By Audrey Benjaminsen
i don't do bad sauce passes

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wallacepolsom
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

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Kiana Khansmith

@theartofmadeline

Love Begins
Cosimo Galluzzi

tannertan36
AnasAbdin

titsay
Cosmic Funnies
trying on a metaphor
Misplaced Lens Cap

roma★
will byers stan first human second

oozey mess
ojovivo

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@witchydreamer97
By Audrey Benjaminsen
instagram | photos are my own, reblogs fine, do not repost/reuse
𝔞 𝔟𝔲𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔦𝔯𝔢
𝔵𝔵
Bluebell Season. flickr // instagram
"How can I be a witch/pagan without falling for conspiracy theories/New Age cult stuff?" starter kit
Posts & Articles
Check your conspiracy theory. Does any of it sound like this?
Check your conspiracy theory part two: double, double, boil and trouble.
QAnon is an old form of anti-Semitism in a new package, experts say
Some antisemitic dogwhistles to watch out for
Eugenicist and bioessentialist beliefs about magic
New Age beliefs that derive from racist pseudoscience
The New Age concept of ascension - what is it?
A quick intro to starseeds
Starseeds: Nazis in Space?
Reminder that the lizard alien conspiracy theory is antisemitism
The Ancient Astronaut Hypothesis is Racist and Harmful
The Truth About Atlantis
Why the Nazis were obsessed with finding the lost city of Atlantis
The Nazis' love affair with the occult
Occultism in Nazism
Red flag names in cult survivor resources/groups (all of them are far right conspiracy theorists/grifters)
The legacy of implanted Satanic abuse ‘memories’ is still causing damage today
Why Satanic Panic never really ended
Dangerous Therapy: The Story of Patricia Burgus and Multiple Personality Disorder
Remember a Previous Life? Maybe You Have a Bad Memory
A Case of Reincarnation - Reexamined
Crash and Burn: James Leininger Story Debunked
Debunking Myths About Easter/Ostara
Just How Pagan is Christmas, Really?
The Origins of the Christmas Tree
No, Santa Claus Is Not Inspired By Odin
Why Did The Patriarchal Greeks And Romans Worship Such Powerful Goddesses?
No, Athena Didn't Turn Medusa Into A Monster To Protect Her
Who Was the First God?
Were Ancient Civilizations Conservative Or Liberal?
How Misogyny, Homophobia, and Antisemitism Influence Transphobia
Podcasts & Videos
BS-Free Witchcraft
Angela's Symposium
ESOTERICA
ReligionForBreakfast
Weird Reads With Emily Louise
It's Probably (not!) Aliens
Conspirituality
Miniminuteman
Behind The Bastards
daily affirmations
- I will own a house and decorate it just like I've been dreaming of for years
- I WILL OWN A HOUSE
- my house will have the cutest decor ever
- I will have the most peaceful house of all time
- house
Advice for if your practice is feeling stressful or unfulfilling (that isn't 'just stop practicing')
Before you expand: long text post!
I think it's interesting that the first line of advice stressed and unhappy practitioners often receive is 'stop practicing! take a break,' because besides a breather this doesn't actually do anything. When a person is done with that break they're still going to have the same stressful, unfulfilling practice they did before.
Stop practicing is useful advice for someone who is about to deep-fry their brain in uncontrolled Witch Fire. It's useful advice for someone who experiences unexplainable catastrophe every time they engage in magic.
I'm not sure it's useful advice for people who want to practice and are actively seeking help figuring out how.
So here are some ideas. Feel free to add your own.
If your practice has too much of a time load:
Scrape over-engineered ritual. Examine ritual formats. Are you spending a majority of your practice time engaging in elaborate ritual? Where can that be paired down?
Swap ritual for enchantments. If ritual performs an action (laying a compass), can you substitute for that ritual action by making enchanted objects that take less time to activate (enchanted compass altar cloth)?
Minimize ingredients. If you regularly perform spells that require lengthy enchantment of ingredients, can you use fewer ingredients to achieve the same results? If you're using more than 3 correspondences for any spell, is this because you are wise in your own ways, or because you just feel that more is merrier?
Mash rituals together. Do you have a string of rituals, even small ones, that you perform one after the other? Is it possible to reorganize these so they're all done at once, in the same ritual? For example, setting out an offering to the gods, a different offering for the ancestors, another for helper spirits, etc. Can you combine these all into one single offering?
Check for over-tending. Is it possible that you're repeating magical acts, like feeding wards and cleansing, more often than you need to? Did you arrive at this schedule through trial and error, or did you just guess this is how often you should do them?
Check for your own levelup: spell maintenance. If it's been a while since you re-evaluated your ritual/offering/maintenance schedule, your increase in skills may mean you need to do these tasks less often to achieve the same result.
Check for your own levelup: techniques and routines. Some techniques, like carefully entering trance, grounding, and centering, are like training wheels that wear ruts into our paths of magic. As we improve in skill, old rituals and techniques that have been carefully couched in these helpful devices may become ingrained in us so that we can perform them in almost any state of mind, much faster and easier than we could before. Experiment with any technique you've been doing for a while and see if you still need to perform time-consuming meditative or focusing techniques before you can perform the skill.
Be reasonable with your own goals. I find most 'laywitches' give themselves daily and weekly schedules that would put actual cloistered monks to shame. Did your spirits tell you they expect daily offerings, or did you decide on that an run with it? Where are you overcompensating and overexerting in your path when nobody, including yourself, asked you to?
If your practice has too much of a work load:
Much of the advice of the prior section applies. Also,
Just work less. Are you putting in 100% effort when 20% or 30% would do? Are you treating every act of magic like a performance review that will control the outcome of your magical career? I'm not being sarcastic; an actual solution to your path being too much work is to just put in less effort. If you've never tried this you may be shocked at how effective magic can be when you're only doing what needs to be done.
Find simpler that's more reasonable. Find new techniques, and spell and ritual formats that are paired down to fit the amount of effort that's reasonable to exert for any given magical act. If you can't work with correspondences without a lengthy act of activation, find a way to cast simple spells that doesn't rely on correspondences.
Limit research and prep. Ask yourself how much research you reasonably need to get started on any given project. Remember that a huge amount of a witch's education is experiential; you will probably never know enough until you've already done it three or four times.
Be goal-oriented; prioritize actions. Ask yourself if you've set arbitrary workloads before you can get started with anything, such as forcing yourself to write artistic grimoire pages before you're allowed to perform a ritual you're interested in.
Learn skills to help prioritize actions. If your practice is consumed by acts of upkeep such as cleansing and empowering objects, focus on learning energy sensing so you can reasonably determine whether or not an object actually needs to be cleansed or empowered.
Administrate your own practice - what can go on the back burner? Make a list of all your active ongoing projects and maintenance, including upkeep of energy batteries, spells that require maintenance, and situations you want to change and are casting spells on. Prioritize them; see which ones you can set aside.
Restructure your projects to minimize maintenance. Consolidate spells and projects where possible. For example, if you have multiple protection spells for many people that require upkeep, condense them all onto a protection altar so you can feed and tend to them all at once.
Work in batch and bulk. See where you can do batch work to lighten your load. You can bulk enchant candles and incense, instead of enchanting incense every time you do a ritual. You can enchant oils, waters, and incense to feed your spells, taking time out of upkeep.
Levelup your charging and maintenance skills. Learn energy work to attach energy tethers to batteries and other important projects so they're able to drink from the wellspring you attach them to, and stay charged.
Scrape routines that don't serve you. Examine any daily routines. Are you doing them because they're helping you, or because you feel like you're supposed to be doing something every day? See if you can replace more intensive daily routines with something less tiring, like a prayer to your path itself.
If your practice feels too silly:
You have a right to privacy. Cocooning is valid. It's fine to take steps to limit who can see and potentially judge your practice. You can keep things to yourself until you're ready.
Tend to your emotional wellness. Self-therapy, in any form you feel comfortable with, can help mitigate the inner eye of judgement.
Reduce your beliefs to palatable doses. Believing in magic for only the duration of your work is perfectly fine. You don't have to 'believe-believe' 24/7. If you're not ready to integrate the belief of magic and spirits into your baseline worldview, don't - you can agree to buy in to those beliefs only while you practice techniques and cast spells, and then put them away the rest of the time.
Scrape stuff you really can't get past. Ask yourself what about your practice feels silly. Are there trappings - like altars, ritual movements, and speaking aloud - that you don't like? Change them. Is the idea that religious faith itself is a bit cringe? Self-therapy (or you know, the regular kind) may be assistive.
Ask for help modifying your process.Is there something very specific about a ritual or technique that you just can't get past, but you don't know how to change it? Research and see what other substitute rituals are available. Ask others and see if they can help you brainstorm.
Embrace the silliness. It's not going anywhere. Believing in your practice and holding it dear and sacred is not the same as being ✨super serious gravitas✨ all the time. There are lots of things about witchcraft, and the acts of the witch, that are silly and make you realize you're doing something ridiculous. I came out here at 2 am after it's been raining to climb down a slippery riverbed to get a branch of a tree that I think is talking to me?? Because some medieval guy said Tuesday is the planet Mars and I think trees talk to me?! Ridiculous. Yet I still love it dearly in a sacred place in my heart. It can be silly and glorious at the same time.
Cast a wider net. See if you're barking up the wrong tree. Traditional Witchcraft, folk magic, lodge magic, chaos magic, eclectic neopaganism... these things are not interchangeable. If you've never explored different traditions, why not give it a go? You might find another path that feels a lot more natural to you. A lot of people fall into a certain path just because they don't know what else they could be doing!
If your practice feels unfulfilling:
What are you doing to bring yourself fulfillment? Why did you get into witchcraft? Make a list of your top 5 reasons (if you have that many). Which techniques, spells, and rituals are you regularly performing are designed to deliver these desires to you? If one of your goals of practicing witchcraft is to 'feel connected,' how often are you performing acts where the only goal is to make you feel connected?
Grow your path deliberately in the direction of your needs. What do you wish you had in your life right now? Is it the feeling of being loved? Inner peace? Feeling like nature is alive and watching you? Look for what techniques and rituals in your practice will bring these things to you. If there are none, find or develop them.
Ask for help and share your feelings. If you work with gods and spirits, do you regularly tell them how you feel about your practice and ask them for help finding fulfillment?
Find contentment in the process. It's vital to find joy in the process. If you have regular routines or upkeep you need to do, how can you modify it so that process in and of itself is satisfying to you? Try considering the visceral element of witchcraft: the words, scents, sounds, moods, and thoughts that you want to experience in your present moment. Witchcraft is experiential: a great deal of the experience you create in the tidepools of routine is under your control.
Contemplate the larger purpose. Some witches do have magical chores and responsibilities they can't or shouldn't shirk. If this is true of you, and you can't modify those routines, try refocusing on why you're doing them and the importance they hold in your path. See if you can find balance elsewhere in your practice that feels rejuvenating; sort of a 'work-play' balance of your own craft.
Set short-term goals you can celebrate. Are you undertaking a lot of 'workout routines' that are designed to basically make you magically buff, or get good at a particular skill, but you're doing them with no endgoal? Try creating short-term goals that excite your sense of wonder or accomplishment. Like, practicing tarot until you can read the Celtic Cross, or practicing energy work until you can make a four-element layered energy shield. Build goalposts for yourself, both in the short and long-term, and celebrate your successes.
Scrape routines you're not doing for any good reason. Are your regular practices things you're doing because they fill you with mystery and wonder, or because you're just pretty sure that's the kind of thing witches do? If you're bored or unfulfilled by a particular routine, consider stopping it altogether, especially if you can't think of any short-term goals that it's helping you work towards. Think about the reasons you got into witchcraft: what practices would help you fulfill those reasons, while also feeling good to practice?
Seek out a likeminded community. A good working group of friends can be invaluable. My close group of witch friends, whom I've been hanging out with for years, started as a Tumblr post asking if anyone wanted to make a small server to study witchcraft. Reach out and see who's out there to study with, talk to, and practice with. It can be loads of fun to do short-term study and practice challenges with friends, and a great way to get feedback and support.
Evaluate your spiritual relationships. Although it can be painful and challenging, sometimes we enter into our paths working with gods and spirits that after some time, we need to move on from. Is it possible your path has become stagnant because you don't want to keep working with a god or spirit that your path has been built around? It may be time to see how you can move on.
When 'take a break' might be helpful advice to heal your practice:
Of course, YMMV :)
'Taking a break' doesn't mean stop being a witch, stop believing in magic, or stop 100% of your practice. It can also mean putting a lot of projects on the back burner, switching to bare-minimum (or below minimum) maintenance, and squashing regular routines.
I'm talking specifically about taking a break in the interest of your own practice - not the conditions under which someone is ""allowed"" to stop practicing witchcraft.
Take a break to rest and let your seeds germinate. 'Fallow periods,' when you have no desire or motivation to practice witchcraft, and when it seems like there's nothing for you to do, are normal. Some witches experience this cyclically, perhaps during certain seasons or when predictable life conditions are met. There's no need to force yourself to practice when it's just not flowing. The snow on your mountaintops needs to melt to replenish your waterways, bestie. There's nothing wrong with you, the sun just isn't out yet.
When you're hitting yourself with a hammer. When something in your practice is triggering or harming you, and stopping will have no consequences, then stopping your practice for a while is probably a good idea. Use the downtime to seek healing or reformat your practice.
To open your life up for necessary work. Not every witch can out-path every problem. Consider taking a break when the problem is something you will have time and energy to work on if not for your regular magical practice.
When you're about to deep-fry your brain with Witch Fire. Consider taking a break when the problem with your practice is that you are practicing too often - such as fatigue due to excessive spellwork, divinatory obsession, trouble staying out of the spirit world (compulsive astral travel), or focus on spirits/magic/the spirit worlds are starting to erode your home, school, or work life.
To let the ripples settle. When you've done so much magic or ritual work that your life is a boat on a stormy sea, and you just need to batten down the hatches for a while and let things settle.
Crows are scary They
use tools
Can be taught to speak (like parrots)
Have huge brains for birds
like seriously their brain-to-body size ratio is equal to that of a chimpanzee
They vocalize anger, sadness, or happiness in response to things
they are scary smart at solving puzzles
some crows stay with their mates until one of them dies
they can remember faces
SIDENOTE HERE BECAUSE HOLY SHIT. They did an experiment where these guys wore masks and some of them fucked with crows. Pretty soon the crows recognized the masks = douchebag. But the nice guys with masks they left alone. THEN, OH WE’RE NOT DONE, NO SIR crows that WEREN’T EVEN IN THE EXPERIMENT AND NEVER SAW THE MASK BEFORE knew about mask-dudes and attacked them on sight. THEY PASSED ON THE FUCKING INFORMATION TO THEIR CROW BUDDIES.
They remember places where crows were killed by farmers and change their migration patterns.
Guys I’m really scared of crows now. (q)
Yeah but have you seen this
A colleague of my dad’s lives next to a lake, and looked out the window one morning to see a duck trapped in the ice. A crow swooped down. “Oh hell,” she thought, expecting carnage, because crows are opportunists. But the crow chipped at the ice with its beak until the duck was free.
Idk of this counts but a few crows saved me from a magpie swooping attack once ,they’re bros who can tell when magpies are being unreasonable and need to chill
I love crows so damn much. When I was fifteen, I hit a pretty serious bout of depression, to the point I was in my room for months. Well, a family of crows made a nest in a tree outside my window. There were two parents and two chicks. One chick was healthy and strong. One was weak, and had a caw like something being strained. It sounded more like a rooster crowing and so my parents jokingly named him ‘Buck’.Well… months passed and Buck’s sibling was taught to fly. His parents focused on the sibling because the sibling was strong. The father stayed behind to try and teach Buck, but I saw him try to fly, fail, and crash to the floor. His father helped him back up into the tree.
Every day, I would watch Buck from my window until one day I opened it and started talking to him. He was small and gangly and he couldn’t caw right. His feathers were all over the place and I felt a kinship. So I made a deal with him. I told him that if he could do it, if he could fly, then I could find the strength to get up. Well… near the end of the season, after talking with him every day, I finally saw him get out of the nest. He went to the edge of his branch, braced himself, and jumped… and just before he hit the ground, he soared back up into the sky. I cheered harder than I ever had before.
That winter, Buck left the area. I was crestfallen. I felt like I’d lost a friend. But I was so damn proud of him.
Cut to the next spring? I’m walking up the driveway one day when suddenly I hear a sound… a broken caw. I look up, and Buck is sitting in a tree above my head. He stared at me and puffed his feathers, then hopped down in front of me and cawed again. I was so damn thrilled, and I told him how proud I was of him. He ruffled his feathers and then soared off into his old tree.
That summer? I heard two broken caws. One from Buck… and one from his chick.
Cut to ten years later? We have a family of crows who all have a very distinct caw and they come here and spend every spring, summer, and fall on our property. Buck still greets me every spring.
that last reply made me wanna cry. that’s so beautiful.
Don’t forget the Russian Crow SLEDDING DOWN A ROOF not once, but twice.
this one morning i kept hearing really loud caws, i remember it was like 5am, LIKE REALLY LOUD AND ANNOYING AND AGGRESSIVE, so loud that i could hear it through a closed window, and i eventually went outside to check it out. there was a crow on my front lawn, it had an injury on its head and couldn’t fly and there were two other crows circling right above it, and they were cawing like mad.
i tried to get close and take a better look and one of them dived super low and tried to attack me. so i went back in the house and chopped some sliced raw meat and tossed it at him from a distance.
a few more times later, very soon after, they could tell i was trying to help, and did not attack me. i was “allowed” to walk up close and pick him up, he couldn’t drink water properly so i had to dip my finger in a bowl and stick it in his mouth.
i did this few times a day and it went on for about a week before he disappeared, i thought he recovered and left, but he came back the next day and lands on me, and i see him around the block quite often, and he would come sit on my shoulder for a few minutes and then fly away again. i feel like i’ve adopted a son.
Best birbs !!
your son is Beautiful and Strong
every time I see this post it has different crow stories and every time I reblog it again because all crow stories are good stories
Like, I wouldn’t want to be on bad terms with a crow, but they are a really smart animal, they aren’t scary You just want to be nice to them because they will know and they will remember, and they will pay you back if you treat them a certain way.
As a side note, I volunteered at a rehab (Hope for Wildlife), where they were rehabbing a crow with a broken wing–who was named Russell Crow. He kept pulling his bandage off so a sleeve was cut off some old clothing and put on him like a little sweater.
!!!!
I don’t think I’ll ever not reblog this. This posts makes me cry and smile at the same time.
He’s so handsome!!
I would trust a crow with my life
This is your regularly scheduled crow appreciation post
many east indians respect crows and lowkey worship them and now i know why :)
fucking superb you funky little death omens
Damn now I want a crow
Considering this image ⬇️ is from my most popular post, I think you all know the deal.
Run!
Had to get this art out of my system last night, which is actually from a post I wrote on here years ago.
Should I make it into a print? Without the logo of course.
I know this is a witchcraft blog, but most of my practice involves simply observing nature as it is, and I think it's something everyone can benefit from. Not necessarily trying to understand it, or judge it, but quietly being present while it exists to do the only thing it's meant to do. To me, expanding my knowledge of the world is witchcraft. And almost conversely, just because we understand how something works doesn't make it any less magical. Sure, you water a seed and it becomes a plant. But that is an organism that eats sunlight and that is magical and I will not be convinced otherwise. When you look up at the Milky Way and it looks back at you, yeah it seems reasonable to point above your head and say something like, "The Gods live in the Heavens. Jupiter is up there, and he's watching over me." The line between literal and metaphorical blurs, and the microcosm reflects the macrocosm.
Illustration from Two Too Many by Nora Unwin, 1962.
Unexpected friend. September 2024.