rubedo

Hi, I'm Jackdaw! I'm a sympathizing order muppet, writer, remaker and pagan. I believe in hope, hearth, and fixing as much shit as I can from down here in the mines. I write about everything from practical hearth magic to fictional reconstruction and chaos magic, and from poetry to superhero fiction.

🜂 [ Magic ]

a summary of my how my flavor of paganism works

the practical magic of home

feelings about gender and bodies and Loki

my understanding via fictional reconstruction

from my experiences working with various firebird energies

the place I spend the most time elsewhere

a collection of links and my own thoughts on creating your own tools

meditations on the idea that writing is sacred

archetypes don't need to be ancient to be relevant

daily prayers and other devotional offerings

my experience working with the forge god

🜁 [ Poetry ]

🜂 [ Stories ]

Garcia’s been quietly building her practice as a freelance supernatural troubleshooter in Phoenix for years, and is almost ready to break into full-time if she can just deal with a thief, a library ghost, man-eating mermaids and her own relationship issues.

It's 1972, and Dan McCarthy is trying his damnedest to dodge the draft, the Department of Superhuman Affairs, and his ex-girlfriend, but all three keep coming back to haunt him.

The world ended weeks ago and Lacey’s been cast out of the safe bunker she called home with her husband and sister-wives. Now she’s got to figure out where she should go and who she can trust to stay alive in post-apocalyptic Utah.

Originally published in Imaginary Beasts

🜃 [ Zines ]

I started out with comics, drawn on notebook paper and meticulously photocopied at the library for distribution to a handful of kids I knew, mostly people whose thinly-disguised superhero characters made it into the stories. Within a few years I was making zines in high school, enjoying the opportunity they offered to be cool by proxy in the late 90s, because I was never going to be cool in the actual town I lived in. I was typing up terrible poetry on my lunch hour in the library or meticulously handwriting it so it was readable, writing little articles and essays. I made a couple of perzines inspired by the zines I was learn about online and send away for, mostly because I wanted to have something to trade with the immensely talented people I was mailing my well-hidden dollars to. My best friend and I published two issues of an underground newspaper until we got in hauled in front of the principal for (in retrospect, very mild) reporting. Eventually I discovered blogging and then livejournal, and I started posting my writing online instead, but every few years I get the itch to produce something that I could print and staple, if I wanted to.

Lately I've been thinking about zines again and there's a desire to make them that I haven't fully unpacked, nor have I been able to act on it yet. When and if I do, I want to share them. In the meantime, I'd been looking for a good place to share some of my older projects and I think I've finally found one via discovering Zine Jams on itch.io.

Brainflowers is a zine I made in 2011, following a long year of physical and mental health issues. It was a series of essays that marked the first time I really sat down and gave thought to my gender and my relationship with my body, and marked an important step in my transition even though, at the time, I had no belief I would be able to physically transition in the future.

the Merciful Earth is a bit more of a booklet than a zine, clocking in at 66 half-size pages. It's a compilation of poems and prayers and storylets I wrote for a goddess, and it was both intensely personal and the first thing I actively, intentionally published in a long time. I've never gotten it physically published but eventually I'd like to print and bind a copy for myself.

🜔 [ Other ]

"A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest... because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her." – Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

Webrings