Getting Ready To Celebrate La Quinzou In Halifax 🌟 And I'll Be Acquiring A Bigger Altar By September,

New apartment, new altar!!!! I found a handmade kitchen hutch beautifully made by a carpenter in the 1970s. It reminded me of my grandpa's wood skills. My old one is still loved and cherished but at my girlfriend's place for us both. This one has a lot more space than my old one, storage and surface wise. I just finished painting Cap Éternité in Saguenay (bottom reference photo) on the altar backsplash area. The next project is designing stained glass windows for the doors on the cabinet hutch and installing lights at the top to illuminate the art. The one after that would be mythological creatures of French Canadian and Acadian folklore on the door medallions. I also plan to put in two sconces to hold vases of flowers on either end of the hutch, and paint more folk art designs on the hutch sides and drawers. The beginning of many a cherished moment painting this piece to make it come alive within my practice.

Every action we take is fundamental to a better world that is kinder. I also recognize he had his mistakes and issues but he learned and he strove to do better. And for a Pope, that’s monumental. Rest in peace Pope Francis 🕊️

Pope Francis has died.

I know to a lot of people on the left and in the LGBTQ+ community, he wasn’t exactly seen as a holy herald of progressive values. That said I think he was more helpful to our community than we have ever really given credit.

The Catholic Church is hugely entrenched in the past. They may not ever accept gay marriage within our lifetime. But if you compare Pope Francis to any other Pope that came before him, he did more to progress the Catholic Church than anyone else ever has. He constantly spoke out saying that the church needed to accept LGBTQ+ members. He has denounced laws that criminalise homosexuality. He supported same sex civil unions—which I was literally taught was evil and dangerous when I was in Catholic high school. Transgender people can be baptized and same sex couples can be blessed because of him.

He was never enough, of course. He has affirmed the teaching that gay marriage is not spiritually possible and prior to becoming pope he opposed the legalization of same sex marriage. He has said gay children should seek psychiatric care. He has also been even less accepting of transgender people than same sex couples.

But at the same time he was the most empathetic Pope to have existed in the past several hundred years. I have left the church because I no longer believe in God, but I do recognize that the Catholic Church has power over huge swaths of the world. My mother still believes in her Catholic faith and has always stood by this idea: it’s impossible to move a behemoth organisation like the Church overnight. She stays in the community because she wants it to become better. She pushes, in her own small way, a little bit every day towards what she thinks is right. In this conversation, that is the acceptance of LGBTQ+ youths. Pope Francis was helpful in moving the Church away from a stance of hate. Now I hope that whoever the cardinals choose next for pope is someone who joins her in pushing that ball forward.

First big hike in Point Pleasant Park since top surgery three months ago. It feels really good to be in the woods again and see the ocean. I used to spend all day in the woods but I don't think my stamina is quite there yet.

French Canadian Witchcraft: Symbols, Guardians and Divination

(forgive the long post, but this is information I’ve been collecting through personal experience and Beltane Lowen’s book, along with lectures and other scholarly articles I’ve read.)

Symbols

Le fleur-de-lys: Can be used as a symbol for the Trinity, the triple worlds. The flower, the lily, is a symbol of purity and was often placed with the Virgin Mary (hence, a Goddess symbol). It of course also displays the sacred number 3. 

(Oh, this is my favourite painting done of Madeleine by Georges de la Tour, she just looks so pensive and looks like she’s learning lots of things, and the skull is just such a nice touch, a very witchy painting for me. ooh and fun fact: this painting was the one Ariel had in the Little Mermaid!)

Deities and Spirits

Saint Anne: The mother of the Virgin Mary, this saint was very popular among the French Canadians and Acadians living near the sea. Her feast day is July 26. She is matron saint of carpenters, single women, orphans, children, equestrians, grand-parents, housewives, lace workers, lost things, seamstresses, miners, clothes sellers, poverty, pregnancy, birthing, people who work in stables, teachers, sterility, and sailors (she protected against sea storms). I look up to her when I sew and keep my home clean and fresh. Her symbols are the threshold or a door, and books. She’s the matron saint of Brittany, and therefore, has Celtic connections. Her colours are green and red. 

Saint Marie Magdeleine: She is the matron saint of the Magdalen Islands (where my great-grandma came from). She was one of the female disciples of Jesus. She’s matron saint of women, spiritual revelations, of those that love to ponder and study, and discoverers of sacred mysteries, visions, apothecaries, jewellers, perfume makers, and pharmacists. I look up to her for vision quests and when I study witchcraft. She’s also someone I associate with sex, love, and the true meaning of loving someone for who they are. She’s been in religious debates among scholars if she was Jesus’s wife or not, but the mere implications that she could be are very appealing to me Pagan-wise, so there). I know, she’s been written as a repentent prostitute, but that was an addition made to the Bible long ago by a Pope so she’s not that for me. She’s witnessed Jesus’s crucifixion, burial and ressurection, so for me, she is a figure with which to work with spirits and death and rebirth. So I call on her for scrying and divination.

Virgin Mary: One of the prominent mother goddess figures, her symbols are cerulean blue, white and the lily, She protects women and children. I look up to her for learning love and compassion. 

The Devil: while the Church has painted a horrid image of the Devil in their structures, the Devil appears a lot in French Canadian folklore. He’s often there as a figure of temptation and getting seduced to act out of socially accepted norms (Church, right?), but, one could argue that there’s a primal wildness to this figure, as the French Canadian habitants were often very fearful of the forests when they came here. Some stories have heroes meet him in the forest, sometimes accompanied by little spirits and elves. He can transform into different beings, and sometimes, he appears as a fellow Voyageur (hence the liminal and sometimes dangerous aspects of the wilderness). He brings young women to dance wildly (something the Church frowned upon heavily, so let’s dance!!) In some stories, he helps build churches (I know, what the heck?) but the structure never ends up finished or it gets destroyed repeatedly. He’s basically a figure of mischief and wildness, of total chaos in the natural landscape, much like the Horned God. 

The Fée (from the Lecture: Erik Lacharity and Morrigane Feu “Les Dames Fées: Ladies Fae in French-Canadian Traditional Witchcraft”, Raven’s Knoll Workshop, 2018.) There were rules of engagement with dealing with the Fée. Stories of the Fée were roadmaps for people. When someone meets them, it’s because they’re embarking on a life-changing journey. Stories with “Ti-Jean” are like this. Crossing a road, stream, forest, or taking a right turn at the crossroads, they meet a Fée. In French Canadian tradition, Fée doesn’t mean belle fée. Fée meant something that is enchanted with the means of affecting fate. This is no ordinary stick, it can do something. The Fée would give them something to help them, usually in sets of three. The exchange that took place, the hero had a quest but usually, there’s something in it for the Fée. An example of this is a talking horse previously being a stable boy, and at the completion of the journey, they turn back to their forms. Depending on the setting of the storyteller, ex: Acadia, there were lots of stories with the ocean, boats, nets etc. In the interior, there’d be forests and valleys, barley and cakes. The geographical context matters. The Raconteur makes it so that you yourself are in the myth because of your geographical location. Trou des Fées: a little cave or a little crack in a rock and leave an offering of cream or milk. Normandy, Gasgogne, Picardie, Belgians, they came here, and they had fairies called les lutins. Little red-bonneted fairies, really good blacksmiths, more dwarf-like. They’d sharpen tools too. When Ti-Jean is on his quest, the Fée can give him a knife to defend himself or to deliver someone from imprisonment. Three main classes and areas of affinity for the Fée: those that take on aspects of the woodlands (the Queen of all the Animals/Birds etc) they were very straight-to-the-point peoples. The Fée as protectors, about 30-40 stories of those. Others were sorcerers or magicians. Some Fée would give advice and help the hero. Stories where lost loved ones were some of those. Many of these stories featured Princes and Princesses, kingdoms, etc. because the settlers came here before the Revolution, so it was still important to them. French Canadians, almost all their divination and magic was centred around their love, sex and family life. These are reflected in the stories. For magical objects that the hero would have, sometimes it’s a stick, sometimes a napkin (when you set it on the table a whole feast would show up), little pieces of iron, and if you set it down it becomes a cookstove. Animals of the Fée would help you: Eagles and Horses, they were the big deal. Eagles and Horses were passenger animals in and out of the Fée land. Hero is coming out of subterranean kingdom and there’s this giant Eagle there and offers him passage out of the Fée lands, but he needs sustenance. Use your magical knife and cut off a chunk of your thigh and feed it to me. Ok… but he got a passage. It’s about sacrifice. Little lessons are all hidden in there. Formulas came with using these implements. Ex: This stick can beat people up. If robbers come and take my stuff, I’d take my stick and say “Joue mon gourdin!” and the stick would beat everybody up. “Napkin, give me food!” and poof, food. It’s not about the big magical words, you already have a tool that you know is Fée and it’s a simple command. Every animal that is white is Fée. “Adieu Aigle” and you’d turn into the Eagle. Whoops. The French Canadians were super practical people, just do the thing. They had no time for frilly stuff. Archetypes are super fluid in this tradition. Never pigeon-hole the Fée. Ladies Fée is a type of Fée. Dames Amorphosées: shape shifters, ex: The White Cat, usually very very beautiful, the cat hops into the pail with four toads and she turns into a Princess. Another form of transformation is the whole aspect of going from the pauper to the Prince/Princess. Sometimes it was a curse, but other times it was to disguise themselves. Woodland Ladies Fée: you’d encounter them in the forest, and they had dominion over something, like Birds (super connected to the Fée). With the male aspect, there were beings like the Eagle King or the Ant King (they’d be more specific with their animal dominions). Elemental Ladies: personifying fire and water. Both those elements were big deals. Blue Bonnet Lady: she’s frustrating for the hero, sometimes blowing out his match when he’s cooking pea soup. The Lady comes in on a cloud in the fog. Fog is a big deal. There are Courtly Ladies, like Fée Princesses, and lots of items she offers are scissors, twine, thread, things that are tied to female weaving magic. Sometimes the pauper and the princess switch roles, sometimes they’re the same person. The Witch is another figure. They can have Fée Witches. These were not the type of witches you want to meet. Some stories have the hero stumbling over this thatched hut, and you can stay for lodging, just feed the good oats to the black horse, and beat the white horse to a pulp. The white horse is actually a Prince that she transformed. So he takes the white horse away. The Three Sisters, they come up often in French Canadian folklore and healing traditions. In stories with giants that want to eat humans, replace them with pork and barley bouillon, make a type of beer with raw dough makes the water boil without it boiling. When superintendents of New France were coming here, wine became less available, so French Canadians often made spruce beer, given the lack of hops. There’s a reason why in France they go “We love our wine!” and we go like “we love our beer”. A year and a day and forgetfulness is a big motif in stories. Gifts: magic weapons, animals, objects, transportation, social status (pauper to princess), riches, love (gets a bit non-consent, but in those days there was not a whole lot of consent in marriage, that’s why they were so preoccupied about who they’re going to marry, so they can psychologically prepare).Go to the threshold of the woods, where the Fée usually are, sit down, and offer your offerings. Clearings are good too, the beings you encounter can surprise you. White animals, characters from stories, etc. Following the steps of the story can allow you to write your own story with that formulaic narrative of the old tales. If you read the tales and use them as guides and embark on the hero’s journey, lots of wisdom can be attained. Stories became mixed with Irish folklore, because when the Catholic Irish came over, we bonded with them and created new stories. 

Historical Archetypes and Associations

The Voyageur: The liminal figure in its own right, voyageurs were known to shift and adapt endlessly to their environment and cultures they found themselves in, whether in French Canada or among Indigenous peoples. Can be linked to the Wild Man. They combined their Catholic rituals with the mythologies and cosmologies of Indigenous cultures. They’re temperamental figures, but knowledgeable off the beaten path to keep you alive.

The Raconteur: The storyteller had an important place in French Canada, telling stories as old as the first settlers in North America and sometimes from the old country. Some of them were itinerant, asking for food and lodging in exchange for a story. They were known to stretch stories for multiple nights, ending on cliff-hangers. They weaved tales together, and had vast repertoires. They’re learned figures, with silver tongues and enchanting qualities.

The Violoneux: The violinist or fiddler, a key figure in French Canadian culture. They had an innate sense of rhythm and song, and could bring a whole room to dance. The jigs and reels are also inspired from traditional Irish and Scottish music, as the two cultures mingled. 

The Bewitched Canoe: It’s a popular story of French Canada. It’s a variant of the Wild Hunt. One version, written by Honoré Beaugrand in 1892, tells it like this: some loggers get lonely in their winter camp on New Year’s Eve, and wish to go home to visit their families. The Devil appears to them to offer them an easy and fast way to go back to their homes through a flying canoe, as long as they get back before dawn, otherwise, their souls would belong to him and they’d go to Hell. The embark, and they arrive home, partying the night away. They almost arrive to the camp by the skin of their teeth, but the Devil lets them go, mysteriously. This legend comes from the Poitou region of France, where an english nobleman named Gallery loved hunting. He loved it so much, he skipped mass. As punishment, he was cursed to ride in the skies for eternity, chased by horses and wolves, like a Wild Hunt. When the French arrived in North America, they combined this Wild Hunt variation with the Indigenous realities of using canoes as modes of transportation. Some stories have the voyageurs or loggers ride the skies every New Year’s Eve for all eternity, and in some versions they escape Hell. Consequently, New Year’s Eve is an important day for French Canadians, and is very liminal in its aspects. 

Divination

Most French Canadian divination traditions revolve around the family, love, and sex. Back in the day, they were very concerned with whom they’d end up marrying, if their child would carry through an illness, or how their family and love life was fairing.

Lowen described some divination methods that can be applicable to a French Canadian practice, namely: playing cards, dice, reading tea leaves, mirrors and crystal balls, dream interpretation. 

🌲 Familiar trees and their leaves New York D. Appleton 1911

"Totentanz/Danse Macabre" Probably one of my most well known & and most fitting for the season piece is once again available as a tapestry print!

Google Docs

Werewolves Tapestry Pre-Order 2024

Pre-order for the following selection of tapestries: "Shapeshifter" "Totentanz" "Transmutation" "Nachtschwärmer" "13 - Death" "Perchta" "Bi

sharing some resources on the works of st. hildegard of bingen!

Texts and Chants

Hymn to the Virgin (w/ sheet music and commentary)

Scivias

Selected Writings of Hildegard von Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validation

The visions of Hildegard of Bingen. 1928.

Hildegard of Bingen and the Greening of Medieval Medicine

fair warning, though. some of them are behind a paywall. do with them what you will.

Folk Ways for an Acadian or French Canadian folk practitioner -The Heavens

Here are some Acadian folk beliefs tied to the skies and its celestial bodies. It is to note that Acadians lived by the tides of the ocean, and that these would create all kinds of folk sayings. The high times of the universe "les temps forts" were when powerful things could happen, such as when the moon was at its fullest and the tide at its highest (a child born at that time would be destined to become physically strong), or the night would be at its absolute darkest (when "revenants" or deadwalkers/ghosts were known to visit their family homes.)

*My painting of the Virgin Mary is in progress meanwhile.*

The Moon

When the moon is full, it's an opportune time to cut hair (it will grow back thicker), to slaughter pork (it will sell at a profit), and to split firewood (it will give off more heat), and to prune onion shoots (they will grow more full).

When the moon wanes, especially in the month of March, wood cut to make fences will not rot. It is also the best phase to sow root vegetable seeds, such as carrots. Wood cut to make sled runners need to be cut during this phase.

When the moon waxes, you must sow the other vegetables (tomatoes, peas, beans) and grain crops (wheat, barley). This phase is reputedly so strong, it can turn a post into a tree.

When the moon is new, if the horns of the moon point upwards, it won't rain, since you can hang a bucket on its horns. If the horns are pointing down, it's a sign of bad weather ahead. This is an awful rime to cut your hair, as the hair will grow too quickly.

The Stars

It is optimal to plant your garden the day after a particularly starry night.

When the stars are "creuses", or not many in the sky, it announces cold weather for the next day.

source: Dupont, Jean-Claude. Héritage d'Acadie. Collection Connaissance, editions Leméac, 1977.

A drive along the coasts of Cape Breton, in Main-de-Dieu, Louisbourg, and Sydney. Various graveyards, with time-worn statues, and an abandoned church. The first photo of Christ has the Fortress of Louisbourg in the background.

Spending Holy Saturday exploring these lonely, holy places really brought me joy!

Bonjour and Hello!

My name is Laurence and I am a Heritage Witch. I chose this path in 2019 after research into my genealogical roots and heritage from Quebec and Acadia. I wanted to create a path for myself that was relevant to my experience growing up in my Quebec family and in the surrounding landscape around me. I have another Tumblr account, showing some French Canadian witch material, but I decided to hone the focus and create a new account just for this.

I research French Canadian and Acadian folk ways and history, using archive and scholarly sources to gain knowledge for my practice. I also aim to write a book about these practices for the modern witch. I want to have the information I gathered to be accessible to the wider witchcraft and Pagan community, for anyone that would be interested in adding these tidbits to their path.

As the book is being written, I am going to post some blog entries about my findings, and little tidbits of knowledge I've found.

This blog is a safe space for all witches and everyone that comes with an open mind. While French Canadian and Acadian culture is beautiful, I recognize the colonial aspects of the history and culture, and I aim to dismantle that. I will not entertain or tolerate Quebec nationalism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc. I support active reconciliation efforts with indigenous cultures and peoples, and while I recognize that French Canadians and Acadians have a shared cultural history with indigenous peoples, this blog will not post or teach indigenous practices. It is not my place to do so. This practice focuses on folk Catholicism as practiced by my ancestors. I do not support the Catholic Church and I want them to be held accountable for all the wrongs they have committed. This is a place of love and acceptance.

Stay tuned and I look forward to exploring and sharing further.

-Laurence