Both. Both Is Good

saw is a horror movie to YOU. to me it’s a gay romcom.

I love the smell of autumn rain…

𝖒𝖔𝖓𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖍𝖎𝖌𝖍 ; 𝖉𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖚𝖑𝖆𝖚𝖗𝖆 ⚰️🦇

[please reblog or like if you saved]

Creature of the night

my school librarys copy of dracula has bite marks on it???

✨Witchy Uses For Tea✨

A good way to unwind and replenish your energy after a spell or ritual is to relax with some tea.

🌱TEA TYPES🌿

Green tea- fire, passion, healing, love, sexuality

Oolong tea- reflection, wisdom, concentration

Black tea- earth, water, strength, stability, energy, cleansing

White tea- happiness, wisdom, purification (compliments moon energy very well)

Rose tea: love, compassion, psychic abilities, good luck, protection

Herbal tea- very versatile; best uses depend on herbs used. Examples are peppermint, spearmint, rooibos, etc.

✨ WITCHY USES 💫

If you are performing a ritual or spell that involves sending positive energies out into the universe, steep the tea nearby while it is taking place. Drink the tea when you are done- this will allow you to replenish your energies, leaving you less drained

Brew loose tea and read the tea leaves!

Drizzle honey into the tea in sigil patterns. Stirring the tea charges it (clockwise if you are attracting something, counterclockwise if you are banishing something) and drinking it activates it!

Brew your tea with distilled drinking water that has been charged with the sun/moon to give your magic a boost!

Make your own tea blends to compliment and refine your intent

Store tea leaves/tea bags near crystal grids to charge them before brewing- the longer you charge and the stronger you brew it, the stronger the magic will be

You can add things like lemon, ginger, cinnamon, cayenne, and give your magick some oomph

You can spread tea leaves (moist, dry, used, unused, etc) as offerings, mix them into or add them on top of the soil to help plants grow (bonus if they’ve been used in healing or growth spells!), add them to melted wax for a personalized candle, etc; the possibilities are basically endless

i’m like a vampire in the way that you have to 100% confirm that it is okay for me to join into anything

Dr. Abraham ‘100% knows it is a vampire causing Lucy’s illness but knows better than to immediately say that out loud to anyone let alone someone who runs an asylum’ Van Helsing

Witch Positivity Culture is Toxic

A wild unscheduled post appears. I’ve just been seeing a lot of something lately that’s been bugging me and I wanted to put it into words, mostly for my own sake. Though my frustration here is rooted in my path as a shadow worker which is the topic I’m writing about this month so maybe it’s more of a prelude.

It’s really just a riff on what plenty of other people have put more eloquently – positivity culture is toxic – but with regards to the witchcraft community in particular. I see so many feel good posts about “When you don’t feel witchy enough…” followed by a list of affirmations. I watch people get responded to blithely when they ask questions about witchcraft with “everyone’s path is valid.” 

This, quite frankly, is incredibly shallow.

Feeling bad isn’t a bad thing. It’s positivity culture adding pressure to feel good about yourself and your practice all the time that makes these totally normal and helpful feelings into things that need to be soothed away, into feelings to reject. Feelings – even bad ones – exist to try to help us. This is more complicated in cases of mental illness but, for the most part, feelings exist to help you.

Your bad feelings about your practice help highlight an area that isn’t working for you. If you just try to affirm the feelings away, you’ll never figure out why the practice isn’t working for you in the first place. What I wish those posts would say instead is to look at why you don’t feel witchy enough and be honest with yourself. Are you actually doing the work of studying and practicing witchcraft? If not, then what could you do to improve it? If you’re not in a place to work on it right now, how can you practice acceptance for the season of life that you’re in?

That takes work and a willingness to reflect and change, but it does begin to actually resolve the underlying issue at hand. I find it preferable to having to reapply affirmations ad infinitum.

And I would chalk this up to a difference in taste if it weren’t how it works its way into all aspects of the witchcraft community. I have frequently been greeted with hostility and “all paths are valid” when I ask questions about how other people think through their witchcraft. The very act of asking questions – especially ones that are beyond a beginner’s level – gets treated as if people are invalidating whatever it is they’re seeking to understand. I’ve watched as some communities take a more aggressive stance with practical questions about intermediate witchcraft than they do actual racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Validation, like affirmation, is the easy and temporary way to cope with discomfort. “All paths are valid” is absolutely meaningless. It is a non-answer in almost every case I’ve seen it used. It’s also untrue. Paths that appropriate closed practices, have misogyny and racism imbedded in them or as part of the goal of their craft, that are used to justify and further transphobia – not fucking valid. The fixation on not invalidating anyone is wild to me. Why is it that in so many spaces that is valued over open discussion what our personal values and paths actually are?

One of the reasons it took me so long to call myself a witch and to practice more regularly is how this sheen of validity covered up everything useful from any sort of scrutiny to figure out whether it would work for me. It wasn’t until I finally found people who could be comfortable with their practice, did not seek my validation, and could answer my questions freely that I ever got anywhere.

I can’t control what other people do, but I since I’ve gotten a flurry of new followers I thought it might be good to restate one of my main principles with my work here on this blog – I will never make you comfortable with my materials at the expense of your well being. I will never affirm you staying the same when change is absolutely necessary.

This community wide discomfort with discomfort is toxic, stunts people trying to be become more skilled, and creates a haven for people reproducing systemic oppression in the community. If we don’t accept discomfort as a natural part of learning and growing, we run the risk of creating a space that is more focused on feeling like witch than actually being one.*

TL;DR – Feeling bad isn’t a bad thing, stop trying to affirm it away. Saying “every path is valid” gives racists, sexists, homophobes, and transphobes a pass and keeps people looking to learn in the dark. Discomfort with discomfort is toxic.

*I want to be clear that my definition of a witch in this case is someone who studies and uses witchcraft and isn’t tradition or skill dependent.