What Native people say about the use of sage: you can use sage, but you cannot smudge as nothing you are doing (waving sage around) is actually smudging. Smudging is a ceremony and you are, we promise, not smudging. Please buy sage from either us, or someone who sources the sage from us. White sage may not be considered endangered by the US government but corperate sourcing is making it difficult for us to source sage for our own religious purposes. Let alone to sell it.

What white people hear: never use sage ever, don’t ever buy it, don’t own it, don’t even look at it.

Look, y’all. There’s a couple of facets to my talk today.

1) Yes! You can buy sage! You really, truly can! Buy it from either native sellers (go to a powwow! Eat our food, buy our stuff, watch some dancing!) Or buy it from a seller who sources the sage from native people. Pick one. And no, buying it from 5 Below doesn’t count.

2) you CANNOT smudge. This isn’t just you “shouldn’t”— this is a YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF SMUDGING. Waving a sage stick around your doorways IS NOT SMUDGING. It is smoke clensing. Smudging, depending on the tradition and tribe, could easily have dancing and drums involved. You, as a white person, do not have the cultural BACKGROUND to even know how it works. At all. Period.

3) please, for FUCKS SAKE, stop making posts here on tumblr where you tell other white people about cultural appropriation and what they can and cannot do. Please stop, your license has been revoked because none of you bother to get the facts right. We native people are FULLY CAPABLE OF DOING IT OURSELVES. Consider instead: a) reblogging our posts where we talk about it! We’re here! We have made posts!! b) Making a post that states what we said and then LINKS BACK TO US. Screenshot with a link if you must. Stop centering your own voices in these conversations. You are already centered in everything, stop centering yourselves in a native space.

I’m tired of this nonsense, y’all.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk ™

——

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⭐🌛𝓢𝓮𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓶𝓫𝓮𝓻 𝓦𝓲𝓽𝓬𝓱🌜⭐

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Insta, Twitter ~ @lunreye

What A Broken Family You All Are

Always and Forever | We Remain Together

[listen]

the one everyone should have listened to

“What happened to the brother I used to know? The one who laughed death in the face.” “That’s a lot easier to do when you haven’t died already once.”

[listen]

nobleman in a suit

making suits look good since the first century.

[listen]

call it magic

our loyalties and our ambitions laid bare

[listen]

New Orleans, Louisiana

you will lose your soul here

[listen]

MIRROR SCRYING FOR PAST LIVES

norse mythology - freyja aesthetic (requested)

more here // request here

bottom left photo by rattle-and-burn and houkakyou

Color Palette Challenge #75 - Freya

aesthetic meme - deities - freyja

athena aesthetic (requested)

more here // request here

tarot and pendulums can get it wrong

a response to these posts of “if you don’t want to do tarot or pendulum (or general magic) for this thing, you must not really believe in magic” i’ve been seeing around lately. 

Tarot does not have a degree in law, pendulums are not a doctor. They are estimations based on a situation, and they have the ability to be interpreted differently than the answer we think we receive. 

Pendulums, at least for me, have always represented an answered that averages a question down to a yes or no. However, life is rarely that simple. There are almost always other factors. Pendulums don’t communicate as simply as we do. “Does Tommy like me?” Well, he doesn’t hate you. Maybe he even likes you as a person. But maybe not romantically, and pendulums don’t have that nuanced understanding of “like” that we do. “Does Tommy want to romance me?” Maybe, but it could totally be for a practical joke because Tommy is also an asshole. 

Tarot tells you your future supposedly, and you ask it medical questions. However, it is in part working off your own knowledge of what is going on. You may have an unknown condition, and it’s not going to tell you about it, it’s going to tell you how you’re going to live and react to things while not knowing. How can tarot tell you that you’ve got onychocryptosis if you’ve never heard of it? Besides, tarot works solely with themes, not multi-syllabic disease names. You’d have better luck divining what’s wrong with you via bibliomancy and a medical text book (don’t do that, seriously).

In short, do the tarot reading after you visit the doctor, ask it things it will be able to answer. Tarot is not so much a tool for telling the future as it is telling you about yourself. Pendulums are not so much an exact answer as they are a shrug and “it’s kinda leaning towards yes? idk man”. They are not exact answers, they’re vague advice as best. It’s foolish to treat them as cosmic instructions or divine orders.

As a tarot/oracle card reader, I HIGHLY agree with this. They can be totally helpful tools, but they are not ever a “set in stone” answer and are completely for internal evaluation and reflection.100% on board with this.

a note about jars and herbs and mold

i’ve seen posts that both warn witches not to put herbs in jars because it causes them to mold, and then other posts exclaiming about how jars have been used to store herbs for centuries. and i have yet to see a post that actually focuses on the problem. because they’re both right if they don’t focus on the actual issue

do not put fresh herbs in jars. only put dried herbs in jars. 

you know when you leave bread out of its airtight bag and then it gets stale? that’s the water evaporating from it. now it’s a dried husk. 

same principle, things with water in them, over time the water inside them leaves, evaporates, and then you’re left with something dried up. 

however, when you put fresh herbs in jars, they still have the water in them. if you seal it up, it still naturally seeps out of the herbs, but then it has nowhere to go and collects inside hte jar, and molds. 

tl;dr dry your herbs first so you can avoid moldy jars, store herbs to your little heart’s content

⏳ Restarting Spell ⏳

a ritual for fresh starts, to remove old energies, and invite new ones in

⏳  to be done at the end of the year, midnights, or the end of each month

⏳  gather: a white candle, salt, two pages, and a fire-safe surface

⏳  write about, or in a sigil, represent the aspects you want to shake off

⏳  on the second page, write the things you wish to usher in.

⏳  place the positive one under the candle, and draw a circle of salt around the candle. burn the negative note.

⏳  if you plan to repeat the ritual, use the back of the positive note to collect the negativities for when you burn it later.

⏳  to do in a group ritual, arrange the candles in a circle or mark all pages with a unifying sigil