ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭♡

Lo, 27, trans mlm, eclectic witch. I follow back from sailurmars. Agnostic, currently non-secular, but I do love the moon. There is still so much I don’t know. Sun: Cancer Moon: Gemini Ascendant: Cancer

[thenighteternal]

[worldhistoryfacts]

Handprint paintings in Pettakare Cave, Sulawesi, Indonesia. These were made by people over 40,000 years ago. The artists blew pigment over their hands to make a stencil. This technique is seen in a number of very ancient cave paintings all over the world; it seems to be one of the first ways that people figured out to leave an artistic remnant of themselves.

{WHF} {HTE} {Medium}

[wondersmith-and-sons]

it’s just funny though that in The Before Times when the goat burned (or didn’t burn) there was very little fanfare except maybe some tongue in cheek celebration (or disappointment). but give it a few jokes about lack of ritual sacrifice and a five-year survival streak and two plague years and suddenly we’ve collectively tapped into the seasonal worship instincts of our ancestors from 36,000 BCE and created a new sacred ritual through sheer force of internet jokes and desperate hope. it’s like we’ve crowdfunded a god.

[aubrey-melinoe]

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THE BURNING GOAT TO ME ????

[zoreta]

I'm more familiar with the Gävle goat than yule goats in general, but I'll take a whack at it.

From my one hour's worth of research, the yule goat is a very old character in Scandinavian winter festivals. The likely source of that is Christianization of an existing festival. Thor is best known as the god of thunder, but he was also god of the harvest, and was prominent in the yule festival (the celebration of the last harvest).

Thor rode a chariot pulled by goats and goats are associated with him in general, so goats became associated with yule festivals too. People would dress as goats and walk the streets begging for food, pulled goat-themed pranks on each other involving wood and straw goats, etc... Over time yule goats when from pulling Thor's chariot to Santa's sleigh, but some old traditions remain. Straw goats are still common Christmas ornaments, and large ones are erected in town squares around the first day of yule/advent.

1966, the town of Gävle Sweden decided to build the biggest yule goat ever as a tourist attraction. It was 13 meters (43 feet) tall, and made of straw. It was burnt down New Year's Eve... commencing an arms race between those who protect the goat, and those who delight in the old yule tradition of Fire and Mayhem.

This arms race has included:

Running through the goats' legs with a car

Coating the straw in a protective layer of ice

Flaming arrows shot by a guy in a Santa suit

Coating the straw in flame retardant (it burnt anyway)

Bribery to allow the goat to be kidnapped by helicopter

Making a second smaller goat (which was also burnt down most years)

Shooting fireworks at it

Read the Wikipedia, it lists the goat's fate from every year. It has been destroyed more years than it has survived.

Overtime, the goat gained a cultural mythos that the destruction of the goat was a sign that the next year would be prosperous, and that the survival of the goat was an ill omen.

2017 they seriously increased security. A double fence, a 24 hour Webcam, and a large team of guards. The goat survived-2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.

Which we can all agree were some very shite years. Over the course of those years, what had been a fairly localized tradition got more coverage- the goat had never survived so long.

2021, the goat finally burned. And in that good old yule tradition of seeking levity in the darkest and coldest time of year, people have joined together in the fervent hope that the evil of the last four years will be torched along with it. That is why we rejoice- for The Goat Has Burned, and like the yule log and dawn on the solstice, we are manifesting that it is a sign that better times are coming.

[aubrey-melinoe]

I'M SORRY, BUT THAT'S THE MOST HILARIOUS SHIT I'VE EVER HEARD. THAT'S FUCKING WONDERFUL.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE A FUCKING AMAZING PARTY. GOD, WHAT I'D GIVE TO SEE THAT IN PERSON ONE DAY.

I'M GLAD THE GOAT HAS BURNED.

[isaacsapphire]

Next year we're going to start making and selling little straw Christmas goats to burn yourself, I swear, and some translated pagan ritual to literally Thor will become reincorporated into the December holiday rituals.

[v-as-in-victor]

I would like little straw goats to burn as a northern hemisphere dark times tradition thank you.

[9d6problems]

Be the cleansing fire you want to see in the world.

[starlightomatic]

I post about this every fucking year but pagans really need to fucking stop responding to Jews talking about Christmas ubiquity and Christianormativity by yelling at us about don’t we know that Yule exist and pagans exist and Christmas was originally Yule. It’s irrelevant to whatever point is being made and 95% of the time it means you misunderstood the post.

[starlightomatic]

If a Jew says “I wish people stopped saying Christmas is secular, it’s Christian” they are saying “I wish people stopped assuming a part of their culture is part of everyone’s culture, I’m tired of having people ask me what I’m doing for Christmas even though I’m loudly Jewish, and it’s an indication of the fact that deep down Christianity still wants to convert everyone and eradicate difference.” When you come in with “ACTUALLY christmas was originally pagan and called Yule how dare you erase pagans!!!!” it’s literally irrelevant to the point. And in fact indicates that you too can’t conceptualize the fact that Christmas/Yule/winter-holiday-with-trees-based-on-Christmas/Yule isn’t universal!

[starlightomatic]

Like in a facebook group I’m in, someone advertised something ornament-related as “holiday” and a Jew was like “just call it Christmas, I’m tired of this fake inclusivity” and then was immediately ripped to fucking shreds by pagans and secular cultural-Christians because pagans who celebrate Yule also use ornaments so it’s not actually just Christmas. I’m talking dozens of nasty, bullying comments because the mean Jew spoke up about their marginalization, which apparently erases pagans. Y’all need to fucking stop. If you can’t be actively supportive to marginalized people then at least just stay quiet and don’t engage.

[starlightomatic]

And the sad thing is, Jews and pagans should be allies here since we’re both impacted by Christianormativity! We could support each other on this but instead you come after us whenever we talk about it and are so eager to support a hegemony that erases you too.

[cryptonature]

Expressing gratitude for nature is a bit like mourning the dead.

Mourning isn’t for the dead; it’s for us.

Which is not to say that such things will not touch the world beyond our own minds.

[slysca]

I start most mornings by smudging [for non-Natives: info here]*. I love how the smell lingers on me and in my home and I love that the smell

[traegorn]

Predators. They're predators.

[traegorn]

@thecoloredcanvas wrote

So a couple of things

1. Witch is a gender neutral term

2. Not really sure how anyone practicing witchcraft at home is suddenly a "predator"

3. Not a man.

All that aside, you respond to a video criticizing someone literally targeting vulnerable people to take advantage of them, and your reaction is "the person doing the criticizing is just as bad because of the gender identity I assume they are?"

Like seriously, what the fuck.

[libraford]

Trae: hey, there's a pervasive problem in my community of people conflating neurodivergent coping mechanisms as magical powers and using that conflation as a means to create an insular community which if gone unchecked can turn into an abusive situation where people can get hurt.

This rando: Ah, but I can see by your video that you are not what I consider female and therefore YOU are the abuser! Checkermate!

Seriously. Even setting aside the fact that Trae is not a man (the big genderqueer flag is visible in every frame, but I guess not everyone is familiar with that flag). There is so much wrong with the mindset that witches have to be female (and implied here as gender-conforming cis female) but also... just to touch...

Women can be predators. Women can be abusers. Women are fully capable of manipulating people for personal gain, whether that be for money or for something even worse. Women are not exempt from criticism of their actions.

I swear to every god. If you think women can't be predatory then you have never had a friend from high school guilt you into a mlm scheme.

[cumaeansibyl]

"We're looking for isolated people who are easily influenced and have trouble saying no" = totally fine

"I have a beard" = SCREEEEEEEEEEE PREDATOR

Y'all are kidding me with this. I cannot.

[libraford]

While this is not my fight, essentially, I would like to point out something in this reply that has me going 🚩🚩🚩

The implication here is that men, or people who are perceived as men, cannot heal and that is a blessing solely bestowed on women (again... cis women.)

This is STRIKINGLY and ALARMINGLY similar to something that a certain someone said to me. If youve been following me for some time, you will remember me talking about Coven Guy. (I'll be talking about it with Trae on their november episode of BS-Free Witchcraft, and spoke in depth about on Hex Positive some time ago.)

He said to me that:

"I believe that women are inherently more magical than men because the womb is the seat of creation."

And anyone who is nodding along to this, I want to ask yourself WHY you think that a body part has magic powers. Why is my uterus, which tries to kill me every month, full of fucking 'healing energy?' What happens when I get a hysterectomy, am I not a witch anymore because I got my magical tubes tied? What does that say about women who cant have children or choose not to?

Why do we equate women with healers? Isn't that kind of sexist? Can't women be whatever they want to be? And why cant everyone be a healer? What's so freaking special about the uterus? Must a witch be a healer? Must that be what defines us?

Why, even in feminist circles, must everything boil down to my fucking body parts and their ability to have children? Do I not have a say in the direction of my own life? STILL?

I'm going to make a long story short here. The man that said this to me had a small cult following because he would build people up with these kinds of words and manipulate them into doing absolutely heinous shit.

Hes a pedophile. I dont mean in a joking, vague kind of way, I mean hes doing 90 in prison for multiple accounts of sexual assault on a minor. And he dragged his girlfriend in all this with him, despite the warning signs. She's lucky she only got 30.

So I want y'all to know that when I see this TERFy, manipulative gatekeeper bullshit, I see the strings of it. You may not think you'd fall into that kind of thing, but neither did his girlfriend when I warned her. You're being manipulated.

Also, the burning times? Really? In 2021... honestly.

[lunefrog]

also not to mention that men were accused of being witches, and an equal amount of men and women both were killed on account of witchcraft suspicion. the accusations had more to do with social status (like if they were poor, not christian (though mostly jewish/indigenous/black/etc), disabled, old, just sorta weird, etc) than genuine suspicions of witchcraft. most of the witch hunts targeted people who werent christian or people who werent christian "correctly", so they didnt care much about gender. witch is and was gender neutral--it was someone who went against God and cavorted with the Devil and did evil magic.

also the presentation of most witches in media is.. misogyny. literally. like this isnt a big feminist win. nowadays the trope is coming around to being empowering but the reason it started was to.. literally demonize women who didnt want to be mistreated by the church. it wasnt because women are inherently magical or witches or whatever--which is very much what churches at the time would have you believe, that women were inherently prone to succumbing to evil in that way--and parroting that sentiment now is literally counterintuitive.

gender essentialism (combined in this case with bioessentialism) is only ever going to cement misogyny and sexism. the idea that there are some inherent, fundamental differences between "male" and "female" (categories which are arbitrary and we made up, mind you) which make one sex more capable than the other (or of one sex capable of one thing that the other isnt) is the literal foundation for systemic sexism & misogyny--not only that but it simply isnt true, and requires vast logical leaps like the commenter is presenting here, or even straight up misinformation.

anyone can be anything they want to be and there are no inherent qualities which a man or woman possesses that separates them from each other. the uterus is just an organ, if we want to talk about the seat of healing let's talk about the liver, now THAT is a magical organ if i've ever seen one.

[pinewhisky]

One of my favorite parts about this is when I'm told I can't be a witch, "obviously." And if I feel it's a decent time to say I'm trans, I'm then told I automatically have access to magic because I'm a woman. Which I'm never surprised at, especially that no one will ever go back and answer me why they were so volatile when they thought I was cisgender. Or why they assumed I'm cisgender if I'm talking about the gender neutrality of the term witch.

It's the same kind of person who insists I'm gay if I talk about LGBT rights, or that I must be unemployed if I'm talking about universal basic income. Exactly the same.

It's an appeal.to emotion, not logic. Twisting facts (or omitting entirely) to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

[andmaybegayer]

#hey neopagans I know you think ley lines are ancient magick #but they were invented by a guy almost exactly 100 years ago #you can read his book if you want it's on the Internet Archive

I feel like "hey neopagans I know you think X are ancient magick but they were invented by a guy almost exactly 100 years ago" is a line we could apply pretty broadly.

[argumate]

be funny if the modern magick worked better than the ancient magick

[feotakahari]

Well, the modern tech works better than the ancient tech. Magic’s just trying to keep up with the times.

[theskepticalwitch]

Crystal Care 101

Alright witches (and non-witches), let me give you a crash course in Crystal Care.

Universal Ways to Charge Crystals

Any of these ways can be used without damaging your crystals:

Moonlight. The moon is our best friend, she is amazing, she will not harm your crystals at all.

Touch. You can hold your crystals in your hand to charge them with your own energy and intention. It is a very personal way to charge your crystals.

Smoke. You can run your crystals through smoke from your incense, candles, or smoke cleansing sticks.

Sigil. Place a sigil meant for charging underneath your crystal to charge it.

Selenite. Some people use Selenite to charge their other crystals. I don't know why Selenite is associated with charging crystals, but it is.

Basic Crystal Safety

Do not consume any crystal or crystal powder under any circumstances.

Some crystals are toxic when in water, make sure yours isn't before you charge your water.

Do not heat your crystals with a flame.

Do not have Himalayan Rock Salt Lamps if you have a cat, they can lick it and become very dehydrated, which can lead to death.

In fact, make sure all of your crystals are out of reach for any of your pets, or children if you have them.

DO NOT PUT THESE CRYSTALS IN WATER

Amber, Angelite, Black Tourmaline, Calcite, Carnelian, Celestite, Halite, Hematite, Jade, Labradorite, Lapis Lazuli, Lodestone, Malachite, Mica, Moldavite, Moonstone, Obsidian, Opal, Pearl, Pyrite, Selenite, Tangerine Quartz, Turquoise

DO NOT PUT THESE CRYSTALS IN CONSTANT SUNLIGHT

Amethyst, Apatite, Aquamarine, Aventurine, Calcite, Celestite, Citrine, Clear Quartz, Fluorite, Green Amethyst, Opal, Rose Quartz, Sapphire, Smokey Quartz, Topaz, Turquoise

DO NOT PUT THESE CRYSTALS IN EXTREME TEMPERATURES

Amber, Amethyst, Aquamarine, Citrine, Coral, Emerald, Jade, Labradorite, Lapis Lazuli, Malachite, Moonstone, Obsidian, Onyx, Opal, Pearl, Touramaline.

This is just a 101 Guide, it's by no means a full list, so please make sure to also do your own research on your individual crystals as well. I hope this helps!

[greenwitchpeach]

🌿🌱🌻🪴

[owls-hive]

Purity in witchcraft is overrated in my opinion.

"Make sure you're in a good state of mind" this, and "Don't be afraid" that.

Anger, fear, grief, exhaustion... are all emotions that can be used in witchcraft. Learn how to wield them properly, and see just how much power they hold in your craft. Just like a weapon.

[bewbin]

[traegorn]

Someone asked about Silver Ravenwolf, so I answered

[hag-stone-witch]

Thinking about how everyone's interpretation and practice of witchcraft is unique and personal and how sad it is to see so many mass produced "you must do it this way or you're wrong and bad!!" books there are out there trying to force people to follow the author's rules and beliefs on magic. What I'm trying to say is if you're reading this: hi, your practice is valid as long as it's true to you. Don't let anyone else force you into their beliefs. Take freedom back, own your magic, because that's what witchcraft is!!

[awitchandhersecrets]

That's been my problem, you put it in words! That's why I don't want to write a how to book. I write fiction anyway, maybe I'll just write about a witch and go in detail on her practice for funsies and if someone takes something from that, cool.

[libraford]

Oh yeeeesh. We're back to 'Christian witch' discourse. It's 2012 all over again.

[upthewitchypunx]

Lol

[traegorn]

Or 1997. Shit is cyclical.

[libraford]

Let's see... we've already had the curses discourse this year. Its early yet for bone-stealing, but I've been proven wrong before. Cultural appropriation is always a big topic, but I haven't seen it explode lately, so I'm assuming the next round is going to start with someone crossing the line there in a really, really awful way.

[traegorn]

I figured we'd hit an argument about the etymology of the word "witch" next instead.

[libraford]

Always a classic. Always arrives with carry-on gender baggage.

Theres always room for a niche 'veiling is cultural appropriation of hijabis' which hasn't shown up for awhile. Honestly thought it would make a comeback when I started veiling again.

[shanie-the-toyaddict]

You know, I still hope and long for the day that we can get past a single spring without the Easter/Ostara nonsense

[libraford]

Last year we came pretty close, but because easter was cancelled due to pandemic.

[upthewitchypunx]

But we're not to late for "Christians stole Christmas"! Or "pentacle with the point at the bottom is evil".

[aresstan]

Hot take but you can’t learn about paganism without also learning about white supremacy and how it uses pagan religions to push hate group agendas all over the world today. If you don’t learn about the connections between the two and how it operates, your ignorance enables white supremacists to keep on doing it and using it to recruit others. People in our community who do nothing and stay silent are literally a part of the problem, there is no opting out whatsoever. Divorcing the two makes the issue repeat itself over and over and over again.

It’s not hard to include this in your research and stay aware. It’s the bare minimum.