devotional blog

Lorraine | any pronouns | 18 | bisexual | gemini sun, sag moon, aries rising | I am a witch and reconstructionist hellenic polytheist. I currently work with Aphrodite, Dionysus, Hermes, and Apollo primarily, so that is the main focus of this blog. I love them with my whole being

[broomsick]

Just in time for Samhain (Vetrnaetr)!

This challenge is meant for you to develop your bond with a chosen deity, or deities. Indeed, you can use it to honor as many deities as you want. You could choose a single deity to devote this challenge to, or you can switch it up as you go and devote certain days to certain deities! Since this challenge’s goal is to improve one’s connection to a deity/deities, it won’t require of you to do any active magical work or elborate ritual. These are all simple actions that can fit into your schedule easily. Enjoy!

Keep reading

[evilios]

Reminder: You cannot “identify a narcissist” no matter how many fancy books you read, though most of the people who try to “spot a narc” don’t even do that little. That’s called armchair diagnosing. Don’t do it.

[ephemeral-cryptid]

fr, it’s so annoying

[lochnessmonster-deactivated2013]

doES ANYONE ELSE REALIZE THAT WE’RE LIKE, THE FIRST GENERATION ON TUMBLR

GIVE IT 10-15 YEARS AND WE’LL ALL BE GROWN UP AND AN ENTIRE NEW SET OF KIDS WILL BE ON HERE BLOGGING ABOUT COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SHOWS AND BANDS AND MOVIES AND BOOKS

THE ONLY THING THEY’LL STILL BE BLOGGING ABOUT THE SAME AS WE WERE IS DOCTOR WHO

HOPEFULLY

[castiel--for--king]

We’ll probably all be blogging about Sherlock season 4.

[ourglennrhee]

maybe

[tumblartifacts]

7/22/2013

[stonerzelda]

[wepon]

happy decade anniversary to this post

[manifestationsofasort]

50 songs I associate with Aphrodite

What The Water Gave Me - Florence + The Machine

Lipstick on the Glass - Wolf Alice

Fade Into You - Mazzy Star

Temporal Love - SRSQ

Angelene - Them Are Us Too

Lavender Fields - Lebanon Hanover

She's My Religion - Pale Waves

Daydreaming - Paramore

Green Light - Lorde

drivers license - Olivia Rodrigo

Ophelia - The Lumineers

Heat Lightning - Mitski

Sparks - Faith and the Muse

Trees and Flowers - Strawberry Switchblade

Pink Orange Red - Cocteau Twins

False Moon - Them Are Us Too

I Know The End - Phoebe Bridger's

My Love - Florence + The Machine

Witchcraft - Graveyard Club

Ribs - Lorde

we fell in love in october - girl in red

Somewhere Somehow - Oddness

Once in a While - Rosegarden Funeral Party

Spellwork - Austra

Cascade - Siouxsie and the Banshees

Macabre - Land of Talk

Dark Hill - Lebanon Hanover

Simmer - Hayley Williams

Night Time - The Birthday Massacre

Mephisto Waltz - Mephisto Waltz

Get Higher - Palate Royale

State of Grace - Taylor Swift

Don't Delete The Kisses - Wolf Alice

Ever Crashing - SRSQ

Northern Lights - Death Cab for Cutie

Cherry-coloured Funk - Cocteau Twins

Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush

Deep Water - Strawberry Switchblade

Last Words of a Shooting Star - Mitski

Venetian Blinds - The frozen Autumn

Pull Apart Heart - Eliza & The Delusional

Remember Me - The Birthday Massacre

Girls Against God - Florence + The Machine

Dear Prudence - Siouxsie and the Banshees

All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun - Mins Cinema

Five Ten Fiftyfold - Cocteau Twins

Deep Water - Strawberry Switchblade

October Passed Me By - girl in red

When We Go Dark - Faith and the Muse

Black Metal - Helena Deland

[kosmogrl]

[delightingintragedy]

"you cant do spells when youre emotional, only when youre calm, grounded, and balanced"

as someone with bipolar disorder id like you to shut the fuck up

[maceofpentacles]

seconding this as someone with borderline personality disorder, literally shut the fuck up

[ephemeral-cryptid]

I also have bipolar disorder, and if I could only do my pagan shit when I’m calm, grounded, and balanced, it would never get done

[coven-of-genesis]

Things witches keep under their pilllows

Traditionally, witches may keep various items under their pillows for different purposes. Some common examples include herbs or botanicals associated with specific intentions, such as lavender for relaxation or mugwort for enhancing dreams.

Other items could include crystals, charms, written spells, or personal items with symbolic significance. It ultimately depends on the witch's individual practices, beliefs, and intentions.

1. Tarot Cards: Some witches keep a tarot deck under their pillow to enhance their intuition and promote vivid dreams. They believe it can facilitate messages from the subconscious or spiritual realm.

2. Dream Journal: Witches who are interested in dream work might keep a journal under their pillow to record their dreams as soon as they wake up. This practice helps with dream recall and analyzing the symbolism within dreams.

3. Protective Talismans: Witches may place protective talismans or amulets under their pillows to ward off negative energy, nightmares, or unwanted spiritual influences. These could include symbols like the evil eye, pentagram, or specific charms chosen for their protective properties.

4. Magickal Tools: Depending on their craft, witches might keep small magickal tools under their pillows, such as a wand, pendulum, or small ritual knife. They believe these tools can absorb and amplify energy while they sleep.

5. Sacred symbols: Witches may choose to place sacred symbols that hold personal meaning or significance under their pillows. This could be anything from sigils to religious or spiritual symbols associated with their belief system.

It's important to note that the items witches keep under their pillows vary greatly and are highly individualized. Practices can differ depending on personal preferences, cultural backgrounds, and specific branches of witchcraft.

[maceofpentacles]

trigger warning for cancer!!

just got off the phone with my dad and my corgi, macy, does have bladder cancer. the vets have been taking their time trying to figure out everything but they finally got back to my dad today to tell him the news. we have 3 options for treatment and none of them are cheap. i hate to do this but i’m in the process of moving 2 more hours away from my family and i want to help them out as much as i can while also not having to ask them for money.

i’m not asking for donations, i’m really not, i sell divination readings so if you’d like to help my parents, myself, and most importantly — macy, please consider buying a reading from me! i have p*yp*l, v*nmo, c*sh*pp, ko-fi, and z*lle ((message me for that))

i’m more than willing to offer multiple readings for a lower price, i’m just desperate to help my parents and my dog. we have 4 dogs in total so having to spend a lot on macy is going to cause issues for everyone in the house so please, please consider sharing this post so people can potentially buy a reading from me.

this is a post that no one ever wants to make but here are some silly pictures of macy begging for my siblings food!!

[maceofpentacles]

we scheduled an appointment with the specialist for monday so literally anything helps. please keep sharing! i’ll be going home on saturday to help but i’ll be sure to bring some divination supplies with me to continue doing readings.

[evilios]

I might have gone out of my way and made a Google Doc with every book and notable study I’ve ever used to learn more about Greek and Roman Ancient religious practice.

It should be available via this link: 🌞

This document will be updating gradually. I only add books I have personally read or at the very least looked into. Website links and most of classical literature are omitted as I believe these sources are more or less easy to find. Links to free sources are added to the books that exist in free access.

The split into topics is relatively loose as many books cross-reference and touch on more topics that one.

Please, read the after-table comment.

[evilios]

🌞 Slight update, sunshines: I realized linking to Z-Library isn’t very fair to people who might not want to make an account to access sources! And while it is completely safe, I do get it. So, Z-Library links are removed, it’s all PDFs now. Academia, ResearchGate, etc. links are untouched. The changes are accessible through the link in the original post.

The PDFs are stored on my Drive, and here’s an additional link to the folder for my generalized sources. It’s Greek and Roman majorly with an inclusion of mixed sources, some Slavic, and some Thracian ones. The folder has more resources than linked in the table, because I just don’t consider some of these large enough to be in the main source list. However, it’s good background reading.

As always, the links will be updated regularly.

[callmealioness]

“In discussing the relationships of goddesses to mortal females, myth must be distinguished from cult. Myths represent goddesses as hostile to women, or show them pursuing many activities foreign to the experience of mortal women. In cult, on the other hand -that is, in the ceremonial veneration of these divinities by women- attention is paid both to the fulfillment of women's needs and to the delineation of their proper roles in society. Thus, for women, Athena's patronage of weaving, Hera's of marriage, and Artemis' of childbirth were of supreme importance, but these qualities are not emphasized in myth.”

- Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (1975) by Sarah B. Pomeroy

[evilios]

I love this. I will never stop quoting what my prof wrote in a paper on the topic of a different story, but still relevant: The story <...> is not a women’s story: men told it to other men in a very specific <...> space. Let us not mistake a tale with a cult myth.

[ephemeral-cryptid]

Thoughts on Prayer in Hellenic Polytheism

So, I just wanted to briefly rant about my thoughts on prayer, specifically in the tumblr polytheist community. It seems to me that most people posting on tumblr about their worship talk about the “proper” way to pray to deities, and it’s always so formal and it almost feels manufactured to me.

A lot of the polytheists, particularly Hellenic polytheists, on here talk about “the right” way to pray, about how you should wash yourself of miasma before you do it, and how it has to be worded a certain way, and how fancy it needs to be, but I just wanted to say, in my opinion, that’s bullshit. 

You don’t need to come up with pretty phrasing for your prayers, you don’t have to take a shower or even wash your hands to pray. You don’t have to cover certain topics in your prayer if you don’t want to. You don’t even need to give your deity an offering before you pray. If you want to do those things, go ahead, absolutely, but you don’t have to.

I also see a similar narrative about praise. A lot of people on here post elaborate, detailed praises, and that’s great, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure your deity loves those praises, and if you feel capable and want to come up with those praises, more power to you. I’m just sick of seeing beginners think they have to come up with these elaborate prayers and praises because it’s completely not necessary. Something as simple as “Hey Aphrodite, I just wanted to let you know that I love and appreciate you deeply and you’ve greatly improved my life” works just as well as all those elaborate poems people write. 

Obviously, this all depends on your personal beliefs and how close you are with the deity in question, but I just wanted to share my opinion on the topic because I don’t really see anyone else saying this. Everyone’s path is highly individual, and you need to do what feels right to you, but your god won’t be upset if your prayers and praises aren’t as elaborate as others. They will still love you, and I believe they will appreciate the authenticity, rather than the almost manufactured-sounding prayers and praises the polytheist community touts so often.

[opaldisaster]

I felt the same way reading the prayer examples people make. It felt so reminiscent of Christianity and the idea that anything other than perfection or complete and utter reverence is outright disrespect. I can tell the gods a joke or ask for something casually without having to fear their wrath or their silence. I’m sure asking for something big would be better received from a larger offering or more formal prayer. But every day praise shouldn’t be so rigid and uptight. It’s ok to have fun and be yourself with this practice! If we can’t do that then what makes it different from the other faiths most of us rejected for that exact reason? 

Note: If you enjoy the formal prayers/rituals that’s great! Do what makes you happy. But for those who don’t enjoy them and find it tedious or impersonal, you’re not doing anything wrong by doing things differently.

[witches-bottle-deactivated20241]

The Mask in Meditation

Interestingly, the Mask has been of help to me in my meditation. It seals off the senses of sight and smell (if it is scented. I have a cloth that I put over my entire face which has an incense smell). It can be paired with headphones to keep out noise. The primary goal is to seal off the physical senses and to open the inward senses. I remember a quote from Oscar Wilde:

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth".

The mask is also a symbol of darkness, of illusion. We wear a mask in the daily world but it hides something beneath it. We hide ourselves for the sake of survival, but that doesn't stop our thought from telling people to go fuck themselves. So, by donning the mask, we are symbolically hiding ourselves so that we can act without being "seen".

The mask is also an item used in initiatory rituals, being the donning of the mask to represent ignorance which is taken off during the initiatory rite. Donning the mask thus represents ourselves stepping into the darkness of self, ignorant. When we take it off at the end of the meditation, we step out of ignorance and into Truth, thus representing that we obtained the information we needed and obtained a higher state of being.

The mask can also take a symbolic form of removing the persona and thus representing the Individuation of the Self. It can aid us in necromancy by representing the "death shroud" which we use to cover ourselves prior to entering into the Realm of the Dead.

I used the benediction of the garment from the Grimoire of Turiel to bless my own mask and the methodology of putting it on and off is a simple incantation and statement:

Placing it On: From Thee Thy Will, to Thee the All Taking it Off: From Lead to Gold, Light be with us.

[thegodwhocums]

Bull-god, drunk god, god of women and transvestites, giver of ecstasy, master of dance, lord of the emotions—such were the various masks worn by the daimon whose lineage went back to ancient Minoan civilization. In his myths and rituals, Dionysos embodied both a feeling for the living continuities of nature and a concept of the human personality as an organism deeply rooted in the nonrational forces of the cosmos. Serving as the focus for the spiritual needs of Greece's underclasses, he became the god that the patriarchal establishment could neither accept nor eliminate. And so Dionysos represented the return of the repressed in several senses: return of the religious needs of the lower classes, return of the demands of the nonrational part of the self, and return of the Minoan feeling for the living unity of nature. And so in turn he threatened several repressors: the aristocracy of well-to-do male citizens, the domination of intellect over emotion, the alienated ethos of the city-state.

Arthur Evans, “The God of Ecstasy: Sex Roles and the Madness of Dionysos,” 1988

[evilios]

🌞 Lesser known epithets of Apollo:

Philesios - Loving - the title of the God in Miletus and Didyma

Iatros - Healer, Helper - the title of the God under which He was worshiped in the Greek colonies alongside the western coast of the Black Sea

Thargelios - of Thargelia or of Thargelion - either deriving from the name of the celebration to honor Apollo during the month Thargelion, or after the month itself

Boreas - of the North - the title of the God as He was worshiped in the Miletus’ colony of Olbia

Neomenios - Apollo of the first month

Prostrates - Protector - epithet of Apollo as the city-protector, especially of those who left their home and settled in a new place (i.e. colonies)

Aguieus - similarly to Prostrates, this title names Apollo as the protector of streets and public spaces as well as travelers

Thyraios - title of Apollo, protector of the doorways

Propylaios - Apollo as the protector of the area before the gates into the house

Milesios - Milesian - title of Apollo in the Greek city of Miletus

Didymaios - Didymaian - epithet of Apollo in Didyma, the city of Ancient Anatolia, where He had established oracular worship

Oulios - Healer - the title under which Apollo was worshiped in Miletus where the epithet Iatros was not yet known

Ptoios - of Ptoion - title of Apollo in honor of His oracle in Ancient Boeotia

Sources:

Apollo Iatros: A Greek God of Pontic Origin by Y. Ustinova The cult of Apollo in the Milesian colonies along the coast of the Black Sea : an inventory of archaeological data by Patrick Bisaillon Theophoric Names and the History of Greek Religion by Robert Parker

[theblackdahliaemporium]

Sealing Oil

Use this oil to close off and protect areas or items. It is also used in the threshold protection ritual.

●1 tbsp carrier oil ●3 pinches salt ●1 whole clove ●1 sage leaf

1. Combine all ingredients in a bottle. Label with the ingredients, purpose, and date. Allow to sit in a sunny spot and infuse for at least 9 days before using.

2. To use, Dip your finger in the oil and draw a line across or along the area that you are sealing. (Around a doorframe or window frame, along a wall, across a threshold, etc.)

-This oil Blend was found in The House Witch, by Arin Murphy-Hiscock 

[evilios]

Alright, this one goes out to neurodivergent people who conceptualize experiences of others through comparison to oneself: you are not selfish, annoying, or egotistical for that.

Some of us can only understand what another is feeling through comparisons with our own experiences. Some of us can only voice empathy and sympathy through feeling what the other is feeling. Some of us do not understand emotions otherwise, and it’s okay.

You’re not a nuisance. You’re caring in your own way, sunshine.

[evilios]

You know, everyone convinced that people end up homeless because of their own “bad decisions” with money and “lack of desire” to get a job has got to be my least favorite human beings alive, if I can even apply the term here in full honesty. The bubble these people live in must be real damn nice to be in though, huh - the happy bubble where your family’s breadwinner doesn’t suddenly leave or die, where landlords are fair, where no one discriminates against you for completely goddamn ridiculous reasons, where everyone is able-bodied and capable of work to earn paychecks, where housing is affordable, where laws are fair, where everyone’s income is stable and consistent, where no one scams anyone over renting, where racism and nationalism against POC and/or immigrant renters doesn’t exist. Where it’s so damn easy to get a home and keep it. That bubble that includes a super small percentage of world population, the super loud part of it that dictates how housing availability is looked at. That bubble must be real damn comfortable to live in.

[ephemeral-cryptid]

So true. Most people I know who ended up in poverty as adults grew up in poverty and had far less opportunities than the majority of people do. I truly believe the majority of impoverished people just were given very unfortunate and unfair circumstances