Gentle Spirits, Gentle Dolls: Working with Spirit Attached Vintage Dolls and Children's Toys with Minta Karlsson

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that  happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just  to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” - The  Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams 

When the magical community converges on conversations about working with  spirit attached toys there is a tendency to approach the topic with a  heavy bias. How often do we hear of "haunted dolls" and are reminded of  horror movies such as "Child's Play"?   

Why do otherwise courageous discerning practitioners, those who work  with blood and bones and fae, recoil at the idea of dollwork?   

And lastly, why is there an insistence that all toys with spirits  attached are dangerous?  

In this lecture, Minta Karlsson will explore these common reactions and  fears, and discuss her own journey into working with toys and  miniatures. She will discuss general safety and boundary setting  exercises that can be applied to any spirit work, and use that as a  baseline to approaching working with these spirited creatures. Karlsson  will help to redefine these old and loved creatures as Real Toys, a nod  to the Velveteen Rabbit, steering the rhetoric away from misleading  words such as "haunted dolls." 

Lastly, Karlsson will discuss spirited toys with negative influences to  those around them. She will challenge participants to consider what  might be the cause. Karlsson will share tools they use to discern  between Real Toys that are carrying imprinted traumas of the world and  owners they've lived through, and toys that have had ghosts or negative  spirits bound to them against their will, and ways one might address  that from a practical standpoint.

This is a 120 minute, intermediate level lecture and workshop.

About the Presenter:

Minta Karlsson (she/they) is the co-founder and maker at Needfire LLC  and Trollkatt, a ritual candle and spell kit company located in Portland, Maine USA.  Karlsson is Trollkunning and a former apprentice of Johannes Bj rn G rdb ck, and  utilizes their foundational knowledge of a Swedish Folk Magic tradition  to inform her practical pursuits. She has spent the last two years deeply immersing herself in glamour  magic principles, and experimenting with them in her practice. Karlsson has presented on post  modern animistic folk magic for Magickal Women Conference online series in the past, as  well as the Salem Symposium, on subjects of Moon Magic and Trolldom. Karlsson regularly  offers workshops through Needfire, with hands on practical tool kits, on the arts of  candle and glamour magic.