Freewill Friday. The day we name a choice out loud and let it count. Mine this week was small and deliberate: I harvested my mullein- the tall stalk the old books call Hag's Candle, Hag's Taper, Witch's Torch, dried and dipped in tallow and burned as Hekate's own torch since Roman times. I cut it in the dark of the waning moon, four days out from Deipnon, on purpose. And I made a second choice right beside it — the Phase III video, The Underworld Floor, is postponed a week. Not lost. I chose sleep instead of editing. Sometimes the conscious act is slowing down before you go deeper. Chthonia keeps. So do I. Next week. That's the whole practice of this day: the descent doesn't only happen to you. You choose how you enter it. You choose what you gather to burn for light later. More on the mullien candles next Thicket Thursday. 🔦 Torchlight For Today: "If one beareth with him one twig of this wort, he will not be terrified with any awe, nor will a wild beast hurt him, or any evil coming near." — Anglo-Saxon Herbal of Apuleius, on mullein (trans. Cockayne) 👇 Your turn. Name one conscious choice you're making as we cross into the dark moon, big or small, a thing you're gathering or a thing you're setting down. Tag it #Freewill. Most likes and comments by Sunday wins a free Triple Crossroads Spread with me. 🖤 En Erebos, Phos. In darkness, light. Blessings, Tirza 🌿🗝️🌙 📚 Further reading: Blood and Spicebush, "The Hag's Taper: Mullein" — https://www.bloodandspicebush.com/blog/the-hags-taper-mullein | T.O. Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England (the Apuleius Herbal source #Freewill #HekateanHealing #MulleinMagic

Today we step onto the Underworld Floor. So before we walk it, let's do what any traveler does before a hard journey: read the map. Because the Greeks left us one, older than almost anything in writing. 🌊 The border. The living world ends at water. Homer's dead cross Oceanus, the river that encircles the whole earth, to reach the entrance. Past it lie the underworld's own rivers. The Greeks named five, each one a feeling. Styx, the river of hatred and unbreakable oaths, the one even the gods swear by. Acheron, the river of woe. Cocytus, the river of wailing, from the word to lament. Phlegethon, the river of fire, blazing toward the deep. And Lethe, the river of forgetting, whose water empties the dead of everything they carried in life. 🕯️The ferry and the gate. At the Styx waits Charon, the ferryman, who takes only those who can pay—which is why the dead were buried with coins. Those who can't pay wander the near bank, unquiet. Past the water stands Cerberus, the three-headed hound, guarding the gate so the dead stay in and the living stay out. 🖤The floor itself. Beyond the gate spread the Asphodel Meadows. It’s the vast grey plain where most of the dead simply are, neither punished nor blessed, drifting. Below that yawns Tartarus, the pit of punishment, and off to the side lies Elysium, the resting place of the blessed. Three destinations. One realm. All of it under Hades. And here's what I want us to carry down. Read this map psychologically and it stops being geography. The underworld is the unconscious. It’s the vast, submerged country of everything you've buried, repressed, or refused to look at. The rivers, the ferry, the gate: these are the thresholds between the waking ego and the deep material below it. And thresholds are Hers. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, when Persephone is taken down, it's Hekate who hears the cry and comes to grieving Demeter with a torch, telling her the truth of where her daughter went. When Persephone returns, the Hymn names Hekate her "minister and companion" — the one who walks beside her on the road down and the road back. Persephone is the psyche that must descend to become whole. Hekate is the light you carry so the descent doesn't swallow you.

Every Friday we name a conscious choice and tag it #Freewill. Not the big cinematic ones, but the small ones that actually run a life. I'll go first. My week's been motherhood and math. My son is almost one, and like some of you, I'm raising him while making ends meet. This week that meant choosing which bills breathe and which ones wait. Choosing where to manage my time. Nobody claps for those choices. But they're choices, made on purpose, and that's what free will can look like some days. Hekate is the goddess of the crossroads. Most crossroads aren't dramatic, though — most are small forks nobody sees you standing at. She's there for those too. The quiet choice counts. 🔦 Torchlight For Today: "Freedom is the source from which all significations and all values spring." — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity 👇 Tag your #Freewill: one conscious choice you made this week, big or small. Most likes and comments by Sunday wins a free Triple Crossroads Spread with me. (I have a small list of people I need to read for, but the readings will come.) En Erebos, Phos. In darkness, light. Blessings, and lots of love, Tirza 🌿🗝️🌙 #FreewillFridays #HekateanHealing #Freewill

The deck is shuffled and the crossroads are open. This is our one day a week for card readings, so if there's a question sitting in your chest, today's the day to let the Oracle speak to it. Now, readings! Hekate Enodia, She of the Way, has 60 doors in the Oracle of the Hekatean Path. One of them has your name on it. And on a day like today, the door She opens might not be the one you were heading toward. It'll be the one the road was bending you to. 🗝️ Drop a number from 1–60 in the comments. I'll shuffle and count to find the message She left at the wayside shrine for you. Then I'll pull a supporting card from the Witches Tarot to light the way forward— because She doesn't just show you the door. She hands you the torch. You don't have to share your question if it's private. Hold it in your mind as you choose, and trust the number that pulls at you. First come, first drawn. I'll work through the comments as they land today, in between my errands and Tuesday responsibilities. They may come in slow, but every reading will come. 🔦 Torchlight For Today: "Hekate met her, holding a torch in her hands… 'Swiftly I tell you all the truth.'" — the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, where Hekate comes to grieving Demeter with light and word of where her daughter has gone, the torch-bearer who meets you in the dark and tells you where the road went 👇 Drop your number. Let Her of the Way show you what the reroute has been bending you toward. En Erebos, Phos. In darkness, light. Blessings, Tirza 🌿🗝️🌙 📚 The decks: Oracle of the Hekatean Path by Kenn Payne & Chris Butler | Witches Tarot by Ellen Dugan

It's here, loves, and it's yours to download, print, and carry into circle. The full Hekatean Strawberry Moon Esbat that I was working on all of yesterday— is now live here in the community as a printable PDF. This is the complete rite, start to close, built for the year's lowest, ripest moon: the first full moon of summer, the Mead Moon, the saffron Krokopeplos Moon, when Hekate's light bends close to the earth and walks the threshold between sky and land. It’s known locally as the Strawberry Moon, so I’ve honored the ancestors of the land here in Michigan with a strawberry offering. Inside the PDF: 🌙 The full ritual, opening to closing — casting, quarters, the works 🔑 Hekate Trimorphos at the center — three-formed, of the crossroads, key-bearer at the gate 🍓 A First-Fruit Offering working — name what's ripened in you since the dark, and set it on Her plate 🍯 Barley-and-honey cakes and wine, drawn straight from The Hekatean Kitchen (level 3 class) 📜 A land acknowledgment, a key-and-threshold Great Rite, and an opening you can adapt for solo OR coven Formatted clean so you can print it, mark it up, and bring it to the table. No fluff. No gatekeeping. Just a real, usable rite for your own grimoire. Love ya. 😉 ⏰ The Strawberry Moon peaked Monday, June 29 at 7:56 p.m. EDT — you’ve still got time to print, gather your cakes and wine, and prepare. Grab it now while the moon's full. 💬 Tell me below: 👇 are you working this one solo or with a coven this Strawberry Moon? And — if you're brave — what's ripened in you since the dark of the year? I'll be in the comments and working on the Tarot Tuesday post! 🌿 En Erebos, Phos. Love, Tirza 🌙🌿🖤