What Should I Teach My Children About Witchcraft?

If there are trees you aren’t alone

I think a surprising amount of writers don’t realize that tragedies are supposed to be cathartic. They’re intended to result in a purging of emotion, a luxurious cry; the sorrow caused by a great tragedy is akin to fear caused by a good horror movie – it’s a “safe” sorrow, one that is actually satisfying to the audience. It can still be beautiful! It’s isn’t supposed to just be salting the earth so nothing can grow.

But that’s how you get grimdark: writers who don’t realize that they’re supposed to be doing something with the audience instead of to the audience.

Get in loser, we're starting an oak cult.

A Secret Witches Guide to Concealing your craft

Make sure practicing witchcraft in your home does not put you in any imminent danger! 

Drink tea - A mundane thing, make it a daily thing in order to make people less suspicious. Say short incantations while stirring in your honey. 

Keep a small plain notebook to use as your grimoire - Use this to write all your witchy ideas in. 

Find a well concealed hiding place to put all of your witchy stuff - Put anything that you want to keep concealed in here. 

Create a portable altar - One easy enough to take down and hide quickly. Draw an altar in your grimoire for a simple portable altar.

Meditate - Sit somewhere you won’t be disturbed and meditate. You don’t need any special supplies to meditate therefore, it is easy to hide.

Paint your nails to match your intent  

Glamour your Clothes

Braid your hair while say an incantation

Trace sigils around your room - Use your fingers so they remain discreet and charge them with intent.

Glamour a piece of jewelry to wear daily

Keep plants and candles in your room - No one will draw conclusions if these are in your room.

Decorate a shoe box to dedicate to your practice - Put any witchy things you want if you are unable to find a place to hide your stuff. 

Use knot magick when tying your shoes

Cleanse your room and home using intentions

Water your plants with growth spells - Speak to them while doing this in order to help them grow.

Do your casting in a discreet location outside - this way no one can interrupt you when you are in the middle of a ritual.

Use color magick when picking out what you want to wear

Use scented candles - Although lots of candles may raise suspicion, if they are scented they won’t draw much attention.  

Write sigils in lotion - Cover your body in lotion sigils, in a couple minutes they will fade away and not be visible.

Stir counter clockwise - In your baking or your tea to banish negative energy.

Use playing cards instead of tarot cards

Go for hikes - A way to be with nature and not raise any suspicion.

Clean your room - This is the equivalence of cleansing your room.

May the moon light your path!

==Moonlight Academy==

Forage Basket // A Fine Company on Etsy

got that autumn feeling.

genuinely cant stop thinking about whatever early human first looked a literal wolf full in the face and thought domestication would be fun but ALSO cant stop thinking about the ENTIRE early human tribe that absolutely did NOT think to stop them

Get it..

honey production does hurt the bees. the honey stolen is replaced with a toxic synthetic sugar substance which isn't healthy for them. honey isn't for humans to steal, please educate yourself.

Arright, sit down, you’re about to get some knowledge dropped on you by somebody with beekeepers and meadmakers in the family.

The “toxic synthetic sugar substance” you’re referring to? Is sugar water. Literally SUGAR and WATER. There’s nothing synthetic about it. And the bees only rarely need a LITTLE bit of sugar water to help them get through, because if they’re provided with enough nectar, bees will make a shit-ton of honey. Most hives generate more honey than they can ever use.

And when a hive starts getting too full, the bees may swarm and try to go find a new place to live. Do you know what happens to a more than three-quarters of swarms that leave their hive? THEY DIE. Yup. Either they can’t find a new hive, or they run into predators, or they wind up landing somewhere that humans don’t want them and then exterminators get called.

So removing a few frames from the hive, taking out the wax and the honey, and replacing them for the bees to fill with new comb and honey and larvae is actually GOOD for the hive. The bees stay busy, they’ve got frames to fill, the queen doesn’t feel the need to go anywhere, and their human buddies can help keep them safe from natural predators and pesticides.

The mutually-beneficial relationship between humans and bees has existed for literally thousands of years. People keep hives, bees pollinate crops and make honey, people harvest the honey, the bees get extra protection and can happily buzz away keeping the plants healthy and making more sweet sugary goo.

Honeybees are an endangered species. If they die, not only does your vegan diet become completely impossible, but the entire planet is royally fucked.

And do you know who’s doing more than anybody else to keep them alive and make sure we don’t all starve?

BEEKEEPERS. And they treat those bees like their own damn children. They’re not going to feed them toxins or “steal” all their food, they want the bees to be happy and healthy and THRIVING.

Being vegan is absolutely fine, but don’t go trying to tell other people how to eat and don’t sound off on shit until YOU educate YOURSELF. Try talking to an actual beekeeper sometime. Or at the very least, read an article by a beekeeper instead of relying on someone else’s scare tactics.

I've started to actually get excited for school starting, I spend a lot of time online reading scientific papers about my favorite weeds, and I think I want to study weeds forever.

Apparently it's an ongoing mystery why dandelions in North America are so diverse, when all dandelions that have been found so far are apomicts that reproduce only by cloning themselves.

However, any given site will have many distinct dandelion genotypes, with many different traits.

For example, a site might have one dandelion strain that blooms primarily in fall, and another that blooms primarily in spring.

One theory is that there's new genetic information constantly coming in from Eurasia somehow. Apparently dandelion seeds can spread on the wind 150 KILOMETERS! Perhaps some are just blown across the ocean in a storm? But if that's the case, why weren't dandelions found all over North America already when European settlers came?

The other theories are that there are sexually reproducing dandelions here that we just haven't found yet, and that they somehow make new diversity very rapidly purely through mutations and recombination and such.