The Serpent and The Dove

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The Serpent and The Dove

Spirit in South Jersey The Serpent and The Dove

Providing the spiritual tools and supportive community you need to step into your true power.

Discover alternative practices, embrace your authenticity, and find alignment with your inner divinity. Your magic is waiting. Beth Barling & Stephanie Schafer

01/06/2026

Tonight is the Eve of the Epiphany and eves have always belonged to the witches.

In Italian folklore, La Befana is an old woman who was visited by the Three Wise Men while they were searching for Jesus. They asked her to join them. She refused because she was busy cleaning and tending to her home.

Later, regret set in.
She gathered what gifts she had and tried to follow them, but she became lost. From that moment on, La Befana wanders each year on the night of the Epiphany, visiting homes and giving gifts to children, hoping that one of them might be the child she missed.
La Befana is not a villain and she is not foolish. She represents something deeply human. The moment we say not now to a call that later reveals its weight. She carries the wisdom of hindsight and the devotion that comes after certainty is gone.

Her broom is not about punishment, even though children who stay up late to catch a glimpse of her, will catch a thump of her broomstick instead. It is about clearing. Sweeping out the old year and what can no longer be carried forward.

La Befana reminds us that it is never too late to choose differently. Any moment we recognize it is the right moment to begin again. Cheers to course correcting and living in alignment with what calls us forward.

01/02/2026

We’ve held public ritual in many homes over the years. Each one mattered. Each one served its time.

Now, we are standing inside our own hearth. A three-story, 19th-century Victorian in Mullica Hill, New Jersey, brought back to life by our own hands. From asbestos to electric, windows that finally shut, plaster walls intact, and yes, a hot pink ceiling.

This is the fire.
A place for community to come, rest, and relight their flame whenever they need to.

Join us for imbolc Sunday February 1st ✨️

01/01/2026

On this New Year's Day, we reflect with deep gratitude on a journey shaped by courage, surrender, and trust.

Like the serpent, we were invited into the courage it takes to release what was no longer aligned. We did not lose anything. Each skin shed returned wisdom, clarity, and a deeper intimacy with who we are becoming. Nothing was taken. Everything taught.

Like the dove, we were reminded that trust is not passive. It is an active opening. Choosing to lift our wings and meet the air with presence and faith. Vulnerability did not weaken us; it refined us.

This year was not about loss.
It was about gaining knowledge, discernment, and devotion, just as every year offers in its own way.

We step into 2026 more aligned with our purpose, our passion, and our responsibility than ever before.

Ready to continue the sacred work of becoming, together.

12/28/2025

Since December 13th, my body has been asking me to slow down in ways I didn’t choose. Illness has a way of stripping life down to essentials—rest, warmth, breath, care.

Tonight I sit with Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of healing and home. In her tradition, care of the body and care of the household are not separate things. Health is not only medicine—it is order, rhythm, cleanliness, and containment.
A prayer often spoken in her devotion says:

“Am I not here, I who am your mother?”
Not a promise of instant healing—but of presence, shelter, and steadiness while the body does its slow work.

This is the season when the old folk knew to tend the hearth carefully. Whether you call them spirits, germs, or haints—winter brings things that creep, linger, and settle when homes fall into disorder. Structure matters now. Clean surfaces. Clear corners. Water changed daily. Floors swept with intention.

Tonight I’ve placed cups of fresh water at the four corners of my home. This is an old household practice found across European and folk Catholic traditions—water as witness, absorber, and boundary. It collects what does not belong, holds it overnight, and is discarded in the morning away from the home. Nothing dramatic. Just quiet maintenance of spiritual hygiene.

This is not a time for pushing through.
It is a time for keeping house—inside and out.
For blessing the threshold.
For letting the body rest while the home stands guard.

May our homes be ordered.
May our bodies be protected.
May what does not belong find its way out by morning.

12/24/2025

Expect a miracle

In a world filled with noise, conflict, and unraveling, this season invites us into something quieter and far more powerful: surrender.

Whether you are celebrating the twelve nights of Yule, preparing to celebrate the birth of Christ, or standing in the sacred meeting place of both, this is a time to lean into the mystery of becoming. The worlds lean close. What seems impossible is nearer than we think. Each moment of surrender opens space for the unknown to take form.

Like Mary, carrying a promise the world could not yet see, we are asked to trust what is gestating beneath the surface of our lives. To choose the frequency of perfect love, perfect truth, and divine presence, again and again, even when the path ahead is unclear.

Miracles do not always arrive with spectacle. Sometimes they arrive breath by breath, through willingness, through faith, through the quiet decision to remain open when fear would have us close.

We love you. We are surrendering our hearts to this ministry in new ways, allowing love to lead, allowing God’s current to move freely through us.

We cannot wait to open the doors of The Serpent and The Dove hearth, to gather, to warm our weary souls, and to remember together that when we surrender to love, the impossible begins to unfold.

So much love.

Ⲡⲉⲥⲛⲁϩⲧ ⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲧⲛ̄. Ⲥⲱⲧⲡ ⲛ̄ⲧⲁⲓⲥⲛⲁϩⲧ ⲉⲧⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲧⲛ̄.
“Peace be with you. Receive my peace within yourselves.”
-The Savior, The Gospel of Mary, 4.4–5, Sahidic Coptic

12/17/2025

No tools. No blueprint. No laws.
A priestess commands her space by soul alone.
The temple is a reflection of her heart and the hum of the blood that flows through those chambers of life.

Hearth opening January 2026.....no matter what.

12/15/2025

The Dark Night of the Soul was never about fixing the self.

In Christian mysticism, St John of the Cross names it, the slow undoing of the false self so union, real intimacy with God, can emerge.

Modern spirituality often recycles language without its theology, discipline, or conclusion, turning surrender into self-improvement and darkness into identity.

It’s okay if your practice walks in Christian roots.
Many do.
But roots matter.

The roots of all these "new practices" matter because is anything actually ever really new?

When we understand where these ideas come from, our altar work becomes clearer, our magic more honest, and our spirituality less performative.

🐍📚

12/14/2025

Last night we celebrated Yule with a blót and lineage feas.

Three covens gathered, each birthed from the one before it.

A blót is not about aesthetics or reenactment. It is about relationship. Offering. Accountability. Remembering that spirituality was once lived around tables, fires, and shared breath—not consumed as content.

At Yule, when the sun stands still and the world turns inward, we honor ancestors, land, and the bonds that hold a community together. We feast not to indulge, but to participate—to bless what continues and to take responsibility for what we carry forward.

Lineage is not authority.
It is care.
It is trust.
It is continuity through love and responsibility.

May the returning light find you rooted, fed, and held. 🌲🔥

12/13/2025

Starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on this massive undertaking at the new The Serpent and the Dove Hearth.

12/05/2025

Before winter spirits were divided into “good” or “bad,” there was only the season itself; wild, liminal, and alive.
Krampus wasn’t a punisher. He was a winter spirit of clearing, protection, and shadow work.
A reminder that not everything dark is dangerous… and not everything light is kind.

11/20/2025

What's in your kitchen pantry✨️

Address

1428 Kings Highway Ste 201
Swedesboro, NJ
08085

Website

http://serpentandthedove.com/

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