selenightwitch

[selenightwitch]

whenever i get sad that i don’t have friends to worship and do rituals with, I remember that birds sing love songs into the sky everyday, and the grass dances in the wind when it blows. And the clouds blush at the sunset, and the wind whistles tunes, and the bees hum, and the deer trot. And then I remember that the river runs, and the flowers open themselves to the sun, and the bugs sleep on warm leaves. and as I walk and pray, perhaps the rabbits nibbling on shrubs are praying too, perhaps that’s why the spider spun her web so beautifully. and then I remember that I’m not worshipping alone. I never was.

[selenightwitch]

helpols for palestine. the gods love all of their children, including those in gaza, and they would never approve of the genocide going on there right now. may lord apollon protect and help heal the injured victims of this genocide. may lady aphrodite, king zeus, queen hera, all of them extend their strength and their protection to those in palestine.

#hellenic polytheism #prayers #palestine

[selenightwitch]

Have a most blessed Beltaine to all who celebrate. Hail the May Queen!

#brythonic polytheism #beltaine #creiddylad #altars #calan mai

[selenightwitch]

Outros Deuses e Seus Epítetos - Agathos Daimon, o Nobre Espírito.

Continuando nossa série de postagens sobre os Deuses, hoje focaremos em uma deidade peculiar e, principalmente para aqueles fora da religião, pouco conhecida integralmente. Falaremos hoje de um daimon muito importante -- Agathos Daimon, o Bom (Ou Nobre) Espírito!

Representado como um jovem com uma cornucópia ou como uma serpente, o Daimon é um espírito dito responsável pela prosperidade do lar, sua proteção e, no caso de locais com plantação, um guardião da boa colheita.

Em outra visão da mesma deidade, o Agathos Daimon também é descrito como um espírito atribuído a cada pessoa. Um daimon pessoal de cada um, capaz de guiar, ensinar e proteger, similar ao eudaimon descrito nos escritos de Platão. Era por vezes dito que o Agathos Daimon era o consorte de Tique, a Sorte, e por isso tinha domínio sobre nossa própria prosperidade.

Em termos de culto, o Agathos Daimon não era uma deidade com templos cívicos na maior parte da Hélade. Seu culto era de natureza doméstica quando acontecia, com libações simples dedicadas a ele.

Por vezes, o Daimon era sincretizada com diversos aspectos de Zeus, como o Zeus Meilichios (Zeus, o Afável) que era representado como uma serpente (uma representação ctônica) e Zeus Ktésios (Zeus dos Bens), onde era honrado com a feitura de um kathiskos -- um pequeno recipiente selado com azeite, comida, grãos e mel, dedicado mensalmente ao Deus do céu neste aspecto doméstico, invocando sua prosperidade.

Além de Zeus, os Deuses Baco e Hermes são alguns dos que levam a associação direta ao daimon, tendo-o como epítetos endereçados a si próprios. A forma de honrá-lo seria com uma libação no segundo dia do mês helênico, onde costumeiramente se derrama uma libação de vinho na terra para este espírito auxiliador.

Na região de Kemet (o Egito), o Agathos Daimon fora sincretizado com o Deus Sérapis e era cultuado em templos na era helenística principalmente. Sua origem é debatida mesmo nos tempos antigos, com Hesíodo afirmando em seu Os Trabalhos e os Dias, que os bons espíritos da "Era de Ouro" eram estes daimones que guiam os mortais.

Independendo da forma e origem, todos se complementam no aspecto benévolo do Agathos Daimon, tal é a nobreza de seu nome aqui. Estabelecer um vínculo com este espírito, faz parte de uma comum prática entre os politeístas helênicos modernos.

Por fim, encerramos o post com o Hino Órfico 73, que sincretiza o Agathos Daimon com o próprio Zeus: "Ao Daimon [Zeus]. A ti, poderoso governante Daimon temeroso, eu chamo, Zeus brando, doador de vida, e a fonte de tudo: grande Zeus, muito errante, terrível e forte, a quem vingança e torturas terríveis pertencem. A humanidade de ti em riqueza abundante abunda, quando em suas habitações alegres tu és encontrado; ou passa pela vida aflito e angustiado, os meios necessários de bem-aventurança por ti suprimidos. É só teu, dotado de poder ilimitado, para manter as chaves da tristeza e do deleite. Ó santo e abençoado pai, ouça minha oração, disperse as sementes do cuidado que consome a vida, com mente favorável aos ritos sagrados, e conceda à vida um final glorioso e abençoado.

#hellenic polytheism #agathos daimon

[selenightwitch]

the woman who holds the moon

prints available here. my cover for this month's issue of baffling magazine.

#selene #art

[selenightwitch]

Raffle: Braided Crabapple Stave (OPEN)

This raffle is for a unique Stave of braided, thorny wood that harvested from a 120+ year old Crabapple tree. It measures approximately 34 inches/86 centimeters in length and 1.5 inches/4 centimeters wide at its thickest point.

After initially acquiring the rare specimen in question, I went about curing the wood, smoothing the ends, and cleaning up some ragged branch stumps. While I usually debark pieces of this sort before working on them, the particular helical structure and profusion of thorns made me worried about being able to strip and sand the piece without damaging it. As such, I instead gave it a thin coat of handmade Dragon's Blood varnish to help stabilize and prime the wood, and then went about staining the entire piece using a polymerized oil pigment I make from Hearth Soot (Creosote) harvested from the interior of our Wood Stove. I applied layer after layer of the pigment until the bark was thoroughly coated and preserved, then used a cloth and my homemade Wisefool’s Oil (a ritually crafted oil of empowerment that also serves as a wonderful wood conditioner) to polish away the excess, before sealing the piece with my personally developed Wisefool's Glaze (a ritually empowered wood varnish made from an array of potent arboreal resins.) Finally, I gave the stave one last protective coating of polyurethane and suffumigated it with a smoke of Apple Blossoms and Dragon's Blood in a simple rite of hallowing.

While the retail price for this item is $200, I am taking the risk of setting up this raffle, in hopes that it might aid me in raising enough money to help us ease the cost of emergency surgery my dog required recently.

Tickets are $5 a piece, each assigned a number, and you can purchase up to three of them. To purchase a ticket, simply use the link below and follow the provided instructions. You will be asked to make an account and fill in your payment details, which will allow the raffle to email you your entry information, as well as automatically notifying the winner when the time comes. Participants are more than welcome to deactivate their accounts following the raffle. A random number generator will be used after ten days' time in order to determine which ticket number is the winner.

Thank you, truly and sincerely, to anyone and everyone who takes part! Please feel free to let me know if you come up against any issues! And as an aside—even if you don't end up entering the raffle, I'm sure that sharing it would still be helpful. :~)

Raffle Link: ☆

[selenightwitch]

Here’s a thought:

Not every culture wants their religions practiced by everyone around the world. Not every race of people intends for their spiritual practices to fall into the hands of people thousands of miles from where they originated. It’s only a thing because of the New Age movement said so. It picked up the spiritual practices of different cultures from around the world and tried to tie them all together into one religion because, according to New Age thinking, all religions are the same.

This is not true. It has never been true. All religions are not the same, and they never will be. This was only true to people who felt no connection to the dominant religions at the time this thinking was gaining traction and attempted to reconcile Christianity with the rest of the world by eschewing the presence and knowledge of Satan and dressing it up in its Sunday best. The New Age movement has not done any favors to people of color because our peoples’ practice was never meant to hit the mainstream, especially in the way it did. That it did is something our people, today, have to deal with and work against because there is so much wrong information, originating with white people who were ignorant of the truth even then, even now, and all that misinformation makes it extremely difficult for new seekers, modern inheritors of those practices, us, to find them and approach them properly because they’re locked away in some museum somewhere, away from the people who need them.

How many different ways can people of color tell white people that the stuff from us they keep picking up and playing with were things that got our people arrested and killed, and that’s why we keep it away from them? Some of us don’t even know where our people originally came from, nor what our cultures actually were because it was beaten out of us. How many times must we bring up what slavery did to black people for the white mainstream to understand what we’re fighting for is the same thing our ancestors fought for? What will it take for white people to understand that tossing themselves into our peoples’ religions, even by following the traditional means of doing so legitimately, makes it that much more difficult for the rest of us to find the resources we need to survive? Why is it such a taboo for white people to understand that there is literally nothing in our peoples’ religions and our practices that is for them, at all? And why are there some white people who, upon hearing these things, become so hostile that they attempt to close off ancient religious practices that actually DID try to spread to everyone else because that’s how they were built?

Even pursuing knowledge within Hellenism requires a great deal of effort and research to understand what was once done and how it relates to us in the now, to say nothing of reading and understanding the myths we’re told as kids are not the end of our research. You can not just pick up a candle with Yemoja’s face on it and suddenly call yourself a practitioner of Yoruba, despite what New Age thinking says you can do. The religious practices of people of color are not for sale, are not to be spread around, and were never meant to be practiced by the descendants of the people who murdered those to whom they belong.

[selenightwitch]

Sing, O Muse! Is coming soon! To celebrate we've got 6 previews of the 17 submissions for the zine featuring some of your favorite mythology artists on tumblr! In this post we've got:

@kleioscanvas illustrating Hymn III, to Delian Apollo

@danpoharyskyiillustration illustrating Hymn XXXII, to Selene

@flaroh illustrating Hymn XIV, to the Mother of the Gods

@jacobpking illustrating Hymn XV, to Heracles

@davidluongart illustrating Hymn VIII, to Ares

@mikeybooch illustrating Hymn V, to Aphrodite

If you're on twitter or instagram you can give the zine account a follow (@)singomusezine where you can find weekly previews, FAQs, and other fun information.

Sing, O Muse! Homeric Hymns Illustrated will be available in print and digital this April. No preorders/limited quantities!

#art #hellenic polytheism

[selenightwitch]

Ancestor work can include pets btw

I never knew a lot of my deceased family, and the ones I did know I didn't know well. I loved my great grandmother, but in reality I didn't know her well, I still honor her and my grandpa who died when I was 3, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't closer to my cats.

My cats were with me my whole life, and theirs, they're my children. I soothe them to sleep by cradling them when they're scared, I sing to them and they sing back, I sleep with them every night. They are my whole world, and I'd do anything for them.

So of course they're honored after death like a blood family member, of course I leave them offerings and speak to them beyond the grave, of course there is space for them on my altars.

Don't let anyone tell you pets deserve less honor than humans in your practice.

#spirit work

[selenightwitch]

It really doesn't make any sense to practice Kabbalah unless you're Jewish. It's an advanced method of esoteric textual analysis for Hebrew scripture.

As a gentile, I greatly enjoy reading commentaries on it, and discussing it's concepts with my Jewish peers, but at no point have I thought like "Alrighty! Time to spend several years learning Zoharic Aramaic so I can write my OWN esoteric treatise on the Torah." Why would I want to do that lol.

[selenightwitch]

I really hate doing this, but earlier today, my puppy Rowland was running outside with his brother when he took a tumble and ended up running straight into an old metal tool of my father-in-law's. The metal caught the flesh on his side in three spots and tore some large and deep gashes in his hide and underlying muscle. Initially, between the blood and the way he was crying and limping, I really thought he had managed to stab himself in the gut, which was a particularly horrifying thought since I was alone in the countryside with no way to get him quick medical help at the time.

After soothing him enough to get a better look at his wounds, I was deeply relieved to see no signs of abdominal perforation, but I was still taken aback by how bad his injuries were and how much he was bleeding. While I waited desperately for my father-in-law to get home and lend me his truck, I gently cleaned Rowland's wounds, and I thank all the gods that I was able to work a successful Blood Stanching charm on him despite the severity of the bleeding. He was already beginning to shiver and drool with nausea, making me think he was starting to go into shock, so I'm not sure how much worse it might have gotten if I hadn't stemmed the flow of bood.

I managed to get him to the vet, where he had to stay for the day being cleaned, treated, and given 15 stitches. He is clearly in a lot of pain and fear, but he should recover fine, which I am beyond grateful for. That being said, though, the veterinary bill was $864 (everything on the itemized invoice below plus an additional $17 for anti-nausea meds that prevent him from throwing up after anesthesia, which could tear his sitches) and while we were able to pull from our savings to pay for this, it's still a rather disheartening financial turn of events. Especially since I've been mostly working free cases the past few weeks, meaning that I've taken in very little money recently. While I trust my spirits to keep our needs met so long as I honor my vows, it would still be nice not to be forced into depleting our life savings.

I held a raffle once to help fundraise for my older dogs who had started a regimen of expensive pain medications at the time, and I am now considering doing this again. Specifically, I am considering raffling off a handmade wooden stave that I'm currently selling for $200. I was thinking that, since this piece is highly unique and fairly expensive, people might want to enter the raffle for $5 a person (using the link I end up providing) and then the winner would be chosen by a random number generator. Whoever won would end up with a $200 Stave of braided thorny Crabapple wood that was harvested from a 120+ year old tree and sealed with a traditional black Hearth Soot stain, for only $5.

Of course, a raffle like this would only be of use if enough people think they would actually consider entering the raffle. After all, if only 20 people entered, I would be selling this $200 piece for $100, which wouldn't help me fund this medical care and would actually lose me money overall. As such, I figured I would make poll to help me gauge the viability of this idea, like I did the last time.

Sorry again to be doing this. I hope you can understand. ♡

[selenightwitch]

Sometimes you will have powerful moments that aren't signs and don't turn into anything.

Sometimes you'll encounter a hard "NO" and there won't be a way to turn it into a yes.

Sometimes you'll be very interested in a specific practice or method, you try it, and it just never really clicks the way you want it to.

Sometimes you'll click with a practice and can't find a community around it, or dislike who you do find.

Sometimes there aren't easy-digestible online resources for that thing you're curious about, and the only way to learn more is really digging to find old, dense books and scholarly papers.

Sometimes there's barely any information online and you'll have to do research "around" the subject and fill in the blanks yourself.

Sometimes you'll do a huge ritual and just not feel it like you'd hoped, or you don't get the results you wanted.

And that's all fine, that's life. That's normal. People love to talk online about the big powerful moments and the success stories because the everyday boring stuff or mildly disappointing stuff isn't very interesting to talk about. It's normal for your practice to not look as "exciting" as theirs because you see how the sausage gets made for your own but not theirs!

[selenightwitch]

Athena & her little owl

#athena #art

[selenightwitch]

hey hi hello can you reblog this if you’re a trans-inclusive witchcraft or paganism blog i am fighting for my LIFE out here

[selenightwitch]

“Everything is overflowing with Gods.”

— Proclus, 1st century CE

[selenightwitch]

Happy Theogamia! Praise the King and Queen, Zeus and Hera! ❤️💞🦚❤️⚡️🦚❣️❤️💕🌹

[selenightwitch]

haiii, i was just curious if you matbe have like a theory or a post on why spells are able to affect people's behavior? ik this is probably a really vague question but I was just thinking abt it . and by changing behavior I mean like.. getting someone to leave thru banishing, getting the job with a spell, u get me! hopefully

Any explanation will do, provided it seems to explain.

So here's an explanation that seems to explain, although I find it's not too wise to get married to these sorts of things:

The physical bits of people (like the entire human body, etc) is not at all how much of a person there is. In a literal sense, all humans have a spiritual body that exists within and moves through the spiritual layer of our present reality.

We can sort of conceptualize this as an iceberg thing; the physical parts of humans are what is sticking out above water, and the hidden parts are below water, immersed in magical reality. Just because we can't see it doesn't make it any less real or any less vital to our wellbeing.

This spiritual body has a lot of nuances, but for our purposes, we can say that it's somewhat body shaped, or eggish-shaped, but extends past a person perhaps a foot or two, or more or less; this size corresponds with the size of the aura, and typically corresponds exactly with "personal space."

This spiritual body provides actual input in our day-to-day lives. It's maybe one source of intuition, if you believe in that sort of thing. Just like other sensing organs, we can learn to tune out what this spiritual body is sensing. Some people may be born less attuned to it, just like some people will never really have a fine-tuned palate; but some people can also be very sensitive to it.

Typically, one of the earlier goals a witch will want to get around to is learning to sense and interact with their spiritual body, and then further learn to work with it in certain acts of magic (maybe most commonly this would be glamours, shielding, or certain empowerments).

But whether or not someone knows they have a spiritual body, they have one. And that body is constantly intersecting with magical reality, which is the place where "energies," spells, and spirits live. Therefore in a literal sense, when someone sends a banishing spell on someone, that spell has the capacity to literally touch that person. It can literally touch them because their spiritual bodies are an integral part of being human.

The spell is conjured up and released within magical reality, which is where a part of you is right now; and then it goes to your target, who also exists partially in magical reality, and it directly affects them.

Just, you know, underwater.

Like a shark. 🦈

The idea behind a job spell might be to get the hiring manager to take very special notice of the resume, in which case the spell isn't like "ahhh I'm going to chase you until you leave! Run away! Omnomnomnom"

but rather, it grabs them by the spiritual-body collar and says, "woah, isn't that resume perfect? Wow, you could clock off and take your wife to dinner if you just agree to hire this super valid-looking candidate right now. Put a post-it note on this one, buddy! Olive Garden is calling your name."

And that person is experiencing those things because a large part of their literal sensing of reality is suddenly immersed in a physically invisible energy that is directing them towards that purpose.

And it's not like the spell is locked behind a glass wall in some faraway astral space (or at least, it shouldn't be... it can be. This is too much for one post, let's stay on topic).

It's right there, literally intersecting with someone's being, filling their space with a confluence of power all directed towards a singular purpose.