🐞 Insects and their magical associations 🐞
Let's be clear. I'm obviously *not* advocating to use them in your spells, rituals and concoctions. Even tiny, these are living beings that deserve respect and care! But if you spot one in your path and are looking for a specific message, here's what it could mean...
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🐞 Bee - love, luck, community, communication, family, messages.
🐞 Spider - conjuration, creation, creativity, destiny, femininity, illusion, inspiration, mysticism.
🐞 Ladybug - happiness, luck, dreams, wishes.
🐞 Cricket - abundance, instinct, intelligence, resourcefulness, transformation.
🐞 Snail - chance, determination, divination, meditation, birth, peace.
🐞 Ant - discipline, energy, strength, industry, organisation, patience, power, work, team work.
🐞 Wasp - warning, strength, independence, curse, attack.
🐞 Dragonfly - air, acceleration, speed, change, learning, energy, wisdom.
🐞 Firefly - love, communication with spirits, fire, illumination, freedom, moon.
🐞 Praying Mentis - beginnings, direction, navigation, peace.
🐞 Fly - travels, flights.
🐞 Butterfly - beauty, change, transformation, balance, grace, youth, death and rebirth, transition.
🐞 Moth - happiness, moon, night, passion, truth.
🐞 Grasshopper - air, freedom.
🐞 Beetle - creativity, immortality, rebirth.
🐞 Earthworm - growth, fertility, underworld, life.
⟡ hi, i'm pauline. french, cottage witch, thirty-something, living in the countryside with my partner and a garden that keeps me humble.
⟡ this blog is my little corner of the internet: i started it more than five years ago to document my spiritual practice. it's basically my grimoire shared with the rest of the world, intermixed with quotes that help and inspire me.
⟡ next to this, i'm also a writer working on my first novel, and i document a lot of that journey on my other channels.
⟡ if you're new here, welcome. if you've been here a while through my witchcraft content: hello again, i'm so glad you're still around.
⟡ you can also find me here: ╰ TikTok: @storiesofpauline books and literature ╰ Substack: stories of pauline personal essays on quiet living and books
Beautiful quote from A Psalm for the Wild-Built, a book that entirely changed my perspective this year...
⁀➷ Wrote about it on my Substack if you're interested, give it a read!
📚 Books, books, books 📚
Some of the books on witchcraft that I'd recommend to anyone getting started on the practice:
🌿 For the garden witches: Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs by Scott Cunningham All about magical herbalism - in this book you'll find the magical properties and folklore of about 400 herbs.
🔮 For the spell-casters: Spellcrafting by Arin Murphy-Hiscock A step-by-step guide to writing your own spells and timing them for the best effect
🧐 For the witches interested in history: Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler A sociological study of contemporary Paganism in the United States, discussing the history and various forms of the movement.
🧹 For the beginner witches: The Crooked Path by Kelden A good all-around book with valuable information regarding the tools, rituals, and spells of witchcraft. Great beginner guide.
Summer 2026 Witch Guide
📅 Important dates
New moons: July 14th and August 12th
Full moons: July 29th and August 28th
Festival: Lughnasadh (also called Lammas) on August 1st
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🌞 Associations
Element: water
Zodiac: Cancer and Leo
Deities: the Oak king, Demeter, Sól/Sunna, Lugh
Herbs: mugwort, basil, vervain, chamomile, sunflower, mint, rosemary, calendula, marigold
Animals: lion, horse, eagle, roosters, snakes, bees, butterflies
Colours: yellow, orange and red
Food: corn, bread, mead, edible flowers, berries, grains, honey
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🎨 Activities
- Sunrise or sunset ritual: days are long in summer, so marking the actual sunrise/sunset is a classic and very direct way to honour the season.
- Bonfires: fire is central to Midsummer and Lammas folklore, jumping over a small fire (safely!) for purification/luck is a traditional practice.
- Sun water/sun tea: leave water or tea infused with herbs out in direct sunlight to charge it with solar energy, then use it in cooking, baths, or rituals.
- Charging crystals and tools in direct sunlight, especially solar-correspondence stones like citrine, carnelian, or sunstone.
- Flower crown making: using seasonal blooms (lavender, chamomile, marigold) for a Midsummer crown.
- Baking bread from scratch, ideally with intention/gratitude work baked in.
- Visiting a farmers market or your own garden and consciously harvesting/gratitude-journaling about abundance.
- Drying and preserving herbs picked at peak potency for use later in the year.
🎨 Color correspondences
Whether it's in your candles for a spell, or on your clothing or nails for your day-to-day life, the color you pick has a significance in witchcraft. So be mindful, and pick wisely...
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⚪ White: healing, purification, innocence, meditation, peace
⚫ Black: strength, negative energies, resilience, self-control
🟤 Brown: intuition, animal protection, stability, decisions
🟣 Purple: ambition, power, focus, concentration, inspiration
🔵 Blue: happiness, calm, laughter, relaxation, harmony, water
🟢 Green: luck, love, fertility, birth, health, success, earth
🟡 Yellow: imagination, divination, intelligence, energy, air
🟠 Orange: authority, changes, control, support, versatility
🔴 Red: love, brave, blood, passion, death, sex, fire
✨ So, I just quit my job...
earlier this year, i went through a severe burnout.
it was hard to talk about, and even my spiritual practice (everything i talk about and document here) wasn't enough to get me better. i really had to claw out of there with my teeth out...
last week, i've made the decision to quit my corporate job. i plan on dedicating my full time to creation, for the time being - creating witchcraft content, writing essays, sharing my love for books and literature and maybe, just maybe, write a book of my own.
i wrote about all of it on my Substack. it's different from the witchcraft content you can find here, but i hope some of y'all might give it a read, and perhaps a follow :-)
xoxo your witch aunty, Pauline
Summer solstice journal prompts
June 21st (tomorrow) is the summer solstice or Midsummer, the longest day of the year. If you're not sure how to celebrate, I have written a few posts over the years on what you could do. My best recommendation is to spend time outside in the sun!
Collect flowers and your favourite summer fruit, open up your journal and start reflecting on your life...
Journal prompts:
🧡 Write about a difficult topic that needs addressing in the second half of the year. How are you planning to resolve it?
🧡 In which area of your life do you feel the strongest?
🧡 How can you use the solar energy to achieve your goals?
🧡 Write down a memory from your childhood summer breaks.
🧡 How can you make this summer extra special? Write down a to-do list of the activities you plan to do this summer.
🧡 Write a love-letter to your body. What is your favourite part? What lights up in the sun? What have you learned to love over the years?
🧡 What is your favourite activity to do outside?
Midsummer aesthetic
On June 21st, we witches of the Northern hemisphere will celebrate Midsummer. We have arrived at the longest day and the shortest night of the year. The earth is awash with fertility and fulfilment, and this is a time of joy and celebration, of expansiveness and the celebration of your achievements. It is a turning point.
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Rituals to celebrate:
🥳 With people, dance, dance, dance! Out of all the witches festival, this one is the most festive and fun, so go out there and enjoy yourself.
🍽️ In the kitchen, use lemon in everything: your salads, sea food, cakes, tea, everywhere.
🎨 Get crafty, by making a sun-catcher and hanging it at your window to get even more sunlight into the house.
💃 Dress up, with shades of deep green and yellow to represent the union of earth and sun.
📜 Write in your journal, about a difficult topic that needs addressing in the second half of the year. Midsummer is the turning point in the wheel of the year; from now on, the days will grow shorter.
🔮 Meditate, about what makes you feel strong and full of life.
✨ Witch Tips Masterpost ✨
Can you believe this Tumblr is almost 6 years old? To celebrate, I wanted to give y'all a summary of the posts I'm proudest of. Feel free to use them in your respective grimoires or books of shadows!
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Celebrations / wheel of the year
💀 Samhain - Movies, TV shows and podcasts for Samhain - Dumb supper ritual for Samhain - What to do on November 1st after Samhain
🕯️ Imbolc
🐣 Ostara - Spring magic
☀️ Litha
🌽 Lammas
🍂 Mabon
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Moon magic
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Rituals and spells
Tech witchcraft in 2026
I've been practicing magic for many years now, and calling myself a Technopagan or Tech witch at the same time. Here's what it mean to me in the world we live in today.
💻 Using my laptop and phone for journalling - on top of my physical journals and grimoires, I am a huge proponent of using my notes app and Notion dashboards to gather my thought.
❌ Refusing to use AI in my practice (or anywhere else) - being a tech witch does not mean using every new technology that comes out. I don't believe in a moral/spiritual usage of generative AI for witchcraft or any other practices.
💬 Using text messages for manifestation - here's a fun one that's easy to implement in your day-to-day life! Send yourself (or your loved ones) messages with positive affirmations, manifestations, etc... There's power in sending your good intentions out there, even if that's through something mundane like a text.
❤️💛 Using machines as self-care - I use red light therapy for my sore muscles and sun lamps in winter to help with seasonal depression. This is usually a perfect time to combine it with a meditative practice!
🤔 Balancing my phone usage - being a tech witch does not give you the right to spend unreasonable times on your devices. On the contrary, I believe that spirituality is all about balance, finding equilibrium in a complex world.
💨 Practicing with breathing gif - it's very simple, but I can't count the amount of times I have searched for this gif below, in moments of crisis. It helps me to have something visual to focus on while I recenter my breathing.