Under the Strawberry Moon

My love for the spiritual goes deeper than just reading Lenormand cards.

I was born into it.

I grew up listening to old wives’ tales passed down for generations. My grandparents scheduled surgeries by The Signs, consulting the Farmer’s Almanac to know when the body would be more or less receptive to pain, to healing.

I’m no stranger to superstitions and folk magic performed by generations of women and men who would curse your name if you called them witches, swearing their abilities came from the Good Lord above, while probably driving railroad spikes into the corners of their property all the same. 

"Grandma always said….” was a common refrain throughout my life, referring to my great grandmother-who was born in the late 1800s, got married at fourteen, and raised fifteen of her own kids, plus some extras, in a holler in Southwest Virginia.

This brings me to my second son. 

I believe he’s got some sort of second sight though, he would never admit it. He has had a handful of experiences over the years he’s told me about that have left him uneasy, and probably some left untold.  He’s seen and interacted with my doppelgänger, he’s seen his friend’s car-same bumper stickers and everything--and his friend driving by his place of work when in actuality, his friend is at college, four hours away. A trick of the eye? A coincidence? Maybe.

He came to me after that last one, unsettled. And I did what I do. I offered to make him a charm. Something for protection. Something to help him see clearly, without interference from illusion or glamour.

“Sure,” he said, “I could use some more decoration in my car.”

That was his way of saying yes without fully admitting he believed in what I do. He’s logical. But I could see the space in him that needed reassurance.

Normally, I do this kind of work under a New Moon. I like spells to grow in strength with the moon’s waxing. But this one felt different. This one needed a Full Moon’s power—ripe, watching, ancient. I started gathering what I might need, but didn’t yet know how to bring it all together.

I pulled cards for guidance….

Heart – Crossroads – Mountain – Ship – Stars

Make your choices with your heart, out of love. Rather than doing magic with the fear of something happening to him while driving, I should let my love for him create its own sort of protection. I needed to move through any blockages I felt and trust the magic of the universe. 

When the full moon arrived, heaviness weighed upon me like a mountain. 

I had had a full day of carrying Eldest Daughter responsibility and anxieties over the upcoming reunion with a semi-estranged family member I hadn’t spoken to in years. I was emotionally and energetically depleted. I’m of the belief that the magic of moon cycles lasts from the day before to the day after, so I thought I would do it the next night.

However, fate had other plans. At 1:30 am the night of the Strawberry moon, I woke up. Just wide awake. No noise, no reason. And I knew what this meant. The time was now. 

An hour and a half past midnight, I found myself standing in my nightgown before a veritable apothecary cabinet, filled with items I had intentionally collected or been gifted over the years. I made choices with my heart. 

Ingredients for purification, black salt, cascarilla, clarity. Mugwort. Malachite and amethyst. Strawberry quartz. Mock strawberry leaf, growing wild in my garden. Pyrite. One false thing can see another—that’s what I told myself. That was for glamour. For truth-seeing.

And the dirt. Dirt from land that belonged to my maternal grandparents. Dirt from my paternal family’s homestead. Dust from the family cemetery. I come from a small town in the Appalachian Mountains, where our names are tied to the land and the land remembers us. My first home was in a holler that bore our last name.

The final ingredient list maxed out at a whopping fifteen ingredients. This was for my son, and I don’t do half-measures when it comes to my blood.

I packed everything into a glass vial. I sealed it with white wax, carved his initials into the seal. I filled those lines with cemetery dust—called on our dead to guard him. I sealed it again. Passed it through mugwort incense smoke—mugwort I grew myself—and set it on the windowsill to charge under the light of the Strawberry Moon.

As I crawled back into bed at nearly 3 AM, I reflected on the cards I had pulled previously.

Heart – Crossroads – Mountain – Ship – Stars

Make your choices with your heart, out of love. Soil from generations of people who loved one another and would have loved him too, because he was one of them. If that’s not leading with my heart and love, I’m not sure what is. The black salt, the cascarilla, the crystal chips. The trifecta of strawberry—strawberry quartz chips, mock strawberry leaves, and the Strawberry Moon. It had come without hesitation.   I moved past that blockage I had been feeling earlier that day-that bone tired, spiritual depletion, and trusted the magic of everything we can’t quite explain. 

I trusted the cards. I trusted the moon. I trusted my gut. It all tied together.

And I trusted it—because magic rooted in love is never wasted.

⭒☾⭒