I realised today that I should have celebrated Litha on the 21st or 22nd of this month.

I'm not a fan of Christmas, I hate it, I've always hated it, and I've apologised to the Goddess and the Coniferous God for celebrating Litha on the day that Christmas would be celebrated; in fact, it will be my first Litha after letting go of the macho and patriarchal traditions that come with Brazilian society, which forces Christianity on those who would never even think of it on their own.

According to the "Yearbook of the Great Mother", you can choose as your theme the story of a fire deity descending into the depths, and since my mother has always joked about calling me Persephone given my clear preference for flowers and fruit in everything I choose for myself, I think I'm deciding to theme this sabbat of mine precisely on Persephone's abduction by Hades and her forced stay in the Greek underworld.

I have to organise the altar so that I can celebrate at midnight, when people will mistakenly be celebrating the "birth of Christ", when in fact it's the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, and the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere. Boy, the Church really has stolen everything from pagan religions without any creativity to build its own.

I need to light orange and red candles, put rosemary on my altar - I even think I'm going to use rosemary as incense for the prayer. As an offering to the Spirits of Nature... I don't have any bread, milk, butter or ginger - having my house without a roof and having to live in a tiny flat affects the availability of ingredients... Unfortunately, honey will have to suffice.

For the celebration itself, what should I consume in honour of the culmination of the Sun God and his unfortunate defeat by the Dark God, causing him to fall to the underworld... I also don't have any special breads, fruit, jacket potatoes, mead or white wine with spices. I have apple cider - and I need to cut some sprigs of lavender, rosemary, rue... I don't have a little red cloth bag to sew a talisman, but I'm going to make one with coarse salt, lavender and rosemary and seal it to put under my mum's pillow - as she herself is looking to increase her oniromancy.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue my notes while I study "The Tarot of Health" - I want to find out how the cruel spells cast by my ex-grandmother and ex-aunt have affected my health and that of my mum. I even want to know how their health is, simply to have the information since we never really know anything. With my uncle in hospital with a "head problem", which is what he says I have for anyone willing to listen to him for more than two seconds... it seems that karma is finally getting to him and that The Wheel of Fortune is finally turning in my favour. 23 years of this, enough. May he pay for all the harm he's done not only to me, but to my mum and our guardian spirits - no matter how powerful they are, and unfortunately I don't know how to identify them, but protecting us both for the last fifteen years, especially with me only taking up witchcraft this year, can't have been easy.

Blessed be.

To do:

• Cutting rosemary
• Cutting lavender
• Cutting rue
• Make a talisman with coarse salt, lavender, rue and rosemary in the golden bag she used for cards.
• Offer a glass of apple cider
• Drinking apple cider
• Lighting orange and red candles