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Hermes, god of boundaries, thieves, travel, and a divine trickster

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dont take bird noises for granted

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RICCI, Sebastiano Mercury 1706-07 Fresco Palazzo Marucelli-Fenzi, Florence

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the trees you grew up with have not forgotten you. their branches still whisper your name in the breeze and their roots remember the paths your feet once traced through their shade.

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when i say “girl” randomly as an interjection i’m speaking to the omnipresent all knowing being of Girl. asking her for mercy. taking girl’s name in vain

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Visitors in the garden. Roe deer/rådjur. Värmland, Sweden (March 27, 2023).

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Advice for if your practice is feeling stressful or unfulfilling (that isn't 'just stop practicing')

Before you expand: long text post!

I think it's interesting that the first line of advice stressed and unhappy practitioners often receive is 'stop practicing! take a break,' because besides a breather this doesn't actually do anything. When a person is done with that break they're still going to have the same stressful, unfulfilling practice they did before.

Stop practicing is useful advice for someone who is about to deep-fry their brain in uncontrolled Witch Fire. It's useful advice for someone who experiences unexplainable catastrophe every time they engage in magic.

I'm not sure it's useful advice for people who want to practice and are actively seeking help figuring out how.

So here are some ideas. Feel free to add your own.

If your practice has too much of a time load:

Scrape over-engineered ritual. Examine ritual formats. Are you spending a majority of your practice time engaging in elaborate ritual? Where can that be paired down?

Swap ritual for enchantments. If ritual performs an action (laying a compass), can you substitute for that ritual action by making enchanted objects that take less time to activate (enchanted compass altar cloth)?

Minimize ingredients. If you regularly perform spells that require lengthy enchantment of ingredients, can you use fewer ingredients to achieve the same results? If you're using more than 3 correspondences for any spell, is this because you are wise in your own ways, or because you just feel that more is merrier?

Mash rituals together. Do you have a string of rituals, even small ones, that you perform one after the other? Is it possible to reorganize these so they're all done at once, in the same ritual? For example, setting out an offering to the gods, a different offering for the ancestors, another for helper spirits, etc. Can you combine these all into one single offering?

Check for over-tending. Is it possible that you're repeating magical acts, like feeding wards and cleansing, more often than you need to? Did you arrive at this schedule through trial and error, or did you just guess this is how often you should do them?

Check for your own levelup: spell maintenance. If it's been a while since you re-evaluated your ritual/offering/maintenance schedule, your increase in skills may mean you need to do these tasks less often to achieve the same result.

Check for your own levelup: techniques and routines. Some techniques, like carefully entering trance, grounding, and centering, are like training wheels that wear ruts into our paths of magic. As we improve in skill, old rituals and techniques that have been carefully couched in these helpful devices may become ingrained in us so that we can perform them in almost any state of mind, much faster and easier than we could before. Experiment with any technique you've been doing for a while and see if you still need to perform time-consuming meditative or focusing techniques before you can perform the skill.

Be reasonable with your own goals. I find most 'laywitches' give themselves daily and weekly schedules that would put actual cloistered monks to shame. Did your spirits tell you they expect daily offerings, or did you decide on that an run with it? Where are you overcompensating and overexerting in your path when nobody, including yourself, asked you to?

If your practice has too much of a work load:

Much of the advice of the prior section applies. Also,

Just work less. Are you putting in 100% effort when 20% or 30% would do? Are you treating every act of magic like a performance review that will control the outcome of your magical career? I'm not being sarcastic; an actual solution to your path being too much work is to just put in less effort. If you've never tried this you may be shocked at how effective magic can be when you're only doing what needs to be done.

Find simpler, more reasonable stuff. Find new techniques, and spell and ritual formats that are paired down to fit the amount of effort that's reasonable to exert for any given magical act. If you can't work with correspondences without a lengthy act of activation, find a way to cast simple spells that doesn't rely on correspondences.

Limit research and prep. Ask yourself how much research you reasonably need to get started on any given project. Remember that a huge amount of a witch's education is experiential; you will probably never know enough until you've already done it three or four times.

Be goal-oriented; prioritize actions. Ask yourself if you've set arbitrary workloads before you can get started with anything, such as forcing yourself to write artistic grimoire pages before you're allowed to perform a ritual you're interested in.

Learn skills to help prioritize actions. If your practice is consumed by acts of upkeep such as cleansing and empowering objects, focus on learning energy sensing so you can reasonably determine whether or not an object actually needs to be cleansed or empowered.

Administrate your own practice - what can go on the back burner? Make a list of all your active ongoing projects and maintenance, including upkeep of energy batteries, spells that require maintenance, and situations you want to change and are casting spells on. Prioritize them; see which ones you can set aside.

Restructure your projects to minimize maintenance. Consolidate spells and projects where possible. For example, if you have multiple protection spells for many people that require upkeep, condense them all onto a protection altar so you can feed and tend to them all at once.

Work in batch and bulk. See where you can do batch work to lighten your load. You can bulk enchant candles and incense, instead of enchanting incense every time you do a ritual. You can enchant oils, waters, and incense to feed your spells, taking time out of upkeep.

Levelup your charging and maintenance skills. Learn energy work to attach energy tethers to batteries and other important projects so they're able to drink from the wellspring you attach them to, and stay charged.

Scrape routines that don't serve you. Examine any daily routines. Are you doing them because they're helping you, or because you feel like you're supposed to be doing something every day? See if you can replace more intensive daily routines with something less tiring, like a prayer to your path itself.

If your practice feels too silly:

You have a right to privacy. Cocooning is valid. It's fine to take steps to limit who can see and potentially judge your practice. You can keep things to yourself until you're ready.

Tend to your emotional wellness. Self-therapy, in any form you feel comfortable with, can help mitigate the inner eye of judgement.

Reduce your beliefs to palatable doses. Believing in magic for only the duration of your work is perfectly fine. You don't have to 'believe-believe' 24/7. If you're not ready to integrate the belief of magic and spirits into your baseline worldview, don't - you can agree to buy in to those beliefs only while you practice techniques and cast spells, and then put them away the rest of the time.

Scrape stuff you really can't get past. Ask yourself what about your practice feels silly. Are there trappings - like altars, ritual movements, and speaking aloud - that you don't like? Change them. Is the idea that religious faith itself is a bit cringe? Self-therapy (or you know, the regular kind) may be assistive.

Ask for help modifying your process.Is there something very specific about a ritual or technique that you just can't get past, but you don't know how to change it? Research and see what other substitute rituals are available. Ask others and see if they can help you brainstorm.

Embrace the silliness. It's not going anywhere. Believing in your practice and holding it dear and sacred is not the same as being ✨super serious gravitas✨ all the time. There are lots of things about witchcraft, and the acts of the witch, that are silly and make you realize you're doing something ridiculous. I came out here at 2 am after it's been raining to climb down a slippery riverbed to get a branch of a tree that I think is talking to me?? Because some medieval guy said Tuesday is the planet Mars and I think trees talk to me?! Ridiculous. Yet I still love it dearly in a sacred place in my heart. It can be silly and glorious at the same time.

Cast a wider net. See if you're barking up the wrong tree. Traditional Witchcraft, folk magic, lodge magic, chaos magic, eclectic neopaganism... these things are not interchangeable. If you've never explored different traditions, why not give it a go? You might find another path that feels a lot more natural to you. A lot of people fall into a certain path just because they don't know what else they could be doing!

If your practice feels unfulfilling:

What are you doing to bring yourself fulfillment? Why did you get into witchcraft? Make a list of your top 5 reasons (if you have that many). Which techniques, spells, and rituals are you regularly performing are designed to deliver these desires to you? If one of your goals of practicing witchcraft is to 'feel connected,' how often are you performing acts where the only goal is to make you feel connected?

Grow your path deliberately in the direction of your needs. What do you wish you had in your life right now? Is it the feeling of being loved? Inner peace? Feeling like nature is alive and watching you? Look for what techniques and rituals in your practice will bring these things to you. If there are none, find or develop them.

Ask for help and share your feelings. If you work with gods and spirits, do you regularly tell them how you feel about your practice and ask them for help finding fulfillment?

Find contentment in the process. It's vital to find joy in the process. If you have regular routines or upkeep you need to do, how can you modify it so that process in and of itself is satisfying to you? Try considering the visceral element of witchcraft: the words, scents, sounds, moods, and thoughts that you want to experience in your present moment. Witchcraft is experiential: a great deal of the experience you create in the tidepools of routine is under your control.

Contemplate the larger purpose. Some witches do have magical chores and responsibilities they can't or shouldn't shirk. If this is true of you, and you can't modify those routines, try refocusing on why you're doing them and the importance they hold in your path. See if you can find balance elsewhere in your practice that feels rejuvenating; sort of a 'work-play' balance of your own craft.

Set short-term goals you can celebrate. Are you undertaking a lot of 'workout routines' that are designed to basically make you magically buff, or get good at a particular skill, but you're doing them with no endgoal? Try creating short-term goals that excite your sense of wonder or accomplishment. Like, practicing tarot until you can read the Celtic Cross, or practicing energy work until you can make a four-element layered energy shield. Build goalposts for yourself, both in the short and long-term, and celebrate your successes.

Scrape routines you're not doing for any good reason. Are your regular practices things you're doing because they fill you with mystery and wonder, or because you're just pretty sure that's the kind of thing witches do? If you're bored or unfulfilled by a particular routine, consider stopping it altogether, especially if you can't think of any short-term goals that it's helping you work towards. Think about the reasons you got into witchcraft: what practices would help you fulfill those reasons, while also feeling good to practice?

Seek out a likeminded community. A good working group of friends can be invaluable. My close group of witch friends, whom I've been hanging out with for years, started as a Tumblr post asking if anyone wanted to make a small server to study witchcraft. Reach out and see who's out there to study with, talk to, and practice with. It can be loads of fun to do short-term study and practice challenges with friends, and a great way to get feedback and support.

Evaluate your spiritual relationships. Although it can be painful and challenging, sometimes we enter into our paths working with gods and spirits that after some time, we need to move on from. Is it possible your path has become stagnant because you don't want to keep working with a god or spirit that your path has been built around? It may be time to see how you can move on.

When 'take a break' might be helpful advice to heal your practice:

Of course, YMMV :)

'Taking a break' doesn't mean stop being a witch, stop believing in magic, or stop 100% of your practice. It can also mean putting a lot of projects on the back burner, switching to bare-minimum (or below minimum) maintenance, and squashing regular routines.

I'm talking specifically about taking a break in the interest of your own practice - not the conditions under which someone is ""allowed"" to stop practicing witchcraft.

Take a break to rest and let your seeds germinate. 'Fallow periods,' when you have no desire or motivation to practice witchcraft, and when it seems like there's nothing for you to do, are normal. Some witches experience this cyclically, perhaps during certain seasons or when predictable life conditions are met. There's no need to force yourself to practice when it's just not flowing. The snow on your mountaintops needs to melt to replenish your waterways, bestie. There's nothing wrong with you, the sun just isn't out yet.

When you're hitting yourself with a hammer. When something in your practice is triggering or harming you, and stopping will have no consequences, then stopping your practice for a while is probably a good idea. Use the downtime to seek healing or reformat your practice.

To open your life up for necessary work. Not every witch can out-path every problem. Consider taking a break when the problem is something you will have time and energy to work on if not for your regular magical practice.

When you're about to deep-fry your brain with Witch Fire. Consider taking a break when the problem with your practice is that you are practicing too often - such as fatigue due to excessive spellwork, divinatory obsession, trouble staying out of the spirit world (compulsive astral travel), or focus on spirits/magic/the spirit worlds are starting to erode your home, school, or work life.

To let the ripples settle. When you've done so much magic or ritual work that your life is a boat on a stormy sea, and you just need to batten down the hatches for a while and let things settle.

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new tarot card "fuck your entire life" and its a guy being attacked by devils and flaming skulls and wild animals and screaming and fire everywhere

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Shout out to the people for whom Witchcraft and the Gods totally fucking suck sometimes

A few years ago, I was being mocked in a Discord server by someone who believed that if I was having a difficult relationship with my primary god, then that was my fault and I needed to "be better."

He's a god of Witchcraft, I tried to say. He's the Folkloric Devil. He can be an asshole. Sometimes, working with him is very difficult.

The person implied it was a phase and that they hoped I "figured it out" because the gods would ~*nEvEr*~ ever behave as complete cunts.

Sigh.

I see great posts around. "Witchcraft isn't supposed to be stressful! Witchcraft shouldn't give you anxiety! If you don't like your witchcraft, stop doing it! Change it!"

It's a great message, in general. But what if you can't? What if you shouldn't?

I see these support posts side-by-side with posts like, "where is all the advanced witchcraft? People should post more of their path!"

I hate to say it out loud and in such a boorish way, but a lot of the time, "advanced witchcraft" is tedious. It's a chore. It's making pacts that you can't back out of, that become burdensome responsibilities.

(Not trying to get into a discussion about what constitutes "advanced witchcraft" so I'm going to stop using that term)

There are a lot of people out there who are now bound to paths that they don't really like, didn't intend to become a part of, are having difficulty changing, or who are going through a phase where everything fucking sucks, but they are still dedicated to seeing it through to the end.

So, anyway. If you feel the gods have betrayed you, if you feel trapped in your practice, if you feel exhausted by the responsibilities you have taken upon yourself, if you feel like things are being taken away from you, if your Craft feels like a chore: you are not alone.

And from time to time I get really burned out on posts that seek to make witchcraft and the gods so accessible for beginners that anything that gets a tiny bit serious, or tedious, or burdensome, or scary, is erased. And called fearmongering. Or called gatekeeping.

I think it would just be nice for time to time that people who are not beginners, and who are struggling, also get community support. And not erased or shut down just because their lived experiences might be scary to a hypothetical beginner.

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Sometimes at the moment I expect it the least, the universe sends me something I didn’t realize I needed and wouldn’t have thought to look for. Be it a sign or a kind word, a reminder or a push in the right direction. A small comfort or a big one, it can arrive and change my outlook. Whatever you need, even if you don’t know you need it, here’s a sigil to call it to you. ☪

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A practice is something you built, it’s very organic like an ecosystem of rituals, knowledge, words, material objects, ressources. Like the branches of a tree it sometimes dies and sometimes branches out, you builds more in one direction or choose to work more in another one. Even if you feel like you are stagnating in your practice, or you don’t know what direction to choose, you have to start somewhere. And with time you build your practice like the gardener maintains their garden.

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I block accounts run by polytheists who make entire portions of their content/personality about despising Christians/"exposing" the "lies of Christianity," btw.

If you spend so much time hating another religion, you probably aren't keeping up with the responsibilities you have to your own, and I stand by that. 🤷

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low energy devotional acts you can do!

hey guys! i know i haven't been quite active here, and as the title of this post suggests, you might already know why :') i know this is something that may happen to all of us, so i wanted to start by saying that it is completely normal and that you shouldn't beat yourself over it. so here are a few things you can do to honour your deities, even on days where you feel at your lowest <3

have a cup of tea in their name. you don't necessarily have to offer it, just have a nice warm drink in their name

drink water. you have to take care of yourself either way, so better keep yourself hydrated!

have a small meal in their name. just eat something, for their sake, and for yours.

light a candle. even an LED candle is fine. let its warmth embrace and its light guide you

listen to music. now's the perfect time to listen to your devotional playlists, even if you're just laying in bed.

pray. just pray to them. out loud, in your head. doesn't matter. you can do this from your bed, too, they'll understand

wear devotional jewellery. it doesn't have to be anything fancy, just a small ring or necklace or whatever that reminds you of them.

just take care of yourself. it'll pass. and they will welcome you with open arms once you recover your usual energy and go back to your usual self.

remember. your gods love you. so do i. everything will be okay <3 take care!

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New goddess just dropped from some recent translations of Roman Inscriptions in Britain:

To the goddess Minerva Rudupia and the Divinity of the Emperor, Iulius Iulianus son of Iulius […] and Bric[…] daughter [?of …] in accordance with their vow [willingly], deservedly

No known parallels or etymology at this point, but I am looking forward to learning more once the etymology has been done but the assumption at the moment is that Rudupia appears to have been a local goddess that was "identified" with Minerva.

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Winter Sun & Moon

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Hi Chicken!

What's your opinion on someone *asking* a spirit to give them the Sight?

I've seen posts where people say that it has to be a gift, and can't be asked for. (And some saying it's disrespectful to even ask)

I've seen other people say that they asked their deities/spirits to provide them with it and they did.

Obviously everyone's going to have a different opinion, but I'm just curious what yours is!

💚🥰

We're in reference to this post and this post.

I am feral and crying.

It is so weirdly bizarre how difficult it is for witches to ask their helper spirits for help.

We can be talking tutelary spirits, friends, caring gods, literal familiars contracted to help, any of them -

It midkey messes me up how resistant witches are (and myself included sometimes) to just asking for help.

"I really want to learn this but I'm struggling-" "Did you ask your spirits for help?" "No I don't want to bother them." (*I would rather learn generic things online than continue the line of knowledge and lore carried by my spirits; I don't want to be a beacon that shines their light into the world through acting on their teachings, thereby being their conduit into this world, granting them reciprocal power and deep honor.)

'Second Sight' may be a generic term for a skill, but the technique you use to access it is unique to you. The spiritual mythology and lore behind why your spirits teach things this way, and the most important and moral uses for this skill, are unique to your spirit family.

The spirits choosing to help us is a big commitment on their part. When spirits choose to become our guides, protectors, familiars, and initiators, we often think of how this is our responsibility (to talk to them, to give offerings, whatever). But not many people talk about how much of a responsibility it is for them.

Why would spirits undertake this huge responsibility - of being someone's guiding god, of being their helper spirit, of teaching them magical skills? Is it because they all just want offerings? Is it out of a sense of duty?

No.

I hazard a guess, in fact I will offer a belief for the taking, that most spirits who choose to help us do so because they love us and care about us.

They sit down with us, break bread with us at our table, and invite us into their families. They do it because they want to be our family.

And when we join their families,

we honor and respect them by often asking for help.

Why is this?

Because when you ask them for help learning Second Sight, they get to teach you their familial methods and traditions. They get to teach you their lore and stories. They get to celebrate the passing of their clan's knowledge down to the next generation of practitioners.

They are the mythic elders dancing with joy that the practitioner they help, guide, and protect, loves them back enough to learn their ways.

Witchcraft is family!!

"Ohhhh trade skills are dying out in the world, everyone go learn how to fix watches, tradesmen will cry and sob with joy and relief knowing someone wants to learn their lifes work"

"Don't ask your spirits to learn their trade though it's rude and disrespectful, do everything on your own from scratch :)"

Witchcraft is family.

I would teach any of my family how to crochet. I'm quite fancy at it, and I'm a good teacher. Who will I teach: the person who asks to learn, or the person who does not ask to learn?

It is a gift either way.

Asking for it doesn't make it less of a gift.

Witchcraft is family you have to choose to participate in.

"I wish I could make lasagna~" "Grandma Benini is coming for Labor Day, she'd be so happy that someone wanted to learn the family recipe-" "I could never disrespect Grandma Benini by asking to learn her lasagna recipe. I'll just watch a youtube video." "But... it's the family recipe..." "Can you imagine how disrespected she would be. If she knew. I wanted to carry on the family traditions. Instead of just teaching myself generic. From online. ??"

When you participate in your spirit family's teachings and enact their wisdom, morals, skills, and goals in the world, you are a literal conduit of the spirit world - a lamp that shines their light into this world, and providing them with reciprocal influence and power into the world.

It does not honor the spirits to shut them out. It is not respectful to ignore their extended hand of grace. You are not a burden to them.

You are not a burden to them.

They are here because they want you to be a part of the family.

And if you like, if you want to, you can ask them to help you learn the family's ways. You can ask them to help you with Sight to see the family, with knowledge to understand the family, and with skills to help the family.

If you want to, you can live a path filled with the teachings and wisdom of your spirits. You can be a singular point in timespace where their teachings spill over into the world around you.

You can be the body of your spirits in this world. You can be their footprint.

But how can you, unless you ask them to shine through you?

What if the spirits didn't roll their eyes and tap their feet when you came calling? What if they didn't groan and look at their watches and say, 'well at least I'll get an offering...'

What if their eyes filled with love and they breathed a sigh of relief that you now, finally, are ready to ask to receive the gifts that have always been offered?