31, Scorpio☉, Cancer🌙, Taurus ⬆ she/her, demisexual, semi-closeted Christian witch, empath, Owner of Miss Nargaluna's Cosplay and Shop, Fan of Gajevy, Fairy Tail, Monster Hunter, monster romances. Icon art done by the lovely @cana-mochi
There is no joy like the joy of a writer who has just figured out that a throwaway line they put into the first few paragraphs of a story is actually the key to a major plot point and possibly even the theme underlying the entire thing.
right now it’s almost halfway through 2023, and 2024 is an election year in the US. I have started to see a growing proliferation of posts suggesting that there is no difference between the republican and democratic parties–the exact same kind of posts I saw an awful lot of before the last major election here. I am unfollowing folks who post or reblog these sort of posts, as I consider these posts to be fascist propaganda framed as leftist discourse, designed to suppress anti-fascist votes and voters.
Prepare yourself to vote for Biden now, because the only other option is someone who will make 2016-2020 look like a picnic.
You work with what you’ve got, not what you wish you had.
I detest Biden more with every passing day (and he was not in my top 10 candidates in 2020). 2024 will be an election between:
Biden/The Former Guy
Biden/DeSantis
Biden/Republican Fascist to be Named Later
No Labels is an op. It’s being funded by unknown parties to defeat Biden and the Democrats. Their election scenarios are fantasy football for political junkies.
No Third Party has a road anywhere outside statewide offices (Bernie is the exception that proves the rule, and he’s a Democrat for all intents and purposes).
Arguably the rosiest scenario is that TFG breaks with the Republicans to form his own party and tanks any chance the Republicans have, but that’s not looking as likely as it did two years ago.
If you’re pissed, get involved in your local elections. Ensure that no position is running unopposed (and that includes if you’ve got a conserva-Dem somewhere now–primary them).
Get the House back in the Democratic hands (unless you’re up for two more years of this only with MTG as Speaker this time). Increase the margin in the Senate (and send Selema to her post-senate career). Make sure your school board isn’t full of flat-earthers. Wake sure your county counsel isn’t going to shut down your libraries if they have a book someone doesn’t like.
As Stonekettle says, if you want a better country, but a better citizen.
There’s a reason we call it a civic DUTY, not a civic privilege.
Starting mid-April I’ll be posting to-do lists and action items for people who’ve never gotten involved before. One party wants you dead. FIGHT.
Speaking as a Michigan resident: Look at the laws being passed in Michigan. Now look at the laws being passed in Florida. Spot the difference? That’s because Michigan is being governed by the Democratic Party, and Florida is being governed by the Republican Party. That’s the difference. They’re different parties. It is not the same.
You want what we’ve got? Vote for it.
(And you want Michigan to stay the way it is and not slide backwards into the shit we had to deal with with Rick Snyder, or even just the way it was when the House and Senate were Republican-controlled? Keep fucking voting.)
D are not our friends or even allies but R is a staunch enemy
look the main thing is that our first-past-the-poll voting style automatically and always devolves into a two party system where the majority of people dislike both parties. This is now a known phenomenon, a feature of our voting method as inevitable as water running downhill.
But that isn’t going to change until we get some sweeping voting reform that revises our voting system into some kind of ranked or run-off voting
Meanwhile one of our destined-to-be-disliked parties is actually trying to do things we want (health care, living wages, social services, public transportation, civil rights, education, support for gay and trans people, religious tolerance, etc) and one of our parties is banning books and undoing women’s rights and supporting corrupt racist police and endangering gay and trans lives while paying people to make posts about how both parties are equally bad so that people don’t vote democrat.
Like, we are going to not like a lot of how the Democrats operate, that is a feature of the current design, but they are trying to protect women’s rights, they are trying to help the homeless, they are trying to raise minimum wage they have agendas that include important things. And republicans? are at this point a literal cult that want to create a religious fascist state.
Even my father, now 80 years old, a man whose politics i have often despised, a man who voted for Reagan for fucks sake! even he (unhappily) votes Democrat now, because he’s not an insane person, and the republican party has become SO BLATANTLY EVIL AND STUPID that he can’t ignore it.
Democrats pass legislation we want that republicans then find ways to block. Democrats have passed bills that:
close gender pay gaps raise federal minimum wage make becoming a US citizen easier for immigrants protect civil/public water sources from pollution cut greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change increase gun regulation lower and control prescription drug prices improve healthcare access for those with pre-existing conditions protect net neutrality protect gay marriage rights
these are all the subjects of specific real bills that democrats have either passed into law or tried hard to pass in the last few years.
Meanwhile republicans act to block these bills while championing book bans and attacking trans folk and giving more power to corporations to ruin our planet and taking away women’s rights.
when you see posts attacking Democrats from the left or whatever, the talking points and quotes can often be traced back to right wing sources
So all posts trying to keep non-republicans arguing amongst ourselves and calling for us to not vote democrat (or not vote at all) ? I will be assuming they are bad-faith posts and i won’t be spreading them or engaging with them or anything.
Honest critique of the party is necessary, but like it or not our system currently is a two party system, and i’ll be voting for the better of the two until we can change our voting style to make additional political parties viable.
I live in Pennsylvania.
Neither of my children is cisgender.
The last gubernatorial election was, literally, do we elect this guy who is overly fond of cops but is generally a normal human being, or do we elect this other guy who believes frightening conspiracy theories and wants my children removed from my care and forcibly detransitioned and honestly would prefer them to be dead?
That’s it. That’s the kind of choice we get in first-past-the-post voting. If that second guy won, we needed to move. There was no safe way to stay here. The votes of my fellow citizens were all that was standing between my kids and serious fucking danger.
And my fellow citizens DID turn out. Lots of them came out and voted to reject the scary death cultist. I am grateful to all those who went, ugh, I don’t really like this guy, but the other guy is worse, and hauled themselves down to the polling place to get it done.
You, too, can vote to reject scary death cultists, in your hometown and your home state and in the country as a whole.
Getting rid of the scary death cultists is a prequisite for getting political representation you actually want.
The term spiritual vitamin is being used to refer to a particular set of practices that are basically the building blocks and supplements to your daily craft. These are small things that are done daily or weekly to just keep things fluid and smooth. These include:
Cleansing
Warding
Basic Energy Work
Basic Breathwork
Grounding
Some meditation
Now let’s break these down in context of spiritual vitamins:
Cleansing here refers simply to the removal of energy from a prior time so to ensure a better and more fluid present. We gather up energy in our week, our day, and it’s a rather good practice to have some means and method of taking off this extra bit of energy to work forward. Now, the fun thing about any form of cleansing is that it does lend itself to another principle. The lack of energy leaves a vacuum that allows for other energy, good or bad, to waltz in. So during your cleansings, be it by fumigation or simply anointing the head with blessed or lustral water, it might also do well to invoke desirable energies to replace the energies cast out. That way, you’re more in alignment with the energies that will help you in your grand scheme than not. The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram can be seen as a daily affair, it is a rather good way of cleansing the microcosmic self of things that aren’t supposed to be there but should generally be followed with some invocatory ritual, such as invoking health, prosperity, power and so on. If we were to get technical, a small daily cleansing would be good and a greater cleansing at least once a week, preferably on a Sunday because then you get to start the new week on a fresh foot.
Warding is the act of warding off undesirable energies. It could be considered mildly apotropaic which falls under protective magic. It is something that should generally be done on a regular basis for the sake of sakes. It is mostly energetic in nature but I have found it to be rather useful to have an secondary force. Anchor the warding onto a necklace or unto a piece of wood and keep it in the home or wear it as it is bodes a lot easier in future events. Some Pentacles of Solomon are especially suited for this and to make them and maybe sew them unto a good bit of black or white fabric would be rather well. The colours used for the ward are also of importance. Some people experience white as too protective as it reflects all other colours, so I would assume a colour such as red which is martial in power and can protect would be suited but it might have the issue of creating anger.
Energy Work - this revolves around a few things. Imagine your body as a connection of pipes, sometimes things might get stagnant in one pipe so it does help to push or move it to free up the pipe. This is the basis of energy work on a consistent basis, to keep the energy flowing but also to build a resonance with astral forces. In the end, it would also aid in the ability to perceive and tap into energies and, by consistent working with your energy, you become aware of when something is wrong in your own force. So it helps quite a bit. Exercises include the Qabbalistic Cross which balances various polarities and is a very good thing to do when you don’t want to banish energy that you have invoked. So too is drawing down the moon or the sun, the Circulation of the Body of Light and the PSI Ball which give the magus a certain ability to understand and use personal energy.
Breath work - alongside energy work, breathing is another force. Energy work can be ascribed to the energy manipulation on an internal basis but breathing brings in energy from an external basis. Not only that, it helps with anxiety and its always good to have extra oxygen in your body. Breathing can be used to empower the mind and focus it, it can also be used to promote trance states. The combination of energy work and breathing can be used for the empowerment of items, personal cleansing, and empowerment. For this, the Four-Fold Breath is always a recommendation and so too is vase breathing. By getting yourself to a good start with extra oxygen and energy in your body, you work better in your daily life. Sometimes, you actually have to sit down and literally take a few breathes to get rid of the drain.
Grounding forms a part of psychological and spiritual magick. Grounding is the bringing of the self to present in psychological means, essentially bringing the mind back to earth during anxiety attacks or when the mind is just bustling with too much and too little energy. The 5-4-3-2-1 method is amazing here but so too is stimulus. Teachers often told us to go wash our face when we were crying and now I understand why. The Mammalian Diving Reflex, if you take some cold water and put it on your face, your body reacts in such a way that it actually promotes a decent state of calm and focus. Not to mention the coldness being a good shock to the system. Whenever I had anxiety attacks, I’d always put my hands under cold water. The shock would bring me back but it would also be soothing to have water over my hands. Holding ice is another form but also becoming aware of something in the present, such as breathing, a particular sound, a particular feeling. The Spiritual Aspect generally refers towards a circulation of energy. During spiritual work, we accumulate spiritual energy in our body and it does help to have somewhere to put that energy so it doesn’t overwhelm us, again, bringing us back to earth after being present in a spiritually altered space. Most often, this is a meditation where one connects to the core of the earth. One might also choose to put excess energy into the altar or into a talisman of sorts that can be used later. Having a special rock on the altar where you push all your excess energy into and, when you’re drained, having that reservoir to draw on is a good idea.
Meditation is a misunderstood subject and brings about the Thoughtless Paradox. As a person, your brain is a machine made to think, made to be aware and made for survival. You’re going to think of things regardless. When people speak about the silencing of the mind by way of excluding every single thought, it becomes more effort and defeats the purpose of meditation. Rather, meditation is the altering of the mind by way of focusing on something, such as breath, prayer, a mantra, a spiritual truth, a sigil, a god or goddess or some other item. When we place our focus onto something, we achieve One-Point Concentration, our mind becomes focused, absolutely enthralled by that single item, that all else begins to fall away. Then one achieves thoughtlessness and is able to exalt the self through the means of their meditation, be it prayer, mantra or something else. We have the basis now, we need something that our mind can become absolutely enthralled by that everything else falls away. Something that can calm us down. So this could include walking, breathing, drawing (and by drawing I mean things that put the mind into a trance state, like those trippy sketches where you just draw and leave the rest up to the mind to decide.
Those are our basics… I do hope this helped and i do hope that someone may benefit from this. Sincerely, Bottle
discord is adding parental surveillance. as nerdskii’s tags pointed out its a ridiculous measure that doesnt help anyone because apps like Signal exist for actual illegal/sketchy activity and this just hurts lgbt teens looking for somewhere to be themselves and have resources especially with conservative parents
I use android. this is my secure folder, which was built into my phone. it has a customize option, so I’ve made it look like some bland fitness app. when you open it, it asks you to enter a password or unlock it in any other way you’ve set it to unlock before it lets you in
inside of this folder is like a 2nd phone almost, I can hide apps in here or have different accounts on apps I’ve already installed. I have a separate discord and tumblr inside of my secure folder (which I moved this blog to recently)
there are similar third party apps, usually disguised as a calculator that you set a certain number or calculation as the password to unlock. that’s a lot more inconspicuous if opened, but also more well known, and parents might be looking out for any suspicious calculator apps
also, be careful what 3rd party apps you download, especially when it’s concerning things like your accounts and data! make sure you’re downloading something safe and secure
this isn’t foolproof, depending on how far your parents are going to track you. if they’ve installed anything or had you install anything on your phone or computer, or had the chance while you weren’t there, be careful for spyware. some apps report how long you look at each app, or can record sound from your phone on demand
also important: a good VPN can secure what you’re looking at from the router, which parents may be able to access information from, but this also isn’t guaranteed to work if the parental controls are set to block VPNs
another one, if your parents are tracking your location but not your app usage: download a GPS spoofer. you don’t necessarily need to root your phone for this, as long as it’s supported in developer settings. a lot of them are branded as tools for pokemon go, which can be helpful for plausible deniability
parents reading this: these are things I’ve learned from constantly having my shit taken and looked through as a teen. you aren’t protecting your kids, you’re ruining any chance of them trusting you with anything. if something goes wrong, you’re going to be the last person they tell, because someone who goes to these lengths to see any little thing isn’t going to be chill when something actually bad happens if this is how you act when literally nothing is happening
Hey all! I’ve run into some big bills today so if I could get some help that’d be super cool. Patrons get 20% off, non-patrons get 10% off commissions but the payment must be finalized this week, and the work will be done next month.
Thanks all for reading and sharing! For more information please check out my Trello page where you can find more prices and my Terms of Service linked in content source
Just a reminder that this sale is going on for today and tomorrow and then my commission prices go back to normal!
Send me a DM here or email me at moonlore@hotmail.com for more info and accurate quotes
Wait wait you’re doing sticker commissions as well? Yeeeeeee! I’ve been looking for someone for that! 😍
When you’re getting started in the witchcraft/occulting communities, there could be a couple of organizations that pop up on your feed that you need to be weary of. Getting involved with these guys is a no-go for my moral code, and I think it’s very important to highlight the issues with these groups as much as possible.
TW: Discussion of hate groups, bigotry, SA, etc.
In this post, I discuss groups that claim the title of “Satanism” to describe their belief system. As Satanism is already a very misunderstood set of beliefs, I have also created a post about the history and breakdown of Satanism that you can find here.
When most people “roll their eyes”, they flick their eyes directly upward, usually as far as they comfortably go, then resume looking normally.
When someone who learned the phrase before the behavior does it, they usually go in a circular (ish) motion. Since most eye movements are lines, it’s usually pretty triangular: the key points are usually a diagonal up one way, then to the far other side, then to a diagonal low the first way. Thus, the eyes basically make a loop, so they “rolled”.
I’ve found that when people who learned the up-down way first try the circular motion, they might risk motion sickness, so experiment carefully.
me, an hour ago: “fuck, the stove is on! what do we do?” [immediately does all the wrong things]
PSA: What NOT to do when you smell gas
In this situation, we got home to a smell of gas throughout the house and discovered our gas stove was on without a flame. it was only a tiny stream, and everything turned out fine, but here’s a brief list of everything we did wrong:
NOTE: this is for if you smell significant amounts of gas, not a blanket list for all possible gas situations. (If you aren’t aware, the propane/natural gas used in houses smells vaguely like sulfer, or rotten eggs - this is an additive, since it has no natural smell. It’s a very recognizable smell, once you’ve smelled it once. It’s not the same smell as gasoline.)
1. If your stove has an electrical/spark ignition, do NOT turn it off.
Spark ignitions often spark when turning on *and* off. Spark + Gas = Boom. Boom is bad. Avoid boom.
Instead, turn off the gas at the source, i.e. the physical valve at the meter. There may be a smaller valve near the stove. If you don’t know where the shutoff is, the fire department will find it.
2. Do NOT turn on (or off) vents or fans.
In fact, don’t flip any electrical switches - that includes lights, plugging in or unplugging appliances, etc. These cause sparks. Spark + Gas = Boom.
Also, don’t start your car. obviously.
3. Do NOT open windows
counterintuitive, I know. This is mostly because you want to prioritize your exit, but it’s also to keep the fumes from spreading outside, where you should be waiting for the ~professionals~ to come handle it.
4. DO take all people and pets outside.
Do this very first!! (one thing we actually did right - go us!)
This is obviously because you don’t want to go boom, but you also don’t want to suffocate. Gas is poison!
NOTE: the gas from your stove is probably propane (natural gas); carbon monoxide is what you get when propane burns, which is why your kitchen needs to be well-ventilated and the stove shouldn’t be left burning for long periods of time, but the natural gas itself is *also* potentially deadly. Carbon monoxide detectors dont detect natural gas, so that’s what the odorous additive is for.
Inhaling natural gas causes nausea, headaches, dizziness, and makes you just generally woozy, and eventually causes you to lose consciousness and potentially suffocate, just like carbon monoxide does. We don’t want that.
5. DO call the fire department/emergency line
They’ll check for other leaks, shut gas off if needed, then test for air quality and eventually clear your house for reentry. It takes like 1-2 hours for the gas to dissipate, generally.
Yay, you survived! Congrats!!
NOTE: if you find the stove has been left on with a flame, or it’s on with no flame but you don’t smell gas, then you should be safe to just open windows and turn on vents and fans to air it out.
idk, this was actually pretty scary, especially when we realized how much of our immediate response was wrong and could have turned a dangerous situation into a real disaster.
tl;dr: If you smell gas when you shouldn’t be smelling gas, just get all the people and animals outside, shut off the gas line, and call the fire department or gas company. don’t fuck around with gas. you’re not overreacting, you’re taking the proper safety measures.
common plants used for cleansing that are under threat
sandalwood
S. insulare, S. yasi, S. freycinetianum, and S. pyrularium are endangered. S. involutum and S. macgregorii are critically endangered. (source)
dragon’s blood
D. cinnabari is under threat, and was listed as “vulnerable” by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as of 2004. (source)
frankincense
in 1998, B. Sacra was listed as “near threatened” by the IUCN. all Boswellia species are currently threatened by overharvesting and habitat loss. (source)
myrrh
as of 2019, almost 50 species under the Commiphora genus are classified as “threatened” by the IUCN. (source)
white sage
S. apiana is not yet considered endangered or threatened, but many Indigenous communities in north america have expressed concern about the over-harvesting of the plant. furthermore, S. apiana is sacred to certain Indigenous tribes, and non-Native people have been asked to refrain from using it by many Native people. (source)
alternative cleansing plants you can use
rosemary (S. rosmarinus)
clary sage (S. sclarea)
rue (R. graveolens)
lavender (anything under the Lavandula genus)
hyssop (H. officinalis)
pine (P. sylvestris)
feel free to add on to the alternatives!
more alternatives (off the top of my head):
mugwort, Artemisia vulgaris (grows invasive where I live, so harvesting it for smoke bundles is actually a win for the ecosystem; common in Norse workings)
cinnamon, any variety (sprinkled or burnt)
bay leaf, Laurus nobilis (common in Hellenic workings)
garden sage, Salvia officinalis (similar properties to white sage for non-Native practitioners, who don’t have cultural bonds to That Specific Plant)
white cedar, Thuja occidentalis (grown as “arborvitae” shrubs by landscapers and easy to find; the similar red cedar [Juniperus virginiana] is of great significance to a lot of north american indigenous folks, so be thoughtful and buy directly from indigenous sellers or carefully harvest your own)
eucalyptus, Eucalyptus globulus (invasive and *highly flammable* in the Western US)
garlic, Allium sativum (not usually burnt)
lemon oil (not usually burnt)
and one experimental thought that’s been kicking around my head recently:
bee propolis (created by bees in abundance and sold by beekeepers, propolis is composed of hyperlocal plant resins, essential oils, and pollens collected by bees - perhaps better for offering than for cleansing, but could be sprinkled lightly on hot charcoal)
