About

Lemmellia’s began when we were blasted open, sitting in front of the altar on Saint John’s day. Suddenly, a spirit guide took over, directing us to throw away the old money oil we had been using and moving us to make our own. And so it was, our true path was illuminated.

What we practice has no affiliation with any tradition; this is ancient magic that our ancestors did, before writing anything down or before we associated any plants with specific attributes (mostly found in surviving books written by old white dudes). Back then, we would just listen to the spirits and the world around us and they would tell us what we should do with them. In this way, our magic is both ancient and modern.

Modern because it is always changing. We do write down what we learn from the plants and other spirits, but we know the information isn’t permanent. Energies shift, species evolve and the old traditions give way to the new. A recipe we used this year made the exact same way next year will not produce the same results. Our goal at Lemmellia’s is to listen well, to silence our egos, our cultural programming, and our preconceived notions, and to let the spirits tell us how best to make our sacraments.

We don’t often know what we are going to make on the night we make it. We gather jugs of oil and big glass jars, tobacco for offerings, incense, red wine, candles, and more, we set up our altar, connect with our guides and guardians and let the spirits show us the way. Sometimes the plants speak with us directly, telling us how best to use them. Sometimes our guides and guardians are calling the shots, and other times the spirits of place tell us what to do. Often, we speak with a myriad of spirits on any given night. We listen and trust our intuition, we allow mediumship to happen, letting spirits move through us if they wish. 

Most of our oils are created close to the full moon, but not all of them. We strive to avoid getting locked into a routine, therefore allowing inspiration to strike at any time. Often we can connect the dots and understand why we were inspired to make a specific item at a specific time, and sometimes we just don’t know. Either way, we have strong relationships with our spirit guides, and we know they are always advising us to make the best creation we can.

An important part of our empowerment process is breathing life into our oils. This allows our guides and guardians, our ancestors, the plant, land and other spirits involved to breathe through us and to thoroughly enliven and enspirit each oil with its own individual essence. It’s a party! We’ve found that the spirits that show up are excited to be a part of this process, as if they’ve been waiting for this for who knows how long. 

Once we have made introductions and done some dancing and movement, we synchronize our breathing, allowing them to further empower our breath with theirs. When the moment comes, in unison, we all breathe life and spark and spirit into the oil; and thus, a new life is born. 

Dancing, noisemaking, singing and more movement is what we do next, allowing spirits to use our bodies to empower the oils as they see fit. At last we seal the jar, raising it high up above our heads in the moonlight to celebrate our newborn and welcome them into the world in a joyous fashion. 

The oil is born with a purpose in life - to get bottled up, sent out and be put to work by you. As long as they’re doing this they’re doing their life’s work. Each one is excited, eager to help and ready to be your potent ally: a spirit in a bottle.