#crooked path

[less-ismore]

Jeff Wall, The Crooked Path, 1991.

[noctesmaleficarum]

I was wondering about the term Traditional in the craft. I know some people find discomfort in calling themselves Traditional witches, and I wondered why this term never gave me any issues, despite my entire identity being founded in rebellion and noncomformity. I am certainly not a traditional human being, in fact, I'm quite the opposite, adhering to all things current society deems unnatural and wrong. So why do I like calling myself a traditional witch following the crooked path?

And I came to the conclusion that I find it highly interesting to reclaim the term with an opposed meaning, with the idea that a traditional witch (in the crooked path sense) is a witch that goes to the Sabbath, feasts and works with the Devil, fights against this capitalistic and patriarchal society to help the spirits and nature and to reclaim her own power. Which goes in complete contrast to tradwives, conservatives and whatnot.

My tradition is very real and very angry, and worthy of being talked about just as much.

[magdalene-spirit]

The witch & the Mother

The Witch path has many entry points, mythological, imaginal, archetypal, spiritual, magical, animistic, activism, agency, spiritism etc.

It has a right & a left turn, a high road & low road, an inward turn & an outward turn, & ultimately a turn that can take you beyond all roads to nondual liberation.

It is a call that you hear deep from the bottom of your being but may initially just be curiosity or disillusionment with religion, politics, a desire for Nature & a natural way of life or self-empowerment.

Wherever we start on the path is right for us at the time.

The call to the witch-path is a sound that echoes & emanates from something so ancient & primordial in the subconscious, when the first forces of what would become also human intelligence rose in the belly of the ancient mountain Mother, as a service to her.

The path is sometime called a crooked path because like a tree doesn’t grow straight, but twists & branches, so will your journey be.

This path ever escapes institutionalisation because it has no laws made by man, but a human can receive the keys of the path & then articulatie it. It is anti-institutional.

It recognises the underpower of the human form to draw & direct power from land & nature towards the community. Political power is the overpower of colonising bodies, access to the land, & the ancient source of power to build community, the foundation of Matriarchy.

Witches must resist colonisation of the mind, bodies, life & nature.

The ancient meaning of witch, is your knowing. Initially psychic or intuitive knowing. Witchery is the primordial science of exchange between human & environment, the ancient economy & ecology.

The female form has traditionally had greater access to this spirit of knowing & power.

Men can tune in to it with reverence & veneration & so also become vehicles for service to Mother.

In other times initiated men would wear robes or some other symbolic shamanic gesture of allegiance to the Mother, Goddess & serpent energy.

Men have to learn again to turn to the sense of the Mother within them.

Mother loves her male witches.

—

We start with self-knowing, self-agency etc. & with spell & intuition we learn about magic & energy patterns & manifestation & so we discover something important about what we are “in here” & what happens in the world “out there”.

We may just become curious about Self-knowing & the real reality behind the correspondence of “in here” & “out there”, at this moment our interest shifts to nondual knowledge of existence & ultimate liberation within the knowledge of the Self, anterior to the creation & world.

[thehexwitch]

Some animistic bone-reading tips

I've been practicing bone-reading for about five years now, and through that I've picked up on a few things that I don't regularly see people talking about, so I decided to put together a list that I would have personally found helpful at the beginning of my divination practice. Please be advised that I come at bone-reading from a very animistic perspective, so if that's not a viewpoint that you believe in, most of these tips probably won't be helpful to you.

The method of bone-reading I use is to ask a specific question and toss the bones to read. This is a common method, but there are also alternate practices, such as tossing bones in the fire and reading them based on the burns and heat cracking.

Choose your bones carefully. Pick ones that want to be worked with, and ones that you're personally able to resonate with. Bones that don't want to be read can't be used effectively from my experience.

Feed your bones. This is the practice of giving your bones offerings to maintain their willingness to work with you and to build your relationship with them. I find divinatory herbs and blood to be a great offering, though blood should not be used without experience and caution. Food the animal would have eaten while alive can also be effective (for example, if your set is made primarily of fox bones, a small offering of meat might be appreciated).

Listen to your gut. Bone-reading is an incredibly instinctual and personalized form of divination. Don't try too hard to logically assign meanings to your bones - from my experience, they will usually let you know. If you can tell a bone would like to be used for a reading but can't tell what the bone might mean, add it to your set. It will let you know once you start doing readings with it.

Use a mat. This is partially a mundane recommendation; if you throw your bones straight onto the floor, they're eventually going to break. This also makes it easier to tell when a bone breaking is significant to the reading. A mat can also serve as a center of the reading; the bones in the middle may be more significant, whereas the bones that fall off the mat may be irrelevant to the reading. This isn't a format one has to use, but it can be helpful, especially to beginners.

Just start bone-reading. Obviously you should go into it having done research, and with a cautious and respectful attitude. However, at a certain point, doing research and preparation isn't helpful. Because bone-reading is so personalized and instinctual, there is so much you can only learn once you start. During your first few readings, pay close attention to each bone, where they fall next to each other, and what they may be telling you about their meaning.

[the-trans-folk-witch]

The Green Devil of the Ozarks: The little green fairy of... moonshine?

It was 2005. I was with my grandfather in an old shop similar to "dick's 5 and 10" outside of Branson, Missouri. This is where The Green Devil caught my eye.

My grandfather frequented little old fashioned stores like this. He loved collecting all kinds of gadgets. Old movie posters, salt water taffy, and soda parlor paraphenalia. It was heaven on earth to him in this little corner of the world that was stuck in an older Ozark time. His house wasn't too dissimilar to a crackerbarrel gift shop. All kinds of wooden toys and dolls. He loved his little knickknacks. But on that day he found it. A copy of an old French absynthe poster with "the little green fairy" smirking at the viewer. He had to have it. It was being sold for $8! frame included! If only the seller knew the true value of it. Or how it's mere existence was breaking so many copyright laws.

Maurin Quina, as it's named, is a French apéritif advertisement painted by Leonetto Cappiello in 1906. The drink was made illegal soon after its creation. But this poster is now being reused today. It was not well known in the US at all back then. Not even in the 2000's. but my grandfather being a moonshiner, absynthe fan, and art history drop out, knew all about it.

My grandfather was not as religious as the rest of my family. But he sure prayed to God when he was trying to avoid the law. He was selling homemade moonshine without any sort of license or proper knowledge of sanitary practices. It was an arte form he learned from his father that I never had the pleasure of learning.

He decided to hang this new poster up in his storm cellar where he kept his aging bottles of various liquors. Over time it developed A life of its own. My grandfather would kiss his hand and place it on the poster of the little green fairy after every jar was sealed or sales were made. I Don't think he saw this as devil worship so much as just a simple good luck ritual. Not too disimilar to his high school basketball team kissing the image of their mascot before a game. He always practiced these superstitions even though he didn't seem to really believe in them.

Fast forward to today. I'm an Ozark trad witch. So of course I now work with this image as if it is the devil himself. He is a devil that rules spring and summer. Drunkenness, poison, lunacy, fairies, and nature. He is associated with law breaking, alcohol, healing, harming, and fertility. With Easter coming up He is on my mind heavily. A time I feed him red dyed eggs symbolizing the blood of christ and the blood of good Christians. I feed him this with intentions of causing those which share the eucharist to lust. Poisoning the church so to speak. I attend mass in spirit form and dip my blessed turkey wish bone down in the communion wine. The turkey is symbolic of love in the Ozarks. And the wishbone is horned like the stang, and my devil. Midnight mass on Easter is filled with drunkenness and sex. Those consuming this spiritually poisoned wine are consumed with lust for others in the church. An orgy ensues in the great house of God. Only for all members to awaken Easter morning with no memory of the incestuous rituals performed with their brothers and sisters in christ. To do such things in the house of God and not confess them (due to not remembering) is damanble. This is my goal as a witch. To bring the witches Sabbath to the church and to pervert the souls of good men.

By turkey wand and lustful stang I complete my work in the devils name.

A call to the Green Devil:

"Envy is his name. Drunkeness and poisoning are his arte. He is Lord of the little people and plants alike; come little green fairy and bring your lust and your lunacy. Green devil rise from the roots below like a serpent. Green devil come down from the tree tops like a booger in the night who takes its flight. Join me in this witching hour oh beast of the green and hear my call to the wild. By my witches flame may it be so."

Look out for a post on the black and red devils later this year. Our horned one changes with the seasons

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[cantva190]

Round or oval stones symbolize the feminine as they represent the female reproductive system, and pointed stones symbolize the masculine as they represent the male phallic side. ............................................................................................ Make a Wish: While you are in the river you can grab a stone and make a wish, while you do so focus on your wish and visualize how it has already materialized. After this, throw the stone with all your strength, go and don't look back.

[bbapothecary]

[mon3trs]

i know it hurts. it hurts to feel it all slip right past you, i just want to ask you: was there something holding you back? have you had to cover you tracks so long, you lost your identity? is there something dragging you down? crippled under the weight of the crown, what are you waiting, oh, what are you waiting for?