Self-help Challenge #1

self-help challenge #1

create an alter ego for yourself. make her the version of yourself you want to be.

many artists have ae's. when beyonce's rocking it on stage, she's sasha fierce. when tyler the creator is performing, he's igor. the point of an ae, for most is to gain confidence and to be fearless.

the more confident you are in your future, the more successful you will be.

*note: i refer to your ae (alter ego) as she/her. you can use whichever pronouns you like for your ae, of course!

what's her name?

be sure to be thorough and research the meaning and origin of the name you choose for yourself. names have power.

what does she look like?

your alter ego should look like the better version of yourself. make yourself look like her. dress up. be extra if you want.

what does a typical day for her look like?

be as creative as possible with this. nothing is impossible with manifesting. nothing.

what's her personality like?

find five words to describe her with. remember your alter ego has no faults. she's perfect. don't let this intimidate you. if you are your alter ego, then you are, by default, perfect, too. you don’t have to try, you are.

who does your alter ego surround herself with?

watch the friends your ae associates with. you should be friends with people that can put you ahead. whether that be financially, mentally, or physically, only make friends that make you better. don't associate with those who make you worse than your worth.

what kind of media does your ae consume, if any?

think about your ae's favorite author, artist, dancer, singer, etc. how present she is on social media. is she a public figure? how does she influence the media, if so?

why are you creating your alter ego?

why are you frankensteining, in other words? are you tired of being cooped up in your home all the time? do you want people to hang on to your every word? do you want to have influence?

Full moons correspondences

Wolf moon (January) also known as cold moon, air

Inner power, insight, assess your journey, protection, personal developement

Ianna, Freyja, Skadi, the Morrigan, Hecate

Wolves, foxes, coyotes, blue jay, pheasants

Hematite, ruby, selenite, moonstone, opal, garnet, jet, onyx, obsidian

Black, white, silver, violet

Snow moon (February) also known as storm moon or hunger moon, air and water

New starts, ambition, change, creativity, reflection

Brighid, Diana, Juno

Otter, eagle, chickadee, unicorn

Amethyst, jasper, moonstone

Purple, light blue, yellow

Worm moon (March) also known as seed moon, water and fire

New growth, set intentions, renewal, balance, prospering

Mars, Tyr, Athena, Isis

Cougar, bear, hedgehog, sea crow, sea eagle

Aquamarine, bloodstone, jade

Pale green, red, violet

Pink moon (April) also known as hare moon, fire and earth

Rebirth, discovery, fertility, goals, openings, opportunities

Aphrodite, Venus, Hathor, Kali, Rhiannon

Bear, wolf, hawk, magpie

Diamond, quartz, emerald

Pale yellow, pink, gold

Flower moon (May) also known as fairy moon, earth and air

Abundance, gratitude, romance, maturity, intuition

Bast, Artemins, Pan, Cernunnos

Cats, lynx, leopard, swallow, dove, swan

Emerald, sapphire, agate

Pink, green, brown

Strawberry moon (June) also known as rose moon, air and water

Harvest, manifesting, dreams, love, good health, clarity, communication

Juno, Hera, Isis, Neith, Cerridwen

Monkey, butterfly, frog, toad, wren, peacock

Pearl, moonstone, citrine, blue lace agate

Yellow/green and orange

Buck moon (July) also known as hay moon, water and fire

Inner fire, long term goals, leadership, divination

Hel, Athena, Lugh, Khepri

Crab, turtle, dolphin, whale, starling, swallow

Ruby, carnelian, green calcite, peacock ore

Blue, gray, silver

Sturgeon moon (August) also known as barley moon, earth and air

Freedom, perseverance, cleansing, reaping, gratitude, peace, harmony

Demeter, Ceres, Hathor, Nemesis, Ganesha, Vulcan, Vesta

Lion, phoenix, sphinx, dragon, crane, falcon, eagle

Periodot, onyx, bronzite, green sapphire

Gold, yellow, green

Harvest moon (September) also known as corn moon, earth and air

Harvest, gratitude, balance, reflection, psychic work, home and hearth

Demeter, Ceres, Thor, Thoth, Persephone, Freyja, Isis

Snake, jackal, ibis, sparrow

Peridot, sapphire, bloodstone, chrysolite

Brown, yellow, amber

Hunters moon (October) also known as blood moon, air and water

Strength, protection, endurance, rebirth, ambition, ancestral work

Cernunnos, Hecate, the Morrigan, Osiris, Astarte, Ishtar, Lakshmi

Stag, jackal, elephant, ram, scorpion, wolf, heron, crow, robin, owl, raven

Opal, tourmaline, citrine, rose sapphire

Red, orange, deep blue, black, dark green, brown, gold

Beaver moon (November) also known as snow moon, water and fire

Preparation, security, grounding, fidelity, new beginnings, release

Cailleach, Circe, Sybele, Hel, Holda, Kali, Bast, Osiris

Unicorn, scorpion, crocodile, jackal, owl, goose, sparrow

Topaz, obsidian, onyx, apache tear

White, purple, gray, sage green, black

Cold moon (December) also known as oak moon, fire and water

Completion, renewal, reflection, shadow work, transitions, peace

Dionysus, Athena, Attis, Ixchel, Neith, Wodan, Osiris, Frey

Deer, mouse, horse, bear, snowy owl, robin, rook

Blue zircon, turquoise, serpentine, lazulite, smoky quartz

Blood red, green, white, black

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2 years ago

limiting beliefs and reprogramming the mind

i remember seeing someone say

when neville came to abdullah and said he wasn't in barbados, abdullah didn't say "go work on your self concept, get rid of your limiting beliefs, reprogram your subconscious mind, and then you will be able to manifest your trip" .

he told him that he WAS in barbados and neville had the choice to either live in the end or keep on worrying. we all know that he properly started living in the end and manifested his trip.

you don't need to get rid of "limiting beliefs" or reprogram your subconscious mind at all. just decide what to manifest and know it is coming. that's the "secret".

Limiting Beliefs And Reprogramming The Mind

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3 years ago

Here’s Some Advice I Had About Sigils, A Fun And Accessible Way To Make Your Life More Magical! There

Here’s some advice I had about sigils, a fun and accessible way to make your life more magical! There was a lot I wanted to say so I hope it’s not too wordy.

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2 years ago

My Endeavours in Magick Manipulation: Tips

So this gives a few tips on both direct and indirect from what I've learned. Direct is when you manipulae a person from across the room or through direct contact. Indirect is through spellwork that is not near the person or from a larger distance.

Spells to move a person to your favour are generally best done on a Saturday (in the case of domination) or on a Monday (The Moon being a Mistress of Magicks, Illusions and Glamours).

Monday is especially prevalent in spells where you wish to manipulate someone through dreams, thoughts or during their sleep.

Indirect manipulation is best done at night for the sole reason of: the person is asleep, their spirit is in the astral and they're both (them and their body) susceptible to magical influence.

Again, from a last post, in place of making great or more specific changes, introduce circumstances that would make those changes more probable (instead of making the person scratch their right ear, make the right ear itch. Conserving enegry while still being effective).

The amount of time it takes for it to happen is generally dependent on the willpower of the victim and the willpower of the magus. A person with a strong will is not difficult to work on, you just need to be clever about it. That entire brain over brawn type thing.

The two best ways I've found of manipulating people is through projection via the eyes (essentially building the command in the mind and projecting it through the eyes) and through a little more energetic manipulation (building a tether between you and the person and working that way. Like a puppet).

The eye method is obviously best done in the vicinity of the person, and although its not necessary that they look you in the eye to establish the link, it still helps.

The other method is also suited to the direct form but can also be worked on indirectly, especially if the astral body, or an aspect of it, is summoned at the ritual.

Affecting the astral body is bound to affect the physical body.

Again, in regards to will, it can sometimes become a battle of the wills. if you keep at it, the person will eventually fall and you will be more able to manipulate them.

There is often a physical feeling to the manipulation. I've noticed that when I do it, the body of the person seems to respond in varied ways like: excessive blinking, sudden sharp headaches, rocking back and forth and brain-fog.

It is indeed like a muscle that should be worked but like an exercise, you're going to feel tired. If you're not in the right space energetically, it might not be the best thing because you might end up draining yourself more rather than affecting change.

In the case of a person who you want to be more easily enchanted, using your abilities to lull their spirit into a trance is also suitable. If they're in a trance, it's like a waking sleep and you can go on as per normal.

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3 years ago

you’re just consciousness. literally just move your awareness to what you want to experience and your consciousness will follow because reality is just a waking dream baby

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3 years ago

An essay on why we all get so fatigued trying to do witchcraft, and some ideas on what to do about it.

I've mentioned a few (several?) times that I'm trying to rework my practice to be so much lower energy.

I want to practice a lot. My path has responsibilities and demands. I want to be engaged in witchcraft daily and often.

As a part of this I have had to really sit down and untangle the question of chronic magical fatigue, which then turns in to chronic regular fatigue.

I've come to some personal realizations during this quest. Here is one of them, which I would like to suggest as a concept or hypothesis but not a literal truism:

One of the most vital and basic energy working techniques you can learn is feeling how full your "mana tanks" are.

Magical battery, odic fluid, witch-power, whatever you want to call it. It's finite for all of us (even if for some it can recharge faster than they can use it).

I have yet to see a "daily practice" or "101 energy work guide" provide a resource on how to feel how much magical energy you have, and explain how to avoid over-spending it.

I have also never seen a 101 guide ever really explain that "energy-gathering" techniques which are meant to recharge you are in and of themselves draining.

Techniques which refill your mana tanks are often the same techniques as energy raising and energy programming.

E.g.: "Pull energy up from the earth" (energy raising) "and guide it to your spine, imagining that it refills and recharges your whole body" (energy programming).

This is an actively draining technique.

The only passive energy-gathering technique I'm familiar with is just resting.

As humans, this should be common sense! Eating food requires energy (to find food, to prepare it, to consume it) and then can further tire us as our body redirects resources to digestion.

As humans, when many of us get older, we start to realize our physical limits. You know how far you can get in the day on a single bagel. And for many of us, if you've pushed past your limits, your whole day is thrown off. Refueling might make you crash and nap, not suddenly fill you up with a huge burst of energy!

Yet somehow it's pervaded the 101 energy working sphere that a certain energy-gathering exercise - which drains your magical power - will just fill you up and you can do as much magic as you want again. Warnings about not over-exerting are usually like, "take it easy! Only do 1 or 2 minutes if you can't do all 15, or even take the day off ;)" but no actual instructions about how to feel out your limits and know how to reliably stop before you over-exert.

I think that for a lot of people it would be helpful to divide their energy-working abilities into two categories: Muscle and Fuel.

Your energy working Muscle becomes stronger over time. It has its own muscle-memory, and repetition of techniques can allow you to do them faster and better over time. This Muscle behaves very much like your earthly muscles: it burns fuel to work, but it also becomes fatigued and even damaged with over-exertion. It requires regular periods of rest. Once pushed to the point of fatigue, the necessary period of rest becomes a lot longer.

Your energy working Fuel can be thought of as the little magical calories floating around your energy body system. These units of energy are refilled and recharged as we do normal things like eating, sleeping, and engaging in restorative mundane activities. This Fuel doesn't do anything on its own*. In order to utilize it, you have to engage your Muscle. The more that you work with Fuel-collecting and Muscle-using, the more efficient your energy body system becomes at accepting, processing, storing, and expelling Fuel. You can use your Muscle to collect Fuel and store it inside your energy body.

No matter how much Fuel you have, once your Muscle is fatigued, you have to rest.

I can run a marathon (no I can't, but imagine with me) and be totally exhausted. If I eat an entire pizza, will this allow me to suddenly run another marathon? No, of course not!

Now, let's imagine that nobody brought a pizza to me, but I had to walk down to the corner shops to buy one - now, my poor muscles can barely hold me up. Energy-raising exercises still require you to flex your Muscle, and if it's already fatigued, you are probably just shooting yourself in the foot.

Your Fuel and Muscle are not automatically synchronised. And I think a lot of us out here are abusing our poor Muscles, demanding they work again and again and again, not understanding that they need literal periods of rest - hours and days to be allowed to relax, heal, and regrow to a stronger state. And I think a lot of people do believe that just by Refueling, their Muscles are supposed to "magically" work as if they just came of a week of rest.

In my beliefs, this Fuel and Muscle are the same ones we use for divination, spellwork, and spirit contact :) So if you're trying to do tons of these things all the time and thinking that a grounding exercise can replace rest, you're probably literally just… running yourself into the ground.

I would like to propose that if you are having a really hard time dealing with fatigue and energy levels when trying to engage with your practice**, you should learn two techniques: A way to judge the fatigue of your Muscle, and a way to judge the fullness of your Fuel.

Either of these things can be accomplished with a pendulum on a number line (using a pendulum requires usage of your Muscle, by the by!). Bodily sensations may tip you off - I get a strained feeling in my forehead when I'm close to over-exertion. You can also induce a psychic technique, such as asking yourself where you're at and waiting to hear, see, know, feel, or understand where your Muscles and Fuel are at.

I would also like to propose that metaphysical energy gathering can actually be so tiring that it might be inappropriate for everyday use. Raising a ton of energy and infusing it into yourself or objects for later use is a full day's activity, not a quick act you can shove into a morning routine. I'd like to clarify that here I differentiate between energy-raising, and meditative techniques which provide a "grounded," present-moment focused state of mind.

If you're taking suggestions, I would recommend figuring out how much magic you can do before you achieve a state of 50% Muscular fatigue/Fuel exertion, 75%, and 90%. I believe you shouldn't push past your limits. It just hurts. It feels bad, it's exhausting, and it takes exponentially longer to rest and heal. And I think many of us will be surprised at how little magic we can accomplish when we respect our limits.

*Some people who experience a great over-abundance of personal energy do have weird stuff happening around them all the time; it's the metaphysical equivalent of a cat rubbed with a balloon and set loose in a Styrofoam factory.

**Here, I mean people who notice marked upticks in exhaustion and fatigue when working magic, not people with baseline fatigue which just carries forward.

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2 years ago

Writing Characters with Superpowers

Look! Up on the blog! It’s a novel! It’s a poem! No - it’s a new SOC Original!

Anyone who knows anything about my writing knows that the one thing I love to write, more than anything else in the whole world, is characters with superpowers. Why? I don’t know. It might be my childhood obsession with X-men: Evolution, or my subsequent obsessions with Static Shock, Batman: Beyond, the Justice League, or any other number of cartoon superhero shows. I started writing about superheroes when I was twelve years old, and I have never gone back.

Of course, writing about superheroes (and supervillains!) for over fourteen years teaches you a few things about how to write superpowers - and how not to. A few people have requested that I make a post about what to keep in mind when writing about superpowers, so here it is!

First of all, when you’re writing a character with superpowers, ignore anyone who says that if you give your character the same powers as another character you’re cheating, being uncreative, or whatever else. Listen, there’s nothing you can write that hasn’t been written, or at least there isn’t much. What counts isn’t the powers, it’s how your specific character chooses to use them! Just because you have a character who is super strong and who can fly doesn’t mean that you’re writing Superman - maybe your character isn’t quite as “Good” or as law-abiding as Superman, or maybe your character is afraid of their own strength and chooses not to use it at all, or maybe they just don’t have a lot of control. There’s a lot of wiggle room, so don’t be afraid to wiggle!

Second, when you give your character superpowers, give them limitations or drawbacks. These don’t have to be directly connected to their powers - they can be a part of your character’s personality instead. For example, I have a character who can unleash devastating amounts of telekinetic force, but she chooses to suppress her abilities instead of using them because she’s afraid that she’ll hurt someone - a fear that stems from her past, where she might have accidentally killed someone with her powers. Her fear of her own strength is a limitation on that strength and on her willingness to use it. You can also take this in the other direction and have a character who is so confident that they are helping that they end up doing more harm than good, or a character who so firmly believes that their powers are the answer to all of their problems that they completely miss the simpler solution. There are lots and lots of ways you can do this!

Another thing to think about, though, is powers-specific disadvantages. Yes, we all know the “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” trope/joke, but honestly, most superpowers have some kind of drawback associated with them, especially when they first manifest. If your character is a telepath who doesn’t have great control over their telepathy, they might hear things in other peoples’ heads that they wish they hadn’t, or they might get overwhelmed by the amount of mental “noise” around them. An empath could be overloaded by other peoples’ emotions, especially in a crowd, and a pyrokinetic always has to worry about starting accidental fires, of course. Figure out what kind of trouble your character’s powers cause for them. This can also be a list of “superpower cons” - reasons why your character might want to give up their powers.

That leads me to my next point - figure out how your character feels about their powers! Are they afraid of them? Are they awed? Do they think their powers are super cool, or are they angry that they can no longer lead a normal life? Do they think they need help learning how to deal with them?

In the same vein, figure out who your character can tell about their abilities - every hero needs someone they can trust enough to be their true selves with. It’s not good for people, psychologically, to have to wear a mask all the time, even if the mask is invisible. Your hero needs someone they can turn to in times of sorrow or doubt, whether that’s a friend or a sibling or a parent or a butler.

Your superpowered character needs to have a life outside of their superpowers, but their superpowers should affect that life, too. What I mean is that there are some things that can’t be separated from who we are as people, and superpowers fall into that category. Your psychic character won’t only have migraines when they’re wearing the mask. Your superstrong character doesn’t only have superstrength when they’re wearing tights. They still have lives and families and jobs and things that they have to do that don’t involve stopping (or starting) the latest crime wave, but their powers don’t go away. Show your readers the impact that has on them.

And, last of all, when you’re writing a superpowered character, think about what drives them. Think about what their morality is, and think about their motivation, and think about how that affects the choices they make with and without their powers. Don’t be afraid of the gray areas - sometimes that’s where the most interesting stories happen, in the struggle between what a character wants to do and what they know they have to do.

I hope this helps you out when you’re writing your superpowered characters. Good luck!

-Kyo

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