Attempting To Flourish

Written by: @teaberrymagic

As a person with chronic pain and fatigue issues, I’ve had to give up a lot of my hobbies. So how do I practice witchcraft when I can often experience too much pain or tiredness to do the things other witches do?

TAKE SHORTCUTS, MAKE MODIFICATIONS

Don’t spend all your spoons trying to do something that is difficult or impossible for you. Modify practices where you can, and eliminate the things that you know are beyond your limits. You don’t have to prove to other people that you can do the same things they’re doing, and your practice is allowed to look however you want or need it to.

MY PERSONAL MODIFICATIONS

So what do I personally modify to make things easier for me with chronic pain?

I never meditate sitting, and I wish it’s something more people modified. If I want to completely relax all the muscles of my body and focus on something like visualization, energy work, astral, etc., I lay down. I find a comfortable place (usually a couch or a bed) and lie there instead of feeling like I have to do the cross legged stereotypical meditation pose, or sit upright in a chair. I’m using my mind, sitting upright just isn’t necessary and lying down takes the pressure off my body.

I never cast with a wand and I generally don’t even lift my arms. I visualize and just look in the direction I need to cast. (I can describe this visualization in another post!)

I use sigils as an energy saving alternative to complicated spells with lots of steps and ingredients. Sigils are simple in execution, the supplies for them are almost always within my reach, and they’re chargeable so on a good day I can make them, and on a bad day I just take them with me. I bring a pocket notebook and pen everywhere I go, so I can make and use sigils whenever necessary.

I use tarot apps if I can’t take my entire deck out.

I sit or lie down as much as I can. I can do kitchen witchcraft on a hot plate sitting on the floor. I lay out a blanket on the ground and pull cards there. I cast a circle around my bed and do spells, rituals, energy work from whatever position is easiest to maintain (sitting, leaning, lying down, etc).

I utilize “passive magic” as much as possible. I leave water out in moonlight to charge without effort and collect it when I have the energy. I create talismans and charms that will keep working throughout the weeks and months afterward. I program spells to activate when I’m low energy. I keep bells and chimes to cleanse my space with just a tap of my finger. I use a diffuser with various scented oils. I turn on a bedroom lamp that lights up different colors for color magic. I burn candles with various scents and correspondences. I keep flowers with certain meanings around my apartment. I make infusions, tinctures, and pickled foods because they require very little prep and mostly a lot of time. Whatever I can do standing, I do sitting or lying down with visualization instead.

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS

💻 Rather than a handwritten grimoire, use a digital one. Typing is lower impact and you can even use speech to text apps if typing is too much. Voice recordings can work for some people too, but I find it difficult to reference past material if I have to listen to a half hour speech every time I want to find something.

📚 If heavy books are too difficult to lift or hold, keep your library on an external hard drive or an e-reader. I hardly have any physical books in my apartment, I have converted most of my collection to an e-reader. Holding and shelving books has become too taxing, so I read everything on my laptop, e-reader, or phone.

🕯️ If the upkeep of a physical altar is too much, keep a digital, paper, or pocket altar. Lighter and candle apps are a great (and budget friendly) alternative to keeping a huge collection of candles for your altar, home, and spells too. I personally keep a few candles for each season and have no designated altar. I just keep things with good energy around my space.

🌱 If you don’t have the energy to take care of plants, keep low energy alternatives like cacti or moss balls. If even those are too much energy, keep plant figures, ceramics, or art instead. Keep an app like Viridi so you can grow and take care of digital plants without even needing to get out of bed.

A PERSPECTIVE CHANGE

Spoonie witchcraft is about creativity, substitutions, and a willingness to define your own boundaries. When you’re dealing with chronic illness and disability, there are things you can’t do or can’t do the same way anymore and it’s not about fighting or forcing yourself to do things the way other people do. Use that awesome brain to come up with workarounds that will allow you to engage with the same intentions in a different way. There’s never one right way to do a spell, so be creative!

Spoonie witches will likely gain skills in meditation, visualization, energy work, and astral abilities more than anything else as many of these can be substitutions or workarounds for other elements in one’s practice. And at the end of the day, every spell ingredient is just a conduit for energy. All you need is yourself for witchcraft and none of those things are necessary.

I see it usually in the context of “esk*mo kisses” which may pop up when people talk about their ships and their headcanon, but it means “snow eaters” in cree and is a slur against Inuit people so please just don’t use it!

Background:

So, there is this ethnic group in Russia known as the Mari people.

In 16th century, some of them took up Orthodox Christianity, while others still practiced the native Mari faith, centered around reverence for the forces of nature, which humans must respect. The Native Mari Religion has existed continuously (it has an “unbroken lineage”) and survived Christianisation organically. It is something of a phenomenon among the religion scholars. Today, 25-40% of the Mari people are worshipers of the Native faith. (Others are Orthodox or Muslim).

The actual lol:

If you go to Polish wikipedia, it says “the Mari are Orthodox Christian since the 16th century, some are Muslim, and there is a revival of pagan faith observable over the last few years.”

Way to go, wiki author, whoever you are, you robbed these people of their proud and exceptional heritage in just a few words.

Kristen Miologos, Binding Ritual for Protection, 8 1/2” x 11”, embroidery floss on legal papers never served, 2008

“In 2006 I was in an abusive relationship. After months of physical and emotional torment, I gained the strength to end things for good, only to have my abuser harass me and attempt to break into my apartment in order to harm me. I went to the police for help.

After a confession and a failed attempt to arrest him, my case was reevaluated by the county attorney’s office. It was decided that since I stayed with my abuser for months after the initial abuse began, I was not considered a credible, perfect victim and my case had been dropped. My only option at this point was to file an Injunction Against Harassment (a restraining order).

Officers were unsuccessful in serving the Injunction after attempting to do so three times. I was told the only thing I could do now was to carry the papers with me at all times, and to call 911 if he contacted me so law enforcement could serve him. My abuser showed up at my apartment and I immediately called police—only to have them arrive hours after my attacker came and left.

After that, I carried the Injunction Against Harassment everyday with me for two years. Every crinkle, tear, fold, and stain on those papers represents years of injustice and time spent waiting for the system to help me. Finally, I realized I would not get the help I sought from law enforcement, so I decided to stop letting the papers weight me down, and I took matters into my own hands. I decided to create my own talisman of meditative protection by ritually binding all of the words on the 10-page document. By concealing his name, his address, his date of birth, and the horrible atrocities he executed against me with embroidery floss and needle, I felt like I had finally regained my power against him through this act of erasure.

The Bound Injunction Talisman acts as a stern reminder to never wait around for others to act on my behalf. It reminds me that, the world is not against me, but rather, it truly does not give a shit about my insignificant existence. It reminds me that there is no meaning to life, and that justice may not always get served even in the most just of situations. It reminds me that, time heals nothing, because time is a measurement, and it cannot ease trauma—only I have the power to do so by being consciously proactive.”

So as I come down off a very long very low period of my depression, I realize this is a topic I’ve seen, but not covered in a way that gives you any consolation or usefulness when you’re depressed. I see “little rituals” and “how to do more with less energy” but rarely addressed is the “how to do anything with nothing” that comes with real, deep depression. 

So when you’re in your depression, with offerings rotting in your ceremony bowls, candles burned down to nubs, your tarot deck missing, your supplies in disarray and decay, I want to tell you, you’re still magical.

Magic comes from different sources, the world around you, the deities you follow and deep within you. When you’re in a depression the magic within you often feels like it is deep beneath the bottom of dried up well, it may seem like your gods have forsaken you and you just can’t feel the hum of magic in the world around you. But do not worry, it has not gone away. The sun might shine just right one day, or you’ll feel an easing in your soul after a good cry, or one little thing goes just right, your gods might give you a sign. You are still magical, like a dry river bed before a week of rain, full of potential. It might take a long time, and you might ache in your soul for your magic to return; it will, in due time. Magic likes to rest, and gods may go to sleep, even the natural world lies dormant once in a while.

(here’s and draft of expert from the zine I’m working on about my personal practice of witchcraft)

I’ve joked that my personal practice of witchcraft looks like a cottage or hearth witch got set loose in a punk house of a Philosophy major drop-out who read too many Discworld books.

However, that statement doesn’t mean much to you if you don’t know what a cottage or hearth witch is, some aspects of Philosophy, or the glory of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld witches’ concept of “headology”.

If I am feeling frustrated and I’m just ranting and bitching about the thing, even if I am trying to use my will to change the thing I am bitching about it doesn’t always work, if it does work it takes a lot longer and the results are not nearly as strong.

A couple of examples:

One day I was walking out of hte store to my vehicle, and a guy in a very large and very loud pickup truck was driving way too fast through the parking lot, not slowing down for the pedestrians to cross, not stopping at the markings where he was supposed to stop to let people pass. I felt VERY angry about this as I watched him. I did not expect him to stop for me, he was going so fast and hadn’t stopped for anyone, and as I approached the roadway he was still pretty far from me. I looked at him and muttered stop! not loudly at all, just very strongly. I just wanted him to stop driving so fast in the parking lot. He slowed down immediately and he stopped a few yards away from where I was standing so that I could cross. He motioned for me to cross the lane. After I crossed he did not speed through the lot any more.

One night I was driving on a road where they were doing roadwork. They had lots of cop cars with those obnoxious flashing lights, plus the work vehicles with their flashing lights. I hate flashing lights especially when I am driving. As I approached the end of the road work area, the last truck with flashing lights started driving in the lane next to me, but was ahead of me. I couldn’t pass them without speeding, and even then the lights would have been in my mirror flashing at me. I was irritated that they didn’t turn off the flashing lights as they were driving, and I strongly stated OUT! in a mumble that my daughter did hear in the seat behind me. Now, we had gone through several intersections at this point, and they should have turned off the lights before they started driving away from the work area IMO. Within a second of me saying OUT! the flashing lights went out. 

Ranting and venting can relieve some of the frustration I feel, but it does nothing about the source. It just wastes and scatters my energy. 

Holding the thoughts in myself and using as few words as possible to state my intent takes care of the source of the problem for me.