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
Temperance, Reading the Signs Around You & The Eclipse Portal
A eclipse portal has opened, and its effects are rippling through our bodies, minds, and spirits. The eclipse season officially began on September 7th, unleashing a wave of intense energy that's affecting witches and spiritual practitioners in deeply personal ways.
Feeling unusually tired, emotionally drained, or noticing disruptions to your sleep or menstrual cycle? You're not alone. The majority of coven members report similar experiences as this powerful lunar event pulls on our internal waters just as it does the ocean tides. Yet some witches find themselves energized, experiencing welcome releases and feeling more authentic than before. Your unique response to this cosmic shift is perfectly valid – there's no wrong way to experience eclipse energy.
What makes eclipse season particularly transformative is how it creates a storytelling arc in our lives. The first eclipse opens the portal, bringing hidden patterns and energies to the surface. Things bubble up, often causing confusion or emotional intensity. By the time the second eclipse arrives (the upcoming solar eclipse in Virgo on September 21st), your personal eclipse "story" typically becomes clear. What recurring themes have appeared in your dreams, thoughts, and divination since early September? These patterns aren't random – they're forming the narrative of your unique eclipse journey.
The combination of eclipse energy with Virgo season creates perfect conditions for examining what's in balance and what isn't. The Temperance tarot card appeared this week, underlining this theme with its imagery of careful, balanced flow between vessels. Like Justice's gentler sister, Temperance asks us to notice imbalances without forcing correction, instead inviting feminine wisdom to guide our realignment.
During this potent time, the veil between worlds thins, making signs and synchronicities more pronounced. As witches, we exist in liminal space, more attuned to the invisible world's communications. Whether it's recurring animal visitors, meaningful found objects (like the perfect pentacle revealed when cutting an apple horizontally), or messages that seem to come through ordinary people, these aren't coincidences – they're communications meant specifically for you.
Ground yourself daily through this cosmic intensity. Put bare feet on earth, take mindful walks, sit on the floor, pet animals, or soak in salt baths. These simple practices anchor your energy while allowing you to remain open to the profound shifts occurring within and around you.
What's your eclipse story? What signs are appearing? What needs rebalancing in your life? Journal on these questions as you navigate this powerful portal, and remember – you're not experiencing this cosmic shift alone. We're moving through it together, one step at a time.
Connect with me here: https://www.jennycbell.com/
Hey witches, welcome to another Cozy Coven Chat. I'm your host, jenny C Bell, and this is for the week of September 14th. What a week last week was. Let's chat about that a little bit. Let's talk about the eclipse season, or what I like to refer to as the eclipse portal, just because it sounds like more intense, because it is more intense and so, you know, on Sunday the portal officially opened, even though a lot of us were feeling it prior to that.
Speaker 1:So last Sunday, right the 7th, and this week we've all just been in the energy and I asked in our coven how people were feeling and the majority of people were feeling tired, drained, needing more sleep, kind of like slowed down, things like that. Some people were feeling energized and like a good release and they felt more like themselves than they did prior to the eclipse. Talk to quite a few people who menstruate and their menstruation has been off. A lot of them are having it, either their cycle is longer or coming sooner, right, but you know we are very much affected by the moon and the planets, even in our bodies. So if you've been feeling any of these things, please know you're not alone. Eclipse energy you know it happens twice a year and, depending on where it falls in your chart or where you are in your life, it can just be so intense and it's been intense for everybody I know. And if you're like I'm not really feeling it, well, good, that's okay, like it's, there's no wrong way to witch. Okay, so, totally fine. So we're still in that energy. We're technically entering like the waning half moon phase today, on the 14th, and so we're going to continue to wane until the new moon, which is the other eclipse, which we'll talk about a little bit as well. But right now we're in the energy of waning moon, we're in the energy of eclipse, and the next eclipse that is on the 21st and I'll talk about it because the next podcast comes out on the 21st, so you might want to prepare a little bit is in Virgo.
Speaker 1:It's a solar eclipse near the south node and, according to Chani, the key themes are releasing perfectionist tendencies and the desire to get life right. And that's because it's in Virgo. But what I always think about with these seasons, even regardless of where they are in the planets, I always think the first eclipse opens the door right. So the portal. It opens the portal, and I find it's usually more intense because things start to arise.
Speaker 1:It opens the door and you maybe don't know what your eclipse story is yet, because everybody has an eclipse story, and so you're. You're feeling things. Things are rising to their surface and it can be draining, it can be confusing, it can be frustrating, there can be a lot of feelings, but then by the time the second eclipse comes around, you usually have an understanding as to what your story is. What do I mean by that? Ask yourself what's been coming up for you and we're going to talk more about this in the journal questions, but reflect since around I would say, like a few days before the 7th right, probably since September has started. That would be safe. What are some things that have come up for you in dreams and thoughts and feelings and actions in your cards and that's probably your story.
Speaker 1:And my story has been interesting. My story has been about daily routine and I know it's like not super interesting, but I'm fine with that, I don't need it to be super interesting. I've already gone through eclipses in my son, which is Taurus, but it's been about routine, like what fills my cup. You know what is aligned, what isn't aligned. I get to this point in the year, often around the equinox, which we're approaching as well, and I start to see what is in balance and what isn't, and so that's a lot of what's been coming up.
Speaker 1:I am changing my daily affirmations right now. Even though I wrote them and I've been saying them all year, they just don't feel aligned anymore. I am changing up my morning routine, changing up my evening routine. I'm spending a lot less time on social media, which has been so good for my mental health, and, yeah, just really looking at that, looking at my daily walks. I'm looking at just daily activities when I do things. I've been trying like different things out, like when I do a particular activity, you know let's change the time, okay, no, I don't like that, let's go back to the other one, just that kind of thing, really simple stuff.
Speaker 1:But it is still Virgo season and Virgo invites us to declutter, clean, clear, right, get organized, all of those things, and that's how I have been leaning into eclipse season. I feel the need to reorganize my day to day as opposed to like my entire life or a closet right. It's like I want to reorganize my day and how I spend my day and my energy and when I write versus when I read and all of those things. So that's been my story. It's not super fantastical or interesting. I have had another shadow rise that I don't really want to chat about. It's nothing crazy, but it's still something I'm working on healing. Once I get through it I think I could share about it then. But yes, that's my story for right now and so we're in that. We are also in Virgo energy.
Speaker 1:Still, as I mentioned, this is pretty much the last full week of the Virgo energy and, like you know, we've talked about it's that organization, it's earth sign, it's all of that. But because the eclipse is here, it's not as grounded as it normally feels. So if you haven't been making an effort to get grounded every day, you really should. You know, when the moon starts to kind of take things over, we begin to feel not as grounded. So simple things you can do is get outside. My husband and I both work from home on computers. You know I write and he is working on his computer all day and we take breaks just to go put our feet on the clover and look at the mountains, like, and it's important, uh, taking walks is very grounding. If you can't really get outside, then sometimes, just like sitting on the floor or laying on the floor of your house, is very grounding. Petting animals is grounding, um, eating earthy foods and really being present with your food is grounding. There's, you know, a nice, even though it's water, a nice salt bath can be really grounding, um. So, yeah, make an effort, if you're not already doing so this week, to get grounded. And now we're going to pull our tarot of the week, so we had um justice last week. So I curious, I wonder, how Justice played out in your life.
Speaker 1:I always think of Justice as being a balancing card, you know. So that's a theme, I think. Oh, and speaking of balancing, we got Temperance. So that's such a Virgo card like pretty, pretty interesting. Okay, so temperance is technically associated with Sagittarius, but you know Virgo's, the scales and the card is often like depicted with someone, usually a winged someone, pouring like water back and forth in a like a calm manner and not dropping any, and very balanced. Um, and it's technically. And now the fire is connected with fire, even though there's lots of water in the picture, which is kind of interesting, and it always has that kind of like.
Speaker 1:Whenever this card comes in, I'm like like, okay, what needs balancing? I've already been asking that I probably think you have been too because we're getting close to the equinox, we have Virgo season with this eclipse, so temperance is here to like underline that question and can put like an exclamation point at the end right, what needs balancing, what isn't balanced? And then I always think of temperance to. I always think of it as like a sister card to justice, like I think of justice as more of a masculine card and temperance more of a feminine card. But they're like the same energy of trying to balance the scales and making sure that everything is as it should be. And so with temperance, we have this more of this feminine kind of, you know, not forcing the issue, not like okay, I need to get, I need to get balanced, and like being aggressive about it. It's more like okay, what's not serving me, what is not in balance, and you know how can I do that, how can I get grounded?
Speaker 1:And it's interesting too because of the water. There's so much water in the card, but it's connected with fire, um, according to some. Anyway, the water to me is like I just talked about the salt bath, the one like the nice shower with maybe some essential oils in the shower stall. I feel like that's very cleansing right now because of the eclipse, and that's also true with the moon and water don't know just kind of re. It underlines that, like before we get into the equinox and before we get into Libra season, what is standing in your way of being balanced, of having a decent temperament, of feeling like you can be around other people, right? Right, I've been very hermited this week. My card actually of the week for my own self was hermit, and so there you go. But yeah, so very similar, I think, in my opinion, to justice. They obviously mean different things, but the vibe of the card is so similar, so seems like a similar energy for this week. It's the rebalancing and balancing of with water instead of scales, right? So, yeah, definitely, I'll remind you at the end of the journal questions, but we'll be getting back to them and they'll all be connected with that.
Speaker 1:I wanted to talk just a moment about apples for a second. So we have as a family, we would go apple picking every year, and now we have an apple tree in our yard and we have plenty of apple trees around town as well, and I don't know you probably know this, but maybe you don't if you cut an apple in half not lengthwise, but like if you sit the apple, you know, down and the stems on top, and you cut it in half so that you have the stem on one side and the little kind of flower looking part at the other side I don't know how to describe it horizontally, I guess. If you cut it like that, the seeds make a star and so they are like a living, perfect pentacle, because a pentacle is a five pointed star with a circle around it. That's what makes it a pentacle and a pentagram and it's a symbol of protection for witches and I love it. And so one of my favorite offerings if you work with a deity and if you don't work with a deity, you can just put them on your altar is to cut apples in half and put them on my altar and they shrivel and dry and I think they look even cooler when that happens. And I just do that throughout, basically, until I buy mini pumpkins and put them on the altar, but they are my go-to altar decoration. You can also slice them and dry them in the oven, but I really like how they just will dry out on the altar. If they have a problem with ants or a greedy dog or something, then don't do that, but I just think they're just the perfect like witch fruit, because they are a pentacle, and I also love that. You know, other people in other religions associate them with evil, which is silly. Virgins associate them with evil, which is silly, and so I kind of feels rebellious.
Speaker 1:I think, sometimes to like put the apple on the altar. It's like yeah, see, but anyway, I just want to share that a little bit with you. So, yeah, if you have apples are usually inexpensive this time of year you're looking for something fun to put on your altar or something festive. That's definitely something and, like I said, I like to keep it pretty much until the mini pumpkins come out, but sometimes I continue.
Speaker 1:I also like to put pomegranate seeds. Um, that's great, especially if you work with like Persephone, uh, but I love. Well, I can't wait. I haven't seen them in the store yet. They're like one of my favorite fruits. So I'm like anxiously like checking the store. When are the pomegranates here? But I like to put a few seeds on the altar and they also dry out and they're so beautiful. There's nothing really like that color that we eat, besides beets, which I'm not a fan of. So, yeah, so I just wanted to talk about that a little bit. The other thing I wanted to talk about is the I've had. Okay, let me start, let me restart here. I'm not going to edit that out, but we're just restarting.
Speaker 1:So, the last eclipses in Pisces, which we've talked about on here as dreams and psychicism and things like that, and a lot of people have been having very interesting dreams or having very interesting signs come to them, and recently someone in our coven reached out to me and was like I have this dream and this dream and then I kind of had, like, this feeling and this vision, is it nothing you know? Like, basically, am I crazy? And here's the thing is we don't want to go overboard. We're like every little thing's a sign, okay, but being a witch is reading the signs Like that's, that's who you are. We're liminal, we are looking through the veil, even when the veil is not at its thinnest. We are more aware, more conscious, more open. We work on opening our clear senses and becoming more psychic and all, and listening to our intuition, and all of that is connected to reading the signs around you.
Speaker 1:So should you like? Like if you remember a dream, should you look into the meaning? Why not Should you? If you keep seeing the same number repeated, should you look into that meaning? Yes, if you find a feather, that's symbolic, right. If you see a bird you don't normally see, that means something. If you keep seeing the same animal enter your your yard, right like you keep seeing bunnies come into your yard when you've never seen, noticed them before. These are important signs because the invisible world is real and as witches we know that, and the invisible world communicates with us through signs and symbols.
Speaker 1:You know, it's funny to me because not that long ago I kept finding cards. Now I was. I read cards every day, right. But I went to a little free library and there was literally only three Oracle cards or four there's four Oracle cards there and they were just like they'd fallen and I looked around, I couldn't find the deck and so I was like I'm gonna take them home. I did a reading in our coven, but obviously that was significant. Those were very clear signs. But then that same week I went for a walk and I found a tarot card, like just by itself, facing up, facing me, not by anybody's house, not by anybody's car. Those are really strong signs.
Speaker 1:Okay, you have a repetitive sign. That's a really important message. So it's like you dream of a crow, then you're hearing a crow call while you're meditating and then you see a crow fly by you and then you're on social media and a crow comes up, like crows coming in with a message. Right, does that mean crow is an animal guide? Maybe, but it could just mean that crow's the messenger of something or someone for you. So it's really important to honor yourself by reading the signs and allowing your intuition to decide what that means.
Speaker 1:And if you're unsure, that's when you know you talk to a friend or you, we bring it into our coven. Hey, I had this dream. What do you think it means? It's what we do, right, if I think, you think about like the witches. You know, in an ideal world you would be like your local witch and people would come to you with these questions I saw this sign and I have this dream and this and that, like, what does it mean? Because they would think you know, because you're in that liminality, right, you're not. You admit that there's more than this mundane 3D world, right, you know there's an invisible world.
Speaker 1:So I think now, especially during eclipse season, if you haven't figured out what your story is or what your theme is, read the signs. There's communication happening. You know, someone in our coven was talking about we were doing a reading, a live reading, and she was like it's raining really hard right now and we kept getting a lot of um, like water, imagery and femininity. There's like a lot coming in that was related to water and she's like I need to share that because I feel like it's significant and then it is, and then she just realized like water's coming through a lot for her and that's that's a sign, right. So I think, like in movies and things, people think the sign is going to be like a lightning strike or something, but they could be very little.
Speaker 1:It could be like I've had this happen too and you may have as well Like I'll be at a grocery store or something and I swear that like a spirit guide or like an angel is talking through a regular person to me because they say something that's a very clear message that I needed to hear. Or is like in relation to a card I pulled or something I channeled already and it's like confirmation and just leave and I just laugh because it's like okay, like thank you for the random earth angel, you know. So yeah, that's our like a point of what we do is reading the signs, like am I saying that they're everything's a sign? No, and if you're unsure, if something was a sign, that's where you go and you either ask your cards, right, like I saw this sign, is this what it means, or was it for me? Or is it significant? And see what cards you you find, or you can ask for confirmation. Give me that sign again, or give me, show me. Some people will do this, like if I'm meant to do this job, then help me, like I will see a blue jay in the next 24 hours, or whatever. They'll actually ask their guides for a specific sign as confirmation. So signs are everywhere. Reminds me of that song um, sign, signs everywhere, sign. I won't sing, uh, because it's not that kind of show and I want you to be able to, like keep your headphones in, but anyway, look at the signs.
Speaker 1:So my journal questions for you are ready. Number one what is your eclipse theme or story? Number two what, if any, signs are coming in right now? And number three what, if anything is standing in your way of feeling balanced at this time, and that's connected with the temperance card. So you might want to take that card out if you have a deck, and put it on your altar or look at it while you journal. I think it will help. The visual always helps.
Speaker 1:Before I go, I wanted to share a couple things. In our coven, for the first time ever, I'm going to be doing a live event for everyone, whether you're in our coven or not. It's free and it'll be on and about Samhain and Halloween. So I will share more details when I have them. I'm still in the creation process, but it will be happening. And if you want to make sure that you stay updated on that, go to JennyCBellcom and join my newsletter, because that's where the invite will be.
Speaker 1:The other thing is that I will be on Granddaughter Crow's show um, pretty soon. I'm really excited actually for that, uh, because I'm trying to let me look it up. She named it um, like she named the little series we're doing. Oh yeah, as the veil fins is the name of the series, and it'll be um coming up pretty soon. Sorry, I should have had this all prepared.
Speaker 1:And the other thing is that granddaughter Crow, who's an amazing person. She will be in our coven as a special guest pretty soon. So if you're not already in our coven and you're interested in shamanism or interested in getting to know her, we will have like almost like a private live podcast. So it'll be really fun. But, yes, so her podcast I will be on is called Belief, being and Beyond and we will be talking about the veil thinning and Halloween and Samhain. She's having this whole like special series about it in October. So as it gets closer, I'll give you the specific date and I'll remind you. So that's going to be really fun. But yeah, those are some of the things we have coming up and, as always, take care and nourish and, um, I think, most importantly, stay weird.
