By Oath and Pomegranate, By Serpent and Crossroads @bound-by-pomegranate - Tumblr Blog

Posts

milfmanifesto

I complete 1 thing every few months then I have to go to bed.

stormwaterwitch

Me, A Witch, On Every Major Holiday: Oh hey yeah there’s a thing today

moon-lightfaerie

Things to Research Before Working with the Fae

Research is the most important thing to do before heading into Faery work and witchcraft. You want to have a lot of in depth and versatile knowledge covering many areas of the topic so you’ll be able to understand and interact with the Fair Folk! If you don’t want to work with the Fair Folk you can use this list to help yourself understand them and take the proper measure if you ever stumble upon them. I know the list could go on forever but I’m compiling the topics I find build a good foundation of understanding. I have compiled this list to give those interested guidance and a push in the right direction, it is best you do your own research before asking other’s personal knowledge and opinions!!

The Basics

Terminology ( Fae, faery, fairy, changeling, seelie, unseelie, sidhe, etc)

The Origins of the Fae (Tuatha de Dannan, Aos Sí, Tylwyth Teg)

Faeries in Different Cultures: Celtic (Irish, Scottish, Gaulish, French), Norse, Influences from Greek and Roman culture.

Folklore & Myths!! ex. Oisin and Tír na nÓg , Fenian Cycle, Arthurian Legend.

Celtic Gods, Goddesses & Heroes- strong influences and connections to the Fae

Types of Faeries (study diverse types from pixies,brownies, pooka to Kelpies, Bwbach and Red caps) *Make sure you can at least answer who, what and where about them.

The Otherworlds (Tir na Nog, Caer Arianrhod, Annwn, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, etc.)

Faery Landmarks (fairy tree, fairy ring, fairy hill)

Signs of the Fae

Sacred Trees and Plants (Hawthorn)

Protection!! very important

*Bonus if you learn Celtic Culture

Getting into Working with Them

Connecting to Nature and the Land

How to Banish Faeries & Protect yourself, house, family, etc.

Faery Behaviour and Proper Etiquette

Proper Offerings, How to give an Offering

Animals associated with the Fair Folk and Why? (raven, deer, etc)

Faery Festivals and Holidays (Samhain, Midsummer, Beltane)

Why certain things offend them- iron, saying “thank you”,etc.

The Courts (Seelie, Unseelie, trooping fairies, solitary)

Setting up a Faery Altar

How to work with them in Rituals

Faery Flowers, herbs and crystals

A proper and personal way to communicate with them!!this means developing psychic ability, tarot, meditation, signs, etc.

Hagstones, heptagram/faery star

Some Good Books :)

The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W. Y. Evans Wentz

Encyclopedia of Spirits by Judika Illes

Enchantment of the Faerie Realm by Ted Andrews

Faery Craft by Morgan Daimler

Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes by Phillip Freeman

**if you have more topics, books or anything else feel free to add some!

verdantlyviolet

How I Converted Athenian Festivals to My Local Calendar

Festivals in Ancient Greece were celebrated for a myriad of reasons;

in honour of a god with games and feasts

to signify the changing of seasons

to align with harvests and agriculture

to remember and celebrate victories, etc

To establish your own festival calendar, I believe the underlying question should always be:

Why?

Why do you want to celebrate? For who was this festival celebrated, and why is that important to you?

The usual starting point is a favoured god, so the why would be ‘I want to celebrate all the festivals for this particular god I love most.’ But if the festival is a celebration of something irrelevant to my practice, and my beloved god just so happens to be a patron, should I really celebrate?

Below I will outline a mock-up of my thought process for some festivals of Zeus as my example, how I decided what to include in my worship, and how I converted them to my local calendar in the Southern Hemisphere. Hopefully my extremely informal explanation for each might help you analyse other festivals in your own way and how they could apply to you and your worship.

Apatouria. Zeus Phratrios and Athena Phratria are patrons of this three day celebration of the brotherhoods of Attica, with an unspecified date. It seems to be a reunion of sorts, almost like a fraternity. It doesn’t really appeal to me. Skip.

Demokratia. Celebrating the establishment of democracy in Athens, with Zeus Agoraios, Athena Agoraia and Themis as patrons. I don’t particularly care about democracy in Athens, but I could celebrate its establishment in Australia instead! Australia’s Commonwealth, when the various colonies were given the right to govern, was January 1st. Also, Athena is the patron goddess of Athens and was likely only worshiped on this day because of that. I will only include Themis and Zeus. This isn't a highly important occasion for me so I will only perform libations and a hymn in thanks, not a full festival.

Diasia. A solemn celebration in spring to Zeus Meilikhios, a khthonic aspect of Zeus, to purify participants and possibly to placate the dead. It also could be about spending time with famil, and was traditionally held on 23 Anthesterion. As it is a springtime festival, and spring and new beginnings are definitely linked to purification, I think this should be moved to spring in Australia. Since I have a personal and familial reason to have a festival like this on September 1st, which by our calendar is the first day of spring in the Southern Hemisphere, I’ll move it to there.

Gamelia. Theogamia. The marriage of Zeus and Hera! Yes! I can immediately see that the Gamelia is actually called the Theogamia, so I’ll correct that. 27th Gamelion, the traditional worship date, works out to be roughly January/February. There doesn’t seem to be a seasonal reason to have the Theogamia in winter, and I think a summer wedding sounds lovely. I’ll keep it at that time of year, and since it’s an anniversary I’ll keep to the original date as best as possible. This means keeping track each year of what date the 27th Gamelion falls on. This is a big deal to me so it will be a full festival with a feast!

Maimakteria. There seems to be some confusion between this festival and the Pompeia? To Zeus Maimaktes in the month of Maimakterion, which for the Greeks is winter. Assuming that this was a festival to placate the blustering Zeus of heavy rains, and besides a sheep sacrifice there isn’t much to go on, I might make a simple offering to Zeus Maimaktes in my winter to pray for mercy during the stormy weather. However in my state we have cyclone season throughout summer, and the cyclones up north can be pretty devastating. Instead of a fully fledged festival, I will make two yearly offerings to Zeus Maimaktes for mercy before both the cyclone season and our winter.

Calendar @ Numachi • Attic Calendar Converter

villanoustarot

Me: *Pulls a clarification card*

Tarot: The Tower.

Me: *Slides card back into deck* I don’t need clarification.

theforcekeepers

DO NOT DO THIS.

This makes me so angry.

If you work in a movie theater and you do this I have no respect for you.

My younger brother is Type 1 Diabetic.

When we go to a movie theater, we always get him diet soda. If he were to get regular when we asked for diet, we would not give him the insulin he would need for it. If that happens, his blood sugar level could go so high he could go into a coma, go blind, or even die.

If somebody gave him regular soda instead of diet without telling us, that person could be responsible for a nine-year-old being killed or blinded.

Just thinking about that makes me so angry. I get scared every time we take him to a movie in case the people working there saw this picture and decide to do the same thing.

Please signal boost this so people know.

wreckedupbarnes

This also applies to baristas

kimchicutie-deactivated20180618

Fun story about the baristas doing this kind of shit.

I am very sensitive to lactose, not Lactose intolerant but because of stomach ulcers that are still healing. A couple years ago I went to Starbucks right after my classes with some friends and asked for a green tea latte with soy milk. The barista, for some reason out of malice and/or hate for her life so she took it out on me, gave me whole milk in my latte.

5 minutes after my first sip of latte, my stomach cramped BAD. Not the “Oh! time to poop!” kind of cramp but it felt like someone had stabbed me with a knife and twisted it. Now I’ve had this happen before so I knew the cause of it. I went up to the barista clutching my gut screaming at her that she put dairy in my latte rather than soy LIKE I REQUESTED. She denied it and called me a “pretentious white girl for wanting soy”and so my friends got the manager. I had to explain that I had stomach ulcers that were still healing and if I were to go to the hospital for this incident, they would be responsible for it.

Manager flipped his shit and the barista was terrified out of her mind. Pretty sure both thought i was gonna sue. Manager actually fired her on the spot because of the negligence. My friends managed to get me home in one piece while I stayed home for 3 days in absolute agony and missed my midterm.

So remember kiddies, if someone is asking for Diet or “Skinny” or “soy” or anything that is not regular, give them what they requested because it may not be them being healthy, but a dietary need that can possibly be life or death

housebuiltbyghosts-deactivated2

also if they ARE trying to be healthy you should give it to them to!! Its not your decision to police or question others food choices!!!

also im lactose intolerant AND ive had stomach infections/ulcers so i feel this.

cartoonkatelyn

I have Celiac Disease, so I’m very gluten intolerant. When I go out to eat at restaurants a lot of people just assume that I asked for my food gluten free because of the gluten free diet fad (which is usually a bullshit diet btw).

Last month I went out to dinner with a friend at an italian restaurant that had a small gluten free menu. I had been there once before and had their gluten free pasta and it was great! I think one of the managers had been there and was super helpful when taking my order to make sure that everything was gluten free for me. When I ordered the gluten free pasta again this time though, the waitress who took my order all but rolled her eyes at me. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because the restaurant was so accommodating before, I just assumed it would be the same this time.

But sure enough, they brought out my pasta, I ate it, and about an hour later I had extreme stomach pains and was throwing up (in a movie theater no less).

Barfing and agonizing pain aside, eating gluten when you have celiac causes a lot of internal damage that’s hard to notice. The biggest thing is that it damages your intestines, preventing your body from absorbing nutrients properly, which can take months to heal.

So PLEASE, if you work at a restaurant or anything with food and someone asks for something a certain way, please listen to them and don’t just disregard someone’s order. It’s not funny and it can have serious consequences.

somethingnottooclever

I will reblog this with every single story about someone getting sick because of an asshole giving them the opposite of what they ordered until it sinks in for everyone.

sailornightfury

Recently on the news a 16 year old boy with a dairy allergy had gone to eat at IHOP with his family. The specifically asked if they could make dairy free pancakes and they said yes. Not too long after he had a reaction and was rushed to the hospital. This kid died because the was dairy in his pancakes that they asked for no dairy. His epi pen that his mother had wasn’t enough to help him. I know working in fast food or any job that’s serves food and beverage sucks but not as much as causing someone to get sick over negligence.

obstinate-nocturna

My youngest cousin – who is now five, he just started kindergarten – has Celiac’s disease. You would not BELEIVE the amount of times I’ve heard my aunt say she’s ordered something gluten free, only to watch the waiter or waitress’s eyes go huge when she gives it to my cousin – my cousin with the medical id band on his tiny five year old wrist proclaiming I HAVE CELIACS and have to take it back. Shit like this could kill my cousin. Knock it the fuck off.

iopele

I cannot tolerate caffeine–it makes me have chest pain and a racing pulse, and also gives me horrible body pain, so I always ask for decaf if I order coffee when I’m out, and doublecheck with the waiter/ress when they bring it. but instead of saying “is this decaf like I asked for?” I always say “oh, did I remember to order decaf?” I shouldn’t have to act like I’m the forgetful one (because I know damn well I asked for decaf) but it seems to work better than implying that they screwed up when I take the blame on myself like that. and if there’s any hesitation when they answer, I tell them, “if there’s any doubt, please get another one, or just give me water–if this is regular, it’ll mess up my heart” and lots of times when I say that, they look alarmed and go change it or get another one.

but I shouldn’t HAVE to share my personal medical history with strangers just to get my order right! no one should! how is it their business? it makes me really uncomfortable to have to do that. JUST GIVE PEOPLE WHAT THEY ORDER!

minnigem

I’ve reblogged this maaaany times before but there’s a few new stories on here so i’m doing it again.

cut this shit out

willowfae82

don’t be that kind of asshole.

silkwingfood

I WILL GIVE YOU ALL TILL NOON THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW TO GET THIS AT LEAST ONE MIlLION NOTES REBLOG THIS FUCKERS

bound-by-pomegranate

As someone with a handful of very strange allergies, I cannot agree with this more. Even if something someone tells you they're allergic to sounds fucking crazy, just take a minute and give the benefit of the doubt. I have mild allergies to Jasmine and Chamomile, which is often in teas. Quite allergic to Charcoal (both topical in skincare & internally if I eat food from a charcoal grill) and SUPER DUPER EXTRA allergic to Sage....as in that herb you only really use much at Thanksgiving. The times I've had to ask restaurants if things have sage in it so I don't have to go to the emergency room just to get an eyeroll is ridiculous. The times I've had to explain to BBQ places in particular that my throat will physically start to swell if I eat charcoal grilled food is absurd. Like just do what people ask and leave it at that.

#not witchy #food #food allergies

sugaryewscythe

it's officially halloween witches! time to hex all your exes, makeout with a ghost and gossip with spirits!

notyourmothersspellbook

Happy Mabon

Today the light and dark stand perfectly equal. Tomorrow we begin the slow slip towards shorter days, longer periods of darkness and cold. You’ve come through so much this year already, but there is more ahead to be prepared for. Now is the time to celebrate the light, to honor what you do have, and to make plans for the dark and the cold ahead. Winter can be an enjoyable and beautiful time of comfort and continued activity, or it can sap the energy from our very bones. You’ll need to be resolved to your goals as the light fades away. What work needs to be done? What parts of you need to be culled? What can you stand to lose, and what can you not?

ma-demoiselle-cherie

aroacepagans

My hot tip for today is that sometimes you can do silly, spiritual pagan things because they’re fun and they don’t have to be particularly logical or relevant in any way. You don’t have to believe in everything 100% to do and enjoy things.

Every Samhain my mother leaves a plate of food outside. She says that the ancestors come in the form of raccoons to eat it. When I was little I of course wholeheartedly believe this. Now I think we probably just have a lot of raccoons in the neighboorhood, but that understanding doesn’t detract from the tradition. Suspending my disbelief for just one night to think that the animals I see wandering about are visiting spirits makes Samhain a hell of a lot more spooky and mystical then it would be otherwise. I wouldn’t want to do it any other way.

We don’t touch the garden between Samhain and Yule. The explanation given for this is that anything left outside during this time is food for the fairies and taking it angers them. As I’ve gotten older and learned more about gardening I’ve realized that this is probably an explanation for why we need to let the soil rest, and I certainly don’t think picking a plant in early December is going to cause me any harm, but don’t pick the plants anyways. Leaving the garden alone during the cold months makes tending to the plants that much more enjoyable and special during the hot months, and if my reasoning for why I can’t harvest that very last squash of the fall is fairies then that’s my own business.

Sometimes when I go down to the beach I find strange or out of place things. My explanation for these things is always selkies. In the back of my mind, I’m always aware that there’s probably a much more logical and reasonable explanation for whatever I’m seeing but those reasons usually aren’t quite as interesting, so I say that it’s selkies. And that’s fun. I feel like there’s some unspoken rule that after a certain age you’re not allowed to try and believe the things you’ve imagined, no matter how inconsequential and silly those things are and honestly, that’s boring, I’m not a fan.

The point here is that not all of the things we do in the name of our spirituality and faith need to be serious or even well thought out. Clearly, if you’re doing a ritual or a spell that’s one thing, but there are other fun little ways to make your spirituality more magical and wondrous that are less about what’s actually happening and more about the suspension of disbelief. And those things are wonderful and fun, and they add a little bit of joy to your life.

I meet a lot of witches and pagans who take themselves and their practice very seriously, and well that’s fine to a certain extent I think it can sometimes make your spiritual beliefs feel like a chore. Letting yourself have fun this way can be a really good way to prevent that.

heatherwitch

Mabon Resource Masterpost

A collection of categorized links for your Mabon needs! What is Mabon? [X] Mabon is celebrated between September 21st to September 29th (March 21st to March 29th in the S. Hemisphere) and is also called: the Autumn Equinox or the Second Harvest Festival.

The Basics:

Ways to celebrate Mabon

What is Mabon?

Mabon: A small guide

The Autumnal Equinox: Finding balance as the cycle ends

Solitary Autumn Equinox

Low spoon Mabon ideas

Mabon ideas for celebration

Mabon ideas!

Mabon Crafts:

Floating acorn cap candle

Mabon burlap wreath

Mabon wreath

Apple bowls

Mabon Recipes:

Mabon stew

Mabon pomegranate chicken

Grandma’s pumpkin bread

Easy pumpkin muffins

Mabon apple twist bread

Fresh apple autumn cake w/ honey cinnamon glaze

Stuffed apples for mabon

Mabon magic hot apple cider / Mabon cider

Mabon Spells:

Mabon spell

Mabon charm sachet

New fall ritual

An autumn ritual

Autumn blessings

Mabon bath

Mabon Tarot Spreads:

Mabon spread (3 card)

The balance (5 card)

Balancing autumn tarot spread (6 card)

Mabon delicate balance spread (9 card)

Autumn equinox spread (12 card)

Other:

Mabon altar tips

Mabon sigil

Mabon/Autumn Equinox playlist

Crystals for the Autumn Equinox

Mabon masterpost

Last udated September of 2020, please inform me of broken links via askbox!

Imbolc / Ostara / Beltane / Litha / Lammas / Mabon / Samhain / Yule / Bedridden ideas

thegrapeandthefig

At any rate, whether explicit or not, it is the key defining feature of an oath: an oath is a declaration whose credibility is fortified by a conditional self-curse.

- Alan H. Sommerstein, Isabelle C. Torrance, Oaths and Swearing in Ancient Greece, De Gruyter, 2014.

myth-boy

Classical Language Learning Masterpost

I’m not studying any Greek or Roman this coming year (I sacrificed intro classical languages for gender & history), but I will be doing a Roman history module and engaging with the language is always useful. I know a few people who have been looking for Greek/Latin learning resources, which is how this list came about. It includes MOOCs, youtube videos and websites. Not really knowing much Latin or Greek I can’t vouch for them 100% but my googling skills are pretty on point, so they should be okay. Feel free to correct me or add to this.

Latin

Getting started on classical Latin

Duration 10 hours

Introductory level

This free course, Getting started on classical Latin, has been developed in response to requests from learners who had had no contact with Latin before and who felt they would like to spend a little time preparing for the kind of learning that studying a classical language involves. The course will give you a taster of what is involved in the very early stages of learning Latin and will offer you the opportunity to put in some early practice.

Continuing classical Latin

Duration 4 hours

Intermediate level

This free course, Continuing classical Latin, gives you the opportunity to hear a discussion of the development of the Latin language.

FLVS Latin

As we build our Via Latina, we will travel back to ancient Rome. On our travels we learn about their culture, history and literature.

National Archives: Beginner’s Latin

Welcome to the beginners’ Latin tutorials. These lessons cover the type of Latin used in official documents written in England between 1086 and 1733. This can be quite different from classical Latin, as used by the Ancient Romans.

Learn Latin

Here are two dozen short lessons on learning Latin designed for “mountain men” (and women: montani montanaeque), engineers, philosophers, and anyone else looking for entertainment and with lots of free time by the campfire. My course is quite different from Peter Jones’ Learn Latin (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1997), but it is just as devoted to interesting you in Latin.

Learn Latin (Learn101)

I would like to welcome you to the Latin lessons. I’m here to help you learn Latin, by going step by step. All the lessons contain audio and are all offered for free.

The London Latin Course

170 videos

Learn Latin from the ground up. This is a serial course, structured to bring you to a high level of Latin fluency. The pace is slow and unhurried. This course is suitable for all ability levels. Restored Classical Pronunciation.

Latin Online

Latin is probably the easiest of the older languages for speakers of English to learn, both because of their earlier relationship and because of the long use of Latin as the language of educational, ecclesiastical, legal and political affairs in western culture.

Latin Excercises

Welcome to UVic’s practice exercises for Wheelock’s Latin (6th edition). There are 40 units comprising many hundreds of exercises to help you consolidate your progress in the classroom and with the textbook.

Ancient Greek

Introducing Ancient Greek

If you are starting to learn Ancient Greek, this site is for you! This site will help you prepare for a Beginner’s Ancient Greek course.

Classical Greek Online

Greek has been important in the intellectual life of western civilization, but not to the extent of Latin except for ecclesiastical matters. In years past, Latin was introduced in the first year of High School, followed by Greek in the third year.

Ancient Greek Online

This site was designed to be a learning environment for students as well as a reading room for scholars. The large print Greek is easy on the eyes. The Internet has returned us to the scrolling method of reading texts, which lends itself particularly well to the project at hand.

Teach Yourself Ancient Greek

The material presented here will be of use to anyone beginning ancient Greek, but is specifically designed to accompany our book.

Ancient Greek Grammar

103 videos

Including pronunciation tips. I haven’t personally watched this and there’s no real description, but it looks pretty comprehensive from what I can see.

Greek & Latin

Introducing the Classical world

Duration 20 hours

Intermediate level

How do we learn about the world of the ancient Romans and Greeks? This free course, Introducing the Classical world, will provide you with an insight into the Classical world by introducing you to the various sources of information used by scholars to draw together an image of this fascinating period of history.

Discovering Ancient Greek and Latin

Duration 12 hours

Intermediate level

The free course, Discovering Ancient Greek and Latin, gives a taste of what it is like to learn two ancient languages. It is for those who have encountered the classical world through translations of Greek and Latin texts and wish to know more about the languages in which these works were composed.

Textkit

Textkit began in late 2001 as a project to develop free of charge downloads of Greek and Latin grammars, readers and answer keys. We offer a large library of over 180 of the very best Greek and Latin textbooks.

intotheastral-blog

Garden witches, green witches, healers and anyone who uses herbs in their practice...

This is a really good, comprehensive list of edible flowers. It has a vivid description each plant’s taste and how to use and harvest as well as including which parts of the plant are inedible (x)

Here’s a great free ebook on cooking, brewing and blending herbs (x)

This website has fantastic gardening advice. Just search for a plant and it will tell you how to grow it, what grows indoors, pest, solutions, trivia and much, much more. (x) And it even has an edible gardening section (x) plus an indoor section if you don’t have a garden (x)

If you have any other resources, feel free to add them to this list.

the-memedaddy

meirl

brimstonewitch

We’re all making moves to live off-grid at this point. Self-sufficiency is the only future we can survive.

yo-daddys-my-bitch

May the 10 of Pentacles bless your account with more money than you can spend. 💵✨

hermes-is-my-homeboy

10 of Pentz came thruuu

violaslayvis

Omg this actually works!!! Thank you 10 of Pentacles!!!

borkdork

I could seriously use this money right now….

ashashi-corner

Please give me my refund of 400$ soon…

hermes-is-my-homeboy

I feel obligated to reblog this every time it shows up in my dash

hermes-is-my-homeboy

No bragging, just 100% floored and grateful. Work hard, maintain a positive attitude, and believe that anything can happen.

mchashimi

So I reblogged this exactly a week ago because I thought it was funny and uh lo and behold, a family friend wrote me a big ol’ check just to help me out of a tough financial spot AND my bank refunded me $32 for fees they’d originally taken out. SO UH YEAH. Reblogging this again in hopes that it brings equally good fortune to my followers.