cuttlewitch

(25+) she/her & he/him hey, I'm cuttle! this my witchcraft blog. ✨🎀💛🎀✨ My Dreamscape

[cuttlewitch]

Hi! I’m cuttle.

I'm an agnostic witch.

I switch back and forth between the mindsets of viewing deities/spirits as real and not real. Like how fictional characters can feel alive while you still know they’re a writer’s creation.

I have an “about me & my craft” tag:  “✨🎀💛🎀✨” (and a pintrest board for it)

My deconversion from christianity was a big part of my journey, so you’ll see posts about that tagged as #ex christian.

Any posts with nudity will be tagged as such.

[deservedgrace]

There's also a reason I almost always say "harm" when talking about issues in the church and not "bigotry". Bigotry is part of harm, sure, but it isn't the whole picture.

I think sin doctrine is harmful. I think the concept of original sin is harmful. I think purity culture is harmful. I think hell doctrine is harmful. I think vertical morality is harmful. I think mandatory forgiveness is harmful. I think sin leveling is harmful. I think emotion and behavior and thought control are harmful. I think child indoctrination is harmful. I think believing you are separate from the world ("we're in the world not of the world") is harmful. I think isolating/insulating yourself from the world is harmful. I think believing this life is your "practice life" and your "real life" is in heaven is harmful. I think believing that you alone hold the one source of truth is harmful. I think spiritual bypassing is harmful. I think atonement theology is harmful. I think proselytizing is harmful. I think telling people that their thoughts, actions, emotions, beliefs are being monitored every second of every day is harmful. I think believing you are more knowledgeable than experts because you have an all knowing God on your side is harmful. I think believing you know other people's experiences better than they do because you have an all knowing God on your side is harmful. I think encouraging/requiring victims of abuse to put up with abuse because divorce is a sin is harmful. I think prioritizing faith over evidence is harmful.

I'm certainly missing things but this is long enough as is. And not every christian or church does or believes every single one of these, but none of these are one-off or two-off or even three-off things I've experienced. These are all patterns I've noticed.

So I find it odd that when I talk about harm within christianity, a lot of christians only hear "bigotry". And I also find sentiments along the lines of "it's not the doctrine it's the people carrying out the doctrine imperfectly" odd. Even if there were a church that was 100% bigotry free, addressing bigotry doesn't automatically address any of these other things. And I think that the harm christianity does goes far beyond bigotry. I think a lot of the harm is baked into it, baked right into the doctrine. Which means that for every person causing harm by carrying out the doctrine "incorrectly", there are just as many causing harm by carrying it out "correctly".

[oldguardleatherdog]

[photoblogdujour]

Hydrangea meaning many headed angel in the original Akkadian, it was first found at the bottom of rainbows in the Babylonian empire, more towards the purple side of the rainbow, not the red side.

[yuumei-art]

Glass and wings Starlight brings Dreams that gleam sharper Yet my nights grow darker ___

Here's a peek of how I painted this. The HD image and full hours long process videos will be DMed on my Patreon on Oct 5

[g3lc0r3]

[yuumei-art]

Roses without thorns Wings without horns Skin stained in color Still, I grow duller

I've painted a lot of glass wings, and now I want to explore all the possibilities with stained glass wings. What's your favorite type of stained glass? I love nature so anything botanical or starry would be my fav.

The 3 hours long process videos will be DMed on my Patreon on August 5th

[landsccape]

[rainie-is-seasonchange]

Nemophila flower garden.

Hitachi seaside park, Ibaraki, Japan.

[cryptotheism]

Ritual Magic makes a lot more sense when you understand that its basically live historical improv theater. It can be profound, cathartic, deeply important. And like most forms of live theater, it can be kinda cringe even if you're really good at it.

[cryptotheism]

The Occult is to religion what the WWE is to MMA. It's all keyfabe, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Keyfabe is where the Magic happens.

[cryptotheism]

The Clown, The Drag Queen, The Mage, and the Priest, all exist on a linear spectrum. Not necessarily in that order. They overlap.

[forthegothicheroine]

I’m not a classicist, but I suspect one of the reasons so many of the Greek gods are portrayed so unflatteringly was less because they were seen as villains than because they represented their domains.  Of course Zeus sometimes misuses his power, that’s what a king does.  Of course Artemis’s wrath is wild and painful, that’s what nature can be.  Of course Hades snatched away a young girl from her mother’s arms, that’s what death does.  This is one of the reasons callout posts for some gods comparing them negatively to ‘nicer’ gods are kind of missing the point.

[selavy]

as someone who is partially a classicist, this is a better analysis of Greek mythology as a whole than 99.95% of the takes I’ve seen on here (and a substantial number of the takes I’ve seen in ~academia~)

[elbiotipo]

what the fuck did I just download

[elbiotipo]

Context: I downloaded what's called simply "Encyclopedia of Religion" by Lindsay Jones because I found some articles online and they seemed well written in the style I like. I was like, okay, it must be one of those thick reference books, like, 500 pages long.

No. Apparently it's a 15-volume masterwork made by what I think are a hundred experts covering everything from Muslim Sufism to the Hindu Vedas to Slavic gods to the beliefs of the peoples of the Chaco to recent Afro-American religious movments to the structure of the papacy to Selkam religion and back. There are even individual articles on animals like bears and cats. It's honestly scary.

God must be in there, somewhere.

[elbiotipo]

Bro just the preface + list of contents + list of contributors is 100 pages. I still haven't reached the index.

There's a Japanese dude who wrote articles about foxes, toads and frogs, hedgehogs, cocks (direct quote..). There's also articles about.., just reading titles: scholasticism, a lot of Muslim terms I'm not familiar with, theriantropism, that weird Japanese cult who did those sarin attacks, ancient canaaite religion, humor and islam, Jenovah's Witnesses, Gender in Celtic religions, an overview of prehistoric religion, and a lot of things I have never heard about. This is all from different collaborators listed on the same page.

This is just the table of contents. The encyclopedia starts in page 152.

This is scary. Did God write this.

[elbiotipo]

If you want a link, you can find it on Anna's Archive by searching Encyclopedia of Religion, apparently by the Macmillan Library Reference.

It's 170mbs. I am not responsible if your PC crashes.

[elbiotipo]

The thing is that every single article, even if it's half a page short (and they're all well written) has annotated bibliography and primary sources on it. You could seriously get lost forever here.

[mimimar]

the woman who holds the moon

prints available here. my cover for this month's issue of baffling magazine.

[desolatus]

Victor Nizovtsev

[cryptotheism]

Once you understand that sincere belief is not necessary for participation in religion it becomes a big fun box of philosophical tools to play with. And I don't mean that in a belittling way I mean it in a post-structuralist way.

[imogen-mangle]

In case you lost it - a link to the eSIM donation guide. Even if you feel sick and powerless, you can at least do this. And even if you really, really can't donate, you can always at least share this and remind others.

https://gazaesims.com/esim-purchase-tutorial/

[lanotteviene]

the lowest tier, which costs 9 dollars, offers a week of connection while the very next, 16 dollars, will provide a full month of contact with the world to someone who desperately needs it. this is not some idle step. an entire month is a huge length of time for people who are displaced, terrified, and isolated.

[girlcherrys]