We’re please to introduce an offering of our recent KATABASIS release of jewels, each in a limited edition amount of ghost rose quartz, amethyst, garnet & incredibly clear quartz. These will release at 3PM EST this Friday in our little corner of the 🕸️ 🖤.

Happy day of days to Sam @samanthamacabre / @hautemacabre ~ one of the many gems I know & have drawn near { & dear } to me 😹 I’m so glad we finally live in the same area & can talk about books in person rather than over the phone, I can hear your incredible laugh & you say bananas irl & we can share all the vegan food! I’m so glad we’re alive together 🖤

Full moon blessings ! Illustration via Émile-Antoine Bayard for Around the Moon by Jules Verne (1870)

We’re excited to announce we’ll be releasing a small amount of each limited edition perfume oil created by @blackphoenixalchemylab for @sphinxandsnakeskin tomorrow, 6/2 at 3PM EST US in our little corner of the 🕸️. Image 2- Oil of Flight & Vision ~ I asked Beth to create a gestating poison garden readying itself for Spring ~ 
“Inspired by witches’ flying ointments, this is a deep, rooty perfume flecked with grave soil: sweet, tar-like 7-year aged patchouli, henbane bell accord, smallage, opium pod accord, cinquefoil, mugwort, and soot.” 3- Lekythoi I asked Beth to make a scent that she felt encapsulated what a Lekythos, an Ancient Greek vessel used for storing oil used in funerary rites smelled like to her. As these clay vessels were used in the preparations of the dead, they were found in tombs, often featuring scenes of mourning or afterlife passage. The oil stored within was as an offering to either the rulers of the Underworld or to the dead they were buried with. “Rivulets of myrrh and pelanon clinging to ancient clay, remnants of thyme, moringa, spikenard, and hyssop.” These oils are a bit more resinous than usual as an especially aged myrrrh was used. 4- Enagismata “An offering to the dead: goat’s milk, honey, wine, myrrh, and a glint of gold.” 5. Pelanon ~ “Thick, ancient roots growing through honey, olive oil, and zea.” In addition to these 4 incredibly special scents, we’ll be restocking a large portion of our general catalog scents created for us by @blackphoenixalchemylab. It’s been an honor to work with Beth & the rest of @blackphoenixalchemylab over the years and it’s been even more exciting to work with them now that they have relocated to Philadelphia 🖤

Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart… A carousel of current feels : 1. Via Fall via @gregoryhalili 2. Via Antique image of the human arterial system via @vault_editions 3. The Dream Ship after Mervyn Peake, 2020 via @denisforkasofficial 4. @roisinpierce via @visual_ssense 5. Australian Trumpet shell, 1950’s via @sol_calypso 6. Via @hoellenrose 7. Via @alisherik 8. POWER via @chogiseok 9. Via @uusidesignstudio 10. St. Via @santiago_licata

🗝️The Listening Cabinet 🗝️: Tomorrow { 5/26 } at our usual time, 3PM EST US, we’ll be launching a collection of limited edition earrings { three pairs will be general catalog and will be marked as such }. The title is inspired by cabinets of curiosities, most, if not all of which contained shells. Despite their natural beauty & unique shapes, seashells are also know for their folklore of containing the sound of the ocean ~ known as “shell resonance”. When you press a shell to your ear, you are actually hearing your own blood course through you, *or* the echoes of ambient sounds around you. It is reverberating through and against the walls of the shells and it sounds so similar to the waves of the ocean that our ancestors likened it to the ocean being trapped forever within them. I love this idea ~ this folklore I can listen to, that can whisper to me even when I’m having trouble listening,~ Or likewise~ when I’m having a hard time being heard, especially due to struggling with expressing myself with my auditory voice. There is so much grief in this for me, being tangled up in the inability to listen or hear properly when I possess a mind that isn’t sculpted to be still, that bolts from thought to thought like a lightning storm that I’m often caught outside in the eye of {{ iykyk }}. The grief is a deep well storm water continues to rain down into, until I can no longer distinguish between them~ all the water feels & looks the same. I suspect we may all be carrying these waterways within us now, chalking leaks with inappropriate mediums & methods, but still doing our best. I see you, even if I can’t brush my shoulder against yours in kinship. • Earrings are ancient ~ & were worn for a variety of reasons. Cleopatra dissolved a large Pearl earring and drank it to prove her indifference. The Egyptians were buried with theirs. Today, we wear ours for aesthetics, mostly, but here, with the offerings in my cabinet ~ I’m suggesting companions akin to ocean filled shells~ something you can pour your grief into~ something near your ears & your mouth & your throat, where your voice lives; that can listen & hear, that you can whisper your secret heart to. 🖤

I’m hoping you’re keeping your head above water, wherever you are. 1947, Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida via Cats Paw Print Shop

🗝️OBOLUS II🗝️ Coins for the Ferryman ~ for safe passage, for divination, for talismanic companionship ~ arrive today in our corner of this strange, never sleeping place, at 3PM EST US thru 5/26 • 1: The Sacred Heart of Persephone :: 8 of Swords :: / This was inspired by layers of ideas ~ one being Our Lady of the 7 Sorrows & my affection for the melancholy aspects of Catholic imagery. I added an additional sword because I in 2021, when I drew the first sketch, I was connected to the 8 of swords card in tarot ~how easy it is to feel small in this world despite the ability to release one’s self from the binds of this thinking ~ yet how hard it is to escape this sharp way of talking to one’s self. I often think of Persephone, trapped by those seeds, always liminal, oscillating by the nature of ascend / descend ~ yet also, how ancient peoples were made free of the oldest fear so many of us have, the fear of death, when they pilgrimaged to ‘meet’ her in Eleusis. A talismanic vessel for the deepest wound in your heart, for feeling small, for safe passage when traveling between worlds, for feeling that you belong nowhere. For those always in the liminal. For those who work with and alongside spirit & death. For those who have eaten the seeds, I see you. • 2: Tell The Bees The old practice of the telling of the bees kept the bee hives of a family involved in major life events. This included marriages, births, & perhaps most famously, deaths. A hive was ‘heaved up’ at the same time the coffin was. If a hive was not included in these important household events, the bees would either leave the hive or die, which at that time, could be devastating to their family. Additionally, Charon’s Obol, the coin placed in the mouth of the dead for safe passage in the underworld, had a bee struck on it for safe passage, to ‘sweeten’ their journey. These ideas are tied into this coin, where my 1st sketch featured the hive as a kind of bell jar, something to whisper your secrets and anxieties under, a hive with your own bees to hear you. 3: The Reader A reading Sphinx { inspired by Lalique } guards your heart & its silent riddles~ as what is more in need of protecting than your 🖤?

Francesca Woodman in her New York studio by her friend George Lange, 1975/76 • Isn’t it strange to be alive in these blazing times ? Isn’t it strange to be seen, to be perceived through so many means now ? Mostly nowadays it feels we are caught unawares & without the ability for those perceptions to have any true nuance. It’s { sometimes } a comfort to know it only matters what we think of ourselves & know is true ~ even if the knowing shifts around our ankles like river water while our eye is fixed through a lens ~ just passing through like a comet~

The next 🗝️Letters from the Edge🗝️ missive will be released post haste & I’m tingly for y’all to read it! Anytime I start a new endeavor I always feel a bit more vulnerable than usual & this has been no exception….however I’m hopeful that all that’s teeming in this one might likewise fill the shell of your heart with inspiration. This digital letter in a bottle will feature an aquatic playlist from our resident Pisces Jen { @jenvonhaunt }, ‘Lately…’ a long list of my obsessions from April, ‘Voices from the Deck’ from which we’ll hear from Team BloodMilk member Meghan about an artist that resonates with her & more …. One of my favorite features of the newsletter is gathering all of the books I’ve read or I’m reading { I usually sip from books of short stories, essays & poems that I might not finish that month because I have a strange compulsion to savor / save sometimes { like Kelly Link’s new book ! } } This image is from the new book which is featured on the list: The Green Mysteries : Arcana Viridia An Occult Herbarium By Daniel A. Shulke Images by Benjamin A. Vierling { @ba_vierling } & published by @threehandspress The image pictured here illustrates the Rose entry & is one of my favorites from the book as I love how the rose is shown woven into the labyrinth. If you’ve yet to sign up for our emails~ there’s a place to do so either in our profile or in our little corner of the 🕸️. Letters from the Edge is meant to inspire and perhaps, if you’re so inclined, lead you down a rabbit hole of new things ….many many thanks to those who have read our past issues as well as to everyone who made it out to our event this past weekend despite the gloomy weather ! We appreciate all the support♾️🖤♾️

Today is the day ! Join us at @sphinxandsnakeskin from 12-5pm at 45 N 2nd street here in Philly for our first ever Time Travel Fair, featuring folks who sell wares from another era or who either work with materials from the past or who work in ways that are now considered old or antiquated : • @a.rural.pen { will not be able to make it, but we do have bottles of his handmade ink from dissolved guns in our showroom & we love his work! Go visit his IG for more } @blackcrepeantiques @jinxedstore @libertybutterflies { he will just be offering his pinned butterflies at this event} @purevile { my eternal muse & our window artist } @witchfingersantiques { Dani is also a writer } Our longtime photographer @jason.w.blake will be taking Polaroids for a small exchange🖤 We also will be offering a brand new oil from @blackphoenixalchemylab LEKYTHOI based on Ancient Greek vessels used in funerary rites. { visit their page for scent notes } We also still have bottles of Oil of Flight & Vision available from last month’s event. @bloodmilk ~ our showroom is full of jewels and we also have a ooak table teeming with treasure ~ see a sneak peek in the slides @adam_wallacavage came through last minute with two of his antique inspired bat chandeliers available { see slide 7 } Lastly ~ @amberellaxo has been handing out UR MAGIC stickers to folks in line as our numbered tickets ~ visit her IG to see her magic 🖤🖤🖤 This event is free to attend but we are taking door donations to The Attic Youth Fund @atticyouthcenter { even if you’re unable to attend you can still send a donation their way 🥰 } We are so grateful to everyone who crosses our threshold & supports us and those who pop up in our space in every way, whether that’s via a monetary exchange, visiting our space, or simply extending kindness in these sharp & strange times. 🖤so many thanks to the folks that work so hard to make this space stay afloat behind the scenes ~ there’s many hands that go into every piece ~ helping me ~ a broken girl in the underworld bring my dream world to life. Thank you @teambloodmilk ~ I care about y’all & appreciate what every single one of you do to keep this ship alive.

every so often in life, if you’re blessed as I’ve been, you come across a once in a lifetime person who’s changed your life and the lives of everyone else they encounter. Jamie ~ you’re like finding a fallen raven feather in the forest, like encountering dozens of black bay scallop shells on the cusp of the ocean, like looking at the glowing crescent of the moon from a great height in this life and perhaps countless others. It’s my wish on this day after the anniversary of a special year that @endlessnightstudio serves folks the way I know it already does & continues to blossom, that you continue to find happiness back home here on the East Coast, & that inspiration, adventure, & peace, however ephemeral, finds you often & flows through you like molten lava and continues to touch those around you. I’m so glad we’re alive together. Happy birthday @jdraven 🖤♾️ • 1/2 from the film Only Lovers Left Alive 3/4 from the show Penny Dreadful 5 @jdraven & I at a Francesca Woodman show in NYC almost 10 years ago 6 @jdraven & I last summer