Tales of an Injured Fog Rat

(about my tags on this)

#whenever phil gets out the tarot cards and pulls something scarily accurate i’m just like…. yes…. good…show us your witch powers…… #(my own experience with tarot? so reassuring. and calming. it’s like asking for a friend’s advice but that friend is your own brain.) #also my great grandmother was a witch by profession and i definitely got some of her magic #i have not yet learned to recognise a feeling when i feel it.. but when stuff happens later i’m like OH THAT WAS MY MYSTERIOUS FEELING #one of our sheep died a week or so ago.. and for two days straight i was outside in the middle of the night staring at the moon #and wondering why i felt death in the air #and the rain made me cry and it felt like release but i didn’t know why #and i immediately started worrying about our sheep but didn’t follow up to see if they were okay #then two days later my mother comes in and tells me one of our sheep died and two days ago had given my mother “the death look” #if you’ve never seen someone or something die… there’s this look they have that’s like a disgraced peacefulness and self-awareness #but basically i knew the sheep was gonna die without any reason for me to think that #and i need to learn to follow up on my instincts because they’re ever-present and i never know when it’s a psychic thing or random anxiety #disclaimer: IS IT ALL BULLSHIT who knows? but science doesn’t know a whole lot about a lot of things and this stuff is natural to me #so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

okay!! i was expecting someone to ask, so here goes. (in case anyone’s wondering, this is a personal post, and no, i’m not making this stuff up.) (feel free to reblog if you want. but it’s so goddamn long aaah)

first off, an opinion: whether or not you believe magic is real in this world is entirely related to whether or not it is real. at least in my books. magic/paramormal stuff can always be observed, but if you don’t believe it’s anything beyond coincidence or skilled trickery, it’s not gonna impact you.

i do believe in ghosts (or djinns, or something else human-like), but in my experience they don’t really do anything except exist in some other realm and occasionally become visible when i’m at my most lucid, at that point between waking and sleeping. most people (myself included) would say it’s just a hallucination. but like…. who’s to say it isn’t real, just in a way we as humans don’t yet understand? y’know?

the most interesting ghost sighting i’ve experienced was when i was fully awake, not hallucinating. i was in a car with my sister, my sister’s friend, and her mother - and we drove over a bridge, and i saw a fritzing semi-translucent black figure walking along the peak. i looked back and it was gone. it wasn’t scary, it was just really cool. i saw that with my own two eyes, i have zero doubt i saw it, and for that moment, it was there.

other times i’ve seen things pass through walls, or felt presences in the room that vanish when i look. i get deja vu maybe once a week. the ability comes and goes in phases, switched on and off whenever i tell someone about it. it’s like that part of my brain gets really shy and goes into hiding when it’s mentioned.

sometimes it can be pretty powerful. there’ve been moments when a deja vu begins, i remember it from a dream, fast-forward through the memory to remember what happens, and i get ahead of present time, so i predict what’s in front of me by about one to three seconds. usually it’s snippets of conversation, or my hands moving to complete an action, or words i’m typing. (let me tell you, it’s so freaking bizarre when you’re consciously typing, thinking about what you’re typing, and simultaneously remembering typing it before, and knowing what you’re about to type despite not yet knowing. and then seeing it happen. i think a lot of people reading this would be like “what?” but i know there’s someone out there who knows exactly what i mean)

for a long time in my teenage years i told people i’d see coloured figures, like auras without physical people, just hanging around out there in the world, but due to health issues a lot of my teenage memories are gone, and the only memory i have of that stuff is the recollection of me telling people about it, and remembering it while telling people. it’s really weird. i sometimes think maybe i made that up?? but i don’t understand why i’d do that when i do actually see other things sometimes.

once, my family visited this old historic building, and i remember seeing a woman in a maid’s outfit duck through a doorway. but she wasn’t actually there. so. idk.

my great-grandmother (or great-great grandmother?) on my mother’s side used to sell love spells to the people in her Indian village. my mother told me about it when i was little. my [great] great grandmother would write a spell on parchment, and the client had to go home and burn it in their fire. and she would curse people, in exchange for payment. that’s all i know about that. but my grandmother (also on my mother’s side) used to have some kind of power, i never got to ask about it while she was still alive. (she was an awesome woman. one of the first women in her country and generation to go to university.)

personally, having been raised as a muslim, i always felt really disconnected from the culture and practices of the religion, even though i believe in the supernatural aspects of it right down to my core. that’s despite my ultimate acknowledgement of facts being deeply rooted in hard science. recently (like, in the past few months) i’ve started to rediscover my faith - directly following on from a quiet interest in the pinterest & instagram aesthetics of paganism and new age magic, which as a concept i was never really sure about. i just really liked how it looked. basically, it clicked in my brain that islamic prayers could, in essence, just be spells. you gotta take everything with a grain of salt. they might not work. but that’s the beauty of it.

a few weeks ago i stumbled across a prayer on tumblr, and read its intended purpose: “Allah will grant whoever recites this seven times in the morning or evening whatever he desires from this world or the next”.

and… i started to think, maybe the purpose is not to actually do that. nothing ought to be a get-out-of-jail-free/do-this-and-your-life-is-made type thing. maybe the purpose is to make you believe nothing can go wrong. and that every bad thing that happens–? it happens so that you can learn from it. and eventually, after many things change, you realise what you desire was not the thing you thought you desired. (idk how to explain that. an example from my life: i really wanted to be a veterinarian growing up. then i got sick, dropped out of school. and now i’m a writer. i want to be a writer more than i ever wanted to be a vet. i had to get sick and my life had to fall apart before i could discover that. writing was never something i’d have considered before.)

my point is, if you believe everything that happens to you will ultimately be a good thing, bad things don’t hurt so much.

and if you take something as a sign, it’s a sign. it’s just your own brain taking hints from the world around you and using them to conjure up a decision. if you wanna believe it’s magic, it is.

personally i like protection prayers/spells and just…generally positive ones. i say prayers for sick friends, people who i see on my tumblr dash who are having a bad time, and if i see or hear about disasters or worldwide events. i’m not expecting it to have a visible impact, but like.. what’s the harm? at the very least it makes me feel like i did something if i don’t have money to give, or i can’t be there with a friend, or the world is falling apart and i’m helpless. praying or saying a spell is just hoping, really, really hard. if some greater being is out there, listening? cool. (but what if god doesn’t wanna do anything? maybe it’s like my cupcake theory. god puts the ingredients in a baking tray, shoves it in the oven, forgets about it. the universe rises as a cupcake. god made it. but the universe is doing its own damn thing.)

regarding tarot cards: again, it’s self-reflection. you can believe answers come from outside influences, but it’s easily just as much about interpreting generic advice and making it mean something to you. but personally i’ve drawn random cards, and known that no other card in the deck would’ve been as relevant at that moment. i’ve used tarot cards to determine the endings for my stories, and coincidentally pulled cards that directly represent my title characters.

one time i was thinking about my fic “The Moonlighter and the Magician” and the card i pulled first was The Magician. and i was like gee thanks tarot cards that’s helpful. (but actually? it meant those cards were on the same wavelength as me. think about it. 78 cards, there’s a one in 78 chance i pull that one on my first try.)

apart from my wonky first-ever tarot readings with the Rider-Waite travel-size tarot deck (which belonged to my mother), i’ve never pulled anything that didn’t eventually make sense. i use The Wild Unknown cards now, i relate to them so much more. plus they’re mine, not borrowed or abandoned for years, which probably helps. (buying those cards was the most money i ever spent on anything. i don’t regret it.)

is any of this like the show ‘supernatural’? not really. the closest i can say my experiences have come to the show would be the episode “faith”. just, the whole episode. it doesn’t matter if it’s the real deal, so long as it works. and boy, does it work for me. and a lot of other people.

like i said, all the spirit-like entities i’ve encountered have been perfectly benign. no monsters, except things i’m pretty sure are nightmares.

but on that note, i take a lot of things to help me sleep. if i didn’t, i’d be waking up screaming night and day (i hit whistle register while screaming, once). i see faces in the dark and creatures in my bedroom, even when my eyes are closed and i’m awake. i sleep with a light on, and i prefer to sleep in the day. i cannot even deal with the presences in my room.

for that matter, my room is definitely the most presence-heavy room in the house. now, although it’s obviously just in a drafty area, i feel the cold spots. all. the. time. i’m feeling one right now as i type this. the door and window are both closed. the heater is always on. the draft comes from the same corner of the ceiling my cat stares at when she’s “staring into space”. there’s definitely something there, but it legit doesn’t bother me. it watches me get dressed sometimes, but it’s not weird about it. like i said, benign.

i feel energy everywhere i go. i can’t stay in my family’s open plan living room comfortably for more than a few minutes, because that room is filled with people and pets coming and going all freaking day, and even when it’s empty, it’s so LOUD. there’s vibrations and voices coming out of the walls, because the house absorbs it all. as a generally tired person, that room exhausts me. i can only stay there if i have social energy. (yes, even an empty room.)

i am so, so sensitive to people’s moods and the energy they let out (to the point where i burst out screaming if i see a negative microexpression during a personal conversation). i find phone calls very difficult, not just because of social anxiety, but because i can’t sense energy as easily as i want to, and is natural for me. skype calls aren’t the same as being there in person. a lot of this could also be autism-related, but nearly everything about me is autism-related, because i’m autistic. go figure.

one time, the day i had my first period, i passed out in a maths exam. all the other times in my life, i’ve seen black or maybe red when i passed out, but this time it was a striking cobalt blue. and i heard SO MANY VOICES, i thought the whole classroom was full of people shouting. my P.E. teacher was observing that exam, she carried me out of the room and lay me on the floor outside. i told her about the voices, she looked at me in confusion and said “there were no voices?? the whole room was silent for the exam.” obviously that was a weird day, but given the amount of times i’ve lost conciousness in my life, before and after that day, i know the warm muggy feeling of slipping away, and i guarantee that one was just a little bit not-normal.

my cat Wilson follows me everywhere. if you’ve ever seen a picture of a witch and her familiar, that’s me and Wilson. she leaves the house if i leave, and she’ll walk down the road beside me to make sure i stay safe. she only lets me leave completely if i go in a car, but even then, she tries to come too. i know what she says when she talks. she speaks in words for me. it translates naturally in my head without a thinking process.

there was this one time when i was about 15 my parents took me to an after-hours medical centre because apparently i was ~speaking in tongues~ or whatever. i don’t remember it, i remember ‘waking up’ with a doctor’s flashlight in my eyes, crying, then holding my sister’s hand as we looked at the fish in the fishtank afterwards. i can’t say how legit that is because i just.. don’t remember it.

one time as a kid, i am absolutely sure i was possessed for about 30 seconds. i was walking down the street on a balmy English afternoon, pine needles scattered underfoot, with my elderly grandmother (paternal), my grandfather, and my sister. i must’ve been 6 or 7? and a streak of evil just bolted through me. and i stuck out my foot and my grandmother fell flat on her face. my grandfather tried to help her up, a car driving by pulled up and asked if they needed help, grandfather said no, and got her back to her feet. i can’t remember if i felt remorse. i think i just knew instinctively that it wasn’t me who did it. but like.. i wasn’t just A Nice Kid, okay, i was The Nicest Kid. i just don’t do things like that. ever. especially not to a kind and generous grandmother who i love so very dearly. i never had before, and i never have since. that’s the single most evil thing i’ve ever done in my life and it came out of nowhere. being more aware now, i think it was a djinn (aka a demon in christian beliefs, i think). they’re known for being mischievous. (my grandmother was fine, by the way. this is the first time i’ve told anyone about this.) now i think about it, i remember cobalt blue behind my eyes then, too.

whoops, this is a really long post now. but uh… basically, i’ve just always been open to feeling these things, and believing in what i sense for myself, without subscribing to whether or not the science has been done yet. in fact, i think i’m open to it because i experienced the same stuff when i was young. the energy i feel is very much real to me, completely tangible. i’ve never been able to see auras, but i feel them on some people. i think just being open to feeling something makes it more likely to come to you. i try not to ignore my instincts (because they’re always right. always.) but i find it’s super hard to distinguish between anxiety (which i feel often) and magical ability (which is far less commonly felt). also sometimes the instinct is so faint it doesn’t even become a passing thought, just a blur of something i half-considered. but in hindsight i realise what it ought to have been, had i paid proper attention.

i can comfortably manage to go outside in bare feet, shut my eyes and let the moonlight do its thing. it has an immensely powerful energy, i always feel cleaner inside when i go back in. (my cat Wilson sometimes asks me to go outside with her when there’s a full moon. almost every night, especially on warm nights, but even freezing ones, we can just stand out there for an hour together. watching the moon set is transcendent. far more so than a sunset.)

right now, due to years of bad health, i have to force some natural abilities away (like the nightmares) because they’re too much for me to handle. i think as i recover, over time it’ll be easier for me to accept that stuff back into my life.

oh, one more thing, regarding my health - i have celiac disease, which has kept me essentially bedridden for the last 7+ years - WHICH BY THE WAY, my family spent literally 9 years trying to diagnose. my doctor kept doing an anaemia test, telling me there was nothing wrong with me and sending me back to school. i saw various specialists, herbalists, a naturopath, physiotherapists, cardiologists, had an MRI scan, saw family counsellors, school counsellors, a hypnotist, etc etc - basically consulted every medical professional under the sun when a simple blood test would’ve done it. stupid misogynistic doctor who thinks all teenage girls fake it to get out of school.

but one thing we did do was visit a psychic, who told me i had something called a candida. my dad, a sceptic and nonbeliever, googled it and said it was “some kind of magical thing in the gut”, and was therefore bullshit, so we continued the search for a diagnosis. years later - years - after a change of doctor (who i chose because i got a good vibe from her picture) we find out it’s celiac disease, a disease of the gut. of the hundreds of people we saw, the only ones to even pinpoint the right body part were the psychics. i googled candida just now and guess what? literally celiac disease. this woman diagnosed me with celiac disease by kneeling at my feet, holding my hand, and shutting her eyes for 30 seconds.

for the record, slightly off topic, i know very few men in real life, and this is what the men in my life have been. my doctor, dismissing me as a liar because i was a teenage girl. and my father, dismissing my declining health as “not trying hard enough”, even now, more than a year after i was diagnosed by a doctor. i think this is why i take refuge with male fictional characters. they’re better. i want them to be soft and understanding like the men i’ve never known.

anyway, this is the part of my life’s story i never really pieced together until right now. it’s a lot, more than i expected. i happily call myself a witch. most of my magic goes into my stories, and i think a lot of people who read them feel it, even if they translate it as passion or love or good vibes or something. the amazing comments i get would speak to that. i love the energy i get from comments, because it does come through in typed words, even if it’s much fainter than seeing people face-to-face. some comments just hit me with waves of goodness, even if the words themselves aren’t so powerful. so i really appreciate that stuff. it’s good stuff.

yep. that’s all. i hope this satisfies your curiosity, anon!!!