Month: October 2021

life, Plants and Herbs

The Sludge of Immortality

J.

I’ve developed a concoction.

I don’t have any of the right letters after my name to do so, or reams of scientific papers to justify this particular blending of ingredients. I can’t even claim to follow the doctrine of signatures — in most cases, I ask a question before sleeping, and wake with the answer in my ear as if whispered there by some helpful spirit who doesn’t really understand personal space.

Either way, I’ve found that this is good enough to take the place of any meal. I have it for breakfast nearly every day, but it’s also stood in for lunch or a light dinner on occasion. Once mixed, it tastes almost like a virgin Bloody Mary. It also makes my various component parts happy.

You will need:

  • 8 ounces of good vegetable juice. Store-bought is fine, but choose one without added salt.
  • 2 tablespoons of chia seeds.
  • 20 grams of hydrolyzed collagen.
  • A heaping quarter teaspoon of ground turmeric root.
  • Several generous dashes of black pepper.
  • Approximately 75 drops of tincture of dandelion leaf.
  • 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar.
  • Horseradish, to taste.
  • A glass or jar.
  • A fork.

Put the chia seeds into a cup or jar first. Add the collagen powder, turmeric, and pepper, and stir well with a fork to combine. (This will evenly distribute the seeds through the various powders and keep them from clumping later.) Pour in the vegetable juice, add the vinegar and horseradish (if applicable) and stir very well. The longer you wait, the thicker it’ll become courtesy of the chia seeds. Drink.

It’s filling, high-fiber, and, courtesy of the seeds and collagen, relatively high in amino acids. Collagen supposedly keeps the skin young-looking and elastic, but this depends entirely on what type of collagen you use. Turmeric is said to help with inflammation, while black pepper potentiates the compounds in turmeric. Dandelion leaf is a bitter herb that acts as a mild diuretic and digestive tonic. Vegetable juice is (generally) high in potassium and various anti-inflammatory compounds. Apple cider vinegar is said to help with digestion, blood sugar levels, and inflammation, and all kinds of things. Horseradish is delicious.

It comes out to about $1.99 per serving — this will, of course, vary depending on where you buy your ingredients. (You can save money by preparing your own dandelion tincture, as long as you know the dandelions you use haven’t been sprayed with anything.) Best of all, every calorie in it comes with side benefits. They provide energy, but, unlike “empty calories” from very refined carbohydrates, come with a pile of proteins, vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and so forth.

Will this lead to immortality? I can’t be sure, but it does make me feel better. All I can say is: So far, so good.

crystals, Witchcraft

Moldavite: Is it bad luck?

J.

So, moldavite.

These small greenish stones are considered one of the highest-energy crystals you could own or work with. They’re uncommon, occurring in only one area of the world, and carry a high price tag — if they’re real. Because of their reputation, the market has been flooded with fake moldavite. That may change, however, as increasing numbers of people are coming out with their bad experiences using these crystals.

What is moldavite, anyway?

Moldavite (sometimes called vltavin or Bouteille stone) is a type of natural glass. Unlike volcanic obsidian or lightning-made lechatelierite, it formed fifteen million years ago as a result of a meteoric impact. When the meteorite struck the Earth, it instantly liquified the surrounding silica. This splashed up into the air, cooling on the way down. Since it cooled in mid-air, moldavite developed all kinds of cool swirly textured patterns on the surface.

It’s typically a sort of olive or mossy green color, and has a hardness of 5.5-7 according to the Mohs scale. Since these stones are essentially droplets, they’re generally not very large. Faceted or tumbled moldavite is also pretty much unheard-of in the metaphysical market, since this would negate its uniquely beautiful pitted or fernlike patterns.

Photo by Moldavite Association, CC BY-SA 4.0. No changes were made.

What is moldavite used for?

Crystal workers and healers ascribe a lot of metaphysical and healing properties to this stone. It’s used as a focus during meditations to connect to the Higher Self, to aid past life regressions, and to break maladaptive behavioral patterns. It’s a stone for ascension, and some say that the meteorite responsible for its formation was sent here specifically to create moldavite and help the entire planet ascend.

Emotionally, some people use it to cut through world-weariness and cynicism. It’s said to open the mind to new possibilities, and ease worries by helping the user arrive at new, creative solutions to their problems. People who enjoy dreamwork sometimes use moldavite for this purpose, in order to better connect to their Higher Intelligence through dreams and visions.

For people who have a Hindu Tantra-adjacent practice, moldavite is sometimes used for the heart chakra (Anahata) or the crown chakra (Sahasrara). As an ascension stone, it’s considered helpful for connecting the soul to cosmic intelligence. As a green stone, it’s also said to resonate with the heart area.

Sounds pretty good. Why’s it considered bad luck?

It really depends on what you mean by “bad luck.”

As the section above suggests, moldavite’s considered a very high-energy stone. It also breaks through maladaptive patterns and pushes you toward your highest good.

However, your highest good might not be the life you’re currently living. You could have a stable job, a decent relationship, and all kinds of things that you’re comfortable with. “Comfort” doesn’t necessarily mean that they are aligned with your highest good, however. If that job has you earning a comfortable salary, but mentally and spiritually stagnating, or your lifestyle doesn’t exactly set your soul on fire, expect moldavite to shake things up.

And shaking things up doesn’t always feel good. Who likes losing their job or getting dumped?

This is why moldavite is sometimes considered bad luck. When it seems like things aren’t going well, it’s tempting to ascribe this to a hex, curse, or plain old misfortune. Sometimes, it’s what has to happen for you to reach your full potential.

If moldavite were a tarot card, I’d call it The Tower. It stirs things up with a big stick. It’s also important to remember that stones don’t have human ideas about what comfort and success look like — you wanted an ally to help you reach your highest good, and boy howdy are you going to get one. The Tower is the foundation-deep destructive force that allows new growth to take place. The card that immediately follows it is The Star, the card of hope and renewal. Could that hope and renewal take place without The Tower?

In short, moldavite isn’t bad luck or cursed. It’s just a catalyst for changes we may not be fully ready for. I’m not going to be all, “Everything happens for a reason,” but sometimes parts of your life need to burn down for new growth to take place. I’ve been there and experienced it myself, and, while I definitely didn’t enjoy it at the time, I couldn’t be more grateful that it happened.

life

Professional Cat Hazing: $350

J.

I regret to inform you all that Pye is fat.

He’s always been a big cat — one of his paws can fill my palm, and his legs are as big around as my wrist — but he’s also exhibited a lot of anxiety around having food available to him At All Times. (This is a pretty common thing for rescue cats.) Trying to balance his physical needs and mental wellbeing has led to a boy who is, while very tall and weirdly muscular, also kind of a chonk.

He and Kiko had their checkups and booster shots not too long ago. Because of the pandemic, it was all very distanced. My partner dropped them off in the parking lot, a tech took them in, and he waited outside until the visit was over. When both cats were returned to us, we were given the verdict: They were healthy, he needs to lose weight, and he was also a gigantic asshole by the way so here’s a standing prescription for gabapentin, to be given to him a half hour before every future vet visit.

He looks so innocent when he’s sleeping.

“I feel like I just paid almost four hundred dollars for them to tell me he’s fat,” my partner lamented.

“I mean… kind of. But they also pointed out that he’s kind of a dick. And he got booster shots!”

“… Three hundred and fifty dollars for someone to roast my cat.”

And so, Pye has a special robot butler that dispenses special Chunky Boy Cheerios for him at regular intervals. He loves this, because the only thing more dear to his idiot heart than food is machinery. (You should’ve seen how excited he was to “help” the maintenance guy fix the dishwasher in our old place. Or the time he similarly attempted to help my partner repair a printer that Pye had, for some reason, diligently packed full of coconut bark.) Because he is extremely adept at drawing bizarre conclusions about things, he’s decided that, if he whines and flumbuses around in a specific way, the Benevolent Gods of Tasty Food will cause kibble to appear in his bowl with no input from either my partner or me. It has led to several impromptu a capella concerts at 3 AM.

He will sing for you the song of his people.

Kiko, meanwhile, has a special pink teacup and snack plate to eat and drink from, because she refuses to drink out of bowls and demands to be accompanied to her food and I have lost control of my life.

Fortunately, Pye’s managed to stop gaining weight on this regimen, despite his food anxiety. He hasn’t lost anything yet, but, with luck (and monitoring his food and increasing his activity level) he’ll get there. If not, this kid’ll be eating corrugated bran puffs for the rest of his tiny life.

crystals, life, Witchcraft

Top 7 Crystals to Hide in Your Relatives’ Homes So They Stop Falling for Weird Toxic Bull@#$%

J.

Good morning!

If you’re like most people, you have at least one person close to you who will occasionally come out with some completely bonkers, destructive nonsense. Unproven conspiracy ideas like, “vaccines are a conspiracy to implant tracking chips in everyone (posted from iPhone)” or “Jewish people caused the oil crisis by always getting their groceries double-bagged at King Kullen.”

(I have heard both of these unironically from actual human people.)

You might think this person is mostly cool, save for one or two beliefs that you’d swear were the byproduct of some kind of brain worm. You might also just be obligated to spend time around them, because you’re a dependent and they’re related to you. Maybe you just hold out hope that they’ll someday become the people they were before they got wrapped up in the fringe. If trying to talk to them or send them actual empirical data doesn’t work, here are the best crystals you can strategically plant wherever you’re forced to interact with them:

Lapis lazuli

Lapis has a hell of a reputation. For one, it’s been used in everything from cosmetics to artistic masterpieces, so it has some strong associations with creativity and expression. It’s also blue, which people who work with chakras will recognize as the color of Vishuddha, the throat chakra. (It rules expression and communication.) This means that it’s a pretty rad stone to have on you when you’re forced to defend yourself against accusations of being a NWO shill or secret lizard person from space.

Lapis has another talent, though. It’s often called the “Stone of Truth.” Its energy is said to help the user uncover hidden truths, both about themselves and the people and things around them. Most of us wouldn’t necessarily consider the idea that multi-level marketing schemes are a scam designed to profit off of people’s desperation to be a “hidden” truth, but you’ve got to meet people where they are.

Emerald

Now, I’m not suggesting that you drop a bunch of dosh on a fancy table-cut emerald to cram under your uncle’s recliner this Thanksgiving. You can get tumbled emeralds that aren’t gem quality, but are still emeralds and will still work for our well-intentioned-yet-nefarious purposes.

The idea here is that emeralds are tied to the heart. People who work with chakras consider them a stone for Anahata, the heart chakra. Even if Hindu tantrism isn’t your jam, emerald has a reputation as a stone for love and compassion. (Like instilling more compassion in the hearts of those around you who have notions about a super secret “gay agenda,” for example.)

According to color magic, green is also associated with growth. This is typically taken to mean increase, as in an increase in prosperity, fertility, and so forth. But green is associated with growth because of its connection to plants and nature — a lush, green plant is a successful, healthy, thriving one. You can empower a tumbled emerald to help your family grow and develop as people before you hide it behind the TV.

Amethyst

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a list of calming, meditative crystals that didn’t include amethyst somewhere. There’s a reason for that. This stone is associated with things like divination and meditation, sure, but it’s also very relaxing and enhances a person’s connection to their intuition. (That means that it might be able to amplify the tiny voice inside your grandpa that says that maybe Democratic Socialists aren’t coming to take his toothbrush.)

Amethyst is also credited with increasing the user’s spiritual awareness and guarding against psychic attacks.

Smoky Quartz

Smoky quartz is pretty much clear quartz that, like Bruce Banner, was exposed to radiation and came away with some extra powers. It’s said to be helpful for grounding, as well as filtering energy and transmuting the negative into the positive. This means that it can help keep things on a smooth, even keel when Aunt Karen gets a couple of glasses of eggnog in her and starts ranting about immigration.

Rose Quartz

Ah, rose quartz. Any love-drawing crystal spell or list of stones for heart-related matters is basically guaranteed to include this pink stone. The thing is, it’s good for a lot more than just flowery, hearts-and-chunky-angel-babies romantic love. It’s also very rad for compassion, friendship, and familial love.

Like emerald, it can be helpful for getting people to meet you where you are. It can encourage the opening of hearts and minds. While lapis is a better choice for getting people to see the truth, rose quartz is better for getting them to see people as people, with the same pain, fear, hope, and aspirations as they have.

Black tourmaline

Like smoky quartz, black tourmaline is a weapon against negativity. It’s a very powerful energy filter, and can help neutralize bad vibes. Large specimens (especially ones intermingled with spangles of golden mica) look extremely cool, which means they’re great for keeping in your own living spaces to ensure that nobody’s bullshit sticks around to bother you. Smaller stones are good for keeping on you as a protective amulet, or, as the title suggests, stashing around anywhere you’re forced to be.

As an FYI, crystals that act as energy filters need regular, thorough cleansing. Think of them like vacuums — they can suck negativity up, or even transmute it into positive energy, but that canister’s gotta get emptied sometime. The more crap they come in contact with, the sooner they’ll need to be recalibrated with a cleansing.

Spirit Quartz

Spirit quartz also goes by the names cactus quartz and fairy quartz. These are quartz points (usually amethyst or citrine) that are entirely covered in tiny, druzy points. This makes them all spiky, like cacti.

Spirit quartz help in a number of ways. Amethyst is a stone for introspection and harmony, as was mentioned above. All of those tiny points effectively amplify this energy and send it out everywhere. The druse also symbolizes many tiny units working together in a cohesive whole, so it’s great for fostering feelings of community and cooperation.

Amethyst spirit quartz is also said to be particularly helpful for getting rid of negative attachments or entities. It can’t get rid of the weird radicalizing podcasts your cousin insists you check out, but it can help pull their hooks out of him.

As with anything involving crystals, make sure yours come from an ethical source. Sadly, much of the mining trade (not even just the crystal trade — a lot of crystals are byproducts of mining for gold, platinum, lithium, and other materials used by the electronics industry) relies on exploited labor and environmentally damaging methods. Always know where your stones came from, and how they got to you.

Many, if not most, sources say that it’s unethical to perform magic or energy work on someone without their consent. While it’s nice to abide by the rules, sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to get the right thing done. The energetic toll of trying to get someone to be less hateful, or less absorbed in destructive conspiracy theories and hoaxes, is going to be way less than, say, casting a love spell on an unwilling target. Use your own judgment. If you belong to a marginalized group and need to do something to keep yourself safe and sane, do it.

life

Trafficking doesn’t look like you might think it does.

J.

I’m gonna get cranky and serious for a minute.

The Epstein case and Pizzagate hoax brought child trafficking into the public eye.

Well, the “public eye.”

For some sectors of society, human trafficking has been a known reality. People were aware that there was danger, just like they’re aware that breast cancer exists. Just look at the long-running efforts to find answers about missing Indigenous women for one example. Unfortunately, narratives surrounding human trafficking have begun to solicit attention by playing to a very specific type of fear — the fears culturally pushed on middle- to upper middle-class white women. This isn’t an uncommon tactic, either. To paraphrase Henry Zebrowski’s comment about a true crime documentary, “Are ya scared, ladies? Are ya scared?”

Look at it this way. How many posts on social media have you seen about “unpublicized numbers of missing children,” or pieces of paper, flowers, or plastic bags used to “mark” cars for kidnapping attempts, or families being targeted at Walmart, IKEA, or the grocery store? Many of them aren’t even new, they’re just making the rounds again.

The trouble with these stories is that they put forth a picture of human trafficking that ends up doing more harm than good. While concerned about strange people at gas stations, shops, and parking lots, they’re overlooking what human trafficking is, how it works, and what it looks like. These stories overlook these things in favor of a more dramatic image that strikes a chord in the people most likely to make sure they’re posted over and over again. And they do it in ways that might actually be putting kids in danger.

I’ll give one very specific example. There was one mother who was concerned about her kids getting snatched. She always held their hands in public, never let them out of her sight in crowds, and even had nightmares about someone kidnapping one of her children. She paid far less attention to the fact that one of her kids was of a marginalized gender and orientation, mentally ill, and suffering from living in an unstable home. In focusing on the idea of tot snatchers, she had overlooked the things that were actually dangerous.

These were things that a potential trafficker saw. Maybe it was the way the kid carried themselves, their worn, ill-fitting clothes, or the fact that they were walking home down an otherwise-vacant street, alone, long after other kids had already left school. Either way, he crept on this kid and tried to convince them to get in his car for “a ride home.” He even held out his watch as he circled around behind them, encouraging them to get closer, to see exactly how late it was.

Abductors choose their victims the way a hyena picks out the sick and injured.

Luckily, I panicked and ran for it.

I second-guessed myself afterward, too. Maybe he was just trying to be nice. Maybe I was the asshole here, getting an innocent man in trouble. When he turned up the next day with a group of his friends, harassing my local crossing guard to try to find out where I lived, I decided that I was probably right the first time.

Not all kids are so lucky. My experience was an outlier in some ways. For one, this guy was a stranger to me — the majority of kids (76%) are snatched by those they know. (He also could’ve been a garden-variety serial killer, but I’m giving him a very, very small benefit of the doubt here.)

There are other reasons why posts that say things like, “we should be publicizing the numbers of missing children the way we publicize COVID numbers” are severely missing the point. The number of people who aren’t concerned about missing children is vanishingly small, and always has been. Who would this statistic help? The only people who have somehow managed to remain unaware of child trafficking until now are the people who haven’t experienced a reason to pay attention. A statistic isn’t going to do it.

It also plays into several myths about human trafficking. A significant number of trafficking victims aren’t “missing” at all. Trafficking doesn’t require someone to disappear. People forced into labor against their will are trafficked, even if they never go missing. A teenaged girl whose boyfriend exploits her vulnerability to convince her to perform sex work to earn money for him might go home to her unknowing parents every night. She’s still being trafficked.

Not all trafficking victims see themselves as missing, either. They may have genuine feelings for the person trafficking them, and think they are helping. They may not be desperate to leave their trafficker, or seek help to do so. Believe it or not, some may not want their families to find them.

Lastly, of the roughly 800,000 children reported missing yearly in the US, a huge number of them are victims of parental kidnapping — one source claims over a quarter, while the Parents.com page linked above claims 49%. (The discrepancy may lie in the fact that almost half of all kids kidnapped by a parent aren’t considered missing by the other parent.) There’s also the number of runaway and homeless youth: 1 in 10 young adults between the ages of 18-25, and 1 in 30 children between 13-17. This includes kids who ran away or were kicked out. Conflating missing children with trafficked children overlooks a vast array of other reasons kids disappear, as well as a ton of kids who actually are being trafficked.

There are also children trafficked by their foster or adoptive parents. The situation of “rehoming” “problem” adopted kids is a very deep rabbit hole that’s outside the scope of this post, however. It’s also somehow manages to be even more depressing to write about.

Anyone can be trafficked, but some people are much more likely than others. Human traffickers are like other criminals, they don’t want to go after a target that’s more trouble than its worth. They don’t want to snatch someone who will draw attention. People who have exploitable vulnerabilities — who are walking home late and look lonely and uncared-for, who have been kicked out of their homes for being gay or trans, who run away from an abusive family, who are recent migrants who experience difficulty navigating a new language and country — are the easy targets.

If this was about murder instead, trafficking victims would often fall into the category of “the least dead.” They’re the people who tend to attract less attention and coverage when something bad happens. Few criminals want people to take an interest in their activities.

This doesn’t mean that all kinds of people don’t get snatched by strangers. It does mean that posts and memes focusing on that specific scenario do a disservice to the very people that need to be protected. It’s kind of like posting about how huffing drain cleaner can give you lung cancer. While true, it’s also not a very effective way to prevent lung cancer.

The Epstein case also narrowed the focus to sex trafficking. In reality, human trafficking encompasses far more types of labor. By playing on the media-friendly fear of sexual violence, it draws attention to one very specific type of child trafficking. How many memes about missing children examine the amount of trafficked labor it takes to pick vegetables, butcher meat, mine ore, or sew garments? They don’t, because that doesn’t garner enough attention.

The thing that really shits me is the bone-deep irony of people who purchase counterfeit designer goods reposting memes about human trafficking. Not only do counterfeit goods rely on trafficked labor to produce, they’re a significant income stream for organized crime syndicates. So is sex trafficking. Purchasing fakes doesn’t just save the buyer money — it incentivizes human trafficking and puts money directly into the pockets of the organizations that profit from it. Fake purses create a market for trafficked kids.

Tl;dr, human trafficking is an enormous problem that goes way, way deeper than is often represented. Memes about protecting oneself and one’s family from kidnappers, or publicizing numbers of missing children versus COVID numbers aren’t helpful, and may be actively harmful by misrepresenting what trafficking looks like. Even if they’re well-intentioned, they end up supporting an agenda different from actually ending human trafficking.