Kirke, Goddess of Potions

Hekate: of Crossroads, Keys, and Everything

Spooky Rites and Snapeish Doings

Nov. 4

Potus II Progress

You know you're eccentric when, upon finding you've used up two-thirds of a three inch thick blank book, respond with: "Time to bind a new one!"

That's exactly what I decided a few months ago, when my potistry (both spiritual and mundane), and thus my book entries, picked up again. I wanted a brand-new leather bound tome ready for when I filled the first one up!

So, I got busy; and I didn't let moving stop me. After drilling the holes at Grandma's House, I began sewing them together at Dad's. I've now tightened the stack of thick-signatures into a cohesive whole and started prepping the wooden cover.

Here's what it looks like now, before the pages have been tied to the spine cords, showing how thick it's going to be when finished.

Pretty soon I'll have another book!

Several folks have asked me if I sell these so-called "Century Tomes"; I have to tell them, not yet. And they can't come cheap.

Odd Vessels

Being a lover of potions means you end up collecting glass or ceramic containers of all sorts, not all of them practical. After all, there's a large creative aspect to this craft. Here's a few of my latest encounters.

Potion nerd! I'm not ashamed to be seen with fingers full of phials. Though it's true I need a more efficient way to store them, because they're piling up!

I found this beautiful dispenser bottle with a metal tap on Nov. 1. It turned out to be actual vintage; I would've nabbed it, but it was out of my price range.

On Nov. 2, Kathleen and I went to friend Amie's home to plan an upcoming ritual. I noticed this out in a trash bucket in her backyard. Thrown there by her husband by mistake, it's one half a set of brass scales given her by her grandmother! The shape is perfect and lovely: I found it hard to quit playing with it.

How can someone like me pass up a whole passel of tiny vials . . . even if they're stuck together? (Why? I don't know either.) Before moving, I got these from Scrap the second after she placed them on the shelf, reasoning there must be a way to unstick them all and remove the glue. On Nov. 8, I carefully broke them all apart.

They looked quite amusing before I managed it, though!

What about vessels you make? I can't work glass (yet), but I can work ceramics, and rather well. I plan to make a cauldron with some extra clay I have, but I just may have to make one of these naughty, greed-punishing cups. More artistic, of course, with the trick better disguised along the sides. Pythagoras was quite the clever fellow!

Last but not least, how many can spot this on a Goodwill shelf and know what it is? It looks like a strange piece of alchemy equipment, but what makes a "Klein bottle" or Klein flask special isn't merely its odd shape, but principles of mathematics. This structure has but a single surface, and, in the same manner as the Moebius Strip, it toys with your mind's efforts to comprehend the unique property of its shape.

Whether or not I can incorporate it into some weird distillation experiment, I had to have it for my future lab . . . for sheer nerdy appeal alone. After all, I recall one movie-still of Snape in his classroom lab, and one of the glass vessels on the table is a dining-table oil and vinegar dispenser combo! (I know, because I have the same type.) We simply can't rule out a Potions Master's ability to find function in the most unlikely of vessels.