u/Competitive_Monk2954

I’m relatively new to this. I’ve got a few questions on what to do to further your skills in between spells and rituals. I’m not at a point where I feel ready to run a bunch of spells at once, at most I’ll do maybe 2 a month right now. Half bc I just don’t have any real reason to be doing spell work often, and half bc I want the magick of the current spells to permeate and actually take effect before I start doing other things.

Also a secondary question slightly unrelated- I’ve seen a few things mention a trance like state during spell work and rituals. Is someone able to give me a bit more information on that? I don’t experience any trance like state during spell, I also don’t experience any of the lightheadedness or exhaustion I’ve seen others mention after a spell. I’m not sure I’m doing something wrong on that front. I generally try and ground myself like I would with meditation and I carry that grounding sensation throughout the spell/ritual, but I wouldn’t say it’s anything ‘trance like’

I’m gonna try to keep this as short as possible bc I’ve endured over 20 years of abuse from my mom.

Basic over view is I’ve been systematically beaten down emotionally since I was a kid, and as an adult my mom does everything in her power to make it harder for me to maintain my responsibilities. I don’t remember most of my childhood, but what I do remember is being constantly screamed at for normal kid things, being isolated from my peers bc my mom didn’t want to interact with other parents/my younger sisters extra curricular activities always held the highest priority. I was denied mental health help as a kid over and over again despite teachers telling my mother that I should get evaluated for something. As a working teen I got threatened to have the cops called on me, and everything that I loved and paid for taken away from me (plants, books, pets, etc) for simple things like forgetting to take out the trash before work. I don’t remember having positive moments with my parents and for as long as I could remember I felt like I’d raised myself, and regularly chose not to ask for help bc it would only mean I would get screamed at. I’ve concerned several therapists, friends, and coworkers with texts/quotes/situations in recent years. I’m not treated with even the slightest bit of respect and often treated like I’m a problem. I’m trans and go by a different name/pronouns and that’s made things worse bc my mom intentionally goes out of her way to make sure every stranger who meets me knows I’m trans and that’s made things she doesn’t care and will call me what she wants. My pets lives have been threatened to the point where I had to miss work and classes at times bc I couldn’t trust my mom to not break into the basement and hurt them.

I’m working on moving out- please that’s not what this post is about. I plan on fully changing my name legally, and compiling mental health records once I move out. And I’ve been saving every screenshot of text from my mom, or screenshot of what I’ve shared with close friends about what she’s said to me for about 2 years now. I’m hoping that that’s enough for a lawsuit. I’m not looking for money out of the lawsuit (although that would be a nice bonus) I’m just looking for her to have consequences for the over 20 years of intentional abuse bc everyone in the family refuses to see how horrible of a person she is.

For context I was raised believing in the Christian God. Personally I still believe in that God, but I’ve experienced so much religious trauma from the church that I can no longer interact with my God in a normal way. Secondly, I’m a person of science and even though I participate in rituals and spells, I have a hard time wrapping my brain around how/if they work. Like I’m not sure I fully believe that carrying a rock in my pocket with aid in my protection (unless I’m yeeting it at someone lol), but I do know that having a rock in my pocket is good to physically ground me. And lastly, I’m a transmasculine/transman-esque person and a lot of the information I’ve seen is strongly catering towards women and femininity, and it creates a bit of gender dysphoria sometimes.

Witchcraft has been the closest I can truly get to having religious practices again. And when I can actually keep it up it’s really good for my mental health. However, I’ve never really been able to practice for more than a few months at a time, half bc mental health is garbage and life is busy, and half bc I’ve still got a lot of poor preconceived notions I think. There’s just a lot of contradictory things for me specifically, and they’re causing a lot of hesitancy with how i interact with the craft as a whole.

I’m wanting to read more/branch out what I’m reading, but I know there’s some authors that are problematic or outright hateful and I don’t want my money going to them. I’m trying to create a list of them so I know which authors I need to specifically buy used books for. I know jk. Rowling, Steven king, and Neil gaimen are authors that I’m strictly purchasing used books for. Are there others that I’m not aware of? (Looking specifically at Jeff Vandermeer bc I want to read Annihilation after watching the film)

For context I’m a trans individual currently in an environmental science degree program. Just in the past year and a half the government has decimated my civil rights and my career field, among other things they’ve done. I work too much to have any energy or time to invest in hobbies or meet up with friends. I could lose my grant and federal loans next year solely due to changes in government. I’m in a south east state that has dozens of flock cameras everywhere to the point where I can’t leave my house without being tracked by them.

I truly am in a place where the maximum doses of antidepressants aren’t even touching the level of hopelessness and dread I experience everyday. Additionally I’ve resorted to thc vaping every night just to calm my nerves enough to sleep, but I’m so depressed and stressed that I’m taking 3-4 hits back to back and still not feeling the giddy high where I’m in a good mood.

I replaced my gpu (and psu with it) in October and it’s been running just fine without issue. Today I pulled up MHS3 and it needed to download something. About halfway through the pc screen went black and wouldn’t come back on. I turned the pc off and then back on. When I turned it back on the screen size was wrong and I got errors saying that the opencl.dll was not found. Did a full clean reinstall of my drivers. Didn’t fix it. After the reinstall I tried going into the amd software app to change the scaling, but got an error saying the software and hardware didn’t match. Another full clean reinstall. Nothing changed. Checked device manager to see if that showed anything, showed an error with (code 43). Unplugged everything and held down the power button to let the computer discharge any extra energy. Plugged it back up, checked for corrupted files. Files fixed. Reboot. Two more rounds of gpu full clean reinstalls. Nothings changed, errors persist. I’ve been working on this for 3.5hrs now. The graphics card isn’t even old (amd Radeon 9060 ).