thetwotorches

[thetwotorches]

yeah so just in case this is needed, please do not kill yourself. you, reading this. please live. please take breaths in and out. please let your hair and nails continue growing. please let your heart continue to beat like a radio station set only to you. please take yourself out of the sliver of time this moment is. the pain will become a memory. your survival is a tool, a weapon, a superpower. amends can be made and wounds can be healed and entire worlds can be rebuilt while you are alive.

[thetwotorches]

An old coworker who I liked a lot decided to find their own exit from this life this past week.

This is surreal to me because looking back....I hate this but I realize now I smelled it on them. There were also times over the past few years where I thought they had already passed but obviously had no basis for thinking so. The shock, then, this morning getting the news was honestly something.

I always looked forward to seeing them again someday. They always helped me out with a hefty sense of humor, amazing energy, and unforgettable wisdom.

We as humans step into a room, and because we ourselves have stepped into it, we then automatically assign meaning to the room. This does not mean the room acknowledges the meaning we have now attached to it, nor that it even realizes you have done so- or perhaps that you have even entered inside of it at all. This does not, by nature, make the room a cruel place, but simply careless in that it is ambivalent to what goes on in it. As more people enter the room and more and more people attach more and more meanings to its walls, the atmosphere can become unbearable for some. In that moment, a careless container can feel intolerable. It is in those moments, I think, when some people decide to carve their own paths out.

We can judge, sure, but it changes nothing and ultimately doesn't matter. Perhaps in our grief a little judging may make us feel better as we find a way to localize and vent our frustration over tragedy.

One of the things I strongly dislike about some religious denominations is a frankly morbid and black and white damning of those who take their lives into their own hands. If each of us has a destiny, who is to say that wasn't theirs, just because they were their own instrument in the process? Does that make the method any better- of course not. But the stigma when plenty of others pass away from other forms of equally fatal self-neglect is irrational and only makes things worse.

To be honest with you, I don't really....I don't have a summing up point for any of this. Someone I really looked up to has gone before I could sat hello in the flesh just one last time, and the thoughts I have about this are many. I suppose I wrote a few of them out here. I hope that's alright.

Overall I feel like too many people have passed in the last 6 months. I can't fathom what is going on.....or rather, as I wrote that sentence I was reminded of the last time I felt this way and then a major world event happened. Well, what will be will be. But as far as I'm concerned, I would prefer to keep as many good people with us for as long as possible. And so, yet another loss feels overwhelmingly profound.

[thetwotorches]

[thetwotorches]

"Voyage of the Moon" by Mary Hopkin, 1969.

'The Moon is like a boat, My Love

Of lemon peel afloat, My Love

And with her sail of gauze, My Love

She seems to slightly pause

Upon her silent way

Along her starry way...'

-A Voyage to the Moon-

#Youtube

[thetwotorches]

ABOUT TIME!!! for those out of the loop homeowners’ associations in the US 1. suck horrendously in every way 2. were the beginning of the end of urban biodiversity

[thetwotorches]

the idea that the moon was once a part of the earth, and now reflects the divine light of the sun to guide us through the darkness... 'drawing down the moon' as the practitioner ascending from the mundane via self-identification, invoking hekate or thoth or artemis or whichever lunar superintelligence to become something that also reflects and channels celestial energies... turning our eyes skyward to the constellations and seeing ourselves, our history, our imagination, all of it, gazing back at us

[thetwotorches]

Moon Seen Through Leaves, from the series Twenty-Eight Views of the Moon by Utagawa Hiroshige (1832)

[thetwotorches]

They’re not calling me back home.

[thetwotorches]

How do I connect with local spirits?

Most witches consider local spirits to be a cornerstone of their practice. It's much easier to cast a ward on your home when the local forest spirit will back it up. Ask five witches how to connect to spirits and you'll get seven answers and three arguments.

So I'm going to give you a foolproof answer.

If you live in the united states, your state will have a list of endangered and threatened species. It will also have a list of invasive species. Look through these. There's a pretty good chance that you'll be surprised and find something you've seen before. "I didn't know that was endangered! I've seen that in my grandma's backyard."

Great! You are now that species guardian angel.

Figure out how to protect it. Find out how to spread it. Then do it. It spreads from cuttings? Awesome! Take some cuttings and sprout them, then plant them somewhere.

You don't have anywhere to plant them? That's okay. Get a high-vis vest, pull over onto the side of the highway in a nice spot, plant them, and leave. No one questions the high-vis vest. Someone does? "I'm a volenteer at an endangered species reintroduction program." It's not even a lie, it's just a program of one. Hell, that program may actually exist and you may actually be able to volenteer for it.

"But how does this help me connect with local spirits?" You are actively protecting your local ecosystems that your local spirits are a reflection of. They will appreciate that far more than any other offering you can give.

[thetwotorches]

What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it's hard to stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Wisgaak Gokpenagen, A Black Ash Basket written by Robin Wall Kimmerer

[thetwotorches]

'The old gods are everywhere,' she says. 'They swim in the river, and grow in the field, and sing in the woods. They are in the sunlight on the wheat, and under saplings in the spring, and in the vines that grow up the side of that stone church. They gather at the edges of the day, at dawn, and at dusk.'

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab

#they were us and we will be them if we play our cards right

[thetwotorches]

「愛して」それが口グセ

「見つめていて」濡れた瞳で

「愛して」呪文みたいに

「踊っていて」夜よこのまま

「愛して· · ·」

"Love me" -that's what I always say

"Keep looking at me" -with damp eyes

"Love me" -like a spell

"Keep dancing" -it's nighttime, just like that

"Love me..."

"......this is not a buck-tick blog," I repeat firmly to myself as I reach over and add yet another item to the menagerie....

#on repeat in my brain this one right now #the more i listen to it the more intensely intimate of a song it feels #someone in the video comments mentioned it was a vastly underrated bt song and they are 100000% right

[thetwotorches]

“But why are trees such social beings? Why do they share food with their own species and sometimes even go so far as to nourish their competitors? The reasons are the same as for human communities: there are advantages to working together. A tree is not a forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent local climate. It is at the mercy of wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old. To get to this point, the community must remain intact no matter what. If every tree were looking out only for itself, then quite a few of them would never reach old age. Regular fatalities would result in many large gaps in the tree canopy, which would make it easier for storms to get inside the forest and uproot more trees. The heat of summer would reach the forest floor and dry it out. Every tree would suffer. Every tree, therefore, is valuable to the community and worth keeping around for as long as possible. And that is why even sick individuals are supported and nourished until they recover. Next time, perhaps it will be the other way round, and the supporting tree might be the one in need of assistance. When thick silver-gray beeches behave like this, they remind me of a herd of elephants. Like the herd, they, too, look after their own, and they help their sick and weak back up onto their feet. They are even reluctant to abandon their dead.”

— The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World Peter Wohlleben,

[thetwotorches]

"I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them cats." ~Eckhart Tolle

[thetwotorches]

Hi guys- as soon as it warms up a bit more, I may be shutting down readings again to resume charm/talisman making, so grab me while you can!!

I'm opening up Tarot and Oracle readings again after being closed since October. I am unsure how long they will be open, so please do come in while you can.

$30 will garner a discussion of the question with myself, a custom-built reading, a detailed explanation with photo, and any questions you might have.

I currently use the 1001 Nights deck for Tarot and Manshin I for oracle. Initial discussion will determine which option is best suited to answer your question, or if you would rather one over the other- price is the same either way.

For those unfamiliar with me and to summarize as succintly as possible, I have been best described as a psychopomp. My primary responsibility is for the dead, but I am hardly restricted to that, and have been able to help with a variety of questions and situations for people.

Please do DM me as, again, I am unsure how long I will keep readings open for. Thank you, and happy Lunar New Year!

[thetwotorches]

"......this is not a buck-tick blog," I repeat firmly to myself as I reach over and add yet another item to the menagerie....

#Youtube

[thetwotorches]

"A century of gradual reforestation across the American East and Southeast has kept the region cooler than it otherwise would have become, a new study shows.

The pioneering study of progress shows how the last 25 years of accelerated reforestation around the world might significantly pay off in the second half of the 21st century.

Using a variety of calculative methods and estimations based on satellite and temperature data from weather stations, the authors determined that forests in the eastern United States cool the land surface by 1.8 – 3.6°F annually compared to nearby grasslands and croplands, with the strongest effect seen in summer, when cooling amounts to 3.6 – 9°F.

The younger the forest, the more this cooling effect was detected, with forest trees between 20 and 40 years old offering the coolest temperatures underneath.

“The reforestation has been remarkable and we have shown this has translated into the surrounding air temperature,” Mallory Barnes, an environmental scientist at Indiana University who led the research, told The Guardian.

“Moving forward, we need to think about tree planting not just as a way to absorb carbon dioxide but also the cooling effects in adapting for climate change, to help cities be resilient against these very hot temperatures.”

The cooling of the land surface affected the air near ground level as well, with a stepwise reduction in heat linked to reductions in near-surface air temps.

“Analyses of historical land cover and air temperature trends showed that the cooling benefits of reforestation extend across the landscape,” the authors write. “Locations surrounded by reforestation were up to 1.8°F cooler than neighboring locations that did not undergo land cover change, and areas dominated by regrowing forests were associated with cooling temperature trends in much of the Eastern United States.”

By the 1930s, forest cover loss in the eastern states like the Carolinas and Mississippi had stopped, as the descendants of European settlers moved in greater and greater numbers into cities and marginal agricultural land was abandoned.

The Civilian Conservation Corps undertook large replanting efforts of forests that had been cleared, and this is believed to be what is causing the lower average temperatures observed in the study data.

However, the authors note that other causes, like more sophisticated crop irrigation and increases in airborne pollutants that block incoming sunlight, may have also contributed to the lowering of temperatures over time. They also note that tree planting might not always produce this effect, such as in the boreal zone where increases in trees are linked with increases in humidity that way raise average temperatures."

-via Good News Network, February 20, 2024