a hundred thousand unmapped stars

As many folks in the witchcraft community say, "mundane before magic." That is, before assuming that your problems have a supernatural cause or require a magical solution, look into mundane causes and fixes first. So, I made a list of stuff to consider and try out before committing yourself to something supernatural/magical. This of course a generalized list, so not everything is going to apply to everyone. (The kind of people who get mad at a bean soup video because they don't like beans are advised to skip the rest of this post.)

(This is inspired by that bit of advice going around that's like, "If you hate everyone, eat", etc, which is very good advice.)

I know some of this stuff might sting the ego a little bit, but in all of my experience these problems really are super common among people who feel or suspect certain things. And a little kick to the ego is a lot easier to deal with than the fallout of completely detaching yourself from the real world.

If you feel like the apocalypse is near: examine your living and financial situations (are they stable?), cut down on your consumption of bad or politically-charged news, examine your childhood religious/political indoctrination, and socialize with normies more.

If you feel like you're under spiritual attack or you're constantly sensing bad energies: examine your unresolved tensions with people, work on your social skills (especially your ability to set and maintain boundaries), and examine whether you might have PTSD or C-PTSD (such as from childhood trauma).

If you're stuck on the idea of meeting your soulmate: work on your self-image, work on your social skills, and socialize more.

If you feel like a supernatural or divine being stuck in a mortal body: examine whether you might have autism and/or ADHD.

If you show symptoms of trauma but can't think of a reason you'd be traumatized: examine whether you might have autism and/or ADHD, whether adults were more supportive or invalidating when you were a child, whether you were more often included or excluded at school, and how stable and relaxed your home life actually was.

If you feel like you have a purpose presently unknown to you: build a skill or get into a hobby. Also socialize more.

If you feel called to be a spiritual healer or teacher: examine whether adults emotionally neglected or invalidated you as a child.

If you feel like the gods hate you: examine how your parents treated you when you were growing up, and examine childhood religious indoctrination.

If you feel like you've been cursed for a long time: examine whether you might have ADHD, autism, some form of mental illness, some form of chronic illness, poor social skills, or shitty doctors.

If all of the spells you cast seem to be weak: work on your self-image (including your faith in yourself) and work on your social skills (including your ability to set and maintain boundaries).

When I was younger, I was extremely bitter and burned out by the holiday rituals I grew up with. They either meant mandatory attendance with biological family I was trying to escape, alcohol-fuelled parties, lots of hollow capitalism, or religion I didn't have or want. But after two years of doing nothing significant to mark time in the year-- no Christmas, no Thanksgiving, no birthday even because I'd moved out and didn't know how to celebrate it as an adult-- I realized how much I missed having something.

A gathering. A celebration. An event. A significance.

So yeah, we're inventing new ones. Pick dates and events that matter to you and do something to mark the day, even if it's only to yourself. Have an annual "it's everybody's birthday" party. Make a full moon dinner every month and invite friends. Decorate your house every solstice and equinox (and clean while you're at it, because rituals also serve practical purposes). Light some candles and play music out loud on the first day of every month. Pick up a leaf when you hear the autumn's first goose and do it every day until they're gone, then burn all your leaves. Hang up a piece of art when the first snow falls and take it down when the first flowers bloom in spring.

Don't cherry pick from religions and cultures that aren't yours. Do be open to celebrating things from other cultures if you're invited. If there are aspects of your old holidays that you like-- dressing up or making food or singing songs-- then by all means keep those things, because guess what, that's all just Shit Humans Always Do. None of these rituals have to be religious or spiritual, but they do have to be significant to you. Fill your life with things you look forward to.

celebration. An event.

A significance.

irish mythology: brigid

Eventually, I realized that was a bad idea. My entire bedroom was smoked up, and the living room and kitchen was also smoked up. The fucking roof was so, so clouded.

cause i uhhhh made an offering dish once out of beautiful speckled buff red clay, it had a little handmade triskelion on one side and had another painted in green and gold in the middle. i was really looking forward to using it to contain offerings to the Tuatha Dé Danann, and glazed it with a lovely blue color.

got a very cold, stiff feeling as i put it on the altar. then realized with a drop in my stomach and a sudden lurch of horror the next day, the speckles in the red clay are iron on top of extra iron (which, yknow, the Good Folk abhor). said fuck loudly in my car. bought some profuse apology cookies and offered them on a normal plate.

Oh that is a fantastic question!

Tbh, this is why I recommend tarot for people that are just starting out with magic. It's a hands-on way to experiment with many of the basic concepts of magic.

So cartomancy existed for a long time before Etteilla made the first tarot deck. The reasons for exactly how cartomancy works vary based on the occultist and the system they work with, but generally the idea is that the cards are little fragments of a story, and by shuffling the cards, you are letting the random chaos of the universe organize that story as it wishes. Through this, you allow the world/god/spirits/etc to speak to you. The tarot deck itself is just a tool that makes listening a bit easier.

Let's say you need to hammer a nail into a piece of wood. You could try to push it in with your hand, but that wouldn't work very well. You could hammer it in with a brick, but there are better tools. Or you could use a hammer. I would say it's less a question of a tarot deck being "valid" and more a question of a tarot deck being "effective."

Not all decks are created equal! You can do cartomancy with pretty much anything vaguely card shaped. One time I made a cartomancy deck out of a stack of fast food coupons. That coupon deck was kinda the brick in this metaphor. The pictures it painted of the world were rough and didn't make much sense. You could make a tarot deck out of just The Tower, but that means every reading would be "danger, crisis, destruction."

But that begs the question: what makes a "good" tarot deck?

There's no one answer here, but I would say that a good tarot deck is one that produces diverse, relevant, and evocative readings. The meanings of the cards need to fit together. They need to be specific enough to be interesting, but not so broad that they feel like nonsense. How you design that is really up to the individual occultist.

For example, Etteilla based his four suits on the four cardinal virtues, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence. They give the minor arcana a sort of common narrative through line. When designing my own deck, I based my four suits on common esoteric associations with the four seasons: Change, Growth, Passion, and Materiality.

I’ve divined with pokemon cards and magic: the gathering cards, made little oracle decks, but there were definitely factors that imo affected the outcome. It was less that they had no view-- I could bend them into a divination tool, reading by intuition, and get some pretty accurate daily draws/readings, but it wasn’t what they were meant to be, and the readings felt forced/didn’t flow like tarot does for me (they also had some gnarly energy attached to them tbh, i don’t necessarily recommend using cards that were sitting in the basement of your rumored-to-be-haunted dorm for cartomancy).

I've had so much trouble in the past being able to give people good advice or recommendations when they hit me up with, "hey, I'm at [experience level] and looking to expand, any ideas?"

So if you're one of those people really frustrated by vague answers from blogs who seem like they should know what's up, this post might be able to help you out :)

Experience level labels are beyond useless. I know an energy worker practicing over 5 years who firmly identifies as a beginner and instructed me to stay in my lane when I advised they were probably beyond that. I have seen 17yos post stuff like, "Hi! I'm an adept who has been studying Wicca for 3 months and I am ready to begin looking for students."

Instead of telling a blogger, "I'm a beginner/intermediate" (etc. etc.,) try giving context to your practice by explaining what you can do or what you have studied. "I have been studying elemental energy work. I can make energy balls and multi-layered shields."

Months/years of practice is not helpful. Someone seriously studying and practicing magic every day for 6 months can be more skilled than someone casually studying magic and casting occasional spells for 2 years. Same as above - the length of your practice isn't useful in terms of knowing where to point you. Instead, try framing your practice as "I study every day, I want to know some really dense texts I can dig my claws into," or, "I prefer reading over active practice, I'm looking for easy ways to incorporate daily magic." Etc.

Ask specific questions related to specific things you want. "I feel stuck," "I don't know what to look at next," aren't helpful descriptors, especially if you provide 0 context to your path. Try describing what you want. Do you want to learn new ways to cast spells? Do you want to be exposed to new paradigms of practice? Even if you can only point to things like, "I want to feel I have more control in my day-to-day life," or, "I want to feel more spiritual," that is so much better than, "where do I go from here?" which is inevitably responded to with, "wherever you want, its your own path!"

Don't forget, "witchcraft" can mean anything from pure, secular energy work to intensely religious ceremonial craft, folk magic, pop-culture magic, and everything inbetween. Please do not assume that the blogger understands your path/interests/needs based only on the extremely vague label of "witchcraft."

Include what you're not interested in. There is nothing that makes me die inside more than someone sending a vague "what do I do next?" message, and I'm like, "why not try out servitors?" and they follow up with, "I'm actually not interested in servitors... I had a bad experience... thanks anyway." If you are not interested in working with spirits, you don't want to do pure energy work, you have a serious issue with astral travel, etc., say so - especially if you aren't really sure what you do want.

the commitment and bond without the formal worship or guilt. the sense of being on the outskirts and making my own way (see also: hedge witch).

They’re literally equating ‘being special’ to ignorance and stupidity. Which is extremely ableist.

Also judging by these posts, they’re likely a racist:

(Post Link)

(Post Link)