Bouquets of Perfumed Stars

Eating Chinese food, watching Bollywood movies, going to see Cambodian dancers, or learning to speak Korean so you can watch every K drama in existence is totally fine. The invitation to participate in those things came from within those cultures. The Mexican family that owns the place where I get fajitas wants me to eat fajitas. Their whole business model kind of depends on it, actually. 

If you see something from another culture you think you might want to participate in, but you don’t know if that would be disrespectful or appropriative, you can just…ask. Like. A Jewish friend explained what a mezuzah was to me, recently. (It’s the little scroll-thing near their front doors that they touch when they come into their house. It basically means “this is a Jewish household.”)

“Oh, cool,” I said. “Can I touch it? Or is it only for Jewish people?”

“You can touch it or you can not touch it,” she said. “I don’t care.”

“Cool, I’m gonna touch it, then.”

“Cool.”

It’s not hard.

Water: Angelite, Azurite, Boji Stones/Shaman Stones/Moqui Marbles, Calcite, Celestine, Desert Rose, Halite(rock salt), Himalayan Salt, Hematite, Jet, Lapis, Malachite, Moonstone, Pyrite, Selenite, Unakite

Salt: Angelite, Azurite, Calcite, Carnelian, Hematite, Jet, Kunzite, Kyanite, Lapis, Labrodite, Lepidolite, Malachite, Moldavite, Moonstone, Pyrite, Selenite, Tiger’s Eye, Topaz, Ulexite/TV Stone

Sun/UV: Amethyst, Aquamarine, Aventurine, Calcite, Celestine, Citrine, Fluorite, Jade, Jet, Kunzite, Lapis, Malachite, Quartz, Sapphire, Sodalite, Super Seven, Topaz, Tourmaline

Heat: Cinnabar, Emerald, Moonstone, Sodalite, Unakite

Acid: Apatite, Sodalite

In light of the whole captain-planet-official nazi dogwhistles thing…

Doesn’t matter if they know what they’re doing or not (but they certainly do) or if they’re doing this ‘ironically’ (a cop out excuse to claim plausible deniability when they get called out) this fascist nazi Captain Planet blog is influencing its readers in a bad way, and you should be aware of how. Because honestly I’ve used some of those techniques too.

“But it’s all a joke!” No it’s not. It’s masquerading as a joke, hiding behind that claim if the heat gets too intense, but it’s not a joke.

Well, except maybe for the fact that the right wingers are laughing at you trying to figure it out, ‘getting confused’ or defending parts of what’s been said.

The short premise is that the more positively you feel about a personality on the internet, the more likely you are to agree with them, and the more likely you are to side with them on issues that you didn’t previously have an opinion on. At some point you file them away in your brain as ‘someone I agree with’ and use them as a shortcut for ‘If they said this, I agree with them’. It’s a very human thing, it’s why advertisers pay so much for celebrity endorsements.

So part of what this Nazi Captain Planet rper is/was doing (I can’t believe I typed that phrase with my own two hands, what even is 2019?) is making you feel attached to them, and partly it’s training your brain to accept and normalise their rhetoric.

So how does a blog set about accomplishing this?

Start with an easy one- giving you a nickname or term of endearment. It makes you feel special, and like you belong to something. They use Planeteers, I used Vetlings. People crave belonging.

Then have an approachable front: a much loved cartoon character. The trusted profession of veterinarian.

Now if you’re trying to do this deliberately, start getting people into a quick habit of agreeing with you. Pick neutral ground that’s hard to criticise - protecting the environment is good, don’t litter, we want good things for our pets, etc.

And once you’ve got people agreeing with you on multiple points in succession, it becomes easier to get them to agree with, or at least tolerate, the next point. Especially if you’re on a relatively unassuming blog about ‘saving the environment’ or animal health.

Did you ever try that trick as a kid where you ask someone to repeat the word ‘silk’ out loud ten times in a row, and then ask ‘what does a cow drink’? A bunch of them will automatically reply ‘milk’ instead of ‘water’ because you primed their brain.

So you can use this repeated behavior to desensitise readers to an idea, get them used to agreeing with you, until you slip some things in which they might normally side-eye.

It’s making the brain practice how you want it to think before the main event. It’s showing your work so that other people can apply it to other situations. I’ve done it too, rather more unintentionally most of the time on this blog, though I use it when communicating directly with clients.

For example, in my writing I can lead you down the garden path of:

“Purebreds have problems because they haven’t had new genes introduced in generations”

> “mixing of breeds is a good thing”

> “breed purity is a bad thing, maybe not immediately but it is bad”.

Then I will often leave readers to make the last step on their own, because I trust they’re intelligent and reasonable, and a conclusion you reach yourself has more sticking power than any I just hand you.

So when you conclude “racial purity is a completely bullshit concept and detrimental to the health of those ‘races’, are Nazis actually trying to make us as screwed over as German Shepherds?” you will hold that opinion more strongly than if I just said it to you.

Similarly, a different blog leading you down the path of “Invasive species are a result of globalism and must be removed” with “there are three types of people: black, Jews and normal” is leading you towards the path of “blacks and Jews are not normal, they are invasive and we should remove them” and then that goes to “but humanely! We can humanely euthanize invasive species!” and I’m sure you can see where that is going. It also co-opts real conservation talk and terms, but it’s glossing over the fact it’s trying to get you to think about people this way, often with as much plausible deniability as they can muster. Throw the thoughts out there, see what sticks, then backtrack if it doesn’t work.

On that note of backtracking, this is where Dogwhistles come in.

A Dogwhistle is a phrase that on its own looks perfectly benign, or even makes sense in context, but has a specific meaning for a particular subgroup of people that change the context. Just like dog whistles are heard by dogs, but not by people.

A classic example is the phrase ‘family values’, which often means anti-LGBT+ in a Christian context even though it sounds like it should mean something supportive.

The Nazi and alt-right ones change periodically. From relatively old school ones like ‘14 words’, the number 88, and ‘final solution’, to more recent ones like putting names in (((brackets))), particular emojis and even ‘Subscribe to Pewdiepie’.

Yes, ‘Subscribe to Pewdiepie’ became a Nazi dogwhistle, regardless of whatever you might think of Pewdiepie. If it was thrown into a context where it didn’t necessarily seem to belong, it changed the meaning of those words. And if that person was called out on it, they’d backtrack and claim they simply liked the content. And the bigger the meme became, the easier it was for them to use.

Ah, you might think by now, but lots of people also use ‘Subscribe to Pewdiepie’, emojis and sentences with 14 words. And 88 is a perfectly ordinary number, a birth year even, there are times when it’s really just being used legitimately?

Of course there are. But when you start to see a lot of them together, it starts to look suspicious.

And if you are a minority regularly targeted by such a hateful group, it starts to look really very intimidating. So if everybody starts reblogging these dogwhistles from a colourful Captain Planet blog, it makes it look like there are far more Nazi supporters than anything else. And it isolates those minorities.

This is why it’s so insidious that they claimed something like Captain Planet - a character with significant nostalgia, a show with a pretty diverse group of main characters and a good message, and co-opted it into spreading these dogwhistles and priming unwary minds to think these rhetorics, these training ideas, are reasonable.

“But it was clearly a troll, lmfao!”

‘I am strong, I can do this, I have the strength within me’

aka, little things to distance your craft from capitalism

Let’s all just admit that buying stuff is fun. That said, there’s a big issue of consumerism within the witchy/pagan scene. As magic work and the pagan “aesthetic” becomes more of a commodity in the mainstream, there’s a mounting attitude of needing All The Items in the highest quality (even if we’re not certain we’ll use them,) and big corporations mass-producing cheap stuff to make a buck off of a growing trend. Here’s some things you can do to help detach your practice from that and support other people in the craft:

Go outside. Check your backyard or local park for local plant life, waters, roots, etc. If your work involves things from nature at all, you can probably find a lot of your supplies… in nature. It takes a little more time, but it’s free and then you’ve gathered stuff yourself! 

Make stuff. This one is pretty straightforward. There may be key items to your practice that you can make yourself instead of buying it! That said, I know sometimes spending money is inevitable so I won’t dwell too much on this… let’s talk more about shopping:

Shop mindfully. The price of a lot of items will skyrocket once it has a pentacle or other symbol engraved on it. For example, little mortars and pestles can be very pricey in witchy shops, but you could probably get a bigger one that’s actually food safe for less at a nice grocery store. Antique stores and international markets are now your new best friends.

Support small businesses! Things are cheaper on Amazon, but the extra money goes to support real people, likely other practitioners. If you can, supporting small, local, independent shopkeepers and crafters does a ton of good. It also helps build and sustain a local community. 

Shop based on need. Don’t get something “just in case” (unless it’s banishing or hex breaking stuff; those are decent to have on hand.) It’s tempting to impulse-buy a ton of niche items and ingredients, but unless you have a reasonable idea what you’re going to use them for in the near future, it’ll probably just create clutter for you to deal with later.

Prioritize effectiveness over aesthetic. Ultimately your practice has to work for you, not just look good. I think making your work aesthetically pleasing to yourself can be an important part of really connecting with what you’re doing, but don’t make that desire burn a hole in your wallet and distract you from what brought you to this path in the first place. Altar envy is a real thing. 

Recycle/Upcycle. Use old clothing fabric for an altar cloth. That old trinket dish makes a great offering dish. Enchant jewelry you already own. That jar of strawberry jelly you just finished off will work just fine for that spell. Things can be re-purposed and made into new things.

Analyze your offerings. Special occasion wine isn’t a special occasion if you do it every time. Not every offering needs to be a grand gesture, regular maintenance is more important generally.

Organize trades. Have any pals that also practice? See if you can help each other! You could trade different goods (that old mini cauldron you bought and never used for that abandoned tarot deck, maybe?) but also services. A protection spell for a luck charm. A reading for a reading. You help them with the laundry and they cook you a meal one day. 

The application for guardianship is filed at the same time, my mother did all of that on Friday [15 March]

This is solely to gain full control over me legally so that I can be forced into conversion therapy. I am, in fact, mentally competent. However, I live in a small town in the Deep South, my grandfather is loaded & a retired fire chief, my uncle is a lawyer, half the rest of my uncles & older cousins are either fire fighters or police. In other words they have a fuckton of connections and the uncle who is most directly assisting my mother with the process has guaranteed that they can push this through because he’s helped other people do it to their children before. Yes, this is illegal as all hell. No, I can’t call APS- local APS is in on it, a check by APS is literally part of the process to have someone declared mentally incompetent.

The only way to get me out of this is to get a legit psych eval. Bare minimum, I HAVE to have that. It will also help my case considerably to not be living with my grandmother, so no one can pull a “oh I provide care daily, x can corroborate my statement” and ideally far enough away that “I drive out daily to provide care” will also very clearly be impossible. I can’t just ditch out, there’s going to be a bunch of court ordered evals and appearances- they will find me and drag me back, completely legally.

Psych evals are expensive. Moving is also expensive. There’s a full breakdown of the costs over at my gofundme- https://www.gofundme.com/juzfrd-help-me-not-be-forced-into-conversion-therapy

Most often, I see athiests who react like to this to believers in a god due to growing up in a highly religious family that took their religion too far and was abusive as a result.

Some were sexually or psychologically abused by religious heads.

Some by religious family members.

Unfortunately, witchcraft can be pretty toxic to our pets. This post has birds in mind since I’m a bird owner, but it generally applies to most pets including cats and dogs.

Things you should DEFINITELY KEEP AWAY/HEAVILY RESEARCH before using around pets:

essential oils (specific ones are said to be toxic to specific animals. i say just keep that shit away from them period.)

certain flowers (lillies are toxic to cats. many different flowers are toxic to birds.)

scented candles

paraffin candles (these can excrete fumes and make nasty smoke. use beeswax unscented candles with cotton wicks if you want to use candles.)

incense (be especially careful with this as it can travel through your whole house pretty easily)

certain herbs/dried plants

smoke (birds have extremely delicate respiratory systems and anything like smoke or overly scented items can be detrimental)

juniper / sage (juniper used in saining is toxic to birds)

“It comes with the Devil’s Wind, on flint sharp hooves and bellows lungs. It’s wake, a cleansing sea of gold.”

This is one of the best stories we read in a long time. An arborist AKA a tree caretaker and tree surgeon from Redondo Beach, California had to watch the death of one of his favorite trees, which was ordered by the mayor. Although he lost a great battle, he won the war. Find out how he avenged the death of his 30-year-old pepper tree named Clyde.

His story was recently shared online and has already been shared over 150k times. RIP Clyde.

but.

the truth is we absolutely should move away from “cancel culture” and towards  what i’m calling “good faith” culture. the way i propose this works will be demonstrated by calling out myself for something “problematic” i have done.

i have scratched a child in my care. it was not the first child i scratched, nor the last. she is worth mentioning because it was the deepest of the scratches, and, when asked if i would do it again, i absolutely would.

cancel culture: “tumblr user inkskinned literally thinks it’s okay to violently scratch children, like? she takes care of these kids and she fucking scratches them (and who knows what else if she’s so fucking confident in admitting that) and like she has even drawn blood in a few of these instances. these are 3 and 4 year olds we’re talking about. one child she scratched while she was forcibly restraining and she is even proud of that moment. she’s fucking disgusting and i’m sick knowing she still is a teacher. she blew off violence. cancelled.”

good faith culture: “okay, she admitted to scratching children. she did not say it was violently or on purpose. after talking to people who work/live with young kids, almost all of them admit that, at some point, you will accidentally scratch your child. this is because we are mammals with soft skin and claws, and, similar to accidentally scratching yourself with the edge of your nail, is very easy to do with a wiggly object, particularly young ones. i don’t know about the restraining situation, let me go look into the source. maybe she apologized?”

me myself and i: i absolutely did apologize after it happened. i also did forcibly hold a child, who was the one i injured. she had slipped past (? how? the world will never know) three teachers and six ropes and had gotten to an absolutely-off-limits-for-children area, climbed up the very small retaining wall, and was about to take a forty-foot drop off the other side. I literally snatched her out of the air, and, in doing so, caught my nail on her wrist. she did bleed, but i obtained stickers and a bandaid to cure that problem. 

cancel culture: “i find it extremely unlikely that a child could do that by themselves. probably she is a very bad teacher who let a child go somewhere they shouldn’t and get into this situation to begin with. on top of that, if she knows she can accidentally scratch a child, why weren’t her nails trimmed? no offense but she needs to quit her “activism” and step down. i also don’t fucking believe her apology when she said right there she would do it again. bandaids don’t solve the trauma she allowed to happen.”

good faith culture: “okay. children do this kind of thing all the time, because they are children. this situation is clearly one where yes, a bad thing happened, but she used reasonable care. since she actively does not try to hurt children, and she was actually trying to protect one (albeit clumsily), we can see she’s just a normal human being who was acting in good faith.”

the reason i propose good faith culture is because i find the majority of “cancelled” people are activists and/or minorities. these people are targeted for incredibly small altercations or behaviors, despite the fact that they’re acting in good faith. i know for a fact mras/alt-right ppl make fake “liberal” accounts that target these people using the language of cancel culture, because it’s easily picked up on - it’s explosive, passionate language without true sourcing (or out-of-context sourcing) that encourages knee-jerk reactions. this breeds infighting and cruelty when we need to be a unified front.

good faith culture also makes a line between “problematic” and “genuinely cruel/disturbing/etc”. you cannot abuse, threaten, or otherwise intentionally harm someone in good faith. this is intentionally to prevent the god-awful “ted bundy might have been problematic” phrasing i have seen. he was not problematic. he was the fucking problem.

meanwhile, it encourages positive behavior. okay, a person blundered. they apologized and seem to have continued to educate and rebuild themselves. they are acting in good faith. oh, actually they never apologized and continue doing this nonsense. this person is no longer acting in good faith. 

sure, call out people who are not acting in good faith. i agree. there are plenty who deserve it. but when you pick apart all media/efforts made by activists with a fine-tooth comb looking for something you can “cancel” the person on, you’re doing more harm than good. if the person spends their life trying to help homeless lgbt+ children get off the streets but accidentally takes in an abuser while doing so, they’re still net-good. they were acting in good faith, the abuser is at fault here. if a person spends their life making youtube videos and not once but twice uses a racial slur, they are not acting in good faith. unfortunately, we attack the first person more than the second.

people make mistakes all the time. none of us are perfect. shows can try their best to be good and representationally accurate and take a slight misstep, books can have one problematic trope - if theyre acting in good faith, okay. like, maybe fix it in the future, but okay.

Me: Okay but what??