During my research for the subject of suburban planning and its social isolation I stumble upon a wonderful specimen of poor urban design in the state of Missouri, where the nefarious housing pods hosting cul de sac and twirly roads is the realm for car culture.
The whole looks like any other American suburban community with the freeway skimming residential areas, the collector defining the neighbors, and then smaller roads extending everywhere until they meet all houses.
I wanted to plot an hypothetical visit of one neighbor to the other and this is the result. It’s a three miles trip by car that will take at least 9 minutes because there are no opening in the shape of a road or pedestrian path to connect the two points.
This is how it appears from top-down view with a series of semi-natural and artificial barriers that separates the cul de sac on the right with the curb on the right. Two worlds apart basically because of arcane and mysterious reasons that impelled urban designers to totally exclude any sort of travelling from one side of the neighbor to the other. Picture if the neighbor’s house is on fire and you want to help them escape death; you won’t probably because you either climb over the two fences and the trees, or you drive your car but that’ll take 9 minutes and who knows if people there are still alive by then.
Highlighted in red it’s the whole barrier of fence and trees that separate the neighbor in two distant sides, where socializing can be as difficult as Berlin in the 1950s between West and East.
To avoid your other neighbor doesn’t get the chance to invade you, the developers built an artificial canal (highlighted in blue) to furthermore make sure people don’t get together and come up with crazy ideas like socializing. In yellow the broken connection that might have been existed with a pedestrian path, but better not take any chance.
Here’s the site from another point of view and you can see how the whole portion doesn’t allow for people to walk or drive to the other side, splitting the pod into three areas.
I zoomed as much as I could and you can see it’s not just a road network issue anymore but a lack of safety feature that could help people stay away from danger. After all these are places where families with young kids live.
In yellow I highlighted the dangerous areas where the lack of fence around the power lines and the canal have allow for free access; anybody can go unrestricted near the pylons and the ditch. Unsupervised kids face the most peril especially when it’s right around their backyard. Coloured in magenta it’s what appears to be a narrow bridge but in fact is a floodgate connected by another fence to the little shack on the right.
Notice also the lack of sidewalks everywhere; this tells us a lot about the urban design of housing communities where the pedestrian was left out of the picture in the first place. People going for a walk have to be in the street increasing the risk of being struck by a vehicle, this shows us the very weak UX design home owners are affected, but also emergency vehicles who might get tangled driving streets which have been badly shaped.
What does this mean?- We live among cities that are the result of zoning laws which manufactured landscapes dictate by cars first and people second. In North America there’s nowhere a car couldn’t go from the driveway to the drive-through of your local burger joint; drive in movies for cars, parking lots eating away downtown portions of many cities, and many other issue which gets in the way of creating healthier places to live.
UX design is not only about websites and phone apps, it extend its dominion onto any other experience the user goes through that can be as simple as opening a pickle jar or driving to work. Both these elements engage people into specific and different behaviors which can result in the success of failure of products and services.
Disclaimer: This is all based on my research, path, opinion & experiences! Intro: I really was holding out on doing this post because it’s such a big, important topic to cover and I really don’t want to mess it up or get anything wrong. This post needs to be done though, people have asked if I have such a post and an anon suggested it. So finally, here it is. - What Is Warding? Warding is a type of magick, it is the act of creating an energetic barrier around you, your home, an object, ect. They can be temporary or permanent, although typically they are cast with the long term in mind. They can banish or turn away whatever you choose. Warding is an excellent skill to have because it can keep you, and even others safe and with practice you can do it anytime with just about whatever you have on hand.
When Should I Ward? Whenever you want an energetic barrier around you, most people consistently ward their home, themselves or their place of practice. Some people even ward their space every time they prepare for a spell. It should be done consistently in any area you want protected, but exactly where and how often is entirely up to the practitioner.
What Should I Do Before? Cleanse, a ward is a barrier of energy and in the same way that it keeps things out it also keeps things in. You don’t want to trap anything inside of it. Cleanse yourself before you ward yourself. Cleanse your space before you ward your space!
Tips Before You Ward-
Phrasing Keep the phrasing in mind! You don’t want to keep anything out that you want in, or let something in that you want out. If you’re chanting or using sigils ect keep in mind exactly what you want to keep out both in your methods and in your mind. Covering everything Make sure to cover everything, a ward is useless if there’s a weakness in it or if the ceiling & floor aren’t probably covered. Be super thorough!
Layering Your Wards One small little wimpy barrier? Ha, the spirits say as they scramble into your home to wreak havoc! You need to layer your wards, don’t just use one method one time, there’s no such thing as too much warding.
What Are Some Ways That I Can Ward? Now we’ll get right down to the methods you can use to ward yourself and your space! Remember that warding is important and needs to be effective, don’t try anything that you don’t have experience with for warding. At first, focus on the stuff you know. If you like sigils, use sigils at first and slowly work your way into using other more complex methods or methods that solely rely on your abilities.
Chanting/Speaking Come up with a protective chant you can use to ward your space. This chant could be someone else’s or your own as long as you feel it’s effective. Speak it aloud and visualize a layer of energy protecting your space.
Incense Burn a protective incense in the space you’d like to ward and visualize a barrier protecting your space.
Athame Draw out the line of your ward with your athame, visualize the wall appearing, covering everything with a thick layer of energy.
Spraying Spray a mix of blessed/magickal waters and or herbs with protective properties in the space you want to ward.
Sigils Create a sigil using your favorite method with the intent to “ward” or “protect/protection.” Then charge and activate it as a layer of protection! Here’s my post on sigils if you’re interested in that: -Sigil Post
Jar Spells You could mix up a jar spell for warding, set it in your house and forget it as a layer of warding. -My protective jar spell post
Anointment Anoint the doorways of your space, you could also anoint the ceiling, floor, walls, corners, honestly go for it.
Salt Sprinkle salt all around the edge of your home or space. Make sure to sprinkle salt on the INSIDE of your harm as salt can harm plants & wildlife if used outside. If you’d like to make a barrier on the outside of your home, you can use dried & crushed eggshells in place of salt. - Post on how to make eggshell powder here -
Hag stones Hag stones are stones with holes in them that have been corroded into the stone because of rushing water. It is believed rushing water is protective & cleansing so if you wear a stone that sat in it long enough to have parts corroded away, that the stone will maintain and keep those properties with it. It’s a great way to personally ward yourself, and an excuse to go out in nature.
They look like this!
Energy Manipulation If you’ve got a knack for manipulating energy, you can create a barrier through work and visualization that surrounds yourself or your space. This isn’t recommended for beginners though!
Personal Wards Also remember not just to ward your space but yourself, if you layer your home with wards, what happens when you leave? Exactly. Keep yourself safe too! Circle casting & hag stones are great methods I mentioned above that are good for personal warding. Can I Ward Specific Things And Not Others? Absolutely! I mentioned this in the phrasing section of this post, keep in mind exactly what you want to keep out when you’re warding. I like words like “negative” or “harmful” or “with ill intent” because they don’t necessarily keep out the Fae or positive/neutral spirits but it does keep out anything that wants to harm you in general. Just think about it ahead of time, find wording or a phrase you like and keep that in mind as you ward. What If I Live With People? If you’re out of the broom closet, explain to your family/roommates what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and make sure they’re cool with it and are aware of what’s going on. If you’re not out of the broom closet, you may have to resort to only warding yourself/your room, & that’s okay!
I hope this helps someone or teaches them something new! Enjoy! Have a lovely day
We are coming apart without an honest vision of hope, separated from our unique inner life through manipulation of our addiction to material gain.
This is our new ritual of living a life under the thumb of mega photo agencies that don’t care about higher prices but rely on bulk sales, for volume is their key to success and our demise as photographers unable to earn a decent living.
When you look at these photo agencies and their dominance in the stock image business you begin to get nervous at your inability, your silence to demand higher prices for your hard earned travels, making great images now are basically worthless, money for-profit only photo agencies that take the money from photographers submitting their images that will sell on these mega-agencies websites by using RF images as their con-game, their bait and switch, as if RF is superior to Rights Managed for the photographers income, it isn’t even close!
The new photographers are just trying to get on board with any photo-agencies not realizing the scam is already in place, for your images will sell for pennies on the dollar, think about that, your image prices are meager and are sold in bulk, which means you and other photographers are being scammed, for you receive individually small token payments of your image creations you worked on for hours while the agencies make millions off their bargain basement volume sales, leaving the image creator broke without a chance of making a living off his efforts, for the photographers are just pawns in a chess game easily taken and abandoned for the investors and the corporations that use stock images feel that photography is no longer respected as an art but now looked upon as a product, a commodity to be sold in quantity and of course your paychecks reflect the disintegration of a once inspiring way to get your images on the cover of magazines, ads, newspapers etc…. and make a decent living off your original photographic creations.
We all seek these precious moments that enhance our ability to see potential images and to be attracted to an overall scene with purpose as we transition from novice to a professional.
The close relationships between experienced photographers and those just starting out is such a positive influence on your ability to make images more powerful and unique.
But ultimately all photographers need to be independent, seeking their own unique sense of style and visual purpose.
What our inner eye is demanding is for us to wake-up and investigate subjects with curiosity, and experiment with what could eventually be your unique style.
Not all image creation is based through your inner perspective, sometimes a subject just appears as a blessing from nature and your instinct takes over to capture the scene in front of you.
As an intuitive photographer you must be prepared to free yourself from the boundaries set up to exploit your talents by the photo agencies telling you what you should shoot and upload.
You must seek more than just a snap shot of the same old subjects that slowly take away your versatility, your visual awareness of what your senses are telling you is a subject worth exploring.
Free yourself from the barriers that are forming, surrounding you with conventional society that exploits your ability to break free from the copycat club and begin experimenting with different subjects in order for you to find your rhythm, your versatile anticipation, your inner reflections of how a scene looks to you, your vision that sees beyond the cliche and digs deeper into the undercurrents of your unique ideas to be expressed through a photographers strong emotion as he experiments with new subjects of importance.
Yes, we have other duties in family life that will interfere with your need to make imagery as much as one would like to but if you are a father, a mother, you must separate yourself from your over active instinct demanding you leave for a month long road trip to Arizona to create images of the beautiful red rock formations in Sedona and just be present when your family really needs your presence the most.
Through practice you will enhance your ability to form a frame that will give the viewer of your photograph a new visual insight of what your true interests are whether they be nature, sports, people, clouds, mountain climbing , etc.,. image creation is what your life is all about.
Human beings want to be accepted by the pack animals hiding from their own unique talent. What we think we want is to be part of something bigger than ourselves but you won’t experience your own style of making great images by following the herd.
What we truly seek is freedom of expression, and we must fight the desire to give in to the ant-hill of working a job that leads you nowhere but moody, angry at why you couldn’t break free from the daily grind of a working stiff and move your life beyond money and in to a realm of life experiences, where you are the creator of your outer world expressed through your unique inner vision.
Photography is not a game but a demanding desire of creation by making something of beauty that others can enjoy.
Break free from the cliche’s of stock images and focus your mind on subjects that appeal to your senses, your uniqueness.
But we still fear the powers that be, that want to exploit us for our hard earned efforts. And we allow ourselves to be manipulated by the photo agencies that keep taking more and more of your hard earned efforts and because of the over abundance of new photographers that don’t think it is important to come together and stand up to these men and women of wealth, for they are barriers to our fulfillment of our youthful dreams to be paid a good living wage for your images appearing in well known magazine, newspaper, billboard, sports, architecture, etc ….
Photographers back in the hay-day of unique image creations, their personal images that expressed their inner vision accepted the agencies 50/50 split when selling your images but that was back when the photo agencies were friends and trusted but now there isn’t any chance of having a photographers union that would protect our image creations with a good price demanded by the photo-agency that is selling our work and not leave us standing their in disgust as our photographs are sold in volume to companies that pay in bulk and have access to your work sometime for pennies.
Barriers to our purpose, joining sides as if this was anything else but a deceiving shell game, the carrot in front of distracted minds, come join our photo agency and earn a good living, yeah right!
The powers that be move in the shadows making what sounds like a good deal for sending your hard earned imagery to one of these mega agencies, but in reality it is just another scam, a used car salesman promising you good returns on your travels, the wealthy take from the poor and give back to their selfish selves.
And as you are assimilated into a facade of hope you realize your intuitive knowledge of what makes a good photograph is someone else’s intellectual property, always check the fine print. Don’t ever give your images away for free!
But without experience young photographers give their images away because their egos just like seeing their own photography used in an ad! an ad that once was worth thousands of dollars and now goes for a whopping $15.00, wow what a sale!!!
What a good photographer needs is an intuitive perception, an understanding of how this wave of stealing money from new artists is the new norm of multimillionaires paying almost nothing to photographers for their earned search for that person, place or thing that made the photographer stop and then immerse themselves into the scene before she found that perfect once in a lifetime composition that satisfied her individuality, her unique perspective and she was certain in her efforts to explore the subject from all sides and choose which angle would make her master-piece.
In today’s cell phone camera explosion everyone is a photographer looking for a quick buck and that is what they will get a quick dime for their efforts, these newbies are of course the new wave of talent that thinks these small payments is the way it has always been until they talk with a photographer that have been around the block and lets the new kid on the street know that he and all the other photographers are being taken for a ride where you won’t be able to earn a decent living creating photographs as your main means of income.
But you must keep making images for that is your personal instinct, your well being, which is seeing potential in a scene and then exploring all your possibilities of the subject chosen, for what would a good photographer do if he stopped making great imagery he is proud of, you must always deeply feel your individual hope, slow down, stop and explore a new subject through concentration and vigilance, your never ending desire to keep making photos no matter how bad these agencies steal your hard fought efforts.
Image creation is both visual and personal, it is a means of exploring life first hand, up close, the photograph you were destined to make.
As our lives move forward and fears grow over the collapse of our entire planet we seek a distraction from our sense of doom but photography is more than just hiding oneself behind a camera, we must also fight the controlling force of a stagnant mind that has lost incentive to dig deeper into mother nature and fight the destructive force of the wealth’s power over us and be willing to fight for your freedom to breath clean air, drink clean water and enjoy nature’s beauty and not her wrath.
