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

Urban legends about dreams are weird. How do people even come up with them? Maybe because our society treats dreams like something that shouldn't be talked about much for some reason so the creators of the urban legends just go off their personal experiences? IDK

The gravity method seems to be the one that works best for the members of my favorite LD forum. If anyone's interested in that, I can ask the author of that technique if he'd be cool with me pasting his tutorial on it on the LD thread here.

 

this is basically what I mean when I say I'm a place dreamer. I have a shitload of reoccurring places - I think I mentioned some of them in here at one point - very few reoccurring events or plots. Though I've had several that were "go back to a place to show a friend the thing you saw last time."

Not really. Manipulation and awareness are the two broad categories I'd put witchcraft into - spells (loosest possible value of term) either do a thing or they help you find out a thing. Stop a spell that's gone wrong isn't, ime, a thing very often, unless it's stopping literally in the middle of the casting. Once you've cast the spell, it's gone free, there's not really a ... You don't have to keep your hand on the steering wheel in a way that would make having brakes relevant. You're on public transport, and you either get where you're going or you don't.

 

If you have reoccurring places, does that mean you get to know them really well and can decide to go to certain parts of them to do different things based on what you know is there? :o

Yeah, I've always been a little envious of people who are able to have ongoing storylines that carry over from one dream to the next. It sounds like a fun experience.

This is really fascinating to me. I guess it makes sense that there's no equivalent for creation.

I like the public transport metaphor. It worked very well to help me understand what you meant. Going by that, is casting a spell like picking a bus and paying fare? And if you pick the wrong bus you go to the wrong place? I really like this analogy.

 

I've actually had lucid dreams that started in one dream and carried over into a second; mostly because I didn't get done what I needed to in the first dream.

 

Oh, I've had that happen too. Or if I really wanted to continue that particular dream I could sometimes fall back asleep and do that

 

hmmm, see deliberately continuing a particular dream, that I cannot do. it's not a choice for me when the dreams continue because 'you're not done yet', it just happens. it's cool you can do that!

 

I can deliberately continue a dream if I wake up and fall back asleep, but I can't do @alex's thing of continuing a dream from one night to the next. That's sounds really cool. :o

 

I'm not lucid, so no. The only times I'm ever semilucid is in tooth-falling-out dreams, and my brain has now worked out a way to fool my "this is a dream"ness on those.

Pretty much! Though it's an uncommon thing, because most spells are based off intentions; the average witch isn't going to wind up on the wrong bus, because they're familiar with the system, and a newbie won't wind up on the wrong bus if they pay attention to what they're doing (like reading a route map). It's only the newbies who go in blind that really seem to have an issue with wrong-effects.

 

How do newbies usually learn the system? From other people who are more experienced? Or are there books that are more reliable and well-known than others? I used to love checking out the supernatural section of the bookstore as a kid, and I came across a lot of books that even I could tell weren't accurate to the info I'd learned about Wiccan mythology and etc. Or is there another method that new witches learn from?

Oh, I thought of more questions related to witch stuff. Someone I know used to live by a coven(?). It was a house where people who wanted to learn how to be witches who used negative magic stuff went to to learn how to do that. His first encounter with one of them was when he walked his dog. The witch was on the other side of the street, then they passed each other on different sidewalks, and then she was suddenly behind him and his dog freaked out. She stared at him (and might have been muttering something? It's been a while since I heard about this) and he said he felt like she was trying to do something to him with very negative energy. He got out of there and, in my opinion, he probably shouldn't have gotten any more involved than that. He's not me.

The members of the coven would go around carving symbols into trees around the neighborhood. My friend does a lot of energy work stuff, and he said that the trees with their symbol felt like they weren't doing well and were being drained. He had the super bright idea to cross out their symbols and write his own personal one to try to protect the trees. After he started that, the members of the coven pretty much started stalking him. He toughed it out until they started showing up with a guy who my friend said felt absolutely terrifying. After that, he backed out and left it alone. There's a lot more to the story, but I'm summarizing and paraphrasing. What I'm wondering is if witches who specialize in negative stuff are normal and if retreats for witches to learn to be witches are normal and what do if I get into a situation like what happened to my friend? Aside from, you know, not antagonizing the people claiming to be witches who do negative-based stuff.

 

I don't understand why anyone does anything intentionally negative, bro, IT WILL NOT TURN OUT WELL FOR YOU, DON'T MESS WITH THAT STUFF.

 

I still can't wrap my head around there being so many people who wanted to intentionally mess with negative magic stuff that they had a freaking retreat for it. .__.

 

It depends entirely on the person. Most of my learning has been cribbing together stuff from tumblr people who seem to have their own shit together. Other people are in formalized traditions (which can include covens), learn from their parents (we have a few of those around these parts) or just experiment with shit until something works. There's basically no standard path through witchcraft.

As for that coven... It's not normal, but it's not so weird that it's disbelievable. It's just the sort of people I'd banish the fuck off my lawn. It should be noted that a lot of the witchcraft community goes along with the Wiccan Do No Harm thing, so that's a much more "average" sort of attitude.

 

Omg that's ridiculous :/ props for him to screwing up their trees though....I probably would if I had the knowledge for it because I'm way too cocky o.o

Don't mess with trees.

 

I learned a lot of it from my mom and grandmom, and more or less filled in the gaps with books. This is why 90% of what i know is keeping a household spiritually clean and peaceful and safe, with a smattering of like cursebreaking and general good luck shit.

Covens, like any group, can definitely go toxic and it sounds like that one for sure was. I personally would stay the hell away from a group like that unless they were in my neighborhood, and even then im only one person and not keen on fucking with a whole group of crazies. I like to think id put up protective barriers around their shit, and/or ask them to leave the rest of the community out of whatever they're doing. My best self would; my coward self would probably move. That is some bad shit there. :/

 

I'm more of a *soak your environment and friends with good vibes if you can* kind of person. Can't go wrong with those.

I don't know anything in detail and I don't trust myself for more than maybe a simple cleansing or protective thing on a small object or home.

 

And now my Buddhist altar has a small statue of Guanyin on it. Lugh has gained a pack of cards and the Mórrígan has one of my tarot decks. I think I'll set up the card for death on her space in particular. So you can see it.

EDIT: There we go. Death is set up. As is the Queen of Swords, which is a card that makes me think of, and the Chariot. The person on the Chariot in this particular deck is Cú Chulainn, her beloved dog. The Sun is sitting next to Lugh's things now. While the Lugh is a sun god thing is dumb it is a pretty looking card.

 

Is that safe? Fiddling around with things like that has seemed risky to me since the ghost thing.

He lives in an area where it's not uncommon for people with psychological problems to go diagnosed and/or untreated, so I kind of wondered if that had anything to do with it until he mentioned that it was common knowledge in the area that they came from across the country to go there. I really don't know what to think of it or if I fully believe it. I'm just glad he moved.

I don't think he really knew what he was doing. He just tried it to see if it would help and it seemed to, but got them mad at him.

I love reference books for different supernatural things. I mostly use them for writing inspiration or to understand what my friends are talking about, but I also really like to learn about different beliefs and worldviews. Also, energy work friends have been telling me I should read up on that stuff since they're pretty sure I mess with it. I have no medical explanation for it, so I guess I should be safe and listen to them rather than sorry. Wow, I got off-topic. Anyway, I think it'd be fun to read about witchcraft stuff and get an idea of what the belief system is like.

Also, one of my best friends, the overprotective one, was Wiccan. The one year anniversary of her death is coming up, and I kind of want to figure out if there's anything related to her faith that I could do for her. I've been told by energy work friend to set out tea and star anise for her and I was told by someone here to hold a candlelight vigil, but I'd kind of prefer to try to do something from Wicca if possible since that's what she believed and I want to honor her with something from her own faith. Also, I want to be 100% positive that whatever I do will be safe and not lead to any kind of ghost encounter. ._.;

So bad covens like that are an actual thing?

 

Ultimately even the other methods are experimenting with shit, just with slightly better guides. Witchcraft tends to be very "You won't know until you try." What works for one person doesn't work for all of them - even just look at this thread. I can't meditate to save my life, but it's very important to some of the other folks. And so on.

 

Its like cooking, i think. Some people like things super spicy, some people like mild tastes, no one agrees on salt, but everyone is pretty sure they dont want arsenic in the soup. So there are guidelines and best practices, but few hard and fast rules.

 

Of course not, everyone knows you serve arsenic in elderberry wine.