grungefairy 🌜⭐️🧚🏻‍♀️

hey friends! this is just going to be talking about my personal spiritual / wiccan journey and if I get anything wrong please just politely tell me! blessed be x also theres going to be some eating disorder things, please just report dont block GW - 50kgs

[recreationalwitchcraft]

Your book on Witchcraft is bullshit if:

It uses the “Witchcraft” and “Wicca” fuckin interchangeably 

It suggests you’re one dreadlock and eagle feather away from being your very own, white Shaman

It claims “Voodoo” is a super fun, spooky thing that everyone should join in on

Smudging is cool, also, has anyone seen my works cited? Oh that’s right, I didn’t make one.

If you curse, you are mustache twirling devil and the 3 fold law is gonna send your ass to witch hell 

All witches, Wiccan or not should abide by the rede or burn the hell up in the aforementioned fictional witch hell

Ignorantly throws around the word “Chakras” like fuckin mardi gras beads 

You even see the word gypsy once

Spices things up with some sacred, closed and wildly un researched Native American Spiritualism

Miscellaneous new age white person spiritualism

And here’s some Ohms.  ૐ ૐ ૐ 

I’m not sure what what they but have some more Ohms ૐ ૐ ૐ ૐ ૐ 

Wait, white sage is endangered?

[breelandwalker]

New Additions:

It suggests that “witch” is a gendered term or refers to witches (and possibly the reader) exclusively with she/her pronouns.

It sets hard timelines on length of study before you can call yourself a witch or learn certain skills or try certain activities i.e. “year and a day before you can cast a spell” with a hand-wave of an explanation. (Bonus points if it’s a book that’s supposedly for solitary witches.)

It says anything about youth being inherently magical. Big honking red flag.

“The Law of Attraction TOTALLY works! You just need to be more positive!”

You don’t need medicine or doctors, just drink this crystal herb elixir and do this spell, oh and don’t forget to put mugwort in your tea. What are health warnings?

But of COURSE we can apply modern concepts to ancient narratives without any regard for the historical record! There was totally a pre-Christian Irish potato goddess! 

NINE MILLION DEAD WITCHES!!!11!!!1!!eleventy

There is only ONE RIGHT WAY to be a witch, the rest are garbage and you’ll probably end the world if you get things wrong.

[stormbornwitch]

Thanks for the great additions Bree!

[stormbornwitch]

There are so many 'witchcraft' books available nowadays!

Now I know this is gonna make me sound old as shit but I gotta say it:

When I was started learning about witchcraft around 15 years ago, all 'witchcraft' books were wiccan books and they were all fucking awful. You might find 3 books in the back corner of a bookstore and they were all misinformation and blatant lies about history. You might also find a couple books about tarot, dream interpretation, healing crystals and natural remedies but that was IT. To find out any real information you had to do extensive research in historical and anthropological texts and academic journals.

So while there are thousands of 'witchcraft' books available nowadays (I saw 6 sitting on the same shelf as popular self-help books in KMART today)... they're all watered down and 'socially acceptable' spells for love, money and self acceptance....

Dont get me wrong, I'm thrilled that I dont have to hide my practice as much as I had to years ago but... a lot of the witches I meet now are swimming in the shallow part of the pool while thinking they're delving in the deep seas. This lack of understanding isn't their fault though, just as it wasn't mine when all I had was books that only shared personal gnosis and misinformation.

The problem with flooding the market with shallow 'witchcraft' books, is that these books don't really help new witches and they don't help experienced practitioners either. For newbies these books can touch on some of the basics while simultaneously giving the reader the impression that this book will tell them EVERYTHING THEY NEED TO KNOW. The majority of these books also don't help experienced practitioners because they either share a rehash of 'common knowledge' or they make witchcraft out to be this fluffy-bunny, white-washed, appropriating crap.

Now, I know that this post will likely offend people, and for that I apologise. This was simply a frustrated rant by a witch who has seen too many terrible 'witchcraft' books.

[slowpurgatory]

what books would you recommend?

[stormbornwitch]

Unfortunately, its not so easy to just recommend a list of books because it would be snippets from an entire library. I will elaborate:

The majority of my practice is built around history books, recorded folklore, academic journals and anthropological texts. My general rule of thumb is, if the author cannot bother to include a workes cited, end notes or any sort of referencing system to say where information originated from then it should all be considered personal gnosis. Which isn't wrong - it's a bit like reading a diary; it's a great primary source into the thoughts and perspective of the author but it can include misinformation and bias that they believe as fact.

Now, historical sources also can't be treated as gospel and have to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt because of academia's racist interpretations of history for the last hundred years. Another thing to consider is that the majority of people in academia who write papers and publish this information about historical witchcraft... don't practice witchcraft themselves so the lense through which they understand the material is skewed and can lead to misunderstandings.

So as I said at the start, no one book will give you a complete picture of witchcraft. Some will give context and primary sources. Some will give snippets of historical practice which can be misinterpreted due to either preconceived notions about what witchcraft 'should' be or personal biases of the author.

We are all human. We are all inherently opinionated and biased. This cannot be helped. That's why its important to read a wide variety of texts critically and then test out what you learned in practice. It is only through this gruelling back-and-forth process of in-depth research and personal practice can you grow in your practice.

I'm sorry there's no easy answer for you. I wish it was easier for people to learn witchcraft but I guess that's the real rite-of-passage isn't it; if you want to practice witchcraft you have to be willing to put in the time and hard work.

[jeffreywinger-archived]

Horror is a universal language; we’re all afraid. We’re born afraid, we’re all afraid of things: death, disfigurement, loss of a loved one. Everything that I’m afraid of, you’re afraid of and vice versa. So everybody feels fear and suspense. We were little kids once and so it’s taking that basic human condition and emotion and just fucking with it and playing with it. You can invent new horrors.                               —John Carpenter (remake of this edit)

[grubloved]

humans are an essential part of the ecosystem. nearly every ecosystem on earth had humans as an essential part of its function. the earth would be worse off than before if we were gone suddenly overnight. send tweet

[interstellarsailor]

I don’t remember dinosaurs drilling for oil and dumping trash everywhere…

[grubloved]

very gently: yes. some humans have been doing destruction recently. yes, some humans are living in unsustainable ways. yes, the world is suffering for the actions of the humans who exploit the natural world.

however.

this has not been the case for the vast majority of time. this is not currently the case for many people on the earth right now. we evolved alongside earth’s ecosystems, as they evolved alongside us. we are part of it. we are embedded in the world. we have never been seperate from it, and the idea that we are – that our actions somehow could have no consequences for the world at large – is the mindset that allowed the current crisis to reach where it is.

it’s. hard to truly get a sense of the scale of humans’ existence on the planet– under the readmore i’ve drawn out a rough timeline for you. it is very long, so i’ll put it under the cut.

suffice it to say: humans, homo sapiens, have existed on the earth for 315,000 years. we did not invent agriculture until 11,500 years ago. the industrial revolution, the drilling for oil and dumping plastic? that has happened only in the last 250 years. 

we are part of the world. we are in the world. some of us have very, very recently forgotten this fact. but we are remembering, and remembering quickly.

the earth needs us. it needs us to fix the things we’ve gotten wrong, yes. but it also needs us to be humans. to hunt, to burn, to care for the forests and the fields and the grasslands. it has always needed us. we are not interlopers here. we belong. we have simply forgotten our manners.

Keep reading

[deactivated-blog]

A shaky (sorry!) video of my alethiometer-like device in action. I call it my divining watch, and no, I’ve no idea who made it or why. It seems to be pretty old, maybe from the 1920s-1950s?

I bought it from a dealer in the UK who specializes in rare watches. No, he doesn’t have any more like this, as far as I know. No, this isn’t a movie prop or, as far as I can tell, in any way tied to the actual series of His Dark Materials.

It does work a bit like an alethiometer, though. Instead of twisting the needles around to formulate a question, though, I just ask. Then I wind the watch and it points to a symbol, which I interpret. I do know a bit about it, but not who made it. You can check out my #divining+watch tag for more on that...

[brokenmusicboxwolfe]

New stuff

The 21st from November

[successionoflessons]

01/08/2022

[astraldemise]

https://twitter.com/Kbearart/status/1433601390429892621

wizard

thats plectronoceras its the first 100% definite cephalopod in the fossil record, wizard friend :)

[astraldemise]

this website is a hivemind but gotdamn it sure is a squizard

[catadromously]

pondering the orb (wiwaxia) ...

[nibeul]

man some of y’all are so boring, let characters be flawed. stop tryna justify their actions, the reason they did that is because they suck and that’s infinitely more interesting than trying to spin the narrative around to make them seem like a perfect person

[catasters]

[psikonauti]

Richard Kirk Mills (American, b. 1947)

Earnest on the Lookout, 2019

Oil on canvas

[butterflyliliththefemboywife]

Not me falling asleep looking at thinspo since im away from home and cant get caught.

[grungefairyxo]

i’d really appreciate if you go follow my tiktok! i really want to reach 100 followers by christmas and i post about 5 times a day. also you can request videos! love you and it would be very much appreciated!

[grungefairyxo]

currently watching skins (just for cassie and effy)

[growing-yet-into-magic]

Book Recommendations:

I have a book list of witchcraft books I do own (which is now updated too!), but I also have a ton of books from the library I have reviewed as well! There are many I have posted, but not all of them are actually books I would recommend to others, so let me compile the books I don’t own which I would actually like to get the word out about here: 

Books I genuinely like:

Grovedaughter Witchery, which I liked so much that I bought it and then gave away and then bought again

Crystal Ball Reading for beginners by Alexandra Chauran

Glamour Magic by Deborah Castellano

Her Hidden Children, Chas S. Clifton

HausMagick by Erica Feldman

Traditional Wicca, Thorn Mooney (Which I don’t think I wrote a review for)

Of Witchcraft and Whimsy, which I also liked so much that I gave it to a circle-sister as a gift

The Magickal Family, Monica Crosson

Things Your Elders Never Told You, Katherine Clark

The Study of Witchcraft by Deborah Lipp

The Witch’s Book of Shadows by Jason Mankey

Tea Leaf Reading for Beginners by Caroline Dow

Garden Witchery by Ellen Dugan

A History of Witchcraft: Heretics, Sorcerers, and Pagans by Russell and Alexander

Anathema! By Marc Drogin

And for the Kemetic Polytheists out there, Nefer  and Dancing for Hathor :)

Books I recommend for historical/context value, but don’t personally enjoy:

Doreen Valiente’s Collection

The Triumph of the Moon, Ronald Hutton

Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches 

American Witches by Herbert J Davis. (This one is expensive. File an ILL if you want to read it.)

How do I judge books?

I have the full post linked above, but tldr, I look for things that provide helpful, accurate information, are able to convey their point in the midst of and enjoyable experience, and aren’t racist, transphobic, or ableist. Like the Beschdel test, I am surprised how many books just don’t pass.

This is not the full extent of all the books I have reviewed or that I like, but I don’t have an easily distinguishable tag, so here’s the down low. Take it and run.

Blessings!

[promptsforthestrugglingauthor]

Writing Prompt #1742

"I would say I'm surprised to see you here, but I suppose I shouldn't have expected you to die so easily in the first place."

[neeeeooowww]

❤️ Sorting out my thinspo box today ❤️