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
3 of Cups, Shadow Work & Ancestors
If you’ve been living like a hermit since eclipse season, consider this your soft nudge back into the village. We draw the Three of Cups and unpack what it means to step out of the cave—planning a coffee, catching a harvest fair, or simply FaceTiming a friend—so your energy can circulate again. From there, we shift into the heart of October: shadow work, ancestor tending, and a simple, no-fuss approach to everyday magic that actually fits into a busy life.
We explore a grounded path to shadow work using Jungian ideas, tarot as a mirror, and 10-minute journaling sprints that lower the stakes while raising your self-honesty. You’ll hear a practical philosophy—every stone protects, every herb cleanses—that cuts through overwhelm and replaces it with relationship and intention. Then we walk step-by-step through an ancestor candle ritual you can set up in minutes, with inclusive language for complex lineages and a focus on kindness, consent, and clear boundaries. Along the way, we preview coven events, including a conversation on shamanism with Granddaughter Crow and a New Moon YouTube premiere designed to let us facilitate and chat live at the same time.
By the end, you’ll have a handful of tools you can use tonight: a journal prompt to surface what’s rising, a simple altar practice for autumn, and a gratitude-and-release habit that trains your attention toward what’s safe, true, and timely. The season invites connection and clarity—community outside, integration inside. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs gentle encouragement, and leave a review to help more witches find their way to this cozy corner.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel at Healing with Jenny and join the Witch’s New Year portal premiere on October 21 at 5 p.m. Pacific
https://www.youtube.com/@healingwithJenny
Connect with me here: https://www.jennycbell.com/
Hey witches, and welcome to another Cozy Cub and Chat. I'm your host, Jenny C. Bell, and we are looking at and talking about the week of October 12th. And I just want to say that if you're finding these podcasts later and you're listening to them, you know, there's good information. I do try to keep the podcast a little bit seasonal and I do pull tarot cards, but you know, time is an illusion. Everything's multidimensional. You find it when you find it. So don't get hung up on that. If you're like, oh, you know, I just found the show and I like to listen to past episodes, do it. Like, totally, there's maybe little wisdoms in there for you. And everything finds us at the right time, you know. I think about that a lot. Um having taken such a journey to become a published author, you know, it was lots of lefts and rights and detours and full stops and do-overs and redo's. And when it came out, it came out perfect timing, I think, because we're on divine timing. Like I really do believe that we can manifest in this and that, but the timing isn't up to us. So just want to say time is an illusion. So whenever you listen, it's fine. Um, I do want to chat a little bit. Uh, the whole month of October, I'm sharing little spells or rituals you can do. So last uh week I shared about um a scrying and what scrying is and how to create a scrying mirror from a silver raven wolf book. And then someone also messaged the show saying that they met her and uh had several books signed from her. And growing up, and when I did and becoming a witch in the 90s, like she was like huge jails. Like her and Scott Cunningham, everybody read them. I need a little water. Like everybody was reading them, and everybody was swapping their books, and we all were talking about them, and they were like the go-to authors for a lot of us. So I just want to say thanks for messaging the show, and thank you for sharing that. That's really, really cool. Um, her name is quite the mouthful though. Like, I always feel like I have to really say Silver Raven Wolf very slowly. So today I will be pulling a card. Um, we'll do that in a moment, and I'll be talking, I'll share another little ritual I found from a different book. Um, we'll have journal questions at the end, and gonna talk a little bit about upcoming events and yeah, pretty much talking about what kind of what we're talking about in our coven too, and I want to talk a little bit about a personal philosophy that I just wrote about in Substack. So let's find the energy for the week. So, what I do is I prior to the show open up sacred space. I would do this when I interview people too. And, you know, acknowledge the land and all of those things. And then I ask to be guided for the listeners of this podcast. So I'm not reading for the entire collective, I'm only reading for the people who are listening. And so it's you know more like a narrow down. So if you ever do this, if you ever read for a group, read don't want you don't necessarily have to read for the entire collective. Instead, read for who you know will be listening or watching or who's with you. Okay, we have Three of Cups. One of my favorite cards because it's just like women partying in a lot of decks, right? Like I'm using um the Modern Witch. That's the one I've been using for the show. I love the Modern Witch tarot. I love the illustration, I like that it's like Pamela Coleman Smith style, but more women focused. But yeah, this one is just like obviously like women at a festival of some kind, just partying it up, wearing like festival clothes. And so Three of Cups, whenever that comes into my own personal readings, I know that I've been too much of an introvert, and it's time to for me to get together and get out of my head and get with friends and do something. So I always look at this card as it's time to socialize, it's time to collaborate, it's time to get together a family or friends or loved ones. And maybe that's not gonna happen this week, but maybe you make the plans. Like right now, you probably in your area have something seasonal going on. Uh, we just went recently to this harvest festival that I didn't, we'd never gone. It's in our area, and it was its 54th year, and I was like, hey, let's just go, and it was such a good time. Like, I got fry bread, which is one of my favorite um things in the world, really. And then we got a pie, we got ice cream, um, we heard good music. It was just nice to see people happy about tiny pumpkins, like it was just such a harvest vibe. It really felt like my hope was that it'd be like the harvest festival in Hocus Pocus 2. And it kind of was like, and it was like that vibe. And I was totally like the mayor when he's obsessed with the caramel apple when I saw that there was a fry bread truck and I saw the sign, like literally grab my daughter and I was like, oh my gosh, there's fry bread, let's go. And I had to wait 15 minutes for my fry bread, and it was totally worth it. I got cinnamon sugar. So, what I'm saying, long story short, is do something. So, even if it's just FaceTiming a friend or finally calling back a friend, this is a week where we're being instructed or guided as a group to make some social connections. I have some mom friends here that I will be like, hey, let's meet, you know, just something. A walk in the park with a friend, coffee with a friend. It's just you're we're being drawn out of our caves. I don't know, maybe that's just me. The eclipse season had me very within, I would say most of September, I was very within myself. And I did go to coffee with a friend at one point. Well, I got tea. Well, we both got tea actually. I got a um chai and she got a matcha, but we like that was really the only time that I got out during that eclipse season. And she's into astrology, so she wanted to chat about that anyway. And so we could be really raw with one another. But yeah, I just wasn't, you know, you get through, I think we all cycle all the time through different things, spiritual things, and it's like we're constantly shadows rise, we alchemize them, and you know, we just kind of go through these cycles, and a lot of times when those shadows are coming to the surface, we're very like vulnerable and touchy, and we can be like not want to be around people. It's like wounded animal, you know, just kind of like want to go into our little cave, our little hidey hole, and not come out. And so I think I recently came out of that, and so I love this. I'm gonna use this as an excuse to try to do something, but we will be doing something social in our coven, so I might as well go over little dates. So on October 14th, we have Granddaughter Crow, our first guest. I'm hoping to bring more authors and creators into the coven to just chat with us. So this is a conversation on shamanism, and we have a little section where people in our coven can put questions in ahead of time, and it'll be like a little interview of sorts. Um, just really fun. I love that she was open to it. She's been such a big help uh for me starting a podcast and also becoming a first-time author. She's been a real guiding light for me, and so I was grateful that she'd be in there. Another thing that's coming up on October 21st is I decided to do the Witch's New Year portal um activation and ritual and video, all of that as a YouTube premiere. And so what that means is I can record it ahead of time without interruption, and then I can be live to chat with people because I'm only one person. This is the one team person. I have no one here, no assistant, no Igor to help me. And so I wanted to be able to do a live, but also chat with people, and was like, okay, I don't know how to do that. So then this premiere is the best way to do it. So it's going to premiere at 5 p.m. My time, Pacific Time, um, uh at my YouTube channel, which is at Healing with Jenny, and that's on October 21st. So you can just make sure you're subscribed to my YouTube channel. And we're going to, it's a new moon that day, and we're going to, I'm going to open sacred space. I'm going to lead everyone through a meditation, a little ritual, and then we'll talk a little bit about Sawin. So I think it'll be really, really fun. And I would love for people to be at the live premiere so that I can answer questions. So that's kind of what's going on in there. Another thing that's been going on is we've been talking a lot about shadow work in our coven and just like tools we use and what shadow work is. So we've been sharing like favorite podcasts on it, and card spreads, and cards we use, and books we've read, and journals. And I have a reading for shadow work on my Etsy, where I look at shadows are arising, and then there's some journal questions, and it's basically like a guidepost. Because what a shadow is, is it comes from Carl Jung, who was one of the founding people of modern psychology and psychiatry. Psyche, psyche, why did I, I don't know, psychology. Um, believe it or not, I studied psychology. I took several classes in college, and um, you don't really talk about young that much because modern psychologists don't really use a lot of young and Freud things because they're kind of spiritual. You know, Young was into astrology, there was a spiritual aspect he would talk about, and then Freud, you know, it's just good, it was a good start, but it wasn't everything. And Freud was very interested in dreams and things like that. And psychology really is a science, and they really try as professionals to separate themselves from a lot of that kind of what we know as the collective conscious and the unconsciousness and all of that. So Young had theorized that the parts of us that we are ashamed of or feel guilt towards are embarrassed of, or the mistakes we've made, or the parts of ourselves where we were shamed as children, like you know, could be creative parts of yourself that were like, why you're never gonna be an artist? Artists just starve, like give up your art. Any of that gets put into the shadow. So it's like we it's the things that we deny. It's a part of ourselves that get lost through shaming and learning and trying to please others. And so shadow work is uh allowing whatever those things are, those feelings, stories, thoughts, to arise, to come up and to not be ashamed of them, to really work at acknowledging them and then eventually transmuting them or alchemizing them. Meaning that you let the shadow present itself, you acknowledge it, and you try to just let it be a part of you without judging yourself. And so interesting because you know, it's like, yes, we have one mind, but do we really like we have this ego part of ourselves that is like an overprotective parent that's often telling us things to keep us safe, but are not really helpful a lot of the times. And then we have the shadow element that is like more, I would say, almost instinctual things that we let go. We have that reptilian part of ourselves that's very instinctual. And then we have like the higher soul self. And in the end, as like someone who's on a spiritual evolution journey, my goal is to try to become more and more of that higher self. And we can only do that by doing the work. So shadow work is a lot, I think the easiest thing to do or the most beneficial is to just journal. Just, you know, what what is coming up for me right now? What shadows are rising, and just kind of like letting yourself write unedited for a certain amount of time. So you can set a timer for like 10 minutes and be like, what shadows are rising, and then just write. It may be doodles, it may be nonsense, but there also may be information in there. And I think journaling and meditation are really hard for a lot of people because they invite us to be still and quiet and listen. And some people don't want to hear what their own selves have to say. So yeah, the shadow is overall when we do shadow work, we're becoming more comfortable in our own selves, more in our bodies, more authentic in who we are, learning to speak our truth and becoming more of our highest self. And so, yeah, that's what we've been talking about in our coven. People have been sharing tips and tricks and tools, and it's just like an it's a always, it's a cycle. And the first time I really worked on shadow work was through the tarot, which I don't have a book anymore, and I swear it was a fever dream because I cannot find the book that I used anywhere, and so I kind of only remember part of it, but it was this you use the shot the tarot, and it was like rituals with the tarot to find your shadow. I was like 20, and it was powerful. And then ever since then, I've done different journals, done meditations, but mainly it's been the tarot is really good for helping you discover your shadow, especially one that's based off of the writer Wait Smith, and you really can like let things rise for yourself. So, yeah, simple thing. Ask, you know, what shadows are rising, pull some cards and journal. That's a good way to start it. Um, I did want to talk a little bit about um I'm now in Substack, and my name is Jenny C Bell, and I just put out my first kind of put out a few little writing pieces, but this one is why I decided to call my blog aspect or my substack um stone and herb. It's because of my personal philosophy, which is that every stone is protective and every herb is cleansing. So take that in for a second. You know, we we are here on this podcast, like living a witch's journey, but also trying to live well live a simple, slowed-down life. And so much of magic and witchcraft can come across really complicated and confusing to people. But I have found these to be true that every stone is protective. Yes, there are some that people use specifically for protection, like black tourmaline, and every herb is cleansing. And yes, people use like sage as a very cleansing herb, but in my opinion, every dried herb will cleanse. And in my opinion, every stone will help protect you. You just have to connect with those things, and how you do that is you hold the herb or the stone in your hand. You I like to breathe onto them, like take a deep breath and breathe my breath onto them, wake them up, and then I like to talk to them. Thank you to Mugwart for waking up and cleansing my space today. Thank you to Lavradorite for waking up and protecting me. And they have other attributes, of course, but I think this is just a simple kind of philosophy and way to do magic. Every stone is protective, every herb is cleansing. And then I wanted to, I shared last time about sprawling, so I have another thing I want to share with you. This one comes from a book called Magic for All Seasons: A Grimoire for the Wheel of the Year by Marla Brooks, which is a really cute and nice guide to the Wheel of the Year. And this is about creating an ancestor candle. And if you grab the book, it's on page 33. We all have the power to communicate with our ancestors and we should. After all, we carry their physical and spiritual DNA, which is woven into the fabric of who we are. You can strengthen your connection to them by creating a candle in their honor. You can burn the candle on special dates like the birthdays or anniversaries or on Sawan. You will need one large white votive, pillar candle, or a battery LED candle. Frankincense, myrrh, lavender, or sandalwood incense, a pen with blue ink, a piece of paper, ideally parchment paper, optional photographs or something that represents ancestors. Write the names of the ancestors you wish to honor on the parchment, but I'll also add an all others who have gone before at the end as not to leave anyone out. And I really like that because maybe you are adopted, or maybe there's big gaps in family history. I like doing that. I don't didn't know my father and his side, and so I always just say, like, all the ancestors who wish to work with me or wish to come through. And some people will ask, like, you know, what if my ancestors don't approve of the witchcraft, or what if my ancestors were not nice people? Is my personal belief that when people cross over, they become different. The ego, the shadow, all of that falls away, and they become their soul self and they realize lessons learned and they become a better version of themselves. Anyway, set the candle on top of the paper, and if you have photos, put them around the candle, light the incense, and recite this prayer. As the veil between our worlds has thinned, I call upon those who have come before, those I have known and those who have gone long gone. Your blood runs through my veins, your spirit fills my heart, and you will always live forever in my soul. You will live within me and will never be forgotten. With this light I honor your memory, somot it be. And so we are still in the energy of autumn, moving towards Sawin. And so, you know, this is the energy of connecting with loved ones past, letting things go, letting shadows rise. It's the energy of letting things fall away. It is the energy of being grateful for the things you harvested or the things that happened this year. You know, it's really a mix of gratitude and letting go. That's at the heart of autumn energy. And so I'd leave you with a few little journal questions. So, one, where can you invite ancestor practice into your daily life or day-to-day or ritual? So, if you want to work with ancestors, how could you do so? What is one fun or social event you can do? Maybe you can look for a class to take, or you can look for like a free little get-together, meetup sometimes has good things. What shadows are rising? And what are you grateful for? I personally started a gratitude journal when October started, and it's really helping me have clarity and be in a positive state. Um, our brains are wired to find the negative, and so when you keep a gratitude journal, that especially one that you do at night, it starts to retrain the brain throughout the day to look for the good. So that's another really great journaling exercise to do right now. Um, may you have a wonderful week and I hope you do something fun. Blessed be.
