#ask keri

[thegodthief]

Wait... How do I know when a diety wants to work with me?

For my short answer, I said:

“Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Thrice is by design. Look for the cause and the signature of the designer.”

There is the possibility that the clouds could open up and you receive a personal visitation by a deity (or local spirit or ancestor, etc.) during which you are explicitly told in no uncertain terms that this is your life now.

Anon, I pray this never happens to you, cuz it sucks and you can’t take a tax deduction on it.

Chances are, that entity is going to try to get your attention in ways that doesn’t shatter your mind worldview upon contact. Which means it is likely going to be small, repetitive, and easily tuned out.

It is also going to “speak your language”. One person’s omen of hope is another person’s omen of disaster. (Snakes, anyone?)

For example: You realize bees have been coming to your thoughts a lot lately. Whether it’s that swarm that went overhead last week, or the neighbor’s kid practicing loudly for the part of the bee in the school play, or that beehive jewelry keeps hitting your dash. Later at school, you hear about someone’s relative being a beekeeper and at the store there is a sale on honey-based cosmetics.

Sure are a lot of bees around you lately… I wonder what would happen if you (or a trusted third party of which I am not) were to perform a divination about this persistent topic of bees. Local spirit? God? Ancestor?

Let’s say your Fuckery Entity Senses™ are tingling. Return to your favorite means of divination and ask the question you asked me: “Is there Someone who wants to work with me?” Though, I would personally add, “… and is actively trying to get my attention?”

Think about all the people you have to “work with” at school, at work, in your household, at a rally. Some folks may want you to work beside them, but not all of them at once. It is better for everyone involved that you work with those who want to work with you at the time that you and they are available for the work.

Once you have established that connection, listen to them via the means you have available to you and go on from there.

“But what if I ask and there is no one wanting to work with me?” Cool! Free agent! Go do what makes you happy and don’t worry about it. Sometimes being on your own is the better thing anyway.

“What if I ask and the entity that responds is someone I do not want to work with?” This is a good time to practice civility. “Thank you for your interest, however, I decline.” I know some folk would think me as good as dead for turning down an entity (read: Fae) but I’m already dead person walking so whatev’s. You have your own agency, and just because Someone has tapped you on the shoulder claiming that you are The Chosen One™ doesn’t mean you have to accept. I have personally had quite a few interesting nights where turning down the offer from the Big Spooky was the better option for me no matter how terrible they were at the time.

“What if I’m not sure about the whole thing?” Then proceed slowly. Maybe they work out and you have a grand ol’ time together. Maybe it doesn’t and you have to withdraw after all. Not all relationships last forever, and none remain in the same state as they started. If you are required to swear an oath at the onset… “Thank you for your interest, but I cannot make that oath.” I’m sure there’s a few good discernment masterposts floating around. (I am not a good person to write such a post myself. The bulk of my blog is justification for having discernment and a warning about what happens when you don’t.)

“So, about the thrice thing in your short answer?” Entities have to use things that catch our senses and tap into our thoughts. Look at how modern advertising is so damn effective. Short bursts of repeated information. Something caught your eye only once? That was a novelty. Twice? Well, a broken clock is right twice a day. Thrice? Hang on. My tea is ready and I like to put honey in it while it’s hot.

;p

[thegodthief]

I gotcha Anon, and the answer is Yes because by now you’re used to me and you’ll know I’ll be a sarcastic shit as much as possible with sprinkings of improper humor and personal anecdotes that should not be misconstrued as data.

But I’ll need more time than I have right now to properly set you up, and I want to remind you that anything on Anon will be answered publicly, so just as I am being evasive about identifying specifics in this non-answer, so you may want to be evasive about naming your concerns.

But first... 

Homework. (insert evil laughter here)

Eating on your schedule is definitely high on your list of wants, but don’t forget having a place to eat and a place to store the food for eating. So your homework is to sit down and identify the things you need (bed, clothes, soap), the things you need to regularly pay (electric bill, phone service, loans), and the things you want (Patreon subscriptions, savings, future purchases).

Now be fucking realistic and ask yourself where do you want to be 5, 10, and 20 years from now. What is your goal for those times? Is it a certain number of monetary symbols? A deed with your name on it? Family and/or offspring? Specific location of residence? All this shit costs money, yo, and you’ll need to plan for it.

Then take a look back at your prospects and consider... how does each one satisfy your Right Now Needs and Wants? But also consider how does each one assist you to getting to your 5, 10, and 20 year goals? If a prospect doesn’t answer your Right Now Needs (and Wants), then it’s not in the running. You need a safe space to sleep, a safe place to eat, and a safe place to shit shower. Promises are like notes written on water. Blink, and it never happened.

Your initial job is going to be shitty. Your workmates are likely to be shitty. Even the A-Team a group of shitty individuals. But the A-Team worked out how to deal with their mutual shittiness to get shit done. That is going to be the hardest lesson you have ever learned before or after your degree. (Grats, by the way.) And there’s only one way to learn it.

Remember that no matter how shitty your office mates are, you still have a standard for yourself. You don’t have to lower yourself to their level, because you have a 5, 10, and 20 year goal that you are working towards. Sometimes that means picking up cigarette butts at two in the morning in the dark (personal anecdote that I’m still proud of), but if that leads to a mentorship that leads to a managerial position that benefits you, then guess what.

Put the damn gloves on and get to it.

Oh, look, so much for “not enough time”... well, I really don’t. I have five minutes to run out the door to my job, but I didn’t want to leave you hanging all day. (And it’s going to be a long fucking day... public sessions. Pray for me.) So consider this to be my preamble to the formal answer, should you wish to run your concerns with me further.

However, I will point out that for the most part, the people who follow me and engage with my posts are pretty much worldly knowledgeable assholes like me who may have insights of their own to give you. So there’s that.

Be encouraged. Cuz I said fucking so. :D

[thegodthief]

since coffee as I understand it is very much a constant (/necessity) for you I wanted to ask what the perfect (3 if you want) food item/s are to combine it with. I don't drink it myself (health) and have therefore only a superficial understanding of the subject and was curious what an expert might say. this very important ask is brought to you by friday and my temporary procrastination. have a nice day!

The only thing I’m an expert in is wasting time, so you’ve come to the right person! ^-^

But really, coffee snobbery… actual coffee snobbery, is simultaneously so vile and entertaining that you’ll question whether humanity was a mistake and should we start over as a universe. (Civet coffee, which I have never partook of, can sometimes be a subject of coffee snobbery, but is more along the lines of unusually sourced foodstuffs that if you grew up with it, is normal. But if you didn’t…. no.)

If you want to go down a rabbit hole and completely miss that deadline, I suggest looking up “how to use moka pot” in your favorite search engine and start reading forums and blog comments. I have never seen so many ways to overcomplicate what is really a simple and straightforward procedure. If you are boiling water in a separate pot to heat up the chamber before filling it with heated distilled water, then you have other issues going on and the moka pot is not the ideal equipment for you unless you like hurting yourself that way.

I will declare that not all coffee grounds are the same. Even though most coffee is just two subspecies, how and where that coffee is grown affects the flavor considerably. So that mass market coffee bucket in the grocery store is going to have a different smell, mouth feel, and taste than a single-field artisan coffee scoop sold at the gate to said field.

Personally, I prefer Cuban blends of coffee. My fave Cafe Bustelo is often at least twice the price of Folgers and Maxwell House (popular USA blends), but Cafe Bustelo doesn’t make my stomach feel like I’ve imbibed poison either, so that makes the price palatable.

Speaking of blends, there’s more blends of coffee than there are stars in the sky. Again, we’re dealing with just two subspecies of coffee, but how that coffee is processed is just as important as where it is grown. Over roast the beans, and it doesn’t matter how delicate and nature-kissed the initial harvest was. Charcoal is still charcoal no matter how fancy a name you give it. (*cough*Starbucks*cough*)

Lightly roast the beans, just enough to remove water but not enough to harsh the taste, and you have a “light roast” that make a coffee that’s dark almond in color, very light “and fruity” to the taste, and enough caffeine to restart an elephant’s heart. (Hyperbole? What hyperbole?) The longer you roast coffee, the stronger the taste but the less the caffeine. You literally cook caffiene off as you roast it. So those folks who want coffee to kick their ass in the morning are better off with a light “breakfast” blend instead of a cup darker than my soul.

I actually don’t like the lighter blends. They taste watered down to me, even though I can feel the caffeine oil on my tongue. I am not a fan of flavored coffee, either. But if I must have a light blend, I’ll have it with cream to give it some body, and request biscuits with butter and jam to go with.

Medium blends are most of what you’ll find on the shelf. These brew that classic coffee color you see inks with. These can go with anything, really, because it’s how you dress up the coffee that matters. Plain and black? Tart foods to balance it out, please. A lot of cream? Dense foods like grits or rice.

Dark blends have a taste that will punish you for existing, but are relatively lighter in caffeine than the lighter blends. I can have three cups of dark blend coffee and be mildly buzzed later, but one cup of light blend coffee will have me vibrating through walls in an hour. I actually can’t deal with the taste of dark blends straight up, and must have at least some cream or half-n-half to take the edge off. Light pastries go well with dark blends for me. Or if I’m having this first thing in the morning, throw some ground chili and some cream in it and call it breakfast by itself. If for dinner, then plain and black and gimme a hearty beef dish to celebrate it with.

If you want to try the taste of coffee but want to avoid the caffeine, there are good decaf coffees out there. (Hang on, I have to hide from the coffee fandom.) Unfortunately, the last time I had good decaf coffee was when I lived in Washington State (which I am not now) and all the stuff on my local shelves do not sit well with me, so I have no recommendations to give you. You could also try coffee flavored hard candies, but read the label to make sure you aren’t accidentally caffeinating yourself.

If the Coffee Side of Tumblr wants to jump on this post to correct me or offer further avenues for exploration, they are more than welcome to participate.

[thegodthief]

A different anon: I read your dream posts because in addition to my own Work that I've started doing recently, I find it helps me open channels again to things I thought I'd lost. And that thrills and terrifies me but I'm starting to realize I /need/ to do this. So into the water I go again.

One person leaves the river of words. One person wades back in.

Both are right to do as each has chosen to do.

There is a lesson here for those who are seeking one. 

[thegodthief]

oookay, after todays reading I really should do everything to prep, but really, did it have to be so *drags hand across face* (and first thing in the "prove you're not a robot" are bridges, I mean yeah, that's subtle)

You have my sympathies, Anon. (As I try very hard not to smirk and utterly fail.) But at least now you know you can cross those bridges if you have to. Right?

[thegodthief]

I finally understand why I can’t read your dream journals. It always bugged me because I was like LET ME READ THE THINGS DAMMIT!? What’s the worst that can happened? Well, now I know. I subconsciously call things to me. When I read something fascinating I day dream about it and eventually take it to my dreams. Where the astral and dreams collide, I end up pulling on strings. Sometimes those strings are tied to the internet posts I saw and spirit essence is attached. Bad things. So now I know.

I’m glad you figured this out even though it means I will lose you as a reader. I would rather have you never glance my way again if it means you remaining safe.

Though now you have homework, if you are willing to sit down with it. Now that you know the why, examine the effect that has had in your life, physical and otherwise. Is there a possibility of using what is superficially a weakness into a strength for you? That is something you’ll have to explore for yourself, along with what led to this sensitivity.

Good luck, Anon. I hope all goes well for you.

[thegodthief]

Hi! After all of the time I've spent hovering about your blog, I have more or less created and leaned on the belief that it makes the most sense for me to ask you about woo-related things, because a) I don't really have anybody else that I'm willing to ask and b) I also believe that you would be really straight-up with me and not try to spare my feelings. All of that introduction is an attempt at an explanation for asking the following: (to be continued)

[cont] (part 2) If I wanted to commission (read: request and pay for) a reading to the effect of “why do I keep hanging around occult/metaphysical/spiritual/woo spaces and people when I know that I’m too lazy to actually learn any woo-things properly and I don’t even feel much connection to the little I’ve tried of it presently?” would you accept? Not soon necessarily (I’m glad I checked your etsy page as I wrote this), but just at all? Thank you!

I would… barely. And I reserve the right to refund your money if I get the answer I believe I would get. Because the answer would not be The Answer™, but the Beginning of the Dialogue about The Answer™.

The only thing I’m certified in is something that had jacque shitte to do with anything medical or mental, so full disclaimers are waving here. Having said that, before I even decide which deck to get, I would give you some personal homework that you are in no way obligated to share with anyone outside of your skull:

What itch do you have that exposure to these “occult/metaphysical/spiritual/woo spaces and people” is scratching it? If you were not getting something out of these interactions, you would quickly find something else to do and other people to shadow. But even though you’re describing the scene like a negative image, there is something you are outlining. You just haven’t recognized it yet.

What do all these places have in common?

What do all these people have in common?

What they have in common is not going to stick out at you like a red coat at a naval shipyard. Paint your descriptions with broad strokes at first. Is it smells? Inside places? Dirt places? Historical? Language? Familiarity with family stories? Look at the bigger genres first and start narrowing down from there.

“I don’t even feel much connection…” Dude. My Dear. Beloved Reader. I don’t feel much connection with the shit that I do. And there is a seven-year archive to back that statement up. Some shit I just take on faith. Some shit I do because I have seen results even though at the time I felt like a broke-ass patsy trading the cow for beans. Pick a thing. Do the thing. Observe the results of the thing. If it consistently works, mark that as a win and learn from it. If it consistently doesn’t, mark that as a lesson learned and move on. If it yields randomly or sporadically, dissect the thing and work on the parts one way or the other.

“… to the little I’ve tried of it presently” Then try other things. If trying other people’s things ain’t your thing, then make a new thing and walk it out as you go. What works for me is not guaranteed to work for you, and vice versa.

So, back to the initial question: “[W]ould [I] accept?”

Ya know, on second thought… No. Not yet. Going back to Point Number One, there are other sub-questions I could add on to that. Maybe you’re being called by the ancestors, spirits, gods, and/or Others. Maybe all that stuff floating around you is causing your inner woo-slinger to resonate, but you just haven’t found what path(s) you’re compatible with. Maybe actually doing the woo isn’t your thing, but you find a certain solace and comfort in the wooish environment? Maybe all the above. Maybe none of it. It’s a big question, and I am not going to cheat you by trying to condense the universe into a 3-10 card spread.

Your question is too big, and I can’t help you narrow it down with only cards.

So here is the Dialogue you need to have with yourself: Where or who does your feet lead you to the most? Analyze that place and/or person. What about that place and/or person draws your attention the most? Why? What would you like to know about that focus? Now you have a question I can answer.

Get a notebook and take notes. Welcome to the Work.

[thegodthief]

I'm glad you're ok. I hope things will only continue to improve. Good luck.

Thank you. I’m working on it. Unpacking a lot of shit and a lot of shit after the move. Day by day, right? Let’s go.