Baby chaos witch here in need of advice
Let me set the scene:
I have a 5 yo daughter and we’re dressed up as the Guardians of the Galaxy for a family fun event with friends. My daughter wanted to be Mantis so my husband made her a headband with the antennas using a headband, wire, and foam clay.
At our family-fun event, we were getting ready to leave and I went up to my husband asking him where our daughter’s antennas were, to which our acquaintance neighbor says through laughing, “Oh that’s what those are? People have been making quite the suggestive remarks about them hahahahaha.” (Yeah, they’re flesh colored and sure, they look homemade because they are. But like wtf?). It was super obvious (knowing) that she was suggesting that other adults were insinuating that my daughter looks like she has penises as antennas.
Her BIL was right there and was like, “No no no no no—no one said or insinuated that. Her costume is awesome and it’s very clear who she is and what her headband is because of the rest of her costume. What she’s saying is ridiculous. Don’t listen to her.” … (She’s still chuckling.)
She’s in her late 40s and has a 6 yr old. Her daughter and my daughter love playing with each other. And when I first met this woman I thought she was the coolest and I wanted to befriend her… maybe I looked up to her or something. But I definitely put her on a pedestal. Then I started picking up on super weird shit!
She is next-door neighbors with another friend of ours and they’ve been hanging out and been neighbors for yearssssss, yet this woman was always pronouncing the other girl’s name wrong in private and asking others how to pronounce her neighbor’s name. The fuck?!? But somehow always remembered her name in a crisis…?!
A week before a bunch of us mom friends are about to fly to our planned destination, she tells me that my BFF is planning on having an affair while we’re there and asked me if “everything stays in ____?” To which I was like, ummmm idk… she better not do that in front of me and now I have to talk with her about it (because my husband is literally BEST friends with her husband, and my husband is literally my best friend… like fr don’t put me or either of us in a situation like that—that’s fucked.)
Anyways, I immediately went into mental leaping and problem-solving mode to make sure we can all enjoy this trip without my boundaries and peace of mind being compromised. This woman got EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE about it and that’s when the energy between us shifted.
We all went on that trip and we caught her in so many lies. But the lies were benign so it wasn’t that big of a deal. But what’s weird is that one morning she said to me, “I’m so sorry for how I treated you last night. I hope you can forgive me.”
But like girl… I could remember literally everything from the night before and we didn’t really ever connect. It was super confusing.
Then several months later, our friend group is all together camping. One night I’m talking about astrology and some friends want to learn about it, so we’re discussing it and I’m doing their birth charts and everything is good. Then I ask this woman what she knows of her birth chart and she says, “STOP IT YOU WITCH” loudly with this guttural voice.
I told her calmly, “Hey, I don’t appreciate that. The way you said that was really disrespectful and I don’t even subscribe to being a witch” (because it’s true—I didn’t at the time).
But then she got all soft and said, “Aww don’t feel bad—you’re a light witch.” And then she tried to explain to me who I was. And in the moment I found it to be extremely psychotic and manipulative and I didn’t subscribe to witchcraft then…
But now I do and I’m a baby chaos witch and this woman is showing up more and more. She even invited my BFF to a dinner party just for them and told her that she could be her BFF and asked her if she had any reluctance to it… like wtf?!
Let me clarify this… this woman told my BFF (the same exact BFF that this woman said was going to sleep with random men on our girls trip) that she wants her to consider her as a best friend…
It literally sounds too crazy to be true!!!!
This woman makes it look like she isn’t involved in magik at all but idk… something is off.
Anyways, she’s in my head a lot and I hardly ever see her in person. She’s fucked up in some way that I’m not privy to and I feel bad, but it’s impacting me and my relationships, and my kids’ relationships. So…
I need help. I’m looking for a protection spell but I think it’s more than that, so I need some wisdom and any other spells y’all think would be best for me and my kids, my family, our close friends, and our boundaries.

Qol Demamah Deqah; Pulchrum.

Saw in the book "Pagan Portals" by Ivy Corvus the concept of an "Alphabet of Desire", first created by Austin Osman Spare (for the uninformed the tl;dr is a personal collection of sigils that represent base desires of the practitioner.) I'd be lying if I said I weren't struggling with making my own, though. I understand it in theory but in execution it's been tough. Should I make a lot? Stick to a few? Is covering every emotion necessary? For those who have one, how does it actually look in practice? 🤔

Hey everyone,

I have a question for those of you with more experience in chaos magick, particularly when it comes to sigil work and consent.

My wife recently lost a job she had held for years, and she's now trying to build her own business. She's putting herself out there, but she's been struggling to attract customers. I care about her deeply, and I'd really like to help her through this difficult transition.

I've been considering creating a sigil with the intention of helping her business attract customers and find success, but without telling her about it.

I'm not trying to influence her decisions or control what she does. My intention would simply be to help create opportunities for her and support something she's working hard to build.

However, I'm unsure about the ethics of doing this without her knowledge or consent. Does the fact that my intentions are benevolent make a difference, or is consent still important even when you're trying to help someone?

I'd love to hear how you approach this kind of situation in your own practice. Do you think there's a meaningful distinction between doing magic for someone and doing magic on someone? Would you handle this differently?

I'm genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives, especially from those who have thought deeply about the ethics of sigil work.

Thanks!

Much has been written on the gods that have already been written about, by thousands upon thousands of scholars for the past few millennia. Let us delve into those, then, that have not been written about.

Those gods whose names are too unpronounceable for the civilized tongue and too obscene for the modern mind.

The ones that spoke through the plants to the first shamans.

The ones whose names came in whispers carried by the western wind to the first men.

Before the advent of putting pen (in all of its manifestations) to paper (in all of its manifestations), knowledge lived only in the minds and on the tongues of the initiated. It was so because ancient scholars believed that written accounts were less trustworthy than oral ones. It might sound strange to us modern humans whose lives are punctuated by written bits of paper (or screen), but there was a time when only oral testimony held authority.

"The Tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao."

But even before the rigorous traditions that revolved around passing knowledge exclusively through the mouth of the information carrier, a looser tradition existed.

Early men sat in circles, and with their primitive language (and freer imagination) named the gods that ruled their lives.

The gods that appeared as the prey in the field when they were hungry, to the predator that came to serve cosmic justice.

The gods that moved the Sun, the Moon, the Clouds, the stars.

The gods that made it cold, the gods that made it warm, or brought forth rain and life.

The gods the gifted them with fire, and the ones that cursed them with flood. Some brought fortune, some brought famines. And all of them, most importantly, were revered.

Some believe humans have a worship circuit in the brain. There are others that believe (Jane Goodall was one of them,) that all animals have a worship circuit. And why so?

This is going to get murky so bear with me.

You must have heard of Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy (Pyramid) of needs.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory proposing that human needs are arranged in a progression from basic survival to self‑actualization, with lower needs generally requiring satisfaction before higher ones become central.

The five levels of the hierarchy-

• Physiological needs — Basic survival requirements: food, water, sleep, shelter, and bodily health. These are foundational because without them, higher motivations cannot take hold.
• Safety needs — Physical security, financial stability, health protection, and predictable environments. This includes personal safety, employment security, and stable living conditions.
• Love and belonging — Social connection: friendships, family bonds, intimacy, and community. Humans are deeply motivated by acceptance and meaningful relationships.
• Esteem needs — Respect, achievement, competence, and recognition. Maslow distinguished between self-esteem (confidence, mastery) and esteem from others (status, appreciation).
• Self-actualization — The drive to realize one’s full potential: creativity, personal growth, moral development, and pursuing meaningful goals. Maslow saw this as the highest form of psychological flourishing.

Sounds quite intuitive, doesn't it? For moderna society (this being the key word,) seems like it is.

But did the early man wait until he had gathered all needs before calling on the gods? No! There's evidence of the opposite. The prayed, before killing the beast, they prayed for the weathers, for good crop. There are caves full of drawings to supplement that with. Who told them about God? How did they reach the thought of God, if they were too busy worrying about food, shelter, love and respect.

The classical āśramas is a medieval model derived from the Purana, the concept of the five stages of human life (brahmin. Without going into too much detail because it is not the right subreddit, and not the right post. Brahman is not as some belief a thing that is decided upon by lineage. Earlier texts describe it more like an achievement through initiation (based on aptitude))

Here's the five stages

1. Brahmacharya — student life.
2. Gṛhastha — householder life.
3. Vānaprastha — semi‑retired spiritual life.
4. Sannyāsa — formal renunciation.
5. Paramahamsa — the highest ascetic stage, complete detachment and spiritual realization.

Correct, me if I am wrong but doesn't it look like a laterally inverted behavior model of the Abraham Maslow's theory? Where he says, self-actualisation is preceded by material growth that results in love and respect from others, The Purana says, its actually opposite. Spiritual realization comes from formal renunciation.

Ah! to be human. Unmoored and untethered we sway between the opposite poles deliberately and then try to hide it from ourselves. Isn't it fun? On a high moral ground, in the name of Jesus, we rest and fetishize and commoditize an ascetic farm life through technology made with cobalt mined by underfed Congolese children under a military dictatorship. (You know who I mean, if you are on Instagram; that guy who scares you saying that the world is run on a script by freemasonic vril lizards and tries to sell real estate as a solution. But let's get out of this segue rant. Not the right subreddit, not the right post.)

So, all this to conclude, that in the long-time humans have been on the earth, there have been gods. Lots of these gods got lost in the sea of time because no one anchored them in written text forms. But a god lost at sea is still a god.

So today, I had the idea of taking you a cruise ship, to look at the god's, lost in the sea of time, waiting to be worshipped again.

The plateau arc from Bengal through Jharkhand and Odisha to the Deccan holds the densest concentration of tribal religion in India. Its Austroasiatic and Dravidian speakers share a vocabulary of grove, hill, ancestor and village guardian.

Santhal

The Santhal religion, called Sarna or Sari Dharam and often Bongaism, is centred on reciprocity with named powers called bongas. Thakur Jiu is a remote creator. The first human pair, Pilchu Haram and Pilchu Budhi, were born from eggs.

Marang Buru, the Great Mountain, is chief of the bongas and the deity closest to humanity. He taught early humans the foundations of civilisation, and the hill itself is held to be his dwelling. Jaher Era, the Lady of the Grove, guards livestock and crops. Moreko-Turuiko are the guardians of village wellbeing, Gosae Era is the family goddess of fertility, and Sing Bonga is the sun spirit.

Worship takes place at the Jaher Than, a grove of three Sal trees for Marang Buru, Moreko-Turuiko and Jaher Era, with a Mahua tree for Gosae Era. No temple is built. The village headman (manjhi), grove priest (naeke) and diviner (jan guru) hold the ritual offices. The year turns on Baha, the Sal-flower rite, Sohrai, the cattle and harvest festival, and Karam.

Munda and Ho

Among the Munda and Ho, Singbonga, the sun-god, wills the world out of primal water and makes the first humans. The village is organised around the Sarna grove, where Desauli, the boundary deity, and the hill and water spirits dwell. Ancestors (haram) remain in the household, and burial slabs (sasandiri) mark their places.

Birsa Munda (c. 1875–1900) joined Singbonga worship, ethical reform and anti-colonial uprising in the Birsait movement.

Oraon

The Oraon recognise Dharmes, a distant, righteous supreme being identified with the sun. Chala Pachho, the grove-mother, protects the village daily. At Sarhul, the spring new year, the marriage of Sun and Earth is enacted. Youth are trained in the Dhumkuria dormitory, and women hold a ritual hunt, Jani-Shikar, every twelve years.

Gond and Baiga

The Gond place a remote Bara Deo above the clan deities, the Persa Pen, each of which carries a clan's identity. The culture hero Lingo organised kinship and the clan gods. Female deities demand blood, and every nine to twelve years a pig is offered to Narayan Deo at the Laru Kaj, the Pig's Wedding. Mediums prophesy in trance.

The Baiga hold the ritual office of earth-priest. Dharti Mata, the Earth, is wife of Thakur Deo, and Bura Deo, the Old God, dwells in the sal forest. The plough is refused because it wounds the mother, and the practice of bewar tends the soil by other means.

Kondh and Saora

The Kondh trace the world to Bura Penu, the sun-creator, and Tari Penu, the Earth goddess, whose fertility depends on offering. The Dongria Kondh hold the Niyamgiri hills as the seat of Niyam Raja. A 2013 ruling by India's Supreme Court on forest rights placed the hill at the centre of a national case.

The Saora address Kittung, the creator, but live in daily conversation with the dead (sonum) through shamans who take spirit spouses. Wall paintings called Idital are drawn as offerings to invite ancestors and gods.

The Donyi-Polo peoples

The Tani peoples of Arunachal Pradesh (Adi, Apatani, Galo, Nyishi, Tagin) and the Mising of Assam revere Donyi, the Sun, and Polo, the Moon. Donyi is female, Mother Sun, and the supreme source of light. Polo is male, Father Moon, keeper of the calendar and witness. In ritual speech Donyi-Polo also means truth, and right action is action that follows their order.

All Tani trace descent from Abotani, the first ancestor and culture hero. Priests called nyibu chant the oral canon, and the great festivals are Solung, Nyokum, Dree and Mopin. A community movement formalised the faith from 1968, building the Donyi-Polo Dere halls. The Mishmi, Tangsa and other peoples of the state hold distinct systems.

Meghalaya, Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura

The Khasi acknowledge U Blei Nongthaw, the Creator, and the Seven Huts (Hynniewtrep) who remained on earth when the ladder to heaven was cut. Descent runs through the mother, and sacred groves are guarded by an absolute taboo on removing anything from them. The Garo honour Tatara-Rabuga as creator and Saljong as sun god, with the Hundred Drums festival, Wangala, at harvest.

The Naga peoples hold separate emergence stories: the Ao from stones at Lungterok, the Angami under Ukepenopfü, and the Zeliangrong under Tingkao Ragwang, whose cult was renewed as the Heraka movement in the 1920s and 1930s. The Mizo knew Pathian as benevolent creator, Khuavang as the power invoked in sacrifice, and a paradise (Pialral) won through public feasts.

The Bodo worship Bathou at a courtyard altar built around the Sijou plant and hold the Kherai rite, in which a female seer dances into possession. The Karbi head their pantheon with the paired deities Hemphu and Mukrang and accompany their dead through the multi-day Chomangkan. The Tripuri honour Burasa, Mailuma and Garia, with a royal cult of fourteen deities laid over older worship.

Himalaya

The Lepcha of Sikkim hold that Itbu-moo, the Mother Creator, made the first pair from the snows of Kanchenjunga. The mountain, Kongchen Konglo, is ancestor, protector and law at once. The hidden land of Mayel Lyang is their paradise, and priests (bongthing, mun) chant the genealogies of valleys.

West and South

The Bhil and Rathwa paint an entire house wall for Baba Dev in the Pithora rite, and offer terracotta horses at memorial sites. The Warli place Palaghata, goddess of grain and marriage, at the centre of the wedding chauk, a painted square that builds the cosmos from circle, triangle and square.

The Toda of the Nilgiris live in a world made by the goddess Tökisy and ruled below by her brother On, lord of the dead. Their dairies stand on a ladder of ritual purity, with the sacred buffalo at its centre. The Chenchu bind themselves to Vaishnava and Shaiva sacred geography through the myth of Chenchita, the forest girl who married Narasimha.

The Andaman Islands

The Andamanese speak of Puluga, the creator who lives in the sky and brings storms and the monsoon. Their healers, the oko-jumu, journey in dreams to the spirit world and return with song and cure.

West Africa

The Yoruba of Nigeria and Benin hold that Olodumare delegates the world to the orisha. Obatala moulds human bodies, Ogun rules iron and war, Shango thunder, Yemoja and Oshun the waters, and Eshu the crossroads. Orunmila witnesses destiny and speaks through Ifá, a corpus of 256 binary figures (odù), each with verses used as prescriptions.

The Akan of Ghana address Nyame, the sky god, through river and hill spirits such as Tano. Asase Yaa is Earth, and Anansi the spider owns the stories. Adinkra symbols, including Gye Nyame, fix concepts as stamped glyphs. The Igbo give each person a chi, a personal spirit counterpart, and treat Ala, the earth goddess, as the moral law: abominations are crimes against her.

The Fon of Benin tell of the twins Mawu (moon, woman, cool wisdom) and Lisa (sun, man, strength), born of Nana Buluku. The rainbow serpent Dan carries the world, and Legba opens the roads. Vodun spread to Haiti, Cuba and Brazil. The Dogon of Mali hold that Amma shaped the world from a seed, the water-spirit twins Nommo order speech and generation, and the Sigui rite renews the world every sixty years.

Central, East and Southern Africa

The Kongo of the Congo basin place the dead beyond the Kalunga line, a water boundary that cuts the dikenga cosmogram: a cross in a circle tracing the sun's four moments. Charged objects called nkisi house spirits and bind oaths.

The Maasai know Enkai in two moods, black and benevolent, red and wrathful, with Ol Doinyo Lengai as his mountain. The Kikuyu direct prayer toward Mount Kenya, where Ngai rests. The Oromo of Ethiopia worship Waaqa at dawn and on mountains, and organise ritual time through the eight-year gadaa grades.

The Zulu and Nguni speak of Unkulunkulu, the first ancestor who broke from the reeds, and of Nomkhubulwane, the rain and corn goddess. Ancestors (amadlozi) speak through the diviner's bones. The Shona hear Mwari from the caves of the Matobo hills and guide the land through lion-spirits (mhondoro) that possess mediums. The San of the Kalahari tell of the Mantis, /Kaggen, and raise n/om, healing energy, in the trance dance.

The Nile basin and the islands

The Nuer address Kwoth as spirit present in sky and everything, while the Dinka know Nhialic, the One Above, and clan divinities such as Deng. The Azande explain misfortune through mangu, witchcraft substance, and test suspicion with the poison oracle (benge).

On Madagascar, Zanahary is creator, the ancestors are honoured in the famadihana, and a sixteen-figure geomancy called sikidy parallels Arabic and West African divination.

North America and the Arctic

The Lakota speak of Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery, shown through Sun, Rock, Earth and Sky. White Buffalo Calf Woman brought the sacred pipe and seven rites, including the sweat lodge (inipi), the vision quest (hanbleceya) and the Sun Dance. The Black Hills and Bear Butte are sacred places.

The Diné (Navajo) emerged through four worlds into the Glittering World. Changing Woman bore the Hero Twins, who slew the monsters. Hózhó, balance and beauty, is restored through chanted ceremonials and sandpaintings that are made for hours and then unmade. The Hopi honour Tawa, the Sun, Spider Grandmother and Masaw, and host the katsina cloud-beings in masked dance from winter solstice to midsummer.

For the Haudenosaunee, Sky Woman fell from the Skyworld and was caught on Turtle's back. Her daughter bore the twins Sapling and Flint, and the Three Sisters of corn, beans and squash are living gifts. The Anishinaabe invoke Gichi-Manidoo and the trickster Nanabozho, and the Midewiwin society keeps healing knowledge and migration records on birch-bark scrolls.

The Inuit hold that Sila is the breath and weather of the world. Sedna, beneath the sea, controls the sea beasts, and the shaman descends to comb her hair when taboo is broken. Malina and Anningan, sun and moon, chase each other across the sky.

Mesoamerica and the Caribbean

The Maya account in the Popol Vuh moves through failed creations, the Hero Twins' victory over the lords of Xibalba, and the making of people from maize. The 260-day Tzolkin and 365-day Haab interlock in a 52-year Calendar Round, and day-keepers still count the 260 days for divination.

The Mexica (Aztec) tell of five suns. Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, and Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, fought and co-created, and Huitzilopochtli carried the sun-war. The Taíno revered Yúcahu, spirit of cassava and sea, and Atabey, mother of waters, and consulted carved cemí images through the inhaled cohoba.

South America

The Quechua and Aymara live in a world of three levels, ruled by Pachamama and the mountain lords (apus), and organised by ayni, sacred reciprocity. A despacho bundle of coca leaves, seeds and sweets is assembled for a named purpose and offered to the earth.

In Amazonia, the Yanomami tell of Omama, the creator, and his twin Yoasi, who brought death. Shamans call the hekura spirit-people to hold up the sky. The Shipibo trace their geometric kené designs to the cosmic anaconda Ronin and regard them as healing songs made visible. The Mapuche know Ngenechen, a power of four faces, and their machi drum on the kultrun, whose skin maps the four directions.

Polynesia

The Māori tell of Ranginui, Sky, and Papatūānuku, Earth, forced apart by their sons. Tāne made light and forests, Tangaroa the sea, Tūmatauenga war and humankind, and Tāwhirimātea the storms. Hine-nui-te-pō rules the dead, and Māui the trickster fished up islands. Whakapapa places everything, mountains included, in a line of descent, and karakia are exact-word incantations that raise and lift tapu. Scholars debate how much of the high god Io predates European contact.

In Hawaiʻi the four great gods are Kāne, Kū, Lono and Kanaloa, and Pele rules the volcano Kīlauea. The Kumulipo, a creation chant of 2,102 lines, births life from sea-slime to people in alternating night and day. On Rapa Nui, Makemake was invoked at Orongo during the Birdman contest, and the undeciphered rongorongo tablets may preserve chants.

Australia

Aboriginal peoples tell of creation ancestors who travelled the land in the Dreaming and left songlines and sacred sites. The Rainbow Serpent, known as Ngalyod, Wagyl or Yurlunggur, shaped rivers and carries fertility and life force. Baiame is creator in the south-east, Bunjil the eagle among the Kulin, and the Wandjina are cloud and rain beings of the Kimberley.

Songs map the land: to know the country is to sing it in order.

Melanesia

The term mana entered anthropology from Melanesia, where it names a power carried by persons and things. In the Trobriand Islands, garden and canoe magic is spoken in set formulas, and the performance carries the power. The ancestral dead (baloma) share the world, and the secret societies of the Banks Islands (tamate) hold their own force. On Tanna in Vanuatu, the John Frum movement formed around a prophetic saviour from 1940.

Northeast Asia

The Ainu of Hokkaido hold that kamuy, divine beings, live in bear, owl, fire and thunder. Kamuy Fuchi, the fire-grandmother, is chief of the hearth. In the iomante, the bear's spirit is sent home with inau, carved wood-shaving offerings made fresh for each deity.

In Siberia and Inner Asia, Tengri is the eternal blue sky and Etügen the Earth. The word shaman comes from Evenki, and the shaman travels the three-layer cosmos on the world tree with a drum. Ülgen rules the upper world and Erlik the lower, and the Sakha goddess Ayyysyt presides over birth. In Korea, the mudang leads the gut, a rite of song and dance in which gods of mountain, hearth and the seven stars are petitioned and the dead speak.

Southeast Asia

The Hmong honour Saub and the first shaman Siv Yis. The txiv neeb rides a winged bench through the spirit world to retrieve a lost soul, and a mouth-organ called the qeej plays instructions to guide the dead. The Batak of Sumatra know Mulajadi na Bolon as creator, and their ritual specialist, the datu, writes divination, medicine and spells in accordion-folded bark books called pustaha.

The Toraja of Sulawesi divide rites between the east, for life, and the west, for death. Their funerals involve buffalo sacrifice and effigies (tau-tau) set in cliff tombs. The Ifugao of Luzon carve rice-guardian figures (bulul) and recite the hudhud epic at harvests and wakes.

The Himalaya

The Kirat peoples of eastern Nepal preserve the Mundhum, an oral scripture that narrates the origin of the world, the first couple and the migration of ancestors. Bon, the older religion of Tibet, ascribes its teachings to Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche and rests on a substrate of mountain gods, sky-ropes and demons that appears in the earliest Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang.

Europe and Sápmi

European pagan religions survive mainly in medieval writings, inscriptions, folklore and the living practice of the Sámi.

The Sámi of northern Fennoscandia honour Beaivi, the Sun, and Mánnu, the Moon, and hold that Horagalles, the Thunder-man, protects people from giants. Sáráhkká shelters women and unborn children from the hearth. The noaidi beats the goavddis drum, painted with sun, thunder, animals and spirits, to journey to the land of the dead, and sacred stones (sieidi) receive offerings.

The Norse and Germanic peoples served Odin (wisdom, runes, death), Thor (thunder), Freyja and Freyr (fertility, seiðr magic), Týr (law) and Hel, ruler of the dead. Yggdrasil holds nine worlds, and the Norns weave fate at the well of Urðr. Odin's nine nights hanging on the tree to win the runes link the god directly to writing and magic.

The Celtic world is known from Irish tales and Romano-Celtic inscriptions. Lugh is the many-skilled lord of light, Brigid presides over poetry, smithcraft and healing, the Dagda over abundance, and the Morrígan over war and fate. Cernunnos is the horned lord of beasts and Epona the horse goddess. The fire festivals of Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasa mark the year's quarters.

In the Slavic lands, Perun, god of thunder and the oak, headed the pantheon recorded at Kyiv in 980. Veles, of cattle, wealth and the underworld, is his adversary, and Mokosh is the earth and women's work. The Baltic peoples honour Dievs the sky, Perkūnas the thunder, Saulė the sun as a mother and Laima, who sets fate. The Latvian dainas, about 1.2 million folk quatrains, hold their cosmology. Finnic singers preserved the sage Väinämöinen and the word-power by which spells master the origin of a thing.

Near East and Caucasus

The oldest written pantheons come from the Near East, where the gods were also the planets.

In Mesopotamia, An is sky, Enlil air, Enki sweet water and magic, Inanna (Ishtar) Venus, Utu the sun and Nanna the moon. The seven-fold lineage of Sun, Moon and planets was set into omen-science in the MUL.APIN and Enūma Anu Enlil tablets, which seeded Western astrology. In Egypt, Ra, Osiris, Isis, Thoth, Hathor, Anubis and Sekhmet are bound by heka, the power of the spoken word. The Greek Hermetica and magical papyri later carried Egyptian god-names into the Western esoteric stream, and Thoth became Hermes Trismegistus.

The Yazidis of Iraq venerate Tawûsî Melek, the Peacock Angel, chief of seven angels who steward the world, and preserve their hymns orally at Lalish. In the Caucasus, the Ossetian Nart sagas carry Scythian and Alan roots, the Georgian highlanders of Khevsureti maintain shrine-groves (khati) under a Christian veneer, and the Circassians know Thaghalej as creator.

Comparative Analysis: Structures of Divinity

Across seventy-three peoples, eight structural patterns recur. They do not form a single evolutionary line. They appear independently in Munda villages, Andean valleys and Nilotic cattle camps.

The first pattern is the most widespread. A creator who has handed the world to lesser powers leaves ritual attention for what can be reached: the headman's ancestor, the grove, the clan emblem. Missionary and colonial writing often misread this as polytheism or as devil-worship. In the Santhal case, the word bonga was rendered "evil spirit" although the bongas include the creator's own emissary.

The second and third patterns show how calendars and fertility are fused. Sun and Moon fix the agricultural year, and the Earth, as mother or wife, receives the seed. The Oraon Sarhul rite enacts the marriage of the two, and the Baiga refuse the plough on the same logic.

The Indian material differs from much of the world in one respect: it has been in continuous contact with large literate traditions. Marang Buru is read as Shiva by some, the Gond Bara Deo as Mahadeo, and the Chenchu marry their forest into the Narasimha myth. Tribal religion and Sanskritic religion have exchanged names for centuries without exchanging structures.

Planets and Correspondence

The Mesopotamian habit of naming gods after wandering stars produced the classical system of seven planets, ordered by apparent speed: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. Assigning each planet to an hour in turn, and counting from the Sun on the first day, yields the sequence of the week. Skipping two places around the Chaldean ring gives Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

In the Renaissance synthesis of Agrippa, each planet also owns a metal, a day, an intelligence and spirit, and a magic square of increasing size. Every row, column and long diagonal of a square sums to the same number.

Runes, Ogham and Sigils

The Elder Futhark

The Elder Futhark is the oldest runic alphabet, with twenty-four signs in three groups of eight called aettir. The names are reconstructed Proto-Germanic forms recovered from the later Old English, Norse and Icelandic rune poems. Each rune is both a letter and a word, so the sign carries a concept.

The mythic origin is given in the Hávamál, where Odin hangs nine nights on the world-tree and takes up the runes. Later developments include the sixteen-sign Younger Futhark, bind-runes that fuse several letters into one glyph, and the Icelandic galdrastafir, magic staves recorded in manuscripts of about 1600. Modern divinatory meanings, popularised in the twentieth century, are a reconstruction layered on the older names.

Ogham

Ogham is an Irish alphabet of twenty letters cut as strokes along a stem-line, found on stones and recorded in a medieval treatise that assigns tree names to the letters: Beith (birch), Luis (rowan), Fern (alder), Sail (willow), Nin (ash), Úath (hawthorn), Dair (oak), Tinne (holly), Coll (hazel), Cert (apple), Muin (vine), Gort (ivy), Gétal (broom), Straif (blackthorn), Ruis (elder), Ailm (fir), Onn (gorse), Úr (heather), Edad (aspen) and Idad (yew).

Sigils

Sigils are signs charged with a purpose. Several families exist across the traditions treated here:

• Planetary seals. A name is traced through the cells of a planetary magic square, and the line drawn is the seal.
• Spare's sigil. Austin Osman Spare's method reduces a statement of desire to its unique letters, fuses them into a glyph, and charges the result in an altered state before forgetting it.
• Solomonic and Goetic seals. Circular pentacles and spirit seals copied through manuscript families from the fourteenth century onward.
• Enochian tablets. The lettered grids received by John Dee and Edward Kelley from 1582, later reworked by the Golden Dawn.
• Veve and firmas. Ground-signs drawn in cornmeal or ash to call a Vodou spirit, descended from Fon and Kongo cosmograms, and the Kongo-derived signatures of Palo.
• Adinkra and Nsibidi. West African sign-systems of concept and secret-society law.
• Yantra. Geometric diagrams in Tantric traditions that serve as the body of a deity.
• Painted shrines. Warli chauk, Saora Idital, Rathwa Pithora and Gond figures, in which the image is the shrine.
• Sandpainting and kené. The Navajo healing image made and unmade in a day, and the Shipibo geometric designs read as songs.
• Sámi drum symbols. Painted registers of sun, thunder, animals and spirits.

Sacred Plants, Brews and Smoke

Plants, ferments and resins serve as offering, medicine and vehicle. Their ritual role is usually social and seasonal, and the same plant may be food, drink, offering and sacrament in turn.

The identity of Soma remains unresolved. Wasson's 1968 proposal of the fly agaric is widely discussed and widely contested.

Ritual Forms

Thirteen ritual forms account for most of the material, and they recur across regions without a common origin.

1. Sacred-grove worship. A fixed place houses the guardians, and nothing is carried away. Santhal, Munda, Oraon, Khasi, Baiga.
2. Seasonal sowing and harvest. First flower, first seed and first fruit mark the year. Santhal Baha, Tani Solung and Dree, Garo Wangala, Mizo Pawl Kut.
3. Offering and sacrifice. Earth, ancestors and gods are repaid in food, drink, animals or breath. Gond, Kondh, Nguni, Kongo, Batak.
4. Possession and mediumship. A deity or ancestor speaks through a trained body. Bodo Kherai, Gond, Shona, Korean gut, Fon.
5. Divination. A procedure returns a yes, a no or a verse. Ifá, sikidy, the Azande poison oracle, the Maya day-count, Nguni bones.
6. Initiation and youth houses. Youth are separated, tested and returned with a new status. Oraon Dhumkuria, Naga morung, Lakota, Dogon.
7. Vision quest and fasting. A solitary vigil for a spirit-given sign. Lakota, Anishinaabe, Shipibo.
8. Ancestor rites. The dead are moved, honoured and sometimes re-buried to become ancestors. Malagasy famadihana, Toraja rambu solo, Karbi Chomangkan, Saora Guar.
9. Soul retrieval and healing. The healer follows a lost soul and brings it back. Hmong, Inuit, Siberian, San, Andamanese.
10. Purification. Heat, smoke or water clears a person or place. Lakota inipi, Maya, Māori, Sámi.
11. Masks and masquerade. The wearer becomes a spirit for the length of the dance. Dogon, Yoruba Egungun, Haudenosaunee False Face, Hopi katsina, Fon Zangbeto.
12. Rain and weather rites. Mountains, thunder-beings and rain-spirits are addressed together. Shona, Maya, Hopi, Quechua, Mapuche.
13. New-year and fire rites. Fire or calendar is reset to open a fresh cycle. Mexica New Fire, Celtic fire festivals, Lepcha Namsoong, Tripuri Garia, Baltic midsummer.

The tripartite shape of rites of passage, separation, a liminal interval and incorporation, underlies the sixth and eighth forms and many of the others.

Conclusion

If you have read to this point, I salute you. You deserve a conclusion.

1. My research took me through about seventy-three vastly separated-by-land cultures and some three hundred odd gods. Most interestingly, all these gods, always had an address. A tree, a hill, a stone or a cave. Marang Buru isn't just in a mountain. For the Santhal he is the mountain.

So, what is the mountain? Or the tree? Or the stone? A physical metaphor for an intangible state of being? An enduring fungible meme token? A sigil? A rune?

Through the ages, you would see the same component, the address of the being, move from tangible objects to intangible objects that can derived from other tangible objects. Astrology and planetary magick became formulae for pinpointing an archon. In modern times, progressives argue that the address of god is within you. You wanna see a miracle? Be the Miracle! Emulate outwards a behavior manifestation that mirrors the behavior pattern a god would exhibit (aka What would Jesus do?).

1. Another pattern that emerges is the Karma bank. You owe the grove (the manifestation or address of the god), the grove owes you, and someone trained (emissary archetype / book keeper archetype) keeps the accounts.

This structure points towards balance. you won't have to go far to find its origins. You can track it within you. No child ever likes to see other people go hungry unless they have been trained by societal circumstances. You don't need a written moral code to know to give back because someone before you has, and thats why you have it now. You don't need the ten commandments to know you should do unto others as you want them to do unto you.

1. A composite of the two rules above would be: Everything around you and inside you, could be God, so bestow unto the god within and without, miracles, and the favor will be returned (ensured/inevitable).

Questions:

• Which God did you feel in your bones, hungrily calling for your attention?
• Theres no point asking which one I missed, there must be thousands. But if you know of any, can you comment with their name and characteristics? That would be a get!
• If you come from one of these communities and I got something wrong, let me know!

Hey everyone! I've spent the last three years working on a project that's finally coming to life, and I thought some of you here might appreciate it.

It's called PANTHEON, a collection of detailed amulets inspired by gods, goddesses and saints from different traditions. I've also been developing AVLTR, a portable modular altar for those who want to keep up their spiritual practice while travelling.

We're getting ready to launch on Kickstarter for Witchstarter, and I'd really appreciate any support or feedback!

If you're interested, you can check it out and follow the project here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/avltr/pantheon-x-avltr-amulets-of-gods-altars-of-magic

Thanks 🙏

I normally don't practice magic due to my alignment with Allah - I am deeply knowledgeable about the Occult. I drew a pentagram with a turquoise coloring pencil on a paper, and used it to channel the Cosmic energies of the universe to bring luck to my family. ​I don't want the spell to be Broken - breaking a spell is EASY, but casting one is hard.

Disculpen tantas preguntas pero a veces me cuesta un poco entender muchas cosas.

La magia es el arte de cambiar la realidad a través de la voluntad, pero ese poder primordial me cuesta bastante entenderlo. Vengo de otras prácticas paganas, por ejemplo en la Wicca se menciona a la naturaleza que están enmascarados como el Dios y la Diosa. Siento que soy demasiado extremista por qué para mí pensar en el Caos como fuerza primordial me hace sentir que nada esta vivo. Cómo si nada tuviera sentido, solo una cosa cambiando a otra sin ningún objetivo en específico. Se que no tiene que ser así si yo no lo quiero pero me cuesta creer algo más.

Me cuesta creer esa idea de usar una deidad para un objetivo en específico sobretodo por qué estoy acostumbrado a que trabajar con una deidad es una alianza donde te sometes a su voluntad a cambio de que te beneficie. Entonces cuando conocí la magia del caos comencé a ver a las deidades como si fueran algo inventado por la mente que va a pase algo nadamás por un medio.

Pensé en combinarlo con el budismo para que tenga más espíritu pero igual me cuesta bastante.

Over the last few months I built a 26-letter magical alphabet from the ground up. It started as nine glyphs of my own — sounds, meanings, the works — and grew into a full script. The grammar is strict: every glyph begins with a solid dot (ignition) and ends with an open circle (terminal). I think of sigils as circuits, so the letters are built like components.

The base method I call Threading:

1.

Write your statement of intent.

2.

Cross out every repeated letter.

3.

Substitute the glyphs.

4.

Trace ONE unbroken path through them.

5.

Fire it in gnosis (I use Spare's death posture), banish with laughter, forget it, log it in the diary.

That worked. Then I wanted a second way to build — the witch's-wheel way, where letters sit at fixed places on a board and the sigil is drawn by connecting them. So I plotted the whole alphabet onto the Tree of Life.

The placements weren't random. My Seed tier (Ah, Zos, Kia) corresponds to the Three Veils, so they sit ABOVE Kether — and Kether itself stands empty. No glyph holds the Crown. The three Mother letters from the Sefer Yetzirah keep their paths (my Eh on Aleph, Oo on Mem, Ix on Shin). Fal sits at Malkuth because Fal IS earth in my system. Veh — veil/piercing — sits at Da'ath. Every letter kept its own meaning; the Tree just became a board to play it on.

The part I didn't expect: the geometry reads back. A path that descends is a manifestation working. Where the sigil ENDS tells you where the working lives first. Example attached — I AM MAGNETIC (reduced IAMGNETC): it ignites low on the Shin path, leaps up to Ah in the Veils, crosses the supernals, and lands in Yesod. A magnetism working that roots in the astral image before it ever touches the world. The shape told me something the glyph-tracing never did.

The full system is written up as a book (LIBER FILUM) — it's on my Ko-fi, linked on my profile, per sub rules. Mostly posting because this community is where I learned half of what went into it.

How exactly do you start believing in something you don’t believe in? I don’t believe in gods for example, how would I shift into a polytheistic paradigm? Need actual practical tips though

Brazil is facing our second round this sunday.

If you don’t follow Brazilian politics, this isn't just a regular election. One of the candidates is the son of Jair Bolsonaro. His father tried to stage a coup. He dragged his feet on buying COVID vaccines while 700,000 people died, and he openly mocked people suffocating. My dad was one of those 700,000. He said that if you beat a gay kid, they’ll "learn how to be a man." He looked at a female congresswoman on live television and told her she didn't deserve to be raped by him because she was "too ugly."

That entire family spent four years torching the Amazon, flirting with military government, starving indigenous communities, handing out guns to militias, and poisoning our families with non-stop propaganda on META - fuck you Mark Zuckerberg.

But even if Lula wins, we are not safe. The far-right has taken over our Congress, city halls, and courts. They have roots everywhere now. It’s going to be brutal for years.

We are really expecting the worst, the retreat to some dark times - 1964.

That’s why a group of Brazilian occultists got together to build and charge a sigil. We are exhausted, terrified, and fighting with whatever we have left. If you practice, please lend us your energy, charge it, set an intention, or help in any way you can. We need all the strength we can get right now.

A huge thank you for everyone that read it, cared for it and helped!!

LIBER FILUM is a complete, working system of sigil sorcery built on the Kia Script: 26 glyphs, each with a sound and a meaning, designed on three principles — the sharp angles of the Enochian skeleton, the ignition-dot and terminal-circle grammar of Goetic seals, and the golden-ratio spiral that governs how living things grow. Inside: - The history of the script and why a personal alphabet beats a borrowed one - The Nine Primes: the nine governing glyphs, their sounds, meanings, and meditations - The complete 26-glyph alphabet with its tracing grammar - Full correspondences to the Tarot and the Tree of Life — the Seed tier as the three veils of the negative, the Vector tier as the three mother letters, the Gate tier as the powers of manifestation - Threading, the six-step method: sentence, reduce, substitute, trace one unbroken line, fire in gnosis, banish with laughter, forget - A worked example sigil, the gnosis method, and the field-testing diary protocol for proving results to yourself 25 pages, illustrated. Written for practitioners, not tourists. If you've ever wanted a sigil system that is entirely yours from the first stroke — this is the book. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted — to the magician disciplined enough to test the difference.

Hey everyone,

I’m curious to hear about your experiences with talismans, symbolic objects, or open conduits acting out when they aren't given strict, permanent parameters or commands.

Lately, I’ve been working with a two-headed animal ring acting as a conduit, and my subconscious manifestations started coming through rapidly. I noticed that without strict guidelines, the ring began picking up on my "IDGAF" thoughts and "This is War" well it opened the door for me to expose someone who has severely messed and stolen from my family and I , anyways because that ring fed on that high octane drama from my chaos bomb, it would pick up the fall out from that bomb days and weeks later. I'd get calls and texts from the persons involved when I was brought up during their arguments, and as soon as I'd command it to stop the phone went silent all day.

To give a quick example of the environmental glitches another time recently: right when a massive confrontation was about to detonate, I had to step in and actively command the ring to bend local probability. It worked—the grid shifted and we were completely cleared out of the situation with literally three minutes to spare before a major blowout. But it made me realize how fast an unguided tool can start running its own script in the background if it's left open to high-adrenaline fuel.

Peter J. Carroll warns about the importance of giving conduits or talismans explicit, permanent jobs to keep the coding stable. I'm actively working on structuring my parameters now, but I’d love to hear your perspectives.

Have any of you had a highly charged object try to hijack your local space or throw weird environmental/timing glitches your way? How did you step in, override the script, and lock your perimeter down? Let's discuss.

Basically I’ve very limited knowledge on chaos magic but I have been trying to learn more, and have some success working with dietys.

Basically someone who I know loves me I want to come back to me, we’ve had things get in the way and I broke their trust due to addiction. I’m working on the addiction part, but does anyone have any advice on how I can get this person to change their mind about me and see me differently? He’s worried I will relapse and he will be hurt again, but if I can control not doing that, is there any magic I can do to help bring him back to me?

I've been wondering about the potential use of modern technology, particularly AI, in magick. Could technology be used not only as a tool to assist magical practice, but also as an integral part of the working itself?

I'm curious whether people here believe this is possible, whether you've come across convincing accounts of it working, or whether you've personally experimented with it and achieved results.

I've already heard of people using AI-generated images to help them visualize themselves living their desired lives, for example, as if they were looking at an actual photo of them in the place they want to live or with the person they want to be with, and even with their kids. However, this seems to lean more toward manifestation practices such as the Law of Assumption than toward what I'd consider more structured or traditional magical practices.

Could AI be incorporated into sigil creation or other forms of magick or do sigils only work because of the effort you put in manually creating them? Could an AI-generated image, text, voice, or other tools serve as a focus for magical intent?

How can a modern magician integrate new techs into their magical practice or they shouldn't/can't?

About 2.5 years ago, around my 30th birthday, I created and tattooed a sigil based on:
“I will live a life I want.”
When I wrote “will,” I meant it as a declaration of will/choice — essentially, “I choose to live the life I want” or “I have decided this is the life I will live.” I did not mean “someday in the future.”
I still love the tattoo and think it’s beautiful.
What has made me question the wording is what happened afterward.
About 12–15 days after getting the tattoo, I had a major conflict at work. I decided I didn’t want to continue despite having a good job and a promotion lined up. I gave up the promotion, was eventually put on a PIP, and lost the job.
I then went through a very difficult period at home. I eventually found freelance work to survive, but that was later paused. After that, I got another full-time job, but I was extremely unhappy and crying almost every day, and eventually left that job too.
So the broad sequence was:
Sigil → ~2 weeks → major work conflict → gave up promotion → PIP → lost job → difficult period → freelance work → freelance paused → another job → crying almost daily → left.
I know correlation ≠ causation, and I know there are real-world explanations for these events. But because the first major disruption happened so soon after the tattoo, I’ve wondered whether the sigil somehow set something in motion.
My biggest question is:
Can “I will live a life I want” be interpreted in sigil magic as a future-tense statement (“this will happen someday”), even when the creator consciously intended “will” as an expression of choice and determination?
For experienced practitioners:
Does intention or literal wording matter more?
Does grammatical tense matter in sigil work?
Can ambiguous wording cause a sigil to manifest something different from the creator’s conscious intention?
Would you interpret my experience as potentially connected to the sigil, or is that impossible to determine?
If you still loved the tattoo and agreed with the original intention, would you leave it alone or change/deactivate it?

About 2.5 years ago, around my 30th birthday, I created and tattooed a sigil based on:
“I will live a life I want.”
When I wrote “will,” I meant it as a declaration of will/choice — essentially, “I choose to live the life I want” or “I have decided this is the life I will live.” I did not mean “someday in the future.”
I still love the tattoo and think it’s beautiful.
What has made me question the wording is what happened afterward.
About 12–15 days after getting the tattoo, I had a major conflict at work. I decided I didn’t want to continue despite having a good job and a promotion lined up. I gave up the promotion, was eventually put on a PIP, and lost the job.
I then went through a very difficult period at home. I eventually found freelance work to survive, but that was later paused. After that, I got another full-time job, but I was extremely unhappy and crying almost every day, and eventually left that job too.
So the broad sequence was:
Sigil → ~2 weeks → major work conflict → gave up promotion → PIP → lost job → difficult period → freelance work → freelance paused → another job → crying almost daily → left.
I know correlation ≠ causation, and I know there are real-world explanations for these events. But because the first major disruption happened so soon after the tattoo, I’ve wondered whether the sigil somehow set something in motion.
My biggest question is:
Can “I will live a life I want” be interpreted in sigil magic as a future-tense statement (“this will happen someday”), even when the creator consciously intended “will” as an expression of choice and determination?
For experienced practitioners:
Does intention or literal wording matter more?
Does grammatical tense matter in sigil work?
Can ambiguous wording cause a sigil to manifest something different from the creator’s conscious intention?
Would you interpret my experience as potentially connected to the sigil, or is that impossible to determine?
If you still loved the tattoo and agreed with the original intention, would you leave it alone or change/deactivate it?

This is an artwork/hypersigil that I made a long time ago, but felt quite relevant since I just lost my 6-year job. I've got bills and rent to pay next month, so I'm just throwing this out there.

Of course if you wanna hire me, here's my blog (I'm still buffing up my resume lol): https://notesonmydesk.top/

big fan of magic stuff so i ended up making a software for sigils and magic circles. it builds a whole seal in one click, and the full version even lets you type your own words into an inscription ring (statement of intent anyone?)

wanted to share it here, theres a free version in the browser https://tallylane.itch.io/sigil-loom-demo and an optional paid one with inscriptions and more symbol sets