I Hope You Like Chaos

I honestly don't know much about chakras because it's not a part of what I do.

So this sort of thing comes down to "is this a closed practice or an open practice." Are the people whose culture this comes from okay with outsiders doing this or not.

Hey there Witchlings, I just wanted to remind you that  trickster spirits/harmful entities and the overall bad vibes will definitely flock around you like a moth to a flame when you do spirit work/deity work/ or any work with a mystical being at that.

Why Does It Happen?

INEXPERIENCE 

Often times, new witches never experienced Red Flags before and would trust anything willy-nilly. They will miss the ques and forgot the do’s and the don’ts, I know I did when I first started.

THE “CHOSEN ONE” SYNDROME

As human beings, we tend to love the idea of being “the one” and being special in our idol’s eyes, being the center of attention to put it bluntly. But remember, you are human, yes you can be a powerful witch in the future but you are still human. Witchlings tends to lap up and do anything that validates this specific need, and that my babies are one free ticket to a harmful spirit to latch on to you.

Oh don’t be embarrassed! We’ve all been through that phase before. You will slowly and surely grow out of it. 

How to Prevent It:

RESEARCH 

I cannot stress this enough how important it is to do your own research and read tons of books. Basically, learn anything you can on the entity you’re trying to work with/summon.

“But Sally! I don’t have any money to buy books or where to get them!” You say? Not to worry friend, the simple solution is to join Witchcraft Discord Servers that their main purpose is to archive pdf books in all things occult! 

CROSS CHECK

If you’ve notice, a lot of people has similar specific encounters with deities/spirits/demons/other mystical beings they work with. 

For example, when I worked with Apollo, there’s this specific melted honey and gold that is pouring constantly on my chest when He’s around and I never dream of Him (I usually communicate through dreams) and that’s a common thing witches who works under/with Apollo experience.

So be sure to cross check and double check your experiences!

WARD, CLEANSE AND CREATE A CIRCLE

Even though I rarely do this (cuz I’m lazy pls don’t follow my example) but it actually made a lot of difference when you do it, you’ll feel less drained, more secure, safe, and steady in performing whatever you’re trying to do. 

YOU ARE SPECIAL BUT REMEMBER…

You are also divine and you don’t need anyone or anything validate that, of course your future Patron/Matron will help you with the things you find lacking but They also want you to know you are your own powerhouse. 

The power comes from you and use it wisely.

I just had this discussion with my friends in a server that I own with @ladykalila​ about it and it was a fun and informative discussion! We share and talked about our cringe Baby Witchcraft days but hey, without them we will never grow and improve.

Please add if I miss any and correct me if I’m wrong!

You really don't need all the fancy bullshit every tumblr influencer will ever tell you to use. Here's my countdown ofaxtually useful shit.

A pocket knife, preferably with a wood handle. Use that bitch for everything, enchant it, carve symbols in it. It will absolutely be your best friend.

A good bag or backpack with a couple of plastic or ziploc bags in it. If you ever run off into the woods to find minerals, bones, plants, etc. A set aside bag and some things to store your treasures in becomes a necessity.

Basic divinatory sets. You don't have to buy fancy shit, learn to divine with playing cards and dice, or learn geomancy, lithomancy, or rune casting with homemade sets. A tarot deck is nice, but it isn't necessary when you've got so many other divinatory aids available.

A nice sized chunk of scrap cloth. When you process dried plants or sort new ones, that shit can and will get everywhere. A scrap piece of muslin or linen can help contain all of that mess and make clean up way easier.

A stash of good rocks. Draw sigils or symbols on those babies and leave them in the garden, the windowsill,property boundaries, under the stoop, etc. You can never have too many good rocks.

A pendulum, for fucks sake. The cards are going to be vague as hell when you're trying to figure out yes or no questions, and using a candle to communicate with spirits is really fucking hard outside. If you can't afford one, find a nice chunk of pointy quartz and learn to macrame.

A workspace. Everyone talks about having big fancy altars, but no one mentions that you need a good surface to do all your work on.

Storage, so much storage. I'm not talking about mason jars and pill bottles, I'm talking about where you put all the things you put in those jars. Having a workspace with drawers is immeasurably helpful.

A broom and water source. You're going to be cleaning up after yourself a lot, it's helpful to have a jug of water and a broom that stays by your workspace.

A mode of cleansing. I make a salt concoction to scatter around my workspace on short notice and store it close by.

On that note: SOMETHING TO CANCEL SPELLS WITH. Eventually, something will go wrong. You'll want to end that spell immediately. Have something to do it with.

A strainer. If you don't have a blender, rub dried plants across it to get a powder. If you do have a blender, you can strain that powder with it. Either way, if you intend to powder shit, get a strainer.

Small trays. It makes drying flowers so much easier if you have a small metal surface to contain them with- then just stick those suckers in a southern window and let em go.

Yarn/string scraps. Having a box or drawer of scraps makes trying this up to dry easier and a bit less wasteful.

A stash of offerings for whatever you work with. Honey for fae, coins for graveyard gatekeepers, alcohol for ancestors, etc.

Protective talismans or charms. Once you're into all of this stuff, you'll likely stick your nose in something you shouldn't. Having basic protection with you or in your workspace is incredibly important. A key and hagstone with red string is simple and effective.

A lighter- so many people forget the most basic shit. You're going to want to light shit on fire if you're a witch.

I’m not Romani. This is actually the first time anyone has said anything to me about it, and I’ve actually never seen anything about it before, so I can’t be sure if it’s a thing or not. I know that it is highly offensive to use Romani dress as a costume and to use racial slurs pertaining to the Romani people. As far as tarot goes, *shrug*

I know that the Tarot has been around for around six-hundred years and started out as a pack of playing cards. It seems to have gotten it’s start in France and/or Italy, so the Romani probably were involved in its inception, but it’s not really clear. However, as the original game was morphed into a divination tool, it was adapted to include all kinds of occult imagery from Christian, Jewish, Greek, and Egyptian mysticism. Each trump card was assigned a Hebrew letter, and each trump falls on a path between two Sephirot on the Tree of Life from Kabbalah (Qabalah?). The pip (numbered) cards all fall in the 10 Sephirot and every card is assigned an astrological correspondence.

There are tons of decks, made by and for a multitude of cultures and sub-cultures. As the origins of the original game aren’t very clear, I can’t say much about appropriation in this instance. Now, dressing up like a *gypsy* and doing tarot card readings? Yeah, that’s shitty, and needs to be discouraged. A) it’s using Romani people as a costume, and B) it’s stereotyping Romani women as fortune-tellers (who are usually looked upon with mistrust by outsiders). But Tarot as a whole has become so widespread and different from its origins that I don’t think it is that inappropriate to use.

I have been study witchcraft for years, but not actively practicing. I want to start practicing but i live in a semi-intolerant area and also have no real idea on how to start practicing.

Go to a local park or green space and have a picnic, just you and the sun. If you’ve got deities, invite them to join you. Pour out some water or juice as an offering.

If you’re able to have fire in your room, put out a scented candle or some LED pillars. Decorate with some silk foliage and seasonal trinkets. Call it “ambience.” You can do this year-round just by changing the decor from spring and summer greens to autumn leaves to winter pine boughs.

Make a stealth altar by putting a collection of knickknacks and decorations on a dresser or on top of a bookcase. You don’t have to have icons for this. Try substituting items that represent your deities or your practice. Add photos or images of things that are important to you, things that you want to protect or that inspire you.

Put magic into your cooking with seasonings or private blessings. No one needs to see or hear them. You’ll know that they’re there.

Imbue a piece of personal jewelry with a protection spell. It should be something you wear frequently. You just put it on and the spell surrounds you to keep you safe all day with minimal effort.

Attach spells to your everyday rituals. Put on a confidence glamour with your makeup. Stir energy and positivity into your morning drink. Activate your household protections when you lock the front door. Cleanse yourself when you take a shower, or cleanse your home while you’re doing housework.

If you have space for it, start a garden. It doesn’t have to be huge. Even a small potted plant will do. Build a relationship with green growing things and see how it lifts your mood and reminds you of your magic. Plus, it’s a great way to practice growth spells AND you can grow herbs or flowers to use in your spells.

And remember - even if you can’t cast spells or perform rituals, doing your research and increasing your knowledge of witchcraft STILL COUNTS as practicing!

Sure thing! Dead Man’s Dust is one of my magic powder recipes. Despite what the name would have you think, it does not contain any human remains. It is made of chili pepper (or powder), salt, basil, garlic, dill, and lemon peel. The current batch I have for sale also has a little bit of willow bark and angelica root for extra punch.

The reason why much of tumblr (or at least my side of it) tends to be inclusive in terms of who may call themselves a witch- to the point that a person may take the title with no pre-requesites is:

For a Very Long Time, there was a an ever-increasing bar of what counts as 'witchcraft.'

And the list of things you had to do in order to call yourself a witch were an ever-shifting landscape of pseudo-wicca and other practices with a strict structure. You could ask three different practitioners on the matter and get four different answers. Biases were everywhere: you couldn't be a witch if you didnt do a year and a day. If you didnt have a coven. If you didnt have a book of shadows. If you didnt worship the god and goddess. If you were gender nonconforming. If you did curses. If you were black (yes. Even that.)

Eventually, it got to a point where a bunch of us just said... enough. Enough, okay? If we can't agree where the line is, then there is no line. The line is gone now. Anyone can be a witch if they want to be.

There is no Head of Witchcraft to direct you to for your official membership card. Just do some spells or dont. You do a spell and want to be called a witch, you're a witch now. Do a spell and dont want to be called a witch? Call yourself something else.

Dont do spells? Maybe you do divination? Maybe you're figuring it out but still want to be called a witch? Maybe you like the idea and the aesthetic but dont do anything with it?

Call yourself whatever you want.

This post is made by a TME person who thinks that trans women calling them out is being “judged.” Then, because they tagged it so much they’ve made it easier for trans women who reblog it to be targetted. I would not be surprised if OP was a crypto tbhh

Stop reblogging or even making these posts if you’re tme and you want to be an ally to trans women in any way.

Yes TERFs as a whole primarily hurt transgender people (largely trans women – but not exclusively). I am not denying that.

But TERFs also are a problem in the Witchcraft community on this site because they come after and attack any witches who aren’t cis women and say they cannot be witches. They send anonymous hate in ask boxes, they spread lies and misinformation in the tags. This is a legitimate problem, and denying it exists doesn’t help anyone.

Great question!

I haven’t personally read anything by this author but I tried to get a small scoop on him. This is just something I came across from @breelandwalker and worth taking note of.

“Raymond Buckland:

In addition to the Burning Times nonsense, we have Buckland to thank for perpetuating his own interpretation of the Threefold Law that’s led to so much confusion over the ethics of using baneful magic. It’s his interpretation that we see in Ravenwolf’s works and their popularity (and the dearth of other viewpoints) has resulted in the prevalence of the idea that using magic for self-serving or less-than-friendly purposes will result in some sort of exponential cosmic retribution upon the caster.

The original context of the Rule of Three, as presented in Gardner’s works, speaks of a symbolic ritual flogging for new initiates into a coven. Whatever the new recruits are given, they then give back threefold. And thus, the older witches, knowing what is to come, strike gently.

In magical terms, this tells us not that we will get what we give, but that we should give what we get. Whatever we are dealt, we should give back three times over, for good or for fill. If someone does you a good turn, do a kindness for them or pay it forward. If someone wrongs you, repay them accordingly. We have a right to protect ourselves and our near-and-dear through witchcraft, aggressively if necessary.

The universe is a very busy place. The Powers That Be don’t always have time to reward or punish people for what they do, and karma doesn’t kick in until the end of the reincarnation cycle, when all our lives are spent and all our lessons learned. Sometimes, whatever justice there is to be had has to come from earthly hands.

If you’ve been doing some reading on witchcraft and spellcraft, it is likely that you’ve seen the word ‘taglock‘ crop up a few times.

If you haven’t, worry not.

A taglock is something that has been used in witchcraft for a very (very), long time and all it is, is an object or substance that forges a strong link between your target and your magick.

Traditionally, taglocks are things such as blood, spit, hair or nail clippings, – direct DNA. The use of DNA creates a stronger magickal bond. Nowadays, however, snagging someone’s blood in their sleep is generally frowned upon and quite difficult, so suitable replacements include cigarette butts, used tissues, used plastic cutlery and easily obtained things of that ilk.

You will notice that taglocks are often used in curses and hexes as it binds the target to the spell and therefore amplifies the magick and ensures that it affects the intended person. They are used in binding spells for the same reason; to tie the person to the magick.

So not everyone is going to agree with me, but personally I think things only have the meaning you put into them.

Like I see those correspondence lists for colors and crystals and whatevers, and I'm always left asking "How did you come up with this list?" They're never sourced. There's no explanation. Half the time they're copied from some other list which was copied from some other list which was copied from some other list... and I often think "some Witch made this up one night at 3am and said it confidently enough and everyone copied it."

And guess what -- often those lists work. But I honestly think they only work because people using them agree with the meanings enough where it makes them work. Item A represents X only because the witch has designated it as such.

And, again, there are going to be folks who disagree with me. But this is how I see it.

(Obviously I am not talking about herbs and the like, which can also have a physiological effect on a person and you should always verify any sources on anything you take internally, apply to your skin, or inhale -- and I mean like medical sources)

The snake thing is a very apt example. I work with fetchdeers/fylgjur in my practice, which are spiritual companions that take the forms of animals (there's a bunch on it in my Dabbler's Week episode). One of the folks on the Nerd & Tie Network Discord mentioned they'd done the exercise to reach out to one of their fylgja and ended up having a deer appear to them. Now, some people see deer as graceful or peaceful. This person and I who both live around deer in real life have a different take: Asshole agents of chaos.

Okay, so I'm just going to say this -- a lot of books are wrong.

Sit down, this is going to be long. Sorry.

I don't know who you're reading (is it Silver Ravenwolf?), but there were a lot of sources from the 90s and late 80s that tried to sanitize Wicca to make it seem "less scary" to the mainstream (which was still in the tail end of the Satanic Panic).

I don't like describing the god and goddess having "light" or "dark" sides, because it's applying human morality to higher powers which... aren't human. I tend to describe them as more indifferent than anything, but that's just me splitting hairs. So magic drawn from them is neither good nor evil, it just is.

But a lot of Wicca sources then play up the "threefold rule" which supposedly says whatever you do -- good or bad -- comes back to you times three. That seems to contradict the idea that magic opperates outside of our morality. This is because he threefold rule is a bunch of bullshit.

It's not real, and wasn't part of Wicca originally.

The source is a passage in the fiction novel High Magic's Aid written by Gardner, and what that book says is that a WITCH is supposed to return to other's what's done to them -- not the universe. Gardner never wrote about a universal threefold rule, and neither did Doreen Valiente (who is about as equally responsible for the creation of Wicca but doesn't get as much credit).

After Gardner's death (and after Valiente had split from his coven), Monique Wilson came up with the backasswards universal threefold rule, and Buckland picked it up and ran with it. And then sold a shit ton of books.

Which other authors copied without fact checking. Like... how would anyone even learn that such a rule existed too? Wicca doesn't claim its creators had a divine revelation. It's just nonsense.

...sorry got on a rant there.

The one thing I will say is that Wicca has a single rule which discourages a lot of baneful magic, and that's the Rede. "An it harm none, do as ye will."

The rede (which means "advice") says that a Wiccan SHOULD try not to cause harm. It's what we're aspiring to. But, like, it's not built into the universe or anything. It's just a thing we're trying to do. It's not really any different than Wil Wheaton saying "Don't be a dick"

So yeah...

But you asked about the "no negative magic" stuff...

So in many ways the Rede asks you not to do that, but how we interpret harm is so hard sometimes. Like, isn't allowing someone to harm you causing harm? So cursing someone trying to cause you harm might reduce the net harm in the world? Like... cursing a murderer is good.

Also sometimes we're guessing.

But, like, importantly, if ya do mess up, the universe isn't going to enforce it. You just try better next time.

wonder who that weiner was.

MAYBE

POPULAR

Cuz they were naked, and it was cold out, and they got pneumonia.

…

wonder who that weiner was.

MAYBE

POPULAR

Cuz they were naked, and it was cold out, and they got pneumonia.

…