#power bag

[gladstones-corner]

On the Power Bag

I've mentioned this before, but I want to dive in deeper today. Before we do, however, I need to get a couple things out of the way regarding my qualifications to speak on this topic.

About Glad

First, as many of you know I am a member of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA). At my current degree, the Order introduces a tool called the Crane Bag. I am not authorized to disclose certain details, but for more information please consult the public AODA article on the subject. What I can say is that the Crane Bag is one expression of a cross-cultural phenomenon.

I know that some will bristle at the idea of a "non-indigenous" culture using such a tool, but there is technically a mythological precedent for it (check page 4 here) among Celtic practitioners--of which the AODA is strongly influenced by.

Secondly, I am biracial. One of my parents is Mexican, the other Germanic. While the latter cultures generally do not carry such a bag, several cultures within the United Mexican States do. They are called many things (Medicine Bag, Sacred Bundle, etc.), but again are cultural expressions of a cross-cultural phenomenon.

I will admit that just because I am Mexican-American does not entitle me to speak as an expert on the Sacred Bundle. I am not a curandero, and thus do not have the training nor the authority to speak about the particulars of such a tool. However, my heritage has made me familiar with the tool, at least to the extent that I can speak about its prevalence in Latin America.

One last note: to be as non-appropriative and account for as many cultures as possible, I will be referring to the general tool as the Power Bag. I will disclose no details about any real Power Bags I know of.

Okay, let's get started.

What is the Power Bag?

The Power Bag is a bag or bundle that contains objects sacred to its owner, who typically keeps its contents private. There are varying beliefs as to why they're private, but I don't need to preach to other magicians about the Levi's Fourth Tenet: to keep silence.

The Bag itself can be of any size, and indeed has been most reasonable sizes throughout history. It is traditionally made of hide or leather, though in the modern day any natural material may be used. In the case of large Power Bags, the wrap itself often serves as the pad upon which the contents sit when in use.

As for the contents, they can be any sacred objects within the magician's working life. This can of course mean physical tools, like a blade or rune set. However, it also includes objects of power, such as incenses, offerings, or amulets. Note that these objects have spirits of their own, and thus are not simply disposable. The magician must build a relationship with their sacred objects and mindfully decide the next stop on their journey when they are finished working with the magician.

What Goes Into a Power Bag?

Let’s take a brief look at some examples of the Power Bag by reintroducing our hypothetical magicians Sam, Kelley, and Nick (from my article on working together). They each carry a Power Bag, but because they have different foci, their contents are different.

Sam is an avid hiker. They often find themselves on the trail. As a result, their Power Bag contains a knife, lighter, paracord, and other survival gear. It also contains a journal of leaf and spore prints, along with photographs of things discovered on the trail. Finally, it holds their wand and vessel, allowing them to perform their version of the Great Rite outdoors.

Kelley is less of a hiker and more of an artist. Therefore, their bag contains some notebooks, pens, pencils, and other art supplies. They also carry incense, a burner, and small deity statues they sculpted for offerings. Kelley’s bag also holds their wand, which they use as an all-purpose magical focus.

Finally, Nick is a divination specialist. As a result, their bag contains witch-stones, a tarot deck, runes, and a casting cloth. It also holds a journal and pen for keeping a divination log. And as usual for this group, Nick’s bag carries their wand—but they also keep travel sizes of the blade, vessel, and disc to complete the elemental ritual set.

Making Your Own Power Bag

Hopefully this has given you a solid idea about what the Power Bag truly is, at least from a practical standpoint. But don’t give into the temptation of getting a large backpack, stuffing it with every magical item you own, and lugging it everywhere. Recall that the objects in the bag should be significant to your daily life. Start with what you already carry.

Do you have a purse? Perhaps you carry a satchel to work? Already you have the beginnings of your Power Bag. Some people like to keep their bag separate; others don’t mind mixing them all together with mundane items. I do a little of both, depending on the situation—but I digress.

Ask yourself what you can carry that would benefit you without being burdensome. Does your shrine have a spare crystal that calls to you? Maybe you have some loose tobacco or coffee that you want to scatter as offerings to the local nature spirits? Think small.

That said, I have some suggestions for items that are common to Power Bags. Items from the natural world are nearly always present—a few crystals, some seeds, nuts, or leaves, even some fur or feathers (legally and ethically obtained, of course). I am a traditional magician; I believe that you at least need a wand and vessel. Though I find the Great Rite a bit too heteronormative for my tastes, the wand is a ubiquitous magical focus and the vessel holds everything from offerings to consumables.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the important thing is that your Power Bag reflects your practice. Its contents should be portable, or at least wieldable enough to take with you daily. You should use them for meditation and magic, giving power to them when you can and drawing power from them as needed. Giving power to the items doesn’t always have to be an active thing—sleeping with the Power Bag nearby, keeping it with you, and using the items inside all charge them and imprint your magical signature upon them. In time, the Power Bag becomes a microcosm of your practice.

As always, thank you for reading. Stay safe and stay tuned.

Blessings~

[alliseaisfandom]

"AgathaRio is an age-gap ship because physically Agatha is visibly a lot older than Rio, and she's in her 300s so it's likely she's actually older"

Me: Ok that's hot

"AgathaRio is an age-gap ship because Rio is Lady Death and a fucking primordial entity and Agatha is barely in her 4th century of life."

Me: did. I. Fucking. Stutter.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

This wine tastes like pigs blood!

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[shotmrmiller]

i need simon to be the one neighbor with a generator when the light's been out for days and when you shakily ask him if he can let you at least charge your phone he just drags you into his home and tells you that you can stay if you pull your weight ie. feed him and wash his ripe work clothes.

sure. you don't know how to cook but he eats it like gordon ramsey made it, doesn't even leave crumbs on the table.

you mix colors with whites, dark with light, but luckily for you, all he wears is black. (not like it matters. if you stained a wife beater pink, he'd blame it on his girl mixing her red thready knickers in with his own clothes)

it works, you suppose, but then he tells you that yall are about to have company so make plenty of food. it's 3 others but they all eat like a family of four.

and this is where things take a turn. where he always left you alone before, his hands are on your shoulders. waist. hips. curling around your ankle, thumb digging into your foot beneath the table. the scottish one notices and tells you both to keep it PG. ye're in decent company, he grumbles.

he helps pick up the dishes once everyone's happy and full of whatever you threw in the oven. stands so close he's pining you against the sink, counter digging painfully into your skin.

"they like ya," he says. well yes, you rather noticed when they kept complimenting the science experiment you called dinner. you also noticed that they called you missus. or maybe you misheard. their accents are pretty thick.

after a nightcap, he sends them on their merry way. "the missus is tired. off with ya." so you hadn't misheard.

you aren't sure how one thing led to another. how you'd been aimlessly drying dishes with a rag to having his head between your thighs, tongue dragging between your folds, fingers pressed into you up to the knuckle.

what do you know is that where he bit your neck as you came still aches. he'd been talking filth that would have even a sailor apple cheeked as he used his spit slick thumb to rub your stiff pearl in tight little circles, feeling you felt your peak approaching at a speed that almost frightened you when he sunk his crooked teeth into the junction of your neck. hard.

enough to feel a bit of a stinging tearing of skin.

ouch. you'd ask if this is also a part of pulling your weight but he's doing it for you as he drags you toward his bedroom.

[antiqua-lugar]

tav being canonically so attractive that people just throw themselves at them is super funny as a galemancer because like so many people in-game (and the game itself at times) call gale either annoying or pathetic straight up to his face but tav is turning down all of faerun for him. everyone desires them carnally and they are busy getting ready to be introduced to gale's cat over dinner.

[shower-phantom-ideas]

Danny is just a kid ya know? Like he is just a little guy. A baby really. 14? Tiny child! Look at him, he needs to be protected. Someone has to help this poor little dude. I mean he forgets to use his own powers to avoid attacks all the time.

Anyway cut to Batfam not knowing all of Dannys power set cause the lil dingus keeps forgetting he can do that stuff in the heat of battle.

Danny uses his invisibility all the time… to avoid being followed. But in a fight? Oopsies hes too busy thinking of funny one liners to realise he could do that.

Intangibility? Give the guy a break. I mean who calls themselves condiment king. Even he was stunned.

He so rarely actually uses his biggest advantage powers that the League doubt he actually has them. He, like any naive child, trusts them and reported fully on his power set. Instead of just asking him to demonstrate his powers they instead start watching him and try to find evidence of his powers.

At least they know duplication was true since they watched him make a copy of himself to go to the bathroom and not miss any of his fav tv show.

[pankiepoo]

yoy

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 217

Babies can die if they don’t have enough physical contact. This is something that is known, but Talia does not have time to spend with her twins, and it’s not like she carried them thanks to the false Lazarus womb, so she didn’t even have that excuse to use. 

What she did have, was a near braindead teen who could be taught things through muscle memory. 

Which is how Jason ended up caring for a pair of toddlers between any training, even after his dip in the Pit. Well, he cared for them until he left for Gotham, to enact his plans, even if he continued to call them every week. 

But that wasn’t enough for little Damian and Danyal.

Where had their caretaker gone? Away from them? Where is Baba? Across the sea? Unacceptable. They will not stand for this! 

Which in turn, is how Jason discovers his the twins outside his safehouse window, having somehow made it to Gotham on their own- what the fuck, kids!?

[clarissasbakery]

more tpot 10 doodles

[tangramkey]

I had an idea for a Bottle ita bag🤍

[khloxxy]

Cold war chibi yuri that I didn't post here for some reason..

Alt. bg cause I couldn't decide

[lambmotifz]

sam literally offering himself to dean in 2.11 playthings, and dean not giving it to him because he doesn’t want to “ruin” his little brother

and this is why sam would initiate. AND he would prefer to bottom

[hetaologist]

When your collection is too big for a bag, you make an ita bag shelf

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

how about that uhhhhh Fantasy Julie. she gets her sword <3 no one can take it from her <3

rambles:

SIKE you get an extra, lower quality doodle

SIKE AGAIN here's the rambles

yeah... i caved and gave her a tail... I'm Not Sorry! it's cute! i wanted to stick with her sorta flower motif - it's stronger in her princess look, since I imagine that when she was part of the royals she was very blatantly flower power based. it was her Thing!

but a Julie free of her noble shackles... she deserves her big sword. like yeah, she has flower magic, but who needs it when she has a Giant Blade??? on the royalty vein, and if we're classifying "rainbow monster" as a species, i feel like horn size/curve would be a status symbol of some kind. maybe Julie would have kept her horns filed short. but if she ran away from that life... longer horns! i like to imagine that they'll keep growing until she has a pair of Extra Weapons attached to her head! curved forward like mammoth tusks maybe!

i imagine that like Frank, she goes with minimal armor - range of movement over protection, yk? some scale mail over her front, a thick leather flower over her chest w/ scalloped leather pauldrons, wrist armor and metal knuckles! i'd think that the faux-suspenders include a back sheath for her sword... i wish i'd thought of that Before i finished the little ref! i don't feel like going back and editing!

i imagine that she was forced to cut her hair when it got caught in something (a gelatinous cube, mayhaps). it didn't look good! don't let anime and Mulan fool you! cutting your own hair with a blade will not look nice! but someone - Eddie, probably, he's good with scissors i'd assume - cleaned it up for her. and hey, it didn't look bad! plus, Julie probably liked being able to just tuck up her long strands into her hat when she's feeling a bit more like a Julius than a Julie!

it's been a fun challenge transforming their canon outfits into a similar variation with fantasy flavoring and twists! i want them to suit the setting but still maintain Themselves! Julie's was tough i gotta admit. i was messing around with the princess look and the fighter look side-by-side. it worked better when i sat back and thought "fighter Julie is Julie unrestrained. that version would be more aligned with her canon look"

i wanted her princess form to look Restrained! she has to be a ~delicate flower~, a noble woman, pristine and poised and very much a princess. soft colors, poofy clothing, bright white gloves that are not to be sullied. carefully bundled up hair! jewelry! that dress must be Heavy and hard to move in! her tail must be so cramped under there!

but Julie Unleashed? violent pinks! rose gold accents! short skirt so that she can sprint and Kick! fun boots that she can be active in and delight in watching them get dirty! her hair is free to whip in the wind and get caught in things! fun straps and Deadly Accessories! a sword that she stole from the royal armory on her way out the window! she has forearm wraps both to match Frank and to support her wrists!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Sharing is Caring!

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[duckshuffled]

chip and spruce going camping together or something

hii i hope this is okay for the prompt whee. wasn't too too sure what The Deforestation Brothers over here would get out of some quality time in nature so i just figured spruce talked chip into making a day out of some assignment because he is strange and unusual