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

@Lissiel
You have a point. Like I said, I think a lot of my desire to be validated as Someone Who Can Do Thing is 1) wishful thinking and 2) identity-related.
I have been letting all my spiritual stuff slip a lot recently because... well half because my room is a mess and I can't think straight in it and half because my entire life rn is apathy.

 

Well, fwiw, i think you can definitely do the thing, but also that you will probably be better at the thing (and find it hella easier!) when youve gotten your room and your brain sorted out. Also i wish you ease and speed at getting them sorted. <3

 

@Lissiel
Thank you. The room will be easier (though i've tidied it up repeatedly and it just gets messy again in a few days) than the head, I fear.

 

okay Nai's turn for weird family shit

So my paternal grandmother (The Only Grandparent, That Bitch) is dead or actively in the process of dying at this moment - it's about time, really, Decent Aunt finally authorized pulling the plug on her basically. But The Awful Aunt's son apparently had a daughter born today?

And like. I'm not even a death mage of any sort but I'm kind of Um about all this, timingwise. It's giving me a distinct Weirdness vibe.

 

Being told what a spiritually sensitive person thinks of you really can be gratifying. I can't ever help but be skeptical, though, because a woman at my old church told me when I was in high school, with great conviction, that I would a) be a wonderful mother someday (I'm a guy) and b) be financially successful (I'm an unemployed college dropout.) I also remember a woman answering my anxiety about seeming to not have any gifts of the spirit, which all Christians are supposed to have according to that church's doctrine, by promising me that one would appear eventually. I gave God until I graduated high school to make good on that promise. I ultimately determined that my spiritual gift was the the ability to tell if something or someone is full of shit... which I am just now realizing may be a contributing factor in my interest in the skepticism movement.
Like some others in this thread, I'm a sort of undefined agnostic semi-practitioner. I'm really into shamanistic "wisdom from nature." I think every species on the planet has some kind of insight to offer on the nature of life. If it's not extinct, clearly it's doing something right, yeah? Cats have wisdom, crickets have wisdom, parrots have wisdom, mushrooms have wisdom. It's just smart to try to understand that wisdom and take advantage of it.
A lot of the stuff I'm interested in seems to kinda require meditation, which I am super bad at because I have ADHD and my brain just does not do what I want it to. If I try to imagine a forest clearing, it'll be way too small for what I'm trying to do. If I visualize myself following a winding path, it'll appear straight as an arrow in my head. If I try to make something happen at a slow, gentle pace, my brain will rush through it haphazardly and things will clip through each other like it's a crappy PS1 game, and the more times I start over and try again, the worse it gets. I'm not the only person who has this problem, right?

 

Update: Grandmother died after child was born. I don't even believe in direct reincarnation and I'm relieved.

@paintcat: NOPE - you'll see me making mention of it in a discussion of astral shit a ways back. Can't focus to save my life and I'm a <i>place</i> dreamer, I can only imagine how hard it is for someone who.... isn't. If you're comfortable with, ahem, medically enhanced experiences, I've got a couple friends who manage it a lot better with pot, but I can't vouch for if this would help me because I have strong reactions to the smell and a bad personal history. Mugwort also seems to be used a lot, and I can't say anything about that other than "research any herb you're gonna use first oh god."

 

Heh, yeah, there's nothing wrong with being sceptical of what people tell you, especially if they seem to be telling you what either you or they want to hear. Which is partly why I am wary of my own desire to be read, because I am liable to either just sort of accept it or just... add it to the pile of things I aggressively doubt myself over. Not that I'm not already doubting myself over it. I'm... fairly tired of doubting myself. I'm fairly tired of doubt generally, which only makes me doubt myself more because WHAT IF I'M JUST FOOLING MYSELF BECAUSE IT'S THE MORE PLEASANT OPTION.

 

So I suck at meditation too (seems to be a theme. If it helps a few people have mentioned ADD/inattentive type ADHD in relation to some of my issues) and I just kind of feel on a gut level that I can substitute meditation in my stuff by doing things related to the energy I need. So maybe this can be a helpful suggestion? Drawing or coloring or knitting or something other repetitive but engaging enough to keep you focused.

 

@TwoBrokenMirrors a thought: what if you decided that labels dont matter, and that regardless of how you think of yourself the thing-and-the-whole-of-the-thing doesn't change? Would your brain let you get away with just observing whats actually their without trying to match traits to categories?

Probably youve already tried this, or it wouldnt work. But on the off-chance...

 

@Lissiel
I've tried it a few times before. It works! Up until it doesn't. Which is usually until something happens that proves I have in fact been subconciously categorising myself anyway, and I don't fit suddenly, or I find a different label than the one I originally disowned and that fits better so many I'm actually that?
Or maybe it's just all bullshit.

 

Nah, I totally get the wanting to be categorized thing. I have spent probably more energy than it's worth pursuing the idea of animal spirit guides and such, because if I could just connect myself firmly to one or two animal symbols I'd find myself so much easier to understand...
@Starcrossedsky Well, I do like weed (it seems to help my mood a lot). Next time I get the chance to use it, I'll give that a try.
@IvyLB I do knit! That sounds like it could work really well!

 

You could try walking meditation perhaps as well? Basically you just walk and you pay attention to the walking. What it feels like as your muscles move, the firmness of the ground, the sound of steps. That sort of thing. Not all meditation is sitting and watching your breath. Though that is definitely the most common method I have run across. I am not sure how having ADD or ADHD is but with lots of people who have trouble meditating it helps to learn that, at least from a Buddhist perspective, it is not about shutting the world out and focusing on one thing. It is definitely about focusing on one thing if you are doing concentration meditation but even then it is not about shutting the world out. The world is still there and it's ok to be drawn to it. Maybe your foot itches or you heard a noise or you wonder if you shut the front door. That's all fine. You just need to note that your attention has been drawn away from your focus object, your nimita. Then you go back to the nimita.

It really is a skill that needs to be practiced though. It's hard work and you need a lot of persistence to do it, even if you're neurotypical. Really though beyond persistence and reminding yourself that while it is work it is not deathly serious the best thing I've found is that you need to experiment with meditation. Everyone has their own strengths and their own things that work for them. We don't all sit the same or focus on the same things. Not even the monks do. They all sit differently at my wat depending on what is comfortable for them, and they describe different ways of focusing on the breath. Some look only at the breath as it enters the nose, others follow it into their chest, and one thinks of barometers going up and down with each breath. Meditation needs to be played with and we need to accept that progress is going to be slow. Perhaps painfully so.

I don't have ADD or ADHD though so I sadly cannot help on that specifically.

 

I do repetitive or simple tasks when I'm having trouble meditating. Stuff I can do on autopilot; they keep my hands busy enough to satisfy the ADHD fidget but don't take too much brainpower from my meditation. I have a couple of huge but simple sewing projects I only work on when I meditate, I hand sew everything so it can take me hours to finish one part when I take my time and keep the stitches even. If I can't focus on my breath (my lungs are kinda messed up so sometimes they can't hold a pattern, which is distracting) I'll focus on my hands instead, the consistent motion of each stitch. Sometimes instead I play with clay, or play solitaire or super easy sudoku (to prevent frustration, not because I suck at it. Honest.) I don't think the method of focus matters so much as the act of focusing.

 

I tend to meditate while walking and listening to music, because that helps my brain calm enough to focus.

 

Oh god. I cannot meditate with music on. I get lost in the music like immediately and then things just go badly. Music is for a rushing flow of emotion and inspiration for me. It's too easy to get caught up in.

Sewing and solitaire though. I like those a lot. They are meditative things.

 

Not meditating, but this is why I had to fold paper stars all through late highschool and college. I can kind of get in the zone with beadwork sometimes, but not as often.

Sounds kind of like why I can't do like, those vocally guided meditations. My brain fixates on the fact that there's A Sound.

 

I used to draw all the time in class because it helped me focus. I always told teachers the first day that I'm not ignoring them, but I can't take proper notes for shit and drawing my Weird Ink Stuff actually helped me remember. Even now sometimes when I look at certain parts of some drawings I get a brief impression of the lesson I did it in.

And when I'm stuck on my writing I play Minecraft. It's enough of a distraction from what's frustrating me than I can calm down, but not so much that I lose the thread so I can mull the story over in my head without reaching AAAARGH FUCK.

 

tossing glass beads around in hand

There's got to be a way to make a divination tool out of these, most of them are the same size rounds. Anyone got any experience in this shit?

 

Tossing things generally seems to be a common method of diving from things like bones, dice, and so on. With my ogham staves I look at the characters on the staves themselves and their locations relative to one another. Dice it's a simple add up the symbols method, though it could probably do with taking into account the locations of the dice. Not sure how big the beads are but depending on the size I'd be tempted to paint ogham letters on the things and find a way to toss them without losing the damned things (though i guess losing them could be valid in a reading). That or grabbing them from a bag and reading the characters.

Though you might not work with ogham letters or want to learn to. So use whatever symbols you personally like to make use of possibly? That or learn ogham because ogham is awesome.

 

My 'rail uses stones to measure the spiritual connection between things by their position. She collects ones that remind her of people/important things. Depending on how similar the beads are you could do something like that, or mark them appropriately if they're big enough. Or you could use pre-existing symbols like Aondeug suggested, either the ogham or something else.