#sasswitches

[booksandwitchery]

More on Ritual and “Magic”

Throughout my journey so far I continue to remind myself that ritual and ceremony are so psychologically beneficial, religious or not. I apologize if it seems like I’m really hammering it home at this point, but I think it’s so important. I recently read an article on Scientific American called Why Rituals Work, which is very good. It states, essentially, that the symbolic behaviors we develop and perform before, during, and after meaningful events are more rational than they initially appear--you just have to understand it and embrace it  (and again--never take yourself too seriously). 

The authors state that “studies by psychologists have revealed intriguing results demonstrating that rituals have a causal impact on people’s thoughts, feelings and behavior. Rituals, which can be defined as predefined sequences of symbolic actions often characterized by formality and repetition, do not have to be theistic. And furthermore, they lead to better execution of actions, reduce anxiety, and “boost the ability to experience positive emotions, secular or otherwise.”

Now--a lot of people may get stuck on how magic and ritual intersect. It can be difficult to make the leap from “ritual has psychological benefits” to “ritual magic is real.” I think that this really comes down to the way that you choose to define magic; I define it similar to Aleister Crowley did when he said “Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.” When I say “magic” or “witchcraft” I’m referring to the act of combining psychological practices such as visualization, meditation, and intention with symbolic ritual and personal energy in order to achieve your goals. These practices can really be incorporated in any cultural setting, religious or otherwise--what’s not to like? Let’s get witchy.

[clementine-and-rain-tarot]

introduction

hey! i'm rain, they/them. welcome to my witchy blog. i'm an eleclectic, urban SASS witch from canada. clémentine is my familiar and also my cat. this is a sideblog, i follow from my main @rainwolfheart. i speak french and spanish also (ask for pronouns)

in addition to straightforward stuff about witchcraft and divination, you'll also find some discussions of pseudoscience and criticism of certain spiritual beliefs/practices here, because i'm an academic in my day job and can't not be critical and meta about anything i do

i'm still getting this blog up and running but one of my goals with it is to get more practice with tarot/oracle readings, hence the tarot in the url. i'll make a more formal post soon, but for now, feel free to request readings in my askbox! they'll probably be max 3 cards depending on complexity of your question. they will be answered publicly (i can anonymize on request), and you'll get a photo of the cards and my interpretation.

[criticalthinkingwitches]

Good news, Critical Thinking Witches! We've got another FREE Witches' Brew coming! Savannah Rayne (DIYWitch) will be hosting a Brew on Pop-Culture and Witchcraft with some surprise special guests! Sunday May 19th 12 PM PST/ 3 PM EST/ 7 PM BST (5/20 6 AM AEDT) Register on our website

[Image ID: Background is pastel yellow and lavender stripes exploding from the center. Top banner is askew in the upper left corner, pastel magenta with white block letters reading "Pop-culture & Witchcraft!" An image of a vintage styled with in a black hat, white coat with 3 quarter sleeves, and a long orange skirt with matching boots in seated on a broom is super imposed into a pop art heart in the upper righthand corner. The middle features an off center yellow banner the stretches all the way to the right edge with simple black type. It reads: "Sunday May 19th 12 PM PST/3 PM EST/7 PM BST 5/20 6 AM AEDT Hosted by: Savannah Rayne & Surprise Special Guests!" Super imposed into a pop art circle with an orange border is an image of the Sanderson Sisters form Disney's Hocus Pocus. Another pastel magenta banner sits askew in the lower right corner reading "Register on our website! CriticalThinkingWitches.com". ]

[monsterwitch]

Spells/Rituals For Healing, Moving On, Grief, Trauma

TW: death, grief, trauma, disturbing imagery

Hello, all. I’m new to witchcraft still and am not much of a practitioner but have been interested/researching for a long time.

I recently witnesses something really traumatic — my first time ever seeing death. It was sudden, graphic, jarring, disturbing, and I’m on a rollercoaster, never knowing how I’ll feel about it at any given moment. I am in therapy and seeing a psychiatrist as well, so I’m trying to do all the right things to take care of myself, but I’m also looking for some spiritual help.

I need to try to unburden myself from this. I don’t feel guilty or responsible in any way, as it’s something I just happened upon and could do nothing about, but I’m still carrying the burden, the image, the weight. I can’t get it out of my head. In a way, I’m grieving a stranger. In another way, I’m grieving for what my life was like before I saw what I saw. Yet another part of me is filled with anxiety about seeing something like this again, or causing something like this. In a way, I feel haunted by it.

I feel like I have the help I need as far as therapy/mental health/support, but I’m still looking for something more, even if it’s just lighting a candle in that person’s memory, or saying a little prayer, I’m just kind of at a loss. Does anyone have any suggestions or similar experiences? Any advice is appreciated. ❤️

[rainwolfheart]

a neighbour down the hall put up a witchy sign on their door and i'm tempted to leave them a "hi let's be friends" note but what if they're not the kinda witch i vibe with and it gets awkward

[xyrdragons]

Some fun with crystals!

[upthewitchypunx]

You may have already decided against this for perfectly valid reasons but for your CritWitch event there is a very good subreddit r/SASSWitches that might be good to plug your event. Good luck with your event :)

So, full disclosure. We first came up with SASS Witches (science-minded, agnostic / atheist, secular, and skeptical Witches) when we messed around with acronyms in our Facebook group independently of them. Someone let us know of that group and we were delighted at the synchronicity. We reached out to see if they would like to get involved but they did not, and they were kind of hostile about sharing the name.

We decided to change the name and focus on creating an event we wanted to see in the world. And we think the name suits our event better. While we do focus on secular, science minded, atheist, and agnostic mindsets, we do not want to completely exclude pagans or folks from other religious perspectives who are critical thinking because I'm sure they too have a hard time finding spaces for this kind of exploration.

[wishful-seeker]

I'm sharing this post from r/sasswitches on reddit because an eclipse is coming up, thus inevitably bringing out the new agers claiming eclipse energy is harmful and its important to debunk that.

Also this subreddit is great for new witches because it includes skepticism and talks alot about what weird witchy rules are bs, and how magic affects us psychologically which I think is really helpful and important because you can believe in magic and also be a skeptic and apply logic to your craft!

If you don't feel like clicking a link this is the truth about the spooky eclipse energy here was my comment on why this energy is said to be scary:

"It's just new age bullshit. Negativity is associated with it because people chose to be scared of it. Eclipses represent change, transformation, and letting go which is extremely healthy and necessary but people can be scared of change. Same reason why people are scared of moldavite, it's a bit of an overreaction. I love Eclipse energy, I made a spell candle on a stormy night of an Eclipse to remove blockages from my life and bring peace. It's my most potent spell, works everytime, and has never hurt me. I even remelted the wax when the candle was done to make new candles with and it still kept its energy and power and the spell still works. Eclipses are one of the most powerful tools, use them."

My rule of thumb in this community is: fuck around and find out, experiment, challenge things.

[craftcliniciancreative]

I didn’t get a photo of it but I was feeling particularly distressed earlier this evening by life events and suddenly looked outside. The Full Hunter Moon was directly outside my window, perched above apartment buildings, framed so perfectly by clouds and so bright it almost felt as if it were watching me. Daring me to be larger than my problems, larger than it was. I felt so captivated in that moment I couldn’t really think about what had been stressing me. I remember walking away from the window feeling a little more serene. And when I looked out my window again later, it was gone. 🌸What power and serenity does the full moon grant you this October? 🌸Will you allow the magic of the lunar cycle to let you transcend your trials and tribulations? #lunarwitch #october #naturalisticpaganism #naturalisticwitch #sasswitch #skepticalwitch #fullmoon #witchesofinstagram #pagansofinstagram #pagan #witchcraft https://www.instagram.com/p/CVO8ThXL1Rn/?utm_medium=tumblr

[rebeccaotool]

[booksandwitchery]

Storytelling Alchemy

I recently finished Storytelling Alchemy by  Renée Damoiselle. Though she is a practicing Wiccan, you don’t have to be part of this religion to follow what this book teaches--in fact, it reminds me a lot of the type of treatment that PTSD patients receive to overcome difficult memories. Essentially, Damoiselle proposes a way of ritually reviewing difficult memories and rewriting them in the form of a fairytale so that you can heal from them. Though there were a lot of good things in this book, I found myself a little perplexed by her advice; I’m cool with rewriting a painful memory to heal or feel more positive about it, but at certain points it seems as if she is advising her readers to rewrite the stories to have happy endings. It seems a little pointless to stamp a good ending over a bad one--in the end, we know what really happened and what didn’t. I am more inclined to embrace the kind of storytelling alchemy that paints painful memories in a more objective and/or positive light rather than trying to pretend that the story ended differently. 

Despite this misgiving, I still recorded a lot of things that I want to remember for my potential life practice, witchcraft or otherwise:

I. “Whenever we experience difficulty, our emotions have a way of storing the beliefs generated around the situation in our unconscious mind so that, even when we are not consciously aware of it, we will continue acting on those deeply held beliefs. The problem is these beliefs formed in tragedy, pain and sadness are almost always false.”

II. We must uncover these deeply held beliefs in order to remove them.

III. “The story that you tell yourself about who you are should empower you, not limit you.”

IV. “There are no illusions in magick. In fact, in my experience it is instead a way to uncover and open the mind and psyche to what is real and true.”

V. Everything is made up of energy, and the practice of magick is about recognizing and manipulating energy.

VI. The author does not view magic as supernatural--in her view, everything in the universe is connected; everything a person does, says and thinks has an effect on the world.

VII. Subatomic particles exist in both wave and particle form. Waves and particles seem to be correlated to what the observer wishes or expects to observe--this could be why magic and our intentions are so closely related.

VIII. The practice of magic is training and arranging your thoughts in a specific manner, with the idea of imposing your will on reality. Using items can help aid in the practice of arranging your thoughts in a specific way.

IX. Symbolic associations are a means of engaging and fusing the unconscious mind with the conscious desire.

X. If you can get the results you want from using magick, who cares if you can define it as “real” or not?

XI. It does not serve you to think of your personal history and memories as fact--your understanding of these memories is extremely subjective because of the emotional factors involved.

XII. “The truly insidious aspect of the deeply held belief is that when you have one, you constantly look for proof it’s true.

XIII. “What you believe yourself to be becomes the rudder of your life.”

XIV. Any limiting belief you have about yourself is probably false or, at the very least, extremely subjective and therefore open to debate.

[pig-wings]

Picked up the audiobook "The Gifts of Imperfection" by Brene Brown per the suggestion of the wonderful SASSwitches subreddit, currently face down on the floor of the lab

[criticalthinkingwitches]

[Image ID: Marbled magenta background with plain white boarder. Text matches below.]

Save the dates!

The 2023 Virtual Critical Thinking Witch Convention will be:

9/29 - 10/1

We can't wait to see you there!

Stay tuned for more info!

CriticalThinkingWitches.com

[honeymushroomhoney]

r/SASSwitches has been recommended to me a few times as a good resource for secular witchcraft but they're really just assholes over there. You ask a question and they just bombard you with "are you sure you didn't imagine it?" Like I get you're skeptical but so far that seems like just an excuse to call people stupid

[xyrdragons]

New crystal haul! I finally snagged a nice big pink lemurian.