Body//Apocalypse

29 y.o. queer poet & druid // he/she/they/it

[kataster]

I’d say introductions are in order!

Hello, I’m Caddy.

I’m an ovate in OBOD, a ceremonial magician, and hedge practitioner.

I’m a recent transplant to the PNW and previously practiced my craft from my long-time home state of Texas. I have a lot of experience with finding local community and a little bit of experience in running group ceremonies for loose collections of people who all vaguely agree on being “alternatively religious”

Which is great! I’d really recommend it.

You can find my general shitposting and fandom interests and such on my main blog CaddyWampusWalk but I am going to try to be better about posting my witchcraft related thoughts here.

You can also find me making content on Instagram @the_kataster and, more recently, TikTok under the same name.

Say hi. Reblog. Argue with me. Whatever. I’m just glad you’re here.

[snowy-equinox]

Genuinely, I think pagans would benefit from researching the religion & culture their deities come from. Only reading books about Aphrodite is a good start, but you need that sweet, sweet cultural context.

I have such a problem with those witchcraft books who use a "deity soup" approach--they just list a bunch of deities for you to work with in spellwork, instead of encouraging you to foster connections with a handful. A blót for Thor is not going to be the same as a libation for Zeus. Sure your spell may fall under that god's domain, but does it follow Their cultural values?

Do your research and find out.

[marshayame]

summer at mount rainier

[love-heals-everything-deactivat]

- Rithika Merchant

[le-immorte]

C// Instagram // Redbubble- Prints //

[love-heals-everything-deactivat]

"The world is not something to figure out, it is something to be tasted, touched, heard and seen." - Alan Watts

[chronurgy]

The hanged man tarot card but he's clearly getting off on it

[love-heals-everything-deactivat]

"The world is not something to figure out, it is something to be tasted, touched, heard and seen." - Alan Watts

[kataster]

"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science."

- Edwin Hubble, 1954

These two quotes go together, in my mind, because I think this is precisely the attitude towards science that allows one to maintain one's feeling of wonder and appreciation for the world. Spirituality is not in conflict with science (which I don't think OP is implying but I do think comes up in these spaces) but instead, science is what we call the process of watching and learning about the world around us, seeing it for the beauty and wonder of its intricacies and relationships. The flower is no less wonder if I know about the vast network of relationships that made it possible for it to bloom.

[kataster]

Wintering and Rest

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to "winter" creatively and spiritually. I have experienced a lot of frustration lately with the ways I will desire to be creative or, at least, creatively-productive. It can be easy to tell oneself "well, you don't always have to be productive, that's capitalism!" But I still find myself frustrated because I want to write that second novel, I want to draw that artwork, or I want to make a collage spell, but the energy just isn't there. I'm drawing from an empty well.

As part of my work with OBOD, during my bardic phase, I had established a spiritual and emotional routine dedication to the element of water. I'm talking a weekly cleansing and small ritual that I then supplemented with any restful activity done in dedication and devotion to the divine. This was an incredible choice for me - but there was a person in my life, at the time, who was resentful of the time I would turn my phone off to look inward. It came from an abundance of caution, mind you, I was fresh out of some pretty heavy emotional trauma and there were people who had reason to be concerned for my safety should one of these evenings turn into a triggered-event for me. But it still eroded my boundaries around having spiritual time for myself and I ended up just meekly giving way to incursions upon that time. When that relationship inevitably blew up, I also totally lost my relationship to that spiritual practice. Due to some of the trauma around the loss of that relationship and many of my friends, I just couldn't bring myself to safely engage with those emotions alone and could only work through things piecemeal through therapy. The grief was huge.

This is all pre-amble to provide context that my therapist and I have agreed that spiritual devotional practice seems pretty critical to how I regulate my emotions and handle grief. It seems like very important infrastructure to reintroduce into my life. One of those restful, dedicated activities was to study an area of interest to my spiritual practice (shout out to archeology students who put their dissertations on the internet) but for my return to this practice, I am actually choosing to read "Wintering" by Katherine May. As a Druid -- although my links to that title have frayed over the years -- let's just say, as a "nature worshipper", I see the appeal to looking towards these restorative quiet times as a kind of winter which is not only helpful but crucial and necessary to the continued health of one's mind and soul. I think it can be somewhat unusual for me to think of winter as quiet, although many things do go to ground and wait out the cold weather, because human life is out of sync with this expectation. And, in point of fact, it has been very important for myself as a human animal to get out of the house and be active this winter to prevent the depression that such little sunlight in my new, PNW home can cause. But creativity isn't a talent, it's a modality of thought and thinking hard and critically about a creative project is draining on your resources - science argues it may not be more draining than just browsing the internet, but the research is still undecided about whether or not that's true for intense, hours-long cognitive tasks. (I read more about this through this article here but was introduced to the science at a neuroscience talk at a conference sorry: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-calories/ )

If anyone else has read wintering and has thoughts about the primary thesis of the work and how it relates to nature based spiritual thought, I'd be really curious. I do intend to write again, as I go through the book, and let you know what I think and how I am applying its ideas (if I am applying its ideas) until this routine.

Lastly: if you don't have a weekly routine for turning your phone off for a few hours and dedicating yourself to something just for yourself and your pleasure, I strongly suggest it.

[cryptotheism]

We should get woodworking dads across America to start producing animist shrines.

[criticalthinkingwitches]

CRITWITCHCON2025 recordings are live! 🖤🧙✨

Did you miss CRITWITCHCON2025? Never fear!

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Follow the link in your Eventbrite ticket confirmation email to access our community Discord, where you'll find links to our recorded sessions.

(�Recordings do not include community chat or workshop sessions, out of respect for our attendees' privacy.)

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C�ontact us with any questions, & happy viewing! 🖤🧙✨

2025 CTWC Post-con Recorded content and Virtual Community Space

The virtual-place to be for critical thinking witches and seekers. The live event has passed - but the recordings of the sessions are here!

[astriiformes]

College friendship is sending one of your friends who's graduating soon a giant list of monster theory and gothic horror academic reading recs so they can download as many PDFs as possible before they lose their university database access

[astriiformes]

Got a request for some of the recs here, so here's a short-ish list of some of the reading recs -- I've made an effort to link open source and/or at least slightly more accessible databases like JSTOR wherever possible, but some of these are, admittedly behind various paywalls that I wish everyone luck with circumventing in whatever manner you deem fit

Monster Theory - Really great anthology to start with, especially the first reading, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's famous "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)" which is a personal favorite

The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts - A general SF/F journal, but there are definitely a lot of great monster theory and gothic horror readings sprinkled throughout. Consider taking a look at Veronica Hollinger's "The Vampire and/as Alien," the special issue on Dracula, and Faye J. Ringel's "Genetic Experimentation: Mad Scientists and the Beast," among others

Werewolf Histories edited by Willem Blécourt - Phenomenal anthology on werewolf scholarship, especially if you're interested in the connections between werewolves and witchcraft and/or witch trials in Early Modern Europe

Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters by Jack Halberstam - Of interest to those who are interested in the connection between the gothic and gender (among other topics). Halberstam has written extensively on both

The Journal of Dracula Studies - Exactly what it sounds like.

Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural - Another journal, which focuses on the connections between witchcraft and occultism, monsters, demonology, and the like.

Susan Stryker's "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix" - An absolutely landmark piece of writing on Frankenstein and the transgender (and in particular the transfeminine) experience; one of my favorite pieces of academic writing of all time.

Speaking of Monsters: A Teratological Anthology - Another solid monster theory anthology

Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene - A really, really good anthology about the ecological gothic that I cannot recommend enough. As a known werewolf guy I especially like the piece "Wolf, or Homo homini lupus" by Carla Freccero

The Vampire Lectures by Lawrence Rickels - So many vampires

Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader - Another anthology, I in particular recommend Rosalind Sibielski's "Gendering the Monster Within: Biological Essentialism, Sexual Difference, and Changing Symbolic Functions of the Monster in Popular Werewolf Texts" in this one.

"The Trans Legacy of Frankenstein" by Jolene Zigarovich - Definitely a good read if you enjoyed the Stryker piece earlier; it's a more general survey of the idea but might give you some ideas for further reading

TransGothic in Literature and Culture - A whole anthology of works on transgender identity and the gothic!

Twenty-First Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion - Not to be confused with the other similarly named anthology earlier, this one is on various modern perspectives on the gothic.

"Christians and Jews in the Twelfth Century Werewolf Renaissance" by David A. Shyovitz - Stand-alone article but really really interesting

Wonders and the Order of Nature: 1150-1750 by Lorraine Daston & Katherine Park - Incredible volume that gets into several different subjects surrounding the fantastical in the medieval and early modern eras, monsters among them. The same authors have written some other fantastic work, such as "Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England" and I honestly would recommend any of their work.

Monster Anthropology: Ethnographic Explorations of Transforming Social Worlds Through Monsters - A more anthropology focused volume, I particularly like Rozanna Lilley's "Drawing in the Margins: My Son's Arsenal of Monsters—(Autistic) Imagination and the Cultural Capital of Childhood"

Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations - Another anthology, this time with a historical perspective

This isn't even everything I've dug into on the subject, but I hope it's enough to get folks started on some reading!

[what-even-is-thiss]

People are always talking about the “divine feminine” like it’s a beautiful and gentle force fueled by menstrual cycles or whatever when in a lot of world mythologies the female deities are just as violent as the male ones.

[melinoesnecropolis]

Get ya a girl who can do both. Violent bloodthirsty force of nature who is also endlessly compassionate. Will just as easy cut a bitch as bandage your wounds and tell you which herbs to use to heal.

[dovewithscales]

Anyone who thinks the "Divine Feminine" is universally nurturing and that the masculine isn't, clearly aren't religious studies nerds and haven't met Hekate, or Kali, or Inanna, or The Morrigan. Or Melinoë.

[punished-venom-solitair-e]

ppl are ragging on The Horror Zine for having incredibly restrictive submission criteria that will inevitably lead to some nothingburger ass works of art but i havent seen anyone comment on these specific guidelines

like. what kind of writing advice is that.

[judgejudyofficial]

good morning it's don't crash out Thursday where we try our hardest not to crash out. on Thursday

[natalieironside]

You should never create anything with a wide audience in mind. The so-called "general audience" doesn't exist; it's a fiction made up by advertising executives. Most of the time, great art and literature is made with the intention of pleasing no more than 4 or 5 specific perverts of the author's acquaintance

[windvexer]

friendly reminder that hedge witchcraft does not refer to gardening or shrubbery and is not another term for green witchcraft

[windvexer]

the "hedge" of hedgecraft refers to a barrier between our world and the spirit world. it may also be conceptualized as a fence or veil.

to practice hedgecraft is to "ride the hedge" (straddle the fence; step half-way through the veil) or to fully cross that boundary and enter the spirit world entirely.

this visiting of the spirit world is experiential. that is, it is not the same thing as spirit communication achieved through the use of divinatory tools or channeling.

hedge witches visit the spirit world by utilizing dreams, trance states, ecstatic states, and other methods (sometimes including substance use). they experience that they themselves are in the spirit world.

hedge practices often revolve around developing spiritual relationships (especially with local spirits), performing magic by affecting the spirit worlds directly, and healing the bonds between the spirit world and the human world.

it may be seen as distinct from other similar methods of practice, including:

psychopompy (which may include a lot of veil-crossing, but specifically to work with the dead and visit afterlife realms),

the infinite astral praxis (which may include a lot of astral travel, but usually not to earthly realms and usually not to meet local spirits),

and oneiromancy, which is the practice of visiting other realms specifically through dreams (a technique which a hedge witch might utilize, although ecstatic and waking trance states seem to be more popular).