Ring of Light (23 page)

Authors: Isobel Bird

I like to make my own goddess statues out of salt dough. Many people have used salt dough to make things like Christmas ornaments and other decorations. Well, you can also use it to make images of any goddess you want to! (Of course you can also make a salt dough god, but I'll use the word goddess here.)

I think of the process of making a salt dough goddess as being a kind of ritual. After all, it involves the four elements of earth (the flour), water (the water), fire (the oven), and air (inspiration and kneading). It also celebrates the gift of creativity, and in the end you have a wonderful object to use in your other rituals and celebrations. So as you make your goddess, do it with a spirit of fun, but remember that you're also doing a kind of magic. Do whatever you like to make it feel like an act of creation. Play music. Light candles. Sing. Dance. Make it a special event.

Before you begin, decide which goddess you want to make a statue of. If you want to, find pictures of the goddess you're interested in and note any details you want to add to your statue, like facial features, jewelry, or symbols. Or just make up your own based on what a goddess means to you. It doesn't really matter. But if your goddess has any particularly interesting physical attributes, it can be fun to work those into your statue.

Once you've decided what kind of statue you want to make, you have to make your dough. The following recipe makes enough dough to form a very round statue about six inches high and five inches wide. You can use the same proportions to make more or less dough, depending on the size of the statue you want.

3 cups flour

3 cups salt (coarse Kosher salt works best)

: to 1 cup water

Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl, using your hands. Add the water gradually, starting with about two cups. Mix it into the flour and salt until you have a nice firm dough that you can work easily without it sticking too much to your hands. You might use more or less water, depending on your flour and on the humidity in the room in which you're working. The important thing is to add only a little at a time. If you add too much and your dough becomes too sticky, simply add a little more flour.

Once your dough is formed, turn it onto a hard surface and knead it until it's good and workable. If it dries and cracks while you're working it, add a little more water and knead it in. The dough should be elastic enough to form into shapes, and not so soft that it just flattens out when you try to form something.

When your dough is ready to work, form it into any shape you like. It can be shaped into almost anything. I prefer to start with one big lump of dough and mold it into a shape, rather than trying to make individual parts and sticking them together, but you can do that too. I find that wooden manicure sticks (the thin wooden sticks used to push back cuticles) work great for forming mouths and eyes and other details.

You can't really go wrong with this craft. Have fun. Use your imagination and let whatever deity you're working with work through you. You'll probably find that the dough starts taking shape quickly. Don't fuss with it too much or it will start to crack. But if you need to, you can wet it a little and smooth out any rough edges.

Once your statue is formed, it needs to dry. You can let it air dry, but this takes forever, and with a thick statue it will probably never really dry. It's best to bake it. Heat the oven to about 200(infinity)F and set the statue on a piece of tinfoil on a baking sheet. The recommended baking time for thoroughly drying a statue is about an hour for every half-inch of thickness. Once your statue is dry, you can paint it or decorate it or do whatever you want to it. If you want to keep it forever, you'll have to seal it with varnish made for crafts (ask at a craft store).

I don't keep my statues forever. I usually keep them on my altar for one cycle of the moon, or for however long I'm working with the particular goddess whose statue I've made. Then I return the statue to the earth, either by burying it in the ground or putting it in the ocean (or other body of water) to let it dissolve. Of course, you can do whatever you like with your statue.

You don't only have to make statues, either. If you want to you can make flat tiles with goddess images on them, pendants to wear around your neck, or decorations for a Yule tree or other occasion. The possibilities are as endless as your imagination.

â Isobel Bird

About the Author

Isobel Bird
has been involved in the world of paganism and witchcraft for many years. She lives and dances beneath the moon somewhere in New England.

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Credits

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

RING OF LIGHT.
Copyright Â© 2001 by Isobel Bird. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Â© Edition AUGUST 2001 ISBN: 9780061756535

Print edition first published in 2001 HarperCollins Publishers

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