Plants Suitable for Planting in Cemeteries Many cemeteries today offer perpetual care, and there is little contribution a family can make to a gravesite. But smaller and more rural graveyards still allow, or even need, the involvement of family members in the landscaping around a loved one’s grave. Goths that are interested in performing community [...]

Natural Black Dye for Hair and Clothing Herbal Black Hair Dye Here are two recipes I found in World of Herbs, by Lesley Bremness, which are natural formulations for darkening hair. I haven’t tried these, so I can’t vouch for their effectiveness or safety. I also suspect that these would only be useful if your [...]

A Mummy’s Herbal mummyThe mummy is a popular figure from horror movies, but of course there are many cultures in the ancient world that mummified their dead. The best known of these “real” mummies are probably the Egyptian mummies. The ritual involved in making a mummy, especially the mummy of a wealthy person, was long [...]

Everybody knows that red roses mean “I love you”. FTD and the rest of the floral industry have made that abundantly clear. Fewer people know that almost every culture, at one time or another, has developed a “flower code”, wherein almost every bloom known to man has had some meaning attached to it. The Victorians, [...]

Adonis was worshipped as a god of vegetation, or at least a god associated with vegetation, in the Hellenic world. (I won’t discuss the radically differing viewpoints on this.) Adonis was born of Myrrha, the myrrh tree, seduced both Persephone and Aphrodite with his androgynous charm, and died young, killed by his ineptitude in a [...]

Gardening by the Phases of the Moon This is intended as a brief overview of the concept of using the moon as a guide to gardening. Most devotees of this practice are people who believe in astrology, but you don’t have to believe in astrology to believe that the moon has influence over earthly events–after [...]

Vampiric Plants Giant man-eating Venus Fly-traps? Night-flying daisies? Blood-sucking rutabagas? No, not quite. pumpkin with fangs While there are lots of plants associated with repelling vampires, I’ve found only *one* mention of vampiric plants. The Islamic gypsies of Bosnia (Kosovo-Metohija region) believe that pumpkins and watermelons, if kept too long in the house, can become [...]

Vinegar of the Four Thieves If you plan on robbing people dying of the plague, you might find this recipe handy. It was used by a notorious band of men who stole from corpses or broke into the houses of the dying while the Great Plague raged in Marseille in 1720. They thought it would [...]

Halloween Plants When people nowadays think of Halloween, they think of pumpkins, since the pumpkin motif is seen everywhere, children love to carve jack’o’lanterns out of pumpkins, and the color of pumpkins–orange–has become one of three main colors of Halloween (along with the white of ghosts and the black of witches). However, lanterns at Halloween [...]

Gothic Sundial Mottoes You’re a brave goth, and you’ve finally realized that in order to garden, you’ll have to venture out in the daytime, at least occasionally. Despite this slight bow to necessity, your garden will still reflect your character, and a time-keeping device that’s been outdated for centuries would be perfect. Unfortunately, the sundials [...]