[highways-are-liminal-spaces]

[femme--deer-deactivated20260430]

Picture from the Photographer Kalynn Youngblood, in her series Staged Portraiture and Documenting daily Black Life.

This is all I need in my life.

[sistersbyfreya]

[stsathyre]

I’ve never seen this name— granted, I’m not actively hunting books either. But heads up.

The casting the wide net, should be the first clue you’re on the road to some bull shit.

[buggywiththefolkmagic]

Ah yes the at best copy pasted info from Wikipedia and at worst ChatGPT nonsense. Ahhhhh.

[wandering-free-and-queer]

Can confirm, as someone who spends a LOT of time researching pagan authors, Mari Silva is one of the (unfortunately many) AI authors out there. "She" has put out dozens of books in four years. Do not buy, do not read.

[elminx]

If you wanna get into witchcraft, you need to do witchcraft.

You don't need to research anything.

There, I fixed it.

Not everyone is a researcher, and that is okay.

[elminx]

The irony of this is, I’m a serious researcher. That’s why I know you don’t need to. 😂

[breelandwalker]

Allow me to cosign but also counterpoint, as someone who is also a researcher and whose practice includes a LOT of research -

You don't have to do thesis-level research to be a proper witch. To be a witch, you literally do just have to self-identify as a witch (even if only in private) and practice something that you acknowledge as witchcraft.

HOWEVER.

Research really does help.

It doesn't have to be a LOT or super in-depth, but having some kind of practical information alongside whatever magical exploration you're doing can be incredibly useful. Whether it's knowing what plants exist in your local biome or understanding the history of the practice you've chosen or learning about the cultural framework of your favorite mythology cycle, I do recommend at least A Bit Of Light Reading.

(Also, this helps with building a bullshit detector that keeps you out of pipelines, MLM scams, and misinformation slop.)

[windvexer]

user chicken this has been driving me crazy. if the east is air then SURELY the west is earth. right. *right*???

I place fire in the east, earth in the south, water in the west, and air in the north.

It doesn't matter what path you take to find these elemental heartlands, because they are fairy roads.

Elemental Earth is not in any direction. You can't access it by traveling physically east. Yet it is true that it can be accessed if you search for it in any one direction for long enough. The key is finding how to get there for yourself.

The fairy road to Elemental Earth does not lead to a destination that is south of anyone. Or west, or north, or east of anyone.

It is a road that may begin no matter where you are standing, and no matter which direction you travel in, you may arrive at Elemental Earth.

The trick of it is that you are the one who has got to traverse it, and learn to open it up, and to call things up and down it. You are the cartographer exploring the roads. They are not *unique* to you, you do not make them up, they are not dependent on your whims: but it will be true nonetheless that if you are unable to discover Elemental Earth by traveling West, then you may arrive at your desired destination by traveling East.

If a group or tradition have already explored and documented these roads, do as they advise: if you are on your own, follow your heart.

The pacific ocean is to the west of me. That made a lot of sense. The sun rises in the east. I went from there. I was nice to every old woman I met and I saved ants nests from stones and rescued fish from reeds, and then one day no matter where I was standing a road started at my feet, and no matter where Elemental Earth was I found it by going South.

Now I'm so good at finding Elemental Earth to the south that I think if I tried to find it by going North, I'd learn a lot of new lessons and the spirits and powers and lessons would change. So it's not whims, it's not dependent on you, they are outside of you:

But they're fairy roads. So they can go in any direction and lead to the same destination.

If you can't find them where you're standing, they intersect as crossroads in the center of every Circle. Call the Circle first and it makes calling the roads much easier.

[windvexer]

To speak plainly I believe that the steps to finding out which direction to go for which elements amount to:

What makes the most sense for you (have you got a huge lake or an ocean right in one direction? etc)

What you're vibing with

More or less what's convenient

Pretty much whatever

And then:

Call the elements in whatever direction you put them in

If something feels weird or doesn't work just move them around a bit until it feels like it's really grooving

[breelandwalker]

I use this exact system. Because the one I would read in witchy books didn't make sense to me.

The sea is to the east of me. Therefore, East is water.

The weather blows in from the west. Therefore, West is wind.

The temperature rises as I travel south. Therefore, South is fire.

The mountains of my home state are to my north. Therefore, North is earth.

I refuse to be told different. Fight me.

[cloveconifer]

Y'all know it's okay to just try stuff in witchcraft, right?

Across the internet, I see a lot of people who seem to be asking for permission to do what they want. While I see some validity in getting wisdom from others, I worry that the people asking these questions might miss out on the experience they could get from going ahead and making a good faith attempt.

"Can I do this spell even if I don't have rosemary?" I don't know. Try it!

"Can I use fruit juice as an offering to my goddess?" I don't know. Ask her!

"Can I include a pocket watch in my magic?" I don't know. See if it works!

Of course, it's not a good idea to jump in and try something that could be harmful, but if you're not hurting yourself or others and you're not appropriating from a closed practice, just give it a go! You're allowed. You're a witch with magic and power and discernment of your own. You don't have to get permission from a bunch of internet strangers. Have fun trying new things!

[crabwarlock-deactivated20260108]

The issue is that the community has become saturated with copy-paste material and beginner witch material because of its own action. An emphasis on the sterility and marketing appeal of witchcraft put the community on such a path that those who talked about the intricate detailing of their craft were often argued and run out of their own house. This left patterns that others could pick up on to make their blog more marketable to the general audience.

We ended up abandoning personal and regional canons in favour for a pseudo-canon. To quote Penelope Scott:

"But we've been fucking mean

We're elitist

We're as flawed as any Church

And this faux rad west coast dogma

Has a higher fucking net worth"

[xquisitedeadguy]

attempting to atheistify the ancient tribal sun worshipper but the more scientific sun facts i tell them the more hyped they get about the sun

[xquisitedeadguy]

well actually it's not a god it's a giant ball of fire one million times bigger than the entire planet and we spin around it and it creates infinite food and every star in the sky is another giant ball of fire. okay so im gonna triple down on the sun worship then.

[witchynyx]

So I've been working on this project for like 3-4yrs now, and look what came in the mail today...

This isn't so much an "I'm just checking this off before I publish" proof, as it is an "I've spent too many hours staring at this on a screen to edit it properly there" proof, but I've genuinely put thousands of hours of work into this and it's so surreal to hold it in my hands!

I've recently been considering adding a bunch of extra content to it, so it was surprising to see how chonky she already is (almost 500 pages, without front/back-matter, 3cm/1 ¼" thick)

So yeah, this'll be coming at some point this year 🥰

Fellow plant/history/herbalism nerds: Stay tuned!

[stormbornwitch]

I look forward to reading it!

[transgenderer]

attention conservation notice: atheism butchers proclus' theology

ive been relistening to some of the SHWEPisodes on proclus and i think proclus could have saved abrahamic theology (which like. okay obviously they are different. but like. theyre really not different. the amount of cross-influence in abrahamic theology is crazy. and also mutual influence from the same greek philosophers, which leads to cross-influence via cribbing interpretations of nominally secular philosophy. anyway).

so okay, religion has basically two threads, nirguna (without attributes) and saguna (with attributes). yknow, god as transcendent, indescribable, beyond comprehension, totally detached, etc, vs god as earthly, specific, with attributes and symbols and statues. just the former is boring and sort of without content, leads to deism, just the latter isn't even god, its just like... a powerful guy who might exist. not god, really. so you need both

but how do you have both? theyre contradictory. well, christianity tried to solve this with jesus and it sucks. so. not like that. BUT a mere 400 years later proclus figured it out. and a little bit of it spread around the greco-abrahamic tradition, because his elements of theology was shared around by people who thought it was by aristotle. but mostly, he didnt influence that much, which is too bad

okay so here's proclus' idea. first of all, there's the one. it's the ultimate nirguna. totally transcendent. cause of all being. etc. we cant talk about the one. we cant even talk about what the one ISNT. BUT below the one, there's the henads. the henads are not the one but theyre sort of. related to him. theyre the closest thing to the one than anything else is. and the henads "are" the greek gods. but actually, they just correspond to the greek gods.

from each henad there is a chain to lower and lower levels, with the earth at the bottom. and a statue of athena doesn't look like athena-the-henad. but it resembles her MORE than other earthly things do. and in fact everything is in the chain of one of the henads. so like, if you know a guy, and he has some of hermes' traits, and maybe a facial feature associated with hermes, thats because he's in the henad of hermes. some things, or traits of things, have a better "resonance" with the henads than other things. and because everything is connected via the henads you can do magic, by yknow, influencing things higher up in the chain, which then send their influence back down to other things in the chain (i guess it's less a chain and more a tree).

its a good theory of magic! its a good way of having the saguna and nirguna together! it makes the transcendent aspect do metaphysical work, its not just a trait its the mechanism by which ritual functions (another thorny puzzle for theologians!)

[hoodooboo]

sometimes ancestor work looks like taking your mood stabilizer and sleeping 8 hrs

sometimes ancestor work looks like cooking yourself a healthy meal

sometimes ancestor work looks like taking out the trash and washing the dishes

sometimes ancestor work is just taking care of yourself, the first altar

[stormbornwitch]

And sometimes ancestor work is telling grandpa's spirit that while you love him, he was kind of a bad father to your mother and 'no you're not giving him more grog, he had enough in life'.

[traegorn]

i love witch names i wish we did that more these days. especially as a transgender individual i love having many names

Like honestly I think everyone who practices witchcraft should choose a craft name. Not because we need to keep our real names secret, or because of any esoteric nonsense -- but because it's fun and everyone should sit down some day and figure out what they'd like to be secretly called if they could be named anything.

[windvexer]

farming magic versus wild foraging magic

It's been on my mind a bit but I really think in Witchcraft, a lot of it is finding power. A LOT of it.

You know I talk about my system a lot, building relationships with ally spirits ("correspondences"), evoking and petitioning spirits, laying a compass, carefully storing and distributing energy between spells.

And this is all kind of like farming; you can learn how to cultivate the magical ecosystem around you to carefully seed, grow, harvest, and store power, and to make friends with the gods and spirits within and around this system who help you (or decline to hinder you, which is also very good).

This farming is good because it serves the same function as regular farming, i.e., it's hard work but it provides reliable and predictable resources available throughout the year.

But that's not finding power, that's farming it.

Several months ago I did one of the most powerful workings I had done in a while, which transformed my life. There was no evoking correspondences or compass laying or invocations or spirit offerings.

I found a free-flowing source of incredible power (an eclipse, and I found it by looking up), called it into myself, and asked that it do something specific.

No candles, incense, bells, talismans, or whatever: the actual technique I performed was extremely basic energy work.

The results were humbling, and continue to humble me, and I believe it is probably beyond what I would have been able to accomplish working only through 'farming'.

After all, I am a competent adult. I could build a fish farm. I could learn to keep it regulated and sustained to provide fish all year round.

But it doesn't matter how good of a farmer I am, I'll never be able to compete with the open ocean.

A lot of this stuff about Witchcraft techniques - if it seems like a lot, that's because it is a lot; it seems like hard work because farming is hard work, and it seems like you must plan ahead so much because farmers must plan seasons ahead.

But that's not all of Witchcraft, and homesteading your magic isn't just farming - it's wild foraging, too.

So if all this Traditional stuff seems a bit stuffy and laborious and lacking in spontaneity, perhaps it's good to ask if you're ever leaving the boundaries of your homestead and venturing out into the woods.

And all those planets and transits and holy days and plant lore and special tricks for foraging power without profaning it are not tedious rules, but maps that show pathways to wild foraging your own power, bringing great boons and benefits to uplift your seasonal farming.

[crazycatsiren]

This witch is pro science, pro modern medicine, pro technology, while believing in herbalism, traditional medicine, and alternative healing.

FDA approved first, everything else supplemental, mundane before magic.

[cryptotheism]

Do you need to believe in magic to do magic? Like if i secretly carve a protection rune into a friend's shoe sole does it still count even if i don't think it will?

If you don't think it will do anything why are you carving symbols into people's shoes?

[cryptotheism]

Listen, I think "belief" is more complicated than people give credit for, but if you find yourself carving symbols into people's shoes, you should probably interrogate why you are doing that.

[spiralhouseshop]

New in the Spiral House!

As-If: Punk Magic and the Art of Self-Invention

Up the Magic Punx!

Er... 

Up The Punk Magic?

Ya, that makes more sense.

Another thoughtful zine from the folks at Fiddler's Green Peculiar Parish covers the transformative power of the "As-If" technique in "As-If: Punk Magic and the Art of Self-Invention." This essay by Clint Marsh, originally featured in Fiddler's Green Peculiar Parish Magazine, explores how this powerful approach can help you overcome creative blocks and manifest your dreams.

Through the spirit of DIY in creating its own culture from music to print and other forms of art, chart your path and cast the spell of As-If" until it shows you the way!

16 pages, cardstock cover and with the Fiddler's Green signature copper embossed cover.

As-If: Punk Magic and the Art of Self-Invention

Discover the transformative power of the "As-If" technique. This inspiring zine offers practical guidance for overcoming creative blocks and