Lunar Love-Witch

♡Kodi♡ ♡Non-Binary Nature Spirit♡ ♌️ Sun ♎ Rising

[snoozeandstudysounds]

PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997)

[skeletons-of-the-weak]

I'm not casual, I want a vial with your blood.

[thefloralmenace]

Somewhat on the vibe of "your glorious revolution doesn't exist," I want to talk to you all, especially the young folks, about effective anarchism.

Spoiler alert, it's not blowing stuff up or arson.

I am considered the most anarchical person of all among my friends. Granted, most of my experience has been wreaking anarchy against the systems present in my high school and college, but the principles are the same.

Practical anarchy is not the big, flashy, romanticizable thing people online make it out to be. It's more about the long haul - digging in your teeth and just being a menace that no one can really get rid of.

Everyone's "Why vote when you can firebomb a Walmart" posts (that they don't follow through on) are just not pratical because this is a surveillance society. With CCTV and DNA testing and cell phone cameras and GPS tracking, if you do something big like that, you are GOING to be caught; then that is the end of your anarchical career. And, keep in mind that you might get caught while you're setting up this big event - it's a crime to blow up a Walmart and also a crime to conspire to blow up a Walmart, so your career in anarchy might end before it begins, and then you are permanently out of the game. No matter what causes you were working for that inspired you to do something big and violent that you thought would get someone's attention, you now can't help at all ever again in your entire life. What you did will be a passing headline on the news, and then everything will go back to exactly what it was because big, acute actions can't compare in effectiveness to small, constant actions (just being a thorn in the side of the system, poking and poking, but unable to be dislodged).

This is just the practical side of it too: think about the risk of hurting innocents if you really advocate for doing things like that. You think blowing up a Walmart would really make a dent in that big of a corporation? But if you intentionally or unintentionally kill a bunch of Walmart shoppers, that's going to devastate families that had nothing to do with whatever your cause is.

So all that big talk about violence and destruction: not practical, not effective, not ethical.

The only way I've started to change oppressive systems around me is by justing chipping away from within the confines of the rules of these systems, and/or only stepping just outside them (never breaking rules in a big way that could have allowed said system to easily and "justifiably" get rid of me).

So if you're going to be an anarchist, you need to consider:

Having the longest career in anarchism possible (i.e. being careful enough and judicious with your actions so that you don't get expelled from the system you wish to fight).

And then for any given anarchical plan:

2. Potential consequences.

3. Insurance.

I'll give you an example. I had serious beef with the culture of my college's science department. Students were constantly overworked, and if they expressed their misery outloud or reached out to any of their professors about their struggles, they got apathetic responses if not direct insults to their abilities or dedication. I had too many similar disparaging interactions with professors in one week, and I realized a lot of the responses I was getting were just the result of professors not really knowing how they sounded when they said certain things to students (ex: If someone says they're struggling with a course, don't IMMEDIATELY respond with "change your major," - you can give that as an option, but if you make it your first suggestion, the implication to the student is that if they're having any trouble with the course, they're not good enough for the program).

So I wrote up a flier of examples of good and bad ways to respond to students having anxiety with explanations and distributed it to every professor in the department. Everyone who knew about this perceived it as a great personal risk - that I would get in some kind of unspecified trouble or piss off an important professor, so before embarking on this project, I considered...

Potential consequences: I couldn't really think of any specific college or department rules I could be violating. People postered and handed out fliers in the department all the time. What I was doing fell pretty clearly under freedom of speech. I just shoved the fliers under professors' doors, so I didn't trespass in anyone's office. Worst I could think is that individual professors would get mad at me and make my life difficult, or I'd simply be told to stop fliering in the department.

Insurance: Just in case there were any consequences that I didn't think of and to insure me against the ones I had thought of, I didn't put my name on the flier. It was typed in Word, something everyone had access to. I came in to do it after professors had all left for the day but before I needed to use my ID to get into the building (no electronic record of me being there). I took the elevator to the first floor offices because the stairs require ID swipe after 5pm, but the elevators do not. I found out the building had no cameras by asking about it on the grounds that something of mine had been stolen a few weeks prior. I shoved the flier under the doors of dark offices and left it outside offices with lights on (so that no one would come out and spot me). And here's one of the most important pieces of insurance: I put up a few of the fliers on public bulletin boards in the building. This was important so that if I slipped up and said something that conveyed that I had knowledge of the content of the flier, I would have an excuse for that, i.e., I read it on the bulletin board before class this morning.

And then I did the thing. And surprisingly, it was incredibly well-received by professors. A few who knew that the flier must have been mine (because of previous, similar anarchical actions rumored to be associated with me) told me that everyone was RELIEVED that they finally had an instruction manual from the student perspective on what the hell they're supposed to say when one of their students is panicking. It sparked a real change in the vibe of the department and student experience. Had it instead pissed people off, I would have simply said I could not claim authorship of the flier but had read it and thought it contained good ideas then gone on creating more anarchy while angry people grasped at the zero straws I had left them to pin the action on me.

That's an example of a single action I took that was part of a much longer (~3 years) campaign of mine to change the culture of my department. Everytime I did something in that campaign, I made that consequences vs. insurance calculation to make sure they couldn't expell me from the program, the department, or the school before I succeeded.

[helheth]

*pierces a thorn-wrapped red candle with a rusty nail on the day and hour of mars*

Smack cam

[cherishedwifey]

an under-appreciated view.

[breelandwalker]

"What radicalized you?"

Nothing.

I've just always held that fascism is bad and that all people deserve basic respect and human rights, along with food, healthcare, housing, and civil liberties.

And somewhere along the line, that became a radical opinion.

[quris-sparky-deactivated2018052]

Energy Based Witchcraft and Quick Practices

All right, so this is essentially the beginning of energy related witchcraft that I’ll be posting about as I try it and learn new things. Feel free to try out some of the stuff I talk about here but please remember that this is your journey and you can and should edit and tweak everything to best fit you.

Types of Energy

Reserved Energy

Reserved Energy floats either just above or below your skin. It should feel like it’s attached to you and resist most attempts to use it. It is minimally pliant, minimally workable, and mostly just exists as a backup or protection.

Latent Energy

Latent Energy is typically a ball of energy that is extremely malleable and easily visualized. This type of energy is more ‘for your use’. It can be visualized anywhere in the body; however, where ever it best seems to fit (i.e. a ball of energy in your stomach, chest, head, etc) is normally where it stays. Latent energy is great to work with to give yourself a better mastery over molding both Reserved and Latent energy.

Neighboring/Immediate Energy

Neighboring (or Immediate) Energy is an amalgamation of your energies and outside forces. It’s best visualized and felt by meditating. If you’ve meditated and felt like you were basically out of your own body and hazy, you’ve felt Neighboring Energy. It’s less you and, as a by product, significantly harder to work with. It’s not as difficult as Reserved Energy since that’s an active rejection to change, and this is simply difficult because you’re reaching beyond yourself.

Visualizing Your Energy

Visualizing energy can be a bit tricky, but seeing your energy, in my opinion, is equally important as feeling it. Being able to see and acknowledge your energy makes feeling and moving it so much simpler. There are a couple of ways to visualize your energy, so we’ll hop into those first:

First Plane Visualization (FPV)

If you close your eyes to visualize your energy and the first thing you see is your body, this is where you’re at. First Plane Visualization essentially means your energy best manifests itself to you as a physical part of you. Personally, I feel this makes it easier to work with Latent and Reserved Energy, but harder to work with Neighboring.

Second Plane Visualization (SPV)

If attempting to visualize your energy brings up empty space with your energy in some form or shape in it, congrats, this is you. This type of visualization makes it significantly easier to work with energy that isn’t yours but more difficult to work with your own as well. Your energy seems to best manifest itself as a construct in your mind, essentially on a different plane than your physical body. To use it, you have to get around your own barrier between it and physicality whereas outside energies that are already on your plane don’t need any extra work for you to work with them.

When you visualize your energy, you’re essentially introducing yourself and greeting it. In the same way you most likely wouldn’t hand a stranger a thousand dollars, your energy isn’t likely to do much for you if you don’t at least know it.

Moving Your Energy

Think of your energy as a muscle, if you never use it, it becomes that much more difficult to begin using and to strengthen it.  Please don’t expect to hop in, visualize your energy once, and suddenly have it do everything you want it to.

First try visualizing your energy with your eyes closed. Spend some time with it, don’t demand anything of it. Is your energy naturally calm? Does it spin lazily as you sit with it? Is your energy a spitfire, constantly flinging out strands of itself and wrapping around everything it can without leaving it’s basic shape? Who is your energy? What kind of personality do you get from it?

Try to learn and love your energy every time you visualize it. When you’ve got the image of your energy firmly in your head, preferably to the point where you can almost feel  it wherever it’s best visualized, try moving it. Try to get a strand of it to detach from the bulk of your energy and pull it towards you. If that’s difficult, simply work on moving the bulk of your energy towards and away from you (SPV) or around your body (FPV). This should honestly take awhile. Remember that you’re not simply trying to visualize it, but feel it. As it moves, you should feel it. Once you’ve got a mastery of that, try opening your eyes and doing it over again.

When you can move your energy in bulk or pieces with a bit more ease, I recommend pushing it to the surface. The easiest place to feel Latent Energy is between your palms. If trying to move your energy with in yourself simply won’t work for you, try this instead, then move back to that later. To push your energy to your hands for FPV, imagine it wherever it tends to manifest itself. Push it, either in whole or (preferably) in part, down or up your body and into your palms. If you need your eyes closed to direct it, by all means, close them; however, once you’ve got it comfortably in your palms, open your eyes and try to get used to keeping a hold on your energy with your eyes open. Allow it to do as it pleases within the space between your palms. Start out with maybe half a foot between your hands and slowly increase the distance as you grow more confident.

For SPV, visualize your energy and bring it towards you. Bring out either two bits of it, still connected to the whole, or the bulk of it towards yourself until it feels like you’ve stepped inside of it or as though it’s encompassed you. Carefully, without losing that feeling, visualize it (either with your eyes opened or closed depending on what works better for you) sparking its way down your arms and into your hands. If that’s too far to visualize, simply imagine it condensing between or in your palms for the get-go. Because your own image is less involved in your own energy, expect to have a harder time keeping it where you want it to be.

Energy, like most objects, rejects movement without force. When you move it at first, it may feel like it snaps back to where it started no matter what you do. Keep practicing and remember that it hasn’t really moved in years, so it’ll take some work to get it to move now.

Energy Exercises

We’re finally at the end of what I can share for the time being. I only have a couple of practices that I’ve been using lately, only one of which I’ll add here, specifically for Reserved Energy because that’s what I’m practicing working with currently. I will update this as time goes on but I do want to be sure before I give put any exercises. For example, one of them uses hunger as a basis and I don’t know how I feel about giving a purpose to staying hungry, so I’ll wait to add that if at all.

Exercise 1

Find a cold room or area, cold enough to give you goosebumps but not enough to shiver. Furthermore, if it’s outdoors, make sure there’s little to no wind. Wear short or no sleeves. Allow the cold to seep into your skin. Visualize your reserved energy; this may be a thin layer above or below your skin.

If it appears above your skin, give it intent, push it to separate you from the cold. In practice, this literally felt like a wash of lukewarm warmth sliding down from my head. The cold felt like someone holding an ice cube near my skin, but didn’t actually make me cold.

If it appears below your skin, incite it to heat itself. The cold should sink into your skin and meet that barrier of energy and fizzle out. I can’t tell you how it feels in practice because my Reserved Energy appears above the skin. If you try this out and are okay to share, I’d love to know how it differs.

Updates

I’ll either update or make new posts on this as I learn. I love energy based craft and I’ve got a lot more things I’m practicing that I’m not confident enough in quite yet to share…but soon. Here’s a mini-list of what you can expect in the future:

Moving Energy Into Objects

Visualizing Neighboring Energy

Using Neighboring Energy

Taking Energy from an Object

NOTE: All of the names I’ve given energy, energy types, etc were made by me simply to make it easier to refer to and talk about. If you call any of the feelings or activities something else, by all means, continue doing so. This is just what makes it easiest to understand for me.

[kokiri-witch]

Spells are not simple.

Here's a real tip for all you baby witches out there, diving into spellwork before anything else: Spells aren't as simple as going through the motions, and a spell probably won't work if you don't understand how to use your Will.

This is what I've been taught by my mentor who has been a witch for 25 years. You have to set your intentions and use your Will to match. What is your Will and how is it different from your Intention? This post may get long, but it's important and I haven't seen any others cover this, so please don't give up half way through!

Basically, it's like this:

Intention: your reason for a spell, your goal/what you want + ingredients to match

Your Will: the Power you put behind your spell or working

The intention part is easy. You figure out your goal, pick a spell or create a spell that uses ingredients or actions that match your intent, and then you perform it. This is what most of Tumblr will teach you how to do. While working with simply your intent can sometimes work, it's more like a coin toss because you're not actually making your spellwork as powerful as it could be.

But your Will, as I've been taught, is the most important part of any magick and is the most often overlooked. You can make magick with nothing but your intent and your Will together. Did you know that? What is your Will? It's the power you put behind your intent. Your Will is your Power.

That's right, baby witches. You have to learn how to tap in to the power around you as well as the power within yourself. This is why spells are never as simple as you think; if you can't add your Will to a spell, it will never be as powerful as you want it to be. This concept can prove difficult, so I'll try to break it down as simply as I can.

Your Will comes from the energy within you, but you can also tap into the energy around you to add to that power. This means that to find your Will you have to first learn how to:

Perceive Energy

Feel Energy

Feel your Own Energy

Touch Energy

Gather Energy Inside and Around You

Manipulate Energy

Infuse Energy with Intent

This is the basis for finding and understanding magick. Magick is all about energy, and the sooner you learn how to do these things, the sooner you'll start to realize your power as a witch. And this is why I say that spells are not as simple as Tumblr makes them; at least, they shouldn't be.

When you're performing a spell, you should be raising energy and infusing that energy with your intent. You could be adding energy to your ingredients, or simply raising it and holding it, to be released into the world when the spell is finished. That's your Will; the energy you add to your working. The stronger the energy, the stronger the spell.

A simple way to put it: Intent + Will = Power

So please do yourself a favor. Research energy. Find it, figure it out, feel it within you. Take your time to truly understand that power so you can properly perform powerful spellwork.

Learning all of this can take time and that is fine. If you take your time to work on this, you will be grateful for it in the long run. Feeling the energy that surrounds you and that comes from within you is such a beautiful thing, I promise. Energy is wonderful.

[silkfromvenus]

[seaymph]

“Cool your hands in the grey twilight of Gothic things,”

— Oscar Wilde, from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas wr. c. January 1891 (via violentwavesofemotion)

[bebemoon]

julia fox in dilara findikoglu .

[viridianmoon]

[wombatannihilator-deactivated20]

[inloveforevr-deactivated2025041]

we aren’t doing enough arts and crafts in this world I’m telling you

[petaltexturedskies]

Daphne du Maurier, from “The Apple Tree” in Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights

[humblebumble]

[simena]

ROBERT BRYDALL - The fairy woods (detail)

[astrologanize]

our venus is simultaneously our most attractive and most unattractive qualities. it’s usually the thing people love in the beginning but after you part ways it becomes the ‘ugliest’ feature

taurus venus: “they’re an anchor and they never rush” can quickly become “they never did anything adventurous and nothing moved them”

gemini venus: “they’re fun to talk to and keep me on my toes” can quickly become “they talk but they never really say anything and i never know where i stand with them”

libra venus: “they’re charming and easygoing” can quickly become “they’re deceitful and weak-willed”

capricorn venus: “they’re assertive and unbothered by others” can quickly become “they do whatever they want and lack consideration”

[astrologanize]

aries venus: “they’re energetic and protective” becomes “they’re exhausting and defensive” 

cancer venus: “they’re emotive and youthful” becomes “they have to be coddled and they’re immature” 

leo venus: “they’re attention grabbing and they give their all” becomes “they’re a diva and take their all too”

virgo venus: “they’re refined and willing” becomes “they’re restrained and calculative” 

scorpio venus: “they’re deep and diligent” becomes “they have unresolved issues and they’re unprincipled” 

sagittarius venus: “they’re a free spirit and amusing” becomes “they’re unmanageable and nonsensical” 

aquarius venus: “they are nonjudgmental and complex” becomes “they’re careless and ambiguous” 

pisces venus: “they move to their own rhythm and are unconditional” becomes “they’re fickle and don’t understand boundaries”