Boundaries and Unseen Progress: Social Media Narrowing Our View and Late Summer Herbal Harvesting

Let's take a collective honest end-of-August exhale with two cards that both point to the same truth, you are making progress even when your eyes cannot confirm it yet. I pull the Nine of Wands for boundaries and stamina, then an oracle card on synchronicities and serendipity that asks us to measure growth emotionally, spiritually, and mentally, not just by visible outcomes. If you’ve felt worn down, behind, or restless lately, this is a gentle reset with real journal prompts you can use right away. 

We also look ahead to early September astrology, including the “sticky, weird” vibe around September 1 (Mars square Saturn) and why a void-of-course Moon can make a day feel slightly off. From there, I share what’s coming up in Our Coven: our theme is Thrive, plus a private live Q&A with beloved witchy author Deborah Blake. I also shout out my upcoming Movie Coven appearance to talk Twilight, and what we’re doing on Belief Being and Beyond with community questions. 

Then we go practical and seasonal. If it’s hot, dry, and you’re craving a shift, we talk late-summer witchy prep and kitchen magic: harvesting, preserving, fire cider, four thieves vinegar, elderberry syrup, herbal tea upgrades, and smoke bundles for home cleansing. I close with some very eclipse thoughts about social media algorithms, why posting can feel like throwing your best energy away, and how niche feeds can quietly shrink our shared reality. 

If you enjoy tarot, oracle cards, seasonal living, and thoughtful conversations about modern witchcraft and community, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more witches can find me. What sign or synchronicity have you noticed lately?

Transcript

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Welcome To Cozy Coven Chat

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hey, witches, welcome to another Cozy Coven Chat. I am your host, Jenny C. Bell, and this is for the week of August 30th, going into September. So August 30th, 31st, and then Tuesday is September. And I promised I'd be back with weekly podcasts. Thank you to everyone who listened to the monthly ones. Um, it was just nice to kind of do those longer podcasts, but I think people really enjoy the weekly. But let me know what resonates with you. We are starting September, which I'm gonna focus on in a moment.

Tarot And Oracle For The Week

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Um, let's start with our cards. So I picked um they're two different decks, but they're both from Sunny Graves. Hopefully I'm saying her name right. She has the Happy Halloween Tarot and the Morbid Mirror Oracle, and I've been using these two together um since I got the Morbid Mirror Oracle, which was like my number one, like most anticipated. And the reason why is because obviously I love Halloween and skeletons and stuff, but her artwork is so beautiful. She has a website and an Etsy shop, and I want to order a print for my Halloween wall that stays up all year. Um they're just beautiful cards, but then even though they're quote creepy or spooky in theme, the messages are so uplifting. And with both cards, you get different, you get journal questions, and that's what I've been enjoying. So I pull two tarot a day, it's an energy that's leaving, energy that's coming in, and then I pull an oracle for what else I need to know. And these have gone so well together. So for this week, I pulled the nine of wands, and it's like a little uh jack-o'-lantern, a moon in the sky, and nine brooms on stairs, and they're all different, like the way they're shaped. And her questions for that card are what boundaries must you establish to protect your energy through difficult moments? How strong is your willpower? How is your willpower being tested? So it's she says, with the stars as your guide, you will soon reach the moon. You're not there yet, but look how far you've come. There's no turning back, destiny's reached one step at a time, and that's totally the image because the brooms are going up the stairs to the Jack-Lanor moon, and they're all laying down, like they're all laying horizontal, but it's like broom to handle, alternating. And so, you know, it's been a long year already. August was really hard for a lot of people for lots of reasons. Um, celebrity deaths and uh eclipses and heat waves and just so much, just so much going on in August. And so take a moment at the end of August, you know, today and tomorrow, and reflect on like where you have come from and where you're going, and take some time to like rest, you know. Let me take a sip. I have a cough. Um take a moment to reflect and to rest and to think about different things. I I just wrote um some different articles on the Sabbaths, on the eight Sabbaths. And when thinking about Lamas Lunasa, which was August 1st, I think of it like I think of in bulk. These cross-quarter days are kind of like choose your own adventure. Are you leaning more into at Lamas? Are you leaning more into going into fall, winding things down, going into gratitude, letting things go, or are you doing like a last push of summer energy to get things done? And I don't know about you, but I definitely wanted to do the winding down, but didn't. Like the eclipse. Um, so the eclipse, the where that is in my astrology, has really been having me think about things, career, community, what that means, how I create, how I contribute, how I spend my time. And then on top of that, Mars isn't cancer, am I cancer rising? It's causing so much inflammation in my body, like not just in my chart. So August, physically, I didn't feel well. Mentally, emotionally, I'd have ups and downs, but then I'd have like big things, big clarity come in, same spiritually. And then I wanted to get some things done. I had some, I had a manuscript due and some other things due, but I also didn't want to get things done. So it was a push. It was a push. So I don't know how August was for you, but I'm gonna use that card, the nine of wands, as like, okay, let's look back at the year so far and give gratitude. Because I kind of want to start winding down. And then the morbid miracle card is synchronicities and serendipity, and it's three skulls surrounding a triscle. It says, do not judge the progress you're making with your physical senses alone. Okay, wow. So both of these cards are about progress, right? So we have the wands going up to the moon. Like you're you may not feel like you're making progress on whatever it is you're thinking about, but you are. And then this card is telling you don't judge the progress you're making with your physical senses. Think about it emotionally, spiritually, mentally. And then the questions for that card are do I believe in the first or second mode of the universe? When have I experienced a synchronicity or a hard-to-ignore sign? What types of signs do I take notice of? Could I use a sign right now? And I love that. It reminds me of that part in the first Practical Magic movie where the ant is like, there's a little witch in all of us. After all, they're all sharing like stories of intuition. Um yeah, so this is a week to take stock of your progress. You've made progress, you just may not physically sense it or see it, but it's there. So it's like a meditation. It's an invitation, I think, to meditate. When is it not,

Early September Astrology Weather

SPEAKER_00 6:46

right? Um, as far as astrology for September, we really don't have anything going on this week, and we can talk about things next week. Um, we do have, it's always interesting when the moon is void of course, which is on Wednesday, September 2nd. We haven't really talked about that before, but some people just don't like to do things that day, like start things or release things. It's like the energy's a little off. From what I understand, September 1st, um, Mars is gonna square Saturn and it's gonna be very sticky and weird. All the astrology I'm seeing is like it's gonna be an extremely weird day. So just it's like the first day of school for my kids, too, which like come on. That's just gonna be a day where it's like it feels weird. And that could, you know, it's only that one day, but I have a feeling it's you know, a lot of astrologers are talking about it, so it might really um affect us more than the day. So September 1st, try to lay low if you can.

Thrive Theme And Coven Announcements

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Um, I started a newsletter and I'm hoping to stick with it. I've not done newsletters before because I don't I'm not organized. I don't like to be like this is what's happening this month because I don't always know. And so these are gonna be reflective. I'm gonna talk more about the month. So I'm gonna be talking about August, um, just reflecting on August, and then I'll do the same hopefully each month. So more reflective, which is better for me. Um, in our coven, our theme is thrive, which is kind of perfect for these cards I pulled. I did a card reading in there too. I used like half of my Halloween decks. I have a lot of Halloween card decks, and so I was like, I'm gonna use like half for this one, and then the other ones in October. But our theme is Thrive. And so originally all the members suggested themes, and I thought Thrive. I'm like, okay, spring, summer, but then I was like, no, you know what? Fall, because we're the season of the witch at this time, you know, like fall is when we can be our witchiest, is when all of my witchy and Halloween clothes just seem seasonal and not weird, right? So I think um Thrive is perfect. So we'll explore that theme. I'm super excited. On September 15th, we have a live QA with Deborah Blake. Like, what? I don't know how this happened to me. Um, how somehow Deborah Blake was like, I like you. And I don't mind being in your coven. Like, what? Pinch me. Um, if you don't know who she is, look her up. Uh I just feel like every witch I know has like at least one of her books or card decks. She's amazing. We read Everyday Witches, which and let me, I can't think of the title. Everyday Witches Guide, Year in a Day, or something like that. She has a few day books, and we read one of them together in our coven. It's just so uplifting to read from her every day. She's a real deal too. Like, who you see online is who she is. Like, she's just really grounded. She's a fellow Taurus, uh, a cat lover, a gardener, and an author. And her books are amazing. Her latest one on deities is really well done. She told us she had to do a lot of research for that, which she didn't love, but it's a great book. And so, yeah, she's gonna be in there for an author QA. So she's like, Yeah, just they can ask me whatever. I'm like, oh my gosh, pinch us, right? And it's private. So if you're not in there, you're gonna want to join, I think, for that. Um, you know, go to jenystebell.com and join our coven, at least for that. That's gonna be so fun. Um, and then I will be on movie coven, which is movie coven, uh, this Wednesday to talk about Twilight, September 2nd. So if you're a fan of the show already, you may know Courtney. Everybody gets a movie pick, and Courtney picked Twilight. And um I happened to be there when it was announced, and I got really excited. And then uh they were like, you need to be on there for that one because she's gonna need some help defending it, I think. But if you haven't watched the show, it's just fun. It's Patty Negri, Jason Mankey, Heather Green, Richard Lale, um, and Courtney Buckley, and sometimes Scarlett Amara, sometimes other people, and I'm a substitute, so I'm not on there all the time. I get to go on there when someone needs a fill-in, and it's always a good time. Like there's laughter, there's tears, there's good stories. Um, so I just think it's a blast. And that's a Wednesdays, 6 p.m. Pacific time on YouTube. And there's like a live chat, and we all are watching the chat the whole time we're in there, so that's really fun. And then I'm on Belief Being and Beyond. Let me get another drink.

Herbal Tea Syrups And Show Updates

SPEAKER_00 11:32

I've been making um simple syrups, which is just equal parts sugar and water. You boil it until the sugar dissolves, and then I turn off the heat and I throw in a handful of herbs. So this one is strawberry mint, because I'm growing strawberry mint. I've done rosemary, I've done just regular mint, peppermint, um. Sometimes I do a fruit, but that's more less likely. Anyway, and then I just make like a cup of it, one cup sugar, one cup water, let it cool, put it in the fridge, and I put it in my tea. Because my tea that I drink every afternoon is hibiscus, nettle, and um raspberry leaf, and sometimes other things. I have some mugwort in here today, and so it's not really like yummy, it's very sour, sometimes bitter, depending on if I put like dandelion root in there. So I've been adding syrup, which has been really nice. So I've been I'm drinking that right now. I've had like a dry cough for days. This, I don't know what it is. I think it's the Mars being in Cancer. I don't know if it's eclipse season. Um, I'm recording this on Thursday, so the eclipse uh has not happened. Yeah. Yeah, the lunar eclipse is tomorrow, according to today. So yeah, so it's but we're in the energy. It's been intense. So anyway, I've had this cough, and so I have the tea with me. But I was saying I'm on Belief Being and Beyond with Granddaughter Crow most of the time. Sometimes she does interviews without me. Um, sometimes it's just the two of us. We've been releasing on Wednesdays shorter episodes where it's an actual question from our coven community. Like I asked them for questions that they wanted us to answer, and then we just do our best to answer them. So we've done one on channeling and one on guides. And so those are coming out on Wednesday, they're short, you can catch up on them, and then um Saturday the main things come out, and we sometimes do like a roundtable dialogue with several people, and then other times um it's just like we are just talking to a creator, so it's always a fun time. That's on Granddaughter Crow's YouTube channel, but she usually collaborates with me, so you should be able to find it on my YouTube channel too. Just it's just good. It's just good, it's good to be part of a community, like interview these people, get to know them, and especially when you're I'm a fan of the book or their card deck or whatever, it's just really, really nice to do. Um yeah, so that's this week, and I want to talk about seasonally.

Late Summer Harvest Witchy Prep

SPEAKER_00 14:18

I feel like so many people are just having a really hot um time of year. If you're not wonderful, so many people I talk to just start like in heat waves. We've been, it has been so hot and so dry here. It's like when we walk, it's like the ground is like dust. Do you know what I mean? Um, I'm on the west coast, Pacific Northwest, and I just really desperately want rain. Please really want rain. So it's just very hot, very dry. Um, so as far as seasonal things to do, you're probably, if you have a garden, probably harvesting, freezing, canning, pickling, right, fermenting. Um, if you haven't started your four thieves vinegar or your apple cider, um, not apple cider, uh, four thieves vinegar or fire cider, you should probably do that. I started mine already. Um, and I have recipes in our coven and I think I have them on my social media too. They're really easy to do. And I'm also gonna be doing an elderberry syrup. So I've harvested the ones from my yard, but the ones in the mountains that we forage, they're not ready yet. So basically I've just been harvesting mine and freezing them and waiting until I get the foraging ones, and then I'll combine them all to make that. I did grow a lot of whore hound this year, and so I'm gonna look into whore hound um cough drops because I have this little cough. Um, the other thing that's great for a cough is cherry bark and sage. And like in a tea, but not together. You can do either one, just like a simple, like just some cherry bark in a tea with maybe a clove to numb your throat, or sage in a tea with some honey. Uh, very soothing, they really do help coughs. So I'm kind of getting started on those. I've already done some dried smoke bundles with my molin, rosemary, lavender, and yarrow is what I added this year. And those are not, those are just great. They lasted me all year. I use, I like created them at the end of summer last year and then gave some away around Christmas time to friends, but then I've been using them as well as like my way of blessing and cleansing the house, and it's been really kind of great. So have that going on. Um yeah, it's been it's been busy. My daughter is learning to drive, my son is now a middle schooler, and it's a different

Parenting Transitions Worth Marking

SPEAKER_00 17:17

stage of parenting. And I think, you know, we don't do a lot of um rites of passages or ritualization anymore in our culture, and it's really sad and lacking, but it's important to like hold space and honor these transitions for kids, but also for you as a parent, you know, as you're if you have children as they grow, as they age, as you enter a different stage of parenting, it's important to remember that and mark that in some way for yourself through journaling or whatever, but taking notice that time is passing, that things are changing, and allowing yourself to lean into that, right? To process that to decide what that means for you. What does it look like to be a mom of a middle schooler and a driver, right? How is that different than a mom of two little kids? Very different, right? Very different. And how do we maintain relationships and how do we nourish ourselves? It's just like so much on that, really. Um so I've been thinking about that and then I've been thinking a lot about it's like not fully baked yet because like I

Social Media Feels Like Trash

SPEAKER_00 18:27

said, the eclipse is tomorrow, but the eclipse has really brought up a lot about social media for me because as you know, like I have a decent following on TikTok. I'm not a megastar, right? But it's like I think I forty-four thousand on there, and then Instagram is over a thousand and YouTube's over a thousand, so small, small following compared to some of my peers. And yet I spend a lot of time creating things on there. So I kind of had this epiphany the other day, and I'm gonna I think I'm gonna write about it on Substack. There's a couple things. One, the first one was that whatever we put on social media is just kind of like throwing things away because it may or may not get seen and then it gets buried. And so, yes, like the internet never goes away and everything you do on the internet remains, but in the end, really, social media is just like trash. It's like you're throwing stuff away. You're not gonna put your best and brightest idea on there. And so that's kind of I've been thinking about that actually a lot. And how much time I have spent and energy on social media pat posts in the past, and like it's really just like throwing away my energy and time, all right? So that's one thing. Now our coven's not like that, and that's why I created our coven is because it doesn't get thrown away. Like people, there's a cu there's community there, and I guess that's what I mean. So, like, I can't get anybody to comment or like anything on Substack, and then people will like things on Instagram, but they don't really comment and make you know community, and then on TikTok I get comments that are not always nice, and so it's like we create, we put things out there to build community, right? There's like a couple of reasons why people post on social media, I think. One is to build community or connect, and for the most part, that's not really happening, only on our coven. Or it's for validation, right? Like everybody likes this or loves this idea outside validation, which is not really why I do it anymore. That's why I I think I started out doing things, but I was really now I feel like I'm just doing it to like because I feel like I have to. It doesn't come from a place of like I think I'm gonna make community. It doesn't come from a place of wanting validation. It's like I feel like I should. Like I should put this out there. Otherwise, how are people gonna find me? That's kind of where I'm at. Like, how will people find my book or my podcast or our coven if I don't share about it? And I don't know, maybe there's another solution. So it's one thing I've been thinking about. Like I said, these are not fully baked ideas, so that's one. The other thing I've been thinking about is how weird the algorithms have gotten. They've gotten so niche and so specific that people are not really seeing things that are outside of what they want to see. And so, like for instance, in the past, you would put on the radio or you do like the scanning part of the radio, find a radio station, and you it'd be like songs that you probably will like, right? So I listened to like a classic rock station and I had an alternative station. And so it's like, okay, they'll probably play things I like or things I might learn to like, right? But now with like Spotify and Apple Music, I'm in charge of everything I hear. And I don't have, I mean, obviously there's playlists and whatever, but I could just never do that and just only listen to things I know and like and never really be challenged uh or grow in any way, or listen to things I don't love just because I want to get to the next song. So that's one thing. I was thinking the same thing's true about television, right? We used to flip through the channels or get the TV guide, and you gotta be there as Sunday at nine o'clock for X Files, otherwise you miss it, unless you could do a VCR, blah, blah, blah. Now, and you had to wait every week, right? You had to wait each week for the show to release. They'd go on summer hiatus, all this. Now you can just sit and binge the show that you like in a couple days. And there's no like waiting, there's no thinking about it, there's no community because you're not watching it with everybody else at the same time. And then the other thing I was thinking about was with reading, you most people would either go to the bookstore, the library, or you get a magazine, and you would just kind of like wander, or it'd be word of mouth for a book, right? You'd be like, Oh, your friend had read it, and they're like, It's good, you should read it. That's how I read Dune, right? My friend Jeff's like, these are the best books in the world, like you should read them. It's like, okay. I would have never picked out Dune, I think, on my own. Did love the series. Um, first four, anyway. And then now it's like, I like this book, and then if you buy on Amazon or whatever, it's just like, okay, you like that book? You probably like these other ten books just like it. Even Libby does that, right? Recommends books that is like you've been reading. I don't think that's better. And then with algorithms, now they're getting so specific that you're only seeing like people's content. It's just like, like, for instance, I was on Substack trying not to do scroll on TikTok anymore. Pretty much broke that habit. So I've been on Substack more. But like I'll look at a picture of like a cat, and then my whole Substack is just cats, which I love cats, but I'm not getting variety, and so I don't think this is good. I just think it's not good for us. I think we're not getting the whole picture, we're not as resilient. People are more divisive and meaner online because it's like, oh, you don't 100% agree with me. You're not an exact mirror image of me. I hate you. And that's not reality. Like, I don't agree with any of my friends all the time, right? Like they're my friends because we have common interests, or we like, you know, we our kids are the same age, and we've just come to like get together, but we don't think exactly the same. We don't like the same things, we don't dress the same, we don't have the same algorithms, but that's what makes us good friends. So I don't know, I've just been reflecting on this. I've been thinking about choice, right? Like, and it's just just getting weird to me. It's just like so everything's so niche, so specific. Everyone's kind of an island on their own. Like everybody's seeing a different reality, and we always have, right? You view the world in your own lens, but your our realities are becoming so narrow, and it's like this is my reality. This is all I see, listen to, read, watch. And there's no community, there's no, like, hey, we're all gonna go. We all saw this happen on the news, or we all like know that's on because it's if it's on all the radio stations. So I don't know, I don't have a solution. I have a lot of questions, and like I myself, like the way I've used social media has been different. Like TikTok, I just put things on there with shopping carts for the most part because I'm not getting any engagement like I used to ever since it got bought. Witch talk doesn't seem to really work for me, and so I just kind of gave up and I'm like, I'm happy to just talk about books or clothes that I like. Um, they give me the free product, I'm happy to talk about it. And you know, full transparency, that's what I'm doing there. With Instagram, I'm like trying to use it as a place to share what I'm doing everywhere else because I feel like it's it's almost become like a bulletin board. I think of Instagram, I think of TikTok as a like a mall, because almost everybody's I mean everybody's selling you stuff anywhere on social media, but like TikTok specific specifically because of the shop, it really feels like a mall, right? So you're in the mall and I'm showing you some cool books and Halloween clothes. I think of Instagram as a bulletin board and we're all just sharing our flyers, and like it's like constantly your flyers getting tacked over, right? So it's like you have to go back and like put a new flyer because someone put 10 flyers on top of yours. So that's that. And then I really want Substack to work for me, and I want to enjoy Substack, but I just don't understand it yet. Like I don't get it because there's no hashtags, but there's certainly an algorithm, but I don't get how it all works. And yeah, I don't like love it. I want to love it, but I don't love it, and then yeah, it's just like it's all weird, it's all weird, and then YouTube is cool for longer format. I definitely have my favorite YouTubers that I charmed intuition, tarot, favorite. Um and then podcasts, those are long form, those are fun, but again, it's like it all gets recommended. So niche, so niche. So yeah, those are my existential eclipse thoughts. What are yours? Um, please share with me. I'd love to know what other people are thinking, what has come up for you, and I hope this week is great. I hope it's really positive for everybody, um, because we need it. So, some journal

Journal Prompts And Closing Blessing

SPEAKER_00 28:11

questions besides the ones I shared for the cards, but it seems like the whole thing is about progress. So I think this week to journal about is compared to January, what is some progress you see in your own life? And then you maybe want to compare it to September of last year. And then what gratitude can you give for pro progress? And how does it feel to do that in your body? And then the other thing is I want you to take a look at the social medias that you consume and decide what they are for you. So I just told you I think one is a mall, one is a bulletin board, one is a confusing newsstand of sorts. How do you see them? Because I think it's really important to see them and separate yourselves from them and not just be part of them and plugged into them. So yeah. I'll talk to you next week. Blessed to be.