#personal studies

Inspired by @midwestbramble 's Personal Study of the Witch, here's what my current curricula's looking like! I'm thinking of updating this post as time passes to reflect what I'm currently working on.

From the original post: {The idea is that you make a course for yourself on a topic you want to learn more about. It can literally be anything.

With how many people are saying that they don't recommend any witchcraft books, this can be a fun way to share what we are learning that doesn't necessarily scream "Witchcraft!" but can definitely impact it. I'll go first.}

First Course: "The Methodology of Ritual"

{status: completed, organizing notes} This is a course I took from November through December with one of my Elders, who's currently getting a degree on education and, as part of her work as a cultural educator and ceremonialist, offered a full course sharing her findings on the intersection of Ritual As Communication, and particularly a form of cultural education. Including how to create, lead and adapt rituals (in the widest sense of the word) to different contexts: academic, intercultural, personal or collective, religious, etc. I want to share some of my notes from these here on the blog! It's also really interesting how this course helped me approach through a different lense the weaving course that I'm going through now: understanding that symbols, patterns and images are also a form of language, and how Ritual through the use of these symbols shapes our own cultural systems of Education.

Second Course: "Unkhuñas, Altars and Ritual: with a focus on ofrendas and leaf reading".

{status: completed, organizing notes} I was able to attend some classes of another course on "Andean Ceremonies", I've been re-watching the recorded classes and taking more notes, particularly about the structure of our altars, duality and quaternity in our rituals, and how these are used differently depending on what we're using the altar for: to make an offering, or to perform divinations and diagnostics, two acts that are intrinsecally tied since one wouldn't do an offering without a prior reading, and viceversa, most divinations recommend doing some sort of relational offering to maintain or restore balance.

Third Course: "Illa Pacha and the Summer Solstice"

{status: completed, organizing notes} These are technically three separate classes/events I've participated in last december, from three different Elders. I'm personally considering these to be part of the same course in this personal curriculum, since they're all on related topics. December is not the end of the year for us Andeans (that's June!) but it's still a very significant time in our calendar. There's two particularly special events for me in this pacha, one being the sacred time of Illas (that I spoke about briefly in here, if you're curious!) that extends all the way into April-May in some cases, and the other being the Summer Solstice, right at the beginning of this pacha. Special rituals are dedicated to both, in gratitude for this past agricultural-religious cycle, and in preparation for reaping future blessings. I've already been able to go through the notes of one of them (already posted some on the blog) and I'm still going over the other two.

Fourth Course: "Andean Weaving"

Been inspired by Sinix YT video so tried to do a bunch of skulls as well. Had lots of fun. Ref used.

Now all I can think about is how big the library of Alexandria might have been, so much knowledge from so many places! That’s so cool! If I had a time machine I’d for sure go straight there just to at least look around once. I love libraries and learning about the first ever library just made me really happy. 

some portrait studies. left (troy copeland) was finished in a single 4-5hr session, while the right (brandi quiñones) took me around 2 days. so weird that the better looking portrait took wayyy less time to finish...will have to try and tackle brandi’s portrait again. definitely did not do her justice.