. ݁ ˖ Phantom Garden ˖ ݁ .

22 | They / It / She | Eclectic Pagan | Training Priestess

[phasmaphoria]

MDNI ~ 18+ Blog due to topic discussions

⟢ Intro | Discord ❦

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Hiya!! My name is Blaire, but you’ll also see me referred to as Phasma or Phantom frequently online ❧

I’m currently 22 and use They /She /It pronouns! I own the discord server linked above for other 18+ practitioners and polytheists, with a push towards intermediate and advanced devotees, priests/ess’s, oathsworn individuals, spirit or god spouses and more.

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⟢ About My Practice |

- ꒰ Magic Practice꒱

Practicing for 8 years, i started doing divination for others 2 years ago, but have practiced for 7! I am a Chicano Folk Practitioner & Hechiceria, my family was big on ancestor veneration and herbal work that very much influence how I practice today. I have a big interest in both dream magic and travel, as well as usage of psychotropic herbs & entheogens in ritual context! Spirit, Death & Cemetery work is also a very large aspect of my devotional journey as a death priestess in training.

- ꒰Devotional Path꒱

Eclectic Polytheist who works mostly within the Hellenic Pantheon, i do incorporate more private deities from 2 other pantheons and cultural entities as well. As a spirit worker i work with many types of spirits, cemetery entities, animal or plant spirits, and folkloric creatures. I am training to serve as a priestess for both Melinoë and Circe, others who take a strong role in my team include Aphrodite, Dionysus, and Khaos. I am also in a fairly new romantic relationship with a deity that I’m actively exploring- so expect a good amount of posts around the subject.

⟢ For My Page |

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Expect a lot of devotional blurbs, collages or digital offering posts, every now and then some devotional art may come out of me haha- This space is a safe space #1 for me, i have no issues prioritizing my own well being and piece of mind by blocking any problems or hate for spouses, pagans, witches, cultural magic, LGBTQ+, or others. I love asks and any sort of comments/questions on things either here or on the server!!

I hope to see you around!!

[phasmaphoria]

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˖ Rite of Regulation ˖

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During the 3 nights of the upcoming Full Moon, I, serving as training priestess in dedications to the gracious βασίλεια of ghosts, will be offering messages from Melinoë and local willing spirits. This will be a 3 day period of card readings, scrying sessions, and spirit/talking board messages. All will be confirmed through dowsing rods, along with any notes from clairsenses to be included.

˖ Additionally, a ritual will be held in dedication to our mistress of ghosts, near my local cemetery to bring forth balance and order, while banishing the anxieties and terrors that plauge us. Anyone who wishes to recieve such blessings can inform me before hand, and i will give an offering to each of your names and pass along any prayers or requsts directly! ˖

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˖ This is just a small act of service i wish to preform regularly, so if you miss this occasion dont worry more will be held in the future. ˖

˖ Additionally, any tips from the readings will go towards raising funds for donations related to our community (such as helping gofundmes, those with emergency commissions, those who struggle with bills, etc!) ˖

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Interested? See the Schedule Below and find out how to join ♡

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˖ Schedule ˖

Tuesday, July 28th | 1st day of Full moon | A day focused on building up, gathering, and beginning. Openings of space for messages will begin, hymn to Melinoë will be played at dawn and dusk with libation.

Wednesday, July 29th | Peak Full Moon | A day of evaluation, inventory, transition, connection and gratitude. Ritual will be held in private during the night, any readings will occur before the rite.

Thursday | Last day of the Full Moon | A day of releasal restructuring, banishment and enlightening. Final messages will be delivered, hymn and libation once again for Melinoë, closing prayers will be said and the total from all tips will be counted and donated.

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Commenting or DMing me, here or on Discord can give you the chance to join the prayers inside the ritual and recieve blessings. If you would like to join the free messages, consider joining my discord server where all my information stays posted! (Linked in my Bio ♡)

[athanel]

quick sketch of Dionysus based on his sculpture in Yusupov palace

[kystory]

Ah, my dear, dear Dionysus~

[64mpg]

(emerges 3 hours later covered in blood) i figured out what emotion i was feeling

[loudroaring]

A reminder from my ancestors:

"Slow down. If you think you're going too slow, go slower"

[quotefeeling]

“Why can’t people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”

— David Baldacci, The Camel Club

[sacredlittleember]

So often I worry about getting things wrong.

But I realized something a long time ago: there really isn’t one “right” way to do this.

Yes, closed practices exist and should be respected. Yes, some traditions are culturally specific. Yes, there are methods, rituals, tools, and approaches that people may find more effective than others.

But outside of that?

Your practice does not have to look exactly like someone else’s to be real.

I know you might feel lost sometimes, especially if your path is mostly reconstructed, self-led, intuitive, or built from scattered pieces you had to gather yourself. But that does not make it less meaningful. In a way, that is part of the beauty of it.

You are forging your own relationship with your deities, spirits, ancestors, land, or whatever sacred presence calls to you. You are learning the language of your own devotion. You are building something honest.

And I know it can feel lonely. I know it can feel discouraging. I know it can feel like everyone else has some ancient handbook you never got handed.

But I promise, you are not alone.

There is someone out there whose beliefs may not be exactly the same as yours, but close enough that your soul will recognize the warmth. Your people exist. Your path exists. Your practice is valid.

You do not need anyone else to approve of the sacred relationship you are building.

What you need is the courage to take the next step.

So go ahead.

It’s right there. 🌙

[homey-worshiper]

drawing for dionysus

Support homey-worshiper

Support homey-worshiper

[sonseulsoleil]

let's go girls!!

[milkandvoid]

[linguisticparadox]

Spoke to a gen z person the other night and apparently the young folks don't know about the very legal sites from which you can access public domain media (including Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and other Victorian gothic horror stories)?

Like this young person didn't even know about goddamn Gutenberg which is a SHAME. I linked to it and they went "aw yiss time to do a theft" and I was like "I mean yo ho ho and all that, sure, but. you know gutenberg is entirely legal, right?"

Anyway I'm gonna put this in a few Choice Tags (sorry dracula fans I DID mention it though so it's fair game) and then put some Cool Links in a reblog so this post will still show UP in said tags lmao.

[ri-writing]

Spreading the news to my followers - if you weren’t aware of this before, here’s the link to Project Gutenberg - https://www.gutenberg.org/

Project Gutenberg is a gigantic collection of books that are in the public domain.  You can read the books through the site or you can download them in various formats so you can get the format you prefer for your eReader of choice.

It is free. 

It is legal.

I was reviewing the list of the top 100 books downloaded yesterday and I saw a fair few that I had to read for college classes - so if you’re a college student and your professor assigns you to read Plato or any number of older works, check here before you buy a copy.

I reread the Anne series several years back - they were free through this.  I need to reread Pride and Prejudice at least once a year, and my e-book version is from this.  Someone recommended Jekyll and Hyde to me a few weeks back and I got a free copy from this.  When I went to Haworth on my last holiday before the plague times, I brought books by the Bronte sisters with me to read or reread that I downloaded from here.  It’s a great resource.

[linguisticparadox]

Yes yes yes! I was honestly so flabbergasted that this young person hadn't heard of the gutenberg project! It's been around for AGES, maybe longer than the kindle has? And it's such a huge project and wonderful resource! It used to be a household name (or maybe that's just my family, thanks to my dad being a cheapskate nerd [affectionate]). I was so glad to be able to share this resource and others with them though, and I wanted to make sure no one else was missing out!

If you look at the first reblog from me I also recommended a few other resources, most of which were from www.archive.org, home of the Wayback Machine! They run openlibrary.org, where you can check out ebooks of some public domain titles! They even have the Bone series by Jeff Smith!

And archive.org itself has all kinds of public domain media including music and movies! For Dracula fans, here's a radio show adaptation of the book, starring Orson Welles! And here's a 1920 movie adaptation of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring John Barrymore, the grandfather of Drew Barrymore!

I'm so excited to see people falling in love with classic media through Dracula Daily! Let's keep that fire blazing!

[wanderingchaos]

Also, if you can't handle reading things, check out libirvox.org! it's a free audio book project taking public domain works and people doing free audiobooks! there's a lot of great stuff on there, but it takes things in the public domain and makes audio books out of them!

it's a super nice project, and you can find some really nice readers there!

[athenadark]

Also don't think a book is old because it's in the public domain

lots of writers and publishers are prepared to waive future profits for entirely petty reasons

because of this the entire works of Philip K Dick [petty writer who found himself with lots of hangers on during his life] and HP Lovecraft [his publisher - who was his wife and hated him] became public domain on their death

Sherlock Holmes entered public domain this year, it's always worth checking because you can save a fortune

and the more popular the classic - the more likely someone has uploaded it

[the-haiku-bot]

Also don’t think a

book is old because it’s in

the public domain

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[elfwreck]

Want audiobooks instead?

LibriVox has free public domain audiobooks.

Public domain works in the US are:

Anything published (in the US) from 1927 or earlier (this number goes up every year for quite a while), and

Anything published between 1928 and 1963 that wasn't renewed, and

Anything published before 1989 without a proper copyright notice.

(Don't go looking for things in that third category unless you've studied a LOT about copyright law. Mostly that covers things like "weird little newsletters" and "self-published booklets" and sometimes fanzines. But most publications have a copyright notice in them.)

There's also some oddball exemptions here and there; copyright law is a tentacled mess. But those are the basic guidelines. (Except for audio. Audio has its own set of rules. It's weird.) (I mentioned tentacles, did I not? Double the amount of them you were thinking of.)

There are a lot of works from the 50s and early 60s that were not renewed, especially short stories published in magazines.

Project Gutenberg began in 1971; the first text was the US Declaration of Independence, shared through the university computer system. That was the start of "hey computers + public domain text = FREE BOOKS FOR EVERYONE."

[noswordinourlake]

Adding on that Project Gutenberg is not just Eng language texts either! I know specifically about the French texts because I did independent study French lit in high school and all my sources were Project Gutenberg acquired (Candide my beloathed) but there's many open source texts available in a number of languages.

[stevespookington]

browsing the top 100 books downloaded in the last 30 days can be really fun too, interesting to see how things change

https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top#books-last30

[rostekhorn]

Oh man, yeah, young people definitely need to learn this. I read so many public domain things when I was fresh out of college and penniless but still needed entertainment. Just going straight to Wikisource works too:

And yes, Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain. But I got bored with Sherlock Holmes after a few months, and became much more pumped when I discovered his mirror opposite, Arsene Lupin. Because when you're not only young and penniless but living through the Great Recession, what you really want to read about isn't the world's greatest detective solving crimes. It's the world's greatest thief robbing fat cats blind while pantsing the police along the way.

[trambrosia]

And you can Ctrl-F find words in electronic texts.

This is so powerful that in the old times they made a whole-ass index of every word in the Bible, called a concordance. It is now possible for every electronic book

[phasmaphoria]

Silent moments

Being as active as i am in both the mundane and spiritual worlds, balancing all these energies in my space along with social groups, future progress in school, theurgical & financial work, everyday drama and changes in life- silence and stillness are harder to find the more i drag myself to meet every need.

Stillness, hermit moments, reflecting on where you are and have been recently are things i have avoided the past months as life presses forward throwing new things, situations and deities/others my way. I never stopped to adjust what i was carrying before continuing on the journey, so when burnout hit the beginning of the year it wasn’t that much of a surprise. Because i didnt take time to adjust and understand, i then had to stop and sit with stillness to see where i was, wasn’t where i needed to find myself.

But the silent moments are where my deities are reaching me. The memories in the mornings together, the birds in the trees and overhead who visit, shared whispers of support in the kitchen on the quietest of days, the dreams of returning to solitude with them driving the car as i safely sleep finally trusting myself to be carried. My growth is showing again, and the burning nature to show all i understand and who i will be must be hindered, just a touch until my torches are all lit and i am accomplished in myself.

[cursecuelebre]

What is Supersitio in Greco-Roman Polytheism?

This concept is shared in both Ancient Greek and Roman cultures and religion. It was orthopaxic/Cultus Deorum of Mos Mairum “Way of The Ancestors” both shared common values, traditions, and religious beliefs. Supersitio is one of these concepts.

Supersitio is the opposite, the counter of the “correct way” of approaching the gods. Superstitious beliefs of having fear of the gods such as thinking their vengeful, cruel, petty, angry and jealous followed to excessively pray and offer them was considered especially to the Greeks as Hubris or prideful thinking one can sway the gods with bribes for their appeasement. To one approach the gods correctly one must not think the gods are going to harm them in anyway to have a trust and bond between the god and worshipper.

What is Supersitio?

It comes the Latin word meaning “standing over” and to translate the Ancient Greek word deisidaimonia or “fear of the gods or spirits.” That this fear is impious before the gods.

Here’s a few examples how this would’ve looked like.

1. Irrational fear of the Gods, believing the gods are easily angered, petty, jealous, and cruel then trying to win their favor with what’s more than necessary is considered to be hubris and thinking the gods can be win over by bribes.

2. Excessive Dependence on the Deities - essentially you place your autonomy and power in the hands of the gods not fulfilling or acting on your commitments and obligations leaving it to the divine or you can’t make any decisions, actions, or any other decree without involving the gods and relying solely on them. There is a balance between the person’s own ability and self control and the faith of the gods.

3. Sorcery or goetia (opposite of therugy) both cultures the practice of necromancy, curses, and spells that involve forcing someone was regarded as superstitious. As well as fortune telling but divination and fortune telling were two separate things to them. Plato mentions that one would practice necromancy would exploit the dead for their own personal means risking the danger of themselves and the communities this also follows to the last one.

4. Believing you can command the Gods and spirits, according to Plato no one has the power or authority to bind a god or spirit by usage of spells and rituals.

But here’s the thing about sorcery….

It’s a tricky thing because the people who condemn it usually are rich and powerful men, Plato was a Ancient Greek philosopher meaning he was very wealthy and educated. The Roman elite was frighten of fortune tellers and sorcerers because they can sway the plebeians (peasants, lower class) in fear and rebellion. The most common people performing sorcery was women and it was a common thing to do among the common folk to go to sorcerers and fortune tellers or practice themselves. But also defixiones or curse tablets, evil eye amulets, and poppets are superstitions as well. It was common thing to bury curse tablets beneath the temples of Demeter and Kore (Persephone)

My personal opinions and beliefs

Except for sorcery cause how it was common among the common folk to practice it was very widespread and I do it myself. The previous mentions is something I adhere to and agree with. If you want to pray and approach the gods you can’t think they will do you any harm in anyway possible or not able to make decisions or do any actions unless divine presence is involved and rely on it solely is unhealthy cause it removes independence and autonomy of the person. Now if someone is trying to command the gods through the act of sorcery that’s a whole different story but as someone who practices witchcraft with deities like Hekate I don’t believe I’m commanding or binding them to the spell and I know others who don’t believe it as well.

Supersitio is the counter to Cultus Deorum and the religion of the ancient Greeks it’s not dogmatic as in heaven vs hell or sins rather it’s inappropriate impious behavior people act before the gods and out of the values that is centered around such Piety, Faith, Discipline, etc.

[nous-teleios]

Can we give some love to a bearded Dionysus?

Seriously, there's something about this way of depicting him that brings out a more mature aspect of divine ecstasy, and it's so captivating

[hiiighpriestess913]

Y’all I’m being so serious when I say this: go to the library for witchcraft reasons.

You can usually find books on witchcraft, yes, but there’s also field guides on local foraging and wildlife, cookbooks, books that teach you how to craft and DIY, books about environmental protection and stewardship, books on how to use herbs medicinally, books about other religions, cultures, and spiritual practices. My favorite local library even has a seed swapping program and fantastic resources to research your own family history!

Go to the library for witchcraft. Please. :) <3

[dionysianivy]

Dionysus Anthios

“The Flowering One”. An epithet especially used during the Anthesteria festival, honoring Dionysus as the Blooming God who brings the return of spring, awakens the fertility and restores nature back to life.