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

So I'm designing a tarot deck, and it's hard as fuck. Fortunately my gf doesn't mind helping

Spoiler: A beautiful napkin rendition of the 8 of cups

I full out cackled in the middle of the restaurant

 

Living as someone who is no longer Buddhist is both easier than I thought it would be and harder in a way. I am not sure how to describe how it is harder, but it is definitely easier in that I just kind of...Set it down. It was helpful to me. I owe my life to it and to the bhikkhus who taught me, but I just don't want the end result of it I decided. I can't say that the ocean is meaningless and that Lugh isn't Lugh. Because he so very clearly is Lugh.

My desire to be a religious "official" of a scholarly sort hasn't died though. Oh no. I still want that. So I am going to work on creating for myself a new druídecht. Based on what we have available evidence wise and my own personal work. It won't involve any of the neo-druidism things or the druidic orders' stuff. At all. It will take a lot of work, but I am going to be a druid. Yes.

 

Dice update: according to the random.org thrower, P = NP, KiwiFarms is right about the whole Lysik'an thing, and I should drop out of university. I think I'm going to find something else.

 

Alternatively they could be fucking with you. Which is...Never fun to deal with when it comes to divination. Though that just makes me think that the fucking with you is purposeful to get you to another method.

Divination is weird.

 

So we're having movers come in to pack all our shit because the Navy is going to pay for it. We just pack personal stuff ourselves. I packed all the jewelry and adult funtimes stuff and whatnot and called it a day.

Completely forgetting about my kitchen cabinet full of witchy paraphernalia.

It's fine, there's only a ton of candles, crystals, shells, herbs and a mortar and pestle in there, right? Oh, and half a dozen 2-3ft snakeskins.

That's not creepy at all.

/facepalm

 

Okay I ran downstairs and emptied my cabinet and the guy took one look at my mason jars of blessed water and was like "Oh ho! Moonshine!"
Avi: *glances at jar of lunar eclipse water*
Avi: uh
Avi: sure

 

Petition to call all moon charged/blessed water moonshine from now on.

 

Somewhat on topic, I just put my stones and any relevant jewelry, plus my homestuck tarot deck, to clean with salt and smoke. I forgot which stones can be put into salt water (I know some can't), so I just sprinkled it on top after setting them out, then burned some palosanto so the smoke could clean it too. It's weird to realize that my instinct is always to make the sign of the cross with the smoke, syncretism way up here and lodged firmly.

Also burned two miscellaneous string charms and blew the ashes into my herb pot. They were half practice/half releasing negative energy/ok so one fourth an unconscious spell making. At least now I know what I will be doing in the future.

 

Everything smells of palosanto now.

I also finally used my deck for my first reading on a friend, and it was basically what I expected. Got Temperance upside down for the past, the Devil for the present, and Justice for the near future. The Devil is... frankly really accurate to the situation.

 

-reading about divination inspiration-

"So there are breathing exercises that sound quite like meditation and these three cauldrons of energy that turn..."

mhm

"And Finn chewed on raw meat and smashed his hand in the door."

BRB STICKING RAW PORK IN MY MOUTH.

 

Also, after the cleaning was done I set up my stones for a quick photo. I put my earrings and jewelry in a corner, and the roughly color organized everything.
The hunk of rock on top of a white bag is unrefined silver ore, pried from the wall of a mine in Bolivia. Frankly I don't know what most of my stones are, though I do know I have some hematite, tiger's eye, and quartz, and one piece of pyrite. I've included the few seashells I have set aside for the crafts, but that I have yet to do anything with them. Thankfully I have two cowries, so we'll see if I can use them for some sort of divination later.

Spoiler: Large image with stones

 

Please don't stick raw pork in your mouth, I don't want trematodes in your brain, how will you be funny and interesting then?

 

I WILL BE FILLED WITH THE WORDS OF THE GODS.

Though I won't be sticking raw pork in my mouth. I might eat some other sort of meat raw in small amounts. Honestly salmon would probably be good for that sort of thing. Might be handy to get some salmon for when I feel like I need to do fríth or something.

 

Sacred sashimi?

 

sacred sushi would be amazing.

 

Does it take a lot of practice and relaxing about it to get this stuff to work? It doesn't for me and it may be because I obsess over how it doesn't work.

 

Meditation is very much a relaxing and practice based activity. It's hard work to get down to and it takes a lot of time to get decent at it. Obsessing over it and how it doesn't work is essentially the best way possible at ensuring it does nothing but frustrate. Which is the frustrating thing about meditation.

Divination is also very practice based in my experience. You need to get used to the symbol languages you're using and getting used to piecing things together. Also, in my case, you need to form a rapport with the gods and ungods as well. A working relationship of mutual give and take. You also need to get used to how they talk. Think of learning to divine the words of the gods as like having a foreign language pen pal. I'm not sure if relaxation is vital to it, but I do feel that obsessing on it not working might be counter-intuitive to it? Especially because you're not working with something that's clear and explicit. You're working with language. You're talking to a god and that god is telling you things through your medium of choice. It might be cards or dice or sticks, but the point is that what you're doing is fundamentally language. And if people get hung up over disagreements on what a :D means in some case then you better believe that misunderstandings will occur with divination. It's something you've got to keep at.

 

the tarot book my dad just lent me: only a *~true mystic~* can understand the intricacies of tarot
me: maybe I should ask my cards what I should have for lunch?

nice coincidence though, I was just thinking today that I needed to practice more, maybe this book won't be 100% nonsense

 

hello friends I have a question! I don't really believe in.. anything.. but I made myself a set of glass runes for experimental divination attempts. however it turns out that even when a thing is theoretically a thought experiment and it shouldn't MATTER to me how ~authentic~ my interpretation is, I do not like sketchy woo-y mystical websites. does anyone have a reputable-ish source for interpreting them?