Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Laurel Woodward, author of the new Kitchen Witchery. 2020 was a year of change. As COVID raced across borders causing millions to become ill, countries shut down. COVID shut down economies. It shut down schools, restaurants, and gyms. It caused an entire "new normal" as business models shifted to work from home. I doubt there is a single person, perhaps on the entire planet, whose life was not affected in some way or another. But 2020 wasn't all bad. One silver lining to come out of the shutdown was that it caused a large portion of the populous to slow down and reinvent their lives. No longer did we have to wake before dawn to make our

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Katrina Rasbold, author of Crossroads of Conjure, Sacred Art of Brujería, and the new Uncrossing. I entered Paganism back in the 1980s. I am sure you have all heard the war stories. We had no internet, no festivals to speak of. Instead, we had quiet covens and circles. There was the occasional metaphysical store, sometimes closeted as candle shops or new age shops. In Sacramento, we had one literally called "Al's Feed Store," and it was just that. There were tarot decks, books, and stones sitting alongside live chicks and bags of cracked corn. There was a tiny section of metaphysical books in Barnes & Nobel or Waldenbooks, which

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Josephine Winter, author of the new Fire Magic. My first deck of tarot cards was a gift from a friend when I was a mouthy teenage mall-goth with a cheap pentacle necklace and a thirst for Occult Secrets™. It was Juliet Shaman-Burke's Mythic Tarot, which uses symbolism from ancient Greek myths such as Jason and the Argonauts, Persephone in the underworld, and others; the first edition images, not the too-bright cartoony ones that came out with later editions. It's still among my favourite decks today. The suit of wands in the tarot is usually associated with the element of fire, as it represents primal forces,

Do you have a problem with slugs eating your basil? Are you looking for a tried-and-true burn salve? Do you want us to profile your new favorite plant? Ask the Herbal! Leave us a comment with your question or request, and we may publish it in an upcoming edition of the almanac. We'll give you our favorite tips and tricks to try in your own space or feature an article with all the juicy details. We look forward to your questions and comments!