So I saw thisYoutube video teaching you how to make an origami house box and I thought to myself ‘how can I use this in my craft?’. I love origami and I’ve been using it in my own practice for a few years now. From origami boxes filled with witchy goodness to origami bunnies decorating my altar (to help bring me lucky of course). So of course I came up with a home protection spell. And because I’m someone who never seems to have the supplies I need to do what I want I also included some alternatives and some extra little tips. Enjoy
What you’ll need:
An origami house box in whatever color you associate with protection, for me that is black.
Whole Cloves (but you could also use cinnamon or holly instead) for protection.
Dried Orange Peels (you could also use pine instead) for blessings.
After you’ve made your origami house box (be sure to really envision your intention and main goal while making this box) put it aside for now.
Grab your dried orange peels (be sure they are dried) and cloves and begin poking the cloves into the orange peels, again while envision and really focusing on your intention. You could even say a mantra while doing this.
[Alternatives: If you’re using cinnamon & orange peels just sprinkle the cinnamon onto the orange peels. If you’re using pine with any of the other choices just simply mix them all together. ie. pine and holly or pine and cinnamon or pine and cloves.]
Place your orange peels (or mixture) into the box, close it and place somewhere that you’ll see it everyday. You’re altar or by you’re front door would be a great idea.
Extra Tip: If you live in a home on wheels (tiny home or RV) and you’re traveling a lot place a tigers eye in your box for extra protection while traveling. If you don’t live in a home on wheels you could add a clear quartz.
It’s time to bring an end to the Rape Anthem Masquerading As Christmas Carol
Hi there! Former English nerd/teacher here. Also a big fan of jazz of the 30s and 40s.
So. Here’s the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying today’s worldview to the song, yes, you’re right, it absolutely *sounds* like a rape anthem.
BUT! Let’s look closer!
“Hey what’s in this drink” was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.
See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. In the 1940’s, that’s the kind of thing Good Girls aren’t supposed to do — and she wants people to think she’s a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she’s really concerned about: “the neighbors might think,” “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious,” “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow.” But she’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. That’s the joke. That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.
Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I’m staying because I want to.” (That’s the main theme of the man’s lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs available, he simply insisted because he was concerned about my safety in such awful weather, it was perfectly innocent and definitely not about sex at all!) In this particular case, he’s pretty clearly right, because the woman has a voice, and she’s using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but can’t say so. She states explicitly that she’s resisting because she’s supposed to, not because she wants to: “I ought to say no no no…” She states explicitly that she’s just putting up a token resistance so she’ll be able to claim later that she did what’s expected of a decent woman in this situation: “at least I’m gonna say that I tried.” And at the end of the song they’re singing together, in harmony, because they’re both on the same page and they have been all along.
So it’s not actually a song about rape – in fact it’s a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But it’s also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. It’s a song about a society where women aren’t allowed to say yes…which happens to mean it’s also a society where women don’t have a clear and unambiguous way to say no.
remember loves: context is everything. and personal opinion matters. If you still find this song to be a problem, that’s fine. But please don’t make it into something it’s not because it’s been stripped of cultural context.
This is actually really interesting. I’ve never known a lot of the background to this song.
If you’re like me and you love Greek Mythology but struggle with the whole actually sitting down and making it through the monster that is the Epic Poetry of Ancient Greece; I got links for ya.
The first is a playlist from a channel I personally adore, they put out all kinds of interesting and informative content on a variety of subjects; but we’re here for the Epic Poetry.
The playlist contains their videos on The Illiad, The Odyssey, The Aenied and Iphigenia.
The second link is to their video on The Oresteia.
They also cover a bunch of different myths both Greek and otherwise if you’re inclined to check out more of their content.
My instagram is dirt_vvitch, that’s pretty much the only other social media I actively use. Feel free to follow me as long as you DM me that it’s you so I don’t block lol
fair--y backup 