Getting started with spirits and animism

[ThornsOfIronMass]

Hi everyone

I am just getting started in spirit work and animism. I have always had very atheistic view of witchcraft, mostly leaning on ideas of things (symbols, plants, colours, stones, etc) having innate virtues and properties, which could be utilised in witchcraft or magic. Now I am getting started in trying to commune with spirits and trying to get my own little spirit "court" going. I have decided for my first spirit ally to be a mugwort root.

If anyone has any experience working with a plant root as a focal point for a plant spirit, effigy, fetish, etc. I would love some tips, pointers, ideas, etc.

thank you all so much!
can't wait to see what you write.

 

[MorganBlack]

The late and excellent Gordon White issingle-handily responsible for the popularity of the word 'animism' over the past 10 years. It's all the rage now.

For English speakers, unless you grew up in a Catholic or a New World sorcery culture it may be difficult making the flip. GW does a very good job here as an intro to what for most modern secular people is a totally alien worldview.

For background info start with his book 'Star.Ships' (not here) and

Ani.Mystic: Encounters with a Living Cosmos

Book – PDF - Gordon White - Ani.Mystic: Encounters with a Living Cosmos

Gordon White’s sequel to his acclaimed Star.Ships is a book of adventure and encounter, of optimism and healing. Ani.Mystic: Encounters with a Living Cosmos is, explicitly, a magician’s book, a dreaming book, one which aims to fundamentally shift the discourse within the western magical...

wizardforums.com

Just to add a few practical tips here.

There is no singular class of spirit. They are highly local, relative to you, your life, the culture you are in, the local biosphere, your expectations, the mythic framework you're using, and the ritual materia you are using, or lack thereof.

Since you are or were an atheist, you can still approach them in a Chaos magic intellectual framework. When starting out with spirit magic is not required to even think of them as spirits. Be gentle with your brain.

You do not need to flip your intellect to an animist viewpoint, which may be hard for someone from a modern secular culture. It might limit them becasue you set the rules of your life. So you of you start thinking hey can only change your mental psychology, then that is true too.

Use their traditional rites, incantations, and prayer... and if and when they show up and start doing things, flipping stuff around, and doing stuff, you can flip to an animist "model" and try talking to them. Most of pre-1875 Western Magic is animist, and assumes a universe that is alive with consciousness.

Most of magic here is getting their attention, then the western system provides pointers for what to do when they show up. Again, no need to totally mind-fuck your intellectual left-hemisphere brain with all this. It is very hard until you have these experiences to believe it.

I will say give of warning. Always keep you promises to any "hot" spirit you conjure . While may not believe in the demon you conjure, they will act with an apparent intelligence and volition that can shock you. They can be relentless. And often not forgiving in lapses of protocol. I can even translate why it works that in chaos magic or cool sounding and modern quantum viewpoint, but after a while it just easier to flip to a traditional view, at least when in ritual , and then having a relationship with them and weaving them into the fabric of your reality (and the reality of other people, when necessary)

 

[Swampdweller900]

Mugwort can be very friendly, and the Artemisia genus is as diverse and quirky as any human family could be.

Keep in mind that plant spirits are not the same as "this plant part has a soul." It's more elemental in a sense, with the plant spirit being a throughline across the species. You can go get a fresh sprig of mugwort, or use a dried sprig or bundle as well, any of those will call the same spirit. That's the awesome thing about plants, they grow and regrow. Their presence is self-renewing.

Also, let the herb find you and work with you. Often it's the same as a cat. If you try and force it too hard, that's the only way to do it wrong. Let the spirit come to you, then make friends. As long as you're willing, then you've opened the door.

In case it helps, there's a great animist podcast named The Emerald that is worth your time.

 

[Like Ferro]

The work of Michaelle Small Wright is highly recommended. Not magic but on working with nature inteligenves
Perelandra-ltd.com
Behaving as if God in all life matters is a book i highly recommend to start with

 

[ThornsOfIronMass]

The late and excellent Gordon White issingle-handily responsible for the popularity of the word 'animism' over the past 10 years. It's all the rage now.

For English speakers, unless you grew up in a Catholic or a New World sorcery culture it may be difficult making the flip. GW does a very good job here as an intro to what for most modern secular people is a totally alien worldview.

For background info start with his book 'Star.Ships' (not here) and

Ani.Mystic: Encounters with a Living Cosmos

Book – PDF - Gordon White - Ani.Mystic: Encounters with a Living Cosmos

Gordon White’s sequel to his acclaimed Star.Ships is a book of adventure and encounter, of optimism and healing. Ani.Mystic: Encounters with a Living Cosmos is, explicitly, a magician’s book, a dreaming book, one which aims to fundamentally shift the discourse within the western magical...

wizardforums.com

Just to add a few practical tips here.

There is no singular class of spirit. They are highly local, relative to you, your life, the culture you are in, the local biosphere, your expectations, the mythic framework you're using, and the ritual materia you are using, or lack thereof.

Since you are or were an atheist, you can still approach them in a Chaos magic intellectual framework. When starting out with spirit magic is not required to even think of them as spirits. Be gentle with your brain.

You do not need to flip your intellect to an animist viewpoint, which may be hard for someone from a modern secular culture. It might limit them becasue you set the rules of your life. So you of you start thinking hey can only change your mental psychology, then that is true too.

Use their traditional rites, incantations, and prayer... and if and when they show up and start doing things, flipping stuff around, and doing stuff, you can flip to an animist "model" and try talking to them. Most of pre-1875 Western Magic is animist, and assumes a universe that is alive with consciousness.

Most of magic here is getting their attention, then the western system provides pointers for what to do when they show up. Again, no need to totally mind-fuck your intellectual left-hemisphere brain with all this. It is very hard until you have these experiences to believe it.

I will say give of warning. Always keep you promises to any "hot" spirit you conjure . While may not believe in the demon you conjure, they will act with an apparent intelligence and volition that can shock you. They can be relentless. And often not forgiving in lapses of protocol. I can even translate why it works that in chaos magic or cool sounding and modern quantum viewpoint, but after a while it just easier to flip to a traditional view, at least when in ritual , and then having a relationship with them and weaving them into the fabric of your reality (and the reality of other people, when necessary)

Thank you very much for your information! I have definitely found comfort in your words!

Post automatically merged: Tuesday at 11:43 PM

Mugwort can be very friendly, and the Artemisia genus is as diverse and quirky as any human family could be.

Keep in mind that plant spirits are not the same as "this plant part has a soul." It's more elemental in a sense, with the plant spirit being a throughline across the species. You can go get a fresh sprig of mugwort, or use a dried sprig or bundle as well, any of those will call the same spirit. That's the awesome thing about plants, they grow and regrow. Their presence is self-renewing.

Also, let the herb find you and work with you. Often it's the same as a cat. If you try and force it too hard, that's the only way to do it wrong. Let the spirit come to you, then make friends. As long as you're willing, then you've opened the door.

In case it helps, there's a great animist podcast named The Emerald that is worth your time.

Thank you very much for your thoughts!

The mugwort root is to act more like a focal point, less like the heart of the mugwort spirit, as I feel it is the easiest to make a talisman / pendulum / spirit vessel out of.

 

[MorganBlack]

You're most welcome!
Oh, check out Ivy Corvus chapter here.

Book – PDF - Peter J Carroll - This Is Chaos [epub & pdf]

From the Amazon Description: This Is Chaos showcases where chaos magic has come from, where it is now, and most importantly, where it is going. Helmed by one of the originators of chaos magic, Peter J. Carroll, this book is filled with essays by some of the most respected chaos magic workers who...

wizardforums.com

I've been uptalking it for months! What she did to flip into a universe that has spirits, I did with different stories many years ago, but the principle is the same. Whether or not you "really" change universes does not matter here. Right now your reality is made of your FELT assumptions and beliefs. Intellect does nothing here but allow you to choose feel differently about reality. Pick feelings and felt assumptions that serve you.

 

[solxyz]

The late and excellent Gordon White issingle-handily responsible for the popularity of the word 'animism' over the past 10 years. It's all the rage now.

David Abram published the Spell of the Sensuous in 1996. This was the book that really started the reappraisal of the term 'animism.'

 

[gerardobraham]

first improve your spirit sight and hearing. I recomend Ivo Dominguez Jr. book "Keys to Perception"

 

[MorganBlack]

David Abram published the Spell of the Sensuous in 1996.

Thank you, Solxyz! Seriously!The history of magical, religious, and esoteric ideas is totally my jam. Adding it to my backlog of books.

 

[the_herb_necromancer]

Josephine McCarthy's Magic Of The North Gate is a fantastic work relating to this.

I'm an Animist, the bulk of my practice is in this realm, and this book has a lot of great stuff to chew on.

Probably 90% of what I do in my practice is communing with land, weather and nature spirits.

 

[MorganBlack]

You raise good point, the_herb_necromancer.

An idea from an observation I've been thinking about:

This is totally speculative, but I sometimes wonder if the environment where we grew up has a huge bearing on the type of spirit we "vibe" with.

Aidan Watcher once mentioned Gordon White got him to try out the PGM Headless Rite and Four Demon Kings ritual for a week. If I recall, he said it made him feel miserable and sick.

What's interesting is both those rites - the PGM and the Demon Kings - are urban rites. City magic. The PGM comes from the cosmopolitan, multicultural city of Alexandria and its environs. The Demon Kings come through the Clerical Underground and the town and city magic of the brujos, Cunning Folk, and service magicians.

There is an idea that the Demon Kings began as the more nature-based Four Winds a long, long time ago. I am fine to include the Four Wicds as a mythic layer, ,but i don't think that's how all this works, but ok.

Whatever they are now, they are no longer (if they ever were) the storms or directional winds. It makes sense Aidan Watcher, as a nature-based "dirt magician," would have an serious immune system reaction to them.

Me, I'm a city boy. I LOVE big cities, the music, coffee shops, concrete,lights and noise - New York, Los Angeles, London. Raw nature can fuck off. I am a force of nature myself. Half-joking aide, so it makes sense with the daimons of the grimoires I focus on are the urban, literate, story and mythic, and Catholic spectrum of the tradition. The dead are cool though. But they are also in the cities. And cities themselves have a spirit, which some suggest are a roving horde of that city's dead.

Anyway, it would be cool to make a poll here and see if there is any correlation to:
Born in City = Literate spirits / Catholic, Hermetic
VS
Born in Country = Nature spirits / pagan and nature-based mysticism.

Then poll for personal vibe preference.

I'll go first:
I'm totally Urban Noir. "Ex" Punk. I love big cities for the Art, art galleries, writers, actors, game designers, artists, artifice, bookshops, theater plays, music, clubs, art galleries, Mexican-Korean Fusion food trucks at midnight, neon bars that are also a pinball arcade, stumbling across Goth-punk clubs in downtown LA late at night, with the kids dressed in leather jackets and listening to music I actually like, and the look of street lights at night reflecting on asphalt after the rain. That is my Kingdom, in the Quimbanda sense. And I vibe most with the spirit manifestations there. Fam.

 

[the_herb_necromancer]

You raise good point, the_herb_necromancer.

An idea from an observation I've been thinking about:

This is totally speculative, but I sometimes wonder if the environment where we grew up has a huge bearing on the type of spirit we "vibe" with.

Aidan Watcher once mentioned Gordon White got him to try out the PGM Headless Rite and Four Demon Kings ritual for a week. If I recall, he said it made him feel miserable and sick.

What's interesting is both those rites - the PGM and the Demon Kings - are urban rites. City magic. The PGM comes from the cosmopolitan, multicultural city of Alexandria and its environs. The Demon Kings come through the Clerical Underground and the town and city magic of the brujos, Cunning Folk, and service magicians.

There is an idea that the Demon Kings began as the more nature-based Four Winds a long, long time ago. I am fine to include the Four Wicds as a mythic layer, ,but i don't think that's how all this works, but ok.

Whatever they are now, they are no longer (if they ever were) the storms or directional winds. It makes sense Aidan Watcher, as a nature-based "dirt magician," would have an serious immune system reaction to them.

Me, I'm a city boy. I LOVE big cities, the music, coffee shops, concrete,lights and noise - New York, Los Angeles, London. Raw nature can fuck off. I am a force of nature myself. Half-joking aide, so it makes sense with the daimons of the grimoires I focus on are the urban, literate, story and mythic, and Catholic spectrum of the tradition. The dead are cool though. But they are also in the cities. And cities themselves have a spirit, which some suggest are a roving horde of that city's dead.

Anyway, it would be cool to make a poll here and see if there is any correlation to:
Born in City = Literate spirits / Catholic, Hermetic
VS
Born in Country = Nature spirits / pagan and nature-based mysticism.

Then poll for personal vibe preference.

I'll go first:
I'm totally Urban Noir. "Ex" Punk. I love big cities for the Art, art galleries, writers, actors, game designers, artists, artifice, bookshops, theater plays, music, clubs, art galleries, Mexican-Korean Fusion food trucks at midnight, neon bars that are also a pinball arcade, stumbling across Goth-punk clubs in downtown LA late at night, with the kids dressed in leather jackets and listening to music I actually like, and the look of street lights at night reflecting on asphalt after the rain. That is my Kingdom, in the Quimbanda sense. And I vibe most with the spirit manifestations there. Fam.

You bring up a great perspective, Morgan. Urban magic does have it's own current, in fact each city has it's own. Urban & animism aren't mutually exclusive. Buildings are made of stone, cities have parks (in fact your city has one of the absolute best). My driveway has a spirit. I'd also make an argument that "country" is too broad of a category: the wounded farmland of my state is distinctly different from the true wilds of the forests east or west of me. The larger purpose behind what I do is directly tied to the abuse the Great Plains has undergone over the last 2 centuries. Even the mundane causes I focus on are related to it in one way or the other.

But even for myself, I grew up and have always lived in mid to large Midwestern cities. I am not sure I would put that in the same category as someone practicing in NYC/Chicago/Houston/etc or someone in the country. So I am not sure if I count in that poll lol. But similarly I'm just as removed from more wild places and work instead within the designated preserves and urban parks i do have access to. It was in a park next to town where I had my first experience. "Country" could mean a cabin in the woods...or a farmstead full of developed and bruised land. Both are vastly different energies. City development seems far more conducive to connecting with animism in many ways than farmland development if I'm being honest. Cities generate energy and egregores and as you mentioned the spirits of place evolve with development but if you're in the developed countryside, everything is being sucked away rather than being more symbiotic.

Even the West Coast major cities are distinct from the East or Midwest, as nature is more...integrated?...in their urban designs and the cities themselves are significantly younger than out east. LA's a place where you can do all the city things you could ever want at night after hiking in mountains all day, I think a study in how the cities of the various bioregions itself tend to integrate into occult practices would be fascinating.

Thank you for providing this dialogue!

Post automatically merged: Today at 4:03 PM

You raise good point, the_herb_necromancer.

An idea from an observation I've been thinking about:

This is totally speculative, but I sometimes wonder if the environment where we grew up has a huge bearing on the type of spirit we "vibe" with.

Aidan Watcher once mentioned Gordon White got him to try out the PGM Headless Rite and Four Demon Kings ritual for a week. If I recall, he said it made him feel miserable and sick.

What's interesting is both those rites - the PGM and the Demon Kings - are urban rites. City magic. The PGM comes from the cosmopolitan, multicultural city of Alexandria and its environs. The Demon Kings come through the Clerical Underground and the town and city magic of the brujos, Cunning Folk, and service magicians.

There is an idea that the Demon Kings began as the more nature-based Four Winds a long, long time ago. I am fine to include the Four Wicds as a mythic layer, ,but i don't think that's how all this works, but ok.

Whatever they are now, they are no longer (if they ever were) the storms or directional winds. It makes sense Aidan Watcher, as a nature-based "dirt magician," would have an serious immune system reaction to them.

Me, I'm a city boy. I LOVE big cities, the music, coffee shops, concrete,lights and noise - New York, Los Angeles, London. Raw nature can fuck off. I am a force of nature myself. Half-joking aide, so it makes sense with the daimons of the grimoires I focus on are the urban, literate, story and mythic, and Catholic spectrum of the tradition. The dead are cool though. But they are also in the cities. And cities themselves have a spirit, which some suggest are a roving horde of that city's dead.

Anyway, it would be cool to make a poll here and see if there is any correlation to:
Born in City = Literate spirits / Catholic, Hermetic
VS
Born in Country = Nature spirits / pagan and nature-based mysticism.

Then poll for personal vibe preference.

I'll go first:
I'm totally Urban Noir. "Ex" Punk. I love big cities for the Art, art galleries, writers, actors, game designers, artists, artifice, bookshops, theater plays, music, clubs, art galleries, Mexican-Korean Fusion food trucks at midnight, neon bars that are also a pinball arcade, stumbling across Goth-punk clubs in downtown LA late at night, with the kids dressed in leather jackets and listening to music I actually like, and the look of street lights at night reflecting on asphalt after the rain. That is my Kingdom, in the Quimbanda sense. And I vibe most with the spirit manifestations there. Fam.

Also for some reason I thought you were in NYC, rereading I see you're from LA lol.

 

[MorganBlack]

Man, great post! Yep yep, patronize your local cemeteries and rivers.

You have me reflecting on my own experiences outside my "home turf" of the cities and the American SW.

Working in the video game industry we tend to move around a bit, and I spent a couple of years in Boston. Hated it. Every second. In theory I should like it, but everything tastes wrong. I met some a great people. I scifi and oil painter I adore has as studio there and we became friends. . But everyone acts beaten down and rude. The cold, and snow and endless talk of the Minutemen and American Revolution. I had to exorcise a ghost from my basement and I want to to that to the entire town

The North End is wonderful, which a a wonderful historic, old-world Italian neighborhood in downtown Boston. I would go there to have dinner and get cannolis while visiting with Italian friend from Italy, who worked at one of the local game companies. Speaking of American Italians, he once commented on how they are stuck in Italy that no longer exists. My friend asked, "What is up with American Italians? They're stuck in the 1950's. The rest of us have moved on."

THAT is Boston. It’s cold, tribal, and haunted, and also Lovecraft Country. The walled-in tree dungeons are oppressive. The forced thinking about topic I do not care about about - the Boston Teas Party, the Revolution, fine. Move on. 99% of the Mexican food is cook by Dominicans ,and the spices are wrong. And every New Englander thinks they will BURST into flames if they get within ten feet of a jalapeno.

But then I could drive to New York City, and I could feel all the tension pour out of my body. Those old colonial ghosts of the Revolution fade away at New York state line (but not Connecticut's ) and I could breathe again. People in New York have swagger, it feel modern, clean, and we get along. Boston - whatever that is, never again. I have a visceral allergic reaction to the place.

 

[the_herb_necromancer]

Man, great post! Yep yep, patronize your local cemeteries and rivers.

You have me reflecting on my own experiences outside my "home turf" of the cities and the American SW.

Working in the video game industry we tend to move around a bit, and I spent a couple of years in Boston. Hated it. Every second. In theory I should like it, but everything tastes wrong. I met some a great people. I scifi and oil painter I adore has as studio there and we became friends. . But everyone acts beaten down and rude. The cold, and snow and endless talk of the Minutemen and American Revolution. I had to exorcise a ghost from my basement and I want to to that to the entire town

The North End is wonderful, which a a wonderful historic, old-world Italian neighborhood in downtown Boston. I would go there to have dinner and get cannolis while visiting with Italian friend from Italy, who worked at one of the local game companies. Speaking of American Italians, he once commented on how they are stuck in Italy that no longer exists. My friend asked, "What is up with American Italians? They're stuck in the 1950's. The rest of us have moved on."

THAT is Boston. It’s cold, tribal, and haunted, and also Lovecraft Country. The walled-in tree dungeons are oppressive. The forced thinking about topic I do not care about about - the Boston Teas Party, the Revolution, fine. Move on. 99% of the Mexican food is cook by Dominicans ,and the spices are wrong. And every New Englander thinks they will BURST into flames if they get within ten feet of a jalapeno.

But then I could drive to New York City, and I could feel all the tension pour out of my body. Those old colonial ghosts of the Revolution fade away at New York state line (but not Connecticut's ) and I could breathe again. People in New York have swagger, it feel modern, clean, and we get along. Boston - whatever that is, never again. I have a visceral allergic reaction to the place.

New York was a straight up religious experience for me when I visited holy shit. I have never felt so innately connected to a place I'd never been before. I got around the city by pure unfiltered instinct and just spent 6 glorious days absolutely lost in her intrigue. Didn't do or see anything I set out to because going with the flow was too irresistible. And idk where the "New Yorkers are rude" stereotype comes from because the only rude person I met was a fucking hipster transplant. I had nothing but fantastic experiences with everyone else, included unexpectedly deep conversations with pure strangers.

I need to go back soon lol.