Creative Crone Dispatch:

Creating Connection & The Magic of Hearth Craft

Over the past few months, I’ve been showing up on Bluesky with what I’ve categorized as “Creative Crone Dispatch.” They are little tidbits of Craft knowledge, curated into regular threads born from my skills & experience of  more than four decades of being a Woman In Total Control Of Herself. I started to really dig them and they made me recognize I have more to say.

A writer having more to say?

At my deepest heart, I’m a nerd. I’m also a Scorpio Stellium, so I like to get deep. I like to discuss the depths of a subject and learn as much as I can.  And if we can sneak off into that corner booth at the pub underground and talk over it with our fav beverage deep into the night, I’m in heaven. 

Social media can be a bit of the opposite, a hellscape, so controlling the content we want to explore, and keeping the coolest of folx closest, the Creative Crone Dispatch was born. Normally, I know exactly what I want to focus on – but today I decided to ask the near 1k people following me, what they wanted to chat about.

The answer came quickly via @4islesandco.bsky.social . However, my response wound up being too many threads and this blog post was born. So, my dear one, here is my very quick, hopefully easily digestible, thoughts on your query.

Let’s start with what Hearth Craft is – it is the magic of tending our center. It can look like sweeping the floor with intention. It’s stirring the pot as prayer. It’s is lighting a candle and fucking meaning it. Before temples, before skyscrapers of capitalism, there was the hearth. And around it – women. Hearth work is civilization’s first altar. 

When someone mentions Hearth Craft, it is often in the same sentence with Hestia, the keeper of the flame. She did not wage war. She did not chase lovers. She did not leave. She stayed. Her power was continuity. Her magic was steadiness. Her gift was the flame that never went out. 

If it’s not Hestia, then it’s the goddess Brigid. She represents not only poetry, but the forge. She is also the ‘banked’ fire in the kitchen. She lives in bread rising under cloth. In clean thresholds. In the quiet pride of a well-kept space. Hearth Craft is not perfection, but devotion made visible. 

In Nordic tradition, Frigg is associated with the home, weaving fate at the spindle. She knows the threads before they tighten. She sees what is coming, and keeps her counsel. Queen of Asgard, yes; but, also keeper of keys. Guardian of the household’s inner sanctum. In the ol’ Norse world, women carried the keys at their belts, the symbols of authority over stores, wealth, and running of the home. This was not small power. It was sovereignty in wool and iron. Frigg’s magic is not loud. It is strategic, patient, and protective. Hearth Craft, in her lineage, is the weaving of peace – sacred harmony – within walls that can withstand the storm. 

Not every hearth keeper had a myth. Most were unnamed. Grandmothers who salted soup by instinct. Caregivers who rose before dawn. A partner’s hands cracked from winter wood. Hearth Craft honors them, too.Their magic was consistency. Their altar kin-keeping. Their spell was love. When they cooked, they crafted communion. When they tended home, they tended spirit. This is not “just domestic.” This is sacred architecture. 

They would sit at the hearth, a portal available to most of humanity, as the hearth is a threshold between worlds. The fire of the hearth transforms. Food becomes body. House becomes home. 

In a world obsessed with spectacle, Hearth Craft makes us consider if the magical act of ‘tending’ isn’t one of the holiest, powerful. To tend the hearth is to hold fate gently in your hands. 

And I leave you with this final piece of my regular Creative Crone dispatch – a bit of ‘hearth craft’ to get you started: This week, choose one hearth ritual. Light a candle before cooking. Bless your doorway. Sweep with intention. Bake bread as an offering. Ask yourself, what am I building here? And then follow the answer. The flame is waiting.

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Although not entirely all Hearth Craft, my book, Magic In Your Cup talks about intention, tending, and the sacredness of what we put into our bodies and how to make it more magical. Find it wherever books are sold, or get one personalized just for you at the Creative Crone Shop.