There is a fresh wave of people trying remote viewing this week, target generators making the rounds, the old kill-shot prophecy talk back in the tags. And a lot of them sit down wanting the same thing: tell me the future. Will he come back, when does it crash, what happens to me. Those are real questions. They are just not remote viewing targets, and treating them like targets is how a promising viewer trains themselves straight into noise.
Remote viewing is describing a target. Something specific exists, or will be shown to exist, and you describe it before you look. The whole method is built to carry faint impressions into words while the analytic mind is still locked out of the room. A target, at bottom, is simply a thing you can be handed the answer to afterward.
Even the precognitive protocols do not skip that. When a computer picks the target after you have already written your notes, you are not reading an open future. You are describing the one image you will be shown at feedback. There is still a fixed answer waiting, it just has not been selected yet. The feedback moment is the anchor. Take it away and there is nothing to describe and nothing to score against.
This is why the plain will-this-happen questions come apart in your hands. There is no bounded target and usually no clean feedback, so nothing ever confirms you or corrects you. You sit down, you feel around, and what comes back is your own hope or dread wearing the shape of data. You cannot tell a hit from a wish, because nothing on the other end was ever going to grade it.
The move that fixes most of this is to turn the question into something viewable, or to leave it alone. Instead of will I get the job, view the target: the room you are sitting in at the next interview, sealed now and scored later against what actually happened. Instead of is he thinking about me, pick a defined event with a real feedback point you will genuinely reach. If a question cannot be pinned to a specific target with a moment where you find out the truth, it is not a viewing problem, and forcing it only teaches you to trust your own imagination.
So the discipline was never about seeing further. It is picking a target you can actually be shown the answer to, and being honest about the ones you cannot. Keep those for a different tool. The signal only sharpens when something on the far end is able to turn around and tell you that you were right.
Sooner or later every reader gets the pull to read about someone who did not ask. A crush, an ex, a family member's situation, a name that keeps surfacing. The question underneath is almost always the same: what are they thinking, what are they hiding, what do they feel about me.
Here is the thing it took me a while to accept. A reading does not give you a live feed of another person's private mind. What you are reading is the connection and your own side of it. The cards show the state of the thing between you and where you are standing in it, not a transcript of their thoughts. So "what is he thinking right now" is the least reliable question you can put to a deck, and "what is the current state of this, and what is mine to do" is one it can actually answer.
When you read for their thoughts, you fill the gap with your own hope and fear, and the deck obliges by mirroring you back to yourself. That is why obsessive "do they love me" pulls feel true and then never land. You were reading your own longing the whole time, dressed up as news about them.
There is also the consent piece, and the community is right to keep raising it. Reading someone's private inner life without their knowledge is snooping, plainly. Read the situation, not the person's secrets. Their health, their other relationships, their private business are not yours to open because a querent is curious. If someone wants you to surveil a third party, that is the moment to redirect, not to deliver.
The move that fixes almost all of this is to turn the question back toward the person in front of you. Instead of "does she love me," ask "what do I need to see about this connection." Instead of "what is he hiding," ask "what is mine to do here, and what am I not letting myself admit." Same cards, completely different reading. One is surveillance, the other is self-knowledge, and the second one is both more honest and more accurate.
Sometimes information about a person arrives without being invited. A dream, a sudden flash about someone you barely know. You are not obligated to act on it or to hand it over. Sit with whether it is actually about them or about you, because most "messages about other people" turn out to be the reader's own material wearing a familiar face. If it genuinely seems meant for someone who did not ask, the respectful default is to hold it, not to dump it on them.
If you do read a connection, keep the shape clean. Read the querent's position, the honest state of the bond, and where it goes if nothing changes. At most one card for the other person's general stance toward the situation, and you name that as the softest read on the table. General stance, not private thoughts. Anything more precise than that about someone who is not in the room, you are guessing and calling it sight.
The oldest rule still holds. You read for the person in front of you. When the reading is about someone who is not in the room, stay on your own side of the street, and the work stays clean.
If this is the kind of thing you sit with, it is what I write about at intuwise.com.
The unconscious always tries to produce an impossible situation in order to force the individual to bring out his very best. Otherwise one stops short of one’s best, one is not complete, one does not realize oneself. What is needed is an impossible situation where one has to renounce one’s own will and one’s own wit and do nothing but wait and trust to the impersonal power of growth and development.
~Carl Jung, Visions: Notes of the Seminar given in 1930-1934 (Princeton University Press, 1997)
This reads as a fair description of how a real intuitive read actually works. The useful material tends to show up right when you have run out of clever ways to force an answer and have to sit with not knowing.
The hard part in practice is the waiting. Most people grab a quick interpretation to relieve the discomfort, and that is usually the thinking mind talking over the quieter signal. Letting the situation stay unresolved a little longer is often what lets the actual read surface.
Babyyyy, folks be mixin' these two up all the time, so lemme clear it up real quick. 🤎✨
🌿 Hoodoo is an African American folk spiritual tradition rooted in our ancestors' wisdom, faith, prayer, roots, herbs, Psalms, and practical spiritual work. It's a tradition with a specific cultural history passed down through generations.
🕯️ Witchcraft is a broad practice of working with intention, energy, rituals, herbs, candles, divination, and other spiritual tools. People from many different cultures and traditions practice forms of witchcraft.
Now hear me out... some people practice only Hoodoo. Some practice only witchcraft. And some folks respectfully practice both, while understanding they're not the same thing. 🌻
One ain't "better" than the other, they just got different histories, traditions, and ways of working.
So don't let social media have you thinkin' they interchangeable, 'cause they ain't, boo. 📚 Respect the roots, learn the history, and always give honor where honor is due. 🌿🤎
"Know the difference, honor the ancestors, and let your wisdom grow just as deep as the roots." 🪴🕯️✨
I really feel like I'm in a labyrinth but I can't figure it out!
(feedback for the reading)
Thank you for this feedback!
As for Labyrinths, you don't really *need* to figure it out. Labyrinths are meditation devices. You choose something to focus on as you walk to the center. You spend time in the center with the heart of what you are asking about. Then you continue to think about how to overcome it as you weave your way back to the start of the labyrinth.
Just follow the natural path to the center. Take some time to think there. Then follow the natural path back out. Things should make more sense.
If you've received a reading from me, please consider leaving a review! These reviews help others determine if I am the right reader for them! They also help me strengthen my skills!
This matches how labyrinths work best as a practice. There are no choices on the path, just one winding route in and out, and that is the point. It occupies the part of your mind that wants to plan and solve, so the quieter read you are actually after has room to surface.
Worth adding that the walk back matters as much as the center. A lot of people reach the middle, get the insight, and stop there. Working it the whole way out is where you decide what to actually do with what came up. If you cannot walk a full one, a finger labyrinth traced on paper does the same job.
Book Review: Magic from the Hilltops & Hollers by Leah Middleton
This was selected by a book club I'm in, and was not one I had voted for. I was nonetheless eager for my opinion to be changed, and for the book's stories and recipes to outshine the impression it made from my initial look through. I was unfortunately pretty disappointed.
The book started out well enough, with a forward by a respected educator on Appalachian folklore, Rebecca Beyer, and a set of lovely, honest anecdotes by Middleton. I think she has a knack for painting a scene and imparting a sense of nostalgia.
From there, Magic from the Hilltops and Hollers slumped downhill. The writing was often long-winded and scattered, without much sense of clear direction or any obvious reason why certain details were being included. The sections were an odd blend of whimsy, conjecture, and off-topic rambling. I felt a need for more editing and structure throughout the book. There was a sense of anxiety in Middleton's writing, as if she felt required to include everything she knew about every tangent, and it resulted in something like a Wikipedia effect: we were reading about one topic, but have fallen down a tangential rabbit hole and now I've been reading about sheep for three pages?
I wish Middleton had kept the topics closer to home, speaking from personal anecdotes and experience. The anxious air of the writing unfortunately seems to have led her into the weeds of topics she was clearly ill equipped to cover. The section on witches was packed with misinformation and self-contradictions, even implying at one point (perhaps mistakenly?) that there were somehow European pagans ("witches") who moved into Appalachia and were colonized by European Christians or Christian locals after the fact. It was a tough chapter to get through. Most other chapters suffered from similar inaccuracies and broad, confusing implications.
Alright, so the writing isn't very good and she's not a historian. Fair enough, she states up front that she's not an academic and is approaching these topics from her personal standpoint. Perhaps the practical advice in the book is good, and speaks to her experience? After all, why else write a book! Alas.
The bits of practical advice and the few recipes we did try out as a group were difficult to make work, and seemed to be less of a help than a hindrance. For example there was a dream tea recipe that many of us tried. For most (including myself) there was no effect; I had a completely standard night of sleep. For two other members of our book club, it had the unsettling effect of causing rapid, anxious dreams that did not speak to the ritual prompt. We also made a chamomile ointment from Middleton's recipe, which turned out poorly. A standard ointment or salve recipe is about 1 part beeswax to about 4 parts oil. Her recipe was 2 parts wax to 1 part oil, without explanation. We tried it anyway and it was essentially unusable. We decided to just remelt and adjust the ratio–luckily we had some leftover oil.
It's difficult to describe, and hardly the most salient point: however, the atmosphere around the magic and folklore Middleton imparts in this book was far from the Appalachian culture and magic that I'm familiar with from the other books I've read on the topic and the people in my life who have lived there. This book honestly felt more like watching a Hallmark movie about an Appalachian witch than talking to anyone who could speak from that sort of cultural grounding. I'm not suggesting that she is lying about her authenticity or decrying the validity of her choice to write on these topics; but that sense of performance and disconnection struck me oddly and seemed worth pointing out. No more, no less.
Overall, I'm unimpressed with Magic from the Hilltops and Hollers, and I regret that Middleton seemingly lacked access to a more thorough edit of the book prior to publication. I can't recommend this book in good conscience.
Appreciate an honest review like this. Folk magic shelves fill up fast with books that are long on atmosphere and short on anything you can actually work, and a forward from a respected name does not guarantee the rest holds up.
Worth saying for newer readers: a disappointing book is still useful if you read it for what it gets wrong. Holding a weak treatment up against a tradition you already know is its own kind of study.
Dragon Path Oracle by Caroline Mitchell and Tiras Verey
WILD ARCHETYPES
LXI.The Mask
The persona, the performance, the reveal
"We often think of a mask as something that conceals our identity yet contemplate the possibility that The Mask permits our true identity to be revealed. It allows. The Mask gives voice to that which was previously rejected. When this card appears, enact the side of you that is seeking expression, yet was never given a role to play on the stage of your life. You are in the realm of theater, so anything is possible. Speak with Other's voice, embody the Other's limbs. You are taking part in the ritual of expanding The Self. There may be mischief and deception around, and others may be trying on new masks too. No one is sure who is who. It's likely you've become so attached to a single mask that you need to fall face forward into this perception-bending time. Trust it."
XXX. The One
Nonduality, one love, unus mundus
"Our ability to experience this archetype firsthand is limited. It comes in brief and potent moments that we are left to savor for a lifetime. The One is both the energy that unites all living beings and our capacity to sense this intimate union. This archetype eludes us most of our lives, appearing as a concept in a distant galaxy. Yet when we are in the midst of its power, a solemn reverence falls across all the land. We glimpse ourselves in the vastness of all consciousness and are neither small nor large within that field. We are neither important nor unimportant. All duality fades away and we are left with what is-the previous knowing that life is a gift, and we are both the giver and the receiver of this fortune."
XI. The Queen
The Empress, the mother queen, the sovereign
"Like her counterpart The KIng, The Queen has a dualistic nature. Either she presides over the realm with grace and eloquence that comes from the heavens to uplift the spirit of others or she falls into petty contemptuos moods casting a shadow across the land. If The KIng is ego, The Queen is the expression of that ego in the world. She is the lotus's bloom, the dancer's bow, the moon's radiant reflection. When The Queen is seated in her rightful (and righteous) place, she is patient, and forgiving. She waits for the grace of god and goddess to move through her, striving and grasping for nothing. To be the benevolent leader, to embody The Queen is to settle into deep trust, resolve, and power. The royal Queen fears nothing, for divinity itself cradles her heart."
DRAGON PATH
XXXI. Gaia
Courage
"The dragon Gaia is the Earth Keeper and carries Gaia's ancient knowledge deep within her. She is one of the oldest dragons yet to come to Earth. "I am the etheric body of your planet, I urge you to protect her and all who dwell upon her. I will guide you into restoring balance. What is done cannot be undone, and alas some things are gone forever. Have courage to stand up for what you believe in your heart to be true and I will stand with you. You can be that change" Call upon her support when you are working on a new project and need to anchor its energy fully. You can invoke her wisdom when any form of group work is taking place, to anchor the collective vibration to the planet. Make use of her grounding energy! She is also here now to help ground the frequencies of the 5th dimension and above, which are coming in to our consciousness. She will guide us when we are ready to re-ignite the light of Earth's grids. The deep healing this invokes will help Gaia and us as humans to build peace on Earth and a future that is sustainable."
XXI. Merlin the Dragon
Discovery
"Merlin the Dragon, to give him his full name, is an incredibly large and sage old dragon whose message is one of teaching and learning. If he has found his way into your reading today his message is this: "Not all things are as they seem, some are images being reflected back in order for you to understand discernment and learn the lessons of self-trust. Only once you have done this, will you discover how to stand in your own power and own who you truly are." The Grand Master Dragons are able to shape-shift between their dragon and human or angelic form. In whichever guise he adopts, Merlin is "the teacher of the teachers", so heed his wise council: "You are unable to teach others until you fully understand the lessons yourself. Once you have mastered these, you are in a position of clarity and ownership and can share your wisdom with integrity and power. Until then hold your tongue and continue your journey, discovering what you need to learn, understand and own. Only then will you be in the place of authority to share your knowledge with others." If you notice that owls keep crossing your path, know that Merlin is around and willing to share his infinite wisdom with you and show you what you need to learn. He will stretch you, and often answer questions with another from within. He is not an easy Grand Master to work with, but he will guide you well."
One of the most common questions in this corner of tumblr right now is some version of: is this my intuition, or is it an intrusive thought? The honest answer is that you usually cannot tell from the content of the thought itself. You tell them apart by how they behave.
Intuition tends to arrive once. It is quiet, often oddly even-toned, and then it is done. It does not announce itself or demand that you react. An intrusive thought arrives loud and urgent, insists it must mean something, and then comes back again, and again, no matter how many times you set it down.
The strongest single test is whether the thought asks you to do something to make it stop. A real intuitive hit does not. You notice it, you file it, you move. An intrusive thought drives a compulsion: check the lock again, reread the message, search the symptom, repeat a phrase, ask someone to reassure you, avoid the thing entirely. If you feel pulled to neutralize the feeling, that pull is the signature of an intrusion, not a message worth decoding.
Notice the charge it carries. Intuition is often strangely neutral even when the subject is serious, a flat knowing with no panic attached. Intrusive thoughts come soaked in dread and tend to run toward the catastrophic or the taboo, the exact thing you least want to be true. They feel foreign, against the grain of who you are. That foreignness is itself a clue: a thought that horrifies you and contradicts your own values is far more likely to be anxiety than insight.
There is also an escalation test. Acknowledge an intuition and it tends to settle, because it was only ever trying to be noted. Engage an intrusive thought and it grows. Answering it does not satisfy it; it just spawns the next 'but what if.' Intuition does not bargain. Intrusions negotiate forever, and every answer you give is the down payment on the next question.
Content gives a softer hint too. Intuition usually points at something present or specific, often mundane, sometimes about another person. Intrusive thoughts mostly live in hypothetical futures stacked on top of each other, powered by 'what if' rather than by anything you actually perceived.
Here is the part that matters more than any of the filters. Sometimes it is not either-or, and sometimes what you are calling 'intuition versus intrusive thoughts' is actually OCD or an anxiety condition. That is not a spiritual failing and it is not a gift to decode. If thoughts are sticky and distressing and you are running little rituals to quiet them, no amount of energetic hygiene will fix that, because the problem is not discernment. OCD is common and genuinely treatable, and talking to someone who works with it is a real and worthwhile move. Getting support does not cancel your intuition; it clears the static so you can actually hear it.
If you want to train the discrimination, keep a short log for a couple of weeks. Write the impression when it lands, and write what you did next. Over time the two sort themselves out by behavior, not by content: the quiet thing you noted once and the loud thing you fed for an hour stop looking alike. You learn your own signal by watching which calls were true and which were just fear wearing a costume.
There are a few online remote viewing target generators and seven-step guides going around again this week, which means a fresh batch of people are sitting down to their first real session. And almost all of them hit the same wall in the first ten seconds, the moment you are supposed to make the ideogram. The instructions say let your hand move, and then you sit there with a pen, nothing happens, and you either freeze or you draw something on purpose. So here is what that first mark actually is and how to stop fighting it.
The ideogram is the quick, involuntary scribble your hand makes the instant the target cue lands, before you have thought about anything. It is not a drawing of the target. You are not sketching a building or a coastline. It is a compressed first signature, a reflex mark that carries the rough shape of the thing in a form that arrives faster than your thinking mind can catch up to it.
That speed is the entire point, and it is also where people ruin it. If you pause to decide what to draw, you have already handed the job to the analytical part of your mind, and what comes out is a guess dressed up as data. The opposite error is to glance at the squiggle, decide it is meaningless, and move on. The mark looks like nothing because the information is not in how it looks. It is in what your hand did and what you felt while it did it.
So take it fast and take it loose. Hold the cue, put pen to paper, and let one quick mark happen in the first second, then lift the pen. Do not curate it, do not redraw it to look nicer, do not add a second pass. One reflexive stroke is the whole thing. If you find yourself thinking while you draw, you waited too long, so shorten the gap between the cue and the mark until there is no room left for a decision.
Reading it is the part nobody explains well. You do not interpret the picture. You describe two things, the motion and the feeling. The motion is what the pen actually did, rising up then flattening, dropping, curving back, a hard point. The feeling is the quality underneath it, solid, liquid, airy, energetic, warm or cold. Rising up, peak, down, hard and solid is real data. A mountain is not, not yet.
Underneath that, you are feeling for which basic element the mark is carrying. The classic set is small on purpose, land, water, something man-made, something natural, air or open space, motion or energy, and life. You are not deciding which one it is. You are noticing which one the mark leans toward, lightly, the way you notice a smell before you name it. Most marks carry one or two.
The instant story your mind attaches, that is a building, that is the ocean, is the thing to watch out for. It is the analytic guess riding in on the back of the real signal. Note it in the margin so it stops nagging you, then set it aside and do not build the rest of the session on it. The motion and the feeling are what you keep. The label is what you park.
None of this is fixed talent. Your marks are personal, so make a handful against simple known targets, water, a city, a mountain, and learn what your own hand does for each, so you can read your shorthand later. The ideogram is a handshake with the signal at the very start, not a prophecy. Keep it fast, keep it honest about what is a felt motion and what is a guess, and it becomes the most reliable thing in the whole session.
Playing cards can be a good alternative to tarot if you’re in the broom closet. Note that with playing cards, you won’t really have the major arcana.
Suit Key:
♥️ = ☕️
♠️ = ⚔️
♦️ = 🪙 (Pentacles)
♣️ = 🪄
Upright/Reversed:
As for how to tell if a card is upright or reversed, for most cards, you will usually find some kind of indicator in the card’s imagery (refer to the image below). Otherwise, I personally mark one of the corners of the cards that don’t have a distinguishable upright/reverse indicator with my fingernail.
The cards that have no distinguishable upright/reverse indicators are all the court cards (Kings, Queens, Jacks, and (depending on the imagery in your deck) Jokers), almost all of the cards of the diamond suit (except 7 of diamonds), all 2s, all 4s, and all 10s (I might be missing a few, let me know if I am).
Extra Notes:
- Jokers = The Fool
- Jacks can represent Pages, but also Knights. Use your discernment/intuition.
- I’ve seen some people use the King/Queen of Diamonds are to represent the Emperor/Empress.
If you have any questions or if you can’t figure out if a card is upright or reversed, feel free to ask me and I’ll help you out as best as I can (if you’re comfortable, you could show me an image of the card(s) in your ask)!
Good practical writeup. Worth saying that playing card cartomancy is its own reading tradition, not only a tarot stand-in. Once you stop missing the major arcana and let the pips and court cards carry the weight, a 52 card deck reads fine on its own terms.
And the broom-closet point is real. A worn deck of cards on a kitchen table looks like nothing, which is part of why it works when you need privacy.
When dreams become the way that the otherworld speaks to you
A bit of personal experience here, I’ve been dreaming quite consistently about the otherworld. In my dreams, I am at a college for witches and wizards (non gender related terminology). When I wake up, I have info swirling around my mind about whatever it is I learned at the school. Sometimes I’ll just have a random dream and I’ll still get info about digital sorcery that hasn’t been written yet. Two nights ago, it was about digital animacy, last night to this morning, it was about summoning creatures like celestial beings via digital methods. I’m kinda annoyed that I missed my walk because of it. That being said, I have info aplenty to add to my grimoire.
This matches my experience. The information from those dreams degrades fast on waking, so the practical move is to write it down before you are fully up, even a few words. The details that feel unforgettable at 3am are usually gone by breakfast.
The recurring setting is worth watching too. When the same place keeps showing up it tends to behave like a stable channel rather than a random dream, and that consistency is itself data.
We have all seen posts going around trying to define what separates the level of beginner, intermediate or advanced, weither talking about the magic itself or the practitioner. I even more wrote one myself when I felt like I learned all I could learn from beginner-oriented resources and was looking for more. And the conclusion I came to, is that the thing that will tell apart witches who will remain beginners forever (which isn't inherently bad, your path is your path) is your ability to build, create, or deduce a form of theory from the practical aspects of your craft.
For example, in the case of tarot, I have seen it's much less likely for someone to get the spooks and leave the practice all together if they have a solid understanding of what they do for, the ethics and the mechanics of it, as well as being able to integrate tarot into a potential faith or religious practice, for those interested. The witches who veer off the deep end, who suddenly renounce tarot or who fall to propaganda, New Age, or religious psychosis are the people who never looked deeper into tarot as a tool and what it entailed. For example, being a Christian Witch, I usually ask the Holy Spirit, a Saint or another entity to answer my questions. Each entity comes with their own language, their subjects preferences, their limits. Archangel Michael does not really give much of a shit when I ask him about my office gossip, but my Grandma Spirit loves that, and she is prone to telling me I should fight people more, when Michael used to teach me trigger discipline. Even in an animist viewpoint, I see the deck as being crafted by an artist so those intentions are somewhat inbued, and I do see my decks as having specific personalities or a bit of a temper, but I don't think the cards have a spirit themselves that is capable of guiding me the way a plant spirit, land spirit or other being could have.
The tarot is the tool, but I as a magician is the one doing the tuning into the energy of my guides, asking them a question, and then my energetic perception is helped by the cards to translate information. Same thing when reading for others, for me it works more like this:
I start by connecting with my own guides, asking to connect to a certain person. They guide me to them, either in the astral or by guiding me to their specific energy. Usually their guides are present as well, and may add limits, ask for a small offering, a codeword or straight out refuse the readings. Sometimes the person's soul (or their energy or their higher self, whatever way you see it) already knows me and the guides aren't present/visible. Some people I may only have been able to connect through their guides, that is especially the case if they are particularly energy sensitive, in a transformative period or very busy/stressed. I can still get information on them, but it usually feel like looking through a window at someone, instead of actually discussing with them.
After that though, I connect to the person myself, but I am still overseen by my guides and theirs, as such:
At this point, I can get a feel of their energy myself, and the tarot reading feels more like a discussion or a diagnosis, than feeling like asking your mom about how you are doing when I see you do your homework through the kitchen's window.
For witchcraft, I also have my own system. I see the world as a rhizome, everything and everyone is connected. Magic is about looking through the tapestry, and choosing the right bonds to tug on to favor the outcome you want. What it means is, everything that is technically possible through the mundane is possible through magic. Probably not likely, nor effective, nor probable, but possible. Any protection is penetrable, any person is hexable, any hex is breakable as long as you can use your creativity to poke at the right weakness. I have seen people gloat about being the most feared practitioner of their country but folding at any threat, and people claim they're untouchable but having lives run by bad luck they don't think to attribute to people potentially hexing them, magic stops where your imagination does. God I have even seen someone claimed they warded themselves against Justice itself in order to not deal with the consequences of their actions, and I'm thinking that if it was possible to do that, it would be possible to banish Bigotry and protect against Stupidity forever, which is simply not the case lol, but maybe I'm the one whose mind is not open enough then?
But then, without theory, what is left truly of someone who claims to be an advanced practitioner?
How can you diagnose how effective your magic is if you never stop to wonder how it works? How good can your tarot readings get if all you are doing is pulling cards but you don't have any methodology or theory of how and why it works? How well can you read and create energy intentionally if you don't build an understanding of what it is and why you can read it? How can you cast effectively if you don't have an understanding of what effective magic is, or if it is even right for you to cast magic, or if you don't have a solid understand of the consequences of your magic and if you are okay with them?
I think there comes a point, especially when it comes to practitioners who gloat about how many years they have of experience or sell their works, that having a magical theory is not just about understand their service, but understanding if the service is even worth it. I don't trust readers, no matter how many years, who have never shared their process or talked about the theory of tarot in a way I aligned with. I do not trust witches who never shared about their methodology, theory or even mentioned any witchcraft or magical tradition or framework of understanding.
Of course, everyone has a right to post, or to sell their services, or to give free spellwork or free readings. I however would call for caution about practitioners who claim titles (ex: priestess, oracle) and advanced roles without being able to back it up not only with experience, but also with knowledge and wisdom, weither that is in their specific traditions (for example, heathenry or hellenism) or in magic theory in general.
And you? What is your magical theory like?
This lines up with what I have seen. The plateau most people hit is not a shortage of spells, it is reading every method as a fixed instruction instead of asking why it works. Once you can take a technique apart and rebuild it for your own situation, you stop needing the next beginner list.
Worth adding that the beginner stage is not a lesser place to be. Plenty of steady, real practice happens there. The shift is just the point where curiosity about the mechanism starts to outweigh the urge to collect more correspondences.
Notes from The Spiritual Underground, or I do spiritual practice for a living. #1:
One of my favorite things about professional spiritual practice is the nitty gritty of turning someone into a professional psychic. My development circle is such a gift in my life, and I love being the personal trainer at the spirit gym. I am very direct and unwaveringly honest with my students about what they need next to get more skills developing inside of them. They appreciate it. I tell no lies. I can be very harsh and completely non judgemental at the same time in a way that is valued. That's actually a sacred experience to have when you are raised up from generational inauthenticity and mental illness. I had a student with aphasia who has a vivid imagination now and is capable of professional grade psychic and mediumistic readings. It took her 9 months, (the length of a pregnancy can change a major area of your life forever), but she chose the path of spiritual awareness development. She's a badass witch, and she's in her 60s. She was formerly very religious and conservative, but she would say she was ready to be happy, and was, as she pursued her new life. (She's not a professional, because she secretly likes being retired too much. Good for her, of course. And, I am often in awe of her.) And I helped her move so fast in getting her powerful magical and awareness-based gifts online. It was fun! I love her! It's such a specific and special dynamic with every student there to me, to each other, to Spirit, etc. It's good. And my city is so small there's never more than eight people at a circle. It's still hard to pay bills, but I don't regret it. It's so cool to see the crazy things my students have accomplished by nothing other than the pursuit of the idea of a miracle.
The direct and honest part is the whole thing. Most development advice is vague encouragement, which feels kind and teaches nothing. What actually moves a student is a specific, accurate next step said plainly, with no padding.
The nine months detail tracks too. Steady weekly practice in a small circle does more than occasional intensity. People underestimate how far plain consistency carries the work.
weird question but does anyone ever do those intuition test videos?
if so I’ve been doing a lot of them recently and I find them fun I was doing really well with them
but I’ve found they make me feel nauseous when I do them
anyone have any clue why it’s making me nauseous??????
it also make my forehead feel weird but I’ve been told possibilities from that one
The nausea is worth listening to rather than pushing through. When people run a lot of these back to back, the body tends to flag overstimulation before the mind names it, and forcing past it usually makes the signal noisier, not clearer.
The forehead pressure is common when you concentrate hard on the brow area. Shorter sets, something to eat first, and a soft attention instead of straining all help. If the queasiness sticks around even when you slow down, taking a few days off is fine; the skill does not fade from rest.
Question: What are everyone's procedures for crossroads dirt/dust? (for anyone who feels like sharing)
When I was mentored, I was taught that it was specifically the dirt from the dead middle of two crossed dirt roads. And that it had to be a proper road with a signpost, rather than just two crossed paths. But dirt roads aren't as common where I live now as they were near my grandmother's dairy farm, so I tend to take dirt from as close to the crossing as possible. I try to find a crossing that aligns pretty well with the north, east, south, west and use directional symbolism to determine which side of the road I take it from. Or, I use proximity to landmarks such as opposing the jailhouse or behind the courthouse for law work, or on the side of the cemetery for spirit work or healing by sending ailments to the spirits.
I'd love to know what everyone else learned and/or how they've adapted their methods over time.
Example of the Apothecary Sheet in Action: Sarriette/Summer Savory
Let's use the apothecary work sheet on an iconic herb in the Acadian pantry, the Summer Savory (Sarriette d'été). This page can help you get some spell-work correspondences due to associations you write within.
I got to know summer savory when I moved to Nova Scotia. Outside the Maritimes, it's not an herb you see often in supermarkets, and if you do, thank you, Farmer John's Herbs! It pairs great with potatoes, different meats, and other root vegetables, and is a staple in the Acadian pantry. How did it become a staple among our people? It's a story emblematic of our displacement and resilience.
The lore often points to the town of Burnt Church, New Brunswick, and the Robichaud family.
The herb made its way from Europe with our French ancestors, and thrived in our 17th century kitchen gardens. Following the capture of Louisbourg by the British in July 1758, Col. James Murray was sent to destroy Acadian settlements in the Miramichi region. On 17 September 1758, Murray reported spending two days in Miramichi Bay looking unsuccessfully for Acadians, but destroying anything he found; one of them being the first stone church built in New Brunswick. No Mi'kmaq or Acadian was safe from those raids. My own family sought refuge in Camp d'Espérance, along the Miramichi River. It's a region that was rife with starvation, hiding out, and great suffering. (1).
Through the Acadian Expulsion, our gardens were scorched to the ground, and we were forced to either live out in abject poverty and forced service in the American Colonies, or find a way to come back home in secret. Once we did come back to the Maritimes (when we were legally 'allowed' to come back), we were given poor land for cultivation (our previous fertile lands occupied by New England settlers brought in by the Crown and their American co-conspirators), or did subsistence fishing on the isolated coastlines. (1) The sturdy, hardy summer savory plant was still growing in the ditches of neighbouring farms and on rocky highland cliff sides of coastal communities, helping sustain us through the consequential poverty we endured in the nineteenth century into the early-twentieth..
A descendant of the deported Acadians, Jean Prudent Robichaud (1867-1958) supposedly acquired the seeds from a Mi'kmaq woman from the Esgenoôpetitj First Nation at Burnt Church, NB, while he was working on Mi’kmaq farms with his draft horse. (2) Both Mi'kmaq and Acadians were forced to compete for meagre resources following the Seven Years' War and the Acadian Expulsion, and as a result, that pre-deportation cooperative relationship soured. It's something I'm hoping gets remediated, as I see examples of really terrible racism and vandalism (I think of the Baie Sainte-Marie lobster fishing rights being challenged by some Acadian/settler fishermen, causing loss of catch/materials/livelihood vehicles in the Sipekne'katik First Nation in 2020, and ongoing to this day.) (4)
This shared history of loss, oppression, forced subsistence agriculture, and the intimacy and comfort of Acadian cooking make it a powerful herb to recall your Acadian ancestors, and to start allyship workings.
It's a plant that is so closely tied to Acadian culture, I wanted to share just how soul-sustaining and cooperative our culture is, courtesy of the University of Maine's Culture Focus page on the Acadians and our cultural values:
Spirit of cooperation; some Acadians say its from cooperatively building and maintaining miles of dykes; others say it is evident in the number of successful fishing, farming and other economic Co-ops.
Adapting to and thriving in new circumstances, as evidenced by the maintenance and evolution of Acadian culture in all areas of the world where Acadians live.
Joyful pleasure in family gatherings and festivities, as evidenced by vibrant music and performances, and by summer family reunions attended by thousands of relatives. (3)
With those key features in mind, Summer Savory can be used in holiday cooking to incite warmth and love, help you in social justice and community efforts to replenish your strength (it being such a hardy plant), and doing spells for adaptability and embracing change.
The following care instructions are taken directly from the Albert County Museum & RR Bennett Centre.
Culinary uses: Summer savory is a common herb in Atlantic Canada and associated with holiday food. For example, turkey stuffing for Thanksgiving is made with summer savory rather than sage. Summer savory plays a significant role in Acadian food culture. The herb is the main seasoning in fricot (rabbit or chicken stew). It is also a component of the Herbes de Provence mix.
Crop description: Compared to modern varieties of summer savory, Ancienne d’Acadie is a short, stocky plant with a strong flavour. It grows 8-12 inches in height and is more cold-resistant than modern varieties. The plant is quite beautiful with delicate small leaves and a profusion of light purple blooms, which attract bees and other pollinators.
Growing: Direct-seed in the spring after threat of frost has passed. During the season, tip-propagation can be used to acquire new plants. It can be harvested throughout the growing season or just cut in the fall. It pairs well alongside onions and beans, enhancing their flavours, and keeps aphids away.
Seedsaving: The variety must be isolated from other varieties of summer savory in order to keep the variety pure. The seeds are tiny and care must be taken while processing seeds to avoid losing the seeds with the chaff. Norbert Robichaud harvests the small seed pods in early November. He crushes and winnows these in a light breeze. He cleans the seeds by rolling the rest of the seed on a sheet of paper, and gently blowing the remaining chaff of the seed. (2)
Another Traditional Seed-Saving Method: Women of the household would cut the twigs from the summer savory bush to dry them for winter. Once cultivated, the leaves of picked off the stems. The stems have little seeds attached to them. The seeds would then be dried, and placed in glass containers for winter storage. Once all the foliage was consumed, the seeds would always be found at the bottom of the glass for sowing in spring!
You can grab your seeds here at Écoumène Édaphon in Saint-Damien, Québec, once they're back in stock:
Old Acadian Savory is a heritage variety deeply rooted in the cultural and human history of Atlantic Canada. Towards the end of the 19th cen
So, here's the page example in English for all of you lovely folks, but I'll write things by hand in French for my own records:
Sources
John Mack Faragher. A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland. W.W Norton & Company, 2005. 562 pages.
Albert County Museum & RR Bennett Centre. Summer Savory: The Herb of Acadie.
Scrying is moving through these tags again this week, a few people posting their first mirror and water readings. And the most common how-to you find stops at gaze into the surface and wait, which is exactly why people sit for twenty minutes, see nothing, and decide they cannot do it. The technique that matters is in the parts nobody mentions.
Start with the gaze, because this is where most of it goes wrong. You are not staring. A hard stare fights you, your eyes water, you blink, you reset, and you never settle. What you want is a soft, slightly unfocused gaze that looks through the surface rather than at it, the way your eyes drift past a window to the street beyond the glass. The surface should lose its hard edge and go a little vague.
Then the surface starts to change, and beginners almost always misread what happens next. Within a few minutes it tends to cloud, go smoky, darken, or seem to breathe. People take that as their eyes playing tricks, snap back to a sharp focus to check, and that ends it. The clouding is the doorway, not a glitch. Part of it is simply your vision softening on a featureless field, and that softening is the exact state you are trying to reach. Let it fog over and keep your attention loose inside the fog.
It also helps to know what a vision is actually like, because the expectation is the thing that blinds you. It is almost never a clear picture floating in the glass. It is shifting shapes, a color that was not there a second ago, a shadow moving against the grain, a face that assembles for a moment and dissolves. Sometimes it is not visual at all, just a feeling, a word in the mind, or a flat knowing. If you are holding out for a sharp image, you will look straight past the real signal, which tends to be quiet and partial.
A lot of what people call a block is really the setup. Work in low light with a single candle placed behind you or off to the side, never throwing a bright reflection straight into the surface. Use a black mirror or a dark bowl of water set on a dark cloth. Sit so you cannot see your own face clearly in the surface, because a sharp reflection of yourself locks your eyes at the glass instead of through it. Fix the light and the angle and half the I cannot scry problem tends to disappear.
On patience, the honest number is that most people need somewhere between five and twenty sessions before a first real impression. The early sittings where nothing happened are not failures. They are you teaching your eyes and your attention to hold the soft state without bailing out the moment it gets strange. Ten quiet minutes a few times a week will take you further than one heroic hour.
There is a discernment line worth holding too. Not everything you see is a message. Floaters, the afterimage of the candle, the surface graying out, that is ordinary eye behavior and it is the doorway, not the content. The scried material is what comes through that state, the shape that carries meaning, the word, the pull toward something. You learn the difference by keeping a log and only trusting what recurs or genuinely lands.
When you break the gaze, write it down immediately, before your mind tidies it into a tidy story. Do not interpret in the chair. Scrying hands you raw, half-formed material, and the meaning comes later, on the page, with a little distance. The skill was never seeing harder. It is letting the surface go soft and staying in the room while it does.
