#dieties

[pratchettquotes]

People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way.

Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiraling in a potter's wheel. That's how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn't be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies.

Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

[smallgodseries]

[image description: A youngster in lavender striped pyjamas stands on the bed, holding tight to the wooden footboard as the incredibly long legs of the bed move them through 4 different panels of space and time. Text reads, “59, Galloping Gertie ~ Small God of Escapism”]

“Gosh, Gertie, where are we going to go tonight?”

The sky is blue; the sun is shining.  It’s the middle of the night, but the sky is always blue and the sun is always shining, except when Gertie wants to count the stars.  When she wants to count the stars, the sky is black with midnight and glittering with diamonds, and no one has ever heard the words “light pollution.”  But right now, the sky is blue, dotted with puffy white clouds like promises that tomorrow will be better, and today is already pretty darn great.

She smiles, and her smile is the smile of every mischief-maker and every prank-puller since the beginning of time and children.

“Everywhere,” she replies.

The game is on.  The game is always on.  The game has been on since the beginning; the game will be on until the end.  The end of what?  Of everything.

Individual players come and go, of course.  Everyone comes to play in the beginning, when the world is sunlight and rainbows.  Even the ones for whom such pleasures are too dear to be afforded come to her, sleeping under bridges and in the backseats of cars, still reaching for the joys of childhood.  But though she is a frivolous god, she is not a childish one.  Her form might say otherwise.  Her faithful know the truth.

She is there for the mother whose child wastes away in a hospital bed, whether that child is four or forty.  She holds their hands, she wipes their brows, she shows them to her rainbow palaces and she welcomes them for as long as they need to stay.  She is there for the hiker with the broken leg, lying at the bottom of the ravine, waiting for the elements to finish them forever.

And she is there for the college student too broken and worn down to continue, for the man working three jobs and still not meeting the bills, for the administrative assistant unchallenged by her work and struggling to find motivation.  She offers them a hand and a glad cry of “Adventure is ahead of us!” and the game is on.

The game is always on. 

• • • • • •

Artist Lee Moyer (Trident of Aurelia, 13th Age) and author Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children, October Daye & InCryptid series) sincerely appreciate you, wherever you've gone exploring!

[bb-the-witch]

Hestia 🔥

[witchbydaywitchbynight]

How many deities do you work with / worship?

[gods-favorite-autistic]

Whenever I see Apollo on my dash it’s usually one of three things:

People talking about the actual deity Apollo, usually witches who work with him talking about working with him

The Riordanverse version of Apollo and his children

People on tumblr accidentally getting the gift of prophecy, usually paired with that one meme of a child throwing a dodgeball

Like that’s the real vibe of tumblr: Is it witchcraft, fandoms, or memes

[whileyouwait-dm]

1

So it begins...

Everything happened in the blink of an eye.  Miriana had been crossing the street with a group of people one minute and the next she was in a strange dark forest.  Obviously she was at least unconscious and this was some kind of dream; at least that was what she was hoping.  The alternative was that she was dead.  Were that the case, then where exactly she was confounded her.  This certainly did not resemble any description of Heaven that she had read of, but it didn’t exactly resemble Hell either.  She hadn’t read up on all mythologies though, but she doubted Hell as supposed to look like a dense forest with lush vegetation.  So, exactly what happened and where was she?  Two questions that she hoped would be answered by someone in at least some kind of decent timeframe.

Miriana turned in a circle, but saw no path or anything that gave a clear direction out of the clearing that she was in.  There was just this jagged oval of a clearing where the underbrush was lower, then it grew higher again and the trees were closer together.  The canopy was still lush and green, keeping everything below in shade and relative darkness.  There were no sounds of birds or active wildlife that she could ascertain, which seemed odd for the middle of the day, but she wasn’t any kind of wildlife or forest expert.  Trying to decide which way to go was not easy, since she had no idea where she was and there were no ambient noises to guide her.

Finally, she just picked a direction and headed into the thicker underbrush and darker canopy cover.  There was no better or worse option, none of them seemed any different than the other at this point since there were no indicators of where she would find someone else.  Hopefully when she did find someone else, they’d be able to tell her where she was and how she got them from the middle of a busy intersection with no memory of it.  She’d never been camping or hiking, so this definitely wasn’t one of her friends playing some messed up kind of a prank, they’d know better than to drop her city girl ass out in the middle of the wilderness. Fending for herself meant using the microwave to heat up leftovers, not making her way through the wilderness.

****

“SIRE!”  A messenger came running into Djall’s  office.  He was out of breath and flushed, looking almost on the verge of panic.  This could mean nothing good for the ruler of the underworld, so there went his afternoon. “Yes?  What is it?”  He asked, leaning back in his chair.  Hopefully it wasn’t something too bad and he could get back to organizing the newest batch of arrivals according to what demon would be overseeing them.

“There was a problem with the afterlife routing algorithm and we’ve received…………a mistake.”  The color seemed to drain from the demon’s face.

“A mistake?” Djall’s dark eyes narrowed at the demon, who was nodding and simultaneously looking like he wanted to become one with the wall behind him.  “What kind of mistake?”  His head cantered to one side as he tried to figure out how they could receive any kind of mistake.  This was Hell.  Mistakes didn’t happen in Hell and you didn’t end up in Hell by mistake.  You earned your way here.

“Sir, the algorithm sent a murderer to Paradise, and an innocent human girl here.  She just landed in the forest of beasts.  She was supposed to go the other way.  There are a few beings arguing over whose fault it is, but we need to find her before the beasts do.  She’s done nothing wrong to be here, Sire.”  The demon’s back was pressed against the wall and he was truly terrified that his liege was going to cause him great pain from the look of displeasure currently upon his face.

“I have a completely innocent female IN THE FOREST OF BEASTS?!” Djall almost roared at the information.  Of all of the places for her to land, the one that was the most violent and vicious.  Of course, because having her land someplace “safe” in Hell would be to easy when the pompous pricks upstairs fucked up.  Instead he was going to have to go find her before she was hurt and he had to put a bunch of pieces back together.  Had he fucked over some deity that he’d forgotten about?  He didn’t think so, but the day was sure shaping up that way.

Pushing on the armrests of his chair, Djall came to standing.  “I will be off finding this female.  Can you please find out who I’m supposed to call once I have her back here to the manor?  Getting her out of Hell promptly is, I'm sure, on the top of everyone’s agenda.  And, also, find out how the fuck this happened!”  He gave the demon a tight smile and teleported to the forest.  This was not going to be fun, and someone would definitely pay for the inconvenience later.

[therealestwizard]

Everybody wants to talk about the Gaels when referencing Pan-Celtic cultures (a categorical term to group a large swath of historical ethnic groups with ties to each other genealogically and culturally) still they don't want to mention Celtiberians/Generally Continental Celts.

You guys want to post about Cernunnos and your pseudo-Wiccan pantheons? Don't look to Insular Celts. Portugal, Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, etc. have so many interesting cultures to examine! Not to mention you can look as far east as the Galatian Speakers in Anatolia? (And don't forget Italy...Slovenia...Austria...)

Celts were all over! That's why they are not One Thing at all. I see a lot of posts on here calling deities "Celtic". While this can be true (perhaps they share a lot of common roots in different historical Celtic groups) it's more accurate to assign them to the actual ethnic group(s) they originated from.

i.e: "Arwan is the King of the Otherworld in Welsh Mythology. He can be considered a Welsh and Brythonic Celtic figure."

Or consider: "Epona is an equine diety of Gallo-Roman origin that was worshiped by Celts as far west as Wales. She can be considered a Gallo-Celtic, Brythonic Celtic, Roman, and possibly Iberian Celtic deity."

[madcowmagic]

I think it's interesting how different people read tarot. I know someone who doesn't look at the book at all and just reads intuitively. Some people just know the meaning of every card.

I look at it like this:

Every deck of cards comes with a book. And while the basic meaning of the cards is kinda the same, the words are very different. Someone took the time to write out what these cards mean to them. And I think when you read tarot, the cards or deities or whoever you're talking to know what the book says, and the cards that they give you actually mean what the book says. So when I read the cards I read what the book says but obvs I dont take it completely literally, I usually take sentences that resonate out of the meaning of each card to piece together the message all the cards are saying together.

Ifk if that makes sense, just hope it does. I also cannot remember what the cards say to save my life, I'm bad at remembering. But I think each deck is unique and the books say different things so I like to read the books for clues as to what the message is. It'd be kinda boring if every book that came with a tarot deck was the same thing.

[writercole]

Okay okay my turn! Cast your mutuals as Egyptian, Norse,Greek and other Deities ✨

Oh.

You: Loki. You're chaos. @princessmisery666 - Sigyn. Norse goddess of compassion. @wildbornsiren - Hel. @ryebecca - Thoth. Egyptian god of writing and wisdom @blue-aconite - Freyja. Cat chariot. @nepenthe-raes-affairs - Persephone, as discussed previously. @never--doubt - Iris, Greek goddess of rainbows. @navybrat817 - Tefnut. Egyptian goddess of moisture. @antiquitea - Demeter. @hederasgarden - Brigid, Celtic goddess of fire.

As for me? Toutatis, Celtic god of tribal protection.

[dingustripas]

‘Lil something im working on in respect to submissive Harrow.

[smallgodseries]

[image description: A naked woman stands facing away from us, right hand on hip, with jet black hair, pale skin and a carnation-colored tattoo over her sacrum that reads ‘REBEL’. She has a long curved triangular earring and pale pink lips. Text reads, “53, Patrice Angel ~ The Small God of Lower Back Tattoos”]

Very few people realize that she’s a god, even though she speaks most often to the inebriated and the exhausted, in bolts of sudden cosmic inspiration that lead to an eternity of ink.  Her works are ineffable and swift, and yet they would still deny her divinity, all because they’ve listened when other people spoke cruelly about bodies that should never have concerned them.  Her works are dismissed as “trashy” and “tasteless,” and still she carries on, because she brings something more precious than pearls, more essential than prayer:

Like every small god of tattooing, she brings ownership.  She brings connection.

To have a body is a strange thing.  It isn’t something chosen; it’s more something assigned, with only limited customization options.  Gender is malleable.  Height is not.  Hair color is malleable, as Polly and Tesla will gladly demonstrate.  Weight is less so than people want to admit it is.  Skin color and eye color can be changed, but only temporarily, and there are costs, both socially and physically, for pushing those changes too long or too far.  The body is a burden, but it can become a gift, a partner, even a friend.

And for many, part of that friendship is customization.

Patrice offers yet another way to mark the physical form as owned and beloved. Painting the walls of the temple, as it were.  And when people dismiss her works as “tramp stamps” or “ass antlers” or whatever other dismissive phrase has popped into their heads, she only laughs.  She knows what she means to people.

She means pain and she means pleasure.  She means a moment of drunken inspiration that lasts a lifetime, and she means remembering that you were young once, wild and free and unburdened by the fear of censure.  She means meaning, and sometimes meaning is the greatest miracle of all.

And all too often, she means a bad tattoo, chosen from a book of plagiarized flash and paid for in sweaty singles left over from the bar crawl, but people shouldn’t hold that against her, or against the people who carry the marks of their time in her dominion branded on their flesh.

She isn’t just for a night.  She’s for a lifetime.

____________________________________________________________

Artist Lee Moyer (Trident of Aurelia, 13th Age) and author Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children, October Daye & InCryptid series) sincerely appreciate you, whether or not you rock a lower back tattoo.

[bb-the-witch]

Hecate

[imgonnagetkilledbynutstink]

Y'all I need some recs for some actually good demonolotry (not demonology) books cause it seems like every author I find is shitty somehow

[inkaitations]

Introduction ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

Hi I’m Kai 🪴🌱🌿

I’m a minor ! | eng/esp/ita | I worship Hermes ✉️ & Hecate 🔮 | please use he/she/they

A couple of my interests: fma, tloz, fnaf, undertale, stardew, terraria, tadc, horror media, acnh, toh, the nightmare before Christmas, Sanrio, uhhh the lists goes on and on I’m just naming random things basically if you like this stuff too let’s be mutuals 🫶

I also love learning abt random animals (I love love love marine life) and psychology as well as reading and art (follow my Instagram Alkaistry for my digital art 🫡🫵)

Abt this page (*⁰▿⁰*)

I’ll post silly things and questions/comments centered around paganism—using this as a safe space for me to talk abt that. Probably also things abt my interests or stuff on my mind or I just might never post that could happen

If you wanna chat you can hit up my Instagram, you can also ask me any questions here

Would love to be mutuals and make friends

Stay friendly here! Remember: we don’t hate, we masterbate 🙅🗣️

That’s all!! Hopefully I don’t disappear off this app for like months (I probably will)

Be well and may the gods watch over you! 🫶

[stearleart]

Digital depiction of Xochipilli from @warlordofnoodles No Evil showing off his new McCoy outfit he bought! Really trying to capture a sense of motion with these pics.

You can watch it here on NG:

[moonkissedmeli]

Back in the office today. Feel free to send me interesting things to pass the time or let me know about historical / Hellenic / or witchy things you'd like me to research and post about.

MWAHH <3