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Connecting Dots in local Witchcraft and Folklore
-or why this journal exists-
I have mentioned in a lot of topics that I have a very local craft, I did build it from a young age and in the first 5 years separate from knowing existing traditions. We had no internet in that time and I never had the chance to go to the big bookstores and libraries in the city. I called it witchcraft from the very first beginning and I called myself a witch from that beginning. From the age of 18 I first start to read things and 'dicovered' that there were more people who self define of witchcraft and learned about the existence of Wicca. I dabbled some years in that, but long story short I came back to my own praxis. My praxis is a kind of homemade thing, I build it from scratch. There was folklore, there are certain powers in the landscape, there is history science and occultism in Europe but my way of working is not build on existing tradition. I don't believe in a uninterrupted witchcraft tradition that lasted for centuries long. (But that is another topic and it is beyond the scope of this Journal)
Now, how did I connect bolts and pieces over all those years? Where did I start, what kind of information did I use or discard, where do which magic operations link to the landscape and why? Are there local things that define one or more parts of my witchcraft? Or that confirm things? How did I build the bridge between the natural world around me and the astral and the world inside me?
This journal builds up the story and my personal myth. I am hoping to inspire how things work If one build things like this. Till now I did not read that many books that really covers this process as a whole. Thus when people start to ask questions, I can't point them to books or blogs to start their own route. I don't have the intention to write a book, but I can understand that people want to try out things by them self. I will try to share this in a serie of posts, links to posts I made earlier, maybe pictures, some maps and thus painting a picture about the process that was there for over 30 years. It was a really organic process, so it is not always easy to put things in themes and fixed ideas......... I don't know if I will stay on a forum for many years or that I go back to my own little world of silence. One word about where I grew up: I lived in a very rural region, could walk the forests for hours with the dog and was not missed because the dog needed to walk hours, friends lived alongside brooks that had their own powers.
Correspondences
As mentioned, when starting my praxis, I did not had the opportunity of consulting internet or books. I had the idea in my mind that I use all kinds of things in magical potions And I think that making those, was the very start with everything. That in combination with weather magic practices, but about that later. If you have no internet or books, you can't read about correspondences for the magic. Then there are three things that stand in front of how you practice: cultivating your own witchpower, imagination and find correspondences yourself in your area. Cultivating the own witchpower and how to discover how that works when you don't have a mentor or another form of guidance, I will post later about that. Imagination and finding correspondences goes hand in hand.
But how do you find correspondences in your own region? It was not always by association. It boiled down by running the same experiments over and over again. So, for example I had a intent/purpose. I designed a potion that was exactly the same in operation, exactly the same in ingredients, except for one thing: the plant that I wanted to use. So I tested every time another plant and repeated the experiments over and over again. If I had enough information, I did the same thing over and over again, but changed the intent/purpose. So every plant got tested many times in different intents/purposes. Then, you have to test it again! Roots act different from flowers or leaves.
The other way of finding is about what you see that is present in your region and where those plants grow, how they behave throughout the seasons. Nettles alongside a brook can connect different than those that grow in the forests..... And if you gather information, you need to have knowledge about how the landscape historical evolved. Now, what was it like? We had swamp-like grounds in the winter, sand in on the higher grounds on which forests and heather flourished. Those swamp-like areas were described for the last 300 years, and there is no evidence found that confirmed otherwise. On all kinds of lands were blackberries often present, not only in the last century but much longer. They were there for hundreds of years according to the people who have enough knowledge about the historical landscape. This was why I incorporated the blackberry in my magic, here in a talisman:
"choose blackberries in your neighborhood to harvest from and harvest some blackberries itself and the thorns. Choose the thickest and prickiest thorns you can find. If the plant makes scratches on your skin and you bleed, it is a plus and maybe even a prio. Dry the thorns. Cook the berries till you have the black juice. Cut 3 branches of the bramble and make a hoop from it. If it cracks you need start over again with everything with another plant! Before picking the blackberrie stuff you have find some white sheep's wool. Clean it, spin a thread of it and make a little pooch of it in your preferred method. Paint the pooch with the blackberrie juice and vinegar or urine. Handwash it, dry it. Then take all those thorns you collected, put them in pooch and close the pooch by sewing. On full moon lay down the hoop (your circle) and place the pooch in the middle to make it gain more power. There you have another strong working talisman. Needless to say that you have your intention in mind the whole time in this whole process. Make sure you choose blackberries from a place that is not so cultivated by modern humans. I have some special places: a bronze age burial place and a place where there is a folk story about a giant who lives behind a thorny hedge. If you are open for folklore and history you can find places like that yourself."
Utilizing the thorns of the blackberry:
Another thing what was present was spruce and pine. The pines are there in the landscape because they thrive on the sandy soils on the higher grounds, but the pines that were present in my youth were there because of wood harvesting. So that is mixed. Spruce was not so present over many hundred years but forestry made them a part of our region. My own way of working with it, can you find in the link.
Then there was a lot experimentation with dandelion in those beginning years. I tested both the flowers and the roots. In the very beginning I used the harvested fresh roots in a potion for protection and in contact with local spirits, but I got disappointed by that. I changed over time my method to work with it, I made that change in the period I didn't live with my parents anymore. I collected the plants, used the flowers for tea and honey and used the roots otherwise: I did cut it in pieces dried them in the sun and grounded them. So I got a powder from it and the drying process was accompanied with connecting to it every day and connect the intent/purpose to it. Same with grounding. The powder has more power because of the process. You can use it in similar operations as the curse with clay and thorns, or mix it with clay and form a talisman from that. This is something you can do with more herbs/plants/trees. Over years I tested honeysuckle, oak, rowan, stinging nettle, mugwort, hawthorn, elder, heather and fox glove from our area. Rosemary, sage, grape vine, walnut, onions and yew from gardens. Later on I had the hobby of growing hot pepper and did some experiments. You can find a hot powder recipe/method with hot pepper on WF. The last years I am testing mandrake and datura. If you want to know more about walnut, there is a topic on WF but keep in mind that it is a much later developed method. The next year I will work with blueberry that is to be found in a part of my territory that is promising and where I worked on a very intens way my magic. Later on some comments about that...Ten, I used after intensive test driving rowan for protection purposes:
'I start visiting the tree long before the berries grow: in the end of the winter to be able to watch the complete growing process. I bring with me attention, intention and maybe some water or manure to help the tree growing, The moments of the visits can be daily, but it is possible to carefully choose those moments. (Under influence of planets, or chosen by divination, use your own method) For harvesting the rowan berries I pick a special moment too, but it can be that nature chooses another moment: every growing season is different and you need to accept that, Doing so, you will develop a relationship with that tree also. After harvesting I dry the berries and after that I chain them on a tread with a little help of a sharp needle. You can add dried root parts of mandrake too, preferably a home grown plant."
Then the clay, why is it in my praxis? In the places where the local streams were present there was a kind of clay, so decided over time that clay was a ingredient with lots of potention. I can't find much local clay anymore, so I take some soil from a swamp-like ground that are alongside the brooks and that is more fat like clay and work that through store bought clay. Sometimes you need to be a little practical and are things what they are................. The map is for another time, but I give it already to study it. It will be a post about building a territory.
Little adds about the herb correspondences
I forgot one thing in the 'herb' part of the path. When living on my own at age 19, there was a very sigil-like way of working with herbs. I did put non poisonous herbs on my pancake while baking and shaped what I called at that time a magic sign with intention/purpose. Nowadays I would call it a sigil. When eating the pancake I imagined how the pancake was ground between the teeth, how I swallowed it, how it was knead in the stomach, how it went further where digestive juices were added, how it transported inch by inch through the digestive tract, how I pooped it out, how it went in the sewer further on. When I was at the end of that I mostly was forgotten what the magic was all about. I made that experience very intens and detailed. For that pancake batter I used flour from a windmill in the north-west of my area. I cannot use it from a mill of my village. One of the mills was blown up in WO II and the other doesn't mill anymore.
Why using flour from a windmill? The windmill is a transformator of air-to-earth magic. The wind blows against the mill blades and with an intricate system it keeps a millstone (earth) turning, grinding the grain. So you have a connection between inspiration and communication on the one hand and grounding things on the other hand, of having ideas (air) put in manifestation. (earth) If you are lucky and knowing the miller, you can have the information of which batch of flour is milled on which wind but not all millers are keeping information about that. It is interesting to mention that Dutch windmills turn counter-clockwise seen from the front of the mill. The push is against the natural turning of the wood and that firms the wood thus being able to withstand greater forces.
Ice and fire
Another method was the fire and ice. I took a herb, controlled it with intent while pushing for that power from withing my body in it. I put the herb in a container with water, freeze it. And then took it out of the fridge to leave it in the hot burning summer sun to not only let it melt the ice but drying and let shrink the herb. After that I put it on fire. If I needed magic that had to last for a long time I would do the freezing in the winter with water from the outside (or snow) and the melting and burning around midsummer.
-or why this journal exists-
I have mentioned in a lot of topics that I have a very local craft, I did build it from a young age and in the first 5 years separate from knowing existing traditions. We had no internet in that time and I never had the chance to go to the big bookstores and libraries in the city. I called it witchcraft from the very first beginning and I called myself a witch from that beginning. From the age of 18 I first start to read things and 'dicovered' that there were more people who self define of witchcraft and learned about the existence of Wicca. I dabbled some years in that, but long story short I came back to my own praxis. My praxis is a kind of homemade thing, I build it from scratch. There was folklore, there are certain powers in the landscape, there is history science and occultism in Europe but my way of working is not build on existing tradition. I don't believe in a uninterrupted witchcraft tradition that lasted for centuries long. (But that is another topic and it is beyond the scope of this Journal)
Now, how did I connect bolts and pieces over all those years? Where did I start, what kind of information did I use or discard, where do which magic operations link to the landscape and why? Are there local things that define one or more parts of my witchcraft? Or that confirm things? How did I build the bridge between the natural world around me and the astral and the world inside me?
This journal builds up the story and my personal myth. I am hoping to inspire how things work If one build things like this. Till now I did not read that many books that really covers this process as a whole. Thus when people start to ask questions, I can't point them to books or blogs to start their own route. I don't have the intention to write a book, but I can understand that people want to try out things by them self. I will try to share this in a serie of posts, links to posts I made earlier, maybe pictures, some maps and thus painting a picture about the process that was there for over 30 years. It was a really organic process, so it is not always easy to put things in themes and fixed ideas......... I don't know if I will stay on a forum for many years or that I go back to my own little world of silence. One word about where I grew up: I lived in a very rural region, could walk the forests for hours with the dog and was not missed because the dog needed to walk hours, friends lived alongside brooks that had their own powers.
Correspondences
As mentioned, when starting my praxis, I did not had the opportunity of consulting internet or books. I had the idea in my mind that I use all kinds of things in magical potions And I think that making those, was the very start with everything. That in combination with weather magic practices, but about that later. If you have no internet or books, you can't read about correspondences for the magic. Then there are three things that stand in front of how you practice: cultivating your own witchpower, imagination and find correspondences yourself in your area. Cultivating the own witchpower and how to discover how that works when you don't have a mentor or another form of guidance, I will post later about that. Imagination and finding correspondences goes hand in hand.
But how do you find correspondences in your own region? It was not always by association. It boiled down by running the same experiments over and over again. So, for example I had a intent/purpose. I designed a potion that was exactly the same in operation, exactly the same in ingredients, except for one thing: the plant that I wanted to use. So I tested every time another plant and repeated the experiments over and over again. If I had enough information, I did the same thing over and over again, but changed the intent/purpose. So every plant got tested many times in different intents/purposes. Then, you have to test it again! Roots act different from flowers or leaves.
The other way of finding is about what you see that is present in your region and where those plants grow, how they behave throughout the seasons. Nettles alongside a brook can connect different than those that grow in the forests..... And if you gather information, you need to have knowledge about how the landscape historical evolved. Now, what was it like? We had swamp-like grounds in the winter, sand in on the higher grounds on which forests and heather flourished. Those swamp-like areas were described for the last 300 years, and there is no evidence found that confirmed otherwise. On all kinds of lands were blackberries often present, not only in the last century but much longer. They were there for hundreds of years according to the people who have enough knowledge about the historical landscape. This was why I incorporated the blackberry in my magic, here in a talisman:
"choose blackberries in your neighborhood to harvest from and harvest some blackberries itself and the thorns. Choose the thickest and prickiest thorns you can find. If the plant makes scratches on your skin and you bleed, it is a plus and maybe even a prio. Dry the thorns. Cook the berries till you have the black juice. Cut 3 branches of the bramble and make a hoop from it. If it cracks you need start over again with everything with another plant! Before picking the blackberrie stuff you have find some white sheep's wool. Clean it, spin a thread of it and make a little pooch of it in your preferred method. Paint the pooch with the blackberrie juice and vinegar or urine. Handwash it, dry it. Then take all those thorns you collected, put them in pooch and close the pooch by sewing. On full moon lay down the hoop (your circle) and place the pooch in the middle to make it gain more power. There you have another strong working talisman. Needless to say that you have your intention in mind the whole time in this whole process. Make sure you choose blackberries from a place that is not so cultivated by modern humans. I have some special places: a bronze age burial place and a place where there is a folk story about a giant who lives behind a thorny hedge. If you are open for folklore and history you can find places like that yourself."
Utilizing the thorns of the blackberry:
Another thing what was present was spruce and pine. The pines are there in the landscape because they thrive on the sandy soils on the higher grounds, but the pines that were present in my youth were there because of wood harvesting. So that is mixed. Spruce was not so present over many hundred years but forestry made them a part of our region. My own way of working with it, can you find in the link.
Then there was a lot experimentation with dandelion in those beginning years. I tested both the flowers and the roots. In the very beginning I used the harvested fresh roots in a potion for protection and in contact with local spirits, but I got disappointed by that. I changed over time my method to work with it, I made that change in the period I didn't live with my parents anymore. I collected the plants, used the flowers for tea and honey and used the roots otherwise: I did cut it in pieces dried them in the sun and grounded them. So I got a powder from it and the drying process was accompanied with connecting to it every day and connect the intent/purpose to it. Same with grounding. The powder has more power because of the process. You can use it in similar operations as the curse with clay and thorns, or mix it with clay and form a talisman from that. This is something you can do with more herbs/plants/trees. Over years I tested honeysuckle, oak, rowan, stinging nettle, mugwort, hawthorn, elder, heather and fox glove from our area. Rosemary, sage, grape vine, walnut, onions and yew from gardens. Later on I had the hobby of growing hot pepper and did some experiments. You can find a hot powder recipe/method with hot pepper on WF. The last years I am testing mandrake and datura. If you want to know more about walnut, there is a topic on WF but keep in mind that it is a much later developed method. The next year I will work with blueberry that is to be found in a part of my territory that is promising and where I worked on a very intens way my magic. Later on some comments about that...Ten, I used after intensive test driving rowan for protection purposes:
'I start visiting the tree long before the berries grow: in the end of the winter to be able to watch the complete growing process. I bring with me attention, intention and maybe some water or manure to help the tree growing, The moments of the visits can be daily, but it is possible to carefully choose those moments. (Under influence of planets, or chosen by divination, use your own method) For harvesting the rowan berries I pick a special moment too, but it can be that nature chooses another moment: every growing season is different and you need to accept that, Doing so, you will develop a relationship with that tree also. After harvesting I dry the berries and after that I chain them on a tread with a little help of a sharp needle. You can add dried root parts of mandrake too, preferably a home grown plant."
Then the clay, why is it in my praxis? In the places where the local streams were present there was a kind of clay, so decided over time that clay was a ingredient with lots of potention. I can't find much local clay anymore, so I take some soil from a swamp-like ground that are alongside the brooks and that is more fat like clay and work that through store bought clay. Sometimes you need to be a little practical and are things what they are................. The map is for another time, but I give it already to study it. It will be a post about building a territory.
Post automatically merged:
Little adds about the herb correspondences
I forgot one thing in the 'herb' part of the path. When living on my own at age 19, there was a very sigil-like way of working with herbs. I did put non poisonous herbs on my pancake while baking and shaped what I called at that time a magic sign with intention/purpose. Nowadays I would call it a sigil. When eating the pancake I imagined how the pancake was ground between the teeth, how I swallowed it, how it was knead in the stomach, how it went further where digestive juices were added, how it transported inch by inch through the digestive tract, how I pooped it out, how it went in the sewer further on. When I was at the end of that I mostly was forgotten what the magic was all about. I made that experience very intens and detailed. For that pancake batter I used flour from a windmill in the north-west of my area. I cannot use it from a mill of my village. One of the mills was blown up in WO II and the other doesn't mill anymore.
Why using flour from a windmill? The windmill is a transformator of air-to-earth magic. The wind blows against the mill blades and with an intricate system it keeps a millstone (earth) turning, grinding the grain. So you have a connection between inspiration and communication on the one hand and grounding things on the other hand, of having ideas (air) put in manifestation. (earth) If you are lucky and knowing the miller, you can have the information of which batch of flour is milled on which wind but not all millers are keeping information about that. It is interesting to mention that Dutch windmills turn counter-clockwise seen from the front of the mill. The push is against the natural turning of the wood and that firms the wood thus being able to withstand greater forces.
Ice and fire
Another method was the fire and ice. I took a herb, controlled it with intent while pushing for that power from withing my body in it. I put the herb in a container with water, freeze it. And then took it out of the fridge to leave it in the hot burning summer sun to not only let it melt the ice but drying and let shrink the herb. After that I put it on fire. If I needed magic that had to last for a long time I would do the freezing in the winter with water from the outside (or snow) and the melting and burning around midsummer.
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