[whichwitchiswitching]

Ah, I see now.

This website is not for discussion, talks, sharing ideas, or elaborating on beliefs.

It's about established hegemony and following the demands of said hegemony, lessening yourself and altering the way you express your truth for the sake of ensuring nobody get their little feelers hurt.

You can't even have a conversation with someone in private messages without them crying that "you're arrogant and mean and you should just leave tumblr if you hate it so much" after a single observation.

Good Gods Above and Below. Best advice I've heard all month. There's no point in trying to share anything on a website where people are looking for reasons to be offended, to argue, and to cause drama where none was ever intended. There's no point in trying to say anything on a website where people will go out of their way to put words in your mouth to feed their own narrative.

How very sad that some of you take the title of witch.

[whichwitchiswitching]

Horned God?

How often do I see the "Horned" God depicted with Antlers. How often do I see Gods with antlers being referred to as "horned." How often it frustrates me to know that so few people understand the God to whom they are calling.

From the National Park Service:

Antlers—found on members of the deer family—grow as an extension of the animal’s skull. They are true bone, are a single structure, and, generally, are found only on males.

Horns—found on pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and bison—are a two-part structure. An interior portion of bone (an extension of the skull) is covered by an exterior sheath grown by specialized hair follicles (similar to human fingernails). Horns are usually found on both males and (in a diminutive form) females.

I used to have trouble expressing why images of Our Lord with antlers bothered me so deeply, why it never felt true. The simple truth is that my God, my Lord does not have antlers.

If you call the "Horned God" and a figure with antlers appears, something else has answered your call.

[whichwitchiswitching]

If you take this post as an attempt to invalidate your personal pracfice, do not interact. I am not interested in interacting with people so insecure in their own beliefs that a personal revelation shared online illicits a childish response.

[foolmarquis]

I feel like there must be some kind of miscommunication happening here. You said outright in your post “if you call the ‘Horned God’ and a figure with antlers appears, something else has answered your call”. Then, when people have pointed out this isn’t necessarily the case nor true to their own experiences for whatever reason, you’re telling them not to interact with your post? I’m not completely sure what you wanted to accomplish with writing the post how you did, and then responding as you have.

It feels very much like you were trying to make a blanket statement about what should and shouldn’t be considered horns versus antlers, and then in turn the nature of a deity someone has an interaction with based on how they portray themselves to that person. I think if you meant for this to be a personal revelation shared online, you might want to avoid making statements that sound like you’re stating a fact about other peoples’ practice, and maybe tag it things like #personal or #my take or whatever instead of casting as wide a net as #witchblr and #horned god.

Obviously in the end you can use whatever tags you like, and I can understand how startling it is to have unexpected pushback on a post you thought was a reasonable take. However, the responses I’ve seen (and found this post through) have been pretty civil push back against the premise you stated, and seem to come from people who want to share their own opinion and interpretation rather than just those that are insecure.

Our blogs are a journal, yes, but when we make statements that declare our take on something as if it’s fact and then tag it in a way to try and ensure it’s seen by as many people as possible, it seems reasonable that some of them might disagree with you, and a little dismissive to write off what have been pretty reasonable replies as them being childish.

[vintagegenderpunk]

OP, you must be aware that most references to The Horned God run in parallel with Cernunnos, who is famously attributed as the antlered god on the Gundestrup Cauldron.

Although yes, Antlered God is semantically correct, it is far more widely recognized that Horned God can be applied to any antler, horn, or nub bearing god.

The difference between antlers and horns is actually the permanence of the growth. Antlers shed; horns don't.

While, yeah, you have all the room in the world to be indignant that this misnaming is incorrect, you're just going to make enemies if you want to put into doubt the (at least a) decade's long attribution of Horned God to any antlered or horned deity.

[whichwitchiswitching]

Well, to start, I'm not out to make enemies. If a single person sharing their personal beliefs makes enemies though, I'm certain to have a few before the month is up. See the user above you, who makes SEVERAL assumptions about my intentions for posting, rather than asking clarifying questions for the sake of dialog. I've only been on this website for a month and I already see how desperate some people are for an excuse to act like an ass and feed their ego.

I definitely know that Cernunnos is widely accepted as the "Horned" God. I made this post simply because I was excited to have words for why certain depictions never felt right or acceptable to me. While the wider community may refer to Cernunnos as a "Horned" God, I do not. Truthfully, IMO there's barely enough info for people to know for certain that Cernunnos was ever really a god. The best evidence is that cauldron you mentioned, which is also the worst evidence at once. The cauldron does not depict an anthropomorphic figure as the witch-god is often described. It simply shows a man bearing antlers. It COULD be a depiction of an ancient Gaulish deity, certainly! But it could also just be a "shamanic" practitioner of sorts. And while I'm not interested in getting into the academics of the topic here, suffice to say that I have never, in my own craft, viewed Cernunnos as the God of witches.

To be clear, I'm not indignant about this. This post wasn't made in an angry flurry, I was actually excited when I posted. I'm not sure why or how anyone would interpret the original post as being anything other than that, and that concerns me for posting anything in the future.

And with regard to the last comment. In my own view, if upsetting something that has been semantically incorrect for years makes enemies, it sounds like people are more interested in keeping a status quo than in doing any digging into their own personal gnosis about these gods. Particularly if one person's view or experience triggers them into hating someone, calling them an enemy, or demanding blood. Doubt is essential on forming beliefs. It is entirely necessary for us to truly grasp what we feel is real, and what we are simply telling ourselves is real. If a single post on a social media website is able to bring doubt to a decades old belief, I think that says more about the belief than the witch who posted the incongruous statement. Not that that is the goal in any way of my post. Again, my post was just a personal post. I think people look at the last line, which is supposed to be taken in a horror-humor tone, and took it at face value. That's not something I ever recommend on my posts.

Also, thank you for being chill and actually looking for discussion.

[whichwitchiswitching]

Horned God?

How often do I see the "Horned" God depicted with Antlers. How often do I see Gods with antlers being referred to as "horned." How often it frustrates me to know that so few people understand the God to whom they are calling.

From the National Park Service:

Antlers—found on members of the deer family—grow as an extension of the animal’s skull. They are true bone, are a single structure, and, generally, are found only on males.

Horns—found on pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and bison—are a two-part structure. An interior portion of bone (an extension of the skull) is covered by an exterior sheath grown by specialized hair follicles (similar to human fingernails). Horns are usually found on both males and (in a diminutive form) females.

I used to have trouble expressing why images of Our Lord with antlers bothered me so deeply, why it never felt true. The simple truth is that my God, my Lord does not have antlers.

If you call the "Horned God" and a figure with antlers appears, something else has answered your call.

[whichwitchiswitching]

If you take this post as an attempt to invalidate your personal pracfice, do not interact. I am not interested in interacting with people so insecure in their own beliefs that a personal revelation shared online illicits a childish response.

[whichwitchiswitching]

Horned God?

How often do I see the "Horned" God depicted with Antlers. How often do I see Gods with antlers being referred to as "horned." How often it frustrates me to know that so few people understand the God to whom they are calling.

From the National Park Service:

Antlers—found on members of the deer family—grow as an extension of the animal’s skull. They are true bone, are a single structure, and, generally, are found only on males.

Horns—found on pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and bison—are a two-part structure. An interior portion of bone (an extension of the skull) is covered by an exterior sheath grown by specialized hair follicles (similar to human fingernails). Horns are usually found on both males and (in a diminutive form) females.

I used to have trouble expressing why images of Our Lord with antlers bothered me so deeply, why it never felt true. The simple truth is that my God, my Lord does not have antlers.

If you call the "Horned God" and a figure with antlers appears, something else has answered your call.

[echoesofthefall]

Kernunnos' name literally derives from the root *ker/*karn, meaning horn in PIE. Would you say Kernunnos does not have antlers? Some plants even bear the name of "Stag's Horn". Truth is, the word 'horn' can refer to antlers, because people are talking metaphorically and not biologically. Also, female reindeers have antlers, so they definitely are not "only found in males".

If your Lord only has horns, fine. Your understanding of Him will never be mine, and I respect the way you perceive Him, and the way He's revealed Himself to you.

But my Master has many faces and is infinitely vast. He is not limited in such a way. He has Horns, He has Antlers, He does not have any of those.

[whichwitchiswitching]

Ok

[glumshoe]

talking about species that are “useful to humans”—as opposed to species that are not—is like calling a steering wheel “useful to driving” because it’s the part of the car you personally see and interact with most

[glumshoe]

Nature education is a complete disaster in so many ways—it’s good at getting people to care about “nature” in an individual, hands-on way, but ecologically it’s a failure.

It’s easy to convince people that opossums and butterflies and snakes are cool. You can get an extreme arachnophobe cooing over jumping spiders or gently shutting tarantulas out of the house in a matter of months—don’t get me wrong, it’s hard work compared to selling them on kitten, but living things have innate charisma.

But how do you sell them on systems? On relationship webs? On largely invisible, interconnected, interdependent cycles that you can’t meaningfully display in a terrarium or on a food web poster? Ecology is like an enormous game of non-Euclidean, fourth-dimensional Jenga in which some of the pieces have gone missing and others have been replaced with tubes of chapstick or sticks of half-melted butter.

But you have to, because inconvenient scientists are ignored and widespred ecological ignorance is all the permission slip that corporate and political actors need to keep poking at the unholy geometry of that Jenga tower.

[traegorn]

Follow me on Tiktok for more of this kind of stuff

[whichwitchiswitching]

Horned God?

How often do I see the "Horned" God depicted with Antlers. How often do I see Gods with antlers being referred to as "horned." How often it frustrates me to know that so few people understand the God to whom they are calling.

From the National Park Service:

Antlers—found on members of the deer family—grow as an extension of the animal’s skull. They are true bone, are a single structure, and, generally, are found only on males.

Horns—found on pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and bison—are a two-part structure. An interior portion of bone (an extension of the skull) is covered by an exterior sheath grown by specialized hair follicles (similar to human fingernails). Horns are usually found on both males and (in a diminutive form) females.

I used to have trouble expressing why images of Our Lord with antlers bothered me so deeply, why it never felt true. The simple truth is that my God, my Lord does not have antlers.

If you call the "Horned God" and a figure with antlers appears, something else has answered your call.

[arcusxx]

art by slutfocate

[ex0skeletal-undead]

Ritual by Erikas Perl

[skelenabones]

i find the use of the term “witchcraft” when people are discussing actual popular historical magical practices from the early modern or medieval periods of Europe to be vexing and confusing, because the way people use it tends to carry along an ahistorical set of assumptions that has more to do with early neopagan misunderstandings of history than anything else. namely, when people seek ‘witchcraft’ in these time periods they are usually seeking non-christian folk magical practices and beliefs. a big reason this is the case is because early neopagans like Gardner bought into poor scholarship that suggested that during the period of the witch trials there existed sects of surviving pagan practitioners who did magic, and that often these practitioners were the target of the trials. most people seeking historical witchcraft know this was never true, these witch cults did not exist, but the way they use the term witchcraft means they’re ironically basically looking for the mythical practices Gardner and others believed in. why this is especially vexing is that it causes people interested in ‘witchcraft’ to skip entirely over the large corpus of christian magical practices that are decently well documented and were practiced by people in almost every level of society from the bottom to the top. pro-tip you know who was the most prevalent professional magical practitioner in most medieval western European towns, almost certainly even surpassing wise women and other similar folk? the village priest

[dianasson]

Thank you, so eloquently said.

[officious-seeing-eye-bitch]

Hey! Appalachia needs help!

I haven’t really seen any talk of it on here, but us Appalachians are trying to fight the Mountain-Valley Pipeline that’s going to cut right through a lot of backyards! Not only that, but it’s slated to go through the Jefferson National Forest and even the Appalachian Trail. The company building the pipeline has already had over 300 accused water-quality violations (link also contains links to how the pipeline is going to cut through sensitive ecosystems, active seismic zones, unstable karst, and steep slopes). 

The pipeline, as of Wednesday, has potentially hit an aquifer, putting local well-water at severe risk. While the company is denying this, do we really want to mess with something that will put our water at risk? 

Here is an article from the Sierra Club that goes over the protests and potential environmental impacts of the pipeline. 

The pipeline would also desecrate land belonging to the Occaneechi band of the Saponi nation in North Carolina.  

A small petition in regards to the sediment pollution caused by the pipeline. 

They are not hesitating to use eminent domain to gain access to private property. 

10 people were just arrested for locking themselves to equipment in protest, and they’re not the first. 

Multiple people have been sitting in trees to protest, but they all have been arrested and removed. Such as a mother and daughter duo and even a professor from Virginia Tech. 

I don’t know of any bail funds at the moment. 

Please share this!! Appalachia gets so little attention from big mainstream media, and we could use all the help we could get! No one wants this pipeline here, but we’re having a hard time getting noticed. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How Big Oil lied about "recyclable" plastics

Exxon knew.

They knew, 50 years ago, that they were going to murder the planet and our species with their oil.

And they acted.

Oh, how they acted!

They created a campaign of lies to distort the public perception of climate change.

https://exxonknew.org/

Exxon knew.

They knew in ‘73, when their researchers told them: plastics would never be recycled. There would not be a cost effective way to recycle plastic.

And they acted.

They created a disinformation campaign to convince us plastic COULD be recycled.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled

That campaign - the little recycling logos on our plastics, the upbeat videos about a future where plastic was part of a circular economy of use and recycling - convinced us to buy, wash, and sort plastic.

90% of that plastic was never recycled. It never will be.

NONE of those splashy campaigns - the announcement that all NYC school plastics would be recycled, the recycling in national parks - ever worked. They all lasted long enough to get some upbeat press, and then they quietly shut down.

This week’s NPR/Planet Money investigation by Laura Sullivan doesn’t just talk to the ex-chief lobbyists, now serving as belated Oppenheimers, lamenting the impending destruction of our planet.

It also talks to the current round of executives who have announced a fresh round of plans to recycle plastics - completely disingenuous, insultingly obvious distraction tactics to convince us that their projections of TRIPLING production by 2050 isn’t a form of mass murder.

Then Sullivan circles back to those retired executives, the ones who oversaw the first disinformation campaign, and they confirm that this latest round of promises are literally the same tactic, barely updated for a world on fire.

The world is on fire. My sky has been orange all week. Our family’s socially distanced meetings with friends in parks or back yards have been cancelled because we cannot breathe outside.

Exxon - and Chevron, and the rest of Big Oil - knows.

In a secret recording released to the New York Times, oil execs meet to cheerfully discuss how they will burn the world and murder us all but make a buck in the process.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/12/climate/methane-natural-gas-flaring.html

Their plans for climate change don’t involve reducing emissions - they’re building bunkers and hiring mercenaries to keep us at bay when we come for them. They know what they’ve done.

Exxon knows.

Exxon knows.

When I searched for the “Exxon Knew” campaign to find a link for this piece, the top of Google’s search results included a blisteringly expensive ad for a disinformation site, paid for by Exxon.

The sky is orange. The oceans are choking. The air is unbreathable. Your body is full of microplastics.

Exxon.

Fucking.

Knows.

[quasi-normalcy]

Everyone needs to understand that the capitalist class would rather kill all life on Earth, including, ultimately themselves, then give up their money or their power. This isn’t a hypothetical thing, by the way; the oil companies have already made that choice.

[bogleech]

this really really isn’t exaggeration because every single time legislation is introduced that would protect the environment, protect workers, protect human health or make products more effective, business owners fight it tooth and nail and that includes when it can be mathematically proven to have either a negligible effect on their profits or even make them more money in the long run after taking a MINUTE, temporary hit. They don’t even want to do better later. They want every single fucking penny they’re able to get today, and only today, no matter who loses a home or gets cancer or what goes completely fucking extinct. This is almost universally true. When you find a huge monopoly willing to let one thing get better you’ll almost always find that they’re doing ten worse things to make up the money and complied with the one nice gesture so they can look good and attract more customers. This isn’t “conspiracy theory” shit but all out in the open.

[wolverinesorcery]

A Cornish protection charm -

To be drawn onto paper with the written addition of “Whosoever bareth this sign need fear no foe. So shall it be!”, folded and presented into a square bag made of velvet or felt & held with a cross of thread (or otherwise contained). Carry in a pocket or bag for protection.

No other materials are required unless the charmer wants them, originally noted from The Black Toad by Gemma Gary

[breelandwalker]

A Lesson for Young Witches

If you cannot find representations for a given element, remember…

You are supported by a rigid skeleton made of minerals. You are earth.

Your body is over 70% fluid. You are water.

Your lungs take in and expel breath. You are air.

Your blood is warm and your brain runs on electrical impulses. You are fire.

Your essence, however you describe it, resides within you. You are spirit.

You are composed of gifts from every element, and every element is given marvelous life in you.

Never feel that you are insufficiently magical for lack of icons or accoutrements or accessories.

You are ALWAYS magic. You are ALWAYS enough.

[breelandwalker]

Bringing this back, because you never know who needs to see it. 😊

[thelaughing-deactivated20250616]

𝒅𝒆𝒗𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝒕𝒐 𝒅𝒊𝒂𝒏𝒂, 𝒑𝒕. 𝒙𝒙𝒙𝒙

Fearsome Diana, who with keen falcons and steed, hunts those who disdained her.

Wrathful Diana, whose hands hold the profane under water— transfixed in the tide.

Righteous Diana, whose priest-king broke his bonds and fought for his freedom.

Fair Diana; her long plait cliched in a mobius strip; two bright stones for eyes.

Queen Diana, her crown the stone of mountains; in hand, a silver sword of stars.

Soft Diana that lifts me from my sorrow, so that I swim amidst the reeds of life.

[politijohn]

[politijohn]

Yes, this is really a thing…

[solitarelee]

Yep, because baby formula is one of the most shoplifted things in America. Which should ALSO radicalize you.

[girtheemoninja]

Or… We stop shoplifting? 🤔 Are we demonizing acts to stop crimes now?

[demonius-darkblade]

ill tear your head off your shoulders you dumb fuck

[jana-the-clown]

I’m all for radicalization like the government and society are fucked. But they put baby formula in locked cases because it is used to make meth. The store does this to keep an eye out if someone is buying way too much. Like waaaaay too much.

[40ouncesandamule]

No. They lock it up because hungry babies need it and there is a thriving market for stealing baby formula because people will pay good money to guarantee their babies don’t starve.

You can’t make meth out of baby formula. You can stretch some drugs by cutting it with baby formula but “Drug dealers sometimes use the powdered formula to dilute heroin and methamphetamine or to stretch the product when supplies run low. However, experts say that more often than not, formula is stolen because of its high market demand among consumers rather than drug dealers.”

This is what imperialism and capitalism and the “war on drugs” does to people’s brains. You can see that people are so desperate to feed their babies that the people who rule your lives keep baby formula under lock and key but rather than that radicalizing you and making you want to fight for a world where no baby ever goes hungry, you justify this draconian bullshit because you’ve fallen for the propaganda that baby formula is used in some nebulous relation to “drugs” and drugs are bad so whatever inhuman monstrosity that occurs must be justifiable.

[spiritscraft-deactivated2025031]

Hmmm, will I cut this with $5 of flour a super cheap commodity or $80 of baby formula???