Blog 3: "Making Potions"
One of my favorite activities as a child was “making potions” with my friends and sisters, pretending to be evil withces trying to poison a Princess or cast a spell on a King. We would collect our cauldron, usually a pink sparkly cup or a sand pail, and skip around the house looking for our ingredients. These typically included random soaps and lotions or an assortment of flower petals and leaves, and we would shout out made up names for these such things as we went along. “One mudroot leaf” or “two pumps of unicorn milk,” our imaginations were full of whimsical and wild ideas. We crafted "Glowing Goop Gels" with shimmering hand soaps and "Soothing Sleepy Mixtures" using calming lavender-scented bars. With each potion, we felt a sense of wonder and camaraderie, turning an ordinary day into a memory we would forever cherish.
However, I hadn’t thought of this core memory in depth until taking this course. This activity would transform a simple afternoon into a fantastical adventure filled with laughter, creativity, and the enchantment of sisterhood or friendship. I wondered if this was a universal experience, or if my sisters and I simply had overactive imaginations. I started by asking my roommates, and, sure enough, they had also delved into this world of magic when they were younger. I then took to the internet to test my theory further, and found a plethora of youtube videos, tiktoks, redit threads, and even recipes for “at home potions to keep your child entertained.”
I found it interesting that this was not a unique experience I had grown up with, but rather it was something many other little girls enjoyed. Potion making, alongside playing mermaids in the pool and fairies in Pixie Hollow, was just one of the many ways we, as children, expressed our mystical wonders. As I am learning more about the complexities and history of Witchcraft and the Occult, it has made me think back on my formative years, where being a witch was just an innocent afternoon activity. Maybe that was why I was so interested in taking this course, and I am thoroughly enjoying breaking out my creative side again with our in-class activities. I never thought I would be so invested in crafting up my own female demon, or reliving my past by casting my own love potion full of chocolate hearts and ringpops.
Wonderful photos, but I am having trouble reading the blog. Can you enlighten?
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