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

I've been interested in the Thoth deck for a while, if no-one else really wants it. If it doesn't work for me I can just pass it on to someone else :P

 

@Lazarae its yours! Pm me an address to mail it and ill try to get it off in the next week. :)

 

Aeeee thanks!

 

Dang, this is what I get for not checking the forums regularly. Eh, I only really wanted to have a general crack at a Thoth deck for theory purposes. Most of the online guides to it are too symbolism-dense for me.

 

I buried a witch bottle next to my front porch today

 

Any specific purpose?

 

General warding, protection. Keep out/absorb bad energy. Husband comes in by that door under a lot of stress, maybe that'll help catch the bleed-off before it gets in the house.

 

I think Lugh digs grapes.

 

I want to try some astral/dream type shit but most of it pings my "that sounds fake but okay" side really hard. anyone got tips?

 

So the other day I decided to draw one card each from three separate tarot decks, just for funsies, when doing my daily taking-my-decks-out-and-using-them-so-they-don't-get-sad thing.

Two of them were the same card (Page of Pentacles), and the other was only one card away (Knight of Pentacles).

Does that signify anything? The decks were all very well-shuffled...

 

There seem to be some people knowledgeable in the ways of gemstones, so I want to ask what labradorite is good for, if I can jump in?

 

@Starcrossedsky I havent done dream stuff for a while, but i used to. I think the thing is... I dont think its real the way rocks are real, but more like the way justice is real. Our minds make it real, and its best at helping us understand our own minds. What were you thinking of trying? What kind of advice did you need?

I built a rambling old haunted house in my mind, and things like...there was a tiny dark room i could hide in when my brain was hurting me or if i couldnt access information id go look it up in the library and then i could remember, and theres a ten year old me that stays there safe that sometimes i interact with. That all was very useful for managing emotions and information.

Sometimes i did remote viewing kind of stuff but honestlh it was usually like "yep thats an empty room" or "those sure are trees!" So i kinda stopped. I think thats more empirically real but less useful unless youre like... A military intelligence person or a stalker. :/

 

General consensus online seems to be reduction of negative energy, anxiety reduction and stimulation of creativity

 

Don't take a stray dog in for the night after a rough workday despite spouse protests.
She'll fuck up your primary ward-plant (just the most important one!) and get a case of pica (eating weird things, esp. rocks) on the quartz crystals in the rest of them. UGH. I get it, okay, don't let unknown things past the wards.

Edit, Upd8: Upon inspection, wardplant prime is apparently in the process of putting out not one, not two, but five new shoots, all on the Earth and Fire sections. I have never gotten this many shoots on a single bamboo plant, let alone so quickly. This is fantastic.

 

http://thetwistedrope.tumblr.com/astral is referred to a lot
#yes i know where to find resources for a lot of strange witchy things #even if im not sure i believe in them myself

 

@Starcrossedsky I do mostly like what Lissiel does. I don't so much project my consciousness elsewhere as much as I build things in my head (the one who taught it to me referred to it as an 'astral temple'), and I put enough energy into it so it has a consistency; time passes even when I'm not there and I don't have to rebuild it from scratch every time. For me it's partially a refuge and partially a place where I can look at my life in metaphor and cope with things that way. I first started building it some ten years ago so it's rather large and there's a lot of personal landmarks. And I can talk about it for days with people I like because it's one of my major achievements (ten years of growth, holyfuck) and it provides an easy way to go "here are the ways in which I've been broken/have recovered" without outright saying that I'm broken or damaged which tends to make my friends uncomfortable.

When I first started going there it was like the meditations where you picture yourself in a place or situation- the kind where you build up the details of, say, being on a boat at a pier. You get yourself in a quiet place and relax and start building it from the first metaphorical brick. For me it developed a momentum, once I'd put down a few bricks suddenly I was laying out whole sections. And even when it's not done (mine is never done because I'm always growing, always changing, but the major parts, the core of it, have been built.) I could wander around and see what I'd made when I didn't feel like adding to it. The starting point I was taught was a natural space for permanence, a hill or a mountain or an open field, and you add another natural element of change (rivers are standard. I did weather.) Then you plant something, preferably as a sprout or sapling instead of a seed. The plant is You and you're kind of introducing it to the space. Leave for a while, a day at least. Come back and check the plant; if it's not doing well then the place doesn't suit you, wipe the board and start over. When people first start building they don't often know what they want/need so they kind of throw things at the wall to see what sticks so the first place they build might not be what they need! That's totally ok. Once you find a place the plant grows nicely in (it doesn't have to grow, it just needs to stay healthy since you're first starting) then you can start building whatever you want! My teacher said the first thing a lot of people built was the 'temple' which isn't so much a spiritual place as it is a place of solace. It's a mental panic room, where you go to be safe when everything gets to be too much. Since it's in your head it doesn't have to be as sterile as a real-world panic room unless that's what makes you feel safe. My teacher said hers was a more literal temple, made of marble and full of incense with high windows that fill it with sunlight. Mine's a crypt (less to do with my suicidal feelings and more to do with my taphophilia) that's all covered in ivy and moss and smells like turned earth and damp stone. There's a statue of a valkyrie with her wings wrapped around, and I can duck under them and sit on the plinth and have the wings cradling my on either side and her above, hands tight around her spear as she takes watch. There's also an open stone coffin I can curl up in when things get particularly bad because I actually feel safe in tight dark spaces. Since it's my world the stone lid can be light enough for me to move but heavy enough to keep everything else out.

Now that I've been at it for so long I don't need to meditate to get there, I just need to turn inward. I lose a lot of attention to things around me when I do so I usually do it when I either REALLY need to or I'm in a situation where spacing out won't hurt me. Sometimes when I can't brain I'll start a nice repetitive activity, the kind that keeps the fidgety part of me busy without taking up brainpower (solitaire's a go-to. Puzzles, match-3s, gathering stuff in Minecraft, all are good for me) and go there and just... wander around or hang out because it's nice and it's safe. There are things that represent Bad Shit in my life but it's set up in a way that hurts less instead of more. But sometimes when things get really bad and I'm in shutdown mode and need to get away I'll go there to block everything else out as a coping mechanism, to protect part of myself from whatever shit is going on around me.

I'm going to end up ranting forever so I'll stop now but if anyone wants to know what the inside of my head looks like lemme know and I'll dedicate a post to it. I love it and people here are the kind to understand why I made some of the things I did that usually weird people out.

I hope some of that rambly thing was helpful at least.

 

Talked today to a young witch who told me that his astrologist recommended he learn Tarot because he has the gift of clarivoyance. I told him I've been reading for years, my readings are honestly pretty awesome and I don't believe you need a "gift" in order to read the cards. I told him that for me, it's the same process by which I appreciate art and music: you draw associations between the artwork and meaning of the cards and your own experiences, thoughts and emotions. To me, with practice and knowledge, anyone can read the tarot. Next week I might do a reading for him :}

 

Yesterday I went to let a friend of the family practice an alternative therapy thing on me. She's only learning and I'm sort of chill about alternative stuffs and patient with things being looked up in the middle of proceedings so I was p handy. I can't remember what it's called, I can't say the word or get it straight in my head, it's something like kine...thesiology maybe? Energy work basically.
It was super interesting actually, my arm answered questions. ;P Friend worked out an 'indicator muscle' (my bicep, I think? I think the sort of standard one is tricep but mine refused to co-operate) and I sat with my arm out at right-angle from my body and she applied a tiny bit of pressure while asking a question and my arm either dropped down or stayed put to answer. I had to have like two sets of energies balanced before we even began, haha.
The first time she asked what I needed my arm frustrated her by requesting a thing she didn't have, haha. It wanted a... i can't remember exactly what it was called but basically a rose-quartz charm to help me block outside influences. I think practioners are supposed to sell them to clients but a) my friend's only learning and b) i don't think she wants to do that anyway so she just advised me to go pick up some rose quartz and make my own, specially after I said I already had some stones.
Second time I ended up doing a thing where, via my arm, a pair of 'i feel/i am' statements were picked out and then energy was... balanced or something in regards to them. First was 'I feel burdened/I am sincere' and second was 'I feel defeated/I am acceptable', which given that apparently the 'i am' statements are more things to work on than things that are, I feel are pretty appropriate. xP
She said she thought I would be good at the therapy, actually, because she thought I had the intuition needed for it. Which I find rather flattering.
I've been letting all my spiritual stuff slip lately because of incredible lack of spoons which makes me sad. My needy tarot deck is probably horrifically pissed at me. xP

 

These are both pretty good posts, though I feel I should ramble a little about the Weird Way Nai's Brain Works to give ya'll some idea of what's actually set up in there -

-> My brain doesn't need any help generating places. Most of the dreams I can actually remember are Place Dreams, rather than Event Dreams. I should ramble about them sometime, some of them are fairly specific.

-> My brain dislikes meditating. I'm pretty sure it's a Focus Disorder but it just doesn't happen. That's why I was leaning more towards the dream side of things than the meditative part, because meditation style focus doesn't come naturally to me.

-> More directed at @Lazarae, but my brain intuitively rejects the idea of being a plant. Uh. Any other options there?

(Seriously, for as much as I love gardening I've only really had a bond with a few plants in my life. Red maples in general and one in specific, and my lemon tree that I've grown from seed.)

 

I think anything that would be able to show signs of surviving/thriving in a short time would work. The point is to see if it's a good place for you, a sort of litmus test. If you can think of something else that can work for that I say go ahead! But I'm also a filthy chaote can't be tamed so. I have a hard time remembering what my teacher said about animals but she was highly unnerved when I told her about the corvids but that was before certain things were known that would probably make it less alarming. So I'm :/ on an animal but you might want to ask someone else.

And I do it as a meditation because it's actually the only meditation I can do but if dreaming it works better then that should work too. It's the severing ties to the outside world temporarily that does it so I don't see a problem there.