evergreenwitch

[evergreenwitch]

I think it's bad for a human to have access to as much news as we currently do.

The modern fire hose of world wide news reporting.... It brings a lot of benefits! The differences in public perception of warfare and about things like nationalism and stuff are super duper significant and maybe even important enough to be worth it.... You look back at papers and essays and letters written in Ye Olden Times and certainly there were folks who had the right idea about the genuine necessity of universal human compassion, and like the fundamental lack of differences between all people.... But I do think that in order for that sort of thinking to become the standard baseline ideology you must have a level of cosmopolitan experience which is not practical for most folks, or even desired by most folks (homebody 4 life lol).... The information age goes a long way towards reconciling this. I think there is a very genuine and shockingly universal trend towards that sort of 'global perspective' which was very much not the norm historically. ((I think that the conservative backlash against that trend is also a whole thing but I am hopeful that it is the desperate thrashing of a dying ideology))

That being said,,, I think on an individual level it's bad for you!!!! It's one thing when we get global news that's already a bit out of date - you read the newspaper and you are horrified to hear about the various atrocities going on in faraway places, but these things are already a month old by the time you hear about it, and there isn't really anything you can do - and there isn't even that many details anyway. For most of human history, there was a pretty intuitive relationship between how much data you had on a topic and how much agency/responsibility you had towards that topic -- you would get a lot more news about your local community then the big city you live near and more news from that city then from another city in your country, and more news from your country then from another country etc. This was not perfect! Or even ideal really - see above about how you need global information exchange to kill nationalism. But there is still something there about how the prioritization of proximate information helps prevent compassion burnout.

Like - currently there is a genocide being enacted upon the Palestinians in the Gaza strip by Israel. And that is horrifying. And it is constant - and there isn't really much I personally can do. I can show support in various ways - I can learn about the conflict and the history and the politics, and I can speak out to people I know about it, or on social media, and I can donate to charities of good repute or whatever -- but at the end of the day my ability to effect significant change for any given Palestinian is basically 0 - certainly the outcome to effort ratio is abysmal. And the Palestinians I could hypothetically have significant impact on.... Are going to be any who are already part of my community - ie family members of folks in Gaza who I could potentially help support locally, etc.

I don't really have a call to action - Maybe actively seek out local news sources and avoid doom scrolling world news? But it's something that I think we should be aware of, because I believe that we have a responsibility to each other - that all people have a universal responsibility to help other people - but I also think that you have to be realistic about your capabilities, and run the cost/benefit analysis on where you should apply yourself.

There is a certain sense that if you cannot materially help prevent an evil then you have a responsibility to act as witness... And I think that is so so dangerous in the modern information age. We hear so much news we can do absolutely nothing about, and trying to take the emotional burden of finding out about all of these things, and sorting out the truth from the propaganda, and just bearing the weight of knowledge gets so exhausting -- more and more people are suffering from the kind of compassion burn out that used to only really be expected in people's whose careers constantly expose them to suffering, or who are unusually active activists, just because of how our news is setup now.

[evergreenwitch]

I think I should make a 'State of the Gender' post - because I bet its going to be interesting to look back on in a couple of years hahaha

Or it might be completely unchanged and this sort of boring - but I kind of doubt it, my gender identity as of right now feels kind of liminal in many ways.

Ok for context - I've more or less always identified as a cis woman. I was a ~quirky girl~ as a kid; occasionally attempt to lean in to the tom boy thing, but that was definitely more of a 'not like other girls' thing then a 'pro masculinity' thing, and also I was bad at it hahaha - catch 10 year old me saying things like 'im a tom boy but I love dresses and makeup' sort of big ann of green gables vibes (ie it was the ADHD/autism weirdness not really gender weirdness)

Cut forward to.... Idk I guess in high school I realized I was bisexual and didn't really come out so much as stopped telling people I was straight (not that I had done that much prior)... I did spend a bit of time considering my gender but settled on 'no issues, carry on'

By the end of college I think was when I settled on 'Woman For Political Reasons' - or that is to say Agender cis woman: I realized I just don't get gender? It's not a significant factor for me in like any way - I started IDing more as pansexual then bisexual, etc. Being a woman was still sort of significant to me but for purely social reasons - volunteering with Girl Scouts was important to me, I was getting a degree in a heavily male dominated field.... It felt important that I continue to be an unambiguous example of 'woman-hood', but I was beginning to realize I don't really grok gender. I also started firmly IDing as autistic at this point lol

It's been roughly a decade since then and nothing too significant has changed wrt my interior gender, externally a lot has changed! - I've gotten married, I've learned a lot more about trans perspectives on gender and ace perspectives on sexuality, I started playing roller derby......

I currently identify as somewhere on the aro/ace spectrum (specific labels TBD for like 8 years now I'm not in a hurry to pin that down haha) somewhere in the bi/pan/omni sort of sexuality cloud of labels (again I don't really give a fuck about the specifics) and still in that cisish female, Agender woman, demigirl** sort of gender space - firmly She/They pronouns.

Derby has really made me think a lot about it - I definitely am not a woman the same way people who definitely are women are women.... But I feel like I *do* belong in spaces that are exclusively for women... Yea Agender woman continues to be the most accurate term, but I'm not really satisfied with it, you know?

** I have issues with demi girl mostly because while I sort of feel a lukewarm acceptance/begrudging fondness for 'woman'/'lady' I feel a deep fundemental sense of wrongness about being considered a 'girl'. Various compound phrases are fine - 'girlfriend' doesn't really bother me, 'adjective Girl' is.... Probably more or less fine (tech girl, derby girl).... But being called just generically a 'girl' is bothersome...... Might be part of why I was so insistent on 'tomboy' as a kid now that I think about it....

[evergreenwitch]

Always fun to trip over an old journal with just a couple entries from years ago hahaha!

I was cleaning out my side blogs and almost just deleted this without looking through it - but I'm glad I read through it instead. And it might be fun to take up the journaling again, maybe including the tarot prompts (looking at you 3 days of daily draws and then radio silence)

I thought it was interesting to read my old post about ID'ing as a Catholic Witch, especially since I don't ID as.... Either of those things anymore hahahaha!

So I wanted to write a little bit about why that is, for posterity I guess.

I don't identify as a witch anymore because I no longer practice any witchcraft.... Pretty straightforward. I still mostly believe the same stuff I believed then - there is 'energy' in the world that folks can tap into in various ways, but I definitely lean towards the 'these things are metaphors' or 'these things are alternate ways of describing ~mundane~ phenomenon' -- all of the magic I have experienced is also explicable through non-magical paradigms, or sufficiently subjective as to allow for so many alternate interpretations.

I think plenty of people with similar models still practice witchcraft - there is so much value in ritual and the act of belief - but for me eventually the sparkle sort of ran out and the framework wasn't useful in my life anymore. I still utilize some of the smaller rituals and mindfulness practices, and you can pull tarot and astrology from my cold dead hands lol but I no longer really cast spells or perform significant rituals, so I no longer seriously ID as a witch.

The Catholic side of things.... I think at the time I started this side blog I was on an upswing in 'IDing as a Catholic'. If I recall correctly, I went through a several years long period there where my relationship with Catholicism was firmly 'Its Complicated'. On the one hand, I had the justifications I described in my earlier post (just decide the rule you don't follow is the one which says you have to follow the rules) on the other hand, that's sort of obviously bullshit?

It's disingenuous - the core tenant of the Catholic social construct is the Pope thing, if you ignore the Pope thing you are just not Catholic *shrug*. That being said, I will always have been Catholic - that's never not going to be a significant part of my upbringing and like, fundemental framework for the world. Realizing that is what really helped me let go of the increasingly brittle and ridiculous justifications I would come up with for how I could still be Catholic even though the Catholic church is not a good environment for me (and Catholic philosophies and ideologies are not a good fit for me) - I can still respect and in certain ways honor the Catholic culture I grew up with, without having to continue to cling to the religious identity which just straight up doesn't fit.

[evergreenwitch]

Daily Draw 6/30/2017

Three of Air

Sorrow - I need to let go and forgive myself or others in order to heal. I... don’t actually know what this is about and let me tell you that is inciting a bit of anxiety. I typically would associate this with the Three of Wands - but it’s clearly taking the position that the Three of Swords does in more traditionally named decks.

[evergreenwitch]

Daily Draw 6/29/2017

Queen of Fire

I think this is the tarot equivalent of that ‘just hang in there’ cat poster. Assert yourself, believe in yourself, spread your wings and fly. I consider this more or less the same as the Queen of Swords. Be confidant, bold, and assertive. Imposter syndrome can check itself at the door.

[evergreenwitch]

Daily Draw 6/28/2017

The Lovers

LOL. My sweetheart left on a road trip with their mom yesterday. It’s pretty much a no-brainer that they’re on my mind. I kind of thought that this Angel deck would be less sassy then my other decks... I was obviously wrong.

The Lovers represent intimate relationships (not necessarily romantic, but often so) and ‘feelings’ and stuff. This card can be a call to pay more attention to your relationships, to seek honest evaluation of your emotional state, and to C O M M U N I C A T E!!!! This can be tricky for me, and I recognize that.

I should work on nourishing my close relationships, and being emotionally honest/available (if possible). Things are going good with Nic, so I should probably give a good serious think to the other relationships in my life as well.

[evergreenwitch]

Alternatives to burning

Use the garbage disposal. Especially to get rid of something Nasty(TM)

[evergreenwitch]

Catholicism and Witchcraft

I am Catholic. I'm also a witch. This is sometimes more interesting a situation than others. Often I get 'that's... a thing?' from people I tell this little fact. What that means for me is different from what being a Catholic witch might mean for other people, because we all get to define our own identities however we like.

First, I should say with all seriousness (and recognizing the stereotypicalness) I am a bad Catholic. I don't believe that everything the Pope says is automatically 100% God's Truth. There have been a shit ton of Popes I aggresively disagree with. (One of the things that me and The Church disagree about is the inherent infallabililty of The Church). There is an argument that goes 'part of being Catholic (as opposed to other flavours of Christian) is that you believe the truth as presented by the Vatican/Pope wholeheartedly' But you see, this is a requirement that comes straight from... you guessed it... the Vatican/Pope. Once you chose to deliberetely ignore the rule that says 'you're not Catholic if you don't take all this bs as 100% truth' then the whole Catholic witch thing becomes much easier as well. (As does the Bisexual Catholic thing. And the 'I have friends who aren't Catholic and I don't think are going to Hell thing.)

Second, being Catholic 'limits' my magic to a certain extent! The same way that feeling icky about curses limits my magic, the same way that choosing not to bury non-bio-degradable things limits my magic. In that, I have things that I choose not to do, and some of those choices are influenced by my religious beliefs. The easiest example is Necromancy - or anything working with spirits of the dead. That whole 'suffer not a witch to live' bit in the bible is a thing - and the way that I've interpreted that is that there are specific practices that are bad frowned upon by Catholicism. (There's also arguably some translation stuff- I don't know Hebrew and I'm not an expert on it by any means, so I can't really speak to it, but I am aware that the term 'witch' used in the Bible is not necesarily the same 'witch' that I use to describe myself). One of those things is bothering the dead. I don't think it's a good idea (generally, tho people can make their own decisions and I know there are plenty of people who work with spirits a lot and find it totally fine), and I think it is somewhat disrespectful (I suppose this really only applies to Catholic dead? Like that's the point of it - Catholics who die go to Heaven to be with God; praying to /ask/ for their attention is fine, but using magic to 'force' their attention is not. Even if the magic can't actually /make/ the spirits do anything, it's still the difference between saying 'Hey, Great-Great-Grandma, could you maybe take a look at this problem I'm having a lend a hand some time, if you want to? Thanks!' and saying 'Great-Great-Grandma get down here and do this!'. I don't know how people of other religions view this - and I think err-ing on the side of polite is best for everyone involved). ((And actually back to the praying, that's even a little more removed. It's less asking the dead politely, and more politely asking a mediator to ask the dead politely if it's not too troublesome. The mediator has veto. [The mediator according to Catholic beliefs is a Saint, or Angel])).

I also don't do curses or hexes or... any negative magic really. This is partially that whole 'suffer not...' thing, but mostly just me actually. I don't want negative energy around, I don't want it summoned into my space or near my person, even if I do shield and cleanse properly I just Do Not Want to deal with that whole mess.

A lot of my spells involve prayer and/or vice versa. I believe that there is energy in the world that we can tap into (magic) and that that energy is... closer to divinity than other mortal stuff. Like - the whole world is part of the Divine. God is a thing and God is all the things. But there's definitely specific things that are closer to God than other things - Angles, Saints, really big trees, etc. And I think that the Holy Spirit (the God that's super especially in All The Things) is especially potent in the energy that is magic, that it's the same energy that prayer's 'travel' on, and such.

So that's that. Catholic witch. Woo.

[evergreenwitch]

Introduction

Okay, so I have several different journals and such with various witchy things in them - scattered about, because I always think it's a good idea, and then misplace it, or forget about it, and then later think it's a good idea again. I am going to attempt to use this blog space as the virtual iteration of that - in the hopes that being online, and on a platform I use regularly /anyway/ I am more likely to be consistent. We'll see how this goes.