#problems in paganism

[breelandwalker]

Weekly reminder that it's not okay to illegally download and distribute free copies of recently-published books from a niche market where the authors depend directly on monthly royalties to pay their bills.

Books are a luxury and if you can't afford a title, save your pennies or check out a copy from your local library. There are plenty of free resources and public domain texts available in the meantime.

It's worth mentioning that plenty of authors in the witchcraft and pagan markets make a point of providing free resources and advice to the community on a regular basis, myself included. To take that information and then turn around and steal from us on top of it is not only petty, it's cruel, especially considering the financial hardship we're all facing in the current economy.

Download overpriced textbooks and public domain titles, not witch books.

#witch community #witchcraft #witchblr #pagan #baby witch #beginner witch #Just found one of my titles on a high-traffic discord server and it's been there for over a year. #Which partially explains why my Amazon sales have been in the toilet since last spring. #It's been removed but to say I'm annoyed is an understatement on the level of Houston We Have A Problem. #If you're a witch author contact me privately and I'll give you the info so you can check for your own work and file a DMCA takedown.

[unityghost]

"Having a familiar must be so magical; I wish I had a cute little black cat to help me with spells"

Cat: *eats catnip out of the chalice*

#witch #witchcraft #witchblr #cats #familiars #black cat #wiccan #pagan #paganism #wicca #witch problems #altars #spells #modern witch

[isuckmorethanjustblood]

the pagan urge to work with the mothman

#only problem is the question whether mothman is real or not #because depending on that he's either an egregore or a spirit or something else entirely #pagan #paganism #paganblr #mothman #cryptid #polytheist #deity work #spirit work #egregore #pop culture paganism #????

[mars-and-the-theoi]

So…this is definitely a very personal post. But…in the next week or so I might be heading to eating disorder treatment….and as ready as I am to kick this things ass once and for all, as I’ve been dealing with this off and on for ten years now. I’m also very scared. Naturally. So I really could use some prayers for healing and courage and all that. It will be very much appreciated. Thank you! ❤️❤️

#tw: eating problems #tw: eating disorder #hellenic polytheism #helpol #hellenic pagan #hellenic pantheon #hellenic paganism

[tadpoles-and-daydreams]

hello! i'm new to witchcraft in general. how do you talk to deities using tarot cards? i saw your post about hekate and i want to learn more

Hello! I hope you have fun and find fulfillment in your craft and all that :D

I personally don't have a formal way of doing it. I just... Speak their name in my head, and ask them to use the cards to communicate with me. I don't do it out loud but you can.

After that I ask if they're there, and once I get a yes I ask them whatever I need to ask. The actual questions themselves vary depending on the situation. My way of using tarot cards is pretty casual and intuitive- I don't do spreads and instead just asked what vibes right, and the answers are what fall out of the deck as I shuffle.

I use a mix of tarot cards and what I just call "direct communication" which not everyone does, so that's why I talk about more specific answers than you'd see on the cards- sometimes they aren't using the cards. But I find the cards to be an irreplaceable tool in my deity work, and I hope this at least sorta helped! Feel free to ask me to clarify or elaborate on anything.

#and obviously just bc i talk about direct communication a lot doesn't make anyone invalid for not doing that #I've seen enough posts to know that that's a problem ppl have #thinking direct communication is somehow better #witchcraft #paganism #witchblr #pagan witch #pagan #eclectic pagan #paganblr #witch community #deity work #witch blog #tarotblr #tarot #tarot witch

[suairceagsionadh]

i don't care how good your herbal remedies are, they should never be used as an alternative for professional medical care. they should be used, if anything, alongside hospitals and doctors, not as a replacement. and if you are taking herbal cures alongside prescribed medication, please check that they don't fuck with each other

#my family are convinced that doctors and medicine are Evil and Trying To Kill You so i am barred from getting any medical assistance #idk if that's a widespread problem in religious communities or just my weird family #paganism #pagan witch #witchblr #witchcraft

[beatingdrumspouringwine]

Communication with the Gods

This is related to this post that I reblogged a few nights ago, which talked about how vocal folks on the internet can be about talking to the Gods, and also how this can sometimes be a little misleading. After reblogging it, I started to think about my own interactions and relationship with the Gods, and how they too don't often fit the internet's view of Godly interactions, and figured that I would share a bit about my own practice to show that face-to-face talking with Gods isn't necessarily the only way one can commune with Them.

To start off, I'll say that when I was first dipping my toes into Hellenic Polytheism, I was with groups that were very vocal about the Gods always talking to them. It was the kind of thing where they would be talking about having full-fledged conversations, or tea parties with the Gods, which caused me to put a lot of pressure on myself to experience the same. It definitely took a while after all that to have a relatively normal relationship with my Gods. As of right now, the vast majority of the time that I pray to the Gods, I feel and hear nothing. Maybe I'll have a sense of inner peace, but I think that comes from within more than anything else. Something about the rhythms in the way the prayers are spoken is soothing to me.

Hermes tends to take a very subtle approach in His interactions with me. Sometimes I know He's there only because I hit more green lights than I was expecting, or a car ride went smoother than the traffic would allow. Sometimes I find coins laying on the ground, heads-up, after a particularly successful trip, or after a desperate prayer to Him; or I find items that have been lost for a while, sitting in a very conspicuous place. Hermes isn't subtle, but He also isn't very obvious. It's almost as if He moves when my back is turned, and when I turn around again, there's a very faint sense that maybe someone was there.

Dionysos, meanwhile, has been a bit more There for me. Sometimes, there's a heavier presence to Him being around, almost as if a person is standing in the space with me. Other times, I won't feel a presence, but rather an intense emotion, that I usually can't quite place. For me, it feels like something akin to the type of madness shown in the Bacchae, although I'm fully aware of my state, if that makes sense. Rarely, I've felt His hands around mine when I pray, although it's more of a pressure than the physical feeling of hands (it's all about vibes!).

The few times I've had an experience that was a deeper communication, they were relatively abstract. One time, it came as a sudden rush of realization on a cruise ship that the Gods love us (that will be another post, lol). A few times, it's been strangely intense dreams, in which I wake up from them and have a strong feeling that it meant something, one of which led me to create this blog. And the One Singular time I have ever heard a God (Dionysos) speak directly to me, it was only one sentence, while I was trying to take a nap, and I was able to feel His presence for a while afterwards.

Anyways, this has come as a bit of a ramble, but I think the overall point that my ADHD-addled mind is trying to make is that the Gods communicate in many different ways, and not all of them are direct God-to-human talking. It's more like subtle communications that say "I'm here, I've never left you." There's something to be said, and I think this idea stretches across multiple religions, about just being still and quiet with your Gods, and the Gods being there in that silence. If we really think about it, animals have only been able to hear for about 275 million years. That's almost no time compared to the age of Earth (4 billion years), and the universe (13 billion years), and the Gods were around even before that. They lived for so long in the silence, and They are there with you in the silence as well. <3

#thanks for coming to my TED talk #that turned out much longer than i thought it would be #whole ass essay over here #hellenic polytheist #hellenic polytheism #hellenic pagan #hellenic gods #hellenism #hellenic deities #i don't think the problems here will be applicable to most of the people who follow me #but just in case #here are my ADHD-riddled thoughts #on the Gods

[antlersacornsandallium]

Deep breath

Posts talking about the need to unpack religious trauma from pagan practices or the influence of cultural Christianity on how modern pagans interpret their experiences practices ... Are not an attack.

You do not need to feel defensive. You don't need to feel confused by confused by what different people say online when it comes to things like "you're not actually being pagan if you do x thing" and then someone else says the opposite.

What you read is not always a conversation spoken directly to you.

(Except this. This, I am speaking directly to you.)

You're not sure where to begin with connecting to faith? Well congrats, no one ever is, welcome to the club, pull up a chair and start listening. Here is a tangled ball of yarn - what you make with it is entirely up to you. There are no easy answers, and there never were and never will be.

To people coming from more dogmatic faiths, this transition is jarring. You want a ritual, you want to know the right words to say, you want someone to teach you the steps of the dance. What you should sacrifice, how you should do it, what does this god like, what rules you should follow.

The rules are always the same, and they never changed for you regardless of your faith.

Be honest. Be kind. Be brave.

The rest is decorative.

Example: offering the gods mead. Does the recorded history say that mead was offered to the Norse gods? Absolutely. Do we know why mead? Why the blood of cattle? Why these sacrifices and not others? You can read about these things on the surface level and never think about what made these things valuable for this purpose, and be no closer to any answer. You've done the ritual and said the words but gotten no meaning from it.

To the point that I frequently see newbies coming in wondering anxiously what they should do if they can't find mead to offer a god. And I sort of want to shake them a bit and ask why are you so desperate to connect to a deity you don't understand? Is it because you were conditioned to believe that this is how humanity should interact with the divine? Do you believe that to have faith really means to believe in a god, and you just mentally swapped out which ones?

Why on earth do you think that sparkling apple juice is any less valuable than honey wine?

When were you going to question why everyone told you to offer mead? When were you going to ask "why this specifically though"? When were you going to wonder why you were looking for a book of do's and don'ts and why you were prepared to believe that the only acceptable offerings were the ones you were told?

The mead is decorative. It doesn't matter. The offering itself doesn't even matter - it's a representation of kindness and reciprocity. It has as much meaning as leaving a gift basket at a neighbor's door. You want to have a good relationship with your neighbors, so you build one. It's very important as an action, but the substance doesn't matter that much. The intent does.

So do yourself a favor and stop stressing. You are only hurting yourself. Your trauma needs healing and the scars may always remain, but you need to learn to put down the sword before it can begin. You don't need to fight, you don't need to boast, you don't need to read every book of medieval Norse poetry to understand any of it.

The rules are the same. Be honest, be kind, be brave. Start there. Decorate the rest however you want.

#norse pagan #norse paganism #heathenry #paganism #norse heathenry #pagan #paganblr #pagan psa #pagan problems #this is such late night rambling posting #im begging yall to have some critical thinking skills #obligatory back in MY day we made up our own stuff and stole from wicca

[panthera-dei]

Pros of pop culture witchcraft: None of this has really been done before, so you can make whatever you want! (Within reason)

Cons of pop culture witchcraft: None of this has really been done before, so you're basically on your own making things from scratch or trying to adapt something out of old stuff that doesn't quite fit, and also there's nobody you can really turn to if you have questions because you're all trying to figure it out as you go along.

And same with techno magic, honestly. 😂

#pop culture magic #pop culture witchcraft #pop culture paganism #witchblr #witch problems

[khaire-traveler]

When the best art of your deity is from a video game or franchise TvT

#helpol #hellenic polytheism #hellenic pagan #the problems of worshipping underrated deities #paganblr

[soldier-poet-king]

'fran can you stop being Like That for 5 seconds?'

Unfortunately not. I am a non-person underneath all the masks and personas and the only thing left is an empty void obsessed with depressed christian existentialists, theodicy and the existence of evil, and the nature of suffering

#the duality of fran #be normal be normal be normal #i am. so well. alas #thinking my silly little thinky thoughts #which everyone maybe hates but thats ok #m still thinking #also thinking abt how obvs the early church was like nooo Greco roman paganism bad #but also if u look at the conception of divinity and theodicy in the tragedians and philosophers (and less so in populsr religion) #u see a lot. not the same. but a lot of ideas about like. evil. the nature of the gods as both terrifying and good. both horrible& beautiful #the both/and nature. the awe inspiring in the traditional sense of the word #like obvs it's the influence of platonism and neo Platonism on the church fathers #but also ive given yall my dionysios and jesus ramble before. smthn smthn smthn human and divine #I AM NOT SAYING SYNCRETISM OR HERESY #I AM SAYING. PREFIGURING. I AM SAYING. THE HUMAN SOUL IS ALWAYS SEEKING THIS THING #I AM SAYING THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSIONS AND DIALOGUE OF THE PERIOD #anyway. im normal. im sooooo normal about the problem of evil

[breelandwalker]

Gearing up for the yearly presentation on why the date of Easter has nothing to do with the modern Wiccan holiday of Ostara like

#pagan problems #granted it's not as bad as it used to be but still #every. fucking. year. #witchblr #The Witchstorian has armor to go with her fancy hat

[freyjahcandice]

Thrifty find from today ✨

#love peace empathy #thrifting #chalice of the gods #witch chalice #silver #pagan wicca #witchblr #pagan witch #spiritual awakening #paganblr #witchcore #paganism #borderline personality problems #spell work #ritual

[bookishblogging]

The lack of in person community with paganism is so hard. Like christianity has that community aspect that I achingly long for but with my own beliefs. Like also the person right next to me could be pagan but I would have literally no idea bc it’s scary to put that information out there!

#paganism #green pagan #religion #greek mythology #witch #witchblr #witchcraft #hellenic pagan #Hellenism #pagan problems

[mars-and-the-theoi]

Feeling Lady Hestia’s influence in my kitchen today. Have 2 pies in the oven (pumpkin, of course), a roast in the crockpot, spiced hot chocolate on the stove, and potatoes peeled and ready to be turned into mashed potatoes. Feels good to be out of my flare (finally) and in the kitchen again.

#as we near thanksgiving I get into my ‘pie trials’ as I do the pies for it #so today I’m practicing my pumpkin and probably next week I’ll practice apple #then I’ll practice my chocolate pie then the peach pie #just to make sure I’ve still got it all down and whatever tweaks need to be made can be made and I’m not left scrambling at last minute #I mean it’s not big deal if I am kinda screwed over last minute as other folks never have any problem bringing other desserts if I ask them #to (and they did so last year) but still everyone really likes my pies and I always feel bad if I don’t provide on that end so #helpol #hellenic polytheism #hellenic pagan #hellenic pantheon #hellenic paganism #hestia deity

[xrixx]

is it just me or does anyone else not see signs? i understand i don’t need them, and i don’t actively go looking for them. but i was just thinking about it, and i don’t see any signs. or maybe i’m just extremely oblivious, which is a likely possibility.

#beginner witch #deity worship #deities #witchcraft #paganblr #pagan #polytheism #send help #maybe im the problem