dirtandwormsandweeds - Tumblr blog

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

catch me reminding myself constantly that my gods r ok with it if i miss a special date, an offering, anything, bc my gods do not fw thought crime and im allowed to be a human

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

since I'm on the topic of veiling. I wanted to talk an aspect of veiling that I don't talk about a lot.

I love my hair. I have very vivid red, curly hair, and my whole life, I've been told how beautiful it is, and how much people love it. and I agree, I love my hair so so much.

because of this, I sometimes have a hard time covering it. I love it, I want people to see it.

part of my veiling practice is that it's a sacrifice for me. I veil in honor of my gods, but also as an offering of something I love to the theoi.

it's an act of devotion and humility for me to cover my hair for the gods, and knowing that brings a lot of peace and blessings to my life

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when women have strong venus in their chart specifically both libra and taurus in their big six, [including jupiter in taurus or libra as it enhances the characteristics more, or saturn, as it is the planet of lessons], they really have to learn how to love themselves and be comfortable being by themselves.

i've known many women in my life with those placements in their big 3 or 6, especially close friends and family-members. and they never seem to be comfortable on their own, which makes them dependant on their partners and having someone on their side. it makes them lose their value in themselves, and perception of their independency.

this occurs more when they dont have strong mars or pluto in their chart. its crazy, because i know a handful of women who have taurus and libra in their placement, attempting to settle down with just anyone...anything so they feel confident. one of them i know of has gone through countless of fiancés and engagements and another one got married to a man she's known for a week, after i advised her to focus on herself too.

venusians! learn how to love yourselves!

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

check out the cowboy-wizard hat i made!

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

when i was really little and had just learned how to write my full name . i noticed my twin brother had really messy handwriting. while mine was like … as nice as it could be for a little kid. so i wrote my name in his handwriting on a wall and i waited to see who our parents would get mad at . and they blamed him. and that was when my life of crime began

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

i hate to say it but. the healthy eating people are kinda onto something. if you can figure out a way to get all your greens and proteins and fiber in ways that taste good to you you start to prefer the healthy option over junk food 7/10 times

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

I almost scrolled past this on Twitter

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

How to get back into your practice after a burnout

Alot of times in our practices, we often just straight up forget. Not going to lie to you I didn't practice much until I got out of my mom's home...which was one year ago. And I also have a theory that since paganism isnt dogmatic and is meant to be ran by a community we fall out really easy, it's natural, paganism is different now. But anyways here is chaos's master guide on how to put on your big girl panties and get back the work.

(disclaimer: just because these things worked for me doesn't mean it's going to work for everyone else, this post is completely upg. I'm just offering advice.)

Starting out small

What never stuck to me is those post that are like: "stir your intentions into your coffee, light incense, pray" because like yeah thats a good way to start off I really dont think itll set in our brains to do this everyday. Instead what I recommend is finding days to practice and sticking to that day. Find a day where you useally do nothing and dedicate it to getting back into your practice.

You could use this day to research on all the things you forgotten (been there)

Or you could just leave offerings out for your deities and call it a day

I think if you uphold a certain schedule your mind will get into the habit of "oh today's witch day, time to do witchcraft" this is basic psychology, and I promise it works 😭😭

Deity work and getting back into it

Little reminder: your gods are not mad at you. They do not hate you. They love you.

I have had so many falling outs with deities because I just couldn't uphold a schedule. Hekate being one of them. Hekate really showed me the way once I moved out of my mother's house, and after so many ins and outs of my worship to her, she still showed me love and compassion. I promise your gods will do the same. They understand our mortal lives more then you comprehend. After all, this is their earth.

Stuff you can do to get back into worship with your deities:

- offerings, big or small

- dedicate days to them, in my schedule Hekate is worshipped on Monday, and Aphrodite on Friday.

- research ways to connect with them more

- don't make big promises that you will get back into your practice and never fall out again, thats just putting yourself in more responsibility, your gods will now expect that responsibility. I've done this before and I definitely got side eyed by Hekate 😭😭

I recommend reading over these lovely post by @/khaire-traveler

Subtle deity worship

I honestly used this alot to get back into worship with my deities 😭😭 these posts go into worship you could do for deities while you are either hiding your practice or just want to do something for your gods. Really helpful post 10/10.

Getting back into witchcraft

I know I kind of went over this already, but I feel like there needs to be some small steps to getting back into witchcraft before we get to rituals, spells and stuff of that sort.

To get back into witchcraft, I recommend meditating, either by yourself or with your deities. Meditation allows you to just focus on the present and let go of all your stresses. I like to meditate with my deities because I get visions from them easily this way, it's easier for me to communicate.

From there you can do research on the basics of witchcraft and work your way up to rituals and spell work... hopefully all of this makes sense

Anyways yeah that's all the advice I have to getting back into your practice, if I have anything else to add I'll reblog this and add more. But yeah! I really hopes this helps at least someone lol.

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

worship evolves with time. yes, the people who worshipped the gods back in the day had specific offerings to be given. but what is stopping you from giving modern offerings? things around your house? offerings shouldn't have to cost you a fortune. your deities aren't holding you at gunpoint to only receive what you can't easily get. they are a means of showing your love in your day-to-day. so yes!! give your deities candy bars! show them a silly little doodle of them in the corner of your notebook!! make a spotify playlist and play it for them!! dedicate a journal to them!! make a pinterest board and fill it with pins that remind you of them!! the important aspect of these offerings is that you are thinking about your deities. thinking about them and feeling love and devotion to them is a means of offering! you are devoting your energy in these acts!!

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

My altar for Noumenia and Agathos Daimon, Gamelion 2024. Highest and central, we have Zeus Ktesios, He who brings bounty into our home. To the left is Hestia, who is eternally due a portion of all offerings. To the right is my Agathos Daimon, in the form of a cobra, which I consider an especially sacred snake. My libation is some delicious coffee and my offering is Gala apples (my favorite) and lavender colored daisies. My kathiskos for the month is also on the altar. When I move Zeus back to His regular place in my kitchen, the kathiskos will go too.

I burned a combination of royal amber, frankincense, and sandalwood oil, which actually caught on fire because I didn't realize I had gotten oil on the outside of the burner. It just isn't January without my annual Practice Fire Safety, Dumbass!!! reminder.

I separate my kathiskos into liquid and solid to prevent spoilage.

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

🌿Minimizing Waste as a Hearth Witch🌿

Minimizing waste saves money and the environment. With a little creativity, there are many ways you can create opportunities to reduce waste and maximize the supplies you have.

🍄 Keep your jars. If you buy something that comes in a useful container and can be reused - then reuse it. In my experience, the best reuse for plastic containers is to freeze food. Also, small bottles like Advil bottles, are EXCELLENT spell jars. However, for all types, you can use them to store food, organize drawers and closets, store spell ingredients, or even make decorations. The possibilities are nearly endless!

🍄Keep all your fruit, vegetable, and herb scraps. With some scraps and water, you can make a lovely broth. Alternatively, you can use them to make a simmer pot for a spell or simply for the scent.

🍄If you eat meat, keep the bones. Again, a great broth ingredient!

🍄Avoid paper towels whenever possible. These are super wasteful and expensive. Whenever possible, I opt to use a towel or cloth. You can recycle old textiles for rags. However, if you're feeling ambitious you can knit or crochet towels and cloths; this is a great way to use up that scrap yarn you probably have laying around! You may even choose to add a bit of knot magic to these pieces.

🍄Thrift and upcycle. This is a bit of an obvious one; but really. It's a great way to have lovely belongings while reducing waste overall and saving money. With a bit of love, many things can be new.

🍄Almost every dish can be salvaged. It happens. We mess up. But, before you throw it away, do some research on how to salvage it. Odds are, you will be able to do it!

🍄Don't throw away fruits or vegetables that are overripe or wilting. Within reason, of course, many of these fruits and vegetables can be frozen for soups, casseroles, sauces, and smoothies!

🍄Buy a reusable coffee filter and tea basket for loose tea. Really, this is a given if you are a tea or coffee lover. Disposable ones are so wasteful and the reusable ones will pay for themselves in no time.

🍄Compost if you can. Compost dirt is amazing for growing ingredients for dishes and spells. While you're at it, save your eggshells, as well.

🍄Mend your clothes, blankets, and even shoes. A little bit of love can go a long way, including increasing the life of your favorite items. You can also add flair by learning how to darn and apply patches.

🍄Learn how to remove stains from fabric. In the same vein as mending, learning how to remove stains increases the life of your clothes. Different stains require different methods of removal, but usually, it is not impossible. Failing this, learn how to dye your clothes to revamp them.

🍄Use alternative cosmetics. This is a really big topic and I will create a post about this later. But, consider doing research. There are lots of things that can be made or substituted; notably face masks, hair masks, and using coconut oil as a make-up remover.

🍄Localize your practice. Use natural herbs and ingredients found in your local environment. Create your own correspondence if needed.

🍄Collect rainwater. Unfortunately, it is no longer a great idea to drink rainwater - but use it to water plants and clean your floors. Rainwater is also a powerful spell ingredient for spells that don't require drinking or putting on your skin.

🍄Only buy what you need. This time of year more than ever it is VERY tempting to buy up cheap Halloween-themed goods. But, consider an item's long-term usefulness, if it will create clutter and disorder in your home in the future, and if there are alternatives.

🍄Buy a cheap food dehydrator. These are perfect for making tea and drying out herbs, flowers, and other ingredients for spells and cooking.

🍄Consider alternatives in cooking and spells. There is always an alternative, you may not have to buy something new.

🍄Meals and beverages as spells. As a full-blown kitchen, I believe spells eaten and drank are extremely powerful. It also saves on ingredients.

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

A Collection of Greek Keywords for Hellenic Pagans (kharis, miasma, etc.)

Kharis:

Kharis means 'grace' or 'favour' and it is in reference to the reciprocal nature of our relationships with the gods.

Liddell and Scott describe it as, "A grace or favour felt on the part of the doer but more frequently on the part of the receiver in the form or thankfulness and gratitude."

It essentially means a favour done in delight. This can be both the offering we give to the gods, and the favours and blessings the gods bestow upon us.

Kharis is both the action of offering and worshipping and also what is built between a worshipper and a god through the actions of offering and reverence. It can be used like this:

'Giving an offering to the gods is an example of kharis.'

Or:

'I have built up kharis with Apollo over the years.'

Khaire/khairete:

Khaire or khairete are words that mean 'hail', 'farewell', or 'blessings'.

It can be used to greet someone, either as hello or farewell (I use it at the end of some of my posts). It can also be used at the end of a prayer.

Khaire is used to address one person or god, and khairete is used to address a group.

Miasma:

Miasma means 'stain', 'pollution', 'defilement', or 'stain of guilt'.

It is a type of spiritual pollution that a person or a place can collect through either happenstance or deliberate action. It makes us spiritually unclean but there is no damnation involved in miasma and thus is not similar to sin. Sin is more comparable to agos, which is mentioned later.

We tend to collect miasma while going about day-to-day life, almost like getting our hands dirty while working. The stain it refers to is always one of a spiritual nature; miasma is a strictly spiritual concept.

It makes a person or place ritually impure, hence it is inappropriate to interact with the divine while in a miasmic state. The gods are said to reject the offerings of a miasmic person or to vacate a miasmic place until it is cleansed.

Human blood is also considered to be miasmic when spilled outside of battle, though this is not the case for menstrual blood (although I tend to avoid praying and doing rituals during that week anyway as I consider it to not be my cleanest state possible. I use this time to tend to my altar physically instead, cleaning it and reorganizing it).

Miasma is very common, everyone gets it, mostly due to plain daily life, though sometimes due to deliberate actions. Miasma can always be cleansed.

Sources of miasma include:

Death in the home - Pollutes the grieving and the home. People and home need to be cleansed before interacting with the gods or going to temple.

Birth - Because of the blood involved. Mother and baby are considered by traditional standards to be miasmic for three days postpartum and both are generally cleansed at five days postpartum.

Intercourse - Both parties are polluted by the act and must be cleansed before interacting with the gods or going to temple.

M*rder/m*nsl*ughter - This collects both miasma and agos. The m*rderer becomes miasmic, and a place can become miasmic if a m*rderer is free and unpunished there. This does not apply to blood spilled in battle.

There is a line in Hesiod's Works and Days that refers to the action of cleansing oneself of miasma before interacting with the gods. It reads, "Never pour a libation of sparkling wine to Zeus after dawn with unwashen hands, nor to others of the deathless gods."

Khernips:

Khernips means 'handwash', or 'lustral water'.

It is basically Hellenic holy water. It is used to purify ourselves of miasma before interacting with the gods.

It can be made by dropping burnt herbs or laurel leaves (bay leaves) in clean water, or by dropping a lit match in clean water. Simply washing our hands in plain water can work symbolically as well if done with the specific intention of purifying oneself.

Agos:

Agos means 'curse', 'pollution', or 'abomination'.

It can be considered as a step up to miasma and, while not quite the same, it could also be considered comparable to sin. It is brought about through deliberate actions and it is very difficult, if not impossible, to cleanse. Agos can also invoke the divine wrath of the gods, so it does involve a form of damnation

Some things that cause/invoke agos include:

Having intercourse inside a temple

Temple robbing

M*rder

Bloodshed inside a temple or on sacred grounds

Broken xenia

The refusal to properly bury a family member or a soldier (even an enemy soldier)

K*lling someone who is under the gods' protection

Offering human blood to the gods (due to its miasmic nature)

Agos is hardly as common as miasma, so it is not something the general practitioner should worry about.

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

It's my Nana's birthday today. She passed more than 30 years ago... here is one of my favorite cookie recipes because I don't believe in secret family recipes!

HAZEL'S NANA'S THIMBLE COOKIES

(that she got from her friend Sally)

1 cup salted butter

½ cup granular sugar

2 egg yolks

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups sifted flour

Cream softened butter, sugar, yolks, and vanilla. Slowly add flour (remember sift flour before measuring 2 cups)

Chill dough for at least 2 hours.

Roll 1 inch or smaller balls depress center with thumb or with back of small measuring spoon, and fill indent with jam (she used raspberry) and bake 8 minutes in 325° oven.

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

SET YOUR WARDS? COOL NOW SET YOUR BOUNDARIES!!

Ahhhh, boundaries. The thing many people can’t set in both the spiritual and mundane sense. Well, first what IS a boundary?

What is a boundary?

A boundary is an expectation that you may have for someone else. It is a mutual agreement of what is okay and what isn’t. It’s giving and taking consent in a given circumstance. Boundaries are within all types of connections from friends to family to deity. It is important to have boundaries in all these connections to maintain comfort and understanding.

“Toomixedwitch how the fuck do I set boundaries?”

I’m so glad you asked. It all starts with communication. This goes for mundane and spiritual situations! You want to first outline what it is you want to have rules on. I think the biggest one I always suggest for deity work is “Privacy will always be respected.” You might find deity showing up in places that you’d rather they not… the bathroom for example. So to be able to say “hey can you leave?” Is a boundary that’s expected.

When making boundaries you can write them down in your book of shadows or on paper to help you refer back to them. I always recommend for the first month or so communicating with deity on a certain day or time to check up on boundaries and expectations. This can be surrounding offerings, formality, what the work you do together is, if deity can bring other entities/deities into the space (if you’re in training etc) and so on.

If working with a deity who is on the more chaotic side you may want to outline what they can and can’t do. Can deity affect/mess with/play with/talk to your pets or no? Can deity move the stuff in your room or no? Can deity almost burn your house down or not /hj

How do I maintain these boundaries?

As I say, communicate. Schedule a time and day where you use divination or meditation to go through the list again and see how things are going. Is there anything that needs changing or going into more detail over? Is there anything deity would like in return (if the boundary was related to offerings etc)

The biggest one in both spiritual and mundane connections is being able to say no. Obviously, deities and entities will almost always allow you to say no; you always have a choice and will never be scolded for it. But if it helps you, write it down. “I am able to say no”. Sometimes we need a rule that outright says we can. With that said it’s always important to:

Communicate your discomfort

If you aren’t comfortable or you are struggling you are always allowed to say. ALWAYS. “I’m finding this way of offering tricky at the moment. I am still wanting to give offerings to you and I am willing to do it another way. Do you have an alternative?” BOOM it’s called communication and it is necessary in deity work.

“I am struggling mentally and am very busy right now deity, as you know, but I still worship and devote to you completely. Could you guide me through this time as I lessen my prayer and active work? My hard work and perseverance will be devotion to you.”

If you’d like to continue reading about this subject:

https://witchesandpagans.com/pagan-culture-blogs/pagan-leadership/what-are-boundaries.html

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

feeling drawn to Hecate again. got onto the helpol tag and working on my pinterest altar for her, and i just...i feel like she's a very stern maternal figure for me. she has high expectations of me, doesn't sugarcoat anything, is willing to teach me what she knows, but only if I actually put in the work to follow her. she's a comfort but also a challenge. She appears in a doorway on one side of a river, with my only way to her being large stones to jump from. she knows i can cross, she knows i have the capability to overcome my fear, my hesitation. my anxiety keeps me on the other side, my fear of slipping and falling, but Hecate remains on the other side, waiting for me to free myself of my insecurities and take the chance to go to her. what mysteries would she reveal to me? what wisdom can she impart?

there are so many days that I just forget about the gods, too focused on my health, my job hunt, my financial instability. days where i seriously doubt if i'm a religious person deep down. then i'll suddenly have a day like this, when they call to me. I'll look at posts here, study them and their myths, and devote time to their digital altar on my pinterest. I adore Dionysus and Hestia. Dionysus brings me joy and Hestia brings me comfort. But Hecate, someone I never considered working with, has been with me since I was old enough to even understand the word "witch". am i ready to cross that river to finally know and accept her? the thought fills me with confidence.

what are your guys' thoughts on the pull of a deity?

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

i dont rly have a safe place to rant right now so hello tumblr! trigger warning as l ill talk about moving out of an abusive situation/the aftermath of that, so if thats not a safe topic for u u can go look at a puppy pics blog :)))

today is not a great day for my brain thus far. i moved out of an abusive situation two days ago thanks to the help of my support system (i literally have the best support system ever theyve just heard everything abt this situation already so they deserve a break lol), and the abusers are claiming that ive stolen from them, lying to people about how i treated them when we lived together, calling me a bully, etc etc. and it’s just so exhausting. i live in a pretty moderately sized town and i see people related to this situation very frequently. it’s also rly triggering to see my abusers in public lol.

the day i moved they had a party that night. and i got three phone calls, a voicemail, and a voice message about how much they hate me and the different ways they want me to die (diabetes and cancer respectively lol). they also made some really disgusting sexual comments about me that are rattling around in my brain still. called me a fatass and everything.

obviously this just enforces my own beliefs that i definitely should have left when i did, and secretly at that (i was concerned for my safety if i moved out at a normal pace and to their knowledge , guess i was right for that), but it sucks a lot to be on the butt end of a bunch of lies that are so heinous people DO hate you even though it’s all lies:/ive not experienced this before and it fuckin sucks to go through but . i’ll make it im sure. i’m just really still reeling from the texts/calls/memos/also the other phone calls from one of their friends (10 phone calls!!! Wtf!!! of course i never picked up but !!! wat!!)

anyway. advice and support are appreciated. if you have normal questions i’ll answer them for context but i doubt anyone truly gives a fuck lmaoo. Thankfully ive got my support system and my faith to keep me sane rn.

[dirtandwormsandweeds]

truly this evoked an emotion in me i didnt think was possible thanks .

in another life