10 Days and counting...

I had wanted to start posting more but getting ready for my trip has really taken all of my time!  10 days and counting until I fly off to Sicily for a month.

I have my Euro cash, my bills paid, lodging and other arrangements made.  I have to pack and get a phone when I arrive.  I am pretty sure that I've taken care of most everything.

Each day, I'm doing 1/2 - 1 hour of Rosetta Stone. It's really a great course. If you're thinking of learning a language, it's worth the money especially when you compare it to the price of more traditional courses for language.

Stregacrafts is up and running.  since I hand create most items that we carry,  but we're not going to be taking any new orders until I return. Note - I was just informed that I accidentally crashed the site. It's off line as of this writing my Mike is going to fix it as soon as he gets back from lunch.  Sorry!

OneStopOccultshop is up and running. We'll still be taking orders through the site. I've arranged it so our suppliers will drop ship orders directly to our customers and I'll be staying in touch with them while I'm gone.

Streghe.us is up and running and we've got some surprises planned. I'm working with a friend to convert the site to a WordPress UI including forums. The goal is to make it a real community site focused around resources and intelligent (and respectful) discussion regarding Pagan religious Witchcraft with origins in Italy/Sicily, Europe, & the USA.

http://www.vinnierusso.com/TarotReadings is up and running. Although I am still taking phone readings until I leave, I am not able to do any in-person readings at this time.  While gone in September, I will not be available for phone or in-person readings.  When I return in October, I will be available for both and will be sure to post a notice.

The Sheaves of Demeter Coven is busy as well. In addition to the Chthonioi-Alexandrian and Italic material, we're currently doing 4 - 6 weeks of elemental workings. Each week is devoted to meditations on a particular element and how that element appears and interacts in our daily lives. The goal is both become familiar with the more traditional associations with the elements as well as forge our own personal associations with them and recognize when and how they appear in our daily lives.  By recognizing their appearance and interaction, we can better use our knowledge of them to steer our course more positively.

If you're thinking of doing some of your own elemental work, I highly recommend The Way of Four by Deborah Lipp. It's an excellent book written by an amazing Witch.

OK, back to work.

Ciao a tutti,

Vincenzo

We're back on line...

We're back on line with the new redesign of all our websites!

Now you can get to any of our sites by visiting http://www.arsenic.com.

We have a few bugs to knock out so please let us know if you see one and please give us your feedback!

Our newest site, http://www.Streghe.US is going to be our resource center for information on Witchcraft, specifically Pagan religious Witchcraft with origins in Italy/Sicily, Europe, & the USA.  We have a variety of articles, book reviews by Mike Gleason, blogs, and other references.  Please let us know if you have written an article that you would like to see at Streghe.US.  If you know of a good article that you think would be appropriate for our site, let us know its URL.  We'll track down the author and see if they will let us repost it.

For those of you on Facebook, we are going to be changing how we use FACEBOOK:

LIKE OneStopOccultShop
https://www.facebook.com/OneStopOccultShop
for Store info, discount coupons, new products, blog updates, article updates, and things of interest to general paganism.

LIKE StregaCrafts
https://www.facebook.com/StregaCrafts

for updates of interest to Italian Craft, handmade items, blog updates, article updates, and things "Strega", then please like this page:

Like Arsenic & Old Lace
https://www.facebook.com/ArsenicAndOldLace
if you want to see my "catch all" posts, blog updates, general reposts, etc.

Fair warning on my personal page
https://www.facebook.com/nivho
- it is going to be used for my personal posts, politics, humor, and general thoughts that creep out of my head. It will also be receiving reposts from my Twitter account and likely to have duplicate posts. If you don't like my politics or my humor, then you probably shouldn't friend it.

Ciao for now!

---Vincenzo

News for our customers!

News for our customers -

Mike and I have been extremely busy redesigning our business model, improving the technical specs of our various website projects, and giving the sites a "makeover". Our goal is to have the redesigns up and running by the beginning of October. I can't guarantee that it will be up for October 1st, but it should be live sometime during the first week of October.

Currently we have Arsenic & Old Lace for our main commerce site, tarot readings, and resources. Unfortunately, at a commerce focused site, the Tarot Readings and Resource Section tended to get lost. To add to that, we have StregaCrafts as our "boutique shop", what seems like dozens (!) of "homepages" on various Pagan Community and forum sites, and finally, Vinnie's blog (of occasionally interesting things) at blogspot.com.

Until now, we've felt like we were spread all over the place with no real connection between our various projects: go to blogspot for Vinnie's blog, go to X Community Site for discussions, go to Arsenic & Old Lace for occult supplies, go to StregaCrafts for custom products, go a subsection of Arsenic & Old Lace for resources (book reviews, blogs, etc.), go to yet another subsection of Arsenic & Old Lace for Tarot Readings, etc.

Rather than have one or two really "busy" sites, we're breaking things down into several discrete and less busy sites that will be dedicated to specific purposes:

Arsenic & Old Lace (http://www.arsenic.com) will become our main "portal" site to all of our other activities and products with a "universal menu bar" to help folks navigate our offerings. From here, folks will be able to find links to whatever we're working on.

http://www.OneStopOccultShop.com will become our main Occult and Witchcraft commerce site carrying over 7500 products of major brands like Anna Riva, AzureGreen, 1618Gold, etc.

http://www.StregaCrafts.com will be for our hand-made crafts and custom magic products;

http://www.VinnieRusso.com will focus on Vinnie and his Tarot Consulting;

and http://www.Streghe.US will be dedicated to resources, book reviews, blogs, and article with future plans to integrate forums and members' pages. If you have suggestions for content, or would like to contribute content, then please let us know!

This will be a long-term, ongoing project and we're open to your suggestions!

Ciao,

---Vincenzo