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Ah, the big date you’ve been looking forward to all week. And you, clever one, planned it on a new moon night. If this new moon happens to be in the signs of Taurus, Scorpio, Libra, or Pisces, you are really in for a treat tonight! Here is the last-minute preparation to guarantee you will have the time of your life. Gather the following ritual elements:

2 red candles

Those of you who have been following my Monster Powers / Gila Lizard Powers (GLP-1) posts know I became obsessed with perfume after starting the GLP-1 drug Mounjaro. I like to call it getting Gila Monster powers because GLP-1 drugs were derived from a Gila Monster natural product. I have been trading perfume samples and posting reviews in the What Did You Test Today thread on Fragrantica. Recently another fragrance afficianado posted on the thread to congratulate me on my great review posts and suggest I have a soft launch as a fragrance influencer. I replied that I was planning to launch my own brand. My reply was the simplest and clearest explanation I've ever given for what I'm doing and why, so I copyied and pasted it here for all of you, with a few minor edits:

I'm planning to launch my own brand, to be called Magical, which will be mostly soaps and lotions but with perfumes too. I have a handful of test batches already made for the Erin's Garden collection and notes for many future collections.

Is it a salad? Is it a pickle?

Well, yes.

Looking for a cold side-dish to lighten and brighten your post-Yuletide board?

Bright with ginger, tender-crunchy with radish, and a wild electric pink color to boot, this dish is just what the witch doctor ordered.

Every recipe's a spell.

Boss Warlock's Knockout Gingered Pink Radish Salad

Here are stones I recommend for harnessing various powers for love:

Amber for grounding and understanding yourself

Real Change in the Real World

Reader, I'm casting a spell as you read this.

That's how word-magic works.

Every post's a spell.

Why do I blog?

Easily told: to bring about change, real change in the real world.

Not only to bring about change in consciousness, as odious old Uncle Al would have it, though certainly it begins there, but real change in the real world.

Ye gods, how grandiose is that?

Word-magic only works when someone is listening.

Therefore, in order to work word-magic, you have to make them want to listen.

You have to give them something.

You have to make what you're saying worth listening to.

In other words, you have to establish a connection.

Before hitting the “Publish” button, I always stop and ask myself first: is what I'm saying here likely to bring about the kind of change that I want to see? i.e. have I said what I'm saying in such a way as to open the reader to Posch and his ideas? Or am I just blowing off steam?

If the answer is B—as it not infrequently is, especially when I'm writing about matters that I care too much about—then I don't publish.

Well, mostly not.

A word to would-be workers of word-magic: alienate your reader, and he'll stop reading. Alienate your listener, and she'll stop listening.

Then your spell has failed from the outset, and the change that you want to see, won't come about.

“Merry Christmas,” says my friend's husband.

It's a surreal moment.

He's Jewish, I'm Pagan. Christmas isn't a terribly active category for either of us.

Do I detect irony? No. I shake my head and smile.

“You too,” I say, pondering the complexities of human interaction.

Even as a callow first-time reader of Dante's Divine Comedy, I could readily see the major design flaw in the overarching architectonic symbolism of that soaring cathedral of a masterpiece.

It makes Lucifer the—literal—center of the universe.

Like Dante, I too had my own selva oscura experience.

He, though, wanted to find his way out of the dark forest.

Me, I sought a way in.

Forests can be literal or figurative. Mine were both.

The self, too, is a dark forest: one that it took me long to find the courage to enter.

In the end, desperation drove me.