lackofcoolcraft

[lackofcoolcraft]

This is the ✨Wonderful $100 Weekend Post✨, charged with crystals of abundance and prosperity. Seeing this post will bring you good fortune and your wish will come true. May you be fulfilled and enjoy this weekend.

✨Like and reblog for prosperity to come your way.✨

✨Like and reblog on a Saturday or Sunday for extra abundant energy and manifestation power ✨

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Brighid Mural

I randomly stumbled on this absolutely stunning mural that was just completed in Dundalk, Ireland!

It’s apparently part of a new urban art festival there and this piece portrays Brighid as both goddess and saint. The colors are absolutely stunning and I’m in love with it!

Art by Friz

Photograph by Swedish Ginger

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Am I Getting Back Into Witchcraft Or Is It Just Autumn: A Novel by Witchcraftings

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I have fun on tiktok lol.

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I Wanna Try Something New.

I��ve been reading tarot cards and doing divination for about seven years now and I drastically prefer reading for people in person. Any time I’ve tried to market my readings online, I’ve always struggled with getting the spoons to lay out a reading and take a picture of it and type everything up, it just zaps my energy and takes forever. Reading in person doesn’t give me the same trouble.  I still want to market my readings online, though, especially right now! So I want to do things a little different. Instead of me just mailing a person a document,  I’m considering selling voice/video chat divination sessions. Instead of being measured by the card, it’d be measured by the time, and you would have access to me and every deck/divination tool in my arsenal for a set block of time and we just sit down together and do whatever we want to do! (also, things can totally be adjusted to your personal comfort level if you’re not into showing your face or anything.) 

Let me know if that’s something you would be interested in, and what platform you would feel most comfortable doing something like that on! I think to get a feel for it, I want to sell a few test sessions at an uber discount just to test the waters and get a feel for what I should make the real prices.  So: I’m going to do two fifteen minute sessions for $5, and one half-hour session for $10. I may open up more later just depending on how these go, but if you want one, message me! :) 

[lackofcoolcraft]

not to be horny on main but i’m a big slut for thunderstorms

[lackofcoolcraft]

🧿🛡🌦🤝🌦🛡🧿

emoji spell to keep people safe and unified during protests, rallies, and riots, where their lives could be at stake.

likes charge, reblogs cast!

share to keep racists away 🧿

[lackofcoolcraft]

I’m both pro herbal medicine and pro vaccination because you can treat burns with aloe vera juice and sore throats with lavender infused honey but you can’t rid a country of polio with plants. 

[lackofcoolcraft]

This guy's sending out some good vibes and I'm here for it

[lackofcoolcraft]

How Magic Works and Why It’s Important

I realized recently that some people may not understand the main underpinnings of how magic works across different paradigms. The psychological model is so widespread that much of Witchblr seems to think that it is the basis of all magic which brings them into conflict with folks who are working in fundamentally different systems. When the psychological model is taken as the only model, it leads to folks being disrespectful and then reactive when they’re told as much. I really hate to keep seeing it happen like this so in an effort smooth out the dialog a little, I thought I’d let people know the lay of the land a little so people know what they’re walking into.

Psychological Model

The psychological model posits that magic works by changing our inner world. Some people go so far as to call it a placebo effect. To be clear, this isn’t to say that people who hold to a psychological model of magic believe it isn’t real necessarily. It’s more that that they tend to see the reality of magic is primarily cognitive.

This is quite a bit of mainstream Witchblr. It’s also one of the most recent and modern and isn’t rooted in many long standing traditions as far as I can tell. Spells for confidence or for self care. Astrology that’s primarily focused on explaining your personality. The emphasis on intent alone as what manifests change. All of this is psychological and self oriented in nature.

Spirit Model

The spirit model is one of the oldest models I know of. There are a couple variations and I can’t claim to know the finer points of them all. A lot of ceremonial and traditional witchcraft folks fall into this category. It mainly posits that magic works by getting spirits to carry out work for you.

Sometimes this is through offerings, pacts, or worship. Sometimes it’s through binding. With many practices in between. Different systems often work with different spirits. Local dead, planetary spirits, angels, saints, spirits of the land - the spirit model posits that they are real and can act on the material and spiritual world.

Belief Model

The belief model posits that our belief in something makes it so. That’s an oversimplification but at it’s core, that’s what it is.

It is distinct from the intent model. The intent model is built more on individual will that doesn’t necessarily have a distinct belief accompanying it. This model also isn’t psychological. People who use this model aren’t saying well I believe it and it changes how I perceive things and that’s how I make things work. No, this model says belief warps the fabric of the universe.

As you might have caught on, this is the basis that a lot of chaos magicians work from. Belief isn’t simply a conviction in this model, gnosis is key. Gnosis is a type of single pointed concentration  or altered consciousness harnessed through various methods to essentially hack the source code of the universe. The belief model cannot be separated from the concept of gnosis in my book. It’s foundational.

Why It Matters

While yes, it’s definitely possible for these models to overlap and they aren’t inherently incompatible, where I see so many people going sideways is when they assume everyone is working from a psychological model. This is especially bad because many folks are taking the aesthetics of magic born of the spirit or belief models and passing it off as if it is all psychological and then frustrated when those groups both point that out and say it won’t work.

Sigil magic is a really good example of this. One thing I was completely stunned by when I came back to Tumblr was how many people believed that just inscribing a sigil on something would be sufficient for change. Sigils are found in both belief oriented systems and spirit oriented systems and how they work is so far beyond what is presented so often. So many writers here argue essentially “it works because I think this is how it should work” - which isn’t how any other part of life works as far as I can tell and I don’t know why magic would be different. This is where the idea that magic is in the mind conflicts so heavily with these other models.

This is related to the other issue I have with how wide spread the psychological model is it’s aversion to proof and reproducibility which are highly valued in spirit and belief systems. I have not talked to any of people who’ve used sigils with the intent model successfully in a reproducible and externally verifiable way. I’m not saying they’re not out there, like maybe it’s possible.

But usually when I talk to folks about this, the conversation quickly devolves into validity. “But this is valid” people will say. The problem is each of these models have differing ideas of what valid is. A lot can be valid under the psychological model. But much less is valid in the other models. A wide scope of validity is great at making people feel better about themselves which makes sense for a model so focused on the self as the beginning and end of magic. But a narrow scope is much more effective for folks looking to reliably enact change in the physical world.

And this is such a difficult line to tread because so many people hear that and get defensive. This is where shadow work needs to come into play. People need to really be honest about what they’re doing and where they fall in these groups. What are you willing to sacrifice to get what you want? How do you know your spells are working? What role does your ego/narrating self play into your perception of what’s possible with magic?

Since I talk a lot about shadow work on this blog, let me leave you with this question in particular. Are you lowering your expectations of what’s possible in magic to support your narrative that you are doing magic? I’m not shaming anyone with this. I absolutely was at one point in my life. And that was even after having direct experiences with possession and remote viewing. I lowered my expectation because I wanted to feel like I was good enough. I was good enough as a person, but that didn’t make my magic effective. And I could hold both those truths at the same time. I really encourage folks to see what happens in their practice when they explore the same.

Know your model. Know the others. Focus on your craft and your aims.

That’s what I try to do anyways.

[lackofcoolcraft]

Witches On Tinder

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good things will happen 🧿

things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿

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Genitals have nothing to do with witchcraft you fucking creep.

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the thing folks living in Christian dominant cultures gotta realize is that even if you’re not Christian, your basic understanding of religion and spirituality and morality is still being filtered through a Christian lens. your very concept of what religion is and does is filtered through that lens.

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