Michelle Mia Araujo

Michelle Mia Araujo (or simply Mia) is currently showing her latest body of work at in a 3-person show called "Riddles in the Dark" at the Corey Helford Gallery, July 25th-August 12th. If you are not familiar with her work, you must go explore her website! Click on gallery...there you will find thumbnails representing several shows her work has been featured in. Each thumbnail is the doorway to a whole body of work, don't forget to click on each work of art to view the magnificent details! I don't want you to miss a thing...Fairytales and folklore, Goddesses, Gypsy Queens, and Witches galore! Totally spellbinding!



*Just a side note* If I suddenly become wealthy I will contact Mia and Madeline Von Foerster immediately so I can purchase original works of art! However, they both offer high quality prints of their work...so perhaps I can induldge myself in the near future!

Nancy Baker

When I first laid eyes on Nancy Baker's work, it took a moment for me to collect myself...my mouth was literally hanging open. Did I ever mention I'm a Libra? I'm a natural born sensualist, ruled by Venus! Perhaps then you can see why Nancy Baker's work gives me butterflies...the rich colors, the lush flora and fauna, the mythology and surreal elements that leave it open to the imaginings of the viewer. Go check out her website...bon appétit!

Mushroom Magick: A Visionary Field Guide

I just purchased Mushroom Magick: A Visionary Field Guide, I can't wait till it arrives in the mail! This is an extraordinary collaboration! Arik Roper is a visionary artist known for his CD covers, posters, and animation. Erik Davis is the author, most recently, of The Visionary State. Daniel Pinchbeck is the bestselling author of Breaking Open the Head and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. Gary Lincoff is the author of the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms.



"For centuries hallucinogenic mushrooms have participated in a sublime relationship with humankind, thanks to their psychoactive chemicals that shift and modify the human mind. Arik Roper's exquisite painted portraits of magic mushrooms illustrate more than 90 of the known hallucinogenic species from around the world. He captures their powerful auras, adding to a tradition of Mushroom art that stretches back more than 400 years. Popular culture critics Erik Davis and Daniel Pinchbeck provide background and testimony in elegant essays, and mushroom expert Gary Lincoff contributes notes. This beautifully designed and profusely illustrated mushroom bible will appeal to nature lovers, mushroom hunters, and enthusiasts of all things psychedelic."

Jess Hill and that Voodoo she do...

I got the sweetest email from a girl named Jess Hill! I think you'll love this little bluesy folk number she sings called "From Above" The video is great...gal's got her gris-gris workin'!

Darla Teagarden's Candy Land

Darla Teagarden finally has her very own website up...down the rabbit hole you go! Miss Teagarden designs all her own sets and styles her models. She creates props in her home and garage, does all the make-up and hair in her bathroom, and assembles it all in her bedroom where the photoshoots take place! She works with the most amazing artists! Recently, she did a shoot with Liz Mcgrath and her band Miss Derringer! She created the dress Liz is wearing out of paper! Liz McGrath actually makes most of the fabulous hats Darla uses, her line is called Creepsuela Switchletto ("Oh RATS. Where the fuck is your hat?") Well you can buy one from her etsy shop...but she on tour with her band right now so you'll have to wait till she returns home from tour!



She has also featured hats from the fabulous and incomparable Topsy Turvy Design...



And corsets by the diva of dark glamour, Louise Black...who, by the way, was casted for Project Runway's 6th Season, which will premiere August 20th on Lifetime!!! If you've been eyeing something in her Etsy Shop, snatch it up now!



And just look at this fanciful shoot she did with Christy Kane! Christy Kane is a Doll Maker and Story Teller. You can watch her short film featuring her doll, Callalilly HERE...you can also visit her Etsy Shop where she sells t-shirts and accessories featuring her "doll daughters" the Sisters Kane!

Supernatural Specimen Necklaces...

Hello everyone! Just a heads up, my etsy shop will be updated on Saturday afternoon with a few of my Supernatural Specimen Necklaces! Butterfly Specimens will still be available at Bona Drag as well! Have a beautiful day...don't forget to stop and smell the roses! xo Lavona

Hetty MacLise

Mystical Mother, intuitive artist and cosmic musician, Hetty MacLise, is the wife of the late percussionist (original Velvet Underground drummer), poet, calligrapher, shaman and visionary, Angus MacLise. She met her husband in San Francisco, where they were married by Timothy Leary in Golden Gate Park. She played music with him in various projects in the late '60s and 1970s. They went to New York, where Angus MacLise had become established as an important figure in the city's multimedia avant-garde, collaborating with various partners in experimental music, film, and poetry projects.



Hetty played organ, tanpura, and other instruments in the Universal Mutant Repertory Company, which played psychedelic drone trance music with an Indian flavor. One track by the Universal Mutant Repertory Company, "Heavenly Blue Pt. 4 & 5," appears in The Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda, a collection of musical endeavors in which Angus MacLise participated between 1968 and 1972. The 39-minute title piece, a live improvisation while Ira Cohen's Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda film played at St. Mark's Church in New York. It is not explicitly credited to the Universal Mutant Repertory Company, but the five musicians listed, including the MacLises, are the ones that comprised that group. The MacLise's work has made them bona fide legends among vintage psychedelia enthusiasts! Hetty and Angus produced a magickal child, a son by the name of Ossian. The couple moved to Kathmandu, Nepal where Ossian was later 100% recognized as a Tulku (an incarnation of Sang gyes Nienpa Trulku Rinpoche) at the Swayambu Buddhist Monestary by His Holiness, The Gyalwa Karmapa! A Tulku "literally means, an emanation body; a term used for the incarnations of Buddhas, Arya Bodhisattvas and Bodhisattvas, as well as for the reincarnations of spiritually achieved practitioners or Lamas"

Hetty has a blog called the Phantomly Oracula! What an amazing and inspiring story this woman has to tell! Go check it out...send your love and leave comments so she continues to share her incredible life experience with us!

Awareness & Consciousness A/W 09-10

Behold...the otherworldly designs of Awareness & Consciousness.

for the love of moss...

"For Strange Women is a collection of natural, handmade adornments, perfumes and meditation oils for sensually acute women with a darker and unique beauty- although strange gentlemen are always welcome as well. I cross Victorian styles and Pagan sensibilities to create products made with connections to nature as well as the past."

Courtney Brooke for Beloved & Co.

I sent Courtney a box of magickal goodness with a Virgin Moon Goddess theme: a Black Forest fox tooth relic, a handmade white deerskin medicine bag (containing New Moon magick) and a set of Moonstone Runes! I didn't give her any artistic direction for the photoshoot...I thought it would be better if she just vibed with the stuff I sent her. She really nailed it...she looks like a Priestess of Artemis! Check out the rest of the photos HERE!!!

Fredrik Soderberg

"In his cauldron the aesthetics of the occult, witchcraft, pagan religions and black metal is boiled down with cute smurf-like mushrooms and lollipops, achieving strange displacements of their original meanings and references." "I'm not interested in function and logic. I want to achieve transcendence." Fredrik Söderberg

Thanks Nix...you rock!!!

Doom Metal

I'm lusting hardcore over L'Âge d'Or Jewelry by Eric Sæter! I love his fierce, raw approach to jewelry design. L'Âge d'Or (The Golden Age) features casted Crystals, Pyramids, and Peyote! I especially love his Baphomet head ring! It's really masculine but I think girls could get away with wearing it too! His jewelry is now available through his Etsy shop!



I also love these casted bone stacking rings and necklace by Lady Grey Jewelry. Their line has a post-apocalypse feel to it, they feature rugged crosses, skulls, thorns and crystals tangled in chains. I really love their website design too!

Fall Wardrobe Essentials...

The Season of the Witch is right around the corner! I can't afford to be extravagant with my clothing right now and even if I could, I wouldn't! When it comes to fashion, as much as I love over the top avant-garde designs, it's not practical for me. I'm usually running around with my kids and such so I need to be comfortable. I'm all about jeans and t-shirts with awesome shoes and assessories. Anyway, here's what I have on my wishlist for Fall so far:

I NEED a mid-length cloak hoodie made by Lindsey Thornburg!



Belted Harness Mule made by Frye These are the kind of boots that look better the longer you wear them! They make Men's shoes and boots too...check out the Engineer Boots...HOT!

Glyn Smyth

GLYN SMYTH is a magick man...an incredible artist inspired by the Occult, folklore, and heavy music. His artwork for the Swedish pychedelic doom metal band WITCHCRAFT caught my eye and reeled me in first. But after I saw the work he did for the drone doom band EARTH, I was totally smitten! You can buy limited edition screenprints of his artwork from his Etsy shop. Check out his blog to see more of his artwork and inspirations!

Musicka Magicka

"Spires That in the Sunset Rise are a Chicago-based, all-female quartet whose ecstatic, communal psych-folk draws on the same fragrant smoke that fed the otherworldly likes of such vintage acts as Comus, Jan Dukes De Grey, or COB, as well as on the crypto-ethnicity of the Sun City Girls' Carnival Folklore Resurrection series or the Gothic spiritualism of Current 93. On their second album Four Winds the Walker, the foursome emit such inspired gusts of collective fire that they resemble a witches' coven almost as much as a band, their shadow-draped music seeming to issue forth organically from the soil like a sulfurous hot spring. When operating at their peak, which is the case on much of Four Winds the Walker, Spires That in the Sunset Rise can invoke the unbounded, ageless music one might expect to hear emanating from the deepest forest, as mysterious black-cloaked figures dance around the fire-ring. Whether that sounds more like a warning or an invitation is left up to the traveler." - Pitchfork



I've had the pleasure of seeing Spires That in the Sunset Rise perform live here in Chicago...they are totally surreal. I was elated to hear they are playing at the Musicka Mystica Maxima Festival presented by Ordo Templi Orientis! I won't be able to attend, but I'm still so excited to hear something like this is actually happening! "Two nights of Musick made by practicing magicians or practicing musicians who's work celebrates the Magical lifestyle, as well public performances of Ceremonial and other Magick ritual." The Musicka Mystica Maxima Fest takes place at Santos Party House, New York, NY, 21 and 22 September 2009. Apparently the enchanting Larkin Grimm is co-curator of the event, so it's going to be fabulous!!! By the way, Miss Angeliska did a lovely, intimate, interview with Larkin Grimm for Coilhouse...check it out HERE!



"Larkin is a magic woman. She lives in the mountains in north Georgia. She collects bones, smooth stones, and she casts spells. She worships the moon. She is very beautiful, and her voice is like the passionate cry of a beast heard echoing across the mountains just after a tremendous thunder storm, when the air is alive with electricity. I don't consider her folk though - she is pre folk, even pre- music. She is the sound of the eternal mother and the wrath of all women. She goes barefoot everywhere, and her feet are leathery and filthy. She wears jewels, glitter, and glistening insects in her hair. She's great!" ~ Michael Gira

Crowns for Women Who Run With Wolves

I was wandering around the internet a while back searching for historical references of headdresses made by indigenous people. (I want to make one for myself and some for my Etsy shop, but I can't find any ethically sourced feathers...any suggestions?) Anyway, I stumbled across the Little Doe is Love website and totally fell in Love! This headdress is my favorite...total woodland witch couture!



Chase Cohl is the bohemian belle behind Little Doe is Love. You might remember seeing her AMAZING apartment on the Selby...she's also in a Folk Rock band called Weepaw with her brothers! Her feather headdresses totally remind me of my favorite photograph of Natasha Kahn of Bat for Lashes! You should check out her latest video, Pearl's Dream...I love it!



For those of you not familiar with Natasha Kahn, Pearl is her Shadow Aspect. Pearl is the escapist, drama-prone, devastating id to Khan's rational superego. She's a "subterranean prowling witch," at odds with Khan's "desert being, which is very much about nature, interconnectiveness, and acceptance." "Perhaps my Pearl is like that little Pearl grown up, orphaned and traveling down this dreamy river surrounded by dark forces," says Khan. "Also, in folklore the pearl is like a droplet of moon falling into the ocean. She's supposed to govern the subconscious world." Sometimes the two halves duel directly, as on "Siren's Song," where the languid verses find Khan contemplating what it is to be a perfect, nurturing woman (Keeping the bed warm and being "proud when you dazzle"), but in the chorus Pearl comes crashing in, destroying the calm with cacophonous piano chords and insistent drums. But a conclusion is found with "The Big Sleep," the album's closer that features cult '60s crooner Scott Walker. The song is Pearl's finale. "The curtain's coming down, she's going to take her millions of sleeping pills and finally enter nothingness," says Khan. "She had to subside. The aware side of me woke up, and the more I woke up, the more Pearl fell asleep."

(source: Fader Magazine)