@magiccalmeanderings / magiccalmeanderings.tumblr.com
"AI" offerings are the digital equivalent of leaving all yer trash on the ground after a ritual in a park, forest, etc.
Please research the environmental impact of those automated art theft image generators.
Artists have flooded internet with free creative assets, tutorials, barter offers and free commission slots. Use them.
I assure you the Gods will fuckin' thrilled for any offering that doesn't hurt Jörð for the creative chickenshittery of techbros.
Pictish Stag Symbol Stone, circa 9th Century CE, St. Vigeans Stones and Museum, Arbroath, Scotland
Considered by many to be one of the finest Pictish animal depictions.
Bryn Eryr Recreated Iron Age Roundhouses, St. Fagans National Museum of History, Cardiff, Wales
Your Polytheist reminder that if you have altars in your home, then ...
Vacuuming, cleaning up the clutter, dusting... all of it.
Housework suddenly becomes not only easier but spiritually fulfilling when I play music and envision that I am not cleaning my bedroom or apartment but in fact cleaning my modern day temple.
You can dedicate cleaning each room or each corner to a specific deity if you like in addition to your altars.
Cleaning itself is not only great active meditation (it's when I get my best deity insights, such as this very post) but is such an underrated act of worship and devotion.
Witchy tip: sweeping dust etc out the door is a super effective cleansing activity that doesn't require expensive herbs or other ingredients.
We may have no way of knowing your name, but we do know you. We know you existed.
We may have no way of knowing what purpose you served in your pantheon, but we appreciate the work that you did, and the work you continue to do.
You may be older than what we think of as the first civilizations, you may be older than evolution, but thank you for being with our ancestors.
Thank you for holding their hands, teaching them how to hunt, which plants were edible, how to walk, how to develop.
It's because of you that humanity exists in the way we know today.
I'm sorry you've been lost to time.
I just got an ask about a Native spirit that many Natives have asked monsterfuckers to not use.
It starts with a W.
People from the culture it’s from do not say its name because in their culture, saying the name summons the spirit. Out of respect for my friends from that culture, I do not say/type the name either.
I would kindly ask you not put that creature in my ask box in the future. I know the person that submitted it likely didn’t know so there’s no hard feelings. It’s alright. I’m not upset.
I’m not really the best person to educate folks on this topic and I wish I had some resources on why that’s not a good thing for non-Native people to use for their fiction.
I’m sure even my wording here isn’t great. I know the spirit is from a specific Native culture (there’s a lot of them, for those that didn’t know lol) and I can’t remember which one(s) and my brain is still fuzzy from being sick.
So if any of my followers are familiar with this issue, please feel free to share the info of why this isn’t good.
Again, I understand the person that sent the ask likely didn’t know all this. I’m not upset. I just think it’s worth mentioning.
Ugh I’m trying to research to find resources of actually Native folks saying it’s bad for non-Native folks to use this spirit and instead I’m just finding Hot Takes like
“The *** may be a figure from American Indian mythology, but it belongs to all of humankind”
No? Like haven’t we (colonizers) taken enough from Indigenous people without also appropriating their spirits and misusing them? Fuck right off.
I’m too sick to deal with this shit today.
Hello! Hi! Yes! Maybe I can help here!
Here are some very basic things to help people understand this:
In case you wanted to know what the word is to describe the circumstances surrounding the name of this creature:
It’s a taboo. Not the modern meaning of like “oooh, that sexy topic is so taboo,” but the original meaning, in which a taboo is something a group will never ever do EVER (or will only do at certain times or under certain circumstances, and woe betide the person who does it improperly). It goes beyond being a social norm. If a social norm is something that garners everything from disapproval to amusement when it’s broken, a taboo is the thing that makes everyone stop, gasp, and stare in horror because NO YOU JUST FUCKING DIDN’T.
Speaking the name of G-d is a taboo in Judaism. Putting your chopsticks vertically upright in your rice is a taboo in China. Speaking this creature’s name is a taboo to the Ashinaabe.
So just like you’d be an asshole if you came into a synagogue screaming your best guess at how to pronounce the Tetragrammaton, or if you were served a meal in a private home in China and promptly left your chopsticks in the middle of your rice, you are an asshole if you use this name for your own enjoyment. It isn’t yours and it causes distress. It costs you zero dollars to not be an asshole and choose a cryptid that isn’t sacred to Native people—Slenderman is RIGHT THERE! The Fresno Nightwalkers are RIGHT THERE! Midwest and Appalachian superstitions like not walking into the corn at night because it’ll get you are RIGHT THERE! YOU HAVE MANY OPTIONS!—or to get creative and make up your own. Like 90% of Mothman “lore” was made up after the fact. You’d be in good company.m
This is what Rasputin would've wanted.
I feel like I'm being seduced like one of those fancy rainforest birds
is it working
Yes
People who think that replacing a wild ecosystem (left pic) with a solar plant (right pic) is "good for the environment" are seriously delusional. Solar panels require a global supply chain, (fossil fuel-based) mining and refining of rare-earth minerals, denuding of areas, and regular washing, all of which are extremely ecologically destructive. They also have a relatively short life and become problematic toxic waste afterwards. Humans have existed sustainably for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the advent of civilization and thrived - believe it or not - without any of these 'green' energy technologies. If we wish to survive and thrive again we must return to those ways.
^These fucking tags though.
The short life/toxic waste thing is a falsehood.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2023/10/12/these-two-myths-about-solar-power-are-slowing-the-energy-transition/
The only groups interested in turning pristine prairie land into solar farms are capitalists motivated by profit. Dismantling capitalism is the tack we need to address that.
Yes, we need a global supply chain.
Know where an excellent place to put solar panels would be? Parking lots.
https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/solar-parking-lots-are-a-win-win-energy-idea-why-arent-they-the-norm/
Also the romanticized idea of human thriving in the pre technological past? Relies on ignoring a lot of human suffering and death. Particularly infant and child mortality, disabled folks, etc. Modern medicine also requires a global supply chain.
The idea of 'wild ecosystem' at all ignores and dismisses the land management/stewardship/curation of indigenous people for the past 40k years. The kind of prairie in your picture above is the result of hundreds to thousands of years of controlled burns/fire management. It is a human-curated landscape.
What do you think 'civilization' is?
^^^^
You don't need acres and acres of solar panels on desert or prairie land that isn't used for other things; the whole point of being more ecologically frugal is to make sure the land you use is doing multiple things while also being allowed to function as the ecosystem it is. Deserts should not be considered 'waste' land, nor should prairies. There is no such thing as land that isn't ecosystem of one kind or another, unless it is paved over, and even then, cities are full of ecosystem, because Earth is just teeming with all kind of life and will not allow a void to subsist for long.
Solar panels do not need to be at the scale these so-called 'solar farms' are at. Hell, cars should all have solar panels on the roof as standard at this point, especially electric cars. But they don't, because of capitalism. They could, as evidenced by how many people who build their own or modify RVs add solar panels on that power the entire RV easily. Solar panels on rooves are becoming more and more popular because in a lot of places you can generate so much electricity you stop having an electric bill and even sometimes get a cheque from the city you live in for the surplus power they're buying back from you.
Solar panels are at a point where they're cheap and should be widely adopted already--capitalists that profit off fossil fuel and selling electricity are the only thing standing in the way of this.
And we don't really need solar panels in such a huge monoculture of space, either. Like I said, we could just be adding them to the rooves of vehicles and buildings; and like @moniquill said, to parking lots and anywhere that needs shade canopies. We could be incorporating them into signs to power the lighting of the sign, or incorporating them into the back of a phone to partially charge the phone. We could be doing a lot more with them than we are, and if you look into diy places where capitalism doesn't choke off innovation, you see people putting solar panels all over the place, really utilising them as they can be utilised.
The haunting ancient Celtic carnyx being played for an audience. This is the sound Roman soldiers would have heard their Celtic enemies make.
Man if I heard that shit while descending upon a strange land with my brethren I'd straight up dig a hole to die in right the and there, fuck the emperor fuck the gods that's a warning straight from the bones of an older evil and whatever is coming is worse than death
Something I really need pagans to understand is that bad apples in the pagan community ARE our and your responsibility.
You can’t just look sideways at racism and fascism in the pagan community because “they aren’t real pagans.”
We are the only community who seems to get away with that bullshit and I’m tired of it, Muslims as a whole get held responsible for the actions of extremists, Christians as a whole get held responsible for the actions of mega conservatives, Hindus as a whole get held responsible for the actions of Hindu Nationalists ect. ect.
Yet whenever someone rightly calls pagans out on effectively ignoring the vile racists, abelists, sexists and fucking NEO NAZIS in our communities people jump on them saying the same old “they aren’t really pagan” excuse.
Say it with me kids, someone being a terrible person doesn’t delegitimise their faith!
Y’all get soooo mad whenever Christians do this but turn around and do the exact same thing and wonder why people draw comparisons between pagans and Christians.
Also a side ramble but there is this weird perception that right wing pagans all became pagan post right wing radicalisation but that is absolutely not true. There are so many right wing pagans because we’ve allowed literal fascists to run around unchecked in our communities (it’s especially bad on tiktok) and then completely shun the people who they manage to indoctrinate instead of realising that maybe this is a systematic problem and that we should be introducing community wide education and condemnation to deal with this issue.
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I feel like I’ve not seen a post with a list like this so I wanted to share ideas from my own experience!
I love to offer up food to the Gods. Unfortunately, I cannot burn anything, and I can’t leave most perishable items on my altar because either my cat will get to it or it’ll attract bugs as soon as it starts to spoil.
I’ve come up with some non traditional food offerings to give that I find really successful. I leave new offerings every Noumenia, and none start to rot within that time. Hopefully this list can be helpful to others!
𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒
┃ Prepackaged foods:
When you want to remove these from your altar, I recommend either reverently disposing them, consuming/cooking with them in the honor of a specific deity(s), or leaving them until their expiration date and then disposing of them.
𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒
┃ Loose foods
I like to fill little organza bags and glass jars with these kinds of items, but you can also just put them in an offering bowl loose if pets or kiddos aren’t a concern. You can either bury or reverently dispose of these when you’re ready to remove them from your altar.
𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒
Even if what you offer seems a little silly or informal, remember that we live in the 21st century, and the Gods appreciate 21st century offerings. Give what you can; and if you can’t give anything, the Gods understand. They love you anyways <3
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“This country was founded by a group of slave owners who told us that all men are created equal. To my mind, that is what’s known as being stunningly and embarrassingly full of shit.” - George Carlin
…PolitiFact going through history to fact check this guy was like that time CNN went through history to dig up dirt on Bernie, and all they found were videos of him planting trees, and telling kids that racism is bad.
PolitiFact going through history to double check this is still a good thing though, because it means we can truthfully say they did.
please i love you i'm begging you bring back suspension of disbelief bring back trusting the audience like. i cannot handle any more dialogue that sounds like a legal document. "hello, i am here to talk to you about the incident from a few minutes ago, because i feel you might be unwell, and i am invested in your personal wellbeing." "thank you, i am unwell because the incident was hurtful to me due to my childhood, which was bad." I CANT!!!!
do you know how many people are mad that authors use "growled" as a word for "said"? it's just poetics! they do not literally mean "growled," it's just a common replacement for "said with force but in a low tone." it's normal! do you hear me!! help me i love you please let me out of here!!!
Oscar Larsen
No hiding the best part in the tags!
This is your reminder that "New Age" is not a catch-all term for "modern spiritual practices I find shallow and annoying."
New Age is a specific form of spirituality centered around the belief that the Earth is about to enter a new cosmic cycle. Its mythology is mostly just a bunch of far right conspiracy theories in a spiritual hat. They believe in hyperdiffusionism, the ancient astronaut hypothesis, and some form of nearly every antisemitic trope in the book.
A lot of people who use the term "New Age" as a blanket term against people they find annoying or shallow are just as bad, believing in many of the same conspiracy theories and engaging in other forms of appropriation and/or erasure. (This is a major problem in Solomonic magic.) A bunch of people believe that Christian holidays were stolen from pagan ones, little realizing how much of this goes back to Alexander Hislop, a conspiracy theorist.
New Age isn't just a bunch of annoying white people appropriating Indigenous spirituality or practicing crystal healing or whatever. It's far more harmful than most people realize, and people are far more likely to share in its beliefs than they realize.
