How Antidepressants Made Me Better at Witchcraft

July 22, 2020July 16, 2020 J.4 Comments

Have you ever seen that meme about psychiatric medication? The one that’s all, “pills are trash, forests are medicine!” (Which, by the way, is a toxic, steaming load of horse puckey.)

It’s not an uncommon attitude in some new age and Pagan-adjacent circles. I could digress into a discussion of the destructive power of the naturalistic fallacy, but it’d take at least eleven posts just to contain it. Instead, I want to point out one thing:

Medication made me way better at everything, including witchcraft and Druidry.

A lot of people express reluctance at trying psychiatric medication, and I can’t blame them. It can take awhile to find the right one, and, after that, to work out the right dose. That’s frustrating, even scary. Some worry that medication will “dope them up,” reduce their creativity, or subdue the traits that make them them. For me, nothing could be further from the truth. Without the constant high-pitched background buzz of anxiety and panic disorder, I’m much freer. I have some side effects, but they’ve been a small price to pay.

I do occasionally feel stabs of resentment that I’m reliant on something “unnatural” — but that’s a me problem. If there were a “natural” equivalent to what I need, believe me, I would have found it. I didn’t, despite years of experimentation. I came close a few times, but there was no herbal remedy for my panic that didn’t also knock me unconscious, make me throw up, or worse.

The fact is, the idea of “perfect” physical or mental health is a construct. It’s not a birthright, it’s not even a natural concept. In Sick Woman Theory, Johanna Hedva explains,

“Sickness” as we speak of it today is a capitalist construct, as is its perceived binary opposite, “wellness.” The “well” person is the person well enough to go to work. The “sick” person is the one who can’t. What is so destructive about conceiving of wellness as the default, as the standard mode of existence, is that it invents illness as temporary. When being sick is an abhorrence to the norm, it allows us to conceive of care and support in the same way.

By contrast, in nature, an organism that is “well” is one that’s able to meet the challenges of its environment. That isn’t a super high bar to clear — it also very often doesn’t look like the human conception of wellness. In reality, few creatures would meet the definition of “well” to which humans aspire. Animals live with parasites. Crows steal lit matches and bow over ant hills, seeking relief from mites when they need to. One crow with an injured beak needed the help of his mate to eat, and she gave it. We find deer that have lived for years with teeth or bullets embedded in them, muscle and bone growing gnarls over what biology apparently considered an impolite intrusion. We find creatures that have existed, eaten, and fucked for a lifetime, tumors and abscesses locked away behind walls of thickened bone. As salmon amply demonstrate, as long as you can survive to adulthood and pass on your genes, nature doesn’t much care what state you’re in. If you end up truly unwell, you don’t survive. If you’re surviving, even if it takes an anthill, a patchwork of scars, or an understanding mate to keep you there, you’re doing well.

“Perfect wellness” is not a natural standard, and the kind of health sold by the wellness industry is not only unnatural, it is deeply damaging.

Natural perfect health is rare enough to be nearly mythical, because there is no real binary opposite to sickness. Everyone will experience a significant amount of pain and disability at some point in their life. Some are fortunate enough not to experience that until they are very old. For others, that point just comes earlier and lasts a bit longer.

We are pushed to consider caring for ourselves as temporary, which perpetuates the myth of being “well” as a default, natural state. As long as the aspirational standard of natural perfect health exists, we’ll keep working ourselves to death trying to reach it. So, the idea that you must be naturally, perfectly clear-headed in order to commune with the Divine or perform magic? It’s kind of crap.

It’s an idea that’s also used to delegitimize practices that use entheogens — practices where altered mental states are valuable, if not necessary. It derides rituals that use substances in favor of quiet, whitewashed sensibilities.

In my case, it’s just a lot easier for me to get things done when my brain isn’t dysfunctionally revved up on a constant stream of high-test adrenaline, neurons struggling to swap about four serotonin molecules between them. It doesn’t matter if the “things” I’m trying to do are dishes or divination.

It’s not wrong to prefer natural tools in ritual, but the standards that apply to a wand or an herb don’t work when you try to apply them to the self. Medication — the help that gets us closer to the functional, animalistic concept of “wellness” — isn’t an enemy or a detraction from spiritual experiences.

If you’re hanging in there, even if you need medication to keep you here, you’re doing well. Nature and the divine won’t reject you for that.

life · Witchcraft

You don’t need to worry about the moon.

July 20, 2020July 21, 2020 J.Leave a comment

Today, in Things I Never Thought I’d Have to Type:

Just in case you came across this Twitter thread yesterday — the moon is going to be fine. A minor internet kerfluffle ensued when some kids got the bright idea to hex the moon (?) and the fair folk (??) for… Reasons, I guess.

Everyone who gets into a hobby — whether it’s pottery, baking, or witchcraft — has a moment or two when they develop starry-eyed aspirations of punching way above their weight. For some people, that means trying to tat an entire lace tablecloth by hand. For others, I guess it’s trying to curse the moon. But, much like ending up with a pile of tangled thread instead of heirloom-quality table linens only really hurts the crafter, trying to hex the moon or the fae only really hurts the caster. The only real difference between the two is that a finished tablecloth would have been beautiful and served a purpose.

Kids have been doing asinine things since the beginning of time. When I was four, I ate an icicle that was hanging off of the muffler of my grandma’s car and became violently ill. When I was ten, I ate a plate of dog food to prove a point (the point was that chicken alfredo is gross, don’t @ me). My adorable baby cousin once spent twenty minutes enthusiastically smashing sliced peaches into his hair. This probably isn’t the first — or even most impressive — time someone’s tried to pull something like this. The moon will be fine. Moon deities will be fine. They’ve survived the destruction of their temples and imagery, the forced conversion of their believers, and actual people walking around and leaving trash on the moon. They survived Theodosius the Great and the Donation of Constantine. This is kind of adorable by comparison.

(It’s also what happens when you dive headlong into spellwork without learning enough about history or theory, but that’s another subject.)

Admittedly, energy might be a little weird for a bit. Not to get too deep in the weeds, but, during some vision work I performed before finding out about all this, I experienced what I can only describe as an energetic whirlpool. I tried to feel it, but it slipped right over my hands like oil on water. I asked what it was and what it was for, and was told that it wasn’t my problem and not to worry about it. I went on my way. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, and, to be frank, didn’t feel like it was useful or important to delve into something that had been expressly described as Not My Problem. In retrospect, it makes sense.

I don’t think these witches should be bound or otherwise disciplined by more experienced heads. I think they’ll get what’s coming to them well enough, either through the backlash of their own work, or the humbling realization that the whole situation is more cringey and hilarious than anything else.

As for the fae, maybe leave some honey or milk out in your garden. Wear some gold. Carry some cold iron. The fae are temperamental at best, and this definitely isn’t a situation where I’d recommend going the “fuck around and find out” route.

life · Witchcraft

Cleansing Your Space After an Illness

July 8, 2020July 7, 2020 J.Leave a comment

By now, your home has probably had some sick people in it. Even if you’ve been fortunate (or diligent) enough to avoid COVID-19, the pandemic has triggered a spike in people using telemedicine — which means that they’re avoiding healthcare offices and handling more things at home.

Even in homes that haven’t seen illness, the vibes might be getting kind of weird by now. Being in close proximity to other people, no matter how much you love them, can result in more arguments, more tiny annoyances, just more of everything. (Absence may not always make the heart grow fonder, but it can certainly do a lot for sanity now and then.)

Cleansing is intended to recalibrate the energy of a space. Without getting too Witchcraft 101, it’s a good idea to do it where there have been arguments, nightmares, annoying guests, or anything that just makes a room feel a little “off.” It makes sense that you’d want to energetically cleanse a place where people have experienced sickness or physical or emotional pain. Odds are, you’re going to be giving the whole room a regular disinfecting anyhow, so why not combine the two?

In many folk magic traditions, magic and housework go hand-in-hand. As cleaning protects the home from filth and sickness, magic protects from spiritual ills. Hoodoo, in particular, has a strong tradition of using floor washes for bringing good in and shooing evil out. In nature, the cycles of weather and the seasons keep things moving. Fresh energy is brought in, the old is re-integrated. This isn’t something that can take place indoors, where it’s sealed-up, soilless, dry, and climate controlled all year!

Open Up

Cleansing a space gets things moving. That’s why it’s important to allow as much of the outdoors in as you can. Open windows and doors, bring in the wind and the sun. Much like grounding allows us to recalibrate our own energy fields, this lets the energy stirred up by the process to re-integrate into the world outside.

Perform a Physical Clearing

Vacuum carpets. Sweep floors. Change linens (preferably for a set that’s been aired in the sunlight). Wash curtains. Air out bedding. Anything that can be physically cleaned, should be. Pay particular attention to areas that don’t see much action, like the corners of rooms. These spaces allow things — both physically and energetically — to accumulate.

Do a Double-Duty Cleansing

Many of the ingredients that are used for energetic cleansing are also useful for sickrooms.

Floor cleaners with pine oil purify spaces and ward off evil, while having some antimicrobial activity. (Unfortunately, Pine-Sol no longer contains pine oil.)

Lemon is also used for energetic cleansing, while the citral and linool in lemon oil have some bacteria-inhibiting and antiviral action.

Vinegar is sometimes used for energetic cleansing, by leaving a dish in an empty room to evaporate. When prepared as an appropriate dilution, vinegar also inhibits candida, e. coli, and staph.

Some herbs, like white sage, are antimicrobial when burned. If you don’t use white sage, bay leaf has also shown some similar effects.

These measures will shift the most resistant energy patterns and restore the flow.

It’s important to note that these ingredients are all aromatic. That means that they might be too strong to be tolerated by someone with a respiratory condition or sensitivity to smells. Air everything out well afterward. Even if the smell is dissipated, the cleansing action is still there.

It’s also important to note that, if you’re dealing with a serious pathogen like the novel coronavirus, you should disinfect using a cleaner approved by the EPA for that specific purpose. Not every cleaner, herb, or oil is effective against every pathogen out there. If you know what bacteria, fungus, or virus you’re dealing with, make sure you knock it out first with a good disinfecting agent. You can clear the vibes afterward.

Bring in the New

Next, it’s important to bring in the kind of vibrations you want to have around. You can place crystals that correspond to the kind of energy you want to bring in (or the kind of illness you’re working on healing), but it should be noted that a lot of crystals come with energy you may not want. If you’re in doubt, find a piece of Arkansas quartz or a Herkimer diamond harvested by the seller. Arkansas and Herkimer county are home to some beautiful, powerful clear quartz crystals — you can ask for their assistance, inform them of your intent, and they’ll work just as well.

You may also want to sprinkle cleansing salt in the corners of the room. Plain sea salt is fine here, but you can create your own cleansing salt by combining it with your preferred herbs. Eucalyptus leaves, lavender buds, and dried lemon zest with some coarse sea salt all work well for this purpose.

Playing music helps, too. Music and sound have a powerful effect on our mental — and even physical — states. The frequency of a cat’s purr helps speed the healing of bones, muscles, and connective tissue. In one study, 528hz was found to lower biomarkers for stress. Even if you can’t replicate exact frequencies, your favorite music can have a strong impact on a room’s energetic imprint.

As a chronically ill person, I’ve found that I’m especially sensitive to when things start to go a little bit “off.” Even if you don’t have the energy to do all of the things on this list, doing just a few (opening a window, playing music, getting rid of some clutter) can help improve the feel of a place.

divination · life

Tinne

July 7, 2020July 6, 2020 J.Leave a comment

It doesn’t really feel like holly season. I mean, it objectively isn’t the time when people start decorating their houses with spiky green foliage and bright red berries. Midsummer is when the Oak King is at the height of his power — though the Holly King begins to grow in strength as the days shorten, he won’t get the upper hand until the autumnal equinox.

Still, gauging by this week’s Ogham divination, it’s holly time for me.

(Interestingly, the holly of the Ogham is very likely not the tree we think of when we hear the word “holly.” Holly didn’t come to the British Isles until the 16th century, so this holly is most likely actually the holly oak.)

Holly, Tinne, is the art of war. It’s the energy that avoids becoming too impassioned in conflict — it waits for the right time to strike. It brings justice that is restoration, not revenge. It’s the knowledge obtained from a bird’s eye view.

Weapons and chariot wheels were made from holly’s hard, dense wood. Planted near a home, it protected it from lightning strikes and fire. Inside, it defended against hexes and malignant magic. Holly is a warrior.

In this case, tinne points to the need for a good defense. Someone — or something — has you ready to go to war, or forcing you to swim against the tide. Tinne underlines the importance of facing our fear of confrontation and loss, of reining in our emotions so we can make a wise decision.

This is something that’s at the forefront for me. In my personal life, the fear of confrontation is something I’ve been fighting for awhile. Externally, the U.S. continues to fight a battle against every kind of -ism, as well as against those who place the economy ahead of human lives. Every day feels like a fight against bigotry, ignorance, and dogma.

Holly is a tree of the dark half of the year. It’s a tree of war and protection. It’s also a tree of knowledge and divine retribution, though, and I think we could use that right now.

life · Neodruidry

Water you mean?

June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 J.Leave a comment

I’m not really big into dream dictionaries. Symbolism is so subjective, it’s hard to really get usable information from a guide compiled for nobody in particular. That said, if you have recurring images you can’t really get a bead on, you could probably do worse than looking them up.

All of this is to say that I’ve been dutifully making note of my dreams, and have come to the realization that, holy crap, fully 99% of them are water-based.

The funny thing is, I used to live on an island. Going to the beach was a regular thing. When things got too intense at home, I’d sometimes hop on my bike and ride for hours — often ending up at one beach or another. I never dreamed of water then.

I don’t mean that I dream of drowning (because then I’d be signing up for a sleep study to make sure I don’t have apnea). I mean that I’m almost always either navigating around, traveling on, adjacent to, or in the ocean. The character of the water varies — sometimes it’s eerily, glassily smooth. Others, it’s pouring in and threatening to tear down everything in its path. In either case, I never actually feel threatened by it. I might have to work around the threat of an imminent flood, but, no matter how dangerous the waves may seem, they never cross into nightmare territory.

(If I have nightmares, they’re usually about crossing suspension bridges or trying to keep out zombie hordes using doors that are inexplicably too small and keep falling off the hinges, but that’s another story.)

Dream Moods mentions the usual stuff about ocean symbolism, it’s tied to the state of your emotions, rough seas mean turmoil, yada yada yada. (They do have one oddly specific bit about kissing the ocean floor, though.) Looking up “sea” yields pretty much the same.

I know water is emotion, but I haven’t really identified anything in particular that it might be referring to. The roughness of the sea doesn’t correspond to anything, it’s seemingly random. One resource offered up a bunch of prophetic meanings to sea imagery, but, if that’s the case, oh boy do I have a whole lot of very contradictory stuff coming my way. These also don’t “feel” like prophetic dreams that I’ve had. Another resource pretty much describes ocean dreams as a land of contrasts.

I have been considering choosing a patron/matron deity, but I don’t know who and haven’t fully committed to the idea.

Maybe the choice is being made for me.

life

My Apartment Building Has: A Baby!

June 24, 2020June 23, 2020 J.Leave a comment

A very grumpy and scruffy baby, but that is probably to be expected.

My partner told me that he’d spotted the wee one on the steps. I was so excited to go see, I actually went out without a mask (or shoes, or pants) to check up on them and leave some cat kibble and a bit of water.

Crow fledglings sometimes spend as long as two weeks on the ground. Nine times out of ten, there’s nothing actually wrong with them, they’re just in the awkward stage of learning to fly, growing their adult feathers, and looking like cranky little Halloween decorations that’ve been left in the attic a bit too long. Crow families and the rest of the murder are pretty close-knit, so their parents are usually right nearby to keep an eye on things. Babies have to learn to spread their wings eventually, though, so it’s not at all uncommon to come across a grumpy youngster, feathers all bedhead-ed up, covered in grass and dirt from hitting the ground seventeen times.

While cute, this baby is not a crow. This is probably an Ayam Cemani chick.

I talked to this one a little bit, left the kibble and water, and came back inside. We’ll keep an eye on them and make sure they still appear healthy, alert, and at an appropriate level of cleanliness (well, for a teenager, anyway). If they start looking listless or ill, we’ll get in touch with a wildlife rehabilitator.

For now? Good luck, little one! Hope you and your fam like chicken cereal.

Crows, ravens, and other corvids are A Thing for me — maybe this baby is one of the signs I’m supposed to be expecting?

life · Neodruidry

The Summer Solstice, and Paying the Rent to Manannán mac Lir

June 22, 2020June 22, 2020 J.Leave a comment

This weekend was the Summer Solstice, one of the High Days for Druids and other neo-Pagans. It’s the longest day of the year — the turning point where the daylight hours begin shortening and the world turns slowly, inevitably, into the restful darkness of winter.

This year, I celebrated by myself. There were plenty of Zoom rituals, streams from Stonehenge, and other online celebrations to take part in, but I wanted to keep my ritual for myself. It’s one thing I’ve found very helpful on my path. The High Days have their traditional meanings, but they just feel different depending on where (and who) you are. A California Solstice feels differently from a Maryland one, and neither is quite the same as a New York one! Celebrating by myself lets my experience shape the ritual, and makes it more relevant and meaningful to me.

_{(I’m also really self-conscious about screwing up the order or forgetting the wording, so it’s easier if I’m not doing it in front of a crowd.)}

*Ahem*

The day before the Solstice, I paid rent to Manannán mac Lir. On the Solstice on the Isle of Mann, worshippers go to the highest hill to make offerings to “pay rent” to the first King of the island. Needless to say, I am not on the Isle of Mann and don’t have a high hill, but I make do. With a bowl, fresh water, a few pinches of Celtic sea salt, and yellow flowers (roses, in this case, and a few drops of sweet ylang ylang), I made my offerings and ad libbed a prayer.

To be honest, I ad lib most of my prayers and ritual work. I might post a spell outline here and there, but rituals? I follow the basic ADF structure, but it’s all improv from there. I’m lucky I can remember my own name half of the time, let alone an entire ritual!

The Solstice is a time of brightness, optimism, and joy, coupled with the acknowledgement that the warmth and light of summer must come to an end. It’s the time when the Oak King and Holly King do battle, and the Holly King emerges victorious. It’s been a little tough to see the brightness and joy this year, but the warmth is there nonetheless.

For anyone who’s missed it, I’m still donating all of the proceeds from tarot readings in my Etsy shop to Black Lives Matter. If you’ve already donated to a Black-led organization of your choice, send me a screencap of the confirmation (redact whatever information you need to) and I’ll happily give you a free 3-card reading at no charge.

May we all have peace and justice as the light wanes and the Earth turns toward repose.

life

I guess it’s Brain Awareness Month?

June 15, 2020June 14, 2020 J.Leave a comment

To be honest, it strikes me as a bit egotistical.

I mean, the brain is the only organ that named itself. Now we’re gonna let it decide it gets its own month?

Anyway, I’m not a fan of brains, personally. At this point in my life, I think I’d rather have a sort of undifferentiated network of nerve tissue, or just be some kind of sentient alien gas cloud.

For Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month, I want to talk about what a complete pain in the ass it is to be properly diagnosed with anything neurological.

The trouble with many neurological disorders is that they often don’t have a nice, neat, non-invasive blood test that can definitively tell you what you’ve got in a visit or two. There might be a weeks-, months-, or even years-long pattern of behavior that you need to exhibit first. There might be some other symptoms that, at first blush, don’t seem like they’d have anything to do with your brain. They might need to take a bunch of pictures of your brain and then stick giant needles in your spine. It’s kind of a crap shoot.

This isn’t to complain about doctors, per se — when they hear hoofbeats, they’re trained to look for horses, not zebras. This approach usually works pretty well, unless you’re a zebra.

All my life, I’ve had what I thought migraines. I regularly felt crushing pains in my neck and head, to the point of being dizzy, hallucinating, and throwing up. Sometimes, I’d notice my hands leaving “vapor trails” wherever they moved, like some kind of bootleg Etch-a-Sketch. I had an inhuman amount of trouble seeing things in my peripheral vision during driver’s ed, to the point where I never properly learned to drive. I was told it was anxiety and I needed to manage my stress level.

I could hear what sounded like distant drumming in my ears. The pressure in my head sometimes felt like someone tightening a belt around my skull. Sometimes, the thrumming and drumming sounded almost whispery, like voices. I was told I was hallucinating and paranoid and I needed antipsychotics.

After awhile, I noticed that I had double vision. A person I dated at the time told me I was a hypochondriac, and I watched “too much House.” Around the time I lost my grandmother to brain cancer, a doctor told me that these symptoms might not be something I could just keep ignoring — in fact, they sounded a lot like a brain mass of some kind. I was uninsured and couldn’t afford the imaging I needed, so I languished in medical limbo instead. (Naturally, I didn’t express my concerns to my then-boyfriend. Why would I, when he mocked me for being worried and told everyone around us that I was exaggerating?)

A few years later, I noticed that I always seemed to have retina fatigue. My eyes seemed to keep impressions of whatever I looked at, for way too long after I’d looked away. I had odd flashing spots. I thought it might be from my new contact lenses, but, just in case, I downloaded an Amsler grid to see if my eyeballs were just malfunctioning somehow. Sure enough, the wavy, warped, and missing lines told me something really, really wasn’t right. After one episode where I wasn’t able to see anything and went to the ER, I was told it was atypical optical migraines and I needed migraine medication.

It was another three years and a cross-country move before I was actually properly diagnosed. After years and years of misdiagnosis, someone finally scanned my broken head (there was no mass) and stuck a needle in my spine (but there was an absolute shitload of extra spinal fluid). My opening pressure, the fluid pressure at the beginning of the spinal tap, was roughly twice what is considered normal — 29 mmHg (39.4 cmH2O) compared to 7-15mmHg (9.5-20.4 cmH2O). Whoops!

Your body has a lot of mechanisms in place to maintain your cerebrospinal fluid pressure within a range of ± 1 mmHg. Mine… doesn’t. For some people, this is because of medication — steroids, hormones, antibiotics, certain pain killers, and even antacids can all increase cerebrospinal fluid pressure, but it goes back down once the medication is discontinued. I wasn’t on anything at the time I was diagnosed. So, my case is considered “idiopathic,” and, in all likelihood, congenital. It will never leave me, I will never be cured. I’m stuck with it until I either go into remission, or die. Welp.

Munchausen Syndrome and hypochondria exist, but they don’t describe everyone that’s struggling with the medical industry.

Sometimes, you’ve just got a zebra brain.

divination · life

Justice (also free tarot readings).

June 8, 2020June 8, 2020 J.Leave a comment

Hello! Instead of my usual Monday posts, I just wanted to let you guys know that from now until the end of June, 100% of the profits (everything after Etsy fees) from any of the tarot readings listed in my shop will be donated to bail funds and Black Lives Matter.

If you’ve already donated to another Black-led organization, bail fund, or mutual aid fund, hit me up with a screencap/pic of the confirmation email (redact whatever information you need), your birth date, and whatever question you’d like answered, and I’ll send you a three card reading at no cost.

Thank you!