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

I asked my pendulum if my friend who believes they're a god is really a god and the pendulum said yes
I think it's fucking with me

 

i'd say so.

 

on second thought: someone is fucking with me, because I was shuffling my tarot while contemplating my friend, and what card falls out? the one that means 'supernatural and obscured' in my tarot deck.
how do I figure out what the heckie is going on here

 

take a nap and try again?

 

....sounds like a good plan!

 

awesome

 

Anyone interested in empirical tests?

It seems like it might be hard to design a test of, say, tarot accuracy.

 

@soulgender tests for what, if you don't mind me asking?

also: anyone know how often is too often to use your tarot cards??? i'm currently dealing with Anxiety Issues and part of me wants to consult my deck, but the more rational part of my brain is pretty sure that since i recently asked it about something that was driving my brain batty (something very similar to this, in fact) it'll give me the same response, or ask me why i'm asking it a similar question when it already gave me a response.

 

I'd say it's only too often if it's maladaptive. If you're asking the cards instead of making changes/doing self-care/dealing with the source of the trouble (whichever is applicable to your situation) then I'd advise against it. If not, who cares what a deck of cards thinks of you?

 

I agree it's only really too much if it gets to be a problem in your managing other shit in your life time wise. Or if it is just freaking you out too much. If you're asking some sort of being questions through them I feel they're more than capable of letting you know that you really need to fucking drop it. Though I seem to be something of a weirdo here in that I just use the cards as a communication medium between myself and my gods. Said gods being damn clear when I need to shut up.

 

@paintcat @Aondeug thank you for the advice! i ended up not asking and then within the next couple of hours I was "answered" to a degree (a friend my brain was halfway convinced was avoiding talking to me responded to me).

so i'm thinking that i'll probably only stick with asking questions i feel will help me, rather than questions that i have because i'm being anxious.

 

@pinnedbutterfly Magic, I guess. I hate not knowing if something is real or if I just imagined it. I hate looking at things that might be odd coincidences and not knowing if that's all they are.

My first thought was something like "I could collect divinatory answers to a bunch of questions with objective, verifiable answers and then check the accuracy" but a lot of divinatory methods aren't really for that.

 

Ooooh that sounds interesting! I'd agree that a lot of methods of divination allow for a lot of interpretation, but I imagine that there might be some method that can do more concrete answers. A pendulum maybe? (I'll note that I know Nothing about pendulums though)

 

comes in late, ughs about gender shit in tarot with the rest of the class. The only cards I tend to read as strongly gendered are the emperor and empress, because those to me are sort of the Gender Arcana.

 

Ok, so, I just did a big personal cleansing witchcraft thing - once I'm dried off enough to put my hand braces on for long typings and have had some grounding food, would people be interested in a writeup of Kit's Weird Mashup Magic for Personal Cleansing & Feeling Better?

 

yeh

 

Here goes!

So, I have had a hell of a week, and I decided to incentivize Actually Showering by adding some witchcraft to do spiritual and emotional cleansing while I cleaned myself. This took part of a tiny practice I've done occasionally, added some steps, and threw in some wild improv in the middle of it. Witchcraft like this, for me, is very much a "whatever feels right" hodgepodge drawing from every avenue of knowledge I've had in my wildly varied life and often just sheer instinct. If anyone has any questions about why I did something or what I used that I don't cover adequately, please feel free to ask!

For starters:

Went into the kitchen with following tools: hairbrush, broom, and my "cleansing spices" shaker. Really, it's just a big spice blend grinder I got at the grocery store that has black pepper, lemon peel, and orange peel. The amount of (admittedly tiny, but hey, I have disabled hands) physical force needed to turn the grinder over my head always adds to the feeling that I'm forcing out negativity and destroying bad things. Once I feel like I've ground enough cleansing/purification ingredients, I brush it through my hair really thoroughly, and then meticulously sweep the kitchen floor and respectfully dump the dustpan outside. (I pick the kitchen bc it's the only place in our apartment that has room to move and a smooth sweepable floor - it being the kitchen isn't really significant.)

Then, I went back to the kitchen, and shook a bunch of pink Himalayan salt into the bottom of a glass tumbler, then stirred it into cool water with one of my wedding spoons. I added a couple of drops of rose oil for self-love and connection to my paladin-practice stuff, and then decided to add the tiniest drop of one of my sentimental bath soaps to help the oil mix in with the water better. I set this glass right in front of my laptop on the bathroom counter, put on my positivity/anti-depression playlist at full blast, and let the music charge the water more while I did regular shower cleaning steps. Then I poured the water slowly over my head in the shower stall, and only rinsed it minimally with clean water to reduce the amount of salt-crusted-hair afterward.

I feel a lot better now! (Having my new fingerless gloves with protection symbols literally knitted in also helps, I think.)

 

Hmm. I think having a personalized shower ritual might help me too. I mean, I already have a Procedure, because I always need a Procedure for multi-step tasks, but it'd be nice to have one that actually feels good and meaningful.

 

Oh yeah, we were literally just talking about my shower procedure since it's broken down into steps on my Habitica task for it :) My shower procedure is p epically aspie of me, but adding magic was a good incentive for me to have fun with it!

I find that the kind of dry-brushing-through spices is good for removing negative energy, and the post-shower rinse is good for blessings.

 

@pinnedbutterfly Maybe something besides divination?

@Starcrossedsky "Gender Arcana" is amazing.