something new to celebrate what my family do sometimes we have done is we'll make those sun wheels we tried last year to make them with branches yarn and didn't really what we were doing I'm artistic and I teach art classes but crafting is not really my thing so trying to figure out how to navigate the weaving was it was an experiment and that's okay I never ever claim that you have to do it correctly or that there is or that you're going to make something that is so beautiful you could sell it on Etsy you know may not be but the participation in it is really fun so there's a lot of celebration happening around the summer solstice that has to do with the sun the wheel the circles and so we would get branches and we could weave them together and made them into a circle tied them at the end so you start with a circle you could also start with just one branch or you would do with a dream catcher you know something that starts you out with a circle and then I think we just wrapped it around so that there were crisscrosses x's t's you know as many times as we could so there was lots of yarn all connecting from the outsides of the circle into the center and then we just took colors and we tied them to the center and we started weaving in and out and then the opposite all the way around so that each time we went around the circle if we went over the first time on one of those strings then we went under on the next one and so that they kind of weaved into a pattern and you know then we had this cool little sun wheel this thing that we created that was all these colors and they spiraled out into the edges didn't look particularly great my first one you know but maybe this year I'll be posting on my Instagram and my TikTok some better looking ones from what we made last year the point is to participate in the activity to weave your intentions into it and it make it in a magical experience or a spell in how you're making the thing and by the way if you don't want to work with yarn and you just want to work with pens crayons paper whatever it is that you like to work with and just think how can I incorporate circles and circle shapes into my art or my doodling or my creativity making spirals making sun shapes just to honor the sun and the length of a full day now it is the longest day of the year a lot of a lot of pagans a lot of people magical energetic people associate the sun and symbols of the sun to the masculine and I particularly do although there's a lot of folklore from native indigenous people here in in northern America or Turtle Island that would have stories about the sun being a grandmother or a mother or being a woman or feminine and I think that's particularly wonderful too I think that you know it's all about our own associations with it but a lot of times it's associated with the masculine because the masculine energy coming from the solar plexus chakra that is the yellow bright flame it is it has to do with self-confidence self-esteem productivity efficiency you know getting things done so we do associate the sun with action and the time of day when you get the most done at least until electricity was invented and you could have the lights on all night and work all night which I don't recommend but our natural rhythms and cycles are rest during the darkness winter time night time and be productive and doing things during the day however in the middle of summer when the sun is out the longest it's very easy to get overworked to be burning out and the thing is from Imbulk on February 1st when you start the planting seasons and you have Imbulk and Ostara the spring equinox and then you have Beltane those are the three major planting seasons or cycles in the year at least for the northern hemisphere of the earth so planting and working we're planting seeds we're tilling up the garden we are tending to the animals we are helping them give birth now this is our ancestors right not all of us are in the farming community but if you do have a farm you know what I'm talking about you still live and in these cycles right come here Moki I have my aunt's dog visiting us and he's in the room with me right now so we'll see if he lets himself be seen on camera sitting next to me Moki if you want to come sit by me nah he might not oh well so we've been working hard is what I'm saying we've been working working working hard we're planting seeds and we're hoping that all those seeds become abundant and fertile and you know produce what we need to survive because our ancestors really needed that to survive they really you know they didn't have grocery stores to just pop over to and grab food they depended on their crops doing well and their livestock doing well and surviving so our natural rhythms are still very cohesive with that it's very much about getting a lot built up of our business or our work or our money putting it all into from thought into action but then we get to the winter the summer solstice we get to summer solstice and we're pretty burned out and we and we've run out of things to do I mean if you were likening it to actual planting and crops by this time they should be growing and they should be just needing to be watered intended to and weeded and you know just kind of kept going but really there's not a lot to do and we are meant to have a little period of rest not quite the rest we have in winter but very much so a period of playfulness of joy of gathering with our friends and so it should be time to kind of lay back and relax this is when people plan their family vacations which by the way if you're planning vacations with little kids that's not necessarily a rest and I get you but you do your best right you do what you can to spend quality time with your family and really make it a lot of fun for everybody this is the time when you kind of plan your things in the morning when it's cool you wake up early you get a little bit done and they maybe by mid-afternoon you're hoping for a little nap now if you're listening to this and going what are you talking about Courtney there is no way I get a nap I am way too busy but here's the problem your body is going to feel like it needs to keep working as long as the sun is up and so it's going to work work work from sun up to sun down it's going to find more and more things thinking that that's what it needs to do at least that's the way our programs our brains are programmed right all right so we've been kind of going over the wheel of the year about how there's a lot of work to be done and our brains are kind of programmed to work extremely hard when the sun is up when it's daylight we I mean this is part of like the conditioning that capitalism has given us is productivity efficiency more more more more you can be getting things done you should be right but our bodies are actually connected to a ancestral pull to be nurtured at this time that this is a time to rest to take breaks to take those midday naps some cultures around the world still hold that very high on the priority list on long dog days of summer they have a siesta time or a time that is actually like stop working go have a couple of hours break maybe you go meet a friend for coffee I've actually heard about this somewhere in Europe that this is a very normal very cultural practice to do this and I am extremely jealous because in America we just have adopted something more that looks a lot more like the push towards a masculine energy of work work work work get it done now masculine energy is not a bad energy that's why we get stuff done but to balance it with a feminine energy is really important so I'm going to challenge you as like your Litha homework at this time I want you to figure out a way to pull back from working so hard at least during certain times of the day perhaps you can work it into your schedule perhaps you can give yourself a little bit more of a I'm going to push some goals and deadlines back a few months so that my summer July time maybe July and August if you'd like is just a little bit more relaxed a little bit less pull some things off your plate maybe tell some people nope I'm sorry I can't do that project right now because this is when I'm honoring the cycles that my body needs to be in rest and I know that we have conditioned our society to believe that we will not be as productive if we are not getting things done at all times the truth is we are actually and studies have proven this all the time studies are proving this people are more productive and get more done when they have these breaks and rests and they're able to have some stillness and peace during times of the day I was actually at my twin boys first soccer game last night and we have never done sports e-sports in our family very much so this is all very new to us a lot about soccer people how that works but this is just a fun community soccer thing where they have no practices they just practice a few minutes before their game every week couple times a week we brought our camp chairs and we sat them out on the lawn in the shade of a nice big tree and just got ready to kind of chill out and watch watch the boys play soccer watch them do their little thing you don't really know what they're doing yet but they're so cute just running around kicking the ball and doing their little thing but as we sat there my husband and I side by side in silence and peace and just the sound of the distance soccer game going on where we could see it it wasn't very loud and my older son was sitting next to us in a in a camp chair as well and he is not used to this kind of thing he is usually going going going he's usually got an activity of some kind he's usually got friends to play with he's he's always got something entertaining him almost constantly not not my choice but it's his reality so he was sitting next to us and he says how can you guys just sit here this is so boring I looked at him and I said you're right it is man do I feel lucky to be here right now just getting to be bored for once my mind can just sit and think thoughts and figure things out and be infinitely entertained by all the ideas that are possible in my own brain and I never get that normally on a daily basis I always have something either a phone in my face or a to-do list to get to or a list of chores or three human beings that depend on me and I have to take care of and in this moment right now just right now I get to sit here and be bored so awesome and I just loved it I just loved that moment so that is what Litha represents to me and I'm going to pull out another card from the deck that I pulled out purposely from the Litha deck which is the Cancer card my twins are Cancer so I have that tattooed on my arm from the tattoo episode you guys might remember I have the Cancer symbol there the crab and cancers are the are ruled by the moon right so we're going into Cancer season we're going into the Cancer time of the year ruled by the moon and very much motherly nurturing caring for others and I'm going to challenge you to care for yourself in the way a mother figure would notice that instead of the sun and the bright yellow summer feeling that you get typically this card is a night sky darkness stars this woman is resting on the moon with her white hair held up by stars there's like a moon moth butterfly sitting there very much a call to nurturing right now so if you have felt overworked burned out too much being asked of you this is a good time to revisit that and the next wheel of the year turn is going to be August 1st so we get to celebrate Lammas or Lunessa depending on how you pronounce that each person kind of has their own way of pronouncing it but another Celtic fire festival that is in between the solstices and the equinoxes so it's not fall yet but it is kind of the late summer vibes that we have at the 1st of August so for this next six week turn of the wheel of the year we get to be a little self-aware about how overworked and over tired and overstressed we are and how much we need to clear some things off of our schedule and our plate to make room for what feels like a good time to break and rest maybe you have a vacation planned maybe not I am going to devote some time to sleeping something that I haven't been getting a lot of lately and if I can choose to do with what I want to celebrate Litha with it's going to be some sleeping time sleeping in or taking naps whatever my body seems to need to do maybe laying out on the lawn chair in the on the beach or on the next to the pool or you can take a little nap there if it's safe to do so all right make sure you're watching those kiddos sorry that's my mom brain I just have to say it so thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Practically Magic I want to give a shout out to some of my favorite peoples at this time I do not have an official sponsor for season four yet but I absolutely welcome any level of sponsor that would like to sponsor a segment like our card pulls at the beginning of the episode or if you'd like a little segment played out in each episode we have different packages available for that which would help support our show and support the content so that we can create keep creating educational magical content for all of those out there seeking that for their healing for connection for engagement with their inner child there's a lot of reasons why you would want to follow Practically Magick so if you liked this episode share it with someone make sure you like and subscribe on that button on wherever you are watching this so find the follow find the subscribe make sure you do that because it helps our show to grow and to get more content out there to you and if you are one of these people who shops at one of these one amazing places note that these are my friends and maybe one of them would like to be a sponsor at some point I'm going to give a shout out to Rising Moon Minerals of course that's where we get our crystals that's where I direct every client of mine when they do a healing session with me go find a crystal at risingmoonminerals.com online or you can go to the shop a new shop potentially coming soon I'm teasing this out just you'll have to watch and see what happens so the conjuring tree I was lucky enough to do their psychic fair so if you are in Utah Salt Lake area and you need a awesome witchy shop to get your tools for magical practice they have awesome little witchy camps going on for the kids all summer my kids love it we go to witchy camp on Monday nights and I am going to be doing their psychic fair in July as well doing card readings cardamom seed dream interpretation sessions during that later in July and I'm also going to be on the schedule very soon to be a regular reader on Tuesdays they have some fantastic readers and psychics and shamans and healers and people that do this kind of work at the conjuring tree and schedule them throughout the day so you can go just about any day and there's going to be somebody there and I will be there on Tuesdays starting very soon also if you like my shirt goddess vibes only it's super great t-shirt light for summer I'm just like hanging out in my jean shorts and t-shirts all summer goddess vibes only and the audacity card shirts are both from spark at the trolley square mall they're one of my favorite places to get attire cute clothes they have just the funkiest funnest clothes ever overalls and witchy kind of outfits and just things that I love to wear on a regular basis so shout out to them they did not pay for this endorsement at all I'm just letting you know because I like them and I think that's what you should do for places you like and support all right magical people I want you to remember that you are light so never forget your spark