Astrological Shadow Work: Healing Writing Prompts

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

Astrology helps us look at the many luminous (and perhaps limiting) narratives that impact and define humanity. Hanging above us in the stars in an illustrated fabric of what it means to be human: To want, to hurt, to self-destruct, to transform, to find justice, to intuit, to survive. You don’t need to ‘believe’ in astrology, though (although of course, if you’re here, you probably do turn to it from time to time).

Like tarot, these narratives offer a system by which to reflect. And let’s be honest — it’s fascinating.

And because each and every sign offers lessons and ideas on our potential (and perhaps our limitations), you can use these prompts in several ways: You can work with them for your sun, moon, or rising signs, or you can use every single one, as the moon enters each sign almost every two and a half days. 

An example: If you don’t have any Scorpio in your chart, for example, you can still use its prompt; just wait for the moon to enter Scorpio. Use the Scorpio energy to reflect on its prompt. Each sign offers valuable lessons and insights.

Below, prompts around the deeper, heavier, murkier aspects of the sun signs. Want more like this? The Magical Writing Grimoire (it’s out in 2020 and the cover/title isn’t finalized, but any of you witchy writers you can add it to your list!) includes magical and ritual writing prompts, practices and guided meditations.

Aries

What, in your triumphant, hard blaze, are you hiding from? Is there a softness you can grant yourself? What would it look like if you could undress in the light of flexibility? Does it pay to hold tight and remain stoic, or are you limiting yourself? 

Taurus

What happens when ugliness seeps in? What will you do to honor it without losing yourself? Can you handle the lack? What happens when there’s nothing around to beautify the void? What can you bring out of yourself, organically?

Gemini

When you silence or suppress one part of yourself, how does it feel? How can you worship at the feet of your multitudes? How can you become a chameleon without losing yourself? What does your foundation look like?

Cancer

When you are unsafe, can you find an anchor? If the sea keeps rocking, how can you find your strength without capsizing? How can you learn to let nostalgia bloom without its vines suffocating you? What does safety feel like inside your body?

Leo

Sometimes, you are so busy roaring you don’t hear the small sounds of morning and night. Meditate on this. What’s in front of you? What happens when the radiance machine stops working? Can there be power in the darkness? How can you be proud of yourself even when your crown falls off?

Virgo

In the chaos, there is a song. What does it sound like? Outside of the lines, you find yourself. When you are shapeless, what are you free to become? Can you find worth in the wildness, or hold space for the imperfect self? What happens when you dismantle the cliché?

Libra

What can you learn about yourself when you feel imbalanced? Is there authenticity to be found when you’re not busy balancing and performing seeking and connecting? What is found beneath the robe — and then beneath even that? Who are you when everyone goes home?

Scorpio

You feel the hum of power in the dark, but are you the architect of your own misery? Do you stay guarded in the shadows because it’s safer than letting the light in? Part the curtains. What can grow when you learn to differentiate the well from the water? What happens when you stop being jealous of the sky? 

Sagittarius

How can you learn what it feels like stay — with others, with yourself — when you always want to keep moving? Are you running?  What happens when the ideas and the wanderlust leave you empty? What happens when you stop wearing the mask? Who are you when you take the wings off and stand still?

Capricorn

Imagine the wild, wide desert. You are lost. You are thirsty. You are rescued. What happens when you learn to drink from someone else’s palm? Can you find peace in needing someone or something other than yourself? Can you lean into the softness, the slowness? Who are you when you aren’t in control?

Aquarius

Can you operate deep underground? Can you burrow into the murky waters of fear and love and want? What happens when you get naked and sit in the garden of your dark? When you don’t have a bird’s-eye view, when you comeinrealcloselikethis can you feel the granules? What do they feel like?

Pisces

What does it look like when you step out of the dream world? Can you remain here, and now, when fantasy and reality fail to merge? Can you intuit yourself? Are you able to hold space for your hopes — without crumbling under their impossible beauty? When you look your self-destruction in the face, what do you say to it? 

---

Lisa Marie Basile is the founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine--a digital diary of literature, magical living and idea. She is the author of "Light Magic for Dark Times," a modern collection of inspired rituals and daily practices and the forthcoming "The Magical Writing Grimoire: Use The Word As Your Wand for Ritual, Magic, and Manifesation." She's also the author of a few poetry collections, including 2018's "Nympholepsy." Her work encounters the intersection of ritual, wellness, chronic illness, overcoming trauma, and creativity, and she has written for The New York Times, Chakrubs, Narratively, Catapult, Sabat Magazine, Healthline, The Establishment, Refinery 29, Bust, Hello Giggles, and more. Her work can be seen in Best Small Fictions, Best American Experimental Writing, and several other anthologies. Lisa Marie earned a Masters degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University.

The Witches of Bushwick: On Cult Party, Connection, and Magic

BY CALLIE HITCHCOCK        

Every time I walk into Cult Party, an all women-run intersectional feminist witch shop in Bushwick which opened in 2017, there are new magical objects bursting from each fold and corner. Every item is held in a delicate, seemingly impossible, possibly magical, balance. They have dangle earrings depicting Venus of Willendorf — the plump, breasty figure who dots the pages of every anthropology and art history textbook ever printed, and is a symbol of fertility said to date back to 25,000 BCE; a gold plastic trophy plated with “Raging Pansexual” at the bottom; dragon’s blood artisan incense; spell candles; a vest with a print of the tarot card queen of cups; energy crystals; and honey laced with CBD, a chemical found in marijuana that is legal to sell.

These are a few of the things I notice when I attend Cult Party’s reading for Kristen Sollée’s Witches, Sluts, Feminists : Conjuring The Sex Positive, where other writers read from their work as well. The air in this small corridor space is heavily perfumed and the murmur of women conversing feels hypnotic, warm, ancient.

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I have no extensive experience with witchcraft, but I do have a previous interest in astrology and tarot cards. My nature has always been inclined toward narrativization, introspection, analyzation, pinning things down. As a neurotic, organizing my experiences, fears, and hopes with astrology and tarot was always a relaxing and practical illusion. 

Kristen Sollée stands at the front as she hugs Jacqueline Frances, a woman in a black latex catsuit who I recognize as the admin for a popular Instagram account called Jaq the Stripper which chronicles their life as a stripper and works to create solidarity for sex-workers. Kristen is wearing a long hot pink jacket and matching lipstick with pink glitter. Something feels odd about her but I can’t tell what– until I realize she has no eyebrows.

Kristen begins to speak. The crowd quiets down, without her having to ask. Kristen knows her stuff — her articles on witches are published widely and she is co-founder of the Occult Humanities Conference, a lecturer at The New School, and founding editor of Slutist, a sex positive feminist website. She commands the room, with the breadth of knowledge and immersion into witch culture, while maintaining an open, approachable mien. From her book she reads about the mythos of women as witches throughout history and what the female witch represents:

“The witch is a shapeshifter. She transforms from vixen to hag, healer to hellion, adversary to advocate based on who seeks her,” she says. It reminds me of Kali Ma, the Hindu goddess of birth and destruction and of the enormous power that human society has long seemed to both worship and fear in women. The burning of witches is a manifestation of this contradiction and it is the same contradiction that informs why women are shamed and policed for their sexuality today. That women have reclaimed the image of the witch as a symbol of autonomy, comes as no surprise. 

When the last reader of the night says, “The power and the energy in the room with everyone reading was tangible to me,” I agree with her. I feel lighter, on a higher plane of solace and joy with all the women in the room and the readers who shared their stories. I walk to the back to buy some CBD oil and I meet Cult Party’s owner Debbie Allen. As Debbie rings up my receipt, I chat with her about the space and she tells me that she is so happy that she has been able to create a store dedicated to “holding space for women.” I’m happy too.

~~

Cult Party demonstrates an increased cultural interest in the occult over the past few years. Today, witchcraft maintains an emphasis on ritual, community, spirituality, and healing, while focusing on feminist undertones and eschewing dogmatic religious ties. 

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In her book, Sollée writes that she was drawn to the character of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty because “she was the witch I wanted to be: a woman in control… like many millennial women, I see a reclamation of female power in the witch, slut, and feminist identities.”

Witch practice is experiencing new vogue among millennials. Laurie Penny, a journalist and self-described “former spooky girl” muses that “a general sense of powerlessness in a chaotic and competitive society, along with a revived interest in forms of feminism that don’t care who they frighten, may explain the growing appeal of hedge magic as a cultural aesthetic as much as a practice.” Witchcraft transverses many axes — female empowerment, community, belonging, and a system of beliefs and values. 

The competition and chaos Penny describes also correlates with the increasing reliance on the growing gig economy of contract or freelance work. Many millennials are left without health insurance, a salary, or retirement benefits.

The workplace has become decentralized, and a large chunk of interpersonal interactions have been siloed into social media. An isolation forged from aimlessness, and lack of structure have taken the place of older forms of social belonging. Millennials are all looking for a way to scrape up some softness and humanity where they can.

~~

Back at Cult Party, the source of the magic, I see the owner Debbie Allen carrying a glass from home with iced coffee in it. It is a sunny afternoon and she’s holding the leash of a hearty squish of a dog that she is looking after for a friend. His name is Lear. “I call him a chicken nugget. If he was left in the wild he would be a snack,” says Debbie as we huddle together in the back by the register and the wall with a rainbow painted on it.

Debbie is in her thirties, has long brown hair and bangs that softly curve around her face. Her kind smile and unhurried gait match the warm spring day and she seems so relaxed and happy that my imagination will keep reconfiguring this memory of her as also barefoot on the pavement. Lear whines constantly, possibly from being away from his true momma, and giving him attention doesn’t salve his unsoothable pout for long. I feel an uncomfortable kinship with Lear in this but choose to focus on the task at hand. 

Cult Party, Debbie tells me, started as a seven person collective in July of 2017 and the remaining members are Debbie and Al Benkin, a short-haired blonde artist, also in her thirties, who joins Debbie and I. Now the store runs as a co-op where vendors rent space to sell their wares and take turns manning the shop. Debbie and Al met while vending around town. Debbie was selling her brand of clothes, pins, stickers and patches called Hissy Fit, and Al was selling her art. The conversation moves towards the occult and Debbie tells me about her first inklings of her witch identity.

“I was always the kid playing with ouija boards, trances, seances, always getting in trouble at Christian camp,” she says, recalling that as she got older she would take her friends to the roof of her house to write down intentions and burn them. I ask Al if she identifies as a witch and she says, “I'm not against witchy things, I do believe we have more energy in the matter. I think different stones carry different energy but I'm not super woo-y about it. I'm a lot more science based than anything.”

We chew on the merits of a witchcraft practice for a few moments before Al suggests why feminism and witchcraft have historically gone hand in hand. “People manifest their own reality in their beliefs and people want to feel like they have some power in their decisions.” Witchcraft fosters a sense of power of self-determination, and feminism aims to create self-determination against perennial sexism and misogyny.

“I think it really helps people set the course for their quality of life in some way. It gives them a moral code and standards to abide by that makes them feel like they're being a good person and I don't think theres anything wrong with that,” continues Al. Moral code, ritual, symbolism — the touchstones of any meaningful religious practice. 

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Debbie adds: “When I dropped Christianity I went through a phase where I wasn't into anything.” She’s not alone.

According to a 2017 study by Pew Research center, 27 percent of millennials ages 18-29 attend religious services weekly compared to 38 percent of baby boomers and 51 percent of the parents of baby boomers. With a lack of trust in old belief systems, and a lack of trust in political leaders (Donald Trump only got 37% of the millennial vote), where do the non-religious go to find guidance?

Without social trust of politicians or structured belief systems, it can be hard to know where to look for a system of values or a narrative to turn to for meaning. Debbie explains that she started practicing witchcraft more heavily when she had been in her T-shirt company job for ten years and credits witchcraft with helping her set a new course for her life. She started to do more witch ceremonies with her friends to set intentions like she did on her roof as a teenager. 

“I don't know how much of the magic part of it I believe, but I do see when I put things out there, they come back. So in a real world way if you put out there what you want, you'll start to see opportunities present themselves,” says Debbie.  

“You have to tell the universe what you want,” Al concurs.   

For Debbie, rituals served as a kind of therapy — a way to check in with herself and set personal goals. A witch ceremony is a way to really immerse herself in paying attention to what her inner self wants to say. “When you're living your authentic life, instead of hiding or lying to yourself, things start appearing. Since I started, things just start happening weirdly. Synchronicity. Things start fitting into place.” 

Al’s face has been slowly illuminating. 

“You know what, I'll try that. I'm not anti, I will try it.” 

Debbie’s calm yet vital aura is infectious. When she talks about witchcraft as a place of healing and ceremony, something in the core of my humanity lights up– a need basking in its articulation.

I decide to attend my first full moon ceremony at the shop.

~~

Callie Hitchcock

On a dark March evening I bike to the little Bushwick store, unaware of the impending rainstorm. Debbie, the house witch Staci Ivori, two other ladies, Lear the dog, and I huddle into the cold little shop.

A few of us shuffle our feet and awkwardly try to find a space to sit or stand that is out of the way of Staci readying the altar. I start talking to Alayna, who has come in from Long Island. She wears a pink dress with a moon scene on it and sparkly square toed boots. Within minutes we are already discussing bad boyfriends. An old boyfriend of hers didn’t like her witch dealings or aesthetic, and wanted her to cut her hair.

We laugh and exchange more stories of personal feminist heroics and rebellions. The inimitable female intimacy of the encounter warms up my bones; I revel in the ease with which I can connect with most women so quickly and deeply. No shame, no one-upmanship, no hiding. 

Debbie had told me about the purpose of full moon circles: “It's really important to have a safe place where you can speak and not feel judged or shut down.” A full moon circle is meant to be a space where women get a reprieve from quotidian interruptions, disrespect, or feeling like their ideas and interiority are ignored because of their gender. 

To begin the full moon ceremony we sit down in a circle around a square bandana with a blue and red geometric pattern. This is our altar — the bandana is decorated with crystals, geodes, sage, candles, a beaded necklace, and seashells. We are instructed by Staci to put on the altar an object that we want to be charged. Some women have brought their own crystals, some put in their jewelry, and I put in my pen for lack of an object, but feel chuffed realizing that it has symbolic significance for my nascent writing career. My pen needs all the energy it can get. 

After making salutations to the north, west, east, south, sky and ground, we go around the circle and each woman gets a chance to do an emotional check-in on our head and our heart. We each go around and say what’s on our minds in life right now and how we are feeling emotionally. I share about writing projects I’m worried about and how I’m feeling about a new guy I’m dating.

As the night wears on, I slowly steep in the warm sharing energy of the group. Everyone is open, honest, and taking great care to foster a kind of sacred space opening up between all the women in the circle. Later on we do a self breast massage which might have initially seemed silly, but by that point in the evening I am in a relaxed meditative state and it all makes sense. We have to release negative energy and demonstrate physical care toward ourselves among other women.

At the end Staci asks us to write down some introspective questions. What are some areas in life that have meaning to me? What makes me feel nurtured? We share our answers and make promises to ourselves in the form of a mantra. Mine is, “remember my power.” Afterward, I feel closer to these women and everyone seems relaxed, happy, and caring. Everyone is very concerned about me riding home in the rain but I roll away into the night, the glow of the little shop fading behind me. 

~~

The next time I’m at Cult Party, they are hosting a clothing drive for a women’s shelter. As I walk into the store I hear someone say “I wish I could live here,” as they study some of the colorful bits and bobs of the shop. I see Debbie, and we talk with her friend about the full moon ceremony Debbie and I attended. Lear is puttering around the shop, still without his mom but remarkably less whiny and more relaxed with his surroundings this time around.

I am eventually drawn to the tarot card reader in the corner. Her name is Claire. She looks like a young Professor Trelawney– long blonde hair, big stone earrings, matching necklace, and large wire rim glasses. I put ten dollars in her donation jar and we begin. She starts by holding my hand while I hold the tarot card deck in the other. I moved to New York a few months ago and haven’t had much physical human contact, so her hand holding mine is a little startling but really nice. As I tell her about my question for the cards and we begin to pull them, I get this spine tingling feeling in my lower back.

This happens every time I get my cards read or when I’m being “seen” somehow by the divine– coffee ground readers in Istanbul, palm readers at a fair. It’s not the same as the excited, but mostly depthless feeling of astrology– where it is fun to find characteristic matches like, say, a crossword puzzle, but it never calls up my core. The tingly feeling is a manifestation of a few things — having someone dedicate such directed care and energy toward me, plus a sense that with our interpretation of the cards we are channeling something higher, sacred, divine. For a brief moment we are calling up something written in this shared moment of curiosity and discovery– the humanity in a desire to learn the truth. 

And in the end it is an act of care. Getting my tarot cards read feels like when someone unexpectedly gives me a shoulder massage. I hold very still, in an effort to not spook them, and so that it might continue forever. But the feeling of wanting it to last as long as possible clouds the pure goodness of the feeling. It nags me out of the moment– always keeping one eye on the inevitable end while wishing it away instead of enjoying and appreciating the moment of care. 

A 2017 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine showed that for people aged 19-32, hours of internet and social media usage heavily correlates with feelings of isolation and loneliness. That this is the same age group of women taking up witchcraft, does not feel like a mistake.

Alex Mar, author of Witches of America, wrote after her long investigation of witch groups across America that “We don’t need a consensus on what does or does not have meaning.” We merely need “strategies for staying alive.” She concluded, “When you have that feeling, of an encounter with something greater than yourself– however subtle, whatever form it takes, trust it. It is evidence enough.”

Rolling away from Cult Party on my bike again I think she’s right. Something like religion is really just a way to feel a solace of the human spirit with others. Reaching out for a cosmology, a social space, and a sense of power over our own destinies– this can take any form. 

The last two cards I pulled with Claire were Temperance, signifying a balance and two forces coming together to change each other; and Six of Pentacles, signifying an exchange between two people for a give and take. The cards have spoken. 

---

Callie Hitchcock is a journalism Master's student at NYU in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program. Callie has written on gender, sexuality, and culture for Slate, LA Review of Books, Slutever, Bust Magazine, and The Believer.

Working Out As Magic & Ritual: A Witch's Comprehensive Guide

BY MAGDA KNIGHT

I never used to go to the gym. Now, somehow, I do. I’m happy to call myself a health-goth, but as I’ve eased into what the gym means to me, I’ve discovered great joy in seeing it as a blend of physical and deeply internal progression… and I’ve incorporated so much magical practice into my physical self-training, too. 

Physical activity (in whatever way your body can accomplish, given that we all have different mobilities and abilities and some of us manage a disability or chronic illness) is a celebration. When we carry out magical acts, don’t we do it to flourish — rather than to shrink and feel small? We can pour ritual into how we use our bodies, and we can use our bodies to add a deeply physical element to connect us with our spirit, too. 

Going to the gym can be a way for magic positivity and body positivity to dance together to a shared rhythm. I’m not going to the gym in order to watch numbers on a scale go down, but to acknowledge and love the body I’m in — and to work it in the same way that I work my spirit when I carry out any magical practice. 

In this piece I’m going to look at ways in which some elements of going to the gym might be incorporated into magical work. And I have to share a revelation that’s very dear and important to me – that I’m not alone in this thinking (nor am I an expert).

I’m on a journey, as are we all.

When I first mentioned I wanted to write something like this, a sort of love letter to physical exercise and magic, I was amazed and gratified to discover how many people had already made the connection. So many people related, and they shared their own wonderful perspectives on how they flow magic into their physical activity. So this piece is a celebration of all the transformational ways in which physical and magical work can be made as one, and a testament to all the wonderful people who are finding their own paths to make it work. Some of what’s written here may echo with you, but there is so much more to say and discover, and your own personal journey is so, so important. 

My personal journey is only important to me. As it should be. 

Dear heart, if you are reading this, do it your way. Your personal journey is everything.

Ritual attire

When does the ritual begin? When going to the gym (or using some household items while watching a YouTube fitness video, for example), you don’t need to set out your magical space. That’s already done for you. You’re perhaps more likely to start getting your magic on when you don your ritual attire. 

Clothes that make you feel comfortable in your body and like you don’t have to think about them? Check. 

Anything else you need to wear for ritual purposes?

No.

Unless you wish it.

Gym-wear can be viewed as ritual attire because it may be something you don’t wear on a regular basis. You wear it for the gym. If desired, you can select clothes that match or enhance your gym persona. I feel good about myself and my physical practice if I wear specific colours to the gym – black and red are the colours I’m drawn to. You may feel like light, bright colours inspire you more. Colours and designs are important if you think they are. If you don’t, they’re not. 

At the moment, the gym is the one place where I feel safe wearing tight clothes. It’s almost as if I’m naked, fully in my own aspect, with nothing to hide. Regardless of my physical appearance and what normative society might think about that, in my tight clothes in the gym I feel empowered to walk tall. And this is just my own deeply personal viewpoint – the only truly important thing about your ritual gym attire is that it makes you feel right in yourself!

As you progress in your personal development, you may choose to add to your ritual kit. I’ve recently added sportswear gloves for lifting weights, to avoid blisters. When I put those gloves on, I’m ready to go. But I didn’t get them straight away. And I still don’t wear any special sportswear on my feet – just some average sneakers that do the job and feel fine to wear. Another practitioner might feel that specific gym footwear is essential. They may feel they need the swoosh emblem of Nike, winged goddess of victory, or they may feel that sportswear earbuds mean business and the use of sound helps them immerse themselves more deeply in their practice.

As I write this, it is cooooold outside. Winter weather. So, to negate the metaphorical demon of inertia sitting on my shoulder, I put on my gym attire every morning beneath my clothes. That way I’m already halfway there, and can go to the gym as an impulse, with even fewer barriers to stop me. The clothes still feel magically infused because I don’t think about them with other clothes on top. They only become ritual attire when I strip down to attend a session and they’re all I’m wearing.

Choosing and putting on your attire can make you feel like you’re energised and ready to begin the work. Your attire might be gym kit, or a swimsuit, or anything else. It’s charged with energy, and each time you engage in physical practice, it’s charged even further.

Pre-gym ritual preparation

One thing you’re very likely to bring to the gym is water. You may drink more than one bottle, but your first bottle can be charged before you leave the house. I love to cup the water, surround myself with golden light that builds with my breath, and pour energy and gratitude and intent into the water.

I give thanks to the water that will nourish me later, and each sweet sip will taste like nectar.

Entering and leaving the sacred space

In my gym, you have to walk through pods controlled by a key fob or access code if you wish to enter or leave. The door slides open, you enter the pod, then wait for the next door to slide open again to enter the centre proper. In my heart these doors represent the opening and closing of the ritual. The action that defines the transition between the mundane and sacred space. The signal that magical practice is about to take place, and the definitive moment when it ceases.

With the aid of these pods one enters the gym activated, and leaves the gym grounded.

Not all gyms have such obvious portals or gates for magical working. Entering and leaving through a simple door (or designing a space for working out in, say, your living room) can also open and close a sacred space, when done with intent. 

I don’t use changing rooms myself, but a practitioner can incorporate elements like changing or showering to begin and end their magical working in the gym.

Magic or mindfulness?

Is going to the gym a sweetly internal and holistic act of mindfulness, or a powerful magical rite? Perhaps it comes down to your practice and preference. Mindfulness certainly plays a key part in attaining a magic state in the gym. There might be a moment where you’re flooded with reverence for your body as you explore the liminal space within or just outside your comfortable limits, feeling the effects of air and blood move around your system, considering whether to spread sensation around your body to relieve a tired area, or pour your focus into those parts of the body which are working the hardest. 

You may have a million thoughts, or none, yet physical activity helps a person connect to the moment and respect how mind, spirit and body are all part of a whole.

Ritual practice

There are numerous ways to explore the gym as a magical working, too. You can use the endeavour as an offering: “I will do this next rep, or this session, as a gift or sacrifice.” One friend, Genevieve, tucks a cloth into her bra as she trains, with the intention of using that cloth in a later specific working. I love this. As she incorporates running into her practice, while running she also internally repeats a mantra aligned with the working for which she will use her cloth. You can imbue paper with your effort in this way too, and use it later for statements of intention or other written magical work. If you don’t wear a bra, you can stuff cloth or paper into your sock or footwear.

If you’re in a wheelchair or doing seated work, you may wish to place personal items like paper, cloth or threads beneath you as you sit. Some might see this as somehow disrespectful of your work, since you’re placing it beneath your area of elimination. Me, I’m always minded how Cloacina, beloved Roman goddess of the sewers, was acknowledged as the goddess of transformation and purification.

If I’m wearing my stalwart gym gloves for a whole session, I can slip a sigil in there. It’s being activated, charged and released through doing the gym session. I can seed it with intention then forget about it, because I can’t feel it in my glove. And if it gets sweaty or smudged? Well, that’s wonderful! Its outer form is becoming increasingly distanced from the conscious effort of creating it, working its way even further into the subconscious. Physical activity is such an aid in getting that balance between intent and no-mind, helping the conscious and subconscious work together.

I’ve been known to paint sigils on my body where they won’t be seen and let the physical activity sweat them out. Charge and release.

I also use thin-coloured ribbons in many of my workings, so there are times when I might charge a length of ribbon by wearing it wrapped round my ankle out of sight, or in my hair if it’s tied up.

If you work with entities or the Tarot, you can use reps or time on a treadmill to focus on a cherished entity or card in your mind, considering it from new angles. I am personally of the feeling that gym work creates space for new thoughts to flow, along with the increase in oxygen and blood movement. New thoughts may arise during the work itself, or — if your mind doesn’t work that way — you can zone out with the repetition of movement and create space for creativity and new ideas to flow into afterwards.

Meditation, contemplation, visualization and path-working

Meditation is a means to increase awareness of your body and still the monkey-mind, often using your breathing or your body. To me, any form of physical activity can get close to being a movement-based meditation. I’d be more likely to find a private gym bathroom cubicle on a non-busy day to meditate in a sitting position. I love using the rowing machine as a meditation tool because you’re nicely and safely strapped in with no chance of falling over, and no-one’s going to care if you close your eyes while you do it.

Pathworking is your chance to go on a journey through an inner landscape. I find the treadmills and rowing machines quite conducive to this. With a treadmill, you already have the forward movement, either walking or running. You have the chase, the hunt. You have yourself as a protagonist on an inner journey. It’s amazing what the mind can throw up when you seek to explore internal terrains while on the move.

Sometimes I use the treadmill and my timings on it (“for x seconds/minutes I’ll walk, or run, or rest” as an exploration of Tarot or the Tree of Life. Placing a focus on first one destination on the path, then the next. Allowing free reign to what comes up. Allowing the body to take charge, and the subconscious to seep into conscious workings.

Contemplation is ideal for the gym, as so much of the practice enables you to focus on specific images, qualities or deities. On the treadmill I might focus on the face of a cherished entity, holding it, loving it, exploring it, conversing with it, offering my thoughts to it, sometimes watching it shimmer with disco sparks in time to the tinny universal music (unless I’ve brought my own music along, which can take things to the next level. Diamanda Galas, anyone?)

Visualisation is my absolute favourite activity for the rowing machine. Maybe the ‘rowing’ nature of it leads my thoughts to water, but more than anything else, I love to strap in, set no timer, close my eyes and just row, row, row. Slipping into the stream of things. Heading with Charon down the river Styx, or swimming with mermaids in the Mariana trench, or letting the thoughts and images flow. Such release! And what comes to the fore can surprise me, or, be used at a later time in my creative work, or remind me that the divine is just around the corner, waiting for us to reach out and welcome it.

Building witch energy

Most importantly, I think physical training of any kind is such a concrete way of acknowledging and building intent, discipline and work. I see intent and discipline as being like muscles. To intend to go to the gym, then to indeed go to the gym, then to exert effort in line with your true will… each time you do this, you’re building witch energy. 

“I can do this. I will do this. I am doing this. I did this.” 

That’s so powerful, loves. 

And if we’re talking about results magic, you get rewarded for your effort at the end of every session. A delicious feeling in your body that’s one part endorphins, two parts sense of personal achievement. Immediate rewards from magical practice is such a boon when it comes to placing a focus on connecting with your will and your environment, mundane or otherwise.

Another friend, Katrin, puts it like this:

“Back when I had a weekly yoga class to attend, this was a big motivator for me - just proving to myself that I could get through this hour+ of forced concentration on nothing but my physical activity. I'd tell myself at the beginning of every session that I was going to be a Good Witch. That is, a witch who is reliable, keeps promises, does what she says she'll do. It did help my mindset in general - I'd kept my promise to do the exercise, so I'd proved to myself that I could be reliable in other ways too. And to me that's always been a huge part of what magic is about - the commitment and self-discipline and consistency.”

And what about grounding in a ritual? The minute you stop and your body thanks you is, to me, a moving and grounding experience. The drink of water, the quick towel-down. Taking that moment to connect my feet to the earth, the floor of the gym, the world. And then heading back through the gym portals to fully close the sacred space.

Ritual and symbolism

Perhaps everyone who goes to the gym has their own versions of symbolism and ritual, whether or not they choose to view it in these terms. As mentioned earlier, the doors to a gym can gain ritual significance. The opening and closing of a padlock on a gym locker can act as a charged seal. If one works with the magical meaning of numbers, one can incorporate this into personal practice, with reference to equipment settings and time spent on them. Or one can go round the equipment widdershins. When you go to the gym, you can seek and find your own symbolism, your own magical moments.

A friend I was discussing this with mentioned how Ramsey Dukes/Lionel Snell turned washing a car or washing dishes into a magical act by breaking it down into tiny magical moments (turn on the tap, sense how the water feels on your hands, consider how it feels when washing up liquid is added, and when the dishes are place in the sink).

To break one large activity down into tiny magical acts gives intent and full participation to each moment. It both activates the soul to the magic of the ritual, and shuts consciousness down so that the subconscious can get to work on the overall intent.

Your time at the gym is filled with tiny magical moments; time and activity broken down into small acts of meaning and beauty. “Just another ten seconds,” you say as you hold a plank, or work a treadmill. “Just four more reps.” It’s just you and the moment, and the pact you have made with yourself to do the work.

Grimoires and books of shadows are free to all

There are so many articles on the internet. So many how-to videos and shared conversations. Navigating the wealth of information and opinion to find something that helps rather than hinders your personal work can be a challenge, but it is there. 

As there is an increasing degree of diversity among people going to the gym, more diverse forms of support and encouragement are seeping onto the internet, and our online Akashic records are heaving with information from people offering the kind of support they wish they’d had access to themselves when they were first starting out. Workouts for trans women and femmes. Wheelchair exercises. Body positivity at the gym. The support available is so much more broad, deep and inclusive than it used to be.

Self-initiation and initiation by others.

What I most love about going to the gym is how personal it is. How true-to-thee-and-thee-alone your goals are. How internal your journey to growth is. There is, perhaps, a sense of initiation and levels of achievement through dedicated practice (and, dear one, you are obviously the only one who can define what ‘dedication’ will look like in your personal practice. No-one else has the right).

So much of gym practice relates in my mind to self-initiation. When you turn up, you do the work. There is no-one who can tell you otherwise. When you achieve personal goals, whether they are beautiful yet tiny in-the-moment goals like “I will do this for another 30 seconds” or greater goals that made you state your intent to go to the gym in the first place (like “I will go caving this year”), it is possible to view such achievements as levels of initiation.

You have your own internal gym compass. You know in your heart when you’re acting in such a way that it’s pointing north, and you know deep within when you’ve reached a destination on your journey.

There is also, potentially, the idea of being initiated by another. That’s where personal trainers come in. You’ll see a number of them in the gym, all initiates who are ready and willing to share their knowledge with the community. Their ritual insignia is the branded T-shirt. They have done the work. They are there for you.

I take the path of the solo practitioner, but I have a statement of intent (“I will get strong enough to go caving”) and to achieve that goal I may save up money so that I can pay for an initiate’s guidance on practice and personal development. Any path is valid if you feel like it is the right path for you.

A sacred space must be a safe space. Not an easy space, for there is work to be done. But a safe space.

When you conduct a magical working in a sacred space, it’s your time to channel your intention in a positive way. You’ve got no time or need or desire for negative thoughts pulling your spirit in directions it doesn’t want to go.

My thoughts on the gym as a safe sacred space are deeply subjective. They are limited by my personal experience as an abled cis white woman conducting physical activity in public. My only areas of potential concern are my lack of physical practice, and my age (I’m in my mid-forties, which has its own challenges, but woohoo to being past my Saturn Return). However, I want to take a moment to talk about other initiates in the gym, and my own highly subjective view of the gym as, yes, ultimately a safe space.

I know others will have deep and valid concerns about being judged by others in the gym. I cannot and must not disregard that. I can only share my own perception of doing my own personal practice surrounded by extremely regular and well-practised gym-goers. In my heart, these initiates - who are doing their own work and not there to mentor me - hold no threat. In fact, they come across as utterly neutral towards anyone but themselves (as it should be) and I also see it as a generous gift that they are carrying out their practice in public so that I can learn from it. If someone cannot afford a personal trainer, they can look to the practice of those who are more experienced, or those who can and do utilise a personal trainer, and learn from their techniques in things like floorwork or free weights. 

Again, it is so subjective. But when I walk into the gym, I feel such a powerful sense of neutrality. The space feels clean. A blank slate to write on. Initiates have no time to judge me – they’ve got their own business to attend to. They are doing their own work; all their intent is going into that. If anything, I tell myself that they already see me as a ‘winner’, regardless of my physical aspect and how I present myself, because I have shown up. And showing up is, I believe, something they understand and respect, having been through those early days of beginner self-initiation themselves. 

Of course, it shouldn’t matter if they respect me or not. I’m not there to win the respect of other gym-goers or anyone else. In going to the gym I’ve made a personal pact with myself, and I have my own business to get on with. And yet… if there is fear in going to a gym, it may be useful to explore ways to negate that fear, if it is stopping you from doing something you really want.

If I ask an initiate for brief advice (for I do not wish to unnecessarily interrupt their work), I see very little judgement in their eyes. If anything, they are informative and supportive, recognising I wish to learn and improve. One of us, I imagine them saying. One of us, one of us…

All around me, I am surrounded by people of all shapes and sizes and backgrounds and ages. We are people. We are humanity. To go to the gym may require privilege in certain areas including ability, time and money. But there are no definites. Someone who is struggling with poverty may be considered by society to be ‘too poor to afford the gym’, or ‘too poor to afford the added expense of a pet’, or ‘too poor to afford visits to the nail bar’. But every time society deems something a ‘luxury’, an actual breathing person – not a number or statistic, a person – may consider that ‘luxury’ to be essential to functioning on an everyday basis. They may equate gym or pet companions or getting their nails done with feeling truly like themselves in tough times. There’s no room for judgement in the gym. When I walk in, I feel like everyone is there. And like I have just as much right as anyone else to enter.  And we have one thing in common: we have a personal intent, and we are doing our best to realise it.

Coming back to my friend Genevieve again, she mentioned once reading an article about viewing the gym as a liminal space where you do not need to conduct physical practice. You might find it easier to view the gym as a space where you can shower, read, check your phone, meditate… and not feel obliged to do any physical activity at all. This wouldn’t suit my own practice as defining the gym as ‘a place to get physical’ helps to shape and build my ritual work.

However, someone else might breathe a sigh of relief in hearing that ‘going to the gym’ could be treated quite loosely if desired. Perhaps those who have chronic pain or find lengthy focus on one activity a challenge might love the idea that they can go to the gym and do what they want there. In a nice big gym, you’ll see people doing the most random things anyway. You won’t stand out. There are people already looking at their mobile phones, perhaps checking their fitness app or looking for health advice or video exercises. There are people chatting to their friends. There are people staring into space, either considering their practice or having a rest and not thinking anything at all, especially with the rise of interval training where you do a bit of activity then stop.

If you want to go to a gym and just chill, I don’t think anyone will stare at you. They’ll be too busy staring into themselves.

But: If you have had negative experiences in the gym, I am so sorry. It is vital that gyms must evolve as safe spaces, as awareness of body and identity positivity grows. It’s important.

Drawing out the toxicity of gym culture

I honestly didn’t know where best to discuss this. First or last? Wherever it’s placed, it matters.

If you’re planning to use the gym or any other physical activity for any self-healing, the last thing you need is toxicity. That poison needs to be addressed. To this day, medical practice has the wand of Caduceus as its symbol – two snakes coiled around the winged staff of Hermes. Without getting too deeply into snake mythology, so many of us think of the snake as a symbol of transformation and healing, its venom used as medical treatment. The snake can also be viewed as responsibility. The snake represents freedom and choice, and with that comes the responsibility to own your choices. Just as the medical profession owns its responsibility to take care of others.

When you work magic, you have such freedom. And you are making a choice. And you are taking responsibility for your practice.  And there need be no toxicity with any physical exercise you conduct on your own, whether it’s swimming or going to the gym or walking in the woods or streets.

My friend Ken has, in his own practice, recently been exploring how the Homeric tradition of competition was toxic at its core, as someone had to lose in order for another to be declared the winner.

When you exercise on your own, there is no-one to vanquish. You are already winning. But negative thoughts can creep in, and how can they best be dissipated? I don’t like to think of it as vanquishing negative thoughts – the very word ‘vanquish’ suggests there is a battle involved, and someone might lose. My subjective approach is to avoid self-talk of vanquishing or banishing negative thoughts around my practice – like, say, punishing myself mentally because I didn’t go to the gym when you said I would, or not going because I didn’t want to be ‘seen’ in a public space, then feeling ‘ashamed’ of ‘letting negative thoughts get the better of me’. 

Wow. Look at all this self-punishment. 

This talk of losing.

This pain. 

The kind that doesn’t make me stronger. 

When I think like this, I stop. Listen. I consider how I’m using language and doubt to retreat into the idea of treating exercise as punishment, not celebration. I’m putting myself in the frame of mind where the gym is a battle and I could lose.

Naturally, ‘winning’ is by no means the only form of toxicity that can seep through gym culture. Sexism, sizeism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, racism… it’s all a potential issue, and a valid concern. Yes, increased gym attendance means there’s far more diversity in gym-goers, which can help. But the way in which culture views physical exercises and is prone to judging people who do it is still far from ideal. 

Whatever you fear most… please know that you are not alone. There are others out there that feel the same way you do. However, there is a chance you are more likely to find people in the gym you can immediately relate to, who make you feel safe and part of a greater whole. And you can find information online written by people who share your experience, and can offer support that relates directly to your concerns and needs.

You are not alone. Together, people are working to draw the poison out.

It’s going to take time. And energy. And courage. And if you choose not to go to the gym, because you need to feel safe, that is important. You need to feel safe.

Perhaps there are other forms of physical practice you can explore. Give yourself the right to seek ways to freely and safely love your body and do the work.

Attaining a magical state of mind.

What a magical state means to you is such a personal thing. You may be seeking a release from the burdens of the world, or a connection with your body and all the elements of the beautiful creature that is you. You may be seeking a moment to charge and release and intention, or a conversation with the divine. You may be seeking a specific goal, that defined line between not being able to do a pull-up or half marathon, then one day being able to do one.

There is no set rule as to whether you have or haven’t achieved a magical state when you go to the gym. But you know what? When you feel it, you feel it. You might feel it for a moment, or it might carry you for days. All those magical moments add up. They remind you that your work and your intentions are important, and that you can work towards them, and that you can achieve a state where you and your intentions are one, not separate things held apart by doubt.

Ritual physical activity doesn’t need to occur in a gym.

Pool sessions, caressed by water. Chair-based exercises, acknowledging what your body needs to be safe as well as worked. Whatever your practice, you can choose to perceive and shape it as a magical act. The gym can be a sacred space, but it’s just one option for ritualising your physical activity. 

If you attend hula hoop classes, grasping that hoop is a magical act, as you feel the energy coursing through you – you’ve put some of your soul into that hoop, so that when you grasp it, it gives you soul energy right back. 

When you climb into the familiar saddle of your beloved bike, the one you love so much you may have named it, you know it’s your steed, your companion, helping you progress to where you want to go.

You have your body. You have your spirit. Your body and spirit have such great beauty. They are the very embodiment of raw and nuanced power.

Physical/magical work is an opportunity to acknowledge your body and seek to make it an extension of your spirit. It is a beautiful act, filled with love. And all acts of beauty hold magic at their core.

If you can move, you can explore a way to exercise. 

If you can feel your spirit, you can work magic.

If any part of this made you think “yes, this is useful to me”, I am so glad. If it didn’t, I have much to learn. We must never cease to learn, try, test, explore. 

You have your own, valuable, truth and perspective.

In the absolutely fucking immortal words of Wesley Snipes in Blade Trinity…

“Use it.”

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@MagdaKnight is the Co-Founding Editor of Mookychick. Her YA fiction and other writings for adults, children and changelings have been published in anthologies and in 2000AD. She thinks you're great.

How Rituals Can Help You Gain Confidence

BY STEPHANIE VALENTE

Rituals are especially important in our lives. Rituals are a marvelous tool for the self, for spell work, and best of all, for boosting confidence. Whether you know it or not, you can increase your self-love and confidence by making a few simple teaks and instilling some daily rituals to ground yourself and your magical life.

Here at 4 tips on gaining confidence with rituals. Don't just get satisfied, get satiated.

1. Establish a sacred morning routine. Every morning, you should have a practice that builds magic and confidence for you. This doesn't mean you have to get sky clad, light a bunch of candles, and embark on a multi-step, complicated process. Perhaps you pull a tarot card while making your tea, write a few morning pages, recite an affirmation, scream to death metal for a few moments, perform a thank-you spell, or meditate for five minutes. 

Whatever morning rituals you embark on, do what works for you. There are no rules. What's best of all is that you test out a few rituals, keep what works, and shed what doesn't.

2. Do ritual self-care in spare minutes or moments. You should treat yourself to self-care several times a day. My favorite rituals are small and sacred moments, like taking a ten minute walk in my neighborhood, cleaning my skin and applying moisturizer every morning, playing with my dog before bedtime, reading one short story or poem a day, stretching at your lunch break for five minutes. 

In fact, I believe that the smaller or more actionable the ritual, the easier it is to do every day or more than once a day, like say, checking in with two friends every day for a 10 minute call each. If you can do a ritual in two minutes or less, why not make it a part of your everyday routine?

Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks said it best: "I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair or two cups of good hot black coffee."

Just let it happen.

3. Be honest with yourself. Keep a journal, log your rituals even, and of course, set boundaries. Rituals should be natural, fun, and inviting. Dropping your mail in the post office box can be a ritual, buying a newspaper before your work commute is a ritual, baking cookies every Tuesday night is a ritual, chatting with your elderly neighbor every night when you get home from work is ritual, volunteering your time once a week is a ritual. 

If a ritual feels stressful or obligatory, stop. Of course, we have to pay bills, go to work, talk to coworkers and relatives. But if something is stressful, look at the root. Is it how the event or task is performed? Adding a ritual to your boundaries or creating boundaries with rituals will make you feel more whole and confident.

4. Carry a special object or wear an essential oil that has meaning just for you. For me, I carry a small sliver of rose quartz in my bag to remind myself that I am loved and have love for the world and its inhabitants around me. The more love I feel and see, the more I give, and the more I look for. From this ritual, I see less negativity in me and the world around me.

I also carry a teeny tiny medallion of Mary in my coin purse because I felt so strongly about the object when I first saw it. I'm not sure what else it means yet, because it's a ritual I've slowly started working on since I found the object two months ago.

Piggybacking on this thinking, I often wear essential oils on my neck, clavicle, and wrists. The act of dabbing on the scented oil feels so glamorous to me (like a classic film!), but the scents also make me feel powerful. One of my personal favorite oils is Witch Queen from Catland. You can recreate this ritual with an oil you already have, a perfume you adore, or you can make your own.

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Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is a Young Adult novelist, short fiction writer, poet, editor, content & social media strategist. In short, she wears many hats. Especially if they have feathers. Some of her writing has appeared in Bust Magazine, Electric Cereal, Prick of the Spindle, The 22 Magazine, Danse Macabre, Uphook Press, Literary Orphans, Nano Fiction, and more. She has provided content strategy, copy, blogging, editing, & social media for per’fekt cosmetics, Anna Sui, Agent Provocateur, Patricia Field, Hue, Montagne Jeunesse, Bust Magazine, Kensie, Web100, Oasap, Quiz, Popsugar, among others.

In Conversation with Writer & Witch Andi Talarico: Stregheria, Tarot & Astrology

INTERVIEW BY LISA MARIE BASILE

LMB: You’re a poet, a writer, a witch, a reading series host, and (as of this summer!) a magical workshop instructor! Can you tell me a little bit about your background in both writing and magic, and how they intersect for you?

AT: I think I've sort of always been both a witch and a writer, since before I understood the terms and knew how to put the work and effort into each practice. I've been storytelling since early childhood and writing/performing poetry since age 10. As for witchcraft, I'd felt alignment with the identity for as long as I can remember. The first Halloween costume I chose for myself was the Wicked Witch of the West. I thought she was remarkably powerful and I wanted to feel that, to mimic and evoke it.

As I got older, the practice of writing down ideas for spells, tarot spreads, important moments, dreams, etc - that ends up becoming one's Book of Shadows, but I don't separate mine from my everyday notebook. To me, the practice of writing down the beginning of a poem, and in the next moment, writing my errands for the day, and in the next moment, recording my ideas for a new moon ritual - it's all from the same place. It all comes back to memory, practice, and ritual.

You’re identify with the Strega. Can you tell me a little bit about how Italian folk magic and your Mediterranean/Italian heritage finds its way into your practice?

When I first started "studying" witchcraft, ie, trying out first spells and rituals that were found in actual sources other than my imagination, I studied Wicca because that was the information available to me at that time. It didn't all resonate with me, to be honest. When I started talking to the women in my family about Stregheria, and started hunting down the scarce resources about Italian folk magic, it all made sense to me, how you can incorporate spellwork into everyday kitchen work, or how you can read your dreams for meaning, or how you don't have to set up a sacred, untouchable alter to work your magic. 

My great-grandmother was a Sicilian Strega whose "specialty" (many of the local Streghe had their "thing" that they did best, as it's been explained to me) was taking the malocchio, or the Evil Eye, off of people with a folk magic ritual. When I started studying that, and really digging deeper into these practices, it started to make more sense to me than the Wicca I had explored previously. 

I identify with Strega magic because there's a lot of room for everyday intuition, and that works for me. It's about much more than just my Italian-American upbringing, though, because I'm a total mix. My mother's family is mostly English, so some of the Wiccan beliefs really align with that part of my heritage.

On my father's side, we're Italian and Lebanese and there were students of Alchemy in the Lebanese side so in a way, I feel born into many magical traditions. But I chose the one that spoke to me the clearest and the loudest, which is what I think every curious person should do. 

Also: did you read and fucking LOVE Strega Nona as a child? I know I read that book a hundred times and it’s basically why I am who I am these days. 

You know, I didn't read that book until I was an adult! I feel like I really missed out, haha.

You’re teaching a series of classes in nyc at Word Bookstore in Brooklyn this summer on tarot, astrology, and ritual! I’m so excited! Can you tell me more about the classes & about the way YOU approach magic? 

Thank you! When I was approached by WORD, they asked me to teach some Witchy 101 classes which really made me examine my practice and my belief system, for sure. I had to break down the elements of what goes into my magic life and think about the connections and stories and education behind them. My studied understanding of the esoteric realm started in seventh grade, when I stole a gigantic book, Zolar's Astrology, and gobbled down like 1,000 pages of info and started telling everyone about themselves astrologically. At the time, it was a way for me to understand and categorize the world a little easier. It was insight into the human condition, which is the focus of much of my work - helping others through astrology, tarot, ritual, and self-care. 

The astrology workshop will show people how to make and interpret the basics of their natal charts, since our zodiac signs are so much more than just our sun signs. Toward the end of the class, I'll discuss astrology across the magic spectrum, like for instance how it can change the way you read tarot cards. That will lead us into the second workshop of Tarot, where I'll discuss ideas for making the cards work for the individual reader. While there are some hard and fast rules in Tarot, I think there's a lot more room for intuition and the art of natural storytelling than some may think. I've always approached my readings as a writer and an author, like here are these ancient plot points being laid out for you - what's the story, what's the lesson, what's the theme, what's the message?

At the end of this workshop, we'll discuss other ways to use Tarot, like for instance in ritual, which leads us to the final workshop. In the Ritual discussion, I really want to give people permission to practice in a way that works for them, and not worry about setting up some expensive altar based on something they read in a book.

There are SO many fun, creative ways to create your space and figure out what works for you, and I love talking to people about their ideas here. For example, growing up, I assumed that to really perform a moon ritual, you had to be outdoors with your coven, skyclad (witchspeak for "naked") and dancing around a fire, and that simply doesn't work for most modern witches, especially us city-folk witches. So I'm looking so forward to bringing in elements of my altar and sharing them, and having a real conversation about practice, ritual, and sacred spaces that can create for ourselves.

What are your thoughts on the burgeoning popularity of witchcraft? I think we both agree more magic and positivity and autonomy is a GOOD thing—so I’m interested in your perspective as a long time practitioner. 

You know, I think I aligned with witches at a young age, because their other-ness and power both spoke to me. I was always a bit of a weirdo and an outcast, so witchcraft made sense to me. Seeing the popular kids take it over and makee it cool and mainstream was a little off-putting at first, I'll be honest, but that was just a knee-jerk ego-speak reaction on my part.

The fact that more people are aligning themselves with witchcraft and ritual and interdependence and intersectionality - we need more of that in the world. So I don't care if you just bought your first Rose Quartz because it made a pretty Instagram post - go get it, friend. Make it meaningful if you want to and if you can, and if not, that doesn't take away from my practice one bit. Witches who want to quiz you on how serious you are, what coven you belong to, who initiated you, what order you belong to: that reeks of hierarchal bullshit and elitism to me. Even being a natural Slytherin, I just can't hang with that attitude, haha.

I couldn't agree more. We shouldn't judge, gate-keep, or assume everyone is going to approach magic in the same way!

So, what books are you reading right now?

I read a lot for place and mood and I'm a total Summer Baby so I've been on a roll with reading books about the ocean. I just finished Ocean Sea, a gorgeous magical realist tale, by the Italian author Alessandro Barrico. I'm currently finishing up the abso-bloody-lutely brilliant novel The Pisces by Melissa Broder (which is so deliciously dirty - it's been fun to spy people reading it on the Subway because I'm like oooooh, what part are you reading right now?)

Lastly, I'm digging deep into Practical Magic: A Beginner's Guide to Crystals, Horoscopes, Psychics, and Spells by Nikki Van De Car because we'll be discussing that in the WORD Workshops. It was so hard to choose JUST ONE book, but I think this guide is a beautifully un-intimidating place to start.

So, what is your birth chart like? How do you think the zodiac actually has a hand in our lives?

Whew boy, this is a big question and a big answer. I feel like there are sort of two types of people here, the ones who say, "Astrology could never be real," and the other camp who are like, "You're SUCH a Sag rising," haha. The thing is, Astrology is really hard to defend, right? How could the alignment of the stars affect our personalities and paths in life? The tough answer is that I'm not totally sure, to be honest, but I also don't need a scientific basis for every single aspect of my life.

What I know is that after years of exploring astrology charts with people, I've seen way way way too much interesting coincidence and important metaphor and meaningful symbolism to every be able to completely deny it. I think Astrology is a fascinating way to gain insight into who we all are and what we're all working with. It helps us understand our strengths and weaknesses, our attractions, our patterns of behavior, our shadow selves.

For me, I'm a Cancer/Leo cusp, and that water/fire split goes down most of my chart and really makes sense to me. I'm a Rising Sagittarius (fire) and Pisces Moon (water.) It basically makes me a textbook ambivert. I have no stage fright but don't do well at a get-together with a few people if I'm not close with all of them, haha. My water side makes me deeply empathetic, intuitive, and moody af. The fire side keeps me performing, laughing, taking risks and chances, and kicks me in the ass when I get too far in my own head.

What a GREAT combo you've got going on there (says the skulking, moody Scorpio with a Cancer moon). I love that you've got that water/fire duality!

So, you’re a tarot reader (and a wonderful one!). How do you approach tarot? How do you think creatives can use the tarot?

Thank you, Lisa, you're too kind. Tarot for me is a way in which we deal with universal messages. The cards themselves speak to many ideas of universality, from Jungian Collective Unconscious to the beats in a novel's plot, from common dream symbols to astrological alignment.

When I read for people, I tend to focus less on the fortune-telling aspect of it and more on the actions that have brought the querent to this moment in time. What patterns are at work, what forces are blocking us, how can we best approach this issue or problem with the tools we have in front of us? With that mindset, you can use the tarot to help you write your way out of a block, or perhaps understand what your dreams have been trying to communicate to you, or of course why perhaps you're crushing on someone who isn't reciprocating. When you loosen up the strict Tarot rules, you find uses in them for everything from spellwork to finding your next poem.

How does magic intersect with our social and political climate right now? I’m interested in your ideas on hexing Trump and self care rituals?

Being a witch has always aligned deeply, for me, with feminism, intersectionality, and putting power in the hands of the marginalized. Witches, historically, were often women healers that provided care outside of institutional patriarchy and that history resonates with me in a hugely meaningful way. The people historically accused of witchcraft were mostly women of questionable status: the unmarried, the lower-income, the other-ed in terms of color, gender, sexuality, etc. I think in particular, that young folks who are today's marginalized people - LGBTQ, POC, women - end up being attracted to witchcraft as a way of harnessing a power that's been denied to us.

That being said, do I want to hex Trump? Uh, of course I do. But I wouldn't and I won't. Hexing feels extraordinarily dangerous and irresponsible to me. I use my magic to help others and myself. I don't call myself a "white witch" because I definitely embrace the darkness within and believe in expression of that darkness, but hexing is something more than that, and it's not a place  I choose to go. I don't know that it's possible to poison someone spiritually without taking it some of it yourself, too. That's the only way I know how to explain that, which may not make much sense, I'm sorry.

As for self-care rituals, I wish that every person out there could find what restores them physically, emotionally, and spiritually and put it into practice.

Time for the hard-hitting question: Which Hogwarts house are you, most importantly?

I'm such a goddamn Slytherin. It took me a while to be comfortable with that but now I'm proud. I definitely don't have the elitist attitude shared by many Slytherin, but that dark energy has my name written all over it, haha. 

SLYTHERIN 4 LIFE.

How can people sign up for your courses this summer? 

Folks can sign up through WORD's site right here.

Winter Comes, It Always Does

BY PEG ALOI

I wanted a grey day, the beggar said, one with huntsmen lurking in the bracken, willowy girls in wet dresses skipping through the bogs, ginger cats slipping down silken copses to dispatch voles and snakes and buckets brimming with mist-ripened plums.

I remember the cries of blackbirds, the poet mused, in the heat of midday, swirling over burning cornstalks, black spirals tracing otherworlds beneath blue clouds gleaming, disappearing into the ravine, into coming twilight, where brown armies of scurrying ants and black covens of twitching cicadas converge, oblivious, waiting in the whispering dark for dew.

I wanted the smoldering brush, the husband said, the winnowing baskets and wagons stacked with pumpkins and leeks, the last sheaf of grain held high by the harvest queen, lips like wineskins plump and red, copper bracelet flashing like green fire, her eyes the summer stars, her belly the moon.

I know the old ones hacked these fields with scythes, the wife insisted, scraping wheat and barley for winter stores, slaughtering cattle at the Blood Moon and salting it in woolen sacks, blessing the horses with cups of cider, rolling russets into the bins and hoarding twists of sugar between candle boxes. We pray for an early snow to soften the fields.

Another day in the countryside is what I wanted, the child said, one that should end as it begins, with tinkling lamps, our skin scented with sour sweat, hot chocolate, by the fire with cheese and bread, songs sung in my head at sunrise, offered as blessings to midnight travelers, sending us off to sleep with melodies, memories, circling like crows at dusk, like hawks of morning.

We go to Safeways now, but it still tastes like magic if we walk 'round the garden three times before supper.

Like this work? Donate to Peg Aloi.

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Peg Aloi: I am a freelance film critic, media studies scholar, and general wordsmith on many topics. My poetry has appeared in Goblin Fruit and Obsidian Magazine. Currently writing for The Arts Fuse, the Orlando Weekly, Cinemazine, Diabolique, The Establishment, and other fine folks, and my blog "The Witching Hour," hosted on Patheos for years, now has its own domain. I am a co-founder of The Witches' Voice, Inc. and its longtime Media Coordinator. I own small baking and gardening businesses, and am studying horticulture. My witchcraft is the hedgewitchy kind, sprinkled with glitter

7 Doable, Inexpensive & Meaningful Ways to Practice Witchcraft Everyday

BY ARCHITA MITTRA

I’ve always been surprised by the depiction of witches in pop culture—how they charm their hair and then go about their daily lives, without a drop in energy levels or a break. Magic seems so fluid, so immediate, working at the drop of a hat and requiring only a wand, a pentagram, and the chanting of a few words.

For a lot of us who identify as witches, magic and spellwork is an integral part of our lives. But performing a full-fledged banishing charm or even a purification ritual, complete with herbs and with all right colour-coded candles, takes up time and energy (and money!), and may even leave us exhausted.

Sometimes our hectic schedules and commitments prevent us from accessing our full potential every day. That’s when I realized I didn’t need to do an elaborate ritual or wait for the next full moon to manifest something. Our little everyday acts can be magic too—if done with the right intention.

Here are some ways in which you can make magic a part of your daily life, especially if you can’t seem to make time for it.

Keep A Multi-Purpose Grimoire

Your Grimoire or Book Of Shadows doesn’t need to be only a record of spells, sabbats and moon charts. I use the same notebook as a dream diary and a gratitude journal, and I make sure I write in it every morning when I wake up. If you’re feeling guilty about the many blank pages in your grimoire, you can use it to record your dreams and nightmares (for later analysis), as well as write down seven things you’re grateful for. It also provides a refreshing start to your day.

Charm Your Food And Drink

Whispering a few words of thankfulness before any meal can work wonders. Another trick I use is to stir my daily cup of coffee in a clockwise direction, while thinking of happy thoughts to charm my drink. (You can also stir anticlockwise to dispel negativity). I also make sure to stock up on my favourite comfort foods for the tough days. Rowling wasn’t kidding when she wrote about having chocolate to ward off the ill-effects of Dementors, after all.

RELATED: More Halloween content for Scorpio season. 

Practice Simple Meditation Exercises

As I have to spend almost 2-3 hours every day on public transport while commuting to work or college, I try to use that interim time to do some simple meditation exercises (discreetly, of course), simply close my eyes and visualize a positive scenario or outcome, or even a shield of white light. It’s sure to make you feel optimistic, and may even bring in a few surprises to your day.

Make Quick Sigils And Spells

Confession: I simply love making sigils (a magical symbol). Maybe it’s because I’ve always been a creative person, but turning a positive affirmation to a beautiful design is also pretty therapeutic. I often end up doodling sigils in my notebooks during a boring lecture or fiddling with the painting apps on my phone to come up with something magical. And if you’re a witch who loves to work with technology, you can create emoji spells and send some good vibes to your loved ones, as well.

Spend Time With Nature

This doesn’t mean you have to surround yourself with greenery. Whether it’s saying thank you to the spirit of a tree, noticing the little things on the side of road or finding a beautiful feather on your path, there are many low-key ways to connect with nature and unwind. If it’s a full moon night and I’m too tired to do anything, I simply look up to the dark sky and talk to the moon. Sometimes, simply gazing into the starlit sky or enjoying the colors of the sunset is more than enough. I try my best to make sure I spend at least some time with my pets every day. If you have an animal, why not try communicating with them telepathetically?

Take A Magical Bath

I love buying and crafting beauty and bath products. You can make any bathing experience magical by dimming all the lights, lighting a few scented candles, mixing lavender and rose water to your bath, scattering some flower petals and tuning in to some music that feels meaningful to you (I prefer Celtic music). It is beautiful, relaxing and even rejuvenative.

Have A Sleep Ritual

Before going off to sleep, I reach for my pet amethyst rock and speak to it about the events of the day before tucking it under my pillow. I also make it a point to shuffle my Tarot cards and handmade runes set, asking a simple question: what is the most important lesson that I learned today? (Regarding morning rituals and magical timing: I used to also draw a Tarot Card each morning, but I stopped the practice because, well, an upside down Nine of Swords can seriously fuck up your mood for the day. So I made it a point to use my Oracles as tools of self-growth and self-discovery each night before sleep so that my subconscious can absorb and act upon it). 

So if you’re feeling guilty about not being able to properly practice witchcraft, remember that it’s perfectly okay, and it’s perfectly normal. You can celebrate your craft in little every day acts by setting your mind to it and remaining positive. Perhaps everyday won’t be as lavish as Halloween, but hey, you can still make it magical. 

Like this work? Donate to Archita Mittra.

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Archita Mittra is a wordsmith and visual artist with a love for all things vintage and darkly fantastical. A student of English Literature at Jadavpur University, she also has a Diploma in Multimedia and Animation from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. Her work has appeared or been profiled in The Statesman, Thought Catalog, Maudlin House, Winter Tangerine Review and elsewhere. She also serves as the Poetry Editor at Quail Bell Magazine, occasionally practises as a tarot card reader and is still waiting for The Doctor and his TARDIS to show up. You can follow her on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook() and check out her blog here.

A Spell for Household Blessings: From Black Moon to Snow Moon

BY ANDREA LAMBERT

October 1, 2016. Full moon in libra. The Black Moon. The Blood Moon. I turn forty. Face eviction from my Hollywood dream apartment. Cry in a ball on the shower floor. Cockroaches crawl down the walls.

That black moon is the beginning of a transformative journey from Los Angeles to Reno. Beckoned ever onward by the Knight of Wands. I draw this card over and over in Tarot that four months in transition in my last living grandmother’s basement. The Knight of Wands means change in residence. Flight into the unknown. Once feared, now I embrace it.

February 1, 2017 is the witches sabbath Imbolc. I do a PTSD healing ritual clutching my broom on the fold-out bed. February 10 is the full moon, a Snow Moon in libra. Snow shrouds Nevada as I pack. I move into the House of the Rising Sun two days after Valentine's Day. Reno is my Valentine. I'm Nevada’s sweetheart. I give my grandma a red heart-shaped box of chocolates as a Valentine’s farewell.

My first week in the house, I feel spooky. Go to the secret room at the end of the hall as if called there. Turn on my dead grandma’s lamp on the hardwood floor. Pink watercolor flowers on porcelain. My great-aunt Theda Butcher was the first widow to "live out her days in the House of the Rising Sun," as the song goes. Grandma Janet was the next. I am the third.

I listen to Yoko Ono’s "Yes, I’m a Witch," as I dress for magic. The chorus goes: "Yes, I’m a witch. I’m a bitch. Don’t care what you say. My voice is real. My voice is truth. Don’t fit anyways. I’m not gonna die for you. You might as well face the truth. I’m gonna stick around for quite awhile." I plan on sticking around. Suicide has never been in my cards. Rising guitars strum as Yoko chants, "Witch… Bitch…"

I line my eyes black. Smear myself with coconut oil. Spritz Elizabeth and James "Nirvana." Pull on the black velvet Courtney Love dress with white lace collar that belonged to my dead wife. Katie Jacobson committed suicide in 2012. Her funeral portrait sits larger than life with a white and gold frame against the wall. My Wicca altar is backed with her portrait staring with those piercing green eyes right through me. I pray to her spirit for guidance. Put on a crow skull necklace from Necromance on Melrose. An etsy witch hat festooned with pale yellow gauze and jeweled black feathers.

Courtesy of Andrea Lambert

I light Sandalwood incense. Pull cards from the Dame Darcy Mermaid Tarot deck. The High Priestess. Empress. Queen of Pentacles. Queen of Cups. Strong, solitary, splendid women. I place them at the back of the altar against Halloween skull goblets and a Virgin de Guadalupe candle. Set the Hermit against a St. Martin de Porres candle for the divine masculine.

The Queen of Swords means a widow or woman of sorrow who once knew much pleasure.

Dame Darcy illustrates this Tarot card with a beautiful female face. Tears stream down her high cheekbones like Nico from the Velvet Underground. A sword tangles in her long blonde hair. I place my central queen in front of the altar stone.

On the stone, a circle of severed acrylic nails surrounds a cauldron holding a round black 8 Ball. I set the Ace of Cups and Ace of Pentacles on either side for prosperity and abundance overflowing. On the Ace of Cups water flows out of a chambered Nautilus shell into the ocean.

Surrounding the Queen of Swords I place the Ten of Pentacles and Four of Wands for a happy ancestral home. The Four of Wands is reversed for my desired home’s twist from the white picket fence of standard domesticity. Fate decrees I be alone. No children or family here. My womb is as barren as the winter branches of the cherry tree in the backyard. I seek only solitary creative bliss under the waning Snow Moon. Over the years to come as Strawberry Moons wax and wane above to Harvest Moons.

I sweep the spooky room with a besom broom. Sit in the lotus position on white velvet pillows. Holding a white candle North in my palm, I Invoke light and earth. Lift the candle East for air. South for fire. West for water. Ring the bell three times. Raise my hands on either side in mystical gestures. Left in the Lotus cup of Persephone. Right in the Devil’s Horns of Dionysus. Divine feminine and masculine.

I say, "I call upon the Goddess and God, Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ, to guide this ritual and guard this home." I close my eyes. Fill my mind with white light. Reach the still point within my soul. Feel the light well upwards and outward from my heart center to fill the house.

"There is one Power, which is within and without," I say, "As I will, so mote it be: I desire that this home be blessed. Consecrated. Protected. Mine. As I will, so may it be." I light the sage. It smolders. I walk around tracing the perimeter of the house leaving smudge smoke behind. Painted faces of people I once knew in Los Angeles and San Francisco stare down from dark walls.

I look deep into the oculus of the Queen Anne dresser in the bedroom. My grandmother Janet Lambert brushed her blonde curls standing right here, many years before. I raise both hands. Left with sage giving off scented smoke. Right in gesture of the Horned God.

"Thank you for my healing," I say. "I call upon the blessed spirits of Theda Butcher, Janet Lambert and Katie Jacobson. Three strong women whom I love. Three ghosts bring about three wishes. Let this House of the Rising Sun be consecrated. Protected. Mine. From this ancestral mirror bring forth into life."

I read from Aoumiel’s Green Witchcraft: "Love is the law, and love is the bond. Merry did I meet, merry do I part, and merry will I meet again. Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again! The circle is now cleared. So may it be. Beings and powers of the visible and invisible, depart in peace! You aid in my work, whisper in my mind, and bless me from the Otherworld, and there is harmony between us. My blessings take with you. The circle is now cleared. So may it be!"

I run the smoldering sage under cold water in the bathroom to put it out safely. With beloved spirits of the other world, my spell is cast. My home is consecrated. My new life begins.

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Andrea Lambert wrote Jet Set Desolate (Future Fiction London: 2009), Lorazepam & the Valley of Skin: Extrapolations on Los Angeles (valeveil: 2009) and the chapbook G(u)ilt (Lost Angelene, 2011). Her writing appears in 3:AM Magazine, Fanzine, Entropy, Angel’s Flight Literary West, HTMLGiant, Queer Mental Health and elsewhere. Her work is anthologized in Haunting Muses, Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices, The L.A. Telephone Book Vol. 1, 2011-2012, Off the Rocks Volume #16: An Anthology of GLBT Writing and elsewhere. Lambert paints in figurative mixed media oils critically referenced as “kitchy maximalism.” Her artwork features in Angel’s Flight Literary West, Entropy, Hinchas de Poesias, Queer Mental Health and Anodyne Magazine. CalArts MFA.

9 Nature-Centric Summer Solstice Rituals

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

[Via IngenueX.com]

Midsummer(during the summer solstice), is here, you lovelies. This is such a glorious time of year for everyone here in the Northwestern Hemisphere – everything we worked through during the long winter and Spring is now behind us, and we can use the rejuvenating days of summer to prepare, build on or resurrect something – whether that is a material or tangible thing or an idea, mindset or self-healing path. 

This year's strawberry moon (or rose moon, as I prefer calling it) makes Midsummer even more glorious, and even more potent. There are so many things we can do to commemorate this time of year – to tap into nature and yourself. 

Read the 9 rituals here. 

Weed Witchcraft: A Ritual with the High Priestess of Smoke

BY MOXIE MCMURDER

Joint in one hand, black magic in the other. I am a weed witch, The High Priestess of Smoke. Guardian of the unconscious, practitioner of the unexpected.
Be still and know that I am free.
Born of the earth and sky, conjuring magick from the smoke.
I welcome you my sisters and brothers to a new way to enjoy your sins:
Weed Magick, a blend of witchcraft and marijuana.

How you choose to use this magick is up to you but be warned, what you put out into the universe will come back to you. Smoking the holy herb is a spiritual act, one that puts you in touch with the four elements and when practised correctly can lift the veil reveal and nature's secrets.

csglobe

Collect your necessities

• Weed

• Tobacco (optional)

• Candle

• Matches

• Oil (optional)

• Small bowl of water

• Small bowl of salt

Before starting

It’s important for a witch to be in the right state of body and mind before performing a spell. Make sure you won’t be distracted. Turn off your phone/TV etc although some music can actually help you get into the frame of mind for casting.

Start the circle. You need space to work in, so we create a circle. There is no need to have a physical circle to work within, however it is worthwhile to have a dedicated place where you can practice your craft. Creating your own altar is a simple and effective way to create a space for you to work in.

If you wish, you may call on the divine or or certain energies to watch over and bless your rite. These are usually connected to the elements earth, air, water and fire. A circle contains the energy of your spell until you are ready to release it. Energy can be released through burning papers or herbs, visualization, or gestures. With intention and power, send the energy toward your goal.

The first step is to grind your weed with intention. If you don’t have a grinder, get one! You may want to bless your weed before you start. Here is an old blessing that you can use. 

“From earth to air, and here to there
I grind you fine, with love and care
Through pestle to essence, here I sow
From whole to powder, on mortar you go
Round and round, may your power grow
Continue to let your energy flow”

Imagine you are grinding away any negativity, bad thoughts leaving your positive and ready to work your magick.

Rihanna <3

You may want to write something with a pencil on your rolling papers. A name, a destination or even just words like positivity, strength etc

As you crumble the herb into your paper repeat a mantra as you focus your energy.
You can create your own incantation, which usually works better than using another witch's words but you can adapt or use the one provided below:

I smoke of my sisters and brothers in the light of the high. The ancient and the new. I light from the flame with pure intention, self love and power.

You must always light a joint from a candle. (The colour of which should correspond to the spell you are casting.)

Here is a quick list of colours and what they represent:

Black: Used in rituals to induce a deep meditational state, to protect and/or to ward off negativity. Can be used to banish evil or negativity.

Blue: The primary spiritual color It’s used to obtain wisdom, harmony, inner light, or peace; truth and guidance. Other uses include healing, sleep, creativity, perception, calming wisdom, truth, loyalty, dreams, and the examination of emotions.

Green: Promotes prosperity, fertility, and success. Stimulates good luck, harmony, and rejuvenation. Also represents Healing, health, and growth.

Purple: Is used to obtain desires, power and success. Stimulates enthusiasm, desire and power. Some attempt to use it for power over others.

Red: Represents physical pleasures. It can stimulate lust, courage, or strength against enemies. Can confer passion, love, and/or respect. Stimulates energy, health, fertility and will power.

White: Protectection, purify, and heal. Represents truth, unity, protection, peace, purification, happiness, and spirituality. Some say it can be used to replace any color candle in rituals. Used for concentration rituals and meditation work.

The best time to cast a spell

You can cast a weed spell any time you like but spells are more powerful when they are cast during certain moon phases.

If you can, smoking outside under the moon is the best way to let the lunar energy add a bit of strength to your magick.

You can, of course, perform weed magick during the day, being outdoors is best but if you are indoors make sure your curtains are pulled back and open. Let the sun's energy lend itself to your craft.

As you smoke focus your mind on what you want to achieve with this magick. Enjoy the sensation of the smoke filling your body, allow it to make you feel at peace, powerful and in touch with the elements.

Ending the ritual

One your joint is down to the end it’s time to close the circle. Add the bowl of salt to the bowl of water and repeat “The circle is open, but never broken. By the powers above, and the powers below, I close this circle” then drop your roach into the salt water mix. Your weed ritual is over.

Sky above, earth below, smoke within.

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Moxie McMurder is a film critic for Welwyn Garden City and keeps a blog here.