#animist magic

[upthewitchypunx]

Looking for a place for animist witches of all varieties from the atheist to the polytheist? My buddy just started this discord for that. Anyone can be an animist, it's a worldview and a thoughtful way to be in relation to the things around you.

[thatmossywitch]

I love when my familiars sleep together next to my altar.

Whenever I rearrange or move things I have to keep them in mind because they have to be close to me and that includes while I practice.

The other day I rearranged my witchy den and they clearly approve of their new cat cubby area. 🥰🐈‍⬛🐈‍⬛

🃏 ⋆ 🌿 ⋆ 🍄 ⋆ 🃏 ⋆ 🌟⋆ 🃏 ⋆ 🍄 ⋆ 🌿 ⋆ 🃏

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[enchanted-wildflower]

On animism

One of my teachers at university told us something today, that I believe to be relevant to animism and therefore also witchcraft:

He explained that in the West we see everything as occurences, whereas in some languages the same happenings are described as actions. Meaning that in the West we tend to imply that there is no agency involved in whatever happens, while some other languages tend to imply that someone activily causes things. His example was that in the West rain is understood as something that just happens, no one causes the rain. Whereas in Mesoamerica it was believed that it rained because some god was crying.

While the idea of a literal crying god causing it to rain on earth might be outdated, I find it really interesting how these two perspectives - events vs. actions - might shape our relationship with the world. If rain is not just an occurence, but someone acting with agency, rain becomes another part of the community we live in. The community then doesn't only consist of humans anymore, but of everything that surrounds us. Suddenly there are all these new players that actively affect your life with their actions. Other-than-human persons that you can interact with and with whom you have to keep a friendly relationship. If the tree in front of your house isn't just an object, but a being with agency, you actually have to be at least respectful and might even want to build a relationship with them, get to know them, learn from them.

I think that's really the core of animism. Descriptions of animism are often reduced to the believe that everything has a soul, but I think believe doesn't even factor into it. You don't need to believe that there is a non-physical aspect to rain, mountains, stones. It's about how we interact with them. I don't even have to ask myself the question if the tree in front of my house has a soul in order to learn about and from them or to interact with them. In my opinion animism is something that is done, not thought or believed. It's a perspective.

Listening to my teacher also reminded me of the following part of Braiding Sweetgrass (great book btw) which explains all this really well:

A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa - to be a bay - releases the water from bondage and lets it live. "To be a bay" holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers. Because it could do otherwise become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that, too. To be a hill, to be a sandy beach, to be a Saturday, all are possible verbs in a world where everything is alive. Water, land, and even a day, the language a mirror for seeing the animacy of the world, the life that pulses through all things, through pines and nuthatches and mushrooms. This is the lan- guage I hear in the woods; this is the language that lets us speak of what wells up all around us.

[...]

This is the grammar of animacy. [...] In English, we never refer to a member of our family, or indeed to any person, as it. That would be a profound act of disrespect. It robs a person of selfhood and kinship, reducing a person to a mere thing. So it is that in Potawatomi and most other indigenous languages, we use the same words to address the living world as we use for our family. Because they are our family.

To whom does our language extend the grammar of animacy? Naturally, plants and animals are animate, but as I learn, I am discovering that the Potawatomi understanding of what it means to be animate diverges from the list of attributes of living beings we all learned in Biology 101. In Potawatomi 101, rocks are animate, as are mountains and water and fire and places. Beings that are imbued with spirit, our sacred medicines, our songs, drums, and even stories, are all animate. The list of the inanimate seems to be smaller, filled with objects that are made by people.

[...]

The language reminds us, in every sentence, of our kinship with all of the animate world.

- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (2013), p. 78-80.

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Nissa, Ascended Animist

Artist: Chase Stone TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[allhailklisz]

has this been done yet

[musingmelsuinesmelancholy]

Some things I’ve been thinking about. At times being an American trad witch is incredibly frustrating and at others it’s absolutely exhilarating, rewarding. Reconnecting with my ancestral ( primarily french and scottish ) lore, magical practices, witchcraft etc has and will continue to inform my practice but I’ll never be a “french” witch. I’ll never be a “scottish” witch. I can find a lone hawthorn or a sacred tree guarding a hidden spring to tie the cloutie to, I can divine via a snail’s mucus trail, Fly to the Sabbath to meet The Abbess, heed the Dame Blanches, pluck the golden bloom with songs to St Columba, safeguard me and mine via silver, spring water and juniper. Yet there’s many things I’ll never know or be able to do. Whether that’s because these things are so tied to the land or a specific place, language barriers, ( working to overcome this one ) or due to the ( well warranted) gate keeping of lore and practices.

This used to be a source of great confusion for me. I think because I was afraid( due to my previous new age fuckwittery ) to experiment, do anything other than what I understood as “traditional”. My understanding being too rigid at the time; the pendulum swung from one end of the spectrum to the other. This delayed my progress and “froze” me. I was left wondering what an “American” trad craft would look like; most our books do come from a European POV. Learning of our own magical traditions as well as those of my Canadian family ( still working on that one haha ) helped. Reading Robin Kimmere helped. Reading Schulke, him being an American and writing on American plants, helped too. I’ve come to know Sugar Maple and Plantain as powerful spirits. Both teaching important lessons on how to rectify my ancestors mistakes, to foster relations with the First Peoples and how to incorporate the magic of this land into my craft. Rather than being frustrated by my being American I see it as a challenge now. I get to explore spirits, plants, places, animals, spiritual/physical ecologies ( is even really a difference between these?) completely unknown to my ancestors. I get to reconcile the old and the new. To learn from Spirit Direct. Tradition isn’t the worship of ashes, it’s the preservation of Fire. New wood must be added to keep The Fire burning. The Devil of this land certainly is a spirit of the unknown.

I am the land, the land is me.

I don’t own it, to it I owe all.

To it my body will return, the tithe paid.

I’m not rolling hills of heather, white chalk cliffs, the monk’s island nor the azure coast. The memories of these places echo distantly in my blood, sung alive by my ancestors shades. Part of me they’ll always be; yet it’s not who I am. Not what I am.

I’m craggy shores, dull-jade waves bearing down upon the tired rocks. I am musky pine forests veiled in mist. Sun-venerating oaks hugging the shoreline. Bleeding alders in damp ground swelling. Proud maples sustaining generation upon generation with their boiled blood. Death-grey clay, exposed by running spring.

I am the kudzu, the itching moth, the knotweed, the Norway maple, the ivy wrecking havoc upon the land. My surname and light skin proof of a genocide ongoing. I am my ancestors sins; the specter of the Old Growth forests, their grief hanging over the land like a fog. Every interaction with The Land tinged with sadness, loss.

I am my maternal side’s copper curls. Melusine’s pride. Ave Landry! Ave Gauthier! Forebears mine.

I am my paternal side’s grief. The end result of decades of cultural warfare. The Jesuits stole our name….my hair will not be cut.

Never will I libate these glacier carved valleys with booze.

I am the plantain, learning a kinder way. The sumac reclaiming the orchard.

My Februarys, my Marches aren’t snow drops and daffodils peaking through the frozen ground. They’re steely skies and walls of sleet. Bloodroot heralds winters wane; not Brigid’s flower.

My June isn’t fields of poppies, it’s seas of crimson staghorn blooms skyward reaching.

My augusts aren’t golden shafts of wheat, swaying in summer’s last breaths; they’re explosions of neon-violet and honey-yellow. Corn ripening on the vine, supporting the climbing bean. The cicadas song reverberating.

Old Michaelmas marks harvest’s end, October potatoes long buried in soils darkness finally exhumed. The Devil his Rosy Briar to ascend and plunge.

With Novembers first snows the Dead come in.

I’ll never process around a standing stone nor know what it is to live and eat off the land my dead lay in. Finally, I’m learning to be at peace with this. To love and know the land I live on. I’ll always be a stranger here, a guest. I hope to be a good one.

[psychopomp-recital]

Yall gotta stop seeing Death as just the end of life.

Theres so much more to it you can utilize!! Get out there and petition Death to help you break those generational habits! Death to the cycle! If you ask really nicely I’m sure it’ll help you kill those insecurities too.

[friend-crow]

This library printing thing is breaking my mind.

They list no restrictions on the types of content you can print. Just a long list of allowed file types.

It's free. Up to 100 pages per day. Per day.

You don't even need a library card.

[sunset-unbound]

sometimes i forget how impossible it is to take me seriously until i do some shit like naming rpg classes after a cross of religious beliefs and schools of philosophical thought

[pushing500]

The daily life of Irwin and Connie Dermokaites. They're very sweet. I feel like Connie might be more affectionate since she converted to the Path of Animism, but that could just be me reading into it too much.

Head Researcher Brennan can't stop researching even when she's off the clock. I want to know what Impid horns are made of, too, Brennan.

We had a very exciting event today: a Space Battle! There were chunks of spaceship and steel slag falling down for the better half of a day. Not too much fire, which was good. The worst fire was down in the bottom-left corner of the map, where we never go anyway.

There were a few escape pods, too, with very interesting people inside. We did our best to rescue as many as we could- The Path of Animism believes in charity, after all.

Oh, hey, this person looks fun. I hear people called Gracie are the coolest ever! :3

Here are all the survivors we rescued! We only just had enough hospital beds for everyone. They're a fun bunch. I wonder if any of them will stick around when they've recovered? I hope so. That would be fun.

I love the nicknames "Hot Minute" and "Grump". Rimworld nicknames can be so intriguing sometimes. I mean, I can imagine why someone would be nicknamed "Grump", but how do you end up being named "Hot Minute"??

Oh, and of course, Gracie is a name I'm particularly attached to for no reason involving any personal biases.

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[upthewitchypunx]

Join us Sunday, December 11, 2022 at 3PM for this free event at the North Portland Library! We are starting an esoteric study/social group focused on animist and folkloric based magical systems.

December 11, 2022 3PM

North Portland Library (upstairs meeting room) 512 N Killingsworth Street Portland, OR 97217

*While this event is open to the public, we aim to create and ant-racist and anti-fascist space for conversation and connection.

[sarenth]

That's Meta

This post was inspired by an ongoing conversation between a TikToker I follow and another I do not. The subject was originally on pop culture deities, pop culture magic, parasites, and chaos magic’s place in the current exploration of these topics. While Phil Hine may have offhandedly commented on exploring working with a fictional god vs one we know from our human myths, this notion has taken…

[abomnibus]

Merciful Unknown,

Divide not the mortal from the divine.

Divide not the body from the mind, nor the mind from the soul;

Divide not humans from animals, nor animals from plants, plants from fungi, fungi from bacteria, bacteria from viruses, viruses from chemicals, chemicals from miracles, miracles from yourself,

Yourself from others, others from each other, each other from life, life from death, death from presence, presence from absence, absence from everything, everything from nothing . . .

Savor the uniquities of symbiotic coexistence.

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Nissa, Ascended Animist

Artist: Chase Stone TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[witchofthenorthernshores]

Me: fighting for my life with mundane life stuff, feeling bad about not having contacting my spirits in a while

My spirits, banging on the glass of my enclosure: LET US HELP DAMNIT

[musingmelsuinesmelancholy]

Soooo since tumblr appears to have consumed my initial introduction post here’s another one 🤩🤣

Hi! I’m Melusine, or Mel. (that’s what I’ll be going by online at least 😉) I’m a traditional witch who’s practice mainly draws from my local and ancestral lore as well as Catholicism, Gaulpol and cultus sabatti. Animism FTW. 🙌 I’m certainly a novice, I’ve only practiced TW for around 6 years? Before that I was more of a new age Wiccan type, though I do hesitate to actually refer to what I was doing then as Wicca.

I’m in my 20’s, I’m from New England. I adore all things history, anthropology, art and gardening! ((Also a massive stoner hahaha)).

Looking forward to interacting with y’all!!!!