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

"I will you my power." /references to terrible movies

 

I'm an atheist but I really like ritual. Pagans have the best rituals. (Catholicism comes in second but most of their rituals are in Latin and also they're God types.) When I'm on my own I mostly just burn candles and do herbalism though.

 

This very much. Sometimes the act of doing can accomplish the thing, especially when the thing is some kind of internal emotional change.

This brings up a really interesting experience of mine. I tend to visualize wings, even on other people, as a kind of soul metaphor. I was staying with another spiritually sensitive friend (he doesn't exactly do magic but he's good at energy flows, way better than I am) who is also otherkin (fox, specifically). So, his perception of himself is ears+tail.

Sitting behind him and slightly offset put me in the wing path, and I was super uncomfortable there and couldn't settle until I moved further to one side or the other (out from behind or directly behind), but sitting directly behind him (where his perception of his own energy, IE tail, was) didn't cause me any issue at all.

Was weird.

[raisehand] atheist with too many candles and herbalism shit, that's me.

 

Ritual is lovely as hell. Especially communal rituals, for myself personally. I really enjoy the various group bowing and consecrated water rituals associated with Thai Buddhist services. God and walking around the wat three times with candles. And giving monks food and stuff.

ALL THE STUFF. Well no just the four requisites but ALL THOSE REQUISITES.

Even by myself though it is just very. Comforting and calming.

 

Okay here's an interesting thing that I'd like this thread to discuss, namely this comment thread, which I'm gonna excerpt:

I only have a little bit of this sense, but it's definitely there, and I'm able to use ritual energies to tap into it more. (Hyperempathy is still much stronger in my mental landscape, though.)

 

Question: does anyone else have a thing where they associate objects with people? Like for example, I won't touch other people's stuffed animals because they are too much of whatever person. I don't like it when people touch some of my stuff because No it is mine and you're getting You all over it. I had a generic pen that I liked to use because it had been used by a friend once and I haven't seen that friend in a while really and it was like having a part of them there. etc. I could probably word this better, but. whatever.

 

All. The. Time. (More detailed response after sleep.)

 

Hey folks, I kept this secret for a while in case Seeb's disrupt-juju reared up through reading, but it's been like three weeks now so you get a recap of the cleanse our witch did. I feel a bit silly for not posting about it, because I still have my entire cognitive dissonance of "I am a biologist, what the heck am I DOING" warring with my respect for this whole thing. On the one hand, it would be kind of funny and an interesting experiment to see what happens if I tell Seeb that a Witch will come to cast magic at my family and do a cleanse and read cards, and see if shit just kinda haywires, but the idea of some shortcircuit of sorts, or the Witch going "wtf there is a presence blocking EVERYTHING and it is apparently connected to your daughter" to my parents is freaky.

Yep.

One of the key part of cleansing is the egg. Well, eggs, really! Apparently this is a latin american tradition, as I've never seen it anywhere else, but I have read that some Mexicans do this too. Roughly, the whole thing had around four parts, and took an entire Saturday afternoon!

Our witch arrived, we invited her food and some juice because we weren't sure if she had lunch, and mom and her chatted while I bustled around making sure they had tea and refilled their juice and what not. Then we set up in the kitchen by taking our her instruments, getting three eggs per person ready, three glasses halfway full with water, and a pot.

Spoiler: Witchy Ritual Summarized

Each person had the whole cleanse. You sit in the chair, and she spritzes some herb water onto your hands. Of note: we got distracted by the dogs when she started mine, so she put a different herb water to "cut" the interrupted ritual, neutralizing it or something, and then starting again. You bring your hands to your face, kind of like putting them together for player, and breathe in the scent three times. She then guides you to visualize a calm place, a relaxing place, and walks around you with something in her hands, moving over your body (not touching or really hovering) and in some places making warding/cross movements. You are guided into a visualization of the rainbow with your eyes closed, and I think this is when she lights the incense we put in the pot. You move, in your visualization, from red, to orange, to yellow, to the rest of the rainbow, as she invokes the different associations with each color. She presses an egg to your forehead, passes it over your body the same way as before, and then cracks it and it goes into one glass of water. She repeats this with the remaining two eggs, and each egg is cracked into a different glass with water. The visualization moves into invoking the archangels as she rings a bell in the same gestures over you. At some point she passes two stones in the same way, and then puts one stone in each hand (more of crystals than stones what even), and you repeat the invocations with her. I feel like I'm forgetting something. You get incense wafted in the same cardinal points around you, even going "You are protected from the East, and you are protected from the West. You are protected from North, and you are protected from South". You stand up, she puts the pot of incense on the floor, and you get handed two crosses made from a particular type of wood to hold and you step over, turn around, and step over. Then you turn around again to stand in front of the incense, and lift your arms horizontally up at your sides while she takes two knifes (old knifes, not like, modern kitchen knifes, these ones were handles made of metal and I don't know how to describe? Simple knifes) and she stands in front of you and "cuts" around you to free you from anything dragging on you. Then you sit down, hand the crosses back, and stare into a candle she lit at the start and repeat some words for good will and fortune, and you are done. I am CERTAINLY forgetting something but oh well.

Cleanses usually happen one on one with the witch, but my mom got hers first and I stayed in the kitchen due to not being directed out. At some point, a vein in my... not my eyelid, but like right underneath my left eye, jumped and hurt and felt like it was throbbing, before mom's cleanse was finished. Then she was sent out of the kitchen to wait while I got mine done, since mom was already clean and we didn't want to contaminate her as I got cleaned.
OH I FORGOT, THE EGGS

Spoiler: Ovomancy

So, not quite ovomancy, really, but the eggs suck away the bad influences. Because she does a succession of three eggs, you can see how it changes, and amusingly enough, every single time I have seen the succession of eggs of a cleanse there is always a pattern.

See, the way the egg yolk forms, but more importantly, the way the egg white forms bubbles or shapes or doesn't matters because it tells you what is going on. My first time like a year ago, my first egg had a HUGE BUBBLE suspended in there which REALLY SCARED THE WITCH as she stared at me and asked me if I had like, been feeling haunted or felt a ghost or any heavy presence to explain THE HUGE BUBBLE. I basically went "uh... no? I don't think so? No? It's just me". And mom was like "Ffs just tell her". "Oh right, well, I have depression" cuz I don't like talking about depression to most people I meet in offline life since like. Taboo and also judgement. The bubble was almost two-chambered so she looked at it and went "maybe it's bipolarity?" "Nah, it's depression."

[Edit: Back then I was only just starting to get treatment and was also kind of eternally tired and bleh/sad about everything. So there is a distinct difference between then and now, where I will remember to shower daily and go out to Portuguese classes and have FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS.]

The subsequent two glasses which had been cracked before we finished and started analyzing them showed the bubble getting smaller. So that was a plus.

Mom's first glass that time had a LOT OF LITTLE BUBBLES so the witch went "you have a lot of little eyes looking at you, jealous little eyes, maybe you should get a talisman or a ward to carry around with you". So since then we have these talismans or wards of sort we carry around with us always, in our purses usually. Any time we go out. She basically went "pick the first one that feels right" and I just kinda grabbed at one, and then let me grab one colored little bag for it (I chose red) which apparently means I chose love, but eh. Mom chose a pink one for dad (health) and I think green for health (wealth).

This time I was very, very clear, at most just my second glass had something that looked less like a bubble and more like a little sheet ghost, and she was like "well, that looks like a presence that is just watching you, but it isn't doing anything". I don't remember mom's for this time, except that there aren't little bubbles this time.

Dad's cleanse showed nothing hanging on him, but that there is a negative presence that would like to affect him but it is far away, and it is "at his feet, not over his head", so basically he is standing on top of it, it is not getting to him even if it is trailing him.

Btw, three different witches/shamans/yatiris have confirmed the same thing without knowing each other or without prompting each other about my dad. Basically, my grandpa apparently really pissed someone off (from what I've overheard mom and dad discussing, maybe he kind of slept around and pissed of some mistress by leaving her for another? Yikes), and so a curse was laid on him, but also on his family. One of them said that it is centered on the old family house, and that possibly the curse tool/summon/medium was buried in the house/in the garden itself which is why nobody has managed to uproot it. Dad is utterly convinced that the fact that the house is going to be torn down soon as it was sold recently, to make a big building, will help destroy this curse. Looks like one magical medium/weaver/worker agrees with this, but it is SUPER ADVISED that whatever objects/furniture are taken out of the house get a cleanse of their own before taking to their own homes. One uncle already has a yatiri lined up to cleanse the books and stuff he inherited when he takes it out of the house, and I have heard dad emphasize this to said uncle like, fifteen times over skype calls now. Funky stuff.

Now I am tired of typing so I will talk about the follow up bath tomorrow or something.

 

Wow, that is a hellaciously thorough and complicated cleanse right there. Like damn.

 

It certainly was. It was also kind of tiring at the end.

 

My method of cleansing consists entirely of "show all surfaces of it to the flame and the water" (alternate options if either is not plausible being sun and salt). The eggs thing is really weird!

 

Spoiler: Laz rants about its methods and philosophy

Alt title: Chaotes are dirty cheaters.

So, the core of my craft and life in general is that any conscious act, any act of will, is a magical act. I'm really careful about my craft, my family has done some scary things when cornered and I've been cornered most of my life so I have to be careful to not lash out unless I really, really have to. Everything that isn't entirely personal ritual I always think over, make sure I know the potential consequences, make sure I'm not affecting anyone I don't mean to be. And if everything I do with intent is magic, then everything I do needs that same level of caution: it keeps me mindful, reminds me to think before I act.

It also means I can get away with just about anything as a ritual. I recently purified my bed in hopes of getting rid of the night terrors by cleaning the sheets, taking a shower, and flicking water off my clean-and-shiny hair onto the bed instead of doing salt water. Because sometimes I can smell salt water and strong smells near my sleeping space that aren't there to help me sleep bug me. It seems to have worked. If I draw for you, and you receive the physical drawing? You are probably Under My Protection and I've woven something into it, like sigil work except not. I patched a hole in my friend's ward by sticking a piece of duct tape on her wall. There's of course the mental focus, the enforcing of my will, but the acts themselves are often vaguely symbolic instead of highly ritualized. Sometimes I'll say a few spells I inherited, sometimes I say a few words in rhyme, sometimes my spells are closer to "If there are any ooga-boogas sticking here kindly fuck off, I ain't feeding you."

I do have some Actual Rituals of course, mainly my purification stuff, that's all seriousness and moonlight and candles and salt. But my on-the-fly day-to-day magic is generally completely irreverent and gleefully made up as I go.

 

That's amazing tho.

 

Happy solstice! Are you doing anything to celebrate?

 

I went out to pay rent to Manannán mac Lír today. I gave him the last of the rice I made for Father's Day and also the last of my favorite tea that I had. THE GOOD STUFF. He is worth the good stuff. Very much so. I might not live near the ocean anymore but the ocean is still in me and I long for it often. So Manannán means a lot to me, especially with his good sense of humor. It involves filling you with awe and then eating you with water when you ask a stupid question.

I've found some nice poetry as well that I will read out loud for him tonight I think.

The story of water eating being that I went to the beach for the first time in years. I brought some mead I made and set aside for him as an offering so it could be drowned. Most of the day was spent playing around in the water and swimming and I asked if he was around. And the most beautiful wave appeared. It was glorious and the sun hit it just right and then it hit me. A grand moment of "Well what do you think?"

 

So I have a weird relationship with faith. First I just didn't know it was a thing, then I made up my own gods and rituals and things in a fantasy-book style, then my friend convinced me of the existence of a dangerous magical conspiracy running the world for a few years, then I was a hardcore obnoxious atheist, now I am ????.

I really want ritual and I have this awfully intense deep seated desire to live in a world where magic exists, but it is associated with .... I don't know, the feeling I had in my childhood, which felt too good and too easy and in at least one case wound up being straight-up invented (conspiracy). And I am scared by how fascinated I am by, like, otherkin, or the whole ~divine~ community on tumblr, in addition to the people who just go about their lives believing magic is a thing.

Also my inner skeptical scientist is a jerk and I have this desire for empirical evidence.

I recognize that wanting ~proof~ is probably not a useful motivation, but is there, hypothetically, anything I could do to say I'M HERE!! COME RECRUIT YOURSELF A BELIEVER ? and just - open myself up to Something, Anything? (ideally not a dangerous Anything.) I realize you all practice differently, but like, general ideas?

tl;dr

 

Sadly not doing anything for Solstice aside from some personal purification. I've got like a cloud of negativity around me and I don't want to go contacting anyone/thing bigger than me with it there. Don't want any negative attention >:/

 

Well Buddhism does involve a degree of skepticism. Behold. The Kalama Sutta. I will say that our data collection methods are definitely a thing many would count as mystical madness. Namely that progressing down the path involves lots of meditation and such. That's how our stuff is found, at least in regards to understanding the nature of reality mentally. Faith in Buddhism is a tool used as motivation, and it's abandoned once you reach the end because then you have knowledge and proof.

As for gods and our magical shit going to temples and leaving offerings to specific Bodhisattas is the way to go about things. Mostly Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism schools deal with the gods. Best bet I think is to go visit around a few temples and talk with monks. Attend classes. Get to mingling with the temple goers. Also study.

Here is a directory of temples and Buddhist groups all around the world.

With Gaelic gods and the Fair Folk if you're reaching out then offerings are your best bet again. Traditional offerings include milk, dairy products, corn (not maize), and pretty shiny things that aren't made of iron. These offerings are to be burned, buried, or drowned in a river or the ocean. Liquid offerings may be poured out into soil or on rocks. DO NOT EAT FOOD OFFERINGS WITH GAELIC GODS AND THE FAIR FOLK. So basically get a pretty plate or bowl that you like and put your chosen offering on it. Then introduce yourself and why you're reaching out to them. I'd side with being formal and serious. Like you're meeting with a new employer basically. Set your offering somewhere clean and leave it there until you dispose of it.

I'd also side with reaching out to them in general unless a particular god just really strikes you, I guess. I personally reached out to Lugh first because personal reasons. Generally though the suggestion tends to be the Gods and Ungods at large. Then you keep doing that and wait. Also study.

Study a lot.

This place has a basic explanation of the sort of thing I do. It also has a nice book list.

Additionally this site has lots of the Irish texts we use.

In general I am just a very take this very slow and research a lot type and will advise against just hopping into something. Religion is hard for me. It's work.

 

@bluefox

Have you asked yourself why you are fascinated?

I personally believe in an unfair universe that is sometimes on my side because that is really the thing that makes the most sense. That is most comfortable for me. Sometimes you get shit on, sometimes you get amazing stuff.

Anyone have any information on how to reach out to your possible personal guardians? Mom claims I have some, but I really don't want to ask her in terms of this stuff, because I want to separate my practice from hers and so on. Might be a good time to do it soon though, we have our bigger summer solstice thing coming up and I suspect it has more "magic in the air" due to *reasons*.

 

I don't have the time to discuss it at length, but in general, finding your guides/guardians/patrons is similar to any other spirit based ritual. Meditation, invocations, spirit boards, whatever works for you. The difference is whom/what you address. If you think you have a guardian spirit, and you want them specifically, create your circle, push out undesired spiritual presences, invite in the thing you are allowing. Once that's done, whatever makes you comfortable for dealing directly.

Note: A circle doesn't need to be a circle, it's just convenient terminology. I specifically mean a consecrated space.