nahtfarewa

[nahtfarewa]

I have no idea if anybody’s even still here, but hi, I might be back I guess.

Never super actively unless a small miracle happens since most of what I do just doesn’t make for good social media posts, but I Exist. Presumably. 

I might post some sigil stuff at some point, I updated the Actually Usable Witchy Alphabet over the last couple years so I might do a new version of THAT post, and if I remember to do so I might come up with some new years’ stuff.

Also happy to see that the Fake Stones Post is still getting the occasional view, because those points also still stand. 

#fran's witchy ramblings

[nahtfarewa]

Obligatory boring addition:

Essential oils, even diffused, may not be safe for pets.

This goes for most pets, including cats and dogs, but doubly so for birds. Birds have super sensitive respiratory systems, and you’d do well to keep most things-that-go-into-the-air very far away from them. My room is a floor away and on the other side of the house from my birds, and I also notoriously never leave my door open, and I’m still wary of diffusing essential oils in there. Or burning incense, for that matter.

(Also be careful about using cheap essential oils for anything, some of them have pretty nasty additions that you probably wouldn’t want to breathe, too. Additionally, if you have housemates, please be considerate of them - some people don’t do well with essential oils, for reasons ranging from a strong dislike of particular smells all the way to essential oils being triggers for respiratory issues)

If you’re positive that diffusing essential oils is safe for you and any creatures living with you, though, they are pretty nifty. Cedarwood, Ylang-Ylang, Lavender and Bergamot are particular favorites of mine.

WAYS TO CLEANSE YOUR ROOM/SPACE WITHOUT BURNING ANYTHING

Some of us have breathing issues or parents/roommates who can’t be around burning stuff, and some people (like me) just have parents/roommates who don’t like the ashes and such left so…

1. Clean! And I mean really clean. Take all those dirty dishes back to the kitchen, take that rotting banana out of your unused backpack (I’m looking at myself there), do your laundry, and then really get in there! Dust, vacuum, do whatever you gotta do.

2. Open your windows during the rain! (Make sure you set up some plastic or such so you don’t get everything wet) I just really love the rain and there’s something so cleansing about it.

3. Get a essential oil diffuser!! I love these, and you can find oils at almost every grocery store just in case you don’t have a local witchy shop. Most of mine are from Wal-mart! (Remember that some oils are not for consumption or skin contact if they’re cheaper. Always read the backs before using them in those ways).

4. Meditate in the center of your space and really visualize all of the bad leaving and washing away. Use crystals if you like! Leave your room filled with bright, beautiful and uplifting energy :)

5. Perform! Read a piece of poetry or prose you love out loud. Give a little concert in your room for just your dog and stuffed animals! Dance your heart out. Just do something that helps you vent in a creative and constructive way! It leaves you and the space around you feeling lighter.

Feel free to add on!

[nahtfarewa]

General Life Update:

I’m still alive and witchin’, I’m just busy doing more than my usual share of household and gardening chores. I could do without the added responsibility, but the gardening as such is fun. 

Also, yeah, the age of the video game spring sales has started, and I’ve been busy with university stuff too. To be fair, though, I’ve also been neck-deep in witchy researches, just nothing I’d write posts about.

(By the way: That crystal post may have the most notes I’ve ever gotten on tumblr. Figures, I’m on the fun, witchy side of tumblr, and my most popular post is still about utterly mundane issues. I’m the most boring person on the internet, I swear)

#fran's witchy ramblings

[nahtfarewa]

Tfw you try to research local folklore, and the first and only google result is an article about a School Project From Hell you did five years ago.

NICE >:|

#fran's witchy ramblings

[nahtfarewa]

Here’s another reblog! I’m still very proud of this, and regularly use it myself - partially for mundane stuff like university notes, just because I can. 

I have made a few updates to it, which I’ll post about sometime soon. Nothing major, just a few more ligatures, and I swapped around the glyphs for e and i because it’s more comfortable that way for me personally.

Also, here’s a something for you secret witches: If anybody catches you using this script and asks what the heck it is, you can safely tell them that it’s an experiment regarding letter shapes based on letter frequency distribution (morse code does something very similar, by the way), combined with a nifty way of grouping letters into shape types, which exists because a random university student got too deeply invested in calligraphy and handwriting culture and got Ideas(TM) from studying the ancient precursor to stenography/shorthand (for bonus points, look up Tironian Notes and some basic facts about Ancient Rome, and use it as a segue into an impromptu history lesson)... and you’re helping with the testing, because it seemed neat. Unless you know way cooler people than I do, they’ll have fallen asleep halfway through that explanation and will be thoroughly sorry they asked.

… because most witch scripts are a massive royal pain to write.

If the images are blurry: right click -> open image in new tab.

Littera Simplex (v 1.0) is a secret alphabet developed by me, with the intention of it being easy to read, write and learn, but also not completely obvious.

It was technically created as a witch’s alphabet, but it’s usable for pretty much everything. There is no symbolic or religious meaning tied to any of it. 

Before you ask: the complete alphabet in chart form as well as the font may only be shared with attribution (a link to this blog is fine) and non-commercially, unless with written permission; however, you are free to do anything you want with texts you write with it… though I’d obviously appreciate a link back to my blog (and a small donation if you make more than just a marginal amount of money off of anything using this script, because I’m a broke-ass student and this took actual effort).  Also: If you show me things you used this for, I’ll be a very happy nerd.

FONT: It’s a thing. [here]. Includes lower-case letters, a handful of capital letters for roman numerals, the short form for “and” instead of &, and that’s pretty much it.

Further notes and a loose translation of my horrid scrawl under the cut:

Keep reading

[nahtfarewa]

Yeah, definitely do whatever feels right, magic(k)ally speaking - after all, all of those stones are based on something, and including that in your practice is neat. 

I own most of the above-mentioned stones myself (minus false citrine - or real citrine, for that matter), and while my practice only rarely includes crystals, I would’t be averse to using any of them - especially red tiger eye. I love red tiger eye. 

The point of this post is definitely not “avoid buying those things”, it’s “be aware that this thing might not necessarily be what the person selling it wants you to believe”, and maybe “try buying from people who are as honest as possible about what they’re selling”.

Because a good half or so of crystal witch posts make me go “ooooh boy”:

“Opalite” is just fancy glass. 

“Goldstone” and its differently-colored varieties are also just fancy glass (though with a rather fun history stretching back hundreds of years, to the point where ‘aventurine’ is named after the manufactured sparkly glass via its Italian name. I saw a 19th century table made out of that stuff once; it looked like the table version of old bowling alley carpets).

“Rainbow” or “Aura” or whatever quartz and amethysts are chemically treated - can’t remember the specifics, but they get coated with something. 

Most agate slices and pretty much all agate-looking bright blue and pink tumbled stones are dyed. 

Most citrine you can buy for a reasonable price is treated amethyst. 

Most turquoise is treated howlite. 

Blue tiger eye does exist (also known as Hawk’s Eye), but almost always includes yellow stripes and/or is very slightly grey-ish or otherwise not a totally dark and saturated blue; Not saying they don’t exist, but I’d be wary of cheap, extremely blue, extremely mono-colored stones.

Red tiger eye is always heat-treated, but not generally dyed AFAIK, because you can get ridiculously good colors just by applying some heat. Apparently, applying certain acids gets you a reddish-purple hue.

A LOT of jade is fake in some way. “New jade” in particular is actually serpentine, though there’s apparently a really interesting and not entirely mean-spirited story behind that one.

None of that is intrinsically bad, (heck, red tiger eye is one of my favorites, as is serpentine, and goldstone is really pretty) but a lot of shops are deliberately incredibly misleading about that stuff, and that is Not Okay. So, know what you’re buying, learn your stuff about your pretty rocks, and don’t let assholes screw you over with fancy words. 

[nahtfarewa]

You at the very least make an excellent point, of course, and lumping most heat-treated stones in with the dyed ones was probably slightly unfair of me. 

However, I still think it should be noted somewhere if a stone was heat-treated (and selling heat-treated amethyst as citrine is flat-out false advertising, and I’ll definitely stand by that) - such stones could occur naturally, but they usually don’t, and not clarifying that the stone was artificially manipulated might make it look rarer than it actually is. 

Because a good half or so of crystal witch posts make me go “ooooh boy”:

“Opalite” is just fancy glass. 

“Goldstone” and its differently-colored varieties are also just fancy glass (though with a rather fun history stretching back hundreds of years, to the point where ‘aventurine’ is named after the manufactured sparkly glass via its Italian name. I saw a 19th century table made out of that stuff once; it looked like the table version of old bowling alley carpets).

“Rainbow” or “Aura” or whatever quartz and amethysts are chemically treated - can’t remember the specifics, but they get coated with something. 

Most agate slices and pretty much all agate-looking bright blue and pink tumbled stones are dyed. 

Most citrine you can buy for a reasonable price is treated amethyst. 

Most turquoise is treated howlite. 

Blue tiger eye does exist (also known as Hawk’s Eye), but almost always includes yellow stripes and/or is very slightly grey-ish or otherwise not a totally dark and saturated blue; Not saying they don’t exist, but I’d be wary of cheap, extremely blue, extremely mono-colored stones.

Red tiger eye is always heat-treated, but not generally dyed AFAIK, because you can get ridiculously good colors just by applying some heat. Apparently, applying certain acids gets you a reddish-purple hue.

A LOT of jade is fake in some way. “New jade” in particular is actually serpentine, though there’s apparently a really interesting and not entirely mean-spirited story behind that one.

None of that is intrinsically bad, (heck, red tiger eye is one of my favorites, as is serpentine, and goldstone is really pretty) but a lot of shops are deliberately incredibly misleading about that stuff, and that is Not Okay. So, know what you’re buying, learn your stuff about your pretty rocks, and don’t let assholes screw you over with fancy words. 

[nahtfarewa]

I just noticed that people might take my  “ooooh boy” the wrong way:

No, I’m not judging you at all, it’s more along the lines of “oooh boy, somebody just got screwed over by asshats”.

Obviously, research and reading up on things is always great, but I’m fully aware that I got into collecting pretty rocks when I was 4, some of the first things I read were nonfiction books about gemstones, and it became my ADHD-equivalent-of-a-special-interest for several years, AND my mom’s a pretty big rock nerd too (studied chemistry, used to be super into crystalline structures), so I had an excellent basis for reading up on stuff, and I’ve been aware of the issues surrounding really iffy stone marketing techniques for damn near two decades. 

I’m also fully aware that a lot of crystal witches and other pretty-rock-collecting people are very young and might not know that there is anything to read up on.

So, I’d like to make people aware of existing issues they might want to know about to avoid getting screwed over by pretty jerky false advertising, but I’m really not judging anybody.

Generally speaking, though: Research the everliving crap out of everything you buy. Better safe than sorry.

Because a good half or so of crystal witch posts make me go “ooooh boy”:

“Opalite” is just fancy glass. 

“Goldstone” and its differently-colored varieties are also just fancy glass (though with a rather fun history stretching back hundreds of years, to the point where ‘aventurine’ is named after the manufactured sparkly glass via its Italian name. I saw a 19th century table made out of that stuff once; it looked like the table version of old bowling alley carpets).

“Rainbow” or “Aura” or whatever quartz and amethysts are chemically treated - can’t remember the specifics, but they get coated with something. 

Most agate slices and pretty much all agate-looking bright blue and pink tumbled stones are dyed. 

Most citrine you can buy for a reasonable price is treated amethyst. 

Most turquoise is treated howlite. 

Blue tiger eye does exist (also known as Hawk’s Eye), but almost always includes yellow stripes and/or is very slightly grey-ish or otherwise not a totally dark and saturated blue; Not saying they don’t exist, but I’d be wary of cheap, extremely blue, extremely mono-colored stones.

Red tiger eye is always heat-treated, but not generally dyed AFAIK, because you can get ridiculously good colors just by applying some heat. Apparently, applying certain acids gets you a reddish-purple hue.

A LOT of jade is fake in some way. “New jade” in particular is actually serpentine, though there’s apparently a really interesting and not entirely mean-spirited story behind that one.

None of that is intrinsically bad, (heck, red tiger eye is one of my favorites, as is serpentine, and goldstone is really pretty) but a lot of shops are deliberately incredibly misleading about that stuff, and that is Not Okay. So, know what you’re buying, learn your stuff about your pretty rocks, and don’t let assholes screw you over with fancy words. 

[nahtfarewa]

Because a good half or so of crystal witch posts make me go “ooooh boy”:

“Opalite” is just fancy glass. 

“Goldstone” and its differently-colored varieties are also just fancy glass (though with a rather fun history stretching back hundreds of years, to the point where ‘aventurine’ is named after the manufactured sparkly glass via its Italian name. I saw a 19th century table made out of that stuff once; it looked like the table version of old bowling alley carpets).

“Rainbow” or “Aura” or whatever quartz and amethysts are chemically treated - can’t remember the specifics, but they get coated with something. 

Most agate slices and pretty much all agate-looking bright blue and pink tumbled stones are dyed. 

Most citrine you can buy for a reasonable price is treated amethyst. 

Most turquoise is treated howlite. 

Blue tiger eye does exist (also known as Hawk’s Eye), but almost always includes yellow stripes and/or is very slightly grey-ish or otherwise not a totally dark and saturated blue; Not saying they don’t exist, but I’d be wary of cheap, extremely blue, extremely mono-colored stones.

Red tiger eye is always heat-treated, but not generally dyed AFAIK, because you can get ridiculously good colors just by applying some heat. Apparently, applying certain acids gets you a reddish-purple hue.

A LOT of jade is fake in some way. “New jade” in particular is actually serpentine, though there’s apparently a really interesting and not entirely mean-spirited story behind that one.

None of that is intrinsically bad, (heck, red tiger eye is one of my favorites, as is serpentine, and goldstone is really pretty) but a lot of shops are deliberately incredibly misleading about that stuff, and that is Not Okay. So, know what you’re buying, learn your stuff about your pretty rocks, and don’t let assholes screw you over with fancy words. 

/EDIT: Also, this list is not exhaustive; if you’ve got stuff to say about other fake and commonly faked stones or general additional information, do feel free to add to this while reblogging!

#crystals #crystal magic #witchblr #witch tips

[nahtfarewa]

OH MY FUCKING FUCK I JUST REALIZED

The Zim Desktop Wiki

is something I’ve used for a while for writing stuff, because it allows you to create a wild amalgamation of stuff with sub-pages and hyperlinks - basically a mini-wikipedia but with way less fancy formatting. 

(Actually, I have some very vague memories of me and my friends creating locally saved mockups of webpages about anime shit in 2006 or so, and this is a lot like that, only with less tiny awkward dorks fawning about Pokemon)

Anyway, if you’re okay with things looking clean and don’t need them looking really pretty (and don’t mind a certain 90′s charm, lol), it’s literally absolutely perfect for a virtual BOS / grimoire / whatever.

You can keep your entire collection of witchy stuff in one virtual binder, you can use hyperlinks, you can basically create your own personal wiki of stuff, and it’s awesome.

If you have some sort of spell or ritual, you can link to separate entries about correspondences of the materials you’re using, for instance.

No more freaking out about the completeness of specific pages because you can always easily edit stuff later.

Perfect.

Bonus points: You can save your stuff directly to your dropbox folder (or, presumably, any other cloud service that uses a local folder to synch); the wiki also auto-saves stuff constantly so you don’t lose your work if anything crashes. Which has never happened to me, by the way.

Bonus points 2: ... or you can save your BOS on a USB stick. The software’s available as a portable app too, so you can put that on the USB stick too, while you’re at it.

Bonus points 3: The wikis are saved as a perfectly normal folder structure and .txt files with a very simple markdown system, so you can technically work on that stuff with the frickin Windows Editor or Notepad if you don’t have access to the GUI atm. File formats don’t get much more basic than .txt, so the compatibility is huge. 

Bonus points 4: Formatting things and inserting links is super painless once you have the more common notations down.

Bonus points 5: Yeah, also? It’s free. 

#bos #book of shadows #grimoire #fran's witchy ramblings

[nahtfarewa]

Biggest revelation of the hiatus: I suck at regularly doing spells with physical components because meatspace doesn’t hold any meaning for me and doing anything rooted in Real Life items seems arbitrary and strange.

Flip side: I should theoretically gel really well with energy work and astral stuff, which I kinda never even tried because it seemed... oddly mundane? 

Also: Going "I won’t be interested in that anyway” about stuff I don’t really know anything about is a terrible, horrible habit which I absolutely need to kick.

#fran's witchy ramblings

[nahtfarewa]

Feels good to be back, though. 

It’s difficult to stay active on this blog, because I’m a) bad at sticking to one topic and b) very uncomfortable with being unable to contribute meaningfully to things, but heck, I missed this.

#fran's witchy ramblings

[nahtfarewa]

I’m back and this is the only notable thing I ever did on the witchy side of tumblr, so here’s a reblog.

… because most witch scripts are a massive royal pain to write.

If the images are blurry: right click -> open image in new tab.

Littera Simplex (v 1.0) is a secret alphabet developed by me, with the intention of it being easy to read, write and learn, but also not completely obvious.

It was technically created as a witch’s alphabet, but it’s usable for pretty much everything. There is no symbolic or religious meaning tied to any of it. 

Before you ask: the complete alphabet in chart form as well as the font may only be shared with attribution (a link to this blog is fine) and non-commercially, unless with written permission; however, you are free to do anything you want with texts you write with it… though I’d obviously appreciate a link back to my blog (and a small donation if you make more than just a marginal amount of money off of anything using this script, because I’m a broke-ass student and this took actual effort).  Also: If you show me things you used this for, I’ll be a very happy nerd.

FONT: It’s a thing. [here]. Includes lower-case letters, a handful of capital letters for roman numerals, the short form for “and” instead of &, and that’s pretty much it.

Further notes and a loose translation of my horrid scrawl under the cut:

Keep reading

[nahtfarewa]

i saw this post earlier about therapists and it reminded me of my old therapist paul, who in my opinion is one of the greatest men alive and who did not put up with my bullshit for even one second

anyway i go in to see paul one week in the summer of 2016, and i’m doing my usual bullshit which consists of me talking shit about myself, and paul is staring at me, and then he cuts me off and says that he’s got a new tool for helping people recognize when they’re using negative language, and gets up and goes over to his desk

and i’m like alright hit me with that sweet sweet self-help article my man, because i’m a linguistic learner and whenever paul’s like here i have a tool for you to use it’s pretty much always an article or a book or something

paul opens a drawer, takes something out, and turns back around. i stare.

i say, paul.

is that a nerf gun.

yeah, says paul.

i say, are you gonna shoot me with a nerf gun in this professional setting.

he happily informs me that that’s really up to me, isn’t it. and sits back down. and gestures, like, go ahead, what were you saying?

and i squint suspiciously and start back up about how i’m having too much anxiety to leave the house to run errands, like it was a miracle to even get here, like i’ve forgone getting groceries for the past week and that’s so stupid, what a stupid issue, i’m an idiot, how could i–

a foam dart hits me in the leg.

i go, hey! because my therapist just shot me in the leg. paul blinks at me placidly and raises an eyebrow. i squint again.

i say, slowly, it’s– not a stupid issue, i’m not stupid, but it’s frustrating me and i don’t want it to be a problem i’m having.

no dart this time. okay. sweet.

so the rest of the hour passes with me intermittently getting nailed with tiny foam darts and then swearing and then fixing my language and, wouldn’t you know it, i start liking myself a little more by the end of the session, which is mildly infuriating because paul can tell and he’s very smug about it 

anyway i leave his office and the lady having the next appointment walks in and i hear what’s all over the floor? and paul very seriously says cognitive behavioral therapy tools.

#not witchy stuff #fran's happy tag #I love this post so much

[nahtfarewa]

I’M BAAAACK

winter witchcraft isn’t really my thing as it turns out, but now it’s spring again and the sun is shining and the plants are flowering, and so the Fran crawls out of their cave and says hi.

#fran's witchy ramblings

[nahtfarewa]

Reblog if you’re a LGBTQ Witch(or Ally)

Where are you all at? :) Looking to make some friends

#nonbinary ace(-ish??? idk) witch here

[nahtfarewa]

I know, I know, I keep saying I’ll be more active and then nothing happens :|

Tbh I’m not much of a reblogger and I’m too noobish to create much original content, so... that’s why. Mostly.

Plus, I went on holiday at my favorite sea shore and didn’t have internet for a week. Found some hag stones, one of which will go on my key chain, and collected a nice bottle of sea water, which I’m currently pulling the salt from to turn into an amulet because being a land-locked sea witch sucks in all kinds of ways and this might help. Hopefully.

Needless to say, I spent most of that week under water - freediving with nothing but my fins this time, because I fucked up and forgot my diving mask a few hundred miles away.

Anyway: Yes, I’m still here and doing fine. 

#fran's witchy ramblings