my journey as an atheist witch

I know that desperate times lead to desperate measures but you do not have to resort to home grown abortion. People have died from home abortions. you will have options. please do not formulate your own abortion.

Some icons are reproduced below:

An earlier depiction (c. 2020) of Apollo as a girl clad in a simple tunic and playing with other children. Figures are smiling and the image is brightly colored, indicating a celebratory outlook toward knowledge of the future.

~I am successful in my endeavors~

Minimizing waste saves money and the environment. With a little creativity, there are many ways you can create opportunities to reduce waste and maximize the supplies you have.

🍄 Keep your jars. If you buy something that comes in a useful container and can be reused - then reuse it. In my experience, the best reuse for plastic containers is to freeze food. Also, small bottles like Advil bottles, are EXCELLENT spell jars. However, for all types, you can use them to store food, organize drawers and closets, store spell ingredients, or even make decorations. The possibilities are nearly endless!

🍄Keep all your fruit, vegetable, and herb scraps. With some scraps and water, you can make a lovely broth. Alternatively, you can use them to make a simmer pot for a spell or simply for the scent.

🍄If you eat meat, keep the bones. Again, a great broth ingredient!

🍄Avoid paper towels whenever possible. These are super wasteful and expensive. Whenever possible, I opt to use a towel or cloth. You can recycle old textiles for rags. However, if you're feeling ambitious you can knit or crochet towels and cloths; this is a great way to use up that scrap yarn you probably have laying around! You may even choose to add a bit of knot magic to these pieces.

🍄Thrift and upcycle. This is a bit of an obvious one; but really. It's a great way to have lovely belongings while reducing waste overall and saving money. With a bit of love, many things can be new.

🍄Almost every dish can be salvaged. It happens. We mess up. But, before you throw it away, do some research on how to salvage it. Odds are, you will be able to do it!

🍄Don't throw away fruits or vegetables that are overripe or wilting. Within reason, of course, many of these fruits and vegetables can be frozen for soups, casseroles, sauces, and smoothies!

🍄Buy a reusable coffee filter and tea basket for loose tea. Really, this is a given if you are a tea or coffee lover. Disposable ones are so wasteful and the reusable ones will pay for themselves in no time.

🍄Compost if you can. Compost dirt is amazing for growing ingredients for dishes and spells. While you're at it, save your eggshells, as well.

🍄Mend your clothes, blankets, and even shoes. A little bit of love can go a long way, including increasing the life of your favorite items. You can also add flair by learning how to darn and apply patches.

🍄Learn how to remove stains from fabric. In the same vein as mending, learning how to remove stains increases the life of your clothes. Different stains require different methods of removal, but usually, it is not impossible. Failing this, learn how to dye your clothes to revamp them.

🍄Use alternative cosmetics. This is a really big topic and I will create a post about this later. But, consider doing research. There are lots of things that can be made or substituted; notably face masks, hair masks, and using coconut oil as a make-up remover.

🍄Localize your practice. Use natural herbs and ingredients found in your local environment. Create your own correspondence if needed.

🍄Collect rainwater. Unfortunately, it is no longer a great idea to drink rainwater - but use it to water plants and clean your floors. Rainwater is also a powerful spell ingredient for spells that don't require drinking or putting on your skin.

🍄Only buy what you need. This time of year more than ever it is VERY tempting to buy up cheap Halloween-themed goods. But, consider an item's long-term usefulness, if it will create clutter and disorder in your home in the future, and if there are alternatives.

🍄Buy a cheap food dehydrator. These are perfect for making tea and drying out herbs, flowers, and other ingredients for spells and cooking.

🍄Consider alternatives in cooking and spells. There is always an alternative, you may not have to buy something new.

Psychosis, by definition, is "a collection of symptoms that happen when a person has trouble telling the difference between what’s real and what’s not" (Cleveland Clinic, 2022).

I'll remind everyone that I am not a doctor, just a psychosis survivor. I don't speak for the entire medical community. I do, however, draw my sources and information from scientific journals, doctors, or other proven scientific-based sources. That is coming from a spirit worker and witch.

"At which point does something count as spiritual psychosis, and who decides that?"

I know you said this was kind of a rhetorical question, so if you'd like me to delete this post, I'd be totally happy to! But I couldn't interpret if you wanted an actual answer to this because it was only part a rhetorical question (and I am autistic). No harm meant at all by this post, just want to answer your question! :)

As a personal note—this is the reason why we should be knowledge about psychosis, as it does have clear boundaries and a diagnostic set of symptoms; saying that the boundaries of psychosis are blurred is part of what contributes to the rampant spread of spiritual psychosis in religious spaces. I don't want to point the finger at all at this person, but just wanted to use the wording as an example of how folks can be unaware of the damage that could be caused due to a lack of understanding!

If your belief is interfering with your capacity to meet the ordinary demands of life, that is psychosis (NIH, 2015).

If your belief is harming you in an In emotional, mental, or physical distress and the delusion is harming you in some way, that is psychosis (NIMH).

If you are having hallucinations (hearing or seeing things that aren't there) that are impacting your ability to function, that is psychosis (Cleveland Clinic, 2022).

This scientific journal expands on the criteria separating spiritual psychosis from a religious-spiritual crisis. My post on what spiritual psychosis is and what the symptoms are goes more in-depth on the actual symptoms and signs and how to recognize/pinpoint psychosis in spiritual spaces.

We were very lucky that there was a priest that he trusted and would listen to, so when we got 3am calls about how Christ was speaking to him and telling him that he didn't need to take his medication or be afraid of anything anymore, we could gently ask him to run that by his priest first, who would walk him through a process of discerning if this was a literal message from Christ to abandon his wife and child, or if he needed to go to the hospital.

I noticed that there were only small pockets of posts on helping ease dysphoria or helping you feel more at home with your gender/identity so I decided to compile what I could here!

TERFS are not welcome to interact with this post. But, I always seize the opportunity to block gross people!

Updated March of 2025. Broken links are crossed out, if you have reblogged versions of those posts or something similar please send them my way! And please inform me of new broken links via askbox!

Spells (dysphoria):

Dysphoria healing spell

Dysphoria dispelling poppet

Gender protection jar

Voice dysphoria glamour

To stop chest dysphoria

Menstruation dysphoria tea

Menstrual prayer to the nonbinary moon against dysphoria

Spells (gender identity):

Gender affirmation spell

Gender orientation validation spell

An enchantment to be seen as the gender you identify with

Gender clarity spell

Gender euphoria incantation

Spell sachet for gender euphoria

Correct pronouns glamoured potion

Glamour to prevent misgendering

Misgender me one more time curse

Sigils:

Dysphoria is banished

I do not have gender dysphoria

My dysphoria does not rule me

Relieving dysphoria for trans people

My transition is smooth

My gender is accepted

I am not misgendered

I am protected from bigotry

Non-binary protection

For feeling more masculine:

Glamoured masculinity potion

The emperor’s reform spell (to strengthen masculine energies)

Adonis charm for trans men

Masculine-androgynous sachet

Bath spell for transmasculinity 

Masculinity bath potion

Dapper magic

Masculine vibes charm bag

I am perceived as masculine sigil

I am full of masculinity sigil

I look more masculine sigil

I feel masculine sigil

For feeling more feminine:

Potion for trans-feminine people

Glamoured femininity potion

Venus charm for trans women

The empress reclaim spell (to strengthen feminine energies)

Feminine vibes charm bag

I am perceived as feminine sigil

I appear feminine sigil

I feel feminine sigil

For feeling more non-binary (any “non-traditional” gender):

Androgynous glamour

A glamour of androgyny

Divine chaosyne: Agender divinity

Divine androgyne: Bigender divinity

I am androgynous sigil / I appear androgynous sigil /I grow into androgyny sigil

Non-binary confidence sigil / Non-binary sigil / Nonbinary sigil

Divine chaosyne + divine androgyne sigils

Agender sigil

Bigender sigil

Genderfluid sigil

Demigirl sigil

Demiboy sigil

General:

Dysphoria tarot spread

Crystals for dysphoria

Binding protection bath

I do not encounter transphobes spell jar

A spell for protection while coming out as trans

Banishing transphobia spell

Begone, transphobe! Minecraft curse

Name banishing spell

Other resources:

@sylvaetria‘s masterpost

@magicusersresource‘s masterpost (spells for trans and nb folks)

@neurodwitches‘ masterpost (dysphoria and witchcraft)

Reworking gendered energies

Nonbinary Cosmology and Why It’s Important

Turns out, the lil’ ghost redwoods benefit their hosts by filtering toxins and acting as a sort of backup immune system.

Not everything sacred needs to be converted into data or monetized into results. Fantasy isn’t “lesser.” Symbolism doesn’t have to justify itself to capitalism. Internal experiences are valid experiences. And imagination? It is a power. It doesn’t need a paycheck, a testimonial, or a TikTok manifestation glow-up to matter.

Witchcraft—at its core—is liminal. It lives in the in-between, in dreams, in play, in the mythic, in the symbolic. Yes, it can be practical and results-based. But it also can be deeply indulgent, internal, aesthetic, irrational, beautifully useless in the utilitarian sense. That’s not weakness. That’s art. That’s freedom.

🧹 The Burden of Legitimization

When witches today feel the need to constantly prove that their craft works in the "real world"—it’s a form of protective posturing. Centuries of persecution, accusations, and erasure led to an underlying anxiety: “If I don’t produce, they’ll call me a fraud. If I don’t fix something, they’ll call me evil. If I indulge in fantasy, they’ll call me insane.”

That anxiety is real. It’s collective trauma. But bending to it doesn’t liberate anyone. It just hands your practice over to the same structures that once condemned it.

🕯️ You Know What’s Revolutionary?

Saying: “My witchcraft isn’t for you.” “My fantasy isn’t meant to fix the world.” “My symbols don’t need to be literal to be real or meaningful or useful to me.” “This practice is sacred because I feel it, not because it ‘works’ on reality.”

That is radical honesty. That is witchcraft with backbone. And that’s where I'm standing.

🐺 But Not Me. Not Us.

I’m a black-garbed warlock with a demon wolf at my side. I have skeletons and sigils and a pendulum that doesn’t need to predict anything to feel sacred. I make charms not for productivity, but for companionship. I speak to spirits, not to control them, but to coexist.

This isn’t about usefulness. This isn’t about outcomes. This is about presence. Power. Permission to imagine. Because that, more than any dollar or spell, is what the world fears:

A woman who doesn’t need to explain her inner world to anyone.

🕯️ To Those Still in the Shadows:

If you’ve ever felt that your magic was “not enough” because it was too symbolic, too dark, too strange, too aesthetic, too rooted in fantasy— Let me say this with fire:

You do not owe this world results. Your path does not require proof. Your magic is not a pitch deck.

You are not broken for indulging in something that doesn’t “serve a purpose.” You are not immature for finding love in the mythical. You are not failing if your witchcraft doesn’t fix the world’s wounds.

Sometimes witchcraft is not about fixing. It’s about feeling. It’s about facing. It’s about fcking existing as you are, wild and untamed and unquantifiable.

🔚 My Magic Is Not For Sale

So to the algorithms, the moral panics, the critics, the capitalist covens, the skeptics, the sanitized influencers, and every fake “demonologist” who ever tried to leash the strange:

The basic answer is that I ask myself, "does this take advantage of something we know about how the human mind works; or might it have psychologically unhealthy consequences?"

For example, I remember reading somewhere that washing up can make people feel as if they've been emotionally or spiritually cleansed. So if someone asks how they can move past a bad point in their life, I'm probably going to recommend some kind of bath or shower ritual.

I also know that our subconscious minds process information and often come to fairly reasonable conclusions without our even realizing it. So if someone's having difficulty making a choice even after doing the best possible research they can, or where there's just no objectively "best" choice, I might suggest using a pendulum to sort it out.

I know that the brain tends to internalize repeated information, so I'm down with healthy affirmations.

I know that people respond to symbols, both consciously and subconsciously. So if someone wanted to feel more confident, I see no reason why creating a spell jar full of things associated with confidence wouldn't provide some benefit if they kept it in a visible place.

I know that energy healing practices can at the very least help people relax. While I would never, ever suggest that someone pays huge amounts of money or uses energy healing in place of evidence-based medicine (never use anything to replace evidence-based medicine), I'm down for using the techniques on yourself or on your friends, or watching ASMR reiki videos on YouTube.

And on the other hand, I don't really put much stock in spells or practices that target an unaware third party. For example, I don't think death or misfortune curses are especially likely to work. I also think that in some cases, they might just reinforce a fixation on revenge that actually hinders the caster's path to emotional healing and finding healthy coping mechanisms.

So every tool of mine has an entity attached, usually molded and awakened by me- similar to the creation of a thoughtform. And in order to benefit from their aid, I feed them. What hit me today, and inspired this post, was the method by which I feed each of them. The enchanted cup that drives away headaches, sour stomachs, anxiety, etc, has a tiny cat-spirit that drinks the cream I put in the tea; her reward for hunting down these ailments is to eat them like the vermin they are. The shrine to the entity of Knowledge I work with is laden with to-be-read books, which I read out of as part of its sacrifices- and its benefits include helping me to learn and more easily comprehend what I read.

The amulet that houses a glamour-weaving demonic eye is fed by compliments given while wearing it.

when someone tells me that they are going to judge me by not just the circumstances of my birth, but what a bunch of random mystical fuckheads just randomly decided those circumstances mean, i am going to tell them that this behavior fucking sucks, and that i am going to opt out.

like, when a christian tells me i'm going to hell for what i've actually done in this lifetime (gay premarital sex with men AND women, transing my gender, refusing to agree that jesus christ ever actually existed) that is actually less of an affront to my free will and individual identity than being judged for my zodiac chart. and i will still tell a christian that they're being a dickhead for thinking this about me.

"Appalachian folk magic" is spoken of as if it were a single monolithic Tradition.

It's not. It's really really not. It's threads from multiple intermixed traditions, further intermixed and evolved due to the isolation of the people and the very overt and accepted influence of the spirits of the land and The Knowing/The Cunning/The Sight/etc.

Plenty of us don't even particularly care for the word "magic". Most abilities and operations that will be shared are shared namelessly. It might be referred to by practitioners as witchcraft, a wives tale, a superstition, but usually it's straight up just instructions.

"Appalachian folk magic" is A Blanket Term for all folk magics from the general area. Not a mystical tradition distinct from those traditions. When people don't remember the metadata of "From The Pow Wow Tradition, or From the Ozarks or From Central Tennessee" the secrets get lumped into "Appalachian Folk Magic" and people discoursing appropriation tend to suggest by implication that "Appalachian Folk Magic" is thus a distinct "open" tradition, and that every named tradition (it refers to) is "closed".

That's really a dangerous and knee-jerk skeered sort of oversimplification. Most are "closed" in the sense of being isolated and handled with a sense of reverence and secrecy, but when an appalachian person teaches you to whisper the fire from a burn, it's understood that you will carry it on.

"Appalachian Folk Magic" is not a tradition. It's a generalization for data from some tradition without metadata referring to which. In an angry sense, it's bastardization. In an acedemic sense, it's a loose identification that might refer to many traditions and which one exactly depends on the metadata.

If someone teaches you something, it matters more that you remember the familial origin for it. I. E. "My germanic/scots-irish grandmother from Eastern Tennesee" or etc.

This information can make it a lot easier to determine the actual original tradition the working belongs to, by comparison of locale, approximate era, and rationale of the working. I.E. Uncle Billy who walked to the crossroads to see the man in black is going to have different conceptions of what he's doing than Aunty Jen who was a devout Christian healer with The Gifted Knowing, and It's a weee bit disrespectful to call Aunt Jens charms "witchcraft" when Jen herself, rest her soul, would never ever call it that, you feel me?

Understanding the relation between the worker and the work is key to figuring out which strand of people originated it, but that's never really the point of sharing it in appalachia, because we'll probably tell you where it came from to the best of our knowledge. The idea of cultural appropriation really isn't a thing we think about because usually, we're sharing stories about peoples loved ones. About what it was they did and where it came from and how they understood it. Disseminating that information wholly and completely is almost in itself an act of ancestral worship for us, an act of committed remembrance for our dead.

That information is usually given under the understanding that it will be remembered and not torn up go in someone elses arsenal under another name. That would be appropriation. And a dick move.

Secrets are heirlooms.

If I gave you my dead grandfathers wrist watch, you would remember it was his when you wore it. You should have the same kind of reverence in your head for spooky secrets. Cuz they are way more valuable than wristwatches and most of us take our ancestors and their workings very seriously.

If an appalachian person teaches you something, it's either because we love you, or we loved Aunty Jen and Uncle Billy, or you have a problem we know how to solve.

Khaire, Anon!

Marble statue of a horse, Greece, circa 500 BC