Make the Offering
When you do a bunch of Runework and readings and the Runevættir want an offering in public.
You make the damn offering.
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Being out in the sun and away from the city is such a balm for my soul. It always heals something that I don’t even realise it’s hurting until I hear the birds singing in the quiet, ravens and hawks calling close and far. Smelling nature, feeling the gentle sun on my skin. And my thoughts clear and I can breathe
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just a blog to dump our magick journey
twenty one year old nonhuman system
+ beginner folk magician 🌱
+ western esotericist & animist
🌏 southern hemisphere ↓ aboriginal
I follow an animistic, relational worldview and practice animistic folk hedgewitchcraft. I work with divination as a communicative tool and understand energy as something that transforms rather than ends, in line with spiritual alchemy and animism.
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Been thinking of getting a tattoo of a badger lately but my personal view is that if I get a tattoo of anything animate or with a face it’s gonna kinda come alive/gain its own spirit so I’m reluctant to tattoo myself with anything living. It’s for an inside joke type situation but it’d be really cool to me. I think I need to study info on the real badger spirit to get an idea of what a tiny badger skin homunculus might be like before I’ll be able to get comfortable
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What I am Teaching at ConVocation
Hey folks, here is what I am teaching at ConVocation this year:
Seeking the Svartálfar
https://convocation2026.sched.com/event/2CHEV/seeking-the-svartalfar
Friday February 20, 2026 8:30pm - 10:00pm EST
Conference Room F
Description:
The Svartálfar, Dark Elves, are vættir, spirits, shrouded in mystery. Sometimes confused with or lumped into the Dvergar, the Dwarves, They have come into modern times as Their own distinct group of vættir. Come, learn more about Them and how to grow good relationships with Them!
Basics of Heathen Souls: Sálættr
https://convocation2026.sched.com/event/2CHEY/basics-of-heathen-souls-salaettr
Saturday February 21, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm EST
Conference Room B
Description:
This workshop explores the basics of Heathen Souls as they exist in community, called a Sálættr, or soul tribe/clan. Each soul is understood as a Being unto Itself in community with each other in ways that makes each one of us unique. This workshops explores what each soul is, how each soul makes up the Sálættr, and how we are, in and between ourselves, a community. Bring your questions, comments, and reflections!
Basics of Seiðr
https://convocation2026.sched.com/event/2CHEb/basics-of-seidr
Sunday February 22, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm EST
Conference Room B
Description:
Seiðr at its core is magic done with vættir, spirits, to affect change in Urðr or Wyrd, the interconnected tapestry or carving of creation. Involved with seiðr is a complex of magical actions, rituals, and varieties of vættir that can be involved with its performance and uses. This workshop covers the basics of this system of magic, how to do seiðr as safe as possible, and ways to explore with seiðr for yourself.Bring your experiences and questions.
ConVocation is February 19th-22nd.
You can find it here:
https://www.convocation.org/
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im giggling i started locking in on my farm animal redesigns right before mojang did oof
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ALTSupporter sketch request reward! The Animist, from “Sorcery: Contested Realm”!
(Patreon.com/JoJoSeames)
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December Workshop -Encountering the Runes
Date: 12/28/2025 on Zoom
Description
The Runes are often looked at as simply a divination tool. This workshop is about approaching the Runes as spirits in and of themselves. The workshop explores what the lore can tell us about Them, to how to interact with Them, to appropriate offerings and communication, and will delve into deeper aspects of Runework from a spirit-based approach.
Purchase…
Video
Alive With Being: An Animist AI Art Music Video
Have you ever felt eyes on you when you walk in the forest? That sense that something more than you can see is alive in the trees, the plants, the stones, the earth? Something more than the forest creatures - fairy perhaps, nature spirits, fae, or some other kind of fantasy creatures? Different cultures have different ways of relating to that sense of aliveness, and in this video I have expressed that kind of magical forest experience using a poem I wrote, which I then turned into a song by singing my own tune into #Suno AI music generator.
Check out my books here: https://www.tahlianewland.com/bookshop/
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🪞Ten Days of Reflection: Defining Magic and Witchcraft🪞
Day Five: How do your spiritual, cultural, and philosophical beliefs shape your understanding of magic?
ALTImage by @puzzled-nobody
I’ve actually been rolling the question of how my culture has shaped my practice around in my mind for months now, long before I ever started this blog up again. It started off simply enough, thinking about the nature of God and divinity and how Christian cosmology has shaped my beliefs, and eventually led to me picking apart my entire identity as it related to my culture and ancestry.
My hometown is deeply Christian and deeply conservative. Church every Sunday, prayers before meals, daily Bible study, a vote for Republicans is a vote for Jesus type shit. Granted, I grew up surrounded by this culture rather than steeped in it, as my parents themselves weren’t particularly religious. For all their faults, they always encouraged me to ask questions and chase my own spiritual truths, so perhaps my immediate home environment was enough for me to shake off the trappings of conservative Christian dogma that permeates the local culture.
I think every white southerner, at least those of us who fall outside the status quo, eventually comes to a point when we have to grapple with history, and trying to draw on ancestral wisdom gets weird when you have to navigate through some objectively shitty people. I don’t want their dogma or their prejudice or their hate. I want to know the land more intimately, to forage and garden, to preserve food and craft herbal remedies. I want to talk to bees while drinking sweet tea on my front porch and to find the face of God in the bark of an old live oak. I want to host potlucks and share family recipes and feel a spark of divinity when the mistflowers bloom.
I said in my day one post that, when I work a spell, I tap into the “universal flow,” which is described as the undercurrent of energy that lives within all things. This model of spellwork is built on a foundation of animism, pantheism, and mysticism, and I’ve come to it by way of deep introspection. I’ve always struggled a bit with what I actually believe, and even now the answer may differ from day to day. Truth be told, I feel like that’s part of the point. At least for me. I’ve tried on a dozen different hats religiously, and while I’ve taken lessons from all of them, I’ve never quite fit into any named belief system.
So what do I believe?
I believe in God. Not in the way that Christians seem to, as some vengeful father figure separate from myself. That definition of God has always felt a bit too narrow for my taste. No, I see God as the divine source, not necessarily a conscious creator, but as the nameless, formless fountainhead from which all things came to be. The wellspring of the universe if you will. If I’m being honest, I only call it God because I have yet to come up with something better. What do you call that which has no name?
I believe in deities too, even if I don’t necessarily work with them personally (with one notable exception, but that’s a post for another day).
I believe that everything in this universe possesses a unique spirit, from deities to people to plants to rivers and streams to cosmic bodies beyond the boundaries of Earth. There are spirits within spirits, worlds within worlds like some sort of cosmic onion that keeps revealing new layers the more you peel away. These are the spirit allies I call upon when I work a spell or during meditation or ritual, and I believe that understanding them brings me closer to understanding everything else.
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Stop Making Scholars Defacto Leaders
Please, for the love of fuck, stop putting scholars into defacto leadership positions within polytheist religions. Most are not even part of our religions, and even if they are, do not make them defacto leaders because of their academic work. Dr. Neil Price may have done some awesome work on seiðr and spá with The Viking Way, but that in no way makes him a seiðmann!
At the end of the day, we, the Heathens, Pagans, etc, the actual polytheists and animists, have to live our religious lives. Be sure that your religious practices can survive being found not in aligment with history, and understand that historicity is not the damn goal here.
If you are going to be any kind of Heathen, Pagan, etc you are going to need to be okay, at some point, in being without some kind of scholarly and/or historic consensus on how to do things. When it comes to seiðr we may have the understanding that the varðlokkur was sometimes used, and it would have been historically led by a singer in a group, and it would have been pretty…but the song mentioned in Eiriks saga rauða was never written down and we do not even have the melody.
If you use a varðlokkur and it is just you? No problem. It is a modern practice. You are the forefront of making new, living traditions. Maybe no one else is going to do it your way. That is fine.
I do guttural singing of Rune names and song otherwise as galdr with the Runes. The accounts of galdr, per Price:
“The most distinctive of these five is undoubtedly galdr, which seems to have been a specific form of sorcery focusing on a characteristic type of high-pitched singing. The word has a relative today in the modern Swedish verb gala, used for the crowing of a rooster and for the most piercing of birdcalls (see Raudvere 2001: 90–7 and 2002 on the importance of verbalising this kind of sorcery). The saga descriptions of galdr-songs note that they were pleasing to the ear, and there is a suggestion of a special rhythm in view of the incantation metre called galdralag, as described by Snorri in Háttatal (101–2) and used occasionally in Eddic poems such as Hávamál and Sigrdrífomál.”
Does this make my galdr either wrong or irrelevant? No.
You ever hear a rooster crow? Not pretty, but it does carry a power with it. That, I think, more than how damn pretty it is, is what matters. Can your voice carry the power? Can it project it? Can you galdr with your Megin and Víli what you want to have happen?
In the end we are going to need to figure out for ourselves what is most important for us, whatever the religio-magical practice happens to be at hand. Overall I think we do ourselves, and the scholars, a disservice by making them defacto leaders in our religions. Let the scholarship be what it is, and when we choose to engage with it, or in it, let us be careful with it.
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Whenever I go out…
Whenever I go out and spend time amongst you - spirits of the babbling, roving river, biting draft of the cool autumn air, ripening, driving spirits of the berries and leaves…you replenish my soul. You take my breath away for a moment as I look around and think: ’You are my church’
‘You are my temple’
’I am where I belong’.
I drink it in hungrily…gratefully.
Yet, always the pang of doubt.
'Will this last?’
'Am I doing it right?’
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Valhǫll is Not Heaven
With the death of Charlie Kirk, FBI Director Kash Patel had this to say:
“Rest now, brother. We have the watch, and I will see you in Valhalla.”
I felt I needed to speak out as an antifascist Heathen who cares about how his religion is seen, and how it is misused in modern discourse.
The amount of goofy bullshit I have seen over the years regarding Valhǫll would, and in some cases has, filled…
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August 2025 Workshop -Acts of Devotion
Date: 8/31/2025 at 7pm EST on Zoom
Description
In this workshop and discussion we will explore ways to honor our Gods, Ancestors, and spirits. These ways can be small, such as daily prayer, offerings, everyday mindfulness, and keeping ourselves healthy and engaged in the world, to more intense ways such as learning crafts, writing books, engaging in activism, spiritual work, and making temples.