bronnadh grásta orthu

nordic countries and the environment

article about white supremacy n ethnonationalism in sweden

Sweden: detention and deportation of asylum seekers

two chapters from a book about criminalisation of migration that discuss sweden n other nordic countries. one and two

sweden selling iron to nazi germany despite being “neutral” in ww2

nyt article about swedish (and others) “neutrality” in ww2

wikipedia page for swedish iron-ore industry during ww2

scandinavians and the atlantic slave trade

swedish iron and how it led to them profiting from slavery

wikipedia page for the swedish slave trade

-Make a witches ladder and tie it to your target however you’d like (hair, name, etc)

-Tie in items that relate to unlucky things 

used up travel toothpaste-> they never seem to have toothpaste when they need it

a key with a ‘?’ drawn in sharpie-> you’re gonna be late to work, douche

empty battery-> they’re always just too tired to really get any work done

loose pieces of yarn-> so they always have that one strand of hair tickling their arm

a pushpin-> step on something sharp, asshole

a ripped piece of paper with the words “REALLY IMPORTANT THING”->so they always forget that one really important thing

an empty toilet roll-> every. single. time.

broken birthday candle->nobody remembers their birthday

Charge that sucker with your annoyed motherfucking energy and swirl some fucking smoke on it with a few spritzes of cayenne water for good measure. 

Some good and/or interesting (or hokey) ‘examples’ included for most resources. tryin to organize & share stuff that was floating around onenote.

Journals (open access) – Folklore, Occult, etc

Culutural Analysis - folklore, popular culture, anthropology – The Mythical Ghoul in Arabic Culture

Folklore - folklore, anthropology, archaeology – The Making of a Bewitchment Narrative, Grecian Riddle Jokes

Incantatio - journal on charms, charmers, and charming – Verbal Charms from a 17th Century Manuscript

Oral Tradition – Jewish Folk Literature, Noises of Battle in Old English Poetry

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics – Nani Fairtyales about the Cruel Bride, Energy as the Mediator between Natural and Supernatural Realms

International Journal of Intangible Heritage 

Studia Mythologica Slavica (many articles not English) – Dragon and Hero, Fertility Rites in the Raining Cave, The Grateful Wolf and Venetic Horses in Strabo’s Geography

Folklorica - Slavic & Eastern European folklore association – Ritual: The Role of Plant Characteristics in Slavic Folk Medicine, Animal Magic

Esoterica - The Journal of Esoteric Studies – The Curious Case of Hermetic Graffiti in Valladolid Cathedral 

The Esoteric Quarterly

Mythological Studies Journal

Luvah - Journal of the Creative Imagination – A More Poetical Character Than Satan

Transpersonal Studies – Shamanic Cosmology as an Evolutionary Neurocognitive Epistemology, Dreamscapes

Beyond Borderlands  – tumblr

Paranthropology

GOLEM - Journal of Religion and Monsters – The Religious Functions of Pokemon, Anti-Semitism and Vampires in British Popular Culture 1875-1914

Correspondences - Online Journal for the Academic Study of Western Esotericism – Kriegsmann’s Philological Quest for Ancient Wisdom 

– History, Archaeology

Adoranten - pre-historic rock art

Chitrolekha - India art & design history – Gomira Dance Mask

Silk Road – Centaurs on the Silk Road: Hellenistic Textiles in Western China

Sino-Platonic - East Asian languages and civilizations – Discursive Weaving Women in Chinese and Greek Traditions

MELA Notes - Middle East Librarians Association

Didaskalia - Journal for Ancient Performance

Ancient Narrative - Greek, Roman, Jewish novelistic traditions – The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel

Akroterion - Greek, Roman – The Deer Hunter: A Portrait of Aeneas

Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies  – Erotic and Separation Spells, The Ancients’ One-Horned Ass

Roman Legal Tradition - medieval civil law – Between Slavery and Freedom 

Phronimon - South African society for Greek Philosophy and the Humanities – Special Issue vol. 13 #2, Greek philosophy in dialogue with African+ philosophy

The Heroic Age - Early medieval Northwestern Europe – Icelandic Sword in the Stone

Peregrinations - Medieval Art and Architecture – Special Issue vol. 4 #1, Mappings 

Tiresas - Medieval and Classical – Sexuality in the Natural and Demonic Magic of the Middle Ages

Essays in Medieval Studies  – The Female Spell-caster in Middle English Romances, The Sweet Song of Satan

Hortulus - Medieval studies – Courtliness & the Deployment of Sodomy in 12th-Century Histories of Britain, Monsters & Monstrosities issue, Magic & Witchcraft issue

Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU

Medieval Archaeology – Divided and Galleried Hall-Houses, The Hall of the Knights Templar at Temple Balsall

Medieval Feminist Forum  – multiculturalism issue; Gender, Skin Color and the Power of Place … Romance of Moriaen, Writing Novels About Medieval Women for Modern Readers, Amazons & Guerilleres

Quidditas - medieval and renaissance 

Medieval Warfare

The Viking Society - ridiculous amount of articles from 1895-2011

Journals (limited free/sub/institution access)

Al-Masaq - Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean – Piracy as Statecraft: The Policies of Taifa of Denia, free issue

Mythical Creatures of Europe - article + map

Folklore - limited free access – Volume 122 #3, On the Ambiguity of Elves

Digital Philology -  a journal of medieval cultures – Saracens & Race in Roman de la Rose Iconography

Pomegranate - International Journal for Pagan Studies

Transcultural Psychiatry

European Journal of English Studies  – Myths East of Venice issue, Esotericism issue

Books, Texts, Images etc. – Folklore, Occult etc.

Magical Gem Database - Greek/Egyptian gems & talismans [x] [x]

Biblioteca Aracana - (mostly) Greek pagan history, rituals, poetry etc. – Greater Tool Consecration, The Yew-Demon

Curse Tablets from Roman Britain - [x]

The Gnostic Society Library – The Corpus Hermeticum, Hymn of the Robe of Glory

Grimoar - vast occult text library – Grimoires, Greek & Roman Necromancy, Queer Theology, Ancient Christian Magic

Internet Sacred Text Archive - religion, occult, folklore, etc. ancient texts

Verse and Transmutation - A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry

– History

The Internet Classics Archive - mainly Greco-Roman, some Persian & Chinese translated texts

Bodleian Oriental Manuscript Collection - [x] [x] [x]

Virtual Magic Bowl Archive - Jewish-Aramaic incantation bowl text and images [x] [x] 

Vindolanda Tablets - images and translations of tablets from 1st & 2nd c. [x]

Corsair - online catalog of the Piedmont Morgan library (manuscripts) [x] [x]

Beinecke rare book & manuscripts  – Wagstaff miscellany, al-Qur'ān–1813

LUNA - tonnes from Byzantine manuscripts to Arabic cartography

Maps on the web - Oxford Library [x] [x] [x]

Bodleian Library manuscripts - photographs of 11th-17th c. manuscripts – Treatises on Heraldry, The Worcester Fragments (polyphonic music), 12 c. misc medical and herbal texts

Early Manuscripts at Oxford U - very high quality photographs – (view through bottom left) Military texts by Athenaeus Mechanicus 16th c. [x] [x], MS Douce 195 Roman de la Rose [x] [x]

Trinity College digital manuscript library  – Mathematica Medica, 15th c.

eTOME - primary sources about Celtic peoples

Websites, Blogs – Folklore, Occult etc.

Demonthings - Ancient Egyptian Demonology Project 

Invocatio - (mostly) western esotericism

Heterodoxology - history, esotericism, science – Religion in the Age of Cyborgs

The Recipes Project - food, magic, science, medicine – The Medieval Invisible Man (invisibility recipes)

Morbid Anatomy - museum/library in Brooklyn

– History 

Islamic Philosophy Online - tonnes of texts, articles, links, utilities, this belongs in every section; mostly English

Medicina Antiqua - Graeco-Roman medicine

History of the Ancient World - news and resources – The So-called Galatae, Gauls, Celts in Early Hellenistic Balkans; Maidens, Matrons Magicians: Women & Personal Ritual Power in Late Antique Egypt

Διοτίμα - Women & Gender in Antiquity

Bodleian Library Exhibitions Online – Khusraw & Shirin, Hebrew Manuscripts as a Meeting-Place of Cultures

Medievalists – folk studies, witchcraft, mythology, science tags

*ˢᵃᶠᵉ ᵀᵒ ᴿᵉᵇˡᵒᵍ

This is a repost of an old spread I initially designed for use with Andy Swartz / SkullGarden’s Earthbound Oracle deck, released in 2015, due to the deck’s wonderful capacity for use with self scrutiny and Shadow Work. I recently dug it, however, up for February 2022′s Hagging Out event, which was Divination themed, and adapted it for similar religious uses with Fez Inkwright’s new Seed and Sickle Oracle, released in 2021, with great success; my original post is here.

At the request of @goddess29, I’m posting the full workup of both variations of the spread for anyone who wants to use it. If you need any help or have any questions, please feel free to ask them.

Please keep in mind before asking questions that this spread was explicitly intended for use with Oracle Decks. I cannot guarantee that it will work with systems like Tarot or Bicycle Cards- and it very likely will not work with systems like Lenormand. I also cannot promise that it will work with all Oracle Decks (as Oracle is not a coherent system, so much as it is a catch-all term for decks that do not belong to individual systems).

Cards 1, 3, and 5 are The Seeds. In Shadow Work, these are the traits you need to cultivate within yourself in order to improve spiritually, and in order to heal your traumas. In religion and spirituality readings, these are the spiritual acts you need to perform or focus on in order to move forward on your religious path.

Cards 2, 4, and 6 is The Soil. In Shadow Work, this is the trauma, traits, behaviors, and so on which are currently obscuring or otherwise hindering your ability to heal and move forward. Within religious or spiritual readings, however, soil takes on an opposite meaning; instead, it is the behavior, traits, virtues, and so on that will help you to cultivate your path and “nurture your seeds” so-to-speak.

In all cases, the Soil only applies to the individual Seed which it overlaps; these are microcosmic events, traits, and the like, and do not impact one another within the reading outside of their individual pairings; technically you could add as many of these pairings to the reading as you pleased.

Card 7, 8, and 9 are The Sun, The Clouds, and The Rain respectively. In both types of readings, these are the overall conditions that need to be met in order to make the changes and cultivate the growth you need in order to properly move forward (or keep moving) instead of remaining stagnant.

In all cases, these apply not just in regards to the individual goal, but in regards to the overall goal and path; this is the macrocosmic view that encompasses the whole.

Autumnal Spell for Letting Go (5 Steps)

Hi friends! This ritual invites you to harness the natural magic of the autumnal cycle in 5 simple yet potent steps. May it bring you relaxation, trust, spaciousness & peace in this season and beyond.

Purpose: to stop clinging to what’s no longer serving you (patterns, beliefs, places, things)

Need:

• freshly fallen leaf

• small piece of paper

• pen

• red, black or white candle (see steps for intention/meanings)

• match or lighter

• fire safe dish

Steps:

1. Bring home a freshly fallen leaf that isn’t yet dried. Search for one that you find beautiful, that you would even think to press & preserve. Place this leaf in your fire safe dish.

2. Select a candle that matches the energy you need for letting go (red if you need to empower yourself, black if you need to banish, white if you need to cleanse). Set the candle on top of your fallen leaf in the dish.

3. Take your piece of paper and write out the things you want to let go of.Place this piece of paper in the dish, underneath the leaf. While you do this, center yourself and meditate on the reasons you’ve been holding onto these things — as well as your reasons & the beauty in letting them end.

4. With your intentions in mind, light the candle and allow it to burn down completely. Imagine the flame of the candle fuelling your will to let go, banish, or cleanse.

5. Once the candle has burned down, set the dish somewhere in your home you walk by or visit frequently, such as your altar or a windowsill. Over the next few days, allow the leaf to dry out & die. As it does, the patterns/cycles you wrote down are also being allowed to come to an end.

Once the leaf has fully dried, the ritual is sealed and you can dispose of the leaf, candle & paper.

Happy autumnal magic-making!

Today's spell comes from tumblr – and I didn't exactly get carte blanche permission to do a write up, but here we are doing our bestest out here. So this spell does have something a little bit different than we have had up to day, actually a few things different – the fact that we get a picture or that we have pictures of what the spell looks like kinda set up and the fact we're doing some writing, with a little more of active participation on our side with the writing.

When it comes to photographing spells, a lot of times we see sometimes videos or we see the end result / mid result and not really the step by step layout of how the spell is being set up. There's no real confusion here on how this is going to be staged. It's pretty clear what the entire set is going to happen.

Sometimes in spell books, you do get pictures or visual representations of how the spell is going to be laid out and how you're supposed to interact with those items. You see that in for instance, I believe Tarot Spells by Janina Renée or Practical Candleburning Rituals by Buckland (Tarot Spells I've already reviewed, and Buckland's book I'm in the middle of reviewing now on @consecsuallyreading) where because of the nature of the spells written guidance is not going to be enough to get across exactly what's going on in the spell. Quite literally in both of these books the formation of the spells are the primary function of the spell. So it is very nice to have a visual to look at whenever you are considering doing or performing a spell.

Write out thing on paper, then put it under a candle – is a pretty standard method for doing a bunch of different kind of spells. Even the Cobblah spell does that, though in the cobblah's case we're doing a lot more with the candle and a lot more with the paper than we're doing in this particular spell. But it's not the only thing that people can do. For instance, I've see more than once where a spell for a new job or a dream job requires you to write up a resume or your own resume and shove it under a candle. I've see other types of petition work in spells for that.

Now of course, this particular spell doesn't call for you to pick or chose a specific type of candle (meaning, tea light verses taper candle verses birthday candle), though I would personally prefer to use a tea light for a quick burn rather than a taper candle especially if it needs to burn all the way down. Why? You should never leave a burning candle alone, especially one placed on top of a plate like the examples shown here. Literally – anything- could happen. So I would prefer something that did not require me to keep it in my line of sight for significantly longer than an hour. I don't think this is a particular large taper candle, so I assume that it's maybe an hour to two hours worth of time.

I don't particularly like the color correspondences here if we're not doing anything else with the candle itself. Like really the flame here is what is “fueling what happens based on the color correspondence” but the candle itself is not playing much of a role except for a seat for the flame.

I would have liked for instance telling the candle what it's job is prior to being lit, anointing it in oil, rolling it in herbs, marking / carving it, putting a charm around it, tying it, lighting it with a specific match or item. We're basically relying on you the spell caster to keep it in mind that xyz color means qrs thing when we go to light it rather than prepping or enchanting the candle. It's a little loose, almost detached correspondence without that level of impact that I'd be expecting from a spell that uses correspondences to represent color significance. Maybe it's just the right amount for individuals who just want kind of a basic, two steps away from High Magic and a lot less ritual.

But honestly, I could see this candle being any color for any reason because letting go does not need to be limited to – banishing, empowerment, or cleansing. It could be for any number of things. Forgiveness, self clarity, justice, healing, strength (which is not the same as empowerment, I'd argue), fortitude, all can be represented by a variety of different colors. I assume the author feels the same way because they wrote “match the energy that you need for letting go” and only provided some examples here to do a base off of in case you couldn't think of any on your own.

Another step that I don't like is that we start with the extra work of “putting the candle on top of the leaf, okay now go write something, okay put that under the leaf.” For me, I would just change the order of this because it doesn't seem necessary to do the steps in this order since there's no significance (or at least none stated) why the leaf and the candle need to be together while you're writing out the things you want to let go. The leaf is the thing that will rot, dry, or otherwise decay as the container or containment of the things that you want to let go. The candle is the bridging or binding between the leaf and the things you written out that ties the leaf and the written statements together. Literally telling the leaf as you rot, this is what will happen for this spell caster through the color correspondence that you've chosen. The target is clearly specified because you're doing the writing of the things you're letting go, and then lighting the candle with that intention in mind according to this spell.

That's why I said it's a bit loose, but it's alright. It'll get the job done. What WOULD suck is if you got a candle that is a thin layer of color over a white candle. Like the aesthetics of this particular set of photographs (red candle, red leaf) would be ruined if that candle was just a white candle in disguise! You could also use, now that I'm thinking about it, a two color / triple colored candle if you wanted to combine colors to make it more significant as well. So in this case, it might be perfectly right to have a candle that at the core of it is doing something different from the outer layer. There's a lot of spells that use double / triple candle colors in this way, so your mileage may vary.

Tying a spell to a thing to rot it, is a very common style of folk magic. You'll see that with onion spells or that potato spell that @lazywitchling mentioned. Though in those cases it's about absorbing evil or absorbing something – in this case it is the same. The leaf is absorbing (though the tie of the candle) the things we want to let go and then naturally decaying those things. It's leeching those things into the leaf and by the very nature of the leaf, letting it die sooner than if it would continue to live in you. You die slower than a leaf does – in case you're wondering. Lol.

Leaves and spells are also a thing you see frequently, whether it's writing directly on the leaf (that bay leaf wishing spell example) or if it's using them as herbs, using their shape, using their calling, using their color, using their herbalism traits and pulling from them. So it's not super unusual to see a living leaf being used here in this kind of context. In fact, leaves make pretty good wrappers if you want to wrap and contain something that you will bury or throw away later. The humble leaf, such a multitude of usages. In fact, you could have skipped the writing on paper step and just written it on the leaf itself.

Now, I don't now what “center yourself” means in this context because the author did not go into any further detail. Mediation the author did go a little bit into context about what it is – generally but not fully. These are the kinds of things that people just say when it comes to spellwork and expect you to understand what that means. Mediation could be a visualization exercise where you are visualizing some activity or some thing. That could fit this context. It could be doing a breath exercise where you're doing the letting go via your breath – though I doubt it in this context (but centering yourself may be this portion?). It could be an active meditation where you're actively participating in a series of actions like walking where you basically shut down all the rest of the thoughts and focusing on the action itself. And then finally, what I think is most likely the context for meditation – active rumination or “thinking really hard” about something.

Part of this spell is doing the work of convincing or at least understanding why these things that you've been holding onto need to go. With spell casting I don't think this step is particularly required, because spells can just make you stop -snaps fingers- but that can be harsh and may only be temporary. Meaning you stop for a few hours or a few days, but not permanently. So I don't particularly mind that we're having this conversation about why we need to let these things ago. What's keeping them here with us, and how they are stopping us from doing other things. It's just in general a good exercise to clean out the mental garbage – which I do not do right now, and my mental garbage is a lot. Three dumpsters full of mental garbage. :D

I do like that we're keeping the burned out remnants of the candle in sight because we're checking to see when that leaf has basically dried out and started to decay on us. In some ways this spell is not an immediate stop to the thing, but a slow process of dying. This means let's say you accidentally fall into the same pattern or the same behavior that you're trying to let go – that doesn't necessarily mean the spell hasn't work but that it's still in the process of dying with the leaf. Because breaking habits or breaking tendencies or having something that you thought about so much and letting it go is not an immediate super quick process, at least, if you want it to permanently go away that is. As I mentioned above, you could stop it but it may not be permanent. This slower removal seems a little more fitting.

I also like that this spell talks about spell disposal. So some people feel very particular about they way they dispose of things. In this case, I would either bury this spell or take it to a place that has a trash bin that's like a high traffic kind of area or take it to a particular location (such as a road or a crossways) and bury it there / dispose of it there. Something like that to make it no longer attached to you or attached to your home. I'm sure if you wanted to have a more ecofriendly option (If that's something you care about) there are ways to make that the case – especially with changing the candle to beeswax based. But that's not very important in the spell itself – it's about disposal. Though you could CERTAINLY make it very important part of the work ie that the spell returns back into the earth – if you're burying it. And thus neutralizing those things that you've written down.

So it's all really flexible in some ways.

I basically followed Wyrdmorrish’s instructions,  winged it a little, and came up with the following:

Fabric with stripes going horizontally to keep luck “in”

An asphalt-y rock from the main road going by my house

A printed map of the metropolitan area I live in, including different towns I frequent (with my house marked)

Yellow thread

Sage, rosemary, and lavender, as suggested in the instructions (if I have more time in the future, I’d like to add some comfrey, because apparently that’s amazing shit for travel spells)

I sewed up my little bag, and then inserted the herbs and rock into the folded up map, telling each ingredient its job as I went.

Then I packed everything into the bag, closed the top tight, and did the classic 9-knot spell to seal it:

“By knot of one, my spell’s begun. By knot of two, it will come true. By knot of three, so mote it be. By knot of four, this power I store. By knot of five, my spell is alive. By knot of six, the spell I fix. By knot of seven, events I’ll leaven . By knot of eight,it will be fate. By knot of nine, what is done is mine.”

And now I have a nice little charm to attach to my purse when I go to the beach this weekend. :)

Witch’s Ladder

A Witch’s Ladder is a spell or several spells consisting on 3, 9 or 13 knots. Traditionally 9. A cord , rope or sometimes hair can be used to make it and it has been a practice from long time ago. Charms are knotted or braided with specific magical intention into the cords. The number of knots and nature of charms varies with the intention.

Some people like to chant a specific rhyme while knotting the charms, others will just think about each spell in their minds.

In other versions it can also be several spells that are waiting to be used. So each time you need one, you untie the knot with the specific intention and release its energy.

Blossom & Thorn Spread 🛣️

The blossom: What should I allow to blossom?

The thorn: How can I better protect myself in the process?

The sap: Why does it need to blossom?

The blood: Why do I need to be protected?