it still comes as a surprise that closeness cannot be achieved from a safe distance

Your daily dose of cat memes

if you learn to love bugs with all your heart the world will feel half as hostile and a thousand times as big

There's a sentiment I'm noticing in the tags that I'd like to address. I don't think learning to love bugs with all your heart means forcing yourself out of discomfort you have with them overnight. It's about observing a different sort of being going about its life and deliberately trying to reframe your observations through a sense of wonder and delight. It's about cultivating a positive interest and curiosity for their ecology and behaviors. It's especially about trying to uncouple the value we find in them from how 'convenient' they are to us; to face head on the part of us that wants to assign moral evil to another organism who just happens to live life in a way that is not harmonious with ours. You can love insects in this way and still recognize your own health and safety needs. We are animals living side by side within a biosphere. This is how it is, sometimes.

I think this is important to cultivate because, if you are alive at all, you are coming into conflict with countless other people and things that don't owe you an apology for their existence and needs. If you are alive at all, you are encountering countless other people and things that harmful bias and personal discomfort have made repulsive to you. This is about bugs, but its also about way more than bugs.

Ritual Is Journey, Chris Abani

“I’ve got a bit of a repulsion towards drawing in a purely perspectival way, as it puts the optical at the top of some sort of hierarchy” - Mary Herbert

"It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind."

—Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations

cat on film 😽

Heart Sampler is finally done! by beanzmcgee

i know kindness exists because i am kind

“people aren’t good”

i am people. i am good

you are wrong

if you are capable of it then so are others

be your own proof of concept

to everyone who’s responded to this post with “people are terrible” and “people who call themselves good are bad” and “everyone i’ve ever met is awful” 

this post is for you specifically 

i know we all hate reading comprehension on tumblr dot hell, but this post is not about other people. it’s not about the people who have hurt you, or saved you, or the ones you’ve met or those who you’ve invented in your head

this post is about you

if you cannot find evidence of the goodness around you, if you are jaded and your existence is miserable and you truly believe no one has ever showed you kindness, then this post is for and about you

you can’t control the actions of other people. you can’t make people show you kindness in the ways you want to receive it. if you look for proof of your version of kindness in the people who surround you, and can’t find it, you can decide it doesn’t exist

or you can be your own proof of concept

you are not special

there are at least hundreds of thousands of people who are just like you

so if you can choose to show others kindness - if you can bite back your temper and hold the door open for others and overtip and compliment strangers - then that is proof that hundreds of thousands of people, who are just like you, are capable of doing the same and likely are doing the same

i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again

the simplest way to increase the number of kind people in the world is to be one

   — Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1964

Mother of Pearl Spoons for Caviar

Ways To Be A Garbage Witch

Look everyone, in These Trying Times we can't always afford things so we gotta make do with what we got. So here's some hot tips to help you become a garbage witch:

Adding onto this because yes!

Red Flag Checklist

Okay witches, let's have a round table.

When you're reading or contemplating the purchase of a book on modern witchcraft or paganism, what are some red and green flags that you look for?

I'll start.

Red Flags:

Disreputable Author - If the author is either a known source of bad information or bad behavior, or one of those "house names" that certain companies use, that's a no for me.

"New Age White Witch" Syndrome - If a text has a more-than-incidental or very deliberate focus on culturally appropriative practices ("Use this exotic voodoo doll ritual to hex your ex"), outdated terminology ("black magic," that G slur we don't use, etc), antisemitic bullshit (Lilith is not a pagan goddess), or anti-science rhetoric ("Essential oils are better than pills!") And yes this means the ever-expanding list of racist dogwhistles too.

Poor Understanding or Misrepresentation of History - If someone's repeating Murrayisms or insisting things are ancient that definitely aren't (POTATO GODDESS), that says to me that either the author didn't bother to do their research or they don't know what they're talking about.

Insistence on One Correct Way - If I encounter anything resembling "this is the only TRUE way," the book's going out the window. The more so if the author is citing their personal opinions or UPGs as fact.

Insistence on Gendering Everything - If a book insists on assigning a binary gender to everything (outside of citing a historical context), or is boomboxing ~*SACRED WOMYN'S WOMB MAGYCK*~ throughout, or even if it's just overly preoccupied with fertility and childbearing as part of the "natural" life cycle, I'm immediately putting it down. (This is more of a personal one, in a way? But it's a red flag for TERFy things too.)

Lack of Sources - If there's no bibliography, no works cited, no recommended reading, or just a really flimsy list that's rife with internet links or problematic titles, that's not a good sign.

Green Flags:

Inclusive Language - If the author refers to the reader or an unidentified person as "they" or "them," that's a good sign. Double points if it's in a context that you'd normally expect to see gendered elsewhere. There's always room for gendered language when it's appropriate, but to me, it's refreshing when an author doesn't assume the female identifies as female.

Health and Safety Warnings - If there are notes for safe handling or harvesting of potentially harmful herbs, or warnings about health hazards (i.e. keep this away from persons who are pregnant or nursing), or reminders to be careful with fire and glass and the like, this is a good sign. To me, it means the author has a practical mindset and is at least keeping real-world limitations in mind.

Lots of Sources...and GOOD Sources - If the book has a nice fat bibliography, especially if there are mundane sources as well as magical ones, and if those sources are solid? A+. Double points if there's an index or footnotes and citations throughout the text.

Lack of "Guru" Mindset - If the author encourages the reader to take what they've learned and continue to do research on their own, that's a good sign. Encouragement of critical thinking is excellent, and also the admission that there is more than one way of Doing The Magical Thing. (Hi Lee)

Good Formatting - A book should be visually appealing, but it should also be easy to read and formatted properly, in a way that makes sense. I like to see clean margins, good spacing, and clear text. Page decorations and pictures and fancy title fonts are fine, so long as they don't make the book difficult to decipher.

(Okay, your turn!)

I like to listen to interviews on podcasts to get an idea of the person behind the book. Do they take themselves too seriously? Do they avoid certain questions? Do they seem like generally nice people? How do they handle criticism?

I know some people aren't into this, but I do enjoy some personal stories in books my magical folks. It's all well and good to read lists of spells or concepts, but I'd like to see how that looks in someone's personal life and practice to see if it is useful to me or could be.

I'm sure I have more of these so I'll have to circle around and reblog when I think if them.

unstoppable force (trying desperately to see the good in life) vs immovable object (wishing life would be kinder to me)

Georg Harald Slott-Möller (detail)