Things I have learned by joining the local Methodist Church’s coffee & knitting circle (where I am the only person under 60 years old):
How to double knit very, very quickly
Mrs. Jonson on the third pew won’t mind her own business, bless her heart. And she buys her pies pre-made for all the church functions.
Ways that women cheated the system in 1950s Texas to get into college and start careers. Including a memorable “He told me I wouldn’t last a week, but then 6 years later, I had to let him go because his production was way down.” *drinks sip of coffee*
We Might Be Conservative But Gosh Darn That Trump Bless His Heart He Doesn’t Know Anything About God Or Texas
And On That Note, God And Texas Are The Only Good Things Left In The World. Erin Write That Down.
How to rescue a dropped stitch and make it look like it never happened
Public schools and inclusive, desegregated education will single-handedly save the world
Sharing recipes is a sacred bonding and community-building tradition that rivals the greatest political negotiations and land deals in history
“It’s better that you prefer girls honey, the Boyfriend Curse doesn’t apply to your girlfriend and a lovin’ god’ll keep on a-lovin. You better make that girl a sweater.’”
(Boyfriend Curse = knit a sweater for a boy and he’ll leave you when you finish it)
Mrs. Barbara’s husband cheated in ‘76, resulting in a divorce. She thought it was the end of the world because her youth had already passed, but now she’s an engineer and married to a kind, good man who she met when she went back to college in ‘79.
“The only things you can trust in are God, your good sense, and the wisdom of those older women you grew up admiring. The rest is crap.”
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I don’t know about you but between going to classes, blogging, writing books, and keeping up with my social circle my life is BUSY. While I’m absolutely in love with the direction my life is heading right now, it does pose a bit of a problem on occasion: I don’t have a lot of time for actually doing magic! This can cause some problems when I run up against a situation where I really need a spell or ritual so I’ve started using a method of delaying my spells. This spell delay lets me stockpile inactive spells so that I can call on the magic at a moment’s notice.
Now there are several ways to do this, spell powders and enchanted objects can both be used this way. I won’t be touching on either of those methods today (although if you’re interested in spell powders, Bree NicGarran’s new book Pestlework is the place to go!). No, today I want to talk about the use of delay triggers in your spellwork.
What is a spell trigger?
A spell trigger is a placeholder created within your spell that, instead of activating the spell immediately, holds all of the components and energy of your work in place until the final piece of the spell is initiated. This trigger can be anything you like, it can be a word, a hand gesture, any quick and easily performed action can be used as a trigger in a delayed action spell.
This trigger system allows you to have complex spellwork at hand and ready to use at a moment’s notice. You can throw up wards, perform a curse breaking, use healing spells or call on an anti-anxiety spell with nothing more than a word. This form of spell casting can also be useful for spells that are intended to be activated at a particular time or place. Have a spell that needs to be performed while you have eyes on the target? Cast the spell in private, insert your trigger and activate the trigger when the opportunity arises. The uses for this technique are endless!
How to Create a Spell Trigger
1.) Decide on your trigger
The first step in creating a spell trigger is going to be choosing the trigger itself. You should pick something fairly quick and easy to initiate such as a word, a phrase, a hand gesture, a series of notes hummed or whistled. This trigger action that you choose should also probably be subtle, having to stomp your feet and roar at the heavens might seem like a cool way to activate a spell but it’s probably going to attract quite a bit of attention and cause questions to be raised. Keep things simple, discrete and easy for you to remember (you can’t activate the spell if you forget the trigger!).
2.) Perform your spell
Next, you’ll simply perform your spell as usual, follow all of the steps outlined in your spell right up to the release or activation point in the spell. This is key, you’ll be replacing the release of the spell in order to delay it so be sure to mark where in your spell this release or activation occurs.
3.) Insert your spell trigger
Inserting a spell trigger can be done in a number of ways. You can verbally set the intention of the trigger (i.e. “I bind this spell, may all its power and purpose be held until such a time as it is released by my signal”) after which you perform the trigger action (saying the word, performing the gesture, etc) in order to connect the now bound spell and the trigger. You could simply perform the gesture or speak the phrase while holding the intention that the spell will be bound for later release. You could speak the intention while holding the trigger word or gesture in your mind without performing it. Any of these methods work, the important consideration is that you choose the method that feels most natural to you. Most of us are not used to stopping the flow of energy short, wrapping it up and saving it for later. Typically the idea is to release or activate the magic at the time of its casting so this process can feel stilted or uncomfortable the first few times. Experiment with which method you prefer to help mitigate any discomfort you might have with such a stark change in method.
4.) Activate the spell trigger and release the bound magic
At the appropriate time, either when needed spontaneously or at the predetermined moment, activate the spell by performing the trigger action with intention. The intention is important. Accidentally stating your trigger word or phrase in conversation won’t release the spell and likewise, you likely won’t release the spell if you offhandedly perform the trigger without reaching for the magic connected to it.
Now, this method can require a lot of personal tweaking, both to become comfortable with the process and find a way to make it work for you, and to possibly adjust spells to have a clear activation or release point where you can insert the trigger. Many spells are designed in such a way that the energy and intent of the spell is continuously released throughout the casting, and those spells can be particularly tricky to insert a trigger into. You may also find that casting circles is helpful in this kind of spell crafting. A circle can serve to contain the energy and intention you’re building so that it can be bound instead of allowing it out into the world during the casting.
Don’t be too concerned if the first few times you try this it falls flat, with the exception of very new witches this can be a serious detour from your usual spell crafting methods and require a bit of retraining to perfect.
As I mentioned before, there are also simpler ways of achieving this delay. If you’re finding this method particularly challenging or daunting it might be helpful to start with a slightly less complex method. Spell powders are a fantastic way to get your feet wet in the world of delayed activation spell work.
Pestlework: A Book of Magical Powders & Oils by Bree NicGarran is an excellent introduction to the world of spell powders and their many uses. With Over 200 original recipes, tons of helpful tips, safety information and an easy to understand format this book is the best place to start if you’re looking to get your feet wet with this kind of magic.
Can you think of any ways that spell delays could be useful in your craft? Tell me about it in the comments!
jesus is ultimately born from the vastness of need: need for justice, need for freedom, need for equality.
he stood in front of the crowds of well-off, profit-worshiping privileged, told them that a camel will never walk through the eye of a needle no matter how much money they funneled into that endeavor, and then he strode right through that crowd of open-mouthed men to stand on the other side, with the poor, the hungry, the ill, the disabled, the exiled, the oppressed, the imprisoned, the enslaved, the sex workers, and the sinners too. his message stripped bare was this: that the people in power were wrong for treating you like you were less than them, and that the corrupt state they enacted should be dismantled until nothing remains but the ashes from which retribution shall spring.
turning the other cheek? explicitly a command for servants to get their masters to treat them like equals, because lessers were hit with the back of the hand and equals were hit with an open palm. go two miles when you were only asked to walk one? roman law said a jew could be required to carry a soldier’s pack for one mile but one mile only, so volunteering to carry it for another meant you were showing the soldier that you could have power over him.
jesus took one look at the corruption and injustices of capitalism and overturned both the literal and the proverbial table. we think of jesus as an emblem of kindness, and he was that, transfiguring fish into loaves of bread, healing the incurable, blessing the unclean, laughing at jokes, tearing up at sunsets, singing singing singing about grace. but jesus was also a man of color executed by the police force of the day for challenging the patriarchal capitalist structures erected by the state.
‘love your neighbor as yourself’ is unquestionably a socialist teaching. what is more radical than saying that everyone is worthy of god? because everyone means the marginalized, everyone means women, means people of color, and lgbt people, and anyone who’s ever been considered worth less to society because you’re not a rich cishet able-bodied white man. god isn’t for them. they already have all the power and control they could ask for; they don’t need god. god is for us, we who were told we’d never be strong enough to survive, we who sweat at rallies and bleed at riots, we who dance unashamed of our bodies and love unashamed of our hearts.
two thousand years ago the fires of every star got condensed into one man, and that man came to earth as an infant carried in the body of a poor teenage brown girl. he grew up among us and lived our lives so that he could courageously declare that we don’t deserve to be called inferior. and i’ll be damned if i’m going to let anyone try to take that away from me
when you study early christianity and realize that no one really knows what happened but you try to discover the truth anyway:
Can someone elaborate on this? Give me some info about early Christianity?
Of course! Here is a little context:
Unlike common perception, the early church was not actually unified; there were hundreds of different sects who each had their own opinion of who and what Jesus was. Each sect was, in a way, competing with each other, and it involved a shit ton of politics. In the end, the sects that won became the standard and all those that disagreed were “heretics.”
Among the first few decades after the death of Jesus, there was no actual documentation until ~50 AD, and all the written works (canon or apocryphal) were distortions of the actual “historical” Jesus. So trying to decipher the truth is near impossible.
stop telling people to not bring children to church you miserable swine
“b-but kids cry and make noise and disrupt the service”
oh im so sorry your children are normal you have my condolences
it’s not like the bible literally tells us to bring our kids forth to jesus :(( church is only for adults who can sit still and be quiet for an hour now i guess
If you don’t hear babies crying, the church is dying
oh i’m so sorry God is interrupting your church service
how terrible
It is mist and rose
of eternal morning.
Moon-honey that flows
from buried stars.
What is holy baptism
but God become water
Federico García Lorca, Collected Poems (via lesgardenias)
bennu rising 