Cultus Quercūs

something for color: I grew up using pigeonweed berries (Phytolacca americana, poisonous) for this, but you can also use burnt bits of matchstick, charred wood, charcoal ash, burned herbs, and lots of other things that make it really easy to align your ink with a magical goal.

water or some kind of liquid: Different color sources have different moisture levels, so how much liquid will vary. It needs enough liquid to give it the desired ink-consistency. I use water or alcohol (if I want it to dry more quickly or extract more color). I have seen other people use liquified egg yolk with good results as well.

a binder: Something that acts as a thickener to keep all the ink color from just being suspended in the liquid and holds it together to make the color more even across writing. I have found gum arabic and arrowroot powder to be the most self stable, but I have also used honey for a single-use ink.

Grind up the color element. If you're working with a dry element (which I find to be the best option for the most pigment) you will want it to be as fine a powder as possible. Make sure to remove (or sift out) any seeds, clumps or large bits. Add the liquid element until it comes into the consistency you're looking for or slightly thinner. Add the binder and stir until well mixed. Adjust until consistency and color are where you want them to be.

Shay's $20 readings are open!

I've gotten some unfortunate financial news in the past week so I'm trying to open a few streams of revenue.

I'll pull as many cards as I need to from between two and four decks to answer your question. No card limits.

I will not answer:

- Legal questions

- Health questions

The first was fanning powder for tarot cards, but I didn't really like it. This one was for flash paper and flash string.

Was seriously interested in what I could do with spirit fire writing solution. You paint something on paper and it dries invisible, then you light it and glows and burns slowly and looks cool.

There's lots of science behind the color changes and website that can explain the specific chemicals. If you don't want to break out your chemistry set, here are some household things you can use to change the colors.

I would say yes, others might disagree, but I can't speak for them :')))

My post is less a commentary on what a grimoire is and more a commentary on doing the work of having a practice to document. You know what to put in your grimoire as you develop your path and as you see which things you go back to reference, as you create things you want to remember, as you make changes you think are worth noting.

Worrying about "what do I put in my grimoire??" before you have those things is silly. So don't worry about that. Just put things into notebooks or obsidian vaults or whatever works for you. Whatever things you want.

"Should I document my every ritual in my grimoire?" Put it in a notebook and see if it's useful to you.

"Should I include information on the astrological signs in my grimoire?" Put them in a notebook and see if they're useful to you. Do you go back and reference them ever or are they just pages in a book?

You'll put things in you eventually won't use anymore or like anymore or even completely disagree with. You'll add things that you'll reference a lot to your notebook. Over time you'll wish you had specific information in there and then you'll add it too.

It's also easy to fall into the trap of getting a special fancy book that you plan on using for your grimoire, but then it is so special and fancy that you become afraid of writing in it.

If this sounds like you, all the more reason to start with a cheap notebook. This will be your lab notebook as you experiment and get your hands dirty. Cross shit out, tear pages out, spill tea on it. It's fine. This is a rough draft.

No offense taken. Here's the full conversation from start to finish, posted with anyone's username aside from my own and Willow's/salixsociety's redacted for privacy, and because I don't have time to get permission from everyone to post their names. But this is everything. You'll find no racism directed at salixsociety (who I will remind you is white), but you'll see salixsociety be dismissive toward BIPOC, and you'll see that they spread racist lies in their own server, which I'll include screenshots of as well. In fact, you'll find that nothing Willow claimed happened... happened. But sure, let's address it. With evidence. [Here's the context post to which this anon is referring, for other readers.]

For the record, I do not hold members of Salixsociety's server, "the Otherworld," accountable for offering Willow/salixsociety support in response to their lies, as I'm assuming they had no way of knowing they were being lied to, and it's not their fault they were lied to. However, those of you who have come to my inbox echoing Willow's lies and accusing me of "racism" for *checks notes* suggesting Willow/Salixsociety not call POC "ethnic" or "exotic" or "racial," to those of you who have done that, I do think you need to sit with the facts of the matter instead of joining Willow in spreading lies. Now, here are the screenshots.

Screenshots are in order from top-to-bottom. Transcripts of all screenshots will be below the cut for those who need them. I'll start with the screenshots of the initial interaction. Screenshots from the Otherworld server and my addressing Willow's lies will be in another section below.

This was the end of the matter in our server and the end of our interaction. However, Willow/salixsociety then went to their own server of, I'm told, 400+ members and lied. I was sent screenshots of the lies and accusations, which I will include. Again, everyone except Willow has had their names and icons redacted. Due to time zone differences between myself and the person who sent me the screenshots below, the timestamps on the server posts will look different. The post Willow made lying in their server occurred 32 minutes following Willow leaving the above interaction.

You'll find below screenshots of Willow/salixsociety/"Idis" going to their discord server (the Otherworld) and...

lying about what happened,

accusing people of having "attacked" them (never happened),

accusing people of "piling criticisms" (never happened),

"including racist ones and ones that dismissed me and my experience" (again, never happened; and, also, what experience as a white person in the matter of what terms are or aren't harmful to BIPOC...?),

saying they were "accused of shit implicitly" (they were never accused of anything, actually),

saying they were "shunned" (literally 5 people were engaged in conversation with them about their essay, which they posted themselves asking for opinions on),

saying they were "questioned in bad faith" (no one questioned them about anything),

saying they were "assumed to be racist" (that also never happened),

saying they were "met with aggression" (again, this did not happen, and is also racist),

saying they were met with "fast-paced angered retorts that engaged in racism actively" (none of this is true, as you can see from the screenshots above, in which only 9 messages were sent accumulatively from Willow's reply at 15:50/3:50pm to when Willow left the server at 16:24-16:25/4:24-4:25pm; 9 messages accumulatively sent in a conversation between 6 users, including Willow and myself)

saying people were "attacking (their) character" (never happened),

accusing people of "dogpiling" (again, it was 9 messages accumulatively sent over the span of 35 minutes in a server in which 6 people, including Willow and myself, were speaking),

saying there was "casual racism displayed" (...where??? because the only racism I saw came from Willow).

You'll also note that Willow/salixsociety was never upfront or honest with their server members about what the interaction was, giving only a deliberately vague explanation that does not expose that they are, in fact, accusing BIPOC of being racist to them (a white person) in asking that they (the white person) refrain from calling POC "ethnic," "exotic," and "racial." Therefore, I can't and won't fault the server members who unknowingly were joining in on Willow's/salixsociety's choice to represent POC as not being intelligent or informed enough to "understand" Willow's posts "despite my best attempts to meet you where you're at."

As an aside, where I'm at is I am an educated scholar, who has never earned anything less than an A in my entire academic career, has multiple national accolades for academic achievements, and has had my essays and articles published in magazines, newspapers, and academic journals, including articles on the topics of anti-racism, anti-Islamophobia, anti-xenophobia, and related issues. I speak, read, and write more than 10 languages and have extensive experience as a translator and interpreter. I have more than two decades of experience in activism and community organization, and have lived my entire life as a person of color. My lived experience as a person of color alone should not be so quickly dismissed by a white person who has taken it upon themselves to "talk about institutionalized racism," of which they have zero lived experience. I, however, have lived with racism every single day of my life. That's where I'm at. That's where you're meeting me. You are speaking down on me based on assumptions you've made seemingly knowing nothing about me other than my race. ...There's a word for that.

I'll put transcripts of every post under the cut.

I have no idea where Willow's claims come from. None of what they said ever happened. It should be noted, though, that all of Willow's/salixsociety's claims find roots in racist stereotypes. Every single one. And I will not ignore that, nor will I allow someone to prop up their lies about me on such stereotypes.

Transcriptions of all screenshots under the cut (I'll be highlighting racism in red and lies in purple; though I can't highlight the entire message in which Willow decided it was their place to explain racism to a person of color and police how that person of color should engage with racism, which is obviously very racist. That would mean the entire message was red, though, and I don't want readers to have to deal with that).:

Username "Idis" (salixsociety): I'm trying to force myself to rebuild a social life so I'll throw my post in a few of the servers I'm in for the sake of opening it to discussion! This is only one part in a series but I'm enjoying writing it so far. [followed by a link to a post on salixsociety's tumblr titled 'Ethnic Envy: Chapter 1 in a series on Appropriation and Ethnocide in the Witchcraft Community'] Keziah (responding to salixsociety): So, I finally got the chance to sit down and read this, and, while I can appreciate what I can tell your aims are with this, I (as a reader who isn't white) feel that you should know that there are repeated uses of terms and phrases that are not helpful and can actually be harmful (and in fact uphold white supremacy and cultural essentialism). Things like referring to people (and it seems typically in your piece you're referring to non-white people and cultures when saying these things) as "ethnic" and "exotic" (at one point referring to people as "racial") are issues that POC have been talking about and writing about for years now. These terms are offensive and contribute to the white supremacist beliefs that white is the default setting and anything outside of white is a separate "other." There are plenty of articles written by POC explaining why people shouldn't be using these terms. I can drop some links if you'd like. I just feel that since you're planning on making that a theme for a series of posts, you should know going forward how those terms can impact readers who are not white. Because it is not having the same impact as other readers (and might actually detract from your intentions).

Idis/salixsociety (responding to Keziah): I appreciate your effort and your reading, so thank you for that and your desire to educate people. I respect that a lot. But I think it is a little misguided in this instance. The writing in question here is deeply polemic of institutionalized racism and white supremacy (as well as cultural essentialism and imperialism, etc), and it uses these terms ("racial," "ethnic," "exotic," etc) in the context of criticism. It is very true that these words contribute to the problem, which is exactly why using them and exposing people to the harm that is contained in those concepts is so important. When you go to criticize systems and institutions, especially those that make up people's lived reality in the form of biases and thought patterns, you are forced to engage with the terminologies and categories of those structures. I'm not using them because I believe in them, I'm using them because I'm criticizing them, and because in order to criticize them and the broader patterns they reveal I'm forced to use them. We live in a SoCiEtY (sorry I can't really take myself saying that word seriously) where, whether we like it or not, race, ethnicity, and exoticism are still prevalent concepts. They still exist, so we have to use those words to describe those structures and dismantle them. It's unpleasant, I agree, but it is necessary, and it's not necessarily an indication of perpetuation of the problem. Extremely pivotal authors to the liberation movement (like bell hooks herself, who I quote in the essay) have and still do use those words for the same reason. No, people shouldn't be using those words seriously, but my use of them s not sincere or literal. Trying to write an article criticizing exoticization and ethicization without using those words would be like trying to fight racism without saying the word "race" or "black." Of course, in an ideal world there would be no "races" and people wouldn't be able to be reduced to "black" or "brown" but we don't live in that world, and until then we have to use those words to describe the problems at hand and aim to dismantle them.