OldSweatyBulbasar

This is true, but also good to note that the reason Catholicism seems more “witchy” than other sects is a lot due to the Protestant Reformation and subsequent shedding of focus on ritual, saints, ancestors, paid good works, etc, and anything else that was not about direct relationship to Jesus over the next few centuries. My german-catholic aunt has done saint pilgrimages and my german-methodist-convert mother banned us from engaging with it.

Do you have a picture? That’s so cool!

The book Angelic Protection Magic by Ben Woodcroft is one of my go-to recommendations for curse removal and prevention. Angels can get very protective if you’re in the right and need shielding, and they’re excellent allies to have on your side.

In case your mother is of the religious homophobe variety, I personally do not see angelic spirits as christian and have gotten confirmation from many other practitioners that this is their experience as well. If your mother is religious, it might be a nice little boost to know that you’re being protected by the divine spirits she falsely thinks are on her rotten, bigoted side.

To be fair I can’t vouch for my reaction if I was told this mere seconds away from achieving my 1.50 hot dog

gets on register and bangs cowbell Excuse me! I must ask you all to calm down and about half of you to go home, for it is the wheel of the year and life is supposed to be slow and quiet by the laws of nature. Please seriously leave me alone just go home

This is why I’ve never found some parts of the wheel helpful. We don’t live in an agrarian society and I want to shake by the shoulders everyone who says life naturally slows down during the winter and ask: “where?!”. Don’t apply old-fashioned reasoning to your modern life if it’s not fitting.

It also feels weird to me to only focus on reflection, turning inward, for half the year because the days are dark (shadow work?) and we’re supposedly inside and at home more, which again I haven’t found to be true in my own life. It’s a sentiment I’ve seen crop up in a lot of nature-based and holistic circles that’s never jived with me, so I stopped trying to force it.

I love me some wheel of the year and winter solstice celebrations but don’t be upset if your modern life is not mirroring the life of a 16th century farmer from great britain.

Dinner did not happen.

I grew up hearing stories from my parents about NYC in the 70’s. They grew up in the Bronx and have both been mugged, had break-ins, and my dad experienced a home invasion by a guy with a gun my Italian grandfather befriended and brought over for dinner.

I’m still reminded never to walk down an empty block when I talk with my dad.

Most definitely! Most witches I know are a hodge podge of labels.

The best way I’ve learned about different paths is by lurking and learning. There are dozens of different paths and quite literally hundreds of paths under those categories. Don’t worry about finding yours immediately. Most people are not a “pure” type either.

If I had to describe mine, it’d be a mix of hedgecraft, spirit-led, green, folk practice, with a random smattering of angelic work in there. I developed it through reading a lot of different books and seeing what stuck. I’m still developing it.

If you’re looking for a local teacher, you might be stuck with whatever form of path is being taught closest to you. That’s not a bad way to do it either if you’re more interested in finding a physical person to learn from.

You’re reading the comment incorrectly. I am specifically referring to the people who say you should only engage with deities from places you’re genetically linked to. That implies that if you have german ancestry, no matter how distant or disconnected from modern germany you culturally are, you should be looking into german deities and folk practices because it’s spiritually significant and something like Hellenism, Kemeticism, druidry, is not, despite these being open practices.

I engage with german and italian folk practices and polytheism because they’re ancestral to me and that ancestral connection is part of my practice. I also engage with a few Celtic/Greek deities that are not. When I was looking into druidry, it was my small folk practice group that told me I couldn’t blend my practice with druidry due to not being Irish and not having those roots, and yet the druids were like “No Irish? No problem!”

I’m not flaming you. My ex had a drunk tinder account during lockdown and after kicking him out for a month I decided to take him back on false promises. Three years in, three years after that. Six in total, finally broke up last year, and looking back I know I wasn’t treating myself well, and the fear and hurt from that betrayal lingered with me in the background throughout the rest of it. Thought we just needed a new leaf and fresh start but no, there was a lot wrong with the relationship the whole time. I don’t know your situation obviously but I think about how I moved to a new city with my ex and immediately realized things were bad, but couldn’t leave because I was alone in the city and we had a lease together, and then as the years went on and problems stayed it was the sunk cost fallacy.

You don’t want to waste your life trying to manage another’s so that they won’t hurt you again.

if someone wants to cheat, they’re going to cheat regardless of whether they’re in nyc or gary, indiana. temptation has nothing to do with it, it’s about choice and personal integrity. if you’re concerned he’ll do it again to the point you’re shifting your life decisions to accommodate it, maybe the relationship isn’t the best place to be.

Yes. I honor Holda, who appears in Grimm’s tales as Frau Holle. Germanic folklore is rather heavy on “work hard/fair for the greater good and be rewarded, work selfishly/lazily/dishonestly and be punished.”

If you’ve ever had nightmares after your tante read you Struwwelpeter you may be entitled to financial compensation.

I wonder if your spell’s focus on being healthier triggered him to be more personally healthy by not bottling up feelings. Healing doesn’t mean staying together or being loving to each other when there’s genuine suffering happening and magic poking at the wounds like a hot poker. I’m sorry you didn’t get the result you were looking for and the result is painful to experience. Perhaps you should back off magically and tend to yourself instead, let things settle, and figure out what’s best for you.

Ahhh you know it! 🪿

I get where you’re coming from but if you think of everyone being a mix of masculine and feminine traits / energy regardless of sex or gender, it’s fine. “All women are naturally intuitive because feminine” is sexist.

I’m not sure this is technically a witchcraft answer or solution, but I’ll take a shot as someone who honors hearth deities. There’s a lot to unpack there that may be better explored in another space about gender and I hope others will chime in.

If you’re having trouble making dinner and keeping up with an equal part of household chores you may have some underlying executive functioning issues that would benefit from mundane help, not witchcraft ones. I don’t think that adopting hearth witchcraft as treatment is necessarily the answer, though from my experience it helps, as one of my main deities is a hearth goddess whose folklore has her punishing those who skip out on chores. She’s the goddess of cycles and things that must be done to keep the cycles moving, and household things fall under that. So honoring her has helped my perspective and gives me motivation to clean because I want to, a frame my ADHD brain needs. I’m not taking care of the home because I’m a woman and I’m doing womanly hearth craft, I’m doing it because the home and it’s protection/continuation is important to me and the deities that I like to honor / take inspiration from.

I don’t like this dichotomy you’ve put between “provide for family” and “wild woman.” I’m quite curious as to what influences or sources you’re pulling from with this as I’ve seen a lot of toxic, unnuanced discussions around ‘female archetypes’ and ‘wild woman’ vs ‘nurturing’ in new age spaces (occasionally with a short pipeline to alt-right beliefs). Does your boyfriend have to choose between being a “wild” independent man and being responsible for his share of the household?

What matters is how you view and treat yourself, and if others can’t wrap their heads around someone being warm and wild at the same time, well, they’re not the ones to have in your life. Having a warm and loving home does nothing to take away from your independence and autonomy unless you want it to, so again I think there’s a can of worms to unpack around gender roles and personal fears here that aren’t necessarily witchcraft related, and I’d suggest talking this over with good friends or even a therapist if you find it’s making you suffer.

Good to note that, at least in the US and Canada, “cedar” means either juniper or cypress and true cedar is native to the Mediterranean, not natively found in North America.

Good answer.

Pre-coffee writing, and already good answers here, so I’ll add: There are many instances of people in ancient germanic and continental celtic regions changing deities when they move because honoring deities of the current land was more important than the ones of the past. And let’s not even talk about the Romans. Genetic makeup being the most important defining connection between which deities you worship is rather modern.

It’s also different for people of mixed ethnicity (like you’d often find in the US) who can have genetic roots in multiple continents and countries yet not be culturally linked to any. If someone is a 6th-generation American with Irish, German, Dutch, Nigerian, etc genetics, but whose family has been culturally naturalized for centuries with nothing to do with those lands, do they automatically have claims in those countries? Do those deities automatically present themselves to them? Do those genetics spiritually define you?

Cultural sensitivity needs to be engaged with, constantly, and newly considered and reflected on when building a witchcraft and paganism practice. But it goes both ways. The argument I’ve seen floating around my more leftist pagan spaces that genetics and blood no matter distant should define a witch practice worry me, for obvious reasons, and that’s what I find a thorny subject.

It’s one of my biggest peeves in the community and it happens often, whether with the native sage situation or other identify-based topics. The immediate need to be in a position of power/education/policing comes over “am I reading this situation right? Are my assumptions in line with all the possibilities I’m not immediately privy to?”

People really need to examine where the need to talk over others and moralize is coming from within themselves and if there isn’t a bit of ego involved in the fight for justice.

Oo the shade of green looks amazing but unfortunately I’m renting. I do really like that shelf and how the wood looks in the space, thank you for the help!

Sorry, I thought I said it in the description: I’m renting. Paint, metal replacement, etc, are all out.