Saturday, September 16, 2017

Ep. 21: The Good Witch movie





 4.0/7.0


Hello to all you wonderful listeners out there!  It's been a little while but I am back with a brand new episode for your listening pleasure.  Episode 21 is all about the original Hallmark channel 2008 movie "The Good Witch" starring Catherine Bell, Chris Potter and Catherine Disher.  Catherine Bell plays Cassandra Nightingale, the "witch" of the movie's title.  The movie's script was written by Rod Spence and it was directed by Craig Pryce.

The original movie spawned seven other movies including: The Good Witch's Garden, The Good Witch's Gift, The Good Witch's Family, The Good Witch's Charm, The Good Witch's Destiny, The Good Witch's Wonder and Good Witch Halloween.  The TV show "The Good Witch" soon followed in 2015 and is now in season 4 which is scheduled to begin in October 2017.  "The Good Witch" clearly has connected with a lot of people and has become a successful franchise for the Hallmark Channel.

The movie begins with a mysterious woman creating a concoction from a personal recipe/spell book and although the identity of the woman is not shown, we know it's Cassandra Nightingale.  The book has a recipe for "Queen of Hungary's Water which I mention in the episode.  Jadwiga Zajaczkowa/Jenne Heise has a great page called Herbalism, Medieval, Magickal and Modern which has great info on herbs in the Medieval period.  Her article "Queen of Hungary Water: some experiments in perfumery provided the information for the distillation for the episode.

Herbs are an important part of Cassie's practice in the movie and she uses them to heal naturally.  Rosemary Gladstar has a great website called "The Science and Art of Herbology" which is chock full of good information.  From a magical perspective, Paul Beyerl's "The Master Book of Herbalism" and "A Compendium of Herbal Magic" are two excellent resources.

If you are interested in crystals, two good resources to start with are Judy Hall's "The Encyclopedia of Crystals" and "The Crystal Bible".  For those of you interested in essential oils, Julia Lawless' "The Encylopedia of Essential Oils is another great book resource.  Lady Rhea's book "The Enchanted Formulary" is a fantastic for the magical use of essential oils, blends and fragrances.

"Ojibwe Stories" is a podcast about Ojibwe culture, language and ideas hosted by Dr. Erik Redix, an Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth.  Also, be sure to check out the podcast episode "Language and Meaning: An Ojibwe Story" of the podcast "On Being by Krista Tippett.  Indian Country Today has an article on 12 Great Native American Podcasts for your listening pleasure.

The episodes' music is "Bare to the Bone" and "The Gathering of Spirits" by Carrie Newcomer, "Only" by Alex Mason & The Minor Emotion and "Glow in Space" by Sergey Cheremisinov provided by the Free Music Archive.

So farewell for now! Be sure to join me on my next episode and follow the show on Twitter and Instagram where it is @thewytchfiles and The Wytch Files on Facebook.

 


Theme music X-Files Theme Parody by Mallon Khan
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