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

((Yep, that's a thing. Oh well.))

Yeah, mostly my brain is placated but sometimes it throws up its hands. Usually when there's a IS IT REAL OR NOT debate going on around me.

 

I'm an agnostic pagan. Skepticism and wonder come hand in hand.

I honestly don't know if what I feel/sense is real, I just know that: ritual helps. If ritual helps, then it's useful.

My personal feelings on my explanation of the universe is separate.

(Basically, you're totally welcome here.)

 

My take on it is pretty much, magic is just something science can´t explain Yet. Ditto gods, demons, and other creatures of myth.

 

I just haven't had many feelings I might describe as "spiritual". A sense of wonder at the natural world, sure. A quiet moment of contemplation at a sunset. A moment of "wow, this is me being *me*, right at this moment in this place in the entire history of the Universe". But nothing that would make me go "I can feel the presence of Something Else".

The one time I've had an acute feeling of "yes, this is undoubtedly what exists beyond the world I observe", it was at a feeling of Nothing. Long story short, I was visiting America, we were on our way back from a 4th of July fireworks display, I was very tired and jetlagged and I fell asleep in the car. That is, I am *told* I was asleep, because from my perspective I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them back in the driveway at my hosts' house. My brain had shut off, and for over an hour, I was functionally non-existent. It just feels True to me, on a basic level, that death would be exactly like that, but without the waking up again. It's... not a particularly happy thought, I admit. But it feels True, and I've found comfort in atheist philosophy.

If magic was real I would totally just have all of the power to change and shape reality at my whim. (I have these powers in my dreams a lot - not even lucid dreams, in the sense of knowing I'm dreaming and controlling it, but within the context of the dream I can do Anything.) And eventually I'd probably use it to carve myself out a little corner of reality where I could live without having to worry about magic. So that might be what happened. Or maybe it's just a story I tell myself.

 

It's all what Is, is my feeling. It's the same thing in the end.

 

Well, disclaimer that a lot of the stuff I have seen is the result of syncretism between local traditions and catholic beliefs. So there is certainly going to be a big Western influence there. As to details or sharing... I'll just jot down the ones off the top of my head. Under a spoiler because it got long.

Spoiler: This is just one event, mind you

One Witch came to do a "cleanse" of us, particularly because mom wanted something for dad for reasons I will explain later. Anyways, part of the cleanse consisted of a... ritual of sorts, to gather energy into an egg, and included a bell ringing around me while I had my eyes closed and the Witch called on different Saints and Mary. There was a tree visualization in there somewhere. The point is, the egg would reflect what was going on and absorb negative energies so we would be free from that burden, and then the egg was cracked and the contents dropped into a glass of water and left for a bit while she repeated the ritual with another egg. We had three eggs each, into their own glasses of water.

Afterwards, she inspected the glasses to point out what the eggs had absorbed. For example, my first egg had a BIG bubble in the egg white that kind of started from the yolk and that was also kinda a bisected bubble but not really two bubbles, and the Witch was kind of taken aback and asked me if a spirit had been haunting me or if I was bipolar. I went "That... is probably the depression" that we hadn't mentioned to her at all. Just that I was low on energy and that we wanted to be sure I didn't have something hanging about. The subsequent eggs showed a similar, singular bubble, but smaller, which she said was the cleansing and removing of some of the weight this is having on my brain.

Mom's glass was very different, her first glass had so many little bubbles in the egg white suspended in the water around the egg yolk, a lot of them. The witch said that this was because of the many "little eyes watching over your every move" and that this was a work thing, of people questioning and looking for a weakness. I don't remember the subsequent glasses.

After that particular cleansing, she threw salt on the eggs in water so that the negative energies couldn't contaminate, and we washed the glasses very carefully after throwing the contents.

She also mixed a bunch of flower petals and herbs and some essences in a big jug of warm water, mom and I changed into old pjs, and she gave us a bath to help cleanse ourselves. We were to throw out the pjs completely (that was why we had to put on old clothes), and... I think I took a second shower afterwards to remove the first bath, as otherwise what it had removed would cling to me again? I don't remember.

She also did a tarot reading of my dad, since my mom said she was worried about him. The witch said that dad has a very strong negative influence on him. That someone cursed his dad, and the curse set strong and has set roots in all grandpa's children. This is the third magical practitioner to say this, independently of each other, in two neighboring countries. Also dad thinks the old family home is cursed too, and that he is glad it will be knocked down for a new building project that will remove the old taint, but that we must clean anything we take from that house independently (he actually called my uncle to warn him to make sure to ask a shaman to clean any objects he takes before bringing them into his home. Apparently all the family heirlooms could be carriers from being in the house?)

We carry amulets with us at all times that she gave us, in my purse, dad in his backpack. They're meant to reflect any ill wishes.

That's enough writing for now, I'll share more details and stories later!

 

*joins this thread very late* On the beliefs side I fall into "you get out what you put in" - i.e. put positive energy out, get positive things in your life. On the practice side, I occasionally meditate, but mostly color/plant/stone associations to focus the aforementioned energy in whatever direction I want it to go. I made D a woven keyring thing with a bunch of protective colors, for example, and I've been considering making little charms to hang in the windows, but....this house has a lot of windows.

 

Possibly a little off-topic, but if it's okay to ask... @Morven and anyone else who knows, what is seidr? I've tried to do some research, but all I've come up with is that it's associated with women/effeminateness, fortune telling, and Freyja and maybe Odin. Was it outlawed in the periods we know about it, or at least tacitly allowed? Do we know why it was considered "unmanly" - was it something about seidr itself, or was it just because anything coded feminine was unmanly for men to do? Was it actually a specific type of magic, or was it just "any kind of magic that women and effeminate men do", even if the practices and purposes were pretty much the same as what "manly men" were doing? Or was it more of a period thing, like "any kind of magic is now seidr, because Christianity is now normative and manly"?

I know that modern scholars' knowledge of pre-modern Norse religious practice is going to be sketchy at best, but I figure you'd probably be the most likely to know, given that it's associated with Freyja.

Different cultures' handling of gender and witchcraft is super interesting, but it's so culturally specific that it's really hard to research. A lot of stuff only gets translated into English really vaguely, at least in the places I have access to now that I'm out of college. I mean, "sorcery" can mean lots of different things, depending on the culture saying it. :\

(The baeddel discussion over in Tumblr.TXT made me remember that I've been curious about this for a while.)

 

I can answer this at least from my understanding, but it's gonna be bigger than I can write before lunch, so I'll have something for later this afternoon.

 

Awesome; thank you! Hope you don't mind the questionspam; my best research attempts have come to almost nothing, and I'm... eternally curious about this stuff.

 

First, a nitpick (NOT your fault): seiðr is inaccurately transliterated as "seidr", because "ð", Eth, is a voiced "th" sound as in "then". The terminal "r" is only hinted at in the Icelandic pronunciation, being more of a stop than a voiced sound, so it's sometimes left off. Any of "seith", "seidh", "seithr" or "seidhr" are better if you can't use the "ð" character (either because you don't have it, or because your audience won't understand it).

Accuracy-sperging aside, seiðr is definitely associated with the feminine side of things, both in historical practice and modern recreation, but it was never exclusively practiced by women. There are historical references to male practitioners ("seiðmaðr", seith-man).

We know for sure that the practice of seiðr was considered unmanly, though. It ran contrary to Norse ideals of manliness, which generally encouraged directness, plain-speaking and a certain lack of subtlety. It's notable that Odin is mocked by Loki for practicing it.

There are some suggestions in the extant records, sparse though they are, that auguries (e.g. the casting of lots) were not considered seiðr, and neither was runic magic, although the details of both are sparse. Both of these are more "manly" in style.

This has led modern recreationists to decide that there was a parallel, male-associated strand of runic magic, derived from Odin, and there have been attempts to recreate both that and seiðr as parallel systems. This seems supportable but in both cases the attempts are obviously filling in the big holes in knowledge with a lot of supposition, guesswork and borrowing.

Like a lot of binary things in the Norse religion, some part of this split is to do with the two families of Gods; rune-work came from the Æsir, from Odin, whereas seiðr came from the Vanir, from Freyja. After the truce between the two, Freyja, who went to live with the Æsir, taught seiðr to Odin.

After Christianization, the purpose of the manly side of magic was taken by Christian practices; holy writings became scripture, luck charms etc. became holy blessings and relics, auguries became prayers. Some of the practices of seiðr persisted as folk-magic and tradition, especially in farming areas, until comparitively recently.

Seiðr was not outlawed until Christianity became the dominant religion, whereupon it was banned as witchcraft. A male practitioner may have been shunned in some places, though.

We are especially missing the feminine aspects of Norse culture in what survived, so our knowledge of what seiðr consisted of is very sparse. Christianity tended to repress these especially, since they were harder to convert into versions of Christian ideas.

That's about it, as far as what we definitely know.

 

Argh, etymology. Thank you for the correction; I've seen ð before, but I wasn't actually sure how to pronounce it.

Do we know if auguries were primarily used for military purposes, or if they were more commonly used for things like 'how's the harvest going to be this year'? I know that the Romans used auguries heavily for things like 'what day should we start the war', but I'm not sure if that's common cross-culturally. And a military association would certainly imply manliness.

Oh, wow. I actually never put two and two together that Norse mythos is centered around binaries, which casts a lot of things in a really different light. I mean, the whole elaborate description of Ragnarok, and 'these two people will fight to the death', is all about binaries and opposites. Enshrining stories about cultural differences and intermarriage in your mythos says some really interesting things about your history and values, but the books I've read haven't talked a lot about the symbolic role of the Vanir as a pantheon after the hostage-exchange. ... I really need to reread.

Odin seems almost more like a crone-analogue than a Super Manly Father Figure. I mean, he's famous for hanging from Yggdrasil and going around in disguise and lying to people (at great cost). Not so much for smashing people with thunderbolts like Zeus, or even for fathering lots of famous children, which seem to be the usual traits for the Father of the Gods. Which is interesting, in a mythos that's otherwise so focused on straightforwardness and battle and wars. Wish we could know more about the role of Tyr in earlier practice.

I had a feeling that the definite knowledge was sparse, which is fairly depressing. Jeez, early Christianity, why'd you have to be so evangelical. =_=

Thank you! That's really helpful and interesting.

 

To expand on something: Ragnarok is not the end of the world. It's the end of THIS world. There is an after. Humanity survives. Some of the Gods survive, though not many. Most of the enemies of humanity and the Gods are dead as well.

Odin does do some warrior things, though; he wields a spear, and he begins the war between the Æsir and the Vanir by throwing it. Mostly, however, he takes on the role of the planner, the general or high king directing armies, weighing the price of lives against the gain. He is not the image of Norse manhood; Thor is, which partly explains why Thor was, it seems, much more common a choice for personal veneration and dedication among men, especially warriors. Plus, Odin was in many ways kinda bad luck. Being chosen by Odin meant often being marked for death, because Odin was looking for warriors to save for Ragnarok. In any case, you would be as a game-piece to him, to sacrifice as needed for greater goals. Thor was more human-scale, a champion rather than a chessmaster.

A bunch of the Gods are said to be Odin's sons, though; Thor, Baldr, Viðarr and Váli definitely are, and Heimdallr may be as well. He's also reputed to be the ancestor for many royal lines of men. But yes, he's a sneaky bastard and rather against the grain of the Norse people overall. And yeah, I wish we knew more of Tyr too. There's so damn little.

Auguries were used for war especially but more generally too, I believe. Definitely more of a "manly" thing, though.

Freyja's also tricksy, of course. Very. And it's notable that she also receives the battle-slain, half the haul. What she's keeping them for is not revealed, nor are her criteria.

 

I do go talk to my gods/pray, but I'm never really sure if it's something inside or outside my brain that I'm talking to. It's kinda like playing out a conversation in your head with a friend you know really well, where you kinda know what they're gonna say, but sometimes they point out things that surprise me, so idk? But hell if it's not a super effective way to work things out anyway.

Unrelated, I heard an interesting argument that we're currently post-ragnarok once. Will try to recall the reasoning/where I saw it, but I remember thinking it was cool.

 

The thing is ... I know there's no proof that anything I experience is more than my own admittedly nutty mind talking to itself. Even if it is that and only that, it's still valuable, the experiences are still powerful and beautiful, and it still makes the world a better place for me.

So I guess is that while I feel that Freyja and the other Gods are real, I know that the world is a better place for my having that feeling, belief, experience.

 

Which makes Norse mythos one of the few I'm aware of where the current world is not a grand pinnacle of evolution and perfection, which is really interesting.

Huh. Yeah, that totally makes sense; I hadn't thought about Odin as the world-scale general and planner. That fits him a lot better. And I didn't realize that he was siring godchild-heroes among mortal men; that definitely changes things. Cool!

... ... Freyja is slightly ominous sometimes. Very cool, but... not a safe goddess, precisely. Goodness sake.

 

So yesterday I went poking at the Kemetic Orthodoxy website, and was looking at some of their early ritual and stuff and. . . cannot find a meaningful difference between my own ideas and theirs.

 

Freyja is not safe at all. She is mostly benevolent, but just as Odin is, she is a force of nature; she has an essential wildness about her, a capriciousness as well. She is woman, but she is not mother. She is in part a Goddess of sex and fertility, yes, but not in a safe, homely way. One sees Freyja's nature in temptation, in risk-taking, in a certain damn-the-torpedoes seizing of the chance for joy and wonder. She represents passion and intensity, in matters sexual, artistic, exploratory, martial. Freyja's in the temptation of the sea to the sailor, the temptation of the higher mountain to the climber, the craving for speed in a racer.

Her temptations can kill, because the wild things in life are not safe.

 

Because it came up through a friend learning craft, can we discuss the ideas of white and black magic?

I personally don't buy into it anymore. (I did, because my mentor was Wicca inspired and well, they kind of separate good and evil as dogmatically as any).

Since then I've learned it's useful to categorize spell work in a negative and positive sense, which is mostly the difference between destroying or minimizing something and building or fortifying something. These are concepts I find useful, but to call negative spellwork evil because you're destroying things makes no sense to me at all.

I used negative forces to break spiritual connections before. Because having the connection put me at risk and was dangerous to me. I absolutely deny the idea that breaking off bad relationships using magic is "black".

Any thoughts?

 

Wicca/wicca-inspired witchcraft is truly the most dogmatic shit, about basically everything. Don't even get me started I will rant about it all day.

Personally I find the majority of magical classifications kind of useless, and this definitely is one of them? Plus white and black magic leaves no room for like, neutral magic, so.