Same I’m a STEMLGBTQ (new acronym I just made) but I find witchy stuff rly interesting and tbh helpful! And thank youuuuu for liking my take, there is no higher compliment!

Perhaps I am biased because I have only had very positive (limited) experiences with witches and psychics. I have not spent more money than I would on, say, a manicure, and I am always prepared for it to be as useful as, say, a bad manicure. (IMO the ethically wrong part is when someone encourages an ongoing financial relationship, particularly with threats of blackmail, i.e. something bad will happen in the future if you don’t pay them some ungodly sum for them to fix it.) During a time that I was really going through some PTSD shit, I went to a botánica and talked with the witch there. She pointed me towards a couple of things to “reset energy” and bring calm. “Woo-woo” stuff that would make my dad angry. Like any reasonable sales person, she asked my budget (like $20) and stayed within it. It was helpful for me to have these objects that I could assign calming properties to. There is scientific basis for using sensory experiences to mediate disregulated emotions — I had already done stuff like that in an intensive outpatient psychiatric program run at a major hospital (distress tolerance 101!!!), and I found it especially meaningful that someone who was in touch w her ancestral spiritual practices consulted w me on these specific objects. She sat with me and saw me cry and believed me that my pain was hard to bear, then she offered me what she could to alleviate it. Is that not magic?

I thought about having another option for astrology only but then there were too many options!!