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

hey ... this feels so weird to ask but it's been bugging me for ages.

whenever i'm outside, lights have a tendency to turn on or off when i approach them. it's not, like, every light - i'm not surrounded by a wave of flickering lights that would be weird and clearly i would have some electromagnetic tendencies out of the norm - but it's definitely enough that i notice it. it's been going on literally as long as i can remember. whether i'm walking, or driving, or riding.

thoughts?

 

@Kaylotta My mom has that too. Do you also make old fashioned/analog speakers bug out? Or radios?

 

Hm. I haven't had a lot of analog speakers around, so I'm not sure. We have a stereo with a radio antenna which bugs out frequently, and I never seem to be able to get it in the right place to receive signal - but that could be confirmation bias.

I've also had experiences with unfriendly presences, both in dreamland and in the real world. But the light thing has never struck me as maleficent - almost the opposite, in fact: it's always seemed friendly, even the lights that turn off.

 

My mom and I both have an... interesting effect on technology. Our computers will crash or reboot on their own if we're upset/angry around them (dad used to not let mom within five feet of the computer when she was mood swinging it was so consistent), I go through headphones at an absurd rate despite taking obsessive care of them, I used to entertain my cousin because we had one of those remotes that needed to be pointed exactly at the little red dot on the TV... but if you pointed it into my mouth no matter where I was standing relative to the TV the remote would work. I'm also either a walking wifi/cellular booster or a black hole.

I dunno if it's a wix thing or if I just naturally have a weird energy (or both, considering my family history) or what. It's never been a huge thing, just sometimes I flop down at my computer making growly face and it reboots, or a friend realizes if they hold their phone riiiiight up against my head they get an extra bar.

 

I've always had problems with things fritzing out when I'm particularly happy, not that that happens very often, but I just attributed it to coincidence.

 

Maybe this is why my WiFi perpetually hates me, no matter the brand, company or location.

Husband, on the other hand, has some sort of techno-wizardry where he can literally fix slow, stubborn signals by touching the chassis and occasionally by glaring.

 

if I'm calm I can sit down and make shit work, half the time without even touching it. but if I get overly emotional, things start to fritz. I just figured it was coincidence and the fact that I am good with technology.

 

Opening my router's config page in a threatening manner seems to be a good way of solving most of my issues with ADSL.

 

soooo what i'm getting from this is that:

1. i may have strange technology-affecting powers
2. harness these powers for the greater good
3. ???
4. profit.


(:P)

 

my favourite thing vaguely related to this is that my wife was grumpy about the structure of the Roman pantheon and thought it was silly that all prayers have to go through Janus. ever since, all doors have hated her. like, they close on her, or open when she wants them closed, etc etc etc. it's now a lifelong rivalry.

my grandmother had a similar thing to these stories with analogue watches (if she wore them, they stopped very quickly) and with yeast (if she makes a thing with yeast, it doesn't rise).

I have an issue whereby my chargers all die ridiculously fast. Other things last, but I am so often buying replacement chargers and headphones that it's just silly.

 

If you reinforce all the joints on a pair of earbuds with duct tape (so the wire doesn't bend as sharply coming out of the connector/splitting apart/going into the earbuds) they last longer. I dunno how helpful that would be to folks in this case, though. Might make them last at least a bit longer? :P

 

....things I make with yeast never rise and all analogue watches and clocks won't work around me.
ARE YOU TELLING ME THERE IS A REASON FOR THIS.

 

Imbolc is coming. Yesssssssssssss. Bríghid is entirely the shit.

 

Imbolc? (I have not been doing reading or anything yet. I know who Brighid is, vaguely. but what is Imbolc)

 

February 1 in the Northern Hemisphere, sorta like Celtic New Year's. Celebrating the lengthening days, divination and cleaning for the new year, setting stuff on fire.

The US equivalent is Groundhog Day, and there's some similar "how much longer is the winter gonna be" divination involved here.

 

cool.

 

technically it is like 'hooray spring is coming thank you Brighid for getting us through the winter', but because of seasonal drift mine tends more to be like 'goddamnit where is the fucking spring we were promised THERE IS SNOW ON THE GROUND IT ISN'T SPRING'. >_>

It's very much Brighid's feast day, and as such has a lot of her elements to it, like care of the house, care of garments, fertility in fields, etc etc.

(I imagine Aondeug will come with a much longer and more detailed explanation but I'm still bitter about how NO IT'S STILL WINTER DAMNIT. :P)

 

Yeah, please do, Aondeug!

I don't personally celebrate the Celtic seasonal festivals for that reason, basically. XP I gotta figure out something of my own to keep me grounded in the turning of the seasons, but ... I'm too tied to this place to base my celebrations on the traditions and seasons of somewhere else. Maybe I'll celebrate when I start the tomato and pepper seedlings.

 

That is actually what I get so mad about!

Like, I live in the UK, so I am in the place where it comes from (approximately) and yet it is STILL WINTER. (I expect seasonal drift is the main thing there. But still!)

And yeah, seedling-starting time sounds apt! Like, hey, I'm planting a thing, please make it grow, etc.

 

Jeez, that is ridiculous. 8| Yeah, it sounds like seasonal drift would be the thing there. I hear that back in Roman times they grew wine grapes in England? Which is crazy.

I might have to try! I do really like that symbolism.

The one thing is that seed-starting time feels a little bit arbitrary, because I can kinda do it any time within a several-week span. It feels like I should be looking to something environmental, outside myself, but I still need to figure out what that is. :\ With our freeze/thaw madness, I think it's gonna have to be something like bird migrations. Maybe I should put up a birdfeeder so I remember to pay better attention.