Poeaxtry's Prism

Spell. Stone. & Sparks that Ignite Change

Category: Poeaxtry’s Open Shelf

Curated collection of spontaneous essays, creative explorations, prompt responses, political takes, minority highlights, cultural reflectons, spirituality, indie and small business shout-outs, and more.

  • Now Available by Subscription Only:

    Now Available by Subscription Only:

    Best For:

    Readers who enjoy Psychological Thrillers, Individuals sick of owning nothing and pretending to be happy about it, and people looking for independent authors.

    The Essence:

    Read Time: ⏰ 5-6 minutes | Weight: 🥊crushing & suffocating| Mood: 🚫exhausted & clinical|

    The Scars of Fitting In:

    This piece is the fifth of the ten piece collection of short stories, that I am currently working on. I will continue to share these periodically across my platforms, including WordPress, Substack, Wattpad, and other publishing spaces.

    Each story in this series stands alone, but together they form a broader examination of the systems that shape us. 

    These works are released intentionally over time, allowing space for reflection rather than consumption. 

    This series blends literary fiction with social commentary and psychologically thrilling concepts. Here I spend time focusing on lived experience, psychological impact, and the long shadow of making decisions for others . New entries will be published as they are completed.

    Now Available by Subscription Only:

    The first thing I learned about being poor was how to live without all my needs being met. A long time before I became an adult and I truly understood The Health App I understood to some degree that money bought health and happiness.

    I didn’t go without all feelings and body functions though, the app would never allow that. The government has regulations about minimum human functionality, and the companies that own our bodies have lawyers to make sure those regulations are followed to the “T”.

    There are baseline services everyone receives, provided we keep our accounts in good standing. A heartbeat and enough blood pressure to keep us upright. Enough brain activity to prove we are still customers worth billing.

    Everything else is based on a subscription. I check mine every morning before getting out of bed, like clockwork. I also check it every night before I go to sleep, just incase.

    The app is called Human+, though most people I know call it simply “The Body App.” It is connected to an implant behind all citizens ears, inserting of the device is done by doctors at each child’s birth, and each device contains a different serial number.

    Your device is with you through every stage of your life. It remains under your parent’s control and linked to their bank accounts until your eighteenth birthday. This is how we monitor our health, manage our biological needs, and pay for the privilege of remaining functional.

    The interface inside Health+ is clean and pleasant, with rounded buttons, soft colors, and little green checkmarks beside every service you currently have.

    Today I open my app clicked the button for the dashboard showing my own body.

    • HEART FUNCTION: ESSENTIAL ✅
    • RESPIRATION: ESSENTIAL ✅
    • DIGESTION: BASIC ✅
    • BLADDER CONTROL: PAUSED ❔
    • BOWEL REGULATION: PAUSED ❔
    • BLOOD SUGAR MANAGEMENT: BASIC ✅
    • PAIN REGULATION: EXPIRED 🚫
    • SLEEP QUALITY: EXPIRED 🚫
    • TEMPERATURE REGULATION: ESSENTIAL ✅
    • EMOTIONAL STABILITY: TRIAL PERIOD ENDED 🚫

    A banner at the top congratulates me on maintaining my Essential Human package for thirty-seven consecutive days.

    I am proud of that. Thirty-seven days without a missed payment, a late fee, or a forced downgrade. Thirty-seven days of keeping myself alive without borrowing funds from my future-self.

    My paycheck is due to hit my account on Friday, but rent comes out the following Monday. There is also the electric bill that is already overdue, and the interest on my deceased mother’s medical debt has grown faster than I can seem to pay it down.

    I have learned overtime to organize my life around billing cycles instead of days of the week. A good week is always one in which nothing important expires.

    I plan to upgrade my heart rate subscription on payday because the Essential package seems to maintain only the minimum rate I require to keep moving, but it does not keep me feeling well.

    The premium tier however, will adjust my heart rate to allow for fun physical exertion, stress, and more laborious work activities. Without it, climbing the stairs to my apartment too frequently makes me dizzy, and walking to work feels like running a race with a hand pressed against my chest.

    The upgrade cost more than my groceries for three days. I decided I need to make the purchase anyway.

    The app celebrates with a brief animation of a pulsing red heart, and my body responds almost immediately. The pressure in my chest eases, my heartbeat settles into a comfortable rhythm, and the gray haze that has been following me all month began to lift.

    I stand in my kitchen and watch my bank account balance decrease, in real time. I then open the grocery delivery app and removed the eggs.

    Eggs are a luxury now. So is fresh fruit, meat, as well as anything that comes in a package labeled organic.

    I opted to buy the cheapest calories available and plan to make them last. After all my digestion subscription can handle the food, provided I do not eat too much at once. The Basic tier processes ordinary meals at a reduced efficiency, which means bloating, cramps, and an unpredictable amount of time spent waiting for my stomach to finish doing its job.

    The Full Digestive Care package promises optimal nutrient absorption, gut motility regulation, microbiome support, and relief from the humiliating biological inconveniences of eating. It also promises fewer bathroom emergencies, although that does require a separate subscription.

    The irony of paying separately to process food and remove it from my body had stopped being funny years ago. There are tiers for everything.

    The bladder package offers three plans: Basic Release, Scheduled Relief, and Total Control. Basic Release allows the bladder to empty, but it does not guarantee convenient timing or warning. Scheduled Relief provides notifications and a limited number of controlled bathroom visits. Total Control maintains continence, suppressed urgency, and allows customers to delay elimination for several hours.

    The bowel package is similar, with additional fees for predictable timing and odor control.

    One time I could splurge and I paid for Scheduled Relief. I actually worked an entire shift without worrying about whether the nearest restroom was available. I even walked home from work multiple times without the familiar dread of checking my clothes before stepping out of the building. I got to actually feel somewhat normal for two weeks.

    Like I said, I felt almost ordinary, until the electric company sent its final notice. I promptly canceled my subscription for scheduled relief.

    My first accident, after the cancellation happened at work, halfway through a twelve-hour shift. My body sent the usual notification, a small yellow warning in the corner of my vision, thanks to those handy devices. However, I had no control over how quickly the need to go escalated. I was helping someone else with their toileting needs, when the notification turned red. By the time I got away, it was too late.

    The health app recorded the incident as a service limitation. While I spent the remainder of the shift trying not to look at anyone directly in their eyes. Thankfully, I always have “just incase” clothes in my work bag, so I at least didn’t have to wear my shame on my clothes all day long.

    There was a protection plan for situations like mine, an add-on called Dignity Assurance. It covered emergency continence support and provided temporary upgrades during qualifying circumstances. The monthly fee was almost as much as my phone bill.

    I had calculated the cost several times, hoping the numbers might eventually become kinder.They never did at best the comparison stayed the same.

    However, like everything else it seems the cost to each subscription and tier slowly rises. When I check my paystub, it seems those are the only numbers that increasingly get lower.

    Blood sugar management is another expense a user cannot eliminate completely. The Essential package keeps my glucose within the narrow range required for survival, but it does not promise a stable range.

    The Basic tier monitors fluctuations and intervenes only when your blood sugar crosses certain thresholds. The Premium tier anticipates those changes, adjusts insulin delivery when applicable, regulates glucose release, and protects against dangerous swings caused by food, exercise, or stress.

    I, of course couldn’t afford the Premium tier. I don’t know anyone personally or through employment even who can afford it.

    Some mornings, I wake up with my hands trembling and my thoughts moving too quickly to follow. On these morning the health app typically displays a yellow warning that when toggled suggests a balanced breakfast, followed by a link to its preferred nutrition partners.

    The recommended meals cost more than I can afford to spend on food in a day. I always dismiss the suggestions, and chew my way through a cheap carbohydrate bar. Then I wait for my blood sugar to settle.

    Sometimes it does; Sometimes the warning remains. Yet, the app never forgets to remind me that I can always upgrade.

    There are God DAMNED… excuse me, I am so sorry.

    There are subscriptions for breathing efficiency, lung filtration, immune response, kidney function, liver detoxification, circulation, clotting, hormone regulation, fertility, sexual response, muscle recovery, bone density, joint lubrication, skin repair, hair growth, nail growth, and the production of tears.

    There are packages for taste, smell, hearing, sight, balance, and touch.

    Customers can pay to sharpen their vision, extend their hearing range, increase their pain tolerance, or even improve their sense of taste.

    Pain tolerance is particularly expensive.

    The Essential tier allows pain signals that are necessary to identify immediate threats, but the advanced package filters chronic pain, inflammation, and unnecessary discomfort. It is marketed as a productivity enhancement. The advertisements show people smiling through workouts, working late without distraction, and enjoying their weekends without the burden of aching joints.

    I had to cancel mine six months ago.

    Now every strained muscle, every headache, every sore tooth announces itself with the insistence of an unpaid debt. I have became very good at ignoring pain, which is not the same as being free of it. I know the difference between a harmless ache and a dangerous one, mostly because I learned how to search symptoms before the app’s free diagnostic window closed.

    Even sleep was by tiers.

    The Basic package provides unconsciousness, though not necessarily equal to a good night’s rest. Even dream management cost extra, and deep sleep optimization cost more than your average citizen can spend.

    Memory consolidation, circadian adjustment, and nightmare suppression are considered premium services. There is an entire tier devoted to reducing the number of hours required to feel rested, advertising if this is geared towards shift workers, students, and people who have more obligations than time.

    I bought the overnight recovery package once during a particularly difficult month. For seven days, I woke up feeling as though I had slept for an entire weekend. My concentration improved, my temper softened, and I stopped making careless mistakes at work.

    Right when I got used to it the introductory rate expired. I of course had no choice but to go back to sleeping poorly. The app calls these downgrades a return to standard service.

    It has a subscription for emotions, can you believe it? Emotional Stability adjusts the intensity of fear, sadness, anger, and anxiety. Social Comfort makes crowds more manageable. Confidence Enhancement reduces self-consciousness. Grief Management softens painful memories without erasing them. There are plans for motivation, focus, patience, and the ability to feel satisfied with what one had.

    I had kept the free trial of Emotional Stability for as long as possible. The trial ended on a Tuesday, and my world has not felt the same since.

    On Wednesday, the world felt louder. My thoughts became harder to organize, and small inconveniences called for my sharp reactions. Every text seemed urgent; all my mistakes felt permanent. I spent more time worrying about the future and less time doing anything that might improve it.

    The app offers a discounted annual subscription. I cannot even afford the monthly one.

    I am beginning to understand that poverty is not simply the absence of things. It is the constant loss of the systems that make life manageable. It is the price of concentrating, the price of sleeping, the price of remaining dry on the way to work, the price of eating without pain, and the price of keeping a heartbeat strong enough to climb the stairs home.

    The wealthy buy complete bodies.

    Their heart rates adjust to their workouts. Their digestion processes expensive meals efficiently. Their immune systems receive early updates when new pathogens appear. Their sleep is optimized, their hormones are balanced, their moods regulate, and their reflexes remain sharp. They can pay to suppress nausea during travel, prevent motion sickness, accelerate wound healing, regulate sweat, and eliminate the smell of perspiration.

    Some people even pay for enhanced memory, improved reaction times, and a heightened capacity for pleasure. Others buy additional hours of wakefulness and recovery packages that make exhaustion a problem only for people who can’t afford the solution.

    Their children grow up believing a body is something that always works. Mine is something I have to maintain.

    Every month, I rank my needs according to urgency. I place my survival first, employability second, and dignity somewhere way at the end. This all depends on how much money remains in my account. I cancel the services I can tolerate living without and renew only those whose absence threatens my ability to earn the money I needed to restore them.

    The system has a name for this in the app it is called Personal Optimization. My mother always called it being broke. She died owing the company money.

    Her final account contained years of deferred payments, emergency service charges, and interest accrued during a prolonged illness. Even after her death, the balance still remains attached to her estate.

    I inherited what she owed before I inherited anything she owned. The company offered a compassionate repayment plan, provided I maintained an active Human+ account and enrolled in automatic deductions.

    I accepted because the alternative was losing my own coverage, which we all know by nowmeans losing my own life.

    Sometimes I explore the idea of stopping my payments altogether. The app had a page explaining the consequences in friendly language. Certain premium functions would be suspended first; Secondary services would follow. Essential functions would remain active according to the minimum standards established by law, although the company reserved the right to charge administrative fees and recovery costs.

    There was no explanation of what happened when a person could not afford the minimum. But There was only a button to review payment options.

    On Friday, my paycheck arrived.

    I paid rent, electricity, and the minimum installment on my mother’s debt. I also refilled the small bottle of pain medication I kept for emergencies. Then I opened Human+ and reviewed the subscriptions available for renewal.

    My heart rate package was due in four days and digestion would renew in six. My blood sugar management was already scheduled for automatic payment. The sleep package was expired, and the emotional stability offer had dropped to its standard price.

    At the bottom of the screen, beneath the services I used every day, was a feature I probably won’t ever be able to afford.

    The Full Sensory Access.

    The package promised the restoration of every available sensation at its highest supported level. It included enhanced taste, refined touch, optimized hearing, and a complete range of emotional responses. The demonstration video showed a woman standing in a field, her face lifted toward the sun, experiencing the warmth of the light, the movement of the wind, the scent of flowers, and the overwhelming pleasure of being alive.

    I watched it twice, closed the page, and I tried not to throw my government provided cellphone.

    I have enough money to renew my heart rate subscription or buy the food I needed for the following week. I could not do both without missing another payment. My account offered a short-term credit advance with interest, but accepting it would add another debt to the balance I was already struggling to reduce.

    I chose my heart.

    The purchase completed with a soft chime and the animated heart popped-up and pumped proudly on the app screen. My chest settled into its familiar rhythm, and the app confirmed that my cardiovascular service would remain active through the next billing cycle.

    I put the phone down and sat down to separate my last bit of food into rations.

    I ate my food for today with utter displeasure, the food was cheap, bland, and difficult to digest. My stomach cramped as the Basic package began processing it. The app registered my symptoms, displayed a suggestion to upgrade, and added another notification to my account.

    I dismissed it.

    Outside, the evening light faded over the buildings. Some people passed beneath my window, moving with more ease than those around here. Somewhere, someone was crying.

    I remain still until the pain in my stomach eases.

    I open the app one final time and checked the date of my next paycheck.

    Fourteen days.

    My heart was paid for. My blood sugar was managed. I could breathe, think, see, and move, provided I didn’t ask too much of any of those functions. My body was still mine in the legal sense, though the company owned the infrastructure that made it work.

    I lay down on my mattress and tried to sleep without the sleep package.

    Tomorrow, I will wake up and check my subscriptions again. I will decide which part of being human I can afford to keep.

    If I am careful, if nothing goes wrong, if my body does not demand anything beyond the services I have purchased, I might make it through another month.

    The app would call that success. I have begun to call it survival. Though, I am not sure how much longer I will be able to keep on surviving.

    Others in This Series:

    1.)Anon Aaron.

    2.) Moist. Crunchy. Purple.

    3.) There’s Something Amiss in the Clinic.

    4..) The Shelf Life of Productive Individuals.

  • Green Smoke & Stones: The Metaphysics of Cannabis Leaves

    Green Smoke & Stones: The Metaphysics of Cannabis Leaves

    Best For:

    Individuals practicing witchcraft who participate in Cannabis Culture, beginner witches looking to connect their leisure and spiritual rituals, and readers interested in the process of making their altar actually theirs.

    The Essence:

    Read Time: 🕰️ 7-9 mins| Weight: 🍃 moderate | Mood: 🔮 reflective & grounded|

    The Vault:

    • Cannabis & the Witches Altar
    • Vision, Clarity, & Altered Perception
    • Inner Peace, Stillness, & the Pause
    • Abundance, Growth, & Sustenance
    • Herbalism & Folk Healing
    • The Eclectic Altar

    The Method to the Madness:

    On top of the Witches Altar:

    There is a quiet almost, sacred rhythm to working with your hands… snip by snip, trimming away the sugar leaves where buds take shape. It is an immersive, tactile ritual all its own: the sticky resin on your fingers, the earthy, herbal aroma hanging heavy in the air, and the slow, deliberate focus required to get the job done.

    In those quiet moments of harvest, it’s natural to pause for a moment or two while you look at a handful of discarded fan leaves or delicate sugar trim. This is when I start to feel a spark of connection.

    Instead of tossing them away, you might find yourself setting a few aside so later you can slip them into a small cup to rest upon your altar. This goes far beyond the usual simple nod to the earth element. When I bring cannabis leaves onto my altar I do so with the intention of introducing a rich tapestry of folk tradition, metaphysical symbolism, and personal resonance to my spiritual space.

    Whether your altar is a dedicated space for ritual, a surface where you honor something, a corner for quiet reflection, or a working surface for your craft, integrating these leaves can help bridge the gap between everyday life and sacred intention. Here is a deeper look into what cannabis leaves can represent when placed upon your altar, and how they fit into the broader, eclectic tapestry of witchcraft.

    You do not have to check parts of yourself at the door when making your altar.

    A view of my altar from the side shows the purple backdrop tapestry, deer antlers, found stones, and other items tied to nature.

    Vision, Clarity, & Altered Perception:

    Humanity’s ancient relationship with cannabis at its core has always been intertwined with consciousness-shifting. Long before modern cultivation, herbalists and folk practitioners recognized plants that alter perception as tools for looking beyond the veil of ordinary reality.

    When you place cannabis leaves on your altar, they act as a physical anchor for your Third Eye and intuition. Cannabis represents the deliberate quieting of external static. When we consume cannabis most of us are trying to slow the frantic pace of daily thoughts, calm our anxieties, or mute social expectations in order to make space for deeper insight.

    Metaphysically, this plant honors shadow work, meditation, and the courage to perceive things as they truly are rather than how society presents them. Cannabis is a symbol of inner vision: a reminder that sometimes we have to step outside our standard waking consciousness to solve a problem or truly understand our own emotional landscape.

    Inner Peace, Stillness, & the Pause:

    In the chaos of modern life finding a moment to simply stop is an act of radical self-preservation. In modern magic, the cannabis plant is tied to nervous system regulation, unwinding, and rest.

    Placing the leaves on your altar functions as a physical invocation of the pause. They remind you of the sacredness of rest, the unbending truth that burnout is not a badge of honor and that stillness is where healing happens. Placing them on your sacred space acts as a threshold marker: a boundary between the heavy, exhausting labor of the outside world and the sanctuary of your personal practice.

    Cannabis leaves can also symbolize permission to exhale, to drop your shoulders, and to let go of the day’s heavy emotional and physical burdens before entering a space of spirituality or intention.

    Abundance, Growth, & Sustenance:

    Plants do not grow by accident. Some require rich soil, balanced water, specific sunlight metrics, and even temperature control. Since cannabis is such a vigorous, resilient, and fast-growing plant, it carries a potent natural association with agricultural magic, vitality, and sustenance.

    On your altar, these vibrant green leaves are a tribute to life force energy and uninhibited natural growth. It honors the harvest, not just the physical yield of a successful grow season, but also the metaphorical harvests in your own life.

    They remind you to acknowledge that what you water, tend to, and invest your care into will eventually flourish. While also helping to show us nature’s immense generosity, the cycles of seed-to-flower, and the sustaining power of working alongside the earth to produce something tangible with your own hands.

    Herbalism & Folk Healing:

    Long before cannabis became a subject of modern political debate or a booming commercial industry, this plant was sometimes viewed through the lens of traditional herbalism. Often seen as a potent, green helper utilized for aches, inflammation, restorative sleep, and easing the body’s tensions.

    Placing the leaves on your altar can also act to honors the long, unbroken lineage of the green apothecary. It bridges the gap between pragmatic folk medicine and spiritual reverence, acknowledging that the body and the spirit are not separate entities.

    Healing is holistic. By placing these leaves among your sacred tools, you are tipping your hat to the ancient herbalists who looked to the hedgerows, fields, and gardens for medicine. It represents wholeness, bodily comfort, and the sacred right to seek relief, restoration, and physical ease.

    A scruffy-bearded man in a grey backwards hat, black sunglasses, and a tie-dyed hoodie smokes a rolled cannabis cigarette.

    Witchcraft should feel accessible, grounded, and deeply personal you don’t need to run out and buy every premade kit or follow a set of strict ancient rules… unless you want to.

    The Eclectic Altar: Heart-Shaped Rocks, Antlers, & Other Objects:

    If you look closely at an eclectic witch’s altar, you rarely find a uniform, mass-produced aesthetic. Instead, you find a living museum of a life lived outdoors: smooth heart-shaped river stones, shed deer antlers found on a morning hike, textured seashells collected from travels, raw crystals pulled from the earth, bundles of dried tobacco, and, yes, a bowl of crisp, aromatic marijuana leaves.

    To the outsider, it might look like a random assortment of nature’s oddities. But to the practitioner, it makes absolute, intuitive sense.

    Eclectic witchcraft is built on the philosophy of personal resonance and authentic connection. Your altar is not a rigid historical reenactment; it is an extension of your own mind, your environment, and your daily walk through the world.

    Every item should tell a story.

    • The heart-shaped rock carries the patient, enduring energy of water and time, representing emotional grounding and love.
    • The antlers honors the cycle of shedding and renewal, connecting us to forest spirits and wild fauna.
    • The seashells links us back to the primordial waters of the earth, carrying tides of emotion and memory.
    • The tobacco and marijuana leaves honor the sacred relationship between humans and traditional plants, or offerings of respect, altered states, and botanical kinship.

    When you bring these elements together, you are curating a microcosm of the natural world right in your own space. You aren’t forcing dogma onto your sacred space; you are listening to what calls to you during your walks through the woods, your time in the garden, or your hours working in the garage.

    Sacred & Spiritual Space:

    An altar should be a mirror of your soul and your journey. Adding the leaves from your trimmings to a simple bowl isn’t just about decoration… it is an intentional act of honoring your labor, your connection to the plant kingdom, and the quiet moments of peace found in your craft.

    When you weave together the symbolism of vision and altered perception, the sacred necessity of the pause, the deep roots of agricultural abundance, and the ancient traditions of folk healing, those simple leaves become powerful allies on your sacred table.

    Alongside your stones, antlers, shells, and crystals, they remind you that the sacred is not locked away in distant temples. It is right here in the soil, in the plants we tend, in the work of our hands, and in the wild, beautiful, eclectic life we choose to build.

    A crinoid fossil plate collected from a creek bed for placing on an Altar.

    Read More:

    Ohio’s Changing Cannabis Laws.

    Healing.

  • Stones of Sight & Time: The Deep Lore, Occurrence, & Uses of Hag Stones-

    Stones of Sight & Time: The Deep Lore, Occurrence, & Uses of Hag Stones-

    Best For:

    Readers with an interest in folklore, geology enthusiasts, & modern witchcraft practitioners.

    The Essence:

    Read Time: ⏰ 4-6 minutes | Weight: 🪶 Light & Atmospheric| Mood: 🪞 reflective & curious|

    The Vault:

    • Stones of sight
    • What is a hag stone?
    • Our Ancestors Feared & Revered, why?
    • Traditional Uses
    • How to Work with Hag Stones Today…

    Stones of Sight:

    I find a quiet thrill when walking along a shifting shoreline, eyeing the endless scatter of pebbles and shells, until I finally spot one that looks entirely different.

    A Hag Stone is a stone with a naturally bored hole right through it. In folklore, these are not seen as just ordinary pebbles. Known also as witch’s stones, adder stones, holy stones, drudestones, or fairy stones, these geological anomalies have captured human imagination for millennia.

    Before we understood the mechanics of erosion, our ancestors looked at these perforated rocks and saw portals, shields, and relics of an unseen world.

    Man wearing backwards hat holds hag stone up to eyeball to peer through it while standing in the woods.

    What Exactly Is a Hag Stone?

    To answer from a scientific standpoint, hag stones are a natural occurrence with a masterclass in patience. They are typically formed from softer sedimentary rocks (like limestone or sandstone) that contain a softer inclusion, fossil, or mineral nodule.

    Over centuries, moving water (rushing river currents, relentless ocean waves, or swirling underground springs) bombards the rock, eroding the weaker spot faster than the rest of the mineral body. Eventually, a clean hole is punched all the way through the rocks surface.

    Their creation relies on water (an element heavily tied to emotional and spiritual cleansing in folklore), traditional belief held that the stone retained the pure, dynamic energy of the currents that carved it.

    Why Our Ancestors Feared & Revered Them:

    The name “hag stone” links directly to old European folklore regarding hags, spectral crones, or malicious spirits believed to bring misfortune. Across rural Britain, Ireland, and Northern Europe, these stones were prime tools of apotropaic magic, or magic meant to turn away harm.

    • The Logic of the Hole: Traditional lore dictates that malevolent entities, dark spells, and bad intentions have sharp edges or rigid trajectories. Because of this, they cannot navigate a winding, natural aperture. Only pure energy and good fortune can pass clean through the hole.
    • The Seer’s Eye: One of the most famous legends surrounding hag stones is their ability to pierce the veil. It was believed that if you held a hag stone up to your eye, you could see right through glamour and deception. You could spot hidden faeries, track shape-shifting witches, or peer into the spirit realm.
    • The Sailor’s Safeguard: Fishermen and mariners historically threaded ropes through hag stones, hanging them from the prows of boats or carrying them in their pockets to ward off coastal squalls, sea-hags, and treacherous luck.
    A whole hag stone lays on the shoreline at a licking county stream.

    Traditional Uses Through History:

    Hag stones weren’t just kept as curiosities; they were put to work in daily agrarian and domestic life:

    • Threshold Protection: Hung by a cord (often red yarn or natural twine) above front doors or windows, hag stones acted as sentinels to keep negative entities and nightmares out of the home.
    • Livestock Keepers: Farmers would nail or tie holed flints inside barns, stable doors, or pigsties. This was done to protect horses from being “hag-ridden” (exhausted in the night by mischievous spirits) and to prevent cattle from taking ill.
    • Bedpost Wardens: Tied to a bedpost, they were thought to catch bad dreams before they reached the sleeper, functioning much like an ancestral dreamcatcher.

    How to Work with Hag Stones Today:

    If you are lucky enough to find one yourself, as old folklore states, you don’t find a hag stone; the stone finds you…there are plenty of ways to honor its history in a modern practice:

    • The Intuitive Gateway: Sit quietly in meditation, hold the stone, and gaze through the hole to ground your focus or clear mental clutter.
    • Intention Anchoring: Because the hole symbolizes a portal, you can visualize an intention or manifestation passing through the stone out into the universe.
    • A Modern Amulet: Wrap the stone in natural twine, leather, or wire and wear it as a pendant or slip it into your travel bag for grounding energy on the go.
    Two rocks containing indents that would eventually become hag stones.

    Foraged Reminders:

    Whether you view them through the lens of ancient protection magic, psychological comfort, or simply as magnificent pieces of geological art, hag stones remind us of a time when the earth felt deeply alive, speaking to us in shapes, textures, and holes carved by time.

    Read More:

    The Altar. The Kitchen Table – Working Altar.

  • Letters to the Different Versions of Me – A Transgender Man:

    Letters to the Different Versions of Me – A Transgender Man:

    Best For:

    Individuals just starting their social transition, readers interested in literature from the transgender perspective, and advocates interested in reading literature by transgender Americans.

    The Essence:

    Read Time: 🕰️ 3-5 minutes| Mood: 🫂 Tender & defiant| Weight: 🍃 Deep & grounding |

    The Vault:

    • New Me – Socially Transitioning
    • Advice & Positivity for Transgender People
    • Changing Me – Medically Transitioning
    • Growth, Dysphoria, & How Far You’ve Come

    Letters Across the Years:

    We spend so much of our lives at war with the timeline, desperate to rush past the awkward, painful chapters to get to the safety of the other side.

    Looking back across more than a decade of living fully and unapologetically as myself, I’ve realized that every single version of who I used to be deserves grace and a pat on the back for allowing me to become me. This is a bridge built across time, a way to reach backward into the fog of early transition, to offer a hand to the younger versions of me who were just trying to survive, and to map out the hard-won resilience that brought me here.

    This is a reflection on the terror of the closet, the exhausting trench-work of early medical and social transition, and the vital reminder that no matter how loud dysphoria shouts, a wider, kinder, truer life is waiting on the other side.

    The New Me:

    Axton 22 yeas old, pre-testosterone

    To the Version of Me at 22 who was just beginning to breathe…

    Axton,

    Right now, your world is both terrifying and exhilarating. You, my friend, are standing right at the threshold, holding your breath while trying to figure out how to take up space as yourself without setting off any figurative alarms.

    At 22 years old, you are juggling the exhausting work of unlearning who you were forced to be and trying to piece together who you actually are.

    I know you are spending too much time analyzing every voice inflection, every pronoun slip, every mirror check, wondering if people can see the heaviness of the weight you’ve been carrying. It feels like everyone has an opinion, a rulebook, or a glaring stare that tries to shrink you back down.

    Yet, look at how stubbornly you keep reaching for truth anyway. You already cut your hair and began wearing clothes that finally make your shoulders feel like your own. You started quietly telling the people who matter most what name to call you.

    “Axton”

    I need you to know that the terror you feel right now doesn’t mean you’re on the wrong path. It just means you care deeply about your own survival as well as your own joy.

    The days of second-guessing every introduction are extremely hard to carry, but every single small, frightening step you take is laying down the pavement for a future where you won’t have to constantly explain yourself just to exist.

    Advice & Positivity for Trans People Not Out:

    If you are reading this from a place where it still feels unsafe to speak your truth out loud, please hear this: Your reality is valid even if it is currently quiet.

    You don’t owe anyone a dramatic coming-out timeline. Protecting your peace, your housing, and your safety always comes first. Living authentically in your own head and your own private spaces while you plan your escape routes or your next moves is a completely valid form of resilience.

    The anticipation is almost always louder than the reality. Right now, your brain is running worst-case scenarios on an endless loop. While the world can be harsh, it will also surprise you with pockets of fierce, unconditional community and people who will love you without hesitation.

    The future holds a profound quietness. Someday, the exhausting hyper-vigilance will start to fade. You will wake up, put on your clothes, walk out the door, and the first thing on your mind won’t be your gender… it will just be living your life.

    Keep gathering your people and your moments. Whether it’s finding a band that makes you feel invincible, a quiet trail in the woods, or a single friend who uses your name without blinking… hold onto those anchors. They are proof that a wider, kinder world is waiting for you on the other side of this transition.

    The Changing Me:

    Two week post op double mastectomy shirtless transgender man with upper body tattoos short beard and grey shorts.

    To the Version of Me Navigating Early Transition who was in the thick of the shift,

    Axton,

    You are right in the middle of the heavy lifting now, and I won’t sugarcoat it, I know some days feel like wading through quicksand. You’ve started down the path of medical transitioning, watching your body slowly begin to align with the person you’ve always known yourself to be.

    I know the mirror is still often a battleground.

    Dysphoria has a way of shouting so loudly that it drowns out every bit of progress you’ve actually made. You find yourself scanning every angle on your body, measuring changes by the milestone, and wondering when the constant mental surveillance is going to ease up.

    I know it is exhausting holding space for the excitement of what’s changing while simultaneously carrying the grief of everything it took to get here, as well as the frustration you feel when things don’t seem to happen fast enough.

    I want you to look around at where you are right now and give yourself some grace. You are enduring an awkward, beautiful, terrifying metamorphosis. The changes happening beneath your skin and in your daily life are real, even on the days when your brain tries to convince you nothing is happening.

    Growth, Dysphoria, & How Far You’ve Come:

    If you could fast-forward and look back at this exact moment from 11.5 years down the road, here is what you would see:

    Dysphoria is a very loud tenant, but it doesn’t own the building. Right now, it feels like every single interaction is filtered through a lens of hyper-awareness and discomfort. Remember that every single month you push forward, the volume escaping that room gets turned down just a fraction. The day will come when you realize you haven’t thought about passing or being misgendered for hours, or even days, at a time.

    Growth is happening, especially in those quiet, unglamorous hours. It’s not just about the medical milestones; it’s the way your posture changes when you walk down the street, the deep, settled relief in your chest when someone uses your name naturally, and the unshakeable self-trust you are building by simply refusing to give up on yourself.

    The contrast is staggering. Looking back now from over a decade into this life, the person you are right now looks like someone holding their breath underwater.

    You are going to make it to the surface.

    You are going to inhabit a body that feels like home, surrounded by a life you carved out with your own hands.

    Hang on. You are doing harder things than you realize, and you are already winning.

    Looking Back to Move Forward:

    Transgender man with red hair, full beard, black backwards baseball cap, and black feral t-shirt stands in front of a sandstone rock wall.

    As these letters to the past versions of me stack up, a bigger picture comes into focus, one defined not by the pain of the obstacles I faced, but by the relentless stubbornness of my own joy.

    Looking back at the young adult terrified in the early stages of social transition, and looking at the person navigating the trenches of early medical changes, I realize that transition isn’t just a physical checklist. It is the steady, radical act of learning how to inhabit your own skin without flinching.

    The distance between who I was forced to pretend to be and who I fought to become is measured in tiny, invisible victories: a name spoken without hesitation, a mirror that finally feels familiar, and the quiet realization that peace is no longer a hypothetical future, but a daily reality. I made it through the storm and the life waiting on the other side is… entirely, beautifully my own.

    Read More:

    His Granite Skin – Nature & Transitioning themed Short Story

    De-Masking at the Tree-Line – Nature & Transitioning themed Short Story

  • Washed Away; Many Years of Love & Labor – One Crooksville Family’s Heart-wrenching Loss:

    Washed Away; Many Years of Love & Labor – One Crooksville Family’s Heart-wrenching Loss:

    Best For:

    Literature enthusiasts drawn to deeply personal stories about small town families facing extraordinary circumstances, individuals active in mutual aid or community-led disaster relief, readers interested in the intimate human stories that exist behind major disasters, & people looking for meaningful ways to support a family rebuild their lives after sudden loss.

    The Essence:

    Read Time: ⌚️ 7 minutes | Weight: 🚨Heavy | Mood: 🌧️ Somber, intimate, & resilient|

    A mol bucket on wooden floors covered in mud from the flooding.

    The Vault:

    • A home filled with almost thirty years of love & family history swallowed by more than five feet of floodwater.
    • Two people who built their golden years in Crooksville, Ohio, & watched two generations of family grow here.
    • A Kentucky farmer, his lifetime of work, & the home that held the memories of his family.
    • The devastating uncertainty of a beloved dog that went missing during the flooding.
    • What remains after the water recedes? Find out how individuals can help so they can begin again.
    A homes flooded mud caked hallway after the historic flooding in Crooksville, Ohio.

    When the Water Came Up:

    Flood waters can turn a familiar place into something almost unrecognizable in a matter of hours if not minutes. Water is insanely dense if you didn’t know. When you consider the constant movement of flood waters you’ll find that ankle-deep water can sweep you off your feet, and knee-deep water can carry your car away you see the force it brings when it rises.

    For these small town grandparents, the flooding did far more than damage their family home and fracture their security. When the water started rising they probably figured this would be a flood like the ones they typically get; they were unaware of the over 5 feet of water that would soon rob them of many things.

    This was the same house they purchased for their golden years, the same community where they chose to spend the best years of their lives, and the same area where their family continues to put down roots. Their grandchildren were raised here and now their great-grandchildren stomp the same yards. Decades of their family history were held in this house.

    This loss they are faced with is a part of a much larger story unfolding across the region as communities deal with flooded homes, evacuations, rescues, destruction, and the difficult days that follow natural disasters. Every flooded street holds people trying to figure out what comes next.

    For this family, that realization is especially painful. They are facing the loss and destruction of the place that held just shy of thirty years of their lives, while also dealing with the heartbreaking loss of their beloved senior dog.

    Let’s head back to the storm that caused the water to rise, when a familiar kind of flooding became something far more devastating.

    A look at the flooring being ripped up in a Crooksville, Ohio home.

    The Derecho-

    Where the Storm Went:

    On August 11th, 2026, this system covered an enormous stretch of the country, starting in eastern Iowa before working its way across Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan before making its way into Ohio. After leaving Ohio the storm cell continued through Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, the Carolinas, and ended up reaching as far south as Georgia. Though the derecho classification applies only to the part of this system that went through Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio.⁠

    This wasn’t just your average end of summer thunderstorm. It was part of a massive line of storms which had already traveled hundreds of miles and would still travel hundreds more.

    The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center has preliminarily classified the storm system as a derecho. To be classified a derecho a storm must:

    • have a wind damage path of at least 240 miles
    • feature wind gusts of at least 58 mph along most of its length
    • include several concentrated clusters of 75 mph or greater gusts

    The storms that ripped through Ohio were a long-lived, organized line of thunderstorms that produced widespread, destructive straight-line winds. These storms differ from tornados, which concentrate their strongest winds into a relatively narrow path. This is why a derecho can keep pushing forward for hundreds of miles, leaving damage spread across a much larger area.

    This cell was not gentle along the way, producing wind gusts that reached 97 to 99 mph in parts of the Midwest. Ohio even recorded an 82-mph gust in Columbus. Trees came down, telephone poles snapped in half, and power lines tangled across roads and neighborhoods. At the height of the storm, more than 800,000 customers across the affected region were without electricity, including more than 200,000 in Ohio.

    Wind wasn’t the only thing this storm brought with it that caused concern.

    As the system pushed into Ohio, it unloaded the same kind of torrential rainfall it had already gifted Indiana and Iowa. Southeastern Ohio was already in a bad position with ground conditions saturated, waterways rising, and rainfall coming faster than the land or drainage systems could handle.

    When the water started moving, Perry County, Ohio, was hit particularly hard. Flash flood emergencies were issued as water rapidly covered roads, entered properties, and almost submerged others.

    State of Emergency:

    Emergency crews began conducting water rescues as people became trapped in homes, businesses, and vehicles. The roads that people used to get around their communities were suddenly engulfed in rushing water, making an already dangerous situation even harder for rescuers to navigate.

    Crooksville was one of the small Ohio villages caught in the thick of it. The area saw floodwater rise so rapidly that many people were forced to evacuate. A shelter that opened for people who could no longer safely in their homes. Nearby communities, including Roseville, were also dealing with the same rapidly changing conditions.

    The flooding became serious enough that Governor Mike DeWine declared a state of emergency for Perry and Muskingum counties and deployed the Ohio National Guard to assist with searches, rescues, and evacuations.

    This storm not only knocked out power, ripped down trees, and produced destructive winds, it also spawned tornadoes, and dumped enormous amounts of rain across its path.

    One of the worst parts of this storm was what was rising from the ground or out of the creek beds, and would eventually rob families of their homes, vehicles, and pets.

    A look inside a living room from a home devastated by flooding in Crooksville.

    Twenty-Six Years of Sunshine:

    Roughly twenty-six years ago, the established couple came to Crooksville with the a small dream and lot of hope. Their goal was one many people share, after a lifetime of working the land: to spend their golden years loving the family that grew from their love.

    They chose Crooksville, Ohio for the peace and quiet. They were able to see their grandchildren grow up on this land, and now great-grandchildren, giving the family even more reasons to stay connected to the place they had chosen all those years ago.

    Their home became a cedar-chest that held all of it. A home where ordinary days became family memories; holidays, birthdays, cookouts, arguments, laughter, quiet mornings, and all the little moments that don’t seem important until they’re torn apart in front of you.

    There were things in that house that wouldn’t mean much to a stranger walking through. Photographs holding children now grown and family no longer here, tucked away photo albums and saved mementos from far off places holding the memories as if they happened yesterday. The ordinary objects that quietly accumulate when a house becomes a home.

    Twenty-six years is a long time to stay put, but that happens when you put down roots.

    In that many years a house will become familiar to you in ways you don’t consciously notice anymore. You know which door sticks, where the floor creaks, what handle wiggles, and the way your family looked while filling the rooms over the years. You stop thinking about the walls as walls, as they become one of the main scenes in your life.

    Beyond the house itself was the community they had spent almost three decades becoming part of. Where they came with a plan and a goal; they succeeded just to watch it all but wash away.

    They did not just live in Crooksville for twenty-six years, they built their life, nurtured their roots, and watched those roots grow their family tree.

    In a matter of hours, floodwater tore through everything they spent their life building.

    Twenty-six years of building a life cannot be replaced simply by finding another house. A new roof can be put over someone’s head. Walls can be rebuilt. Furniture can be replaced. But the years that happened inside those walls, the history attached to the place, and the feeling of having finally put down roots somewhere permanent are not things you can simply buy back.

    And that is what makes the aftermath of this flood about far more than property damage.

    A look through a kitchen in Crooksville, Ohio after the historic flooding.

    How You Help:

    The family has an established go fund me set up and any funds raised will help them begin rebuilding their home. Renovations will include things like redoing the flooring and repairing the duct work that was destroyed by the historic flooding.

    The couple doesn’t have home insurance and simply do not have the financial means to cover these major repairs on their own. These flood waters have devastated their family, and they do not know where to go from here.

    Their grandchildren are asking for community support because their grandparents are the kind of people who have spent their whole lives helping others. They are caring, supportive neighbors who would give the shirt off their back to someone in need. So please if you are able to give, share, or keep them in your thoughts, it would mean so much to their family.

    Any support will help them take the first steps toward rebuilding their home and their lives.

    GoFundMe.

    A kitchen after flood waters came through Crooksville, Ohio.
  • Are We All the Once-ler? Why The Lorax Still Matters:

    Are We All the Once-ler? Why The Lorax Still Matters:

    Best For:

    Readers who enjoy media analysis beyond surface-level themes, individual aligned with environmental advocacy, nature lovers, and anyone who has ever wondered whether ambition and stewardship can coexist.

    The Essence:

    Reading Time: 🕰️ 10 to 14 minutes | Weight: 🥊 Heavy | Mood: 🌹 Reflective, Thought-provoking, & Hopeful with bittersweet undertones

    From below looking up photo shows sunlight through tree tops, a rock wall, and the forest around it.

    The Vault:

    • Environmental stewardship
    • Creativity vs. consumption
    • Corporate greed
    • Hope & Human potential
    • Personal reflection & Media analysis

    “I know it may seem small and insignificant, but it’s not about what it is, it’s about what it can become. That’s not a seed, any more than you’re just a boy.”

    – The Once-ler

    Read If You Enjoy:

    • Reflective essays
    • Nature in writing
    • Symbolism in media
    • Children’s stories with adult themes

    I’m The Lorax, I Speak for the Trees:

    I finally watched The Lorax for the first time, the other night and somewhere between the Truffula Trees and the songs, I realized I had spent years avoiding a beautiful story that I align with immensely because of my own views and standpoint in relation to Dr. Seuss.

    For a moment, I even caught myself wondering what it would be like to be the Once-ler. I don’t agree with what he became; I understand where he started.

    A man who dreamed of building something. He saw possibility where everyone else saw nothing. As a person who spends countless hours writing, creating, and trying to grow something meaningful, that part feels familiar.

    Almost immediately I came to see that No… I’m definitely more like The Lorax. I can’t seem to stop caring about the living things like the trees who cannot speak on their own behalf.

    I feel that’s what this story has always been about.

    People.

    a look through the trees at the Wetland area, I am The Lorax, I speak for the trees.

    Is there a Little Once-ler Inside Each of Us:

    I think one of the biggest reasons The Lorax has survived generations is because the Once-ler isn’t introduced as a monster.

    He’s curious and inventive. He’s even ambitious and charming dare I say. None of these things are flaws. In reality they are some of humanity’s greatest strengths.

    Think about it everything ever invented and the companies that started them didn’t just form out of a vacuum.

    The shows you watch, the books you read, and even the content you consume on social media from your favorite creator all began somewhere small.

    “Don’t get bigger than your britches.”

    – Many Appalachian Mothers

    Every movement, act of advocacy, small breath of change, and dream begins with someone imagining what they could grow from it.

    As creatives, that’s our job. We are called to imagine futures that don’t yet exist. The tragedy isn’t even that the Once-ler dreamed too big.

    Somewhere along the way, his dream stopped including the forest that made any of it possible. The Once-ler’s goal became the growth of his company instead of the byproduct.

    That shift was so subtle; it was almost terrifying. This isn’t your everyday average villain.

    Two small blue and white flowers up close and slightly out of focus growing in a dense green forest.

    There’s The Lorax:

    The Lorax has always been painted as the environmental conscience of the story. I don’t think that’s all he represents. Is he not the voice asking the questions no one wants to hear or answer?

    • Who’s paying the price?
    • What are we losing?
    • Is this actually worth it?

    I don’t think the Lorax hates innovation. He just doesn’t want us to forget what matters. It seems as if he doesn’t want those without a voice to suffer because they can’t speak up.

    • Trees
    • Flowers
    • Waterways
    • Fungi
    • Native Mammals, Amphibians, Fish, and other wildlife

    As someone who spends a lot of my time hiking through forests and encouraging others to experience these places respectfully, I can’t help but laugh at the line…

    “I speak for the trees.”

    – The Lorax

    It’s funny and also strangely accurate. Trees don’t have lobbyists, and streams don’t get a vote. Wildflowers don’t get to argue for their survival.

    When’s the last time you asked a bear to share a plot of land?

    Did you take the bee’s honey without permission? I bet you didn’t even thank him…

    Someone has to care enough to speak anyway.

    At Forest covered in fog. Photo shows a look through spring growth trees and rocks into the fog covered forest.

    Someone Like You:

    If you ask me the most important lines ever written in children’s literature as of yet…

    “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

    – The Lorax

    Most children, I’d assume, think it means to start planting trees. Watching it as an adult for the first time, I think it’s about refusing apathy. Let’s face it, nothing will improve if everyone assumes someone else will fix for them.

    There are relationships that never heal because nobody wants to have difficult conversations. We all know other conversations never happen because people assume someone else will speak up.

    Art disappears when nobody thinks it’s worth preserving.

    The best part is that this sentence never promises success or failure. It just reminds us that caring is where change begins.

    Without someone caring nothing can happen.

    Trees and branches grow over the trail creating a canopy

    Not a Seed:

    The quote that hit me harder than anything else in the film:

    “I know it may seem small and insignificant, but it’s not about what it is, it’s about what it can become. That’s not a seed, any more than you’re just a boy.”

    – The Once-Ler

    That isn’t really about Ted or the seed. It’s about their potential. All the forests in the world had to begin as something tiny.

    Just like every movement starts with one person and every poem started as a blank page. All our friendships began with two strangers and everyone’s life begins with possibilities no one else can see.

    The world spends so much time measuring people by what they are today. Yet The Lorax reminds us to consider what they can still become.

    Budding pink blossoms yet to open in a lush forest growing in a bush in the early spring.

    The Question the Movie Leaves:

    I don’t think The Lorax asks us to choose between The Lorax and the Once-ler; I think it asks us to recognize both inside ourselves.

    The creator and the protector. The dreamer and the conscience.

    The challenge isn’t avoiding ambition; it is refusing to sacrifice everything meaningful in pursuit of it. Success without stewardship eventually destroys the very thing that made success possible.

    Looking Around the World Today:

    Watching the movie in 2026 feels different than I think it would if i were younger. The author understood something timeless. Human beings have always wrestled with the same question.

    How much are we willing to trade for convenience, wealth, and growth Sometimes we answer wisely; though looking around it sometimes seems like most times we don’t. Every generation inherits that question and they all answer it differently.

    Maybe That’s Why I Keep Coming Back to Nature:

    Every trail I hike exists because somebody cares. At one point someone stood up and protected the land. Later on others maintained the path. People advocated for the green-spaces long before I ever arrived.

    The waterfalls, wildflowers, old-growth trees, salamanders hiding beneath logs, and quiet stretches of forest are not here by accident. They are all reminders that caring leaves evidence that remains long after we’re gone.

    white flowers grow in tall grass in front of the tree line.

    Timeless Children’s Media:

    I do not see The Lorax as a story about trees; It is closer to a story about responsibility and balancing ambition with stewardship.

    The Lorax reminds us that growth means very little if we destroy everything that allows us to grow. And maybe we’re all a little bit of the Once-ler.

    I know I can be; I dream big.

    I wish for my words to reach people.

    The difference is that every time I lace up my hiking boots, stop to admire a wildflower, or encourage someone to leave a place better than they found it, I help the Lorax speak just a little louder.

    The forests do not need people who can build. They need people to remember why they matter.

    TLDR:

    The Lorax isn’t just a story about environmentalism. It’s about the tension between ambition and responsibility.

    The Once-ler reminds us that dreams can become destructive when growth matters more than stewardship. While The Lorax reminds us that caring is never insignificant.

    Whether it’s protecting a forest, nurturing a relationship, creating art, or standing up for a cause, meaningful change begins with someone deciding that indifference isn’t an option.

    After all…

    “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

    Read More:

    Dr. Seuss. Sustainable Hiking. Money Talks.
    Penguin Random House. Illumination Entertainment.

  • Kitchen Table Chaos to Concrete Crafty Sanctuary: The Anatomy of My Altar-

    Kitchen Table Chaos to Concrete Crafty Sanctuary: The Anatomy of My Altar-

    Best For:

    Beginner Pagans & Wiccans building their first altar, readers interested in the why behind a spiritual altar, individuals interested in Pagan Eclectic Practices.

    The Essence:

    Read time: ⏰ 15 mins | Weight: ⚖️ Reflective| Mood: 🌿 Grounded, Inspiring, Sacred|

    A far off view of Axton’s altar and workspace showing the entire area.

    The Vault:

    • Why putting you in your Altar is a Must & Why my spirituality meets creativity.
    • The Hiking Altar, The Working Altar, The Tool Stand,
    • Key Terms to know: Altar, Essence, Ritual, & Book of Shadows
    • The colors meaning in Wiccan practice for purple, white, and black altar cloths.

    Making Sure Your Space is More You:

    If your like me before my fiancé and I moved then you know what it’s like to have your creativity fighting for space with the seasonal storage in the garage.

    In a house where the kitchen table fits better in your workspace, your collections, spiritual space, and your creativity all end up in a fight for room on that kitchen table. This may keep your energy fragmented, if you’re like me.

    After all, you are not just building a studio, remember you are building your manifesto. If your essence is not present inside your altar, spiritual work, or your craft, your work has no emotional core.

    A look from the top down at Axton’s working altar and hiking altar.

    It cannot breathe life into anything, if it doesn’t even know who or what it comes from.

    You. You. You:

    It is time to stop keeping your painted portraits in your art stack and start hanging them in your own space.

    You should know that putting yourself in your altar is one of the most important acts of the craft.

    When you curate a space, you are creating a resonance chamber. You are not just organizing stuff. You are anchoring your essence into the physical world so that your intent can actually manifest.

    If you are absent from your own altar, you are merely decorating. By placing your own essence…

    your portraits, your specific memories, your hiking finds…

    You are acting to transform a shelf into a focal point for your own power. You are saying, “I am here. This is the center of my world.”

    Another view of the workspace Axton has created for his spirituality and creativity to coexist.

    The Hiking Altar: The Anchor of Energy:

    For me it all starts at my hiking altar. This is where you find the absolute essence of me.

    It acts as a topographic map of the miles I have walked since October 2021. This is a space is heavy with memory and growth. I have added bird’s nests, antlers, bones, fossils, stones, shell casings, and more over time as my collection has evolved.

    Of course I have also included pamphlets from the specific trails I have conquered. As well as horoscope & crystal booklets, deity & fairy pictures all of which guide my path.

    My more recent additions include fairy statues and a mix of American and foreign coins. Which I’ve also found over my treks.

    You must anchor your altar in something that proves you have lived. By keeping these found items and gifted tokens here, I am not just storing objects. I am creating loop between my hikes, creative output, and spiritual journey.

    This serves as a monument to my experiences and is a place where I hold my energy and as well as grief. It is the center of my altar for a reason. Everything else grows out from this place.

    A close up view of Axton’s hiking altar.

    The Working Altar – Ritual, Reading, & Memory:

    In front of this, the main altar area, sits a big, comfy chair. This is the place where I like to work. The table itself is covered in a purple, white, and black cloth for a very specific reason, tied to meanings of color.

    • Purple: deeply linked to the Crown Chakra, which is considered the gateway to enlightenment, universal connection, and spiritual wisdom.
    • White: the color of clarity, used to “reset” a space or an object so it can be used for new intentions.
    • Black: a “heavy” shield. It is used to absorb, bind, and neutralize negative energy, toxicity, or unwanted influences. It acts as a sponge, taking in harmful vibrations so that they do not affect the practitioner.

    This is the boundary line for my ritual space.

    This is also where my Book of Shadows lives, along with my pendulum boards, my pendulum, and my rune stones.

    I keep a selenite charging jar here specifically for my pens and spoons or other small items.

    This table houses the stones from the Picture Rocks National Lakeshore stones from a trip I took with my partner, Kelsey. That was the same trip where we sprinkled my mother’s ashes. It is the one of the most sacred spot on my altar.

    My non-traveling deck of tarot cards and my pressed flower book from the Blue Ridge Parkway, Asheville, NC, the New River Gorge, and Hawks Nest 2025 trip also live here.

    A side vide showing the working altar, shelf, hiking altar and wall decor.

    Spirituality & Creativity:

    Why have my spiritual stuff so close to my creative things? There is no real separation for me.

    When I am crafting a windchime or polishing a stone for a a necklace, I am pulling the energy of these sacred objects into the work.

    Having my BOS, my runes, and my mother’s memorial stones right next to where I pour polish or grind a stone keeps my intent sharp. It reminds me that I am not just a person trying to make money.

    I am a crafter of sacred items, a rockhound in service to the land, and an eclectic pagan working in communion with the spirits of the places I’ve walked. Between this working altar and the hiking altar is a big, comfy chair where I spend a lot of time doing many different things.

    • Making wind chimes
    • reading cards or pendulum boards
    • doing spell work or ritual work
    • making necklaces or keychains
    • whatever it may be.
    Axton’s selenite charging jar, ingredient shelf, and moveable wet saw table.

    The Tool Stand – Un-Ritualized Labor:

    Then on the other side of my working altar is the stand for the gritty, necessary tools. This is where I keep my wood burner, Dremels, polishes, sandpaper, oils, and the heaters for the garage.

    I’m here to say honestly not every piece of your process needs to be ritualized.

    Sometimes, you just need an area to be functional. For instance maybe it’s a place to store the things you do not want to make sacred. This is the backbone of my workshop, it is what makes the ritual work possible.

    The shelf just keeps the mess away from the magic. A place for the things that provide the friction required for the transformation of raw material into a finished ritual object.

    Another view of my ingredient shelf rolling table and artwork made by Luna.

    The Production & Weed Table – Daily Necessities:

    On the other side of the working altar is a stand with pull-out cubes, topped with a picture Luna helped paint years ago. Next to it is a small rolling table, the center of daily necessity.

    The rolling table holds an ashtray with my roaches, a lighter, a grinder, and chapstick. I keep a mortar and pestle here and a tool for inspecting crystals.

    Underneath this table in the drawers are various materials I use to make spell bags, wreaths, and windchimes.

    This is the true alchemy of my small business and my spiritual practice. It is where the physical items come to life. By keeping my daily necessities alongside my spiritual tools, I acknowledge that the mundane is just as holy as the grand ritual.

    A view of the part of my altar for the person who is always by my side.

    The Shop Floor – Workflow & Logistics:

    My saw table is completely mobile. I move it outside when I need to cut, this is a move I made in order to keep the shop environment more clean. Above the saw is the new shelf for heart rocks, alongside the running rock tumblers.

    I have also had two cedar chests. One sits on the tumbler table hosting the non-running tumblers, while the other holds finished, non-delicate items, including tinctures, sprays, spells, cleaned fossils, and polished rocks. I also have an area dedicated to zines and flyers, with a shelf underneath for windchimes, wreaths, and other delicate finished pieces that cannot hang on my standard keychain holders.

    Rocks are kept throughout the room in various pots and boxes. Other polishes and supplies are stashed in the shelving near my rolling area. The floor is a living part of the shop, covered in rocks that have yet to find their permanent home.

    Another look at my altar

    Occupying the Space – The Final Manifesto

    I put up a skeleton, a trans flag, a mushroom flag, a weed flag, and rope lights to ensure the space felt more like me.

    I put portraits out, the ones my partner and I painted of each other, and anchored them with candles, heart rocks and a sign that reminds us that not all those who wander are lost.

    Putting yourself in your altar is the final step of the craft. When you stop hiding your paintings in your art stack and start hanging them under your own lights, you start telling the universe that your work belongs here.

    Your altar is your manifesto. Look at your floor and at the corners you have ignored.

    If you are still waiting for permission to build your own altar, you are already behind.

    Go out there and move the seasonal decor in your way.

    Make the space bleed with your own colors. You are the architect of your own sanctuary, and it is time to start building.

    The saw, weed, and zine area.

    TLDR:

    Figure out how Axton developed his spiritual and creative areas around his workshop and daily rituals.

    Put the you in your altar and learn why your essence is the one of the most important additions to your spiritual space.

    Realize not all spaces are for ritual functional things have their spaces and matter just as much.

    Read More:

    Altar. Moon Phase Cheat Sheet.

    Creating Your Altar.

    The Altar & How to Use it.

    Key Terms Defined:

    • Altar: a table or platform for the presentation of religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes
    • Essence: what is uniquely ours in the divine/human alchemy gifted to us
    • Ritual: deliberate series of actions performed in a prescribed order to connect with nature, deities, or the sacred
    • Book of Spells: also referred to as a grimore or book of shadows, is a sacred personal journal used to store incantations, rituals, or instructions.
  • Before the Fireworks: Juneteenth a History of Refusal to Learn Repeatedly:

    Before the Fireworks: Juneteenth a History of Refusal to Learn Repeatedly:

    Best For:

    Readers looking for a historically grounded explanation of Juneteenth with cultural context, advocates looking for lived experience observations, those searching for articles that offer creative writing & history, individuals that need fact based context to use as a reference, history buffs, & educators.

    The Vault:

    • June 19, 1865 marks the enforcement of emancipation in Galveston, Texas
    • Reflecting on the delay between legal emancipation & real-world enforcement across Confederate territory
    • The observance began in Black American communities & continued for generations
    • Juneteenth the federal holiday

    Before We Pretend This Is New:

    Through things like my own experiences in life and in my own need to reeducate myself, the pattern that repeats through repeated racism is not subtle. Every year near Juneteenth the same repeated racist reactions show up again and again as if the holiday and the reason for celebration are without reason or brand new.

    People try to act surprised it is acknowledged, then move directly to questioning why it is a holiday as they frame it as unnecessary.

    A repeatedly used excuse is one to the tune of “we celebrate freedom on July Fourth” to undermine Juneteenth. Which ignores the clear reality behind the hundreds of years that African Americans lived between the two without any freedom or protections.

    In these same spaces, the conversation often shifts beyond confusion. There are moments where dismissiveness turns openly hostile, including racist responses. These only continue to prove my point that the issue is not lack of access to information, but resistance to acknowledging what the holiday represents.

    What stands out most is not that disagreements exist, but how predictable the cycle has been. The facts do not change year to year, but their reactions reset as if they were never given the ability to learn in the first place.

    Every year, Juneteenth arrives and will continue too. There is a clear difference between not knowing and refusing to learn.

    Texas Circa 1865 & Enforcement Gaps:

    On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas and announced that enslaved people were to be considered free. This was an action done to directly follow the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which had already declared enslaved people in Confederate states legally free.

    However, legal declaration did not mean immediate equal immediate enforcement, as we can see. The proclamation was dependent on Union military carrying out the oversight. Though a lot of the regions like Texas were left to wait on Union Troops which had not yet been implemented in all regions of the Confederacy.

    Texas remained one of the last places that slavery continued in practice well after emancipation had been declared. Juneteenth marks the moment that enforcement finally reached that region, closing the gap between law and reality at least on paper for nearly enslaved people.

    Communication delays, fragmented authority, and post-war instability all contributed to that delay in implementation.

    The Gaps:

    These gaps between legal declaration, enforcement, and the lived experiences in reality are the central reasons for Juneteenth’s need to exist. This is a more than worthy historical marker of a long systematic injustice that individuals can still feel the repercussions of.

    Juneteenth represents not just a date, but a delay in enforcement that shaped real human lives across time and region. This day is also celebration of the potential for an equality these individuals should have always had. the system failed to enforce freedom, When the system failed them, the community had to step in and become the keepers of the history themselves.”

    Regional Observance & Cultural Continuity:

    Juneteenth did not immediately become a federally recognized holiday. The day’s historical events and everything stemming from them has, like many others things, preserved and sustained primarily through African American communities.

    Juneteenth was carried through family gatherings, church events, storytelling, and communal remembrance practices by primarily Texans from the date of the event all the way through much more recent years. It functioned as both historical memory and lived cultural education in spaces where this is rarely formally taught.

    The migration patterns shifted across the United States, during the great migration period especially, and other families moving to and from the state, the observance of Juneteenth spread. This created the ability for the new celebration to spread from the communities who preserved it.

    The truth of these historical events survived not by being dependent on institutions, but on cultural transmission across generations.

    Federal Recognition:

    In 2021, Juneteenth was finally able to become a federal holiday in the United States.

    This recognition did not move from local observance to federal holiday overnight. For generations, African American communities preserved the history and held many forms of celebrations. Long before federal recognition, Juneteenth was slowly gaining more recognition beyond those communities. Individual states began officially recognizing it, historians continued documenting its significance, educators incorporated it into lessons, and advocates spent decades pushing for broader acknowledgment.

    By the time federal recognition arrived in 2021, the foundation had been built over decades of labor by the very people who were previously denied the freedom being celebrated.

    Yet, we have to look at the reality of that recognition. When officials choose to grant a holiday while simultaneously ignoring the issues, stemming directly from the need for emancipation to begin with, one should wonder why.

    A personal copy of Black AF History, representing the actual labor of educating oneself on the history we were never taught including things like Juneteenth.
    Go read something & Learn what they didn’t say in most public schools.

    It is a performative gesture that rings hollow when the systemic conditions being “celebrated” are still being actively reinforced. Racism is rooted deeply in these answers, and while public acknowledgment of the holiday is finally catching up, the societal discord around it seldom even attempts to hide its blatant, racist points of view. They want the optics of the holiday without the mirror of the history.

    Independence Day vs Juneteenth:

    One of the loudest reactions that appears over and over near Juneteenth is the insistence that the Fourth of July already covers freedom, making Juneteenth unnecessary.

    What, excuse me?

    That argument falls apart the moment you look at the timeline of American History.

    The Fourth of July celebrates the nation’s independence in 1776. Yet the freedoms being celebrated were not equally experienced by everyone living within the country’s borders. Millions of enslaved people remained in bondage long after the nation’s founding and long after the language of liberty became central to the American identity.

    Juneteenth exists because freedom was not experienced all at once by every citizen the same.

    For African Americans, the promises associated with freedom arrived later, unevenly, and only after enforcement reached places where slavery continued in practice. That is what makes the comparison so revealing.

    A holiday celebrating national freedom rarely receives the same scrutiny from the people who question a holiday commemorating emancipation. The issue is not that the holidays are identical. The issue is that one commemorates an ideal while the other confronts the reality that the ideal was not extended to everyone at the same time. Another issue some face with this is it also points directly to their racism and some people hate mirrors.

    Understanding that difference is not an argument against Independence Day. It is an acknowledgment that American history contains both the declaration of freedom and the long struggle to make that freedom more broadly real.

    Equality Growth:

    Juneteenth marks the enforcement of emancipation in Texas on June 19, 1865, and the start of building a scope that shows clearly the reality of delayed freedom across the United States. Finally able to become a federal holiday in 2021 hundreds of years after the historical moment.

    Juneteenth exists as a historical record, celebration, and as factual proof to America’s systematic racism.

    TLDR:

    Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865 when emancipation was finally enforced in Galveston, Texas. It was enforced after the emancipation proclamation had been signed and represented the long-awaited legally enforced practice.

    The celebration began as community observance and spread across the United States over time. It was later recognized as a federal holiday in 2021.

    Juneteenth reflects clear proof of a gap between legal declaration and lived reality.

    Public reactions seem to repeat each year. Some people pretend they never had access to the information to learn from, some dismiss it, and some respond with hostility or confusion.

    Read More:

    National Archives – Juneteenth

    Smithsonian – Honoring Opal Lee The Grandmother of Juneteenth

    Franklin County Conservatory

    J.K. Rowlings World So Magical Equality Still Doesn’t Exist In It.

  • J.K. Rowling Racism Analyzing the Prejudice in the Wizarding World

    J.K. Rowling Racism Analyzing the Prejudice in the Wizarding World

    Best for:

    Social justice advocates, cultural critics, former J.K. Rowling fans, and media literacy educators.

    The Vault:

    • Core themes: media literacy, racial bias, representation, systemic prejudice, cultural appropriation, and accountability in storytelling.
    • Examines: naming conventions, ethnic stereotyping, coded imagery, and patterns of exclusion within fictional world-building.
    • Discusses: anti-Black, anti-Irish, antisemitic, Indigenous, and Asian representation critiques tied to the Wizarding World.
    • Explores: how fiction can normalize harmful narratives and why critical analysis of beloved media matters.
    • Best read when: you are open to questioning familiar stories and examining the politics hidden beneath nostalgia.

    The Cracks in the Wizarding World:

    For years, the Harry Potter series was heralded as a manifesto for the marginalized, centered on the fight against “blood purity” and institutional evils.

    However, as the creator’s public stance has shifted toward more overt forms of exclusion, a retroactive audit of the text reveals a disturbing foundation.

    That the J.K. Rowling racism controversies aren’t just isolated “marks” or social media blunders; they are a series of systemic choices in world-building that rely on lazy tropes, ethnic caricatures, and the “othering” of non-white identities.

    This post serves as a comprehensive breakdown, that works to accurately document why these patterns matter. As well as look at how they reflect a deeper, more insidious form of bigotry. By examining the naming of characters, the use of historical stereotypes, and the colonization of global mythologies, we can see how the franchise often fails the very people it claims to protect.

    The Power of a Name – Linguistic Negligence & Othering:

    In a world where names are supposed to be unique and magical, the naming of minority characters in the series often feels like a dismissal of their actual heritage. This is a primary pillar of the J.K. Rowling racism controversies. Where we see characters of color are often reduced to a single, poorly researched identity.

    The Shacklebolt Symbolism:

    One of the most glaring examples is Kingsley Shacklebolt. While he is one of the most capable and dignified Black characters in the series, his surname, Shacklebolt, is an unavoidable reference to the history of chattel slavery.

    In a series written by a white British author, giving the most prominent Black man a name that contains the word “shackle” is at best a massive failure of empathy. Though we should expect more from platformed authors and at worst this is a coded reminder of historical bondage.

    This serves to tether his identity to a history of trauma rather than allowing him the same neutral, whimsical naming conventions afforded to white characters like Dumbledore, Voldemort, or even Weasley.

    The Cho Chang Debate:

    Then there is Cho Chang. The name has become a global shorthand for “lazy naming.” By combining two common surnames. Especially when you consider that one is typically Korean and the other one is typically Chinese. Couple the multiple lineage with the fact she is using them as a first and last name we see that Rowling created a moniker that doesn’t actually exist as a standard name in either culture.

    This linguistic “mash-up” flattens the vast and distinct cultures of the Asian diaspora into a singular, “vaguely Eastern” caricature. It signals to the reader that these characters don’t require the same depth of research or cultural accuracy as their European counterparts.

    European Caricatures – The Irish and the Goblins:

    The prejudice in the series isn’t limited to far-off cultures; it is baked into the depiction of the UK’s own neighbors and historical “others.” These instances highlight how the J.K. Rowling racism controversies extend into ethnic stereotyping within the British Isles and beyond.

    Seamus Finnigan and the “Troubles” Trope:

    The character of Seamus Finnigan provides a subtle but pointed example of anti-Irish sentiment. In the film adaptations, which were overseen by Rowling, Seamus’s defining character trait is his propensity for things to blow up in his face.

    In the context of the 1990s and early 2000s, the “Irishman who blows things up” was a direct, insensitive reference to the “Irish Bomber.” These stereotypes were used to vilify the Irish during the their troubles. By turning a history of violent conflict into a “quirky” character flaw, the narrative trivializes the real-world suffering of the Irish people under British rule.

    The Gringotts Goblins & Antisemitism:

    Perhaps the most debated aspect of the J.K. Rowling racism controversies is the depiction of the Goblins. With their hooked noses, sallow skin, and obsession with gold and banking. We see use of the physical and societal descriptions of the Goblins to mirror medieval antisemitic tropes with uncomfortable precision.

    • Portrayed as a “secretive” and “untrustworthy” race that controls the money of the wizarding world.
    • They are legally barred from carrying wands, mirroring historical laws that barred Jewish people from certain professions and rights.
    • The visual language used in the films, including the Star of David on the floor of the Gringotts set (a real-world location), only served to solidify these connections in the public consciousness.

    The Colonization of Global Magic:

    As the franchise expanded into the Fantastic Beasts series, the J.K. Rowling racism controversies took on a more global, colonialist tone.

    Co-opting Indigenous Traditions:

    When Rowling released her “History of Magic in North America,” she was met with immediate pushback from Indigenous scholars. She took the Navajo legend of the “Skinwalker.” Which is a sacred and sensitive cultural tradition, and turned it into a mere “wizardry world” plot point.

    This is clearly more “Columbusing” of Native American culture. Where white people are seen taking what looks “cool” or “magical” while ignoring the living people and their history of genocide. This is a textbook example of cultural racism. One that treats Indigenous cultures as a “resource” to be mined rather than as sovereign traditions to be respected.

    The Subservience of Nagini:

    The reveal that Voldemort’s snake, Nagini, was actually a cursed Asian woman (played by Claudia Kim) added another “strike” to the list. The optics of a woman of color being a “pet” to a white supremacist villain. Then to only be decapitated by a white hero later, tapped directly into the “Dragon Lady” and “submissive Asian woman” tropes. She reinforced the idea that characters of color exist solely to serve the narrative arcs of white protagonists.

    The “Happy Slave” Narrative – The Double Entendre of the House-Elf:

    One cannot discuss the J.K. Rowling racism controversies without addressing the House-elves. This is where the narrative’s “double entendre” of slavery becomes most apparent.

    • Internalized Oppression: The narrative suggests that House-elves (with the exception of Dobby) actually want to be enslaved. When Hermione tries to free them through S.P.E.W., she is portrayed to be treating them as an annoying, “bossy” outsider who doesn’t understand that they “like” their work.
    • Justification of Bondage: This mirrors the historical pro-slavery rhetoric used in the American South, which claimed that enslaved people were “better off” or “happier” under the paternalistic care of their masters.
    • The Hogwarts Kitchens: The fact that Hogwarts is a place the reader is meant to love, but is powered by unpaid, enslaved labor. Then that labor is kept “out of sight” is a chilling reflection of how systemic racism and exploitation are often ignored. Especially when they are providing comfort to the privileged class.

    Marking the Strikes of Bigotry:

    In analyzing the J.K. Rowling racism controversies, it becomes clear that the Wizarding World is not the inclusive sanctuary many once thought it to be. Instead, it is a map of the creator’s own blind spots and prejudices.

    From the “shackles” of Kingsley, the “explosive” caricatures of the Irish, and the “greedy” tropes of the Goblins, the “marks” against this franchise are numerous and factual.

    By calling out these instances, we aren’t just “hating” on a popular book series; we are performing a necessary autopsy on the media we consume. We are identifying the “scars” of racism and ensuring that the next generation of storytelling doesn’t rely on the same tired, harmful tropes.

    True advocacy means holding even our favorite stories accountable to the truth.

    TLDR:

    This post works to examine the Wizarding World through the lens of media criticism and asks whether the racism critiques surrounding J.K. Rowling are isolated controversies or signs of deeper patterns within the text itself.

    By exploring character naming, historical stereotypes, cultural appropriation, and narratives around race and power, this breakdown argues that harmful ideas can exist even inside stories many people love.

    Holding media accountable is not about destroying nostalgia. It is about understanding what messages are embedded beneath it.

    Further Your Reading:

    Elon Musk J.K. Rowling

    Lund University

    NMU Commons

  • Mainstream Media Silence – Artists Like Peachkka & Doechii Fight Back

    Mainstream Media Silence – Artists Like Peachkka & Doechii Fight Back

    Best for:

    Survivors of systemic abuse, indie music fans who value deep activism, social justice advocates, and writers seeking to dismantle the “Epstein elite” narrative.

    The vault:

    • Systemic Reckoning: Exposing how mainstream media acts as a buffer for the “Epstein elite,” using curated silence to protect predators and maintain access to high-society power.
    • Sacred Mother Activism: Exploring Peachkka’s “Fertilizer” as a spiritual and visceral strike that reclaims authority for survivors and strips away the unearned status of “somebody” winners.
    • The Puppet Show Critique: Analyzing Earth To Eve’s “THREAT LEVEL ORANGE” as a tactical protest against the fascist structures and mainstream distractions that hide the “straw man” behind the curtain.
    • Platform Responsibility: Highlighting Doechii’s refusal to play it safe, using national award stages to stand for trans lives and bridge the gap between underground fire and industry defiance.

    The Empire Ran by Oppression:

    In a world where the Empire is built on curated silence and backroom deals, the most dangerous weapon is a voice that refuses to be bought. For way, too long, the mainstream media has acted as a buffer for the powerful, ignoring the names on the lists and the “twisted liars” at high-society dinners to maintain their own access.

    Never fear, the frequency is shifting. We are seeing a new wave of artists, some blowing up in the underground scene and others using their first major spotlights, to send a Sacred Fire through the structures that protected the Epstein elite.

    This isn’t a simple review; it’s a deep dive into the transmutation of rage. We are bridging the gap between the lo-fi invocations of Peachkka, the unfiltered protest of Earth To Eve, and the national defiance of Doechii. These artists prove that whether you are an underground artists in the woods or a “somebody” on an award stage, your responsibility remains the same: to act as a Sacred Mother to the oppressed and to turn the predators of the world into fertilizer for a better future.

    Peachkka Reclaiming the Sacred Mother:

    The song “Fertilizer” by Peachkka is a masterclass in independent activism. It’s a track that demands to be played on a loop, but not just for its infectious rhythm.

    It is a direct, visceral strike against the systemic rot of the Epstein elite. While the “somebodies” are terrified of losing their seats at the table, Peachkka is busy setting the table on fire.

    Removing the Blinders of the Elite

    The lyrics are a reckoning. By naming the “dinners” and the “winners” who built their empires on the backs of the vulnerable, she removes the blinders that the mainstream media works so hard to keep in place.

    • The Goal: To strip away the unearned status of predators.
    • The Result: Returning them to the dirt, where they finally serve a purpose as nutrients for growth.

    The Call for Divine Protection:

    Beyond the critique, Peachkka moves into a rhythmic invocation of protection. By calling upon “Sacred Mothers,” she is reclaiming a spiritual authority that has been stolen from survivors.

    This isn’t just music; it’s a shield. She is sending a frequency of safety to those who were hurt while the Epstein Elite Empire looked the other way.

    Threat Level Orange- The Unified Front Against Tyranny:

    When we look at Earth To Eve and the track “THREAT LEVEL ORANGE,” we see the same type of “underground” artist taking on a faceless “somebody.”

    These two artists are operating as a unified front against the same monster. If Peachkka is the spiritual fire, Earth To Eve is the tactical protest.

    Beyond the Puppet Show:

    The mainstream media often presents a “puppet show” of free speech while actively controlling what we are allowed to hear.

    Earth To Eve calls this out directly, addressing the “fascist puppet show” and the tyrants who expect us to bow.  

    • Mainstream Media Silence: They focus on the distractions to keep you from the truth.
    • Independent Artist Activism: They use the “Sacred Fire” to expose the “straw man” behind the curtain.

    The Doechii Standard- Using the Big Break to Throw Down:

    It’s one thing for an underground artists to scream into the void, but it’s another for an artist to reach the top and refuse to forget where they came from. Doechii has set a new standard for what it means to have a platform.

    Standing for Trans Lives on the National Stage:

    During the 2025 BET Awards and the GLAAD Media Awards, Doechii used her first major “big breaks” to do something the industry hates: she made people uncomfortable with the truth.

    She didn’t just thank her label; she called out the “ruthless attacks” on trans people and the LGBTQ+ community.


    “I feel it’s my responsibility as an artist to use this moment to speak up for all oppressed people.”

    -Doechii

    A Platform is a Responsibility:

    Doechii’s defiance bridges the gap. She proves that the Sacred Mother energy doesn’t just belong in the underground.

    Whether it’s standing up for Black, Latino, or trans lives, her message is a mirror to Peachkka’s: the “Empire” is expiring because we are no longer afraid to speak.

    Transmutation- From Pain to Power:

    The ultimate theme connecting these artists is transmutation. Taking the “pain and the hurt,” “the “wicked ways” we’ve been forced to endure, and turning it into fertilizer.

    Why “Love and Light” Isn’t Enough:

    As Peachkka says, “Love and light is for beginners.” To truly dismantle the Epstein elite and the systems that protect them, we have to be willing to look at the dirt. We have to be willing to be “the fire” that cleanses the rot.

    Growing from the Dirt:

    We cannot wait for the mainstream media to give us permission to be outraged. They are the guardians of the very Epstein Elite Empire that is expiring.

    The real protection for survivors doesn’t come from a news anchor; it comes from the independent writer, those working underground, and the artist who uses their award speech to defend the vulnerable.

    From the “Sacred Mother” protection in Peachkka’s lyrics to the “responsibility” voiced by Doechii, the message is clear: the blinders are off. We are the ones who decide who is a “winner” and who is “fertilizer.”

    By standing together, we ensure that the “twisted liars” are returned to the earth and that the next generation grows in a soil that is finally clean.

    TLDR:

    Mainstream Media Silence is an expiration notice for the Elite Empire built on oppression. From the lo-fi invocations of Peachkka to the national stage presence of Doechii, a new wave of artists is refusing to be bought, turning systemic rage into a “Sacred Fire.”

    By rejecting the industry’s “love and light” bullshit and looking directly at the rot, these artists are transforming predators into fertilizer for a better future.

    The blinders are off, we are the ones who decide who gets a seat at the table and who gets returned to the dirt.

    Let me know:

    Feedback?

    Comments, Questions? Concerns?