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

Unsurprisingly, there are a number of spell workers on kintsugi, and I felt we should have a place to chat about the various ways we approach and believe in craft.

I am an agnostic pagan who is definitely of the 'weaponized placebo effect' belief. Back when I worshipped actively, I paid respect to Bastet and Hermes, and my spellwork used symbols for one or the other for most of my work.

I spent some time doing stone magic, and I'm big into various divination techniques.

I have a firm belief that 90% of how a spell is done is how you think it should work, and the other 10% is cultural heritage.

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"Weaponized placebo effect" namedropper here, sup. Atheist witch, dabbles some in emotional and protective magic but mostly, tarot shit. Some weird supernatural-sense stuff. Traditions are for other people. Really angry about witchcraft that excludes neurodivergent people, like, all the time.

 

Norse practitioner here. I honestly don't do much spellwork at all, mostly just various bindrunes on meaningful things (wallet, house, computers, vehicles, weapons ...). Mostly it's just Freyja sitting on my metaphorical shoulder a lot.

 

"Weaponized placebo effect" is a lovely phrase!

I'm an agnostic wix as well as a non-congregating Christian. This may sound weird, but I'm not afraid of synchretism because A) I believe that whichever entity is out there is there no matter what I do or do not believe and B) I believe they don't care about anything as petty as exactly how I worship them, which name I use for them etc - if even I am tolerant enough to accept that people can have different beliefs and still be good people, God must be even more generous in their understanding.

I read the tarot and sometimes draw insignias in the air with incense or a lit candle or match. When I moved into this apartment, I blessed every window and door by rotating a lit stick of incense clockwise and then counterclockwise (clockwise for openness to welcome people and energies, counterclockwise for protection against unwanted ones). I also do a sign-of-the-cross when I'm grateful or need to feel stronger, and sing mantras (my favorite being this one) to calm my mind and improve the flow of my thoughts.

I have a neighbor who has a tiny altar to Nossa Senhora Aparecida (the Brazilian black madonna) in their garden, and whenever I walk through there I stop to bow and pray to her. I associate her with the evening star, because both are pinpoints of light and feminine energy in the night, so I'll often also pray to said star.

Aside from that, I also believe anything one creates lovely through their own effort is worship. So whenever I write, draw, sew, crochet, cook etc, it's an act of magical practice.

 

The top of the dresser in my room is an altar to Freyja and it has currently 3 different statuettes of her, a bunch of cat statues (she has an affinity for cats, as do I), and a bunch of things associated (lots of amber, some golden things, some art, and stuff like that).

My partner's an eclectic Witch with a tie to the Morrigan, especially the aspects of Justice.

 

Personally, I am someone who beleives there´s something more than my own head going on with magic and gods and such. I will just put it out there that I have no quarrel with anyone who bleives otherwise as long as you have the courtesy not to mock me. (I´m a little burned by both atheists and hypocritical christians on that subject.)
Definitely attached to Bastet, otherwise I kind of takes bits and pieces of everything and make my own thing.

 

I'm in the position that I believe there is, but I have no proof except unrecorded personal experience. Which is unreliable even from the inside. However, I don't think it matters whether I can prove it because it works whatever.

 

Oh yeah, I also have a magic cabinet! It contains, among other things, a miniature nativity set that portrays Jesus, Mary and Joseph as Andinos, several tarot decks, my brother and mine's baby teeth, colorful perfume bottles and decorated tins, a vintage typewriter, old analog cameras, seashells and a Rapidash figurine I got from a student.

 

Even aside from Awkward Atheism, I'm very much a non-altar witch; there's no room for it in my lifestyle when I'm already taking over literally every shelf/table/whatever space I can get my hands on. Crafter problems, there's containers of beads stacked everywhere right now.

 

I´m not very good at maintaining altars, still working on finding a solution, because I do love the concept.
I also keep a stone in my bra that acts an amulet.

 

I certainly don't think you need an altar; I just like having a place to lay out all my stuffs, and it feels good to have her watching.

 

i'm a deist-raised-catholic who never got fully out of her teenage witch goth phase, and i try to keep an open mind that just because we don't know how/if things work, doesn't mean it doesn't exist, so i'm willing to try pretty much any magic and spiritual bullshit at least once to see what jams with me and what doesn't. i do a bit of astrology and tarot, i have unconsciously sort-of-assembled an elements altar in my living room, and i've been trying to get into candlework with twilight alchemy lab's ritual oils with little success because my focus is shit even for weaponized placebo effect, but i have to admit their oils smell really nice.

my boyfriend's aunt is really into kardecist spiritism and she claims to be a medium with like, healing powers and stuff. i have gallbladder stones and once got a pretty bad case of the painz while visiting her, so she offered to do her healing hands thing and i was sure it wouldn't work, but i was too shy to decline the offer. fifteen minutes and no meds later, i was up and about, totally ok. it was probably the creepiest thing that has ever happened to me. it also works in my (purple-and-yellow ring of light in the edges of my vision) migraines. most helpful placebo i've ever met.

 

For focus issues, try lighting a candle to represent your focus in addition to whatever you're using for spellwork? Helps me, at any rate.

 

This is both strange and amusing to read, since I'm agnostic of some sort who grew up kinda Catholic but also in South American whose family consistently goes to Witches for things. I recently started going to... not a Witch exactly, but kind of, to help me manage my energies and depression and stuff, and was utterly shocked at how much it helped. I now tend to wear a black tourmaline to help absorb negative feelings, and my family carries amulets with us all the time. If you have any random questions about the stuff I've seen Andean Witches (Peru and Bolivia have REALLY STRONG traditions) or want random tidbits of what I remember, I can share. I'm not a... anything myself, I'm basically curious.

 

While I have no specific questions, I love hearing about traditions that aren't heavily influenced by European craft and so this is a "Can I know all of it?" kind of message. (Not all at once, of course, just, if you have time to share, I'll take anything you've got.)

 

I feel like I should ask permission to join this conversation - I'm a pretty hardcore materialist/skeptic, and people like me can always be a bit of a downer. (I have thankfully grown out of the "argue agressively with anyone who mentions a Belief, any time, any where" phase. That was seriously tiresome for everyone involved.) If it helps, I have alternative theories that I am either 1) lacking whatever sense can detect the spiritual, being functionally "blind" or "deaf" in that area, or 2) spirutually under the purview of some aspect of Void or Nothingness.

 

Hm, I personally don't think much of a sense, just of a perspective?

Like, even in my hardcore atheist phase I still felt a sense of gratitude swell within me when I saw a beautiful dawn, and I was left feeling it and going "!??? but who am I grateful to??? where does this gratitude even go???". I sensed it the same, but it turns out adopting the perspective in which God exists and magic is helpful makes me know what to do with that. Do a quick prayer, a tiny ritual, channel that positivity into an object, etc.

 

I'm so weirdly shy about this stuff that I had to create a sub to even post on here and I'm STILL paranoid because I feel like I have a really incredibly distinctive writing style so I'll be immediately connected to my main. I don't know where my brain gets these ideas.
Anyway.
I don't know what I believe, in that this sort of thing has always fascinated me but at the same time I've sort of been taught somehow that it's illogical and foolish and so struggle with taking it and the part of me that does believe in it seriously. But when I'm alone walking the dogs I talk to the wind and think about the small gods. I guess if I believe anything it might be pantheism? To me when I'm in the right sort of mood there's a little god in every fence post and stretch of hedgerow.
I admit that this view has been mightily, mightily shaped by Terry Pratchett's Discworld gods and Neil Gaiman's American Gods novel, so fuck knows if any of it's more than whimsy.
I don't do any magic though I frequently mean to try it; it sort of goes the way of everything else I think would be cool to try, i.e. inertia gets in the way.
I don't know about established pantheons. I adore mythology but I don't know if I could worship any of them. The closest connection to anything established I ever felt was to the squirrel I named this sub after, heheh.

 

((Hello, Tales friend?))

I bounce hard between "NO, LOGIC SAYS THIS IS FOOLISH" and actually thinking that there's something to it, so I feel you there. The weaponizing the placebo effect line is my way of placating the Overly Logic part, because it's basically saying "whether it has a Real Effect or not, it helps, because my brain makes it so."

Insert here that Pirates of the Caribbean GIF with the jar of dirt and "If you don't want it, give it back" [Jack hugs jar] "Then it helps." That's basically my view on the matter.

 

((Got to admit I don't know what you mean by that, which is probably proving something in itself, unless I'm just being dumb))

Omg that is a very appropriate gif. It helps that I unironically love all four Pirates movies, of course.
I do think I could trick my brain with the placebo effect thing, only sometimes it then turns round and stops it working even as that by making some kind of passive-aggressive comment about foolishness in the middle of things. But I shall work on it.
Glad other people sympathise, anyway. x3