#trad craft

[noctesmaleficarum]

I think witches underestimate the importance of spirits and spirit work in their craft until they actively practice and create bonds with them.

I have been a spiritless witch at the beginning, years ago, only including deities in my practice. It felt... Empty. Lonely. Not right, too. Now I can't believe in a life without spirits. They make my witchcraft whole.

Trust me, work with spirits. You won't be able to go back, in a good way.

[stormbornwitch]

" Magic works through the practitioner, not around him. This means that anything I call forth tends to pass through me on its way out into the world. Sending a curse, in my experience, is a little like spitting poison from your own mouth. It can be rinsed out... but it changes your spirit ever so slightly."

- Roger J. Horne's Folk Witchcraft: A Guide to Lore, Land, & the Familiar Spirit for the Solitary Practitioner.

[sitting-1n-silence]

Thoughts on the way spirits present themselves:

Sometimes, when we're calling spirits, they're arrive without us knowing. The spirit could be standing right in front of us waving, and our subtle senses just aren't fine-tuned enough to see them. Some get around this by working with a scryer. Others might build the ritual pressure in the space until the spirit is compelled into become more visible. Something i find consistently reliable is utilizing forms of passive divination.

This way, you have ways of diving a spirit's presence without having to pull your attention away from your conjurations or ritual actions.

Passive divination methods for spirit conjuration could include:

Burning incense to see figures and signs in the smoke

Letting candles melt to look for symbols in the wax

Hanging bells around the space

A water scrying set up where the surface is oily to more easily produce images

Above, I included photos from a ritual I did a while ago where I used candles and stone with a similar purpose. This stone was being consecrated as a tool to scry with in the future, and I wasn't receiving clear signs that the spirit i called had come. It wasn't until I looked down and saw the melted wax in the form of a black hand that I realized they were sitting with me. It was small and very subtle, so subtle I could've easily missed it.

Having passive ways of scrying and divining the presence of spirits can be a huge help when exploring new spirits and conjuration methods. It takes some discernment to know how to use them, but when applied well, they are a huge boon to one's setup.

[carbon-heart]

Selection of books I have found useful

[elegantshapeshifter]

Fairy Seers in Serbia

▶️ The fairy-seer

Watch Full Movie | 14:31

"The fairy-seers of southeastern Europe are (mostly) women who are able to communicate with women-like creatures from the supernatural world. Sometimes the fairy-seers induce a trance state in order to establish communication with these creatures. During their communication with the fairies the fairy-seers can prophesy about future events. The fairy-seers can also deliver messages to the living on behalf of their deceased relatives. Similarly, they advise about how to heal an ill individual or the treatment of that individual can proceed after consulting the fairies. These illnesses are usually a form of so called " fairy-illness " —a disorder that has its origins in a curse or a spell wrought by fairies offended by that individual. In the narratives of fairy-seers, fairies are described as three young, beautiful longhaired women, dressed either in white or in black. The women who can see and speak to the fairies have been chosen by them early on, usually in their childhood or adolescence. By dancing and singing on special days of the orthodox Christian calendar, these women fall into a trance state and then communicate with " their sisters, " as these invisible creatures are called by these women. The fairy-seers are called numerous names in various languages across southeastern Europe. The semantic field of these varying designations is far from identical: sometimes the seers need not enter into a trance to see them, sometimes they fight (nocturnal) battles in the sky to ensure good crops for their region, where they live and work as any normal human being. But there is one common denominator to all of them: they undergo a process of initiation (prompted by these creatures) and the invisible creatures with whom they communicate are females. I choose to use this term in an attempt to cover and to depict a vast range of more or less similar phenomena across the Balkans with an English term, with the goal of creating an " umbrella term " in the English language (nowadays a lingua franca) for working purposes."

[Vivod, M. (2018). The Fairy Seers of Eastern Serbia: Seeing Fairies—Speaking through Trance. Oral Tradition, 32(1).]

There is a short documentary created with the video material filmed during the fieldwork (April 2015). It’s actually a partial recording of the trance. The documentary has been presented at the Kratovo Ethnological Film Festival in September 2016. The documentary can be seen at: http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi796439833/

[cunning-conjurer]

I've been around in the occult world for long enough that I'm now seeing "traditional witchcraft" move into its capitalist era. Everyone is selling something, using their craft to market themselves, and focuses their magic around what they can sell us. It's sad to see, but unsurprising

[tyetknot]

Words and terms I never want to see in a witchcraft context ever again:

Witch-father

Fairie dame

Womb

Spirit-death

Shadow work

"If the land is poisoned, witchcraft must respond"

"arte" used unironically

Fucking anything about Isobel Gowdie

Actually, anything suggesting the people killed in the European witch hysteria were anything but regular Christians

[morgana-morigan]

Your softening of our ancient, bone curling, hair splitting, blood thinning, scream inducing, hag riding, harrowing vision inducing, cold plunges,dark encounters, elf shot, and painful lessons, shows your unwillingness to walk the crooked path. Stay where you are in the sunny meadow, for we lurk at the edges ready to devour the supple lamb, for its sweet dumb meat.