Btw if there is any chance that you, dear reader, are a beginner witch who is taking this whole warding/protection business seriously and are trying to sort through an elaborate schema of protections:
It is my (perhaps lowly) opinion that you should question if you should be using If/Then statements in your wards at all, if for no other reason than taking time to examine what it is you're really trying to protect against.
[If/Then warding: "All misfortune is kept away from me, but if it's a lesson from my spirits, then it's accepted."]
The reason I'm on this is because A) on a technical level, I believe if/then statements can very easily weaken spellwork, but also B) it's just so much more difficult to properly cover those loopholes, and then you risk delaying warding for months or years while you figure out the perfect set of programming code to specify that you basically don't want needless bad shit to happen to you but you still want to be connected to the world around you and you understand hardship is a part of life sometimes.
(Or even worse, C, trying to make wards so elaborate and finicky that they're never going to work, and then believing you just can't do magic, and get stuck in a spiral of not being able to practice until you're protected but your wards clearly don't work, even though you workshopped your 50 lines of programming for dozens of hours!)
"All spirits are blocked out and unable to enter, unless they already live here and are coming back or want to travel back and forth"
If you don't want to block out all spirits then why say that? Uninvited spirits, malicious spirits, malfeasant spirits might be a better way to go.
"All misfortune is kept away from me, unless it's a lesson to help me grow, but only if it's something I can handle."
What about all needless harm is kept away? All unhelpful harm? All harm that inhibits my current goals? And a separate discussion with your spirits about when and where you will accept potentially harmful lessons?
"I am protected from all misfortune, upset, and angry customers at my job, unless being protected from that will somehow impede my work performance."
What about I'm protected from all misfortune at my job, and the harmful impacts of stressful situations?
You can still experience a stressful situation while being protected from its impacts. Just because vile energy surrounds you does not mean it must have any effect on you. You can be a part of things and have your own agency and do right by yourself, without absorbing the harm into yourself.
"I am protected unless it's against my highest good-"
I prithee, internalize that you are the master of your own fate: decide what your own good is, and take it for yourself.
I want to interrogate this concept of expecting messages from a spirit when you connect with it. Someway, somehow, this idea that every time a practitioner communicates with a spirit that spirit is going to have a “message” for them has become common.
I don’t like this approach to spirit work. I feel like it treats spirits as if they are coin operated fortune telling machines or magic eight balls - insert offering receive “message”. Spirits have their own existences outside of us, they aren’t just sitting around, waiting for practitioners to reach out to them so that they can relay information to us regardless of if they have had contact with us before.
I find that if you want a spirit to have something of worth to say to you, quite often you need to initiate the conversation with something that they will find worth replying to, and that is “do you have any messages for me? Ask them questions about subjects within their domain, or for help with something that you think they can influence, or my personal favor to teach you something that they are good at. Don’t make them carry on a one sided conversation, be an active participant!
Hi. About your readings is the partner description also included in the love reading for singles package ?
Thnx ❣️
Yes! The love reading will have information about your partner. The difference between Love Reading and Partner's Traits Reading is that the Partner's Traits is just about the partner's qualities.
The Love Reading will include things like:
Why the client is single
Is there anything the client should or can do about it
What's the reason why past relationship have not worked
Why this partner is arriving
How are they
What does this relationship look like
For example, I had a client who got a off hand note that the man she was going to meet had lost a child. A young child, so it was a miscarriage, a still born or the baby died very soon after the birth. This was a very sore spot to him and he always hides it but once he brings this up to the client, the client will know that this man trusts her and is opening intimately to her. A little later this client met a man who after some time told that in his previous relationship he and his partner had had a miscarriage, and it would have been his first child.
I had other client who was told by cards in a love reading that her best partner had died when he was young and was not on Earth. Her 2nd best partner was reincarnated on a different planet. Because of this, my client had no love agreements on this planet with anyone and could choose to partner up with anyone she likes. A few years later she told me that she had met a man and they were going to get married, and all was very easy.
So, the Love Reading is a deeper reading, while Partner's Traits is more about curiosity and wanting to know about your partner only without any other information.
It is possible to order both and make a super Love Reading by combining them :3
Etsy sale starts tomorrow (1st August) with all readings 50% off. See my Etsy
This is your regularly scheduled reminder not to fuck around with using herbs OR crystals in or on the body without doing your research. I'm talking actual study of both body and the herb/crystal in question.
"this herb is supports menstrual health!" Cool. what does it DO? Like physically, what? Be specific.
How do your bodily organs function? Could you identify the individual organs? Can you explain how they work? If that organ is ill or not functioning correctly, do you know exactly what's going wrong and what needs to happen to fix it?
What component of that plant is affecting the body and how? Does your body need extra support in that way? How do you know? What other effects can this plant have on other parts of the body? Will it have chemical responses to other medications, herbs, or foods you are putting in your body?
Some minerals can start sweating sulfuric acid in high humidity, did you know that? Other rocks and crystals can contain toxic elements and heavy metals like mercury that can poison you. Sometimes they will straightup just dissolve in water — that doesn't mean they disappear, that means the water is contaminated with whatever elements and chemicals were in that stone, and it is probably not safe to drink.
Look, I'm all for herbal medicine. Crystals and stones can have really interesting uses for magic. But you can't just start smoking random plants or throwing things in a tea based on correspondence lists, or you're going to poison yourself or your loved ones.
If you want to be a healer, start with learning about the body. Not tea brewing.
In part 1 (link) of this series, we talked about the basics of spirit communication and possible pitfalls of using divination tools when communicating with them.
In part 2 (link), we talked about how my family specifically views different ways of communication via divination tools.
Now, we will talk about the two ways that most spirits prefer to communication.
If you've not read part 1 or 2, the most important thing about this series is that spirits are individuals and each one of them has their own skill, talent, and abilities. Some spirits are naturally gifted at some things and others they must spend years building their skills.
With divination, just like you were not born knowing all the ins and outs of tarot, spirits also are not born/hatched/created knowing how to use divination tools. As such, communicating via those methods is something not many spirits are skilled with and usually is only truly learned by those who wish to often speak to humans.
So, how do spirits most often prefer to communicate? How do they communicate with each other?
There are two common answers: Astral Speaking and Telepathy.
Astral Communication
Astral communication is when two beings who can hear astral wave lengths communicate. They have vocal cords, or something biological within their body that makes noise. Then another spirits who has ears, or other biological functions that can pick up on those sound wave lengths, is able to make out the sound. It's exactly like how creatures on the physical plane communicate but somewhere else.
A human can learn how to hear these sounds, both with their physical body and with their astral body, however it takes dedicated practice - usually with patient spirits who are willing to work with you on this.
Text:
Ron: Again, I am a dragon. My talking is roars and growls. If you learn the language, I'd be pleased. But it's unlikely.
Harp: I'm a shifter, so this is how I prefer to communicate in my human form.
Yule: As I cannot use telepathy, it's really important that humans work on their astral hearing so we can talk.
Please keep in mind that I am an experienced spirit worker, so of course those within my family will prefer to talk to me in the way that they communicate with each other.
That said, my entire family communicates with astral speaking aside. Ron and Vinca are dragons who communicate with each other with astral talking (roars), and use telepathy with everyone else. This does mean that Ron and Vinca cannot communicate directly with Yule, which has caused issues in the past.
This is the only communication method that the majority of spirits are created with knowing how to do as it's a biological feature, however there are species that are entirely deaf or do not make any sound. They still communicate with "astral communication" though it may look different. It could be smells, body language, facial features, or an infinite possibility of any other trait.
Telepathy may feel similar to auditory astral communication to humans because neither of them make the physical sound that you're used to hearing in the physical plane.
However, they are very different.
Astral communication, as mentioned above, is when spirits make sound waves. Telepathy is mind to mind communication without any sound being created. Telepathy has the added bonus that you're not limited to just sounds that you're body can make. You can send emotions, sensations, pictures, and more. Anything that happens within your brain can be sent to another person.
I would argue that this is most of the "visions" that people receive from spirits is just telepathy. I know how that sentence sounds, but let me continue. The word vision, in this context, often has the connotation of something important, something from the future or something important happening right now. However, the word telepathy has the connotation of meaning "brain to brain communication" and doesn't have the weight of "important" or "true". A spirit can lie to you, after all.
Text:
Harp: I'm a shifter and I hate telepathy. It's the only really way I can communicate as a mongoose. It hurts my head though...
Vinca: As Ron said, as dragons this is the most reliable way to communicate with an entity who cannot make our noises.
Wolfcub: I'm also a shifter, but I'm good at telepathy and it doesn't hurt me. I prefer it, even in my human form.
And as previously mentioned, Yule cannot use telepathy. Telepathy is definitely less common than astral communication, but it's still a very common practice. Across many different individuals and species, spirits are born knowing how to use telepathy, can learn to use telepathy, can either only send or only receive messages, can do so with pain and great effort, and cannot use telepathy at all.
Within my family, we have a balance of telepathy and astral communication. Vinca and Ron can only communicate with the others with telepathy, Wolfcub prefers telepathy, but it gives Harp a headache and Yule cannot send or receive telepathic messages. Fi and myself are the only ones of the family who are able to proficiently use both astral communication and telepathy, so we often end up as translators (technically Wolfcub is too, but as he is young, we don't put that pressure on him).
We are lucky that Vinca and Ron can hear astral communication and have to use telepathy to send messages. So Yule and Harp can tell them information, and as we are a family, they can often read body language, facial expression, and sounds to know if the message was well received or not.
All of this is just to showcase how different each spirit is as an individual. Even within our own family unit, everyone has their own way they prefer to talk to each other and the small details of how we do communicate in actuality is the product of years of living together and learning.
Your own experience with spirits will differ vastly as you have different skills than me, and the spirits you interact with will have their own skills and abilities. Learning how to communicate with different spirits is one of the best parts of the journey because it's so full of excitement and the joy of new friendships blooming!
That said, if you are truly starting at square one, here are my families personal ratings, from 1-5 stars all of the types of communication talked about across these 3 posts!
If you haven't read my previous posts about basics of spirit communication and divination feel free to do so here:
Part 1 - The Basics of Spirit Communication
Part 2 - Various Spirit Opinions on Divination Communication
Part 3 - How Spirits Prefer to Communicate
This was all part of Chimera Court's July lesson held in our Discord! We host lessons, classes, and meetings just like this one every month so feel free to stop by in time for our next one!
I hope that this was helpful and that you have a great day!
In part 1 (link), I talked about how different spirits all have their own talents, skills, and opinions about divination tools. But it feels odd to say that, but then not include any actual spirit thoughts on the subject.
So! Let me introduce you to my family:
Yule is a snow angel, Fi is a water sprite, Harp is a mongoose Shifter, Wolfcub is a Keva Hound (a type of wolf shifter), and Vinca and Ron are shift dragons.
(I should mention that both Harp and Wolfcub are young, so they've not had as much time to build their skills and uncover their talents as the rest of my family.)
It should be noted though that all spirits, again, are individuals! My family will have their biases as if I couldn't communicate with them, it would be a struggle for us to become so close. But I do hope that having actual spirit's thoughts on each type of communication helps!
Pendulums
So first, let's talk about pendulums. In my first post, I talked about how most spirits (in my experience) are able to quickly learn how to use a pendulum and how they are super easy to make, so I often suggest them for those who are getting started talking to a new spirit.
However, that doesn't mean that all spirits like pendulums or that it should be the standard.
Text:
Fi: I love pendulums because I get to bat at them like a cat.
Ron: I HATE pendulums. They're inacurate and too small minded for me. How am I to explain myself with a yes/no?
Yule: Pendulums are fast and convenient, but they are often inaccurate.
Within my family, the consensus is that pendulums are fine for quick and dirty things, but they're often liked for superficial reasons. They leave little room for an actual conversation or to explain their reasoning for yes/no. It can work well in tandem with other divination tools to double check, but all on its own? Not preferred.
Okay, this post got incredibly long, so I'm going to put it under a read more~
If you want to read more about cartomancy, runes, curiomancy, scrying, signs, dream work, and automatic writing, please keep reading on!
If you want to jump straight to part 3 where I talk about how spirits prefer to communicate with each other and with humans, then feel free to click through here!
Cartomancy
Cartomancy is the classic divination tool, probably right up there with crystal balls. Tarot, oracle, lenormand, even your regular 52 piece playing card deck all fall under the umbrella of cartomancy.
In part 1 of the post I talk about how divination devices that will always give you an answer (i.e. you will always draw a card even if no question was asked, or answer was given) can lead you to confusion and easy miscommunication. However, if you and the spirit are skilled in cartomancy, it's a good way to get really complex conversations going.
Text:
Yule: Oracle cards are easier than tarot if the spirit hasn't seen cartomancy before.
Vinca: I struggle to read decks over 15 cards. You can remove cards from your deck if you feel adventurous and your deck agrees.
Harp: Fuck tarot! There's too much shit to remember and I've never understood how to influence what card gets pulled.
Wolfcub: I like tarot. It has rules that go from deck to deck. It's easy to explain myself....if you draw enough cards....
I should start by saying I, Fox, myself, am a skilled cartomancer if I do say so myself. So many members of my family are able to use cartomancy fairly well to communicate. There are two areas that are heavily biased, and this is one of them. Just be aware of that!
But that doesn't mean it's a one size fits all here. Harp and Vinca both struggle with tarot because of its large size. Even reducing it to just the major arcana (which you can do if it works better for the spirit in question) doesn't meet either of Vinca or Harp's requirements. Vinca struggles to read decks that have more than 15 at an absolute maximum amount of cards and Harp hates having to remember the meanings of each card which the major arcana would still require.
Both of them vastly prefer using my own handmade oracle deck as it's the only deck I own with only 12 cards, but that's not something most sellers have available. Harp is not skilled at influencing the cards that are drawn, so the smaller deck lets her practice her skills.
However, larger decks are beloved by other members of my family, like Wolfcub who likes to learn all the meanings and put them to practice. However, his major drawback would be that many people draw only 1 or 3 cards at a time, rather than the 10+ cards he would like drawn for each reading. This is another angle that you should consider when deciding to use cartomancy for communicating with a certain spirit.
Whether you're using Elder Futhark runes, witch's runes, charm casting, or curiomancy, they all have about the same casting style - stick your hand into a bag and see what you draw. You can cast them onto a casting cloth or draw one at a time to see what you get. It's also common to use them in tandem with cartomancy by drawing cards and casting onto the spread.
Text:
Fi: Runes are easier to influence than cards. Easier to put in your hand than shuffle to the top.
Vinca: Curiomancy is even easier to influence when you cast them vs just drawing one at a time. When it's all different sizes, it's harder though, so be careful.
My family's consensus is that curiomancy of all sorts is easier than cartomancy on all accounts. It's easier to understand each piece's meaning and easier to influence if it gets pulled or not. However if you have a curiomancy set with different sized pieces, their size could make them easier or harder to draw - even if the spirit doesn't want it to be done.
Our last divination technique that we will talk about is flame reading and scrying. Flame reading CAN be scrying, but sometimes it's not, so we'll talk about both.
Scrying is when you unfocus your eyes and gleen answers from what you see. This can be by looking into a flame, smoke, water, or mirror (or another surface, there are a lot of creative options).
Flame reading, however, is when you look for information by looking at the flame itself. How tall or short the flame is, if it goes out quickly, or won't blow out easily.
Text:
Ron: I'm a large fire breathing dragon. Almost all candles react to my presence. It's not my intentional influence.
Vinca: Human eyes play tricks on them all the time. It's hard to get your message strong enough, but also unique enough.
Wolfcub: I like smoke scrying because I can (meta)physically move my hand and it moves in the physical world! I don't understand mirror scrying though...
Scrying is fun in this household, but it's too unreliable to be used as an actual communication method. (Meta)physical properties like Ron being a fire breathing dragon (large is subjective as he can change his size at will) can influence readings like this easily, which make it hard to get clear answers if its your own means of communication.
Before me, Yule actually used scrying with previous humans. Though she could make effects happen in physical realm, the understanding between her intents and wants to communicate were never understood properly. Yes this could be due to many different reasons, misunderstanding, cultural norms, but nonetheless it was frustrating and she eventually gave up trying to scry with them.
Signs are when you ask for something specific to happen as "a sign" that the spirit is there, talking to you, a sign that something good is going to happen, etc.
I will point out that while deities are technically spirits in the sense that the definition I use for spirits is "non-physical entity", deities are a special category. Deities that have thousands of years of theology and belief that they CAN send signs and control specific things does lend them an easier time sending signs, however spirits who are regular Joes like you and me? Not so much...
Text:
Ron: How the fuck do you expect me to get 15 physical birds into your yard? Be be watching fast because they're fucking birds, they're going to fly away.
Yule: I can make it snow, but the weather has to already be ready for snow. It's not really a sign at that point then is it?
Fi: I can increase water pressure but no one likes it when I flood their sink.
Signs are one of the hardest things for a spirit to accomplish and I encourage you, if you can astral travel, go try to round up some birds and ask them to go to your yard. It's incredibly hard and finicky, and even when a spirit CAN influence the physical to that degree, it's hardly recognized as a sign.
Okay! So there are two more common communication methods that I want to touch on: Dreams and automatic writing and drawing.
Dreams
So, when you are dreaming, your brain is firing neurons activating different parts of your brain. Dreams can have some meaning, such as anxieties you may be facing in your waking life, or things you hope happen. However, dreams are just like screensavers for your brain. The insight they provide is often minimal and putting stock into dreams isn't something I recommend past a curious quick search or question.
However, spirits can influence dreams and communicate through them (as long as they themselves are able to do so). However, as you are asleep and only typically remember the last 15 minutes of your dreams, communicating is extremely difficult. How do you tell the difference between a spirit communication and a dream? Even if you know what the spirit looks like and sounds like, then you could just dream them up, ya know?
Anyway, it is possible, but not one I would personally recommend.
Automatic Writing/Drawing
This is when you allow a spirit to take over your body and use your hand to write or draw something. Some call it possession, but as you always have full control over your body and can kick the spirit out easily, I don't put the big "P" word to it.
Spirits who are humanoid will have an easier time doing this than spirits who are not humanoid as they are already used to using fingers to move things dexterously.
A quote from Vinca, who is a dragon: "It's like being in a flesh octopus mech. Everyone is yelling outside of the mech that it's so easy, and just figure out the super easy controls, but you're also blind and nothing is labeled."
So yes, some love this and it works great, but it's not for me or my family. This is the second one that I'm very biased with as mentioned at the start of the post.
Ending
I just covered a couple of the most common divination methods for contacting spirits, but the methods are endless with enough creativity and there are dozens of other ones I know about that I haven't even talked about!
This post has gotten incredibly long and I'm not even done yet!
Part 3 will cover the ways that are easiest for spirits to communicate and how those work! Hope to see you there!
Part 1 - The Basics of Spirit Communication
Part 2 - Spirit Opinions on Divination Tools and Methods
Part 3 - Spirit Preferred Communication
How do spirits communicate is the wrong question. The question should be how do YOU communicate?
There are dozens of small ways that we communicate. We can talk, text, send photos, write, or draw our messages. We can show facial expressions and body posture to let others know how we are feeling or what we might intend to do. We can give a hug or high five or punch someone to communicate. We can throw a fit and make a huge scene to communicate how upset we are, or we can enter a room dancing and singing to show how amazing something is going.
Spirits can also communicate in a wide variety of ways. Just like how humans will have their skills, abilities, and preferred ways of communicating, so will spirits.
Spirits can talk, use telepathy, use any divination tool, move things, send physical sensations or emotions, use automatic writing or drawing, and/or use dreams/visions.
Each individual spirit has their own opinions, skills, abilities, and talents.
That's the most important thing to remember if you don't read anything else in this entire post. "Spirit" is not a collective or a singularity where any statement can apply to all entities. You cannot assume that all spirits know or can do anything.
Take for example these situations:
I use tarot in these examples but this can apply to any form of communication.
You (most likely) weren't born knowing how to read tarot, or oracle, or any other divination methods, and neither are spirits. It's something they have to learn and dedicate time to learning.
By assuming that spirits should or must know how to use something, you will only end up making miscommunication and can end up hurting relationships with the spirit.
If you know a spirit well through other means (I.E. through a spirit adoption shop, or your home is haunted, etc.) then this could just be a silly misstep in your relationship. However, if this is how you are attempting to contact strangers, you could offend and potentially put yourself in danger in the worst of the worst situations.
Furthermore, it's not just a matter of "knowing a divination tool" or not. Consider:
Let's assume for a second that the spirit in question is very well versed in tarot and knows what all of the cards mean off the top of their head.
While what you have to do is shuffle and draw a card or two or three, spirits have to find a card within a deck, know how to make it go to the top or middle of the deck (depending on if you cut or not), or shoot out if you only read cards that fall, and make sure it's reversed or not.
If you are able to astral travel, I highly recommend you try influencing what cards are drawn from the spirit's side of things. Have a friend do a reading and see how accurate you can pull the cards you want out.
Once again, this isn't just for tarot. This is for any divination tool.
The last two things to consider are things like this:
(I will take a second to note that the Cat Tarot deck is by Megan Lynn Kott, and it's a really wonderful deck!)
Okay, so now we know that the spirit in question DOES know how to read tarot and IS able to influence it, but that doesn't mean that everything will be hunky dory yet.
Consider the first situation. Everyone reads tarot differently. Some people read reversals, some don't. Some people shuffle until cards fall out, some will only shuffle a set amount of times - sometimes it's until "it feels right" which means the spirit may not know when you're going to stop. You could cut the deck, or draw from the bottom for some cards. Unless the spirit knows what your plan is, they won't be able to prepare the cards they want read in what way.
In the second situation, spirits also have personal preferences. Whether or not it's a "serious" reason or not doesn't matter if the spirit you're trying to communicate with won't for whatever reason.
We should also consider the perspective that your divination tool may have its own spirit - depending on your beliefs and definition of "spirit".
If the spirit and the spirit of the divination tool don't get along, you may not get the most accurate reading. However, this could be helpful, especially if you have an oracle deck that has a card like, "miscommunication". This could be extremely helpful in knowing if you're understanding each other or not.
So, how do you get started communicating with spirits?
I would suggest starting with a pendulum. Pendulums are very easy to make; you can use a necklace, bracelet, drawstring bag, string tied to a key or rock, or even a strand of long hair tied to a pencil - anything that dangles.
Pendulums are easy for humans and spirits to understand. Move this way for yes, that way for no. Don't try doing anything too complicated right now. While the astral is infinite and no statement applies to all of them, I have not personally met a spirit that hasn't figured out how to use a pendulum.
The biggest downside of pendulums is how unreliable they are. You are able to make the pendulum move the way you want it to, even if you don't think you're moving it at all. You can somewhat negate this by hanging it off of a desk, or other furniture, but just be aware.
However, starting with a pendulum opens yourself to the first start of communication. You can then ask questions like, where X is any divination tool,:
Do you know what X is?
Have you done X before?
Would you call yourself experienced with X?
Do you read reversals/blanks/other variables?
Once you are somewhat familiar with the spirit's background knowledge on any divination tool, your next step is explaining everything to the spirit.
You should do an example reading or two to show them exactly what you do so that they can get the jist of it first hand.
And that's the absolute basics of communicating with spirits! As every spirit is an individual and have their own thoughts on the matter, I've asked my spirit family for their opinions on a bunch of different divination methods!
Part 1 - The Basics of Spirit Communication
Part 2 - Various Spirit Opinions on Divination Communication
Part 3 - How Spirits Prefer to Communicate
Basics of Communing with Spirits was Chimera Court's Discord July meeting! If you are interested in getting this information live, feel free to join our Discord and you can even vote on what next month's lesson will be! Hope you enjoyed it and if there are any questions, feel free to ask~!
A little bit ago I went to a mystics/metaphysical fair that was in town! It was a lot of fun!
It was my first time going to an occult thing in person, other than stuff at the renn faire. I got two unique readings I hadn't gotten before. The first was an aura reading with a photograph! It was interesting, but I think the actual reading of it required more suspension of disbelief and when I shared information they were very willing to connect what I said to what they saw. But! It was very fun and I got a cool photograph out of it :3
So my aura reading is black + purple + red with purple orbs.
I also got an eye reading, which was really cool but mostly health stuff, so not my cup of tea.
The other reading pictured is a curiomancy + tarot + oracle card reading and it was really insightful and fun! I liked how indepth it was and how all three of the divination tools worked together was interesting and fun. The reader was also a really good reader! As someone who almost never gets in person readings, it's really fun to see how other people read~
And of course I bought some good things :3
I got an obsidian Bast statue for Reign, and I got myself a quartz kitsune! She's really cute, even with her tail being a little bit broken. I love how the rock is mostly the body with crystals mostly being on the tail. She's so pretty~
I also got a really good preying mantis shop, some laminated folios of various information, and two oracle decks: Universal Dragon Oracle and Egyptian Sacred Animals Oracle which looks gorgeous and might also end up as a Reign gift lol
I also was talking to someone there and they recommended that the best way to bond with a new deck is to sleep with a card under your pillow and journal about the card in the morning.
I've been doing that for a few days with my Universal Dragon Oracle, and it's been interesting! My dreams have somewhat lined up and last night's card was "awaken" and despite being up at a concert until midnight, I woke up this morning before my alarm and had energy until about noon when I crashed.
Anyway yeah! It was a lot of fun!
I also went to two lectures about herbs and learned how to make salves which was super fun and cool!
I'm going to another in August, so I'm super excited~ My wallet, however, is not lmao
Okay, before I share some of my personal weaving practices, I’d like to explain what weaving means to me. To me, because there is no established tradition around it, and if there is, I haven’t heard of it. And frankly, I don’t care about existing methods - I prefer to make my own.
Weaving is a specific interface for working with energy. It is neither better nor worse than other concepts - just different, with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Weaving is based on working with threads - psychic energy-informational flows. I literally see them as threads or strings that run through the world and form structures. Threads have a source and properties. I distinguish between mental and energetic threads, depending on which layer of reality they are on.
For example, a typical mental thread is a cause-and-effect relationship. With mental threads, you can see the structure of thoughts, concepts, how information is transferred from point A to point B.
Energetic threads are what people usually imagine when they think of weaving - patterns of energy that do something. Energetic threads determine how energy flows and what it is like.
In other words, mental threads tell where energy flows, energetic threads tell how it flows.
There is only one rule in weaving, as in any energy work: know what the hell you are doing.
People and spirits constantly interact with threads - we are all weaving something. The only difference between Weavers and other souls is that we perceive this and work with it consciously. Essentially, this is not magic, but a deep work with intention and attention.
Advantages of weaving:
1. Full control over energy. Weaving allows for very fine-tuning to any level of a situation. You control every step and can create complex structures that will be difficult for those who don’t know about threads to deal with.
2. The ability to work not only with pure energy, but also with the mechanics of its interaction. This allows you to combine what seems incompatible - traditions, elements, correspondences in one practice.
3. Freedom of creation. Since you are fully in control and can combine anything, it gives you complete freedom to do whatever you want. Threads are the ultimate sandbox: weave situations and events, manage emotions and thoughts (your own or others’), create objects and even entire dimensions in the astral.
Disadvantages of weaving:
1. Unclear feedback. One of the main issues with weaving is that you can go a long time without knowing whether you’ve actually done anything and whether it works. Sometimes the work happens on a very small scale, and the effect may be subtle or delayed. Most situations require multiple micro-adjustments to the threads. Not to mention that other people and spirits also influence the threads, so you constantly have to correct your work. At any stage, you might miss an important thread that later messes everything up - so you might try several times, think it’s not working, and give up.
2. The need to keep a huge amount of information in your head. Seriously, sometimes my head feels like it’s splitting apart, even though I do many things intuitively as Ainu. Also, weaving ideally requires well-developed clair-senses, so you know what you’re doing and how. It’s not that you can’t work with threads at all if clairvoyance, for example, isn’t your strong suit, but then you’ll need to compensate with other abilities.
3. Hypersensitivity to literally everything. This is one of the main side effects of this type of perception, and it can lower your quality of life. It’s hard to be a Weaver in a human body. I feel any micro-change in the surrounding energy, and often it hurts - threads seem to tear me apart if I don’t stabilise them, and I don’t always have the strength or time for that. I have a human life, and I want the process to be enjoyable for me, but often it’s just painful and exhausting.
I don’t know if this can be learned, to be honest. I was a Weaver before my human incarnation, I didn’t start from scratch. I saw threads from the very beginning, and I spent many years just observing them, watching what my astral body did on its own.
I am currently being taught by Michael and Lucifer. I think that for decent progress, you need a spiritual guide watching over you, telling you what to do and correcting things when necessary. A human teacher - I don’t think that would be very effective, though I’m not saying it’s impossible.
I’m not discouraging anyone from practising weaving - on the contrary, I want people to not be afraid to try, and to be prepared for what they might encounter.
Again, this is only my experience. I would gladly listen to another Weaver, if there are any here.
Scrying is moving through these tags again this week, a few people posting their first mirror and water readings. And the most common how-to you find stops at gaze into the surface and wait, which is exactly why people sit for twenty minutes, see nothing, and decide they cannot do it. The technique that matters is in the parts nobody mentions.
Start with the gaze, because this is where most of it goes wrong. You are not staring. A hard stare fights you, your eyes water, you blink, you reset, and you never settle. What you want is a soft, slightly unfocused gaze that looks through the surface rather than at it, the way your eyes drift past a window to the street beyond the glass. The surface should lose its hard edge and go a little vague.
Then the surface starts to change, and beginners almost always misread what happens next. Within a few minutes it tends to cloud, go smoky, darken, or seem to breathe. People take that as their eyes playing tricks, snap back to a sharp focus to check, and that ends it. The clouding is the doorway, not a glitch. Part of it is simply your vision softening on a featureless field, and that softening is the exact state you are trying to reach. Let it fog over and keep your attention loose inside the fog.
It also helps to know what a vision is actually like, because the expectation is the thing that blinds you. It is almost never a clear picture floating in the glass. It is shifting shapes, a color that was not there a second ago, a shadow moving against the grain, a face that assembles for a moment and dissolves. Sometimes it is not visual at all, just a feeling, a word in the mind, or a flat knowing. If you are holding out for a sharp image, you will look straight past the real signal, which tends to be quiet and partial.
A lot of what people call a block is really the setup. Work in low light with a single candle placed behind you or off to the side, never throwing a bright reflection straight into the surface. Use a black mirror or a dark bowl of water set on a dark cloth. Sit so you cannot see your own face clearly in the surface, because a sharp reflection of yourself locks your eyes at the glass instead of through it. Fix the light and the angle and half the I cannot scry problem tends to disappear.
On patience, the honest number is that most people need somewhere between five and twenty sessions before a first real impression. The early sittings where nothing happened are not failures. They are you teaching your eyes and your attention to hold the soft state without bailing out the moment it gets strange. Ten quiet minutes a few times a week will take you further than one heroic hour.
There is a discernment line worth holding too. Not everything you see is a message. Floaters, the afterimage of the candle, the surface graying out, that is ordinary eye behavior and it is the doorway, not the content. The scried material is what comes through that state, the shape that carries meaning, the word, the pull toward something. You learn the difference by keeping a log and only trusting what recurs or genuinely lands.
When you break the gaze, write it down immediately, before your mind tidies it into a tidy story. Do not interpret in the chair. Scrying hands you raw, half-formed material, and the meaning comes later, on the page, with a little distance. The skill was never seeing harder. It is letting the surface go soft and staying in the room while it does.
Pssst! You know you can use the Greek names of the Greek gods, right? I'm not talking about ancient Greek. I'm talking about contemporary, spoken Greek. You know the names still exist in Greek. Right....?
Not only the ancient names for figures and terms have remained exactly the same for the most part, but also they're not worse, disrespectful, or "less formal". They are literally the Greek names of the gods/heroes/creatures/terminology today.
You don't have to address these figures the way our people did more than two thousand years ago. Millions of living Greeks today still speak the names of the Greek gods. In the Greek language.
I understand that the versions you use can depend on the resources available to you. And it's fine if you only know the ancient ones, or you only want to use those. But I'd like to make you aware that you don't have to be stuck in 300 BCE linguistically.
Not even the Greek language itself is stuck in 300 BCE! In fact, by 299 BCE, our language had already slightly changed from the year prior, and it continues to do so every year for... well, for a few thousand years at this point.
Ancient names make sense when one uses them in academic contexts, in the study of ancient Greek society and religion. But this religion and culture don't exist in a vacuum inside your history books. This linguistic stagnation in everyday life, though, is part of the centuries-long Western European / American obsession with seeing the Greek culture and language like something divorced from the real world.
There's no particular justification that demands you use the ancient versions in modern informal settings. On the contrary, why not address the Greek gods in the current form of the Greek language?
So if you want to use contemporary Greek, go wild. Use -ες ending instead of -αι. Go full iotacism. Use Έριδα not Έρις, Μοίρες not Μοίραι, Χάρη not Χάρις, Κάθαρση not Κάθαρσις. The differences are minuscule. And - let's be honest - you were not using ancient and modern Greek grammar (like the Greek cases, which depend on the sentence meaning) properly anyway.
Currently writing a philosophical/historical book to witchcraft and how it has evolved to he what it is today. Inevitably I touch upon new age spirituality, but I feel like I wrote out a pretty banger paragraph during this topic.
"Most of new age spirituality is founded in the west, and the western philosophy is capitalist. "What can I take in a way that allows me to reciprocate as little as I can?" We have been slowly losing the sanctity, sacredness, and reverence of magic, nature, and ourselves. Not that our practice has to be wholly formal all the time, that's unrealistic for many people. But magic has become a tool to be utilized and then discarded, spirituality has become currency, while fancy labels and expensive tools have become status symbols."
Reasons why you should be using invasive plants in your spell-work
Helps improve the overall health of your local ecosystems and native wildlife.
Allows you to build a better relationship with the spirits of your area.
There is no such thing as overharvesting, so if you worry you’re the type when foraging for ingredients to go heavy handed; go to your invasives.
Inherently these plants when used in spell work will be fast-working, highly adaptive, and dominating.
You likely already have an invasive in your area that has the intentions you want to use in your next spell.
Allows you to not rely on massive monoculture farms that over-farm and hurt the environment.
Gives you the excuse to go outside and get moving which has been proven to have positive impacts on mental health.
Invasives aren’t hard to find. You can find them at the park, school campuses, any patch of grass along the road, etc.
The baneful possibilities are endless, like you can get so creative.
Depending on what exactly is your invasive and where you’re foraging from it’s free food.
Some Important Reminders
Research what are your natives and your invasives and learn to identify them, especially if they are similar to natives or have dangerous look-a-likes.
Read up on your area’s by-laws to ensure you are foraging invasives in a legal and safe way.
When harvesting invasives harvest carefully and be aware of how this specific invasive spreads, so when harvesting you’re not possibly helping it spread.
Don’t compost invasives.
Some invasives are poisonous or toxic, so research and be careful when handling. Please don’t consume or use in any in workings that would require burning them or skin contact.
If looking for edible invasives or invasives you plan on using in salves or bath rituals, don’t harvest from polluted areas and ensure it is not toxic.
