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

*makes a note not to accept art from you should the opportunity arise* Seriously thats sweet, and sounds like its coming from a place of loving kindness, but that is tripping all my "magic needs to be consented to" skeevies. :|

Have any of you done wards? I did a spell when i moved in here that involved sewing five little bags with various things in--salt, an iron nail, some herbs, a bit of my blood, some other things--and burying one at each corner of the property and one in the wall of the basement near the center of the house.

We do a cleansing with burning sage and a feather, and then a second with salt and water in every room between sunset and dawn on winter solstice to clear out any accumulated nasties and then i charge the center bag again with prayer and new blood.

 

I've sained the home once a year for two years now. I think it's a thing I will keep up. Basically I set out water to be blessed by Bríghid the night before and then the next day I go about the house and sprinkle water across it. I make sure to move sunwise and I make sure to pay special attention to doors and windows. Places of entry basically. Can't be setting things on fire though sadly so none of that burning specific plants (juniper in this case) thing to cleanse the home with smoke thing. I make do with what I can though.

I guess that counts as a sort of ward? Type thing. It gets done on Bealtaine.

 

I set wards on windows and doorsills with salt (and occasionally crushed-up iron mixed in with the salt). I make sure to set them when I move in somewhere and then if I'm having trouble with Things I reset them.

I've also done a witchbottle, which is like an accumulation of all @Lissiel's bags in one place, set somewhere underground or out-of-the-way to divert anything coming at me or wife. We'll need to do that again once she gets settled here.

 

if only i could salt places without grandma going AFSGTHN

if only

 

Sharing spaces makes things a lot more complicated, thats for sure. Some things i wouldnt do in an apartment, because the land wasnt mine-- I'd clean it out more frequently but couldnt build a fence style of thing. I could pray and do visualization work in my mother's home (anyone do the thing where you imagine a white light moving over you and burning away bad stuff, then being surrounded in a bubble thats glass inside and mirror outside?) but only she did the sage and stuff.

I did stuff to the place my husband lived a long time before telling him because i was scared of how he'd respond and didnt want to live undefended. In retrospect, i think that was wrong and wish I hadnt. But fucking up is how life goes i guess.

 

When I moved in I blessed every window and door in the house by taking an incense stick to each oc them and rotating it clockwise (for welcoming in good energies and people) then counterclockwise (for shutting away evil energies and harmful people).

 

I generally don't give away physical art unless people already know about the protective thing. Art is a deeply personal thing for me so if I like and trust someone enough to draw something for them on paper then they already know my wix tendencies and it's given because they need protection or support. I've had magic worked on me without my awareness and consent (useful though some of it may be) so I've got similar skeevies. Digital art is harder for me to put intent into so that's almost always unwarded unless there's someone I can't send a drawing to who needs it and then the sigils are more obvious 'cause it's hard to be subtle.

As for place-wards, I have a circle I got from dad and made a few changes to. There's a couple polite requests to entities who might be interested in keeping me safe and a lot of intent to keep danger out. We usually paint it in a light color on a white wall and then paint over it with white, but when I was kid he had it carved into the underside of one of the planks in the cabin. Just somewhere hidden, it's mostly the act that does it, and it specifies "for as long as <the caster> resides here" so it has minimal maintenance unless something breaks it. I sometimes do salt lines on my window/doorway when my shiny things start getting rearranged because I know some of the local fae and they like to mess with me, it's a small little "knock it off" and after a week or so I break the lines. Since they don't mean any real harm they get past the main ward but I'm not mean enough to kick them out permanently just stop messing with my already horrible organization.

 

This is all the ward I carry with me in my purse or backpack. It's all glued onto a magnet circle the way I bought it from the Witch. No idea on the symbolism. I carry this guy in a red bag to keep it protected.

 

Oh, guys, I bought a new ankh! Sterling silver with white gold and it's PRETTY.

I can't wait to charge it.

(Who doesn't need half a dozen charmed ankhs?)

 

WRT Wards I just salt & herbed all my windows and doors, burnt the leftovers and carried the smoke through the house.

(Salt, black pepper, cinnamon, coriander, rosemary, dill and onion powder (which kinda surprised me) all came up under research for protective herbs and it happens to smell nice too.)

I feel like I should feel silly for sprinkling the contents of my spice cabinet around my house but I feel really productive!

Also Husband's Cat, who largely ignores me, appears to be very interested in the process. She makes a point of coming into my circle when I ground and inspected all the upstairs windows after warding.

This is likely just Cat Behavior, since she's also eaten half the shoots off the upstairs "witch plants", but we've long suspected she has eldritch ties due to things like her ability to teleport. (We've seen her enter single-doored rooms multiple times without visibly exiting, it's spooky)

I feel like I'm off to a good start?

 

I've got some salt+charcoal powder I need to scatter in the driveways. Normally I wouldn't do anything here because it's not my place, but there's a friend of housemate's dad (term used loosely) who neither housemate nor I want around and basically even her dad only grudgingly puts up with him (because, I think, he has the never learned boundaries/can't say no) problem. There's a couple of other ex-housemates who've been problems as well.

I should do that tonight since my mom doesn't have work. The intent is basically ward out people who aren't on the property at the time.

EDIT: it is done! I left the bowl out to get rinsed by rainwater. because this is washington. rain cleanse is only good cleanse besides salt, and since I used salt in the thing...

SON OF AN EDIT: I realized that since I made the powder, I haven't heard any scuffling from the Ceiling Rat? I'm gonna put this one down as a success.

 

Went to a witchy store and they had a cat. Cat immediately started petting me and when I crouched to pet her she climbed on my shoulder and took a stroll with me through the store. Wondered out loud if maybe she was drawn to me because I smell of Other Cats, clerks told me "she just chooses some people". She seemed to be a V magical animal. Bought some crystals, can't wait to play with them.

 

How does one go about FINDING witchy stores? Amazon is one thing, but I got enough weird looks from Husband when I got my labradorite and quartz in the mail, I intend to keep the witchery on the down-low.

Edit: *cough* er... Apparently Google works just fine. The local shop even has a Facebook.

 

The internet is a magical place.

Also, usually word of mouth.

 

*waves* hi hello, that friend was me, whoops ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ my childhood is full of Wanting To Believe and Manipulative Bullshit
anyways, i've been considering posting in here for a while, finally just decided what the hell

raised jewish, but my whole family is not really religious, we go to temple on the high holy days (generally, if we're up to it), light a menorah on chanukah, and have one passover seder per year, but that's about it
my mom is wholly and completely agnostic and not spiritual in the slightest, and my dad is not! i will talk about my dad in a minute
personally, i went through similar phases to @bluefox . . . a lot of I WANT TO BELIEVE stuff when i was in elementary school-ish, late middle school was a period of abject atheism, and now i'm just sorta. . .?????? following my mom in the agnostic sort of way plus slightly more spiritual i guess, would like to believe in some sort of pagan thing because i think it's really neat and relatable but i also somehow want to maintain jewish stuff?? which is a sucky sort of problem to have. when i was in middle school-ish i was super SUPER into theology, despite the atheism, simply 'cause i thought it was neat; i read through a bunch of the torah, also did a ton of research on the other abrahamic religions (less so christianity tho). . . i was also a huge mythology nerd in elementary school through early high school, which probably contributes to my current vague fascination with some pagan stuff

and now i will talk about my dad!! i would like to discuss spiritual stuff with him more, but ive been having a lot of Problems with him lately and so haven't really made any efforts to talk to him about much of anything to be honest
for perspective, he's the sort of guy who owns a million guitars because he feels that each one has personality in it. when i was little he would try (and fail, my brother and i were Huge Skeptics which didn't help im supposing) to hypnotize us. he also used to tell me how he could see auras, i remember asking him to teach me but i was like five at the time so nothing really came of that. . . but he's definitely fostered a sort of openness to spiritual stuff that i would never get from my mom. he gave me a really nice copy of the i ching which i remember being neat, i havent read it in a while but ive been meaning to dabble in it again. . .he also gave me his tarot deck, which ive only recently appreciated as a Big Deal, it's super old, i honestly have no idea what brand or anything it is but it's really nice. its weird but i sorta feel like his energy is in it. . .??? which im not sure how i feel about. the i ching he gave me is also really old, which is kinda nice, i guess id like to think that the stuff he gave me has a History and a personal connection of sorts

recently ive been reading about kabbalah type stuff because its mysticism but in a way that i feel like i can still be connected to judaism i guess? (side note: i always feel Really Weird when kabbalah is treated as just any other sort of mysticism, without acknowledging jewish stuff and its history. . .also im not sure how i feel abt non-jewish celebrities getting into it and treating it like a trend but idk :\\\\\\) i also futz around with the tarot cards once in a while, when im super stressed and i need some sort of connection i guess if that makes sense, most of the time they're in my desk drawer though.

i also just remembered that my cousin and i used to mail stuff back and forth and i guess the only apt name for it is flower magic? he would send me little packages of pressed flower petals with instructions to do various things (e.g. with certain ones, you were supposed to wait for a sunny day and make a wish and crumple a petal into the wind) and i just remember being ALL ABOUT IT, i never used any of the petals, i still have them in an envelope in a hollow book on my shelf

so yeah, just saying hi i guess!! putting my two cents in, if anyone needs the jewish perspective on anything im fairly knowledgeable so hmu

edit: just adding that i am on the same page as bluefox when it comes to wanting very badly to believe in magic but also finding it tricky to do so

 

So. Would "success stories" be weird to share? Because I think I had something work, like, really well.

 

Not sure why they would. If you're comfortable with sharing it and you don't have some sort of oath not to share then go for it.

 

I work as a cashier in a "sporting goods" store. I've made a habit of silently willing good luck and such into the items of customers that are especially nice or make an effort to treat me like a person and not a retail drone. Kind of a pay-it-forward/reward? I had results come back to me today.

A guy that runs a local for-rent ocean fishing boat bought five fishing poles a couple weeks ago. He had a bunch already, but needed to add to his stock because he was taking a group of kids out for a tournament. He also bought insurance on all five, which was a huge help to me and my weekly quota, so I made a point of willing them to catch large fish, and a lot of them.

He came back in today and sought me out to tell me that the five kids that used those five poles all placed in the top tier of the tournament, and one of them won the whole thing!

 

oooh. That is nice.

 

Got a new deck today! This one, specifically. The know-your-deck spread seems to indicate that we'll work well together, but that I probably shouldn't use it for really heavy shit and that it's best used when I'm in high spirits.

Also, I put together a little mini witch stuff kit for when I'm traveling:



The stones and such are mostly just things I found and felt A Connection to. The knife has a secondary purpose as a potential self-defense thing (it's a boot dagger that I got at a yard sale)--you're apparently not supposed to do that but meh. It's probably never gonna be used for that kinda thing anyway. :P