[rejoicinginlove]

Action is prayer.

Pray for that which you desire. Let your body be a temple for the spirit of what you adore and want to serve, dwell. Let it teach you how to move in it’s frequency. In it’s rhythm.

I want to know what love is. I want to be shown. I want whatever of me that isn’t of it to be dismantled. Broken down. Decomposed. And made afresh in the image of that which I serve.

[kisxmesoft]

[rejoicinginlove]

@windvexer @stagkingswife you guys are influencing aesthetic tumblr culture!

[rejoicinginlove]

Soteria (Greek: Σωτηρία ) is the goddess who personifies the concepts of deliverance, victory, safety, salvation, preservation from harm, and recovery.

[rejoicinginlove]

Sovereignty belongs to the those who have reconciled opposing realms. The ones who emerged from the underworld and descended from the heavens. Incarnated. Embodied. Zero point. Being. Stepping forward.

[frtaprhibida]

Chelo Alonso photographed by Angelo Frontoni on the set of Nel Segno di Roma (Sheba and the Gladiator), 1959. Source: Internet Culturale

[pmamtraveller]

A stunning detail from Emperor Maximilian II's Hercules armor, made in 1555.

[6i]

it takes years to develop your craft. do not romanticize the idea of an ‘overnight success’. be a student. grow organically. get really good. hate your work. start over. find new ways to express the same ideas. the student becomes the master. your time will come.

[rejoicinginlove]

May my body be a temple for the spirit of what I adore and want to serve, dwell. May it teach me how to move in its frequency. In it’s rhythm.

[windvexer]

For those who are considering initiatory witchcraft:

Is it once again time for me to wake up and say something melodramatic about witchcraft?

For a while, one way I've conceptualized initiatory witchcraft is as being DLC for your life. Before you initiated, you were playing the vanilla game.

After you initiate, you're playing with DLC. And the DLC primarily changes gameplay mechanics.

And I think that one of the things that changes is complexity, because you have more mechanics than you had before. There are more things to manage, and if you manage them well you get pretty nice gameplay bonuses. But if you manage them poorly, then you get much worse debuffs.

And also, you can't uninstall the DLC.

This is something I wish people had told me at the beginning. A lot of the warnings about initiatory witchcraft are all doom and gloom. Which, that's the nature of this sort of thing. It's a rough road to walk, especially for the first few years there.

But I wish people had just told me about the, well, the chores. The responsibility. The stuff you have to start doing now, or these new channels of power you suddenly rely on are going to collapse and nothing will be right until you fix it.

I think this is a common divide seen between initiatory and non-initiatory witchcraft. In non-initiatory witchcraft the advice tends to be, don't do it unless it sparks joy! Does that routine or activity make you feel great? No? Then don't do it! Your path is your playground.

Which is pretty good advice, but it doesn't apply to everyone.

Some practitioners out there really do just have responsibilities they have to perform, and those responsibilities don't always spark joy, or make them feel good, or whatever. It can be tedious. It can be boring. It can be something you set two alarms for and then drag your feet all the way to the altar. They can take time away from desired hobbies, or friends, or sleep.

When you initiate, there are all these little channels of power inside of you. That's an inelegant metaphor but for the purposes of this post, it's fine.

And a lot of little things can run through those channels. Spirits, powers, gods, the land, whatever. They've got you like a fish on a hook, and they can drag you away.

Do you really, really want to sit with your friends at the campfire and play never have I ever and drink beers? Well, you can't - because the forest is demanding your attention. There's a rock over there beyond the firelight, you will go to it, you will make sacrifices to it, you will honor the spirits who demand your homage because they know you can see them, and they will not be ignored by you.

And I really, really don't like the narrative, or the assumption or whatever, that this moment of having to ditch your friends and go be weird in the forest is a beautiful, sacred moment that makes you sOoOoooOoOOoo glad you initiated.

There are mosquitos out there. You can hear people laughing without you. You're exhausted because you impressed your friends with tarot readings earlier. The energy of the forest is strange because it doesn't trust you.

It can suck, is what I'm saying, but you have to do it.

And I think that maybe this is something to consider, or at least be aware of, so if you start feeling like garbage after you initiate you can be like, "oh yeah, the chores." In my experience, people who are set on initiation aren't going to be deterred by the thought of these kinds of things.

But I think it's something good to be aware of. Initiatory witchcraft isn't something you can set down and walk away from. It's not something you can necessarily change or rework according to your whims. And a lot of that isn't sexy, or mystical, or joyous. A lot of it is just... chores.

[blind-seeing]

It is funny and classic that I only see a post like this now, after the fact. You're v right and it definitely would not have changed my mind when I was younger, probably only made me more interested in initiation, because every scrap of available information is like Cocaine for me.

Um what was I saying? Oh yeah, I have of obligations, yes, and I don't necessarily see them as good or bad, but something that I am simply committed to, like family.

You support those in your circle because you have to, need to, because it is right. You show up to family dinners and help out and spend quality time, and sometimes you get picture perfect moments that you can look back on and make you smile, and sometimes there's drama, but it is a duty.

[windvexer]

Lol, yes, pre- or early initiation I was like a hound dog on a scent, everything whether it was good or bad just drew me in more. I probably would have rejoiced at news like this - "oh, other witches say they can never think of magic to do when they want to practice, but my cup will run over, I will have magic to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I won't be like that OP who finds difficulty in it all."

But here we are, lmao. Sipping broth and waiting. I have other things to do today; I can't do them without doing my spiritual responsibilities first; now I'm drained from those responsibilities.

Family is a good way to put it.

[witches-bottle-deactivated20241]

One thing I had to realize was when I did a reading to find out why my love life was ... well, weird.

The cards I got spoke of a story that because of my particular work, I was more distanced from the world proper and more attached to the spirit world, which makes sense. I spend more time in prayers because that's what I was guided to do since my youth. I found my strength in my faith and now I'm a witch initiated into my own little pathway between worlds... and, it get's lonely.

I want love and I want to be loved, I sometimes feel distant from the world. Sometimes I'll sit in a group of people and see more things about them than they know. Sometimes a person will ask for me for a palm reading as though it's this fun little thing and I'll do it but I'll see stuff that I can't bring myself to tell them. I'd like to take a note from Gemma Gary's book when it comes to this overall - the initiation is the archway, the way when you leave your normal life and enter into a new life...

I may have days where I'm supposed to do prayers and I don't want to, but I have to do them. I may see more spirits than I used to. I may experience more subtle but nonetheless changing experiences than most... but that's the price I paid. I understand that, at this point, I may not have a normal love life, if any, but I'm ok with that...

But, doom and gloom aside, the advice is simple -

Don't step into an initiation if you're not sure that you want to initiate this. When you initiate yourself, you initiate your being to the practice. It becomes a part of you and you become a part of it. You gain responsibilities to not only the spirits, but yourself as well... the best way I can describe it is that the idea of selling your soul isn't literal, but metaphorical, because you give yourself to the practice, to the faith, to the being in that path.

[witches-bottle-deactivated20241]

Tbh, I do think that there is some need to speak on the darker aspects of the craft... not dark as in evil, but in the way that it can affect one's life... the times of the Dark Night of the Soul and Senses, the occasional burnout from ritual work, having to deal with the occasional spiritual-mental illness that occurs such as spiritual psychosis, spiritual bypass and spiritual burnout and a lot more other things... the craft has its good aspects, but it also has times where you're in the middle of Hermit Mode, in which you actually have to look into yourself and there are things that you don't want to see. There are times when you have to weather the storm but you keep moving... it's weird, it's nihilistic, but the craft and the path with it is one that makes you, breaks you and remakes you again... each time, a little more stronger...

That's why I wrote the prayer for beauty, a part of it was asking for me to see the reason behind the suffering I go through, and that I could carry on despite the shit that was happening around me, to see the beauty of the rose in its petals and its thorns.

[windvexer]

I think you have good thoughts here.

I have my own thoughts about the selling-your-soul bit.

I have a pet philosophy that proper consecration is the same thing as meddling with fate: we take an object and, through an act of consecration, give it a new life.

When you take a boring old kitchen knife and consecrate it as a magical tool, the knife gains something. It gains a spiritual nature. It's essence is reformed into something suitable for use in magic.

But by virtue of this, the knife also loses things. It loses its mundanity. Its old life is sacrificed to the fates, to both buy and make way for something new.

The fate of the new consecrated knife may look a lot like the other cooking tools. It may still live in the drawer next to them. It may still go through the dishwasher. But it isn't the same.

It's ability to be just a kitchen tool has been taken away.

I think it's those little pieces of mundanity that we sell. Yes, actually sell - we sell them so we have the currency to buy initiation. We sell them as sacrifice to earn initiation. We sell them to make room for the initiation to happen.

What is lost is a consequence of what is gained. An easy love life, an organic sense of community, the ability to focus on career, fitting in. Being mundane. Being able to sit with people and not see things you shouldn't be able to see.

In some ways, these things turn out big. The end consequence is big, even if the sacrifice is small. You sell your contentment through mundane tasks. You can still be content. You can still do the mundane tasks. You can still take satisfaction from a job well done. But now there's this tiny little gap - that tiny little part is gone, and in its absence the spirits bubble up. In its absence you have a crack through which you can see secrets.

And ten years later your career aspirations are in the dirt because it just doesn't bring you contentment any more.

Anyway.

Is it worth it to trade all that, just to see inside of people? Just to be able to hear the spirits?

The conclusion I have come to is that it is only worth it if you do what you are supposed to be doing.

[rejoicinginlove]

The longer I sit with myself, the more I realize every stagnation in my life stems from my refusal to become the person my will demands me to be. Funny to realize that

1. while the seed is here, the soil requires *me* to tend to it. Consciously architect the conditions in which it may germinate and eventually bloom. Potency over potential. Agency over passivity. Owning my role as the primary causal force in my life instead of *just* collaborating with unfolding circumstances.

Yes, reality responds to me, but you mean to tell me that *I* can, and even must, responsibly become an agent within it? That what’s within my control is in fact within MY control? Insanity.

And 2. if my deepest will is uncovered instead of invented, does free will even truly exist? If freedom lies in the unfolding of my nature, which I am responsible in insuring comes to pass, and I cannot not be what I am, did I ever have a choice to become something else?

[veronicastpierre]

You too can be carved anew by the details of your devotions.

— Mary Oliver

[noxsera]

[staringatcandles]

and may all your stagnation uproot itself and give rise to everything you need to win

[k-z-a]

[rejoicinginlove]

By the way, the price you pay for practicing cruelty is becoming crueler.

[rejoicinginlove]

Just did my Saturn Return chart and omg bitch Ive never seen so many squares in one sitting 🫩

[dominicanmermaid]

Stop measuring your growth only by what has bloomed. Notice what has rooted.