Wight • It/Its • Eclectic Pagan & Occult Practitioner • Cripple & Mad in all the ways you don't like • Plural || Not your family friendly polythiest 🔞 There will be taboo subjects, trauma work & kinky expression as a form of devotion, 18+ Only!
My name is Wight, my pronouns are it/its. This is my spiritual blog dedicated to my various practices and the deities I worship. I am a therian, queer, disabled, and a head mate in a plural system.
My blog will be a large grab bag of various things, but will often be reblog heavy as I like to go back and read over long informational posts. I'll also talk about my practice, worship, and witchcraft as I experiment and learn what works best for myself.
Main is @arrowuana
This blog is 18+ || Minors Do Not Follow or DM
My beliefs are heavily influenced by the intersectionality of my various identities and political stances, including anti psych & mad pride focused stances. I practice witchcraft but prefer to not be called a witch, I prefer the term practitioner or occultist. Please do not call me a witch.
Though I consider myself fairly eclectic I appreciate reconstructionist approaches quite a lot. Currently I take a lot of influence in my practice from Taoist philosophy, Heathenry, and Animism.
My Deities: Loki, Fenrir, Jörmungandr, Selene, Ouroboros
My Practices: Tarot, Divination, Herbalism, Ritual Work, Meditation, Deity Work, and other misc spell work
I work quite a lot with tarot, herbal infusions & pyromancy. I've also been exploring ritualistic kink magic & queer friendly sex magic. Taxidermy, Vulture Culture & the like are all very prevalent as well as I find the cycle of life and death very important to my practice.
I am also an artist and writer, and do various types of art as a form of worship and self expression. Expressing myself through kink and other forms of taboo expression are forms of worship and personal trauma work I do for myself. I am very adamant in the ideology that art should not be censored in any way. Taboo fictional themes and kinks may pop up on my blog from time to time and are not a reflection of what I believe is moral in real life.
My Tag System:
#Wight Talks - My original posts
#Wight Talks+ - My additions & comments on other's posts
#Reblog - self explanatory
#Informational Posts - Important, Interesting or PSAs
This blog is accepting and actively friendly towards:
All System Origins
Pro-Fic & Anti Censorship People
Sex Workers & Kinky People
Pagans & Other Religious Minorities
People w/ Contradictory Queer Labels
This blog is not friendly towards:
Bigots, Nazis, & TERFs
Antis/Fanpol
Cops & Pro Militia
Queer Assimilationists - Exclusionists
Anti Xenogender & Neo Pronoun People
Proselyting & Evangelical Christians
Just general puritan & fascist behavior
Despite this, I have no DNI. And frankly couldn't care less about other people's, because I'm not background checking everyone I interact with. Do yourself a favor and curate your own experience online. I also don't want dragged into shipcourse, syscourse, or any other chronically online discourse. Don't DM me complaining about who I interact with online, I don't care. Block me if these things make you uncomfortable.
That said, I hope you enjoy reading through my blog! Blessed Be!
On average, today (Jan 22nd) is the coldest day of the year in Western Massachusetts. That means every day, from here on out, is climbing out of the winter and closer to spring.
from the tags: #in my heart#today is midwinter#this is the turning point#but goddamn its gonna be cold as FUCK soon#western mass#western massachusetts#massachusetts
THIS is why we celebrate the Caloristice - the coldest day of the year. Which we celebrate by eating ice cream and hit fudge and cake, because it is not very often that you can carry the ice cream home from Herrels without it melting at least a little. (further W Mass reference).
WHICH we will be celebrating on Saturday. It is a moveable feast. We go by the weather forecast.
The weirdest thing (to me) about the Caloristice is how local it is. There is a map. There is even a nice little explanation for why it looks like it does. There is a LOT of variability - from mid-Dec on the West Coast to the first week of Feb in Northern Minn. and along the west coasts of the great lakes, way up north there.
okay i have no idea why my tumblr's playing up but i wrote a response to @rain--goblin's post (you can read it here) and it won't let me reblog it so i'm going to post it here and hope this works.
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just to offer an alternative perspective as someone who does believe we're insignificant to the gods (sort of). (also note: i'm talking about the greek pantheon here).
i'm more so against the idea that each of the gods have this relationship with us in which they by default love and cherish us and are always there for us. the greek gods are not omnibenevolent. they are petty and vengeful and are sometimes immoral.
the gods can care about you (if you build a relationship) but not in the way humans can, because they are not human. the relationship with gods has often been one of reverence and devotion (and often also fear) with little expectation of how the gods will treat you back.
i'm not saying there is nothing to the modern idea of that relationship being a little more equal (for example, i love the idea of boundaries with the gods and in your practice) but ive not seen evidence of a historical precedent that humans and gods had this relationship where the gods love their humans. it's not really present in the myths, either. and so i find it very hard to believe the gods love me unconditionally, because that's not what i understand the greek gods to be.
and the gods not caring about us unless we choose it can be lovely! no attention when you don't want it, it puts agency in the practitioners hands to initiate the relationship. i don't want unconditional love from my deities, that isn't why i practice. and it seems odd to me if you want unconditional love, that you would practice paganism.
I think also, coming from the perspective of someone who has never worked with the Greek pantheon and always has been with the Norse, the dichotomy that the Gods either do or don’t care about you is kind of moot point.
The Gods care about humans as a generalized factor because otherwise, They wouldn’t be around Their followers nor around anyone. Why would They benefit from being around humans if they got nothing out of it? We’re ridiculous and emotional and counterintuitive to the well-being of our environment. I sincerely doubt that if there was no meaning of the Divine being around humanity, we would likely not be seeing the influx of modern polytheists as we see today. The inspiration to practice and worship comes from somewhere and does not just happen in a vacuum.
However, whether or not They should choose to develop a relationship with the humans is another story. They are not always going to respond to humans because They either don’t care to or because the human does not have enough context to reach out to Them in a meaningful and constructive way. This is the same across the board.
There are differences, however. The Greek pantheon holds humans at an arms’ length in historical evidence as well as just in general. They had temples built and huge cities and permanent structures that encompass what They wanted the humans to feel about Them - as benefactors or as rulers of some sort. They were formal, ritualized, and had a title and structure to each individual Deity. This attitude then carried forth when Christianity came around during Roman rule and into the modern era. Formalization and holding the Divine as authority among society as well as doctrinal is uniquely a characteristic of a Christianized people.
The Norse pantheon did not have this. In fact, we have evidence that says that the Norse Gods were protectors of people and humans had titles of having been the Deity’s own. We have evidence that says that people believed to be family members of the Gods and in Scandinavian culture, family was of utmost importance as well as community ties. Because otherwise, humans were not going to survive by themselves in the kind of environment that the ancient Norse encountered. The Gods helped humans coexist with Them and vice versa. It was neither Them versus humanity, but rather living in tandem with one another was best for survival and for creating any sort of religion.
They do not have any evidence of the Norse Gods asserting authority over humans and imposing jurisdiction or law enforcement - those titles were strictly adhered to by the humans themselves and not their Divine counterparts. And while you could say the Gods have more authority versus humans just by encountering Their very nature, it isn’t imposed via temples or immaculate showcases of power and authority like the Greek pantheon had.
People often forget because the Greek pantheon is so popular that nuance is lost when it comes to modern polytheists exerting their truth over others’. While I can see how someone who works with the Greek pantheon might feel like the love of a Deity is conditional and how it might be the same or similar to the Norse - it still isn’t the same way to go about developing the relationship and creating those bonds and overlooks the complexity of the Gods’ nature in general.
The structure of the Norse had very little hierarchy or imposed authority. The value of having a less centralized view of authority can be seen in the way their political structure held to be communal and based on the parts of a community structure rather than just one central body of people or those who had land.
You can even see it today in modern Scandinavian culture where the values of taking care of your neighbor and community reflect in their politics and communal structures where the elderly, misfortunate, and youth are taken care of by everyone as it becomes everyone’s responsibility to do so. The people in Scandinavia are the prime example of socialism and democracy because of this, and there’s a reason they are generally happier as nations compared to the rest of us who took influence from a different class of ancient society.
The Norse Gods reflect that balance and in return become more embedded in the every day, mundane aspects of a human culture rather than the formalized ritualistic, hierarchical culture which the far right tends to like to assume is the case. Therefore, you’ll see a lot of modern Norse pagans assuming this standoffish attitude from the Norse pantheon because that fits the narrative of the people who began modern “heathenry” in the first place - which is, you guessed it, the Nazis. However, that does not take into account actual historical and modern day evidence of the Scandinavian and Nordic cultures of today.
The butting of heads with modern pagans who work with two different pantheons is kind of ridiculous because the answer is and always will be “it depends” and no one likes that answer because it leaves room for both what they fear most to be the case while also leaving no room for what the potential case might be. We don’t like not knowing things but unfortunately, in this modern world, what we know about the Gods, still, even with historic precedence is actually very minimal compared to the peoples who worshipped Them their whole lives and integrated Them into their societies according to the format they were most familiar with. Modern pagans take most things out of context and boil it down to these generic concepts when there’s so much more nuance to be seen in general when it comes to Divine relationships.
Inspired by @windvexer's Simple Ward Against Spirits (and Other Varieties), I spent some time this week creating some wards to hang around our windows and doors..
Instead of premade air-dry clay however I made my own salt dough.
🧂SMALL-BATCH SALT DOUGH🧂
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbsp table salt
1-2tbsp water*
1 tbsp or less ground dry herbs* (optional)
oven (optional)
rolling pin (optional)
cookie cutters (optional)
toothpick for carving/hole punching (optional)
string (optional)
paint* (optional)
🧂 INSTRUCTIONS🧂
Mix dry ingredients thoroughly then slowly add water until it combines into a dough.
Form into small balls and lightly flatten them/roll out the dough and use cookie cutters/roll dough into uniform log and slice evenly into discs.
If you wish to hang them, poke holes near the top big enough to run string or thread through.
Carve in symbols, sigils, runes, or other designs associated with your intent.
Allow to air-dry or bake in the oven at 250°F for 2 hours, checking often to ensure they are not burning. If still soft in areas after baking, allow to air-dry until all moisture is gone.
If you wish to add colour to make your designs more prominent, do so then allow them the paint to dry.
If you wish to hang your wards, string them up.
*I used storm water collected on the Autumn Equinox and black pepper, cinnamon, and rosemary as my three herbs. The paint I used to ink the runes was acrylic medium mixed with wood ash and rust, thinned with a little storm water.
*Due to their salt content, salt dough wards are best for indoor use so as not to harm plant life or draw in potentially unwanted wildlife.
This year the City Dionysia will not be accepting any submissions that contain adult or sexually explicit content; abuse or harming of women or children; incest or implied incest; familial curses; self-destructive behavior; cannibalism; improper burial of corpses; gore for gore's sake; failure to heed prophecy or other disrespect for the gods; or witchcraft. We do not accept any religious or political themes. We do not accept any submissions featuring choral odes which suggest moral complexity or ambiguity; the chorus must explicitly state that any morally improper behavior is wrong. We do not accept fan fiction; this includes use of characters from the Homeric epics. Thank you!
I think people need to think more critically about the idea that they're no authorities on witchcraft. Because within living traditions, there are definitely people who have more authority than you, and these people set a tone for their houses/spiritual families.
You might not like it, but there is a kinda of hierarchy within many living magical traditions. These hierarchies exist for a reason and play an important role in receiving spiritual permissions
I feel like it's a pendulum swing between toxic extremes that leaves no room for functional traditions.
People who are solitary practitioners with only online contact with others, and who are probably practicing eclectic NeoWicca without realizing it (no shade in my game, but things are what they are), probably don't have exposure to ""actual"" traditions that you can't just look up on MysticSymbolism.com and begin plugging in spells from Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells. I don't mean to denigrate any of that. I just feel that contextually, it's how a lot of people currently interact with witchcraft culture.
In this context, there is no hierarchy because everyone is solitary. Just talking about your practice with other people doesn't make you non-solitary, IMO. And when these witches don't interact with (or believe in) spirits or gods, I feel like the core practice left over has to be individualism, which is how you get posts like "people literally just make correspondences up, there's no basis for them" or "witchcraft has no rules, do whatever you want" or "anyone claiming to be a teacher is a red flag! Nobody can ever tell you how witchcraft works or how to construct your path."
I remember an ask someone got a little while ago, along the lines of asking if it's "ick" to want a mentor in witchcraft!! This is the chemical tank into which hierarchy, teaching, and mentorship has been dipped.
But I also believe that this unhelpful, and IMO passively absurd approach to individualism in witchcraft, doesn't exist in its own vacuum. I feel it's in response to groups that exist IRL and especially online, who are at the other end of the pendulum swing: that there is only one true way to do magic, or only one true way to do witchcraft, and this 27yo has figured it out and will gently-but-firmly ensure that you get your silly little ideas of contacting your "spirit guides" out of your head unless you do it through their rituals they channeled from their 17 past lives as a high priestess of Mesperyian, also your ancestors have a special message only they can tell you. (This is only one of the most recent sort of iterations... it's been happening forever)
I feel that the common discussion on authority, mentorship, teaching, and heritage is held static by these two poles.
Maybe I haven't had all my coffee yet this morning but I do sometimes suspect that some practitioners are not aware that people having parallel paths that involve the same teachings, initiations, spirits, actually exist - and that within those groups, some people are indeed given or required to take various positions of leadership and authority. And that this happens not because it's the will of a power-hungry initiate, but because the default and most pure state of practice is not "solitary."
If you study occultism at all, you've heard this phrase before. But what does it really mean? Is it just a fun little maxim or platitude? No. This one phrase is at the core of Western esoteric philosophy.
The phrase itself comes from a short alchemical poem called the “Emerald Tablet”:
That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracle of one only thing.
Or, as Agrippa puts it:
It is undoubted that all of the inferior are beneath the superior. In a certain way (as Proclus said) they belong to each other — that is, the lowest supreme and the highest inferior. Thus, in the heavens there are earthly [things] that have their causes as if in a celestial manner; likewise on earth there are celestial [things] existing in a terrestrial manner — that is, by effect.
—The Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book 1, chapter 22 (trans. Purdue)
Basically, it means that the Macrocosm (the literal heavens, the spiritual world, or the universe at large) reflects and influences the microcosm (human life and the human body), and vice-versa.
Originally, the meaning of the phrase was quite literal — the Macrocosm was the physically up there world of outer space and the planets, while the microcosm was the literal down here world of humans. In the premodern world, there was no real distinction drawn between the literal cosmos and the spiritual or divine world. The underlying idea behind astrology is that the movements of the planets and other things in the up there world reflect and influence the patterns of human life on Earth. If you could “read” the motions of the stars and planets, then you could accurately predict events on earth. Planetary magic utilizes the same principle in the opposite direction — if you can attract planetary influences using earthly things that correspond to those planets, then you can harness the influence of the planets to compel certain outcomes in your earthly life. So, “as above, so below” is the foundational idea behind that tradition of magic.
But that’s still only scratching the surface. “As above, so below” is also a simple summary of a complex philosophical idea. It expresses the essential duality, which resolves itself into nonduality. Put another way: in order to do magic, one must unify the “below” with the “above,” and vice-versa.
Frontispiece from The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Levi
This idea gets expressed in various ways (such as in Plato’s Theory of Forms), so bear with me as I try to simplify it: Whatever God creates (or dreams, or emanates) in the “up there” world manifests “down here.” Everything we see or touch or interact with is the crystalized form of divine thought. The simple Biblical phrase “And the Word became flesh” illustrates this. Similarly, humans can do this exact same thing on a smaller scale: Our thoughts and ideas can manifest themselves as physical objects, buildings, works of art, anything that has ever been created by humans. Our ability to create is more limited, and involves more jumping-through-hoops, but it works the same way: We can take something that only exists in the “up there” world of ideas, and cause it to physically exist in the “down here” world of reality.
In my belief, the gods express themselves through material reality, similar to how a human artist expresses themself using their preferred medium. We can look at nature to learn things about the gods, because the workings of nature are the gods’ fingerprints. This is also the way that I reconcile my religious beliefs with science: e.g. lightning is static electricity that builds up in clouds, that’s just a fact, but it is also (I believe) an expression of the power of Zeus on the physical plane. The sun is just an average star, but it is also the expression or even the physical body of a god. The laws of physics are what they are, but everything that’s perceptible in the material world (“down here”) has an ethereal or “invisible” counterpart (“up there”), a spirit that expresses itself through it. Animism is based on the idea that there is no fundamental difference between the thing and the spirit, the “below” thing and the “above” thing.
This same principle works in reverse: Whatever we do “down here” can influence or “arrange” the spirit world. It’s not just planetary magic — all magic and ritual works this way. By assembling objects and performing actions that are congruent with certain spirits (or other intangible forces, like love or luck or wisdom), we can directly influence those forces in the “up there” world. That, in turn, will cause the manifestation of the desired result in the “down here” world. If everything up there and down here is aligned, then it resonates like a musical harmony. You, the magician, are essentially “tuning” reality to your desired frequency. If you do that successfully, then the universe will simply give you what you want! If you create the desired conditions up there, then you’ll get the desired result down here.
“As above, so below” is often represented by a ladder, or a series of overlapping or concentric spheres. Mystical philosophy is often concerned with working one’s way back up the “ladder” to get back to God. The idea is that it’s possible to escape one’s earthly prison without dying, and reunite with God whilst still alive in one’s body.
Diagram from Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis
Ten thousand years must elapse before the soul of each [person] can return to the place from whence she [the soul] came, for she cannot grow her wings in less; only the soul of a philosopher, guileless and true, or the soul of a lover, who is not devoid of philosophy, may acquire wings in the third of the recurring periods of a thousand years; he is distinguished from the ordinary good man who gains wings in three thousand years:-and they who choose this life three times in succession have wings given them, and go away at the end of three thousand years. […] The soul of a man may pass into the life of a beast, or from the beast return again into the man. But the soul which has never seen the truth will not pass into the human form. For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;-this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God-when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being. And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect.
—Plato, Phaedrus
The problem with this is that it’s very hard to stay grounded in one’s mundane human life while also being fully connected to God. I mean, how do you go from universal enlightenment to paying taxes and buying groceries? A lot of mystics end up becoming ascetics, isolating themselves from other people and from mundane life, so they can better focus on God. But if you’re going to spend your whole life concerned with Heaven, then why are you even here in the first place?
33. I reveal unto you a great mystery. Ye stand between the abyss of height and the abyss of depth.
34. In either awaits you a Companion; and that Companion is Yourself.
35. Ye can have no other Companion.
36. Many have arisen, being wise. They have said “Seek out the glittering Image in the place ever golden, and unite yourselves with It.”
37. Many have arisen, being foolish. They have said, “Stoop down unto the darkly splendid world, and be wedded to that Blind Creature of the Slime.”
38. I who am beyond Wisdom and Folly, arise and say unto you: achieve both weddings! Unite yourselves with both!
39. Beware, beware, I say, lest ye seek after the one and lose the other!
41. But since one is naturally attracted to the Angel, another to the Demon, let the first strengthen the lower link, the last attach more firmly to the higher.
42. Thus shall equilibrium become perfect. I will aid my disciples; as fast as they acquire this balanced power and joy so faster will I push them.
— Crowley, “Liber Tzaddi vel Hamus Hermeticus”
The real secret of “As above, so below” is that there is no real difference between “above” and “below,” the only difference is one’s vantage point. If the above and below are alike, then they’re actually just the same thing, looked at from different angles. If you understand that, you begin to understand that there is no true separation between material and divine things, between spirits and objects, between body and soul. Then you can start moving between the layers. That’s where things get really interesting.
Going back to the Emerald Tablet:
Separate thou the earth from the fire,
the subtle from the gross
sweetly with great industry.
It ascends from the earth to the heaven and again it descends to the earth
and receives the force of things superior and inferior.
By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.
Alchemy is the process of constantly converting between these “above” and “below” states of being. In an actual flask, that constitutes converting between states of matter: gas or combustion (“above”) vs. liquids or solids (“below”). More symbolically, it means making spiritual things physical, and physical things spiritual. The repeated process of inversion — up and down, and up and down, and up and down — eventually results in a perfect substance or state of being that is equally spiritual and physical. That is the Philosopher’s Stone, the divine child, the perfect state of being. It is by “marrying” the opposing forces of above and below (or male and female, sun and moon, light and darkness, take your pick) that the alchemist arrives at this perfectly balanced being. God-On-Earth.
If you go up and come back down again enough times (or go down to the Underworld and come back up again enough times), then you’ll eventually reach a perfected state of being that is somewhere between human and divine. Ideally, one would have the divine power and infinite awareness of God, whilst still being able to live on Earth as a human amongst other humans. In realizing that nothing is separate — realizing that we exist on multiple “levels” of reality at once — we learn that we are not as limited as we think we are. We are not as disconnected from God as we think we are.
“As above, so below” is a simple phrase that sums up the entirety of magical philosophy.
#probably not what op is referring to but i keep thinking about those thinkpieces that are like #'straight cis men HATE astrology because they are all obsessed with facts and logic and reason and rationality >:( #meanwhile women are intuitive and spiritual and emotional and have a better grasp on astrology <3' THIS IS TRAD SHIT. THIS IS MISOGYNISTIC #YOU'RE SAYING THE SAME SHIT CONSERVATIVE MISOGYNISTS HAVE SAID ABOUT MEN AND WOMEN FOR CENTURIES AND JUST TACKING ON 'AND WOMEN ARE GOOD'
