i dont even go here

So this author says that spellcasting shouldn’t be done for frivolous things, and that it isn’t an “art to practice on a whim,” and my friend, that is a HARD disagree from me.

I mean, in the same chapter she says that holding and releasing energy is something that gets better with practice, but like… how am I supposed to practice if I’m not supposed to do magic for silly things? You don’t practice driving by going straight to the freeway and giving rides to people on voting day, you start by driving in an empty parking lot and driving through that one business cul-de-sac at 7:00 am on a Sunday. Is my magical practice only supposed to come from gigantic magical workings to right the evils of the universe? Straight outta the gate like that??

To put it very briefly, my spouse recently found out (and let me know) that they will receive a sizable inheritance when a grandparent dies. Said grandparent is in their 90s, but definitely not going to croak any time soon, barring some awful accident.

What I now fear is that any magic I work that aims toward increasing my household's wealth, bringing about abundance, or otherwise achieving a goal that money could solve will see the early reception of this inheritance as the easiest path forward.

Part of me feels pretty silly even worrying about it but the part that worries insists that such things are best handled with caution. What do you think?

Handled with caution, especially if you can clearly see from Point A to Point B, as it were.

Cast a protection spell for the grandparent to protect them from all malefica, misfortune, and malfeasance.

A nice container spell will do, surely there should be some good family photos available for a taglock. An easy way to do a broad spectrum thing like this is to tap the 4 elements; four colorful stones will do (stone allies are very good in a long-term protection spell because you want them to be nice and sturdy, grounded). Certainly do not burn Grandma with hot peppers in the protection jar, but more soothing things will do, even if you like: rosemary, garlic, lavender, basil.

Once you have all this nice container jar set up and going well, make 1 small amulet out of cord, tying the power up in knots, and maybe attaching a small paper or crafted charm as you see fit. Make this amulet against your own harm, specifying something like the following:

May my own magic be bound from harming Grandparent, be it intentional or by accident or error, so that no misfortune befalls them by my hand. And if any such action is made towards them, let it be fettered and made inert before it can reach them.

Take this corded amulet and wrap it around the original protection jar as a second layer.

But on the internet people describe their ideas in the most shocking and extreme way possible as a way of sifting out people who are "really" on their side

That is bad for forming a movement or sparking any kind of action

it's gotten so outrageous that people will have an idea like "we should have a strong public transportation system that is accessible to everyone" but they will express it like "FUCK CARS! WE SHOULD BAN CARS! IF YOU LIKE TO DRIVE YOU'RE A FASCIST! NO ONE NEEDS A CAR!"

This causes everyone to get into arguments about whether it is true that no one needs a car, and whether banning cars would make places inaccessible for people with certain disabilities.

The whole time we don't need to "ban cars" to have public transportation and it makes no sense why we are talking about it

I'm writing this in a new apartment surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and tubs. Moving to South Carolina has been a journey, but our new place is starting to become a home. I've been feeling out the spirits I'll be living with, which led me to a realization of one of the black-and-white ways we talk about spirit encounters.

The spirits in my new home make me uncomfortable. They are unnerving, and cause a twinge of fear in my stomach. I know many would feel that fear and immediately get their banishing salts out. After all, we talk about malevolence and benevolence in spirits as hard categories, and often categorize spirits based on our first impressions. As soon as a negative emotion (like fear) is tied to a spirit encounter, we cry "bad!" and try to remove that spirit.

However, we need to remember spirits are not people and may not have a concept of civility or politeness when meeting others. Human neighbors may be wary, but will mask it in politeness and gifts until they know you better. Spirits do not necessarily have this code, and may act in ways more befitting their discomfort.

Remember, malevolence is the act of causing harm. A malevolent spirit would see new people in their space and think "Oh, new playthings!" Think of them like a mountain lion, quietly stalking until they're close enough to maim you.

While the spirits are currently causing me distress, they are not malevolent. I can sense no intent to hurt me. The distress stems from their wariness. Someone new has just entered their space, and they don't have the societal rules of civility that we do. Like a feral cat, they are watching me from the corner, puffed up and hissing when I look their way. If I approach them, they very well may harm me, but it's defensive, not malevolent.

To put it in phrasing I've heard used elsewhere on Tumblr, if sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from chores, then I'm not sure that's a burden I'm willing to take on. I struggle enough trying to find the motivation to do my mundane chores; having an extra set of spiritual ones on top of that workload just doesn't sound... well, for lack of better phrasing, "worth it" to me.

Granted, I also think a big part of my feelings on this topic come from my current circumstances. Without getting too far into it, I've become kinda spiritually stagnant as of late, and whatever energies are around me right now don't particularly care for that. (I don't really look (or ask) for signs anymore, but the few I have seen all indicate a need for change/growth in my practice.)

But from my perspective, stepping away from witchcraft feels like finally finding solid ground again after years of trudging through a flooded swamp. Getting any more invested in a magical practice just feels... wrong.

Is it such a bad thing to want to "refuse the call," as it were, and choose to disengage with practicing magic altogether rather than pursue it?

Not rude at all.

The most important part first: no, it's not bad to refuse the call to magic. That's not bad at all. This old post may be of use to you. If witchcraft is something that you can sow into your life like an annual wildflower, and it's not currently/no longer serving you, then why stick with it? What would be the point of that?

(Of this, another post may be helpful for you: growth in witchcraft as shedding of snake-skin.)

"Sufficiently advanced witchcraft is chores" is a bite of a sound bite to be sure, and so I have made this longer post for you stepping it out.

Besides that long post, my other answer to your question is:

I don't think that investing in a magical path is supposed to increase your net difficulty/labor.

This was something that really got me early on. I'd hear practitioners saying how much work and struggle it all is. To which I'd say, sure - but then you have MAGICAL POWERS. You do all this so you can have magical powers which presumably you can use to make your life better.

So can't you then just use your magical powers to untangle, de-escalate, resolve, soothe, improve, and elevate your life in other ways, thus ultimately making your life much better than it was before you got into magic?

Magic is not a zero sum game, for me. I'm not in this for veneration or worship or earth spirituality. I'm in it because I want the utility. I'm here because I want the joy of deep connection with my friends when I'm tranced out and giving readings that zap their socks off. I'm here because I want to see what's behind people's eyes. I want to see how the conversation can go and know the exact words to make it go that way. I want victory, I want success. I want catastrophe and grace, not measured and mixed by a higher power and bestowed upon me but meted by me and sent outwards, downwards, forwards.

I can have all of this. But I myself can only have it one way.

I can only have it if I treat my practice as something so mundane and common that it's likened unto chores, that I put altar tending on my chore chart next to cleaning the bathroom, Saturdays are laundry and warding and wealth. Laundry is an endless chore only if you want endless clean clothes; warding is an endless chore only if you want endless protection.

It's no choice for me any more. I half run on magic now. And so I have to turn the spigot on and water myself first, or else I can never get the mundane chores finished anyway. I am not unique in this, although this is not the path of every Witch.

So if you are saying: this doesn't seem right for me right now, or maybe never again, and stepping away brings relief - then there is no argument from me, I would encourage you to find your solid ground.

But if you are saying, I see all these practitioners who seem to like the chore label, and isn't that overwhelming? isn't it a drag - then, no: for me it is energizing, liberating, fulfilling, actualizing.

Chicken hit the nail on the head by comparing ward maintenance to laundry, you only have to keep doing both as long as you want both to keep going. You can stop either at any time, but then you’ll run out of clothes, and eventually your wards might stop working. These chores are what I need to do to keep my practice stable, to keep it going in the way it is now.

No one likes doing chores, they’re a drag, but don’t you love how your home feels when you’ve been able to tidy everything, and sweep, and do the dishes, and just completely reset? Doesn’t your home feel good when all of the chores have gotten done? Now imagine that feeling for your practice?

This little post has gotten some notes and now there's an ask so I'll make it into more words:

Witchcraft isn't Chores vs. Fun. It's Chores vs. Events. And I posit to you that framing witchcraft as Chores is healthier, easier, better, and more pervasive than framing it as Events.

I've found that if you want Witchcraft to have a profound, transformative effect on your life, to get you out of the bad places and into the good places - then you must discard that mindset that any instance of working magic must be spectacular, mystical, or even motivated. Basically, you must stop treating witchcraft like it's supposed to be an Event.

When you plug into your currents, they release a stream of transformative power into your life. But this power is fleeting and only lingers like a perfume even after the actual burst of power has long evaporated in your life.

I mean this "plugging in" to be very practical, normal stuff: raising energy to cast a spell. Close communion with your spirits where the spirit world is drawn into an overlapping state with the material world. Any time you open up a doorway in your life to the magical Other and let power in.

Like turning on the garden hose, these actions pour a little power into your life. But when the rite is done (the spell is over, the communion is finished) then the garden hose is turned off again. That power soaks into where it was directed, seeping into the soils of your life.

And then it's gone!

Once that power has soaked into your life, it will continue to be helpful and effective. That garden bed is watered now! So of course the plants will flourish all week (or in my climate, until late afternoon, lol!).

But that power is now absent from you!! It's already used up, it's gone. It is no longer available.

By the time the plants begin looking dehydrated, the original power may have already been gone for a very long time. But this tricks us, right: if we wait for signs that the power is fading, that means we're always waiting for the plants to wither before we tend to them.

This creates the dastardly spiral:

My life is chaotic, I struggle to cast a spell to help -> I finally get around to it, the spell helps my life -> Now that the magic is done I don't need to prioritize it until I need it again -> The spell has faded, my life is back to its original chaotic state -> I need magic to help me -> My life is chaotic, I struggle to cast a spell to help

(Above, replace chaotic with stagnant, a slog, draining me, exhausting, harrowing, or anything you like)

If engaging with the Other is like turning on a garden hose of power, then you have to turn on the garden hose as often as you need power, and you need it before things show signs of going bad.

The problem with framing witchcraft as an Event is that it creates this mental load that's nothing but a barrier to entry. You have to put on you Sunday best, have the right attitude, have the right mental health, have enough energy (but not be manic), have complete control over your thoughts but also be perfectly in tune with your body and emotions, be able to sit still for the elaborate working (but not be fatigued), be able to do all of this with complete privacy, and pull all of this together on a random hour on a Tuesday with a spell you had to modify because you can't light candles or incense in your home.

And god FUCKING help you if you can't feel the energies, or don't get the visions or the signs, if the candle omen isn't right, if you don't feel magical, because that means of the two or three times you engaged in your practice this month a HALF or a THIRD of those engagements were failures, you're getting a D or an F in magic, failure magic. Who would ever want to engage in a practice like that??

Nobody!

Of course you can't pull that shit together to constantly cast spells to make your life better! That's EXHAUSTING!!

Do you know what I think takes less energy, is less frustrating, is less exhausting, is more helpful, easier, and more transformative?

It's to stop treating witchcraft like an Event and start treating it as Chores you just go about and put a bit of energy to on a daily or near-daily basis.

At first, this is no fun and games: this garden bed has gone totally rotten, it needs weeding and tilling, it needs soil amendments. Exhausting labor. And then it must rest until the correct season of planting. You can go out and do twenty minutes of work a day. But all that work and it may seem that there are very few rewards for months and months.

But you can't take one weekend and make an Event out of it, and then ignore it all winter until it's completely overgrown and ruined again. You can't progress that way. This is like saying you only do the kitchen dishes on solstices, or you only brush your teeth on full moons. That's not how you have a supply of clean dishes, or good dental hygiene, or a thriving life.

Truly transformative Witchcraft must be steeped into your daily life, and the only way to do this is to engage with it daily or almost daily. There is no room for waiting until you're in the "right headspace," and it's no good to wait until things have already started to go wrong again.

But how can you tell when it's time to work the next bit of magic unless you're checking in regularly? And how can you check in regularly if engaging in magic gives you the same feeling as having to go get ready for your partner's corporate Christmas party at the Marriott?

The question isn't if magic is either fun or a bore. It's whether magic is something you are comfortable approaching and addressing in your everyday life, in the 5 minutes you have before you take the kids to school, at the red lights during rush hour, as part of your shower routine. Or if it's something you need half a week to prepare yourself for, and another week to decompress from.

Can you tolerate tending to an altar for a couple of minutes a day, blurry-eyed, not feeling jack shit, not feeling magical or connected, knowing you will see long-term success, but limited short-term momentum? Or does magic scald you unless the immediate rewards are there to soothe you: the visions, the mystic trance, the instant omens, the short-term ripples in the pond?

I think one of these things is sustainable and the other is not. And so I think in order to stick with it long enough to progress beyond the early stages, then the following is perhaps tautologically true:

It. Literally. Doesn't. Matter.

Spoiler alert: trans people can be antisemitic!

Franz Kafka was a real person who died not too long ago, and just because a trans person relates to his writings doesn't mean they can claim he's trans. It's not the same as relating to a fictional character. You can't 'headcanon' an actual person. I don't care how much you relate- he wasn't trans, don't call him a woman. He was an actual person, not a fictional character you can project on. An treating Franz Kafka like a fictional character you can project any label onto and separate him from his actual life is dehumanization and *also* antisemitic.

It's no different than queer people co-opting Anne Frank's memory and erasing her story to just herald her as a "bi icon" when she never had the chance to live long enough to label herself. Queer gentiles need to stop dehumanizing Jewish people and turning them into blank slates they can project onto.

I don't care how much you relate- he wasn't trans, don't call him a woman.

At some point relatively recently, people seem to have come to the conclusion that you can't empathize with a character (or real fucking person, in this case, and I cannot stress how gross that is) unless you're just like them. "Oh, I, a nonbinary person can identify with this cishet man? He must actually be nonbinary!" "Oh, I, an autistic person, can identify with this Ambiguously Quirky™ person? She must actually be autistic!"

Being able to relate to a person--real or fictional--who isn't just like you is a good thing. It's good that you see yourself in the writings of a cisgender man! Maybe it will teach you that cis people aren't the enemy. It's good that an autistic character resonates with NT people! Maybe they'll gain new insight into their autistic friends and family!

It's called empathy, and it's so important to understand that you are going to see your experiences reflected in people who are unlike you. Those connections are important. Deciding that Kafka must be a trans woman because you're a trans woman is missing the entire fucking point. It means that you do, in fact, have some things in common with a cisgender man, and conversely, it means that cisgender men have things in common with you. To flatten them out so they're just like you is missing out on so much of what they have to say.

People are beautiful and rich and layered and the fact that we can connect with other people and share experiences despite how different we are? That's the whole fucking point. That's what makes life worth living.

Because we've seen that before. We see it very often because it's a fundamental premise of some incredibly antisemitic forms of Christianity, and when it turns out that we're real people with real opinions and real beliefs and real feelings who don't just exist to validate someone else's perception of who and how we could be, people don't just abandon their pretense at allyship, they get violent.

It's also a common failing in how the Holocaust is taught. People like to present this lens of "it was random violence that came out of nowhere and could've happened to anyone. It could've happened to you! Imagine if you'd been one of the victims! That would've been a tragedy wouldn't it?" And the thing is, that's bullshit. If you were just a random German citizen at the time? You would've been one of the perpetrators. And it was a tragedy in and of itself; it doesn't become a tragedy by imaging a scenario in which people who were perfectly safe would've actually been potentially in danger (never killed, of course, because Holocaust education is also commonly sanitized, which is a different rant).

Edited to take out a rant that was in drafts and got added to this by mistake, but. Well, the Tl;dr, since that's been reblogged

But in the Kafka conversation there is an element I think so many non-Jews just straight up refuse to understand. That is the fact that Jews have our own culture.

The societal gender ideals non-Jews in the West grow up with ... Aren't really in Jewish communities the same way. (Though cultural osmosis means we've picked up a lot along the way).

ALL our masculine role models, the ones we're told to admire, are shepherds. That's important bc shepherds lead the heard from behind, not in front. It speaks to a different leadership mindset. Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Solomon, etc. we're soft spoken, humble, slow to action, intellectually inclined. Even when they have tempers or are warriors, those aspects are critiqued or minimized. (It's why when Jews depict King David, he's playing his harp or herding sheep. When non-Jews depict him, he's fighting Goliath.)

Compared to the very Roman/Western ideal of masculine power might-makes-right, Jewish masculinity is inherently softer.

That's not to say we DON'T value male strength. But it's just one factor and mostly understood that physical prowess has a time and place. It's not the ultimate standard for our masculinity.

Especially when you consider femininity in Jewish communities. Our matriarchs were all outspoken, all defied their husbands/men at key moments without punishment (some were even rewarded by God.) Some were prophets, judges and leaders (Miriam, Judith, Devorah, Hannah) in their own rights. Jewish women certainly do not fit the mold of a Roman/Western quiet, docile, submissive woman.

And don't forget, while there very much is misogyny in Jewish communities, our traditions often challenge it. Men are expected to praise their wives every Friday night in front of the family (Eshet Chail), men are halacically responsible for their wives' physical pleasure, Rabbis have denounced marital rape as a sin far longer than it's been illegal in MOST modern nations and women are excempt from time based religious obligations as they are considered closer to God (though that comes with it own problems).

In short, religious or not, Kafka would have grown up with that different understanding of gender norms and what it means to perform gender. He would have understood gender completely different to how a modern non-Jew in the West would.

To erase his Jewishness from the conversation - to ignore the cultural difference between how you see gender and how he likely would have - is a pretty severe historical distortion. And makes this weird history AU even more problematic.

For a long time now I’ve felt like I was being guided or led upon a particular life path. Over the past year or two I’ve begun to connect more explicitly with the entity that I feel has been watching over me. However, they are being very cryptic about their identity and motives. I’ve never been able to get a straight answer, although I have received gnosis on aspects of this entity.

I do feel that I’m benefiting from this relationship both materially and spiritually, but I’m increasingly uneasy about what feels like a lack of information. I have a fair amount of ex-Christian trauma and I don’t like feeling like an entity has the upper hand on me, so to speak.

I don’t want to send this off anon, but I can DM if you’d prefer that. If you are willing to answer, thank you in advance for your time and thought.

In my experience time is the only way to tell, Anon.

I worked with and worshiped Oisin for about 20 years before I got all of the information about who he was. He was my friend, my teacher, and finally my lover before I got the full scoop. He never gave me a reason to doubt his intentions, or to doubt my trust in him, even when I suspected that there was more to him than I knew. It's up to you to decide if you're comfortable playing a potentially very long game. If you trust them, and feel comfortable in your relationship you can continue to build it with the information you have now. Just because you don't have a specific name about an entity, or know why they're staying invested in the relationship, doesn't mean they have any sort of upper hand on you. Think about it like having an online friend: You don't know their legal name, or their address, or maybe even what they look like, but you still know who they are. You know their character, their personality and that ultimately tells you more about them than a name. And the only way to know if who you've gotten to know so far is who they really are, and not an act, is to see the relationship through and see if they change or you catch them in a lie.

Now you can use skills like divination and discernment to offset some of the inherent gamble in working with an entity that you can't pin a research-able name on. I'm also a big proponent of note taking in a spirit work practice, particularly when dealing with a spirit who has some mystery or unanswered questions around them. I think solid, consistent, notes are a great way to keep track of your experiences over time and to identify if the spirit's story or personality starts to shift. I've written a bit about this elsewhere before in the context of unrecorded entities, your spirit might not ultimately be unrecorded, but with nothing else to go on I don't think it's a bad framework to use in the mean time:

Take Notes Like Stage Part 1: Spirit Encounters

Take Notes Like Stag Part 2: Unrecorded Entity Note Taking Exercise

Vetting an Unrecorded Entity

It's been a while since I actively solicited for clients, so some of you may not know that I work as a spirit doctor. My specialty is oaths and agreements, and the making, breaking, and negotiating thereof.

Basically I'm a spiritual contract and divorce lawyer. You made an oath to an entity and now you regret it and you want to get out of it, you call me. I'll get you out of the oath with minimal damage - You might still have to make an offering once a year on a particular holy day, maybe you have to arrange for a new follower or two to balance out the loss of your worship (or maybe I'll take this one for you, depending on the situation, I have also been known to arrange matches), you get the point. But I also consult on oaths before they're sworn, so that you don't need my help to break it down the line. A friend of mine was recently preparing to swear an oath to an entity in their life and asked for my tips for Oath constructions, here's my Top 5*:

1) Write out your oath in some way, preferably before you swear it, so you have a document that you can amend: Being oath bound to an entity is kind of like like being married to someone, the relationship changes over time, so the rules of the relationship needs to change with it. But these relationship rules can be a little stricter than others, and it can be hard to keep track of these rules in our heads all of the time - do you give offerings on Wednesdays or Sundays? Was it wine or whiskey? If you've sworn to multiple entities this can get even harder. So I recommend keeping a written version of your oath that you can add and remove clauses from as your relationship grows and changes. I also think it's also kind of nice to have a record to look back on. It charts the growth and changes of your relationship over time - I think that's sweet.

2) Include specific rules for amending your oath: We covered that the rules of our relationships can change above, but because we're dealing with spirits it can be helpful to lay down some rules about how to change the rules of the relationship. How do you propose an amendment to the oath? Can you do it at any time or only on certain important days? Can either of you propose amendments? Is there veto power? stuff like that. The answers to those sorts of questions will vary with each relationship, but I always feel like it's better to know the answers and not need them than it is to need them and not know.

3) Have a One Year Trial Clause: Especially if it's your first oath, or if you haven't been in some sort of close relationship with the entity for several years before swearing your oath. I always feel like it's a good idea to write your oath in such a way that the first year is basically a trial period, with a re-dedication at the end of the first year to make the oath fully binding. Think of it like dating before you get married, or a 3 month trial period at a new job. It just gives you a some time to adapt to the new situation, to any new taboos or expectations there might be, and then a comfortable "no hard feelings" out if you don't like it.

4) Include a "break glass in case of emergency" way out of your oath: The One Year Trial covers adjusting to being in the oath, but this is for later. In case you're ten years down the line and you realize for whatever reason that you don't want to be bound to this entity anymore, or you're life has totally changed and you're done with this. It will prevent you from needing to find and employ someone like me to break the oath for you. Some examples include: - You will always wear a piece of devotional jewelry and will not willingly take it off. Intentionally and willingly taking it off constitutes the end of the oath - You could make a spirit house or vessel. Intentionally and willingly dismantling or destroying it would constitute the end of the oath. - If you want to go hard you could get a tattoo. Getting it removed or covered up wold constitute the end of the oath.

Any advice on practicing entity work while schizophrenic?

I see it discussed in the context of hallucinations every so often, but that's honestly the easiest one to deal with for me, I just change the manner of communication. Unfortunately it also comes with major fluctuating thought/verbal incoherency, which among other things hinders me the most.

I'm obviously not looking for psychiatric advice, I'm in treatment and not worried about any episodes either. But it's been difficult building relationships, especially with spirits or local unrecorded deities that I'm getting to know from scratch, while practically stumbling through them without full control over how I present myself and what I'm able to offer. Every other symptom can be somewhat dealt with by myself, but the brain fog and word salad especially are making both casual communication and official agreements awkward at best and risky at worst.

Any thoughts on the topic would be appreciated!

So I have no experience with schizophrenia, so all of this advice is based on what you've presented me in this ask. The way I see it you can try to either work around your symptoms, or work through them. This is an approach I take all the time with my chronic pain: 1) can you avoid doing the thing made more difficult by your disorder? or 2) are there ways to adapt the difficult thing to your disorder?

Working Around:

I am a very wordy person: I communicate best in words, I think in words, I text in complete, grammatically correct, sentences. So a lot of my spirit communication is word based, and therefore a lot of my advice (which is based on my personal experiences) ends up being word based. But it's important to remember that spirits aren't bound by the same communication rules as humans, they don't care what language you speak, if you are speaking out loud, witting something down, or saying it in your head, it's all the same to them. They tend to take paths of least resistance if they really want to talk to you, that why I think we sometimes get funny modern symbolism or slang from ancient entities that have no business dropping dank memes into our heads. So if words are difficult for you, try non-word based communication with your spirits - maybe you like to draw, so you can draw little comics that communicate your requests, or maybe you play an instrument, so you can play them songs that convey your feelings. Heck, you're probably already using a non-word based communication system with them if you're using something like tarot as a divination tool - Uno Reverse them! Instead of just them communicating through the cards you can too! Pose your questions with the cards, let them sit for a minute, then shuffle and deal. Or use two decks if you have them, one for you, one for the spirit your talking to. Play with your options and see what works for you and your spirits. You don't have to be all or nothing on any one solution, and you don't have to find something right away. Give yourself the leeway to try things.

Working Through:

I am a huge proponent of 3 simple things in any magical practice, and I think these things could really help in your situation:

slowing down

writing things down

going back over what you wrote.

Now I don't know how exactly you experience your symptoms - how consistent they are, if you have good days vs bad days etc. But working within the framework I have from my chronic pain where I do have better days where I can do more and worse days where I can do less this would be my strategy. Write things down as you go: Questions you have, things you've noticed, patterns symbolism, etc. (if it helps to have a template try my Spirit Encounter Notes Template) Then don't do anything with them right away, wait for one of your better times to go back and review and make corrections. Then wait again for your next good day to check it again, make additional corrections if you need to. Revise and revise, adjust and adjust, until you're happy with what you have written down, then act on it. You can take as long as you need, as many passes as you need, even have someone else look it over for simple clarity (if you have someone you trust to do that). I know there is a lot of passive social pressure to seem like things are always happening in our spiritual relationships, everyone wants to post about the interesting new thing that's happening to them, but I have always felt better in my own practice when I take my time. If you find taking extra time to write your oaths, or your everyday notes, or to write and revise your questions before you ask them is helpful for you then you should take all of the time you need. I deal with a lot of brain fog myself, I call it "pain brain," where my mind is just too full of pain to fit anything else, and this method of taking notes about everything, and reviewing them regularly is how I deal with it in my own practice. The spirits are not in a rush, they have more time that we do, and if you've already started to form a connection I'm willing to bet that they'll be happy to accommodate you and the pace you need. Mine certainly were.

I'm so sorry if this question sounds weird. I have a problem, kinda, mainly because I don't do spirit work and besides the "chill with the house spirit" thing, I never did much.

I have a nice group of deities that I've incorporated in my practice for years. I know them well, and we're fine. A couple of years ago, one of them appeared (like a bright unexpected mental image that made me say "woah") with attributes that aren't his if we consider his traditional iconography/symbology. They made sense to me, and I thought it was just a normal thing that happens when you spend quality devotional time with an entity.

Last year I got closer to him and I started receiving mixed messages. This god is cool, super chill, and reserved, but I kept having these very personal, intimate, and confusing mental images that clash with how I know him. I never doubted that it was him because why should I? Things were still working with him, but it was weird.

I recently asked (with multiple draws w/ yes/no method) if it was really him because things were getting embarrassing, and apparently, he's a different spirit. He probably used that deity as a ram to get through my tendency to be suspicious of everything.

I didn't investigate before because I know when I get intrusive thoughts/things that aren't part of my brain patterns, and when something is gnosis/external input/something related to my practice. These are definitely in the second category.

I don't do spirit work, I'm not familiar with identifying spirits or understanding who they are. I'm (maybe?) an advanced beginner with tarot, so I don't have enough tools to sit down and divine with absolute clarity. I'm planning to do more readings to understand this situation, but I'm really confused.

Do you (or any of your followers, if it happened to them too) have any suggestions on what I should do? Thanks if you answer, and sorry again if it's weird.

What are you confused about? I think that's a good place to start.

It's my experience that spirits can take up the guises of gods to appear to us, and may do so for the express purpose of getting closer to us.

But there can be lying and manipulating you for your attention (forgive and move on) or lying and manipulating you (cut off and move on). I can't suggest what you do, you must decide this for yourself.

Sometimes a guy pretends to be a god because he wants to give you the big smooches and you're a Deity Hanger-Outer-With but not a Spirit Worker, and therefore putting on the godmask is the express train to smooch town. "Why are you mad at me for stealing someone's suit? I only did it because you said the dress code has to be black tie and you never go anywhere else."

Asshole behavior? Yes. You gotta decide what to do with it.

You're certainly not the first person it's happened to. Look at me, I turned out great* and now mine teaches me magic and stuff.

I have a problem, kinda, mainly because I don't do spirit work

Well you do now!

Spirits lie for lots of reasons. You suspect you know why this one did it.

Is this the kind of thing you would forgive? If so, what information do you need to make that decision? Would you forgive this spirit if you can otherwise trust them? If they can bring you some manner of power and benefit? Or is this something that you personally would not choose to get past?

Avoid using divination to tell you what choices to make. Instead, use it to gather information. You must be comfortable making a decision on your own, even if divination appears to provide insufficient information to make that choice.

These decisions can look like:

I do not forgive you and I will harm you if I ever sense your presence again.

I will put this behind me but you need to leave and never come back, and if we ever meet again it won't be as friends.

I'm willing to try and work through this but I require a great deal of your honesty and understanding, and we need to do things on my terms.

I've thought about it and I decided it's not a big deal to me that you pretended to be someone else to spend time with me.

It's sexy as hell that you did all this just to be with me, like a romance novel or something. Let's get married and have forever cuddles.

I'm not familiar with identifying spirits or understanding who they are

If this spirit lied to you to get close to you then I think this means 3 things:

He's a liar

He believes if you knew who he was, you'd stop being close to him

He wants to be close to you

Given these circumstances is a spirit likely to cooperate revealing their identity to you? Maybe not.

In my experience, identifying spirits (as in, being able to label them as a creature from myth or lore) is not helpful. Individual spirits often don't 1:1 match their lore. And a lot of lore is very muddy. I don't know anyone who works with the fae that would look at the general public online lore of faeries and say, "yep! Accurate."

I think it's much more important to identify intent and what this spirit wants from you. I think if you give him a chance to explain himself he may be significantly more open to sharing than if you demand information that you could use to disqualify him from your life. Does that make sense? Like don't start your investigation by barking up the most heavily guarded tree.

I take a breath and kneel on the floor of the shower, water hitting the back of neck and shoulders rhythmically, it will be easier than standing. I finish brushing my teeth and set my tooth brush aside. Today needs focus and concentration, not routine habit. I start again, once more with feeling, saying the words of my daily prayer out loud, just barely above a whisper. 

Oisin, vega, flint, Axe, Pesse, Wren, amaranth, drove, Clovis, Skelly, and finally Brona.  I repeat the last line of Brona’s stanza over to myself.  

This is.... fascinating.

This concept is one where magical practitioners, and for our purposes especially witches, may be divided into two categories: Laypeople and Clergy.

These titles are not ones you can choose for yourself. You either are, or you are not. And I think knowledge of this concept, whether or not one agrees, shines a floodlight on the sometimes murky waters of magical discourse.

The concept is this: There is a significant difference in the practices and needs for people who are permanently oath- and taboo-bound to their practice, and those who are not.

I have before spoken of a similar paradigm using the metaphor of oak trees and wildflowers:

Wildflower seeds are be blown all over a meadow. When those seeds land in viable soil, they strive to grow. Not every seed will take root, nor every sprout grow to maturity. But we know regardless that when May comes, the landscape will bloom with beauty and wonder, filling the meadow with something magical. If such a time comes that the wildflowers are no longer wanted, or needed, or enjoyed, they will die out, and the meadow will go back to what it once was. Just like wildflower seeds, acorns may not always land where they can grow. But when they do, the effect is very different. Unlike wildflowers, the oak tree does not dust the landscape with color that illuminates and enchants what already exists. The oak tree transforms. Its roots reshape the hillside. Its branches host new fauna. Its shade reworks the nearby flora. And it never goes away. You can chop the oak tree down if you like; the roots are still there. You can dig up the roots; the hillside is now broken. Once planted, the oak tree transforms. Even if it dies, the meadow never goes back to the way it was before.

The laypeople and clergy paradigm takes things a step further. In that paradigm, "clergy" are bound to do (or not do) things, and if they fail bad things happen to them. They do not get to choose to leave their path. They do not necessarily get full autonomy in what they choose to study or practice, or how to apply their skills.

These are the kinds of people who are often found saying things like, "if you fail to uphold your responsibilities to the gods and spirits, they will get pissed off at you and can and will leave you." Or, "whether or not you want to accept it, there are rules." Or, "witchcraft is dangerous and it will consume you if you go in unprepared."

On the other hand, we more often see the opposite. "Gods love you unconditionally and you can never make them upset." Or, "there are no rules to witchcraft; anything you want to be witchcraft, is!" Or, "witchcraft is not dangerous, it is a beautiful, natural, and safe way to reconnect with your spirituality." Or, "how and when you choose witchcraft, including choosing to stop, is your choice. Nobody can tell you otherwise."

Although this simple duality obviously doesn't apply to everyone, I feel that very often everyone involved forgets the other is real and valid. The fact that gods will stop talking to you if you fail to uphold the devotional schedule they gave you, and the fact that gods will never care if you skip devotionals, are both lived experiences from valid practitioners worshiping the same god.

So, via this ask, the question is posed: "how to [find out] what the basic building blocks are to build a practice on and [...] the Big Questions that should influence your practice"?

One Big Question, and currently I feel perhaps the most important, is this:

Do you want your meadow to scintillate when the sunlight catches the rainbow hues of a thousand wildflowers that bring joy and wonder into your life?

Or do you want your meadow to be given over to the Oak Tree, remade in His image?

I get these intense signs and synchronicities around this particular spirit, and he shows up in my dreams to communicate. He showed up there before I knew much about him and did something very in character, but I didn’t know that until I had a video about him appear in my feed not long after.

I know why he might be here, so it would make sense, and we have common interests. My desire to make music has only grown stronger since getting more in touch with him.

Is it possible for a regular bored trickster spirit to create grand synchronistic events? Or would that be more in the realm of the divine? I figured it would be unlikely that a random dark spirit could do all that, but you have more experience.

If you aren’t comfortable answering or don't have any advice, that's okay. I appreciate your time. Thanks.

Oh, darling, I think you’re asking the wrong question here.    I will answer the questions that you asked, and  then I will let you know the question I think you should be asking in this situation.  

First I’m going to touch on the concept of “trickster spirits”…. I don’t believe in “trickster spirits” as you’ve probably seen them described - malicious entities who are lurking in the dark impersonating other spirits just because they’re evil assholes. There’s the archetype of “Trickster” that you will see in mythology and folklore all of the time, and entities of that archetype are some of the most popular recorded gods you’ll find worshiped in the community. Why should less popular/unrecorded spirits who fill the same role be any different?  Can spirits lie? Yes.  Can a spirit lie or pretend to be a different spirit? Also yes.  But are they doing it just because they are fundamentally malicious?  Probably not. If a spirit is representing themselves as something or someone they aren’t they usually have a reason for it.  

You asked can any spirit send signs, omens, and synchronicities or is that divine thing?  I’m going to point you to my Silly Hat Theory of Godhood. What is a god except a spirit in a silly hat that denotes they get the title, and therefore treatment, of a god.  It’s not like there’s a Dragonball Z power level scale, and at a certain level of power an entity unlocks different skills and classifications.  Sure they may have different specialties:  maybe Spirit Steve is better at communicating through dreams while Spirit Mary is better at healing, but Mary could send you a dream and Steve could put a bandaid on a paper cut. 

So if we hold to the logic that any spirit can communicate through signs, and that spirits don’t impersonate other spirits just to be evil, the question you should be asking is this: If there is another spirit impersonating the entity you’re trying to communicate with, why are they doing it, and are you okay with their reason?  

Let’s keep using Spirit Steve and Spirit Mary from our earlier example:  Spirit Steve is the spirit you want to be talking to, Spirit Mary is the interloper.  Think about your relationship with Spirit Steve and why Spirit Mary would want to insert herself into that relationship.  Maybe she just wants to siphon some attention and offerings to get a bit of an energy boost.  Maybe she needs to get your attention for some reason and thinks you’re more likely to listen to Spirit Steve, so she’s pretending to be him to get you to listen to her for a few minutes.  There’s all sorts of possibilities, it’s worth asking Spirit Mary about it if you are comfortable communicating with her directly. 

From there you can decide what you want to do with the situation.  Maybe you’ll find that the reason Spirit Mary gives for impersonating Spirit Steve is one that you accept as a good reason and you’re willing to work with both going forward as long as some boundaries are respected.  Maybe it’s not a good enough reason and you feel it’s necessary to banish Spirit Mary and ward against her.  Maybe you’ll find that Spirit Mary was hanging around, playing little tricks because she does fit the trickster archetype, but she never impersonated Spirit Steve - he was the one sending you signs all along - and it’s no harm no foul.