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

Coming late to this thread after reading some of it - I hesitate to call myself a witch/wix/practitioner, but I have a very good friend who is full-nine-yards pagan-wiccan with an altar in her room and all that. She's recently made me realise that magic is only what you make it, and you only get out what you put in.

I used to call myself wiccan, but became very disillusioned with it all*. Now - I don't know how much it counts, but I've done a couple of good-vibe freestyle rituals without consulting any book or text, and I'm thinking of getting into making talismans and suchlike. I feel like energy is all around us, and nature designed things so other things - anything, not just humans - can take advantage of it. Miracles don't stop being miraculous when you know how they work.

Spoiler: * for teenaged disillusionment and heartbreak

(Teenaged me turned to wicca/spellcasting in a big way in an attempt to try and gain some kind of control over an already crumbling home life. First I tried and tried and tried to heal my dad from his myriad ailments, of mind and body, and then I tried and tried and tried to make him die in his sleep. Neither worked, of course, and he just got worse and more abusive, and instead I became extremely cynical about the whole thing, making pocket money through college with tarot readings I didn't believe in myself.)

Nowadays, I think that people's beliefs shape the world around them, and, well, headology, as Granny Weatherwax would say. I don't know how much good I'm actually doing, but dancing in the bright light of the last full moon of the year and drinking whiskey naked in a circle of candles while watching the fireworks for the New Year sure made me feel better, so.

I've given away all of my incense and smudging sticks and all that to my formal-practioner friend - I have next to no sense of smell, lung issues, and I keep animals in my room, so I don't like them to be exposed to smoke either - so besides that, are there any other bits and pieces I could start doing again? Mostly stuff to help my mind and body, really. I'm not interested in changing other people any more.

EDIT: Note that I'm not real big into asking deities for shit, since they've never done a thing for me.

Also, @IvyLB my absolute must shark week herb is raspberry leaf. Yes, the same plant you eat the berries from. I'm lucky that I have a whole bunch of canes growing semi-wild in my garden, so I have it fresh when in season and dried when not. This is from someone who herbology has partially ceased to work due to overuse, so :)

 

yyyyyyup i know about raspberry leaves. I just don't particularly like them? idk. they're hard to get for me rn maybe that's why i usually tend to go with the two herbs I have hoarded :P

 

also I don't really get cramps during shark week at all what I mostly need is mood lighteners so that's why balm is important for me

 

Fair enough, just thought I should put it out there :3

Also dskgkl;l I get crippling horrible cramps so jealous

 

anyone got any decent ideas for things to help pain? I way overdid it today on activity and now everything hurts.

 

what kind of pain? more muscle pain or joint pain or just generalized pain? idk if you have access to willow bark tea but it has the same basic thing that's in aspirin so if you can take taht you can probably drink that too.
otherwise i could look up a possible bath additive you could try for whatever pain you have.

 

muscle pain. I have fibro and I way overdid it on the 'doing things' because earlier I felt GREAT so I was like "I'M GOING TO DO ALL THE THINGS" and I did laundry and I cleaned and I picked up my room and I put away my clothes and I took out the trash and did several other things and went for a walk and now I am paying for it. so yeah. muscle pain. I do not have willow bark tea, but aspirin doesn't really help the muscle pain? because it's not inflammation pain, it's just...pain.

 

aspirin isn't anti inflammatory tho it's a whole different family of painkillers from ibu and diclo and co.
aspirin is painkiller plus blood thinning properties (which is what is kinda tricky sometimes).
but with muscle pain stuff... do you have an arnika tincture or creme? since fibro is kinda related to rheumatism i think that COULD conceivably help.
otherwise a bath with Eucalyptus or balm can help! you want to pour a liter of boiling hot water over a handful of dried herbs, then let that steep for 20 minutes before putting it into your bath water!

 

NGL I just throw a bunch of teabags in the bathtub with me when I do an infusion bath. Dunno on what to use for aches though beyond Eucalyptus.

 

hmmmm....no, but I will look into getting some, for future reference.
for now, though, I'll see if we have any eucalyptus.
I know nothing about painkillers :P all I really know is the ones we have never help.

 

that is of course doable too lol

 

You can usually find epsom salts and/or magnesium salts with eucalyptus oils at a drug store or pharmacy. The salts alone are good for muscle aches, now that I think about it

 

Yesssssss. Even though I'm an east-coaster right now, I grew up in the dry parts of Idaho. Rain water is holy water, straight up. #morelikewashintonianwitchsolutions

I hope you can! I think it's really great that you have that strong sense of where your roots and your heart are; I think a lot of euro-americans don't have that and they sort of have to figure out how to build it and pull it together 'from scratch.'

There's a guy that regularly comes up to this area every couple years and teaches Andean-tradition shamanism and healing practices (it's been forever since I looked him up, but it's like the one where you have all your special rocks and allies bundled and rolled up in your altar cloth? Lol I have no idea if I'm making sense. And so, he seems to be really well respected and popular, but I can tell that isn't really my tradition. I did some research at my local library at the time and read some anthropologist's stuff about what -they- thought everbody was doing, and the way it syncretized and pulled in the catholic stuff, and the traditional stuff of the land, and then some people, other more modern stuff they'd learned like while teaching people in the U.S. I thought it was really cool.

Maybe not exciting, but hella important. I find grounding and centering like that to be really calming and even energizing. I love doing ye old 'pretend to be a tree' meditation, and lots of other variations. ADF druids get taught a variation on this we call the 'Two Powers Exercise' and I really like how it works for me.

Yeah, that feels like a plausible take on chili to me. 'Purification' especially makes me think of how I like, eat spicy food to make my nose run and clear my sinuses out when I'm sick, or how we pepper food to preserve it. (I'm a big fan of, 'look at the medical and mundane uses as clues for the magical ones,' wrt plants and fungi.)
I've always seen vanilla associated with like, sensuality and comfort, if not a straight-up aphrodisiac. Vanilla is like that attractive friend who's totally willing to give you a neck rub or a hand massage, if you ask.

*big grin* Write poetry! Be creative! Or, like....do a little research and see what it is about her that you find most compelling or appealing? Even with a very narrow or traditional interpretation of who Brighid is and what she's about, she's a goddess of many talents.

 

I like the sound of research...but I also like the sound of being creative.
hmmmm.
both?
both.
both is good.

 

@Zuki

 

Continuing to give her offerings is a good bet too.

One thing I like to do is I like to devote things like cooking and cleaning to her. She is the goddess most heavily associated with hearth and home after all. You can also light candles and such to be a sort of hearth in spirit.

 

oooh. I cook and clean a lot, that's a really good idea. and I like the idea of lighting candles and such as a sort of hearth. definitely doing that.

 

@Aviari People use bowls of water to raise dough in ovens? What? just put a little oil on it and plaster saran wrap over the top of the bowl.

 

For me, lighting a candle and keeping it on the desk in front of me can help me focus on my writing when I need to do it--reminds me why I'm doing it, and gives me something to play with (wax and flame) instead of tabbing away to do something else when I get distracted.

@Aviari Eeeee, thank you! <3

Hmmm....I think that red-brown stone definitely looks like a tiger's-eye to me. The red-and-black stripey one is red jasper, I am equally certain. I've got a little fox carved out of stone that looks almost just like it. I like red jasper. ^_^

The white/pastel blue one....Moonstone? (Yeah, I know, doesn't look like the other moonstones.) If it was fibrous and fragile I'd be tempted to say selenite. Particularly if it seems kind of stripey and all the stripes are going a single direction. (Or if you were told not to leave it in water: selenite will dissolve.) Both translucent orangey rocks look like agates to me, but neither one seems reddish/orangeish enough to call it carnelian.

 

the problem with sensuality and sexuality as well as romance with herb associations is that i straight up couldn't give less of a fuck (hehehe) about love potions and the like. i don't have a sex life at the moment i don't plan on getting one and the closest relationship i have right now is my moirail.
Vanilla is Home. capitail H Home.
there is nothing super sexy about it for me it's christmas and warm sweaters and fireplaces and a nice blanket and the feeling of a hug.
the sexual parts of food magic just don't work for me or I'd be having sex, because 90% of my preferred ingredients have romance, sexuality, or fertility in their associations. It dun work.