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My friend opens the door.

“Hi,” I say, “I'm from Aradia's Witnesses. I'm here today to discuss the Book of Shadows.”

My friend laughs.

“Did you ever come to the right place,” she says. “Come on in.”

It's an old joke: What's the difference between a JW and a Wiccan?

Actually, I've never had an STD. For years, though, I thought that I had.

Listen, and I'll tell.

Early Spring and oh, I had the Itch.

Literally. I would lay in bed at night and cry because I couldn't sleep, so badly did I itch.

Finally, I dragged my sorry, sleep-deprived ass in to the clinic. The doctor didn't even bother to examine me. You could see the wheels of homophobia turning in his smug-ass head as he assessed me.

Gay guy, itch: must be venereal, right?

Scabies, he diagnosed.

As I was leaving the exam room, he leaned forward, fixed me with his eye, and said, in the smuggest, smarmiest possible voice: “And have a blessed Easter.”

Yeah, you too, nazz, and the horse you rode in on.

I schmeered on the prescribed goop, and a week or two later, all was well.

So for years I thought that I'd had scabies.

More the fool, me.

You wouldn't know it from our reputation, but in Winter, the North is a desert.

Deep Winter. With prolonged cold, the air loses all moisture. For all the snow on the ground, it's dry, dry, dry, and all the hot showers in the world won't put back what the cold sucks away.

Some survival strategies as we make our annual journey through the High Desert of Deep Winter.

Venus rules this most popular day of the week. Small wonder that this is the ideal night for a tryst. To prepare yourself for a night of lovemaking, you should take a goddess bath with the following potion in a special cup or bowl. I call mine the Venus Vial. Perform this rite on a Friday night.

1 cup sesame oil

My primary goddess is Freya. That has been true all along, as the gods have recently affirmed for me, even when Freya gave me to Sigyn for a while. Sigyn was who I needed at the point in my life when I was dealing with caregiving and then death and its aftermath. As long time readers of this blog know, last year I started my Monster Powers journey (see my posts titled Monster Powers.) As my Gila Lizard Powers (GLP-1) medicine got my health under control and I started losing weight, I found myself vaulted into the world of perfumes, and began exploring new aspects of beauty which I had never considered before. That was when the goddess Frigga told me my primary goddess was still Freya and always would be. Later I affirmed that with Freya herself.

Long ago, in my 20s, my natural body was thin and beautiful and strong and capable. It was also dying, bleeding to death. I tried a medicine to attempt to make that stop, Depo-Provera, which didn't work and caused me to gain 60 lbs. in 3 months and become severely depressed before I went off of it and started trying other medicines over the course of the next year, none of which really worked, but I survived. In trying to deal with my new body, I began making art of Stone Age goddesses such as the Goddess of Willendorf and the Goddess and Laussel. I shifted my personal beauty standard to the Stone Age and identified as goddess shaped. I realized the rest of the world took that as a joke, and went with it, as I went with it any time my most serious and personal expressions came across as funny. For 30 years, I embraced Stone Age beauty, even as I tried, and failed, to get my natural body back.

So, boys, sauna's all stoked up. Which will it be tonight: social sweat, or ritual?

Sacred or secular? No, not really. Sitting around sweating together, naked in the dark: that's sacred—non-ordinary, you could say—pretty much by definition.

No, both kinds of sweat are sacred. They're just for different purposes.

One's for talking, one's for doing.

Sometimes there are things that need to be said, honesties that need to be spoken, agreements that need to be reached. The power of the sauna makes all those things easier.

That's the talking sweat.

For the other, though, we leave the words behind. Instead, we sing: three songs. One to begin, one to do, one to end.

Somewhere in there, in one of those songs, we always sing to the Horned, since he's the one that taught us the sweat in the first place.

That's the singing sweat. That's for working magic.

This section of spell work relates to the arts of love, starting with the first kiss. Make that kiss unforgettable! Tattoo your touch onto your lover’s skin! Leave more than an impression, and most important, merge into a oneness that is truest enchantment. From time immemorial, witches have enchanted everyone with their magical beauty. That’s because we know how to supplement Mother Nature’s gifts. Before a special evening, I usually employ a “glamour gloss” of my own design so that each kiss is a passion spark. You will need the following:

Lip gloss

For years, I thought that I didn't like grits.

I was wrong, of course.

By grits, of course, I mean corn grits.

Technically, you can make grits from any kind of grain—the word itself refers to a specific kind of coarse grind, no more—but when an American says grits, it can only mean one kind.

Just as the word deer, which used to mean any wild animal, has now come to mean the animal par excellence, the paradigmatic American Animal of Animals, so too has corn, which used to mean any kind of grain, come to mean the paradigmatic American Grain of Grains.

Corn and venison, that's our food.

(My friend Craig, who comes from Texas originally, assures me that grits is properly a three-syllable word: guh-REE-yuts; but maybe he's just joking.)

I was wrong, of course. (How could you not like grits?) What I didn't like was what people add to grits.

Cheese grits: yuck. Way too rich.

Garlic grits: yuck. Completely takes over.

Not to mention all the (shudder) nasty, stinky butter that folks ladle over grits to give them flavor. Triple yuck. (Makes sign of aversion.)

Yes, I thought that I didn't like grits until the day that I first had grits at their minimalist best: no butter, no cheese, no garlic. Naked grits. Water, grits, and salt, toute simple.

Oh joy, O rapture.

That delicate corn flavor, that lovely, nubbly texture: nothing fills or warms you better on a cold winter's morning than a nice bowl of grits. A little salt, a little pepper: for gods' sakes, don't pollute them with anything else. Really, what more do they need?