Cozy Coven Chats: A Witch’s Journey Back to Simplicity
A weekly audio altar for witches, intuitives, and soul seekers.
Join author Jenny C. Bell as she shares her lived experience as a slow living modern witch offering seasonal wisdom, lunar guidance, astrological updates, cozy rituals, and journal prompts to help you stay aligned and empowered through the Wheel of the Year. Jenny will keep it real, simple and honest. It's time to return to a simple practice free of glitz and performance. Grab a cup a tea, your journal and get cozy. Get my monthly newsletters at Jennycbell.com
Cozy Coven Chats: A Witch’s Journey Back to Simplicity
Moon Magic: Embracing the Lunar Eclipse in Pisces
The lunar eclipse in Pisces arrives as a powerful invitation to pause and listen to what surfaces from our emotional depths. This celestial event near the north node creates the perfect conditions for honest self-reflection, beautifully symbolized by the Justice card that appeared in our reading. With her balanced scales and unwavering gaze, Justice asks us to weigh our shadows against our light and consider what needs transmutation in our lives.
Connecting with lunar cycles offers a profound pathway to slower, more intentional living. Whether tracking the moon's journey through astrological signs or simply noting the difference between new and full moon energies, this awareness brings us into deeper alignment with natural rhythms. Many struggle with sleeping during full moons—but what if we embraced this ancestral pattern rather than fighting it? Our forebears likely used moonlit nights for hunting, gathering, creating, or communing with spiritual forces. By surrendering to these natural cycles, we discover wisdom and connection that's often lost in our artificially-lit modern world.
September serves as the perfect time for organization before the holiday rush begins. From cleaning and decluttering to budgeting and planning, Virgo season supports getting our practical affairs in order while the garden offers its final bounties. Harvesting herbs like mugwort for dream work, preserving apples as butter, and freezing zucchini connects us to ancient practices and the cycle of abundance. The eclipse in dreamy Pisces prompts us to examine our dreams—both sleeping visions and waking aspirations. Which childhood dreams still resonate with your soul's purpose? Which need gentle release? As Langston Hughes powerfully asked, what happens to dreams deferred? Through journaling and meditation, we can prevent our dreams from festering in shadow by consciously recommitting to their pursuit or compassionately letting them go. Join our cozy coven conversations each week as we explore seasonal living and lunar wisdom to enhance your magical practice.
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Hello witches, and welcome to another Cozy Coven chat. I am your host, jenny C Bell, and this is a chat where we talk about living slowly and tuning into the seasons, and this is coming out on an eclipse. So today is an eclipse and I talked about it a little bit last week just to kind of prepare you But's a lunar eclipse, full moon near the north node, in the sign of Pisces, and it's, like all eclipses, intense, and so if you haven't already done so, you haven't looked at where is Pisces in your chart, like like I talked about last week. Make sure you do that. But just also let yourself be, let things surface today. So if you're suddenly kind of moody or you suddenly have insight, honor it, right. Honor whatever emotions arise, honor whatever comes up for you, and it can continue to come up for you for a couple days. So it may not really hit you today, it may hit you in the middle of the week, right? And so definitely honor that highest self, that emotional self, that intelligent self, the part of you that connects with your angels and guides. This is a good day to pull cards, it's a great day to journal, it's a good day to sit in meditation and I'm going to give you some general questions at the end of this episode. But really it's it's eclipse season and the rest of the week, you know, astrologically speaking, is not going to be as intense, right, um, but we definitely want to honor this moon energy, this eclipse energy, today, and then it's going to just kind of lead into the rest of the week. And then I would like to also offer a card, so a card for the week, energy for this week. Oh, it fell on the floor, okay, justice, she really popped out too, too. She fell on the car floor. So she's the 11th uh card of the major arcana and she is all about kind of like this balance, because she has the scales, like the libra scales, um, but a lot of times about kind of this honest self-reflection, and I love that for an eclipse week, because that's what we're being asked to do.
Speaker 1:Right, I have always been very connected to the moon. I am a cancer rising and moon is very important to me. But when I really started tuning into the moon cycles and which planet the moon was under and where the moon was, and even sometimes, like I really for like a whole year, went through and like looked at each day and where the moon was which you can do right Pisces, and then Monday it goes into Aries, and then by Wednesday it goes into Taurus and then by Friday it's in Gemini, and then on the next Saturday it continues in Gemini. And I really got into that because it was like I just check my moon calendar every day and just be like, okay, so the moon's in this, how, in this sign, how do I feel? Do I feel like differently? And I even found I don't have the app anymore but in the calm app there was songs for each moon. They were really beautiful and I would listen to those as I meditated.
Speaker 1:But it's just a way to connect with the moon. So you can connect with the moon phases. You know new moon energy versus full moon energy. But you can also like look at the astrology where is the moon today and what does that mean for me? Just another way to slow down and tune in and become present, right, and to see each day as a different day. But, yes, we have justice. So, honest reflection. You know what is coming up for you with this eclipse and why, and what does it mean and what needs to be transmuted, and transmutation is, you know, alchemy. It's taking lead and turning into gold. In our case is taking shadows and turning into light. So you know what does that mean and what can you do with that. So I love that for this week. That's actually really great and, yeah, so we're continuing in kind of this.
Speaker 1:Not yet fall, equinox, um, energy I mean. Depending on where you live, it may feel like fall. Um, it's been hot here. It tends to be hot here where I live in Southern Oregon, really until like Halloween. Like we have a couple of days here and there or mornings really where it's like I could wear a sweatshirt, but Halloween hits and it's usually pretty cool and then it gets colder after that. But we've done pumpkin patch picking where we're in t-shirts like it's just kind of the vibe right. So, depending on where you are, it may start to feel like more fall than summer, but some of you may still be really holding on to summer. Personally, looking at the plants in the yard and the garden, it's definitely feeling more fall right. Like my squashes are finally getting pretty big.
Speaker 1:I had no luck with pumpkins this year. It's kind of a bummer, but, like I said last week, this is the time at this time to really harvest the herbs, because for me it seems like suddenly it'll just be cold or dry and my herbs are gone and it's like, oh, my gosh, like besides rosemary, she's tried and true and she'll just stick around, but everybody else, I'm like, oh, I didn't get enough of them. So I just harvest a bunch like tons and tons and then share with people, because it all comes back. You know, especially anything in the mint family, which is most of what I grow. Um, because of the deer, and so yeah, and right now I'm really excited, I'll be collecting.
Speaker 1:Um decided that equinox felt like the right day, so I was going to pick, like a special day to collect all of my mugwort and, like I talked about, she's my favorite plant, she's my ally. This year. Her latin name is Artemis, so she's a moon plant and so it felt appropriate to collect her on the full moon and what I like to do is she's already flowered and so I like to make bundles of her and dry her for incense. So I have a little cauldron, I light a charcoal disc, I let it get nice and hot and then I just sprinkle mugwort on there. Smells amazing, slightly psychoactive, but not like gonna get you a DUI, right, right. That's why it's like the dream plant. It's a prophetic dream plant, but it just smells great and I use it for cleansing and for blessings.
Speaker 1:I use mugwort pretty much all the time. I have it right now in jars all over the house as my flower, because it flowered, it's because it's really tiny little yellow flowers, um, and I also drink it as a tea, so I'll be doing that. So I like to a lot of times harvest like herbs on full moons. This is all my own thing, so I don't know cause. It kind of depends on what other people do. Um, like for gardening, there's like moon, moon gardening. So this is what I personally like to do. And then new moons is more like when I like to make a tincture. That's when I like to get those started. So that's just kind of like my own little vibe for that.
Speaker 1:Um, continuing, uh, this week on cleaning and writing. Uh, like I said, I've gotten really organized in the Virgo season and this is, you know, if organization is not your strength, I understand, it's not mine either, but it's a good time frame to try to kind of get organized, definitely with this eclipse energy, journaling more and keeping a record of the dreams. Um, mugwort, by the way, and always like, do your own health research, but mugwort and tea, uh, you don't want to take if you're pregnant. Uh, helps with lucid dreaming and dream recall, as does blue lotus. So been leaning into those plants a little more, um, because I knew the dreams would be vivid anyway, with pisces being such a dreamer and the eclipse, like let's lean into it.
Speaker 1:That's always kind of my, that's kind of my tip for my energy on like tuning with the moon and the astrology is like, lean into it, like don't resist it. You know what I mean. Like that's part of living seasonally, it's living astrologically, like I'm not going to fight energy, like my body is naturally tired around a new moon, like it just doesn't want to do as much and it's partly like the way my cycle is as well. And then full moon, I sleep less and I just like give into that, like sometimes I'll just get up and journal because that's just my body doesn't want to sleep, and I think that's a lot of us, because our ancestors probably didn't sleep as much.
Speaker 1:The moon was super bright. There was things you could do by the light of the moon right, hunting, gathering, creating dreaming, meditation. You know there's like lots of things. So if you find it hard to sleep around the full moon, you're not alone, and that's where the term lunacy comes from. But just go with the flow, like it's temporary, especially if you realize that's what it is Like, if it's other things different. But if you realize, like just a couple days around the moon you're struggling to sleep, then give in, it's okay, it's okay and go to bed a little like earlier and just allow yourself to meditate and think. And if you wake up in the middle of the night, ponder the dreams, try not to get frustrated, right? Just kind of like. Like I said, go with the flow, give in, so yeah, so that's another kind of like moon tip. I would say Some other things focusing on is sort of like I like to spend September kind of getting things in order budget-wise too, like why not, let's talk about it?
Speaker 1:Because the holidays come up and you want to buy things, you want to cook meals. You know there's a lot of purchasing, you know, starting at Halloween with costumes and candy and then going on from there. So definitely, you know, starting at Halloween with costumes and candy and then going on from there. So definitely, you know, looking at that, like just getting clear on a lot of things. I don't know, virgo season just has me getting really clear on a lot, like you know, am I organized, am I budgeting, am I doing a to-do list, are things clean, are they decluttered? Um, all that good stuff really. And so, yeah, definitely focusing on that, definitely looking at, I've been harvesting the apples I can harvest.
Speaker 1:We have kind of like a worm issue and we know how to deal with it, but it's too late now. So, harvesting the apples that I can from our tree and I always, personally, if you harvest fruit locally or from your own yard, I always like to cut the apple in half so you can see the pentagram or the star, and then I always put that on my altar as an offering and I just let it dry out and it doesn't usually rot, it just dries into like a pretty little pentacle and then I put it in the yard after that and like, put it back to the earth. But I like to do that. When I harvest food from my own yard or from, like, I go to orchard to pick, I always like to share on my altar as an offering, because there's something really special about picking your own food and your fruit or going we used to go every year in California to the same apple orchard and pick fruit. It's just really puts you in connection with nature and ancestry and makes it really mindful. It's very slow, but anyway, looking forward to making apple butter.
Speaker 1:Um, so my recipe is really not a recipe, so anybody can use it. I also use the same recipe for peach butter. So I put it all in a crock pot. I cut the fruit to get rid of the seeds or the pits, put it all in a crock pot. I add a dash of molasses, and this is because side note I never buy brown sugar, because brown sugar is just sugar and molasses. So I just make my own, which is just you add molasses to the sugar and you mix it. It's so easy.
Speaker 1:So anyway, I add a dash or so of molasses, a teaspoon of vanilla and usually like a half a cup of sugar, and with peaches I don't add any water. With these apples they're kind of dry, so I'll just add like half a cup of water, put it on low and slow, oh, and a teaspoon of cinnamon. Low and slow for good, like four hours or so until it starts to like be cooked and brown, then I will taste it and then add whatever needs to be added and then I will use an immersion blender when it's all cooked down to blend it, taste it again and then let it cook down until it no longer looks like baby food and it looks like butter. So so what's the difference is the baby food is usually like, still apple colored or peach colored and the butter is brown and it spreads like butter onto your toast. And I don't like applesauce or jam really, but I love peach butter, apple butter. I think it's a cinnamon and so it's good on like anything you can, can it and you can also freeze it.
Speaker 1:So highly recommend, if you have too many apples or you go apple picking, to try your hand at making your own butter. Um, you can find like an actual, real recipe, but I like mine because it's like I don't know how sweet you like things. You know there's been some recipes I've tried and I'm like no, I cut almost all the sugar in half on recipes for the most part Because I just I like sweet things but I don't like it cloyingly sweet. So, anyway, apple butter and this is the time of year two where I'm going to start kind of oh you know what. The other thing too is.
Speaker 1:If you have like a lot of zucchini, this is the time of year where, like there's a ton of zucchini from you growing it, or a friend or whatever Zucchini freezes. So what I do is I just shred it and then freeze it and it's just like one giant lump, which is fine. It's like a freezer bag. Take it out, defrost it. You can make zucchini bread. So I try to freeze it in like the right proportions, like cups, to either make zucchini bread or zucchini brownies. And also you can freeze it like in little chunks for soups and stews. It's a good thickener Like. You can use it as a thickener, uh, for like a soup. Instead of as much milk you can add zucchini, especially if it's shaved, so it doesn't add any color, and that can be a thickener as well. So you know, when you get the plethora of squash, you can do that with it.
Speaker 1:Um, a couple of years ago I grew my own pumpkins and it was so amazing. But ever since then I can't grow them. And it's weird I've learned talking to other people like if you neglect them or you accidentally grow them. They seem to thrive, which is what happened to me. I was trying to grow them from seed in house. It didn't work and so I like with everything, I just threw the pot, the dirt and everything into the yard and suddenly I had like five pumpkins that year. But this last few years, me consciously planting seeds and trying to grow pumpkins, I've had no success. So you know, I don't know. But same thing with pumpkins I scooped out all the seeds, I saved them, I dried them to plant, and then I also cooked them and made my own pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie, which talk about slow living.
Speaker 1:I, with slow living and this kind of lifestyle that I like to lead, and I've probably been leading as much as I could my whole life. I mean, I'm a Taurus sun and a Cancer rising, like I was meant to live a slow life. I was also raised by my grandparents, which I think helped Um, but you know, having this whole, um, like you know, idea of soul living, I'm always willing to try to make anything from scratch, like I've made my own crackers, like make my own bread, like all everything. And sometimes I'm like, yes, like totally going to make this from scratch from now on, and other times I'm like I will never. I will never. And yeah, that's how I feel about cinnamon rolls from scratch and that's how I feel about crackers. But that's just me. You do you, um, just this. I don't know if it's because they were gluten-free cinnamon rolls, but they took like all day and it just wasn't worth it. Uh, but yeah, yeah, slow living and just from like.
Speaker 1:Last thing I want to talk about again is the eclipse season. Eclipse today. Take it easy, please, rest, nourish, listen to your body, look for signs of what's coming up and these are journal questions from our coven, where I have a ritual for eclipses, like it's a ritual for release of what's holding you back. And these are the journal questions that I want to share with you. What is heavy on your heart and mind at this time? What has this eclipse brought to your attention? What do you need to release or heal at this time? What changes do you want to make going forward from this eclipse?
Speaker 1:Energy and really like the other thing, because it's in Pisces is what I'd like you to just think about dreams you've had, like both real and like visionary dreams, but also like actual dreams or daydreams, and like which ones align and which ones don't. You know what, when you were a child, you know, and you dreamt of your future. Do some of those still align to you? And you're like you know what actually I do still want to do? Travel, or whatever this dream was. Oh, and if not, then which ones don't Like you know? Like maybe your dream of being president is not really a dream anywhere. And you're like, okay, we're gonna put that, put that to rest, but something to think about. Like for me, I always dreamt of being an author and then for a long time I just thought that wasn't going to happen, but I wouldn't let it go. And here we are right. So think about dreams.
Speaker 1:It always makes me think of um, langston Hughes, the dreams deferred poem. Um, I don't know, I was an English teacher for so long. Like, like I often think I would say I think of poems. I think in poems, I think in Shakespeare, like that's my go-to for, like explaining a situation. So you know, not always for everybody else, but yeah, um, but I'm going to end by reading that too.
Speaker 1:So it's by Langston Hughes and he asks what happens to dreams deferred. What happens to a dream deferred in the poems called Harlem. What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun or fester like a sore and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load, or does it explode? And so, yeah, the dreams differ. The ones that you put off or put on hold, they fester, and a lot of times they present themselves in the shadows. And because we're looking at Pisces in this eclipse, dreams may be festering, and so it's important to recognize that and let them go or release them and move on. Anyway, thanks for chatting with me. I hope you have a restful week.
