#[[ this is based on the 'decay exists as an extant form of life' post going around.....again ]]

[maestro-of-clockwork]

From even before you were born, you are not only brought into this world, but you are of the Earth itself. When you die and are lain to rest, eventually your body returns to the Earth: every atom, every piece of your molecular structure meshes into the ecosystem of this planet.

Of course, you already know this, do you not? You are familiar. You are aware. Why, they teach you this in school! How wouldn't you know?

I feel as though many of you are forgetting something, though. A piece of information that too many of you overlook:

All of you were doomed to be oppressed by my influence. You owe your existence, even as a thought, to me. You can choose to ignore it to spite me, but in the most obscure corners of your consciousness, you know that I am right.

Even after your consciousness and awareness dies, I will continue to have a stranglehold on you. What separates the situation is that, while you are alive, you have the misfortune of being cognisant of this.

You have the misfortune to realise that you should be thanking me for everything you know and love...or everything you know and hate.

Isn't it wonderful to know that, beyond your surface knowledge of who I am as a person, I am in control of your lives in more ways than you could possibly fathom?

And, even if you were already aware of this, isn't it wonderful that I am generous enough to give you the reminder?

#in-character #tw death mention #tw existential dread #dhmis tony #such resounding words. {{m u s i n g s}} #from the typewriter. {{ t e x t }} #[[ this is based on the 'decay exists as an extant form of life' post going around.....again ]]

[paleomancy]

Deconstructing the Masculine and Feminine Archetypes

In religious history, folk magic, and occultism the dichotomy between “masculine” and “feminine” energies often play a large part in mythological and therefore ritual construction.  I propose that the use of “masculine” and “feminine” encompass multiple different aspects of magic and ought to be deconstructed for more potent spell development.

In less academic terms, since I’ve spent too much time writing scientific articles: the traditional “masculine” and “feminine” archetypes are actually a combination of multiple aspects of magic that are unnecessarily gendered.  By taking the different aspects of these two archetypes apart, we as occultists can select the particular aspects that are most useful to us.  These are: reaching and receptive, creation and destruction, and attraction.

Obviously I’m leaving some qualities out, but I’m just going to focus on these 3 for now.

Reaching and Receptive

Examples

A paintbrush and a canvas

A spoon and a bowl

A snake and an empty den

These two qualities could also be considered “passive” and “active”, where one is acting upon the other to create something new or otherwise change the state of the receptive object.  In the three examples above, the reaching object acts on the receptive object to perform an act of creation (paintbrush and canvas), destruction (spoon and bowl), and occupation (snake and den).  These actions are fundamentally different in nature, but both have reaching and receptive objects that allow the action to occur.

There is more to this particular relationship than meets the eye, however.  In order for these two objects to function as intended, there are other ingredients needed.  The paintbrush needs paint or ink in order to act on the canvas, or it leaves no marks; a bowl with no food in it has no need for the spoon.  For the reaching and receptive objects to function, one must provide the paint or make the food.  A house is not a home until the creature living within it changes it in some way, often influenced by other experiences brought in from outside the base relationship of the reaching and receptive objects.

In relevance to magic and spellcraft: you could draw a sigil on paper, but the effect of the sigil will change depending on the ink used to write.  Are you carving it into wax?  Are you writing in blood?  India ink?  The middle components will change the impact of the spell as much as the reaching and receptive components do.  If I were to create a protective sigil, for example: I could use a silver pen nib, ink made from a suspension of oil and black salt (heavy on the charcoal), and cedar wood as the writing block.  In this way, all three components are working in tandem to create the desired symbolic impact of the sigil.

Creation and Destruction

Examples

Spring and Fall/Summer and Winter

Birth and Death

Beginning and End

Creation and destruction are frequently referenced as feminine and masculine qualities respectively, and may be some of the qualities tied most strongly to the archetypes.  They can be seen best in the Wiccan wheel of the year, where the Horned God takes over from the Triple Goddess as the harvest season ends and everything dies off for the winter, only to relinquish his reign again come spring.  The act of creation is also associated with childbirth, for good reason, and assigned qualities of motherhood.  

Creation and destruction are often depicted as opposites, but are better described as cyclical.  To quote my favorite tumblr post: “Decay exists as an extant form of life.”  Even as things die, other life springs from their bones.  Entire ecosystems are built around the death of whales in the deep ocean, some lasting as many as 100 years.  To construct creation and destruction as separate from one another weakens magic by creating a divide where one should not exist.

In relevance to magic and spellcraft: some spells work best where a system of renewal is set in place, and some may rely on creation or destruction specifically to begin a new cycle or end an old one.  Cord-cutting or burning spells, a method of destruction, functions to end an old cycle but may be best complimented with a second spell to begin a new cycle.  Seeds might be planted to start a new cycle or celebrate the beginning of a season or event.  A houseplant that goes dormant might be given offerings to form a spell that cycles according to the natural rhythms of that plant.

Attraction

Examples

Magnets

The Moon and The Tides

Surface Tension

Attraction is the quality I’d most like to separate from the archetypes of the “feminine” and “masculine” simply because it predisposes those who rely on masculine/feminine imagery to blindness over the potential for the traditionally “feminine” and “masculine” to attract like objects.  Attraction, as I define it, is simply the act of two objects being drawn to one another through forces physical, spiritual, or mental.  

For example, the moon controls the tides due to its gravitational pull on the earth.  Because the water is malleable, it rises and falls in accordance with the movements of the moon -- the moon, however, is not necessarily attracted to the oceans, but to the mass of the earth itself.  These are two different attractive forces working to produce a visible influence on the planet: the gravity of the moon on the oceans and the gravity of the earth on the moon.  You could even expand this analogy and say that the gravity of the earth also acts on the oceans in opposition to the moon, giving us three different attractive forces and subverting the traditional dichotomy of masculine-feminine attraction.  Attractive forces build on and interact with one another in innumerable ways.  To expand the water analogy, surface tension is the result of attraction between trillions of water molecules that make up a single droplet.  There is no upper limit on the number of attractive forces that can be at play in a given situation.

From a more human perspective, attraction should still remain ungendered.  To gender human attraction would be to devalue friendships and reduce complex systems of interaction (in both humans and non-human life) to a two-sex baseline that does not hold true for most of the natural world.  Minds are attracted to one another based on perceived similarity -- like attracting like -- as well as differences that compliment the personality and mentality of both individuals.  Friends and partners share interests and personality traits, but rarely do they share completely similar views.  In this same sense, opposites don’t attract either!  Rarely does a relationship between two extremely different people thrive simply because they need things from each other that neither can provide because they lack similarity.

From a spellcraft and magic perspective: the law of attraction is already well known for most folks practicing magic.  When you construct a spell, consider the relationships (symbolic or otherwise) between the structure of the work and the desired intent.  For example, if you’re using hair as a taglock in a spell consider these things:

Did the hair fall off naturally?  

Was it plucked?  

Did I cut it off in secret?  

Was it cut and given as a gift?

All of these factors, and many more, can influence the impact of a spell.  A lock of hair given as a gift for remembrance is going to fare better in protective spells, while hair cut from someone in secret is going to be far more effective when used banefully.

I have more thoughts on this, but alas!  It’s 1 in the morning and I have a date with some dirt early tomorrow.

#witchcraft #occultism #occult #spellwork #divine masculine #divine feminine #magic #witch #pagan #i don't know what other tags to add but hey whatever #it's late i'm tired and this is outta my body so maybe i'll be able to SLEEP