melisecox

[melisecox]

^ future blog topic

So I've heard there are types of witches, but what are they? Could you maybe please make a list of the types of witches, what they do, and traits of the witches? Thank you!

Hiya! So there are MANY types of witches, but I can explain some of them!

Cosmic Witch: A witch who mainly works with the stars, moon, sun, planets and universe.

Elemental Witch: A witch who uses the four elements in their craft. (Fire, Earth, Water, Air)

Green Witch: A witch who uses nature in their craft! This may include plants, the earth, faeries, or any natural element or herbal related things.

Kitchen Witch: A witch who mainly uses elements from their home. Not necessarily things relating to the kitchen, but a lot of the time this may be the case! They add elements of magic into their everyday life, like domestic witchcraft. They might use it while cleaning the house or cooking as well.

Eclectic Witch: A witch who uses different crafts and practices and makes it their own.

Sea Witch: A witch who uses the sea/ocean in their craft! (exactly how it sounds, I know.) They might use things related to the ocean in their craft, like sand or shells.

Tech Witch: A witch who uses technology and the modern world in their craft! (This one is also self explanatory).

Pop Culture Witch: A witch who uses pop culture in their work! They use pieces from video games, comics, or any kind of pop culture in their spells or sigils, etc.

Urban Witch: A witch who lives in the city and uses that to their advantage in their craft. They might use things they find in the urban setting as well.

There are many more kinds of witches, I just thought i’d include the ones I was most familiar with! Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions about these types or types I didn’t list!

[melisecox]

Confession

The categorization or “typing” of witches for aesthetic is getting a little out of hand (though I think many of them are beautiful). For instance, I don’t know that there is a huge difference between a cosmic, solar, lunar, and astrological witch. I don’t know covens that only work with desert sand. I don’t know covens that only work with bubblegum. It’s true, each of our paths is unique but I don’t think it warrants an entirely new name because we utilize one tool more than another. The covens I’ve known and have worked with utilize elements from each of the five categories and tools that suit them in a given moment. Witches that draw on the power of the Sun also utilize powers of swamps, the sea, and divine with tarot cards. We’re not exclusive to one aesthetic and naming our chosen aesthetic doesn’t limit our other realms of work. It could just be me, though…

[melisecox]

Witchcraft Aesthetic // Modern Neon Witch

[It was] a city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

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Herbal Witch Aesthetic

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I see some beautiful witchy aesthetics on here; ranging from goth and dark, to frivolous and flowery. All of them stunning. But the all have the same central figure: a beautiful thin woman. There is nothing inherently wrong in this, but looking around I never saw any aesthetics that represented me, a fat girl. So I figured, no one is going to solve my problem for me, and no one should have to, either. So I set out to make my own “fat witch” aesthetic. And that’s when I really hit the wall. Not only were all the “sexy” witch pics I could find only of thin women, but the fat witches were hideous, green and warty. They all filled the same stereotype, shouting to the world that a fat witch is not a real witch, she is only a parody. Fat witches simply aren’t palatable, and they certainly aren’t aesthetic. It took me far too long to find three - just three - fat witches to use in a collage. I don’t believe that every other witch out there is a size zero, so why is that the only representation we use in our aesthetics? Why are we buying into the mainstream ideas of how we should represent ourselves? I don’t want to see only slender, willowy witches in aesthetics anymore. Of course they have their place, but they aren’t the sole representation of us. I want to see black witches, asian witches, fat witches, trans witches, butch witches, old witches, disabled witches. Because I know we’re out there, and we deserve representation too. We are ALL beautiful.

[melisecox]

WITCH AESTHETICS // WHITE + GOLD + BLACK

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Witchsthetics

Snake Witch (Request)

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Pastel Witch for @bubblesquasheleven

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Mermaid Magick

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Witch Aesthetics // Blood Witch

Requested

Chaos Witch | Seaside Witch | Divination Witch | Storm Witch | Scent Witch | 

Circus Witch

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Forest Witch 🌲🌑

[melisecox]

Creating a Mythic Past (TM) for ourselves

Today on Pascha/Easter, as I was honoring my ancestors of spirit, blood and bone, many of whom were Catholic or Orthodox and also people who were deeply immersed in the folk practices and beliefs of their time (which we would now call superstitions, magic or animism) I found myself being troubled by the effort modern witches have gone to in order to create a "mythic past" for ourselves that is not reflected by the historical record.

What purpose do these stories about millions of witches burned and pre-Christian Goddess-worshipping cultures serve? They are based on partial truths and through the power of the Internet, have been repeated and garbled like a children's game of telephone to such an extent that they can never be fully extracted from neo-pagan culture.

There were trials and executions of "witches." But they were not on the scale that popular Pagan and feminist writers have expounded.1 Whether we would consider many of these people witches today is another question, since many of them were likely devout Catholics who also held folk beliefs. The Black Mass and Witches' Sabbath, along with nocturnal flight are all questionable elements that are derived from books written by those with an interest in seeing "witches" disempowered and their own actions justified.

The "Goddess-worshipping Europe" theory comes from the work of one archaeologist, Gimbutas, whose work in that area is questioned heavily by her peers.2 3 And Gimbutas' work may have been misrepresented by Wiccans and Pagans in ways she did not intend.

But the thought I am left with today is who benefits from this? Do we actually become better practicioners of our craft and more connected with our ancestors by believing these things?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_early_modern_period ↩︎

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/01/the-scholars-and-the-goddess/305910/ ↩︎

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-06-11/magazine/tm-2975_1_marija-gimbutas-gods-of-old-europe-indo-european ↩︎

[melisecox]

we all meet in the end

[melisecox]

Curse Positivity

Curse an abuser? Awesome, great for you to stand up for yourself!

Curse a bully? Sweet! Maybe a bite back is just what they need to respect your boundaries.

Curse someone who committed a crime against you? We all know the justice system can be flaky, so anything you can do to level the playing field is totally rad!

Hex a really mean customer at work? Neat, tell me the story! I wasn’t there, so if you thought they were mean enough to deserve it, I trust your judgement.

Curse someone who broke your heart? Go you for valuing yourself enough to not let someone walk all over you and your feelings! Show ‘em what happens when they take your heart and treat it poorly.

Curse someone who was acting bigoted/hateful/violent? Way to go! Some people are dangerous and will harm others if left to their own devices. Thank you for being the one to try and do something about it.

All you witches are awesome, supported, and loved!

[melisecox]

For my paper/presentation: Witchcraft and consumerism/commodification

Witch Casket

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Pagan colonists

I saw the headline "Wade Mueller speaks on the need for Pagan homelands" and I knew it was gonna be good.1 I've struggled with the idea of Pagans of all stripes setting up permanent places of worship on colonized land for a while but today realized I have two separate problems with it. First, many Pagans hold themselves to be spiritual descendants of persecuted religious groups- there's a massive amount of writing on "the Burning Times," much of which is historically inaccurate- which should inform current practices in relating to other marginalized religious groups. Second, the land and the spirits of the land are all living beings in animist and many Pagan worldviews, and the people who have relationships with those places and spirits are the Native peoples who lived or still live there.

The land we live on is Native land. There's no getting around that. Putting up a temple to a god from another place isn't going to change that either. I'm running on the edge of inarticulate right now because we can perpetuate settler colonialsm in our non-Christian religious practices or we can challenge it. I'm not seeing a challenge to it in this article.

http://wildhunt.org/2017/04/wade-mueller-speaks-on-the-need-for-pagan-homelands.html ↩︎