Blog | Tava Baird

We're HEADED TOWARDS SPRING, Bay-bee!

tavabaird
Feb 2
6 min read

Happy Imbolc (just a little late!) We had a fantastic bone-reading class followed by a wonderful Full Moon Celebration that was PACKED TO THE RAFTERS at The Simple Life in Frederick, MD last night. With the world gone crazy around us, I am determined to create as many opportunities for community support, gathering, learning, and centering as I can. Community is how we get through these times. Community heals.

And so...here is a HUGE slate of classes, events, and markets coming up for Darkflower in February and March. Come on out if you can. And if you see something that floats your boat and are a person on a very restricted income, message me. I'm always looking for at least one volunteer per event (which lets you trade helping out for tuition) and I also don't mind bartering for events as well. We always need someone to make cookies or brew tea. So don't let finances stop you from reaching out!

I also am about to put a WHOLE LOTTA new things in the etsy shop over the next few weeks. New prints! Stickers! Spirit Communication Dolls! I use the proceeds from many of these items to cover tuition for classes and events for Pagans who need a financial boost to attend. So if you gotta get your coven-mate a Witchy handmade gift for their birthday, may I humbly suggest a trip to the Darkflower shop? It's at https://darkflowerbooks.etsy.com.

CLASSES

THE SPIRIT HOUSE: A Level One Class in Lilithian Magick

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8th, 1-4 PM

The Blue Ball Inn in Clear Brook, VA

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/lilith-and-the-lost-city-the-spirit-house

This class in Lilithian Magick covers types of entities and energies in haunted spaces according to Samael. Learn how to feed hungry spirits, diagnose what may be happening in your environment, and practice tried-and true methods for communicating with Spirits. We’ll be discussing actual cases from our local area and send you away with methods for forming better relationships with the Unseen…and utilizing their resources to help. Click the link above to register!

A GATHERING OF OWLS: A Level Two Class in Lilithian Magick

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 15th, 12-3:30 PM

The Blue Ball Inn in Clear Brook, VA

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/a-gathering-of-owls-lilith-and-the-lost-city-level-2-1

Being able to visualize your Divine Form can help make you more aware of the path towards standing more fully in your own power. This class, which capitalizes on the information from the Four Mirrors class, guides you on the steps towards re-connecting with your divinity and better understanding the workings of Gods, Goddesses, Angels, Daemons, Ancestors, and other guides. Participants will create a painting that embodies their essential energy as the first step towards creating a Lilithian sacred space in their own home. Click the above link to register!

THE DECK OF REBELLION: A Level One Lilithian Divination Class

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1-4 PM

The Blue Ball Inn in Clear Brook, VA

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/the-deck-of-rebellion-a-level-one-lilithian-divination-class

Come and learn all the layouts for Oracle of the Dae: The Deck of Rebellion in this lively class that covers Dae philosophy and divination. Included in the class are how to integrate Dae philosophy and card pulls into the deck with bone readings. If you already own a deck, these is a discounted option at sign-up for this class. Come and read the energies around you- and inside you- and gain a new perspective on The Lost City and yourself! Click the link above to resister!

SINGING TO THE BONES: Learning to cast Stones, Charms, Stones, and Shells

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28th, 12-3 PM

The Aquarian Metaphysical Shop in Richmond, VA

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/singing-to-the-bones-an-introduction-to-casting-bones-stones-shells-and-charms-6

THE DARKFLOWER COLLECTIVE: A Mentorship Group for Solitary Pagans

Field Trip to Berryville for Druidry Discussion

SUNDAY, MARCH 1, 3-5 PM

Are you a solitary practitioner looking for an opportunity to learn and be social? Join the Darkflower Collective meetings for lectures on various types of Paganism and practices and an opportunity to find community at our Darkflower Collective events. This is a wonderful option for those new to Paganism to find information on a wide array of topics and veteran practitioners who can answer your questions. Hosted by Tava Baird. To register:

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/the-darkflower-collective-a-mentorship-gathering-for-solitary-pagans-2

THE HOLY ROOTS: A Level Two Lilithian Divination Class

SUNDAY, MARCH 15, 12-3 PM

The Blue Ball Inn in Clear Brook, VA

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/the-holy-roots-lilith-and-the-lost-city-level-2

Come and learn a unique Lilithian divination practice that combines lot-casting, moving energy, sign language, and ritual dress all in one sitting! The Holy Roots is a divination system that then lets you use the divination items to balance and move energy in magickal practice and communicate without words to fellow Lilithians. Change the way to dress, heal, speak and read energy all at once under the tutelage of Samael. Class includes a Holy Roots set, mat, and guide booklet. Click above to register!

UNDERWORLD: A HADES and PERSEPHONE JOURNEY to benefit GREEN HILL CEMETERY

FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 6-9 PM - THE FIRST DAY of SPRING

Green Hill Cemetery Mausoleum in Martinsburg, West VA

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/underworld-a-hades-and-persephone-journey

Let’s do it again! Darkflower returns to green Hill where we will turn the mausoleum into a candle-lit Feast hall of the Underworld. Learn Greek divination practices, visit our unique vendors, have a reading, and participate in a Spring Persephone Ritual. We’ll also have a gaming tournament for a brand-new dice and card game called River to Hades. Come celebrate Spring with us and raise funds for the preservation of this historic Victorian cemetery at the same time! Themed Greek God and Goddess costumes encouraged! For tickets: https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/underworld-a-hades-and-persephone-journey

**NEW DARKFLOWER OUTING! A GALAXY of HAPPY ART

SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 3-5:30 PMCome and hang out with us at the new Pagan-owned Art Gallery A Galaxy of Happy Art in Berryville from 3-5:30! Explore a world of color and meet with us to socialize and discuss Muses and Pagan Creative Processes at 3 pm. There is a free public parking lot just past the store on the left if you come from downtown Berryville! There is no charge for this event, but please RSVP so we know to expect you. https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/darkflower-meet-up-a-galaxy-of-happy-art-in-berryville-va

THE SPIRIT HOUSE: A Level One Class in Lilithian Magick

SUNDAY, MARCH 22nd,12-2:30 PM

The Simple Life in Frederick, MD

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/lilith-and-the-lost-city-the-spirit-house-1

THE FOUR MIRRORS: An Introductory Class on Lilithain Magick and Philosophy

SATURDAY, MARCH 28th, 12-3 PM

The Aquarian in Richmond, VA

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/lilith-and-the-lost-city-an-introduction-to-the-philosophy-of-lilithian-poppet-magick

Your Lilithian Journey Starts HERE! Come and learn all the basics of Lilithian Magickal Philosophy and walk the Four Mirrors Self-Worth Ritual with us. You’ll also be making a little Daemon Poppet to continue on your journey with you. If you are curious about Lilith, Samael, Angels and daemons, come and have your perspective shifted in this lively and moving class. Click the link above to grab your ticket!

NEW EVENT! THE POWER OF STORY Sound Healing and Guided Meditation Experience at The Mausoleum at Green Hill Cemetery

SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 1-3 PM

Green Hill Cemetery in The Mausoleum in Martinsburg, West VA

You’ve heard it talked about on the Mystical Musings podcast…now come experience it for yourself! The Power of Story is a live-channeled sound healing and guided meditation event featuring Jennifer and Keith Taylor live-channeling music while Tava Baird invites Samael to speak to you and provide a unique guided meditation for you inside the stunning Green Hill Cemetery Mausoleum. Bring your yoga mat and your blanket and pillow and stretch out to receive messages and balancing inside the Mausoleum for an experience like no other! This event also helps raise funding for the preservation of the historic cemetery. Space is limited…grab your tickets here!

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/the-power-of-story-a-channeled-guided-meditation-and-sound-healing-event

DARKFLOWER MARKET APPEARANCES

Reign of Terror Feast of the Vampires DARK ARTS and ODDITIES MARKET

SATURDAY and SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 & 14

Milton, PA at The Shoe Factory Event Center

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/the-undead-of-winter-dark-arts-and-oddities-market

Ravenwood’s CELTIC FAIRE on the Walking Mall

SATURDAY, MARCH 14

Winchester VA Walking Mall

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/ravenwood-celtic-faire-1

OTHER FUN NEWS:

Wyldwood is coming out through a publisher this year! New cover, new edit, and a whole new lease on life...and it means I can approach indie booksellers about stocking it! Wheee!

Are you going to the Sacred Space conference in College Park, MD this February? I am! I can't wait to take classes! I'll be there Thursday through Saturday, so if you are going, let's sit together!

The Book of High Places is 200 pages finished, 100 pages to go, baby! Then it will head to editing and be the next installment in The Spiral Pathways series!

I'll be presenting at the Fertile Ground Gathering this Beltane! This fabulous Pagan retreat is chock-full of ritual, community and classes! I'll be teaching Lilith and The Lost City: the Four Mirrors and Lilith and The Lost City: The Holy Roots on my own there. Then I'll be teaming up with Jennifer Taylor and her husband Keith to bring beck The Power of Story workshop on Friday night. AND I'll be partnering with Deathworker Jennifer Jurlando to present a workshop on establishing a healthy relationship with our own mortality! I'll be teaching the poppet part. So much fun! https://www.fertilegroundgathering.com/

I'll be one of the featured presenters at this year's Free Spirit Gathering in Maryland! My entire slate of Lilithian Magick level One classes will be there. The theme this year is Unity In the Storm. For more, visit https://www.freespiritgatheringmd.org/

Stay as well as you can, friends. And remember that when things look bleak, our savage love will overcome all.

HADES and PERSEPHONE walk into a Victorian Cemetery...

tavabaird
Jan 22
1 min read

Dreaming of Spring as the storm closes in? So are we!

And when those lovely warm days do arrive, we're going to celebrate in Pagan style...IN THE UNDERWORLD! And since you are a website subscriber, YOU get a DISCOUNT!

Come join us for this benefit for Green Hill Cemetery Historic District in Martinsburg, West VA on the First Day of Spring! We'll have an altar to Persephone, a spring ritual, a gaming tournament with prizes, a few hand-selected local vendors with themed creations, a Greek divination class, and more! All done by candlelight in the historic Victorian mausoleum which will become Hades' feast hall for one special night!

Come support the Green Hill Cemetery Historic District Cemetery and party like it's 570 BCE!

Grab your toga and your ticket here and mark your calendars! And type in Coupon Code HADES for 20% off any tickets you buy!

https://www.tavabaird.com/event-details/underworld-a-hades-and-persephone-journey

The Fallen Angel Project: Angel Alpha, Part II

tavabaird
Jan 2
6 min read

Hello, Beautiful Souls! It's a freezing, overcast afternoon, and I am back at the table with Angel Alpha!

If you remember, the Angel in question came home from the thrift store looking like this:

...but I am determined to give her a Pagan makeover. Hammers, screwdrivers, and a lot of work left her looking like this:

So now the fun begins! I went in with my knives and started shaping, trying to listen to the wood to discover what form she wanted to take.

And it turns out that Angel Alpha is also not down with being a blocky, simple wood cut-out anymore. No, this Lady wants BANGIN' CURVES.

I started out by giving a lot more of an organic, uneven feel to the sides of her, rounding out harsh edges but purposely leaving some texture to show that the altar statue did actually start out life as a tree. Then I started cutting into the neck area to make her neck more pronounced, and giving more of an organic shape to the head.

And then I thought...let's make that center hole really stand out. Let's make it look like something is flowing or dripping form it. Let's make it look like a freaking portal.

Around this time the rubber part that holds my sandpaper drums onto the rotary tool blew out, which means my drums were no longer secure. Which means occasionally, at high speeds, one of them would fly across the room to land Lilith-knows-where in this studio office. The office that is packed with trays of paint, resin art, jewelry supplies, paintings in progress, a buttload of leather tools, packing supplies, and bin after bin of poppet making materials.

How many sandpaper drums have I lost in the last hour? Four. But nevertheless, she persists.

Starting to experiment with texture on the front. Pretty sure I'm using this rotary tool in ways that would violate its warranty.

Now I can hear the wood a little bit louder. Maybe the tree that birthed this wood wants to speak. ROOTS. I see roots, and water. Let's make that Void at the center uneven, and start carving grooves.

Switching to a pen engraver to bring more texture to these roots.

The work continues as the Spirit moves...

The pen engraver and a bit more sanding left me with this:

...and I'm getting the feeling I'm on the right track. Rinsed the whole project down (you could almost hear the wood go "Ahhhhhhh...thank you," when I reintroduced it to water.)

Then it was time to glove up and get some wood putty in the holes on her front and back where that heart used to be.

Somewhere in the process, her front became her back. Her old face is on the back of her head now, and will soon be painted over. She's leaving the face she used to show the world behind her!

It is now clear that there's going to be some Dryad influence in the finished Altar Statue. She feels really good in the hand, a lot rounder and cleaner. Going to give the wood putty about an hour to dry, and then she's going to get sanded all over with good old-fashioned elbow grease (since the rotary tool sander has tapped out.)

One of my favorite things is when people dress devotional statuary with actual fabric and jewelry. I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up making a necklace for this entity, and am contemplating diving into the bins and bins of upcycled fabrics I keep on hand for Veilwalker dolls. Not sure the fabric will happen, but I'm aiming hard for the ritual jewelry.

It's nearly time to being painting. She's reminding me of a winter night, so I'm thinking blacks with some violet highlights, and maybe letting the natural wood show through on the roots for contrast. We'll have to see what she wants...

And I'm thinking of doing lettering on the back. Some words about the Sacred Dark, perhaps...

While I wait I'll switch gears to assemble some Consecration Kits. This is something new I'm putting together for 2026. It's got incense, a lovely bit of Blessing Oil I mixed up, and instructions. That way if you have a poppet or an altar statue or a Deck of Rebellion but could use some help with a ritual to Consecrate them to your practice, you can grab one of these and you're all set. Especially if you want to mark them as devoted to your Lilithian practice.

"An altar to Lilith is an altar to the self."

-Samael

He says that a lot lately.

And so, for this first Fallen Angel...why shouldn't she be dedicated to Lilith?

So here we go!

First, she's going to get a Black Moon Lilith symbol on her head where her face should be. For more on Black Moon Lilith in Astrology, there's a helpful little article at https://www.astrology.com/article/whats-my-lilith-sign/

One of my tattoo artists once said that if you put a moon on its side it will always look off-center, even if it is perfectly centered. But I'm going to do it anyway here. If people don't see us as centered when we are, that's on them, yes?

Next, I wanted to add Lilith's sigil to her chest. Did you know that this popular sigil was created by artist Robin Artisson in 2007? More on that here: https://spells8.com/sigils-of-lilith/

I decided to place it just a bit off to the left to show her association with the so-called "left hand path" in Western magickal practice.

And then, because Lilith is associated with night and hidden places...HERE COMES THE BLACK PAINT!

First coat is drying. NOW we're getting somewhere.

And suddenly...I know what I'm going to do. I'd thought of adding red, but settle on copper instead. To add a bit of shine. And to buck the traditional a bit.

I start layering in bits of copper, but then she looks too...new. So out come the wet sponges to weather her down a bit. Scrub off most of it, and leave a bit to pool and collect in the grooves. Rub off some of the black at the base and on her edges. make her feel a bit more weathered and ancient.

And I'm diggin' it. She's Black Moon Lilith now, Fallen Angel #1. How appropriate.

A trail of copper magick, rubbed into the wood and made to flow with the element of water.

And I have to say...that hole, right at her center. Some might say she's been wounded there. But do you know what I think? I think it's the place that she makes space for herself. Space for the ALL. Space for the divine. It's where she lets the air in and breathes despite what others try to do to her. It might have started as injury, but she's transformed it into RELEASE.

That's the magick of this sculpture, right there.

She needs a pendant and a coat of protective varnish, and then her front is complete.

But what about the back? Some words seem right. And so I choose:

Bless My Wild Self

Bless My Exiled Self

Bless My Fierce Self

I Am the Moon's Apogee

In astrology, your Black Moon Lilith Sign is a point, not a planet. An apogee is the point in the orbit of the moon or a satellite at which it is furthest from the earth. Wanna know your Black moon Lilith sign? You can go here: https://cafeastrology.com/whats-my-black-moon-lilith.html

(Mine's in Scorpio. It says I run towards things that make other people uncomfortable. It also says I use secrecy as armor, which means I hide vulnerability, stifling intimacy and support. Appropriate, I think.)

I listened to my Lost City playlist while creating her. The Lost City playlist is about 26 straight hours of belly dance music, so if she comes to your house don't be surprised if she hip-rolls her way across your sacred space.

I need something for around her neck, and dive into my bead and pendant stash. And I do mean DIVE, because it isn't organized in the least. If my Virgo friend saw it she'd disown me.

I need something...odd. Imperfect. Earthy. I find some lovely orange leather, and then...

I have no idea where how I ended up with this pendant. It's handmade ceramic and...flawed. The garden design is stamped UPSIDE DOWN.

And what did Lilith do, if not turn The Garden of Eden UPSIDE DOWN?

It's perfectly imperfect. But so thick the jump rings have to be wrestled in. That's okay. It's in honor of The Mother of Rebellion.

I grab a paint pen and sign the bottom. "Black Moon Lilith. Fallen Angel #1. Tava Baird, 2026" and then pop her up on my altar for photographs. Tomorrow she'll get a clear coat of protective varnish and then a nice smoke cleanse with my Lilith incense from Dragon Witch Apothecary. (Want some? Emily at Dragon Witch made me a bangin' Lilith Ritual oil too. Her site is https://www.dragonwitchapothecary.com/

And then? She'll go up on etsy, and we'll see who needs her to witness their path. Fallen Angel #1 rises again. Just like we all can.

Alpha Angel is now Black Moon Lilith.

Black Moon Lilith will arrive in the etsy shop on 1/3/2026 sometime in the evening. If you'd like to take a look at her there, please visit https://darkflowerbooks.etsy.com

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for Angel #2's rebirth coming soon!