InTheSpiritOfAlly

Southern Gothic: Abandoned Churches, cryptic gospel signs, don’t go near the marshes, elusive and overly religious people that are probably Up To Something but everyone is too afraid to ask what

Midwestern Gothic: Something Lives In The Corn, broken down trucks, gravel roads that lead nowhere, empty gas stations placed between tiny towns with only one attendant who makes too much eye contact but never speaks

…If you want to flex your communication muscles but don’t want to be cutting deals or making things complicated for now. Just little things to try.

Let me hear a love story

Show me a song from your people

Tell me something you did today that you are proud of

Let me draw a portrait of you

Tell me a little about your culture

Ask me any questions you may have about human culture (and I will answer them, if I can.)

Look at this song/story/poem I wrote, tell me what you think.

Tell me my local reputation, if I have one.

Tell me your story (and if desired, I will record it and pass it on for more to see.)

Share a joke.

Let me admire your beauty/grace/powerful appearance/plumage/scales/wings/great personality

Tell me about your friends

What is your one big token of advice?

Teach me how to make my home more welcoming for you (while still being safe for me.)

Pinus 

This is a very common tree, and like many other herbs, pine has different uses depending upon the species. 

Kinds of Pine

White pine is great as a expectorant, making it useful in cough and cold seasons. A good way to use it is to drink white pine needles steeped in a tea to help with coughing phlegm up if you’re congested. 

Larch pine, common in central Europe, is another good expectorant for bronchitis and pneumonia 

Historical Uses

Pine trees are referred to as sacred to the god Poseidon 

The sap of the pine tree was used on many ships to keep them waterproof and water resistant. The protective aspect of the plant most likely came into play due to its use with ships

The younger shoots of pine trees were used and mashed to bath water for nervous exhaustion, slow healing wounds, circulatory disorders, arthritis, and skin conditions. 

American Indians used pine needles to prevent scurvy. They also used pine needles in their mattresses to repel lice and fleas. 

Magical Uses

Holding a fresh pinecone with seeds still intact is thought to keep away evil spirits and bring fertility 

There is a heavy association with money and work, because pine is an evergreen plant, suggesting prosperity all year long

Health and healing, protection, cleansing, exorcism, purification, and fertility are all associated with the pine tree

Essential Oil Uses

The following is based on the Améo Essential Oils, a clinical grade oil. This brand of oil has a proven cell activity level, proven cell permeability, and Cetri-5 endorsed. You should always use 100% pure essential oil before using on your body. Contact a certified homeopathic practitioner for more information.

Blending: The ratio 50:50, for example, means use 50% essential oil, 50% carrier oil. The ratio 5:95, for example, means 5% essential oil, 95% carrier oil.

Blends well with cedarwood, rosemary, tea tree, sage, lavender, juniper, lemon, Eucalyptus radiata, Eucalyptus globulus, and marjoram

Extraction: essential oil by dry distillation 

To relieve nerve pain, create a 50:50 blend of pine and a carrier oil and massage the painful area. If the area is small, you may apply the oil undiluted and add a carrier oil as needed. 

To help detoxify the lungs, liver, lymphatic areas, or the urinary tract: diffuse 20 drops of pine or create a 50:50 blend of pine and a carrier oil and massage the affected area

For scrapes, cuts, and sores: apply pine undiluted to the area and add a carrier oil if needed

For treating lice, excessive perspiration, or scabies: you may want to mix 3-5 drops of pine in a teaspoon of water and apply. Or you can try diluting pine 50:50 with a carrier oil depending on what works best for you

For arthritis, gout, poor circulation, neuralgia, and muscle aches and pain: create 50:50 blend of pine and carrier oil and massage the affected area

For urinary tract infections, create a 50:50 blend with a carrier oil and apply to the lower abdomen. Use a warm damp compress and add head to help the oil penetrate. Take capsules with a 50:50 blend of pine and carrier oil. Take 3 capsules a day with food. ***

To overcome fatigue, nervous exhaustion, and other stress-related conditions: diffuse 20 drops of pine twice a day

To help with asthma, bronchitis, coughs, sinusitis, and sore throat: diffuse 20 drops of pine twice daily. Also create a hot bath using 10-15 drops of pine in a cup of Epsom Salts. Also use 3-5 drops of pine over your chest and neck after a shower while your skin is still damp. Heat a pan or bowl of boiling water, add 3-5 drops of pine, cover your head with a towel, and inhale. You can reheat and add more oil as needed. 

(Pénoël, 2014)

***You should consult with a certified homeopathic practitioner before ever ingesting any brands of oil into your body. 

Sources

Pénoël, Daniel, Dr, comp. Integrated Guide to Essential Oils & Aromatherapy. 1st ed. N.p.: n.p., 2014. Print.

a tiny list of personal associations

Bright appearance, associated with sun, strength, happiness

Strongly associated with the element of fire (also air, ofc)

A plant of the mind and spirit, not of this world

Connections to the spirit world/ Otherworld. Can help you Travel and communicate with spirits better

Wishes

Youth, children, nostalgia

Fae, all parts can be used as an offering

You don’t have to do spells the same way as other people.

I know it seems like that would be obvious, but I think people don’t even realize that they’re forcing themselves to conform to what they’ve seen. It took me a good three years to realize that I hate incantations in my spellwork. They distract me from what I’m focusing on and I hate writing them. I don’t cast a circle, I don’t plan my spells much beforehand, I get up halfway through spells to grab herbs from the other room, and my spells have only grown stronger since I started doing things that way, because that’s what works for me.

Hi there! I decided to post this because it’s been extremely helpful for me, and I’m sure it will be for everyone else too!! It’s a super easy spell I love to do.

This spell can get rid of your doubts or can get rid of a negative situation.

SUPPLIES NEEDED:

Piece of paper. Lined or printer is fine.

Black pen or marker.

The elements, be safe with them.

STEPS:

First, write down every single doubt you have on that piece of paper, or instead, write down the situation you want to get out of.

If you’re using fire,

BURN THAT BITCH.

If you’re using water,

DROWN THAT BITCH.

If you’re using the earth,

BURY THAT BITCH.

If you’re using air,

FLY THAT BITCH.

That’s it.

For fire, burn it and rid of the ashes. For water, soak it until the words are unreadable then flush it down the toilet. Earth, bury it. Air, rip it up on a windy day and throw it into the wind.

Using the elements will allow the negativity to detach from you.

Do this as many times as you need to, and let me know how it works for you, I love feedback!

Food extract is the flavoring of something cooked down into a carrier oil or alcohol that is safe for human ingestion.

Essential oil is the pure extract of the plant refined down and distilled for concentrated medicinal purposes to a significantly higher strength than simply adding ground up mint leaves to your water. The two are not comparable in any way.

Cinnamon extract and cinnamon essential oil are not the same thing.

One is about 100 times the strength of the other and can also cause acute organ failure. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the food extract.

You can swish some oils on your mouth when diluted with a carrier oil (I use olive oil or coconut for mouth rinsing) mixed with water, but water alone does not dilute essential oils in any safe way to use on or in the body.

Water + neat eo in an air diffuser = safe

Water + neat eo on skin = at risk of chemical burn

Water + neat eo for drinking = at risk of internal chemical burn and or other possible complications.

Tinctures and teas guys, tinctures and teas and extracts for eating.

Essential oils = do not swallow.

Let me tell you what I know about this after living here for nearly thirty years.

This is a modern European country, the home of hot net startups, of Internet giants and (in some places, some very few places) the fastest broadband on Earth. People here live in this century, HARD.

Yet they get nervous about walking up that one hill close to their home after dark, because, you know… stuff happens there.

I know this because Peter and I live next to One Of Those Hills. There are people in our locality who wouldn’t go up our tiny country road on a dark night for love or money. What they make of us being so close to it for so long without harm coming to us, I have no idea. For all I know, it’s ascribed to us being writers (i.e. sort of bards) or mad folk (also in some kind of positive relationship with the Dangerous Side: don’t forget that the root word of “silly”, which used to be English for “crazy”, is the Old English _saelig_, “holy”…) or otherwise somehow weirdly exempt.

And you know what? I’m never going to ask. Because one does not discuss such things. Lest people from outside get the wrong idea about us, about normal modern Irish people living in normal modern Ireland.

You hear about this in whispers, though, in the pub, late at night, when all the tourists have gone to bed or gone away and no one but the locals are around. That hill. That curve in the road. That cold feeling you get in that one place. There is a deep understanding that there is something here older than us, that doesn’t care about us particularly, that (when we obtrude on it) is as willing to kick us in the slats as to let us pass by unmolested.

So you greet the magpies, singly or otherwise. You let stones in the middle of fields be. You apologize to the hawthorn bush when you’re pruning it. If you see something peculiar that cannot be otherwise explained, you are polite to it and pass onward about your business without further comment. And you don’t go on about it afterwards. Because it’s… unwise. Not that you personally know any examples of people who’ve screwed it up, of course. But you don’t meddle, and you learn when to look the other way, not to see, not to hear. Some things have just been here (for various values of “here” and various values of “been”) a lot longer than you have, and will be here still after you’re gone. That’s the way of it. When you hear the story about the idiots who for a prank chainsawed the centuries-old fairy tree a couple of counties over, you say – if asked by a neighbor – exactly what they’re probably thinking: “Poor fuckers. They’re doomed.” And if asked by anybody else you shake your head and say something anodyne about Kids These Days. (While thinking DOOMED all over again, because there are some particularly self-destructive ways to increase entropy.)

Meanwhile, in Iceland: the county council that carelessly knocked a known elf rock off a hillside when repairing a road has had to go dig the rock up from where it got buried during construction, because that road has had the most impossible damn stuff happen to it since that you ever heard of. Doubtless some nice person (maybe they’ll send out for the Priest of Thor or some such) will come along and do a little propitiatory sacrifice of some kind to the alfar, belatedly begging their pardon for the inconvenience.

They’re building the alfar a new temple, too.

Don’t go near big trees in the night

If you live on a farm, don’t look outside the windows at night

I have broken all these rules.

I’ve seen some shit.

If it sounds like your mom, but you didn’t realize your mom is home…. it’s not your mom. Promise.

One walked onto the porch once. Wasn’t fun. But they’re not super keen on guns. Typically bolt when they see one.

You think it’s the neighbor kids.

It’s not the neighbor kids.

Might sound like coyotes but you never really /see/ the coyotes but then wow that one cow was reaaaaaally fucked up this morning. The next night when you hear another one screaming you just turn the tv up a little more. Maybe fire a gun in the air but you don’t go after it. If it is coyotes then it’s probably a pack and you seriously don’t want to fuck with that and if it’s the other thing you seriously REALLY don’t want to fuck with that.

So in the south, especially near the mountains, you just go straight from your car to inside your house, draw your curtains and watch tv.

If you see lights in the fields just fucking leave it alone.

Eyes forward. Don’t be fucking stupid. Mind your own business. Call your neighbors and tell them to bring the cats in. There’s coyotes out. Some of them know. Most of them don’t.

Other than that everything’s a ghost and they died in the civil war. Literally all of everything else is just the civil war. We used to smell old perfume and pipe tobacco in the weeks leading up to the battle anniversaries.

We had ‘witches’ in the mountains (more like ghost-women who will snatch you up by making you wander in a daze around the forest like the Blair Witch before killing you or letting you back out into society but you’re… different). Or devils in springs or abandoned wells (don’t look too long into one or something will follow you). 

But we also had the cornfield demons. I’ve witnessed this many times. You’ll be in the passenger seat looking out the window and see red glowing eyes in the cornfield. No light shining in that direction. Just two red dots a few inches apart faintly glowing in a pitch black cornfield. They’re not the glow of deer eyes in the headlights. More like the embers of a dying fire. Sometimes, as you drive away, you’ll look out the back window or side mirror and you can see the eyes have moved to the edge of the corn field, still watching you. If you bring it up with the driver, they’ll call you paranoid, but grip the wheel a bit tighter and driver a little faster.

I just…yes. This. All of this. And then some.

You don’t have to understand it. You don’t have to believe in it.