Why do people think that affirmations = magic??? I’m looking for real down and dirty SPELLS people. Not a list of nice things to repeat to myself in the mirror

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Why do people think that affirmations = magic??? I’m looking for real down and dirty SPELLS people. Not a list of nice things to repeat to myself in the mirror
troubleshooting spotty spirit connections/"godphoning"
This post is full of my personal UPGs and stuff. These are just my beliefs and what works for me. YMMV.
It takes them a lot of energy to come through to us. Feed them and help them get across the veil.
Have you ever done a big tarot reading and got really drained? Or focused really intensely on a spirit guide meditation that left you feeling lightheaded and hungry? When we connect to the spirit world it is tiring and energy-intensive. There is no reason to believe that connection on their end is any easier.
A lot of rhetoric gets tossed around that spirits and guides are so powerful and life-changing, etc. And this might be true, but I think it gets construed in a way where we assume that because they're so powerful, it must be very easy for them to appear to us - so any failure of communication is squarely on our shoulders.
This is unfair to both them and us.
Your offerings aren't just token gestures. You are actually providing energy to your spirits - dense, earthy energies they need in order to be able to come through to our world. Fresh water is refreshing and polite, but not really energizing. Food offerings are especially helpful.
This is the point of spirit houses and spirit vessels. You create a sacred object or space aligned to a spirit's energies, and invite them to come inside of it and use it as they please. As a magic-worker, your words of dedication and consecration make a literal foothold for that spirit to more easily come to our world. This also provides a place for the spirit to rest and relax as they speak to you.
Liminal times and spaces make it easier for us to reach the spirit world, and therefore easier for them to reach us. Taking actions such as laying a compass, casting a circle, or reaching trance states can actually be extremely helpful. It's not about "spirits are dangerous so cast a circle first," and it's not about "you have to meditate and clear your mind" (trance can be achieved ecstatically, after all). It's about creating or entering into in-between spaces where our worlds more easily meet.
If you primarily use tools to communicate with spirits, cleanse and charge them more regularly. The spirits can direct the energy within your tools instead of having to use their own.
If you're already using spirit vessels or houses, try gently cleaning them and re-consecrating them. Provide as much energy as you can to the spirit at that time, so that they can more strongly imprint upon the vessel.
Stop trying to talk to them all of the time.
Spirits are people too. They shouldn't be treated like invisible humans with cool new skins, but that doesn't mean they don't have autonomy and personhood.
Spirits exist independently of us and they don't disappear and go into the void when we stop paying attention to them. They are living their own lives. Even if you believe the spirits do revolve around you, at some point they have to leave to go find information you're asking about, or review the strands of fate to make sure you're headed in the right direction, or whatever.
You don't expect your human friends to be on call 24/7 and it's rude and inconsiderate to just assume all spirits are going to want to communicate with you every single time you want to communicate with them.
No, the point of this is not "you're clingy and the spirits need space."
The point is that if you're just picking up the spirit phone at any random time, of course some of your communication will "fail" because they're not free to answer!
You might be blaming yourself for having unreliable psychic abilities when the reality is that you're just sending a FaceTime request at a bad time.
It is my experience that this is true even of gods. Sometimes I walk by the shrine of my primary god and it's just empty - he's not there right now. It's not because he hates me or because my psychism failed. He's probably off chasing nymphs or something, he'll be back later.
Try setting a schedule with the spirits if possible, such as determining what time(s) of day they're free to talk, what days of the week or moon phases they're usually free or busy, and so on.
You have times when you're more or less attuned to communication, too. The most random stuff can make psychic senses go haywire. For some, a strong cup of coffee will turn off their second sight like flipping a switch. If you try to get more of a schedule going, it will be a lot easier for you to control the variables contributing to your successes or failures. It's not fair for you to assume your psychic senses are static and you should just be able to turn them on at any time you want.
Give them a good reason to talk to you.
There are many kinds of spirits. Some we primarily interact with as friends and companions. For them, the reason for them to talk to you is that you're cool, interesting, and they want to spend time with you (all your friends think that about you! I promise!).
Other spirits can hold a much more spiritual or tutelary role in our life. When they speak, they have something important to say - and they're not necessarily going to let that be drowned out by everyday chatter.
Have you ever done a tarot reading you didn't like or understand, and then re-drew the spread to ask again? And the second time made even less sense?
Talking to spiritual teachers can be like that. They tell you something important, and they're not necessarily going to rephrase it. The problem with spiritual teachers and guides is that you still have to be the student and the explorer.
I have often communicated with the gods and spirits of other people. In these situations, I do my best to give them a really good reason to want to talk to me. "Hello, gods and spirits of [client]. I am helping [client] with [their question/problem]. I will be empty, and you can speak through me. I'll do my very best to clearly share everything you want them to know."
No matter what, though, spirits might just not want to talk. And that's ok.
Ask yourself the kinds of relationships you have with the spirits and beings you're attempting communication with. Having a very close and fulfilling relationship with a spirit doesn't mean it's appropriate to treat them like a casual friend (just as I can have a very fulfilling relationship with a professional mentor, but it's still inappropriate for me to call them at 3am after some wine).
Keep an eye on the intention of your communications. Are you unable to "find" your guide when it's about an important spiritual question, but they show up just to chat? Or vice-versa? Ask why a spirit might choose to not respond to some types of communication.
I find that spiritual guides can get irritable and non-responsive if you continually request communication without applying their advice.
In the case of spirits who are primarily friends/companions, try thinking of a fun activity for the two of you to do together, or something interesting to show them. Spirits enjoy novelty, too. Maybe you could read a new book together :)
Conversational skills transcend dimensions.
There is a difference between requesting communication and just vibing with a spirit's vibes.
When you want to communicate with the spirits, do you actually think, say, or sign, "hi, it's me, I want to talk to you today about [topic]"? Or do you just kinda show up like, "I'm here, so... yeah."
I like vibing with the vibes. I like sitting quietly with people and spirits and just existing with them. But I wouldn't sit quietly in the vibes and then say, "okay, so you're just not going to talk to me??"
Other things like manners go an incredibly long way. Spirits have a concept of boundaries and politeness - some more than others.
Active listening and critical thinking helps a lot too (and it's a great way to strengthen relationships with other humans!). Make sure you're treating spirits like a conversation partner, and not a novelty toy that spits out mystic answers to your questions.
One of the best ways to bond through communication is to create the space for the other person to share their thoughts. It's more than reasonable to show up to a spirit with a question.
But if you redirect the conversation always to be what you want to talk about, think your senses are going haywire just because a spirit is showing you something that isn't what you asked about, or only want to talk about yourself or your problems - it's not reasonable to expect that 100% of spirits want to be a part of 100% of those conversations.
Try approaching every spirit communication with clear intent. Just wanting to chat and hang out is more than okay, but be upfront with your interests and needs.
Try asking the spirits if they're free to talk and if they're interested in talking about what you want to discuss.
Make time and space for the spirits to bring up their own topics.
Employ manners at all times, even if you think your communication effort failed. Please, thank you, hello, and goodbye are powerful words.
Be open to the idea that the spirit might not want to talk about your question or your problem, and that they might have something to share with you that doesn't appear to directly benefit you.
The questions I ask myself, roughly in this order, to interpret any* tarot spread:
How did the cards appear? Because I shuffle for jumpers, it matters whether cards pop from the deck together. They form pairs (or groups) which have stronger connections to each other than other cards in the spread.
What types of cards are on the field? Majors? Minors? All numerical cards? Court cards? What suits? What numbers? This is where I consider the raw, memorized meaning of individual cards and the archetypes they represent.
Are there obvious patterns or cadences in the order? Think like poetry, ABAB or AABB, but with the types of cards. In a hand of five, it's interesting if the order is Major-Minor-Major-Minor-Major. Or maybe the cards are in a descending numerical order, Nine-Eight-Seven-Six-Five. Or, perhaps Nine-Eight-Six-Five-Four -- the jump in the pattern matters.
Are there repeating numbers or suits? Repetition strengthens the significance of a number's or suit's meaning.
Are there repeating motifs in the card art? Again, repetition strengthens the significance. This includes colors, background details, people, animals, and so forth.
Where are figures in the art looking? Are they looking at other cards? At each other? Away from each other? The direction of figures' attention directs where that card's focus might be.
Is there a cohesion or flow in the spread, or is it interrupted and disorganized? Some spreads flow smoothly left to right, while others show disruption and a lack of coherency. This question looks a the spread as a whole again after all other questions have been asked to consider all elements together.
Does it make sense? Do the cards answer the question being asked? How do they apply? Is there something missing? Is there a deeper meaning to delve into? Do I need clarifiers? Do I need to try again with new cards? Can I explain these cards to the querent and have them understand my meaning?
And then I write out my analysis! There's obviously more to it than this, with a ton of nuance at every step, and I could probably write a whole essay about any individual part of this... and I probably still will, honestly. (And I started to, then decided to just write up a little list instead, lmao.)
*May not work for some tarot spreads, depending on the style.
A Spirit Trap
Get a cobalt blue bottle. Such bottles can easily be found online or at such stores like Whole Foods.
Fill the bottle with sand. Also insert some of your hair and nail clippings as bait.
"In cobalt glass, let spirit dwell,
let signs of naught thus seal the spell.
An empty prison, a hollow heart,
from it they may not depart."
Leave the bottle open until the spirit is trapped. Cap it.
On a slip of paper, mark a circle with a slash through it and tape it to the outside of the bottle.
Dispose of this far from your home, without opening or breaking it.
“A witch is, actually, a successful (in the sense of surviving) deviant. You have a cultural, ideological, social, what-not pattern which is, for that society in question, normal (and, importantly, this is understood as a synonym for natural). Most people survive because they conform to these patterns, because they behave normally. […] But then suddenly you get a deviant which survives, and since it does not draw its support from the normal pattern, […] that deviant is understood as drawing its support from “unknown,” “supernatural” sources. […] If we cannot survive without our order, how can she [the witch] survive in solitude? Hers must be indeed a very powerful order to exist so independently, without all the inter cooperation and individual compromise which we have to go through to survive. And if it is so powerful, then it could destroy us. We must try to destroy it first.”
— Maya Deren, “From the Notebook of Maya Deren”, c.October 1947, vol. 14: pages 21–45.
Using tarot to read on magical events in your own practice: quick theory, new card meanings, and spread ideas
this post is OC based on my personal tarot practice; the examples given are hypothetical for the sake of this post.
Well-meaning guy: "If you think that event was a bad omen, why not read tarot to clarify?"
Person who learned tarot from popular online resources and introspection-focused art decks: "I drew the 6/Cups, so I guess my ward falling off the wall is about my inner child?"
Tarot meanings change and evolve over time. Historical meanings are often not the same, or even contrary to, modern meanings. (Consider, 6/Pentacles: the French present moment was misinterpreted to mean presents, gifts).
By acknowledging that many modern meanings available for tarot cards are modern interpretations for modern concerns, many of which have fuckall to do with witchcraft, we can also acknowledge that we can apply our own sets of meanings to tarot to achieve personal interpretations in pursuit of personal goals.
I call this concept symbol sets, and you can apply your own symbol sets to certain tarot readings in order to rapidly obtain information about magical events in your life.
Symbol sets can be swapped out for each reading. You can intend to operate on your "normal meanings" for a typical reading, and then intend to operate with "magical omen meanings" for another reading.
There are no such things as universal tarot card meanings; there are some traditional meanings, some historical meanings, and many modern meanings. Adjust what each card means to you to your heart's delight.
The more symbol sets I've developed and practiced with, the more versatile and accurate my tarot reading has become. Working with custom symbol sets might be the single biggest leap in my reading ability in 16 years of practice. At least, it feels that way!
Quick n' Dirty Symbol Set for Magical Omens, Appropriate for Everyday Use
1. Apply general portents to each suit which matches your magical practice.
Here is one set that could be suitable to troubleshooting potentially magic events:
Swords, or Air: Misfortune, betrayal, malefica, ill-intent, adversity, due to harmful (even if unintentional) spirit action, pointless or wasted effort. Sometimes, banishing, binding and hexes.
Wands, or Fire: A lot of power, excessive power, due to your own actions, uncontained energy, something you did was very much overdone. Sometimes, protection and empowerment.
Pentacles, or Earth: Mundane, physical and normal reasons, an everyday occurrence, mundane but natural growth and change. Sometimes, unlocking and unblocking.
Cups, or Water: Blessings, magic working as intended (even if unexpectedly), the normal course of magical events, magical growth and change. Sometimes, cleansing and purifying.
Major Arcana: Guiding spirits and gods; their behaviors, guidance, or messages.
A spirit worker might like to add an additional layer of complexity, which modifies the prior set:
Court Cards: The actions of another being, such as a practitioner, god, or spirit, whether they acted intentionally to bring about the event or not.
(Further breakdown, as an example: Swords courts are beings intentionally acting badly; Wands courts are the most important spirits of your path; Pentacles courts are mundane folk or spirits unrelated to your path; Water courts are other practitioners, or spirits related to your path without being in your "inner court.")
Interpret any card drawn within these principles. Here are a few random examples. Let's say, a money spell has failed to produce results, and we'd like to know why.
5/Cups [disappointment, failure]: This is the normal course of magical events; the spell wasn't cast well, and so nothing is happening.
9/Wands [determination, boundaries]: A lot of energy was raised, but incorrectly targeted or released; the energy is cooped up.
Judgment [judgment]: An important spirit in your path wants you to deal with what you have been avoiding, and will interfere with your magic until you face them.
Spread Ideas
"What's going on with that thing?" | 3 cards
Card 1: The source or cause
Card 2: The current state of affairs
Card 3: Suggested action
Example; the money jar doesn't work: Card 1, King/Swords: The source of failure was the person in the discord server who promised to curse you for not feeling the same way about Destiel as they did. Card 2, Page/Pentacles: The current state of affairs is that as a symptom of the curse, an unaware person or spirit is blocking the prosperity you seek. Card 3, Queen/Cups: Ask a benevolent spirit or helpful practitioner friend to assist you in unblocking the situation.
Determining responsibility | 2 cards
Card 1: Why this thing happened
Card 2: Why it didn't happen; one thing that wasn't the cause at all
Example; the ward fell off the wall: Card 1, 10/Pentacles: This happened because of random happenstance in the home; it was not a magical event. Card 2, Ace/Swords: This action was unrelated to malefica or bad spirits or things like that.
Foresight Before Acting | 4 cards
Card 1: The current state of affairs
Card 2: The outcome of your intended plan of action
Card 3: Recommended plan of action
Card 4: The outcome of the recommended plan
Example; the spirits did not seem to appear during a spirit petition spell: Card 1, 3/Wands: Sufficient energy was raised to attract the attention of spirits, but they may not have been properly called to action. Card 2, 6/Swords: Your plan to call the spirits back and re-cast the spell is a fruitless attempt at a transition into a new plan. Card 3, Empress: Communicate with your primary goddess or powerful spirit of the earth and obtain input and guidance. Card 4, Magician: This plan will result in obtaining important magical information about this type of summoning spell you are trying to achieve.
I really wish that all of the tarot and Lenormand information online wasn’t just tailored to beginners. It’s SO FRUSTRATING wanting to explore how other people use and think about these divination systems, but only ever being able to find videos, podcasts, and articles for beginners. Same with books! Not every tarot book needs 70% of it to be an encyclopedia of card meanings! Can we do something different??
Ritual magic is the only thing that can fix me at this point
I want to like and use Lenormand cards soooo bad. But I keep finding that they are extremely negative and extremely inaccurate. Is it just me? Is it the deck I’m using? I don’t get it. I hate using them every time I pick up cause I feel like the cards are just going to lie to me
The great spiritual author Alan Watts had a wonderful image. He said when a boat goes through the water, it leaves a wake in the water as it passes through. The way we understand things psychologically would be that the wake actually creates the boat, that the past is what creates the present moment. But of course, we know that the wake isn’t creating the boat; the boat is creating the wake. It’s the present moment that is creating the past. The present moment is what’s knifing through the water and the wake is just the recording of the present moment moving farther and farther into the past.
So if you look at it from that standpoint, the past doesn’t actually create the present even though it seems like the past is what gives us our present experience, which conditions the way we see life. There’s actually another way to see it, and that’s what the spiritual orientation is. The spiritual orientation is rooted in the revelation or the perception that there’s only right here and right now. And even deeper than that is that everything you think and feel and experience right here and right now is not actually the outcome of the past. It’s actually the spontaneous bursting into existence of the present. In a way it’s uncaused.
We’re taught to view life through the orientation that the past creates the present. The “here and now” orientation doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. And yet, not only in the realm of spirituality, but also in the realm of science and quantum mechanics, we start to see that life actually bursts forth uncaused, seemingly out of nowhere, seemingly out of nothingness. This is what some of our physics and physicists have observed, that the smallest particles of matter actually seem to burst out of nowhere, out of nothingness, and on an even more perplexing level, that our observation of life is what actually brings life into being.
This is really the deeper meaning of “spontaneous.” Spontaneity means uncaused. It’s not following the laws of causation. At the subatomic level, nothing happens until it’s observed, and as soon as something is observed, the observation itself is what brings it into being. So the observation and what is being observed actually arise spontaneously together.
This may all seem quite abstract. That’s why I like the image of a boat moving through water, because with that image you can see how it’s the present moment that’s creating the past, not the past that’s creating the present moment. Even though that may be hard to grasp, it’s really quite easy to have some rudimentary understanding of this by just imagining a boat going through the water and the simple recognition that it’s the present moment of the boat going through the water that creates the wake. The wake will be the past. That’s where the boat moved through the water, and that’s the signature of the boat moving through the water. But the past does not create the present.
From Adyashanti's True Spiritual Orientation, 2010
when you ask a herb / spirit for help how do u know if they're listening? like do i just immediately start talking and assume they can hear me or do i wait for a bit after asking for them to come here.. idk
I tend to follow this process:
Call on the spirit by speaking it's name
Invite the spirit to be with me in my physical location
I then always assume that the spirit can hear me. I do not wait to feel a presence or for any predetermined amount of time.
Something I feel like people getting into folk magic need to understand, for many people of many backgrounds, is folk magic started as a means of survival. It was struggle magic, and it is still struggle magic.
Where I'm living now and where I'm from, people planted by the signs to ensure their crops wouldn't go bad before harvesting. People used ocean water to soothe joint and muscle pains when they got old. People studied the native plants for medicine and were mindful to only take what was needed. People did little rituals and minded their grannies' words to keep their good luck. If they didn't know how to do something (or couldn't), they went to people who did.
Learning folk magic to reconnect with ancestral traditions from before your time is valid. Learning folk magic to connect with and work with the land is valid. There are many valid reasons to take up folk magic. Still, understand that folk magic is survival, and folk magic is community.
there are SO many witchcraft books in the barnes and noble's. Including lots of herb and plant books. And I feel that it's in everyone's best interest to inform that "witchy" herbalism is just, like, a wad of Eurocentric plant symbolism, Eurocentric medicinal plant stuff and random bullshit mixed together, and you don't have to buy something marketed as "witchcraft" to learn all the stuff with greater accuracy
Especially if you're not in Europe, it doesn't make sense to learn about plants that either don't grow in your area or have a totally different role in the ecosystem in your area. Plant symbolism and "meaning" generally is connected to a real quality about the plant. It becomes nonsense if you remove it from the specific ecological context
Also, i find it really funny how a lot of "herbalism" stuff on like pinterest is just about mostly common kitchen herbs and spices and doesn't discuss very many actual commonly used medicinal plants throughout history...because those can kill you or give you the worst most traumatizing trip of your life
A bunch of these witchy pinterest infographics say passion flower leaf is good for reducing anxiety and helping with sleep and every time all I can think about is the person on erowid.org who tried passion flower leaf and had an incredibly vivid and distressing wet dream about bill gates
When you're talking about plants that are medicinal it seems bad to use common names when common names are often confusing and refer to multiple plants, but a lot of sources use only the common names
Another weird thing about "witchy" herbalism is that it assigns plants really abstract meanings when those plants are medicinal plants with concrete effects
These two images from Pinterest say Yarrow represents Courage, and I can see how they got there because of the association between Yarrow and soldiers /warriors, but the reason for that association is that Yarrow leaves promote blood clotting so they are used to stop bleeding from wounds.
This is something I have given a try myself, a yarrow leaf is effective for stopping bleeding from a cut. It is a good trick to know if you are out gardening a lot.
I am fascinated by the very abstract view of plants here...it says certain plants represent something but doesn't indicate how they might be used or even what part of the plant might be used.
It's important to have an understanding of these plants grounded in realism I think, because plants with Witchy Associations are usually medicinal plants and medicinal plants usually can be toxic or dangerous because, well, they have an Effect on your body, that's why they're medicinal. The line between medicine and poison is very very thin.
If a plant is said to "purify," sometimes that means the plant gets rid of parasites or toxins, and it does that by making you shit your guts out, aka slightly poisoning you. If a plant supposedly "regulates hormones," its possible that means it was used to induce menstruation, which is how folks in pre-modern times talked about causing an abortion, and that means it poisons you just enough to make your body reject a pregnancy. Unfortunately it is easy to poison yourself just enough to make your body reject being alive.
If a plant is associated legitimately with divination, connecting to the spirit world, psychic powers, etc. that would often mean that it's hallucinogenic. This is another reason why it's important not to mix symbolic/metaphorical associations and real effects of plants. Jimsonweed/Sacred Datura WILL "connect you to the spirit world," in a very not-metaphorical way that gives people PTSD
Thankfully not many of these infographics are ballsy enough to tell people to consume/use Sacred Datura
If I remember correctly, yes, it is poisonous and ridiculously easy to overdose
Talismanic crochet tapestry pieces??? 👀👀👀
Idc what you think or what you believe. In this economy, you really should be doing money magic
Lenormand reading tonight -
Key and letter
I have what is needed to unlock my results
Key: what’s needed, what’s important, necessity, revelation.
Letter: written exchanges, results, document, message, instructions, mail.
Take this as a message, you are the key
The Sacred Whore:
I recall a man saying that Artemis was prideful because she refused to give herself to men. I remember another saying that the Queen of Swords was a prude. In short, people can't respect a woman that respects themselves, it seems.
What is the Sacred Whore? The Sacred Whore is the Symbol of the Woman without shame for her sexuality, for her own sensual, sexual and artistic expression. She is the Red Rose, Babalon, She is Beauty and Activity Incarnate. You want to know something about the Sacred Whore, though? She isn't a Whore, or at least by what most standardize a whore as. She gives her body but in a union of bliss. The Sacred Whore understands sex as a mystery, Mystery, Babalon the Great, a prayer of the body and soul. It becomes less about dick and more about the sanctified union of two (or more), like minded spirits. It becomes a prayer of bliss and ecstasy, one of that Unbounded and Transforming Love. This is no different from the Queen of Swords, from Artemis, for they are all women that understand the value of life, the body and the soul and practice it differently.
Artemis' Celibacy is sacred. The Queen of Sword's Strength is Sacred. The Holy Whore's Sex and Expression, is sacred. So don't let no bullshit like that fly.