Thief of My Heart

i celebrate this holiday as the first harvest festival of the year. in my practice, this holiday is best suited for transformation, reaping, prosperity, fruitfulness, abundance, protection, and boundary-laying. i also enjoy doing crafting and cooking rituals during this time, with the god lugh in mind. i love gifting food and garden goods during this time of year, so i call this holiday in my personal practice sharemas.

the full moon falls earlier in the week, peaking on wednesday the 29 at 10:35am, which i will make a post about as well. if i was doing an abundance ritual id probably do it this week, leading up into the full moon, before the moon wanes for lughnasadh.

i do like to celebrate these seasonal festivals with a big bonfire most of the time, complete with dancing and milling around the fire. this festival i will also likely make dinner to eat at the fire or maybe just cook hot dogs above the fire.

The Genius Loci was an ancient Roman guardian spirit link with the land and household specifically the head of the household the Paterfamilias which is the head, the patriarch. This spirit manifested as a snake or a male figure holding a libation dish or/and cornucopia. It was the man’s soul spirit, Genius was to the man and the Iuno to the women everyone was thought to be born with one. The Genius Loci is tied to the property of which the man owned, if the spirit was pleased it ensure the patriarch’s well being and security and his property well intended, it was honored at the Lararium (household shrine) but the Matron of the household was also honored this way. Today modern pagans and witches uses this term as a catch all term for “land spirits” but this is not what and how the Romans believed in.

The Genius and Iuno taught the person and guided them throughout their life teaching them morals, learn, and grow as well as protecting them and their possessions. Some Genius’s were honored and worshipped when the person had died for instance after the death and deification of Augustus his Genius was honored in every Roman household believing it to be the Genius of the Roman citizens and families. But geniuses has outside influences where ever a male ownership and presence may be such as sacred places, communities, fields, even legions had their own geniuses.

Disclaimer!

Happy Vestalia!

Celebrating and giving thanks to Vesta today. Marking the holiday by cleaning Vesta’s shrine in my house lararium and offering her a handcrafted crown of fresh roses, a mola salsa of hand-ground barley and salt, wildflower honey from bees belonging to members of my extended family, and herbed olive oil gifted by my mother.

Vesta was the first deity to whom I dedicated a shrine. It is with her I have built my most formal relationship through small weekly and monthly rituals sharing barley and keeping lit an (electric) flame. I bought this red lantern on impulse more than a decade before I ever entertained the idea of reaching out to divinities. I never had a use for it but nor I could bring myself to part with it. It belonged to her all along(!) and the moment I made the decision to dedicate space as a lararium that it would be my hearth. Most of my other relationships with deities tend towards informality, introspection, spontaneity, experience, and peregrination. Rooting my bond with Vesta in ritual, within my home, provides the bedrock for all other relationships I seek to build.

The Tzedakah box of my childhood home still lives on a shelf, perpetually filling with coins. I remember many from my time growing up: ironic piggy bank ones, ones made of ornate filigree, those made of classic tin, ones created by community members to raise money for insulin — Tzedakah is a mainstay of Jewish life because we recognize that Tzedakah is life affirming work.

People often ask, what’s the difference between Tzedakah and charity? Charity is a choice; one often made out of pity. Tzedakah is a moral imperative. An easily recognizable definition of a Mitzvah: it is both a commandment and a good deed.

Taking care of one another is required of us.

If you want to the TV show the Good Place, you might have seen Jewish philosophy spoken to you when Chidi gave his speech, “What do we owe to each other?” His work is based on that of TM Scanlon, an ethical philosopher who has a book by the same question. Fictional Chidi comes to the conclusion, “to put it simply: we are not in this alone.”

Tzedakah is physical manifestation of the idea that we owe to each other care, love, and humanity. While this post focuses on monetary aspects, they also aspects like hiring another person, teaching, training, entering into partnerships.

It is our duty to care for one another and expect nothing in return, for it is our duty.

As such, you can go to link in my bio to find literal life saving opportunities. We are so close to reaching the goals of these 3 families.

Greek votive relief of Selene with a crescent on her head, around her seven stars, and the signs of the zodiac

2nd - 3rd century CE

Your and Stag's responses were both incredibly helpful, and got me thinking about why I even started dabbling in magic in the first place years ago. I think I've found the answer to that question, but it also frustrates me that I didn't realize this a lot sooner:

I'm only interested in magic as a topic of research, not as a personal practice.

That's the hitch. Magic is fascinating and wonderful in theory, but the minute I hit a scenario where I could actually use it for a practical purpose in my life, suddenly it's not fun or interesting to me anymore.

To phrase it in terms of your wildflower metaphor - I'm happy to visit the field from time to time and study all of the different species that call it home, but ultimately those aren't my flowers. I'm just a visitor here, not the gardener, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.

Frankly, where I currently stand, I don't need any magic in my life. There's no end goal; no task that needs doing that I couldn't already complete by non-magical means. I just... don't need it. (Not even as a booster to help make the process easier.)

But the thing is - I still want magic in my life. My life would feel a lot emptier with no field of flowers in it at all. But at the same time, that feels a little selfish of me - I didn't grow those flowers; I shouldn't get to trespass in someone else's garden whenever I like just because I want a closer look.

...I don't know. The metaphor's gotten away from me a bit. Does any of this make sense? Or is this all a long-winded way of me saying I'm too lazy to put in the work and develop an actual practice for myself?

Listen, I have re-written this for like an hour trying to beat around the bush a bit. And it’s not working. So I’m afraid I’m left with the direct route.

I think you're being a bit of a boots about this.

You do not have the ability to ‘trespass on someone’s garden’ by going to public platforms where people publicly post about their practice.

I don’t like gardening. I love to go visit my mom’s garden and compliment the lovely gardens on her street. Do you think that’s selfish of me?

Following social media accounts where people post anecdotes and pictures of their practices is not trespassing.

You are walking down the sidewalk, looking into people’s front yards which they have specifically designed and cultivated to be looked at by people walking down the street.

You are saying, I love to think about this and learn about this, but I don’t want to practice it. Does that make me selfish, bad, lazy?

Of course it doesn’t!

Y'all are beefing with evangelicals, but they think Catholics/Orthodox are heretical too

A lot of times I see atheists and pagans* biting back at conservative evangelicals (rightly so) for the mockery of witchy, new age, or even just non-religious practices.

The heart is in the right place but, off the top of my head, these are the ones I generally see referenced:

Holy water, when our tools are mocked

Rosaries and saint medallions, when protection charms/bags are mocked

Smoke cleansing, when incense is used in Orthodox churches

Ancestor veneration, when Catholics pray to saints

The problem with the "oh so I can't ____, but you can ____?" argument is that the people yelling at folks for these practices are also yelling at Catholics/Orthodox/Non-evangelical protestants for these things too.

Evangelicals are typically VERY prescriptivist about what you can and can't do in worship/spirituality. Generally, the held belief is that if it's not mentioned in the Bible, you can't do it.

Communion, baptism, gathering as a church, tithing, corporate prayer, confession of sin, benediction (blessing), singing, etc; all approved.

My point: you can't convince an evangelical to respect the things you do because it's similar to something Catholics/Orthodox do. There's a good chance they (at least privately) hate them more than you, since as a "follower of Christ" they should "know better" (real thing I heard a lot).

That's not to say arguing these things is NEVER valid, because watching a civil argument is more useful for bystanders looking on than the person you're actually arguing with.

Btw if there is any chance that you, dear reader, are a beginner witch who is taking this whole warding/protection business seriously and are trying to sort through an elaborate schema of protections:

It is my (perhaps lowly) opinion that you should question if you should be using If/Then statements in your wards at all, if for no other reason than taking time to examine what it is you're really trying to protect against.

[If/Then warding: "All misfortune is kept away from me, but if it's a lesson from my spirits, then it's accepted."]

The reason I'm on this is because A) on a technical level, I believe if/then statements can very easily weaken spellwork, but also B) it's just so much more difficult to properly cover those loopholes, and then you risk delaying warding for months or years while you figure out the perfect set of programming code to specify that you basically don't want needless bad shit to happen to you but you still want to be connected to the world around you and you understand hardship is a part of life sometimes.

(Or even worse, C, trying to make wards so elaborate and finicky that they're never going to work, and then believing you just can't do magic, and get stuck in a spiral of not being able to practice until you're protected but your wards clearly don't work, even though you workshopped your 50 lines of programming for dozens of hours!)

"All spirits are blocked out and unable to enter, unless they already live here and are coming back or want to travel back and forth"

If you don't want to block out all spirits then why say that? Uninvited spirits, malicious spirits, malfeasant spirits might be a better way to go.

"All misfortune is kept away from me, unless it's a lesson to help me grow, but only if it's something I can handle."

What about all needless harm is kept away? All unhelpful harm? All harm that inhibits my current goals? And a separate discussion with your spirits about when and where you will accept potentially harmful lessons?

"I am protected from all misfortune, upset, and angry customers at my job, unless being protected from that will somehow impede my work performance."

What about I'm protected from all misfortune at my job, and the harmful impacts of stressful situations?

You can still experience a stressful situation while being protected from its impacts. Just because vile energy surrounds you does not mean it must have any effect on you. You can be a part of things and have your own agency and do right by yourself, without absorbing the harm into yourself.

"I am protected unless it's against my highest good-"