#Wards

[broomsick]

My favorite simple wards to guard the home

Hanging rosemary above the doorstep, and/or above doors of the house for protection.

Sprinkling a line of dried red pepper on a windowsill, to counter a curse.

Placing a mix of dried & ground eggshells and black pepper in every corner of a room to keep out unwanted spirits.

Placing a decoration representing a witch in the kitchen, to keep away illness and to favor health.

Crafting an effigie (no matter how crude!) and make it into the guardian of your home by charging it with your intent of protection and placing it near the front door.

Crafting small witch ladders to hang around the house.

[inky-duchess]

Fantasy Guide to Wards and Fostering

I get a lot of asks about wards and recently it's been a FAQ. So here's a quick guide to warding.

What is Warding?

Warding was a tradition in which a noble or royal family would take in a child from another family to their home for the purpose of educating them and preparing them for adulthood or to protect their interests. Warding was seen as a big compliment to the family of the foster child, especially if the family that fosters their child is much higher ranking. However, warding could also be in response to the family's misbehavior and insubordination or in some cases their death. Warding isn't adoption. Warding does not entitle the child to inherit anything. They cannot inherit a place in the succession, they cannot inherit lands or money or titles.

The Ward

The ward was usually a child of a lower ranking family, between the ages of seven to maturity at 16 or so. Wards usually had parents in which case the foster family was charged with the child's physical and educational welfare. The ward could return to their parents at any time either at their insistence or with the blessing of their foster family. Wards were raised alongside the host family's children as well as other wards. They were fed, clothed and educated by their foster family as essentially treated as part of the family. However, wards that come from unfriendly or rebellious families were essentially used as chips for good behaviour. If their parents or kin act up, they could be killed. Wards could also be orphaned. In this case, their foster father would have control their lands and money which is why an overlord would seek to claim warship over a vassal heir to ensure peace. Wards could also be adopted by family. Royal children are not warded to other royal families due to their value and succession rights.

The Foster Family

The family were nearly always higher ranking and usually had another motive other than charity for taking in the ward. Sometimes the child could be used as collateral against an untrustworthy family or sometimes they were prospective spouses for the family's heirs. It was the responsibility of the foster family to discipline, educate and protect the ward. They would be charged with teaching the ward all the trappings of their position from warfare to statecraft to etiquette.

Wards to Royal families

In some cases, a ward might strike gold and be warded at court by the monarch. Wards would live at court but would be unlikely to be taught the skills by the monarch or Consort personally but would be provided with the best tutors. Wards could be brought in to be companions to the Royal children or in order to ensure their inheritances were not subjected to disputes if they were orphans or again, if their family were likely to commit trouble. Royal wards were always nobility but in some rare and extreme cases they could also be royal themselves, usually of displaced and exiled families or as prospective matches to royal children.

Wardship & Women

In some cases, an unmarried woman or a widow could be placed in the protection of an overlord or male relative in order to protective her interests. If a woman was the heir to a grand title or vast fortune and had no father or brother, the monarch or overlord would insist that a male relative or her overlord would take her in lest her claim put her in danger. Usually, it would be up to their host to arrange a match or aid her in brokering one herself.

[dagda-the-doodler]

Glory Girl!

(TW for Body Horror and Worm Spoilers)

...and what became of her.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey all, been a little bit!! I'm workin through the start of sophomore year, I hope you like this GG piece! I'm reading Ward right now, and I really wanted to get that horror and awfulness of what Amy did across. Have a good one!

[windvexer]

Lowering Wards: Steps for new and established spells

"Lowering" a ward means to temporarily pause some or all of its protective effects, usually to make way for other magical actions or divination; "lowering the draw-bridge." Here, a ward is any protective spell.

Although these steps will work for just about any spell. An alternate title for this post is, basic spell administration: managing your spells after they've been cast.

The whole caboodle is deceptively easy. No need to over think it.

Lowering any wards, even for spells not established with convenient lowering in mind

SELECT WHICH EFFECTS SHOULD BE PAUSED. Hypothetically, a ward with multiple effects can have some effects paused, while others are ongoing (*this is highly variable and really depends on how the spell was built).

But technically, if you have a ward that's A) no magic can come into my house, and B) no energies of ill-will can come into my house, you may be able to allow magic to come into your house while a friend sends a positive spell your way, while still filtering out ill-will.

In my experience, protection loopholes are a bit of a beast, and if your magic starts behaving weirdly, or won't work, or friends can't magic on you like they can for others, check out to see if you've sealed yourself in a labyrinth of protective measures.

Sometimes you'll want to pause all effects - that's fine too. Just have in mind what you want to have happen.

IMO, an excellent way to deal with this step is to just state what it is you want the ward to allow for.

"Let this Discord friend do a reading for me."

"Make way for this spirit to leave the house."

Etc.

TAKE ANY BASIC STEP TO MANAGE YOUR MAGIC.

Enter, or at least brush up against, magical mindspace.

Find the spell - this is easier if its attached to a physical object, which just means finding the object.

While in magical mindspace and interacting with the reality that your spell exists, do any of the following:

Just tell it what you'd like it to temporarily do

Put a black cloth over the spell vessel with intent that it be paused

Hide it away in a drawer, or turn it so that it's "facing" a corner

Draw some sort of stopping symbol on top of it (pentagram or an X work well)

Put the ward close to an energy battery and have it take a break and go out for lunch

Any action that, for you, makes sense to represent a "pause, time-out" instruction

WHEN READY, PUT THE WARD BACK UP. Take away the black cloth, put the ward back in its proper position, "wipe away" the blocking symbol. Especially communicate through magical speech, thought, writing, signing, etc., that the ward is to resume its normal mode of behavior.

For those curious about sorcerous theory, reading on a ward before and after you raise and lower it can offer helpful feedback

Of course, that stuff might not work well, so making a ward with an eye for pausing it is a good idea

Spellcrafting can get complex and there could be any number of reasons why a ward created to be a permanent wall doesn't have convenient, easily-workable drawbridges.

Building a ward with drawbridges is easy. First, decide how you want the drawbridge to work.

You can design a ward where one effect ("no ill-energy") is always active, while another is meant to be raised and lowered ("no outside magic.")

You can design a ward with a skeleton key, where all of the doorways are unlocked at once

You can design wards in such a way that outsiders may be able to obtain the key and unlock them (like, a passcode and energy signature you share with others), or you can design them in such a way that only you can unlock them (like, requiring you yourself to draw a symbol over them in the physical realm)

Etc.

One example of an unlocking action is tapping on the spell vessel three times and saying, "stand down until sunset* so [specific thing the ward is blocking] can occur."

*For the forgetful, giving the spell a timeframe is useful.

When casting the spell, whenever the time feels right, go into a portion where you 'teach' the spell how to listen for your instructions to lower defenses, and how it should operate when this occurs. ("Never stay unlocked beyond the next twilight; the guards named No Bane are eternal, but the guards named No Spying sometimes lie down to rest.")

You can always go back and "open up" old spells to modify loopholes and improve unlocking mechanisms

My paradigm allows for certain things:

Most spells are not so much mindless machines but rather are more like garden plots, or animals. They may be bad at performing a certain thing the first time you ask them to, but over multiple lessons, even a very stubborn spell might learn a new trick.

Therefore, it can take time to teach a spell how to do something new that it wasn't designed to do.

Learning can be improved by holding a formal class. This is the equivalent of taking the spell back into spellcasting space and partially re-casting new magic on top of the old base.

The gist of re-forging an old spell is to carefully outline what you want to change, remove, and add. Using your preferred spellcasting or ritual format, connect with the spell and provide new parameters.

I find this process to be different than casting an entirely new spell, so I think it's normal if it all seems a bit different.

Provide the spell with more energy, tie off the ritual as normal, and deploy the spell immediately or give it a little time to firm up, as you prefer.

[spiralhouseshop]

More stuff back in stock!

Sigil Magic: Fir Writer, Artists, and other Creatives by T. Thorne Coyle

A Witch's Guide to Spellcraft by Althea Sebastiani

Folk Witchcraft: A guide to Lore, Land, and The Familiar Spirit for the Solitary Practitioner by Roger J Horne

Memento Mori: A Collection of Magickal and Mythological Perspectives on Death, Dying, Mortality & Beyond

Sigil Magic: Fir Writer, Artists, and other Creatives by T. Thorne Coyle

A Witch's Guide to Spellcraft by Althea Sebastiani

Folk Witchcraft: A guide to Lore, Land, and The Familiar Spirit for the Solitary Practitioner by Roger J Horne

Memento Mori: A Collection of Magickal and Mythological Perspectives on Death, Dying, Mortality & Beyond

Magical House Protection: The Archeology of Counter-Witchcraft by Brian Hoggard

Weird Walk Zines and the new Weird Walk books!

By Rust of Nail and Prick of Thorn-The Theory and Practice of Effective Home Warding by Althea Sebastiani

Curses, Hexes, & Crossings: A Magician's Guide to Execration Magic by S Connolly

Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape by Jeremy Harte

Magic: A History Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present by Chris Gosden

Pagan Book of the Dead by Claude: Ancestral Visions of the Afterlife and Other Worlds by Claude Lacouteux

[bodegadulac]

I know why wildbow did the timeskip and i know it's the most widely disliked part of Worm. But i think the amount of untapped fanfic potential there is huge.

-Taylor having to do things with the chicago wards while keeping a distance

-The dynamic between the protectorate and the irregulars

-What happened to the undersiders back in brockton bay

-Aisha killing heartbreaker

-Anything to do with the dragonslayers

Fr i have a pitch for a choose your own story / visual novel about L33t dying repeatedly in Brazil.

(Also a pitch for a christmas special featuring Taylor, Theo and Cuff)

[lailoken]

A specialized house ward, meant to prevent spiritual eavesdropping within the warded structure. It utilizes a wild-gathered Walnut shell, which was stained with a pigment made from Indigo and Azurite, sealed using an empowered wood varnish made from precious tree resins, and studded with a Black Tourmaline crystal.

[charseraph]

“Individual” being loosened in regards to wards, who exist as a clotted continuum of intelligences sharing few bodies.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Hi, I’m drafting up a story about Arra and Cregan and I’ve been going in circles a bit on the logistics of how Cregan Stark and Arra Norrey could be considered childhood friends. As far as I know, this doesn’t seem plausible due to proximity, as House Norrey resides in the high mountains north of the Wolfswood rather than near Winterfell.

I thought that Rickon Stark might have sent Cregan to foster with House Norrey, but I find it unlikely he’d send his only heir to foster before the age of thirteen. Additionally, I imagine Cregan would have remained in Winterfell after succeeding his father upon his death. Given these factors, I can’t think of any other explanation for their friendship. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts!

Hey, so there's a really good possible answer for why Arra Norrey (of the northern mountain clans) and Cregan Stark became childhood friends! It seems you've overlooked the factor of the winter town. That's the town just outside Winterfell, which is normally 4/5th empty, but during autumn and winter gains a population of up to 15,000 people, becoming the second-largest settlement in the North (surpassing Barrowton, but after White Harbor). And as Jon notes about the mountain clans,

"It has always been a harsh life up there. When the snows fall and food grows scarce, their young must travel to the winter town or take service at one castle or the other." —ADWD, Jon X

This is further clarified in TWOIAF:

The most prominent towns in the North are the "winter town" beneath the walls of Winterfell and Barrowton in the Barrowlands. The former is largely empty in spring and summer but filled to bursting in autumn and winter with those seeking the protection and patronage of Winterfell to help them survive the lean times. Not only do townsmen arrive from the outlying villages and crofts, but many a son and daughter of the mountain clans have been known to make their way to the winter town when the snows begin to fall in earnest.

Note especially that "many a son and daughter of the mountain clans" come to the winter town for Winterfell's patronage, which may not only explain how Cregan and Arra met and became friends, but also the meeting of Rodrik Stark (the Wandering Wolf) and his wife Arya Flint, a century later. Also, though the northern mountain clans are a bit more... shall we say, rustic than the Northern nobles outside of the mountains, the clan chieftains are still treated as lords by House Stark. So if Arra was a daughter of The Norrey, sent south to the winter town when the snows threatened her clan, it's likely that she would be personally greeted by Lord Rickon and his heir Cregan. Perhaps the Starks even took her in as a ward (since F&B calls her Cregan's "companion"). And things would follow from there.

But does the timeline support this theory? It's not laid out directly, but yes, it does! We know that 120 AC was called "the Year of the Red Spring", for all the tragic deaths that happened that year (to House Strong and House Velaryon). Spring is preceded by winter (naturally), so an unknown few years prior to 120, when Cregan was less than 12 years old, would have been the autumn and winter years when Arra came to the winter town. And quite possibly there may have been another winter even earlier in Cregan's youth where they could have encountered, though most likely they would have been extremely young at the time.

And there's other possible ways they could have met! While you note it's unlikely that Cregan was sent to foster in the mountains by his father, the opposite is not an issue. (Note also that fostering typically occurs well before age 13— Ned, for example, became Jon Arryn's ward at age 8, and the Targaryen princess of the Pact of Ice and Fire was supposed to go north at age 7.) It could be that even before the autumn and winter years, Arra was sent south by her father to be Lord Rickon's ward. (Why? Fosterings are sometimes made to repay a debt, you can make something up, something with a wildling invasion maybe.) Or maybe Arra was born in the winter town, her mother sent south in an especially harsh winter, and the baby taken in by the Starks because she was frail and needed a maester's care — again, it's fanfic, until GRRM says otherwise you're free to arrange matters in any way you like so that Arra can become Cregan's "beloved childhood companion".

Also, please note that Cregan did not succeed his father after his death in 121 AC, as he was only 13 years old. His uncle Bennard ruled as regent for the next 5 years, refusing to give up the post when Cregan turned 16 and became a legal adult. It was only some time in 126 AC that the 18-year-old Cregan imprisoned his uncle and cousins and took control of the rule of the North (and married Arra shortly afterwards). So, it's not impossible that the conniving Bennard might've sent Cregan away during his minority, to rule without his nephew's interference. You could have Arra as Lord Rickon's ward for many years, then upon his death she returns home, only to be followed by Cregan who becomes her father's ward for 3 years, until his 16th birthday when he returns home to take his seat (and is frustratingly blocked from doing so).

The possibilities are endless... well, maybe not endless, but you're more free to be creative with the worldbuilding and history than you may think. I wish you all the best with your fic!

[pointewitch]

ladder-style home ward!

I don't get alot of time for my practise recently, but this quite heavy-duty, 'bones-and-all' ward has made me feel very productive

[thewitchesfortune]

How to cleanse your house for manifestation, and "clear your door ways" of negative shit

Clean your front door. I am not joking, clean the fucking door. Especially if you have VISIBLE grime on it, clean it physically. Take your multi-surface cleaner, spray it to fuck, then wipe it down with paper towels until everything is gone. And then, take a prepared wash (spiritual wash of whatever sort you feel necessary, could even be a multi-action bath for cleansing and protection as well as prosperity if you do it right) and re-wash the door with this mix. If you don't have visible grime on your door, you can skip the multi-surface cleaner and go straight to the spiritual wash

Once a month at least, especially for warding work or for road opening work (would not try to make it for both, if you do road opening have a separate ward set up at the door)

Easy Warding recipe

-baking soda

-bay leaves

-peppermint

-basil

-ashes of psalm 23 (or another if you have a preference, or a petition written for the protection of the home)

Wash the door, then throw the remaining liquid at the door and let it air dry

Easy Prosperity recipe

-cinnamon

-clove

-nutmeg

-ginger

-bay leaf

-holy water (optional, but adds an extra kick)

-coins (will be strained out and given as offerings at a crossroads after the wash is made)

-petition for prosperity and abundance burned (also psalm 23, and Mathew: 7:7-8)

Wash the door while petitioning for prosperity, for money to always be flowing in, and for blessings in general to always be flowing in. After entire door is washed, throw remaining liquid on door and allow to air dry. Take the coins and go to the nearest crossroads and drop them on the corner (if you live in an apartment complex, the entrance to the complex is the best place. Not the nearest gate, the ENTRANCE. My nearest gate is exit only, and you want abundance flowing IN)

Anyway, hmu if you want a reading, or if you'd like a specific work done! Info is in the pinned post on my page, lmk if you're interested!

[inkandpaperqwerty]

They managed to get Castiel to eat, and it's good that he's not dead, but as he recovers and grows stronger, he's going to get harder for them to control. If they don't want him to escape the bunker and start slaughtering humans by the dozen, they have to take steps to keep him contained.

AO3 // fanfiction.net // wattpad

[dagda-the-doodler]

Surprise! It's Weaver!!

Designing her was really fun! I hope you enjoy my last entry into the trading cards series! I'm gonna take a small break, but don't worry, I have lots of fun art planned >:)

[firefight-art]

Clockblocker

[popculture-hag-shit]

The Shield

A spell to protect that which is precious

What you'll need:

The Shield (or something to represent it)

The Earthy (same as above)

What you wish to protect

Marker

Something to charge your item with

Something to use as your "key"

Draw the shield on your item in an inconspicuous place

On the feathers write what the item is you're protecting and what/who you're protecting it from

Charge your item alongside The Earthy and The Shield

With your key pressed to the drawing of The Shield, recite "Oh card of the Clow Reed, lend me the power of the key to transfer the powers of the card to the key! Shield!"

Periodically recharge the ward, reciting the incantation