#city witch

[elizabugz]

[unityghost]

Why does my cat sleep like a muppet possessed by Beelzebub

[thevirginwitch]

City Magic: Painted Rock Wards

This post was released a week early over on my Patreon! You can subscribe for free to be notified of important projects announcements, or subscribe for as little as $2 a month to gain early access to my content, exclusive access to research/reading notes, and free digital goodies! Your support means the world to me and helps me to continue doing what I love.

We’ve all seen those pretty painted rocks over on Pinterest, right? These bad boys? Or perhaps you’ve even seen them around your neighborhood/public parks.

Traditionally, these are meant to be painted (sometimes with words of encouragement) and left in public spaces for people to take home, as an act of kindness. Some others paint them for their garden, either to deter pests with vibrant colors, or they’re used to label whatever’s in their garden.

Now, if you live in a big city, you probably have felt a disconnect from your craft or your practice. It’s difficult to connect with a nature-oriented spirituality, such as witchcraft, when you live in a concrete jungle! But there are many, many ways to feel connected to your craft, even if you don’t live in the middle of the woods or have a lot of nature around you. One of these ways is to connect with your neighborhood.

Your neighborhood has mass significance to your life, whether you realize it or not: this is where you live, where you work, where you breathe, where you practice your craft – you must make yourself known, and make the neighborhood known to yourself as well. One of the best ways to do this is to take walks!

Whenever you’re ready, take a walk through your neighborhood and bring a map, notebook, and a pen. As you walk, observe the behaviors of the residents around you. Do they seem to be struggling with anything? What kind of people are they like? Write these characteristics down. If you notice any parts of your neighborhood that evoke any specific emotions (such as unease, happiness, peace, or anxiety), mark them on your map. You might also notice some “problem areas” – perhaps some patches of the road or sidewalk are horribly paved and need to be repaired, or there’s a lot of loud dogs constantly barking at the end of your block. Mark these areas on your map as well, and report back to your home when you are ready.

Picking Your Purpose

Now that we’ve identified a few “problems” and made observations within your neighborhood, we can decide what we want to do. Do you want to protect against thieves? Ward against illness for one of your elderly neighbors? This is the time to select the primary purpose for your ward.

Picking The Area

Take the map that you marked up during your walk. Connect any common points you see (for example, connect up the "peaceful" areas you marked on your map, or connect any points that have a common theme). What kind of shape does it have? Does it remind you of any popular symbols? Can you use the general shape of the area to generate a sigil or symbol that represents the area? What area(s) would most benefit from your rock wards?

Here is an example of how I created a sigil from a fictional city map I found! Obviously, play around with this idea until it makes sense to you. You can connect up different routes, or perhaps create a border around the areas that feel safest to you.

Now is the time you also want to pick where you want to place your wards - you can use your neighborhood sigil to influence where you place them, or, place them based on intuition or based on need. For example, placing a rock ward at the end of the noisiest block, or in the middle of the block that has the most number of children in the area.

Creating and Using Your Sigils/Symbols

Now, you want to develop symbols or sigils for your purpose. You can use any method you’d like! You may wish to incorporate your neighborhood sigil into each one you create, but ultimately the design is up to you. This is also the point where you would “charge” your sigil, with whatever method you see fit - as long as the design, intention, and charging method makes sense to you, that’s all that matters!

Painting Your Rocks

Finally, onto the fun part!

Now, you could simply paint your sigils on your rock and call it a day. Or, you could paint your sigil, and layer a more “mundane” piece of artwork on top of the sigil, leaving the sigil hidden underneath. This technique works best if the “mundane” artwork connects with the ward’s purpose in some way (for example, if your ward is for protection against nosy neighbors, you could paint eyes; or if your ward is for health, you could paint green colors, or even a red cross). I definitely recommend this “layering” method of painting your rocks so no one in your neighborhood ends up reporting any “suspicious looking rocks” with “satanic symbols” on them to your local Facebook groups!

Materials

acrylic paint

rocks

paint brushes

toothpicks (optional)

paint markers

outdoor/water-proof sealant such as Mod Podge: Outdoor

Instructions

Lay out your rocks and other materials

Seal your rocks with a coat or two of your sealant before you begin painting. This is an important step, since rocks are porous and will suck up any paint you try to apply!

Paint your rocks to your heart's content! If you are layering paint on your rocks, please make sure each layer is dry before painting the next.

Once your rocks are completely dry, seal them up with your outdoor/water-proof sealant so they don't get damaged in the elements.

Lastly, take another trip through your neighborhood to place your rocks. Converse with the neighbors if you feel inclined, and make double-sure of the locations you chose for your wards. I recommend taking regular walks throughout your neighborhood to check on these wards, and make sure they’re doing their job. You may wish to refresh the wards with a new coat of paint, or replace them with something new if the situations within the neighborhood change.

Ultimately, magic is what you make it, especially when you live in a big city. Warding your neighborhood and showing care for the people that live there is one of the many ways you can connect to your neighborhood on a deeper level and feel more connected to your practice locally.

Recommended further reading: Urban Magick by Diana Rajchel

[irreverenttarot]

Reblog if you are into...

- solar witchcraft - technomancy - cyber magick - chaos magick - weather magick - cartomancy - sigils - visual alchemy - paper magick - hoodoo - city witchcraft

I want to follow you!

[umiagawa]

Charging the water under the pink moon.

[rainwolfcoven]

[sunshineandgrapevines]

do any of my witchblr mutuals have city witch advice? just moved back into college and am having a hard time reconnecting to my practice when i live in the middle of concrete

[grwmmoneypie]

Tech/City Witch Things:

*Fashion as a glamour, for protection

*Accessories for protection and manifestation

*Perfume for glamour, protection and adundance

*Lip balm/stick/gloss to give your words power

*Eye makeup to help see what is not seen

*Music to help ground and center

*Gaming dedication to Gods, Spirits, Fae, Ancestors, etc.

[witchingstepford]

Winter crops on my balcony in the early morning light.

The kale is really coming along, I think I will be able to start harvesting soon. I am one of those freaks that actually enjoys kale too, so this is great news.

I’m having less luck with the spinach which is historically accurate. Like basil before it, it seems to be one of those plants that just wants nothing to do with my clumsy kill-it-with-kindness gardening.

Very excited to see baby mizuna, radishes and rocket poking their little heads up out of the freshly potted soil.

[witchmemes]

Cities: A Modern Witch's Urban Sanctuary Part 4: Urban Magick

When in the city, it has its own unique options for magick. One such example is using cans that you've found on the street for such purposes as stringing them together and hanging them from your doorknob as a protection charm. There are many uses for cans. Make sure to clean them first, though. You can use scraps from broken tires for baneful magick as well as banishing. If you burn them, I would not recommend doing it indoors. Bottles found lying around, whether they be glass or plastic, have many uses. They can store moon water and other liquids that one might use in their practice. If the glass bottles are broken, you can put them in a spell jar to drive your enemies away. If you see some paper lying around, it can have many uses in your practice. Chicken bones from fried chicken discarded in front of your apartment building? Those can be used in your practice, too! Even those metal bottle caps can be used for luck, money drawing, or prosperity magick. You'd be surprised how ordinary, mundane-looking litter can be used in one's practice. Just make sure that you clean these items before you use them. You can also do things like use chalk to write sigils on your apartment building. If you don't have an altar, you can make one out of a milk crate with some plywood or thick cardboard on top. You might find feathers lying around, and those have many applications.

Many cities have occult shops where you can find a variety of supplies for your practice. However, if you do not have one or cannot go to one, there are other places where you can get supplies. Take grocery stores, for example. The spice section has a wide variety of common herbs that one might use in one's practice. Some herbs can be found in the tea section. You can use loose-leaf or bagged tea. One thing that I've done is get herbs from the tea bags (chamomile, lavender, hibiscus, lemongrass, and safflower, among others). You just have to cut them open to get the herbs. Some herbal tea blends have herbs that you can use for a specific purpose. For example, Bigelow Red Raspberry has ingredients that are good for love spells, including self-love. If you need fresh herbs, common cooking herbs can often be found in the store. Really, a lot of herbs and other items used in one's practice can be found there. Some stores also have incense, candles, notebooks, and pens or markers in a variety of colors. Some stores have those flat marbles, which you can use to make a DIY set of rune stones. If you don't have any spring water available, you can get those gallon jugs of spring water at most grocery stores. If there is a craft section, I'd recommend checking it out. Most grocery stores have a place where you can buy cookies and the like, which can be used as offerings. If you're on a budget and have a local Dollar Tree, you can usually get candles, incense, dried herbs, salt, notebooks, a variety of craft supplies, cookies, dolls to represent the god and goddess, cartons of eggs to make eggshell powder, and many other items that one can use in their practice. Really, if you're creative and open-minded enough and know where to look, you can find a wide variety of things to use in your practice. I would recommend checking out the seasonal items, too.

Back to the matter of herbs and such things. If you don't want to go out to buy herbs, flowers, vegetables, and the like and are patient enough, you can grow your own. Some plants can be grownn on the window sill, or on your balcony if you have one. If there is a communal garden, try to find out if that's also an option to grow your plants. If you grow your plants indoors, I would recommend purchasing a grow light. If you grow your plants indoors, you will probably have to hand-pollenate certain plants yourself. Thankfully, there are a wide variety of videos on YouTube that give instructions on how to hand-pollenate your plants. Some plants come in dwarf or container varieties, which can be useful if you don't have a lot of space. For example, many micro dwarf tomatoes grow to be less than a foot tall. You might have to order some seeds online, though.

In the city, you can cast almost any spell that you can cast elsewhere. You can find almost any ingredient that you need if you're creative and resourceful enough. If you look for it, you'll probably be able to find it in the city. Who knows? You might find something you can use that might surprise you. As they say, sometimes you don't know what you're looking for until you find it.

[crazyskirtlady]

....................................................Waiting on Infinity

[elizabugz]

[unityghost]

What people think witchcraft is: ✨🔮👻🌿😈

What it actually is:

[urban-witching]

Exercise #1

Write down folk tales/urban legends/history about your city!

I try to do one a day, resorting to bullet points if I don’t feel up to it. I also try to connect them to physical locations: for example, if I walk by a landmark on my way to get groceries, I might jot down the story behind it when I get home. I'll also write down any personal associations, whether those are fun memories or simply the fact that I pass it on my way to the store.

Add pictures or drawing too! I don't like using maps since they can make things a bit complicated, but do feel free to mark them on a map or write down directions (this can be useful for getting to know street names as well).

Whether it’s a short joke or major superstition, it’s a nice way to ground yourself in your city and it’s lore to become more familiar with it. 💖

[irreverenttarot]

There is magic in the trees and forests but there is also magic in the wires

[witchygaymer]

Kitchen witch life hack!

Use your burnt food ashes to make black salt >:)

Since I’m in a single room unit (basically a dorm but for broke bitches who can’t afford a full studio apartment) and I have a cat, I needed to clean the smoke tf up after this mishap with making tortilla chips in my toaster oven. Side note: the chips on the bottom tray came out fine!! Don’t use the top tray of your toaster oven folks. I’m still learning how to function independently.

Anyway… heat up some vinegar in your microwave (or stovetop, or whatever) and use the steam to absorb the smoke smell. Trust me, it works. I used apple cider vinegar. And blast whatever fans or AC units you have. I also said a little banishing spell to the smoke.