#world not fully wonked. but wonked to a degree regardless .

[caruliaa]

put your hands into your pockelets get yourself some wonka chocolate to be quite fucking honest

[taltos-seidmadr]

On spirit communication

(art by galactic-castle)

Before I really start making my point, please allow me to make a short prologue about where I’m coming from and why I’m writing this post.

I’m a Heathen, in terms of religion, and in my practice I do some things that can be construed as “spirit work” according to the understanding of the greater community, but I don’t really consider myself to be a part of that community, and I’m pretty much off doing my own thing that is closer to my understanding of my own culture and/or Heathen traditions rather than what I see circulating on the internet most often. There are two reasons why I wanted to bring this up. One, I don’t feel myself qualified to give advice on anything and this might end up the only advice post I ever write, especially regarding this topic. And two, I apologize for occasionally using some terms that might be more specific to me than the actual jargon of the wider spiritworking community, because I’m not in it, but I hope it will be understandable regardless.

One of my spirit worker friends approached me with an issue they were having. It made me realize what a huge underlying issue it is, and it is indeed one that I also used to have, so I told my friend what I did to resolve it - and after their encouragement to do so, I’m telling you all now hoping that it may help some. I think to some degree it can apply both to the spiritworking community and to those pagans who keep in contact with their deities in some sort of way that involves trance work and/or resembles verbal communication. I obviously have no idea whether it’s applicable to every practice or not, so take it with a pinch of salt, but Hungarians have a pretty insightful and witty folk tale about the importance of a pinch of salt in the right place and the right time, so pretend that I made a reference to that and hear me out.

I want you to imagine the following situation:

You are a beginner practicioner of whatever you are doing. You start talking to some spirits, establish relationships with them, and maybe even start making friends. (While I do believe that a god is a type of spirit, right now I’m just including deities in the category of “spirits“ for the sake of convenience, and just know that the overall advice is still applicable if you don’t believe the same.) But real life also demands your time and energy, and so do real life people, so you begin to pay just a little bit less attention to your spirit fam than you would like. And then you maybe spend a little too much time on the hellsite dot com, and you read a post about how if you don’t actually pay enough attention to your spirit fam, then you are one of Those™ spiritworkers, which is Bad. And you barely even notice it, but somewhere in the back of your mind you start feeling guilty. Then the little behavioral psychology mouse that lives in your brain learns that talking to spirit family=electric shock, and thus you start avoiding your spirit fam even more, and you feel even more guilty, and so the cycle keeps continuing with increasing returns (on the guilt, or diminishing ones on the communication end).

My friend was there. I’ve been there. A lot of us have been there, probably. Maybe you didn’t even have to imagine this scenario because this is exactly where you are at.

And this entire guilt-avoidance cycle (just according to my unofficial armchair observation) goes back to an idea that nobody really says out loud but everyone seems to imply, which says the following:

“You should spend exactly as much time and energy on  spirit relationships as you would on human relationships”

and I’m not even going to argue outright with this statement, because in some ways I kinda agree, but this post is already taking me 84 years to write so just allow me to cut to the chase and lampshade something that I don’t agree with.

This statement seems really wise and unassuming... until I remember that in order to spend time and make meaningful interaction with a spirit on that side, I need to tune in.

This is the point where I feel a bit on shaky grounds because I don’t have much to go off of other than my own practice, but maybe some of this will sound familiar. Take this from someone who has just never been completely tuned out probably since birth, that in order to tune in in a truly meaningful way, I still have to expend a LOT of energy, and I’m not even talking about anything magical here, I mean the completely everyday mental energy that I have a limited amount of at any given point. What this means in effect is that if I wanted to treat my spirit relationships exactly the same way as I do my human relationships, I would have to spend about half my life in a highly concentrated trance state, which is

a) probably impossible, b) even if it were possible, it would probaby serve as a serious detriment to my ability to navigate the real world, not to mention the active harm it would do to my physical and mental health on the long run.

You need to keep in mind that regardless for your metaphysical beliefs, you are a physical being and you have an extremely important responsibility to take care of your physical manifestation. And keeping this in mind, instead of allowing myself to run the guilt-avoidance cycle like a hamster runs a wheel, I could do two things that lead to healthier results:

1. Make a healthy, honest and realistic assessment of what you can actually manage

For me it’s kind of a go to, that no matter how little time or energy I had during the day, and no matter how stressed/anxious/whatever I feel at the end of the day, I pretty much always can do at least a little bit of trance before I fall asleep, when I can have a little contact with the spirit family, and it actually helps me fall asleep too, so it’s kind of a win-win-win. I’m bringing this up because I don’t have the scientific receipts on the matter but I’ve heard that something about the state of the mind when it’s getting into and out of sleep is special and that makes trancing easier. Don’t quote me on it, but I’ve experienced that to be true.

2. Involve your spirit family in ways of communication that either don’t involve trance at all, or don’t require tuning in fully

As for the first half, the most straightforward example that comes to mind is divination, or literally any sort of randomized thing that you could use to communicate. The second half is a little bit harder to explain but I will try to give my own personal example.

I want you to imagine a spirit phone. This is metaphorical right now but visually speaking, I really want you to imagine an actual phone, the object. For fun. It has a screen you can read texts on. You don’t even have to imagine it very hard or in great detail, you exactly know what a phone looks like. There are many days when I cannot hold an entire environment in my mind’s eye in great detail, but there is no time when I wouldn’t be able to put so much energy in that I wouldn’t know what is written on an imaginary screen as text. Of course communication like this is a bit limited, but this way you can text your spirit fam any time you want. If you are saying rn, but Sithi, that is the stupidest fucking idea I ever heard, texting my gods?! This is too modern for me! then you need to understand that the point is not whether this is an actual phone you are holding, but the limitation through which you channel the finite amount of mental energy that you have. The point is the focus. That you are only imagining so much that actually carries information value. If you want, imagine a word wall from Skyrim, a magical book, a burning forest floor on which you scrape your message into the smoldering ashes with a holy stick, I don’t know man. Use your imagination. Come up with something that fits into your inner world and makes you happy. Similarly if visualization is not your strongest suit, just work out something that builds on your strengths instead. (Funny thing about the phone is that it’s very good for making voice calls too! Hmm? Hmmmmm? Wink wonk!)

Just keep in mind that just because you cannot do everything that you planned or can even think about, it doesn’t make you somehow inferior or less than a human. It can be good to stretch your limits, to an extent, but knowing where those limits are in the first place is probably THE most important thing you can do for yourself in your spiritual practice (or in anything for that matter) and it’s a piece of knowledge that will make your relationships healthier and easier, no matter what layer of reality you are on. That was pretty much my hot take and I hope this will help you let go of some unrealistically high standards and be a little bit easier on yourselves, because we all need that a lot. Especially right now. 🔥👁️‍🗨️✨