#like one time i’m pretty sure i saw Cernunnos

[thesouthernsocialist]

Penny Lamb as a Gaulish/Celtic polytheist worshipping Sucellos, God of luck. I see the vision.

Penny Lamb as a hellenic polytheist worshipping lady Tyche (goddess of luck) do you see the vision

[baby-witch-eli]

Quantifying my Craft

I found this lovely post by @breelandwalker, who I totally recommend checking out, and it inspired me. My cards and horoscopes have been pushing me to reflect on my goals lately so this is exactly what I needed right now! I decided I'd give it a go.

Broad Concepts

I like to follow western traditions; Celtic traditions in particular are near and dear to my heart. This is why I chose to focus my worship in the Celtic Pantheon, and I'm currently working on building a relationship with Brigid. I would consider myself an eclectic, although divination and nature magic are my two main areas of focus. While I like to ask others for advice while I learn, magic is something I prefer to practice on my own. I've only been practicing since late January, interestingly enough I started around Imbolc. So far I've found intentions are the most important aspect of witchcraft and it has helped me greatly to practice intention in all aspects of my life.

Working Space

I began constructing an altar to Brigid yesterday. Frustratingly enough, my mother is going to have me put away all my small little items and decorations tomorrow as we're trying to sell our house. We won't be moving for a few more months though. I'm hoping I'll be able to keep the altar up but I'll look into online altar options if needed. I already keep an online altar to myself on an app called #SelfCare that I would highly recommended.

Right now my altar to Brigid has a white candle in a green holder; a sailor's knot I wore around my wrist until it started to come undone; a silver bell for music and creativity; the first piece of pottery I ever painted; a picture book of the traveling I did around Michigan a few years ago; an empty journal I hope to fill with art and poems dedicated to her; and a beaker (cauldron stand-in) I dedicated by burning a sigil in that holds nineteen white rose petals and a whisker my cat lost. I'm charging a carnelian and working on a piece of fox, the spirit guide she sent me, embroidery to add to the altar. It's positioned on top of an organizer I have on my desk, which is pushed up against a window.

There's a spot under my porch I wanted to use for meditation but I discovered I'm too jumpy and distractible to meditate outdoors. I don't like having my eyes closed when out of the open and I have an exaggerated startle response. Instead, I find it better for me to meditate in the bath. Sitting in water at least ankle deep with the lights off, after everybody else has gone to sleep and when the moon can shine through the window, is the ideal place for me to sit and follow a guided meditation. I find meditations that take me on a journey through my astral space are the most effective.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to have my own space where I can freely spread my altars and workspaces throughout the house. I want to be able to fill it with plants and books and cards and candles. While I'm at home trying to avoid suspicion from my Christian family, I just have to make the most of what I have.

Tools

My first deck is on the #SelfCare app. I call it my "Familiar Deck" as that's the one I'm most connected with. It's brutally honest, which I love. My second favorite deck is the "blue-eyed" deck I use for my Daily Draw. Another brutally honest deck and one I find to be very accurate. When asking Brigid questions, I prefer to use the Yes/No deck. It gives you your answer and is also good at accurately conveying "secondary," not yes/no, messages. You'll notice all of them are online and that's because, once again, I live with my Christian family and must be covert.

I have a quite a few crystals as I, thankfully, was interested in collecting them when I was younger. The tumbled crystals I have are small and few; most of my crystals are raw. I keep forgetting to charge them when there's a full moon out. I'll have to set a reminder or something to that effect. At the very least, I'm happy that I don't have to bother with trying to obtain any without my parents becoming suspicious. One of these days, I'd love to start collecting rings and wear several. It's also silly little dream of mine to get an onyx pendulum someday.

As far as books go, I bought a beautiful journal I've dedicated as my grimoire. It's dark blue with shiny, gold space decals. I would love to collect witchy books but I don't have money and I couldn't get away with it while living at home. I hear there's an excellent discord that stores witchy books and I think it's something I'll look into. For now, my information comes from my internet research. Thankfully, I did debate for several years, so I know how to find sources from accurate cites, but it certainly takes a lot of work to find good information that way.

The Year

I’m interested in learning more about the Wheel of the Year and incorporating it into my practice. Imbolc is especially important to me, as I worship the goddess Brighid. I missed it this year but I hope to celebrate it in the future. I have yet to study the important of dates outside of astrology so I’ll have to make sure I study it more.

History of My Magic

Honestly, I’ve always felt a very strong pull towards magic. I was raised in a very religious family though so I was always afraid that answering the call would condemn me. I grew up reading as many fantasy stories as I could, connecting with any animal I was able to, and spending as much time in the woods or by water as I could. The woods and the water have always felt full of magic to me and inspired me to want to practice witchcraft. Ever since I was little, I’ve had a great fondness and affection for the moon and stars. I’ve also always felt very drawn to Celtic folklore, magic, and Irish culture. I have distant family ties to Ireland and even though it’s a relatively minor aspect of my heritage, it’s always felt the most important to me. Movies like Song of the Sea and Brendan and the Secret of Kells helped tighten my bond with it. I even started learning as much as I could about the Fae after some books I read piqued my interest. I’ve always been the kid who kept a firm belief in magic even after all my friends “outgrew” it.

It took me a long time to finally answer the call to magic. Like I said, I was raised in a religious household. My grandparents even accused me of being a witch when I went through my Harry Potter phase! It actually made me rather pleased. There were a few times I came very close to beginning practicing witchcraft but I shied away for fear of Hell. It wasn’t until I finally was able to distance myself from the church earlier this year that I decided to start practicing magic behind my parents’ back. I’m very glad I did.

Progress

I’ve only been practicing for a few months. I’ve been very busy with college so it’s been pretty lax so far. I’m trying to build some sort of consistency. The end of the semester is a bad time for that, for sure. I’ve really connected with astrology and tarot-reading. Learning about the symbolism of different bugs and animals has also been something I’ve honestly also done, so it’s nice to be able to incorporate that into my practice. Dragonflies have always been signs of good luck for me (or bad omens, as the one time I saw one dead was one my Grammy found in her garage; she showed it to me a month or so before she passed away from cancer).

Recently, I began meditation. I met my spirit animal, a brown-eyed fox, who I ended up learning was sent by the goddess Brighid to guide me. I contacted Brighid about twice and set up an altar for her. The first time I heard her speak to me was when she was telling me I don’t drink enough water (I haven’t met with her since I pulled an all-nighter for college and I’m sure she’s not particularly pleased with that). I’m hoping to get back into my meditative practice soon. I’ve also needed to meditate to ask about a crow or raven that my sister and I kept crossing paths with while going out to lunch together. I’m not sure if it’s a sign of something or if the Morrigan wants to contact me. I’ve also heard the name Cernunnos repeated in my head lately so I’ve wanted to look into him too. I didn’t think I’d have anything to do with deities after my experiences with Christianity but Brighid quickly changed my mind.

Final Notes

I actually started writing this post a week or so ago but life got crazy. I’m in the last few weeks of my Freshman year of college, so it’s hectic. Right now I’m staying at a cabin in the mountains over the weekend, so I’m hoping this will give me the chance I need to wind down and reconnect with Brighid and my higher self. I’m hoping to get a daily routine going for my practice over the next few weeks.

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

Oh gods, I haven't written you in days. I thought there was time, that nothing was going to send anyway until we got back to Haewood, at least, and so I had time to sort out my thoughts, and then-- well, this is what comes of praying, I suppose. But I didn't pray for this.

I should back up. We made it down onto the next level of the ruins, and we met a ghost named Ornelien Vedri who has been dead since before this place turned into ruins, and who took up residence in the library because there's an observatory there that he particularly likes. He has maps, too, and he let me look at them and take pictures of them with my LICD, and he gave us what information he could about this place, though he seems not to venture out from the library at all, so there wasn't much he could tell us about what's happened to this place in the last couple millennia. He seemed very distressed by the prospect when I asked if he'd seen any trolls or goblins or other such creatures passing through, and I felt a little bad for alarming him. Though he then proceeded to tell us about a secret door that led to a hidden room with a wardrobe, and a mimic, and I got my hand stuck to the thing for the whole of the fight that ensued. I think I believe him, that he didn't know that thing was in there, but I did feel a little less guilty, after that.

We found another ghost, too, a young woman who turns out to be the granddaughter of the sorceress who'd lived her before, and who seemed to be much more free-ranging than Vedri, and was able to tell us a bit more about the place and the sorceress -- and the goblins, a whole community of them apparently, several hundred strong, and not an army like Elyn had been calling it, and we were none of us too fond of the idea of killing non-combatants. Nor of facing down hundreds of them, either, so Elyn cast Tongues and we went to the door behind which we'd been told the community was living, and we... knocked. I had my head in my hands the entire time, but it worked out as well as we might have hoped.

The goblins seemed as bewildered by our actions as we were ourselves, honestly, and took us to meet their leader, a hobgoblin named Glel who spoke Common, thankfully, and who didn't seem keen on inviting violence down upon their community. And who also was surprisingly willing to forgive the scouting party we'd encountered and killed on the level above. They said that the scouting party probably would have done the same to us if we'd given them the chance, and agreed to let bygones be bygones, and then agreed to let the archaeologists come and do their studying in peace, in exchange for the three of us venturing into some of the tunnels that they'd blocked off, where they'd come from, and taking care of some creature within that had been killing them, and had been a large part of their incentive for moving into the ruins in the first place.

They couldn't tell us much about the creature, since everyone who ventured into those tunnels they never saw again, but we were all of us, I think, glad to do this in exchange for peace, and so we were kindly shown through the areas of the ruins that the goblins had taken for their own, so that I could add those rooms to the map of the place that I've been making for the archaeologists, and then past a series of locked doors into deeper areas of the ruins. We found a room that had been overgrown with flowering plants, and the sight of all those growing things down here underground, when we'd seen nothing but stone for days, nearly knocked the breath right out of me. There was another with vegetables left to grow wild and unkempt, and another, vast chamber that was practically covered with green, with shrubs and climbing vines and lichens everywhere one might look. Walking into there felt like a breath of air when I hadn't even realized I'd been drowning.

We continued on, through a corridor that had nearly entirely collapsed, though there was a long stretch of a small, tight space that we were able to squeeze ourselves through, with varying degrees of success. Cloudleaper and Elyn had a little more trouble than I did, and poor Squirt made it halfway through before he got stuck, but he blinked right to me when I told him too and saved us having to try to drag stones and rubble around to widen the way.

We all decided to rest there and catch our breath, after that, and Elyn and Cloudleaper pulled out their LICDs to write letters -- well, I assume Elyn was at least, it's anyone's guess what Cloudleaper was up to. And... I took mine out and I meant to write to you both, I did. I tried, but no words would come, and I just felt so tired and so worn down by everything. Before, when Elyn had been negotiating terms with the goblins, they'd agreed to take us to Glel so long as no one touched their weapons, and I said I wouldn't so long as no one laid a hand on anyone in our party, or Squirt, and... and Cloudleaper snapped at me that Squirt was a member of our party, obviously, and I should get with the program, and oh, nenîth, it was so unexpected and so patronizing and so incredibly, unbelievably tone deaf that I snapped something in reply that I shouldn't have, and it ate at me for all the rest of the morning. So I tried to write to you, I really did, but when I opened my LICD to start it, the only thing that I could coax out was a message to Pika instead.

She told me, when she first suggested that Cloudleaper join Elyn and me, to teach her how to be better with people, and if the weeks we've spent traveling with her have taught me anything, it's that I don't have the first idea how to do that. I'm still trying to learn how to be better with people, how am I supposed to teach someone something I barely even know myself? How am I supposed to teach someone who doesn't even respect me enough to be truthful with me? She's always lying, about the stupidest of things, about having seen trees or had coffee, and she thinks it's a great joke when I'm stupid enough to take her at her word, and-- why would she bother listening to me long enough to hear anything I had to say, when she's so obvious about how she feels about me?

I don't really expect either of you to have any answers for me. I'm sorry. I don't really expect Pika to, either, but it helped a little to write it down, to pull all those worries and doubts out of my chest and put them down on the screen. Well. A very little.

I was still tired and still run down and I still couldn't figure out how to start a letter to you both, and the longer I thought about just sitting there struggling to write to you while Elyn and Cloudleaper caught their breath, the more I kind of wanted to just start tearing at my hear in frustration. So I got up to my feet before I could really think about it, and I told the others I'd be back soon, and I told Squirt to take care of them, and I wriggled back through the collapsed hallway, back to the big room all filled with overgrown plants, where at least I didn't feel like I was suffocating under all this stone, and I found a little spot that I could clear away without disturbing the plants too much, and I knelt with my incense and my burner and I lit it and when the pine scent of it had filled my lungs I sent my magic out through the stone, into all the plants for as far as my magic would reach, and I coaxed them up thicker and fuller around me, and I... prayed. Poorly, I think, but I did it, and I think he heard me? When I was done, the air around me all of the sudden smelled like the Feywild does, in its deepest, thickest places, and it felt so much like home that it brought tears to my eyes. And when I wiped the tears away and opened them, all the plants around me had grown even more, dense and lush and green, and there were these lovely pink flowers climbing toward the driftglobes that hadn't been there before, that hadn't even been buds before.

I didn't know what it meant. I still don't, really, but it felt like I had been heard, and that's something, isn't it? I stayed a while longer, until the scent of the Feywild in my lungs had stopped feeling new, and then I went back and rejoined the others, and when I got there all at once there were wires sparking from the walls that I swear hadn't been there before I'd left, and there was LICD signal, and all those letters that I hadn't expected to send until we'd returned to Haewood took advantage of it and sent themselves out, and so if you feel like yelling at me over how much getting those letters and then none following them must have scared you, then you can yell at Cernunnos instead, because it's his fault.

Maybe don't, though. Cloudleaper was none too pleased by her letters going out unexpectedly, and started yelling, and I said that I was pretty sure it was my god who'd done it and maybe she shouldn't yell at him. I've only just started trying to doing this properly, I don't know that I've earned myself enough favor for him to forgive one of my companions swearing at him.

We continued on after that, because there seemed little else to do about the LICD situation, and we still had a promise to keep to Glel and the goblins. Elyn and I debated a little about using Pass Without Trace on us -- we were both, I think, justifiably cautious about the prospect of blundering heedlessly across whatever horrible thing it is that's been killing the goblins, but I can only cast it so many times a day before I'm exhausted, and we hadn't any idea how long we might need to travel to find this thing. We decided, in the end, to cast it once, and when the spell ended after an hour, to reassess then whether we should cast it again, or keep traveling a while first, if it seemed like it was likely to be a long walk.

I kept an eye out, while we traveled, for tracks that seemed like they might belong to the creature we were looking for, and some ways in, when the halls had given way to tunnels proper, found some scuttling tracks that I followed to a small cavern with a pool of water and two horrible lobster-looking creatures with tentacles for mouths.

Elyn had cast Greater Invisibility on me while I followed the tracks, and then Messaged me to see what I'd found and how we ought to proceed, which is a plan that would have worked a treat if the things hadn't apparently been able to sense the spell. The moment I responded to her, they whipped around toward me, and it was all I could do to quickly let Elyn know that I'd been noticed before we were fighting.

It was a quick enough fight, in the end, and really only Squirt got hurt, and only a little bit. Elyn healed him right up, and we quickly decided that we didn't think those things could be what had been killing the goblins. They'd have been a tougher fight for a goblin than for us, to be sure, but we didn't think it likely that they'd have been so devastating that not a single one would have ever managed to escape and return.

So we continued on our way, and eventually came to a split in the tunnel. I looked for tracks there, too, and didn't find any worth noting, but it seemed as though down one side of the tunnel, I could hear a bit of wind blowing. I wondered if that didn't mean that it was going to lead us back up to the surface of the mountain, but we decided that at least if it did, that meant that we would likely discover we'd taken the wrong route quickly enough, and could turn around and go down the other tunnel without having lost too much time. So we started down that direction together, and almost immediately walked straight into a face full of poisoned breath from a dragon. A dragon, nenîth, and we just wandered blindly into its cave, even with Pass Without Trace over all of us.

It hurt all of us except Cloudleaper, who seemed to shrug the poison off without a care, though Elyn worst of all, and I was grateful that it's so difficult to poison halflings, or I'd have been hurting even more than I already was.

As soon as I was able to get proper air back in my lungs, instead of poison, I scrambled away from the mouth of the cave where we'd all been clustered, and shouted a reminder over my shoulder to remember the lessons we'd learned from Peninth'zarthan, under the sands of Rugira Prime, and to spread out from one another. We fought it, and Squirt took a bite that would have been followed by a swipe from the dragon's claws, if he hadn't been so quick to Blink away. But then he ran right back in again, even though he was looking in frightening shape, between that and the poison he'd taken with the rest of us.

Partway through the fight, the dragon took off and flew from the cavern, out into the tunnel and down the direction we'd been heading, and Squirt took off after it like a shot, and Elyn ran after him when he started barking. I had gotten myself up onto a ledge at the far end of the cavern, with a slide of rocks at my back that didn't seem to end at a cavern wall, and I took a gamble and climbed up it, to see if luck might be with us and it might be a shorter way of getting to where the dragon had fled to than losing time by running after Squirt when I was already so far away, and my legs can only carry me so far so fast.

It was tricky getting up the rock slide, but at its top I was able to see into another cavern, and I could hear Squirt barking from just beyond another pile of rocks at its other end, and there was another pool of water here, but no dragon that I could see. It didn't take too much of a leap to figure that the dragon must have tried to take cover in the pool, but the water was too dark for me to make out any glimpse of it within it. And there I was at the top of a pile of rocks some thirty feet high, which I knew would take too long to try to clamber down, and there was a pool there below me, deep enough at least to hide a dragon, and really, what else was I to do? I jumped.

Cloudleaper had scaled the rocks behind me in the instant while I stood there considering the inevitable, a far deal more gracefully than I had, and I heard a snatch of her shriek when I jumped before the waters closed over me. Squirt must have gotten over his pile of rocks, too, or Blinked over, and either seen or surmised what I'd done, because in a moment he was there with me, churning through the water, and I held my breath and swam down as far as I could manage, searching for any sign of the dragon or where it might have gone.

I found it just as Cloudleaper came plummeting down into the pool with me, a darker shadow within the already-dark waters that looked to be a tunnel of sorts, angling back in the direction of the other cavern, and the other pool, and I supposed it must connect the two. I pointed it out to Cloudleaper, then came up to the surface to tell Elyn, who had wisely not followed us into the water and was standing at the pool's edge, looking equal parts alarmed and exasperated. When I told her what I'd seen, and that it must have swum through the tunnel back to the other pool, Elyn took off running, just in time for the dragon to reveal that it had been hiding in that cavern instead, by hitting Cloudleaper and Squirt and me with another gust of its poison breath. I was glad that Elyn had missed it, at least, and Cloudleaper still seemed unbothered by it, and then it retreated over the rockslide to the other chamber.

I knew it'd take me ages to get back up over the rocks the way I'd come, so I dragged myself across to the other side of the pool and raced after Elyn, as fast as I could manage, and came upon her in the corridor just beyond the entrance to the first cavern, just in time for her to splinter its head with a well-placed Shatter. It was a bit of a gruesome scene, but I climbed up onto the ledge it had died on and carved away a good amount of meat for our deal with the gnolls, and pried out a few claws and scales, too, to add to the ones in my bag that I'd gathered from Peninth'zarthan.

It was an easy decision, to stay the night here in the dragon's cave. We made our camp on one of the ledges, so that we might be better protected in case anything wandered by in the night, and I felt bad enough about the worry I'd caused Elyn and Cloudleaper that I meant to take the first watch, but Cloudleaper insisted that, as she only needed a few hours of sleep a night, she'd take not just the first one, but the first two. She seemed in no mood to be argued with, so I relented, but insisted that I'd take the last so that Elyn could sleep undisturbed, and in short order, Elyn and Squirt and I were all asleep.

And then we were all being woken up by Cloudleaper, who must have been more tired than she'd let on, or whose attention must have wandered, because a handful of fire snakes had come upon us in the night. We were all of us, I think, immensely grumpy at being disturbed, and at having to wake and fight instead of sleep, and honestly, we just killed a dragon. Having to fight fire snakes in the middle of the night just felt like adding insult to injury.

I'm taking my turn watching now, while Cloudleaper finally gets some sleep and Elyn gets back to hers, and taking the opportunity to write to you while I can, before you get too alarmed by those last letters. Maybe Cernunnos will take pity on your poor hearts and see fit to let this letter go out, too, so you won't have to fret for too long before it reaches you. I did ask him to take care of you both, after all. But if he doesn't, and you don't get this until we're back in Haewood, I hope you'll forgive me for worrying you so. I did my best.

I think we'd all like to hope that this was the end of it, with the dragon, but neither Elyn nor Cloudleaper looked particularly sure of that, and I have my own doubts. The dragon was tucked away down this little side tunnel here, sheltered in a cave, and didn't attack us until we blundered into its home. I know we're stronger than the average goblin, but it's still hard to imagine that not a single scout would manage to survive or avoid the dragon and return back to the community to tell the tale. And Glel made it sound as though, whatever it was that was killing their people, it came up from below. So tomorrow I think we're going to keep making our way through the tunnels, and hopefully whatever it is that we find, we won't walk face-first into it like we did with the dragon and its breath. I'll let you know, either way.

All my love,

Maliah

[anthonyreadsthecards]

So I’ve been wanting to post this for a while but I’ve felt pretty self-conscious about posting about personal stuff in the past. I’m trying to get over that and talk more about things instead of just sitting on the sidelines with my thoughts to myself and no one else. So below is my story of how I started to follow Apollo. If you want to read go ahead if not no big happy trails then nerd.  

So I before Apollo I had tried to have a relationship with the god Cernunnos. They had been a few signs popping up here and there. Some subtle and some pretty obvious but long story short it didn’t work out. Actually I’m pretty sure I got dumped. One day I just couldn’t feel His presence anymore and I just shrugged and went about my business. I didn’t really mind mostly because I hardly understand Celtic myths and folklore and to be quite honest I didn’t really try to understand them. Maybe that’s why He left.  There was always a feeling of things not being enough. So when things ended I wasn’t really upset.  

A few weeks when I felt the presence of something again, but this time it was different. I couldn’t tell what or who it was so I decided to deal out my tarot cards and see who could be trying to contact me. I don’t really remember the cards that I pulled except for one, the Six of Wands. Something about this card just intrigued me. I had expected a Major but instead I had a Minor but something about it was pulling my gaze to the laurel around the rider’s head. I pulled up Google and was searching for gods associated with laurels and Apollo was the first one. As soon as I saw His name it clicked. This was it. He was the presence I had been feeling so I decided to make an actual attempt at communication. There was an old guided meditation that I found on Youtube that I used that day. In the meditation it helped you visualize a space for yourself and the guides you wanted to speak to.

Besides Apollo wanting to contact me there were two others trying to get my attention as well, Aphrodite and Hecate. While I had interest in both goddesses Apollo had been the one that appeared in my tarot reading so I spent most of my time with him. Apparently the reason why he had been interested in me was because I had check off a lot of His boxes when it came to things He’s associated with. I had been buckling down on divination after college, I had a love for music and singing, I was drawn to things like healing and I love characters that have healing or precognitive powers, I had a fascination with bows that I’ve had since I was a child, I’m gay and Apollo is queer as well and to top it all off the Greek Gods had fascinated from a very young age. We used to have a small encyclopedia set when I was a kid and book seven or nine was myths and fairytales. The section on Greek mythology was something that I had read countless times and as I grew up I would frequently check out similar books. So I had apparently been putting out the vibes and Apollo was one who answered my unconscious call. We hit it off fairly well and I felt He was the best choice for me. I really feel like I made the best decision for myself. While I still appreciate Hecate and Aphrodite looking out for me, and one day I may ask to follow them as well, Apollo and I felt like the right fit for that moment. I feel like my life has gotten a lot better from knowing Him. We have a pretty easy going relationship but I still call him things like “my lord” as a sign of respect. He’s still pretty chill and doesn’t really push me to do devotions, although I still do them because I want to show Him I care. There are a few things he pushes one thing in particular is for me to be my best and to be true to myself. Things that are easier said than done but He understands that some days are harder than others but as long as I make an effort, as long as I try even the littlest bit then I’m going forward in the right direction.

So yeah that’s the short story of how I became a follower of Apollo. I’ve wanted to write out this for a while but I always felt self-conscious about posting anything too personal but since a few people have been asking me about Him I figured what the hell? I think I’ll try to make more little post like this. Nothing too long or anything things like UPG or little praises to my lord Apollo. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, later nerds.

[raijinhasverybigpecs]

smite high school au (part 1)

part 1 - agni to erlang shen

part 2 - fafnir to odin

part 3 - osiris to zhong kui

notes

the school is a fancy private school with the gods playing a major role as important students and teachers at the school

the gods are not the only employees/students - there are many other students and teachers at the school to fill in the gaps

uniform is like this, but in the emblem colours (i’m too lazy to search up another image, give me a break lmao)

gods have no divine power but keep certain skills, talents and traits that they had with their powers (raijin doesn’t have lightning powers but he’s still good at playing the drums for example)

gods are mostly in human forms and they actually look like people - no super wild claws or fur or any of that shit (aside from cama and baka i think)

just a general note: this isn’t final or anything, and i’d appreciate any feedback or if you wanna add something or change something then please tell me, i’d like everyone’s opinions to be considered :>

roster (part 1: agni - erlang shen)

(short descriptions/headcannons of gods below)

agni - business and science teacher

for the purposes of this au they’ll be twins :>

seen constantly bickering around the school - don’t approach them if they’re having a fight bc they’ll pull you into it

ah muzen cab - groundsman

not much to say, he good at bee i guess

ah puch - science and maths teacher

subject of lots of rumors around the school due to a lack of knowledge about his past

“if you bring raw meat into the 3rd stall in the boys toilets the seat will overflow with blood and that creepy science teacher will show up behind you and kill you”

“hey kids what’s up-”

“HOLY FUCK DON’T KILL ME-”

“i was just gonna say that you did really well on the last maths test and that you should keep up the effort. is there something wrong?”

“oh it’s nothing...... haha......”

wears a bunch of fancy surgeons masks everyday due to an accident that left his face disfigured

anubis, hades, isis, artio, osiris and awilix are the only ones to know about what actually happened

extremely calm all the time, creeps out everyone constantly

strangely close bond with awilix, no one knows why they get on but they do

awilix will have lunch with ah puch at least once per week

amaterasu - student

good at everything, better than you(tm)

student government president

captain of the volleyball team

plays the cello

mutual crush on bellona but the two are incapable of saying that they like each other

anhur - student

head of the debating team

always in control even when he’s not

plays chess with anubis, ganesha and thoth on fridays in the library, students and other teachers like to watch bc it always gets v intense

anubis - history and maths teacher

grumpy old man who won’t take your shit

if he puts you on the spot for doing something wrong you will feel nothing but shame for the rest of the day

runs the debating team

doesn’t understand modern technology, needs a student to help him

ao kuang - business and hpe teacher

always vaguely angry even though he doesn’t mean to come off that way

always angry at wukong, bad gay mess

“so now we’ll split into teams-”

wukong takes a break to drink some water nearby, ends up wetting his shirt as well and winks when he sees ao kuang watching

“sir are you okay”

“it’s too early for this bullshit i can’t”

needs coffee in the morning to run

throws dodgeballs at students who arrive late in his morning hpe classes

aphrodite - student

pretty much always the lead in the stage play with apollo

good at every single arts subject

popular but not in a bitchy way - knows everyone’s names and tries to talk with everyone

head cheerleader, also a good dancer

knows how to throw a hell of a party

apollo - student

theater hoe and band nerd rolled up in a bright orange cheeto package

always annoying

arachne - former teacher

rumours around the school say that athena was jealous of her so she got her fired through her connections with zeus (the principal)

neith is the only one who can talk to her anymore

ares - student

fuck boy

that’s it

nothing else to say

artemis - student

band nerd, and just a nerd in general

still good at sports tho

v good at maths

part of the moon girls club (awilix & chang’e)

artio - english and geography teacher

she’d be a teacher that would die for her students, really nice and patient but if you annoy her she’ll destroy you

has motivational posters on her desk of bears with bad pun captions on them

one of those teachers that is always part of every school event, literally never sick or away

athena – teacher

reliable and respected by teachers and students

teaches lots of different subjects but enjoys teaching her arts subjects the most

very strict but in a good way

hiding darker secrets (see arachne & medusa for more)

awilix – student

on every sporting team, always doing the most at every moment

always puts her hand up, the type to have organised study books with colour coding and everything

remembers everyone’s name, friends with everyone

part of the moon girls club (artemis & chang’e)

special relationship with ah puch

bacchus –  chef

always drunk but no one calls him out on it

helps with the guidance councillors at times

bakasura – spooky rumour

cryptid

rumours always conflict with each other, no one is too sure what’s true or not but everyone can claim that they saw him

bastet - student

dance buddies with bastet, tries to get chang’e to go out more with her and aphrodite

too goddamn flexible, also really good at sport

bellona - student

awkward everywhere but on the sports field

even more awkward when it comes to ama, is a terrible lovesick lesbian

aphrodite always tries to set the pair up but it never works out the way she plans it

teachers always yell at her, there’s a strange bond between her and her teachers

cabrakan – groundsman

him good at dig

camazotz – pet of ah puch

ah puch wanted to demonstrate how animal wings work with a real animal but cama ended up attacking students ah puch just likes having the company of cama so that’s why he brings him to school everyday

ah puch offers cama to those who wanna take him for the night but it never turns out well for those who take him

cerberus - security guards

set of brothers who work as security guards

no one knows what the relationship between hades and them is – are they cousins? friends? lovers??? what is goin on

cernunnos – geography and history teacher

supportive and patient teacher

won’t call you out on talking during class, he’ll just walk up to you and wait for you to be quiet then step away and continue with what he was doing earlier

is busy with everything, half of the time he can’t show up to class bc he’s going to other important education stuffs 

chaac – hpe teacher

the loudest person in the room, always yelling for no reason

makes fun of students at times but he wants them to succeed

chang’e – student

quiet overachiever, probably doing better than you in everything

obviously gets best marks in dance, has won awards and stuff

part of the moon girls club (artemis & awilix), otherwise only friends with bastet, aphro and erlang

chiron – teacher

mainly teaches history and english but often fills in for other teachers

always well dressed and groomed

strict but you’ll probably never get bored in his classes ever

chronos – teacher

just like chiron, teaches every subject aside from hpe and is strict but you won’t get bored in his classes

sarcastic but he cares (deep down somewhere)

cu chulainn - student

one of the popular kids, good at everything and an all around perfect student

everyone has a crush on him and on valentines day he constantly gets roses and chocolates

keeps trying to flirt with erlang but he keeps failing

tries to invite erlang to his wrestling matches but erlang keeps leaving bc he’s really embarassed by how hot cu is

cupid – student

chatterbox, knows all the gossip

oddly enough, good at keeping secrets

close friends with aphro

da ji – unknown

seen a few times around the school with nu wa or zeus, no one knows why

secretly zeus’ lover

discordia – student

good at science, chemistry to be exact

it’s the only thing keeping her in the school – without her skill in science she’d be kicked out

bit of a bitch, pulls pranks on everyone but not on nu wa or artio 

special relationship with nu wa and artio, they lobby for her to stay in the school because they see her potential

erlang shen – student

perfect boy, good at everything

pure, sweet, innocent child that never causes any trouble (he’s a giant nerd ew), friends with everyone

likes cu chulainn but doesn’t know how to say it

[chrishoulihan]

Here are my extremely important thoughts on Native Invader after a grand total of two listens

The bridge of Reindeer King made me cry!! Also I love the production on the studio version and I think this is gonna be like a Radiohead Bloom situation for me where I’m always gonna prefer the studio version to the live version, because I listened to the solo performance from Polish radio a couple times and I liked it but it didn’t move me in the same way that the album version does. The production on this record is actually pretty fucking nuts, she really upped her game?? One of my issues with Unrepentant Geraldines (which again, I do actually like) was that the production felt pretty sparse and sometimes cheap, but this album is so lush and detailed!! Reindeer King with those atmospheric effects and extra instruments is so transportive. With the moons of Jupiter line and everything I’m picturing the reindeer king image as something like a cosmic space winter Cernunnos figure, which is an aesthetic I am TOTALLY here for

Also surprisingly love Wings a lot?? I saw some people comparing it to Vespertine which I don’t hear at all, but it sounds to me like the way Flavor on AATS should have sounded (and that’s one of the better songs on that record too imo.) Love the high notes in the chorus too.

Broken Arrow is probably my least favorite song on the album so far but I don’t hate it, but I can’t conjure the melody off the top of my head the way I can with every other song on the record after only two listens. It’ll probably take some time to grow on me

Love love love Cloud Riders as ever

Also love Up the Creek, and it still stands out to me as one of the more unique sounding songs that she’s ever done - it’s a total sonic anomaly in her catalogue and I love to hear her experimenting with a truly new sound for the first time since like...maybe Venus?? I will be very curious to hear her do this solo if she chooses to on the tour

Breakaway is pretty but not really my favorite, it just seems kinda straightforward. Kind of interesting for me to compare it to the solo piano songs on Geraldines which I think are indisputably the high points of that album, whereas on Native Invader the complex band tracks are the ones that really shine. Again a testament to its production!

Wildwood is beautiful!! Lyrically it reminds me of something like Thickets by Patrick Wolf. Not much else to say about it but I think it’ll grow on me even more.

Chocolate Song is interesting but I like it. Not gonna lie the way that she sings “satiny luscious chocolate” made me think of Homestar Runner saying 👄 tertiary👄  and made me laugh really hard

LOVE BANG, love love love her singing the elements/periodic table?? at the end. I love the way the percussion punctuates the title of the song. I think this could be really great live. 

Climb is very Sufjan Stevens-eque which I am obviously extremely here for, I can completely picture him singing the “all of me/St Veronica” chorus. I hope he listens to this album. Maybe it’s just the Veronica callback but I feel like I get the vibe from this that Ophelia from AATS tried and kinda failed to go for, that Victorian wandering-through-a-church-graveyard atmosphere. I really love it.

BATS!!!! I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!! Might be my second favorite on the record right now. The drums are so so good, and they’re really good on the whole album actually which is impressive considering that they’re probably all just Mark programming a drum machine. This is kind of like a slower-paced Siren to my ears, which has always been one of my favorite T songs so basically right up my alley. I’m gonna listen to this 5000 times probably 

Benjamin is SO Kate Bush-like, it’s adorable and I love it. I really really appreciate that the cute/lighter song on the record this time around is actually still really strong on its own and isn’t some wack Mary Jane/Giant’s Rolling Pin nonsense that clearly should have been relegated to b-side status. All the songs on this record feel like they belong together. Not sure how I feel about it as the penultimate track on the record though, I think I might have shuffled it around a bit so that Climb or Bats were in that spot instead. Maybe it’ll make sense to me with more listens though

The first time I listened to Mary’s Eyes I literally welled up as soon as I heard that atmospheric string intro and fuckin cried my eyes out the whole way through. Geeeeez what a beautiful song and so fucking sad. The “hymns locked in her memory” line was the one that really got to me. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for her to write but it feels so effortless and compassionate, it really blew me away. Right now my favorite song on the album.

Overall: absolutely love this album to bits, I’m so incredibly pleased with it and I’ve never been this excited about a new Tori record since I became a fan. I’m gonna give it some time to breathe of course but I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up my AOTY.