Author: Karma

At Karma Soup, I write about my chickens (badly-behaved), my gardens (reluctant), and my life trajectory (bewildering) in between researched pieces on family lore or regional history. And then I offer the odd handmade rosary, folk art shrine, spiritual cleansing floor wash, and/or salvaged/refinished end table in between DIY tips and various esoteric ramblings at the Seraphin Station site. Work on deGruy family and Conner-Tally family research continues as I have time. Projects: the deGruy-Glapion-furniture connection; children's book on family pet stories (need illustrator); family recipe book(s); children's book on Mae's scary neighborhood creatures.

Saints Clare and Philomena Candle Services and Novenas Begin Tonight

*While I normally ask that clients book one service per order and check out for separate services separately, in this case, since Saints Clare and Philomena are so closely associated in some traditions, I’m offering a bundled discount if you book both services together. To get the discount, you have to check out with both services at the same time.

Saint Clare Candle Service & Novena – Clarity, Wisdom, Insight, Clairvoyance

Have lights set and worked on my St. Clare altar in a nine-day community altar work service beginning the night of August 11th, the feast day of St. Clare of Assisi. There is some wiggle room and you can join up after the work starts as long as you see that there are still spots left and it doesn’t say “sold out.”

I will begin a nine-day novena and chaplet recitation to St. Clare on this same day, focused on petitioning her intercession for your stated intention, which will be included daily in my novena and chaplet work for the duration of the nine days along with appropriate offerings.

St. Clare is the patron saint of television, goldsmiths, and eye diseases. In folk Catholic practice, she is also petitioned for clear vision, literally and figuratively. Her devotees call on her when they need insight into a situation affecting their lives or guidance on how to make a difficult decision. Spiritual workers and diviners also call on her for aid in developing their clairvoyance.

In some houses and temples of vodou, St. Clare is served as the lwa Klemezin Klemay, who aids her devotees by helping clear away bad luck and negativity, and who is known to grant clear insight and the gift of dreaming true. I do serve Klemezin and have for many years, so I will accept petitions related to service of this lwa.

Learn more or book your spot at Seraphin Station.

Saint Philomena Candle Service & Novena – Lost Causes, Mental Illness, Health, Committed Love, Better Business

Have lights set and worked on my St. Philomena altar in a nine-day community altar work service beginning the night of August 11th, her feast day. There is some wiggle room and you can join up after the work starts as long as you see that there are still spots left and it doesn’t say “sold out.”

I will begin a nine-day novena and chaplet recitation to St. Philomena on this same day, focused on petitioning her intercession for your stated intention, which will be included daily in my novena and chaplet work for the duration of the nine days along with appropriate offerings.

Known as the Wonder Worker, she’s invoked by devotees for all kinds of things when other measures have failed and it seems pretty much hopeless. Some call her the patron saint of the impossible. In that respect she’s become something of a companion saint to St. Jude in contemporary folk practice.

Those who have formed a relationship with her have sought and received her help with everything from the conversion of unbelievers to fertility problems, healthy pregnancy and delivery, cure of mental illness, attraction of a spouse, and the sale of real estate. She’s said to have effected miraculous cures of injuries and illnesses ranging from heart defects to cancer. But officially, she’s the patron of babies and children and is considered the patroness of the living rosary. Padre Pio called her the Princess of Heaven.

In some houses and temples of vodou, St. Philomena is served as the helpful and pleasant lwa Filomez. She helps those who make their livings as market sellers, removes negativity and evil from the surroundings, grants the ability to have prophetic dreams, and aids her devotees seeking love. Some consider her related to Erzulie Freda, while others do not, but while the two lwa might appear to have a good bit in common, Filomez is not as demanding or haughty as Freda and doesn’t have to be handled quite as “carefully.” I do serve Filomez and have for many years, so I will accept petitions related to service of this lwa.

Learn more or book your spot at Seraphin Station.

The Blue Charm: Rustic Hoodoo Amulet Necklace

Seraphin Station

For this amulet necklace, I’ve basically deconstructed a classic rural Southern-style conjure bag, aka a mojo or toby, and made jewelry out of it.
This is backwoods conjure the way it used to be. It’s miles away from the shiny city general store with imported spices and soaps and fabrics. This is the part of the country where floorwash is made with chamber lye, not ammonia and certainly not Florida Water. New curtains come from recycled worn-out clothes, and those clothes come from recycled flour and feed sacks.

Old barn and field gear provides tiny scraps of leather. Copper, brass, and steel are scavenged from derelict machinery and buildings. Scraps of fabric — saved in an old cookie tin with thimbles and thread — tell 50 years of stories in a square inch: palest blue silk of a once-treasured gown; crisp white poplin once someone’s Sunday best; a thin strip of woven blue…

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How Folk Saints are Born

Santo Niño Huachicolero emerges as part of modern-day “folk bandit spirituality” in the state of Puebla in Mexico as the patron of huachicoleros – those who steal gasoline. His iconography is adapted from that of Santo Niño de Atocha, the Infant of Atocha, as shown here in this Instagram post if I can get the embed thingie to work:

The Catholic Church is obviously not happy about this, but this is vernacular religion in action, in direct response to social and economic realities when the official modes of religious observation and praxis do not meet the needs of the people. Thus Santo Niño Huachicolero joins the ranks of figures like Jesús Malverde and Santa Muerte who serve to fill those gaps.

Fiery Wall of Protection community altar service starts tonight

Seraphin Station

Fiery Wall of Protection community altar service starts tonight at midnight Central time. There is a little wiggle room and can join in late as long as you see that slots are still available.

Read more or book now at SeraphinStation.com.

Community altar work services focused on a particular goal or area and with a limited number of “seats” for each working are a great compromise between big workings open to any number of folks (inexpensive but with little customization available) and hiring a worker to do 100% custom, private services just for you (completely tailored to you but often considerably more expensive since the cost of time and materia magica are not being shared by more than one person).

If you’re interested in seeing a type of service or working that I’m not currently offering, please feel free to make suggestions. Some work I don’t generally perform as…

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Red Brick Dust – My Secret Family Recipe (with bonus tidbits on 18th century Louisiana Creole culture)

If the elaborate preparation rite’s too much for you, you can always just snag some Authentic Louisiana Creole-style red brick dust at Seraphin Station, instead.

Stumbled across a set of instructions for making red brick dust the other day. It had 10 separate steps and required a mortar and pestle, some rum as an offering, hand/wrist strength, patience, and a whole lot of praying.

Y’all, I’m gonna give you my secret recipe for red brick dust. And this is authentic — my ancestry on my father’s side is Louisiana Creole through and through. My father was the first generation in our lineage *not* to be born in Louisiana since my 5th great grandfather in 1752. New Orleans cemeteries are positively jammed with ancestors, on both my father’s paternal side (French Creole) and my mother’s maternal side (Spanish Creole, many of whom settled in Florida after coming through the port of New Orleans but ended up buried in New Orleans anyway given how the Catholic Church and its diocese system works – and one of these ancestors made her living in Pensacola by running a brickyard). [*]

And this is how we do it in my family. I’ve never shared this with the public before. You ready?

Continue reading “Red Brick Dust – My Secret Family Recipe (with bonus tidbits on 18th century Louisiana Creole culture)” →

internet

Seraphin Station

We have (mostly)* reliable internet again for the first time since March 23rd. Of course, now we have no hot water because there’s never a dull moment at Seraphin Station.**

Y’all, the backlog on email (esp. light setting reports, readings, and consultations), DMs/PMs on various platforms, and Etsy messages is freakin’ considerable. It’s about to storm, but I’m gonna get started on trying to prioritize all these messages in all these inboxes as soon as I get in from weather prep (protecting the more delicate and/or new plants and getting the chickens set up in case we get any flash flooding – there’s an advisory and we live on the edge of a swamp).

Let’s hope the internet still works after it rains again. (Storms are why it quit working last time.)

*This is still the worst ISP in North America and they still haven’t buried the DSL line, so…

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New Moon in Aries Road Opening Service

Booking deadline for New Moon in Aries Road Opening service is midnight Central time on the 10th of April.

This is a specific rite with a specific start and end time rather than a vigil light setting service. It’s designed to remove obstacles in preparation for new beginnings.

Visit Seraphin Station for details and booking info.

Mercury Conjunct Chiron Healing Service – April-May 2021

Seraphin Station

Mercury conjunct Chiron is an especially opportune time to reflect on and come to terms with past emotional wounds, ultimately turning it into an opportunity to heal longstanding hurts.

Since it’s Mercury transiting Chiron, it’s touching especially on the realms of words (including thoughts), whether they’re your own (such as habitual negative self-talk) or someone else’s (such as returning to a memory of cruel words someone once said when you’re stressed out).

You may know intellectually that your inner critic is a little too critical or the person who said cruel things to you was being an asshole, but this intellectual knowledge may not be enough to keep you from getting swept up in the emotional response despite your best intentions. In short, there are wounds that do not simply heal with time. Unprocessed, they can lead us to hurt ourselves and even others if we lash out defensively when…

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St. Gabriel Light Setting Service – Communication, Fertility, Clairvoyance, Creativity

Have a glass-encased vigil light fixed, dressed, blessed, set on my Archangel Gabriel altar, and burned for you in a community altar work service.

Lights will be set the night of Wednesday, March 24th. There is some wiggle room and you can join up after the work starts as long as you see that there are still spots left and it doesn’t say “sold out.”

Usually, a saint’s feast day is the date of their death. Since angels aren’t human and don’t die (though they absolutely are saints), things are a little different with them. And you’ll find that these days, the official feast day of St. Gabriel the Archangel is September 29th – he shares it with the archangels Michael and Raphael.

But it wasn’t always so – feast days get moved around sometimes. And Gabriel’s used to be on March 24th, the day before the feast of the Annunciation, which was pretty much Gabriel’s starring scriptural role: he appeared to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she was going to be the Mother of God. (And *that* had to be a trip.)

So while all angels are messengers, in a sense, Gabriel is kind of the archetypal angelic messenger. It’s his main gig, and so he’s the patron saint of messengers, including postal workers, diplomats, ambassadors, and those in telecommunications.

Because so many of his messages had to do with the realm of pregnancy, childbirth, conception, fertility, he’s also called upon to intercede on behalf of infants and children, pregnant women, and women wishing to become pregnant. Fertility and conception can be understood figuratively here, as well, to do with inspiration, ideas, and the creative process.

And looking more broadly beyond his mentions in the canonical books of the Bible, he takes on varied roles. In Jewish tradition, Gabriel’s the angel of judgment, and in Islam he’s the mouthpiece of God during the dictation of the Koran. In many traditions of Western esotericism, he’s associated with the West, the Moon, and the element of Water.

Thus Gabriel rules ocean navigation and trade; motherhood, birth, children, and home/domestic concerns; intuition, psychic ability, prophecy, and clairvoyance. He can, of course, also be called upon more generally for blessings as one of the canonical archangels known by name from scripture.

Learn more or book your spot at SeraphinStation.com.

Last Call for St. Benedict Service

Seraphin Station

Read more, or book your spot, at SeraphinStation.com.

St. Benedict has multiple feast days, depending on region and tradition, with his original feast day of March 21st having been moved in many church calendars because of Holy Week. However, the Benedictines still celebrate his feast day on the 21st of March, and it’s a great date to honor him or ask his intercession and aid.

Lights will be set the night of Sunday, March 21st. There is some wiggle room and you can join up after the work starts as long as you see that there are still spots left and it doesn’t say “sold out.”

St. Benedict is Catholicism’s exorcist par excellence, invoked for protection, driving away evil, and dodging the snares of the wily serpent, with the power to banish Satan himself in the name of God.

He’s the patron saint against poisoning, and he’s called on…

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