link to PDF
https://fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/sites/fcs-hes.ca.uky.edu/files/ct-mmb-147.pdf
Ok you know how sometimes you see a post on your dash that starts out good but then it turns into people talking about how many notes the post is going to get? You can just go back to a version of the post before all that shit and reblog that!
This can be you! This can be me! Together we can make our dashes less boring and repetitive and unfunny!
Herb's Properties
Basil: money, luck, prosperity, happiness
Bay Leaf: energy, cleansing, can be charged with almost any intention
Camomile: Caring, kindness, luck, growth, self-love growth, confidence, avoiding negativity, happiness
Cinnamon: passion, quick success, fire magick
Chia seeds: Growth, health, kindness, Property
Chilli flakes: Pride, confidence, power, strength, Passion
Cumin: Courage, bravery, protection, loyalty
Dandelion: wishes, charisma, success, good luck
Dill: sexual love, luck, protection
Eucalyptus: cleansing, healing, purifying, relaxing, comfort
Fennel: hate, anger
Flax seeds: Prosperity, growth, new beginnings
Ginger: fiery passion, success, and personal power
Jasmine: love, dreams, sensuality, luxury and kindness
Lavender: love and attraction, purification, relaxation, restful sleep
Nutmeg: luck, Health, Fidelity, Love, Prosperity, comfort, loyalty
Oregano: comfort, love, warmth
Paprika: Pride, confidence, power, strength
Parsley: Cleansing. purification
Peppermint: healing, purification, love and energy, cleansing, prosperity
Poppy seeds: protection, intuition, self-assurance, hexing and cursing
Rose: love, beauty, harmony, romance, attraction
Rosemary: cleansing, purification, wisdom, protection
Sesame seeds: Prosperity, growth, health, nurturing
Spearmint: love, cleansing, renewal, blessing
Sunflower seeds: happiness, growth, joy
Thyme: beauty, strength, courage
Turmeric: confidence, creativity, energy
Vanilla: love and sexuality
tip jar
accepting that I will be thinking really hard about omelas approximately once per year for the rest of my life so here's a bunch of links for future me next time I go down this rabbithole
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, Ursula K. Le Guin (1973)
Omelas, Je T’Aime, Kurt Schiller (2022)
The Ones Who Stay and Fight, N.K. Jemisin (2018)
The Ones Who Yell at Omelas, Rite Gud podcast (2022) [links a bunch of other responses]
tumblr post by shedoesnotcomprehend (2018)
After We Walked Away, Erica L. Satifka (2016)
Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole, Isabel J. Kim (2024)
and bc I always forget, the BTS music video that references it is Spring Day
@ myself read another story jfc
learn to coupon
what to do when you can’t afford therapy
cleaning your bathroom
what to do when you can’t pay your bills
stress management
quick fix meals
find out if you’re paying too much for your cell phone bill
resume workshop
organize your closet
how to take care of yourself when you’re sick
what you should bring to a doctor’s appointment
what’s a mortgage?
how to pick a health insurance plan
hotlines list
your first gynecology appointment
what to do if the cops pull you over
things to have in your car in case of emergency
my moving out masterpost
how to make friends as an adult (video)
how to do taxes (video)
recommended reads for surviving adulthood (video)
change a flat tire (video)
how to do laundry (video)
opening a bank account (video)
laundry cheat sheet
recipes masterpost
tricks to help you sleep more
what the fuck should you make for dinner?
where should you go for drinks?
alcohol: know your limits
easy makeup tips
find seat maps for your flight
self-defense tips
prevent hangovers
workout masterpost
how to write a check
career builder
browse careers
birth control information
financial management software & app (free)
my mental health masterpost
my college applications masterpost
how to jumpstart a car
sex ed masterpost
Reading tarot like a master requires a natural talent for divination. Barring that, years of constant practice will suffice.
But anyone can learn the basics. And it should not take longer than a day to cover. Start in the morning, and by evening, you will be a tarot reader.
This post is Day 1 of the Divination class that I teach. By 8:30 PM, my teenage initiates were already correctly predicting each other’s crushes and the winners of tennis matches.
Get a deck and a resource.
Acquire a Rider-Waite deck or a clone of it. You may opt for something else, but be forewarned that you could lose out on a multitude of symbolism. The Rider-Waite may not be the prettiest, but there is nothing more complete.
Find a reliable resource. The Ultimate Guide to Tarot by Liz Dean is a perfect book for beginners. So is Labyrinthos’ website, if you prefer something free of charge.
9–10 AM
Pick one keyword for each card.
With a belly full of breakfast, quickly skim through your resource and pick just one keyword per card. For example, “destruction” for The Tower, “happiness” for The Sun, and “wealth” for the Ten of Pentacles. Note it all down on paper or on your phone.
10–11 AM
Associate the word with the image.
Look at your keyword side by side the card. Make an undeniable connection.
Why is The Tower “destruction”? Because the tower on the card has been “destroyed”.
Why is The Sun “happiness”? Because the child on the card looks “happy”.
Why is the Ten of Pentacles “wealth”? Because the family on the card looks “wealthy”.
Memorization becomes much easier when based on visual correlation.
11 AM–12 PM
Quiz yourself.
Hide your notes from view. Keeping in mind the word-image associations you made, go through each card, reciting its keyword. Put in one pile all the cards you remembered the keyword for, and in another, the ones that escaped your memory.
Then look at your notes side-by-side the second pile to remind yourself of what you missed. Go through the whole pile again, repeating the process until you can recite the keywords for all 78 cards without making a mistake. One card, one word. Should be as simple as pre-school.
12–1 PM
Take a break.
Have a meal. Nap a little. Stretch a bit. Give your mind space to absorb everything you just memorized.
1–2 PM
Quiz yourself again.
You are guaranteed to forget some of your keywords. That is fine. It is why you are doing this again, to strengthen your memory. Be patient with yourself, and keep going through the whole deck until you are no longer making any mistakes.
2–3:30 PM
Pick a key phrase for each reversed card.
Quickly skim through your resource again. Now that you know the upright meanings, reversals should be fairly easy, because they can only be one of three: the opposite of the upright card; the upright card watered down; the upright card made worse.
To illustrate:
If The Devil upright is “addiction”, reversed it is “overcoming addiction” — the opposite.
If the Nine of Cups is “fulfillment”, reversed, it is “fulfillment delayed” — watered down.
If the Seven of Swords upright is “manipulation”, reversed it is “betrayal” — made worse.
Note it all down next to your upright keywords.
3:30–5 PM
Quiz yourself on both upright and reversed meanings.
Hide your notes from view. Keeping in mind the upright-reversed meaning associations you made, go through each card one by one, reciting its upright meaning followed by its reversed meaning.
Like before, put in one pile the cards you had no problem with, and in another, the cards that escaped your memory. Look at your notes for those you missed. Go through the whole pile again, repeating the process until you can recite the upright keywords and the reversed key phrases for all 78 cards, without making a mistake.
5–6 PM
Take another break.
Have another meal. Nap some more. Stretch again. Let your mind and body breathe.
6–7:15 PM
Quiz yourself again on both upright and reversed meanings.
Go through each card one by one, reciting its upright meaning followed by its reversed meaning.
Like before, put in one pile the cards you had no problem with, and in another, the cards that escaped your memory. Look at your notes side by side the cards you missed. And go through the full deck again until you are no longer missing a beat.
7:15–8 PM
Read.
For the last time today, bring out your resource, and from it, choose any spread you like. But if you really want to do it right, the Celtic Cross spread is recommended. Do not worry about being overwhelmed. You can leave the book or the website open on the page where the spread is.
Ask tarot your question. Without looking at your notes, interpret its answer to the best of your ability using the keywords and key phrases you just memorized.
Congratulations. You are now a tarot reader.
But if you wish to keep learning, then keep reading.
Day 1 – Day 4
For the next four days, quiz yourself again on both upright and reversed meanings, to really cement them in your mind. Then perform the same spread you did the first time, but ask a different question each time. Interpret the cards to the best of your knowledge. This should only take an hour at the most.
Day 5
By now, everything you learned has been drilled into memory. Feel free to expand your knowledge. Read your book cover to cover. Fully explore your chosen website.
Most of the new meanings you will learn will be related to the ones you committed to heart, so do not worry about being confused. For example, if your keyword for The Empress is “abundance”, you will find that its other meanings are “harvest”, “creativity” and “fertility”. “Harvest” is financial abundance; “creativity”, an abundance of skill; “fertility”, an abundance of growth. They vary slightly, but they are all the same, essentially.
All the best in your tarot journey.
I am by no means an expert in any of these things I’m gonna talk about, so keep that in mind! I am just making a compilation of things I know of that we can do to lessen the stranglehold the capitalist lifestyle has on us while enriching our lives, our surroundings, and the lives of others. Please add anything I miss or correct anything I may be getting wrong! Anyway here goes!
Use what you have, fix what’s you can, make what you can, accept from others, thrift what you can, and finally purchase as a last resort.
This is advice I have seen float around here a couple of times that can apply to a lot of things including clothing, furniture, food, and more besides. It’s meant to be done roughly in that order as it applies to what you’re wanting/needing/doing. It’s about preventing waste, promoting self-capability, having a heightened reliance on your community, and consciously rejecting the ingrained habit many of us have to just purchase things or services.
Here’s where you can read about growing an indoor garden!
Here’s where you can read about sewing things yourself!
Here’s an online site for giving and receiving items for free!
Here is where you can find a local Mutual Aid to get things from, learn skills from, give do, volunteer for, etc. (in the U.S.)
Be politically active! (from a U.S. perspective)
Vote for every election. Know your representatives and those who will be competing in the next election. Vote without ignorance and without falling for unfounded claims. While operating within the system that actively oppresses us will not bring about the future we want, it can serve as damage control (preventing worse candidates from taking office) and it can potentially create a national atmosphere more open to change.
Here’s a good article about getting more involved in the U.S. political process.
Here’s a site that will show you how to register to vote, when and where elections are held, and more!
Here’s good advice on finding protests in your city!
Here’s some readings on unionizing! It’s your legal right to unionize!
Here’s a more user friendly site for learning about unions!
Be active within your community!
Developing strong, motivated, capable, knowledgeable, and inclusive communities is the ultimate way to combat the relentless and bleak present and future. When you’ve worked on the things above and have gotten good at it (or even if you haven’t gotten good at it yet), start spreading what you know and what you can do with others!
Give your neighbors, coworkers, and friends some of the vegetables you’ve grown.
Invite your community members to volunteer events.
Talk to folks about how to vote, when you’re doing it, etc.
Take part in Mutual Aids to teach what you’ve learned or whatever you may be an expert in! Invite neighbors, friends, and coworkers when you take part in the Mutual Aid!
Accept your community. Take them for who and what they are. Discrimination is the enemy of cooperation. You have much more in common with everyone in your community than a single billionaire or corporation. We’re all passengers on this spaceship earth.
Do it one step at a time!
Obviously we can’t do all of these things at once. Do what you can when you can, and you’ll start to notice real change in your life!
Our online communities where we talk about our visions and hopes are fantastic, but they have little impact if we don’t actually get up and do the real work that change requires.
Want to be better, and keep hope for the future!
Harbor and nourish that desire to be a better person and to be the change you want to see in the world. You need to be hungry for a better future if you plan to make it through the rough times when everything feels pointless and without hope. Reach out to others when you’re down, and be someone others can lean on when their lives get hard.
That’s it! Please interact with this, spread it to others, and add your own thoughts and ideas! It’s important that we do the real work to get the change we crave!
a couple of my fav non-true crime related mysteries:
Cracks: a bunch of people remember a creepy Sesame Street short from their childhoods that seems to have been buried by the network. sounds like some kind of Candle Cove nonsense but is actually real.
Geedis and the Land of Ta: someone stumbles on what seems to be merch for a piece of 80s fantasy media that does not exist.
The Case of the Missing Hit: a guy vividly remembers a song he's convinced was a big hit in the 90s; no-one else has heard of it & he can't find any evidence online
The disappearance of William Cantelo: ok stretching the definition a bit here bcos i guess this guy might have been murdered but this is genuinely such an odd story about a guy who straight up had a doppelganger
Who is the world's biggest purchaser of glitter? guys. who is buying all the glitter. it might have been solved but the glitter manufacturers aren't confirming or denying anything so i will be thinking about this until i die.
Do you want to do magic? Yes. Do you know what to do magic on? Maybe not. Here is a post for that. Take what you like and leave the rest behind.
Let me tell you something I believe. I believe that most all of us have been trained to think that:
wanting things to go well,
wanting to be happy,
wanting little joys and pleasures in life,
and wanting not to be aggravated by the small things
somehow makes us weak, lacking, immature, or insecure,
or even worse,
that putting up with bullshit is somehow automatically makes us a better person, as if we've all got a cosmic thermometer that won't ding "good person!" until we've had it up to here with bullshit and then still force ourselves to grin and bear it.
"If I do magic to shorten the Starbucks drive-through doesn't that make me impatient? I don't want to use magic as spiritual bypassing in order to avoid my flaws."
Well then. Far be it from me to decry the kratophany of Prometheus getting his liver pecked out by eagles every day, manifest in your sacred sacrifice of having your minutes pecked out of your day, one by one, as you wait in line.
Make a list. Keep it with you. On paper, on your phone. Doesn't matter. It's a list of things you'd like to change. Little fleeting things that rear their head only for a second or so before our industrial-powered steamrollers smash it into the ground. Big things that you stew over day to day.
No problem is too petty. No splinter in your side is too insignificant. Betty at the office blows her nose every day at 8:15am and if you have to hear it one more time you are going to burn the building down? Put it on the list.
Do you have to leave 20 minutes early for work on Thursdays because a freight train blocks the freeway for five minutes and your city backs up like Betty's nose? What is magic going to do, rearrange the city's entire traffic patterns? Maybe so. Who cares. That's magic's problem, not yours. Put it on the list.
Have your eye on quite a cute designer bag? Does it cost your monthly rent? Put it on the list.
Learn to stare your life in the eye again with the verv of someone who has just found a reality-warping gun with unlimited ammunition. Game night gets cancelled too often? You never remember to use your pizza coupons? You can never remember to get ginger ale at the store? Put it on the list.
Feed yourself what ails you like a crab going absolutely bonkers in a plankton-filled tank.
Protections: Not only for spirits and stuff!
Against unwanted solicitors
Against your room mate's creepy partner coming over
Against debt collectors finding your new phone number
Against surprise quizzes in your course
Against nightmares
And from time to time a sorcerer does like a good house ward. Experiment with yours, why not? Waiting until you're under attack to learn how to put up protections is like waiting until you're drowning to learn swimming. Sure, the sheer adrenaline-fueled terror might get you somewhere - or it might get in the way.
You don't normally use altars? Build one, why not. Build secret ones in shoe boxes. Experiment with altars and compound magic.
Perhaps you'd like a mini spellcasting kit to go? I don't know if making one counts as doing magic, but it's fun to make them.
Why not develop and prepare an oil or incense blend that must steep for a few months before it's ready? You don't need it now, right? So that means it's prime time to make things that are supposed to "mature" before use.
And hey, what's the deal with cleansing? A lot of people make fun of it now. Some people say it's important and necessary. Why not get really into cleansing and develop your own take? Practice gentle cleansing, nuclear cleansing, cleansing with pure energy and cleansing with candles, cleansing with cleaning products and cleansing with joy.
I think that a lot of people think of spells as I light the candle and the spell is activated and it goes and does the thing, so if there is no Thing right now, then I can't cast the spell,
whereas if you reframed it as I am creating a spell-creachur that will hibernate in this little vessel until I spill it out into the world,
you may actually find that there are dozens of spells for you to actively develop, experiment with, cast, learn from, and passively benefit from - without necessarily needing any of them right now.
And the benefit is, if you don't actually need it right now, that takes a ton of pressure off of you. If you're not acting out of desperation, experimentation can be very fun indeed.
What about the most intense jaw-breakingly stupid strong protective amulet you've ever conceived of? Make it, why not. Make five prototypes on your journey to the strongest danged protection amulet this side of social media.
Who cares if you don't need them? Maybe some day you'll meet someone who does. Or, you know, magic is fun and doing it is its own reward.
What about a talisman for dreamwork and astral travel? Make something that reeks so intensely of the moon that it launches people out of their bodies just by walking past it.
Decide to perfect the most dazzling money-drawing candle spell. Make that your thing. You don't need cash right now? No worries; donate it to charity.
Have fun. Experiment. Made something that came through a little too hard and now it's causing problems? What a wonderful opportunity to learn how to disassemble a spell vessel.
Make yourself a cabinet full of enchantments. Learn how to contain the energy radiating off of all those enchantments. Realize you need more space and learn to combine multiple similar enchantments into one vessel.
(self explanatory)
09/22/2022
I made my apple galette. I was going to make the butternut squash soup, but my sister told me that nobody would want to eat it. I thought this would be fine, and I could just make it for myself--we're all adults, after all--and then my mom told me that all of the food I make is strange and odd anyways.
To be clear, the "strange and odd" food is... miso soup, soft boiled eggs over rice, lamb chops, homemade pita and hummus... essentially, anything that isn't meat and potatoes--and even then, only beef and chicken. All of this is very funny coming from the woman who doesn't know what sugar is.
Anyways. The galette was lovely. The chicken and rice soup was also quite nice. It wasn't what I wanted, but I'll make the soup tomorrow. Anyone that has a problem with it can make their own food. Besides--I have someone who will be more than happy to eat something other than meat and potatoes.
I got to talk to Jonathan, even if only for a couple of minutes. They were able to go out and do things in the light for a little bit, but were headed back to bed. I told them to rest, and that I would send them food if they so wished.
With the rain rolling in, my body feels like it's on the verge of collapsing. My joints are all stiff and brittle. I'm going to take a shower, and hope that the warm water soothes my bones. Jonathan said we could talk later. I hope they fall back asleep and don't call--they need the rest--but I miss them so dearly. I think I will leave my parents' house soon.
oh... they finally have therefore, you and me on spotify. (ˊ•͈ ◡ •͈ˋ) I may put it in my blog theme when I have the time.