Disclaimer: Personal post coming - Everything written here is taken from my own practice and will not apply to everyone.
So part of my practice involves working with the dead, particularly dead animals. Recently I stumbled upon an ask to another blog where the person questioned how to honor pets who have passed away (what kind of offerings to leave, etc.). I didn't know this was something people had questions about so I decided to make a post of my own. Here are some ways to honor lost companions:
Creating an Altar
An altar, in this case, is a sacred space used for the purpose of remembering and honoring the deceased. It can be large or small, and can be placed anywhere where it won't be disturbed, such as a bookshelf, mantle, dresser, or a small table. For multiple pets, you can have a single altar or individual spaces. This is completely up to you.
What to put on your pet's altar
Ashes, pawprints, whiskers, and fur
This will depend on the species of your pet and what remains you have saved. My late cat was buried so I don't have her ashes, but I do have a pawprint pressed in clay on her altar.
Candles
Candles can be lit to "light the way" for spirits during offerings or communication, or simply to honor them.
An offering bowl
This can be any bowl, including an ornate offering dish, your pets food bowl, or just a bowl from the kitchen cabinet.
Objects that remind you of your pet
This can be anything, but some suggestions are: photos, paintings, and drawings of your pet, statues, stones, etc.
Toys and objects that your pet loved
If you have any of your pets favorite toys, feel free to leave one or two on their altar. Additionally, if there are any objects that your pet liked when they were alive, you can add those too. For example, I have one of those plastic galaxy roses that my cat loved to try and chew on. It was always kept out of her reach in life, but now it sits on her altar.
Leaving Offerings
This was mentioned above where we talked about offering dishes as an addition to an altar. Offerings can be given daily, weekly, monthly, or at random. They can be left at an altar or burial ground. Whatever works for you personally. Leave things that your pet loved in life. Your pet doesn't suddenly want things like honey and wine just because they're a spirit now.
Examples of offerings:
Food
Treats
Catnip, bones and chews, etc.
Fresh water
Your own energy
These are just a few suggestions. Offerings will depend on personal choice and should be species appropriate.
Dispose of your offerings however you see fit. I like to leave mine in the backyard. If you are disposing of offerings outside or leaving them at a grave, make sure they are animal-safe and biodegradable.
Memorial Art
This is one of my favorite ways to honor a lost pet. I have made memorial art for several family members and for myself. If you so choose, you can add a hidden sigil for safe passing, peace, or whatever you want. Place your art piece on your altar or in your pets favorite place in the house.
Suggested mediums for memorial art:
Paintings
Drawings
Wood carvings
Clay sculptures
Cross Stitch
Collages
Jewelry
Communication and Divination
Before getting into this one, I want to make it clear that not everyone is comfortable with trying to communicate with dead loved ones, and that's okay. I took a break from spirit work completely after suffering my first loss, and I'm still getting back into the swing of things. If you are still grieving heavily, it is 100% okay to wait before attempting communication.
Forms of divination that I recommend:
Scrying
Tassomancy (tea leaf reading)
Carromancy (candle wax reading)
Tarot and Oracle
Asking for signs
Forms of divination that I do not recommend:
Pendulums
Talking boards, ouija boards, spirit boards
Automatic writing
Bibliomancy
This is just a list of divination forms that I'm familiar with. You'll notice that everything under the recommended list almost strictly uses imagery, while everything under the not recommended list uses verbal communication. This is because it is my belief that animal spirits speak through images, sounds, and sensations, and are not capable of having full-on conversations with us.
Use your discretion. If asking for signs, ask for something specific. Try to keep your readings light-hearted. If a reading feels sinister or off, it probably isn't your pet. It's most likely just a bad reading or your own anxiety or grief.
Thanks for reading and for those of you who are suffering a loss, hang in there. It gets easier.
well all i can say about HBO's anti-union message in that bts video is that AS A KIWI ACTOR/STAGE/SCREEN INDUSTRY WORKER who isn't being strongarmed by a corporation into saying shit that they agree with
the hobbit laws suck. peter jackson is universally despised. what that man did with warner brothers and the national government to make our laws worse for workers so he could film his bad films here in the late 00s is akin to several crimes.
we WANT union protection! we WANT to be able to strike! i'm a member on the Equity NZ (union akin to SAG-AFTRA) committee for Wellington and the amount of work that's going on behind the scenes at the moment to claw back worker protections from our fucked up local laws is immense.
most of us aren't allowed to strike. most people working at wētā (the big screen production house), as well as on most screen/stage jobs are employed as contractors, so they're taxed exorbitantly, have no sick leave, have no holidays, have minimal protection from harassment or being taken advantage of.
long hours? being burned out? that's the kiwi way of living in the screen/stage industry and it SHOULD NOT be celebrated.
The Screen Industry Workers Act of 2022 has fixed some of that but there's still so much to go. yknow how SAG-AFTRA is fighting over residuals? here, we don't even know her.
i know all this personally and intimately.
i was taxed 39% on my contractor income last year.
only now that i'm a salaried worker can i afford to get my teeth fixed.
i had to get a legal action from a lawyer from ANOTHER UNION to get paid for one of my contracts in 2021 because the production team didn't like how i spoke up about their lax health and safety rules (this was a contract I was nominated for one of the most prestigious awards in the country for my work on, fyi)
sexual harassment is rife. what support is there? basically none. we hope it comes out in the media, or it doesn't change and there's nothing we can do cause we'll get sued into oblivion.
ive worked multiple 12+ hour days with only a tiny break in the middle or none at all. friends of mine have done 10-16 hour night shoots.
i've burned myself out multiple times in five years of professional practise cause that's the expected thing. that's what you do. if you're not working at 150% the entire time then you're a bad arts industry employee.
in conclusion, fuck off with your anti-union message, fuck you for utilising our weak-ass laws and HBO i'm in your walls
if you're in the US, support the Entertainment Community Fund! if you're a screen/stage worker in NZ, join Equity!
John Constantine had a habit of picking up strays.
From half demons (like Raven) to demigods (like Billy Batson) to other extremely powerful magical children.
It was rumored among Justice League Dark that Batman's adopting problem had rubbed off on John.
So, it came a surprise to absolutely nobody, when John brought two tiny half ghosts to the next Justice league dark meeting and introduced them as his wards.
The two could be seen flying around cities with Shazam and practicing magic with Raven. And John was also talking with Boston about Ghost culture.
But then Batman showed up on the house of mysteries doorstep and wanting to talk about Danny being his biological child.
Well, one thing was for sure..
Batman was not making the kid leave if he didn't want to, and if John had to fight the richest man on earth in a custody battle, then so be it.
This entire thread is horrifying. I was so lucky that my ochem professor let me take the final the next day after I missed it (and in that case it was my own fault, read the time wrong and thought it was later than it actually was)
I’ve seen so many threads debating the merits of rayon and whether it’s a plastic or a “natural fibre” going around, and y’all, the problem with rayon is not whether or not it satisfies some technical definition of synthetic fibre.
The problem is that the most common method of manufacturing rayon is so ridiculously toxic that it’s literally killing the people who work in the facilities where it’s produced, and is illegal to carry out in much of the world as a result – but instead of using better (more expensive) methods, everybody just imports the stuff from places where killing your workers for the sake of a buck isn’t effectively regulated.
Oldest Daughter Dick™ is probably one of my favourite things ever. And it always will be and here's why:
Of course Dick loves his siblings and of course he loves that they know Bruce as the father he is. But it won't stop the jealousy he feels. And no one gets it, not even Jason. They were all raised by Bruce Wayne, he was raised by Batman.
When Dick came to live with him, Bruce had no idea how to he a father. How to handle normal kid stuff like sicknesses and school events let alone the fact he was an acrobat. He was Batman and Dick was raised to be not just his successor but the only contingency plan he had against himself.
Bruce never held his punches ("That was a good block but I still got you, didn't I?" Bruce had said, rubbing cream into the blossoming bruise on Dick's side. "I'll get you next time," Dick had promised, young eyes challenging. "You better." Bruce had grinned back.) All attacks were to remind him that he was at a disadvantage strength wise and thus needed to re-evaluate his lines of defense and offense.
Dick was raised by the paranoid-in-his-late-twenties-probably-shouldn't-be-a-dad-despite-what-Marisol-said Bat. A fun game of catch? He was dodging Batarangs. Learning to drive? It was the Batmobile and he was age 14 (and a half). School events? He was fumbling, awkward and did not want to be there (but still was because he'll be damned if his boy didn't have his support.)
And you know that's fine, Dick was fine. It wasn't Bruce's fault he didn't know how to be a proper dad, despite Alfred's parenting books and videos. And he did try, he was always there. But it just really hits a sore spot everytime he sees Bruce hold a punch before he knocks Tim out cold or when he's behind the wheel with Steph telling her what not to do. Or even when he's at school with Damian and Duke making Marjory and her cupcakes look ridiculous compared to him and his coconut crumble cakes.
It also irritates Dick beyond senseless whenever the topic of sparring with Bruce is mentioned. ("We can all beat the old man Goldie, he's ancient." Jason shrugs off and Dick wanted to scream.) The only one who even tries to sympathize with him was Cass. More than likely because she'd seen him fight as Batman The Dark Knight before seeing him fight as Bruce The Father of Six-Almost-Eight.
And it just really stings because he can't relate to being raised by Bruce the way the others can't. Bruce changed for them, not him. And maybe that kind of hurts. But maybe he's overreacting.
What he doesn't realize is he's the reason why Bruce changed. Bruce saw the hurt and anger in Dick's eyes when he fired him from Robin (Think Shifu denying Tai Lung the Dragon Warrior scroll). He knew the second he saw the betrayal in Dick's eyes after seeing Jason as Robin, that he'd have to change. (The same way Shifu should've changed for Tigress but I digress, not that fandom).
Bruce pulls his punches because he hated seeing Dick limp away from their sparring matches—despite the fire and promise of a rematch in his eyes. He teaches them how to drive regular cars before the Batmobile because the one time Dick crashed (while trying to avoid some of Poison Ivy's vines) his heart rate skyrocketed so high Clark had called him up demanding to know if he was okay. He shows up for Duke and Damian and Cass and Tim because Dick's smile whenever he saw Bruce in the parent's lounge never failed to make him melt.
Bruce stands firm on the fact that while he may have made a hero out of Dick, Dick Grayson made a father out of Bruce Wayne.
I felt like making up "angwy uwu" designs for Phil and Bad cuz yknow the whole angel demon thing, with no real intent to create context for them, but by the time I finished them we had the Election Diner code incident and the kidnapping of Dapper which made me go [blinking white guy meme]
I gotta give huge props to OngakuK for giving me inspo on some aspects
'Cause designing godlike figures with tons of ornements and symbolism is her shit, so I sent her my first drafts and asked for feedback and she gave me really cool ideas
And here's some bonus mid-shapeshifting doodles
My og designs for them are much tamer : Phil has got far less pairs of wings and 20 eyes less & Bad has got far less teeth and one single lower jaw