Just Cleaned My Bedroom And Kitchen To Take Photos For A Subletter & Thought I’d Post ‘em Here Because

do you ever want to be a “forest mermaid” who lives in the river by waterfalls and clear waters and sleeps in the caves of springs

death witch self-care tips 🖤

- keeping obsidian, a small skull amulet, a pendulum, or smokey quartz with you to squeeze when a confidence boost is needed 

- gently reminding yourself to really live in the moment, as our time here is so short 

- burning a black candle when you feel the need to “power up” your energies

- beginning each day with a positive reminder: “i shall continue to make my strongest mark on the world, to the best of my abilities, during my period on this Earth" 

 - taking a “spirit bath” filled with salt + a black bath bomb, cleansing yourself of negative energies

Jewelry Blessings

Alright, so my relationship with my patron gods is pretty fluid- I typically burn a few things as an offering to the god that I need strength from most with a sigil that represents them. To my fellow broke bitch witches, your god knows you’re working with what you’ve got. Don’t sweat it.

Aphrodite, for example-

I mix vanilla extract and cinnamon and throw in a few rose petals, mix it all together, and throw in a ring and my earrings. I burn the sigil and let the ashes fall into the mix, say my prayer, and thank her for her time and patience.

I treat this as a glamour of sorts, and I notice my confidence is always boosted over the next few days when I wear this jewelry (after rinsing it).

Here’s the way I’ve done my worships, as someone who can’t risk having altars and a lot of wiccan material in my home-

Ares- red fabric, matches, pepper

Athena- olive leaves (or oil, but that shit is FLAMMABLE) and citrus peel (orange, tangerine, lemon, etc. )

Dionysus- dried grape peels/raisins, bread crumbs/crusts

Poseidon- salt, shells*, ginger

*just a note: in my offerings, some things don’t actually burn down to ash. Some things are just there as spiritual offerings. I typically have my offering stash in a tall bowl of some kind and toss in my burning sigil, and whatever burns, burns. Always be prepared for everything to catch fire, though.

I hate spiders so fuckibg much but why do I think he’s cute.

Industrial designer Andrew Kim has created a new Coke bottle concept that could significantly change the sodamaker’s footprint. For every 4 bottles currently shipped, the square bottle design could ship 6. This means every shipping container could hold 4,000 more bottles of Coke. Kim also considered that Americans use 2 million plastic bottles every 5 minutes, so he made the bottle itself green. It is  100% plant based, made entirely from sugar cane byproducts. Which is amusing since Coke hasn’t been made from sugar since 1985 (via Jerry James Stone)

STEM DARK ACADEMIA

I'm a little upset at the lack of stem in dark academia, so here's my list of aesthetic science things, STEM ACADEMIA (dark edition)

• relating a little too much to the mad scientist trope (and telling everyone "no, no I would never do anything like that, I just want to help people" but like imagine if we could resurrect people)

• rereading Frankenstein every year, specifically in the month of october

• "why is STEAM a thing?? Art? who that?"

• minoring in classics because you still like mythology and history and reading

• finding the science in art (why things make you feel a certain way, how they do that, what effect they've had on health and medicine) and finding the art in science (isn't it incredible that dna knows how to tell plant cells to break down chlorophyll and this makes the gorgeous fall colors)

• reading every book that mentions at all a scientist or has a character who is interested in stem (they are few and far between)

• enjoying the structure of math and engineering but thriving off the chaos that is science

• where are the mad scientist women? I need this

• people being surprised when you tell them you're majoring in something "really science-y" after being an absolute bookworm and musician all throughout your childhood and having to defend what your heart desires (no? just me?)

• CARDIGANS are peak stem culture

• "why aren't you a doctor? why aren't you going to med school? why are you doing insert reasonable science degree here and not becoming a doctor? don't you want to help people?"

• wanting to go into genetics but wanting to go into botany but wanting to go into theoretical physics but wanting to go into astronomy but wanting to go into geology but wanting to go into chemical engineering but wanting to go into astrophysics but wanting to go into wildlife biology

• for some reason having a huge obsession with morals, ethics, and philosophy

• watching true crime just for the forensic bits

• watching mythbusters as a kid

• LISTENING TO TCHAIKOVSKY, BEETHOVEN, BACH, AND MOZART those are the stem classical musicians change my mind

• doing all your homework and frying your brain then getting to read a simple book that really refreshes you

• you had the astronomy and archaeology obsession as a kid

• listening to synth wave instrumentals

• MITOCHONDRIA IS THE POWERHOUSE OF THE CELL

• when people tell you that one cool science fact they learned and you try your hardest to encourage them but girl that wasn't even close to being correct

• ScienceDirect and PubMed are your go-to databases

• having lots of intrusive, existential thoughts that sometimes suffocate you, because you know better than most how much dark dna there is or how small we really are in the universe or knowing how much math explains and how little room there is for free will or thinking about how we are made up of mostly four types of atoms

• reading science or math textbooks for fun

• reading the fountainhead by ayn rand when you were way too young and didn't understand it but now parts of it emerge from the depths of your memory and you are struck by the power

• watching marvel and x-men and jurassic park just because

• reading sci-fi because it's the closest thing to real science in literature

• knowing a little too much about radiation poisoning and how to really dissolve a body in chemicals

• wearing white to make up for how little your professors make you wear lab coats

(sorry, I don't know that much about technology and I'm a literal grandpa when it comes to using it myself)

straight-a semester 🧠✏️🎒💗

Mystic American West Moodboard

Driving through forgotten highways, the old magic of the land starts to creep down your spine…

The stunning rise of cremation reveals America’s changing idea of death

Cremation is now more popular in the United States than a traditional casket burial, and twice as common as it was two decades ago. What does that say about us?

Dude, some of the people quoted in this article are being real dicks about this!

“‘Some people want it over and done with. You wonder if they’ll come to regret that later,’ Moylan says of cremation. ‘With cremation families, a lot of them don’t want to know what we do or how we do it or don’t care to know what you can do with a cremated body. This generation just doesn’t want to do the three-day-long funeral home thing.’”

“‘People want the body disappeared, pretty much. I think it reminds us of what we lost.’ In the United States, Lynch notes, ‘this is the first generation of our species that tries to deal with death without dealing with the dead.’”

I agree with Caitlin Doughty:

“Caitlin Doughty, a mortician, advocate and author, says funeral directors haven’t done enough to address contemporary Americans’ wishes.

“‘The cremation rates are telling us something. They’re screaming at us that people are not happy with what is available,’ she says. ‘Cremation is more a rejection of the traditional funeral industry than an acceptance of cremation.’ She craves innovation and meaning: ‘We need safe, beautiful ways to engage with death.’”

Embalming and fancy coffins and overpriced services are what I hear people mentioning when they talk about not wanting to be buried. I personally don’t want to pay a bunch of money to have my body preserved beyond death and I don’t think that doing so honors death. I think it denies that death has happened. 

This ridiculous and somewhat insulting article is a gift link. Everyone can access and read in full.