virtual glasses try on pt.2 🕶️
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Putting together a broken turtle shell process!
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Collected peices and cleaned em
Appearently the coloring comes off in flakes so if u wanna keep the color get the shell beetle cleaned. Maceration and natural decomposition will make the color come off
Peroxide time
3 days later and glueingg its like a puzzle
Finisheddd other than 3 vertebrae that got lost
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It’s time to share this super interesting piece I’ve been commissioned to paint. It was a gift for the DM from their DnD group, depicting a city on the back of dead titan’s shell. Loved working on this sketch landscape!
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The Tools That I Use In My I-Ching Practice
This is not a “how to,” just a little discussion on tools I use in my personal practice.
First, I should probably address why on earth a Western folk witch of European descent and a very European practice uses the I-Ching.
(Secondly, I should point out that you don’t need any of this shit, just three pennies and access to the internet will work. This is a practice I’ve grown into over a lot of years.)
Until I came across Eastern philosophy, I was a militant atheist. Growing up in the Baptist South will do that to a kid who is different. We didn’t go to church. Mom was raised Catholic, her grandmother had been a novice nun who wasn’t accepted into the monastic life because of how sickly she was (she never recovered mentally) and one of mom’s aunts was a nun. Dad was raised Lutheran (though the Moravian side of the family is Catholic). Neither family approved of the Catholic/Protestant intermarriage. Both are from the Midwest and I’m pretty sure neither has yet to grasp the concept of “being saved,” they certainly never introduced it to their kids.
I honestly don’t remember how on earth I started reading the Tao Te Ching, but the nature imagery really spoke to me. Worshipping nature was something I could wrap my head around.
Taoism is not a closed system and is “generally understood as a very open and flexible philosophy with diverse interpretations and practices, meaning it readily adapts and incorporates new ideas without strict boundaries or a centralized authority to enforce orthodoxy.”
It is rooted in animism and folk belief and was my gateway drug to philosophy, religion, animism, folk belief and so on. Before long, I wasn’t just collecting translations of the Tao Te Ching, but also the I-Ching. And from there all sorts of books of philosophy and religion.
When I encountered “the Wyrd” studying my own Anglo-Saxon culture and partial ancestry I couldn’t help but recognize something of the Tao.
The Oracle Deck
The Westerner in me just really wants to shuffle a deck.
This is my second deck after my first deck just didn’t work for me. The images were too concrete and static. In the current deck, (The Visionary I-Ching) the art by Joan Larrimore is more fluid, organic and open to many interpretations.
I-Ching Coins
The coins are the only gift I can remember my dad picking out for me, usually he leaves that up to mom. I like to think of these old Roman coins as changing hands all over Europe and as being a conduit to genetic and cultural ancestors. You aren’t typically supposed to clean old coins before using them in folk magic, but I did clean these up enough to discern heads from tails.
I use a bizarre system of cards and coins. With the Oracle cards you don’t get changing lines, which can be an important part of the reading. So, I developed my own personal system to incorporate the lines.
I-Ching Casting Bowl
You can cast the coins on any hard surface. I like to use this turtle shell as a casting bowl because there is a form of divination in China that uses turtle shells that both predates and is associated with the hexagrams.
Turtle shells are also associated with the lunar calendar—and the moon, of course, has its own ebb and flow of changing cycles.
I-Ching Card Wrap
One of the tools I use is a wrap that I embroidered using Elizabethan black work filler on THE Taoist symbol. Yin and yang, heaven and earth—the balance and motion between them is the basis of Taoism and of the I-Ching (and really fucking everything 😉).
Its purpose is to protect the cards both spiritually and psychically when not in use. In Chinese folk magic, the color red is a symbol of good fortune, happiness, and protection. It’s also believed to ward off evil spirits and negative energy. I also use a piece of jade in the tie which is also used for the same purposes. The coin pendant is a representation of the year of the ox—the year in which I was born. I picked it up as a souvenir in the Chinese neighborhood in Philadelphia.
I-Ching Cloth
I embroidered the cloth that I use, copied from a “jaw-dropping work of embroidery [that]was done by Me Èè and Me Tchoupi, Tai Dam women in the town of Muang Sing.” @friend-crow
The original piece:
The Tai Dam are an ethnic minority group of people who are mainly from northwest Vietnam, China, Laos, and Thailand. The Tai Dam practice ethnic religions that mix Buddhism and folk animism. They believe in spirits that can be appeased to avoid curses and receive blessings. They also practice ancestor worship. Many Tai Dam people are shamanists who believe in unseen gods and demons.
The use of variegated thread shows movement and change and is what really spoke to me in this piece and made me want to use it in my I-Ching practice—it is the Book of Changes after all.
Many people use a tarot cloth to protect their cards from wear and tear on a hard surface—for me it is as much to set a mood.
Sage and Lavender Candle
Speaking of setting the mood—I love me some aromatherapy. Sage and Lavender both promote calmness and mental and spiritual clarity.
Hag Stone
“Many believe that the hole [in the stone] is a gateway into the world of spirits and Little People. Medicinal broths and brews can be poured through the hole and the medicine will pick up blessing from the other world as it passes through.”
—Brandon Weston, Ozark Folk Magic: Plants, Prayers & Healing
I blow breaths through the hole onto the cards and coins before I use them to forge a connection between myself, the otherworld, and the cards and coins.
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Again, these are just ways I add depth to my practice, if you are interested in the I-Ching you can get started with a few pennies and the internet.
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Update on the turtle lyre… it’s uhhhh… it’s something alright
My brainrot for epic the musical is getting worse by the day… it’s terminal lol
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Hey gang
I got this turtle shell at an oddities expo yesterday and I’ve been trying to figure out what species it is. I’m pretty sure it’s a pond turtle, but it’s not a box or map turtle. My sister brought up that it might also be painted or stained but I really don’t think it is. Also it’s about 10 inches long. Any of y’all got any ideas?
