The Crafts: Wixes, Spells, and the Weaponized Placebo Effect

So an easy thing to do in the sense that you can do it anywhere and it doesn't require any materials:

Close your eyes. Imagine there's a light in your core, inside your ribcage. As you breathe in it swells bigger and brighter just like your ribs expanding and your lungs filling; as you breathe out the light radiates further out around you. Try to really focus on that, try to feel it and see it behind your eyes. The light physically feels warm and sort of tingly like icy-hot to me, but ive been doing this a long time so don't worry if you don't feel it at first.

Eventually the light is big enough to fill up a bubble around your whole body. Nothing can push back to you through the light, nothing can get past your bubble. The outside of the bubble will crystalize into a perfect silvery mirror when its full, so nothing can even find you, much less get through; it'll just bounce off you and go back where it cane from. Hold that image for a few breaths then open your eyes and go about your day, knowing that the bubble stays with you always even when you dont think about it.

Try doing this at least once a day, more often if you're flipping out or they try some shit with you.

Edit: jfc your parents are such assholes that is not how curses work, or parenting, and either way it wouldn't be cured by fucking with /you/. Maybe they should do their incompetent spellwork on your dad!

 

Gave Lugh and Manannán an offering of incense because I felt it was appropriate. They have a very homely and family like sort of feel to me, and for me Christmas isn't Christian when I celebrate it. It's secular family day personally. Also gave some incense to my ancestors, the Irish Catholics in particular. They are the ones who did a good deal of the work in preserving what we know of the Gods and Ungods. They're also part of the fabric of events that led to this present. Perhaps it isn't the best present and perhaps they weren't the most important but they were a part of things however small a part.

 

@palindromordnilap My favorite defense trick my mom taught me: when you make your personal 'barrier' (however you do) image it as double layered. This works best if you visualize them as spherical instead of, for instance, a shield: visualize the inner layer turning/spinning one way, and the outer layer the opposite, with only a small space between them. The idea is that not only does anything have to get through both layers, but it'll have to deal with the conflicting currents once it gets through the first and hopefully break up before breaching the second. Because my family is paranoid by necessity and have backups for our backups.

 

@Lazarae i fucking love that im hella yoinking it.

 

And now I want to see how many ideas I can come up with for barriers.

 

Wow shit yeah that is fucked up. And again, if there WAS a curse on your dad, messing with you wouldn't... do anything...

Also it usually goes without saying, but, don't underestimate more mundane defenses. Get a couple lists of things that are just slightly difficult for you to remember so that you have something you can direct focus into if they start trying hypnosis or any such bullshit. The whole "concentrate on a wall" thing actually does work somewhat? But it's better if you approach it from the angle of "image every detail of this wall, with as many senses as you can" rather than just trying to repeat the concept of a wall to yourself.

 

So! New Year's Magic, anyone doing some?

 

Divinations. Offerings too, obviously.

 

...So are there any deities whose domains involve lost things, and does anyone here worship/honor/work with them? Because I've misplaced my copies of ACNL and Pokemon Omega Ruby, and I'm super bummed about it, and if there's anyone here who honors such a deity I'd be super appreciative if someone could...fuck, I dunno, put in a good word for me.

(...I'm not sure how actual worship works. I think a lot of my beliefs and practices and such are conceptual rather than related to any specific entities, and my general belief system tends towards some form of deism.)

Also, on a tangent: if you've always felt oddly drawn to something in a weird way, does that necessarily mean anything? Because I've genuinely always felt a weird...pull, I guess, towards death, both as a concept and a Thing. Not in some weird emo way either, but like...it's practically a special interest for me and that pull has always been there and idk if that's normal or weird or meaningful or meaningless.

 

Bríghid can help you find lost things. She's called upon to help inspire a kind of divination called fríth, for example. Which is basically a sort of divination based around interpreting omens to help you find something. As in either an answer or an actual missing object. She's also kind of the homely home goddess so yeah. You could try asking her for help through your method of divination? Make sure to leave some sort of food offering to her though. Milk which you pour out into the soil would be a good bet there.

Additionally you could try asking if it was your house spirit or house wight that took it. Possibly arrange a trade.

As far as feelings meaning things...They can mean things, yes. Definitely so. Or it could mean nothing at all. Things are weird and frustrating like that. If you do feel pulled by death that strongly you could at the very least look into it. Death gods would be a start I suppose? The Morrígan deals with death, for example. Their number being Morrígu/Anand, Nemain, Macha, and Badb. Donn, the Dark One, is another Irish god that deals with death. In particular he lives in the underworld in a castle and helps guide the newly dead to their proper places. Additionally you could look into various views on death. The Venerable Ledi Sayadaw for example has a very interesting view on death. Namely that what we call death can't properly be called death. It's more like sleeping.

I'd also be up to talking with you about these things and what I know about them? Just know that I can only really provide information relating to Theravada Buddhism and Gaelic polytheism.

 

I would love to talk about that. :D Thanks for the tip!

 

I'd say that being drawn to death and fascinated by it is useful even if it doesn't mean anything momentous in the grand scheme of things, because it's a damn good reason to have sufficient focus to more deeply understand stuff!

 

Alternatively, swear at the housewight until your lost thing returns and two other things go missing. >_>

And yeah, being drawn to things is always worth poking it - even if it doesn't necessarily lead anywhere in and of itself, it may point you towards other places or give you Useful Self-Knowledge.

 

Swearing at the house wight is also a good option.

 

Housewights in my family are generally appeased with offerings of M&Ms.

 

Asking nicely usually works for me

 

where do you guys study? i get my stuff to read off of sacred-texts.com and google, and some mega libraries from /x/ . but i've been slacking lately.. i don't think i'm devout enough to do anything that works yet

 

Planning on chayar at midnight for Pachamama, and sometime in the day make a knot and plant circle, hopefully with coca leaves as protection for a certain someone. I'll also carry a rock with me until we reach the lake as another offering to Pachamama. Maybe I can get a cigarette from my friends to offer to the supay as a sign of respect, but not worship. They're kind of tricky but one doesn't want to be on their bad side either.

 

Personally I make heavy use of sacred-texts and the gutenburg project. I also use journal sites at times. JSTOR allows you access to severely restricted free accounts, just so you know. For things relating to Irish stuff I use the mary-jones or CELT archives. Library Ireland has a lot of books too. Gaol Naofa, my many, many issues with them aside, also has a lot of articles and resources of use. At the very least you can mine their bibliographies. Additionally there's a number of people in the tumblr community I follow who have nice information and/or answer questions. For the Irish thing korrigantsionnach and houndbitch are examples. For Hellenic soloontherocks and winebrightruby are examples. For Satanism there is whoreofabaddon. For demonolatry you can take a look at littledoomwitch and also ask them shit. The tumblr community is kind of hideously volatile and there is a lot of terrible information flying about though so you have to watch out for that. Physical libraries are places I go as well. My school library in particular. And if you're in college you probably have access to journals and journal archives. Make use of that.

As for the issue of devout enough fuck that and fuck the people who tell you you need to be devout enough. You only have a bit of information and don't feel confident? Practice anyway. This sort of shit takes time. Lots of time and study. You can't just go "well I am not good enough yet" though. Get in there and start fucking around. Keep studying of course, but get a nice solid practice going and keep at it.

 

I don't really directly study. I do better from synthesis and talking with people than I do straight up reading, so my answer is more like "where do you talk to people?"

Which is here, obviously, my tumblr witch blog, and occasionally Gaia.