Art of the Nephalim

Beauty Enhancing Rituals for Venusians

The Goddess of Beauty has blessed her mortal children with many presents. When these gifts show signs of losing their luster, here are what you can do to nourish them further.

FOR GLORIOUS HAIR

Step 1: Build a shrine to your divine mother. Place upon it a portrait of her, a white candle, and a red rose — her favorite flower.

Step 2: On a Friday, the goddess’ favorite day,  present to her a bottle of castor oil.

Step 3: In your native tongue, implore your divine mother to refill your charms. Leave her shrine. Do not look upon it again until an hour later.

Step 4: Take the oil in your hands. Kneeling in front of her altar, while gazing upon her portrait, use some of the oil that she has now blessed to massage your scalp with.

Step 5: Wait for her to blink, nod, look away or make another gesture of dismissal.

Step 6: Speak your thanks. Then stand up, and leave the bottle on Venus’ shrine to once again be charged by her benevolence.

Step 7: Perform the ritual on the same hour for nine consecutive days — nine being the sum of the two Houses within her power and grace.

FOR DAZZLING SKIN

Step 1: Build a shrine to your divine mother. Place upon it a portrait of her, a white candle, and a red rose — her favorite flower.

Step 2: On a Friday, the goddess’ favorite day, present to her a jug of drinking water.

Step 3: In your native tongue, implore your divine mother to refill your charms. Leave her shrine. Do not look upon it again until an hour later.

Step 4: Take the jug in your hands. Kneeling in front of her altar, while gazing at her portrait, thank her for the water she has now blessed to enrich your skin with.

Step 5: Drink the water throughout the day.

Step 6: The next day, refill the jug and leave it on Venus’ shrine to once again be charged by her benevolence.

Step 7: Perform the ritual on the same hour for nine consecutive days — nine being the sum of the two Houses within her power and grace.

FOR A BEAUTIFUL VOICE

Step 1: Build a shrine to your divine mother. Place upon it a portrait of her, a white candle, and a red rose — her favorite flower.

Step 2: On a Friday, the goddess’ favorite day, present to her a teaspoon each of grated fresh ginger and raw honey. Place them in a teacup together, with the honey covering the ginger.

Step 3: In your native tongue, implore your divine mother to refill your charms. Leave her shrine. Do not look upon it again until an hour later.

Step 4: Take the teacup in your hands. Kneeling in front of her altar, while gazing at her portrait, thank her for the blend she has now blessed to embellish your voice with.

Step 5: Pour hot water into the teacup. Mix it well and drink every drop.

Step 6: The next day, refill the teacup as before, leaving it on Venus’ shrine to once again be charged by her benevolence.

Growing-Yet’s Library Masterlist (Best Copy)

*Updated and most recent version!* I put a link to the google doc up in the title, just in case the list looks illegible. The notes are only in the google doc, link above!

So I am a compulsive hoarder of witchcraft books, and I was honestly surprised I had so many when I started counting. There are a total of 56 real books, with a few mini-books thrown in from kits I was given. Most are purely witchcraft based, and a few are Wiccan, but I put personalized notes on each book so it’s easier to see if you would actually want to read or actually need something out of them. For example, the Sabbats books has some really fun activities, but I wouldn’t use it for the historical sections as most have been debunked over time.

Those books highlighted in lavender are the ones I have personally read cover-to-cover, while the gray ones are mini-books. Most are reference books, and I totally encourage anyone who needs a peek inside of them to message me with what you would need! I know that metaphys. and witchcraft books are hella expensive, and not everyone wants to drop $30 for one of the Judika Illes books, so if you want something from them, go right ahead and speak up. :) I may not always respond immediately, I will get to you and you will save yourself some $$$.

*Please, just clarify which book you want something out of. I cannot trawl each individual book for answers to a vague question, but if you want to know what, say, one book says on a certain topic, or if you want to see certain pages from a book before you buy, send a message that includes the title! :)*

*Also, I know that some of these authors are controversial or otherwise not-reliable, so take the words with a grain of salt. I made some points in the notes, so read the notes. I also make a point to buy used instead of new where I can.

also me: i have a terrible and sudden urge to learn how to tablet weave

like let's start some new superstitions

"if your buffalo wings have a broken bone in them, somebody has lied to you"

"if siri stops recognizing your voice, someone has cursed you"

"if your uber gets lost on the way to you, bad luck will befall you that week"

"a speaker that keeps disconnecting from bluetooth, a spirit is nearby"

my life feels short. like it is squeezed into my twenties. like at 30 i become ghost, just another mother or hard worker or both, just another background character. like if i am not settled and making a difference by 27 i should just give up already. is this something men feel? like a clock is painted on their back, one hand warning: your beauty is something you are valued for and it is something you cannot get back.

and why was i only beautiful, i wonder, at 18 on a riverbank. i’m told often my childish face is a blessing. that i shouldn’t want to look older. one told me i was a trap falling: “you look young but you’re not” he said to me, “it kind of led me on”. am i not young? 

Our understanding of our own aging is very much conditioned by the priorities of straight men, who in the aggregate understand beauty and femininity, indeed women in general, in literally superficial terms. Most of the ads you see for anti-aging products, for instance, focus on its *visible* symptoms: graying hair, wrinkling skin or discolored skin, sagging breasts, changes in body shape, etc. These are the symptoms of female aging that men perceive, and they are the ones that the cosmetics and the larger anti-aging industry therefore target. (Men do have their own anxieties about visibly aging, mostly related to hair loss and body shape; but they are not, for instance, generally terrified by the appearance of wrinkles, unless they work in the entertainment industry.)

But aging is not just something that happens to everyone else’s perception of you; it is something that happens in your own body, at levels deeper than anyone else (especially anyone male) is ever likely to perceive. From my POV the really important thing about aging is how you feel. Your body is where you live; it is for you. Aging is inevitable, but it can to some extent be intentional, in that you can (to some extent; all this is limited by the amount of time and money available to you and the healthfulness of the environments you have lived in and how you did in the DNA lottery) choose to do things that will help preserve the things about your body that make YOU happy to be living there–things like flexibility, strength, and the smooth functioning of your major organs. Generally, if you’re healthy, you don’t think about any of this stuff at 18 or 25; but when you are 40, you will start to take more of an interest as you come to understand how important all of this is to your own ability to enjoy life.

So that sucks, as does menopause, which is the unacknowledged referent of a lot of cultural anxieties about female aging. But the point I want to make is: one of the worst things that the phenomenon described so evocatively by the OP does to girls and young women is to make them so anxious about their own bodies that they are unable to enjoy and appreciate their youth while they have it. And that is theft. It really is. I miss youth, but even more do I regret the fact that when I was young I was so fucked up by cultural obsessions about female beauty that I was unable to fully enjoy the body that I had then. I did not appreciate its many excellent qualities, and it was a long time before I allowed myself to accept and act on its desires. At a time when I was beautiful, I thought I was fat and ugly, and that because no man would ever find me attractive, I was doomed to loneliness and isolation. After I met Mrs. Plaidder, her conviction of my beauty eventually passed into me. As a result, I enjoyed my life in general a lot more in my 30s than I did in my teens. I’ve enjoyed my 40s more too, apart from the cancer and the current catastrophe. Age does actually bring experience and knowledge and, to those able to profit from it, wisdom. You do gain, even as you lose.

These women, who embraced being crones, were EVERYTHING. I wanted to be them. And as I age, I remember their power, their gorgeousness. I aim for it with all my might.

There is so much women are not only not taught, but flat-out LIED TO about aging. Even within fandom, a space that is very much women-driven, occasionally you come across someone trying to pressure older women to bow out because our mere presence makes some people uncomfy (and sometimes by “older” they mean over 30, never mind the 40+, 50+, 60+ women speaking up here).

Because we are not taught to respect older women as sexual beings, as beings with our own interests, our own passions, our own weaknesses, and our own right to take up space and be fully present even though we are no longer sexually desirable (to SOME) and might not be willing or interested in taking up a “mom/grandmom” role.

When I was in my 20s I was doing a lot of music writing and one of my biggest role models who I sort of knew personally was Deena Weinstein, who was doing exceptional work on metal culture - very little studied in academia at that time - and she was doing it as a (at the time) very rare visibly middle-aged woman at metal shows banging her head off to Cannibal Corpse. (She is not “detached.” She’s in the mosh pit. She loves the fuck out of it, and it shows.) Lots of people were lining up to tell her in one way or another she ought to be “acting her age,” whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. I looked up to her as the giant badass she is.

A few things they don’t tell you about aging, that I know at 48 (and I know to some people here, I’m still a baby, and that’s OK)

1. Menopause is real and for some people perimenopause takes years. Holy shit. It’s as big an upheaval as puberty - but, like puberty, it’s not a disaster it’s just a shift. Respect it but don’t fear it. Most of all, don’t fear talking about it honestly.

2. Being sexually invisible to strange men is a fucking blessing, especially if you take public transit every day. What a gift to actually be able to read in peace most of the time. Don’t dread this!

3. Judgmental opinions of trivial people become a lot more obvious for what they are, over time. 

4. Your interest in sex might decrease. OR IT MIGHT NOT. IT MIGHT EVEN INCREASE. In a culture that is horrified by the sexuality of older women, consider who is served by the assumption that loss of libido is a thing that always happens. (Or that it should.)

5. You ARE still the same person you were at 17, at 24, at 39, etc. You’re just a little bit MORE that same person. 

Increased self confidence

Learned patience

Managing my anxiety and depression

Enjoying the body I have, right now as it is

Things I am not enjoying:

why is it so hard to get off the floor??

I get tired from physical activity faster

I can fuck up my back/neck in 0.5 seconds

Things I give zero fucks about:

grey hair

Also as a 35 can I emphasise things that might already be mentioned or not above that I’ve also noticed since hitting my mid 30s:

Love:

Not feeling the pressure to wear makeup or heels or ‘co-ordinate my outfit’ because I just don’t feel like caring about that any more (despite anxiety still being an issue, this doesn’t bother me the way it used to)

Feeling like a cool spy when I do do the whole ‘pretty woman with perfect clothes and femme presentation’ thing. I only do it when I know I’ll get something out of it (job interview, bullshit meetings, ‘dressy’ events) which makes those occasions feel like undercover cosplay and waaay more interesting since it basically becomes LARPing.

Feeling absolutely confident dressing up to the exact level I want to despite the circumstance.

I get why people were telling me all those things about real friends actually giving a shit about you. I get it now.

Cool becoming something I get to define, not something other people tell me to aspire to.

Not. Giving. A. Shit. About. Shaving.

Hate:

Back problems

Neck problems

Gut problems

Feet! Ankles! Knees! Oh my!

JOWLS??? (Bear with me I’ll get over that but… it was a shock)

Oh shit I actually have to sleep, eat and hydrate properly now.

Less physical stamina

Zero fucks:

Grey hair and wrinkles

Boob sagging

Weight

Ever increasing amount of errant facial hair

I’ll turn fifty later this year. 

The thing I like most about being this age is seeing the multiple, extremely challenging practices / passions / obsessions I’ve taken on in my life coming to fruition. Writing is hard. You get better at it after doing it for a long time. Internal martial arts and meditation, which i teach, are extremely challenging and nuanced to learn. You get better at them after long, careful study. (And bonus: I’m living proof that even though aging is real and the body definitely changes, that doesn’t have to mean pain and deterioration. I’m stronger now than I was at twenty-five, by a long shot)