Ever gotten stung by a bee? Bitten by a spider that had some pain juice in its bitey parts? Brushed against some stinging nettle? Had a mosquito suck your lifejuice from your body and leave a present behind?
This is your time. Yes, indeed. In this post, I shall empower you to pick a leaf off the ground…. and chew it up. And spit it back out. Onto yourself.
[Disclaimer: if you get bitten by something real bad, do not pick a leaf off the ground. Pick up a phone. Call an ambulance. Go to the doctor.]
Have you ever seen
THIS WEED?
It grows in many places. It is your friend. It wants to help you. Sometimes it is big, sometimes it is small. It is called
Broadleaf Plantain
Broadleaf Plantain is edible, click the link if you don’t believe me, do your own research, it is 100% non toxic. Although it tastes real bad. Don’t eat it, unless you want to, I guess.
Grows all over. Which is good. Now getting to the spitting-on-yourself part.
Broadleaf Plantain
has healing properties! According to Wikipedia which is not a reliable source according to all my teachers, the active chemical constituents are aucubin (an anti-microbial agent), allantoin (which stimulates cellular growth and tissue regeneration), and mucilage (which reduces pain and discomfort).
I just plagiarized. Sorry Mr. Stearns.
Okay so on the not-wikipedia front, this has helped me with
a spider bite
a bee sting
a burn
blisters
stinging nettle
mosquito bites
The bee sting was today, on the bottom of my foot, and I used it and bam was walking (with only a tad bit of discomfort) within 10 minutes. 5-10 but I don’t want false advertisement
Mosquito bites? I was hanging with some family in the mountains and the mosquitoes were EVERYWHERE and everyone was getting bitten. And I was like, I know a plant
But! I wasn’t sure if it grew around there. So I looked, made no promises, found a bunch of scrawny lil buggers growing in the gravel. “you don’t need your leaves,” I said, and stole them.
Okay so. So. spitting on yourself. Let’s get there. Do you know what a poultice is? No? Okay here’s what:
it’s mushed up plants that serves a purpose. The purpose of plantain, as I said earlier, is to stop those damn bug bites from being so itchy and/or painful.
There are two ways to make a poultice: get get leaf, put on rock, add a bit of water, and mash into tiny tiny mush, or the more convenient version:
CHEW IT UP! STICK THAT MOFO IN YOUR MOUTH AND CHEW! YOU NEED NO WATER, YOU HAVE SALIVA! YOU NEED NO ROCKS, YOU HAVE MOLARS!
Then once it’s nice and ground up get that plant out of your mouth and slap it on the bug bite. It should be pretty moist (the juices are what help so much) but not so much that it’s going to drip off you. It should kinda stick. Use another leaf, or tape or something to keep it there if need be.
Does it look kinda like this? Great! Ya done did it!
With those mosquito bites I mentioned, it reduced swelling the size of a quarter in about 20 minutes! The guests loved it! You get real popular because you saved them from pain! I used the “styrofoam plate, knife, add water, try your best” method for them because saliva was a big no no and everyone wanted it real hygienic. Don’t fool yourself. Saliva itself has slight antimicrobial properties so it’s for the best, anyway.
Haven’t seen that plant? Well have you seen
Narrowleaf Plantain?
Narrowleaf Plantain has the same properties and it looks like this:
Young man, there’s no need to feel down
I said young man, chew a leaf off the ground
The next time you get bitten by one of mother nature’s beautiful creatures, I hope you feel empowered to pick a leaf off the ground and spit it back onto yourself.
That’s a fantastic question. Actually had to sit down and think about it for a minute…
I think society at large will most certainly remember this as the decade of the activist witch. That’s what most of our mainstream attention has been coming from for the last couple years, and witches along with some magic-aligned religions (Satanism especially) have been extremely visible in the political sphere. There has even been some outright magical war going on between Nazi meme magicians and witches.
But within the witch community, I think there are also other things that are remarkable. To my mind, witches have basically always been activist, we’re just getting more attention for that now because the internet makes us more visible and it’s not as dangerous to be an open magical practioner as it was, say, 50 or 100 years ago, so that’s not exceptional in my eyes.
What’s been exceptional to me is the shift that’s happened in “witching dogma,” so to speak. After decades and arguably a century or so of our information being controlled by a select few sects, or privileged people abusing their power and appropriating without consequence, there is FINALLY starting to be a reemergence of non-denominational, practical, and ethically aware witchcraft resources accessible to the masses. And it really has been a LONG time since we had that. At least if you’re looking at the West, you have to go back at least 2 or 3 centuries to find practical magical guides which don’t make a bunch of assumptions, lie about history, or shame you for not doing it how they do it. And books that old often have no real application to our lives today. I mean, how many witches in 2018 need an abundance spell for milk cows, ya know?
This generation is actually DOING something about the lack of non-Wiccan resources, the dwindling of native (in the broad sense, but also Native) practices, the misinformed histories we’ve been taught for ages (burning times myth, anyone?), and the continued dominance of the same old fucking upper class that has dogged the Western magical community since Crowley.
When someone who’s brand new and has no idea how they want to compile their practice asks me for book recommendations, I can actually suggest stuff now, which I feel comfortable is going to be applicable no matter which direction they go in, and is going to be reasonably free of shaming and outright lies. Not a ton, mind you, but even a few years ago, that wasn’t the case.
To me, that’s the really special, NEW aspect about this decade of witchcraft.
Lunar light I need some help. Free me from these thoughts So I can love myself. Heal me from the doubts I gained at age eleven. I wish to accept all of me Even my faults and imperfections.
Me: X fashion item wasn’t inherently oppressive, though like anything else it could be made so by specific circumstances, and it annoys me that modern pop culture says it was.
TERF: oh my GOD how can you SAY that everyone knows fashion in the bad old days was UNIVERSALLY EVIL because [abysmally-researched, ahistorical yet depressingly popular assertions about the lives of 19th-century women]
I mostly just ignore them. They can say what they want; doesn’t change the fact that I can dance for two hours in a corset and hoops without getting unduly exhausted, and many women back then could, too. My main takeaway from all this is that TERFs are as bad at historical nuance as they are at respecting trans people.
(Also they seem to hate the concept of femininity to like…a weird degree. I get being critical of the way society makes it an expectation for women and the social pressures to perform it, and individual women not liking it for themselves, but it’s not the spawn of Satan, people.)
I’m glad you say that, as I do find it’s hard to talk about women fashion as I will probably never experience it firsthand. But from what I know through primary sources and fellow living historians, that stays were not supposed to constricting but supporting.
My “favorite” part of growing up/being poor is when you have some disposable income, even like 10 or 20 bucks, and deciding to splurge on yourself or even doing something unnecessary outside of base survival (Ie: Instead of getting a lot of cheap processed food “splurging” on a night out like bowling or going out to eat)
and then the moment it’s over or right before you click checkout, you get hit with this deep feeling of guilt and shame as you realize what that money could have gone towards. Or when later, always inevitably, you are in desperate need of money you can recall every “wasted” cent you spent.
It’s really disgusting that while I feel guilt over buying something as simple as a face mask, someone else can lose millions in the stock without even noticing.
it really is disgusting that things like bill gates not knowing the price of bread is endearing while me for once in my life placing the quality of life over survival is seen as living outside of my means. That living within your means is just code for just existing as a tool to make others money.
Why should you continue going after your dreams? Because seeing the look on the faces of the people who said you couldn’t… will be priceless.
i hate when ur in public somewhere and something goes mildly wrong/something inconvenient happens and the nearest baby boomer tries to get you to complain with them
what does this even mean
EXAMPLE:
you are in line at mcdonalds. its really busy and the employees are overwhelmed. it’s taking a long time. you are minding your own business. the old man in line next to you says to you, “boy, this is absolutely ridiculous, isn’t it? these kids working just dont know what they’re doing. Or they just dont care…” you awkwardly nod and take a step to the side
This has probably been said a million times before but: Defend the employees.
Really, you’re never going to see Karen from Stubenville again in your life, so side-eye her real good and say:
“It’s not thier fault they’re understaffed. Having worked retail before, they’d love to have another three or five people back there helping out. But since the whole ‘downsizing’ craze of the ninties, companies try to get as much out of thier employees as possible without regard for thier welfare, or the effect on service. You should really get on McD’s website and complain about the chronic understaffing and tell them you’re willing to pay more elsewhere for better service. They LISTEN to people like you.”
People love to complain, especially entitled people. The good news is that they’re easily redirected with mild praise and a shiny new target. Butter the elders and aim them at the bourgoise.
“if somebody becomes panicked when you accuse them of lying theyre obviously not telling the truth” shut up ugly im a survivor who got punished for shit i never did all the time of fucking course im gonna panic when im blamed for something i didnt do
since this post is actually getting attention rn i really want to emphasize this-
many of the “tells” of lying are traits commonly found in abuse survivors and mentally ill/disabled people.
stuttering, averting eye contact, panicking, raising your volume, fidgeting, and other similar traits are actions performed commonly by these groups, especially in situations of heavy stress- such as being accused of doing something we didnt do, especially if we are afraid of being punished for doing nothing.
im honestly begging people to think critically when accusing somebody of lying for small traits like these.
Also Mcgonagall: that wand needs replacing, Weasley
Whoa there!
Shitpost or not, we do not come after Professor McGonagall on this planet.
It was the best thing a teacher could do in either situation.
You’ve got an abused boy who has never had anything other than the spiders in his cupboard, he is grasping at every new, amazing, thing he finds because it’s all so wonderful? You give him a new, amazing, thing.
You have a boy who grew up in a household where family comes first, where humbleness is key, where taking handouts is seen as embarrassing? You remind that boy that he needs to find a way to replace his broken school supplies and then you sit back and do nothing because you know the family will sort itself out, it always does, and to interfere would be an insult on that perseverance and the family as a whole.
Harry was ecstatic to receive the broom. Ron would have been mortified if his teacher gave him a wand (and so would the rest of the Weasleys).
That’s how you teach.
Not just by knowing which of your kids needs something but by knowing which of your kids will accept something when you give it to them.
WE DO NOT COME AFTER PROFESSOR MCGONAGALL ON THIS PLANET.
Spitfire Alice A Gra 
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