Harvest Moon Last Night So I Guess It Really Is Autumn Now 🍂

In four days we will Celebrate Ostara, the Spring Equinox, festival home of goddess eostre. If you haven't heard of it yet, you can look back at my other Posts about the Easter festival. I wrote about easter in different nations, how you can celebrate Ostara and who Eostre is.

But now I want to give you a small insight on the Equinox.  Did you know that our Days are not always exactly 24h long? I'd love to hear from you. Have you already invited all your friends and family for a easter fire? Or are you going to have a big feast and hide some eggs for the kids?

I send much Love out there,

Luna Reminder

hi everyone!! i’m looking for active accounts to follow/be mutuals with so please interact w this post if you post any of the following:

❁ witchy stuff; spells, general info, divination (tarot, runes, oracle, etc), spirit work - especially deities/demons/angels, the occult, basically anything related to witchcraft. need more of it on my home page lol

Greek Necromantic Spell (1)

For the ancient Greeks, a fire made from privet [Ligustrum vulgare] opened the gates to the afterlife. To summon and speak with ghosts, burn wormwood on a bed of privet fire.

(from The Element Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells by Judika Illes)

Crystals for banishing someone:

Any of em if you throw em hard enough

About Iso'onna

Halloween is just around the corner so let's talk about something similar to a vampire. Blood sucking yōkai is rare in Japanese Folklore, but there is one kind of vampire-like (in terms of sucking the victims blood) yōkai indigenous throughout Kyūshū Region [九州地方] called Iso'onna [磯女] (blow) (or Isohime [磯姫] including other regional variations).

Generally, Iso'onna is described as a anthropomorphic, serpentine yōkai with a women-like appearance with long dark hair, but in most cases, observers fails to distinguish her with any ordinary coastal rock due to her elusiveness when lurking near or in the ocean for hunting her victims. ①

Similar legend ① is also told in Amakusa City [天草市] (Kumamoto Prefecture). Locals are warned not to sleep in a fishing boat with the fishing net still casted on its sides because Iso'onna would use that net to climb onboard to suck the blood of sleeping fisherman using her hair.

While she does possess a Siren like quality as well. A legend ② from Minami-shimabara City [南島原市] (Nagasaki Prefecture) tells a story of a man spotting a woman at the coast who was idly looking at the tides. Then as soon as the man called her out as he approached her, the woman suddenly turned around and after making an ear piercing screech, she wrapped her long body around the man and began draining all the from him via her long dark hair. This is the reason why the locals are warned to not approach a woman near the coast especially during the night of New Years and Obon ③.

In a particular case ④, the locals of Ojika Town [小値賀町] (Kitamatsu'ura Dist. [北松浦郡], Nagasaki Prefecture) believes that the true identity of Iso'onna are the souls lost at sea who appears on the surface on a calm day; begging to return the souls within the sea back to the land.

Meanwhile, the legend ② of a perhaps identical yōkai called Isohime [磯女] from Nagashima Town [長島町] (Izumi Dist. [出水郡], Kagoshima Prefecture) is told to not only attack anyone near sea coasts to suck-out their blood, but some may die only by looking at her even a glimpse.

Sources:

1. "Yōkai-jiten" [妖怪事典] (2000) by Kenji Murakami [村上 健司](1968-present)

2. "Sōgō-nihon-minzoku-goi" (1st Edition) [綜合日本民俗語彙 (第1巻)] (1955) by Tokihiko Ōtō [大藤 時彦] (1902-1990) & et al

3. "Gensō-dōbutsu-jiten" [幻想動物事典] (1997) by Takumi Kusano [草野 巧] (n/a)

4. "Jōmin: Gotōrettō-ojikashima Chōsahōkokusho" [常民: 五島列島小値賀島 調査報告書] (1963) by Chūō University's Society of Flolkloristics [中央大学民俗研究会]

i’m sorry, y’all are using AI for offerings? …do you know how the religion you claim to be a part of started? how it lived? how it works?

🌿💐🌼Blessed Midsummer🌼💐🌿

Liminal Spaces in Witchcraft

First of all, what is a liminal space? A liminal space refers to a place or time that is in a period of transition between two phases. These are usually places where reality feels altered because you are neither moving forward or backward, like a rest stop. The word liminal originates from the Latin word limens, meaning threshold. These places often give off a sense that time stands still and that you are experiencing some sort of reality shift. 

        In magic and witchcraft these spaces are considered to be the boundary between our world and the other, it is known as “the in-between”. These places are considered areas of great magic because it is believed this is where the veil is thin. These places are great for divination, spirit work, meditation and astral travel; they are ideal for hedge witchcraft.

Times & Spaces of Liminality:

crossroads manmade or natural

river, creek or lake shores/ beaches

hallway/corridor/stairwells/landings/doorways

graveyards

dawn, dusk, afternoon, midnight

valleys

forest glades

many more!

      Samhain/Halloween is considered the best time to communicate with spirits and faeries because of its liminality, it is a time of transition between autumn and winter. Irish folklore tells that this is the day faeries and ghosts come out to play because of the veil thinning. The equinoxes and sabbats like Beltane and Imbolc are also days of liminality because the time of day and night are equal (equinoxes) or it is a transition between seasons.  

       Mental states of liminality are also times of spirit communication. While being in a meditative state we are in a state of transition between our concious and sub-concious minds, this is where we sometimes experience astral projection or messages from spirits. People often experience spirit while falling asleep because this is another state of liminality. 

     In my craft I often practice in liminality in order to connect with the faerie realms.

-Moonlight 🌙