erin

witch, animist, mother, married, queer. she/her//they/their.

[theclassyissue]

[rhymeswithbacon]

[meeko-mar]

I’ve never actually seen what it looked like before Mt. Rushmore…it’s so saddening.

[verymememuchimpresswow]

P r e a c h

[angiethewitch]

you know what really gets me about this? there’s a photograph. people think the genocide of indigenous people was centuries ago, but here is proof that it happened when photographs were existent. proof that white imperialism was alive and kicking when photographing things was available. while the original events were longer ago than the carving, the defacing of sacred land is still happening.

[shellfishmademoiselle]

i’m really deeply disturbed by how many Sabrina Show fans and neopagans latch onto the english and salem witch trials. i really . don’t like how they go round saying ‘BURN THE WITCH’ or ‘WE ARE THE DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHES YOU COULDN’T BURN’ and talk about how those witches died for so they could be Badass Scary Witches who Hex the Patriarchy.

these women who were tortured and killed in britain and new england weren’t Hunted for their Witch Powers or ‘toil and trouble’ / ‘light as a feather stiff as a board’ type stuff. they were targeted, for their sex and all the stereotypes that came with it–most of which originated in the malleus maleficarum of the sixteenth century. the maleficarum and the medieval beliefs surrounding it exist to Confirm Christianity as the Universal Truth, and depicts women as weak-willed idiots who are Inherently Evil due to our Insatiable Sexual Appetites lmfao.

the ‘witchcraft’ in question the trials were fuelled by did not refer to actual Magic Practise but gendered, hateful and extremely misogynistic christian hatemongering to make innocent women into monsters. to repackage witch hunts as Fantasy Spellcasting Girl Power Resistance is tone-deaf and contradicts the ‘’’’feminist’’’’ message by ignoring the actual history.

[watcherscrown]

On this 4th of july i would like to boost my tribe’s bee farm!! https://iowaybeefarm.com/ is their website! They sell honey, beeswax products, giant jars of bee pollen, lip balms and lotions!

pretty much everything is really cheap (much cheaper than it should be) and you can get a whole gift basket for 35 bucks!

[hundondestiny]

i love libraries but i wish ppl would stop acting like they’re a utopia that exists outside the bounds of oppression except for when it helps tbh.

[hundondestiny]

i have only ever felt welcome in libraries where the staff looks like me, and that’s including when i WORKED at a library as a student volunteer at age 14/15 when one of my grown as fuck 40+ white colleagues refused to be alone in a room with me because i made her uncomfortable by virtue of being Black :) wouldn’t even sort magazines standing next to me, at that, because i was such a threat to her apparently. 

this whole “uwu librarians are just such sweet people! librarians become librarians because they love people! we exist to support the community!” shows me very clearly where people are coming from and it’s not my reality. libraries should be that but don’t pretend those are things that can be assumed lmao.

[hundondestiny]

it’s like a very specific brand of white women librarians who make these kinds of posts and it aggravates me because they are absolutely the ones who call the cops on people who fall asleep, on the adults with learning disabilities who want to participate in children’s storytime (because so many libraries pretend illiterate adults don’t exist to begin with, or just any adults who would like to be read to???), who make stupid rules about who can use the community meeting spaces and for what even tho ur district tells u it’s supposed to be for anyone fitting x y z standards some Sally or Jane always has “it’s just our preferences here at [branch]!” to say about it, who will tsktsktsk at the white boys who come in clearly high but tell you to “keep an eye on” the group of all brown kids because they look like trouble… who huff and puff and get annoyed when they have to explain something multiple times to a patron with a diff native language than English or taking a few extra steps to serve patrons w disabilities but has nooooo problem excitedly repeating information over and over for the abled english-speaking people, cuz you know, they DESERVE help! they’re not a nuisance!

like fucking… miss me w all this nonsense honestly it’s fucking infuriating the more i think about it. if you pretend we already live in a world where “if only libraries had funding, they’d be havens!” then no one is going to have the motivation or even knowledge to push for that as a reality. and the reality is libraries for many of us are just another site of surveillance and violence by the same group of people in a different outfit.

[blue-wisteria-and-freckled-skin]

I will never forget the time I had a man cry while I was serving him in the library where I’ll work.

He was a regular, but didn’t often do much other than sit around and enjoy being here. One day after coming back after my lunch break, he came to the helpdesk and since my other colleague was busy, I stopped shelving and went to help. I’ll be honest, he has learning difficulties and unfortuantely he isn’t very clear when speaking, but we eventually worked out that he wanted a book (through me guessing and him pointing at multiple people reading). After narrowing down what he wanted to read about, dogs, I stood up to go get some examples before he stopped me to say “I can’t read very well.” 

In that instance, I felt so sorry for him. It was clear from his expression that he was ashamed, and I have no doubt half of that shame comes from other people’s usual reactions, but I just nodded, told him to wait there and went to go find some books. Bringing back a handful of different books, from picture books to children’s non-fiction, to dyslexia friendly and giant print books, we had a look through them together while I asked him what books were good and what were bad, so I knew what I was looking for, and it became clear that what he really needed were essentially picture books with at most a sentence per page.

That was simple enough, so I took him to the children’s area and we looked through some books together, ignoring the Karen-mom clearly glaring from the sofa she was sat on. A little later he’d chosen a handful of picture books and was grinning from ear to ear. We went back to the desk and I issued them for him and he was ready to go, before he started crying, explaining he’d never been able to choose his own books before. He learnt pretty soon that I was, unfortunately, the only one of my colleagues who had the patience/human decency to serve him, so he’d usually come at that same time once a week to change his books, always immediately looking for me so I could help him.

This is just one example of one customer dealing with what is practically bullying from adults, who should know better. He just wanted to read and was belittled so much that he was embarrased to say so. Please, please bare in mind that if you serve customers in a shop or library or any customer service role- it shouldn’t even have to be a second thought to just.. not be a dick.  This is just one example. but c’mon, please just be decent to other people.

[ultrajubilee]

This made me so angry and sad. So many people need to take a long walk off a short pier. Thank you so much for being kind i.e a decent human being.

[theleakypen]

god this is so important and it’s one of the aspects of “vocational awe” that we don’t talk about nearly enough in professional library circles.

There’s a bunch of talk about how vocational awe means that library admin will argue that since it’s a calling, library staff should do more with less, resign themselves to being paid less for their labor than they ought, things like that.

There’s not NEARLY enough talk about how library staff will hide behind the “inherent goodness of library work” and ignore the ways in which they perpetuate systems of oppression.

Librarianship is EIGHTY PER CENT WHITE. That number goes up when we’re talking about library administration. And despite the fact that librarianship is overwhelmingly female, library leadership is overwhelmingly male. So we have a majority-white profession headed mostly by white men. Do the math yourself for what kind of service that results in.

Look at the Code of Conduct in a lot of libraries and you’ll see how damaging it is to homeless patrons, mentally ill patrons, patrons of color, patrons with trauma… I did a whole paper in library school on how public libraries can better serve patrons experiencing homelessness and let me tell you we are NOT THERE.

There’s a lot of work being done right now in libraries to try to undo some of these institutional issues. There’s work around divesting from police in libraries, work on not making POC on staff responsible for “cultural sensitivity” or “diversity” training, shit like that. It’s a long road and we’re definitely not there yet and it pisses me off so much when people pretend that libraries, by virtue of being what they are, are somehow exempt from all the bullshit. They’re not. We’re not.

[khangi]

One of the most interesting things I’ve noticed about non-natives appropriating our stuff is they never want anything but sage, smudging, and feathers.

Native people will share: our food, our music, our dancing, our art.

But no one is interested in those. They don’t CARE about our food and music. We never see those things in popular culture. Non-natives just want to take our religious items, because they feel entitled to the things people don’t want to share.

[accidental-wedgie-deactivated20]

A Tribe Called Red (techno Native beats):

Taboo #noDAPL protest music (Native Hip Hop):

Supaman (Prayer loop song, Rap)

Check em out. Add on. Support Native Artists. Spread the love y'all

[khangi]

Good musical options. 🙌🏼

[graffiti-bi]

Snotty nose rez kids (hip hop) + Drezus (rap)

Blackfoot (rock)

Blackfire (punk/rock)

[lesbianladyeboshi]

Silla+Rise (Throat singing blended with spacey electro beats)

Kelly Fraser (Pop)

T-Rhyme (Hip Hop)

Piqsiq (Throat Singing Electro)

Tanya Tagaq (Avant Guard, Punk, throat singer)

Iskwè (Pop/Electronic)

And the iconic Buffy Sainte Marie (Folk/Rock/Electronic)

[universetalkz]

Do not let getting lonely make you reconnect with toxic people.

You should not drink poison just because you are thirsty.

[bloodbonestelephones]

Death

The Nine of Cups

Justice

The Nine of Swords

The King of Swords

The Hanged Man

The Hermit

The Six of Swords

The Eight of Cups

The Five of Cups

The Sun

The Three of Swords

‘The Ghetto Tarot’: Haitian artists transform classic tarot deck into stunning real life scenes:

Welcome to the Ghetto Tarot, a project from award-winning documentary photographer Alice Smeets and a group of Haitian artists known as Atis Rezistans. The idea was to take the classic Rider-Waite tarot deck of 78 cards and create a photographic version of each card using settings and objects in the vibrant ghetto of Haiti.

As Smeets says, “The spirit of the Ghetto Tarot project is the inspiration to turn negative into positive while playing. The group of artists ‘Atiz Rezistans’ use trash to create art with their own visions that are a reflection of the beauty they see hidden within the waste. They are claiming the word ‘Ghetto,’ thus freeing themselves of its depreciating undertone and turning it into something beautiful.”

[samwisethewitch]

The Law of Attraction, Prosperity Gospel, and Other Ways of Controlling How People Think

In the words of Rhonda Byrne, who brought the Law of Attraction to popular consciousness with her book The Secret: “Life doesn’t just happen to you; you receive everything in your life based on what you’ve given.”

Or, to put it even more bluntly: “You attract to you what you think about most.”

At first glance, these words seem empowering. We all want to be the masters of our own destinies. It’s that desire for autonomy and agency that attracts many people to witchcraft and alternative spirituality in the first place.

Until very recently, I was a firm believer in the power of the Law of Attraction. I believed that it worked the same way magic did, and I encouraged other witches to add it to their spiritual toolbox. I even included an episode about it in my Baby Witch Bootcamp series. (Which you will notice has since been taken down.)

That all changed when I started reading a book about mind control.

For context: I grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, better known as the Mormons. Whether the Church is a cult or not is up for debate, but it definitely uses cult thought control techniques to control its members. Although I left the Church several years ago, I never untangled myself from the Church’s flawed and harmful rhetoric. Recently, I’ve decided to take on this challenge, and I started my healing process by reading the book Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control by Luna Lindsey. This is an extremely well-researched book about how the Mormons use cult thought control techniques to keep members enmeshed.

In a section on the Church’s mandatory tithing (a sort of tax paid to the Church by members) and promise that tithe-payers will be rewarded with material wealth, Lindsey quotes the book Recovery from Cults by Paul R. Martin. Martin says: “The prosperity gospel holds the conviction that if a believing person has enough faith, is completely repentant of all sin, and gives at least 10% of his or her income to the church or to some Christian ministry, then he or she will have good health, obtain financial wealth, and experience general prosperity in all areas of life.”

I was taken aback by how similar this concept — the so-called prosperity gospel — is to the Law of Attraction. Prosperity gospel teaches that faith in God will be rewarded with material blessings. The Law of Attraction teaches the same thing, but replaces the word “God” with “the Universe.” In both cases, believers are encouraged to focus only on the positive while ignoring or minimizing any problems they may face.

In the church I grew up in, we were taught that doubt comes from the devil and prevents us from receiving God’s blessings. Dieter F. Uchtdorf, a member of the governing body of the Mormon Church, says: “We must never allow doubt to hold us prisoner and keep us from the divine love, peace, and gifts that come through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,” and coined the popular Mormon mantra “Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.”

In The Secret, Rhonda Byrne quotes Henry Ford: “Whenever you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are right.” Later in the book, Byrne says, “Instead of focusing on the world’s problems, give your attention and energy to trust, love, abundance, education and peace.”

I was struck by an eerie similarity between Uchtdorf’s and Byrne’s words. I had turned to the Law of Attraction as a means to empower myself after trauma connected to conservative Christianity and its values. Was it really possible that I had merely swapped one kind of thought control for another?

This lead me to look into other similarities between the Law of Attraction and other forms of thought control, and what I found was frankly disturbing.

The Law of Attraction employs at least three of the four components of the BITE model, an illustration of cult mind control techniques created by cult expert Steven Hassan. The four aspects of the BITE model are: Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, and Emotional Control. These are techniques used by cults to mold the identities of their members.

Both prosperity gospel and the Law of Attraction employ Behavior Control; prosperity gospel demands outward displays of faithfulness from believers, while the LoA teaches that we should “make sure that [our] actions are mirroring what you expect to receive,” as Byrne puts it (i.e., act like our lives are already perfect). Both systems employ Thought Control; prosperity gospel warns believers to keep their thoughts pure (“If ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, ye must perish.” – Mosiah 4:30), while the LoA teaches that all of our thoughts have energetic vibrations and that we should focus on “high vibrational” thoughts. Both systems employ Emotional Control; prosperity gospel labels certain emotions as sinful and promotes shame around these “sins”, while Rhonda Byrne tells us to, “Ask once, believe you have received, and all you have to do to receive is feel good.”

The fourth aspect of the BITE model is Information Control. Although not everyone who believes in either prosperity gospel or the Law of Attraction will engage in Information Control, many do. Many Christians are encouraged to avoid media or informational resources that contradict the Church’s message — I know I was in my church. Believers in the Law of Attraction are encouraged to avoid “low vibrational” media and anything else that makes them feel even a little uncomfortable. In either case, this selective consumption of information feeds into confirmation bias and creates a closed system of logic. As Luna Lindsey puts it in Recovering Agency, “All signs point to ‘Yes.’ It transfers the burden of proof to an emotional basis for evidence, which is extremely easy to engineer.”

But Sam, you may argue, the Law of Attraction is a belief — it isn’t tied to any organization! There is no Law of Attraction cult!

Tell that to authors like Rhonda Byrne and Esther Hicks, who are making millions of dollars from books about the Law of Attraction. Tell it to the thousands of people who treat those books like gospels, and those authors like modern day prophets. Tell it to the life coaches and “lifestyle gurus” building social media empires by appealing to people who want to believe that they can manifest their dream life just by changing their thoughts.

And that rhetoric is inherently flawed. Both the Law of Attraction and prosperity gospel employ cognitive distortions in order to plug holes in their logic. Cognitive distortions are irrational or illogical thought patterns, and overcoming cognitive distortions is one of the main goals of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

Both prosperity gospel and the Law of Attraction often lead to overgeneralization (the tendency to find patterns where none actually exist), personalization (believing that everything other people do or say is a personal reaction to us — taking everything personally), blaming ourselves for situations and events outside of our control, and the fallacy of change (expecting other people or situations to change to meet our expectations). All of these are cognitive distortions.

The biggest and most obvious of these cognitive distortions is black and white thinking, also called all or nothing thinking. As Luna Lindsey points out in Recovering Agency, black and white thinking is also a common element in cult thought control. Black and white thinking divides everything into “either/or” categories, with no room for shades of gray. In terms of mental illness, someone with an anxiety disorder may feel that if they can’t be perfect they’re a total failure — this is an example of black and white thinking. In conservative Christian theology, everything is either righteous or sinful, aligned with either Jesus or Satan — this often leads church members to feel like the world is out to lead them into sin. In the Law of Attraction, everything is either “high vibrational” or “low vibrational” — you never hear about neutral emotions or experiences.

In fact, the concept of low vs. high vibrations is just a way of rebranding the Christian concept of sin vs. righteousness. Take virtually any quote from a Law of Attraction author, replace “low vibration” with “Satan” and “high vibration” with “Jesus” and you’re left with typical conservative Christian rhetoric.

(By the way, the idea of emotions having vibrations seems to have originated with the book Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins. I can find no scientific evidence to support the idea that different emotions have noticeably different frequencies. The idea of sin is just as unverifiable, since there’s no way to prove that something is or is not sinful.)

Finally, both prosperity gospel and the Law of Attraction can have a negative affect on the mental health of people who believe in them. A study from the University of Toronto, lead by Nick Hobson, Geoff MacDonald, and Juensung Kim, found that exposure to prosperity gospel sermons lead to an increase in risky financial behavior.

“New research out of the University of Toronto’s department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science suggests that exposure to prosperity gospel messaging – thinking God wants you to be wealthy, prosperous and donate money to the church – makes you more likely to show an exaggerated and unrealistic sense of optimism for life and take more financial risks,” Alexa Zulak says in an article for U of T News. “Hobson says atheists and agnostics were just as likely to be susceptible to ‘unrealistic optimism’ – as long as the prosperity sermon they watched was masked as a motivational speech. Even when the research team removed all references to God and religion, participants still exhibited increased optimism – meaning the messaging is less about God and religion.” [Emphasis added.]

These ideas are dangerous, whether they’re packaged as gospel or a manifestation technique. And that’s not even getting into how both of these systems can contribute to perfectionism, victim-blaming, or toxic positivity.

I’m not the only witch who has noticed a disturbing similarity here. @north-of-annwn​ has a great post on this subject, where they say that, “The Law of Attraction is just Prosperity Gospel and Thought Control repackaged in a new age wrapper.”

They go on to explain how both of these systems are inherently ableist and are based in privilege. Later in that post, they sum up exactly why the Law of Attraction is so dangerous: “It introduces a fear/shame relationship with your own thoughts.”

So… yeah. I’m going to go ahead and admit that I was wrong — wrong about the Law of Attraction and wrong to spread these ideas to other witches without doing more research first. I hope that this post has been informative, and that this information will serve readers on their journey to find a spiritual belief system that serves and empowers them — without telling them how to think.

[deactivated-blog]

This post is amazing. I could never put this into words, but my thoughts are exactly the same. You might want to check out Gary Lachman’s book “Dark Star Rising,” for a look at how prosperity gospel influenced the Trump campaign and the alt right, too.

[kitchenwitchupinthisbitch]

Uuugggghhh. I fucking hate prosperity gospel. I can’t even put into words right now.

[witches-ofcolor]

Why Witchcraft Is on the Rise

Americans’ interest in spell-casting tends to wax as instability rises and trust in establishment ideas plummets.

I really loved this article. There are a lot of things in it I agree with, some I don't too much. However the unacknowledged of cultural appropriation, specifically from afro traditions is refreshing, because its hard to find this discussed outside of our circles!

[thetwistedrope]

this is your unfriendly reminder that climate change is gonna make it easier and more likely for us to have more pandemics in the future.

instead of saying its gods and whatnot bringing this down on us, let’s blame the actual source: climate change brought on by unsustainable capitalistic structures.

[stormbornwitch]

Whistling up a Wind

Recently I’ve had a few people asking me for more information on how to whistle up a wind. So here you go!

Whistling up a wind is the most common forms of weather magic and has been practiced for hundreds of years. Depending on the pitch and tone of the whistle (which I’ll talk about below) a witch can create a gentle breeze or a sharp gust of wind. Traditionally, if the skill of whistling up a wind does not come naturally to you the option of making a ‘wind whistle’ out of willow or alder wood is available. You could also use a simple glass bottle - all you need is to be able to make a whistling sound.  

To whistle up a wind, you would first take a deep breath (close your eyes if you need to), centre yourself and focus the energy you breathed in. Let it mingle with your own energy/magic whatever you want to call it and then literally breathe out the energy into a whistle.

The tone/pitch/length of the whistle you make decides the type of wind you will get. For example a low pitched whistle which sounds like ‘breath over a glass bottle’ will form a light breeze and a short sharp piercing whistle will form a huge gust of wind.

I included the video (sorry about the poor video quality) so you could hear the pitch of the whistle I create to blow in some rain. 

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get it immediately. It really is just a matter of practice and finding the right note/pitch and length of the whistle to make for each type of wind. Don’t be afraid to experiment!

 If it helps, try and whistle a song which makes you feel happy and light then try whistling a song which makes you feel heavy and sad. 

[venusin2nd]

how do you manifest so fast??

What I found helped me out the most was meditation. Every morning I do a mediation to thank my angels, and that really helps to raise your vibe. I always get so overpowered w joy that I start crying during my mediation lol. It’s such a good way to start off the day, because after that I kinda detach from all things spiritual a lil bit and go on with my life. Detachment to your desires also helps you manifest quicker. Also, ik it’s kinda hard at first, but you have to put your 100% trust in the universe. I saw this post one time and it said “what’s mine will be mine so I just chill”. Live by that

[boredpanda]

1800s-1900s Portraits Of Native American Teen Girls Show Their Unique Beauty And Style (15+ Pics)

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

I love love love seeing historical/archival photos of people who are not white Christian Europeans :)

[sashayed]

this is my fave from the source, tho.

[titenoute]

You have no fucking idea how much i love you for the sources.

[modoru-mono]

The caption for the smiley gal up above is “#O-o-be, The Kiowas, 1894”. Come on, if you’re gonna reblog the image, at least give her name and tribe! She’s even got her name on her blanket! Also OMG she’s wearing an elk tooth dress…Having a dad who could gather THAT MANY elk teeth was a sign of high prestige for plains natives, girl’s got bling! I love the rest of the outfit too!

[jennyboom21]

Kiowas Tribe. 1894.

[niconiconiko]

What’s meant to be mine will eventually be MINE. So I just chill.

[tulunnguaq]

“Did you know the Italians have 200 different words for pasta?”

[tulunnguaq]

Now available in Inuktitut syllabics.

[crafting-witch]

DIY LAVENDER WANDS!!!!

These are super fun to make and they smell friggggin awesome and look super cute. awesome for rituals and for decoration and for smelling awesome, could be a cool gift, could sell em’ or just whack this tutorial straight in your grimoire for later use, you name it kiddie winks. IMA TEACH U 

1) PICK YO SELF SOME LAVENDER! if you don’t have lavender in your garden, you need to get some. but in the mean time, head over to your local botanical gardens or a park area or a shop or your friends place, anywhere where you can get yourself some freshly picked lavender. Begin with an uneven number of stalks, the bigger the bundle the bigger your wand.

2) GETCHO SELF SOME CUTE ASS PURPLE RIBBBON, and tie it just below the flowers. 

3) THEN UR GONNA WANNA fold the stalks down evenly over the flower head bundle.

4) WEAVE YO’ RIBBON over and under each stalk, around and around, until you have enclosed the entire flower head.

5) TIE OFF YO RIBBON at the bottom.

6) GIVE YO FINISHED WAND a roll between your palms to release that wonderful lavender fragrance1111111!!!!

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT!! A COOL ASS FUNKY SMELLIN STICK-O-LAVANDAAAAAAHHHH

STAY WITHCY!!!

- @indigo-amethyst