#animists

[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.

[upthewitchypunx]

PNW Folkloric Magic Collective Open Meeting - Sunday January 14th 3 PM FREE!

Belmont Library- 1038 SE Cesar Estrada Chavez Blvd, Portland, OR

PNW Folkloric Magic Collective is an esoteric study/social group focused on animist and folkloric based magical systems. We've been meeting for a year, and it's a new year, let's start again!

Each meeting has a theme. The theme for this meeting is you magical plans for this year, come prepared to participate in the discussion.

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

**Masks are strongly encouraged!

[spider-artdump]

[pushing500]

A baby thrumbo!!!!! It’s so small???? I’ve never seen one in the game! I love him so much! Look at him!!!

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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.

[lunegrimm]

"The witches giving birth to summer"

Personal piece from earlier this year, Summer is already drawing to a close so decided to quickly post it now before autumn is in full swing :)

[allhailklisz]

has this been done yet

[a-typical]

In Toraja, during the period of time between death and the funeral, the body is kept in the home. That might not sound particularly shocking, until I tell you that period can last from several months to several years. During that time, the family cares for and mummifies the body, bringing the corpse food, changing its clothes, and speaking to the body.

The first time Paul ever visited Toraja, he asked Agus if it was unusual for a family to keep a dead relative in the home. Agus laughed at the question. “When I was a child, we had my grandfather in the home for seven years. My brother and I, we slept with him in the same bed. In the morning we put his clothes on and stood him against the wall. At night he came back to bed.”

Paul describes death in Toraja, as he’s witnessed it, not as a “hard border,” an impenetrable wall between the living and the dead, but a border that can be transgressed. According to their animistic belief system, there is also no barrier between the human and nonhuman aspects of the natural world: animals, mountains, and even the dead. Speaking to your grandfather’s corpse is a way to build a connection to the person’s spirit.

— From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, Caitlin Doughty

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Nissa, Ascended Animist

Artist: Chase Stone TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

[sarenth]

Heathenry is Entwined

My Heathenry is entwined with everything I do. It is not separate. My polytheism, my animism, it is entwined with how and who I am.

It is a lived, living religion that is part of all I do, why I do it, and how. It is part of why I hold the politics I do. It is part of why I do the work I do. It is part of how I am a partner. It is part of how I raise my children. It is part of how I am in my communities.

For those saying that we must remove religion from politics, utterly, you are telling me to disappear. For those saying that we must remove religion from public life, you are telling me to disappear. I am not asking for my religion to be dominant, the most important, or the only one adhered to. I want plurality. I want a world in which we can live together. Barring that, I want a world in which there can be respect for one another and we can live as we wish.

I cannot do that with bigots. I cannot do that with homophobes, transphobes, queerphobes. I cannot do that with white supremacists. I cannot do that

[musingmelsuinesmelancholy]

Reddening a moose bone ring to aid in facilitating congress with The Land. As far as I’m aware moose aren’t especially sacred to the tribes here nor could I find any stories where they played a significant role. Tho please do correct me if I’m wrong!

EDIT: there’s a rather funny folk story here regarding “Specter Moose”. Couldn’t help but think of it during the process haha.

[upthewitchypunx]

If you named your car you may already be an animist.

[igatherthedead]

Wearable Deer Talisman from www.igatherthedead.com

[pushing500]

Love watching my colonists all pitch in to teach Andy fun stuff. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and my colony is doing great at that so far.

I like to imagine that it's pretty easy to take advantage of Zonovo's Entomophobia trait if you ever need him to leave you alone for a minute. He seems particularly prone to being bullied, and I'm sure Andy would pick up on that quickly- he's a very clever cookie, after all.

Update on the illicit romance between the leaders of two rival ideologies: They are sitting next to each other outside in the rain to drink tea and coffee. I bet they're holding hands under the table so their followers don't suspect anything... Very sneaky.

The only colonist who doesn't seem to like helping Andy is Connie, even though Andy is, in fact, wearing a hat. She should like him more than Irwin for that fact alone based on how much she wants Irwin to cover up his hair.

But alas, her ideology says kids should do hard labour (thinking about it, she probably loves listening to Irwin reminisce about his days as a labour camp orphan), and she is upset that Andy is allowed to enjoy himself now and then.

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[lovewardeath]

As someone who has always been fascinated by the sky, stars and planets, I’ve become more accustomed to look up at the sky more. Cloud watching and observing the constellations gives me a sense of peace and awe. Space is so vast and so incredibly expansive. For a pagan like me, especially an animist, the sky is a living soul just like the stars. ✨

[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.