Everyday Enchantments
Musings on Ordinary Magic and Daily Conjurings
Maria DeBlassie
Publisher: Moon Books
Release Date: October 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-78535-923-1
Taglines: True magic is in the everyday.
Book Description:
Winner of the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award in the New Age Category for 2018
Finalist for the Body Mind Spirit Book Awards in the New Age Category for 2018
Official Selection for the New Apple Book Award for the New Age/Mind-Body-Spirit Category for 2018
Finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award in the Body Mind Spirit Category for 2018
Spellbinding meditations on conjuring your own bliss.
Everyday Enchantments is a love letter to the magic of everyday life, the sweet moments and the profound that we often overlook in our hurry to get from one place to the next. What if we had the power to unplug from our daily hustle and bustle and conjure a more profound way of living rooted in natural mysticism?
We do. All it takes is the whispered wish for more everyday enchantment breathed onto a dandelion head. This collection of essays reminds us to escape into the ordinary, find beauty in a simple cup of tea or rereading a beloved novel—and joyfully let our world turn upside down when synchronicity strikes in the form of wrong turns down forgotten lanes and unexpected midnight conversations with the moon.
This book is a study in what it means to live deliciously, joyfully, and magically. And it’s an invitation to conjure your own bliss—-because let’s face it: we could all use a little more magic in our lives.
Excerpt:
ENCHANTMENT: A spell wrapped in a noun. Three
syllables. One state of being.
To live with
Enchantment is to see beyond the brick and mortar that make up your home and
into the magic infused within its frame. It is made up of stories and dried bay
leaves and dreams whispered into the heads of dandelions. Of bare feet on
carpeted floors and the smell of burning sage. Crystals—amethyst, citrine,
amazonite, smoky quartz—layers of your day-to-day and search for that elusive
energy that winds its way up your spine and winding in and around your books;
all the better to magnify their magic. It is to peel back the outward into your
life. Let the snake at your base wriggle free of its coil to climb up to your
shoulder blades and across your open back. There is no room for tightly stacked
discs here, just the taste of joy when the sun licks your skin.
You might find
it at the bottom of an empty teacup. Your future written in soggy leaves, or in
the whisper of trees, their leaves rustling and murmuring secrets only they can
understand. Sometimes they are kind enough to translate for you—if you listen
long enough. If you shower their roots with distilled love songs and feed them
the black earth from your compost. It’s there, too, when you run your tongue
along the grooves and ridges of a well-loved sentence. It’s everywhere. Even in
the spaces you think have lost hope, like the junk drawer where you keep your
faded dreams, stray screws, and half-forgotten heartbreaks along with wine
corks and a few rubber bands. They’re not lost, just resting like seeds in the
earth before they are ready to break open.
That is the
first syllable.
The second is to
learn from Enchantment, to listen to Coyote's call when he plays his tricks.
Coyote loves his tricks. And you should too. What delicious messages wrapped in
matted fur and a lolling tongue! All he wants is for you to take that leap of
faith when only you can see the soft earth on the other side of the cliff.
Don’t you know that you have wings? They are just rusty from disuse. Just
listen to Coyote’s long-winded stories (he does so admire himself) and watch
the flick of his tail. All he asks is for you to trust him, even if he can’t be
trusted; his les- son is real, hard as onyx in your palm, ephemeral as the
desert rain that you feel in your bones when all you see is a cloudless sky. No
weatherman can ever map the storms and sunshine work- ing their way across your
body.
Coyote has no
room for logic, just the reason in his unreason.
Just those
perfect coincidences set in motion by the padding of his paws. You are raw
power, he says, a spark of the universe set in motion. And you must trust this
power that is you, that is the earth, that is the beating of your heart. A
rhythmic tattoo forever pounding out your path, however many times you try to
stray from it. All Enchantment asks is that you absorb the wisdom of the moon
and the stars, and the prophesying of the seeds burrowed deep in the dirt.
Coyote is there to make sure you listen, even when the rest of the world
prefers your ears stopped with cotton and your heart beating as slow as melting
snow in winter.
And the third
syllable? To conjure. Here you weave your spell with vowels and consonants and
beeswax candles. You seal them with pure starlight and a handful of chamomile.
Then you burn away the dry brush and the brittle ideas that don’t hold up
against the moonlight. There is no room here for literal…things or the people
who think them. Not if you want to create. Not if you want to believe that the
most important part of your everyday occurs in the moments others can too
easily overlook. (Seldom can you find a person strong enough to brave the
stillness or wade into the bottomless waters of imagination.) You make your life
here, in the infinite potential of seconds and minutes and hours unfurling into
vines and roots. Because when you are looking for everyday enchantment, it
finds you. Always. And if you let it, it will settle inside your skin and feed
your soul with dreams grown ripe under the sun’s caress. It drops you deep down
into the rich earth and forgotten caves buried between heartbeats—places that
many are too afraid to venture inside. For how can you absorb the marvelous, if
you do not recognize it reflected in yourself, feel it settle in your bones
like so much calcium?
That's
Enchantment.
A three-syllable spell wrapped in a noun,
planted in the earth and nourished with moon- light. Let the roots stretch to
the underworld and the leaves unfurl toward the heavens. Walk across the
star-kissed bridge made of hollyhock seeds and strong will. There is your
passage into the unseen universe.
About the Author:
Maria DeBlassie, Ph.D. is a native New Mexican mestiza blogger, award-winning writer, and educator living in the Land of Enchantment. Her first book, Everyday Enchantments, published through Moon Books, will be released in October of 2018. Her blogging life started as a year-long journey to write her back into happy, healthy, and whole through daily posts about life’s simple pleasures, everyday magic, and radical self-care. That year-long experiment turned into a lifestyle, a book, and her ongoing blog, Enchantment Learning & Living. She is forever looking for magic in her life and somehow always finding more than she thought was there. Find out more about Maria and conjuring everyday magic at www.mariadeblassie.com. And don’t forget to follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for regular inspiration on magical living.
Reviews and Endorsements
An insightful collection of short
writings that make you look at the everyday in a whole new light. ~
Erin Elliot, The Sword of Lumina
To build everyday bridges between
the magick and the mundane out of the long-sought and hard-won materials of will
and wonder is the act of a true Priestess. In this book, DeBlassie offers rich
glimpses of daily rituals, miniature spells in their own right that prompt the
reader to look for the quiet divinity in their own lives, to see the subtle
majesty in their day-to-day routines, and to question their perceived barriers
between the modern and the mystical. ~ Danielle Dulsky, author of Woman Most Wild
Maria DeBlassie has crafted magic
within the pages of her new book, Everyday Enchantments. Her eloquent words offer
the ‘promise of soul replenishment’ as one traverses the journey of her -and
their- metaphorical metamorphosis. Page after page, readers will experience the
soothing balm of DeBlassie’s words as they encourage one to open her heart, her
mind, her ear, her thoughts and her soul to the unique transpersonal book they
hold in their hands. Just as DeBlassie mentions early on in Everyday
Enchantments when writing of the unexpected delight of discovering a double
yolk, her heartfelt writing is like ‘cradling…gold’ in one’s hands. Reading and
absorbing the beauty of Maria DeBlassie’s Everyday Enchantments will have
readers conjuring their own magical life. Her words will caress their soul and
embrace their heart with inspiration and encouragement. Everyday Enchantments
blends together poetic consciousness such as from Maya Angelou and Mary Oliver
all while weaving in powerful and deep inner wisdom such as from Clarissa
Pinkola Estes. Yet, Maria DeBlassie beautifully stands out given the uniqueness
of Everyday Enchantments. It’s a must read and a must to be gently and lovingly
held in a sacred place of honor in one’s personal library. DeBlassie’s Everyday
Enchantments is like a heart song that every woman should feel. ~
Janelle Alex, Ph.D.,The Writer’s Shaman
Reading this enchanted collection
is so much more than reading a book…it’s an unearthing of things
half-remembered and bringing them into the light. Gorgeous and luminous…thank
you, Maria, for unwinding this spell for your readers. ~ Laura Bickle, critically-acclaimed
author of Nine of Stars, Bewitching Book Tours
An insightful collection of short
writings that make you look at the everyday in a whole new light. Ponder how
different life could be if you stop taking everything for granted and find joy
in the simplicity of it all. ~ Erin Elliott, author of The Sword of
Lumina series, The Editing Hall
