Milk Tea Witch

You know those little thread tangles you sometimes find when they fall out of cheaply made clothes, and for a second you think it’s a bug, and even after you realize it’s just thread, you still don’t want to pick it up because it’s gross? That feeling is what we’re harnessing for this hex.

It’s not “vegan wool”, it’s plastic.

It’s not “vegan leather”, it’s plastic.

It’s not “vegan fur”, it’s fucking plastic. It’s all plastic.

It’s all fucking plastic, and every time you wash it, or damage it, or try to dispose of it, that plastic winds up in the water, in the earth, in the air.

Hell, the damage has already done when the fucking thing’s been made. As the OP says, it’s all oil and oil products; it creates pollution just to produce synthetic fabrics and materials, even before you try to throw them away, which, I mean, good luck with that.

A lot of vegan ideology is built up around a very superficial set of ethics that are supposedly about protecting animals, wildlife and the environment, but they fall apart when you look even a little bit below the surface. Every time you eschew an animal-based product in favour of something “synthetic” for the sake of “saving an animal’s life”, you’re creating pollution and trash that won’t go away for thousands of years, damaging the Earth and making life so much worse for countless animals and people.

When you live somewhere with -40C winter temperatures, you realize that pragmatism and warmth trump all other considerations.

I’m in and out of cars and buildings all day, every day. I have to dress for the weather and fur is hands down one of the warmest things you can wear — ask the fucking Inuit.

So you know what I do?

I check consignment stores. I check estate auctions. I get family heirloom furs.

I buy furs that are literally older than I am, in styles that would consign them to the dumpster, and then get them tailored to fit. My fur earmuffs? Salvaged fur from a coat that was ripped and functionally useless. My fur short coat? A fur that got raggedy and moth-eaten at the bottom and so was hemmed to hip height. My long fur coat is almost fifteen years older than I am, and I’m thirty one years old. Do that math.

Yeah?

Imma wear linen when the weather looks like this:

I am NOT going to wear hemp, linen or cotton when the weather looks like this:

When the weather outside is frightful, I’mma make like an Inuit and dress like this:

Would it be the:

-reuse of fabrics and furs that are generally anywhere from 10-50 years old?

-recycling and repurposing of old or otherwise unusable materials like leather and fur to make smaller items like jackets, vests, gloves, hats and balaclavas?

-support for Indigenous traditions, handicrafts and artisans?

-recognition of the fact that there are very few plant-based products that will stand up to winters where the average temperature is anywhere from -20 to -50

I know, I know. Your ethics are itchy and it’s very simple to talk that good shit.

But let me introduce you to a Canadian phenomena: frostbite.

Frostbite occurs when your cells freeze. Your cells.

Ice crystals begin to form in cells in temperatures lower than -4C, which is what Canadians call “spring, fucking finally”.

In the teeth of winter, you get maybe ten hours of sunlight a day and your highest temperature is still double digits below 0C and the weather channel is saying “WEATHER WARNING: skin freezing in 30SECONDS”, and the government has put out a WEATHER EMERGENCY: EXTREME COLD WARNING.

When the weather is that severe, we don’t actually get the luxury of waxed cotton, woollen peacoats and a few layers of linen.

Well, that’s not true. They DO, actually. They get wet from sweat and then get clammy and suck the heat out of you, leading to frostbite. Polyester is plastic, and I avoid that, because it’s bad for the environment.

You know what actually keeps you warm when it hits -50F? Wool, fur, and down. All animal products, all renewable and biodegradable, and all of which will last years with proper care.

Ah, yes. Truely, sheep live terribly. (Note; sheep wool is useless unles they have good pasture they’re raised on)

Ah, yes, the sheep are so mistreated when they’re sheared. A whole four minutes and they’re done. It’s like giving a fussy toddler a haircut.

And if they’re NOT shorn, you get flystrike, which I’m not going to post a pic of here because it is very unpleasant. Basically, flies lay eggs on the thick wool and the larvae eat the sheep’s skin off. It can be fatal.

https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/health-welfare/livestock-diseases/parasitic-diseases/fly-strike-warning-warm-wet-weather-continues

Tanned hides work great as a base for moccasins, because it’s thick enough to protect your feet from the heat of the packed dirt, and thin enough that your feet don’t sweat to death inside of them. In boots, I don’t trust any material that isn’t leather or reptile skin to protect me from animals or the elements.

Sacrificing a few cow and sheep for multigenerational goods actually saves more wildlife than any amount of cotton, wool, hemp and especially plastic.

Reading these books needs a good ‘bullshit detector’.  There are a few telling signs:

1) Look at the book’s bibliography. A bibliography can give you, if it’s a good one, the primary sources an author used, and can give you an idea of other books to read. A bad bibliography can save you time - if a book hasn’t got one, or it’s a very short one, or it references only other neo-pagan texts, it’s not going to be long on facts and you might be better off reading something else.

2) Magic and witchcraft aren’t inherently religious. If the book implies or states that a neo-pagan religion is necessary in order to practice witchcraft, it’s probably not worth the read.

3) If the book says it’s about a neo-pagan religion of some kind, but talks endlessly of spells instead, it’s probably a waste of your time if you’re looking for the religious practice first. Some neo-pagan faiths will involve practicing magic, but others don’t.

4) Neo-pagan books that talk about ancient matriarchal religions spanning Europe, a 'Great Goddess’ and all that jazz, are based in the historical theories of Margaret Murray. They were all fairly thoroughly debunked, but it still lingers in neo-pagan circles.

5) Know that things like the 'Triple Goddess’ and the Wheel of the Year are modern inventions - they aren’t ancient, and forcing ancient deities or practices into those concepts will not always work or be appropriate.

6) If the deities you’re reading about are described as being very different from their historical selves, it’s probably a good sign that author hasn’t done their home work very well. 

7) 'The Burning Times’ did happen - but it was not a systematic genocide of a pagan religion or practitioners of magic. What you had was a mass hysteria created by the church, and taken advantage of by greedy people. They had no qualms in killing unloved neighbours or relatives for their property, with witchcraft as a scapegoat. Maybe a few witches died - but so did thousands of Christians who were unfortunate enough to be disliked, or without family, or to be a better farmer or gardener. 'Nine Million’ is certainly hyperbole, and is not factually accurate.

8) Be aware of things that don’t fit: for example, we have what’s called the 'potato test’. Potatoes are not native to Europe and were not discovered until explorers began invading South America. So an author that talks about an ancient Irish potato deity, for example, is absolutely full of it.

9) Authors who are patronizing and talk down to their readers, no matter the subject, should be tossed on their ears. You’re a beginner, perhaps, but you’re not stupid and you’re not a child. You don’t need the author to coddle you or 'simplify’ the information - their assumption that you do is just rude. If you wouldn’t let someone talk to you like that in real life, why would you read a book that does the same thing?

10) Whenever you can, space your neo-pagan or magical reading out with primary sources and proper non-fiction history and anthropology texts. A primary source is going to give you the closest thing to being there, at whatever time and place you’re looking at. Academic texts can be a chore to get through, but they’re going to give you the grounding you need to have a detector of your own.

Read what you can get your hands on. At first, like you said, it’s hard to tell the gold from the dross, but you’ll get the hang of it. A couple of really awful books will give you a guideline, and you’ll find authors you can trust vs. authors you can’t.

Read critically. Don’t be afraid to be a skeptic.  Similar doesn’t equal same - cultures have similar concepts but it doesn’t make their gods or their practices the same thing with different names. If you think something sounds like horseshit or too good to be true, it probably is.

You don’t need tools. Everyone tells us that, and it may well be true. But let’s be real, they do legit help you focus especially when you’re new, and witchcraft is all about focus. For me, as an empath, they also reduce the amount of energy I have to expend on a spell. Beyond that, hell, there’s just something nice about physical ritual and creation. And why wouldn’t there be, with a practice based on crafting? We all have our thing we connect to, process-wise. Personally, I have a much easier time focusing and making witchy shit happen if something’s on fire at some point in the process. Mmm, fire. Anyway…

But just because you want or need tools doesn’t mean you need to spend every cent you make on it the way it sometimes seems when you browse a pagan store, or even online witch communities. And for a tradition that’s always been primarily about empowering the oppressed and the have-nots, personally, it irritates the hell out of me that so much of modern witchery has gotten… well, so elitist and classist. You’re not witch enough unless your grimoire is made of the hide of baby otters and your rosemary was harvested by Indigo children in the enchanted forests of Dunedin.

Fuck that.

I, for one, wish I saw more inexpensive, DIY, and found tool witchery portrayed as not only doable, but meaningful and beautiful.

So here are my ideas on how you can get a good flying leap on your witchy cabinet (or witchy rucksack, if you’re nomadic or homeless) for under £10. I’ve done some of these myself and I’ll post pics of how awesome these can really look.

What you need for…

Sigil craft:

Nothing. You can write sigils in water if you want. Personally, I often make sigils with honey in the bottom of my tea cup.

But if you want to make your own, which requires a fair bit of trial and error, or ya just really like writing shit down…

Pen

Paper

You probably already have these. If you don’t, then buy a packet of cigarette rolling papers. They’re thin and a bit see-through (perfect for tracing your sigil if need be) and obviously they’re designed to burn cleanly if you want to burn them to activate them. 50 to a pack. £1 or less.

Buy a pen. Or knick one at the desk of your local annoying government agency. No judgment. Less than £1.

Sigils can be charged in a variety of ways that are absolutely free. Energy manipulation, holding them to a pulse point on your body, tearing, even visualizing while having an orgasm.

Candles:

Tesco has 100 tea lights for £2.

Lighter and/or matches. Anywhere. Under £1. Matches are sometimes free.

Divination:

Do you have a rock or stone? Does it have a hole in it, or can you put one in it? Stick an earing wire through it and attach a necklace chain. Pendulum. Shazam. Here’s mine.

Does your rock not have a hole in it? Make some netting out of thread, tie it around the rock, and then use either more thread or a necklace chain for the support. Pendulum. Double shazam.

Got some playing cards? Cartomancy.

Got anything that plays music? Shufflmancy.

Got anything with a shiny screen, or access to it? Scrying.

Got a stick? Slice it up and draw some runes on the cross sections.

Got water? Hydromancy.

Got a candle? Cyromancy. Pyromancy. Ceromancy. ALL THE -MANCY’S.

Herbs:

Look in your cabinet if you have one. You probably have at least salt and pepper. Both highly useful, especially salt. If not, both together will cost you under £1 at Tesco.

Or you could always just swipe some packets from McDonalds. Again, no judgment.

If you want more, go down to your nearest Asian or Indian market. That is where the bargain herbs will be – often large quantities for under a pound. It may be harder to buy small quantities, but it’s worth a look before you go to the supermarket.

Also, if you have the domestic stability and the green thumb to do so, it’s worth looking into whether it would be cheaper to grow your own.

Also consider what kinds of local plants you can find growing free, and would be useful to you. Dandelions? They’re everywhere, and super magical. I use the little purple flowers that grow in the cracks in the concrete outside my door. I don’t even know what they are (therefore I am careful not to consume them), but they represent home for me.

Crystals:

Any piece of jewelery you have that has any sort of stone on it.

Any piece of glass; use it like quartz, although it seems to drain a bit faster.

Rocks you find. There’s tons of pretty and magical stones to be found in forests and beaches and gardens.

Coal. Yup, coal. Actually, um, guys? I LOVE coal for energy absorption and clearing. You should try it.

Containers for storage and spell jars/bags:

Any tupperware you might have.

Any containers you might empty (sauce jars, etc).

Ziplock bags.

For highly mobile containers, cut an inch or two of a straw, melt the end to seal it, fill with whatever, and melt the other end to seal that too. Free at any fast food place that has soda fountains.

Wand:

Find a stick you like. This is a environmental craft, dude. Get in the spirit!

Chalice/cauldron/stuff for putting stuff in (we’re going cheap here, so multi-purpose is a thing):

Any cup or bowl. Hit the pound store if for some reason you don’t have one, or want a special one.

An ashtray. Possibly one you found sitting outside, looking sad and lonely at a restaurant. No judgment.

Athame:

Any knife.

Or even, again, a fast food place that has plastic knives that you can deck out if you want.

Or an awesomely sharp chipped rock.

Besom:

Any broom.

Find a pretty reed and use that. Great for a mobile mini-besom for altar use. Or lash a bunch of reeds or thin twigs together onto a long stick and make an actual full-size broom. Results can be frickin’ beautiful, by the way. I made one that I love. All found materials. Behold (this was right after the reeds dried from soaking to soften them, so it wasn’t as fluffy as it is now).

Travel altar for nomadic/homeless witches:

Just some examples with the stereotypical altar layout, but really, you can use anything that’s small enough for your needs…

Any little container. Altoid tin, old spice jar, jewelery box, whatever. You could even use a piece of fabric and bundle everything up in there, and it could double as an altar cloth when you untie it.

Thimble, bottle cap, or folded tinfoil for cup/chalice for water.

Birthday candles, anything red or orange, chilli pepper or spice for fire.

Dirt for earth. I mean, obviously. What’s super cool about this is that you can take it from wherever you are, which gives you an automatic connection.

Found feather for air.

Whatever the hell you want for your focus point. Draw a pentagram on paper. Use your favourite ring you wear everywhere. Use a pretty rock you like.

Most of these can either be found quite easily or gotten for less than a pound.

Grimoire:

Any notebook.

Make a digital grimoire. Probably the cheapest way to make it pretty too. I mean, have you seen what people can do with a simple Tumblr blog? If you do it in Word or Google Drive, you can download all kinds of cool page borders, free.

So there ya go. And thing is, a lot of witches won’t even want or need all of these things. Not into crystals? Don’t get any! Ain’t got time for altars? Don’t make one! So in reality, a lot of witches could spend considerably less than the cost of getting all of these.

But if you did decide to acquire all of this, now you have materials for sigil craft, candle magic, a million kinds of divination, basic staples of herbal and crystal magic, storage containers, spell jar containers, both a regular and travel-size altar, and a grimoire. That’s a pretty good set of kit.

At best, you spent literally nothing at all. Most people will already have most of these things anyway.

Some may need to buy some of these things. But at the end of the day, the vast majority of these things can be found or made for free quite easily, with a couple of exceptions. By my best guess, poor or homeless witches in most places wouldn’t need any more than approximately £3 to £5 if they were starting with nothing, their goal was to acquire something from every category, and they could not ask loved ones to spot them supplies.

Some of these are not as over-the-top gorgeous as the artisanal stuff people buy off Etsy. But you know what? It’s sure as hell authentic. This is what witches have done for eons: use what’s around them. Witchcraft is not about flashing how much money you have. And nothing’s stopping you from decorating with whatever you have.

Witchcraft is for everyone, not just folks who have £200 to blow on an athame.

Even if you have the £200 to blow on an athame, there is something really rewarding about crafting things yourself. This is, after all, witchcraft. I am privileged enough at this point in my life that I could have bought a lot of the stuff I decided to make or find (and sometimes making is more expensive than buying, though it’s fun and meaningful), but honestly, my DIY and scavenged tools usually speak to me more than my purpose-bought tools do.

I think the American Christian right’s persecution complex actually partly mitigates the threat that they are. It’s hard for a specific event to happen that will prompt these people to take action as a focused unit, because they’ve believed their whole lives that christianity is on the brink of annihilation by liberal Muslim hippy transgender gay people and that they live in an oppressive hellscape of mandatory vaccinations, liberal media and chemtrails.

Inktober day 16 - Wild (hunt)

Every year I have to draw at least one inktober with hounds like these.XD 

Yes, their original folklore is often very sad, but the concept of a supernatural child raised by humans (and a human raised by magic creatures) has so much potential for modern, more positive fantasy. And there’s a lot more variety to changeling myths than you might think! So here are my favourites:

The old changeling. Present in both Celtic (most notably Scottish and Irish) and Germanic folklore these are elves, faeries or dwarves left in place of the taken child that are actually fully grown and usually very old. This is the type of changeling that you meet most in simple folklore and they are usually found out by doing something surprising, so they accidentally betray their age and flee. They are usually described as ugly, withered little creatures.

The Celtic changeling child. A real faerie child, usually sickly and small by human standards. Sometimes they never speak and they often have strange eating habits. What sets these changelings apart is that their elven parents usually still care for them. They come to collect them if maltreated or secretly visit to entertain, wash or feed them. Some of these changelings, unlike their ever-ailing, never growing siblings, are described as beautiful and possessing hidden talents, like being able to dance or play music masterfully.

The Germanic changeling child. Once again a real child, left behind by the nixies from the water or the mysterious folk that live underneath the hills. (The brothers Grimm often speak of “devils” leaving changelings, but they are far too eager to call any old folkloric creature a devil). These inhuman children are said not to live long, either seven years, eighteen or nineteen years, after which they may “go home”. Unlike the Celtic changeling child they are often described as insatiably hungry and often very physically strong. They may even use this strength to be helpful. Just like with the Celtic changeling the original parents can often be persuaded to come take their child back, because they still care for it.

The Scandinavian troll changeling. Like the Germanic changelings these troll children are always hungry, but they usually have no trouble growing up. They are cheerful, noisy and disruptive, love to have fun and often end up stealing food and running amok. They are described as a handful to deal with rather than malicious and their troll parents often keep an eye on them as well and may be persuaded to take them back. In some stories the grown troll changelings eventually find their way back to their troll family, because they never really fit in with humans.

The Scandinavian log changeling. This type of changeling is also left by trolls, but instead of leaving a child of their own they leave a log of wood that has been changed to look like a human and then given life. They behave very opposite to the troll changeling, they are sedate and quiet, prefer being alone and lazing about in the woods. In some Scottisch stories the fae also leave a block of wood, but in these cases it is only glamour that makes it look like a child and it is never truly alive. Interestingly, the folklore of the Shetland Islands specifically includes Scandinavian trolls, there called “trows” or “the grey neighbours”. One story states that a farmer caught a couple of trolls in the process of carving a likeness of his wife and baby to leave behind while taking them both.