#oracular work

[7serendipities]

Another Kind of Update for my Crow Folks

This month I have been sick and overwhelmed and battling severe fatigue, and when I went to see Na Morrigna, I asked – what would you have me to this month?  Can I just rest? No, not only rest. They wanted me to finally start a piece of devotional fiber craft, and to share a small, happy update.  One of my workshop proposals was accepted to the Morrigan’s Call Retreat 2024!  So it looks like I’ll…

[devouredbyflame]

Being so afraid of being wrong that you can’t move is actually the worst thing you could do for your practice.

You aren’t imposing on anyone.

You aren’t insulting the Gods. Arguably, you don’t actually know what would be considered insulting unless you’ve actually asked Them.

You’re not going to be beaten up and told you are the worst devotee ever.

You aren’t going to be told by any Deity you are morally imbalanced or impure.

The only thing the Gods are actually concerned with is the ability to get you to listen to Them which means peeling away layers and layers of trauma, biases, and patterns that take you away from Them. They would not forcibly remove you from Their attentions just because you wanted to try something new or do something that no one else is doing.

The ultimate goal of any Divine relationship for either side should always be to draw nearer to Them, not be pushed away because your discernment is inaccurate while you are learning.

[3liza]

I'm reading Greek and Roman Necromancy by Daniel Ogden and once again encountered the trope of oracular locations and temples keeping snakes for various ritual purposes and "feeding them" on a kind of honey cake, which as far as I know would not be interesting whatsoever to a snake and even if a snake ate a baked good it would probably have trouble digesting it (I assume). so I was mulling this over, and naturally Ogden doesn't address it, I've actually never read any writer on these subjects address the animal husbandry involved with ancient rituals, which is always frustrating , and it occurred to me that snakes wouldn't eat a Twinkie but rodents and insects absolutely would.

if your ritual snakes are just being kept in some sort of enclosure, especially something like a pit or a katabasis (the Greeks were really big on a Amigara Fault-type procedure where people would go into holes in the earth in various ways and then come out of the holes in various ways and during this process be understood to have visited the underworld or received a vision from an oracular ghost such as Trophonius, the mechanical details of the process aren't clear), you probably aren't directly observing them very often except for any part of the rituals that involve handling, during which the snakes wouldn't be eating anyway. but alone in their enclosures with a bunch of bakery snacks, the rodents and bugs could sneak out of hiding and get grabbed by the snakes.

also I imagine a lot of the smoke and mirrors of the staff at these temples involved managing the various sacred animals somewhat like a petting zoo or a feeder goldfish tank at PetSmart, and just disappearing any of them that died so the clients wouldn't see them. it's likely the staff were cleaning, feeding, and taking care of the snakes at various locations and the dogs at the Asclepias temple and so on.

one has to imagine that most temple priesthood were probably just people who had gotten that particular job somehow, and not the ecstatic true believers that are depicted in every classicist romantic painting and most mythological or fictional imaginings of such places. of course there are tons of modern fiction books that imagine the same thing I do, I read The Jaguar Princess by Clare Bell when I was about 13 and loved the plain and practical descriptions of Aztec temple life, the process of creating art, and the anatomical approach to the idea of a were-jaguar (i have no idea if this book stands up, probably not), I think it permanently contextualized my thinking about ancient ritual as practical and pedestrian for the people who worked in that field. it's fun to imagine the blood-soaked ancient temples in any part of the history of humanity being as ho-hum as an Anglican church service, but they probably were for most people.

[gemharvest]

When I say these songs are important to me, I mean in a "I literally have a fursona based on the LDA album" way.

(artist/ designer here)

Adding Kids and Little Dark Age to my Pico playlist as a little treat to myself.

[doeeyedseer]

Some positive things said about elain.

“Elain had always been gentle and sweet—and I had considered it a different sort of strength. A better strength. To look at the hardness of the world and choose, over and over, to love, to be kind. She had been always so full of light."

"I gazed again at that sad, dark house—the place that had been a prison. Elain had said she missed it, and I wondered what she saw when she looked at the cottage. If she beheld not a prison but a shelter—a shelter from a world that had possessed so little good, but she tried to find it anyway, even if it had seemed foolish and useless to me. She had looked at that cottage with hope; I had looked at it with nothing but hatred. And I knew which one of us had been stronger."

"'Elain nodded, smiling up at me, and it was tentative joy—and life that shone in her eyes. A promise of the future, gleaming and sweet. "

"But Elain, the flower-grower, the gentle heart"

"She had come alive here and her joy was infectious. There wasn't a servant or gardener who didn't smile at her, and even the brusque head cook found excuses to bring her plates of cookies an tarts at various points in the day. I marveled at it, actually- that hose years of poverty hadn't stripped away that light from Elain, Perhaps buried it a bit but she was generous loving and kind- a woman I found myself proud to know, to call sister."

“Beautiful—she’d always been the most beautiful of us. Soft and lovely, like a summer dawn.”

“That smile grew, bright enough that it lit up even Azriel’s shadows across the room.”

“Elain quietly washed his face. Combed out his hair and beard. Straightened his clothes. She found flowers—somewhere. She laid them at his head, on his chest. We stared down at him in silence. “I love you,” Elain whispered, voice breaking.”

"The Cauldron seemed to realize what she’d done, too, as his head thumped onto the mossy ground. That Elain … Elain had defended this thief. Elain, who it had gifted with such powers, found her so lovely it had wanted to give her something … It would not harm Elain, even in its hunt to reclaim what had been taken.”

"Nesta was wrong, Cassian realized, to think Elain as loyal and loving as a dog. Elain saw everything Nesta had done and understood. "

"For a moment, I just stared at my sister, the wisdom she'd spoken. Not a whisper of those oracular abilities. Just clear eyes and an open expression. "

"I think she’s kind, and I’ll take kindness over nastiness any day. But I also think we haven’t yet seen all she has to offer.” A corner of his mouth tugged upward. “Don’t forget that gardening often results in something pretty, but it involves getting one’s hands dirty along the way.”

"She loves her garden. Always loved growing things. Even when we were destitute, she managed to tend a little garden in the warmer months. And when - when our fortune returned, she took to tending and planting the most beautiful gardens you’ve ever seen. Even in Prythian. It drove the servants mad, because they were supposed to do the work and ladies were only meant to clip a rose here and there, but Elain would put on a hat and gloves and kneel in the dirt, weeding. She acted like a purebred lady in every regard but that."

"and Elain was so gentle, so sweet …"

“My sister Elain can convince anyone to do anything with a few smiles.”

“Elain, who had been gentle and sweet. Elain, who was to marry a lord’s son who hated faeries …”

“Even wasted away by grief and despair, Elain’s beauty was remarkable. Hers was a face that could bring kings to their knees."

“Nesta met her sister's warm brown eyes. When human, elain had easily been the prettiest of the three of them, and when she'd been turned High Fae, that beauty had been amplified. Nesta couldn't put her finger on what changes had been wrought beyond the pointed ears, but Elain had gone from lovely to devastatingly beautiful. Elain never seemed to realize it.”

“Including Elain, who is more than capable of defending herself against the darkness of the Trove, if she chooses to. Don’t underestimate her.”

“Elain, mourn as she might for the life she would have had with Graysen, had found a place, a role here. Tending to the gardens of Feyre’s veritable palace on the river, helping other residents of Velaris restore their own destroyed gardens—she had purpose, and joy, and friends: those two half-wraiths who worked in Rhysand’s household. But those things had always come easily to her sister. Had always made Elain special."

"I saw the painting in my mind: the lovely fawn, blooming spring vibrant behind her. "

"Lost to whatever fog of memory had crept over him, he was smiling mildly at his beloved Elain, the only one of us who bothered to really speak to him at all."

"There was a slight sparkle in her brown eyes.As if she’d been enjoying herself with them. I put a hand in my chest, leaning against the wood panels of the stair wall. Rhys’s hand covered my own a heartbeat later. “that was what I felt,” he said, “when I saw you smile that night we dined along the Sidra,”

“Some were as lovely as you, Elain,” Rhys said from beside Feyre"

"I smiled at my sister, memorizing her lovely face, and wiped her tears away. "

"My sister was beaming, content- prettier then I'd ever seen her, even in her simple muslin gardening dress. Her cheeks were flushed beneath her large, floppy hat.

"Her face had somehow become more beautiful- infinitely beautiful, and her ears...Elain's ears were now pointed beneath her sodden hair."

"The cauldron purred in Elain's presence as the King of Hybern slumped to his knees, clawing at the knife jutting through his throat. "

"The faelights gilded Elain's unbound hair, making her glow like the sun at dawn. "

"Elain stood at the wall of windows, clad in a lilac gown whose close-fitting bodice showed how well her sister had filled out since those initial days in the Night Court. Gone were the sharp angles, replaced by softness and elegant curves."

"Her sister turned toward her, glowing with health. Elain’s smile was as bright as the setting sun beyond the windows."

"I'll do it," Elain said, taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders. She didn't wait for either of us before she strode out , graceful as a doe."

"Her mouth tightened, the only sign of anger in her graceful countenance. "

"but something in me eased at that laughter, at the light thay returned to Elain's eyes. A light I wouldn't see dimmed further. "

Bonus:

" I knew they’d both die the moment that power hit them. Anything, I begged the Cauldron. Anything— The king’s hand began to drop. And then halted. A choking noise came out of him. For a moment, I thought the Cauldron had answered my pleas. But as a black blade broke through the king’s throat, spraying blood, I realized someone else had. Elain stepped out of a shadow behind him, and rammed Truth-Teller to the hilt through the back of the king’s neck as she snarled in his ear, “Don’t you touch my sister.”

“Elain was the only one who guessed. She caught me vomiting two mornings in a row. " She nodded toward Azriel. "I think she's got you beat for secret-keeping.".

“I mean, she’s been brave when she had to be, but she’s never been confrontational.”

“But I wonder if everyone has spent so long assuming Elain is sweet and innocent that she felt she had to be that way or else she’d disappoint you all.” He sighed toward the ceiling. “With time and safety, perhaps we’ll see a different side of her emerge.”

[polutrope]

Daeron's Foresight

Instead of working on one of my myriad ideas and projects that might actually yield a Product, here's an unsolicited overview of why I headcanon that Daeron is foresighted, or at least a bit of an oddball seer-type.

His mentor is (not explicitly in canon but quite naturally) Melian, not only the most gifted of the Maiar in "songs of enchantment" (also like Daeron) but one known to foresee the future and cultivate this gift in her mentees (e.g., Galadriel)

Association with Music (and water: "made lament beside dark waters") in Tolkien lends itself to greater access to the Meaning of the Universe™ past/present/future, given it all began with a Song.

This passage in Lay of Leithian (Canto V). Thingol has just summoned Daeron to ask him why everything has fallen silent in Doriath (it's because Daeron cast a spell of silence upon seeing Luthien with Beren).

... Daeron coming no word spoke, silent amid the woodland folk. Then Thingol said: 'Oh Daeron fair, thou master of all musics rare, enchanted heart and wisdom wild, whose ear nor eye may be beguiled, who all that passes in this land dost ever heed and understand, what omen doth this silence bear? What horn afar upon the air, what summons do the woods await? Mayhap Lord Tavros from his gate and tree-propped halls, the forest-god, rides his great stallion golden-shod amid the trumpets' tempest loud, amid his green-clad hunters proud, leaving his deer and friths divine and emerald forests? [...] Would it were so! An age now hath gone by since Nahar trod this earth in days of our peace and ancient mirth, ere rebel lords of Eldamar pursuing Morgoth from afar brought war and ruin to the North. Doth Tavros to their aid come forth? But if not he, who comes, or what?' And Daeron said: 'He cometh not. No feet divine shall leave that shore where the Outer Seas' last surges roar, 'till many things be come to pass, and many evils wrought. Alas, the guest is here. The woods are still, but wait not; for a marvel chill them holds at the strange deeds they see, though king sees not - yet queen, maybe, can guess, and maiden doubtless knows who ever now beside her goes.'

First of all, there's Thingol's intriguing way of addressing him, "who all that passes in this land / dost ever heed and understand / what omen doth this silence bear?" which gives strong "you have above-average insight" vibes (don't ask me why he doesn't ask his wife -- we all know there's something Weird going on with the Melian/Thingol/Insight situation). The last part is straight-up asking him to read an omen.

Then Thingol goes off on this tangent about Orome (Tavros) returning, and the hooves of Nahar, and oh that the Valar would come deliver them from Morgoth! and Daeron has this unhinged response. "He cometh not." Can you just imagine that three-worder landing like a brick after Thingol's florid speech? And he goes on to explain himself in these cryptic terms, "'till many things be come to pass, / and many evils wrought." I mean, sure, this could be humorously dismissed with a "No shit, Daeron" but I think he knows a little more about those Things and Evils than he lets on. Then he follows this up with a riddle -- very oracular behaviour -- about Beren's presence in Doriath.

Anyway, I just think Daeron is neat. And even neater if he knew all along, like Melian, that Something was going to happen with Luthien. But, unlike Melian, he does not handle its actual happening with the calm (if grief-laden) acceptance of a god who sang the world into being. He spirals, because his worst predictions are coming true and that means all the rest of it is going to come true also and he just LOSES it and wanders off on "strange paths". That's all we get of him in Silm, but in Leithian there's more. His behaviour is erratic, first "haunting the gloom of tangled trees" and getting enraged when he sees Beren and Luthien together; but then when he's about to divulge to Thingol, he sees Luthien's eyes and won't; then Luthien confides her hope to flee to him, and Daeron spills those beans to Thingol; then he regrets that and actually facilitates her escape. Then he joins a search party to look for her and ... disappears.

His is not the mere despair of a jilted lover: it is the despair of someone who sees the full horror of the future rolling in and can do nothing to stop it; nothing to stop the destruction and death of all that is beautiful (embodied in Luthien, but existing in everything) in the world.

[book--brackets]

Summaries under the cut

The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

Taran wanted to be a hero, and looking after a pig wasn't exactly heroic, even though Hen Wen was an oracular pig. But the day that Hen Wen vanished, Taran was led into an enchanting and perilous world. With his band of followers, he confronted the Horned King and his terrible Cauldron-Born. These were the forces of evil, and only Hen Wen knew the secret of keeping the kingdom of Prydain safe from them. But who would find her first?

The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White

Louie is very popular. Who wouldn't love a swan who can read, write, and play the trumpet? When Louie goes to camp, he meets a boy named A.G. who doesn't like birds, and since Louie is a bird, that means he doesn't like Louie. When A.G. pulls a dangerous stunt out on the lake, he realizes that Louie is a hero, after all.

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George

Every kid thinks about running away at one point or another; few get farther than the end of the block. Young Sam Gribley gets to the end of the block and keeps going--all the way to the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. There he sets up house in a huge hollowed-out tree, with a falcon and a weasel for companions and his wits as his tool for survival. In a spellbinding, touching, funny account, Sam learns to live off the land, and grows up a little in the process. Blizzards, hunters, loneliness, and fear all battle to drive Sam back to city life. But his desire for freedom, independence, and adventure is stronger. No reader will be immune to the compulsion to go right out and start whittling fishhooks and befriending raccoons.

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley

Alec Ramsay is the sole human survivor of a devastating shipwreck. Trapped on a deserted island, Alec finds his only companion is a horse, beautiful, unbroken, and savage . . . a horse whose beauty matches his wild spirit.

The Magisterium by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare

All his life, Call has been warned by his father to stay away from magic. To succeed at the Iron Trial and be admitted into the vaunted Magisterium school would bring bad things. But he fails at failing. Only hard work, loyal friends, danger, and a puppy await.

The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine

Twelve-year-old Addie admires her older sister Meryl, who aspires to rid the kingdom of Bamarre of gryphons, specters, and ogres. Addie, on the other hand, is fearful even of spiders and depends on Meryl for courage and protection. Waving her sword Bloodbiter, the older girl declaims in the garden from the heroic epic of Drualt to a thrilled audience of Addie, their governess, and the young sorcerer Rhys.

But when Meryl falls ill with the dreaded Gray Death, Addie must gather her courage and set off alone on a quest to find the cure and save her beloved sister. Addie takes the seven-league boots and magic spyglass left to her by her mother and the enchanted tablecloth and cloak given to her by Rhys - along with a shy declaration of his love. She prevails in encounters with tricky specters (spiders too) and outwits a wickedly personable dragon in adventures touched with romance and a bittersweet ending.

Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe

Before it's too late, Harold the dog and Chester the cat must find out the truth about the newest pet in the Monroe household -- a suspicious-looking bunny with unusual habits... and fangs!

Beka Cooper by Tamora Pierce

Beka Cooper is a rookie with the law-enforcing Provost's Guard, commonly known as "the Provost's Dogs," in Corus, the capital city of Tortall. To the surprise of both the veteran "Dogs" and her fellow "puppies," Beka requests duty in the Lower City. The Lower City is a tough beat. But it's also where Beka was born, and she's comfortable there.

Beka gets her wish. She's assigned to work with Mattes and Clary, famed veterans among the Provost's Dogs. They're tough, they're capable, and they're none too happy about the indignity of being saddled with a puppy for the first time in years. What they don't know is that Beka has something unique to offer. Never much of a talker, Beka is a good listener. So good, in fact, that she hears things that Mattes and Clary never could - information that is passed in murmurs when flocks of pigeons gather ... murmurs that are the words of the dead.

In this way, Beka learns of someone in the Lower City who has overturned the power structure of the underworld and is terrorizing its citizens into submission and silence. Beka's magical listening talent is the only way for the Provost's Dogs to find out the identity of this brutal new underlord, for the dead are beyond fear. And the ranks of the dead will be growing if the Dogs can't stop a crime wave the likes of which has never been seen. Luckily for the people of the Lower City, the new puppy is a true terrier!

Fairest by Gail Carson Levine

In the kingdom of Ayortha, who is the fairest of them all? Certainly not Aza. She is thoroughly convinced that she is ugly. What she may lack in looks, though, she makes up for with a kind heart, and with something no one else has-a magical voice. Her vocal talents captivate all who hear them, and in Ontio Castle they attract the attention of a handsome prince - and a dangerous new queen.

Trickster's Duology by Tamora Pierce

Alianne is the teenage daughter of the famed Alanna, the first lady knight in Tortall. Young Aly follows in the quieter footsteps of her father, however, delighting in the art of spying. When she is captured and sold as a slave to an exiled royal family in the faraway Copper Islands, it is this skill that makes a difference in a world filled with political intrigue, murderous conspiracy, and warring gods.

[historypaintings]

Heraclitus, the Weeping Philosopher

Artist: Spanish

Date: c. 1630

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States

Description

Heraclitus (c. 500 BC) was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire. He exerts a wide influence on ancient and modern Western philosophy, through the works of such authors as Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Heidegger.

Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrote a single work, only fragments of which have survived. Even in ancient times, his paradoxical philosophy, appreciation for wordplay, and cryptic, oracular epigrams earned him the epithets "the dark" and "the obscure". He was considered arrogant and depressed, a misanthrope who was subject to melancholia. Consequently, he became known as "the weeping philosopher" in contrast to the ancient atomist philosopher Democritus, who was known as "the laughing philosopher".

The central ideas of Heraclitus's philosophy are the unity of opposites and the concept of change. Heraclitus saw harmony and justice in strife. He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always "becoming" but never "being". He expressed this in sayings like "Everything flows" and "No man ever steps in the same river twice". This insistence upon change contrasts with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in a reality of static "being".

[archersarrow-tarot]

✨Reasons For Tarot✨

I have done similar previous posts regarding this same type of information, but I like to redo it from time to time - each time with a few adjustments.🪴🪴

A new perspective on a situation

Seeing into the past

Understanding the present

Guiding the future

Aid in decision-making

Seeing choices available to you

Problem solving

Gain knowledge of ancestors

See into past lives

Self-reflection

Dream interpretation

Clarifying goals

Helps develop and strengthen psychic abilities

Journaling

Story-telling: help create plots, characters, and stories.

A tool that can be used in rituals

Working with energies

Finding your true path

Discover hidden parts of yourself

A oracular tool

[dolphin-diaries]

Review: TRANS/RAD/FEM by Talia Bhatt

Originally published on Transcendent Books.

There is a spectre that hangs over modern feminism and queer theory—the radfem. That belligerent hag, her face contorted in stupid and impotent rage, distorted meme after meme. She gnashes her teeth at the patriarchy but, ever the bumbling fool, in her hysteria she merely spits at other women—and at perfectly reasonable and feminist men. Finally, the radfem, having been thoroughly ridiculed for her misplaced activism in polite society, descends to thrashing in anti-transsexual rage somewhere in the bowels of the internet. She crystallises into her final form: a TERF. Proof that her cause was whispered to her by the devil from the very start.

And so by her example is every feminist chastised. Don’t get too feminist with it now. You’re not a hysterical, man-hating, unwashed, shorn-haired, un-lipsticked radfem, right? In the same breath, every trans person is warned away from feminists. You never know when one will shed their womanly skin and reveal the witch beneath—right? Above all, you should never actually read anything radical feminists have said or theorised. That would only corrupt you. Right?

Enter Talia Bhatt: a trans woman that reads. And writes. God, does she write.

To say that Trans/Rad/Fem is (only) a collection of essays is to undersell it tremendously. It is a visionary creed and a dissection; it is one woman’s reckoning with decades upon decades of epistemic erasure. With academic papers that buried her people’s lives; with vapid allies that patted her back with one hand and shut her mouth with another. It is written with the verve of a general and the piercing oracular gift/curse of Dworkin. It is nothing less or more than a recitation of truth. Truth you already know, but must not name.

Because here’s what happens when you actually read the damned thing: you stop seeing spectres. Or quasi-religious corruption. You begin to understand. To ask questions—and to arrive at answers.

Trans/Rad/Fem is both a synthesis of the best of radical feminism with transfeminism, and a thorough beating of the worst. From Bhatt’s veneration of Wittig and respect for Rich, to her searing contempt for Raymond and disgust with Nanda, she takes a scalpel to the second wave and examines its innards through the lens of a brown, Indian trans woman living today. What is born in synthesis is not merely critique—it is a whole new body of work. Though Bhatt is underpinned by years of prior scholarship, the burning core of her theory is spun from her own life, her own flesh. And the lives of all those that are not, as a rule, allowed to speak: female, racialised, lesbian, trans.

We are told to measure regimes by the fortunes of their most abject. Trans/Rad/Fem thoroughly makes that case for the patriarchy writ large. The depth of its depravity is seen most clearly through its whipping girl, its third sex: the trans woman. And so it is fitting that she must be the one to lead feminism's new chapter towards liberation. To quote,

Now is the time for the damned to have their due, for the wails of the forgotten to echo above the “civil”, silencing din. Now is the time for all those whose struggles have been erased, co-opted, recuperated, disrupted, and sanctified to make themselves known. Now we will speak, and you will, for the first time, LISTEN.

I hope that you do. I hope that you accept this chance for understanding, for solidarity, for knowing.

I hope that you read the damned book.

[7serendipities]

Crow Folks: Things Needed in Darkness

This dark moon, my journey led me back to the more usual place, where I met the Three Daughters of Ernmas outside a cottage, around a great cauldron.  When I asked what message they had for me to bring back this time, they reminded me that this was the last moon cycle, dark to dark, before the light started coming back.  After the next dark moon there will be a brief dark period, but the solstice…

[devouredbyflame]

On Mediumship, Channeling and Possession

It is not a common topic for this to be discussed but I’ve touched on it very briefly in previous posts and so I want to speak about what this even looks like and how it happens with the Gods.

There seems to be a lot of fear around having the Gods approach you and maybe it’s not from the Gods Themselves rather than the humans who prey on those who are seeking to find answers and cannot come to their own understanding themselves. There is a way to do this in an ethical way and it is also possible to do so from an empowered standpoint. So in this short series I’m going to talk about why this work is important, what we can get from this work, how we can do so ethically, how we can get to the point that we can do this ethically, and then speak about logistics.

So, why should the Gods speak through a human if the human is perfectly capable of hearing the Gods talk themselves?

This is something I struggled with answering myself in the first days of when I did this kind of work. Why would I need a direct message from my God if I can hear Him in general?

People are afraid of being wrong. Because they are so afraid of it, they get in this mindset of being okay with having to go through leaps and bounds and struggle to find their own meaning in their own way. This is good, of course, critical thinking is absolutely the most important quality in all of this. We must consider all angles when doing this stuff. However, there gets to a point in your own discerning that hearing things can become a problem.

It becomes a problem when you stop actually hearing the Gods and you develop a mindset where you guess their answer based on conversations you’ve had with other people who suggest things to you who are likely unfamiliar with how a Deity actually behaves. It gets to a point where the nuance becomes bartered for in the case of being wrong so you have evidence in other people that it’s actually true. Instead of talking to a being with feelings and opinions, it can dissolve into your own sort of thinking and opinions and manifest as an egregore due to the resounding nature of the echo chamber you’re in.

[devout-khajiit]

I've been thinking a bit about some things related to cards and animism. While I mostly see people say the whole deck is one whole soul, I wouldn't be surprised if some people posit that each individual card in a deck is alive. I also know of the concept of an "oversoul", which is things like... every rose bush soul is connected so they're all the same magically, even though each rose bush is its own entity with its own unique soul.

What if decks are both ways, though, I wonder? Each card is alive on its lonesome so you can use each cards spirit individually for spells, channeling, meditation, etc, but the whole deck together has an "oversoul" -- the collective soul of the whole deck that allows it to function together without the cards arguing with each other or having one card spirit push the rest off the path or other similar struggles and difficulties. ...Or something like that, really, is the theory.

I was just thinking about this because I was thinking about the concept of Yu-gi-oh cards as protective spirits, or otherwise spirits that help with a task. What stops me from calling upon the spirit of the Harpie Lady card from helping me with something the same as I call upon the whole deck for oracular and guidance purposes? Nothing, other than my own personal beliefs on animism.

The same can be argued about any deck. I could just as easily channel the spirit of the Sun card from tarot for healing, as I do call upon the spirits of my tarot decks for support in healing.

My beliefs are ever evolving and changing as I navigate my craft and see what works for me, anyways. The fun thing about the magical path is that everyone's journey is at least a little different.

[dailycharacteroption]

Roleplay Ramblings: Spell Storage part 3

(art by IrenHorrors on DeviantArt)

The Mind

Now, with spellbooks and magic-as writing out of the way, it’s worth taking a moment to talk about the classes that don’t use physical notation for their spell knowledge.

Indeed, while scholarly wizards and alchemists note down their magic or quasi-magical chemistry in some form, other casters do not, either due to quirks with how their magic works or because it comes from an outside source, so let’s talk about that a bit.

So, getting it out of the way first, certain magical traditions, namely primal and divine, have no need to store spells for the most part. Instead they simply petition the divine or natural forces that they revere to grant them power. If the spells can be said to be stored anywhere, it is likely within the connection between the caster and their source of power, floating around them in non-space until the mage calls upon it to be fulfilled.

The exception to this are oracles, whom are directly invested with a reserve of divine power, and the exact nature of their various spells and divine magics are shaped by the nature of what sort of divinities granted them power as well as what sort of miracles they wish to unleash into the world. In this way, they are very much like sorcerers.

Speaking of which, sorcerers are very interesting as well. Whether the power has a biological component or their metaphysical self was imbued with this power, sorcerers don’t have the raw study and intellectual understanding that other casters do. Certainly, they and bloodragers can study magic in order to better understand it and help shape the spells they develop, but for them, the act of casting magic is less invoking memorized power and more flexing a metaphysical muscle that they’ve developed into a proper spell through their understanding of how magic works on a reflexive, instinctual level. Sure, they may still utter incantations and make gestures to invoke the power, but it’s more that they know that they work rather than necessarily understanding their greater meaning, not without training.

And then of course we have the full suite of occult casters, who also have spontaneous magic, but being more directly tied to their emotions and thoughts than even sorcerers and bloodragers. Indeed, whether they’re evoking them from their own or from the resonance of emotionally-charged objects, one could argue that the power of these mages IS their thoughts and emotions themselves, harnessed and refined with practice. Occult magic is after all the discipline of connection and association, after all, so understanding how your emotions and thoughts are connected to the world around them is kinda their deal.

All of those previous spellcasters essentially “record” their magic in their knowledge of what they need to do to get them working, rather than a full intellectual understanding of the “language” or inner workings of magical theory, though those certainly help.

However, there are two classes that blur that line by having their spells stored separately, but not being akin to wizards. I speak of course of shaman and witches, whose spells are both stored in a familiar. In both cases, the spells take the form of whispered secrets from a remote patron that are stored in the familiar to recite them in the case of witches, and in similar secrets but also pacts and agreements of aid in the case of shamans. Either way, the mind and body of the familiar serves as the vessel for this knowledge and power.

Of course, I would be remiss to not mention spell-like and supernatural abilites, which are often innate to various ancestries and species, like the power of sorcery or oracular power, but very specific and without cultivation and refinement, more akin to an adaptation like a limb or sensory organs than studied magic.

As we can see, while magic can be inscribed in books and scrolls, it is also infused into the very being of other spellcasters, making for a form of magic that is evoked in very personal ways instead of following proscribed guidelines, further lending to the idea that magic is not some easily explained and codified thing like a law of physics.

In any case, that’s it for today, but tomorrow we’ll jump several millennia into the future to talk about how folks in Starfinder handle their magic.

[booksinmythorax]

On Tyranny and Tumblr #10: Believe in truth.

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis on which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

In other words, Snyder is saying there's a reason an administration might, for example, remove data sets from the CDC website.

Snyder spends a lot of time in this chapter with 1930s German philologist Victor Klemperer's "four modes" of the death of truth under authoritarianism (Snyder, p. 66-69):

"Open hostility to verifiable reality": Lies. Just straight up boldly lying, about anything from the cause of a plane crash to the outcome of an election, especially when the facts are right there and visible to everyone.

"Shamanistic incantation": "Endless repetition" of slogans and nicknames and soundbites until non sequiturs and ad hominem arguments sound like verified fact. For this to work, huge groups of people need to feel more comfortable accepting lies than they do accepting that they can be fooled.

"Magical thinking": "The open embrace of contradiction". This isn't the radical acceptance kind of stuff that you'd learn in therapy to better your individual life. This is 2 + 2 = 5. This is replacing fact checks with, as one former student of Klemperer's put it, "[abandoning] yourself to your feelings and focusing on the Fuhrer's greatness instead of the discomfort you are feeling at present". Scary stuff, but stuff people do all the time.

"Misplaced faith": Basically making a leader into a god, leaving no room "for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience". In this way, truth becomes "oracular rather than factual". Instead of facts being about what can be verified, they become about who said them best and appealed best to the emotions of frightened, poorly educated, prejudiced people.

Snyder also highlights a passage from Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco's account of his experience in the 1930s with a counterfascist group trying to formulate arguments against those put forth by the Nazi Party.

"From time to time, one of our friends said: 'I don't agree with them, to be sure, but on certain points, nevertheless, I must admit, for example, the Jews...', etc. And this was a symptom. Three weeks later, this person would become a Nazi."

Here are some ways we can focus on believing in truth in our online lives:

If you know a public figure is a large-scale liar - for example, if a reputable newspaper made a list of over 30,000 lies he told in 4 years - don't listen to a word they say. Don't watch the press conferences. Don't focus on quotes or soundbites from them. Go ahead and assume they're only lying if their mouth is open. If they make a factual statement, consider it an accident. Truth isn't about one person, anyway.

Use Media Bias/Fact Check to determine the validity of sources you find on the internet. Try to only get your information from sources with a good fact check score.

Don't repeat falsehoods. Before you reblog or repost anything that appeals to your emotions - makes you angry, makes you sad, makes you feel grim satisfaction or hopelessness or even schadenfreude - research. Find out who said it, when, to whom, and why. If you don't have time to research, don't spread it around.

Learn to read critically. Kelly Jensen wrote a great guide to critically reading a press release from the federal government in 2025.

We covered this a little bit in #9: don't use the same nicknames, slogans, or labels for things that the fascists do. Repeating the "incantations" makes them sound more like truth.

Say true things as loudly as you can. We don't know exactly why a plane and a US Army helicopter crashed over the Potomac River as of this writing, but a lack of air traffic controllers may have contributed to it. Don't even repeat the falsehood in your attempt to refute it. Just research and then say the true thing.

Feel free to list other applications in comments or tags or on reblogs.

Other lessons from On Tyranny:

#1: Do not obey in advance

#2: Defend institutions

#3: Beware the one-party state

#4: Take responsibility for the face of the world

#5-7: Remember professional ethics, Be wary of paramilitaries, and Be reflective if you must be armed

#8: Stand out

#9: Be kind to our language

[lokavisi]

Realizations and Update Time!

Over the past weekend I got to participate in two very different rituals: one for oracular seidr and a CUUPS Summer Solstice ritual.

In the seidr ritual, I got to practice sitting in the seer's chair again. This time, I used the name Lokavisi in the ritual. The outcome was that Loki was so loud that I had greater difficulty finding and hearing other voices to answer people's questions. (Note to self: if it's not specifically a "talk with Loki" ritual, maybe don't invoke him specifically to talk to.) I've been contemplating this a lot over the past few days. I love Loki, but do I need to call him into every aspect of my spiritual/magical practice? The short answer is "no," but a more nuanced response is that names hold power. Using this name is not in and of itself an issue, but it need not be the only name I use to refer to myself. People go by multiple names all the time: nicknames, pet names, pen names, stage names, even just having more than one name in your full legal name could count here. So perhaps Lokavisi is one of many names I use in magical and spiritual contexts, using it at times and in spaces where proclaiming my connection with Loki serves the purpose of the gathering/working. It may seem counterintuitive to not use a Loki-related name when Loki is your Main Guy, but taking various shapes (or names) is quite on brand for working with a Shapeshifter, no?

This connects with the next point that was annunciated during the CUUPS solstice ritual. Being a UU group, we encompass many Pagan traditions. This solstice ritual very intentionally highlighted this. A fellow kindred member and myself represented Heathenry at one altar among four, which also represented Hellenic, Celtic, and agnostic pagan paths. The Hellenic altar and their piece of the ritual centered Apollo, which reminded me that Loki has pointed me in his direction before.* It was a very tangible reminder that doing the Work Loki points me to is often done without him. The metaphor they've returned to time and time again with me is: I go off to school, do the work, I come home and tell Dad what I learned in school today, and maybe there's some homework that we work on together if I'm struggling. I lose sight of that so often. Within my practice, following Loki so frequently means focusing on someone completely different, including focus on myself. I think growing up in a monotheistic religion has made this rather difficult for me to practice, as I'm always thinking about what this One Particular God (Out of Many) wants me to do over everyone else, including me. And I know as soon as I start diverting my attention to other people or things, Loki will be/feel all the more present. When I focus solely on them, they feel much more distant in my experience. Focusing solely on Loki misses the point of our work together. Another thing they've said to me numerous times is, "You're a polytheist. Act like it." They're not the only one here for guidance, wisdom, or any other thing you might go to a deity for.

*Another way this all ties together: Loki originally pointed to Apollo largely due to my interest in divinatory practices across cultures. And this reminder was the day after participating in a divinatory ritual, in which I did for a brief moment feel Apollo's eye on me. Albeit it incredibly far away, likely from atop Mount Olympus. That pantheon doesn't seem to jive with our particularly Heathen style ritual, so I was incredibly surprised to sense him at all, even from such a distance. But it makes sense that he might keep an eye on me if I'm interested in divination and was actively participating in an oracular ritual.

So where am I going with this? All of this has made me reconsider my approach to this blog. That isn't to say I'm going anywhere, but I'm contemplating the use of this name, the nature of the content, and how I might like to generally proceed. This started as a way for me to connect with others and share experiences I've had with Loki. Doing my Loki-Work of expanding my interactions with other deities, even across pantheons and traditions, to me feels related and appropriate to share under this name for that reason. That said, I realize folks who came here for Loki and Heathen specific content may expect something different from someone using such a name. I've thought about creating other side blogs, but that just feels like too much to manage for me. (I have enough trouble as it is maintaining a queue and writing posts for just this one. Speaking of, my queue is low so forgive me if there's a lapse in daily posts!) I may center the UU aspect of myself and my practice more to encompass All The Things that I might want to share and connect with others about. Loki and Heathenry will still be here, don't worry! It just might not be the only thing you see around here. As always I happily accept feedback from followers on this. I'll ultimately do what feels right and best for me, but I do want some idea of what you all think.

Thank you for bearing with my long and winding post. Whether you stick around for any potential changes or not, I always appreciate your support and interest. <3