palmistress

[palmistress]

the depths

#youtube

[palmistress]

Going to go the easy route...(as in, PC. Sorry Mac users - even though I am one but in later years...) you need Windows Media Player and a Disc Drive on your laptop or computer. Put your CD of choice in, if it doesn't automatically ask you, open Windows Media Player and should come up as Rip CD. You will feel like you are committing a crime here. You're not. If it's for personal use you're good. If not, embrace the pirate life, who gives a fuck.

Once that's done, take you CD out and pop your blank CD in your disc drive, use Windows Media Player again and this time you want to add to the Burn Playlist. Once you've added your choice of songs, select Burn. This also feels kind of badass but not in a crime committing way.

Once it's done, take your CD out, take a sharpie and add whatever the fuck onto it. If you're fancy, you have a blank CD case and make an insert with all the song titles and artists.

#your cd drive will make some noises #it's ok #someone probably explained this better than i did here sorry guys #any questions message me lol #rip cd #burn cd #windows media player #playlist #just looked at the replies and comments and realised the original question was more how it worked rather than how to... #fucking hate being neurodivergent #leaving it up though just in case anyone is feeling nostaligic idk #i take everything so fuckin literally

[palmistress]

On Witchcraft as a spirituality

Sometimes people hit me up like "I need verification, but practicing spells is so tedious, and I need validation" and I am here to tell you that

In my personal opinion you know that

You're never going to finish crochet projects unless you love making stitches.

Letting the yarn slip over your fingers and the hook goes over under over under, stitch stitch stitch, turning chain,

That is the part you've got to love, I think, because the problem is if you only love the amigurumi, or the bag, or the blanket, you're never going to get there,

because crocheting isn't having a blanket.

Crocheting is making a blanket.

"I just need to see my spells manifesting before I can have proof, I need that validation" is bullshit

because you can cast a spell that goes off so incredibly well and then you look around and all you can say is "well that just means the situation was already going to go fine and I never needed to cast, there's no way I could have accomplished that"

and all the while there's this little bit of hollowness and stress and frustration, like you're looking for the thing but the thing never presents itself,

so now the question is still there and it just switches from "I need validation," to "I need faith"

and this is exactly like finishing the amigurumi and looking at its soft squishy face and setting it aside and saying "I need a bag"

but in all the cases, you know, the answer is just about stitches.

Do you need a bag? Or do you need the quiet, repetitive, counting, soothing, structure, activity, progress, and then, by total coincidence, after a while a bag appears?

I think this way often about witchcraft as a spirituality. My blog is mostly practical sorcery based. And when you approach witchcraft from that perspective I think it's pretty much, "I need a result."

But witchcraft isn't having a result.

Witchcraft is making a result.

and I think for those of us who use witchcraft as a spirituality, as a damp and safe terracotta pot within which we can unfurl our roots into the rich soil of the underworld,

It is the joy of the process itself which waters the soils - not the end result.

When you engage in your practice - the literal, physical, mental, and emotional actions you engage in, the ways you've ritualized your behaviors, the series of behaviors you engage in which allow you to interface with your path -

Do those parts, in and of themselves, serve you?

So anyway love your results but fuck results at the same time, if the actual moment-to-moment doesn't serve you, if being there doing the actions in and of itself doesn't bring you something,

perhaps there are adjustments to be done.

It could even be time to switch to a new fiber art altogether.

[palmistress]

Potentially you gotta stop making all those substitutions to the spells, witch bestie.

If you're trying to learn magic and have chosen to do so through other people's published instructional manuals, and the magic isn't working, consider asking yourself if you are actually following the rituals provided.

I've been speaking with multiple people lately who are all struggling with the same thing, so perhaps a post on this topic is germane.

Unless you understand the tradition you're working with and why certain things have certain meanings, you probably do not have the background required to make effective substitutions.

Working within someone else's established tradition is not the same as working within your personal eclectic path.

Imagine you go into a working group which is super into bioregional practice and they've developed elaborate rituals which always work for them.

They give you a purification ritual which calls for a red apple, wild-harvested cotton, and local mulberries to be worked over during a full moon.

They do not tell you why each of these things is included. They just give you the list.

We're going to substitute a store-bought cotton ball, obviously, and what to do about the mulberries? We can google "mulberry correspondences," find out they're related to "healing" which is the closest thing we can figure has anything to do with a purification ritual, then pretty much figure that since chamomile is associated with sleep and purification, and sleep is a Lunar thing, right, that we can just use a sleepytime chamomile tea bag, and there you have it!

What the working group has failed to tell you is that this entire ritual is based on local mythology where the cotton wight fell in love with the mulberry dryad and they got married under the full moon by sharing an apple, and the entire ritual isn't based on sympathetic container magic, but is a heirophany which recreates the marriage of local sacred spirits, each of whom has sworn to heal and purify those who honor their love.

A heck of a lot of witchcraft authors do not break down why every single step is taken.

And if you apply contemporary witch-lite logic to everything ("cotton is white so I'm going to relate that to color correspondences and substitute a white candle for purity"), you can end up immediately canceling out a spell.

Not understanding or connecting with certain spell/ritual steps is not a good reason to change them.

You had mulberries once as a kid and they gave you stomach cramps and now you personally associate them with hexing and sickness, so even though there is a ripe mulberry tree outside, you are going to go get a container of blackberries instead, which you personally associate with purification, and -

(You get the drift)

The spell calls for making a paper box, within which you hide the wild cotton and mulberry. Then, at a crossroads at the full moon, you unfold the box to reveal its contents, and offer an apple to the correspondences.

Which would mean we'd have to learn how to make a paper box (fun!) but also like, why this unfolding thing? Nothing I've read so far in my witchcraft books has explained the magical meaning behind opening a paper box. This is basically a container spell, right? I'll just use a glass jar.

(The plant spirits who informed the local coven about this spellwork specified an opaque, degradable container)

If you're using other people's work, you're more or less sacrificing yourself to the reality that they probably are not explaining everything to you, and that your assumptions about what makes that magic tick could be so far off base that even your most educated guesses will fall short.

Yeah, using other people's traditions can mean you don't have what's required to do everything, and that's kind of just the way it is.

I'm not trying to be Mr. Just Go And Buy Stuff You Moneybags, but I guess I am being Mr. If You Can't Do It Then You Can't Do it.

And no, I'm not saying that it's impossible to figure out substitutions.

I'm specifically referring to a situation where a practitioner is trying to figure out magic, hasn't been able to make strides, and then it turns out they've been radically modifying and altering spells from specific traditions to a point where the spell is obviously functionally DOA.

At one point I was learning some slightly advanced bit of coding. I downloaded a set of files from a code library and installed them on my website.

The thing was, at that point in my education, I had enough experience to basically understand what was going on with each file. So, I edited them as I went, modifying them to my custom specifications.

Wouldn't you know it! When I launched the code it was broken. DOA, if you will.

I went back to the code library, and the top comment was,

INSTALL THE FILES AND MAKE SURE THEY WORK BEFORE YOU TRY TO CHANGE THEM. Everyone keeps changing things before they even test launch it and then they come back here and complain that the code is broken. IT ISN'T BROKEN.

[palmistress]

idk where else to put this but my doctor looks like Professor Ronald Hutton

[palmistress]

This is your witchy reminder to research the author, their background and the source of the information contained in any books that you're reading. There is way too much n@zi bullshit surrounding modern occultism/spiritualism/witchcraft. So, beware of what the roots of that knowledge you're gaining might actually be.

[palmistress]

really glad I never took the “my online identity is a BRAND” perk path cuz once you do that you can’t really say “motherfucker” anymore. 

[palmistress]

Talking to my colleague today and I made a reference to Backstreet Boys... Obviously "oh my gawd we're back agaiiiiin" She said "oh my tattoo artist put on a playlist of old music last time I saw them and that was on there" ...Christ alive I've never felt so fucking ancient

#what the fuck #are millennials just old now? #I just turned 30 man what the fuck #this ain't right

[palmistress]

okay tumblr’s exclusion from the twitter social media ban list is hilarious but genuinely we do not belong on there. if a real human person asks “where can i find you on social media” and your choice is a swift death or revealing your tumblr, most of us would simply expire. half of y’all change urls every week like you’re in witness protection. just imagine for one second attaching your wholeass government name to your latest two am clownposting and tell me that didn’t send a cold chill down your spine. the only place i ever want to see the words “connect with me on tumblr!” is on the ao3 profile of an author i’m actively stalking. anyone in the world can follow me except anyone i personally know. antisocial media.

#I will die before I let my coworkers or anyone remotely close to me get anywhere near my Tumblr #And I'm very rarely here #It's a lawless place but that's a good thing probably

[palmistress]

Holy shit, Dr. Tingle, go OFF!!!!

#Shit like this kept me in the closet 15 years lol #Don't #What the fuck do you think the b stands for? Bitches? #It's bisexual and we're all valid thank you goodbye

[palmistress]

My regular reminder to transphobes and racists to fuck off and die painfully and slow.  Right. Back at it then. 

#Off you fuck #Never welcome here #Even though my blog is a piece of shit I have standards and they don't include you bastards

[palmistress]

id rather you have cringy but honest interests than try and act like everything youve ever loved was in an ironic way cause you think that love for simple or useless or silly things is beneath you . pathetic! embrace existence with both hands coward

[palmistress]

sure she’s evil but look at those tits

[palmistress]

I'm at a point in my life where I'm just so done with seeing the word 'womb' in occult books.

[palmistress]

Still watching this youtube channel about what I can only describe as "Dark Classical art" and this one absolutely floored me because I was unaware of it and I want to share it because it changes my perspective on this artist completely.

You might be aware of Louis Wain. If not by name then by his art. He's the artist behind that series of cat drawings that slowly became more and more abstract and bizarre.

This series of paintings of cats are often labelled as a visual representation of Wain's deteriorating mental illness and schizophrenia. Even more so often labelled as "a tragic display of a painter's failing battle with schizophrenia."

The paintings look like this and were painted around the very early 1900s.

Ok got all that?

So here's the thing.

Although Wain did suffer from a mental illness that was strong enough for him to be institutionalized, his mental illness was never diagnosed with clear certainty. Although "Schizophrenia" is so heavily applied to him based purely on how his series of paintings LOOK, despite actual specialists widely disputing this. On top of this, although he did paint the kaleidoscope cat portraits during this time, it was not the only things he painted, and he was quite capable of painting "normal" pictures of cats.

The Kaleidoscope Cat portraits are more images of him experimenting with colour and shapes, something the Smithsonian themselves state on their website.

Wain had actually made his entire living painting whimsical images of cats, often for product adverts, before he was incarcerated and was actually a very beloved artist at the time. When his friends learned of his incarceration, they started a collection of donation money to help transfer Wain to the Bethlam Royal Hospital instead, one of the best mental health facilities of the time. Even the Prime Minster of the time donated, and they raised a large amount of money across England to help him.

4 years later, Wain drew this as his final image which he released publicly

I knew all about "the Schizophrenic cat Guy" but he had always been presented to me as some tragic case of an artist going mad and his skills and work unraveling as he went insane.

Which is why I wanted to share this information which was new to me. And because I think it's important.

[palmistress]

One of the many problems of moving house all the time is trying to remember where you buried your fuckin hex jars

#Royal Mail redirection service does not cover this shit #Pro tip tell the estate agent you left some paint in the shed #Or some bullshit equivalent #Say you're an artist and left some work or materials behind #Usually works for me lmao

[palmistress]

The Siren by John William Waterhouse (1900)