half-assed witchcraft @imwitchin - Tumblr Blog

Hey idk who needs this but helpful reminder that "virgin blood" in any witchcraft shit that requires that means "virgin" in the same sense as "virgin hair" means hair that hasn't been dyed or processed in any way, natural in the default sense. So no, "virgin blood" doesn't mean blood from a virgin, just blood that hasn't been used for any other kind of witchy shit earlier.

Whether nor not someone has fucked before is completely irrelevant. Any act of fucking doesn't instantly make someone contaminated or un-magic any of their shit. You're just not supposed to re-use blood for blood magic. That's just not. Just do not. Like that's just weird who does that.

homunculus-argument

no wait that- no that's not- no.

Unles you've like, poured out ALL OF YOUR BLOOD, used it for a spell, and then somehow SIPHONED THE WHOLE THING BACK IN, that doesn't mean the blood on the inside of you is also used. And even then, if you'd had your sacrifical blood IV'd back into your body-

actually nevermind, I need to draw a graph to illustrate:

I hope this helps.

wardenaristraith

The blood inside of you is used. Constantly. It's why there is blood there.

If anything, the blood on the outside is unused.

homunculus-argument

damn they ain't lying, it is like talking to a fucking genie with you people.

enomie

Ok, but that was a good point before the diagram.

What if you use the blood in a dialysis machine. As in, you grab a few pints, use them in a ritual, and then dump it back in the machine to be put back in the body (assuming you don't add anything extra to the blood for the blood rite, poor woman would die for sure). Assuming you do this multiple times and eventually use all the blood in cycled in the body for the rites:

Is any blood in the woman's body still blood rite eligible?

As blood gets replenished (because red blood cells die and get replaced), does the blood eventually become virgin again or is the blood in the body now permanently unvirgin?

Are the red blood cells the only part that's necessary for virgin blood (like can I centrifuge the blood and use a solid cube of RBC for the rites) or must all the plasma, white blood cells, insulin and stuff also be in the blood?

Does putting unvirgin blood in the blood dialysis machine make it virgin again?

If I feed the bone marrow unvirgin (but nutritious) blood, will the blood it produces be virgin or unvirgin (Theseus style)?

homunculus-argument

I think it works the opposite way from holy water: Any amount of blood that was used in blood sacrifice getting mixed with blood that hasn't been used as a blood sacrifice is going to make the blood used blood. But nonetheless the blood refreshes itself naturally as the body creates new blood and old blood cells get discarded, so I believe that the blood is good to use again in whatever time it takes for the whole blood amount in the body to get 100% recycled?

For the rest of those questions, I genuinely don't know. I'm not a witch, a doctor, or a witch doctor. You'll need to find all three and compare their answers.

rainypaperdetective

But if any amount of blood contaminates the rest, does the recycling still work when the "unused" blood mixes with the "used" blood? Or does the recycling process render the "unused" blood immune to the effect of the ancient ritual?

homunculus-argument

okay, let's look at it this way:

A blood sacrifice is an offering. Let's say you're offering the blood to something in exchange for something you want to get in return. The blood should be blood that was specifically intended for this purpose.

If you went to a restaurant, and received a burger in exchange for your money, and only SOME PARTS of the burger you received were put together from the partially eaten burgers left behind by other customers, how much new ingredients would you expect to be also mixed into it until you no longer regard it as being served other customers' leftovers?

walmart-the-official

Hey, don’t cry. Free online database of Japanese folk lore

bleu-guacamole

Might I add, free database of mostly European folklore and myths

bogleech

A Book of Creatures by @a-book-of-creatures doesn't update these days but is another thing along these lines, really huge, fully illustrated all by the author and cites all sources

st-dionysus

Free database of Native American folklore, sorted by tribe.

the-library-alcove

How many mass graves and extinct cultures are needed to convince Christian apologists that missionaries and missionizing are inherently xenophobic?

The answer is apparently always, "At least one more."

the-library-alcove

It just like... look. If your religion has an explicit instruction of belief that it needs to take every other religion out there in the world, wipe them out, and replace them with itself, that religion is xenophobic. And the people who engage in the fulfillment of that process are xenophobic. It might not be as explicitly nasty a xenophobia as ethnic genocide, but it's still an instruction to commit cultural genocide.

the-library-alcove

#i hate all religions equally

The number of people who have added this comment or others to the same effect...

Yeah.

You're no better than the missionaries who want to wipe out other cultures and replace them with Jesus. You say that you "hate all religions equally"? Fine--that means you hate exactly the same number of religions that they do, plus one. From the perspective of those facing the hate, it really makes no difference.

shofarsogood

If I say "I'm Jewish and I hate the ideas of missionaries because historically they created pogroms and ghettoes and started genocides multiple times," and your response is "I hate all religions equally," which INCLUDES Judaism, what you're actually saying is "those people were bad but they should have succeeded."

nightingalesighs

These missionaries/missions have actually contributed to ethnic genocide. “Kill the Indian to save the man.” Was literally the line of thought for putting Indigenous American children into residential schools and how many mass graves have we found? How many are still waiting to be discovered? How many human beings are in unmarked graves, still separated from their culture, having found no peace even in death. And this is but one example.

Gtfo with “I hate all religions equally”. If you believe this you’re equally racist as the people you claim to hate.

the-library-alcove

Those residential school mass graves were the original instigation for this post... and yet there were people who, in the immediate aftermath of their discovery, argued on this post that they were acceptable.

shadow-daughter

One of my uncles and his wife are missionaries in East Asia. I fundamentally revile them, and I'm ashamed to be related to them. I grew up hearing the way they talked about 'the unfaithful', every year; the condescending attitude, the mockery, the way they played them up as 'dangerous savages' and how they were 'risking their lives and their young childrens lives to bring them the word of god', which one, gross and xenophobic, see: "dangerous savages" and how gross that is; and two, if it WERE actually that dangerous, they wanted to be respected for bringing three children into a situation they believed to be that dangerous??? Even at nine, I knew that either they were full of shit, or they were more interested in looking like Good Christians than anyone's wellbeing. (there was nothing dangerous about where they were preaching, anyway, they just REALLY liked self aggrandizing.) Missionaries are bad people. I say that knowing that this category includes members of my own family; they are bad people. They actively push xenophobic narratives to justify their own work, knowing full well that the danger they're pretending to believe exist isn't there. They drag their families along behind them, indoctrinating their own young children into a mindset where everyone outside the faith is 'dangerous, backwards, and uneducated' and they are the 'saviors uplifting them'. They are actively contributing to colonialist propaganda, and they are profiting off it. That's something they don't tell you-- missionaries are given rewards for their work. Valuable rewards. My aunt and uncle got multiple luxury homes, one in each location they went on mission. In America, they had a fancy, top of the line car. Anything aunt Anita wanted, she got. The church was more than happy to keep throwing money at two of their valuable missionaries, after all. Missionaries are bad people. The act of going on mission is an act of violence.

androphonos-theoi

Today I sing of golden Aphrodite, who moves the hearts of men on a whim. May she be praised as the mighty Olympian that she is.

deadgenerations

always funny to realise Christians have a stronger belief in witchcraft than actual practicing witches

myzornaccount

I mean, the point of witchcraft is mostly just to scare the local religious majority right? Nobody actually thinks it's real

deadgenerations

honey you would not believe what people think is real.

joygucci-deactivated20160123

Reblog if you're black tumblr.

You don’t have to be black, it just means you support us, you stand by us and your for us.

redheadsims-cc

remus-sanders-is-the-bestest

BLM is still a thing. If you don’t reblog this, but would’ve in June/July you were only in support of black lives when it was a trend. They still need justice

liongrl321

everyone deserves equality <3

twunkish-cleric

The fact that there are gods with disabilities make me so emotional. Hephaestus, Tyr, Hodr, Odin and other disabled deities just prove that being disabled is a vital part of the human experience, not a deviation from it, and that concept alone is so moving. Just like there are deities for specific human experiences like fertility or war, there are also deities with disabilities, which just proves that we have just as much of a place on this earth as mothers and warriors do. The idea of that has genuinely pulled me through some hard times.

voyaging-too

I have a rant in me that applies both to birth control and to psych meds: these things can have side effects, ranging from very mild to very severe. These things also have serious benefits, which make it worthwhile to put up with some side effects. And if the side effects are too severe to put up with, ideally the healthcare system will help you try different options, and find one that agrees with you. In practice however, you may not have the time/money/energy to try different options, and you may have had bad experiences with healthcare professionals who told you to shut up and put up with the side effects, no matter how bad they are. We should demand better! We should demand access to a wider variety of options, and we should demand research into even more options: things have gotten a lot better in the past fifty decades because we have demanded better and then got it, and hopefully we will keep getting it.

And in this context, criticising birth control and psych meds is not only allowed, it's our duty.

But when someone criticises them in general terms, with broad claims that they are unnatural evil chemicals that alter you in vague indefinable ways, that they change your personality, that they unbalance your hormones and disconnect your for your divine spiritual whachamacallit, when someone plays up the incredibly rare risks and is silent on the commonly experienced benefits, when someone is just generally acting like these things are poison, you should start hearing the alarm bells: someone wants you barefoot pregnant in the kitchen and too depressed to leave.

wizardarchetypes

i that same vein i hate when i see non Native witches & pagans talking about how they're partnered with "the land" and making offerings to "the land" etc. etc. and they're extremely vocal and public about their practice yet not a single thing they ever say involves Indigenous sovereignty, justice, Landback, or people at all. if you really believe in these things—in spirits and sentient forces of nature—how do you justify ignoring your role in colonialism? I just don't think that you can actually have a meaningful bond with The Land if you aren't doing anything at all for its Peoples—the Peoples who were here long before you, working with the Land before your great x3 Cunning Woman grandma ever set foot in these hills. get yourself right.

seagoatapothecary

Sometimes Spells Are Lazy

Yes it’s true that the most intent you can put into a spell or ritual is only going to increase it’s power and effect. However, I feel like there’s a bit of math involved in this in the sense that the effect is still equal to the amount of intent you put in based on the actual amount of energy you have in store. For me this explains why there are times the simplest, seemingly least thoughtful spells almost have the most immediate and effective results. A children’s silly rhyme sometimes has more of a “POW” than your two hour long, researched, reviewed, and memorized ritual and spell simply because you had no energy to really give at the end of it whereas the childish two-line rhyme works wonders because that was all there was to put into it to begin with. An example using plants is like this: rainfall could drown a plant in water and it will do nothing for it, if not harm the plant because there was no need for THAT much output, but a plant can get one drop of water in a drought and it will spring new growth within a day because that’s exactly all it needed and all the environment could afford to give it at the time.

The message I’m trying to get across is don’t feel guilty about not being able to put in what feels like a bare minimum into your thoughts, spells, or actions for the day. If all you can afford is a simple smile and hello and that’s as positive of energy as you can muster, then so be it. For me, my lazy spell today was disposing of my clipped nails which usually involves a little more of a thought-out intent to banish negativity or bad habits or the such followed by a well-worded recitation, however today all I could muster was a quick:

“Down the toilet you go, and my bad energy is gone.”

Not sure I could even call it childish, even a kid has enough imagination and whimsy to make it rhyme and I couldn’t push it that far. Interesting enough I had that thought as I said my spell and watched my nail clippings swirl down the drain, and I laughed. How funny that even in my adult years and all the experience and knowledge I can say I’ve gained in life so far, I couldn’t even muster a rhyming phrase this morning? But there it was, it worked. I laughed, I smiled at my silliness, and the bad energy was gone.

Sometimes spells are lazy, but sometimes lazy works.

stormbornwitch

"Modern folk witches don't strictly adhere to the eight-spoked 'wheel of the year' used by other neopagans. We prefer to watch our local landscapes and identify days that correspond to the shifting of the seasons where we live. The wheel of the year is a modern invention, and no pagan societies can be said to have observed all of these dates. It's best to look to the lore for specific rituals for seasonal celebrations. Witches who live in Australia or Iceland may prefer different dates for their seasonal rites. What's important is that the days be governed by the tides of nature, not the shackles of convention."

- Roger J Horne's Folk Witchcraft: A Guide to Lore, Land, & the Familiar Spirit for the Solitary Practitioner

I appreciate this perspective as here in Australia, our seasons are just not the same. I'm up in Queensland, and I would say that our seasons are nowhere near as distinct as the classic spring, summer, autumn, and winter that you get in the Northern Hemisphere. I'm currently working on making a seasonal calendar by conferring with Gubbi Gubbi elders about traditional song lines that dictate the changing seasons. Here is a seasonal calendar that the The Wakka Wakka, Jarowair and Barrumgum tribes follow who are the traditional owners of the Bunya Mountains.

Many witches follow an inverted wheel of the year to 'match our seasons' but neither the traditions nor the actual seasons match and it just feels wrong... like sure the solstices (longest and shortest days of the year) can be celebrated but... our celebrations should match up with our regional seasons.

witches-bottle-deactivated20241

There's no better joy in this world than watching someone collapse to their own self when you agree with them:

You know witchcraft is probably the placebo, right?

Me - yeah

Them expecting a fight - wait, why do you practice it then?

I don't know whether I'm placeboing myself a new life or whether I'm manipulating the forces of change in the universe but either way, I'm becoming a better version of myself and overcoming my enemies, my own issues and living well. Is that not what the end game is?