#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!

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

Alien (1979) but it's a nature documentary. David Attenborough does the narration

[www-proxxicles-com]

wolf and baby for a mod that is so bare bones it barely exists

currently a vanilla+ tweak mod that improves models , textures & animations of vanilla mobs

also trying out a new method of animating feet ( sorry for jittering )

go dogy go

[389]

West Nepal, Humla Animistic Mask wood, kaolin 9.75 x 7 x 4 inches 24.8 x 17.8 x 10.2 cm M 93

[sarenth]

Face Ragnarök Like Fenrir

At times like these I also take inspiration from Fenrir.

They put their hand in your mouth, bite it off.

They tie you up, break those fetters.

They may finally tie you down and put a sword in your mouth. What will fall out of your mouth is hope.

They cannot contain you.

Your fetters will break. You will be free. Vengeance will be yours.

Hail Fenrir.

Ves þú heil!

[pushing500]

why does he delight in throwing things at my colony

Nuh-uh! I've seen this before!! There will be no arcturan sky eel-induced heart attacks in this colony, no siree!

We will mine the sky steel for Ivy to make sculptures out of, though.

I wonder if Tokori likes all water, or just warm, soapy bathwater? I've never seen him swimming in the marshwater or using the hot tub. Maybe his obsession is more about the bath or the bubbles and less about the water.

I got distracted for a bit watching Dani. She's having a lovely day, being breastfed on a grand meditation throne and then playing horsies in Auntie Tupelo's bedroom (which is near the barn but not in the barn). As I was cooing over how sweet she is...

I got a notification that Cora awakened???

I don't know if something specific caused it, because unlike with Alistair, I hadn't directed her to do anything like drink coffee. She just... acquired sentience in the caves that are effectively our backyard!!

Whatever the case, we now have TWO sentient androids in our colony!! Cora got the 'composed' trait because I love the idea of a refined and ladylike android who could also hit a bullseye from 3,000 metres away. Welcome to the colony proper, Cora. You're going to be so loved ❤️❤️

First | Next | Previous

[a-single-white-crow]

When I was young I knew the trees had souls, each plant felt different, and every animal held a lesson to teach.

When did I forget this? How did I grow up and lose touch with this understanding?

Now I'm back, relearning the lessons I was already taught when I was young.

[meirimerens]

don't remember when where or how I read an interrogation about how blood could still be given to the earth and that human sacrifices would be needed to keep the herbs growing (likely paraphrasing because as mentioned above i don't rember💀) but I've always thought [regardless of if the narrative is based enough to mean it] that

menstrual blood. evident to me at least.

[spider-artdump]

[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.

[spiralhouseshop]

More stuff back in stock!

Sigil Magic: Fir Writer, Artists, and other Creatives by T. Thorne Coyle

A Witch's Guide to Spellcraft by Althea Sebastiani

Folk Witchcraft: A guide to Lore, Land, and The Familiar Spirit for the Solitary Practitioner by Roger J Horne

Memento Mori: A Collection of Magickal and Mythological Perspectives on Death, Dying, Mortality & Beyond

Sigil Magic: Fir Writer, Artists, and other Creatives by T. Thorne Coyle

A Witch's Guide to Spellcraft by Althea Sebastiani

Folk Witchcraft: A guide to Lore, Land, and The Familiar Spirit for the Solitary Practitioner by Roger J Horne

Memento Mori: A Collection of Magickal and Mythological Perspectives on Death, Dying, Mortality & Beyond

Magical House Protection: The Archeology of Counter-Witchcraft by Brian Hoggard

Weird Walk Zines and the new Weird Walk books!

By Rust of Nail and Prick of Thorn-The Theory and Practice of Effective Home Warding by Althea Sebastiani

Curses, Hexes, & Crossings: A Magician's Guide to Execration Magic by S Connolly

Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape by Jeremy Harte

Magic: A History Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present by Chris Gosden

Pagan Book of the Dead by Claude: Ancestral Visions of the Afterlife and Other Worlds by Claude Lacouteux

[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.

[www-proxxicles-com]

two wolf animations

[anarcho-animism]

Anarcho-Animist Manifesto

I have been nurturing and sitting on this for a long time – it was first penned in 2021 and revised every so often since then. I’ve not posted it sooner out of the desire to make sure it stood the test of time for myself. I wrote it at 23, and now I am 26 and a very different (and more well-read) person…but the core of this manifesto remains strong and something that I am proud of. So I’m releasing it into the big wide world. Any updates or edits to wording past this point will (hopefully) be just spelling and grammer. In Love & Rage, Wolverine. Originally posted on Wordpress. “Anarchy is a society being freely constituted without authorities or a governing body. It may also refer to a society or group of people that entirely rejects a set hierarchy.” Wikipedia entry on anarchy “Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and perhaps even words—as animated and alive” Wikipedia entry on anarchism

Anarcho-animism is the intersection of spirituality and eco-anarchism. It seeks to protect the environment for the environment’s sake. It recognises the world as a living, breathing, system. It abhors the abuse and destruction profit incentives cause.

Animism is the belief that all things – all beings, plants, rocks, animals, rivers, weather systems, the whole world – is animated and alive with a living soul. From me, to you, to a barking dog, to a field mouse, to a bird, to a lizard, to an ant, to the ground beneath us and the plants that give us oxygen: it all has its own unique soul.

Even if the animist concept of all beings and entities having souls does not ring true, all beings and entities have inherent worth and should be treated with care, kindness and respect. Just because we do not understand the language of plants and other beings, does not mean that language somehow doesn’t exist.

It rejects the idea of humans as the centre and paramount of existence. It embraces all experiences of the world across the diverse family of beings as important.

Reject capitalism

Anarcho-animism rejects an unnatural hierarchy of governing bodies within animist practice.

Anarcho-animism rejects capitalism and the state as they are the architects of ecocide (defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts” – theecologist.org).

All power gained by capitalists, states and their puppets is power that they have gained unjustly. They have exploited and continue to exploit the world and its inhabitants.

Anarcho-animism and capitalist consumerism cannot coexist. Capitalist consumerism demands no end to consumption of resources, products and more that is draining the world only to make the select few richer. It is endangering the lives of living beings everywhere, forcing them to work and live under cruel conditions.

It rejects petrochemical companies who have a stranglehold on the energy sector. It embraces sustainable and accessible living for all people and animals, the world over. It embraces the collected differences and seeks to make an accessible world where all can live in freedom and togetherness.

It rejects all borders, states, nations and invisible lines that divide beings on earth and sections land away. Anarcho-animism demands total freedom of movement for ALL, free of the states and nations that fueled capitalism.

Embrace spirituality and animism

Spiritual practice should not be commercialised. Every being should be free to adopt the traditions of their kin and the traditions of those that share with them. It should not be dependent on mass market goods.

Anarcho-animism recognises humans as intrinsic to nature. It explicitly rejects the separation of human and non-human animals as distinct categories & the ideological elevation of humans over all other living beings.

Even though it can be hard to break hierarchical styles of thinking, it is something that can always be worked towards and is an admirable goal for all beings.

Anarcho-animism recognises that everything in the world has a spirit/soul/essential essence tied to it, that cannot be revoked or infringed upon by anything or anyone without deep disrespect.

As an extension, the world is an interdependent web of living things, the environment and the earth’s spirit.

It is anti-racist, anti-fascist and embraces marginalised beings

Nature is inherently a place of diversity.

Anarcho-animism is anti racist and anti-fascist. There is no room for volkish neo-nazis in anarcho-animism. There is no room for eco-fascism, and those ideologies must not be allowed to flourish for they bring unspeakable harm to the most marginalised beings.

Anarcho-animism welcomes and celebrates queer & trans people.

It demands for the world’s colonised land to be returned to indigenous people with no conditions attached.

It demands land back to the public of countries and nations who face increasingly little access to the wild. Take the land from landowners that seek to exploit it for profit, make it free, let all beings roam again. Destroy the state.

Anarcho-animism respects the right to roam of all communities and beings. It stands in solidarity with Gypsy, Roma & Traveller communities against anti-trespass laws.

Care for the environment

Anarcho-animism embraces politics such as rewilding & indigenous land stewardship. It seeks to restore balance to depleted habitats, to allow all to flourish again. It supports the reintroduction of predator species such as the wolves in Yellowstone and the lynx in europe.

Anarcho-animism seeks to stop monocultures of crops eating up the land and draining the water away. Food forests and alternate gardening techniques will help all thrive. It embraces foraging, food for free, folk knowledge of edible plants and mushrooms, and sustainable hunting to feed communities.

Care for fellow beings

It abhors the treatment of beings under industrial meat production. All beings on the earth deserve a good death in whatever form it may come in. The meat industry does not give this mercy after a life of humiliation. All beings have an inherent spirit that deserves dignity and respect.

It seeks to remove the conditions that force other beings into traumatising slaughterhouse work – migrant status, economic status and “unemployability”. No being was made to work, especially under traumatising and unethical conditions.

Anarcho-animism rejoices in the inherent creativity of all the beings of the earth, and in the community found in creative pursuits. In dreams that all beings share.

It celebrates all beings’ milestones in life, it celebrates the seasons and the world changing in time with them.

It looks to nature for the purest form of joy – that found in play. In freedom to play, and learn, and grow, unfettered by capitalism, crushing expectations and the threat of working or death.

Care for the community

It places emphasis on community care and ritualised practices to mark cycles, celebrations, and seasons.

It places emphasis on the joy that exists as part of living, in building community with others by sharing good food, stories, art, love and most of all, it emphasises the joy found in connection with the rest of the living world.

It is a moral obligation to our fellow beings to build a world accessible to those with neurodivergence, sensitivities, disabilities of all types, to the elderly and the young, and for all of it to be done well and to the best of our abilities.

It recognises the interdependence of humans and the environment. Care for self, others and nature are all radical acts of love. It seeks to repair harm by centering those most hurt, and those most in need of healing. It looks to transformative and restorative justice, and imagines a world without punitive justice. There are no cops in nature.

[kickasstorrents]

its crazy how like for like most of history religions or the supernatural as a concept where smth like proly 90% people didnt "believe" in that stuff but rather it was just actually real like the real living physical world & obvious to them im really fascinated by that cuz its like . i think a lot of western religious of any faith have like an implicit doubt/awareness of the kind of fantasy of what theyre doing idk how to describe but i like am obsessed with how empty everything has turned & just like inevitably too its not good or bad