wine-and-madness

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“Three Crow Girls Plot the Destruction of the World”

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i'm loving the whole "interrogate your disgust response" thing but i do think it bears saying that disgust isn't necessarily anathema to enjoyment of something and overcoming it isn't a necessary condition to being able to partake. sometimes the disgust is part of the fun.

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sorry for being indecisive, I haven’t had any prophetic dreams to guide me in a while

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There’s no actual evidence that Aphrodite was forced to marry Hephaestus, the whole “contest for Aphrodite’s hand in order to free Hera” thing is a weak modern theory that got popular for whatever reason. It’s actually was more narratively interesting that Aphrodite and Hephaestus agreed on an arranged marriage but it didn’t work out.

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Wine has been deified through history.

And by god is there a reason.

It smells of the death and rotting of the fruit of our labours yet feels of the most divine creation man can hope to take part of. The creation of life.

It tastes of madness and freedom. It fills your senses with not a desire for lust, but for intimacy. And that alone is beautiful. The broken are beautiful. The drunken are beautiful. The mad are the divine. Go on, children, and slaughter the fruits you have so carefully cultivated in your yards. Make into something to aid the cycle. Turn it into something that will bring you that much closer to your gods. Wine and honey is the recipe for ambrosia, dear children.

To be wine drunk is to be holy and by Dionysus’ name my body and mind are as divine as the earth herself tonight.

Amen, and may the mad be forever holy.

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With how people talk about it, I also like to think that the "accidentally drunk off too much wine, because you didn't realize how much you drank, it was so delicious" thing is Dionysus creeping back into those sophisticated spaces.

Oh, you thought you had domesticated wine? You thought you could just have another glass, it's okay, and it would be *such* a shame to let such a nice bottle of it go to waste....

And next thing you know you're smashed and trying to keep a straight face while in polite company lol

Dionysus is a god of sophistication. Just, y'know, the god of sneaking into sophistication and leading you by the hand back out of it. What relevance is a god of release and madness in a world with no overly-serious people? Where is a god like that needed most, other than fancy events for overstressed people?

Crazy to think that by now, Dionysus should have transitioned from a god of ecstasy to one of social refinement and polite gatherings if it weren't for ancient Greek religion losing its prevalence.

And I mean that Dionysus, as a god who promotes madness and disinhibitions, is what's left of a time when wine was our strongest alcoholic beverage, a time of maenads and symposiums. Nowadays, we have liquor (spirits), far better for getting drunk, and beer, as the always cheaper alternative, so in a "let's get drunk moment," wine isn't picked. That way, the beverage has been left to the sophisticated: culinary connoisseurs, elegant dinner parties, wine enthusiasts, elites, and intellectuals.

And if that's our perception of wine, shouldn't that also be the dominion of its god?

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, detail from Bacchus (1596-97)

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mars black

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when you drink all the wine in the house and then you have. :( no wine in the house

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I saw the most charming little Dionysus at the museum yesterday and I had to draw him ;-;

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Dionysus, Ariadne and panther quadriga

Semperoper, Dresden

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elijah wood as bacchus at 2004 mardi gras. if you care

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Anyone know those, uh, greedy cups? Where if you fill it over a certain line, it empties?

Well what if you used one of those for giving offerings to Dionysus? Like okay hear me out.

You've got your cup set up to drain into a fire. An offering for Dionysus, god of indulgence and hedonism. You fill his cup, more, more, until it comes spilling out into the fire, all of it drank up by him. An empty cup, waiting for more.

Oh! You could even make an evening of it, a ritual. Wine provided to the group without limit, and whoever wants to give some of their own cup's wine to the offering cup can do so, until finally it breaks the tension and the offering is complete. Rinse and repeat all night long.

..... Like those slowly-filling buckets at splash pads, haha

OOG bonus points if it goes over a structure of some sort first, a waterfall-fountain type thing. Both for presentation, and because you don't want to douse the fire you've got going.

Man this makes me wish I lived in a city with other Dionysians 💜

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What counts as a spell? Is intent all you need or do you have to do something before to get it all juicy and stuff.

Hi Anon! What a fun question, because there is no answer except this CAN OF WORMS you just opened.

There is no consensus anywhere as to what constitutes a "spell."

There is even LESS consensus as to what makes a spell go.

Intent is a good starting place. It is probably where you should start for all acts of practical magic.

But I find that in it's common form, the idea of intent + willpower = magic has been diluted past the point of utility for most people.

Like if we're talking about "intent is everything" I'm reminded most closely of Chaos Magic. But Chaos Magic is not a school of "just set your intent and you've worked magic!". It's a very rigorously developed system.

In Hine's Condensed Chaos, he lists the third Core Principal of Chaos magic as technical excellence, and I quote:

One of the early misconceptions about Chaos Magic was that it gave practitioners carte blanche to do whatever they liked, and so become sloppy (or worse, soggy) in their attitudes to self-assessment, analysis, etc. Not so. The Chaos approach has always advocated rigorous self-assessment and analysis, emphasized practice at what techniques you're experimenting with until you get the results you desire. Learning to 'do' magic requires that you develop a set of skills and abilities and if you're going to get involved in all this weird stuff, why not do it to the best of your ability?

Later in the book, Hine likens "magical powers" to the concept of achievements, and goes on to say:

Something which is an achievement is the result of practice, discipline, and patience.

Shortly after:

Chaos Magic is not about discarding all rules and restraints, but the process of discovering the most effective guidelines and disciplines which enable you to effect change in the world.

(In above quotes, all emphasis my own)

But these ideas get taken - and I'll give a big nod to the LOA which is just the worst kind of brainrot for encouraging the "intent is all that matters" mindset - and the ideas get diluted so much that people are literally out here saying, "so all those people who spend years studying magic in order to get results are buffoons? All I have to do is imagine what I want and it will be delivered to me? All humans since the start of history just have to decide they want something and it will happen in a miraculous manner?"

(Not you, Anon. I'm just in a mood)

In my mind, yes - something beyond intent must occur in order to make spells go.

But what?

Anon, have you ever heard that dumb belief floating around that all herbs in a spell can be replaced by rosemary, and all stones in a spell can be replaced by clear quartz, and these two things are "universal substitutes"?

I am 95% sure that this nonsense was based on two very popular dictionaries Cunningham wrote in the 80s, the Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic, and Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs.

In the very long entry for Clear Quartz:

Quartz crystal is used as a power amplifier during magic. It is worn or placed on the altar for this purpose.

And from Rosemary:

Rosemary is generally used as a substitute for frankincense.

And I believe that someone somewhere got the idea that since clear quartz amplifies all other powers, it therefore somehow magically Ditto-copies all other powers, and like a shapeshifter somehow becomes something it is not nor ever was.

And, you know. What's the difference between subbing out frankincense and blackthorn between friends?

These beliefs have become so popular that sometimes when unscrupulous blogs rip off entire Cunningham encyclopedia entries and paste them into tumblr posts (without credit), THEY INCLUDE THE EXTRA MADE-UP BIT ABOUT ROSEMARY BEING A UNIVERSAL SUBSTITUTE.

Anon, your question is "is it just intent or do we need other stuff to make it go," but sadly,

IMO common beliefs about the stuff that makes spells go have also been diluted past the point of utility for most people.

Because if I sat here and said, "hey Anon, it's not just intent, you also have to use correspondences ^-^/" then the very first thing you are likely to run into is absolute nonsense about correspondences. IMO, effective utilization of correspondences is a skillset based in research, theory, and technique.

Or if I said, "you also have to raise energy! 👍", this may be mistaken to mean, "set intent but also visualize white light inside of a candle," because the concept of raising energy and visualizing has been (IMO) diluted past the point of utility for most people. I believe that effective utilization of energy work is a song composed of many notes and chords, several of which you must practice before you can utilize it.

And to complicate all of this, which non-diluted things in which combinations you need to make the spell go depends on what paradigm you operate off of, because while there are approximately one billion ways to do magic that works, my currently very dim worldview is that most people who are talking about magic are doing magic that doesn't work,

and in my opinion the actual basis and reasoning, like the rationality behind the magical systems is really important. Because you need that shit to understand what it is within that system that makes the spell go.

And you need to understand what makes the spell go to make the system fit into your life without breaking it, and in order to troubleshoot problems without making things crumble further.

Because when people don't understand the basis and reasoning you end up with "rosemary is a universal substitute" and "imagining white light makes the spell go."

There are a few circumstances where you can totally strip technique from theory and be successful, but there are also a hell of a lot of people out here feeling shit about their practice because their spells never seem to work.

So.

I really just recommend choosing what school of magic you would like to learn about and participate in, and reading an introductory book on it.

This is because it is the job of introductory books to explain the principles and theories behind a system of magic, and most importantly, what makes the magic go, and a step-by-step primer on what you, the practitioner, are supposed to do to make that kind of magic go.

Despite above rambles I'm really not a Chaote, so I can't recommend a strong primer. As far as I'm aware, Liber Null & Psychonaut by Peter J. Carroll is a core text.

For Traditional Witchcraft, try The Crooked Path by Kelden.

For something more Wiccan, I can't recall having anything bad to say about Psychic Witch by Mat Auryn.

If either of these things are too Witchcrafty for you, try Six Ways by Aidan Wachter, which is still witchcraft, but it hits different.

For a general primer on helping your spells go, try Elements of Spellcrafting by Jason Miller.

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I have two, very different ones lol

First is single crochet, since I recently took up making weird little guys using nothing but single crochet, no pattern. It feels magical that I can sit down, then have a small figure emerge, not knowing what they'll be like until they already exist 💜

The other is.... Some sort of bobble stitch? I forget the name, but I saw it in a big book of crochet stitches. It involves wrapping your yarn around the hook 9 times, which feels very magical, and it's very useful for decorating things with. I feel like it could be used in a lot of symbolic or structural ways, and 9 is always a magical number (and it works with 6 and 3 just as well, in different sizes)

witches who crochet: what is the most magical stitch to you? for me it's treble or half-double. the number three just works for magical uses for me personally.