A Low Moon

We will struggle to explain to them: no, no, this book was actually completely revolutionary for its time. When Kimmerer talks about the honorable harvest, learning to listen to the teachings of the plants, understanding nature as animate and alive, and the relationship of reciprocity and mutual dependence between humans and other life forms, these are ideas that were genuinely new and mind-blowing to us when we were young.

It wasn't just those in power that saw nature as "Resources" or some kind of mechanical system that would be better off without human interference—almost no one else knew another way to think. Yes, yes, we knew about symbiosis, but we hardly ever applied it to ourselves. Kimmerer is serious when she says her cultural perspective was almost wiped out; the culture we inherited as children literally didn't have the concepts she is talking about, and that's why the book was so important!

We will tell the students that it would have been weird even among "environmentalists" of the time to think of trees and insects as your family. I mean, well, yes, we knew that everything was related, but we thought Charles Darwin was the first to come up with that. You don't understand, we will say, most of these ideas about living in right relationship with nature would have been thought of as extra-scientific, sentimental or spiritual crap.

"Did you just not know where food and clothes came from?" they will ask, with eyebrows raised. Yes, but back then, food was mostly grown in enormous fields of only one crop where everything else had been killed with chemicals. We didn't really think of agricultural environments as "ecosystems"—"nature" was a separate thing—I mean yeah, we harvested logs from forests, but that was different. No, we basically thought Earth was divided into "human uses" and "nature," and that people shouldn't be in the "nature" parts. No, really!

@cipher-the-sidhe I realize that I still have much to learn about imagining the future...cause there will be a future where there is no "we" such as the one imagined here, and there will be no shortage of Indigenous educators for whom this perspective was never jarring...

I will say, though, for myself and many others, learning from Indigenous writers and teachers about this perspective wasn't exactly "jarring," but rather... affirming? almost? It was like seeing something with dazzling clarity all of a sudden when I'd been peering at its vague shape through a dirty, grimy window all my life. It was like many things inside me suddenly felt safe for me to express and explore when before they'd seemed like something I had to push into the realm of the unconscious, to "keep in check" because they were irrational or childlike.

I'm writing about this in my journal trying to explore it: I think there is actually some kind of trauma associated with this dysfunctional relationship with Earth? I think children being denied interaction with wild plants through the destructive practice of the Lawn, and being able to interact with wild places only through scheduled excursions to specific places set aside as "preserves" is incredibly damaging to the human spirit.

My love and longing for forests as a child was excruciating. I think the reason it took 21 years of life, 2 1/2 years of college and a devastating mental and emotional breakdown to pursue this love in my life was that I'd repressed it in some way.

When I think of how it felt to be asked the question "What if the Earth loves you back?" I want to cry and cry and cry. I ached for that love so much as a child and then I became callous and numb in trying to accept that I would never receive it.

But what happens when you understand that nature has a language you Can learn, and that it is not indifferent to you (nature is never indifferent, it reacts to everything. The forest knows when you traverse it, the crops react to the cycles of human harvest, the medicines grow with reaction to our movements and uses, and even the ocean- which is often portrayed as the most indifferent realm of nature- makes use of the bodies of the drowned. No part of nature just doesn’t react at all to us, as if we were alien to it)?

That forces you to reevaluate your relationship with everything, including other human beings. And eliminating the mindset that humans are inherently a cancer on nature, as if we are not Part of our ecosystems, promotes a deeper consideration and compassion for each other.

Through the lens of animism, we can view the Old Ones as the exalted spirits of ancient witches who rose to power through their art. In fact, Freya, who wields the distaff, may be associated with the trance-inducing tasks of fiber-work, and thereby, spirit flight. Isn’t the Devil, with his animal hide and horns or antlers, suggestive of a primitive magician wearing the skin and headdress of an animal to connect with the spirit of the herd, to bridge the gap between the human and animal worlds? These beings are mysterious and potent with lore and wisdom, but most folk witches don’t worship them in the sense that religious people worship gods. Instead, we work with them. We build loving, trusting relationships with them. We make offerings. We don’t constantly ask for favors. In short, we treat them as great ancestors.

I am absolutely fucking serious. The original meme, without the big red denial, is someone's attempt to fucking kill people.

There is NO SAFE DOSAGE of pennyroyal oil. Even Mother Earth News says there's no reason to use pennyroyal essential oil for ANYTHING, even topically or as a fragrance, for fuckssake! That should give you some idea about how dangerous it is!

Pennyroyal tea, plant matter in hot water, is a traditional abortifacient. It is *incredibly* dangerous, induces abortion by bringing the body close to organ failure (and frequently pushing the system right over the edge, because dosage is impossible to meter), but I would drink a gallon of it before I took a half-teaspoon of pennyroyal essential oil.

Two teaspoons, taken across 48 hours, has successfully killed someone.

Three teaspoons taken as a single dosage killed the consumer within THREE HOURS.

There is NO SAFE DOSAGE! FOR PENNYROYAL OIL INTERNALLY! NONE!

Especially if you're not in Europe, it doesn't make sense to learn about plants that either don't grow in your area or have a totally different role in the ecosystem in your area. Plant symbolism and "meaning" generally is connected to a real quality about the plant. It becomes nonsense if you remove it from the specific ecological context

Another weird thing about "witchy" herbalism is that it assigns plants really abstract meanings when those plants are medicinal plants with concrete effects

These two images from Pinterest say Yarrow represents Courage, and I can see how they got there because of the association between Yarrow and soldiers /warriors, but the reason for that association is that Yarrow leaves promote blood clotting so they are used to stop bleeding from wounds.

This is something I have given a try myself, a yarrow leaf is effective for stopping bleeding from a cut. It is a good trick to know if you are out gardening a lot.

I am fascinated by the very abstract view of plants here...it says certain plants represent something but doesn't indicate how they might be used or even what part of the plant might be used.

It's important to have an understanding of these plants grounded in realism I think, because plants with Witchy Associations are usually medicinal plants and medicinal plants usually can be toxic or dangerous because, well, they have an Effect on your body, that's why they're medicinal. The line between medicine and poison is very very thin.

If a plant is said to "purify," sometimes that means the plant gets rid of parasites or toxins, and it does that by making you shit your guts out, aka slightly poisoning you. If a plant supposedly "regulates hormones," its possible that means it was used to induce menstruation, which is how folks in pre-modern times talked about causing an abortion, and that means it poisons you just enough to make your body reject a pregnancy. Unfortunately it is easy to poison yourself just enough to make your body reject being alive.

If a plant is associated legitimately with divination, connecting to the spirit world, psychic powers, etc. that would often mean that it's hallucinogenic. This is another reason why it's important not to mix symbolic/metaphorical associations and real effects of plants. Jimsonweed/Sacred Datura WILL "connect you to the spirit world," in a very not-metaphorical way that gives people PTSD

The Poison Path Herbal is a book I recently read about nightshades and other sacred, toxic herbs. It goes into the ways alkaloids act upon the body, working with the spirits of those plants safely, and the histories of each in folklore—and very much does not take any of that stuff lightly.

Someone once told me that corgis are so inbred that that they have to be artificially inseminated in order to procreate.

I knew this was untrue because my roommate used to breed them and they occasionally had some 'woopsie babies' when the neighbors dog got in.

I told him 'no, I dont think that's true.'

And he swore by it because the person who told him this was a college professor. We later found out that the professor was perpetuating a common myth. But because the professor spoke with a sense of authority and this friend had no experience with corgis, he had no reason not to believe her.

You see where I'm going with this?

The new age community, in my experience, is full of people who want to learn. They want to know things the way the experts know things. They want to feel the universe the way that the people who talk about it feel it.

So someone coming to them with a message about the universe, presented as a fact and not as an opinion, will result in that person taking on a leadership role whether they mean to or not.

And it's so much part of the culture in new age circles (and witchy circles. And pagan circles. And evangelist circles. You see where this is going) that people just brush it off like 'oh thats the way it is here- people just make stuff up and call it mysticism.'

And that exact culture is why it's so easy for abusers to become leaders.

So when I say that I wish people would use 'I believe' statements instead of presenting everything as facts, please believe me when I say that it's coming from a place of experience and not a sense of authority.

What IS important for beginner witches is learning mundane skills like discernment and critical thinking. Because when you're just getting started, the most dangerous thing you are going to encounter is other practitioners preying on newbies. Know how to spot grooming. Know how to spot cult-like behavior. Know how to read books critically. Know how to spot bullshit when you see it.

Ace of Swords and The Hanged Man

So that bizarre transcendent high you get when the idea of "reality shifting" or "crystal vibrations" or like. Whatever the hell that "manifesting" shit is, when it -clicks- for you, and its like suddenly the entire fabric of reality suddenly makes sense?

That's not a sign that you've unlocked the intangible secrets of the universe. That's a sign that your brain is hardwired to find and exploit logical shortcuts and loopholes and patterns and it thinks it just found one, so you got hopeful and excited and wondrous and received a dopamine hit on top.

And really, I'd just keep my thoughts to myself, except I've experienced these false-positive "revelations" before too, and looking around there is a concerning amount of fake-spititual not-medicine junk being pushed around, opening people up to predatory cults and pyramid schemes that are doing very, very well and it's really fucking scary

And like.

For centuries, people of all walks of life have turned to tarot to divine what may lay ahead and reach a higher level of self-understanding.

The cards’ enigmatic symbols have become culturally ingrained in music, art and film, but the woman who inked and painted the illustrations of the most widely used set of cards today – the Rider-Waite deck from 1909, originally published by Rider & Co. – fell into obscurity, overshadowed by the man who commissioned her, Arthur Edward Waite.

Now, over 70 years after her death, the creator Pamela Colman Smith has been included in a new exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York highlighting many underappreciated artists of early 20th-century American modernism in addition to famous names like Georgia O’Keeffe and Louise Nevelson.