Closeted Witch.Pagan (no deities yet).Cat lover.Musician.Lover of the little moments that make life worth it. I am waking up and finding that I am strong and can help make the world a better place.
Hello! I think it's past time for an introduction.
My name is Katie, and I live in the Midwestern US. I am a witch that is exploring her path. I started to call myself a witch around 2019 when I graduated from college and moved in with my husband. I am, sadly, a closeted witch. I live in an area where that lifestyle choice would not be accepted.
I am currently on the path of Druidry to see if that fits with me. I grew up Christian, and have since denounced that god.
Some other things to know; I love cats (I have 4), playing the piano or any musical instrument, I have self diagnosed ADHD and autism (and anxiety and depression), I have CPTSD, I occasionally do yoga and meditate (with the intention of regular practice), I read fantasy mostly, I am a Ravenclaw, I am interested in Paganism but specifically the Celtic and Norse pantheons, I am bisexual and an ally, and I am a teacher.
Welcome to my blog! Hope you find something interesting🌟🌟
Anita Sarkeesian, feminist who interpreted media under a feminist lens. She did a series about video games and she was the subject of targeted harassment. That was the start of gamergate
Minor correction, the start of gamergate was based around a different reporter, Zoe Quinn, but they were both absolutely violently threatened over their involvement in video game criticism and development. A hate campaign was started by Quinn's ex-boyfriend when he wrote a post falsely accusing them of dating video game journalists in order to receive positive reviews on their own game, Depression Quest, which led other bad actors to accuse all women in the industry (Zoe identified as female at the time) of perceived sexual immorality. Anita Sarkeesian's brilliant Youtube series Tropes vs Women in Video Games (which everyone should watch, right now) sparked a particular nerve for criticizing popular games of killing and/or victimizing any important female character (there is a CHILLING bit that borders on ludicrous where she describes the plots of a seemingly endless parades of games as "In [title], [male player character's] wife dies, and you then have to rescue [his] daughter."). That series did actually make a huge change in the industry, especially when touted by progressive legacy developers like Tim Schafer (Monkey Island, Psychonauts), who went on to expand hiring in his company to front women and minority voices, but the shift didn't really show for a long time and echoes of the sexism that plagues the industry at its core are still rampant.
Thanks for the correction! I was like 8-10 years old when this all went down (2014-2016) so I only know vaguely about it. I’m still learning about this.
Gamergate never ended as a movement, is in a state of active resurgence and is globally implicated in the rise of the hard right. Steve Bannon, guy who works directly with Trump and ran the hard right website Breitbart, was CEO of a WoW MMO gold farming operation, actively looked towards radicalizing the sexist young men, and are targeting gamers to replace federal employees over there (also in that article link). Now they use LLM generated gamer memes to recruit for ICE.
In terms of what to do about this:
Begging folks to:
1: Start taking memes seriously, look at where the New Lingo you're getting is coming from online because the answer is almost always either:
Appropriated AAVE, which also serves the far-right agenda in multiple ways. Participating in Digital Blackface and the active destruction of different facets of Black cultural tradition (queer spaces do this SO MUCH. SO MUCH of "gay people talk" is bastardized AAVE and that causes serious harm and erasure of history which is inexplicably linked with histories of resilience and joy and culture making in the face of oppression and enslavement. We owe much of our ability to track what gamergaters are doing At All to the work of Black feminists who paid attention to how the far right started to mimic and impersonate Black women online to seed controversies designed to discredit feminist movements, but I digress (barely))
or
Far right memes designed to push the overton window on acceptable behaviour and things to say more firmly into their wheelhouse. This is something far right governments are both aware of and actively engaging with.
All those Virgin v Chad comics; the incredibly ableist lobotomy reaction images; the resurgence of the R slur; the push of tradwife content and Girl Math and such all either originates back in those cesspits or has been firmly weaponized.
2: Continue to educate yourselves on game development and call for systemic change at shareholder levels. Get loud and write in proper complaints about racist and sexist and ableist design choices. Call for crediting and fair pay for everyone who worked on games, including contracted staff on the other side of the world who provided art assets or quality assurance.
Video games are increasingly recognized world over as one of the most profitable and effective modern shapers of culture. A truly obscene amount of money is constantly changing hands, and where development studios are allowed to form at all impacts what stories are told.
A lot of gamedevs want better than this, but we need audience support and participation. There's huge efforts to unionize the industry - but the same underlying problems are at play in organizing too. Devs, not just white devs in the global north, all over the world need support. Unionization won't fix underlying culture issues, and there's also a lot of people who have no interest in even starting to address those. Please support the Game Devs of Colour expo, look at indie titles, check out independent games journalism efforts who are able to call out the links between the mainstream industry and the numerous active war machines.
Sorry for the huge add-on but as a developer myself I have followed along with this from the start and kept abreast of how the situation has continued to metastasize and develop. It's genuinely so important to talk to kids and young people about this history that's still in motion and provide education on what to look out for, especially if you know any who come from conservative homes. Many of the kids are NOT alright, and they're getting swept up across the world into states of profound alienation and taught to view anyone different than them as less than human.
The industry could be better than this, we could see a world where the medium flourishes into a beautiful international art scene and is used as a vehicle for active cultural exchange instead of increasingly being encircled and weaponized for propaganda purposes. But it won't happen unless a lot more people become aware of what is happening and actively push back against it.
I'd like to thank op because I have been using these as reaction images since I first saw this post in 2022 and I had lost track of their origin but now I am grateful to the universe for the chance to say bless u
As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000
As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year.
Earlier this month, the future fell on Los Angeles. A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 inches of rain on the city over three days—over half of what the city typically gets in a year. It’s the kind of extreme rainfall that’ll get ever more extreme as the planet warms.
The city’s water managers, though, were ready and waiting. Like other urban areas around the world, in recent years LA has been transforming into a “sponge city,” replacing impermeable surfaces, like concrete, with permeable ones, like dirt and plants. It has also built out “spreading grounds,” where water accumulates and soaks into the earth.
With traditional dams and all that newfangled spongy infrastructure, between February 4 and 7 the metropolis captured 8.6 billion gallons of stormwater, enough to provide water to 106,000 households for a year. For the rainy season in total, LA has accumulated 14.7 billion gallons.
Long reliant on snowmelt and river water piped in from afar, LA is on a quest to produce as much water as it can locally. “There's going to be a lot more rain and a lot less snow, which is going to alter the way we capture snowmelt and the aqueduct water,” says Art Castro, manager of watershed management at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “Dams and spreading grounds are the workhorses of local stormwater capture for either flood protection or water supply.”
Centuries of urban-planning dogma dictates using gutters, sewers, and other infrastructure to funnel rainwater out of a metropolis as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. Given the increasingly catastrophic urban flooding seen around the world, though, that clearly isn’t working anymore, so now planners are finding clever ways to capture stormwater, treating it as an asset instead of a liability. “The problem of urban hydrology is caused by a thousand small cuts,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley. “No one driveway or roof in and of itself causes massive alteration of the hydrologic cycle. But combine millions of them in one area and it does. Maybe we can solve that problem with a thousand Band-Aids.”
Or in this case, sponges. The trick to making a city more absorbent is to add more gardens and other green spaces that allow water to percolate into underlying aquifers—porous subterranean materials that can hold water—which a city can then draw from in times of need. Engineers are also greening up medians and roadside areas to soak up the water that’d normally rush off streets, into sewers, and eventually out to sea...
To exploit all that free water falling from the sky, the LADWP has carved out big patches of brown in the concrete jungle. Stormwater is piped into these spreading grounds and accumulates in dirt basins. That allows it to slowly soak into the underlying aquifer, which acts as a sort of natural underground tank that can hold 28 billion gallons of water.
During a storm, the city is also gathering water in dams, some of which it diverts into the spreading grounds. “After the storm comes by, and it's a bright sunny day, you’ll still see water being released into a channel and diverted into the spreading grounds,” says Castro. That way, water moves from a reservoir where it’s exposed to sunlight and evaporation, into an aquifer where it’s banked safely underground.
On a smaller scale, LADWP has been experimenting with turning parks into mini spreading grounds, diverting stormwater there to soak into subterranean cisterns or chambers. It’s also deploying green spaces along roadways, which have the additional benefit of mitigating flooding in a neighborhood: The less concrete and the more dirt and plants, the more the built environment can soak up stormwater like the actual environment naturally does.
As an added benefit, deploying more of these green spaces, along with urban gardens, improves the mental health of residents. Plants here also “sweat,” cooling the area and beating back the urban heat island effect—the tendency for concrete to absorb solar energy and slowly release it at night. By reducing summer temperatures, you improve the physical health of residents. “The more trees, the more shade, the less heat island effect,” says Castro. “Sometimes when it’s 90 degrees in the middle of summer, it could get up to 110 underneath a bus stop.”
LA’s far from alone in going spongy. Pittsburgh is also deploying more rain gardens, and where they absolutely must have a hard surface—sidewalks, parking lots, etc.—they’re using special concrete bricks that allow water to seep through. And a growing number of municipalities are scrutinizing properties and charging owners fees if they have excessive impermeable surfaces like pavement, thus incentivizing the switch to permeable surfaces like plots of native plants or urban gardens for producing more food locally.
So the old way of stormwater management isn’t just increasingly dangerous and ineffective as the planet warms and storms get more intense—it stands in the way of a more beautiful, less sweltering, more sustainable urban landscape. LA, of all places, is showing the world there’s a better way.
The infrastructure to make the county more "spongy" is also used in the dry season to remediate contaminated groundwater and to return recycled water to the aquifers.
There have also been some pilot projects to make flood-prone neighborhoods more spongy on a small scale by distributing water barrels (to hold more water out of the storm drain system) and regrading the edges of roads in areas without sidewalks to allow for greater ground infiltration. I've been studying this for a while because we had to deal with a grading problem that caused a lot of water to build up against our foundation (thankfully poured concrete rather than a raised foundation, but it's still not great). There's a lot of small scale ways to reduce runoff that contribute to the overall sponginess while improving quality of life in other ways.
Making the average yard (at least in the Midwest) more capable of holding water is so easy that it's nuts that more people don't do it. Every bit you put back into the soil instead of letting run off mitigates flooding and stores water in the ground for dry periods.
The mantra for rainwater management is slow it down, spread it out, soak it in. Water soaks into the ground more easily when it moves slowly, so plant every bit of soil you can. You can force water to move over stones or other obstacles to slow it down as well. If you can spread the water over a larger area, it will naturally move more slowly, also soaking in more easily.
Rain gardens are just shallow depressions, usually 6" to 12" deep at most, designed to to hold water for 24 or 48 hours until it soaks into the ground. All you need is a shovel and plants native to your area that have deep roots.
I made a rain garden in my front yard that takes the discharge from my sump pump as well as a gutter. Even in a big storm, I have no runoff from that side of the yard. I have been know to take videos of my rain garden in a storm and send them to my gardening friends. Check out the rainscaping page at Missouri Botanical Garden for more methods of managing rainwater.
What am I doing today? Randomly crying when I think about the Carpathia rushing to save all survivors of the Titanic. They pushed the engines past their limit in order to save as many survivors as they could. They made 2,000 meals in the 3 hour trip to reach where the Titanic sunk, but there were only just over 700 survivors when they got there. People threw their luggage overboard to help lighten the Carpathia's load and add speed.
What a poignant story for humanity. When the Titanic cried out for help, the crew of the Carpathia pushed themselves and their ship farther than they thought possible to be able to save as many lives as possible.
The thing is, even if you were lucky and your parents taught you how to clean, they probably didn't teach you how to clean the stuff you clean stuff with, like brushes, mops, sponges, rags, and so on. Or how to clean your cleaning appliances, like a dish washer, clothes washing machine, and clothes dryer and its ducts (if you have a ducted dryer), or a carpet cleaner, vacuum, Or how to clean up clean messes, like spilled bleach or detergent.
My parents threw away all of these things (even the vacuum cleaners and the dryer) when they got too dirty to function, because no one even told them THAT they could be cleaned. Cost them thousands of dollars over the years.
All I'm saying is that cleaning is not intuitive, and not knowing how to clean is not a moral failing, but it is something you can learn.
I'm going to reblog this post with resources for learning how to clean things and how to clean cleaning things (I'm not at my desk at the moment). If you have any favorites, please feel free to add them in too!
I like this video because it does a great job of introducing the basic foundations of house cleaning (and because he doesn't use bleach, which is a common allergy in addition to being awful to inhale). He also talks a little about how to clean a vacuum. And why you shouldn't put grease from your pots and pans down the sink drain. I also love that he mentions that different houses and different people have different needs and different versions of what clean and cleaning looks like.
He doesn't mention though that the toilet seat comes off. I take my toilet seat off to clean under the hinges and clean the seat more thoroughly once a quarter.
This is another video from the same guy about cleaning and depression. This advice, especially at the beginning, can feel really really difficult and oppressive to hear. However, I find that it's generally pretty solid. But I'm autistic and so is he, so that gets a massive Your Mileage May Vary stamp on it.
I have a favorite part of this video. It's from 10:52 to 12:36. I think we could all use to hear that. There's a HEFTY pause after that one. I promise the narration does come back.
I'm also going to recommend KC Davis' book "How To Keep House While Drowning"
This is a pair of videos about how to correctly load and use a dish washer.
The first one is a quick 1 minute 30 second overview on loading. I can't find the exact video I'm looking for, so consider this a substitute for that. If I can find the one I'm looking for, I'll swap it in.
The second is a half hour deep dive on dishwashers and detergents. The short form of that is you shouldn't need to pre-rinse anything, detergent pods are overpriced and can cause problems, some dishwashers have a filter in the bottom that needs to be cleaned (but most don't), run your sink until the water is HOT before starting your dish washer, and put a little detergent in the pre-rinse dispenser when you're washing extra dirty dishes (or on the inside of the door if your dishwasher doesn't have a pre-rinse dispenser).
How to clean a front load washer (with bleach). This should be done monthly or every time you wash really soiled clothes.
With expert tips and tricks for all types of washers.
How to clean a top loader (without the removable agitator thing). This should be done every 1-3 months depending on you unit, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.
Regular cleaning of a top-load washing machine will prolong the life of the appliance and leave your laundry cleaner and brighter.
How to clean a top loader (with the removable agitator thing). This should be done every month, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.
These carpet brushes are a LIFE SAVER if you have dogs. This thing allows me to go from vacuuming about 4 square feet before my vacuum is full to vacuuming half the living room (I don't vacuum often enough. You should vacuum weekly, and I just can't.). I have to unclog the vacuum less often. It fluffs up some of the flat spots in the carpet. And I also use the brush to shampoo my rugs in the spring.
A spot cleaner (or a carpet cleaner with a spot cleaner attachment) is another life saver, ESPECIALLY if you can afford to splurge on a heated one. I see them at Goodwill or at yard sales occasionally, and they're worth picking up. The shark one in the video is great too.
This channel is gold. There's tutorials for cleaning EVERYTHING on there. Just go subscribe!
Gonna throw another potential resource at the end of this very long list, which may be potentially helpful for others like me who loathe videos. It's... the weirdest thing that has genuinely been helpful to me in housekeeping. Absolutely full of useful advice, and bizarrely still relevant in large part. (Though, caveat, research ANYTHING to do with chemicals or cleaning products more complicated than vinegar + lemon + water for modern information.)
It's America's Housekeeping Book (1941). Available for free download on the Internet Archive. (Large PDF file at the link here).
The LISTS y'all. The step by step lists. The emphasis on efficiency and arranging spaces for the least resistance possible. The basic concept of "take a tray or basket into a room when you are tidying up so you can put things that belong elsewhere on it and take them out LATER in ONE GO".
Functionally, there's very little difference between watching a movie on poob and watching a movie on basic cable. Yet, for some reason, the advertisements on poob offend me far more
ad breaks on poob always interrupt important scenes or make really jarring cuts.
when it's on cable, they've timed the commercial breaks in a way that generally isn't as disruptive. someone took the time to "reformat" the movie for tv.
ads on poob always KNOW that they're on poob and want me to interact with them or click them. the number of QR codes or ads-in-separate-ad-framing/window are infuriating and jarring.
cable commercials are just stupid little skits i can mute to go use the bathroom.
ads on poob are less than 2 minutes--not enough time to do anything, but enough time to piss me off.
cable commercials are 2-5 minutes, which is enough time to go do something/bathroom or snack break, or talk to whoever you're watching with.
ads on poob are the same 3-4 commercials over and over and over and over again, often cutting to them immediately with no warning, and poob struggles to like, catch up to the fact that it's having to show a different progress bar, or a different timer.
cable commercials, esp during primetime, generally cycle through like 10-15 minimum, so you can go an ad break or two without seeing the same commercial. and they usually only pop up during quiet moments, at regular intervals, so you can see them coming--and there isn't a weird lag/loading time.
in both cases i am being accosted by advertisements and treated like a consumer to manipulate and exploit. the volume changes on cable and poob, the brightness level is eye-searing in both cases.
but poob doesn't respect that i'm here for the MOVIE. cable, thanks to preexisting, decades-old norms around broadcast television, still kind of does. kind of. it's easier to ignore those commercials than the ones on poob.
basically i think poob follows ad norms established on the internet--pop-ups, invasive flashing bullshit, creating lag, taking up time and attention--and cable follows established cable norms of, "time for a few minutes of ads that are just stupid little skits instead of spam machines, and then back to your otherwise uninterrupted movie."
I mean i know what you're saying, but there's about a dozen free ad-supported streaming services and i respect none of them to use any of their names. Meanwhile, Poob has fully entered the tumblr lexicon as a shorthand for stupidly-named tech products, especially streaming services.
“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”
Note: I am a former classroom teacher, all-ages writing tutor, and home school curriculum developer. In a classroom, I taught a mixed age group of early school-aged students. As a tutor, I taught everyone from elementary ESL groups to college level writers. I have a special focus in developing developmentally appropriate, scaffolded curriculum and providing differentiated learning opportunities. I was also introduced to the concept of magic witchcraft at an early age. Although I did not consider myself a “practicing witch” until later (after my first solo working), I learned a lot of foundational magical skills before that time. Everything that I have included in this post is based on my own experience and re-examined through my professional experience as an educator.
In the modern magical community, we tend to expect that practitioners of magic are introduced to the concept and practice of witchcraft in their late teens, early twenties, or later. We can accept that teenagers might dabble in Wicca and other forms of magic as part of a rebellious phase, to stick it to their more traditional families. We have no qualms about practitioners who discover witchcraft after leaving their family homes, or while deconstructing previously held religious views. We find it both believable and understandable that someone might come to witchcraft through a college friend’s Tarot readings, or after a messy divorce—but we have trouble wrapping our heads around the idea of someone learning about witchcraft and magic during their childhood.
As a matter of personal belief, I think that this difficulty comes (at least in part) from a somewhat limited understanding of what constitutes magic and witchcraft; and, by extension, what it means to “study” and “practice” magic. Witchcraft and magic are not singular skills. When we study and practice magic, we aren’t pursuing a single goal to completion. We are building interconnected skills and scaffolded knowledge that accumulates throughout our magical tenure. Granted, the beginner magical skills that a child or pre-teen might learn are not typically the same skills that an adult beginner would. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t magic.
We can think of learning witchcraft in the same way we think of learning math. (Because, at the end of the day, learning any skill uses the same mental processes and systems, whether we're learning fractions or learning herbal correspondences.) We wouldn’t expect a child to learn algebra in a third grade classroom. That’s not because they can’t read a math textbook. And it’s not because their little brains just couldn’t possibly comprehend that level of math. It is simply because they lack the building blocks of knowledge they would need to understand algebraic functions, formulas and notation. That said, we know that a third grader is capable of learning fractions. We know that a third grader is capable of solving simple multiplication problems. We expect that a third grader can solve a word problem.
Ania has 18 jars of homemade pickles. She meets up with 4 friends on Sunday and gives them each 2 jars. How many jars of pickles does Ania have left to sell at the Farmer's Market? We look at this problem and we know that the average third grader likely has the skills to solve it, but not to solve: n = 18-(x·y), solve for n if x=4 and y=2. The math is the same, but the knowledge and the complexity are different. And we accept that. We understand that children can do math; they just can’t do advanced math because they need to be taught the building blocks first.
Magic and witchcraft are the same. If, when we think about the study and practice of witchcraft, we jump straight into complex theory, developed frameworks, and elaborate rituals, it’s fair to assume that most children and preteens aren’t there yet. But if we widen our view of what constitutes “practicing witchcraft” or “studying magic” to include the building blocks of what can later become broader magical skills—then, yes!—it is entirely possible for younger teenagers, pre-teens and even children to learn and to practice magic.
Witchcraft from the Bottom Up
Children are perfectly capable of understanding and practicing small magics. In magical households as well as in many folk traditions that are passed down through families, it is not uncommon for children raised by practitioners of magic to learn small acts of magic and divination throughout their youth. The exact type of magic that is taught can vary greatly depending on the magical paths that are represented in the household, family culture, and surrounding area. These small magics are typically not taught in the way a witchcraft book, for example, might teach witchcraft.
A witchcraft book, an online course, or advancing through tradition-specific degrees requires witchcraft to be taught and learned from what is professionally called a top-down perspective, working from the broader concepts downward to the finer details. This approach assumes that the reader already knows what witchcraft is and already understands that practicing witchcraft is a real possibility, then uses that assumption of prior understanding as a lens through which finer details and information can be interpreted. First, you learn to believe in witchcraft; then you learn to use that belief as a key to understanding the world around you.
On the other hand, witchcraft that is taught in the home—to children or in the context of certain mentorships—tends to be taught using a bottom-up approach. This means that, instead of the assumption of prior knowledge, initial teaching is focused on the bite-sized details, on discovering through what is observable and accessible for hands-on experience. Here, witchcraft is taught and learned by combining small processes, tiny practices, and individual skills over time, using them as building blocks for broader frameworks and grander understandings. First, you learn to see magic in the world around you; then you learn to pull it all together into a craft.
Bite-Sized Witchcraft Skills Children Can Learn
Simple Spoken Charms: For children who are already familiar with the concept of nursery rhymes, it shouldn’t be difficult to introduce the concept of charms or incantations as, for example, rhymes that have special powers. Children may already be familiar with the idea of making wishes using the rhyme “Star light, star bright, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight." Another simple spoken charm you can introduce is “I see the moon and the moon sees me; the moon sees someone I long to see” which can be used when you want to hear from someone specific.
Easy Magical Protections: Children can benefit from magical protections in the same way that anyone else can. Although children are likely not going out of their way to summon spirits or experiment with magic that requires protection, it is generally agreed that children tend to be more spiritually vulnerable than most adults, due to their openness of imagination and their sense of trust. Teaching children how to make simple magical protections—such as witch’s bottles for protection and herbal sachets—can be especially useful, both as a means to introduce magical concepts and as a way to make children feel safer in a world where everything is bigger and scarier than they are.
Psychic & Intuitive Skill Building: One of my fondest memories of growing up in what I consider a magical household is of building my intuition with little psychic games. Guessing games can be used as tools to help children learn to embrace intuitive abilities and they are easy to put together with very few or no supplies. As with all skill building exercises, these should start off very simply and gradually get more elaborate over time. I recommend starting off with a deck of normal playing cards, holding each card up one at a time and having the kiddo try to determine whether the card is a red card or a black card. At the start, this should be focused on creating the opportunity for the child/student to learn the difference between guesses and intuition. You should talk with them and allow them to talk about how they feel when they just guess a color vs. when they let their intuition guide them. Now…there’s never going to be a time when they’re 100% correct, and that shouldn’t be the goal. As adult practitioners, we know that our intuitions aren’t 100% correct. And, yes, this should also be something that is discussed with children when they are learning new skills—that they aren’t going to be correct in their interpretations all of the time, and that’s okay. As children become more comfortable leaning into their impressions of the color of the card and understanding the difference between guessing and intuiting, you can begin to advance the activity by asking them to try to sense the cards’ suits instead, then by removing the number cards and asking them to tell you if the cards are jacks, queens, kings or aces and of what suit. Exercises like this can also be done with Zener cards, which you can easily make on your own to test and practice extra-sensory perception. You can also use flashcards, photographs, cards with words on them, etc. (I do want to note that, while it’s important to “talk through it” when teaching children any magical skill, it’s especially helpful to do when dealing with intuitive and extra-sensory skills because it helps kiddos to process skills and experience that they don’t yet have names for. It also allows them the opportunity to explore other ways of interacting with their intuition. For example, a pre-teen practicing clairvoyance may not be able to tell you that you’re holding a picture of a lion, but they may be able to tell you that they have an impression of a wild animal with long hair in a particular habitat.)
Basic Omen Reading: Omen reading or augury (which, yes, can mean omen reading with birds, but can also just mean omen reading) is another skill that can be easily taught to children because it relies on the use of normal sensory perception and the child’s personal observations of the world around them. Teaching omen reading can be as simple as having them observe the first birds that they see in the morning and talking about the symbolism associated with those birds. It can be pointing out a spider that’s made a web in the corner next to the door and telling them that a spiderweb by the door is a sign of protection. I recommend starting with what’s called student-led observation, allowing the child to point out things that they notice, allowing them to bring you the feather they found in their walk. This will help to build confidence as well as intuition, and will help to reveal what patterns and omens the child themself is drawn to.
Dowsing: There are several ways to divine by dowsing—pendulum dowsing, copper rod dowsing, y-rod dowsing, etc.—and, because they are so simple they are ideal divination skills for children to learn. I recommend beginning with a demonstration of how they can work when used with appropriate care and practice (modeling all the rituals you would normally use for opening a reading). From there, you can have them practice just holding the dowsing tools, explaining why it’s important to be able to hold them as steady as possible. Don’t strive for perfect stillness before you encourage your kiddo to start asking some questions of their own. But, you can start every practice session with a few moments of striving for stillness before starting in on the questions.
Divination with Playing Cards: If you are looking for a way to teach cartomancy to children, starting with playing cards is the best option. They are simpler to read than Tarot cards because they do not have the complex, spiritual meanings associated with the Major Arcana, nor the heavily symbolic images. (Going back to the idea of building on prior knowledge when teaching children, playing cards also typically have suits with which children are already familiar—diamonds, hearts, spades and clubs—so they don’t require the memorization of entirely new symbols on top of everything else that is involved in reading cards.) They are also smaller than Tarot cards and easier for little hands to handle. Depending on the tradition you follow, there are different ways to read playing cards. But many methods rely on a straightforward system of reading the suit to determine the area of life the card is referring to and the number/figure on the card to discern the message. (I will note that rote memorization is not an effective learning method for young children, so reading playing cards may be a skill that is better suited to older children and preteens.)
The most important thing to keep in mind when trying to teach your kiddos about magic and witchcraft is: it’s not what you teach, it’s how you teach it. What you can teach a child and how quickly they can advance will depend greatly upon the child, their interest level, their attention space, and their ability to read and comprehend sources outside of what you teach them directly.
Start small. Children are unlikely to be able to understand complex frameworks and nuanced concepts, but they can build skills that can be incorporated into broader knowledge later (if they choose to build their own relationship with magic). Children probably can’t handle elaborate rituals, but they can easily remember, manage and apply small charms. If you apply to bottom-up approach and focus on teaching bite-sized magical skills, there is no reason to wait to teach your kiddos about the magic and witchcraft you’re doing at home.
have now made the rest of the discord cry about this little boy who had multi-coloured ducks sewn onto a tunic that he loved so much he wore it to a Very Important Event because he was EIGHT and have you SEEN my DUCKS
sorry no i’m not done i’m gonna make you all cry some more i’m bringing you down with me
there was once a little boy.
he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.
somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.
the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?
he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.
as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.
he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.
and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.
yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real
but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.
tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child
his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.
but he had brightly coloured little ducks on his favourite shirt, and he kept it.
tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.
and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.
but he was a little boy who thought ducks were just the best
Ok but this is how to teach history. This is how you get people to pay attention, to care. Find something small and make it personal, then zoom out to the wider context. History is best taught as a story, with people who lived their lives in ways that came together to create something remarkable that we still talk about today, but who were still just human at the end of the day. They kissed, argued, cried, and dreamed just like we do. And sometimes they really liked ducks.
Also From Microsoft’s own FAQ: "Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. 🤡
