Rachael Mueller is a witch, occultist, shaman and teacher. Her graduate work was in Religious Studies and Philosophy and has a passion for the vocation of a Witch and community. She began ministry work over 20 years ago and has been an ardent student of spirituality and religions since childhood. She has studied with the Temple of Witchcraft Mystery School since 2009 and is a High Priestess and Ordained Minister in the Temple of Witchcraft.
Rachael Mueller will be teaching The Tree of Life Weekend Workshop – a weekend with the Qabalah on Saturday, August 10th and Sunday, August 11th. She’s taught serveral classes at HBS and we are so grateful that she will be here for such an amazing class. If you really want to learn more about the Qabalah, this is the course for you!
When we opened Heart, Body, & Soul, we bought books. Lots of books, on lots of topics, all of which had to be organized into sections with handy little category labels just like every bookstore we’d ever visited. Easy-shmeezy, right? Not so much. We quickly realized there are lots of tough questions to be answered when figuring which books to put in what sections — and turns out those questions aren’t a once-and-done kind of thing. We’re STILL fighting that fight, 3 1/2 years in, with every new book order, every reset of the shop. It’s a constant game of ‘which of these things is not like the other?’
Should each Energy Healing Modality be its own category — Reiki, accupressure, craniosacral, reflexology, tapping, sound healing, and more — or is it more efficient to just lump them all in together under Energy Healing? What about books on Medical Intuitives — do those fall under Energy Healing or Psychic Abilities? (And should books on Kundalini Yoga go in the Yoga section or the Energy Healing section?? Inquiring minds would really like a definitive answer on that one.)
Should books on Native American spiritual traditions be combined with books on Indigenous Spiritual traditions of Africa, Australia and South America? Seems like a good fit. But then what about books on Core Shamanic Techniques that aren’t tied to any particular culture? Lots of overlap with the first group, but not quite the same. Yet, you can’t have a separate section on General Shamanism and leave out all those cultural traditions long associated with shamanic spiritual practices, can you? Of course not. So …. hmmm.
Where exactly are the lines distinguishing Taoism from Buddhism from Confucianism (especially when the title doesn’t have any of those words in it and we’re kind of guessing from the back cover summary.) Is it tacky to have a section just entitled Eastern Mysteries to cover them all? But then do the Hindu texts go there too or do they get a section on their own?
And what about those eclectic authors who pull from several traditions? Where in the name of the gods, do they go?? Or authors who write about lots of different topics? Do you put all of a single author’s books together in one place or do you scatter them about according to category?? (Really, can’t these people just stay focused???)
Should Tarot texts be mixed in with texts on Runes and Scrying, Palm Reading, Numerology and Geomancy in one massive All-Things-Divination section? Or should they be over by the Tarot decks in a category unto themselves? We keep changing our minds on that one. Perhaps some divination on that question would be in order.
Do books on ghosts go with the books on Psychic Self-Protection or with the Fantastic Creatures selection? And where does Joseph Campbell fit in??
We have sections dedicated to Celtic, Egyptian, Norse, and Diasporic spiritual traditions — but what do we do when we get that lone book on Russian Magickal Practices? Seems tacky to lump it in with general Magick when all the other cultures get their own … but one book a section doth not make.
Separate shelves each for Christianity, Judaism, and Islam? Or one combined section on Abrahamic Religions?
Should Goddess books go in a separate Divine Feminine section or be mixed into a more general ‘Books on Deities’ category?
What about putting the section on Relationships next to the Women’s Spirituality shelf? Are we advancing the stereotype that women care more about relationships than men?!? Pressure, pressure …
What should we do with those daily devotionals that aren’t tied to any particular year? Should they go with calendars and date books or should they go in general spirituality — or should they have a shelf all their own? OR should they be shelved according to their focus?? The one with daily prosperity affirmations with the Prosperity / Manifestation / Creative Visualization books and the one geared toward women with the Women’s Spirituality books and the Earth-focused one either with the Gardening / Herbs books or the Green Magick ones?
And what about Magickal Uses of Essential Oils — with the Essential Oil books or with the books on Magick?
Should Angels and Spirit Guides share a shelf or each have their own? And what about Animal Spirit Guides? Should they go with Spirit Guides or with the section on Animals generally?? (Why can’t anything be clearcut???)
Do books on Starseeds go with books on Atlantis / Lemuria? And if so, should they be a category of their own or overlap with Science and Metaphysics? Not quite the same, but some of those books are a slow slide down the same spectrum. Where exactly does one draw the line?
Books on Grief and Death/Dying … part of Books on the Afterlife / Reincarnation (because the latter concepts do seem to help a lot with the former after all) or a category unto themselves?
Ceremonial Magick definitely needs a separate shelf from Folk Magick. But what about historical books on The Golden Dawn and other ceremonial magick orders like The Templars and the Rosicrucians? Do they also go in the Ceremonial Magick or should they have their own shelf? Maybe a shelf just below the Ceremonial Magick shelf…?
The questions continue within each section: Alphabetical by title? Alphabetical by author? Grouped into subsections according to subtopic?
And what about those books that are too big to fit in the shelf assigned to their category?? AUGHHH!!!! (Yes, we have been known to just buy a book ourselves and take it home because it was less stressful than trying to make it fit. Sorry you missed it. )
For a hot minute, we looked into just organizing everything according to the category it was assigned in Amazon, but quickly realized Amazon lumps most of the books we have in the store into a single ‘New Age / Spirituality’ label. Not so helpful. We also learned we’re not alone in our categorical angst. There are entire books on how to organize your bookshelves! (I wonder if they have their own category?) Perhaps we should have just listened to Cat’s librarian sister at the start and done it the Library of Congress way; but that would have required us to learn the Library of Congress way and … yeah, that wasn’t happening. So, we prefer to think of it as a continuous quest we are offering to our customers. You never know j-u-s-t where that treasure you’re seeking will be found. So hey — happy hunting! And you’re welcome.
You asked for it and — voila! — it appears! Until now, all the lovelies you’d love to have were left sitting here all alone, with no one knowing how perfect they were for you — while all those significant folks in your life spent hours, days, weeks, decades in a fruitless search for the perfect gift to give you! Heartbreaking, it was. Simply heartbreaking.
But up until now, we had no way to make the match between those two. (Well, not counting Kayla’s pretty phenomenal memory, but she’s not HERE all the time.) But now — NOW we do! #HappyDance!
So give your loved ones a break. Make their lives and gift-giving a whole lot easier by just stopping in and creating your very own Heart, Body, & Soul wish list. Then send them our way. It’s a match made in heaven! Or at least in Heart, Body, & Soul. Your lovelies become their gifts, together at last. Just warms the heart, doesn’t it?
Hold on, though — there is ONE catch. (There’s always a lawyer’s caveat when Cat’s writing the blog.) So here it is:
A lot of our items — especially jewelry– are one-of-a-kind, so we can’t PROMISE that your favorite thing will be here at some indefinite time down the road, even if it’s front and center on your Wish List. So you might wanta pick up that absolutely-MUST-have item while you’re here, to make SURE it comes home with you, and put several other wow–wouldn’t-that–be-nice items on the gift registry. Or you can live dangerously. Your call.
Either way, make sure you put more than one item on that gift registry so your peeps have options to choose from! Gotta avoid that heartbreak, right?
Eighteen inches and counting, so they tell us. As we write this, the snowflakes are still falling, creating a lovely winter wonderland of chaos outside our windows. Add in the snow plow’s efforts and we have a wall of white surrounding the shop that looks like a Game of Thrones scenario. (Luckily Cat has an obsidian blade handy in case any Whitewalkers make an appearance.)
Why are we crazy enough to be open in this mess? No, we do not believe ‘the-business-must-open-no-matter-what’ nor are we out driving in the mess or forcing our staff to do so — (we promise!) We just camp out here — and those staff who live close enough to walk in or who want to camp out with us, fill out the staffing.
It was an M.O. that developed during the first ice storm after we opened. That one hit while we were here and, since both Deb and Cat live a fair piece from the shop, we couldn’t make it home. Fortunately, we have couches, pillows, blankets, coffee AND wine, as well as a frig & microwave — so we just bunked in and actually had a pretty fun time of it. And to our shock, customers actually showed up the next day!! So the pattern was set. Since then, when bad weather is predicted, we just plan on staying at the shop.
Deb being Deb, she packs in enough food to feed an army. So far this time, we’ve enjoyed a crockpot of chili, gummy bear pancakes — (don’t ask why, just know they were surprisingly good) — and salmon & eggs with blue cheese. Plus dark chocolate haystacks compliments of Michelle who has her own approach to stashing up for Snowpocalyse. (In other words, Cat eats way better when snowed in at the shop than she does at home!)
A surprising number of you people make it in to see us! And when we don’t have customers, we play in the snow (check out our attempt at making snow face-masks on our Facebook page or Michelle’s snow witch out front), work on behind-the-scenes stuff like inventory & cleaning up the warehouse (collective ‘ugh’), or just chill — crank up the tunes, pour ourselves a glass of wine, and drag out the Trivia for Dummies — which actually turned out to be aptly named for our skill levels. 🙂
So on this very snowy day, a collective ‘snow hats off’ from Deb & Cat to:
Michelle McBrien, who wields a mean snow-shovel and continuously reminds us of the joy of play in our lives. Her playful spirit calls to the child in all of us and THAT is a fabulous gift. (And did we mention she was the genius who brought the dark-chocolate haystacks??)
Amy Dove, who trekked the snow-covered blocks from her snug house to ours two days in a row, and helped Michelle dig a path across our parking lot so customers who had to park across the street because our lot hadn’t yet been plowed could actually reach us.
Kris Tenny-Brittian, who also lives nearby and not only made the trek herself to get here to work, but offered us use of her shower and homemade smoothies to boot!
Philana Crite, who did have to make a bit of a drive to get here, but chose to do it — not just to work, but even more importantly to be here Sunday morning to lead our Sacred Sunday service (which it turns out was written specifically for Cat. Funny how that works, isn’t it??)
Susan Walter, the amazingly gifted Angel Portrait artist who came in from Kansas City a day early to make sure she was here for the peeps who’d signed up for her sessions. (And we’re glad to report she did indeed make it safely back home — just a day later than planned.)
The many kind-hearted folk who took the time to check in on us to see if we needed anything, helping clean off cars (Thank you, Chris!), and making multiple trips to the grocery store to supplement Deb’s already voluminous store of food here, because she probably lived and died at Donner Pass in some prior lifetime. (Thank, you Karsten!)
And to all of you who make Heart, Body, & Soul a place we WANT to be even in a snowstorm — a heartfelt, if cold and snowy, thank-you.
The Roman God Janus is always depicted with two faces — one looking backward and one facing forward. (Janus – January – the whole start-of-the-new-year-phenomena – suddenly it all makes sense!) So in the midst of all our fresh starts and new diet/work-out resolve, we think it’s worth taking a page from Old Man J’s playbook and pausing just a millisecond for a look back.
We did that at our last Coffee & Convo of 2018 and it was pretty interesting to hear the highlights and low points, the lessons and hard-won-insights of the year, whether overall folks considered 2018 a pretty good year or one they were happy to kick in the backside on its way out the door. That last conversation of the year prompted me to take a look back at our other conversations of 2018.
For those of you not already familiar with it, we host a Coffee & Conversation every Saturday morning of the year at 10:30 a.m. We provide the coffee, the topic, and someone to facilitate the discussion. MJ provides goodies, (blessings be upon her talented head). And you — the tribe of folks who gather on those Saturday mornings — provide the conversation. And some fascinating conversations they were!
Over the course of 2018,
We talked about forgiveness and ‘if-only’s’.
Dreams and astrology.
And fairies.
We explored what it means and feels like to live fully in our own bodies, what it means and feels like to ‘have a calling’, and how we go about grounding transcendent experiences back into daily living.
We explored mindfulness and gratitude, karma and devotional practices.
We learned about Tibetan Buddhism and Shamanism.
And Ayurveda.
And Conjure.
We debated the power and perils of labels, the differences between personality and attitude, judgment versus discernment.
We discussed who ARE the Gods anyway and what are Solfeggio frequencies?
We got introduced to the the faces of the Tarot and the lessons of Lilith.
We talked about climate change and evolution, played with energy, and listened to tips on how to get published.
We reminisced about the dog days of summer and shared stories of labors of love.
We shared ghost stories and Halloween traditions, discussed rituals around death, and learned about Ancestral Healing.
We talked about the good and not-so-good memories and feelings that Christmas brings up for us, and how we take care of ourselves in the physical and emotional craziness of the holiday season.
We laughed about the worst gifts EVAH and then —
We looked back together at 2018 … which prompted me to do the same here.
Not too shabby a list, is it?? This is our second full year of Saturday morning Coffee & Conversation — 104 conversations shared over countless cups of coffee and MJ’s treats. We have debated and disagreed, pondered and contemplated, cried and laughed together as we explored a never-ending range of things-people-don’t-often-take-time-out-to-talk-about. The Saturday morning group shifts and changes. Some are regulars, seldom missing a Saturday, without regard to topic. Others drop in when they can or when a particular topic catches their eye. Some just happen upon the conversation as its happening and pull up a chair to join in. All are welcome and there is no cost to participate — though we do appreciate donations to the Good Karma Coffee Fund to support our charity of the month!
Saturday morning Coffee & Conversations is one of our favorite things at HBS. We’re always on the lookout for good topics, so if you have some ideas, please grab somebody who works at HBS the next time you’re in and let us know. And if you haven’t yet dropped by on a Saturday morning — consider adding THAT to your list of New Year’s resolutions. If nothing else, MJ’s brownies are guaranteed not to disappoint.
Until then, Happy New Year to each and every one of you from those of us here at HBS. May 2019 bless us every one.
Yes. Yes, it is here — the big shopping season is upon us. But it doesn’t have to be a crazy-making time of year, folks. Really! Avoid the insanity of the mall and the big box stores (or at least minimize) and stop by HBS instead. This whole weekend — from ‘Black Friday’ through ‘Small Business Saturday’ and into ‘Whatever Sunday Is’ — you can get great sales, great products, AND a great experience. So come visit us. Coffee’s always on. Couches await. Books abound. And a whole lot of lovely gift ideas await. You’re welcome. (See you this weekend.)
Buy $50 worth of HBS products and get 10% off your whole purchase.
Buy $75 worth, get 15% off your total purchase.
Buy $100 worth, get 20% off your total purchase.
Buy $150 or more, get 25% off your total purchase.
The gifted Mickie Mueller, whose latest book Halloweenis PERFECT for the HBS Halloween Party & 3rd Birthday Party on Oct 27, will be at HBS! Mickie will be leading our Coffee & Conversation at 10:30 am and then will be signing books and decks from 11:30 – 12:30 PM. Be there!!!
Christopher is the author of over twenty books on Witchcraft and Paganism and a sought-after teacher and speaker over several continents. We are so excited and honored to count HBS among the places privileged to host his workshops! BUT Christopher is not traveling at all in 2019, so this is his last trip to Missouri until at least 2020, so don’t miss your chance to catch him now. His past workshops at HBS have sold out, so please reserve your place in advance to be sure you get a place at any or all of the events of the weekend (with the exception of his free book-signing on Friday night, from 6-7 pm. No need to register in advance for that one – just come on down!)
HBS is SO excited to host Author, Angela Kaufman, for a book-signing and workshop on her fabulous new book: “Discover the Power of Your Archetypal Queen”!!
Sunday, September 30, 1-4 PM
This awesome workshop is an introduction to the Inner Queen system, which teaches participants to recognize and embrace the four elemental energies within themselves and in nature, as personified by the four Tarot Queens. Although this program borrows from the Tarot archetypes, it is not a Tarot class and no experience with the Tarot is necessary. (But if you DO have experience with the Tarot, yo’ull find some interesting new perspectives here worth checking out!)
Angela’s approach reinvents age-old archetypes to fit modern women seeking to expand beyond society’s labels and live in connection with their intuition and inner wisdom. This workshop is perfect for anyone interested in connecting with aspects of the Divine Feminine and is especially ideal for those experiencing life transitions. (So if you’re spending a lot of energy asking yourself “Who AM I? Where am I GOING? What do I do NOW?” … yeah, this workshop is for you.)
So come on and join us in learning how to harness the four core powers within that can help you thrive in any situation. Learn which archetypal energy has shaped your personality, attitudes and motivation, and how to tap into latent sources of power to ride life’s changing tides!
