#and one of the reasons they have so many rituals is because it's Very Necessary to handle the dark side carefully?

[lonepower]

man that was a lot of honestly really cool setup for........... absolutely not even remotely enough payoff

[dharmafox]

Some thoughts on the two Medicine Sellers and Karakasa's themes

Based on what we know so far, the big theme of Karakasa seems to be the destruction of individuality for the sake of integrating with a group. This is what Nakamura-san said the movie would be about from the start, and we're seeing that play out already in the many trailers that have been released. The women of the Ōoku are initiated from their first day there in the water ritual, which requires them to sacrifice things they value to O-Mizu-sama. Thereafter, they're trained to serve the Ōoku, even to the point of denying their true feelings.

That this ultimately requires the sacrifice of their individuality we can see pretty clearly in the maids who are already "integrated"—they appear again and again with featureless faces, marked only by a spiral shape that's reminiscent of swirling water.

Freaky.

This loss of individuality isn't just treated as a virtue; it's treated as necessary and sacred.

This is a lot like the Buddhist concept of "no self." It's often taught that to attain enlightenment is to attain no-self, or the "true self" beyond the individual. In Taoist terms, this means reaching the origin of birth and death. The latest lore document discusses these concepts a bit.

This idea that "no self" is equivalent to enlightenment can lead Buddhist disciples to the idea that the ultimate goal of practice is to let go of all ego forever. Again from a Taoist perspective, that effectively means returning to the origin and staying there.

Like integration into the Ōoku, this is a kind of conglomeration. To die to the self and return to the origin is to lose individuality in an indescribable "void" that's considered to be the true nature of all things. But this void is also the origin of birth and death, and one isn't meant to remain there. Staying in the origin is death without birth; it's clinging to an unnatural separation of "oneness" and the individual. Obviously, this separation isn't really "oneness." Hence other Buddhist teachings that say clinging to the idea of no-self is the same as clinging to a self.

From this perspective, the O-Mizu worshipping practices of the Ōoku are in no way sacred. They're leading the women to spiritual death, which in the end may become physical death, or at the very least leave them hollow shells. Without a sense of self, there's no life.

Then there are the Medicine Sellers. They embody a higher state of awareness, or a state closer to enlightenment than that of the humans. From the perspective of true oneness, they may embody true enlightenment, the meeting of the divine and the individual. This isn't just because each of them is a fusion of god and human wherein they and the god retain their own personalities, but also because each of the Medicine Sellers is an individual themselves.

Grumpy and Happy.

While the humans try to achieve an ideal state by "virtuously" sacrificing their egos, the Medicine Sellers are already in some higher state without making any such sacrifice.

Their stories illustrate the value of their individuality in the service of humans. The first and second Medicine Sellers are opposites because they have opposite goals. Each group of humans they guide has gone to an extreme state of "separateness." The first Medicine Seller's humans show the reason for the "no self" teaching: They cling to identities that have become toxic, effectively prisoners of their own minds. This is a long-established behavior for us. We define ourselves based on what we're taught is right or safe, and then we stick to those self-definitions even when they hurt us.

So the first Medicine Seller is detached from humans. He doesn't get drawn into their identities. He's not driven to protect them; he's driven to destroy them. His, as Nakamura-san puts it, lack of interest in people even to the point of apparent cold-bloodedness doesn't mean he doesn't care about them. It means he knows that returning them to the "origin" is the only way to save them.

But the second Medicine Seller is dealing with an opposite, and arguably a more modern, problem. The humans in Karakasa are exclusively seeking "no self." The Ōoku's women have abandoned their individuality and demand that Asa and Kame do the same, ceasing to value themselves and each other.

These bitches gay.

So the second Medicine Seller is more "interested in people" and protective of them. His goal is to sustain individuality and help people stay in the world. It's not the identities he's dealing with that are toxic; it's the glorified conglomeration that threatens to swallow them up.

Obviously I haven't seen Karakasa, and I'm extrapolating all of this based on what we know. But from the perspective of what we do know, this makes sense. Karakasa is about individuality, and it's here that Nakamura-san decided to reveal to us that not only are there multiple Medicine Sellers, but they can have personalities so different as to be, at least in some ways, opposites. And he told us what they are: the I Ching's 64 hexagrams, elements vital to the functioning of the world. Their individuality is vital to the functioning of the world.

And if beings more "conscious" than us need their individuality to keep the world turning, then so do we. Throwing it away doesn't lead us to enlightenment. On the contrary, it moves us farther from the sacred.

[thinkblotted]

Glossary of Terms

From the notes of a hunter, uncredited.

-

Vampire: A being that feeds on life, nominally through the medium of drinking human and sometimes animal blood. 

Sire: The vampire who creates another vampire by feeding a human their blood and the fledgling completing the ritual of killing and exsanguinating a human. 

Fledgling: The midway point in the turning between a human and a vampire - A fledgling is created when a human drinks vampire blood and dies, but has not yet killed a human to complete the transformation in full.

Childe (plural - childer): The vampire who is the product of another vampire transforming them. 

Pack: A group of vampires where individuals may be related through sire-siblinghood, but not always. 'Packs' or 'packborn', was originally (and still is to some) a derogatory term typically used for North American vampires from bloodlines originating in Europe who followed the colonization of the Americas.

Broodhead: Sometimes a term given to a vampire at the center of a pack, or if a pack is mostly populated by one particular sire's childer. 

Rainbow teeth/tooth: After approximately 200 to 300 years, a vampire’s bones will undergo opalization, showing in the exposed dentine of the teeth, most visible in the fangs. Flecks can also be seen in the blood, giving it an opalescent or ‘glittery’ quality under light. Vampires who have reached this age are so called ‘rainbow teeth’ (plural) or a ‘rainbow tooth’, (singular) as a mark of their age and prowess.  Dullblood: In reference to newly made or young vampires - opposite to the glittering blood and opalized bones of rainbow teeth, dullbloods have very humanlike 'dull' blood, showing their youth and inexperience in the world of the night.

Stillborn: A vampire that has been turned wrong, often not considered a real vampire or even fledgling, and more likened to a wasting disease caused by the failed turning. A stillborn is created when a human imbibes large amounts of vampire blood, but kills and consumes a human while still human themselves. The magic in the act of killing with intent/exsanguinating a human without the fledgling vampiric nature being in place overcompensates for the life still in the human’s body, thus quickly (over a series of months to a year or two if they’re lucky) killing the stillborn. Signs of a stillborn pack can include excessive, compulsive aggression, overhunting, overfeeding, addiction to vampire blood and excessive blood doping, and in the later stages, bodily deterioration such as vomiting blood and viscera, tooth loss, hair loss, unhealing sores, unhealing wounds, sudden phobia of light and water of any kind, mental disorientation, loss of memory, and loss of bodily coordination. 

Stillborn vampires are named so in part because the process to turn them went wrong, creating a ‘non-viable’ being likened to that of a fetus that cannot survive outside the womb, and because the name itself is a pun. ‘Still born’, as in still living. They never died, and thus never took the most crucial step to becoming a real vampire. 

Stillborns are seen as a symptom of a much larger problem in vampiric society, namely, a sire who is either unaware of the correct process of creating another vampire (which indicates the sire themselves was abandoned by their own creator and thus not given the necessary education) OR, the sire is deliberately creating stillborns for their own reasons. In both situations, the sire in question must be confronted and stopped. Very often with stillborns, the reigning philosophy is ‘where there is one, there is many’, as one Stillborn can create more stillborns, like an illness spreading, threatening the stability of whole territories.

[mclennonlgbt]

Combination of McLennon and Paul is dead

This is a post that I found on "Paul Is Dead: Examining The Life And Death of James Paul McCartney" FB group.

When this person writes "ShepLennon", they mean Billy Sheard (aka Faul) x Lennon.

They are confused but they've got a spirit lmao.

"*Bear with me a long post:

“McLennon” was not real. But SHEPLennon may well have been, and that solves a mystery…

Among Beatle fans there are some who believe that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were lovers from an early age. That they were soulmates, no one disputes, but there are many who disagree about John and Paul being the couple known as “McLennon”. Paul was extremely promiscuous with women, and seemed to put up with the fact that John seemed to be in love with him, or at least would get jealous. George Harrison famously told of a night in Hamburg where Paul was shagging some bird and John walked in, had a fit and cut up the girl’s clothes with scissors.

There are some pics of John and Paul gazing at each other with affection – as you’d expect from closely bound young men going through something unprecedented together. You can also find photos of J&P also looking with similar fondness at George and Ringo (they would practically sit on top of each other), all through 1963 and 1964, and part-ways through 1965.*** (More on this another time.)

Within the “McLennon” fandom, there is this great ‘mystery’. They all wonder why the breakup and the acrimony, etc, which makes no sense to them.

The thing is, the break up of the Beatles, the ugliness of it and the lingering distrust and resentment CAN’T make sense unless you understand that in September of 1966, Paul was assassinated and by November replaced by William Shepherd.

And that (because the Beatles initially believed that Paul had died in an accident, therefore having no reason to resent him, personally) the deeply grieving band initially had no personal issues re Billy, beyond wishing he’d not been ‘necessary’ (or ordered). It’s true that George, Paul’s OLDEST friend, never took to Billy, but John and Ringo go on fine with him.

Were Paul and John lovers? The man who sometimes comes into these forums and calls himself Liam Steen (who, like Billy and all of the MPL plants tells some truth mixed in with misinformation) said “No”. He emphatically and repeatedly said Paul McCartney was straight, and that he never did drop acid. Steen also said (emphatically) that JOHN and BILLY WERE attracted to each other, at least, and may have been lovers.

Photographs, videos, and gifs of John and Billy throughout 1967 and up through the recording of “Hey Bulldog” seem to bear this out. Lots of pictures of John and Billy walking through London with Martha the dog (likely Billy’s ‘familiar’) or driving together, and what seems to be some clear flirtatious ‘like lovers’ gazing, and touching.

Yoko told a story of Billy being called “John’s princess” by the staff at EMI, and also of hearing John calling out “for Paul” in a very needy, vulnerable way. Which sounds like she heard them having sex, but I digress.

All of that ENDS after the trip to India, where some sort of ritual was performed, connected to Paul (and using an artifact of Paul’s) that left the other three, most particularly John, completely traumatized, and for the rest of their lives.

The break was the beginning of Billy’s eventual ‘breakdown’ as the band no longer wanted to work with him (probably why he became so overcontrolling during the White Album) and John’s almost immediate attachment to Yoko. Both Linda and Yoko were alums of Sarah Lawrence College (a known ‘spook’-feeding school) and the men eventually married them within a week of each other… like lovers trying to piss each other off, or show that they were moving on. But John and Billy never did move on.

First they fought, and some of the legal wrangling that extended all of that had to do specifically with Billy being determined to continue using Paul’s name and identity (but that’s another story and “How do you sleep” was about exactly that).

But Billy and John were obsessed with each other and never stopped writing and talking about each other. There is a tape of John Lennon, at the piano, writing “Real Life” singing: “hold you in my arms/and now you’ve a baby, and another on the way…”

https://itspaulthewalrus.tumblr.com/post/651703402830708736/serenade-meow-amclennonblog-john-cries-while

And of course, now Billy won’t shut up about how much he loved John. When asked if John could return how he would spend the day with him, Billy answers, “IN BED.”

https://bewaremylove.tumblr.com/post/87659554397/q-if-john-lennon-could-come-back-for-a-day-how

The big “McLennon” mystery is not unsolvable if you begin from the premise that Paul McCartney was dead and John (for whatever reason) transferred his love to someone who was (at best) a facsimile of Paul, who made it feel like his Macca was still around, and who would both drop acid with him and be a lover.

And the break up after India makes perfect sense then, too. The McLennon people want to believe that the break up came because John wanted to be ‘out’ with “Paul” and Billy wouldn’t do it, wanted a family. And maybe that did happen. But Billy, by his own admission, is a witch and a magickian**** who tried to do something with Paul’s spirit while in India, through ritual that may well have included a blood element (ask me about Oblahdi, Obladah, sometime…) and that left John nearly psychotic".

[furiarossa]

Do ghosts have any holidays?

The festivities of the Ghost Zone are countless and of various nature. Some of them are exclusively local, each area having its own culture (which sometimes is a mirror of a corresponding human ethno-geographical area, with which a continuous exchange of information occurs, thanks to magical nodes and possible artificial portals), but there are some events that tend to be celebrated more extensively.

Due to the nature of the ghosts, it can happen that the festivities of the Ghost Zone make no sense to those who live on the material plane, appearing violent or in general of questionable taste.

+ Most important dates +

November 1-2: placed immediately after Halloween (which is the first day in which the "veil" that separates the spirits from the Material World becomes momentarily more permeable) the "feast of the dead" is one of the most important moments of the Ghost Zone culture. Halloween is a holiday for the nobles (the overlords or feudal lords, together with the major spirits), but the people mainly celebrate the night between the first and the second day of November: the reason why Halloween is not chosen as an official holiday is because the "first day belongs to the first", that is, the strongest spirits, those who usually have specific reasons to visit the material plane, have the right of passage. Some spirits bring small gifts to children, others join in the celebrations of humans, consuming food together with them (even if not all lemures are able to digest them, they are however able to taste them), others still indulge in wild dances. The celebrations take place simultaneously in the Ghost Zone and in the Material World, where festivals are organized in which the sky is "opened" like a screen, to observe the Moon and the stars as humans see them, an observation accompanied by music and banquets (often organized by a feudal lord).

Fifteenth day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar: The Chinese celebrate the so-called “Hungry Ghosts Festival” (which in Chinese is known by different names: zhōngyuánjié中元节, guǐjié鬼节 or yúlánpénjié盂兰盆节 for the Buddhist translation) , while the ghosts celebrate the “Generous Chinese People” festival. Popular Chinese belief says that on this night the spirits of ancestors return to Earth to visit them, and that being hungry after a long journey, it is necessary to feed them; furthermore, the ritual burning of papier-mâché objects that reproduce material goods of common use takes place, in the hope that they can be used in the afterlife by loved ones. The spirits of the Ghost Zone do not consume the food that is offered to the deceased, but, unexpectedly, the heat from the combustion of papier-mâché objects, as well as sometimes sakè. Also, this is a time considered "supernatural" for the spirits: many of them swear that they have actually seen the ancestors of humans, which is why there is a stigma around tasting the food left as an offering, because it might belong to someone else. Have you ever seen a ghost who is afraid of ghosts? During the Festival of the Generous Chinese People, it might happen!

Birthday of the Ghost Monarch: date determined, of course, by the birthday of the person wearing the Ghost Crown at that time. The spirits are forced, often against their will, to celebrate another year of their ruler's life, participating in parades in which the banners of the monarch's "house" are waved, chants, ritual battles and heart-rending screams (which, although strange for people of flesh, are almost always very welcome to ghosts in positions of power).

August 31st: the Baby Ghost Festival is celebrated, a time when all the inhabitants of a phantomhive hunt down paralarvae, newborn or slightly larger spirits, with the aim of predicting the future from the first larva that is captured. The first adult spirit that captures a paralarva is rewarded and crowned "seer" for a day, then the characteristics of the paralarva will be analyzed (through criteria such as color, size, mobility and type of core) to determine what will happen. Sometimes the parents of the paralarva in question are annoyed by the fact that their baby has been scared, and this can lead to uncontrolled fights between the "seer" and the parents of the baby, often accompanied by the howls of the fans, who think they can get further details about the future from the outcome of the fight.

Independence Day: of extremely variable date, it represents the first day of a period of sleep of the Phantom Monarch, since sometimes these entities can sleep (not always naturally, but often induced) for very long periods of time. Independence Day is one of the most important among the various international celebrations and is celebrated with public speeches, songs and fireworks.

Of course there are many other small festival and holidays, but they're limited to phantomhives and there are too many to talk about in a single post!

All the ghost worldbuilding posts!

The “Ask us about ghost worldbuilding” post

Our ask is open

[ancientcraftnoccultism]

Beginner Class - Casting A Circle

Ancient Craft & Occultism

___

By KB

Introduction

Welcome back to class everyone! ♡ As you may have noticed, we're moving out of getting familiar with our own energy and beginning to establish our own path in the craft! It's important to note that everyone's path will be different, which is one of the main reasons for so many various forms of the same essential practices. Today we will be discussing casting circles in ceremonial work. Casting circles IS NOT ESSENTIAL when it comes to ceremonial work, although specific paths do adhere to this tradition. It's also very beneficial when starting your path to find what does & doesn't work for you! Let's get into it.

What Is A Circle?

Essentially, a circle is an energetic barrier that is used as protection, concentration, and raising energy. The magic circle represents fullness, perfection, and unity as well as the cosmos' creation, the womb of mother Earth, the seasonal cycle, and birth-death-regeneration. It becomes possible to transcend the physical and to awaken the mind to greater and deeper levels of consciousness inside the circle.

Since ancient times, when they were drawn around the beds of sick people and new mothers to shield them from demons, circles have had a magical, protective connotation. The ruins of stone circles in Britain are evidence of the significance of circles in early paganic rituals. Modern Paganism and Witchcraft use sacred circles that are derived from Western ceremonial magic. Despite these significant variances, there are some parallels.

In ceremonial magic, the circle stands in for a sacred location where the magician summons and controls deadly and elusive spirits and entities. The circle must be carefully cast in order to protect against them. In order to avoid having a summoned entity seize him and strike him down or experience something terrible, the practitioner must never leave the circle while performing a ritual, not even accidentally swinging his arm outside of it. Detailed directions for casting the circle with consecrated ritual materials during specific astrological conditions and hours of the day or night are provided in grimoires and other magical texts. A floor that has been well cleaned is used to form the circle, and salt might be used to emphasize the border.

In modern Paganism and Witchcraft, circles are formed based on the amount of space available, the number of participants, and the goal. They can be measured out with a string or traced on the ground, or they can simply be established by traversing the circumference. Outside, circles might not be perfectly round. A circle is cast after expelling bad energy. The high priestess in Wicca may symbolically sweep it away with a broom. Participants' consciousness is prepared through esoteric techniques like breathing exercises, drumming, visualization, and meditation. The circle area contains the altar and the necessary ritual supplies. Pagans and witches working alone could just have a few tools. The four quarters, or cardinal points, are marked with candles, stones, or other things placed on the ground. These circles can be cast for protection, for example, to ward off psychic attack or protect a home against intruders. magic circles do not last indefinitely; protective ones must be periodically recharged through ritual.

Why Cast A Circle?

Ritual magic can be hindered by a variety of things, including distractions from the real world, other people's opposing wills, and chaotic entities who feed off the practitioner's efforts, to mention a few. Casting a circle might help you block out outside distractions and maintain your attention on the task at hand. Many practitioners cast the circle with psychic protection in mind because a magical trance can be a psychically vulnerable state.

The inner barrier of the circle is just as significant as the outer one. Like all energy that we are aware of, magical energy has a propensity to ricochet and disperse throughout the cosmos. Its natural habit is motion. The basic idea behind ritual is to temporarily focus part of that energy for a specific reason. You may gather more energy and hold onto it longer in a circle. A well-constructed circle provides spirits or deities with a comfortable landing area for the length of the ritual if your activity entails calling forth spirits or deities.

All of this can be summed up by noting that a magic circle serves two main functions: to keep outside disruptions out and to keep ritual energy inside. Without a doubt, this is greatly oversimplified. So let's suppose the circle is a tool to help your magick be more powerful.

How Do I Cast One?

Well, this one is honestly all up to you. As with most things in witchcraft, everything depends upon the practitioner. Regardless of whatever way you decide to cast your circle, all methods share a form of concentration/visualization and commitment to self belief.

Four cardinal points are evenly spaced around the circumference of a conventional circle. They are connected to the Wiccan seasonal calendar, the four directions, and the four elements. The Quarters, in my opinion, are legendary beings that have made appearances in numerous world faiths. You can think of them as tent poles to balance the energy and form of the circle. All of them are typical procedures in circle-casting: Visualizing the circle's boundaries, walking around it, cutting a boundary with a dagger or sword, calling the Quarters, lighting candles, setting objects along the circle's edge, and performing a ritual cleaning inside the circle. You might incorporate some or all of these components into your casting.

Some individuals favor using an athame, a length of cord, stones, or candles for each of the four quarters when casting the circle. Setting up the circle's boundaries can be made much easier with the use of these tools. Since participants may not be familiar with the ins and outs of circle-casting, more tools are typically employed in larger and more public rituals. Numerous calls, shrines at the Quarters, chants, and textual evocations are frequently used in large public circles to increase visibility. There isn't a technique that is superior to the others. The participants' will and other circumstances will affect the circle's strength.

Here's a small guideline to help those who aren't sure where to begin this exercise.

Ground & Center Yourself

Set the four cardinal points with correspondences if you wish

Light an incense (or visualize) and use it as a wand to "trace out" your circle.

As you face each cardinal point, call to the spirits of the direction if you wish.

You will have a very distinguished energetic feeling, which will feel different for everyone, but you will know once your circle has formed a solid foundation.

Of course, there are MANY ways to cast a circle, this just may be the most basic for those who aren't sure where to begin.

[lets-try-some-writing]

Since you have been doing optimus/bumblebee could we maybe get some insight of alpha trion raising Orion pax and being a father to him?

P.S I love your work keep it up

Thank you very much for your kind words! At this point I should stop saying sorry since it won't do much, but apologies all the same for taking so long to get to your request!

Raising a Mortal

Finding Thirteen out in the wilds was a blessing. Alpha Trion had been alone for so long by the time he stumbled upon his brother that he didn't even care for the fact that he was half feral. He led the youngling back to Iacon and worked dutifully to get him accustomed to life as a civilized mech. And while he loved his brother and now sparkling with all his being, there were ups and downs to having to raise Orion Pax.

It quickly became clear that Orion Pax was NOT fond of having his plating tended to. He spent so long living out on his own that having anyone touch him was new and not welcome. It was a battle every time he needed to have his ward get cleaned up, an event that was rather frequent with how often Orion managed to get into energon stashes and muck to dirty himself. Getting Orion to clean was a ritual in it of itself. First he had to lure Orion out of wherever he was hiding with energon or something of interest, then he needed to carefully maneuver the half wild mech toward whatever area he secretly placed the hose and get him sprayed down. His archivists had a ball whenever he had them hold the hose. They found great joy in spraying Orion down as if he were a living training dummy until he managed to hide again. Of course Alpha Trion had to move the hose every. single. time. Otherwise Orion would sniff out his plot and book it before he could get one word in. Proper and deep cleaning session required sedatives and a stretcher to get Orion to washracks.

Orion also made it VERY clear that if sweets were left alone, they would be devoured even at the cost of unsettled tanks. Orion had exactly zero self control when it came to anything with any degree of sweetener in it after so long living off raw energon. A box of energon goodies found by Orion would be scoffed in a rather spectacular mess and the empty container would be left behind. Anyone daring to try and make any deserts in the archive break room would find Orion Pax waiting outside the door, lurking with those beady optics ready to run in and burn his servos to snatch as many as possible. No warding attempts ever worked. If the door was barred where treats were kept, Orion would force his too large frame through the vents. If the sweets were hidden, he would get down on his knees and sniff them out with senses far more capable than the average mech. Locked containers? Orion would find something reasonably sharp or heavy and destroy anything between him and his deserts. There was no having treats in the archives unless one was ready to pay the "Pax tax".

Perhaps due to the fact that it was Alpha Trion who handled him most, Orion tended to shadow Alpha Trion everywhere while he was young. It didn't matter what Alpha Trion was doing, Orion would be there dutifully watching and remaining close by. When walking Orion would stay directly behind him, even when he turned the youngling would keep where he couldn't see. Sometimes he would outright forget Orion was there until he walked into a room and found the youngling gazing up at him with wide optics. There was no escape from Orion, nothing stopped him. If Alpha Trion hid, Orion would hunt him down by any means necessary and make a fuss if he couldn't get in to be by Trion's side. If he tried to toss Orion on someone else, Orion would come running back in less than half a groon ready to watch at usual. In the end Alpha Trion accepted it as a part of life and took to reading aloud for Orion simply because he KNEW Orion would be there.

In the grand scheme of things it was a small thing, but Orion had his own little rituals outside of the larger ones. He required that Alpha Trion give him a hug before he left the archives, even once he was well into adulthood for a while. He seemed to just be fond of the contact he once so thoroughly despised. Orion also never went anywhere without bringing back Alpha Trion something to keep for quite a few vorns. He wasn't quite sure why Orion did it, but he would get anything from shiny rocks to items that likely belonged in a museum. Then there was also Orion's little habit of ensuring that Alpha Trion saw all his friends and approved of them as if it were a rite of passage. First it was Jazz, then Ratchet, and even Megatron later down the line. Every single one of Orion's companions met Alpha Trion and he was fine with that.

So many small habits.

Orion was not a hard sparkling to raise once he learned to communicate, but he certainly had his moments. And yet Alpha Trion cherished every memory, even the plating cuts from where Orion decided to make his claim known.

[windvexer]

Hello! I hope you're having a good day! Feel free to ignore this ask, I just haven't been able to figure out anything myself looking into this.

I have alexithymia, which basically means I can't register my feelings, or vibes in or around me, or do the empathy thing, etc. I can't even register the feeling of tired. Total head blindness. Whiiiiiiich hasn't worked out too great for me trying to get into witchcraft because so much of it is about feeling what you're doing (Energy work is a great example of something I can't imagine working for me in any traditional way) (Visualization is a weird gray area). I haven't really been able to find anything within the realm of witchcraft that comfortably excludes any need to feel. Do you have any suggestions for things that might suit this kind of thing well? (if it matters what I'm interested in, really I just want to explore everything I can to find what suits me) Thank you and I hope you're having a lovely day/night!

Good evening, Anon. I'm not understanding your question, so I think there must necessarily be a disconnect between what terms we're using.

Google is telling me that alexithymia is a disconnection from feeling or recognizing emotions. But the practice of witchcraft, including sensing and perceiving spirits and energies, isn't necessarily emotional.

For example, you describe not being able to imagine doing energy work. But I have been doing energy work for years, and I don't recognize it as being an experience contingent on emotional sensitivity.

If I wanted to raise (let's say) fire energy, I might use a variety of techniques - like growing energy tendrils, accessing/imagining/believing that I am connecting to a source of elemental fire, and using breathing techniques to draw fire energy within myself.

None of these things are related to emotional experience. While I do sometimes experience vibrating/buzzing sensations on my body where the energy moves, I don't always - and experiencing those things isn't necessary for the exercise to have worked.

If you're saying that you've already been trying lots of energy work and you just aren't experiencing physical sensations of energy work, that is IME unrelated to experiencing emotions, and that is something that can take time and experience to unlock (or, there could be many reasons why a person actually working with energy doesn't feel specific physical sensations).

As I work spells and rituals, I sometimes feel frustrated, tired, bored, or whatever - but these disconnected emotions are unrelated to the experience of heavy air, spontaneous visualizations, clairaudience, and so on.

It seems to me that some wires have been crossed about the experiential nature of witchcraft being focused around feeling emotions. The emotional experience can be an important aspect of witchcraft, but it's not as if being in tune with your emotions is prerequisite for charging a candle or talking to spirits.

One way to think about this from a technique standpoint is that emotions are a vehicle which can carry information back and forth between you and the otherworlds.

So, you can receive emotions as a way to pick up on extrasensory information; you can also package information inside of emotions and send them outwards.

But emotions aren't the only vehicle available. You can focus on other methods of sending and receiving information, and it's probably best to start with whatever ways you already prefer to process information.

I'm a very wordy person, so it's easy for me to send and receive information through words. Instead of ~feeling fire energy~ I can breathe focus into a statement, like "I collect Fire from the air around me."

I'm also a visual thinker, so instead of feeling that a spirit is nearby, I may see a flash of them in my mind's eye.

And more often than not, I don't really feel anything during a spell at all, except for a random headache and sudden carb lust that onsets a couple of minutes after the spell ends.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I'm not exactly seeing the connection between being aware of of your own emotions and practicing witchcraft.

[indigovigilance]

Aziraphale, Kermit the Frog, and Fraggle Rock

Inspo from @crowleys-hips, images shamelessly ripped from original post:

The costumes and set design in the Book of Job episode were supposedly inspired mostly by The Ten Commandments but I’m ignoring that for right now because this is more fun. Now that I’ve written it, this is actually one of my dark ones.

Ready? Let’s go.

read on Ao3

The Frog Prince

[Source]

Kermit, created in 1955, was originally an abstract character without a defined species. He did not [officially] become a frog until The Frog Prince episode in 1971. At the same time, he gained his pointed collar. Kermit is not the prince in this retelling, but is one of the many frogs, who don’t believe that the Frog Prince is actually human and try to convince the Frog Prince that even if there is a curse, they don’t need to try to break it, being a frog is great!

Sing out for the swamp and sing out for the ooze The life of a frog is the life you should choose Sing out for the mud and sing out for the bog It’s ever so jolly just being a frog We love the old mud hole, we say that we soak The feeling’s so good that we just gotta croak The muck and the mire, the slush and the slime Are the reasons a frog has a wonderful time

It’s a very weird musical number. I have exactly one semester of music theory under my belt but it sounds awfully minor key to me.

It’s very much about bullying someone who doesn’t feel like they belong into conforming. Exchange “frog” for “angel” and we’ve got a pretty on-the-nose parallel story here.

Two Interpretations

First: Aziraphale is a prince among frogs whose unique identity is being ignored. The ones he has turned to for help are ignoring his pleas and insisting that their way is the best way, even though it is clearly not.

Second: Aziraphale is the frog! Kermit gained his collar when he finally began to solidify as a character with a set identity. Both of these themes apply to Aziraphale’s arc in Book of Job.

*topic change*

Jim Henson & Richard Hunt

Coming back to the extreme queer theming of Season 2 (God bless you GO production team) we have a nod to Jim Henson and Richard Hunt. Much like Pterry and the Notorious NRG, both men began their artistic journeys very young. Henson began in high school, where he began developing what would later become the Muppets; he continued his work on puppets on Sesame Street. He is the creator of Kermit the Frog. He’s also well-known for The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, other queer culture mainstays. Some years later, at 18 years old, Richard Hunt shot his shot and asked for a job puppeteering on Sesame Street in 1972; he got it. He would continue to work as a puppeteer with Jim Henson on the Muppets and related works until he died in 1992 at the age of 40 due to complications of AIDS.

Gone But Not Forgotten || Terry Pratchett

If you have not read my meta on Terry Pratchett’s representation in the Final Fifteen, I will link it at the bottom as well and highly suggest you read it. It’s not necessary reading for what comes next, but it is relevant.

Richard Hunt was openly gay and heavily involved in the New York gay community during the AIDS epidemic. He was in a relationship with a painter named Nelson Bird, who died of AIDS related complications in 1985. There is some speculation that Fraggle Rock Season 5 Episode 7 is an artistic representation of Richard Hunt losing his partner. In that episode, Wembley makes a new friend, Mudwell, played by Richard Hunt, that he abruptly loses at the end of the episode following a confession of mutual affection. You can follow the link below to watch the full episode. The final-fifteen parallel content begins at 12:30:

Gone But Not Forgotten (Fraggle Rock S05E07)

The loss is followed by a conversation between two characters that centers around remembering those who have been lost by keeping the things and memories they left behind, and the partner who [survived] goes through rituals of grieving.

If you scrolled past it but would like to read it now, here’s a link to my meta Terry Pratchett’s representation in the Final Fifteen.

[troutfur]

Hey because it's been an obsession of mine since I was a kid and I know you are the fandom's premiere Power of Three Understander who gets the nuances of the three's brattiness and lust for power (writing compliment not criticism) and how the prophecy originally (pre-OOTS) is not about them being chosen good guys fated to be good and save the day but is much more mysterious and ambiguous than that; how are you planning to handle the whole power of three prophecy plot in Haneossia? I really trust you to handle it well and better than canon and most fans, and while I thought Bonefall's "prophecy just doesn't get revealed in PO3 keep is slice of life" is a very sound tactic to handle it I'd also love to see a take on the three knowing it all along and it influencing their psychology. How will you integrate its "external from StarClan" source to all your expanded afterlife/spirituality lore, what is the in-universe reason why the prophecy exists, etc.?

As a side note I have mentioned it once before, but once in a PO3 and OOTS rewrite/AU I made when I was a lot younger and scrapped because I wasn't as good of a writer back then, I had this plot beat that I still think is one of the only good parts of it now. Basically after spending half the arc wondering "why are we so special, isn't it awesome we are so special, and having a lot of mystery with the Ancients and the tunnels and Sol wanting to accomplish some ritual that will give him great power from that, the big reveal is that the powers weren't bequeathed to them, but came from the Three themselves - in an alternate timeline, Jayfeather with his insatiable curiosity and ambition had gotten his equally motivated siblings to investigate the secrets of the Ancients and they completed the ritual themselves, but due to tunnel time loop shenanigans the result was that they altered the timeline so they were always born with those powers. And there was also a bit of a twist on the "blind seer" trope here, where Jayfeather's powers are specifically what they are because he chose them, motivated by what his internalized ableism would think is necessary to "make up" for what society has told him is inadequate. Also Fallen Leaves here was someone who died trying to accomplish the ritual for great power, it never made sense in canon that any society would have a mandatory coming-of-age ritual that according to the stick like half of the participants died in. So just throwing it out there as an idea/brainstorming...

This one ask got me vibrating in my seat. Gosh, I just have SOOOO many ideas on how I wanna do Po3. It's not at all fully figured out as a lot of the Haneossia stories I want to write out in full first are elsewhere in the timeline. But it is such a central arc to pretty much everything I have in my head because the Po3 characters are always so central to the things I wanna write.

(More under the cut.)

Starting from the top! The exact nature of the powers is always something that eludes me. I will have to mull over your proposal and see whether or not I have other ideas. But narratively I do know what their role is. It is a fantastical highlight of an already existing character trait of self-importance.

The three are the children of two prophecy cats, one of which is the deputy/leader and comes from the ThunderClan old aristocracy, and the other of which is the daughter of their most famous leader in recent times and sister of their current medicine cat. I go back and forth on whether I want Brambleclaw/star to be deputy or already leader in order to really inflate their self importance, but one thing I'm absolutely committed to is that Firestar is dead, Brambleclaw is taking the secret of his involvement in that to the grave, and the mythologizing and distortion of the Firestar story has already begun.

The Clans as I write them are to their core nepotistic. Looking out for one's family is priority number one, and that only extends to the rest of the Clan under an understanding that all the different families and nest units are linked in a web of relations. Thus, the kids are (correctly) expecting to be bigshots from the day they are born.

The prophecy says there will be three with the power of the stars in their paws. It really doesn't say anything about what they do. "Power of the stars" I interpret as a statement about agency. They will be in a position to be able to make a big decision that will define the destiny of the Clans. And the role of this arc is to build up suspense for when that eventually comes to the foreground in Omen of the Stars.

I don't necessarily would call this a slice-of-life story, but it is certainly a very personal-scale story. And I don't think that is at odds with the idea of building suspense at all. With the knowledge of the prophecy, every step of getting to know these kids and how they grow up is progress alongside the plot.

Oh, and even though this is more of an OotS thing, on the point that being one of the three is about agency, I feel very strongly about Dovewing NOT being one. Her powers would ultimately be from StarClan, but she would be their course-correction mechanism. I will talk more about this towards the end of this post, keep that in mind.

NOW! Onto my thoughts book by book!

Since I last did my reread of the arc I have been thinking about increasing the book count from 6 to 7. This is because I want the structure of the story to be 3 books establishing the trio dynamic of the triplets and their three 1-on-1 relationships, have a middle book based on Outcast where we can have them all extensively interacting with Breezepaw, and the final 3 books as story arcs that center each of the triplets individually and in contrast to Sol as a foil to all of them.

Book 1 would of course be the Hollypaw and Jaypaw book, focusing on the career swap plot. A crucial point in this one I'd want to do is to lengthen the time span it takes over. In canon, this book cannot take more than a month and the two of them only were in their careers for a week tops. This gives the impression they gave up way too early and I'd be on the lookout to expand the timeframe with their original mentors to about one to two months.

I am unsure about how I want to approach their career swap so that Jaypaw can have more agency. There's many approaches to it, from presenting it as a competition between the siblings to having a slower buildup of Jaypaw sticking his nose in things that don't concern him. In theory I like the idea that he'd chose this career path as an adult, but for all the chess pieces to be in place in time for Sol's appearance that is not an option.

Meanwhile Lionpaw has a sideplot of some sort developing in his third of this book that has him getting acquainted with the cats across the border. Set up for the next book and start acquainting the audience with the extended cast of characters that will gain relevance but which neither of his siblings would have much reaosn to interact with such as Onestar, Crowfeather, Heatherpaw, Breezepaw, Tawnypelt, Rowanclaw, and Blackstar.

Like in canon, Jaypaw learns about the prophecy of the three by the end of the book and is holding on on telling his siblings. Depending on how I decide how his plot with Hollypaw goes, he may or may not be on good terms with her, so that's his reason for not telling her. With Lionpaw I don't have a solid reason. Perhaps it has to do with the ableist attitudes he has picked up growing up in ThunderClan?

Book 2 is a Lionpaw and Hollypaw book. Much like in canon, their parallel conflicts would center on the fact that they are both meeting with a cross-clan friend when they aren't supposed to. I want this plot to serve to reinforce in them this very war-monger tendencies that they show throughout early Po3 which will contrast with Jaypaw who is softening (will touch on that in a bit). And I also want the ending to end in some way in which Lionpaw is convinced that Heatherpaw betrayed her such that he has a vendetta against her developing, as opposed to how Hollypaw's break with Willowpaw is more melancholic.

On Jaypaw's end, I want to move the entirety of the time travel plot to here instead of splitting it into book 2 and 4. He would not stumble on it on accident but rather seek it out as he investigates this prophecy of the three deal. That way we can really dive into the full extent of the past life memories thing and really explore the society of the ancients at the lake.

Two very important changes I'd make here are: 1) Jay's Wing is blind too. I really want to emphasize this society as one in which a disabled cat like Jaypaw would have more autonomy and respect. This will set him on the path to wanting to remake his own society in this mold and will be a motivation going forward. 2) These are memories. I don't want him creating time paradoxes or making things weird. He's there squarely witnessing these things from Jay's Wing's PoV, which would be a full character on his own which would contrast to Jaypaw.

If Hollypaw and Jaypaw weren't on good terms by the last book, this would be the book where they reconcile.

The third book I'm the most hazy on as it would be a completely new addition. But given it's meant to be the Jaypaw and Lionpaw book, perhaps this could be the book in which we have Cinderpaw's broken leg plot? It would be cute to have Lionpaw more involved here and give them some romantic buildup. But also, since this plot also brings up Clan attitudes towards disability and Leafpool and Jaypaw's attitude clash over it, we can maybe address how Lionpaw too would be dealing with Clan cat ableism.

Hollypaw I'm more unsure where she fits into all this. Given that Haneossia operates under my pfurr dynamic/default polyamory worldbuilding, she can tie in to the Cinderpaw plot too maybe? These kids would be dating age for sure by this time, and I like the idea that by the end of the arc Lionblaze, Hollyleaf, and Cinderheart would have had plans to form their own pfurr as a throuple, which was dashed once Honeyfern died (making it very rude of Cinderheart to leave her birth nest since that would leave Poppyfrost and Berrynose as a couple, which is socially frowned upon) and then Hollyleaf escaped into the tunnels.

I also want Hollypaw's plot here to have some independence though so I'm not sure if that would be too tied together. Decisions, decisions...

Regardless, by the end of this book their dynamic as a trio would be set. I would want Jaypaw to reveal the prophecy and his findings so far here. Each of their individual ambitions, ideas of what power means to them, and such would be explored from here on out.

The book based on Outcast gives me trouble, given I'm not a huge fan of The Tribe of Rushing Waters and I frankly don't want to write about them if I can help it. This is perhaps the biggest plot of theirs I want to preserve and the one reason I am reluctant to just exercise author fiat to erase the Tribe entirely. But the narrative frame of having the triplets go out on a journey and interacting with Breezepelt is juicy. I really want the contrast of golden children and black sheep between them to shine in this and for this journey to somewhat quench their self-centered attitudes.

By the end of this I want them all to connect deeply as friends, despite the antagonism and struggles to get there. I want Jaypaw to see in this proof that his plans to turn back the clock would be worth it. I want Hollypaw and Lionpaw to revisit and rexamine the lessons learned in book two. I want Breezepaw to latch onto them as if they were the littermates he never had. (And perhaps by extension to Brambleclaw as who he wishes his father was? Hmmm... I have a new idea to contemplate.)

Breezepelt, Hollyleaf, and Lionblaze would be named by the end of this book. They'd all be around a year old by then, leaving Jaypaw as the only apprentice as his apprenticeship is supposed to be double length. I want the fact that legally his siblings would be adults now but not him to bring out in him a sense that he ought to hurry and figure out how to use his power for his objectives lest his siblings get too ahead of him.

This brings us to book five, the equivalent to Eclipse and our first look into Sol. The focus character of this book would be Lionblaze, and here is why I want book two to establish a stronger vendetta against Heathertail for him to have. These last books would all be about the central character facing a temptation from and ultimately overcoming Sol as he tries to rope the three into being his minions.

Sol's temptation to Lionblaze would be revenge. While they were gone he's been wandering around Clan territory, trying to poke and prod as he tries to sow chaos for his own amusement. I am unsure about his exact nature here or his motivation. I could take a page out of Bonefall's book and present him as a trickster god type. But the specifics of his worldbuilding around the afterlife don't mesh well with mine, I feel.

But regardless, he's been egging on conflicts between the Clans and there's a palpable sense in the air that war's coming. In the midst of this Sol is encouraging Lionblaze to use the opportunity to exact his revenge. He's offering advanced intel and a way to be as destructive as possible to her. Does he coax the information of his vendetta out of him? Did he pick it up during his time with the other Clans? Does he have supernatural knowledge of it? Open question, still need to decide.

Anyway. His "defeat" of Sol, loosely as we can apply that term, would be in him showing clemency to WindClan in the midst of the chaos. As the battle settles and he reflects on his power-given strength and ferocity, and just how close he was to inflicting an atrocity, he understands just a little bit more what Jaypaw is always on about with his peace-seeking attitude.

Sol's take-over of ShadowClan by the end of the book by leveraging the eclipse segues us into the next book, which is going to be Jaypaw focused. Through his eyes we see Sol's fake prophet act in full force, with Jaypaw aiding as a collaborator. His position as a Clanborn meddie gives his endorsement weight, even as a mere apprentice.

I want his arc in this book to be about learning to wield his authority as a priest responsibly and for Sol to come across as his evil grown up version. Sol's idea of reshaping a Clan to his desires is very self-serving and self-indulgent. And it would definitely come into conflict with a Jaypaw that seeks to pursue his own agenda but is shut down repeatedly.

We would still have the plot with Tawnypelt being a refugee in ThunderClan and her kids aiding the three in toppling Sol, with Jaypaw as their inside informer. (Remember how I said Tawnypelt and Rowanclaw were going to be relevant characters for the story many paragraphs ago? Here it is.) And by the end of the book, Jaypaw would finally have his name.

Last book! There's a lot of field to cover in here. Fire scene, parentage reveal, Ashfur's death, Hollyleaf's search for answers. I feel like it can be cramped but with a Hollyleaf-only perspective it can work well, I believe. Hollyleaf's challenge in overcoming Sol would be to resist the temptation of easy answers at the cost of starting yet another war.

Much like canon, I want a wracked with guilt and overwhelmed Hollyleaf to end up self-exiling after she escalates it so much. A win that feels more like a loss and that permeates the rest of the next series.

As a coda to the arc, by the end Lionblaze and Jayfeather would disown their connection to Firestar and try to push the prophecy out of mind. I want them to connect with Brambleclaw/star and his side of the family as they shun Leafpool and Squirrelflight. Have Hawkfrost and Tigerstar begin appearing from this moment, leveraging their familial connection the siblings are increasingly seeking refuge in to put their plan into motion. This is the point by which StarClan decides to intervene by means of Dovewing. And so the stage is set for the next chapter.

What is the nature of the OotS plot? I cannot say anything with certainty. I still have a lot to figure out, especially in how my afterlife plot affects and molds it. But as far as Po3 is concerned I think I have enough figured out that this shape of a plot is very set.

[edwinspaynes]

Finally found someone who isn't really into faerie and thule thing 😌 maybe that's 2 reasons why i didn't really like tda, I enjoyed it to some extent but not too much.

May I know why you don't like faerie world and thule in tda?

If you ever want to gripe about TDA, you can always come to me. There's very little I enjoyed about it. Lol.

I think faeries are really hard to write and pull off, and Cassie... well, she's actually not bad at it, but she's not confident when writing fae. And it really shows, and all of the rules feel forced. Idk. I also don't particularly like faeries in general in books - their trickiness usually feels like a weird forced ritual to me - and I didn't vibe with it. I also don't really like any of the courtly fae we're introduced to in TSC so it doesn't grab my attention.

Thule is just weird. It feels like Cassie wanted to write an AU angst fanfic of her own characters and shoved it into the book. It had very little meaning or relevance, and it also is written really weirdly and inconsistently. It's disjointed within the bigger book and really serves no purpose. I also hate multiverses in general, and this one opens up so many stupid questions that no one needed to ask or answer. Like, sure, this rupture happened in CoLS, right? So are these characters - Janus and all the dead people - extensions of that TMI cast? Are we following the "true" TMI cast now? And why was any of this necessary? It wasn't. Also, the Warlock Disease really wasn't looking scary anymore when Annabel was wandering around with froufrou dog Malcolm. It detracted from the seriousness of the situation.

Also, we really don't need evil butthole Jace. Sorry. There were a thousand better possibilities.

Luckily, since I'm pretty much here for TID and TLH, Thule isn't really relevant to me. I'm glad there's no stupid alternate dimension where the TLH characters would have been alive, because that would have annoyed me immensely.

[laugtherhyena]

Continuing the relationship chart grind, look at how many goddamn arrows and multiple colors this bitch has. I wouldn't expect anything less form Mrs.Weird woman here.

Much like last time, check this post first if you're new here so you know who is who in this mess.

As an evil spiteful nurse most of Catherine's chart is composed of varying levels of dislike. While John is the only one with the hartred color all through the only reason she hates him that much if because he tries to kill her on day 1 morning, if it wasn't for that she really wouldn't have much opinion in the guy. Amos is actually the person she hates the most out of the whole cast, pretty much by default, since he is a priest and Catherine despises anything and everything related to religion or cultists or magic. Partially because the family that abused her for a good part of her life was heavily religious so she associates the practices and devotion with them, but also because she prides herself in her work a lot and feel as if using magic for things, especially healing, is incredibly lazy and requires no real skill or ability. Seeing people be able to grow entite limbs back in some rituals while the best she can do is stitch them back up makes her feel worthless and she hates that more than anything, it's a blow to the ego, what more can i say.

That's literally the whole reason she has such a bone to pick with Amos because if she stopped being an asshole for one and learned how he was forced to become a dark preist and actually dislikes that heavily I'm sure she wouldn't dislike him that much. But she'll never take time off her day to be around him unless absolutely necessary, so that's not happening.

She dislikes Kit for basically the same reason as Amos, tho his less bad because his main god isn't All-mer (the one her family devoted themslves to the most, which is also the church kind Amos was a part of) + seeing him be an absolute outcast and lacking even a basic knowledge of how it is to be normal and a part of society due to the cult he grew up in validates her beliefs that cultists are just deranged people who will ruin their own lives in favor of devoting themselves to a god that doesn't care for them. She pities him, but that pity isn't enough to make her feel genuinely bad for the guy, she will just be a dick that glares at him from the sinelines and find some form of twisted enjoyment from seeing him suffer because of his ties to the wolfmasks.

On a similar note of dislike mixed with weird feelings we have Lola, who is an odd one out in her humongous hate list because Catherine tens to have a soft spot for women who had harsh upbringing and/or grew up in poverty because she also went through hell while growing up, while Lola did have a pretty harsh life that is ironically a factor in why Cathetine dislikes her so much.

She sees herself in her, as they were both essentially forced to become houseworkers from a young age for one reason or another. But since Lola never tried to change that status or pursue genuine passions she had in life, bending to other's wills and becoming incredibly submissive as an adult because of that, Catherine absolutely loathes her because in her eyes she's looking at the kind of person she could very well have become if she didn't take certain paths in life and she hates that so so much, tho the "I relate to you heavily" keeps her from despising this girl in the same way she does with John and Amos. And hey, i do think that in certains situations she may be kind with her for once, there's just a heap of weird feelings and (self) hate involved.

Continuing on the dislike section we have Claire and really the main reason she dislikes her is because at the start of termina Claire follows her around trying to see if she can overhear any news about Kaiser's supposed plan of invading Prehevil, Catherine is from his army after all and if she's there Claire believes she can maybe check if those rumors hold true. Naturally, Cathy dislikes being stalked, which is made worse by the fact that Claire takes pictures of her around town (Catherine hates her appearance) which in turn leads to Cathy destroying her camera in a bit of a squabble during day 1 morning.

The thing is that this dislike can turn into gratitude and slight respect if Claire is the one to find and listen to her in the bop's hideout during day 1 night (which is Cathy's recruiting event), so much so that she is the only one of the playable characters of who Catherine will tell that she was indeed sent to Prehevil to scout the place and report when would be the best time for the army to invade it + how now she plans on calling them to come anyway so that they can be killed by the moonscorches as a revenge of sorts since by this point she believes Kaiser send her there to die (essentially saying she is disposable and you bet she hated that idea a lot).

Lastly we have Addison and Matyas who are in the dislike/intrigue mixture for basically the same reason of Catherine finds them incredibly annoying and can't stand being around them, Addison because of how paranoid and scaredy he becomes when termina starts and Matyas for his delusional ramblings and scaredy cat-ness as well.

Onto the neturals we have Hilda and Anatol who she really doesn't hold much of an opinion on. Hilda doesn't talk to her and she won't bother going after her either but she does find Anatol tolerable, mainly because he is Ebba's boyfriend and she likes both Ebba and Mary for the previously mentioned soft spot she has for girls who grew up in terrible environments. Tho i would say she likes Mary a bit more than she likes Ebba because she finds her ability to keep on living/fighting despite being incredibly injured impressive from a medical standpoint + Ebba taking advantage of Mary upsets her a little.

Lastly we got the Vinson brothers which are a source of intrigue to her because Cathy never had a good or even normal relationship with her sister so she likes observing the two out if wondering if that's how siblings are actually meant to be, she can tell that despite arguing and butting heads quite often both Damian and Leslie care a lot for one another which is something she finds both sweet and saddening because Madeline has never had this form of genuine care for her even after she started being nice to her.

While she is somewhat similar to Damian due to both of them being very no-nonsense sort of people who focus on their goals above most other things, they don't actually get along that well? They will work fine if they're sticking together for survival but if left on their own devices they will probably just never talk because Damian finds her sketchy/suspicious/potentially dangerous and since Cathy can tell he looks at her weirdly she will act accordingly.

Leslie on the hand is the person she likes the most out of the entire cast, surprisingly because i feel at first glance she didn't thought much of him and only really started interacting with him out of being curious about the brothers. A handful of the things he'd say to her confused her immensely because she could not tell he was trying to show interest in her out of never having had anyone come towards her with that sort of intention, when he did make that clear with some kind of straightforward compliment it also confused her a lot but more as a form of denial of sorts.

Catherine is really funny to because she will be a spiteful power hungry asshole that is some level of rude to basically everyone she knows on a daily basis but she will crumble into an emotional mess the second someone reasures her that she is not an eyesore. Physical appearance is Catherine's deepest insecurity both due to the scars on her face and her body shape in general, so the idea that another person can like it let alone find her attractive is absolutely mind boggling to her. Knowing Leslie likes her that much makes her incredibly flustered but also drawn to him more and more through the festival since she longs to be loved even if Cathy herself would never admit it. (This isn't to say he only likes her for the looks tho, what made him set his eyes on her was Catherine being creepy and weird)

[the-fae-folk]

What happens to humans who are spirited away to the Faerie realm?

Spirited away? What an interesting phrase. There are three main methods humans have of entering the realm of Faerie. The First, and most unlikely, is that the human knows a direct path, gate, or postern of some kind that will grant them entry into that entirely different world, to cross the boundary into the beyond with full intention and knowledge of what they will find there. They know the dangers, they understand the risk, and yet they will follow their own road, making their own choices. The Second method is accidental. A person wandering in a place where the separation between worlds is thin, and the conditions for crossing are right. Most often they simply wander through, never even noticing something is wrong until it's far too late to turn back, never realizing that somehow they've gone astray until the familiar has twisted into the strange and unknown before their very eyes. An ordinary forest behind their house quietly gives way to a forest with much bigger trees, stranger creatures, and is much much more ancient than anything that should be able to exist still on earth. Or an alleyway you slip down to hide from the cops you know will invent a reason to arrest you because you're black; if the alleyway is covered with vines creeping over an old wood fence, if it becomes dark and hard to see, with the grime under your feet silently changing from pavement and cement into earth rich and green, you might not notice it until you step out from the old ruin of a faerie dwelling and into the light beyond. Stepping from one world to another can be swift, seamless, and easier than crossing a stream of water. Yet sometimes it isn't so easy. It could take many coincidences and pure chance to open a way. Patterns, rituals, stories. These are elements of magic, the persuaders of perception, the interpreters of reality. Much is tied to such things, whether we recognize it or not. Our morning ablutions are a ritual, so is the song and dance a person might play if they work in retail, and so too is the choices of entertainment we make. Ritual and pattern, choices to create reasons, reasons to make choices, and the inability to see when we are caught in a ritual we cannot easily escape. Some stories we tell ourselves, or write in books to tell others long after ourselves, show glimpses of these rituals and patterns, the way we think, the way we understand, the way we create. And sometimes those patterns and rituals will lead us to other worlds, often by mistake, tracing the path unintentionally by fulfilling necessary requirements. Touching certain stones in a certain pattern, filling a certain fountain with water from a certain spring, saying the correct words in the correct order. Coincidences, but not impossible ones, just very unlikely. Yet the unlikely happens more than you could ever imagine.

The Third method for humans to enter Faerie is the one you so whimsically name as being "spirited away". Many humans who come this way would agree with you, it certainly feels as if one is spirited away. But I would call it another name, one with fewer positive connotations. Abduction, kidnapping. Whether they are tricked, or lured past a border. Whether they come of their own will because of false promises and the secret intentions of others. If they are threatened or their loved ones are threatened. If they are simply taken, directly and against their will. These are ways in which they could enter into Faerie. It is, tragically, the most common way to reach Faerie. But your question of what happens to them? Many things happen. Each dependent on the reasons and nature of the Fae being who brings a human into a world apart. Sometimes the intentions are for good reasons, though those can often cause just as much pain as cruelty if you're not careful. But far more likely the intentions are not kind, and do not have anything but maleficent intent. Humans are taken and forced to act as distractions, toys, playthings. They are dressed in fancy clothing, paraded about in front of everyone, and then left in an empty room and forgotten about. They are not seen as people, they are seen as pets, and some are not even afforded that luxury, but are seen as things. Objects to possess, but not anything remotely resembling a person. Other humans are given a less glittering cage, put to work and told directly that they have been enslaved. Even here the language used is tricky. "Seven years and a day" and "You agreed to our deal, now you must hold up your end of the bargain" or " Can't break your word, that would have consequences". Child, the Fae are beings who have had time out of human comprehension to reflect and study the nature of words and meaning. To manipulate, to hide, to pretend... it is second nature to them. They can do it without even a single lie, deceiving you through your own creation of meaning. Every word your captors would say to you in order to convince you that you have an obligation to be there, that you must work for them, that you got yourself into this, that you had free will and choice in the matter... every word is meant to draw you deeper into their deception while still being the truth. They will tell you this, if you ask, and laugh at your expression. What fun their little game. And even when you know the rules, you can't stop playing. You can't leave. You can't break the bargain. Because the truth is what it always was, you never had a real choice to begin with. Even the choices you were offered were those given by the faerie luring you to your doom, options between one bad choice and another. Some rare and lucky few have fought for a different fate. Through the kindness of others and their own inner strength, as well as luck so incredibly unlikely that it's almost its own kind of magic, they managed to create a different way of living with the Folk. These folk live many different lives. Some travel and live with courts, others have found the parents they always needed, some have gained the respect of the fae they knew, others have shown incredible wit and cleverness in somehow tricking the tricksters, and some very very few have somehow managed to find real love and friendship among the Folk.

But these lives, though glamorous, are in no way easy. They are filled with danger at every turn, with disaster and heartbreak and the strain of living in a world and with a people that are not made for humans, that barely even understand what it means to be a human or a mortal in general. Our human world is filled with so much darkness and strife, so much so that many would find the idea of living in another world enticing. I too have felt that, I too dream of seeing something wondrous and strange, something otherworldly and magical. But a life lived in Faerie, especially if you had no real choice in that life, is hardly a life at all. It would be a battle every moment of every day, a fight to maintain anything of yourself or your will, anything of you at all. A fight to survive, a fight to even exist as anything with agency, as a person. We fight many such battles here today, in our very human world, and yet there are moments of rest, moments where we can draw a breath and pause to gather our strength and remember ourselves. No such rests exist for us there, where everything and everyone is alien, where even their culture and way of thinking is so unlike ours. Even though there is much they imitate, and much we share, it would be a struggle that few could truly imagine to break past the differences that would assault you at every turn. Many die. Are killed or simply give up the will to live. Another casualty of Faerie, the land of the deathless, where death waits patiently for those who do not belong. Some go utterly mad, losing their sanity to an untold number of things. Eldritch beings or things their minds cannot cope with, the trauma of cruelty or horrific conditions, or even the inability to tell after a time what is real and what is illusory or imaginary. Some escape, with or without their minds, and a lucky few manage to stay away till the end of their lives, while others are drawn or lured back in. And a few grow. When they faced the horrors of the unknown they simply... would not break. No matter how much pressure or stress, no matter the moral quandaries or the abuse or the fear, they simply would not, could not, be broken. This inner strength shows itself in the most unexpected of people, people you often think would be the easiest to break. If at last it shows itself in a person, they grow, they grow and they will not stop growing. Taking in everything, and telling it that it must serve for their self betterment whether it wants to or not. True, they might die or be killed, they might never escape captivity, but they have what many others never do. They have free will, they have their self that they themselves created. It is... a bright star in a dark and endless sky.

[onewomancitadel]

I'm a little late to the topic, but re: that poll which was going around which stirred a fury about the correct implements in washing oneself in the shower (scrubber or no scrubber etc.), and the shock and dismay at disparate practices and subsequent condemnation that followed: I think it was a very illuminating and classic example of ritual hygiene versus practical hygiene.

Ritual hygiene embodies correct behaviour, the state of cleanliness is that of a moral one; it is ceremonial, it creates structure, expectations. It does crossover with practical hygiene: the entire reason it exists is because there are practical reasons that humans worldwide practise hygiene rituals, whatever form they may take: whether that is symbolic cleansing with water, or the usage of soap/soap analogues/ash to wash the hands of filth, or Tudor-like exfoliation with a linen rag, etc.; hygiene rituals are seen in other animals, like cats, or chinchillas who roll in dirt to clean their soft fur which would otherwise grow mildew if washed in water.

And of course practical hygiene rituals take on ritualistic association... religious hygiene, moral hygiene, spiritual hygiene, the physical sensation of cleanliness takes on metaphorical ones. Clearly hygiene is important. It influences everything from the way things are eaten to the type of sleep slept to the excretion and handling of waste in society.

And there is a pretty natural disgust at other, contrary methods of hygiene, because it occupies such a central role in most people's lives, even unknowingly. You might be the grottiest person on earth but you might also be aware of the correct handling of meat. Or you might be the cleanest person on earth and opt to wash chicken before cooking which spreads Salmonella across the entire kitchen facillitating the growth of bacteria.

So, the shock and revulsion at the fact there are people who do not use exfoliants makes perfect sense, because their ritual hygiene provides security in their life. How good do you feel after a shower? And ultimately, the unfortunate thing with that type of everyday cleaning is that it is really down to personal preference and dependent on lifestyle, especially because skin type and even your own personal bacteria varies from one to another (which is necessary, btw). Excess exfoliation, if anything, would likely have more deleterious effects than simply using one's hands to scrub (which is about the real extent of practical cleanliness you need; exfoliation 'feels' clean because of the raw scrubbing effect, but the 'feeling' of cleanliness is not meaningful cleanliness. Otherwise people who 'feel' clean after just washing their hands with water without soap or soap analogues would be meaningfully clean. This is effectively my central thesis: that ritual and practical hygiene are not the same thing).

Of course on the reverse side you have the problem that antibacterial sprays and wipes actually don't get something as clean as just regular scrubbing, but that's not just for dirt, but the growth of bacteria. On your skin that's not going to be a worry the majority of the time, and if you have a skin infection in an open wound, scrubbing's not going to help.

Also, all the talk of washing rags and scrubbers made me remember my putrid housemate who left a rag in the shower I never saw washed. It started out tan and went brown by the end of things.

I just found it really fascinating because it really is such a disgust-inducing topic for good reason. And for me personally who has had to learn the difference between ritual hygiene and practical hygiene - the only thing which has meaningfully helped me with my germ avoidance - I'm glad I didn't start losing my head over the fact I can't exfoliate because of my eczema. My poor sensitive eczema, haha.

On the other hand, the fact that so many people don't wash their hands properly after going to the bathroom... now that's not a nice thought.

[windvexer]

hey chicken i have a question regarding offerings. hope you can help. so what should you do if the results were only half delivered. like i wanted 2 of something but only received one. do i still make the promised grand offering? or do i not because the deal was getting two of them? thank you for all you do!! i worked with planetary magic if that helps!

Alright this is too late to be of help to you I'm sure but maybe it can help someone in the future!

It can be a good idea to specify what happens when your conditions are partially met for a spell. This is both for offerings and other conditions.

Typical spell:

"Help me find both of my AirPods."

Spell with conditions for partial success:

"Help me find both of my AirPods."

"But if you can't, help me find at least one."

"But if you can't, show me where to start looking for them."

Many people report partial successes in spellwork even when they do not specify results. It is not necessary to specify partial conditions when you cast spells. However, this can be something to consider if understanding and experimenting with intents and spell methodologies is right for you at this time. In addition, considering conditions for partial success can also help plan spells, understand unintended consequences, and so forth.

When it comes to offerings, the idea is very much the same:

Typical offering:

"Retrieve for me both of my AirPods, and I will give you this lavish dinner."

Offerings with conditions for partial success:

"Retrieve for me both of my AirPods, and I will give you this lavish dinner."

"But if you can only find one, I will still give you half of the offerings which I promised."

"But if you can only show me where to start looking, I will give you only a small portion of the meal."

"But if you can't do any of these things, I will still offer you this ritual incense, as polite thanks for your attention and consideration."

(Naturally, a person would also want to specify a timeline in many circumstances, or establish other goalposts and markers to remove any confusion from the business deal)

But to answer the actual question:

What do you do if you already didn't specify partial successes?

I recommend that you imagine yourself as a small business owner in contract negotiations with a vendor that didn't come through.

That is to say, yeah, the guy didn't really come through; so what kind of businessperson do you want to be?

I believe it is good to establish ourselves as people that are good to do business with.

This means if you failed to specify in the contract what should happen if the "vendor" couldn't fully deliver, well, that's on you. You're the practitioner. Your entire job is setting up the contract and the venue in which the negotiations will take place.

So, when things like this happen, I tend to err on the side of, "yeah, this confusion is on me, so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and pay out regardless." But, that's probably only if it's a smaller offering that isn't much of a bother for me to provide.

There are lots of concessions to be made. It might be perfectly reasonable to assume that the spirit judged it would get half the offering in exchange for half the work. If I promised a spirit a four-course meal for two AirPods and only got one, I'd say, "hey, two courses it is. That seems fair to me."

I think it should come back to what you reasonable determine to be equitable.

If nothing in your spellwork contradicts giving a lesser offering, it should be okay to do so.

Here, there are no handy bullet points or "just do this" advice. It comes down to your personal judgement and what you think is best to do.

At the end of the day, I don't really add all of those conditional successes to spells because I think they are necessary for the spell to work. I add them because if the spell doesn't work, it makes it so much easier to decide what to do next.

[ome-magical-ramblings]

Good deeds, virtues don't sell.

The idea of talking about Virtues and Good deeds isn't as big or popular but it's a good enough topic that I feel deserve a post here. Mainly that the results from our livelihood deserve this aspect of action in the world...that sounded a bit weird writing it out. What I am saying is that your action in the world, your behavior with other, and a lot of the stuff you do "off the cushion" or "with normies" matter a lot when you go and do the rituals or even meditate.

The essence of all the practices is some kind of finicky adjustment and the real meat is what you do when you talk to people, when you act with people, and how this feed back into the whole equation. It doesn't matter how you talk to random people politely, what matter is how you talk, deal, and act with people close to you.

What are you doing in the world, how are the stuff manifesting in the world, is it all internal? you have to ask yourself these questions.

"The wrong person even with the right knowledge will come to no good end. But the right person even with the wrong (or incomplete) knowledge will make it work."

Some people might think of it as "oh I don't have a lot of money", it's not even about the money, if not by the money then you can help with time, with effort, with talking, with guiding, etc. It's not about always gain and loss in that sense. I think you can see it yourself, but if you don't do anything bad or anything good which is most of population they just tend to "blob" along the sea of life not sinking nor floating, most of their action are morally ambivalent or not even considered "actions" just motions. Paul Sedir in his book about how to Pray have a very good quote on this:

To make ourselves heard, our heart must speak the language of Heaven, and that language is charity; our person must become aware of his nothingness, and in this inner void infinity rushes in to fill it. Thus, belief is not enough; believing in God and not obeying Him is what only too many Christians do. I prefer those who claim not to believe yet obey the Divine Law. Praying without previously performing an act of charity can do nothing; whereas charity without faith still moves Heaven. Remember the wonderful stories of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan. It isn’t faith that begets charity, it is charity that begets faith. Faith isn’t an opinion of the brain, it’s a conviction of the heart. To have faith in someone isn’t to believe that the person exists; it’s to trust them, and to trust them wholeheartedly.

Faith means love of God, as charity means love of one’s fellow beings. These two flames grow through one another and feed one another.

I hope, this doesn't remove the importance of the experiences, the rituals, the practices, and so on. One of my friend said he didn't appreciate the Quran or wasn't moved by the Quran until he worked with Jaljalutiya prayer. So again it's a very tricky situation, there's no one way to crack this egg and some people who over-emphasize the charity too soon don't realize it could be a bit too bad for the people who didn't have the experience or understand why they would do that. I am not telling you to go out right now and do charity just because you read it in the internet, but think about it and contemplate it. Just like Paul Sedir said, they're two flames(prayer and Faith) working in conjunctions, your rituals, invocation, spellwork, etc AND your behavior irl, how you deal with people and how people see you, your actions, thoughts, and words. You can't just practice 1 hour a day and do shit for the rest of the 23 hours. The WHOLE thing is your practice.

Let me end this two points, first a quote and lastly a technique. The Quote from G.O Mebes' Minor Arcana course:

An isolation for too long could harden your heart and damage the intuition. A period of self-analysis lasting too long, developing the principle of reason, could take place at the cost of sensitivity, which is also necessary. This is the first danger that the disciple encounters on the Way and that you need to avoid, instituting an adequate "modus vivendi" in your environment. Ethical Hermeticism teaches that it is preferable to take just one step forward and advance your environment - even a tenth part of that step - than to take ten steps, giving nothing to the environment. It is by giving that man receives.

The technique is either the Planetary Charity which you can read about extensively here and the other one is that aim to just do one good deed a day, to counsel a friend, to drop one cent in a charity box, to pray for the dead, or to help a friend with a problem. Again, Charitable and good deeds have a lot of ways to come about them so why not try praying to be in the position to help people ;) maybe that prayer can be answered. May the Divine Creator open the way for us to help one another as brothers and sisters.

Sincerely, From the Heart.