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

On further research, while it may not be the same species (virginiana vs. fusiformis), live oak was apparently used in the construction of the USS Constitution and its density probably contributed to the resilience that got it the nickname "Old Ironsides". Even more "resilient" associations, I like it.

 

I feel like some of you guys might be interested in these tiny bottles
I want to get 1000 of them for bottle spells and shiny rocks (they have other cool styles also)

 

oh i looooooove stuff like that

 

Those are hella cute! But if that price is for one.... eeeech. I'll stick to $5 for a pack of six at my craft store.

(Incidentally, I used a tiny vial to grab some of the rain from the bigass storm rampaging across southern PA these last few days. I don't even know what I'm gonna do with it, but. First storm of spring's gotta be important.)

(....late February is totally spring. Sure, the equinox hasn't happened yet, but dammit it's 60F right now, it's totally spring.)

 

I'm not sure you can call the current weather where I live "spring" since there has been pretty much no winter, though.

 

It's been snowy and cold in my area since New Years', and even last weekend there was negative windchill :'D This warm snap is much appreciated.

 

Rocks are great! Yaaaay, rocks. uwu.
It is my very firm belief that -any- rock can be a Cool Special Magic Rock, particularly the ones that just stick out to you that you collect on your own! (I had so many, many, many, quartzy pebbles as a child...) I'm sure your collection will rebuild itself in time.

Oaks have so much personality, I think--they're a big family, but they're all impressive in their own ways. "A lasting, doing-things-in-your-own-time"-ness feels oaky to me, yeah. The whole family has those connotations of strength, endurance, and fortitude. They're like....if they were a mammal they'd be bears or something.

I'm rambling. Is there a particular tree or group of trees you think you could hang out around and get to know better? There was a grove of mostly-beech trees on the university campus that I graduated from, and I loved to go there and visit. It became a sort of ritual--I'd leave my bags at the edge of the grove, and take off most if not all of my jewelry. I'd sing wordless songs of sounds and repeated nonsense syllables to the trees and prowl around looking for trash to collect. The place had a really nice energy to connect with--there was a huge old beech tree, easily over a hundred years old, near the center with big raised roots that made it easy to sit upon. I just liked to go there and meditate and feel the slow pace that trees live life at.

I wasn't very good at talking or listening to anything but the energies in rocks at that point, so I never really communicated with those trees beyond appreciation, but sometimes they have stuff they'd be interested in teaching you! Or that you could learn from them!

Zuki comes from a very animist background in her magical practice, can you tell?

Post-Hoc ADHD Edit: Actually.... 'Ease Anxiety' and/or 'Promote Physical Endurance'.....have you practiced good ol' (energetic) grounding much yet, or found a method/visualization/etc that you like for it? I tend to default to something like: 'Okay, I'mma tree now. Rooted in the earth, reaching for the sun, exchanging energy with both, drawing in what I need to be stable and energized, releasing tension and waste.' Learning how to connect with/draw on/emulate that Live Oak energy could be appropriate!

 

^^^
I've mostly posted about my Fancy Rocks here because no one wants photospam of "thirty slightly-different pieces of impure quartz," but the rocks that I collect on my own are more likely to help me than the ones I don't choose myself. It'll be different for everyone, obviously, but don't feel like you have to go out and buy Pretty Fancy Gemstones to rebuild your collection c:
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@Zuki, your singing-to-the-trees ritual sounds really cool! I don't connect as strongly to trees as I do to stones, but welcoming forests are usually nice places to be. (Man, the Feels I get from the Penn Oak at the local meeting house. Brosis is centuries old and hella warm and comforting, even if I don't get quite the same impulses from it as I might from a rock.)

 

Oaks have always been resilience and protection for me, I grew up around a bunch of California live oaks, and I used to collect the galls they'd produce where parasites had gotten into the bark. Sometimes they'd grow in this peachy-pink ombre color, and you could carve stuff into them :D

 

Yeah, this. I've grown up in an area full of oak savanna and deciduous woods; they've always pinged me as... almost maternal, I suppose? Slow and steady and peaceful.

You might also be interested in the symbolism of pioneer species - the species that first return to an area after a fire or tornado, or something similar. They tend to be quick-growing and hardy, and they form a nursery for the forest to be reborn.

Around here, the most common examples are birches and quaking aspens; I'm less sure about other biomes.

 

Wow. First day after deciding this magic stuff might be for me, I suddenly find I have enough motivation to do a little tidying up around the place. Even the dishes. Pretty good sign, I'd say. Also found a piece of fluorite I hadn't known where it had gotten to! Go me!

@Zuki That sounds pretty amazing, actually. There are a lot of trees near me, including live oak- I live where I do partly because of them, though at the time I was mostly just thinking about shade- and it's probably worthwhile to try and interact more with them. I'll be up for more outside time now that it's warming up, at least.

 

i know we have at least one glass witch around here ( @Starcrossedsky i think?) but how does everyone else here feel about glass witchery? i dont do any glass making stuff myself, but i have a lot of those little glass stone things and for whatever reason they definitely feel like....charge-able? like some real stones do :O

 

So I often talk about protection and such as it regards my Gaelic thing, but I've yet to really talk about that where it regards Buddhism. There's a variety of things we do with that. One of them is actually very similar to the Gaelic offering thing. Basically, Thai popular religion involves the making of homes for spirits on the property of homes, business, hospitals and the like. These also act as shrines, where the spirits are offered food and drink. A displeased house spirit is believed to cause illnesses, break things, injure people, and steal shit. Generally this seems to be a rather common idea through the world. Namely the idea of appeasing spirits of the area in which you live with food, drink, and things like coins.

Away from that though you have the amulet tradition. Basically a number of temples make blessed amulets for a variety of purposes. You can get, for example, an amulet with Guanyin on it that was blessed by the monks at a particular temple. There is a huge issue with these things being counterfeited, however. It'd probably be best to do lots of digging and speak with any Thai monks you may know if you're interested in getting one.

The biggest thing I think though is chanting. Chanting and listening to chanting is THE thing to do. Well one of them anyway. This practice we call paritta, and we use a series of chants from the Pali canon. The commonly used ones, with exceptions of course, have been gathered together into The Book of Protection. You can either go to a temple and ask for the monks for specific types of protection (such as the Angulimala Paritta for pregnant women) or you can simply attend a more general service. Or you can learn the chants yourself and recite them.

But how does that actually work? Through merit making and transference. Merit being what many Westerners would call "good karma". So positive results from positives actions, or in Pali kusala-vipaka and kusala-kamma. Basically by being in the presence of one who is spiritually good dhammically, you gain a sort of residual merit. Listening to the recitation of the Tipitaka texts, held to contain the Dhamma, also generate a sort of residual merit. The chanter also gains merit for their Right Speech and for extending merit to those around them. Creating a sort of merit feedback loop. Even without that feedback loop there is still the merit earned from the dedication and rightly applied effort needed to chant. The suttas are also held to be displeasing to the ears of Mara and those spirits and gods like him. Basically, they can't stand to have it so plainly put that everything they preach to people is bullshit. It's also frustrating to them to see your unrelenting confidence. So they leave in a defeated huff.

There is a bunch of other stuff that involves things like consecrating statues and liminal spheres and such. Basically things that are all specifically temple based activities.

 

Well, I hope glass is good, because I just did this with a glass bead and some copper practice wire from back when I was trying to make jewelry:

Spoiler: this picture is way too big, the thing is tiny

No idea what it's for, but it feels nice to have made something.

 

I don't know what it's for, but I love it!

 

@people looking for cheaper options to these: Try Amazon. I've got a sack of fifty more-bottle-shaped bottles of a comparable size for like six bucks.

CRASHES IN YES HELLO I AM THE GLASS WITCH. Yes, it's apparently a "the" position, I haven't encountered anyone else who does things with glass beyond bottle magic except for like, one person who makes window catchers on tumblr.

ANYWAY glass is a very pliable material, it can absolutely be charged! It's pretty much in the same category as quartz - certain kinds will favor certain properties, but you can stick whatever in plain glass and it'll do the thing just fine. Unlike quartz, though, you can charge the glass as you're making it, which pretty much permanently sticks that particular intent in there.

GLASS IS GOOD intuitively feels like some kind of divining rod to me? Would also make one hell of a power-flinging rod, though, copper's a great conductor.

 

Literally right after I posted that I found these on eBay, and you can also get them cheaper without corks

normal bottle shaped ones are definitely way cheaper, I just like round things :3

 

I think this might be exactly what I want to do next. I can make a ton of tiny charms with like a small stone shard and a dash of herb and it will even look adorable as hell on a necklace or a hair pin or whatever. even found a seller from the UK for a ton of different bottles, though not perfect globes.

 

Yeah my main personal ward is one on a hairstick that has a thorn in it.

 

Update: I sat with my fluorite for a while this morning, trying to get a feel for it. For some reason I kept having thoughts of like... implanting it in my belly or hips, somewhere fleshy-fatty like that, and having a protective sac form around it like I was a pearl oyster or something. It sounds gross and weird now I try to talk about it, but it wasn't distressing or anything. No idea what, if anything, it might mean, though.

Also, the bead on my stick turns semi-freely on the wire, and it feels kind of nice to just roll along my skin. I guess if nothing else I have a new stim toy.