of witchcraft and wolf and a little bit of vice

[cornyonmains]

Something I find very interesting about this CEO assassination is that the guy who did it has basically become an American hero.

They're probably quite worried about what will happen when they catch this guy, especially with the level of public support he has. If they catch him alive and he gets to air his grievances, he could unite the entire country against the private healthcare system. It could go to trial and result in jury nullification, which would basically send a message to the American public that catching a rich body comes without consquences.

If they kill him to keep his mouth shut, I'd say people will burn cities to the ground, and it could potentially provoke even more anger against private health insurance. In a powder keg, it only takes one person lighting the match.

I know it sounds over the top, but a figurehead is a powerful thing, and that's what this shooter is. The rich understand it. That's why Blue Cross just magically decided they were going to pay for anesthesia again. Those dead-eyed psychopaths were going to take everything they could until someone shot that guy and that's the gospel truth.

Keep the hate fire burning. Watching their fear is the closest I've come to knowing joy since the Bush administration.

[ei-len]

And if they don't catch him, he becomes a mythical figure in the folk psyche.

There's no easy win scenario for them here, and I love to see it.

[traegorn]

What even are wards fundamentally? How do I know if they're working or not. Everyone's all ward for samhain but like okay, how?

"Ward" is just a general term for a protective spell, usually tied to a geographical location or object (though not necessarily(. It's not really a single kind of spell, but a category of what their purpose is.

I've never felt that Samhain required wards any more than any other time of the year, but that's just a personal opinion.

There are about a bazillion protective spells out there, and I talk about ghost specific stuff in one episode of my podcast, but really there are more spells out there than you can shake a stick at.

[blackthornsallie]

Some of what you're seeing about warding for Samhain might also just be witches reminding themselves to refresh their wards, Anon. Holidays are great for seasonal cleaning or to check stuff, esp ones like Samhain that occur on the same date every year

[ei-len]

Yeah, IME there's nothing special about Samhain that requires more warding than is wise to have up as a general rule. Unless you're doing a special working that needs more wards that also ties in to the holiday, but in that case it's the working you need the wards for, you just also need the day for the working too.

But it is helpful for a lot of people to have scheduled maintenance for long-term spellwork like wards tend to be, and scheduling that maintenance for a holiday is an easy way to remember to do it. Not really functionally different than my mom's habit of taking all the light fixtures down to wash them once a year on New Year's Day. It's not mystically Important to do it on that day, it's just a day she consistently has off from work and it's easy for her to remember to do the yearly light-fixture cleaning by scheduling it like that (and once a year is a good frequency for the task, it doesn't get completely gross that soon but it does get dusty enough that you notice the difference after doing it).

[aesethewitch]

On a scale of one to ten, how comfy cozy is your witchcraft?

1 - Neither comfy nor cozy exist in this place

2 - Uncomfy, uncozy

3 - Very occasionally comfy, rarely cozy

4 - Sometimes comfy, occasionally cozy

5 - Not comfy but not uncomfy; not cozy but not uncozy

6 - Comfy and cozy with effort

7 - Effortlessly comfy and cozy

8 - Comfy cozy down to a science

9 - Always comfy, always cozy

10 - You are THE comfy cozy witch

Voting ended onOct 29, 2024

[friend-crow]

I was trying to explain the concept of animism to a coworker today (this came up because she names her cars, so the ensuing conversation is technically @upthewitchypunx's fault), and another "witchy" coworker interrupted to say "except for white bread."

"What?"

"White bread doesn't have a spirit. It's too processed by humans."

"Lots of things are processed by humans. I don't really believe that matters."

"It's the bleaching process. The chemicals."

"Okay... I think we're just operating under different systems of belief."

"It's in like every kitchen witch book I've read."

"Okay but the vast majority of witch books are horseshit. And the good ones also have some horseshit. It's a requirement."

"Yeah, I mean it's all just stuff people made up. You have to figure out your own beliefs."

"Exactly. My belief system doesn't include anything about white bread being excluded from animism."

[stagkingswife]

If white bread is too processed to have a spirit, but cars aren’t that means there’s a very weird scale where the ends are “too processed to have a spirit” and “so processed that we’ve wrapped right back around to having a spirit.” I’d love to know what the middle point is.

[cunt-force-therapy]

I just think bleach expels all spirits including the benign ones

[friend-crow]

Maybe it expels the spirit of the flour, but then the rising and baking process imbues the bread with a new spirit (it's yeast, the spirit is yeast).

[jasper-pagan-witch]

So bleached bread is just Yeast Spirit Squared?

[friend-crow]

It is also kissed by the spirit of fire, which changes it from a regular yeast spirit. It becomes like a whole new spirit, okay?

[stagkingswife]

Have I ever talked to you guys about my compound spirit theory? I hadn’t really thought about it before but bread is 100% a compound spirit.

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Ooo, do go on! I wanna know how many spirits get turned into Bread Spirit.

[stagkingswife-services]

This is a theory that I came to from my work with the spirit of New York City, and then I found more examples the more I thought about it - a lot of my techo-animism work is with compound spirits.

A compound spirit is a spirit made up of other spirits, but it really is more than just the sum of its parts. Using bread as an example, there’s the spirit of the grain, the yeast, the water, the salt, all of the ingredients, but then there’s also the spirit of the oven that comes into play. They all form together to make a new spirit - bread - while still existing in their component parts.

[friend-crow]

Ah, so something akin to the collective Spirit of Sage (as opposed to the spirit of the sage plant in my back yard)? Or perhaps more like the collective spirit of a murder of crows, as opposed to its component individual crows.

Explain it to me like I'm crows.

[jasper-pagan-witch]

The vibes I'm getting is that it's like the spirit of all of your organs and bones but also the entirety of you. Which is hella neat and I need to add that to my practice immediately.

[stagkingswife]

Very much so! You have your spirit, but then there’s Heart, Lungs, Liver, Stomach, Femur, Tibia, and all of the gang as independent spirits who come together to make you.

[friend-crow]

Your blood is made up of blood cell spirits, all working together... or failing to work together, as the case may be.

[stagkingswife]

Now you get it! It’s spirits all the way down!

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Someone needs to edit that "Oops! All Berries!" Captain Crunch to be "Oops! All Spirits!"

[stormwaterwitch]

Someone rang???

[friend-crow]

Thank you, this is a horror.

[windvexer]

Spell to make plane show up? Immediately??

look at the exit door of an airport (airports take exit doors very seriously)

say, "I know the real reason you can't make the plane come. It's because the sky owns you."

The airport will then immediately clear the sky traffic and make the plane come.

#constructive shaming

[lazywitchling]

A quick and easy incantation could also do the trick:

"Hmm. I have to pee. I think I have time before the plane arrives."

[windvexer]

"They're absolutely going to cancel this flight. I have time to get a drink at the Starbucks across the terminal."

[faraige]

I love how this concept applies to almost everything on the regular and it works!

Yesterday I was watching a let's play from a Spanish youtuber/streamer and his game was crashing at the same specific point in the map. He couldn't go around it, he had to go through there to keep playing, so he said something along the lines of "it's making a fuss for attention. Let's all pretend we don't care. Look away and don't pay attention to it, don't give it the satisfaction so it works and stops being an asshole." He turned around and pointed at the viewers to do the same. Without looking he guided the character (it was Majora's Mask, so it was Link) to go through that point. That time it worked.

It's the classic concept of "listen, if you're going to be rude I'll just go"/"oh well, since nothing's happening I guess I'll just go do some other stuff" that we've been using forever because it works. And I love it.

[lazywitchling]

No don’t hashtag-delete-later, this made me so happy!

Legit, there’s something so very animistic about this. Treating inanimate objects like they’re cats knocking things off shelves because they know it gives them attention.

This is actually a bit of a cornerstone of my practice, too. A large number of the witch books I read say some variation on “you have to believe in your magic or else it won’t work!” But I counter this with my own thing: Magic better work if it wants me to keep believing in it. Sometimes spells don’t work, and when it doesn’t, I try not to start fussing and going “Oh no! My spell! Why didn’t it work? Was it something I did? Was it something I didn’t do? Let me get out my grimoire and troubleshoot!” Because I don’t want to teach that cat to knock things off shelves for attention, you know?

If a spell doesn’t work, I’m less likely to cast it again. So if magic wants me to cast it, it better do what I told it to do.

[creature-wizard]

Practicing discernment: Some ways of testing and ruling out the mundane

As many folks in the witchcraft community say, "mundane before magic." That is, before assuming that your problems have a supernatural cause or require a magical solution, look into mundane causes and fixes first. So, I made a list of stuff to consider and try out before committing yourself to something supernatural/magical. This of course a generalized list, so not everything is going to apply to everyone. (The kind of people who get mad at a bean soup video because they don't like beans are advised to skip the rest of this post.)

(This is inspired by that bit of advice going around that's like, "If you hate everyone, eat", etc, which is very good advice.)

I know some of this stuff might sting the ego a little bit, but in all of my experience these problems really are super common among people who feel or suspect certain things. And a little kick to the ego is a lot easier to deal with than the fallout of completely detaching yourself from the real world.

If you feel like the apocalypse is near: examine your living and financial situations (are they stable?), cut down on your consumption of bad or politically-charged news, examine your childhood religious/political indoctrination, and socialize with normies more.

If you feel like you're under spiritual attack or you're constantly sensing bad energies: examine your unresolved tensions with people, work on your social skills (especially your ability to set and maintain boundaries), and examine whether you might have PTSD or C-PTSD (such as from childhood trauma).

If you're stuck on the idea of meeting your soulmate: work on your self-image, work on your social skills, and socialize more.

If you feel like a supernatural or divine being stuck in a mortal body: examine whether you might have autism and/or ADHD.

If you show symptoms of trauma but can't think of a reason you'd be traumatized: examine whether you might have autism and/or ADHD, whether adults were more supportive or invalidating when you were a child, whether you were more often included or excluded at school, and how stable and relaxed your home life actually was.

If you feel like you have a purpose presently unknown to you: build a skill or get into a hobby. Also socialize more.

If you feel called to be a spiritual healer or teacher: examine whether adults emotionally neglected or invalidated you as a child.

If you feel like the gods hate you: examine how your parents treated you when you were growing up, and examine childhood religious indoctrination.

If you feel like you've been cursed for a long time: examine whether you might have ADHD, autism, some form of mental illness, some form of chronic illness, poor social skills, or shitty doctors.

If all of the spells you cast seem to be weak: work on your self-image (including your faith in yourself) and work on your social skills (including your ability to set and maintain boundaries).

If you feel like there has to be a massive conspiracy or global deception: examine whether you might have some form of mental illness, consider childhood indoctrination (were you raised with highly polarizing or conspiratorial beliefs?) and socialize with normies more.

[were--ralph]

MANIFEST

MANIFEST

[arcaniumagi2]

[friend-crow]

Any good grimoire or witchcraft book should have at least a little bit of shit that makes you cringe. You don't get to learn about magic without the cringe factor.

Something something the difference between medicine and poison is dosage...

[echosblanketfort]

it hones your critical thinking skills and ups your bullshit tolerance. these are very important skills for wizards to possess

[friend-crow]

Yes. But also. Wizards are cringe.

Like you have your edgy egotistical Crowley type wizards, who some people think are badasses, but they are also HUGE DORKS.

But badass and huge dork are not mutually exclusive. True wizard shit lies in the reconciliation of these opposing qualities.

[echosblanketfort]

You are so wise. The duality lives in us and we need to acknowledge it if we want to thrive

*nods sagely while blowing a bubble pipe*

[friend-crow]

[crypticarchivist]

It’s like mithridatism.

Taking in small, carefully-measured-to-be-nonlethal dosages of bullshit until you develop a tolerance.

Of course like actual mithridatism it’s possible that you’re just gonna poison the fuck out of yourself and fall hard for some garbage but that’s why you gotta leave the wizard tower and touch grass every once and a while.

Be cringe be free whisper in latin at 3:00am while waving a stick around some candles, also go outside do the dishes don’t forget to pay your taxes. You look really stupid but the ritual circle design is really cool.

[friend-crow]

#it’s like that one post where someone talked about being able to tell when a storm was coming by looking at cheese#and there turned out to actually be a scientific answer for why they were able to tell by looking at cheese#but like they didn’t know that scientific explanation#they just noticed the pattern

That's @lazywitchling! I'm pretty sure she does know the scientific reasons that cheeses sweat before a rain, though.

[lazywitchling]

[shows up bleary eyed and in a bathrobe]

Why are my ears burning

[breelandwalker]

Something something theatre lessons about moving past ego and allowing yourself to Do A Thing without caring what it looks like.

...... -hands Jes a damn coffee, poor thing, it's too early for this-

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Biggest pet peeve in modern witchcraft books?

Besides the aforementioned fluff-to-hide-lack-of-knowledge, it's still gotta be the claim that every witch follows the Wheel of the Year. The amount of times I saw that in witchcraft books was almost enough to drive me to stop calling myself a witch entirely.

Thanks for letting me bitch about this, anon!

~Jasper

(Not to say you can't follow the Wheel of the Year, but I'm tired of everyone insisting that they're universal.)

[echosblanketfort]

same tbh. i also don't follow the wheel of the year. it's not a universal witch experience

[windvexer]

the year is obviously a square, but nobody wants to talk about it

(the corners are in februrary, april, august, and october)

[jasper-pagan-witch]

I hate but also love that this works.

[asksecularwitch]

New Formation Lore Drop

[traegorn]

Sorry, but that's not a square, it's a rectangle. And if you want a Rectangle of the year, it's great. If it was a square though, the sides would have the same number of months. If you want a square of the year, you're going to have to change the corners.

Here's a working version of a square of the year:

[drafty-castle]

New debate on sacred geometry just dropped: what makes a square?

[traegorn]

The geometry in sacred geometry is important, y'know?

[noctumsolis]

A square is a circle in which pi=4.

[kaleidoscopecatiii]

@traegorn I'm curious why didn't you go with the corners being the equinoxes and solstices?

[traegorn]

I was just picking random ones and wanted Samhain and Beltane on the corners.

[ei-len]

Personally I'd put August, November, February, and May in the corners because in my area those are the months when the season functionally changes. August you start getting a hint of autumn chill and the leaves start barely noticeably tinting toward their fall colors. November, it snows. February, you get the first of the fake-out spring thaws. May, it starts getting hot enough that you have to retire your long pants for the summer.

[breelandwalker]

Some knot-knickered traditionalist shrieking in my inbox: YOU CAN'T JUST THROW SPELLS TOGETHER OUT OF NOTHING, YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE YOUR COMPONENTS ARE CLEANSED AND PREPARED PROPERLY, YOU HAVE TO PREPARE A RITUAL SPACE AND TIME IT JUST RIGHT AND USE VERY SPECIFIC HERBS TO-....

Me: -emptying the contents of storebought teabags into a recycled jam jar- Fascinating.

[ei-len]

I mean sure maybe YOU (general/@ shrieking traditionalist) can't just throw spells together. Sounds like a skill issue.

[lazywitchling]

I miss making informative witchy posts, but everything feels so personalized to me now. I’m not sure how to share it anymore.

Like, how do I tell you about a bridge collapse in the spirit world? The month of offerings to grow a mushroom bridge? The conversations about the possibility of taking a dip in the stream that the bridge goes over? The big fuckoff tree? The chinchilla-like spirit that protected the big fuckoff tree?

It was easier when all I had to tell you about was the silly spell where I just yelled “gimme!” at a candle and got a raise.

[friend-crow]

Uh oh, sounds like you've strayed into the quagmire of mysticism!

[lazywitchling]

I dislike sounding woo woo on my woo woo blog!

[ei-len]

It's the way advanced witchcraft goes.

You start out, you're just learning how to do magic, you're doing candle spells, jar spells, knot spells, maybe dabbling in energy work, learning to read tarot or lenormand and divine with a pendulum... (or/and, and/or, nothing is absolute)

And that's easy to talk about! There are a lot of people who share your frame of reference for those things. You read books and those books gave you vocabulary to talk about those things, in ways that everyone else who knows about those things will understand.

And then you just keep advancing, and in advancing you start to specialize. And as you specialize, the ability to talk about it sneaks away from you, as you get into niche fields where you might be the first witch to explore, or at least it's rare for another to pass the same way.

And often, you start having real secrets. Not just ones like "I don't want people to know..." but serious ones. You learn secrets that aren't yours to tell, that belong to entities who could really give you a bad time if you chose to betray their trust, or to whom you at least feel beholden to maintain trust with. Or perhaps, who extracted an oath of secrecy. Not just a promise that can be broken and the only thing broken with it is trust (as if trust is unimportant -- it isn't unimportant, at all. It's hugely important. But it's only one thing. It doesn't compare). To break a true oath is a deeply serious matter. You also learn secrets that could endanger you, or entities you care for, if they were exposed. (not unlike life in general, really. With age and experience comes the burden of acquired secrets, but it also comes with the strength to carry them, if you try. You learn to pack them away safely, wrapped in solid reasons for keeping them to yourself). You also have experiences that are so far beyond what you ever could have imagined when you started out that you know, beyond any doubt, that to elaborate on them would have others thinking you're crazy, or pretending. They can't understand until and unless they reach the same point.

[traegorn]

Or you have stories that just involve other witches that might not be open about their craft -- or things that feel so ridiculous you'd never believe them if someone told your own story back to you.

If anyone wonders why I don't do a lot of "how tos" on my show... 😆

[ei-len]

Yeah, "it involves other witches that might not be open about their craft" falls into the category of "not really your secret to tell, there's another entity who wouldn't like it being shared". Sometimes the consequences for chattering too freely are metaphysical, sometimes they're social. Personally I think the ridiculous ones make the BEST stories to share, but I'm mostly immune to shame, so. Yeah, I'll tell people about the time I decided to try using a CAH deck as an oracle, pulled "a super-soaker full of cat pee", and later that day discovered that my literal cat had literally peed in my bathtub.

[lazywitchling]

I miss making informative witchy posts, but everything feels so personalized to me now. I’m not sure how to share it anymore.

Like, how do I tell you about a bridge collapse in the spirit world? The month of offerings to grow a mushroom bridge? The conversations about the possibility of taking a dip in the stream that the bridge goes over? The big fuckoff tree? The chinchilla-like spirit that protected the big fuckoff tree?

It was easier when all I had to tell you about was the silly spell where I just yelled “gimme!” at a candle and got a raise.

[friend-crow]

Uh oh, sounds like you've strayed into the quagmire of mysticism!

[lazywitchling]

I dislike sounding woo woo on my woo woo blog!

[ei-len]

It's the way advanced witchcraft goes.

You start out, you're just learning how to do magic, you're doing candle spells, jar spells, knot spells, maybe dabbling in energy work, learning to read tarot or lenormand and divine with a pendulum... (or/and, and/or, nothing is absolute)

And that's easy to talk about! There are a lot of people who share your frame of reference for those things. You read books and those books gave you vocabulary to talk about those things, in ways that everyone else who knows about those things will understand.

And then you just keep advancing, and in advancing you start to specialize. And as you specialize, the ability to talk about it sneaks away from you, as you get into niche fields where you might be the first witch to explore, or at least it's rare for another to pass the same way.

And often, you start having real secrets. Not just ones like "I don't want people to know..." but serious ones. You learn secrets that aren't yours to tell, that belong to entities who could really give you a bad time if you chose to betray their trust, or to whom you at least feel beholden to maintain trust with. Or perhaps, who extracted an oath of secrecy. Not just a promise that can be broken and the only thing broken with it is trust (as if trust is unimportant -- it isn't unimportant, at all. It's hugely important. But it's only one thing. It doesn't compare). To break a true oath is a deeply serious matter. You also learn secrets that could endanger you, or entities you care for, if they were exposed. (not unlike life in general, really. With age and experience comes the burden of acquired secrets, but it also comes with the strength to carry them, if you try. You learn to pack them away safely, wrapped in solid reasons for keeping them to yourself). You also have experiences that are so far beyond what you ever could have imagined when you started out that you know, beyond any doubt, that to elaborate on them would have others thinking you're crazy, or pretending. They can't understand until and unless they reach the same point.

[windvexer]

I keep waiting to say this until it's not a vagueblog and now it isn't so

Some people actually do need physical tools and ingredients to practice their witchcraft, even if they have to buy them mass produced, and it's okay to buy stuff for your practice even if you only use it for a little while, or it ends up not being long term or in regular use.

"You don't need to buy anything or even ever use physical tools or ingredients to be a witch!" is IMO a well-meaning sentiment that people mean in an encouraging way, but I don't think it's accurate or fair.

[lazywitchling]

My new favorite spin on the “you don’t need to buy anything” take is “you can’t buy skill”. Which is… a paraphrase from Don Martin in Dabbler’s Guide to Witchcraft. [grumbly noises]

I think of it like art supplies. Yes you can make art with a bic pencil and computer paper, but having actual art supplies helps tremendously. BUT ALSO, buying the fancy top of the line art supplies is not a substitute for practice/skill/know-how. A trained artist can do a lot more with a bic pencil and computer paper than an amateur could do with top of the line art supplies, but that doesn’t mean the artist never needs those things.

[ei-len]

It really is like art supplies. And also like art supplies, you gotta get the right kind of supplies for the art you want to make!

For some artists, sharpies are the best tool for the job. Other artists find sharpies don't work well for what they want to create, and work best with high-end art markers. Or with a different medium entirely!

The best art teacher I ever had, in a drawing class, once took away a kid's pencils because he was using them to draw in a sketchy style with heavy bold lines -- and gave that kid a box of charcoals to work with instead. And his art improved, one day to the next, despite that he hadn't had time to practice enough to upgrade his skills, because he was now working with a tool that better suited the style he wanted to work in.

Some artists make really cool sculptures out of literal trash, random sticks, whatever they find on the ground. Some work in ephemeral mediums like footprints in snow while others strive to make their work last as long as possible. Some go in with a clear vision of the final outcome from the beginning, and work in careful steps to produce the exact result they envision. Others mess around until they like the outcome (the same art teacher once put a sculptural installment up in the classroom by dumping some trash cans that had been full of old clay that had dried out. Three in a row, side by side, each progressively more crumbling than the last. The whole class agreed: it was Art, and it was interesting. It stayed up for a week or two IIRC before someone administrative got bitchy about it).

What tools are best to use depends on what you want to make and how you want to make it. If your magic is made of random sticks from the ground and a salt packet you kept from the last time you got fries, that's fine! If it's made from carefully crafted ritual with expensive and elaborate accoutrements, that's also fine! Or with nothing more than your focus and force of will.

Art is magic and magic is art, anyway.

[ei-len]

I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this, but I've just been struck with the inspiration to build a divination set consisting of the most unusual dice possible. Grab one to a handful out of the bag, toss them, read the results both in dice type and upward faces. I'm thinking random dice from those sexy dice games or whatever mixed with standard polyhedrals and dice-within-dice and niche dice from very specific board games. If I can get my hands on one without spending too much money or making too big a mess, the inside piece from a magic 8 ball in there too. Just. So many weird dice. The color and shape of the dice drawn have divinatory meaning as well as the numbers or symbols that appear in the throw.

[friend-crow]

There are actually a lot of rules to magic.

Like yes, there's no rules, but if your takeaway from that is that there's literally no rules, then I think you missed the larger conversation about the specific ways in which there are no rules.

What "there's no rules" means is that there is not one universal set of rules that applies to every practitioner.

It means that nobody gets to act as an authority on what the rules are for other people.

It means that if you show up on somebody else's post saying "the first rule of witchcraft is that you must only use magic for good" you will probably (and deservedly) be told to fuck off.

What "there's no rules" does NOT mean is that there are literally no rules. There are SO many rules. People just work within their own set of rules.

Some rules come with the territory of working within a specific tradition.

Some rules are set by entities that practitioners work with, and might be quite specific to each individual.

Some rules are like laws of physics. They define the mechanisms by which magic works within a paradigm, and what the limits are on what it can do. A magical practice consisting of "I can do literally anything," is typically a practice that hasn't had a lot of genuine thought put into it. I have yet to meet anybody who can literally turn invisible or fly.

Some rules are more like a personal code of ethics.

So, when you burst into someone else's post to announce that there are no rules, you might not be told to fuck off quite as quickly as if you turned up to impose your personal rules on other people, but you are essentially signaling that you do not understand the concept of rules within a magical practice.

Disclaimer: some people are going to be obnoxious and make their own posts about how everyone else should be following their rules, and while it might be tempting to correct them, in my experience these people tend to get 0 notes, and you're more likely to give them the exposure they desire by starting a flame war. When they find that followers don't come flocking to them, they eventually get bored and give up.

[windvexer]

Thank you for your reply. When I talk about compatibility, I mean how they will interact in working with each other, whether they will harm each other. Let's say I've created a self-confidence sigil and I want to add another symbol of a similar theme to it. Do I need to diagnose how these two symbols will work together? Sorry for the confusion, I don't speak English well

No worries.

I think that this would be a really useful way to study magic, and learn more about your own practice. It's my experience that spells can and do interact with each other and compound with each other.

Although I don't work with sigils, I generally stop to reflect on how any ongoing magic might interact with new workings I want to complete.

So I think this is a good idea, especially if you want to really get into studying and understanding sorcery.

I don't know if it's strictly necessary if you just want to work the sigils and be done with it, however.

[ei-len]

I once did a cursebreaking that absolutely fucked a completely unrelated piece of long-standing spellwork I'd previously set up, just straight-up demolished it, I had to completely re-cast it again afterward. Very inconvenient.

Spells can definitely interact with each other in ways that might not always be immediately apparent. Usually IME things for similar purpose tend to work well together, if you put a little thought into them, but it's always worth checking out potential points of conflict before adding a new spell to your repertoire.

[traegorn]

So I’ve been hella depressed lately and was wondering if you knew any spells to help that? I’m also in therapy and on meds so like my first instinct has not been Magic Away The Sads but it did run through my mind. Sorry if this is a dumb question, idk I’m just tryna kick these feelings some way or another

Sorry. Not really any shortcuts on that front in my spellbook.

Glad you're in therapy and getting meds you need. I don't really have any advice you probably haven't heard before though, so I don't really know how helpful it would be.

[ei-len]

Couldn't hurt to work some things like, a spell to bring you/your doctors knowledge/insight with which to address your problem effectively, or to relieve circumstances in your life that are impeding you from making mundane progress toward the Kick The Sads goal, if relevant. Unfortunately, magic doesn't tend to be very effective against your own emotions directly IME.

I spent a very long time throwing everything I could think of at the problem of Being Depressed, without a lot of success (until I hit on the one thing that finally fucking worked for me, which is mundane in nature).

Magically, the best results I got was with a self-binding to prevent myself from acting on self-harm impulses (before anyone gets too excited I need to say it's very personally tailored, to an extent that makes it functionally useless to anyone but me, sorry). That spell is worked into a tattoo and still active, although I no longer need it like I used to -- there's no detriment in being magically bound from taking actions I both logically and rationally don't want to take AND no longer experience impulses toward, so I have no motivation to put in the effort breaking it would require. I deliberately designed it to be very difficult to break (I do know a way to break it, it's unwise to cast any completely unbreakable spell, but it would require very significant effort and a not-insignificant financial expense as well as a duration of time that makes it extremely unlikely that a bout of depression lows severe enough to make me want to break it would last long enough to finish following through -- and that's an intentional failsafe measure). I put a LOT of work into making sure it wouldn't loophole me into a weird unexpected corner before committing to it in ink and blood (considering things like, ensuring it won't interfere with seeking medical care that necessitates "injury" to achieve a treatment or diagnosis, or prevent me from adding more decorative body mods assuming I'm being reasonably safe about them, etc), and I can't really teach anyone specifically how to do it because it's so specifically designed for me.

And also, it didn't make living with severe depression any less distressing; the Sads persisted unabated. It just ensured my continued survival in spite of that distress. Anyway I think if you're not in particular danger of hitting crisis-level lows a spell like that is probably overkill. Even for me, it's only really activated once -- but knowing that I have it, and being able to feel it flickering to attention if I poke too hard at the idea of doing something I shouldn't, definitely brings me peace of mind knowing I'm protected from those impulses if things ever get that bad again.