Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk.

Caleb | he/him | 28 | Cancer ☀️ Cancer 🌕 Leo ⬆️ | Tarot/Runes | Ecclectic Witchcraft, mostly secular. 

[doyoulovethewayzeylily]

you are required to accept that there is a vast conspiracy at all levels of power that has worked for hundreds of years to make you, and everyone you have ever known, more racist. you are required to accept that it has been extremely effective, it worked, you are racist.

you are required to become less racist.

when you are told that you are being racist, you are required to understand that as being offered assistance in resisting this vast conspiracy. say thank you.

you are required to cope with feeling guilty about being racist. your shame is only important to you, its only value is that it motivates you to be less racist.

[bekkathyst]

I know this is weird timing, but I'm dealing with some behind the scenes things right now for the shop that are not all too pleasant, and I could really use a little boost.

So, basically the whole online shop (yes even the jewelry) is 50% off with the coupon code CLEARANCE (The only things not included are the journals/prints)

I hate to do this and I wish I already had my new inventory that I'm waiting on, but I'm just doing what I can for now to keep the shop open! Thank you all so much, I'm really looking forward to putting this annoying phase behind us and getting in a good spot again. Soon! :)

Here's the link to have the coupon code automatically added to your cart!

[bekkathyst]

💞💞💞

[cheaphalloweencostume]

i know i don’t necessarily need to explain myself but i feel compelled to say that i like tarot in the same way i like dream interpretation and flipping coins for answers— it’s not going to tell you anything you don’t already know, it’s just an excuse to examine the patterns and symbols your brain builds and is drawn to

[rimonoroni]

pssssst hey. hey. free and expansive database of folk and fairy tales. you can thank me later

[byjove]

A lot of Welsh and Irish folklore is fascinating because it slots in perfectly together but they hate each other.

[byjove]

Oh, no no no, I mean historically and reflected within folklore. Gaelic raiders were kind of like the proto-vikings and they frequently pillaged costal Britain (and especially costal Wales) from the beginning of written history in the area up until the High Middle Ages, in some places. Saint Patrick was a victim of the Gaelic slavers of Dál Riata (Ireland had begun conquering parts of Scotland around 500 AD) and that was his introduction to Irish culture. Ireland and Wales did exchange goods but Irish pirates and raids on enfeebled post-Roman Britain made Irish kings and warriors common villains in early Welsh folklore while Irish folklore contains accounts of their victories. Sometimes there are two vastly different versions of one dubiously possible historical figure in both Irish and Welsh accounts though the events align.

[skaldish]

Do not let the humble title fool you. This one's a doozy.

Understanding Loki’s Family

Loki and his family play an important role in Norse Mythology. They also play important roles in our everyday lives.

[byjove]

Every time a character is struck down by the wrath of God in Arthurian legend (frequent occurrence) I just visualize them being hit with force lightening from Star Wars.

[nongunktional]

speaking of being on tumblr a while i do think the most devastatingly cringy way to end an argument would be "i have posts older than you"

[lokabrenna-art]

Loki with his children - Hel, Fenrir and Jörmungandr from Norse mythology. Art in limited palette.

[exemiin]

[breelandwalker]

I know that Halloween/Samhain has always fallen on October 31. But wouldn't it make more sense to celebrate it on the day of the midpoint between the autumn equinox and winter solstice? (LMK if I'm missing anything.)

It would, if the point of the thing were to celebrate a midpoint between two events, thus making the holiday a moveable feast (a holiday whose date is malleable and dependent on the timing of other events). But that's not the point of the thing, nor the reason for the observance. Allow me to clap on my Witchstorian hat and explain.

Halloween is technically a Catholic holiday, the night before All Saints Day on November 1st, when all the saints in the calendar who do not have a dedicated day are honored. (And yes, there is a saint for every day of the year. Several for each, in fact.) It is also known as the Feast of All Saints, the Feast of All Hallows, All Hallows Day, and Hallowmas. (Honestly, Hallowmas kind of slaps and I wish it was still in common use.)

So it follows that the night before All Hallows Day is All Hallows Eve, which you may recall from some Halloween movies and media. With regional slang and linguistic shift, Hallows Eve became Hallows Evening -> Hallow Even -> Hallow E'en -> Hallowe'en -> Halloween. You can still see the "Hallowe'en" spelling in books and articles from the early 20th century. The apostrophe stuck around for quite a while.

It's interesting to note that November 2nd in the Catholic calendar is All Souls Day, when the faithful remember and pray for the souls of the dearly departed. Combined with All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day, it comprises a small three-day observance called Hallowtide, historically a time to remember and honor the dead.

So Halloween is datebound because of another holiday. But what about Samhain?

Victorian and Edwardian speculation about Ancient Celtic Pagan Practices notwithstanding (there are no written pre-Christian written records that cover it in depth), "Samhain" is the word for the month of November in Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic) and Gàidhlig (Scots Gaelic). The end of the month of October marked the end of the harvest season, so a festival was held to celebrate one more time before the long cold nights of winter fully set in. (October is Deireadh Fómhair in Gaeilge and Dàmhair in Gàidhlig, if you're curious.)

Technically speaking, Samhain is November 1st, not October 31st, but when your day ends at sunset, that means the night of the 31st is party time. The Wheel of Year generally marks Samhain as October 31st, but some models note that it goes from October 31st to November 1st. There are three other seasonal festivals in the Gaelic calendar that also occur at the beginning/end of a month - Imbolc, Bealtaine, and Lughnasa. And yes, these are still observed in the Isles today.

I hope this helps to clear things up! Enjoy the holidays! 😄🎃

[held-in-twilight]

it doesn't matter how much trauma I have, you will never catch me shitting on christopagans. they're actually some of the best christians you'll ever meet. they understand what christianity is actually supposed to be

christopagans are not your enemy. stop treating them like one. especially in a space that is supposed to be positive. if you have such strong opinions, make your own post. don't go into their spaces and disrespect them. (for helpols: that sounds a lot like breaking a certain social contract I've heard about)

[sadclowncentral]

a beautiful man with long black hair dressed in all white sat next to me on the train back from denmark. i complimented his outfit, and he asked me where the train was going. after i told him, he then pointed at my shirt which says 'catastrophe' and said "oh i know a lot about those." and laughed uproariously.

and then he asked me "do you know about norse mythology?" and i said yes a bit because i read the edda a decade ago, and he said "i met fenrir in denmark" and i said that's probably not good if fenrir is walking around. and he said "oh don't worry about it, vithar will take care of it" and i replied oh but that's ragnarøk, that's still pretty bad for us mortals is it not? and he grinned at me like i said something incredibly funny. and then he ignored me for the rest of the train ride?

[lokisflame]

Pretty sure you met a Norse god

[smarmykemetic]

that was Fenrir

[morbidmomma]

Father and Son

Devotional art by me

[isuggestlandback]

My people are called nehiyawak, in english we are called Cree.

Lately I've been feeling a strong pull to try and teach non Natives about my people's worldview and belief system. Things are hard and scary right now, a lot is changing in our world and there is so much change on the horizon.

I want all of you to know how loving, joyful, and kind my people are. I want you to know how much love and community is baked into our language and spiritual beliefs.

Normally questions about culture or spirit are what we call "tobacco questions", meaning that you need to bring an offering of tobacco to an elder or knowledge keeper in exchange for their teachings.

It's kind of hard to give someone tobacco over tumblr though.

So here is my plan:

I am going to do my best to explain some Cree concepts and cultural teachings to you, my tumblr friends. I will tag these posts with tobacco questions, and put them in my education and Cree culture tags.

I am no elder. But I am a connected nehiyaw with a deep love for my culture, and a deep love for you! In my life I am a cultural and crafts teacher, and I do have some knowledge to share. I hope that you will take time to read what I post.

Please take any information you read on the internet with a grain of salt, anonymous information can sometimes come with mistakes or outright lies. I am only one goofy little Cree, my knowledge is not the be all end all of Indigenous wisdom. There are some topics that are off limits to people outside our culture. I hope you will respect that.

As well, I plan to try and do some fundraising for people in need (including our relatives in Gaza) through answering the questions that I usually delete. I will have a post up for that soon.

Please take care of yourself, drink some water and try to get enough sleep! The world would not be the same without you in it.

[littlestpersimmon]

Would really appreciate if you guys can please pray for my family 🙏 we are religious and I believe in G-d, maybe it will help reach His ear better that we are in need of His protection with the help of other folks. Am desperate to be in a better place than where I am rn.

[smarmykemetic]

"In short, the work is art because it appeared in an art gallery and because experts can talk about it in art language, a conclusion that may not be as silly as it first seems if we are in fact witnessing some sort of ritual event and if we remember that ritual and belief often have a tautological core: we draw the temenos, the sacred precinct, and what enters it becomes, willy-nilly, sacred; we create spaces for art and educate curators to watch the gates, and, willy-nilly, what gets in is art.

Be that as it may, the “art” issue was key to the trial because the law of the land currently holds that a work is not obscene if, taken as a whole, it has any serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. “Art” and “obscenity” are distinct categories, the law says—and on these grounds the jury deferred to the critics and voted to acquit. . . Myself, I’d say that Mapplethorpe was certainly an artist, but a minor one whose import was magnified by the historical moment, and it is this last that really leads me to use him as my example here. The trial of Mapplethorpe’s gay-sex photographs coincided with the first decades of the AIDS pandemic (Mapplethorpe himself died of AIDS in March of 1989), and that context gave the whole event different weight as ritual dirt-work, for the presence of the AIDS virus has challenged the ways in which we imagine sexual behavior and integrate it into the rest of our lives. It’s as if the “cunning” of the AIDS virus lies precisely in its having located its passage in socially invisible sites—in homosexual acts and illegal intravenous drug use. Or rather, there is no cunning here at all, only witless contingency, the coincidence of a parasite and a particular style of social organization. The virus happened to appear in the dirt pile, as it were, and we cannot work with it without working with dirt, which is to say, without altering that style. To take it seriously we are forced to reimagine social space; we have to do such things as give away sterile needles to drug addicts, and allow a formerly closeted eroticism to have a different and fuller public presence.

There may have been a time when American democracy could afford to treat homosexual sex as an excluded anomaly, but once the AIDS virus was among us, that way of patterning social/sexual space no longer served. If we are to live with this virus, everyone needs to be able to imagine gay sexuality. The jurors at the trial, at least, had apparently not imagined what Mapplethorpe had to show them. As one of them said, “I sure didn’t know this stuff existed. It surprised me completely that they did those kind of things. So that was an education in itself.” Another juror, a secretary, told reporters “I learned more about that type of lifestyle than I ever thought I could possibly know.” Which is to say that the dirt ritual of this art trial was not the kind of carnival that releases the excluded only to contain it again. This was rather the dirt-work that threatens to alter the order of things by exposing that order to its own exclusions."

-Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art by Lewis Hyde