#but I'm actually fairly okay with say witchcraft in the sense that as someone fascinated with history

[solvicrafts]

13, 14, 15, 26, 29 from the recent ask meme?

(13) Do you believe in reincarnation?

For the most part, I'd say yeah. I think it's very plausible, but I also think it's probably not *quite* what we think it is, if that makes any sense. That's basically my stance on all spiritual and religious beliefs -- there's probably truth to it, but we've probably got a few things wrong.

(14) Would you want to be reincarnated?

Mm... maybe. I lean more towards 'no,' but we don't always get what we want.

(15) Do you think you're special, or just another person among billions? Can you be both?

I think I'm a special kind of pain-in-the-ass.

Bad jokes aside, I think everyone's fairly unique or special in their own way and has potential for something, but few are able to really act on it. So I guess I think we can be both. Some are certainly more charismatic or influential than others, but I don't think any one human is inherently more special or valuable than the other.

(26) What's the most life-changing choice you've made so far?

In middle school we were studying ancient Greece and I decided to write a paper on Achilles (but you'll see me refer to him as 'Akhilleus' on my blog if I ever talk about him, for personal reasons).

Spoiler: I didn't stop researching after I finished my project and it led me down a whoooooooole different path in life.

(29) Do you believe in some form of god/s?

I do, but my beliefs are hard to explain with words and kinda... complicated, I guess?

I definitely believe in some forms of gods, but my belief is that the true nature of divinity is very much beyond human comprehension, and that gods have a symbiotic relationship to humans the same way different animals in the ecosystem do.

Like... I don't believe gods necessarily created the world, or that humans invented gods. I think gods exist in some form we cannot understand, and that much like humans and other animals, they adapt and change over time.

I don't believe ANY religion has all of the answers or even most of the answers, and I think it's absolutely bonkers how wild people will get about their arguments over gods and religion.

I think there's just a lot of things humans will never, ever fully understand, and the challenge of that is what makes it all so very fascinating to me. I'm a lot like Kimmuriel in this regard, I suppose: somewhere out there, there is a hard limit as to what I am capable of knowing, but that does not deter me in the slightest as I will keep trying to learn anyway.

[prairiewitchy]

What kind of magic do you actually do? I know your bio says folk magic, but I see you reblogging stuff about grimoires and demons and ceremonial stuff too. I'm sorry if it's not okay to ask this I'm just curious

I was gonna punt on answering this but changed my mind, so hopefully it’s useful to see how someone falls into a magical niche without, idk, picking a random “witch label” from some list with too many emojis. It also wasn’t something I’d thought about in a while, and it turned out to be kind of interesting to consider the various intersections between my interests, which are at once diverse and fairly singular, and how they’ve evolved over time. 

I got into folk herbalism initially, which is something I still do a lot of. This by itself is kind of a quasi-magical practice, particularly where it engages things like the doctrine of signatures or the syncretization of spirits and plants (e.g. angelica and angels, a variety of plants with Mary, High John the Conqueror with the plant that now shares his name, and so on). There’s a fair amount of science to it too, but I found I was really interested in the origins of particular stories, rhymes, and folktales that attested these herbs’ utility. 

Eventually, I became particularly interested in baneful plants. This was in part due to a series of weird interactions I had with a giant thistle over a few months one summer that made it clear to me that not only did plants have active, communicative spirits, but that their desires, needs, and interests can be just as complex as ours. That folklore began to intersect much more directly with american folk magic as well as sabbatic witchcraft, which deals more specifically with banefuls than a lot of the folklore I was finding. I started tracking the similarities and discordances between the two as they understood specific plants and plant spirits and trying to make sense of them through a variety of experiments using both folkloric and “traditional” methods. 

Through this, I started investigating other forms of spirit work that would enable me to better understand the plants I was growing and using. I got in over my head here quick, unsurprisingly, and made some bad calls that I won’t go into. Through this circuit I became involved with the witch father, who wears many masks (though, as the theory nerd in me reminds, the simulacrum is always true). I’d half-jokingly called my shit “witchy” before that, but I consider that the transition where what I was doing actually became witchcraft. 

It took a few years to get my shit straight after that--beyond the purple prose of crooked path stuff, there really isn’t a linear way to get good with the man at the crossroads (plus, I’m just not that smart in a lot of ways, I’m sure I shot myself in the foot over and over here). To cut to the end, these days I work mostly with Cain as a face of the witch father for the fairly obvious reason of: good at plants. This isn’t to suggest I only do plants, but the actual magic and mysteries have never strayed much further than improving my own and others’ material conditions via the use of roots and leaves (and sometimes flowers). I don’t keep a large spirit court or dabble in too many forms of occultism that don’t directly deal with that.

 I’ve experimented with calling my magic bioregional (kind of, by ease and necessity, but not imperatively); sabbatic (yes, but not only that and also not entirely that); regionally folkloric (I’ve spent almost all of my life in the midwest and most of my folklore and history come from there, but it’s not the only place I’ll ever be); none have them have quite suited. Like most folks who’ve been doing this a while, it’s pretty idiosyncratic. I’ve also had the excellent luck to make some interesting friends here and elsewhere online, so if you see grimoiric shit or ceremonial whatever here it’s almost certainly just reblogging their work, which is always fascinating.