#PSA: Don’t work out in your binder. I just like the aesthetic

[nyan-ryder]

@pumpkin-mayoowo Got me into Gravedale High, and now I’m putting my grubby little gay paws aaallllll over it

[hiswitchcraft]

My Basic Witch Tips & Advice

I shouldn’t even have to be saying some of these but here we go. I’m gonna try to keep this lighthearted & funny. Do what you will with the advice. It is completely based on my experiences & opinions. 

Do not believe everything someone tells you. I don’t care if they claim to be a high Wiccan priestess with 50 years of experience. I don’t care if they’re a friend. I don’t care who recommended the book. Some things aren’t true. You can’t agree with everyone. Form your own ideas. Take what you read with a grain of salt. 

Think critically & cross reference.  I find when researching that asking myself questions & having multiple sources is the simplest way to do this. Does what you’re reading make sense to you? Is it backed up by mundane facts, logic or even a personal experience of yours? Where did you find this information? How do other things the author of this information has said hold up? Have you seen this said in other places? Does it align with what you know for sure to be true? If something is based in science, history, logic or other things you know to be true & you’ve seen it said multiple times by various people it has a much better chance of being true.  

Take notes, don’t make a grimoire when you’re new. Everyone always encourages newbies to start their grimoire soon but I think the way people approach it is wrong. You don’t need set information about certain things like how magic works or correspondences. Those things will come with time and you need to be exposed to a lot of information and opinions before you’ll get to things you’d want to put in a grimoire. Instead, just take notes. It doesn’t need to be intimidating. Just take note of the information you find, its topic, the date and perhaps where you got it. 

If tumblr is your only source, you’re doing it wrong. This goes along with that first one as well. That might be a hard pill to swallow for some of you, but it’s true. The more time I spend learning about witchcraft the more true it seems to be. This goes for me too & what I say. I’ve been wrong before. I don’t agree with all the advice I’ve given out or the opinions I’ve had in the past. No one is the ultimate authority.  

You can find a lot of solid witchy information in books that aren’t marketed as witchy. On the topic of information and resources, this is an important one. Wanna know about herbs? Look at books about local flora and fauna, botany, cooking, ect. Interested in crystals? Try geology books. That Pagan deity & or spirit probably has a lot of history and mythology surrounding it that could be very useful to know. Seemingly mundane information often leads to having a solid understanding of something, and can often lead to finding its correspondences as well. That’s invaluable. 

You do not have to be a certain race, sexuality, gender, religion, ect. Just don’t appropriate!  This goes with the last one. If someone tells you that you need to be a woman to practice the craft, or that you have to be Wiccan, they’re full of shit. BUT it is very common in the “metaphysical” witchy, or Pagan communities to find people appropriating things from other cultures. THAT is not okay. If someone from a certain culture tells you that you are appropriating said culture, cut that out & really listen to them. 

Witchcraft is for you. Your path is for you. You need to know yourself and what you like. Please remember your path is for you. I get a lot of people asking me if _____ (Fill in that blank with anything honestly) is okay for them to do. Probably because someone insinuated it wasn’t. Be safe. Don’t appropriate. You can do what you like, in fact one of the most valuable skills I have found for a witch to have is being able to look inward and see what you think, what you like, and what your intuition is telling you. 

You don’t have to buy that thing. Your practice doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy. Be resourceful. You might see witches online with fancy leather grimoires and cabinets full of expensive exotic herbs or giant crystal geodes. That’s for aesthetic. You don’t need that shit. My grimoire is in a black binder I got at target. I only have a short list of ingredients I use. Researching how to make do, experimenting and getting creative & or resourceful will get you a long damn way in the world of witchery. 

Witchcraft is not a toy. Yes you need to learn to protect yourself. People whine a lot about my insistence on learning about things like shielding and warding. I get it. It’s not as cool as tarot or crystals. But sometimes to eat you’ve gotta do the dishes first. Protection is important, learn it. 

Essential oils need to be diluted!! Be careful with them!  Do not place them directly on skin or ingest them either. Karen doesn’t know what she’s talking about. 

Don’t put random stuff in your body. Research ingredients.  Essential oils got their own section because that problem is just way too common.  But don’t put random stuff in your body! Herbs commonly used in witchcraft can poison or kill you, be harmful to babies, pets, ect. Lots of crystals dissolve in water and can be ruined or worse, become toxic. Moon water that’s been left out at room temperature can grow bacteria so if you wanna ingest it, refrigerate it. As with many things in witchcraft this can be solved with research & lots of it. 

Witchcraft isn’t medicine. If someone tells you that symptoms of your physical or mental illness have a “metaphysical” explanation and are a result of a demon or your chakras being unaligned, bite them and draw blood. If they say only they can fix it and you have to pay them, stab them. This has been a PSA. 

On that note, ask your doctor about things!  Herbs & teas & all sorts of things can mess with medication. Ask a medical professional about such things before using them. Some herbs & or teas can mess with the effects of things like birth control, anti depressants, & other things very important medications. 

[phyrexian-without-a-cause]

BGS Case Grading, Part 2: Why Grade?

This is Part Two of my BGS Grading Series! If you haven’t yet read Part One yet, feel free to check out the link here!

Now, an obvious question comes to mind when doting on graded cards. What’s the point of getting a card graded? What is it that makes it such a premium? And why do people pick BGS? There are several factors that play into this:

“Investment Quality”:

The big selling point in getting graded, when you grade a card, its value typically increases in value, although it still depends on the card, and the final grade it receives. However, in most case regardless, you can rest assured that the value of said encased card will still increase by a small margin, even more so if graded at a high level.

Take this Mirror Universe for example. Where in ordinary cases a Universe usually retails for $100, in a graded case, and in Gem Mint quality no less, a BGS 9.5 Mirror Universe was known to have sold for $250 only in December 2016, a shockingly huge multiplier, yet in the graded world, not unsurprising.

 I’ll explain more about what makes a Mint card, and what makes a Gem Mint, and further beyond that in the next article.

Authenticity:

When BGS grades a card, they also authenticate your card in the process as well! That way, you get to know whether that cheap Mox Emerald you picked up for $100 is real is not.

Durability:

A couple people might ask, “can’t I just put my high end cards in toploaders and call it a day? They’re protected!” Here’s an important thing, once you grade that card of yours, its sleeved, encased and preserved in possibly one of the most durable card cases in all the land. Seriously, if you ever want to pry that card back out of a case, I hope you bring a small pick, and have a great deal of patience, cause you’re going to be here for a while! That hard work there by another grader? That can take upward of 1 hour, chipping away desperately to get back that Masterpiece you graded. There are always people who want to play with their graded cards again. To those people, I say "get PSA then", as their cases are much weaker, but easier to crack open.

Once a card is in that BGS case, it’s pretty much invulnerable to being tinkered with. No random marker scribbles on your cards from friends just messing around, no “uh oh, I just spilled my glass on the table and there goes my foil Karn!” Instead, your card is now safe, secure, and most likely not going to ever get damaged ever again.

Presentation:

It’s not just about money cards either, lots of people just get cards graded for that sweet casing, and having an awesome showcase piece. I myself like to grade foils from various sets just for the appeal of slamming down a pretty foil Commander in a hard case with a shiny silver label at the top, just to see the look on my opponents face. It’s also nice to frame as a set on the wall. 😊

Don’t believe me? Here are two foil Jace the Mindsculptors. Both look pretty much the same, but look at that case! That shiny silver label! The certainty that you’ll never accidently make your Jace SP by dropping it! It’s all about aesthetic in the end, but just like triple sleeving a deck or getting the nicest binder there is, these cases certainly do appeal to a lot of people.

 Reputation:

Just like PSA, BGS is well reputed with a long history of excellent service and performance. When you send a card to BGS, you should feel assured that your card is in safe hands!

Not only that, but with BGS, you also get a unique set of subgrades for every card you get.

What do these subgrades mean? How can you attain higher levels? How do these relate to regular card conditions?? Tune in tomorrow, as I follow up with the answers to those burning questions!

If you have any additional questions, or feel like I missed something, feel free to let me know!