#then we moved to the foothills of the Appalachia

[fangirleaconmigo]

I know nothing about music so if i describe this all wrong pls forgive but you know what kind of song would be really fun to get from TAD? A real barn burning boot stomping fiddle and banjo heavy song. Mayhaps it is the Ozarks in me, the Appalachia in me, but I’d be down with that.

[just-some-castaways]

𝕮𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕯𝖚𝖊𝖘

(Excerpt from the first draft of an original novella, part 2) (CW: mild blood, mild violence)

~ Oct. 19th, 1998 North Carolina, Appalachia foothills.

~

Five hooded faces turned to look at us as stepped into the moss covered shack, the dim light of a nearly full moon creeping through warped glass windows. Five hooded faces surrounding a series of cryptic symbols, carved into the wooden flooring, illuminated by the upwards light of a dozen flickering candles. Five hooded face froze in varying levels of confusion, until one of the figures stepped forward and jabbed a bony finger in our direction.

"It's the Wardens!"

Well, that solves our introduction.

The room erupted into chaos as everyone either tried to escape through the back door, or lunge at me and my companion with rune encrusted daggers.

Dodging the closest attacker, I planted my foot firmly and pivoted to increase his momentum by shoving him to the side over my foot. He toppled to the ground, cracking his head on the side of the door frame on his way.

My cloaked companion moved with the efficiency of an experienced fighter, weaving his way through the tight room as easily as if it were a ballroom dance. A blade cut through my clothing and bit my flesh, punishing me for my distraction. Everything after that was a blur of black and red cloaks, grunts, and cries of pain.

Within minutes, it was over. Three of our attackers lay dead, their blood slithering across the floor till it found cracks in the wood to sink into. Most of the candles had been trampled and were sending wisps of smoke like flags of surrender. The fourth attacker was huddled against a wall, clutching a crooked leg, and whimpering quietly.

The last cultist somehow managed to slip out during the tussle, going unnoticed long enough to make finding him an irritation.

"You... you're the ones they warned us about." The crumpled figure grunted, shifting to try and ease pressure on his disfigured limb. "You're those magic hunters, the ones who kill just because they hate anyone using the gift." The last words were spat out with a glare of hatred.

"You're partially correct." My companion rose from picking the bodies clean of valuables. “We do stomp out anyone tampering with things they don't understand, before the word gets out that there' are witches in the woods." He matched the cultist's snarl, closing the gap between them in two strides. Glancing at my wound as he passed by, I shrugged. The long gash had already re-sealed itself and the scar was fading quickly. Bending down and lifting the man's chin, he smiled, the expression cold and devoid of humor. "But we don't kill everyone with the 'gift' as you put it."

A glowing blue twine sprung up from the floor and grew up till it could wrap around the man's neck. His eyes bulged, gasping for breath. With a twist of the wrist, the twine jerked to one side, snapping the man's neck.

"We just kill witches like you."

[ancientcraftnoccultism]

Challenge 2 - Goal Getter

Hello again ♡ I'm back today with the daily challenge! I've managed to come up with a pretty decent list of goals for myself. This is a combination of things within my mundane life and my spiritual practice. I've decided to lay it out as a 5 year plan, not for any specific reason other than my own leisure and dead lines. Let's get to it, shall we?

1. To Live A Self-Sustained Life Off Grid

This is my absolutely most important goal. I plan to find a nice piece of land somewhere in Tennessee. I'll have a well for water, a cast iron oven to heat my house and cook with. I'll have an outdoor bathroom that's cascaded in its own room constructed of Vines. Heat with firewood under for a tub. We'll have 3 horses, a little hen house with enough hens to keep eggs around, and a few goats for milk. I'll spend my days tending to the animals and the garden and creating whatever my heart desires. It's incredibly important to me to learn how to live off of the land. Society is falling apart and humans were never meant to live this way.

2. To Have My Own Business Website/Blog

As it's clear to tell, I've been working hard towards building an online platform for myself. Ideally, I'd have an online Grimoire/Book of Shadows/Mirrors with all of my information organized and easily accessible. I'd also have a professional platform for my divination workings, and eventually a place to sell handmade candles, incense, incense boards, handmade and personalized tarot/oracle cards, runes, bone sets crystals and stones that were harvested by me and so much more! It's become a huge passion of mine to be able to teach people factual information along with provide them with the proper metaphysical equipment that is usually capitalized on.

3. Build Closer Relationships within my Pantheon

I do daily devotion to my deities along and always make sure to honor them throughout my day, but I'd like to become closer to them and learn more about their history. It's another big goal of mine to completely understand and be able to know by heart every inch of the mythology and reasoning behind everything I'm worshiping. Not only what it means to me, but the historical context and how these deities were once revered by entire cities is definitely a big thing to not overlook. I take my relationship with the gods very seriously and intend to devote a lot of my time to studying them as a collective within the pantheon.

4. Maintain My Altar More

I slack on keeping things tidy, especially on my altar. I'd like to set up a few different altars to keep all the things I practice seperate, but for now, I move things around as needed. That gets messy at times, and there are points where I stack things on top of each other, close the shutter, and forget about it until I come back next time. Sometimes I go months at a time without touching my altar. It just is what it is, but it's a big goal of mine to keep things up on it more. And to get seperate ones to space my things out.

5. Learn Local Folklore & Native Plants

I live in the foothills of the Appalachia, and for how long I've lived here, I know very little of the Lore and history of the land I walk every day. I want to learn more about native species and correspondences, as well as local folklore that once were everyday stories. I feel it would help me feel more connected to the land I already hold so close to my heart. It's also important to me to plant and regenerate native species, as it would save our land.

I'm excited to see all of your goals as well. Thanks for reading. Fair Winds ♡

[dertaglichedan]

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/boomers-retirees-appalachia-georgia-retirement-9bf8e61f

DAWSONVILLE, Ga.—Helen Anderson, known as “Granny Helen” to friends and family, remembers when Dawson County had only about three residents who owned cars.

One was her father, a poor chicken farmer who helped the family scratch out a living by driving down from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Atlanta to sell moonshine.

“We wouldn’t have lived if we didn’t make whiskey,” said Anderson, 86, who has lived in this North Georgia county all her life.

These days the stills and many family farms are gone. Cars and trucks congest what were once sleepy country roads. Wineries on hillsides near Dawson and high-end retirement communities are starting up or expanding.

Dawson is changing in ways big and small, as baby boomers known as “halfbacks” transform southern Appalachia—the moniker a reference to how many first moved from the Northeast and Midwest down to Florida before settling somewhere in between.

The influx of retirees flooding into southern Appalachia is transforming the region from poor, serene and rustic to a bustling retirement haven. Many longtime Floridians are moving up also, as well as northerners moving directly into the area

Drawn by lower housing costs and living expenses, lower taxes, lower insurance costs, low crime, warm weather (but with seasons) and less chance of hurricanes, an older, wealthier population is arriving and demanding a level of services from governments and businesses that neither had to provide in the past.

[gayantlers]

Gay guy from northern Appalachia (rural PA - closest city is Pittsburgh over an hour away) and I grew up with a heavy Pittsburgh accent. I moved to New England after graduation and I worked very hard to not sound like a "drunk hillbilly" (actual thing I read about the Pittsburgh accent). It mostly went away but popped up on occasion. Now I just moved to the South in the foothills of Appalachia and the accent, while close in ways but still different, triggered my accent to come back. Especially with things where the accents overlap ("crick" instead of "creek", for example) and my husband loves it. He pokes fun at me but adores it. I think his favorite thing when visiting my hometown is hearing my accent come back in full force after just a day of being there. Or when I have to translate for him because he has no idea what someone is saying (I've had to do this with someone who had the thickest accent I ever heard).

Us queer appalachians can and do find love for all we are, even our silly little accents.

One day I’ll get a wife who will love my accent the same way your wife loves yours

- religious lesbian

yes you absolutely will, and i hope you'll come back here and tell me all about her 🥺

[thetwotorches]

Since I discovered the wider world of "witchcraft", aka western witchcraft, it's always been like looking at something that exists in some other strange, radically unfamiliar place.

Despite being technically 'western', growing up in the foothills of Appalachia for me had nothing to do with what other people get out of it. How to explain it? I don't think I actually can.

Since I have been conscious in this life, I have been able to remember past ones. As that place is long, long gone, it's always been like being an untethered kite, free-sailing but the price is aimlessly knocking about- the ground always a stranger.

So I have tried to fill in the gaps, periodically owning and disowning in turn those memories that made me the odd one out as a child, as a teenager, as an adult. A love-hate relationship with Being.

I even traveled to the other side of the Earth to seek and build and shape something for myself here, now, that I could live with. And I was partially successful. I came back again, and built and shaped some more, like adding plaster here and there to gaps in a wall. But you can only make so much plaster.

I feel that, in the eyes of 'western witchcraft', I must surely be an anomaly- no spirits or gods from my immediate blood call to me; everyone is silent. At best there is a whisper, a sort of pitch, from 10,000 years ago there, that may come knock delicately on my floor to remind me that despite the silence my blood this time around is still theirs. But otherwise it's the woods of my childhood that hold me. The chants that wrapped around my old self that sing the only familiar tunes I know. And far off lands that have looked at my approach with genuine curiosity and offered a careful hand.

I don't know if this is what has cut me off from the spirits my blood knows best- that memory and soul can overrule physicality so supremely is an interesting thesis to consider. But more and more, gradually, and at increasing-increasing speed I am pulled in deeper, offered potential revelations I thought impossible, and continue to be drawn in like at the end of a rope to beings, customs, things I should have nothing to do with.

I try to keep things in a fairly scientific perspective. I don't let myself stop analyzing and asking why this or that appears or why on earth paths that should be closed to me open wide with neon signage. And I like to hope this stays my hand long enough to think about and consider what the catch might be- nearly everything has a catch, after all (very few of us will linger long enough on inviolable home turf, who have that itch for exploration).

But then I like to think, or at least I feel I have discovered so far, that even the most wide and most circular paths are there to teach us a method or a structure or a mode that can aid us and answer what we've been asking for- whether consciously/unconsciously or with words or not. Maybe this blood doesn't belong to that sphere, but my body has been there, or has been close to there, or was due to perhaps go there and my potential coming turned an eye- again that tilted curiosity and carefully offered hand. Even if the tracks shifted due to the pull of a switch....maybe......maybe they don't let go easily.

Maybe spirits are just as moved by (lost) potential as we are.

I feel like I'm digressing.

Ultimately I don't have much of a conclusion here. At least I don't think so. Or maybe you, the reader, have spotted one, some summation that makes this collection of contemplations make some sort of coherent sense. Basically I have entered a new and very odd and unexpected phase. Or perhaps it should not be so unexpected. I can't quite say. I am 'outside', but I still seem to be worth teaching something. Why? I have stated some theories already, but ultimately I may not find out for some time. This particular trail is very wide and very circular indeed, and I may never known all the machinations behind it. But none the less I'm grateful to still somehow be considered worth a sliver of it. I hope I can do honorably by it. I hope I handle it with the delicate, sincere care it deserves. And I hope that is seen and understood by those who have come knocking and have decided it is Time for this particular divergence. And I hope....

.....well....I hope a lot of things.

[hillbillyhippiemusicreview]

Post #62--Cody Howard, A Long Way From Home

Reviewed by Lyssa Culbertson

After a few days of being home off the road, I had begun to get antsy. So, much like a bandit on the run, I made my way to my getaway car and headed for my favorite spot to think: a waterfall tucked away in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. While there, I was immersed by soaking in nature’s music akin with the sounds of Cody Howard’s melodic voice in harmony. If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a million times again—there is such talent hidden in the hollers in Kentucky and it’s time it is uncovered! Harlan, Kentucky born and bred, Cody is a recently discovered jewel of the mountain—in other words, he’s a young diamond in the rough and it’s his time to shine.

Cody’s sound is what I describe as mood music—it’s those kind of relaxing tunes you just blast to chill out and muse over life. When I first heard him sing on a YouTube video, I knew I had to hear more so when I realized he had an upcoming EP to release, I booked him for a livestream show on HHMR, and instantaneously, I was hooked on his sound. His voice is perhaps unsuspecting to the untrained ear, as it is soft and quite mellow with shades of old-timey mountain folklore scattered throughout; however, it is powerful not only in the way it sounds but the way it phrases the deep, thought-provoking lyrics Cody pairs with it. Lyrically, he possesses a poetic prowess far beyond his years that will surely continue to deepen as he continues to forge his path in the Appalachian music scene and beyond. Sonically, the quality of his EP is quite impressive to be recorded and produced solely by him and a few friends, including Dakota Saylor and Josh Nolan. Cody Howard is certainly an artist to keep your eye on, and I say that with full confidence in his artistry and budding career.

The EP, A Long Way From Home, begins with a thoughtful monologue as hilarious as it is true. It’s full of that kind of good country wisdom we all heard growing up and Robert Gipe gives the perfect introduction to preface the tunes that follow. In it he says, “That’s what I like about these young cats making music here in Harlan or wherever things is kind of rough, because they know if it don’t come with a little bite to it, then the tasty ain’t as tasty.” If you can decipher the meaningful message in those words, then you’ll surely soak in every note Cody sings, beginning with “Thriftshop Suitcase.” It’s a tune about the pain of leaving things behind and moving on from what or who we love, figuratively packing days gone by in the old dusty luggage of our minds. “Bandits,” the second song on the release, sounds almost melancholic, yet it’s an ethereally heartwarming tune focused on the notion of running away from the pitfalls of life and letting love lead the way, all the while placing your trust in another person: “take my hand . . . we’re gonna make it wherever we are.” It was in this tune that I truly fell in love with the mechanics of Cody’s voice, as the chorus highlights the quiet power it holds—it draws you in and makes you believe the promises he’s crooning.

“Mine Town,” co-written with fellow Kentuckian Lance Rogers, is by far the best evidence of Cody’s songwriting abilities on the EP, as it is rooted in both history and truth. The tune commences with an almost haunting spoken word portion detailing the destiny many men in rural Appalachia used to face where coal was king—their life’s trajectory tended to be predetermined from birth, because as Cody sings, “generations come and go.” In this song, Cody details the story of town ruled by the mine and some of the detrimental effects involved, such as runoff killing all aquatic life in the streams. When he sings, “the funeral home’s the nicest place, at least they’ve got some honest work,” it chilled me to the bone imagining what life was, and still is like, in many of these places, as “all we have left here to show is hollow hills we call a home, the blackened field full of bones.” He paints an extremely stark and desolate, yet vivid portrait of a “Mine Town” that is evocatively beautiful in the way he delivers the tune.

Rounding out the EP, “When I Finally Get Around to Livin’,” also co-written with Lance, is a lyrical daydream, noting all the things he would do when he starts truly manifesting his existence whilst urging both himself and listeners to “start living now before you’re dead and gone” because “one day life will be too late for living.” The song shares a poignant message about not waiting to be who you want to be, as every day is a gift we are not promised. I would like to believe it is a lesson the late wordsmith Justin Townes Earle, who Cody’s lyricism at times reminds me of, would support—and I mention Justin for good reason. I will attempt to give a little spoiler alert while not spoiling all of the magic: at the end of “When I Finally Get Around to Livin’,” there are 38 seconds of silence to honor JTE prior to a secret track playing, and much like all of the other fine pieces of music preceding it, it is one you must hear.

As I listened to A Long Way From Home, it was evident that Cody Howard puts his heart and soul into everything he touches, as well possessing a love and hunger to make music and share his stories with the world that is sometimes difficult to find. I positively cannot wait to hear more from this young troubadour, and I hope you enjoy his craft as much as I do. Be sure to procure and stream the EP on whatever platform you prefer, and check him out on social media at Cody Howard on Facebook and @codyhowardmusic on Instagram.

Peace, love, & music,

Lyssa

————————

*This is an independent review. The Hillbilly Hippie Music Review was not compensated for this review.

*The opinions expressed are solely that of the author(s).

*These images are not ours, nor do we claim them in any way. They are copyrighted by Cody Howard..