Wheel of Fortune. Art by Abigail Larson, from the Dark Wood Tarot.

Damn, missed it again

Happy Bog Day!

Happy Bog Day everyone!!!

not joking I would kind of like to brutally murder whoever thought it was a good idea to take away clicking on a person’s name to see their reblog and make it borderline impossible to get to the original version of a post without spending ten minutes scrolling with ctrl f

Helpful tip:

If you have the post date option turned on you can click the date and it will take it to the original post like before. It's annoying, unintuitive, and harder to click but it should work on mobile or desktop

The International Phonetic Alphabet consonants found in English, with keywords and relevant parts of the mouth highlighted and colour-coded. (Source.) 

Pronouncing each of these in sequence is a very strange and amusing physical sensation, and I highly recommend it.

haha look it’s where those noises live in your dang FACE, TRY IT

Very helpful actually

I dunno who needs to hear it, but this golden era of witchcraft where everyone was supposedly very serious about witchcraft and everyone always knew what they were talking about never really existed.

There were always people who were mostly just in it for the aesthetic. There were always people who were spreading historical misinfo. (Hell, 20th century witchcraft was massively influenced by the work of Margaret Murray and Robert Graves, two extremely discredited people now.) There were always people influenced by sketchy New Age ideas. There were always people doing just about anything people claim is a unique problem of today's witchcraft.

If you don't believe me, just start reading literature from whatever time period you think was free from any kind of nonsense. Actually dig into this, and I promise you're going to find that things really haven't changed all that much.

WORD.

People are still just as serious about the craft now as they were ten or twenty years ago. It's just that now things aren't so focused on ceremony and ritual and covenship, and there are many more voices in the conversation. It's not just all about Wicca and Wiccan-adjacent ideas anymore. Other groups have established communities, other schools of thought are contributing to the discussion. We're examining our assumptions, decolonizing our practices, employing more critical thinking, and actively learning to take out our own trash.

And sure, some of the conversation is silly. Some of it is people speculating wildly or getting things wrong or saying just the most idiotic shit you've ever heard. But let's be honest - that's nothing new in witchcraft and pagan circles.

And the fact that we're having open discussion and gatherings and such, the fact that we're comfortable being silly about magic IN PUBLIC, is a really good thing. Means the community is growing. Means we've got the space and the freedom to live a little more openly than in the past. Maybe not everywhere but...it's still progress.

So if there's been change in the community, I think it's in a positive direction. Even if some of it might pucker the assholes of the practitioners who insist that everything has to be done A Certain Very Serious And Ceremonial Way.

deal with how you feel

me doing witchcraft:

Please spread the word!!!!

STOP KOSA.

PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATOR.

The above links provide scripts for phone calls and letters/emails you can send if you prefer! PLEASE!!!!

This sounds like something from The Handmaid’s Tale, ffs.

This was an ad in the early 90's. I first saw it in a textbook in the late 90's, used as an example of the "slippery slope" fallacy.

Now it's over 20 years later. It's happening.

Enchant Oaks

The Update is Live!

Lots of new sculptures and sun catchers are now available!

Glaze is out!

Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?

Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.

I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.

Art thieves already hate it:

Dude, if you're stealing, you deserve to have the data poisoned. Because you could have asked and you didn't.

The link is only in the original post inside an image, not as text, so here it is as plain text: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/ and the paper about how it works: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04222

As links (because some of us are on mobile and can't easily copy and paste to our browser), those are:

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

&

A bit of a TLDR for some questions I saw in the notes:

The team that created Glaze is from the University of Chicago. Their names are each listed in full on the Glaze download website. (This group of students/professors did this for their SPRING BREAK 😱 so go give them some love lol)

It is free to download. No, they won’t ask for or raise money from/for this project.(stated by one of the lead professors of the project).

Glaze is designed to protect artists’ STYLE--which a bunch of ai people have been deliberately fine-tuning their models to mimic (and specifically of current living artists--small or big).

It currently does not protect against composition/trace-like theft (as seen when run through img-to-img) but that would be protected by copyright anyway while STYLE is not.

The University Team has stated that they are dedicated to continuing to improve the tool, like fixing bugs (like overheating older computers by taking up lots of energy when Glazing--it currently runs on CPU so they’re trying to change that to GPU, I believe) and expanding the type of protection given to artists (like working against img-to-img theft).

It currently only works directly on your computer (phones not advised due to current overheating issue, no tablets, or iPads, and no website runthrough since that would be insecure to breaches/scraping/hacks)

It currently works best on painterly artwork, but can still be used on other forms (team is working on improving this)

IT WORKS BY calculating the changes each image needs for the best protection against style theft by AI, and adds tiny changes throughout the piece, so that your style will, for example, confuse the ai into seeing van gogh. But the ai thieves will see a regular image in your style, feeding it into their model labeled as your work (thus starting the “data poisoning”).

Do not post the original unGlazed piece of your artwork after posting your Glazed version (obviously)

The Team worked directly with over 1,000 artists that were being impacted by the ai theft. Because the team listened to those artists, Glaze accounts for regular art thieves too (i.e. Glaze can’t be removed/cropped etc. like signatures or watermarks when reposted. It’s just part of the image, so even if it ends up on another site and scraped, the Glazing is still in effect)

When you run your artwork through Glaze, no information is sent back to the Team. (Aka, no scraping on their part. The app receives information from the Team (like updates) but no information from you is given to them through the app. Basically Team servers ---> You and NOT Team servers <--->You) One-way data street.

Brief misunderstanding happened over an open-source license for the front-end part of the app. (Used open-source coding for front-end, not knowing that code’s use-license states it is only for other open-source uses, not closed-source (the back-end code of the app is private to prevent counter-counter measure developments)). The Team took down the app until they replaced the front-end code with code written from scratch by the team. They are now not in violation of that open-source license since they are no longer using it. (you have 30 days to remedy a license breach once informed; they did so in 2)

The Team is currently in touch with Japanese artists to better expand the tool for use to protect their art styles

From what I understand of it, Glaze is an AI tool designed to be anti-AI (Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: one Terminator robot vs. all the other Terminators 😂)

You can download it from their website and also contact them through email there with any questions, problems, or bugs. The website: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/

reblogging this every fucking time it comes across my dash

OTC BIRTH CONTROL APPROVED BY THE FDA

I always hate it when people are all “so do you go to school, or are you working, or” and I either have to

So my therapist was like, “You don’t have to do either. You can just say you haven’t worked in a while because you’re recovering from an illness.”

I tried it when the home inspector was here today, and it fucking worked. He was like, “oh, I’m sorry, are you doing better now,” and I’m like yeah, and don’t worry, it’s not contagious, awkward laugh, and we moved on.

MY THERAPIST. IS A GENIUS. Because it is an illness, so it’s not a lie to say that, and it’s also none of his business to know specifically what it is, and I clearly don’t want to give more details, so we should move on from this topic. MY THERAPIST IS A GODDAMN GENIUS.

Dude I needed this. I never know what to say when people ask if I work because I’m severely disabled and don’t work.

REBLOG TO SAVE A LIFE HOLY SHIT

To add, this works on job interviews too.  I once had to answer the ‘so whats up with this gap of 8 months in your resume where you were unemployed?” and I just said I had suffered an illness and I needed time to recover.

It’s easy enough, not a lie, and puts them on edge enough that they usually don’t go digging.

Sneak Preview - The Ferryman’s Curse

Vassili went on further till he reached the ferry, where the old man asked: ‘Did you think of me?’

‘Yes, and as soon as you have ferried me across I will tell you what you want to know.’

When they had crossed over, Vassili said: ‘Let the next man who comes stay in the boat, but do you step on shore, push the boat off, and you will be free, and the other man must take your place.

- The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars (The Violet Fairy Book)

—–

Intent: To curse another with the problems that plague your own life.

Materials:

Ideal Timing: Dark of the Moon / New Moon / No Moon

Fair Warning: This is not a nice spell. This is not a polite spell. Baneful magic by its’ very definition is not meant to be pleasant, but there can be a difference between ill-wishing someone yourself and asking a figure from the realm of spirits to help you do it. The fact that you are entering into a minor pact to accomplish this goal creates an additional degree of difficulty and uncertainty. If you choose to perform this ritual, please proceed with caution.

In order to do this spell, you have to make a deal with the Ferryman, who carries souls across to the hereafter and may also haul away bad luck and strife if you pay him and ask nicely. You’ll need to work carefully and quickly to pull this off.

Before you begin, perform any protective steps you would normally take before doing spirit work or baneful magic. Make preparations to cleanse yourself and your home upon completion. If you don’t have anything in place, you might want to check out the Protections section of this book for ideas. (Golden Hood)

Obtain two pennies from the same year. Any year will do, so long as they match, but new and shiny is preferable. Carry the pennies in your pocket for one week to absorb your bad luck. Then, on a moonless night, go and stand on the shore of some body of water. For best results, I suggest a lake or a river too wide to be easily crossed without a boat.

Make a circle around yourself, large enough to stand in without being too close to the edges. You can use chalk, pebbles, stones, sticks, a line in the sand, whatever material works best for the location. You might also use a premade containment figure such as a hoop or a rope circle. Stand in the center, light the candle, and place it at your feet so that the light fills the circle. While you perform the next few steps, take care to stay within the circle of light. Do not look behind you during the ritual and do not let the candle go out. (I recommend using a jar candle which has burned down a little ways so that it is shielded from chance breezes.)

Remove one of the pennies from your pocket and hold it out before you towards the water. In a quiet clear voice, call to the Ferryman:

Throw the penny into the water. Try to land it as far from the shore as you can. Carefully extinguish the candle and leave the area as quickly and safely as possible. Once you return home, you may want to salt your doors or refresh whatever protections you have in place, in case something has followed you home.

You then have until midnight on the third day (starting from dawn the day after you toss the coin), to somehow get someone else to take the other penny from you. It’s best to have a target in mind, preferably someone who really deserves that bad luck. If you start out thinking of a particular person, you can either hand the coin to them, slip it into their belongings, leave it inside their home, or bury it on their property. What matters is that by the time midnight on the third day rolls around, the coin is in their possession and not yours.

Your bad luck and misfortune should leave or lessen during this three-day stretch. If you successfully pass the penny to someone else, your bad luck will fall on them. If you do not manage to get rid of the coin, you can return to the water on the third night and toss the coin in yourself. Otherwise, your bad luck will return and you’ll be right back where you started. 

The only way to break the curse is for the person who has received the bad-luck penny to go to the same body of water and throw in the coin that you gave them.

It may be prudent to return to the body of water in the daylight after your bad luck has passed and toss in another penny to thank the Ferryman for his help, just in case he’s disgruntled over your trickery. It would also be prudent to never again show your face there after dark or on foggy days.

Note: This ritual should only ever be performed in the same location once. If you wish to do it again, you’ll need to find a different body of water. It would also be wise to let some time pass, at least a few months, or find other ways of dealing with your problems. Don’t tempt fate too often if you can avoid it.

-From the forthcoming book, The Sisters Grimmoire, Vol. II © Bree NicGarran

If you’re enjoying my content, please feel free to drop a little something in the tip jar or check out my published works on Amazon or in the Willow Wings Witch Shop. 😊

More Fairy Tale Spells:

three of swords ✶

Simple Moon Spell - One Dozen Wishes

Intent: To create a jar of potential wishes, to be used as needed.

Materials:

In addition to their usefulness in spells for protection, wisdom, and healing, bay leaves are a potent ingredient for wishmaking. This spell does not specifically create a wishing spell, but it prepares a small supply of leaves for future spellwork, using the fulfilling energy of the full moon to pre-charge the component.

Obtain a bag of whole bay leaves. These can usually be found in the spices and seasonings aisle at the grocery store, or you can order them from a botanical supplier if you wish. Prepare a clean, dry jar with a lid as you see fit. Select twelve leaves, as whole and unbroken as possible, and place them into the jar. Cap the jar and leave it to soak up the moonlight on the next full moon evening.

When you have need of some wishmaking magic, take a single leaf from the jar, write your wish upon it, and use it in your spell. The use of the leaf depends on your casting method - you can include it in a jar or sachet charm, cast it into fire or water, or bury it to help your desired results grow, to name just a few.

Use the leaves as needed and when the supply is exhausted, you can pick twelve new leaves and refill the jar.

Happy Witching! 🔮🍃

Btw if I say things like “by god” or “good lord” in posts please be aware I don’t mean it in a catholic way I mean it in a 1950s scientist reacting in horror after they create an evil creature in the lab set in the distant future year of 2005

EMPRESS