#yeah i talked Muž into starting the show again

[stargazerdaisy]

Nolan: You scare me.

Emily: Good.

That's it. That's the show.

[orangepunkwitch-blog]

Now that I've recovered a little, I can finally make a post! But first, I need to put a little side-note here: I may not post everyday because I'm still trying to build my strength back up, which is a pain in the ass when you got other shit to get done, mental health issues regarding depression and anxiety, etc., so right now, it's hard to tell if I will ever post anything on an almost daily basis.

I'd also like to mention that I will not be sharing every single thing I experience or do in my practice. I may not even share pics of my altars very much (if at all!) more to emphasize how witchcraft and paganism are not only aesthetics but actual practices. This doesn't mean I will never share pics as examples, especially if they're god examples for practical reasons. Don't expect super chic witchy aesthetics to come from my personal photos that I choose to share. Yeah, the aesthetics can be nice every once in a while, but again, I want to emphasize that this is an actual practice, and that we shouldn't allow such practices (regardless of the beliefs or culture) to be turned into a fad or trend that corporations can make money off of (and uh.. that's kind of happening but we shouldn't allow it to be the norm).

....I guess that's what this post is gonna be about, lol. I hadn't really planned on what to post. It's been a while since I've done any real active stuff. It's been mostly piecing together what bits of Serbian pagan practices I can find (for the witchcraft part), and then filling in the blanks with what the Serbian Orthodox practice does, then taking out the christian part and making it pagan since that's where the unique practices within that branch of christianity came from in the first place.

Another thing I'd like to do posts on (as I, personally, pick up the habit and find them useful) is DIY'ing everything for the practical elements and not worrying about aesthetics.

Before I forget: you're not gonna find crystal-related magick with me here at all. So if that's what you're looking for, you won't find it here. I've got ethical reasons for why I personally won't be incorporating any. And you will also likely not find very many (if any) spell jars of any sort.

I will also not always tell you what all I do for each spell, or at least I won't be telling you what I'm doing a spell for before I've even cast it. This is because I don't want outside influences fucking with it and shit. I also will not share everything that I have that's obviously pagan-related that you may see in any photos that I have in terms of what they're for or what I've enchanted them with or what have you. This is for the same reason.

Some things I'll try to share will be stuff like the tarot deck I commonly use (I have 3, but this 3rd one is amazing for me to work with and I got it from an artist on Etsy) to promote that you don't need the artwork of a deck to look a certain way or "you're not a real practitioner." I may even share certain readings long after I've done them, and that would depend entirely on whether or not the gods (or whomever I'm talking to) are cool with it. (I do plan at some point to show off my favorite cards based on design from this deck, to be honest, lol).

One thing I might do is---if I can actually do this since money is the only issue here for what I need to do anyways for one particular object I need despite me adding a pagan reason to it---share an example of an outdoor altar that may not quite seem like an outdoor altar. (I know this is vague but I didn't check in with any of my gods as to whether or not they were cool with me sharing to whom, with what, and whether pics were allowed to be shared.)

I'll definitely share some of the family-related stuff when it comes to pagan meanings for me, like how I look back at my baptism into the Serbian Orthodox Church and such. However, when I finally do get an ancestral altar started (which likely won't be until my muž and I get our own house), I will not be sharing photos of it. I might explain some of the types of objects I have on the altar, but never photos of the altar itself. This is largely because it will be dedicated to mostly family members I knew in real-life that I miss dearly. I will also not be sharing names of those that I knew, and I may not even share names of those who I did not know (and whom actually immigrated here to avoid WWI).

I, unfortunately, do not speak Serbian. I would have learned it from certain family members if I not only thought about asking to be taught, but also if it weren't for the fact that said family members have all died. Access to resources to learn Serbian on my own is extremely limited, and I do own 1 book, but it's the cases that are hard for me to learn. I HOPE to go back to college, and the school I hope to attend requires a minimum of 2 levels of a foreign language, with Russian being one of the languages offered. I tried Russian on Duolingo and they didn't teach shit about the cases, so I'm hoping learning the cases in an actual classroom setting might help me have an easier time in learning Serbian. (With the pandemic still ongoing, I may end up finding some way to fork over the extra money to get these whole-ass textbooks about the language that I've found online that's highly recommended.)

I feel I need to add that despite my practice being more centered around my family roots and such, this does not mean that Loki is no longer in my life. He's still around. I still have his altar up. I've just been redirected to reconnect with my roots in as ethical of a way as possible. This has opened my eyes to the unfortunate circumstances that whenever I look up Serbian cultural anything regarding the pagan path, it's either very christian-centric anyways or it's very nationalistic (and even bigoted and/or wh1te s*premacist-y) sorta thing that I try to avoid as much as possible.

I've been distracted heavily by my cat, some chores I gotta do, and this headache that comes and goes, so I'll have to end my post here for now. I apologize that it's a bit all over the place, but I still intend to keep this blog active. I'm still trying to get back on my feet regarding my practice because I've had a bunch of other life stuff that I needed to sort out, and the only regular "practice" I've done was tarot card readings.

Thank you for your time!