Apr 30, 2010

Bloody April: My Pentacle


I had been looking for a pentacle for a while. I wanted one made of wood or clay, since to me either represent Earth. Since this would be a magical item, present on my altar, and used for spellwork, I wanted something that I felt a powerful connection to. I saw or handled metal ones, resin ones, some wooden ones with the pentagram burned on. A few were absolutely beautiful, artist made, but simply cost too much money, especially for a Nanny Ogg/Granny Weatherwax type like me. So, I decided, I would make one.

Warning: I am not crafty in the sense of good at making things with my hands. Arrange flowers, stage a house so that it will sell, put together outfits, creative cooking, sure. But actually making an artsy thing from scratch? Uh oh. Salt dough, I thought. How bad could it be?

Yep I managed to mess it up. I made the salt dough using some regular flour, and some whole wheat flour. The whole wheat flour was going to go to waste, ok? It gets rancid after a while! I was using my resources wisely! But as far as I can tell, the whole wheatiness plus the sweetened black paste food coloring I used caused the dough to rise a little bit. So I ended up with only one kind of circular blobby pentacle out of the whole batch! Fortunately the crushed egg shell sprinkles to form the pentagram came out ok.

Why is this a Bloody April post? Because I did indeed collect a bit of my menstrual blood, and I mixed it into the dough prior to baking. So it's not the prettiest pentacle. It's even a fragile pentacle. But I do now have a pentacle that is special to me, and contains a bit of my bodily magic.

3 comments:

  1. I never had much luck with salt dough- mine always had pockets of air in it. I really like polymer clay- it is easy to work with and not toooo expensive. I usually get sculpey in a big box for about 10 bucks(us)

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  2. I think it is absolutely beautiful. I never would have thought salt dough and egg shells could look so good. Bravo!

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