witchcraft

noniramicitia

falconcloaked:

I’m having strong feelings about crochet/knitting magic but I can’t even know if it’s an actual thing or not since the only google results are about magic loops which are not exactly the kind of magic I’m looking for 😡

I’m pretty sure it has be done before tho that’s weird

I have a friend who does some knitting magic now and then, so I’m sure it’s a thing, but I don’t have details, unfortunately. I’ve done stitch witch stuff when embroidering or hand sewing things, so I would imagine you could do something similar with knitting. I basically use the repetitive motion to focus intent and magic while I’m working.

Seems you’ve done a lot of research to force men into female spaces and tell them it is okay to do the same.

noniramicitia

sylvaetria:

I was waiting to get someone bitching in my ask box about that post. Thank you for giving me the satisfaction.

First of all, I am not forcing anything – there have always been witches that weren’t women. Witchcraft was never exclusively a space for only women, ever. I know there’s one sect of Wicca that geared to be women-only (Dianic Wicca), but that was founded in 1970. Throughout the rest of history, though – nah, not only women. Anyone was free to practice magic, and still is. Your gender does not dictate your capacity for magic, period. And there isn’t a single witch or person alive that CAN dictate that.

There is actually a book regarding this, called “Man as Witch” (thanks go to @ofwoodandbone for bringing that to my knowledge). I haven’t read it myself, but I have freshly acquired it and plan on giving it a through read-through soon. Here is the summary of the book:

“Witch-hunts in Central Europe were by no means focused only on women; one in four alleged witches was male. This study analyzes and describes the witch trials of men in French and German-speaking regions, opening up a little known chapter of early modern times, and revealing the conflicts from which witch-hunts of men evolved.”

Not to mention, WHAT? Is there a law somewhere that says only women have the ability to use magic? Where is the witch’s handbook that says men are prohibited from this “space” or from practicing witchcraft in any form? Not to mention, what the hell does it say about people who don’t identify as either, or both (i.e. me)? Tell me who thinks they have the authority to spread such complete and utter cow-shit. Please, go right ahead; I’m waiting.

If you are so narrow minded as to think YOU can dictate who can practice magic, though, I’d appreciate you getting your ass off my blog and unfollowing me. Actually, I *insist* you do that. 

And while we’re talking about this, anyone that thinks you HAVE to be a woman to be a witch, or that men (or anyone of any other gender for that matter) cannot practice magic, or that witchcraft is a “woman only space,” remove yourself from my blog permanently. I want none of your kind here. Shoo.

On gate-keeping, “real witchcraft”, and…cooking?

noniramicitia

lemonbalmgirl:

Maybe
it’s just the select posts that end up crossing my dash, but I feel
like there’s been an uptick in posts in the witchcraft community about
who’s a “real witch” and who isn’t. A lot of these posts also seem to propose that there’s some
value in gate-keeping who qualifies as a witch or not.

I compare my witchery practice to cooking a lot and here’s another damn instance of it. 

Some
folks are lucky enough to end up under the mentorship of top-notch
chefs and get to absorb all that knowledge and experience. The number of
folks who get to do that is TINY compared to the number of folks who
are learning to be cooks.

Some folks are able to
go to culinary school and learn a particular tradition or style of
cooking, which gives them a base skill set to take with them into the
restaurant world.

Some folks learn to cook by watching the
TV shows on PBS or the Food Network and that’s how they get their
initial instruction on the “right” way to do things. Some people learn to cook from their grandmothers or aunts and learn specific family traditions of cookery.

Some people learn from trying out recipes from the internet or reading recipes out of books.

EVERYONE IS STILL COOKING.

Not
everyone *wants* to train under an expert chef and run a
Michelin-starred restaurant. Not everyone *wants* to spend all of their
time going to culinary school and working in the restaurant industry.
Some people are happy being able to cook nice food on the weekends, or
are happy to learn a few skills that noticeably improve their execution
of otherwise mundane recipes.

ALL OF THESE PATHS ARE VALID.

Folks from different
regions cook differently and use ingredients differently or use entirely
different ingredients. Folks from other countries have different food
traditions. Folks from areas that have been colonized may have had their
food traditions interrupted and their recipes now aren’t the same as their ancestors’. What all these people do? IS STILL
COOKING.

There are literally a million ways to make a dish
and every person will do it a little or a lot differently. THIS IS OKAY.
If you don’t like how someone made a dish? That’s fine, personal
preference. But you don’t get to say they can’t cook just because what
they did wasn’t to your taste.

People do witchcraft how
they can and how they want. There are a million ways to caste a spell and not
everyone wants to make being a witch the main aspect of their life.
People moonlight. Some people take it more seriously than others. THIS
IS OKAY. THESE PEOPLE ARE ALL STILL WITCHES.

Just because someone does something differently than you would or in a way that you don’t consider as witchy, doesn’t mean that the other person is doing it wrong. If you don’t like that someone else is doing, you don’t have to engage with them! But you don’t have the right to decide whether what they’re doing is real witchcraft or not.