A Crafty Sweep

Today's entry is about building an astral broom, also known as a besom (BEE-zum), or a witch's broom. I have built two besoms in my life so far, both of them were for myself, for use as a purification tool in ritual. I'd like to share what I have learned about the craft and the lore.

The besom is used to sympathetically sweep an area that requires purification. It can also be placed alongside your body to facilitate astral projection. The contemporary scholarship of folklore about the besom is that its knob or handle was used to apply a hallucinogenic topical into the mucous membranes of the vagina to facilitate an altered state of consciousness - hence "flying" on the broom. Though this claims has lots of academic backing, it has no direct scholarship. It is nonetheless asserted by many modern pagans as fact and is becoming understood by many folklorists as history.

Another use is to ride the broom like a hobby horse during fertility rituals. Hereditary witches claim that jumping while astride the besom has been an element of spring fertility rituals since the dark ages. The idea is that you show the grain how high to grow with the height of your jump.

When building a besom, you can choose to go after the traditional woods. Traditionally the stick is made of ash, the bristles are made of birch and the binding is made of willow. You may find birch branches at a larger floral shop or garden center for use in making wreaths. I got mine from my back yard. Willow is the same wood as wicker, so you might find the binding in a store that supplies basket-weavers. Good luck on the ash. I'm told that some home improvement stores sell ash dowels, but they are turned to be smooth and don't have the natural look of a branch. I prefer my broom to have a scraggled, rustic and homemade look rather than a neat, organized, and manufactured appearance. Ultimately, your tool is only as powerful as your belief in it. So don't stress out if you can't find the specific woods.

When I make mine, I use a birch branch because that's what came down with the bristles. The best bristles are those with some sap still in them. That means the branch recently fell and hasn't dried out, or the bristles have been factory cured so they are not brittle. If you just pick up twigs from the ground, you will likely have brittle twigs that will break apart when the pressure of the binding pushes on them. For the binding, I use cotton cord or some other strong natural twine like jute or hemp. Don't be afraid to break with tradition and make it your own.

First you must trim all of your twigs from the branches. Trim the twigs at the base of every fork so you get long, straight twigs. The best way to keep them from getting all over and ensure that they all stack at the same level is to put them into a coffee can as you cut them. When you have cut enough you can apply them to your broom stick. I like to start by gathering up the bundle and tying a loose string around it to corral them together.

You will apply the bristles to the small end of the broom stick. This seems incorrect because of the liklihood that the bristles would slide off. But if you make your stick correctly and tie the bristles tightly, they will not slide off. The large end of the broom stick should be rounded into a knob. The short end of the broom stick should be trimmed so that a side-branch remains to act as a projection. Trim off the side branch, but leave a sort stump. If you are lucky, your branch will have a natural bulge in it.

Withdraw your bristle from their keeper can and surround the small end of the broom stick and the small branch stump. Don't take the temporary string off just yet and try to keep all of the cut ends at the same level. Make sure your stick goes into the center of the bundle so that there aren't parts of the stick showing through the branches. Once the stick is surrounded by twigs, tightly tie the twigs above the branch stump. Leave a couple of inches of the twig bundle above the tie. Now you can tie the bristles below the broomstick to bring them all into order. Your bristles should generally point the same direction (more or less) and have a little bulge between the bindings.

When using your broom, you should also use visualization. You can imagine that the broom bristles are giving off a white smoke that fills the space with purity, much like a huge smudge stick. Another option is to imagine the space filled with a dark smoke or dust that the broom clears away when you symbolically sweep the space. Remember that you need not actually touch the floor with your broom if you don't want. The act of using the broom, coupled with your visualization, will bring about the purity of space you desire.

Love and Hate gum

I have come to strongly dislike the seed balls from the Sweetgum tree (Liquidambar styraciflua). They get into the grass such that the mower won't lift them out. Then I step on them and they hurt!

I usually collect them after a rain because the normally reddish color they have darkens and they really stand out against the grass. This color darkens as the balls get older. Most of the time, I toss them to the side to decompose with the rest of the leaf litter.

This time, I decided to put aside my anger and collect them as a natural bead. For your collection, get the ones that fell this year. You can identify them because they will be reddish-brown, rather than dark brown, black or gray. It is a very pretty color. The newer ones also have lots of points because no one has had time to step on them yet (I promise I'm not bitter). I was able to collect a cloth grocery bag full of them in about a half hour.

I have lots of ideas for these things. I think they would look really cool on a strand with smaller wood and bone beads as a set of earrings. Painted white, they would look fun as the trim around the edge of a natural wooden Holly King.

I know it's too late for Yule, but after trimming off the stems, I painted a few of them gold and strung them on a hemp cord to make a garland. They look great when paired with other wooden beads. I think a garland of silver sweetgum balls will look great on a tree with all white lights. I will also play around with some unpainted of course.

When stringing these up, you will need an upholstery needle, preferably one with a bladed end. The center of these things were pretty woody, so I found it easier to first pierce one side and then push the ball down onto the needle by bracing the eye of the needle down against a cutting board. Use only the very tips of your fingers pushing in between the points so you don't squish flat all of the interesting points. Finally, use needle nose pliers to pull the needle through. The stem area  has the most wood so do your best to avoid it by piercing from side to side, perpendicular to the stem.

Awww, NUTS!

This month's crafty adventure centers on nuts, but I'll bet you've not had these nut before. Today we are going to figure out if we can roast and eat a wild food: beechnuts!

The American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) produces small nuts inside of a scaly covering. These scaly nut clusters drop off in Autumn and it just so happens that one of the trails I walk was full of them! Most of the time, the nuts drop out of the scales on impact with the ground, but sometimes the two remain intact. What you see here is the scale cluster surrounding the nut shell. Under the scales and then under the shell is the edible golden nut.

It took me about and hour to collect as many as you see here. I didn't weigh them before roasting because I didn't really care how much the shells weighed. Once I got them home, I used a little quality control to remove any nuts that had cracks or tiny holes in their shells. This was a sure sign of insects boring inside to the nut meat.

Since I couldn't find a recipe on roasting beechnuts, I used a peanut roasting recipe as my basis. Given that the beechnuts are much smaller than peanuts, I used the lowest temperature of all the recipes and shortened my roasting time by a little. My goal was to roast them long enough that the papery membrane between the nut shell and the nut meat would turn brittle and rub away like it does on a peanut. I also hoped that the shell itself would get a little more brittle because cracking a raw beechnut was like trying to crush granite pebbles. I ended up roasting the nuts at 325 degrees F for 20 minutes. A couple of them popped as they baked, but mostly all was quiet. The smell of them roasting was something similar to roasted hazelnuts or hickory.

When they had cooled, I tried cracking a few open. Most had nothing inside them at all! Only the very biggest nuts had any real nut inside the shell and those were very small -- about the size of a shelled sunflower seed. The 20 minutes of roasting turned them medium brown and brittle, rather than golden brown. The outer shell was so hard that I ended up using a pair of standard pliers to squeeze them open. No matter how careful I was, I could not prevent myself from pulverizing the tiny roasted nut inside.  Its possible that with a lighter roast and more care, I could produce enough nuts to make a mouthful, but overall, the yield was not worth the rather involved effort.

So, is this crafty adventure a total wash? Nope!

The nuts went back into the oven at 400 degrees F for an additional 15 minutes to really dry them out. After 5 minutes, they all started to pop! So I took them out, cooled them slightly, and started them drying again, but this time at 250 degrees F for 30 minutes. My goal wasn't to eat them but to make them decorative. They had just changed function. My first thought was that they would be great as a natural bead, because I have a prayer cord project on my slate, but they are too brittle to pierce with a needle; they break all apart. It's possible that they will work as beads if I drill tiny holes in them with my Dremel. I will test that and get back to you. But for now, pushing a needle through them makes them fall apart.

Another use could be inside a shaker; I have a gourd that is soon to be a shamanic rattle and it could use some noisy material inside. I will let you know how I use them, but rest assured that they will have a great finish.

Home Tree Map

I very much enjoy spending time outdoors. Doing so puts my mind at peace as if I am supernaturally zapped by some Zen energy. Sometimes I go outside - even if it's blistering hot - to feel revitalized when something has kept me indoors too long. Being in my yard makes me feel spiritually connected to it. I know that a similar effect happens on a larger scale when I spend more time within my town (enjoying its event offerings and people). As I spend time in my yard, my brain comes up with fun activities for me to deepen my connection to my environment. Since I love botany, herbs and working with all kinds of plants, I knew I would have fun with this month's exercise: creating a tree map of my yard.

Of course, I started with a key or guide to the trees in my area. After moving here, I never got around to buying a local plant guide. But I'm lucky to live near all the overachievers who attend Duke University, so I was able to find some great keys through their online projects. Some of the trees were very difficult due to varietals and hybrids.

Once I knew what was growing, I started to draw it out. As I was drawing, I tried to imagine that I would have to hand this guide to someone who didn't live here who had to identify all of the trees. Even still, I'm sure the map has its confusing areas. Though I used graph paper, my drawings are not to scale. My property is wedge-shaped with a stream running down the side, so I made the front yard in landscape orientation and the back in portrait. I tried to use different colors and tree textures to show the trees since some overshadow others.

With the map finished, my next step has been assembly of a plant field guide to my yard. It only has those few plants that grow on my property, but it helps me to connect to my environment one level at a time. As I expand outward, I will begin to add entries for plants in my region of town, then to the physiographic province of my state.

When one composes a work of lore such as a local guide to plants, it is vitally important to have knowledge of the presence and an understanding of the impact of invasive species. Certainly, these species are part of nature. Certainly, they have some right to grow as they do and they can be very useful. But just as human folly allowed these species to take root in areas that permit them to function as super-beings over their comrade plants, it is up to personal human opinion whether or not one wishes to allow the continued growth of these plants.

In these situations, I ask myself these questions:
Is it abundant elsewhere?
Does it have any useful properties that would make me want it around (medicinal, incense, soil stabilization)?
Are there native plants that prefer this particular habitat (slope face, moisture level, drainage, sun/shade levels)?

My purely pagan position is this: if the plant is listed as an invasive by your local extension service, botanical society, or green smarty-pants, you can be sure that it is far from being endangered. Likely, it exists throughout your region in population densities that are detrimental to otherwise native plants. When I find a plant I don't know, I look it up and get to know it. If it has no medicinal or aromatic properties that would bribe me to nurture it or leave it alone, then I pull it up, chop it down, or spray it with killer. Losing it from my property will not endanger the plant community because my city is infested with it! What I've found is that an enormous number of other herbs begin to sprout from the seed bank in the soil. Sometimes more of the invasive plants return, attesting to their invasive nature, but more often I find new colors that have not seen sunlight for quite a long time.