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

Well, I asked 'em.

 

Update god damn it I just discovered another fucking awesome tarot deck.

HELP.

 

So today I did a get to know your deck spread for each of my four decks, and my first deck basically told me that it has no idea what it's doing and I probably shouldn't use it for advice.

... o k then

 

Awww, the poor little thing. I kind of want to have it now, so that it doesn't have to feel pressured to actually know things. I'd only use it as a sounding board, in a "toss a coin and see how you feel about the result" sort of way.

 

I can relate to that deck.

What sort of spread do you use as a get to know you btw? I'm likely going to order a new deck since I only ever had one and I didn't take it with me when I moved..

 

[hisses and hoards over decks]

I mean, it is a DJ Conway deck, so there's a lot of woo accompanying the card descriptions that I have to mire through, but the Fool plus Hierophant in the weaknesses part of the reading says to me "I'm a total newbie who is shit at being a figure of authority, I'M BAD AT THIS, SORRY." I'm honestly thinking of cleansing it because I have no idea how much of that is the deck and how much is the fact that it WAS my "I'm 14 and what is this" deck purchase.

@Aniseed Oh hold on, let me drag it out of tumblr... Here we go.

#I am a dragon and tarot decks are part of my unusual hoard #which is fitting since this is in fact my dragon deck

 

Looking at that spread, it's basically a job interview for tarot decks. Maybe the "insecure deck" just isn't good at interviews. I can sympathize.

 

I just did that spread with my little cat-based tarot deck that I've had for a while and it told me that it wants to help me, that its weakness is that it will take no shit from me (unsurprising, given what it's given me before), and in the last slot, the one about what kind of relationship we could have, there's the Lovers.

I wish I was surprised. Somehow I am not.

 

From Tumblr:

 

So candles. Candles are magical things. As is fire in general. I have a tendency to get very paranoid at night and my fondness for horror does not really help that. Occasionally it gets super bad as it did last night!

Until I put a candle on. It was one of those fancy pants electric candles. Made of wax and they don't burn, but they do mimic the way candle light...falls. I guess you could say. They flicker appropriately.

this solved everything ever.

It doesn't work with lights though and it is best with actual fire. BUT FIRE SOLVES ALL PROBLEMS. Except when it causes problems but that is why you have Bríghid's crosses around.

 

Hmmm. Wonder if it would work for things that can only be seen/identified by candlelight?

 

That I do not know. Though I suppose it's worth a shot. Electric candles also seem to work as nice substitutes for my "hearth". Which was originally actual candles, but my grandmother has a huge phobia of fire so no candles. Gods certainly don't seem to mind and the thing looks nice and candlely and it gives me the hearth I need.

 

I was really fascinated by magic as a kid, and it still interests me, even though I went full-blown atheist-materialist about halfway through high school. (In part I think my aversion to spirituality came from some bad experiences with alternative medicine... more on that another time, maybe.) I don't see how magic can work, but paganism and related belief systems make sense to me on a philosophical level (if not a scientific one) in a way that Christian-typical monotheism doesn't. "The world is governed by powerful and often capricious forces whose natures and interests are not those of human beings, but human beings can influence the outcomes of events to some extent through their own will and knowledge." That's just true, and intuitively obvious, even if I assume there's not enough Real Magic in the universe to light a candle. (See @ADigitalMagician's ideas about programming, for example.) I'd have an easier time believing that than in a single, unified, Divine Plan.

I think "weaponized placebo effect" is a great way of explaining magic, partly because it doesn't actually explain it. Last I checked, the placebo effect itself was really weird and nobody quite knew how it worked. (Disclaimer: not a scientist.) And it does exist, and can be surprisingly strong.

Anyway. Everyone seems to welcome skeptics and unbelievers in this thread, so I hope it's cool if I follow along. :) Never had any experiences with magic myself, beyond a couple of glasses that exploded with no known physical cause -- maybe there's some weird energy in my family's home, but nothing strong or distinctive enough to call a "presence." If there's a poltergeist it fucked off long ago.

I had a half-friend, half-antagonist back in high school who was Wiccan, and she took to calling me Scully. (I flew pretty close to the fedora-sun back then.) She and I lost touch. The only practitioner friend I have now does Tarot and runes sometimes, and I think she sees them mostly as psychological aid -- she usually only does readings for people when she already knows some of what they need to hear, and interprets the cast or the draw on that basis. It's very Discworld-witchy, which I think is intentional on her part.

Did you accidentally make a shamble? It's a thing the witches of Pratchett's Discworld novels use to divine and focus energy, put together from whatever you have on your person at the time you make it, and it has to have something living in it to work. :3

And you wonder why anons on tumblr think you are "literally angelkin." I confess I'm curious how you even discovered this effect, and if anyone has made an attempt to harness it. "Grounding ridiculous amounts of energy" sounds like it would be useful if you could make it work reliably.

 

@The Frood Abides So, I'm really big on what I refer to as "practical" magic. That is magic that whether there IS a power or not, still has an effect. Often that effect is intentionality, because intentionality is useful and important to getting shit done.

Which, well, diskcworld witches. Totally a thing.

 

In my experience: Any person who is more capable than the spellworker can do this.

I also used to do this. I don't anymore. I have different metaphors now.

I still love that your self image is patterns.

 

but is it that seebs has encountered incapable spellworkers or is it that his no-field is so strong it could actually be used for good?



I like the second interpretation more, actually. and that's a good thing, I think it also means you can protect the people around you.

 

quick everyone do magic at @seebs! :o

 

@Kaylotta Won´t that just cause a clusterfiddle that doesn´t do jack anyway?