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

So I should probably link this in the languages thread too, but I feel like coming here first. Behold lexicity, an index for resources on dead languages. A lot of languages are missing pages obviously. You won't be able to find anything on Pali there sadly, but still you do have nice readily available resources for things like Akkadian, if you're a Semitic polytheist or magic sort of person, and Old Irish, for other Gaelic types like me. It's lovely. Go out there. Learn about language possibly related to your traditions. THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Or just.

Cool.

cuz languages

 

That's awesome! Thanks for the link!

Necroing a topic: I'd fucking love to hear more about pop culture polytheism and trolls. I really do feel like there's a rich mythology there to draw on, and I know for myself it would then become further informed by the personal myth arcs of my OCs, troll and otherwise, etc...


More generally--I can't make a proper introduction right now because I'm staying up late on kintsugi instead of going to bed when I gotta go be an responsible adult tomorrow, but! I'm a polytheist druid, in the ADF (Ar nDraiocht Fein) tradition, which is....well, it gets described as reconstructionist but it's also supposed to be pan-Indo-European so, there are some paradoxes there. At any rate! I've got a great local grove (that recently had some of my very favorite and best people leave because A Social Schism couldn't be dealt with any longer. :,(), I'd say I feel the most affinity for the gaelic deities and mythologies, (broader celtic also, I'm utterly fascinated by the Finns and the Balts but I don't feel like I know enough to go say hello yet), but what I really connect with is animal spirits and plants. Om nom nom nom delicious neopagan totemism. I've had a longstanding fascination with shamanic and ecstatic practices, but my trance and journeying skills are undeveloped and rusty.

Sometime soon, I'll tell the story of the time I got high off my ass on mugwort and did divination to help a group of friends who didn't believe in magic break a curse we didn't believe was real (but certainly had been a long-running joke) to help out a beloved author and her tiny fandom. I think that's the most recent spell-work I did that I'm proud of.

 

Not trolls, but I'm your resident Pop Culture Abhorsen even though I don't prefer to deal with spirits or the dead. I still find the concept of the bells really good for defining like, classes of spells? Pretty much anything in a set of seven is in my alley (though I actually use all nine Shiners). I'm primarily Belgaer-aligned, not that that probably means anything to most of the thread...

 

Oh hello there! I am not really that big of a practitioner of the pop culture thing myself. The Handmaid offering was a spur of the moment spite offering because someone was talking shit about the practice of making fictional characters gods. She seemed like the most appropriate person to make an offering to to spite someone. I mean it's the Handmaid. Though in terms of how I would view that sort of thing...It's not that I believe that she is a god in the same fashion that, say, Guan Yin is a god. Guan Yin is a god because she was born as a god. The Handmaid instead would be a "god" more in the fashion that Cú Chulainn is. She herself isn't divine but she is a great enough figure to warrant a sort of hero worship. Which in a fashion makes one divine, so I feel. The line between god and hero gets quite blurred from my side of things!

Other fictional types I've thought of giving offerings to have been gods from the various Souls' games. Gwyndolin in particular. I've no bells sadly. I really liked how people used bells to single recitations of the miracles in Dark Souls 2. I do have bits of cloth I could make a talisman from though.

Primarily though I'm a Theravada Buddhist and a Gaelic reconstructionist. Are you doing anything for Imbolc by chance? I did some heavy cleaning today and have set up a bed for a biddy. She also has a meal and some tea and I gave her cow an apple. Got some items out that I'm hoping she'll bless. Tomorrow I'll make some Bríghid's crosses and tell stories involving her and her family to some friends. That and cook something. Thinking a soup.

 

In the same line of ancestor worship, or hero cults, yeah that makes sense! Or I guess coming at it from the occult-but-secular angle, like connecting with and using an egregore. I had one of my oldest and best-developed OCs show up as a guide in a journey/guided meditation, which was a little surprising, so it's something I try to stay open-minded about.

I am planning to observe Imbolc, yes! I'll be observing it on Saturday though, with the rest of my local grove. (I always try to do something on the proper day for solstices and equinoxes, but I tend to be more flexible on the cross-quarters.) In the meantime I'll be struggling to get my room in this house clean, learn a song in Gaelic that some of us are singing as a group offering, and...uh...finish the written statement and resume that I need to to submit for my grad school application. I'll probably bring something for the potluck too--I'm not sure what yet.

((Brighid, if you would light a fire in my head (and under my ass) and help me get this written, I'll gladly pour out extra whiskey and verse for you on Saturday.))

 

Cleansing my dice appears to have helped considerably. As well as the salt-and-cinnamon stick in the bag :3

 

Ahhh, cinnamon. Delicious, smells good, and good luck! What's not to love? Digging herbs for magical purposes out of the kitchen is one of my favorite things.

 

Well Imbolc was fun. If simple on my end. I am satisfied with things though.

 

For those of you who like/want/need unobtrusive witchcraft, let me introduce one of my latest finds:



To everyone else this looks like a bottle of shampoo. But this is a rosemary mint shampoo, so I can use it for metaphysical cleansing as well as physical. Plus if you need another purpose out of it the rosemary is pliable enough to let you redirect it.

I'm not going to pretend this is "natural" (it is a mass market shampoo), but it's cheap, unobtrusive, and puts just a little witch into the corners of my life.

 

i have that brand and scent of conditioner and it's lovely XD

 

So I had a neat idea the other day and I wanted to share it.

I'm a big fan of wearing shiny rocks, and keeping special stones in my pockets, or in pouches in my bags and pockets, etc...and I have lost more lovely specimens this way than I want to count. I also tend to lie to take on and take off my jewelry (rings, necklaces, bracelets) during the day.

I...don't really have a formal way to recharge or cleanse anything that I use on a regular basis--if I get the feeling that it's gunked up or needs a break from me, I set that aside and forget about it for a while and let it sort of 'recharge' on its own. I'd love to leave stuff out during the day or overnight on the porch but, see again: good ways to lose stuff.

I've got a cute zip pouch shaped like a leaf, and I'm going to bless and magic and consecrate it up into a little 'recharging/cleansing/purification' bag. I think I want a little bit of salt and a little bit of charcoal in their in a pouch already, and....something else. I'm not sure what I want for the last something else. Rosemary, juniper? A teeny-tiny bottle of special water?

How do you all like to do maintenance and regular care for your magic stuff that you've collected like a magpie?

 

well, personally, if the rock's heavy enough/big enough, I leave it outside in the sun for a day--I live in a rural area, no one's gonna take it, we haven't got birds that are gonna steal it, and it's not like it's gonna blow away. if I'm really concerned about a bird taking it, I put thin paper over it, tuck the edges under the rock, and leave it there, because in my personal belief the sun will reach the rock regardless of the paper, so long as the paper is thin and preferably see-through or nearly see-through.
if I can't leave it out for whatever reason, I take it off and put it on the windowsill so it gets some sun, and leave it for a few days so it gets sunlight and moonlight, and let it recharge that way.
as for other cleansing things, I have a salt water spray that I use sometimes, water with eucalyptus leaves that soak in it (good for cleansing unwanted energies, I focus on clearing the negative ones), and if I can't clean it with water, I burn rosemary and hold it in the smoke, since rosemary smoke cleanses and purifies, according to my beliefs.

 

All of my focus stones sit in the pots of my indoor houseplants to charge/store solar energy and I stick them in my bra over my heart to warm up and absorb my energy just before use. I doodle sigils with pine incense on all my windows/doors and when I'm feeling really witchy I'll draw them in lemon/eucalyptus oil on floor before I mop.

I'd throw a cinnamon stick in the pouch. Luck, protection and a couple other things. And it smells nice and is in a big chunk so you don't get cinnamon dust all over the everywhere. If you can find whole spices (oddly enough if you go in the "Mexican" section of a lot of US grocery stores they have things like whole nutmeg and star anise)

 

...I may borrow the 'sticking them in my bra over my heart' thing from you, because that sounds like a really good idea.
also, I gotta get my hands on some cinnamon sticks now, I'm trying to make my own little protection/good luck pouch and cinnamon sounds like a really good idea.

 

Thank you for the suggestion, because I love cinnamon! I'll buy sticks of it and nibble them right up. Cinnamon's also got a nice, warm, solar energy to it, to me. And it would make my pouch smell nice. ^.^

Maybe also a clove or two, I can fish them out of my cider mulling mix. As I've learned and understood it, clove is very protective--but in a more 'spiky,' warding-off kind of way--'Don't push me, I'll push back and you'll regret it.'

I've definitely charged stones and other stuff by keeping them in a little pouch under my shirt and over my heart! I'll remember that about the 'here we clumped all the 'ethnic' food together' aisle--because otherwise getting just one nutmeg nut or anise pod can be a pain.

I like the house plant idea, and I'll remember it for later--right now all I can say are mind are the tiny air plants and succulent on the window-sill, and those are in constant danger of being knocked over and eaten up by one of the house's cats.

Tiny Edit: Forgot to say thank you. uwu

 

I usually put my stones in a glass of salt water for a few hours and then rinse and put away. For herbs I've heard of rose, not Rosemary, for cleaning and recharging

 

I've heard rosemary for cleansing specifically, not recharging, and I mostly use the smoke to cleanse things like tarot decks, which...do occasionally need cleansing in my experience and cannot be put in water.

 

Rosemary and I'm 95% sure basil are the all-purpose herbs. Their primary attributes are cleansing and protection respectively but they work for everything, roses are the all-purpose flower. Probably because they come in so many color varieties you can repurpose them to whatever you want or just use white, like with candles.

 

[delurks]
I've actually only cleansed one of my stones ^^;

Spoiler: background ramble

I am mainly of the Weaponized Placebo Effect camp, but... places, and stones in particular generally give me Feelings? Sometimes it's really quiet, but I've gotten specific Do Not Touch vibes from certain areas, and most rocks will give me some sort of impulse? Like. Almost aesthetics (in the sense of This Is My Aesthetic), except it's different for each particular stone rather than types? (Different citrines might not all feel like sunshine, peace, quiet days at the riverside, for example, even if there is one specific tumbled citrine I carry on me if I need peace that day. This is why I have a problem with the Established Crystal Magic Woo-- pretty much every resource I've found has things along the lines of "X gem is good for X thing," when that's... not what I've experienced at all. Also it's kind of focused on weird positive things? Why should toxic mercury ores (here's looking at you, "healing and wealth" cinnabar) be helpful?)
This makes no sense, I'm just Going With It because apparently it's been a thing since I was a kid according to my older brother-- I was more vocal as a kid about Weird Stuff That Happened than I am now.

Nowadays I try to tap into the Feelings each stone gives me, and give some of my own energy back to them when I can spare it. Lots of meditation, visualization, etc, whenever I can grab a few minutes to spend with my stones in peace and quiet, the better to focus on them. it is also easier to explain Pretty Rocks than, say, sigilwork or tarot to the Suspicious Conservative Parents

Aaaanyway, to me cleansing a stone feels almost like I'm purposely overriding its natural energy, which seems... really rude and counterproductive if I want to ask the stone to share that energy with me? So I've only done it once, in the hopes that a particularly nasty-feeling malachite piece had just been tainted somehow. Left it in the windowsill overnight for the moonlight (leaving it out in the snow... no. Not happening.). The saltwater Raire mentioned was my first impulse, but that can damage malachite (and also would be hard to get rid of, since... toxic), so...

Semi-related tangent time: above cleansing seems to have backfired somehow, or at least didn't work for very long. It's been about a week, and the malachite in question is back to giving me Do Not Touch vibes after a few days of quiet. I don't want to work it into jewelry, either for myself or for someone else, while it's still so angry, and throwing that negative energy back out into the world (ie, just tossing the stone out, either into the yard or finding somewhere suitable to dispose of it)... doesn't seem too appealing. Considering trying something with smoke/fire when it's warmer and I can go outside (fire in house would not go well with parents), but... anyone have any better suggestions? If the stone's naturally angry then it's naturally angry, but... I would not like that sort of influence hanging around my house =/

 

@Anon19
I think I'm a weirdo, my first reaction was 'aww poor angry malachite don't worry i will love you'.
I don't have much in the way of suggestions but I do want to say that I like your feelings-based stone interpretations. Feels more real than applying Good For Things across the board. Certainly I know from looking for a piece of rose quartz once that not every piece of the same stone will feel right to me.