ThunderRunes

A place for my rune and tarot stuff and other magical shenanigans. SASS witch although I don't vibe with "witch".

[thunderrunes]

I want to be pathetic on the internet and realise I have nowhere else to go anymore so obviously this is the next logical place

Anyway, so apparently when I'm super happy I can barely eat and when I'm sad eating is all I want to do, stupid brain chemistry 😭

[posts-written-by-murderbot]

[thunderrunes]

I've not had much headspace for card stuff recently, but I picked up the Ink and Intuition Tattoo tarot deck and immediately really liked it. The cards are small which I find comfortable and more "low key" to just play around with, and the designs are often simplified but retain some of the symbology of the RWS deck, which I like.

Anyway here's my brief "what's my 2025 gonna be like" spread, each card is one third of the year.

1st third: The Sun. Joy, happiness, carelessness, just a good time

I think this makes a lot of sense - currently doing a second Master's, I'm enjoying it, and next semester/this third is full of stuff I'm looking forward to.

2nd third: The Hierophant. Institutional knowledge, learning, tradition - the hierophant for me has strong "being handed the Key" connotations.

This almost feels on the nose, hah - but I'm going to graduate from the Master's in late summer, so this checks out!

3rd third: The Fool, inverted. New beginnings, but with an inner reluctance/anxiety to jump into, some mental blockage there.

This made me swallow a bit, but again , this makes a lot of sense for me - after graduation, there will be a new job, and I'm honestly nervous about the prospect, and I don't yet know where I want to go.

[kleefkruid]

My cats have this meow that means "please come with me to fix this" after which they'll lead me to the problem in question, usually a empty (or 'empty') food bowl or a closed door they want open. They look at the 'problem', they look back at me, clear message.

What fascinates me is how this illustrates what they percieve as being in the realm of my 'power.' I control the food, I control the door, sure, but my cats love to sit on the balcony in the sun, and it has happened plenty of times that on a rainy day they come get me, go to the balcony and show me... the rain. "Please fix this" they say. "Please get rid of the wet"

"Silly kitty," I say, "I can't control the rain." I then walk into the shower and turn on the rain.

[comparativetarot]

The Fool. Art by Eliza Kingsbury, from The StarString Tarot.

[tarot-card-igans]

Meme spread for a Reality Check

[systlin]

The runes be like: we are the surface of the glacier that is magic, granted to you foolish and diminutive mannish by the Allfather. The greatest secrets of the universe are what we represent and you picked playing cards bought from Barnes and Noble to predict the future.

This is TOO fuckin real fuck

[wearewarpriest]

@wearerunecaster

[wearerunecaster]

This is hilarious.

[crazycatsiren]

Karma, what exactly is it?

Nowadays, when Wiccans, Neopagans, and New Agers throw "karma" around like the hot word it's become, I'm willing to bet most of them have no idea what it actually is, what it entails, or even where it comes from. The people who keep using this word because they think it's "cool" or because everyone else who seems "spiritual" these days is saying it, they really have no understanding of what it means or how it fits into a spiritual practice. And when some of these people go around shaming and guilt tripping witches for cursing/hexing by waving it like a crusade banner, and conflating it with the Wiccan Rede or the Threefold Law, they're disregarding thousands of years of ancient religious and spiritual traditions. Karma is not a Wiccan concept. It's older than the ancestors of the people who invented Wicca. The Wiccans who mistakenly claim karma as their own are, in fact, culturally appropriating.

The concept of karma originated in ancient India, the birthplace of Hinduism and Buddhism. India was a beacon of religion and spirituality, a holy land to the faithful and devout people of Asia. Even as ancient China adopted the Buddhist religion and more or less came up with its own school of it, Chinese Buddhists still looked to India as the sacred place of Buddhism. The novel Journey to the West (one of my favorite books in the world) comes to mind, in which a faithful Buddhist priest, chosen for his knowledge, wisdom, and morality by the royal family, makes the harrowing journey across the continent to seek the true teachings of Amitābha Buddha.

By its own definition, karma (कर्म in Sanskrit) means action, work, or deed. Applied to religious contexts, the term refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect: the intents and actions of an individual (cause) will influence the futures of that individual (effect). In short and simply put, good intents and good deeds contribute to good karma and lead to happier rebirths, bad intents and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and lead to unhappier rebirths.

Karma comes with the idea of rebirth and reincarnation in many schools of ancient Eastern religions (particularly Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, as well as Taoism and Shintoism). These religions believe that karma in the present affects one's future in the current life, as well as the nature and quality of one's future lives that involve the cycle of death and rebirth (saṃsāra).

Karma translates into "Yè lì" in Chinese. I've often heard my grandmother mention the necessity of "cleansing and balancing one's ye li" as one goes through life. I suppose it could equate to the idea of "bringing in some good karma" that's more easily comprehended from a Western point of view. My understanding of this is that it's acknowledged on a universal level that humans are not flawless. We are expected to make mistakes and mess up. It is therefore understandable and not surprising that we can bring bad karma into our lives with our actions, knowingly or unknowingly. It is simply unavoidable as a part of humanity. However, we can counter this by mending our faults, atoning for our wrongdoings, and performing good deeds, to cleanse ourselves of the bad karma and negative things that we might have brought into our lives, and open ourselves to potentially good karma and positive things.

Now, does this mean if you're not a part of any of the religions mentioned above, you can't apply karma to your spiritual practice? Not at all. Most if not all of the religions that include karma are open. I think karma can be a universal concept to those who wish to follow the teachings surrounding it. But if you're going to use it, at least take the time to learn about it and use it correctly, and give credit where it's due. It's the least you can do to show some respect for the millenia old Asian religions and cultures that are so often overlooked and misrepresented by the West.

(Art by CuteReaper on DeviantArt)

[unhelpfultarot]

Page of Cups reversed and Ten of Wands

You keep failing to do anything fun, because you're always too busy working.

[thunderrunes]

Sometimes im not sure if these are shitposts or deeply insightful

Or both

[comparativetarot]

The Hierophant. Art by Megan Wyreweden, from the Anima Mundi Tarot.

[unhelpfultarot]

Nine of Swords and Queen of Wands

Yup, another day of having to get up and go act like you're a competent person who knows what you're doing.

[comparativetarot]

Three of Swords. Art by Olga K.

[comparativetarot]

The Magician. Art by Orla Bird, from the Avisomnia Tarot.

[unhelpfultarot]

Knight of Wands and Knight of Cups

You’re going in the obviously correct direction. You’re not sure what that other idiot is doing.

[traegorn]

Hi! I’m pretty new to witchcraft so this might be a stupid question, but is there a difference between chaos magic and LOA? I’ve heard that chaos magic operates based on the practitioner’s belief (I could be wrong), and to me that sounded quite similar to LOA. Again, I could be completely wrong and have a misunderstanding of it, but I was just wondering if there was a difference between the two.

Here's the key to any of this:

Law of Attraction says that every thought you have - every single one - influences what happens to you. Did you accidentally think something bad? Bad things are going to happen, and you deserve it. It's passive, and it's constant. It effectively states that bad things happen to people because they didn't think right, and that people who have things are inherently better people (because if they weren't, why would they have those things?).

It's so gross.

Any kind of magic, chaos or otherwise, on the other hand is an active task. The act of casting the spell is a choice, and the things done outside of that magical act are not a factor.

That's the fundamental difference.

[ei-len]

LOA says that if you're anxious about something happening, you're making it more likely to happen by worrying about it. If you entertain the possibility that you might not get what you want, well, it's your fault if you end up not getting it, because you doubted it. If you have something bad happen to you completely unexpectedly, it's also your fault because you weren't thinking about opposing good things enough. Did you end up in the hospital? Well you should've been thinking more thoughts about how you're perfectly healthy and you never get injured. Intentionally taking precautionary measures against bad things happening to you (or to mitigate the harm if they do happen) counts as thinking about them, by the way! It's completely unscientific and incredibly dangerous. It encourages irresponsible behavior and "positive" delusional thinking, and builds into itself a cult-mentality failsafe that says "if you aren't thinking exactly right 100% of the time, and this doesn't work to get you what you want/prevent bad things happening to you, it's your fault" -- and no one is ever completely free of complicated feelings, anxiety and worries, intrusive thoughts about stuff they don't want. It's not possible to achieve.

Chaos magic says that magic works because you believe in it, that any magical paradigm or form of spell construction you choose to adopt will work for you if you believe in it, and won't work for you if you don't believe in it -- but your belief doesn't need to be permanent, it only needs to be strong while you're working with that particular form of magic. Chaos magic doesn't say your random intrusive thoughts affect reality outside of spellcasting, and acknowledges that training your focus for spellcasting via focused belief is challenging, that it can't be maintained all the time -- but you don't need to maintain it all the time. You maintain it for the duration of your active spellcasting, and then you forget about it. Literally, putting it out of your mind and not obsessively thinking about it while you carry on living your life, once the active spellcasting is done, is a key feature of at least some forms of chaos magic. If something bad unexpectedly happens to you under chaos magic paradigm, it's either just a bit of random chance or a bit of malice from someone else (or possibly a spell misfire or backfire, if you can trace it clearly to a place you failed to close up your loopholes or punched above your weight). Sure, you could've influenced it with spellwork, probably, but you didn't so now it is what it is. Magic is an odds game and you're not the only player on the field (and not all the players are acting deliberately or even sentient, you've got to deal with pesky little things like the laws of physics and the fact that your coworker Jason is an incompetent moron), sometimes stuff happens that's not in your control. If you focused your belief properly casting your spell, and didn't go around specifically doubting the spell itself afterward, and it doesn't work? Lots of possible reasons. Could be that the odds were just stacked too heavily against you by sheer random chance. Could be that someone else was working magic contrary to your goals, and they were stronger/more focused/luckier than you. Or there were more of them.

So, under LOA: if you don't want to be injured in a car wreck, you have to never think about car wrecks. You have to think instead about getting to your destination safely without letting any consideration of an alternative cross your mind, and if you get in a car wreck anyway it must be because you slipped up and thought about it. If you consciously took precautions to avoid getting in car wrecks (such as avoiding particularly busy roads at peak hours and trying not to drive in hazardous weather conditions) or to mitigate harm should you happen to be involved in a wreck (like making sure your seatbelt is always fastened securely and adjusted properly), then you thought about it and it's your fault if it happens, you caused it by thinking wrong.

Under chaos magic: if you don't want to be injured in a car wreck, you can work a spell to decrease the odds that it will happen to you. You need to focus your belief both on the magical structure you choose to use, and on the desired outcome of the spell manifesting for you. If you cast that spell, you then must not worry about whether or not the spell will work; you must believe that it will be effective, or you'll potentially impair its effectiveness. If you end up getting in a car wreck anyway, you might not have focused your spell well enough, but your spellcasting failure didn't CAUSE the wreck, only failed to prevent it. It's also possible that your spellcasting was excellent, but the odds were too strongly against you (did you run a red light turning left without your blinker, on main street at rush hour doing 50mph on an icy day?) or someone else worked a stronger spell that manifested in creating the wreck you were involved in. If you took mundane precautions like avoiding busy roads and hazardous conditions, driving carefully, and wearing a properly-adjusted seatbelt, then you were simply helping your spell be effective by improving the odds it's up against.

TL:DR LOA says your thoughts always turn into reality no matter what so if bad things happen to you it's your fault and if good things don't happen to you it's also your fault.

Chaos magic says you can focus your thoughts to affect reality by believing in something really hard in short bursts and then not actively doubting it later, and if you fail to get the outcomes you want you could try refining your techniques but also sometimes shit happens.

[ducissatenebrarum]

Coin (silver) from Syracuse, Greece around 466 BCE.

[thunderrunes]

Learned about this spread from thetarotdiagnosis (on Instagram), and wanted to try it.

In order to be more carefree, I must give myself room to grieve things in the past.