@murmuring-forests / murmuring-forests.tumblr.com
DON’T YOU DARE PUT SALT IN THE GROUND.
DO NOT CAST SALT CIRCLE IN THE DIRT. DO NOT SALT THE GROUND TO CLEANSE IT. DO NOT BURY SACHETS THAT INCLUDE SALT.
STOP SALTING THE GROUND.
YOU WILL MESS UP THE SOIL AND HURT THE PLANT LIFE. USE SOMETHING ELSE.
Try using ground dried eggshells instead.
This right here? This is perfect container for spells.
Is cheap (as little as 2 cents) or even free Can be written/painted on Is inconspicuous Is easily accessible Can be lit on fire Is biodegradable Floats
Budget witches, secret witches, all us witches.
Plain. white. envelopes.
You can even recycle old ones. But don’t use the ones with plastic windows to burn or bury.
It’s not a weird thing to have in your house
They can even be tied around candles if you don’t fill them to much.
Envelopes are amazing
Hi there. I'm feeling kind of lost, magically. Like everyone else is having a different experience than me. I can't feel energy, or see it, or the 'magic' or whatever it is I'm supposed to be working with. I feel like I'm operating blind. Everything starts losing meaning for me (gems, herbs, tarot) I stop trying to learn because I feel like it's wasted on me or useless for me. Like reading an instruction manual for a game I don't own, so there's no point. I don't know what I'm doing. Any ideas?
Magick can be more difficult for some than others but that doesn’t mean you should give up. I remember when I first started I was terrible, I couldn’t even figure out how to center myself. I constantly had migraines and felt tired and aggravated while trying to cast spells. But I found a way that helped me and I hope it will help you.
First let’s talk about what originally made you interested in magick. For this exercise I recommend finding a notebook or some paper you like to write on and begin well, writing! Here are some things I recommend writing about and thinking about:
After you get all of that out on the page, even if its messy and full of run-ons thats okay. This is for you, not anyone else. Read through it and think about the next step. Make a goal list, start small.
Next let’s focus on your concern that you can’t see or feel energy. that’s okay, if you are new at this, it is perfectly normal. You just need to attune yourself so that you can. There are all sorts of ways to start.
Some ways that I first started so that I could begin using energy and feeling it:
Some other suggestions:
There’s a “spirit worker” in a group I’m in who is asking my group how to do spells after their clients pay for them. PEOPLE NEED TO STOP PLAYING WITH PEOPLE`S LIVES IF THEY DONT KNOW WHAT THEY`RE DOING!
This is horrific! It’s because of people like that that people think witches/diviners/spirit workers are all scammers.
Please, to all the newbies out there thinking about selling spells: please wait until you know what you’re doing first! If you need to ask someone how to do a spell, you’re not ready to sell your spells. Practice more first until it becomes second nature to you. If you haven’t learned how to clearly communicate with spirits, don’t open a spirit companion shop. Really hone your vetting skills before you even think about pairing someone with an unknown spirit.
In the best case scenario, when inexperienced people sell metaphysical items or services, nothing will happen and the client will just be disappointed (and maybe demand their money back or accuse all practitioners of being fakers and scammers. You might even get into legal trouble if you don’t have the right disclaimers up.)
But in the worst case scenario? If a spell or something goes wrong, you could hurt yourself or your client. When you have no idea what you’re doing, your results could be totally unpredictable.
Metaphysical services like spell work are skills. That means they take practice to master. If you needed surgery, would you want to go to the doctor who claims to be a professional but who’s never practiced the procedure and only knows how to vaguely do it because they asked other doctors?
Please, your clients deserve better. The community deserves better. Until you know what you’re doing and how to do it well, please don’t sell your services.
This is why it is important as a client to also vet who you are buying from. Yes people lie, but are likely to slip up doing so as well.
Whilst talking with my aunt–who is a devout herbalist in another circle in her own town– about herbal remedies, she brought up the word emmenagogue. In this case, the word refers to an herb or plant that can stimulate menstrual flow. For those who may have late menstruation or elongated cycles, this may be quite a helpful remedy, but to uninformed users, it may also have detrimental effects. Most emmenagogues also act as abortifacients, as in, they may harm a pregnancy or can cause miscarriages.
My reason for writing this post is that there are some common herbs that people use for other reasons that may in fact also have emmenagogue/abortifacient properties. Most posts that I see do not address this, and I’d like my followers and the rest of the online witchblr community to be informed as well.
In most cases, you should not take more than the recommended dosage of any herb anyways, especially if you are taking other prescribed medications. If you are pregnant or are thinking of conceiving, please stay away from these herbs entirely and look for alternatives, and please make sure to do extensive research beforehand on anything you decide to use!
The emmenagogues that I have found I will list below along with their common uses otherwise. Herbs in bold are mainly used as emmenagogues and/or are dangerous in anything other than 1 gram dosing.
Angelica (heartburn, insomnia), Bay Laurel (muscle aches), Blessed Thistle (diuretic, bacterial infections) , Bloodroot (emetic, bacterial infections), Blue Cohosh (reducing inflammation, cramps), Catnip (insomnia, headaches), Chamomile (insomnia, stomach ulcers), Slippery Elm (sore throat, heartburn), Feverfew (migraines, nausea), Goldenseal (respiratory infections), Horsetail (edema, incontinence), Lady’s Slipper (insomnia, anxiety), Majoram (common cold), Marshmallow (sore throat, stomach ulcers), Mistletoe (high blood pressure), Motherwort (anxiety, high blood pressure), Mugwort (tonic, sedative), Myrrh (indigestion, cough), Parsley (menstrual flow, high blood pressure), Pennyroyal (antiseptic), Peppermint (common cold, headaches), Rue (neuromuscular problems), Sage (digestive problems, heartburn), Tansy (migraines, stomach ulcers), Verbena (sore throat, depression), Wintergreen (analgesic, cramps).
If you have any questions about this post or about other herbs and their dosing or safety concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me through my messages! I will always respond and try to give as detailed or informed of an answer as I can.
Thank you for reading, and blessed be!
PLEASE always research before using anything you see on spells, especially traditional spells. Some non poisonous herbs can also be specifically bad for some of you who have health conditions because of their side effects!
Stay safe, witches.
Hey uh. You don’t need to go to someone on the internet for validation every time you want to do something magic. You don’t need to ask somebody “can this herb used for this thing?”
“Is it okay if I do this popular thing a little bit differently?”
“Is it weird if I associate this god with this thing that’s not in their lore?”
Just try it and see what happens.
!!!! Also it’s totally okay to do so if you want.
…I disagree, hence why I made this post. On Tumblr that sort of attitude is overemphasized, and beginner witches have a hard time growing in their skills bc they’re constantly afraid to innovate and do things on their own out of fear of doing things wrong.
No, it’s really not a good thing to constantly depend on others to tell you you’re doing things right, in magic or in anything else in life.
Mod J
While it’s all well and good to ask a question every now and then, it’s like learning to depend on yourself in non-occult practices. You’re crippling your confidence in yourself by feeling like you need someone else to sign off on what you want to do (that’s also ignoring the issue rampant on here that’s people preferring to act like authorities on topics that they’ll privately admit they know nothing about, but didn’t want to tell the public that).
You grow as a person and a witch when you make your own choices and rely on yourself. It’s a frightening first step, but necessary.
witches weeds - jimsonweed datura stramonium, hemlock conium maculatum, enchanter’s nightshade circaea lutetiana, deadly nightshade atropa belladona, henbane hyoscyamus niger, moonflower datura innoxia, wolsfbane aconitum napellus
i’ve come across the concept of witches weeds a few times in my botanical wanderings, above are a few of my favorites. a word of warning - everyone plant above except for enchanter’s nightshade are poisonous plants. please do not go foraging for these plants, some of them can even create symptoms just by touching or breathing in near the plant.
I’m going to reiterate what OP said:
Found on FB
Oh dear - I keep hearing tips about leaving bowls of sugar water out to “help” keep bees hydrated. Please, please, please DON’T. Bees are really good at finding what they need and there are so many reasons not to do this. The MOST IMPORTANT reason is that if you within 3 miles of some hives (and most people are) if the bees find the sugar water they’re going to think its a great source of easy food, go back to the hive and recruit more bees to come and collect the “food” and before you know it you’ll have 1.000s and 1,000s of bees descending on your garden/balcony - a very scary sight. This is known as robbing and as beekeeper I’ve seen this a couple of times - once started it is impossible to stop until the source of the “food” has gone.
Other reasons not to do this are - sugar water is essentially “junk” food for bees. Its full of carbohydrates which will give them an energy burst, but has no other nutritional value unlike the food they should be having i.e. nectar.
Honey bees will store this as honey in the hive. The beekeeper unknowingly may end up extracting and selling this as honey later in the year. You don’t want to buy sugar syrup and the beekeeper doesn’t want to be prosecuted for selling a product which isn’t honey.
This is also an easy food source for social wasps.
By all means give a tired bee a drink of sugar water on a spoon, but please don’t leave it out for them.
If you want to help bees there are lots of ways you can do this from planting nectar rich plants or leaving out bowls of water with gravel/small pebbles in so they can access the water which they would be very grateful for.
PLEASE SHARE THIS AND TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS
Reblog for a tired bee
For starters, if you don’t know who Crowley was (no, not the Supernatural dude), he was a 1900s occultist who coined a portion of what modern witchcraft uses today, such as the word “magick” which he, although did not ‘invent’, popularised. (you’ll learn why I denounce that term and try to educate people who use it in a second). He was, in a nutshell, everything modern society hates. Racist, antisemitic, sexist, you name it and Crowley was it.
Crowley wrote several books about the occult, some of them having slightly useful information and still are referenced today, but his occult books are not what I intend to talk about. Little known to most, Crowley wrote an essay entitled “The Jewish Problem”, that title is enough of a disgrace, but what is actually IN the writing is atrocious, which I will be going over in a second. In other writing, he refers to Jewish people as “parasites”, “a barbarous race”, talks about how Jewish people are their bad stereotypes, among other things. This article does a wonderful job of compiling some of his worst quotes and explaining how racist he really is, as well as explaining some of the undertones of the quotes.
Anyway, he also used to throw slurs at his Jewish friend Victor Neuburg and admitted to being interested in fascism multiple times.
As for quotes from The Jewish Problem:
Some of his comments on other groups of people:
Crowley also heavily used the term “black magic” in reference to the “dark art” types of witchcraft, this term is now considered racist by a good portion of the community. Not to mention he was also a regular user of the N slur! I’m talking hard-R.
Anyway,
I never much liked the usage of magic with a K to start with, but I’ve been learning more and more about AC as time has passed, I’ve started denouncing it entirely and educating people about it’s connections to him as best as I can, most people have no idea how awful he is. It’s scary to think that someone so despicable is still heavily referenced and worshiped in the Occult community, so I wanted to finally make this post. I am asked a lot about it and why I hate the term “magick” so much, now you all know. I hope you will consider using the terms witchcraft, or even just magic rather than adding the K at the end, because we all know what the K stands for now, and who it represents. This is not even the beginning of how awful he was, there is so much more that can be dug up. I encourage you to do it, research him and understand how absolutely terrible he was. Please.
Special thanks to @alistaires
I DIDNT KNOW THIS :0
He was a super creep like whenever someone mentions him all I can think is how he would cum in food, ect (for ritual purposes) and he wouldn’t tell anyone.
Ew. O.o to be honest this is why I find ritual magic and magicians to be so off-putting. I do know genuinely lovely people who are into such things but so many of them model themselves after Crowley etc and think what they’re doing is cool and edgy. Firstly magic isn’t meant to be cool, it’s not a game. But also there’s nothing edgy about racism etc. O.o I don’t know, I always liked the look of ‘magick’ but now I understand that the insinuations are related to a racist edgelord who wanted to make himself seem elitist, no thanks. This would also explain why I’ve been having creepy dreams with him involved. O.o
Yeah… I was reading up on Crowley for writing research, as I’ve been wanting to get some details right for a project. Anyway, just the historical foreword to his Book IV sent up about a dozen red flags, which it seemed as if the guest writer was attempting to gloss over—I just got a huge sense that there was much “in between the lines” that actually might make people less excited to read a Crowley book, so it couldn’t get published in one.
Lo and behold, a few minutes of independent research later, I found out that he tended to go through women like tissue paper, but at one point was married to one Rose Edith Kelly. She was who from which he received much of his guidance for The Book of the Law—she would go into a trance via ritual and would dictate knowledge for him. This was a role he often had women in his life fulfill—he would typically draw them into his circle, ply them with substances and with his noteworthy charisma, and before long, they would start spouting secret knowledge on his behalf, often enduring some very questionable conditions. Anyway, Rose and him had two children, and it is said she developed a drinking problem, but it is also fact he committed her to an asylum for “alcohol dementia” in her thirties a couple years after their divorce. Further research uncovered another noteworthy name: Mary Desti, who it seems Crowley met the same year he had Rose committed. She was the “seer” who revealed much of his seminal Book IV. Her son, the playwright Preston Sturges, was none-too-happy to recount that in her induced trances, if she stepped out of line in any way, including if she would start a sentence with “I”, Crowley would slice open her arm with a penknife. Some may start to wonder less why Rose started to drink. Mary would later leave Crowley as well, and Crowley would head over to another mistress, and the train of the world’s fascination with him would keep rolling.
I could go on for ages; this is an exceedingly small sample of how he treated those nearest and “dearest” to him. It honestly put me off using the term “magick” in my project and deeply put me off using many other elements of his work. The sanitized elements that trickled down and insinuated themselves into later traditions… I suspect there is good reason those survived, but lionizing Crowley himself is not an act I think I could look at without some suspicion.
Ew… O.o and I’m guessing he simply said that these things were revealed to him with no credit to the women involved. When you say ‘seer’ do you think it’s more likely that she was simply being put into an altered state of consciousness and suggested to rather than actually being given wisdom by spirits?
MY BLESSINGS UPON THIS ENTIRE POST
Yeah Crowley was an arsehole and half the reason I side-eye “ceremonial” magicians.
Hate Crowley but I’m not gonna stop using magick just cause he popularized it tbh.
Particularly among the newer witchblrs, so I feel as though I should say something:
And research that is preferably done off of Tumblr (aka Google it), so you’ll find a wider range of opinions, articles, and thoughts on the matter.
For example:
My practice is eclectic. I use what works and I draw from as many sources as I can get my hands on, with some limits. But I think at its root, my eclectic practice is due to having a distinct loss of culture after a few generations of erasure, usually self-imposed.
That’s the tl;dr. Let me back up.
I’m an American, but my genes are mostly Norwegian. The other major inputs are English, German, and Scots-Irish. I am in the unlucky position where most culture that my family had was buried in favor of becoming Generic White American to try and make their children successful. It seemed to have happened almost universally, across all sides of my family, between the generation of my grandparents and their parents. What culture bits I do have, I have had to either pry out of family hands, or learn as an adult that something I’ve always done is a cultural thing.
At the same time, I know that no matter how much I learn about the European-American cultures that “belong” to me (or at least my genes, anyway), most of their traditions won’t be a part of me because I wasn’t raised on them. It’s a strange kind of hurt. I can adopt them, I can revive them for the family, I can try to reconnect us for future generations. Those future generations will have that culture. I won’t.
As a result, what cultural things I was raised with I am holding on to with a white-knuckle grip. I try to accept the localness and newness of the culture I was raised in, just being here, in my state. It’s me, after all. I am who I am; I’m not the things I want, no matter how much I wish I were. I’m still the result of my ancestors and what they did, and I can’t lose that. I’ve come to terms with who I am and the culture I’ve got already.
The problem: that culture has fuck all to do with magic.
So where do I go for my magic? Where do I find those traditions? Eclecticism. “Cherry-picking,” to those who hate it. Things from my own familial background and open practices and long-dead men. Gods that find me. Whatever works. Try it all, find what works, write it down. Try it all, try it all. Building my own practice around nothing but me, because when it comes to magic, I’m all I’ve got.
I see eclectic witches criticized a lot, and I do get it. I’ve been annoyed by people who do it with a flippant attitude (but I leave them alone). Consider, however, a lot of eclectic practitioners are people like me! A lot of them, perhaps most of them. My experience is far from uncommon. People whose grandparents spoke a language they never taught their children. Whose grandparents were too caught up in The War to pass on traditions. Whose great-grandparents completely forbade their children from speaking the old language except on holidays, and even then only for prayers or speaking to elders who didn’t speak English well. Whose great-grandparents left the deep mountains for the city and left their rootwork behind. Whose family tried so hard to neutralize, neutralize, neutralize their children in the desperate hope that they won’t seem too weird for that job they want.
(And there the generational timing comes into play: my great-grandparents, apparently on all sides, influenced by the Great Depression, did everything they could to un-Other their children to give them even the slightest perceived advantage, heritage be damned, because it was more important to eat and survive. White people could be un-Othered, besides a name or distinct face, so they did it.)
They thought they were doing the right thing. I’m not going to judge them for it. Perhaps they really did impart an economic or social advantage to their children. Regardless, it’s a strange feeling to have culture denied you by your own family. Others have had their culture erased under far more horrific circumstances by enemies and conquerors. By no means do I feel disadvantaged or something, I just feel sad and empty over it, since it was my own family who did it. Whether it was right or not, it happened, and here I am now, a smudged blackboard of hastily hidden peoples with hints of the words my family wrote.
With magic, I have no choice but to be eclectic, especially if I want to try and honor the different sides of my family. I have to study it by myself too; don’t think for one minute I could have found a traditional practitioner from one of the old countries, or even German Appalachia, to take me in and teach me like I belong there. I’m a foreigner, regardless of heritage, and especially because my family didn’t keep the traditions. When it comes to magic, I’m on my own. I’m all I’ve got.
And that’s okay.
Don’t burry glass spell jars. Or any glass.
Don’t burry plastic spell jars. Or any plastic.
And for the love of the gods don’t throw glass or plastic in the ocean. That is polluting!
I’m all for making and burrowing spell jars. I’m all for leaving offerings. But please do so in a way that is not harmful to the environment.
I used to think I was just a shitty witch cuz all my spells took so long - making me question whether what I considered “results” were manifestations of spellwork or coincidence. This was until just very recently. I did a spell on the 30th, and it manifested as early as the 2nd. To add to that, this spell was a one-shot working, which I don’t believe in (I believe in repeating spellwork until they manifest, and that once is almost never enough). This is tremendous progress from taking MONTHS before seeing a spell come to reality.
This, of course, made me question what in the spell was so special and so right that I went from Bonnie Bennett to Fiona Goode. Simple: I grounded my spell.
How:
Why:
For Step 1: You have to finish a spell before grounding it because what you’ll be grounding is the spell you’ve finished. I think this should be simple enough.
For Step 2: Mentally grasping the spell is like throwing a net. You have to be specific with what you’re dragging into manifestation. You also wanna make sure that you’ve covered everything that you want to manifest.
For Step 3: Like I’ve mentioned earlier, spells are really just dense clouds that linger on the astral when they’ve been cast. They’ll find their way into manifesting eventually somehow, but you can be the agent of that manifestation. By pulling astral matter into physical existence, you’ve effectively manifested your own magick. The whole point of magick is to bring your thoughts to manifest into the physical world. Dragging them into the physical with your power and skill through this method does that.
For Step 4: There’s two ways of looking at this. By dragging a spell into the physical, you would, of course, feel as though you’re living in it. You’re living within the manifested reality that you’ve worked magickally to come to be. Step 4 is almost a knee-jerk reaction to Step 3; you would feel a spell if you pull it into the physical.
The Law of Attraction also talks about putting yourself in the disposition of receiving that which you want. This doesn’t only go for the positive, but also for the negative. If you believe that you will fail, you will think as though you’ve failed, act as though you’ve failed, and effectively become a failure. By mentally living “inside your spell”, so to speak. So, by living your spell, you bring it into manifestation by syncing your mundane actions with your magickal work.
“No wonder you can’t do it; you acquiesce to defeat before you even begin.“ -Pai Mei
I wish to praise Hekate through this post.
Witchcraft is not a substitute for conventional mental and medical treatments. It’s a supplement. An anti-anxiety spell does not replace medication or therapy. A crystal won’t heal your illness. It will help, but you cannot bypass scientifically supported treatment in favor of magic and expect it to work.
It’s a bit more complicated than that.
Chakras are a part of Hindu and Buddhist traditions (although most Westerners know them from exposure to Hinduism). The issue is not that these traditions are “closed” (personally I think tumblr should be using “living” traditions instead of “closed” traditions for the majority of traditions they refer to as closed but that’s a separate issue) but that the way they are understood in their native traditions is very different from how Westerners understand them, and the way people in the West understand them is incredibly watered down and divorced from that religious context.
I would recommend reading The real story on the chakras, (the author is a white convert to Hinduism) which not only talks about how chakras are viewed in Indian traditions, but where the West gets its ideas about the chakras.
This article is actually about yoga but it touches on the racism and colonialism with regards to the West’s relationship with Hinduism. (which includes stuff like chakras, yoga, karma).
This is something I’ve tried researching in the past without much luck. This post is very informative, and I’ll be picking up that book soon!
Lemme tell y’all about this app called PictureThis
It’s a plant identifier, you take a picture of a plant and the app will automatically identify it for you! All of the plants you put in the app upload to a feed (it’s like a social media) so if the app can’t identify it for some reason, people in the community can!
There’s also a map that shows the plants you and other people have found, and on your profile, it keeps a log of how many plants you’ve collected!
I just really love this app and i think it’ll be really useful for us witches! 💞✨🔮
