an cat dubh

j, 30, gay commie, animist witch.

[ancat-dubh-old]

realised I’ve had this blog for a proper while now and also want to spend more of my online time being unhinged and thoughtful about magic in a space that for all its gory faults isn’t deathspiral/totally identifiable social media so! little reintro for my like, 30 followers lol:

I’m J, 30, faggy commie historian, Taurus ☀️ Leo 🌙 Cap ⬆️. I started this blog whilst feeling my early pandemic return to witchcraft era and it turned into more of a magic diary party of one. might be a bit more pagan leaning these days tbh or maybe those things are both for me now; either way, feel like writing and building up more of a community here.

I’m slowly developing my own animist pagan practice, a lot of which currently revolves around a particular green space in my city. there’s some faerie shit, some place-based spirit work, some ley lines, some acab-ery, some folk magic+community care politique, some barrows, some prehistoric vibes. a little je ne sais quoi

my magical work is kinda blending with the spiritual and also developing real quick right now. form-wise, I mostly work with genius loci, divination (tarot, ornithomancy, bibliomancy, my own systems), weather, body/movement work, folklore/historical[ly informed] folk magic, astrology, the moon, plants, animals, fire, writing, queer ancestors, foraging, the ocean, and a Celtic- and Algonquian-leaning seasonal calendar. I’m lucky enough to have not exactly a coven but a small close group of regular magical co-practitioners and to live in a city with a big, sprawling, historic esoteric community that I’m exploring more eye arr el as things open up.

I work with deities, saints, and land spirits, maybe right now as focal points/beginning relationships rather than straight up devotion – something something working out of but also in dialogue with diaspora Roman Catholicism. this bit of my practice feels like it goes hand in hand with putting my anticolonial money where my mouth is (family of colonised experience TM, grew up white settler on occupied land, now live in a seat of empire). I work slightly more regularly I guess? with Mars, + occasional Wild Hunt run-ins, some recent exploration with Brigid, and a big ol reverence for Father Thames. also generally v interested in histories/theories of magic, animism, and polytheism, esp atm Shintō, Inuit mythology, and London occult stuff.

lbr this blog is mostly still aesthetic pics of my altar and nice nature spots where I do magic/reference points for myself, also tend to keep this q magic-focused and introspective (personal craft is all under #my stuff) – but might also use this more to talk about (to myself and hopefully with more people) the *how* of developing a practice. this is something I feel like I lacked starting out, also I’m a Leo homosexual so any excuse for a pagan Carrie Bradshaw moment. plus I wanna build up more of an online community and make an effort to chat more – 18+ folk on the wavelength, you’re always v welcome to say hi.

[ancat-dubh-old]

moving blogs

right – for the life of me I seem to have locked myself out of this account (I'm still logged in on one brower, but can't remember my password and lost access to my recovery email, total mare), so: follow over at @ancat-dubh!

I'll slowly phase over to the new place, see ya on the flip <3

[jupitersmusings]

good things will happen 🧿

things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿

[overlord-fire-bubble]

THIS ONE FUCKING WORKS. REBLOG IT.

[essenceofrose]

Okay I reblogged and got into the entrepreneurship program I wanted. This WORKS

[jensenackles-ismyreligion]

I POSTET THIS HALF AN HOUR BEFORE MY JOB INTERVIEW AND I GOT THE JOB OH MY GOD

[micahulrichdraws]

Sacrifice, inked.

[ex0skeletal-undead]

Misery by Lunaotic

This artist on Instagram

[feral-ballad]

When will I realize that a boy who chewed out someone’s insides became my father, or that I could one day become my father, chew out someone’s insides, probably my own.

Ari Banias, from Anybody: Poems; “Who You’re About to be”

[lotrscenery]

Lough Erne, Northern Ireland

[ancat-dubh-old]

ugh – trapped in the temporal loop of having lost access to the email I used to sign up for this account (originally a sideblog so I used some generic burner) + absolutely forgotten my password + support not contacting me despite multiple reports!!!!

I really don't want to lose access to this blog – it's become a real diary and I've started to get a little circle here I like a lot, I know I can always remake and redirect but what is this, 2009!!!!!

[hagoftheholler]

🌻 Magic, Spirituality & Religious Ask Game 🌻

I was inspired by @little-ginger-witch witchy ask game and wanted to make an ask game that was a little more inclusive to those who don't necessarily identify as a witch. No hate to the person who made that ask game! This is all for fun.

What kind of practitioner do you identify as?

Do you have any daily practices? What are they?

What's your favorite type of magic to use (knot magic, candle magic, pop culture magic, etc)?

Do you use any tools in your practice? Which one is your favorite?

What types of magic are you not willing to do?

Do you have a moral code that guides you in your craft?

How do you feel about "problematic" workings (baneful workings, love workings, health workings, doing workings on others without consent, etc)?

Do you use divination at all? Why or why not?

What's your favorite divination tool?

What's your least favorite divination tool?

What's a method of divination you'd like to try?

What are your favorite types of divination readings?

What types of divination readings are you willing to do, but don't really enjoy?

What types of divination readings do you refuse to do?

Do you identify with any religions?

Do you celebrate any holidays? Which ones?

Do you venerate or work with any deities?

Do you venerate or work with any entities or spirits?

What kind of offerings or acts of devotion do you give those deities, entities or spirits?

What's your unpopular opinion regarding magic, spirituality or religion?

Who are some of your favorite practitioners on Tumblr? Tag them.

[frawgs]

this frog said fuck amaerica

[quotidianheroics]

And they’re right

[satsuti]

i think it’s very important to first and foremost listen to your spirits when it comes to what tools, plants and trees to work with. don’t rush into getting every single thing you see mentioned in a book because it might not be right for the spirits of your tradition (whether that’s a real tradition or a spiritual one that never has been recorded, trust me when I say that spirits have their way of doing and teaching things). find your own correspondences, be patient and listen, listen, listen.

there’s this idea within tradcraft circles that some types of wood or herbs are extra ”witchy” and - while not entirely untrue - it doesn’t mean they are the only ones you can or should work with. who knows, they might not even be the right fit for your needs or your practice at the moment. so basically… you can use other wood than blackthorn for a blasting rod. there are multiple doors and pathways leading us to the same place, so to speak.

[satsuti]

example: back when i was getting ready to make a wand i had some different trees in mind but spirits butted in and told me to use rowan, which i admittedly hadn’t really thought about. i obeyed and later found out that rowan was the main wood used by wise ones and witches in sweden. then much later i got a dream to pick the berries of a blackthorn in my area. i did and used the berries in a liquor infusion, which i then used to coat my rowan wand with. so it became a two-in-one type of thing, extra potent, because i had listened.

another example is when i expected the elder mother to come forth (probably because she’s so widely talked about in witchcraft) but instead the birch appeared as the ‘mother.’ i then i got to know that birch was one of the first trees able to grow in europe after the ice age, so she definitely is mother. also the berkanan rune. however, i have recently been getting dreams of the elder mother and instructions about what to do with different parts of her. i fully believe this wouldn’t have happened if i hadn’t listened and gotten the blessing from the birch mother first.

[lazywitchling]

Witchblr question time:

Why do you practice witchcraft?

[oldcrowshag]

gay

[lazywitchling]

Y'know, that's fair! 🤣

[thegodwhocums]

so Rocket and I did some solstice divination to ask our elevated trans ancestors how they would like us to honor them over Pride. as it stands, the seasonal cycle of The Order rests on three rituals: Pride in the spring-summer, the Elevation in the fall-winter, and Anesthesia in the winter-spring. we established last fall that the Elevation had run its course in its current form and needs to be reformatted before we do it again. when we were based in NYC, the Pride ritual was the recitation of The Mill at the Drag March with glitter-ash sprinkled along the march route to generate devotional power with every footstep. now we're in the valley and trying to figure out what to do if we're not in the city in person. Rocket may still attend the march but what else should we do?

beloved ancestors requested offerings of water (standard), LUBE (specifically KY, I'm dying), POPPERS (at this point Rocket lost it), disco, love, and joy. OK MESDAMES. keeping it historically accurate I GUESS.

we asked about format (static altar offerings? ritual? dance party??) and got a VERY interesting proposal that we interpreted as kind of a theatrical ritual reenactment - a Prideshpil, if you will. a stonewall (etc) pageant in the style of Purim or Theater of the Oppressed. needs workshopping and we don't really have time to pull it off this year but DAMN what a cool fucken idea.

also yes they want a dance party.

[thegodwhocums]

we were setting the altar and Rocket went to see if he had any sample size bottles of lube lying around (to use as offerings), and I held up a mini bottle of gin from the altar to ask "like this?" to which he responded, "yeah, lube nips" 💀💀💀

[thegodwhocums]

happy pride 🏳️‍🌈🕯️✊🏽

[oldcrowshag]

Love love love to see other queer altars 💕

[msgraveyarddirt]

Midnight Blessing [2022]

saint john the baptist, voice crying in the wilderness, pray for us… – litany of st. john the baptist

Midnight blessings of Saint John’s harvests are overseen by Ivan, my ritually decapitated roadkill saint and familiar.

see also: #altar, #ivan, #johnmas

[hillbillyoracle]

Hagging Out: Summer Solstice

Holidays aren’t something I have figured out, not on my own at least. I loved when I was able to just show up to @dianasson ‘s parties and focus on reading cards for people. He kind of set my bar for what a meaningful celebration looks like and I’ve been trying to slowly piece my own version of that together ever since he moved. 

I originally had bigger plans - gathering, infusing, a big reintroduction to the land here - for Summer Solstice and Johnmas but came down with something the day before (no COVID, tested). I was bummed but it did force me to begin to clarify what’s most important to me about holidays. I don’t know that I have a clear idea even now, but it is clearer. For one, I am really about thematic gluten free bundt cakes. 

As an oracle, I’m not the most magically operant person. I think a lot of people are surprised by that for some reason but I guess over the years I’ve learned that acceptance is often easier than magic. I’ve not had much luck with a lot of my workings which has discouraged me. It’s something I hope to reexamine over the next year or so. What magic I do still do is much more rooted in what little tradition I’ve managed to cling to. 

My family and I have a…complicated relationship. I used to think it was my queerness and my transness that got in between us. But even as their opinions have changed, our relationship is still fraught. What I’ve ultimately come to realize is that the intergenerational trauma being passed down is so much bigger than I ever knew. I suppose that’s what secrets are for though. 

So I was thankful that the stars aligned (literally) where I could have a brief but happy time sharing the lemon gf bundt cake I made with all the complicated people I love and live with right now. While my Dad did leave very quickly once my Mom asked for a tarot reading - the first ever by the way - most everyone seemed comfortable and hung out for a while after. It meant a lot to have that shining moment of connectedness as things deteriorated quickly over the following days. 

I think that is definitely something I’ve come to associate with Summer Solstice specifically over the years - that brief window where something lovely is ripe and the skill it takes to pluck it off the vine at exactly the right moment.

I did manage to do some very nice, very long walks to get to know not only my parent’s property but the neighborhood as well. I had hoped to garden when we moved here but I’ve been so overwhelmed with the prospect of unpacking in a much smaller “apartment” than we had almost completely by myself. So something had to fall by the wayside and it was definitely the garden. These are in a raised bed my Mom is maintaining. 

I have managed to identify most of the trees on my parent’s property and around the neighborhood. There’s one with purple leaves I haven’t been able to get close enough to ID in a neighbor’s yard but maybe I’ll have occasion to one day. Several of the trees seem happy to “chat”. There’s a hearty silver maple I’m worried the county will want to cut soon as it’s beginning to tear up the road but it’s so friendly. It shielded me in a downpour and always greats me. I’d love to find a nondescript way to bring it an offering as it lives in someone else’s yard. 

This behemoth of a moth showed up on Johnmas I believe. I found out later it’s a cecropia moth in the Saturniidae family. As a saturn ruled person, I love the family name. It was huge, bigger than my hand and probably wider than my face. And he looked so soft. Shit really hit the fan after I saw him so I’m not sure he was a great omen but I did appreciate seeing him. 

This makes the second moth I saw on or just after a holiday while here. On Beltaine, I saved a small bright white moth from getting crushed in the door jam. He hung out on my hand for a while before he wanted to crawl off. I really enjoy their visits.

The half moon shapes on this one’s back got me thinking about how the year I’m going into - my 7H profection year - will be ruled by the moon. I did a little work refreshing my memory about major moon transits this year. My last moon rule year was fairly quiet which I’m hoping for again this year. It was a good chance for introspection and mellowing out. 

I also did a small ritual for health where I annointed myself and a candle with Asclepius materia from Sphere + Sundry. I then divined to see what was wrong, what I needed to do, and what a tentative prognosis was. I say this as a recommendation to others, for the record. I’ve done a fair bit of experimentation with divination and health and it was within my personal zone of comfort. Got the clear indication that I needed to step back from responsibilities, forgive others and rest for a while. I got an explicit card for making a recovery. Sure enough, the lymph node swelling went down and I felt much better a few days later. 

I’m not sure if it was the materia or the divination or both, but it was nice to have a reminder that some of what I do does indeed work. It’s something I want to explore in the next year especially. I think given it’s proximity to my birthday, the summer solstice functionally winds up serving as a personal new year of sorts, a time when I naturally want to clear away the old and plant the new. Second planting for this area is still a couple weeks off but hey it’s not not seasonally and locally appropriate. 

If you’re reading this, it means I’ve just turned 30. I genuinely never thought I’d get to this age. I know a lot of people say that and maybe it’s cliche but I did have a rough go of it over the years. I’m glad I’m here, glad I can break free of my family’s patterns even as I live with them, glad I can befriend trees and herbs and birds just as I do humans. I’m glad I get to eat bundt cakes. 

I’m slowly learning to be more okay with the idea that practice is discovered and slowly cultivated rather than expertly built. If you had asked me several years ago about my relationship to land spirits, I would have been confused. I had no concept of the planetary spirits either, yet both are so important to me now. 

Thank you so much to @graveyarddirt for hosting Hagging Out! It was such a nice chance to reflect on the place summer solstice might wind up having in my practice. 

[morgandria]

Hagging Out: Summer Solstice

I spent this Midsummer at home, doing my own thing. Nothing fancy, but it got the job done. Typically, thought, I am not at home for Solstice. I am at coven cheerfully trying not to get sunburned while we try to figure out if we’re going to get eaten alive by insects around a bonfire, or if we’re going to get stormed out again and be inside. It is also traditional that if we need fire of any kind at coven, I cannot light it - things will literally just…not burn. It’s not fun, but it really is funny.

That being said, I do have a few things I do at home for myself whether I have coven or not. Because coven weekends rarely line up with the actual sabbat, I do tend to still build an altar or shrine at home for the actual day and light it up with an offering of incense and something good to drink. I like to bake for Sabbats, but out of all of them Midsummer is the one I’m most likely to skip, just because it’s usually too bloody hot. (I mean, it’s too bloody hot at Lammas as well, but I don’t skip baking then because the Bread Gods demand it.)

I also make sure I make offerings to my Good Neighbours, because they don’t want to be left out of the festivities and they are usually quite present at Midsummer. I’m happy I could repair my relationship with the Kindly Ones after many years of wary distrust. (Don’t get me wrong, both sides are still wary. It’s just an more pleasant detente these days.)

This time of year in particular I try to honour Mannanan Mac Lir and Fand, and I like the Manx tradition of taking an offering of yellow flowers to the highest hill. We have one that overlooks our lake here, but I don’t always get up there since they really changed how it’s accessed and put up a big ugly fence between the road and the view of the lake.

(Manannan’s shrine, Midsummer 2016.)

I do my best to gather what herbs grow in the yard around this time, because I like having them. There’s less now, since I have a landlord who takes yard maintenance seriously, and sometimes I miss the wild tangles and the greater diversity I used to have. But the yard still surprises me sometimes. I was lamenting to my husband earlier this month that I wished birds-foot trefoil grew in my yard, to add to my oil. I’ve never seen it here. And yet, after a rather severe trimming of the “weeds” along my fence, a bright yellow sprig appeared! I won’t touch it this year, to let it establish itself, but it was a pleasant surprise. The same thing happened with a wild catnip plant, last year. I am happy to chalk it up to working with the land here, and doing my best to keep the spirits happy. I think for next year I’ll hope for more red clover, or maybe some alfalfa!

(A wild tangle, July 2013.)

I have two cedar trees on either side of our “face” of the house. They were quite small when we moved in, but now they’re both tall and proud. I have a strong relationship with Cedar as a spirit and a medicine plant, and one of them in particular was happy to be my little outdoor workspace for many years, before we had a private area in the backyard.

I asked for a branch to do some cleansing this Midsummer, and it was happy to provide, but with a request: work with it more! I haven’t been working around it as much since we have a private space (although I still leave offerings there regularly). But I’m happy to oblige - I am going to try making my own cedar hydrosol very soon, and I will make a cedar infused oil since I use cedar oil pretty much constantly to scent my home. (I will share my experiment here, most likely!)

Not too much else to say about Midsummer, for now. While I wish I could say I spend it out tramping in the wild or dancing around bonfires, I am far too pale to be a fervent lover of the sun, and the heat lays me out pretty quick. So I do what I can, where I can, and it’s enough.

[palneaux]

Yoshitaka Amano - Vampire Hunter D