the solarpunk archives

a sideblog dedicated to everything solarpunk. i reblog & post some german content (not out of stupid national interest, but because the movement is rarely known around here...)

[valtsv]

btw there was actually an art project led by three students (Ail Hwang, Hae-Ryaan Jeon and Ghung Ki Park) in Germany to install colorful window panes onto an electrical transmission tower to create a stained glass mosaic effect, called "Leuchtturm" ("lighthouse") and even such a simple effect is dazzling

imaging looking up at one of these and being surrounded by illustrations and iconography climbing to the heavens

[valtsv]

postmodern industrial angel

[enochliew]

Roof Gardens in Rome

[samwisethewitch]

Earth-Friendly Witchcraft

Whatever religious or spiritual tradition they identify with, most witches agree that there is something sacred about the natural world. We draw our power from the earth beneath our feet, the sky over our heads, and the air in our lungs.

And yet, many of us live in societies that are actively contributing to the destruction of the natural world. Most developed nations have a linear economy, which means resources are extracted and then sent on a one-way trip to consumers who will use them and then throw them away. This leads to overflowing landfills, air and water pollution, and quickly disappearing resources. The World Economic Forum predicts that, if our habits don’t change, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. And I dearly hope that by now we’re all familiar with the reality of climate change and its devastating impact on global ecosystems.

I’m not trying to scare you, but I do want to point out the hypocrisy of drawing power from the Earth in our magic while simultaneously contributing to her destruction. If we truly want to consider ourselves spiritual allies of the planet, we need to make an effort to live our lives — and practice our magic — in ways that are less harmful to her.

You don’t have to become an environmentalist or switch to a zero waste lifestyle, but we can all make little changes for a more sustainable life. There’s lots of information out there about how to live a more Earth-friendly lifestyle, so in this post I’ll be focusing on how to apply that same philosophy to your witchcraft.

Steps to a more Earth-Friendly Practice:

Limiting your consumption will automatically lower your negative impact on the planet. Follow my previous guidelines for avoiding consumerism to start shrinking your carbon footprint.

Avoid plastic as much as possible. According to the WEF, 70% of our plastic ends up in a landfill or in the world’s waterways, and according to Julia Watkins, author of Simply Living Well, only 9% of household plastics get recycled. Plastic (unlike glass and metal) cannot be recycled indefinitely — it can only be recycled a handful of times before it becomes too degraded to be repurposed any further. There really is no way to make plastic safer for the planet, so it’s best to just avoid it altogether. Look for tools made of metal, wood, or glass instead of plastics, and try to order things shipped in paper and cardboard when possible.

Create spells that won’t leave leftovers. One of the big contributing factors to our current environmental crisis is that we just produce too much waste. You can avoid this in your magical practice by crafting spells that won’t leave you throwing away a big ball of candle wax, herbs, and paper. Kitchen magic is a no-brainer for this, since kitchen spells are meant to be eaten. If you want to do a candle spell, use small candles that will burn up completely — I find larger candles are more likely to leave leftover wax. Making magical bath salts is another great option for leftover-free spells — just make sure everything you include is safe to go down the drain and won’t contribute to water pollution!

Forage for your own spell materials. One of the best ways to avoid plastic packaging and cut down on emissions from shipping is to use materials from your backyard! Learn about the plants, animals, and minerals native to your area, and take regular nature walks where you can gather what you need. Remember to only take as much as you need and to be careful never to damage the plants you harvest from. Make sure to carefully disinfect any animals bits you pick up — you can do this by burying them in salt for a full moon cycle and/or setting them in the sun/under a UV light for several days. If you find a dead animal and want to strip and clean its bones for use in ritual, this is a much more involved process and will require special research, equipment, and lots of time. And, of course, never eat anything you have foraged unless you happen to have an advanced degree in botany.

Keep a magical garden. Another great way to connect with the planet and shrink your carbon footprint is to grow your own herbs, vegetables, and fruits. You can, of course, grow food for your kitchen if you have space, but even if you live in a tiny apartment you can grow a handful of magical herbs in pots. For a list of common houseplants and their magical associations, check out this post.

Shop for spell materials at a local farmer’s market. Buying local is a great way to avoid the environmental impact of shipping produce, and it allows you to support small farms. Farmer’s markets also typically carry seasonal produce, which can help you align your magical practice with the cycles of nature. Farmer’s markets are a great way to find seasonal fruits and vegetables for kitchen magic, but you can use the produce you find there for other types of spells as well.

Trade paraffin wax candles for beeswax or soy wax. Paraffin, the material used for most cheap candles, is a by-product of crude oil, which is not only highly unsustainable but contains carcinogens (chemicals that may cause cancer). Beeswax is a sustainable alternative, and beeswax candles produce a “clean” burn, meaning it does not negatively affect air quality. Soy wax is a slightly pricier, vegan-friendly sustainable option that also produces a clean burn.

Use undyed, unbleached paper for your written spells. The bleaches and dyes used in most commercially available paper have a toxic effect on the environment. Colored paper cannot be recycled or composted because it will contaminate everything it touches. Use plain, unbleached paper for your written spells, especially if you plan to bury them in the ground or dispose of them outside.

Make sure your essential oils are ethically harvested. Essential oils are tricky — although they are marketed as natural, many of them are produced through unsustainable methods. Because essential oils are concentrated, it may take thousands of pounds of plants to produce a single pound of oil. This can have a devastating impact, especially for endangered plants like white sage or palo santo. Look for ethically-sourced, wild-harvested essential oils — these are oils that are gathered from the wild in ways that don’t hurt the local ecosystem. Mountain Rose Herbs and Eden’s Garden are two brands that are committed to sustainable essential oil production.

Instead of burying a spell in a jar, bury it in a hollowed-out fruit or vegetable. Many traditions call for spells to be buried in the ground. Items like jar spells and witch bottles are traditionally buried on the witch’s property. The problem with this is that plastic and glass bottles do not biodegrade, and will remain in the ground for years. Instead of putting these materials in the ground, bury your spells in a hollowed-out fruit or vegetable. As a bonus, you can choose this item to support your intention. For example, you might use an apple for a love spell or a spicy pepper for protection. Just make sure everything inside the spell is also biodegradable!

Keep a compost pile as an offering to your local land spirits. Compost is an easy way to reduce food waste, and it gives your garden a boost! Even if you don’t have your own garden, you can give your compost to a fiend who does or look into donating it to a community garden. When composting, it’s important to maintain a balance between carbon-rich “brown” ingredients (leaves, undyed paper, cardboard, etc.) and nitrogen-rich “greens” (fruit and veggie scraps, coffee grounds, egg shells, etc.) — you want about four times as much brown as green in your compost. Start your compost with a layer of brown — preferably twigs or straw to allow good airflow. Alternate layers of green and brown materials as you add to the pile. Every time you add to your compost, verbally express your gratitude to the land spirits. Your compost should be moist, but not soggy — you’ll know it’s ready when it’s dark and crumbly and smells like soil.

Make your own tea blends with loose herbs and a reusable tea strainer instead of buying teabags. Witches and tea go together like peanut butter and chocolate, but the individual wrappers on teabags create a lot of waste. On top of that, since many of these wrappers are dyed, they may not even be recyclable. Keep your teas earth-friendly by buying dried herbs in bulk and blending your own teas. Making your own blends is not only better for the planet, but also allows you to choose each ingredient for a specific magical intention.

Find ways to use your trash in your craft. This one is pretty self-explanatory. Instead of throwing things away, find ways to use them in your magic! Use food scraps from cooking, like carrot greens and potato peels, in spells. Turn an old shoe box into a travel altar. Add your coffee grounds to spells to ground them and manifest results in the physical world. You get the idea. Be creative!

Research different models for Earth-friendly living, like the zero waste/low waste lifestyle, sustainability, and the solarpunk movement. This will give you more ideas for a sustainable lifestyle, as well as a sustainable magical practice.

The funny thing about Earth-friendly living is that, the more time you spend taking care of the planet, the more connected you feel to it. I encourage you to try some of the ideas on this list — you’ll be amazed by how quickly you develop a deeper relationship with the Earth and all her creatures.

Resources:

Of Blood and Bones by Kate Freuler

Simply Living Well by Julia Watkins

“By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans, study says” from The Washington Post

A Sustainable Mind podcast

Practical(ly) Zero Waste podcast

[marxistprincess]

[mad-hare]

ag question: any thoughts on how to make farming more sustainable in North American deserts?

This is … such a great question… and I will do my best to present a justifiable answer… Short answer: you need to mimic and work alongside nature.

First of all, the true North American deserts, honestly, probably shouldn’t be farmed. But, arid grasslands for sure have agricultural potential. And, thanks to desertification, we are losing good farmland to expanding desert. This is a huge problem in North America, but also in Africa. And I might know more about this in terms of looking at arid regions of Africa, but lets see how I talk my way through this problem.

Life, and agriculture, is all about water. And while most of us will think of this as precipitation levels, much of the farming we do relies on ground water. Aquifers are underground stores of clean, fresh, water, that slowly rise up to let life go on, even far from rivers and lakes. Aquifers naturally replenish themselves, often with spring snow melt seeping back down into them, but humans currently bring up water from them at a much faster rate than they can replenish. I’m sure most of us have heard about the great rivers of the west that have been dammed up so they no longer reach the ocean. Depletion of the aquifers is a much less known about crisis that threatens a huge area.

Below is a map showing major areas of aquifer depletion. Right in the middle of America, that dark red and red/yellow striped aquifer, called the high plains or Ogallala aquifer, probably the most famous one. Here is a link to a huge report on US groundwater depletion if you wish to learn more about this topic (map from the report).

How, has the white man done so much damage in such a short time being here? Well, this is probably why (image taken by NASA):

Probably not what you imagine when someone says crop circle (sorry), but that is crops being grown using giant sprinklers, that take up that sweet, sweet, Ogallala water. It’s sort of pretty, at least? In North America this is just, how the country has been set up to run, and it should be fine until the aquifers drain out completely. In Saudi Arabia, they actually do the same thing in their deserts– but they use desalinated sea water. It is a very wasteful practice (desalination is hard), but SA is a rich country, and they do it because countries generally like to be able to produce some of their own food, even if theoretically they don’t need to.

There are other causes of rapid desertification. Our landscapes were shaped by wildlife. Bison, wolves, and prairie dogs. Three heavily persecuted species. Bison used to move across the plains, trampling down and consuming grass. Wolves would follow the bison, and encourage them to stay tight in their herds. Without bison, grass gets tall, dries out, and decomposes very slowly (and catches fire more easily). There is a Navajo saying, “without the prairie dog, there will be no one to cry for rain.” Ignoring indigenous knowledge has caused harm in many parts of the world. These little critters are considered to be pests by farmers, and have been killed en masse in many areas. While they don’t exactly cry for rain, their complex, deep, tunnel homes passively bring up groundwater and can help to prevent droughts by keeping vegetation green!Read more: Eliminating prairie dogs can lead to desertification.

“Oh yea, my people make it rain. Please don’t kill us”

Okay, so reintroducing these animals is great for the environment, but they don’t really do much to feed us. Due to climate and precipitation in the areas in question, without artificial irrigation, these lands are very delicate. All of the crops we grow on a large scale, minus pasture and hay land, are annuals. They live, go to seed, and die within a year. Perennial plants (including pasture), shrubs, trees, all live for much longer, which gives them more time to establish complex root systems. These root systems stay alive throughout the winter, which is a very good thing. I’m going on for too long, but I could talk about this for pages. Basically, perennial roots support soil life and structure 365 days a year. Ecological succession is the process where, over time, nature naturally becomes a complex system.

The way we grow crops, keeps land at a very low level of succession. The reason it is so hard to grow monocultures is because every bug, weed, that grows in a field, is nature’s attempt to move to a higher level of succession (more biodiversity keeps soil healthy and stable, you can see how the dark top soil grows deeper with increasing succession).

We can manage animals such as sheep and cattle (ruminant animals), in the way bison and wolves originally helped the land, on a smaller scale. This method is called Holistic Management and was invented by Allan Savory. Allan Savory on Climate Change- TED talk that changed my life. His work was done on wildlife reserves in Africa!

Some innovative farmers even follow cattle with pigs or chickens on smaller scales (mimics the way manure would get spread and scratched up even more). More complexity = more productivity.

These perennial areas build good stuff like soil carbon and organic matter fast. Land that is holistically managed is also drought and fire resistant. Like, big time. Farmers practicing holistic management with their cattle herds have seen their neighbours struggle with drought and flooding just across their own fencelines. Over time, holistic management helps build ecological succession and resiliency. Below is one of Allan’s plots in Zimbabwe, but much of North America is starting to look like this:

In addition to healthy cattle, this beautiful land helps support all native wildlife– even wolves. Since the cattle are carefully managed packed together more closely, wolf losses can be lower, making farmers more tolerant to wolves.

So how do we grow crops on this land? On a large scale, these plots could be tilled up and cropped for a few years, before being turned back to grassland. In organic agriculture, we often look at crop rotations that can last 7-10 years, as opposed to short 1-2 year rotations. The smaller these annual plots of our crops are, the more benefit from the surrounding pasture biodiversity they would get. Less water stress, less insect pressure, probably lower disease incidence. The annual crops would deplete soil organic matter and carbon, which naturally store water, over a few years before being turned back into grassland.

To do this, would require a paradigm shift in the way we manage most of our lands. There are innovative farmers doing a lot of what I talked about though, and slowly we are realizing the value of these long-term management styles. Even if things seem impossible today, there are farmers out there thinking ahead, taking risks, and getting results that can slowly lead to large scale changes like this..thank you for reading my post I hope this answered some questions.

[elsewherewitch]

I don’t know a ton about solarpunk aesthetics, so hopefully I got it right! I hope you like it!

Solarpunk Witch Moodboard aesthetic request for @flowersfromjupiter

~Elsewhere 🌚

[leahberman]

meadow whispers

instagram

[itscolossal]

Mantra’s Trompe L’oeil Murals Encase Enormous Butterflies in Vintage-Style Boxes

[the-solar-review]

What's solarpunk???

Hello! Thanks so much for your question!!!  

You know, we have been trying to answer this all year….  The concept was introduced a while ago as a brighter, utopian future in opposition to the popular dystopian future at the time, with an artistic root in a western turn-of-the-century shift into organic and natural aesthetics. The aesthetic itself was influenced by global cultures! We’ve seen a lot of examples of influences from Japan and China for example, but we aren’t scholars in this particular nuance just yet!  

We’re curious! Do you (plural form) think that this is still what solarpunk means or stands for? Has it grown or changed in any notable way, or has it developed any major new trends? 

We’re big fans of art nouveau and art around the world, so that definitely influences our perspectives! Further, we’re both Floridian and Sirin is South Indian-origin, so we’re sure that means there’s things we’ve never even thought about in relation to solarpunk yet! We hope we can all exchange ideas and create a brighter future together! :) 

Sirin & Luchi

[ma-demoiselle-cherie]

[solarpowered-punk]

Solarpunk Action Week Day 2:

Whenever you have the opportunity to reduce unnecessary consumption, take it. Shop from second-hand stores, turn off unnecessary appliances, fix something broken or use it for another perpose rather than throwing it away.

In today's case, I'm staying home on the day off and fertilizing my plants. My unique striped bell pepper plants are coming along very well!

I also find it unnecessary to buy something when I can easily make it at home. I have a pile of craft supplies and boxes that I need to use, so this year, my little sister's Halloween costume will be handmade. I'm just glad that the place I work uses packing peanuts made of corn rather than foam, otherwise I'd have a million more diy projects I'd need to cough up.

I also finished reading On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. It was very thought provoking and encouraged me more to join a political/environmental action group. I compiled a list of contacts and sites so I can find a local one I can regularly participate in. I highly recommend everyone does this, because voting comes only once in a while, and action can be taken year-round and make a massive difference as well. My next read: Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

[im-da-bronx]

Hey guys

If (when) society collapses in the near future, let’s not go all Mad Max or The Purge on everybody, ok?

Most of the boomers will be dead, probably. Society will be left to us: the millennials, gen z, etc.

Lets reestablish the barter system. If you have chickens, trade eggs for firewood. If you can sew, fix something for honey. Become solar punk. If you can grow veggies no problem, but suck with animals, trade cucumbers and tomatoes for milk.

We have the possibility of total social reform looming over us in the near future. Let’s stick it to all the naysayers and dystopian writers, and have a soft apocalypse. Let’s treat each other with kindness. Let’s support each other wholesomely. Let’s not go out with blood and fire and pain, but with a whisper, and a hug, and a kiss goodnight.

[ecohygge]

Willow Pavilion

[probablyasocialecologist]

Daniel Chang Christensen

[blond-shell]

Hunter Schafer for Paper Magazine (2019)

[butchniqabi]

hm, i feel like there’s a big problem when we try to visualize a sort of “solarpunk”-like society where we assume that every place a gonna be a grassy, tree-fillled, green city and that’s like fine and all but it’s very inauthentic to the diverse landscapes of our planet. for example, i live in southern california and ive seen trees and grass but i’ve also seen desert with cacti and bushes and dry land. when we associate our future, our “progress”, with a certain landscape we are not treating the land with the respect it deserves. deserts, plains, mountains, marshes are all apart of the world we live in and we need to invision a future with those lands too

also with all this in mind, a lot of this aesthetic and line of thinking can be damaging to indigenous communities. thinking the desert is just “empty space” and thinking the plains should be replaced with forests go hand-in-hand with colonialist ideology. no land is empty land, it is always someone’s home. we need to make space for indigenous people in our solarpunk, cottagecore, vegan, etc. ideologies if we ever want to truly make progress and not perpetuate the same shit with a different brand on it

[profeminist]

“You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.”

— Eliezer Yudkowsky (via abundance-mine)