As someone with aphantasia, I often come across advice that says you can substitute visualising in energy work with the other 4 senses. The most common of them being feeling. But the thing is that I also struggle to feel properly. It's often said that by rubbing your hands together and feeling the sensation between them will give you an idea of what energy feels like, but I've tried it multiple times and I don't feel anything except the air on my skin.
That leaves me with the 3 other senses (personally, hearing is the strongest for me). Though, I have no idea how to apply them. No one mentions anything about how to apply them. How do I taste/smell/hear energy when doing spellwork? For example, say I have to make energy flow from my hands to an object. This can be done by visualisation or feeling energy, but what if I'm trying to do it with the other three senses instead?
Anyways, thank you for your time, Chicken! 🩷
Let's take this right into left field. Consider this, which I do not claim is necessarily true, but which I present as a thought exercise:
As it's commonly used, visualization means something like within the mindscape. So it's not really sight vs. the other senses, but something internal versus something external. We do not have to guess at what that internal thing is: it's the hidden Witch-body, which is the same thing sent out when we Journey.
In other words, when a resource tells you to visualize,
your goal is to engage in a mild form of spirit flight: you're activating your spirit body and using it to sense the world you're in right now, instead of sending it out into a spirit world.
This would also mean that energy sensing is closer to a mild trance state than an acutely grounded state where you're honed in on the physical.
It's this activation of the spirit body (witch-body, the body of many names) which opens the gateways not only to Sensing, but also Journeying, Knowing, and the ability to commune directly with spirits.
All of these are internal experiences. Your goal is not to be able to feel if the spirit touches your arm, necessarily; but to be able to directly experience the spirit's presence, and directly speak to them and receive communication back. All of this can be done regardless of whether or not you happen to be a visual thinker.
There are many exercises available for identifying, activating, and empowering the hidden body, I think a very useful one given by Horne in A Broom at Midnight, but they're almost certainly going to be in the "learn spirit flight" books and not in the energy work books.
Now all that being said, if you aren't a visual thinker, then what's to be done with all these exercises that linguistically favor visual thinking? The key for me was to just basically replace visualize with other words like observe, believe, feel, understand, and know.
Take a gander at this simple energy raising exercise. See in red, where we have taken words or phrases that would normally give instructions to visualize and adjusted them:
There is freely flowing energy in the Earth available to you. When you focus your mind on this energy and believe or agree that you are connected to it, that pre-existing connection becomes activated and stimulated. This is possible because your present-moment focus inherently holds an intense activation energy.
Once you've narrated to yourself that this connection is activated and you feel immersed in that story, force needs to be applied in order to move the energy. One way to move the energy within the Earth is to believe or agree that when you inhale, energy you are linked to will be drawn into your body.
Breathe normally while you focus timing your best present-moment focus with your inhales. When you feel ready to try it, tell yourself that the Earth energy rises into your body with the inhale. Doggedly focus on this narration along with an inhale.
See if your active narration about the situation changes as you inhale with the intention to draw up Earth energy. Does the storyteller or Quiet Wise One within your mind think the energy of the Earth has stirred or risen up as you took a breath?
If you took those instructions in red and experimented with them until you found the perfect set for you, I believe it's highly likely they will be the same type of instructions necessary to help you learn to Journey, to talk to spirits, and so on. So if it takes a while to figure out, just keep in mind you're trying to forge a skeleton key that can potentially unlock many doors at once.
if u get into neopaganism u really have to spend the first like 2 years sorting out all the bullshit and finding out how much of it is either completely made up or outright stolen from other cultures and then go from there. u truly have to experience ego death, academic death, book collection death, and probably 47 other maimings or else you will be stuck believing something some guy said based on nothing in 1987 as your religion. it's harrowing. it's dire.
nolan's the odyssey has such a fundamentally culturally christian understanding of religion and divinity that it is genuinely jarring to see characters in a supposedly ancient greek historical context describe divinity and its expression in those terms. characters wonder aloud why gods hide themselves (they didn't), question the existence of what nolan interprets the supernatural to be (they wouldn't) and talk of zeus's law (not real, and still somehow bastardized) in the same way we would talk about the ten commandments. it's so out of place. and it taps into that "defy the gods" thing.
like. we can defy the christian god, in a way, because we can choose to not do what he says we ought to. sure. but we cannot defy greek gods in the same way, because the god is not just an entity that commands you but the very thing you are doing. apollo does not just send plagues, he is plague. you know apollo is real because there is plague. plague is not apollo acting in the world, it is an instance of apollo, in the same way that insight is athena, love is aphrodite, harvest is demeter, storms are zeus. gods are not commanding nature and sending signs and acting upon the world, because signs and nature and human nature are themselves the gods. the gods cannot be absent, because we still get ideas, and harvest, and go to war, and feel desire, and hunt. the gods cannot be defied because you cannot defy "getting ideas" or "harvesting" or "having sex" or "dying." to attempt to is entirely futile. like you cannot defy poseidon because you cannot defy the sea. you cannot defy aphrodite because you cannot defy love and reproduction. nature and human nature are unbeatable, and so the gods are unbeatable, because they are nature and human nature.
and it's such a beautiful way of looking at the world, and he just doesn't get that.
I’m begging you to expand on your views on cannabis and its connection to Mokosh
Yes! Yes! You don't have to beg me here. I just want everyone to know, what is about to happen in this post is exactly the reason I can't make short videos.
I guess I want to start by... calibrating who we are talking about when we say "Mokosh". I will try to present the pieces of information we do have - you can make your own conclusions as to which sound true, however I find it is useful to frankly double check all available information now and again. To be completely frank, Slavic goddesses underwent a certain tradwification in the popular understanding that says more about the mythmakers than about the goddesses.
By that I mean that our current understanding of their potential character or sphere of influence seems to have shifted towards the image of a hearth-keeper and a Traditional (in the sense of the modern ideology) wife.
Anyway.
So, what do we have de facto: she was apparently the only goddess mentioned in the Pantheon of Volodymyr, which possibly might have been a calque from another foreign list of gods in place of Astarte. One quote mentions her before stating that pagan worshipers engaged in masturbation. This mention may have been a separate statement, or may have been added in relation to her cult. In one source the author is potentially making a parallel between Mokosh and Hekate by mentioning them next to each other in his condemnation of local pagan holdovers. I will mention, the sentence is ambiguous, and might also point to an unknown local goddess that was for come reason equated with Hekate. Her name, Mokosh, is generally understood to be derived from the word "wet", and water is an element that likewise tends to connect the earth, our life on this side, and Underworld forces.
It is very possible that the spinner and women's labour imagery has entered her identity with the introduction of St. Paraskeva. In any case, both earth fertility and harvest, water, and even the products of spinning and weaving are all connected to the cult of the dead in Slavic cultures. All this together paints a picture of her as something much more primal and chthonic than what we usually describe her as. In that sense, she is, as far as her spheres of potential influence are concerned, seems very much alike Veles.
And as I have talked about before, to me the presence of Mokosh is in some ways a continuance of Api, the Scythian "Gaia", who herself is often linked to the ancestral Snake-Legged Goddess.
All that out of the way (phew!), let's just explore where there threads might lead us.
Fist and foremost, as the screenshot mentions, the consensus etymology of the word "cannabis" links it linguistically and culturally to the Scythians. Of course the nature and presence of their gods and their spirituality did not vanish once we started calling our experiences on the same land with other names.
The potential link to funeral rites is also particularly fascinating in the light of the underworld connection I discussed before.
Now, I find the link to self-pleasure and its core association with fertility of living things personally very true, but I would question the centrality of agriculture as such in our interpretations. In this aspect, cannabis can stand as a teacher of joy and satisfaction. For the earth to produce crops and for our cattle to bring in their young, this principle by necessity must exist in the parts of nature that are nor bringing us profit, otherwise our relationship becomes exploitative. In that sense Mokosh holds the realignment towards work with the natural forces and the understanding that every living thing in nature that is not burdened by existential overthinking truly strives to act from a place of satisfaction and pleasure.
And I want to circle back to Mokosh's role as a spinner. Now, as I mentioned, it is possible the reference may have arrived from the Christinized layer of spirituality, however, it does not mean we must dismiss it as untrue, or that Mokosh herself does not seem to show an affinity to the textile arts and their symbolism. Textiles are also a traditional offering to Rusalkas. Now, the primary imagery here is that of sheep and wool, however, there is really no source or reason that would suggest that is somehow the only fiber source legitimately connected to Mokosh. I would argue that in a lot of folklore, Ukrainian folk songs in particular for example, hemp is both mentioned frequently in love divination and nature renewal narratives, and is often connected with feminine imagery. Honestly, it is quite possible we are missing out simply because hemp plants is apparently not something you bring up in polite society.
So I hope you made it to the end, stranger, and that this satisfies your curiosity.
Extremely frustrating how people can "respect" you as someone who isn't Christian but still expect you to sing praises for Jesus, including other non-Christians?? "Well you still have to admit he was a pretty cool guy—" I don't have to admit shit actually! That guy can fuck off and so can you!
like if you're that pressed that youre a settler and the devils bargain your ancestors struck for that reality was the willful severing of your previous culture heritage idk. just move to europe or something
All the talk of incenses is also reminding me of something I saw from Porphyry and later Christian writers such as Augustine (possibly also the pagan Platonist Plutarch beforehand) going on about demons, or daimons (or at least "evil daimons" in particular) being satisfied by offerings that included vapours or smoke if I remember correctly.
So Plotinus’ two main students were Porphyry and Iamblichus, who apparently had something of a rivalry with each other. Porphyry over his career as a philosopher took a pretty anti-material stance, and a part of that was a deep anxiety about the omnipresent daemonic. He divided daemons based on degree of control over their own spiritual bodies - rational daemons were entities born of the cosmic Soul and helped administer the sublunary sphere, irrational daemons were those who became overwhelmed by the sensations of the material and became engulfed by their own desires. They lie, cheat, misdirect proper religion, they are the agents of goeteia, they cause earthquakes and are just attributed to all sorts of nastiness. Their bodies are very pneumatic (airy) and because the air is full of moisture that weighs it down, so too are the irrational or evil daemons attracted to all sorts of sensations that weigh down the soul - sacrificed meat, drink, the exhalations of warm blood. Synesius, who was influenced by Porphyry even as he was adapting philosophy for Christian purposes, wrote in On Dreams of demons filling the mind as sensual pleasures make reason leave it - almost like how homeless people enter a vacant house. Porphyry in the fragments of Philosophy from Oracles writes of something similar, that not just dwelling places but the human body is filled with evil daemons, they enjoy the pleasures of the flesh by infesting the human body. They do this by adhering to food and drink like parasites getting eaten by a host. It’s remarkably similar to what you see from the Church Fathers and it demonstrates a strain of Platonism that has really profound anxiety toward the body.
Something about the idea of the omnipresent daemonic has me wanting to deepen it, with certain ideas about the wilderness full of demons very much in the background of the imagination.
"In his influential 1978 essay, Steven Katz emphasizes the role of the context in the formation of mystical experiences and casts doubts on the possibility of a typology of mystical experiences. He argues that writers on mysticism seem to take mystical terms more as names than as descriptions, erroneously taking descriptive mystical terms that refer to some ontological structure to be merely “arbitrary labels of some underlying common reality.” Katz’s contextualist position has been criticized as “hyper-Kantianism.” But the case of a typology of comparative mystical experiences does not have to rest on either extreme of the debate between relativist contextualism and the pure and unmediated consciousness of mystical experiences. Wolfson’s “intermediate position” suggests a way out of this dichotomy by advocating a modified contextualism. Wolfson validates the possibility of a typology of comparative mysticism and moves toward Eliade’s structuralist view that highlights the importance of the knowledge of structure for understanding the meaning of mystical experiences. By determining “the common structures underlying the manifold appearances of the phenomenon,” Wolfson argues, we can appreciate the unique status of mystical experience in the different religious traditions."
Rumi and the Hermeneutics of Eroticism, (39-40), Mahdi Tourage
Being a part of outdoor sports has influenced my magical practice, religious beliefs, and my understanding of animism. The longer I remain in these kinds of spaces, the more I realize that I have an insane amount in common with self-proclaimed nonspiritual people in a very spiritual way, which has reaffirmed my belief that close communion with nature is a kind of religion of its own, whether you recognize it as spirituality or not. Notably, what I observe the most is a very animistic belief without the label. Beyond that, these communities are religious about the sports themselves, to the point where I’ve been told by friends that they don’t feel like they need religion because they get everything they would want from spirituality from their sport.
Hostile Environments and Trolls
I’m predominantly a caver, and this definitely is the largest influence on my practice. I think in part, it’s also because of the cave environment itself: there’s very few places that get so remote so quickly. There’s limited resources (almost exclusively however much you can carry) and limited physical capacities (one day of hard caving uses about 5000 calories!), which reinforces that this is an inherently hostile environment. For me, it very much echoes an animistic worldview, but it particularly brings me closer to the trolls of folklore and the jotnar of Norse mythology, who are both powerful initiators and beings that will wreck you, in a life-ending way. I find that a lot of modern spirituality emphasizes historically hostile entities as misunderstood, and one of the most heartbreaking parts of modern trolldom practice is watching the active declawing of trolls and related spirits. Frankly, I can’t blame people. It’s hard to understand how people would have historically viewed the trolls, when the comforts of modern life makes it difficult to conceptualize the harshness of nature. I adore the outdoors, with every bit of my being, but the romanticization of nature in pagan communities seriously destroys understanding of the spectrum of beings we interact with every day. Even seemingly safe environments in nature can become very hostile understand sudden conditions: hypothermia from rain in the wrong clothes, a sudden injury, etc.
It’s in caves that I first really felt like I was close to the trolls. If you sit still, deep inside, it feels as if there’s something slowly shifting in the walls. I see the trolls in the rock that suddenly shifts underneath me, threatening to throw me off balance. I see the trolls in the bone-chilling cold that sets in after a wet-section. I see the trolls in the total darkness as I turn off the lights to go to sleep at camp. I see the trolls in my failing muscles that are screaming out to eat more, in my bruised body from throwing myself against hard rock, in the fear that hits me when I realize how wrong something could go. But I also see the trolls in the way my aching muscles give me the best sleep, in the feeling of elation and ecstasy of standing somewhere no one has ever been before, in the comfort of friends in an unforgiving environment. I think trolls have a similar reputation as caves do, but being harsh and unforgiving doesn’t make something evil and malicious. They exist as they are, in their own environment, and we have no choice but to submit to their forces. This puts Tor fighting the jotnar into perspective for me too: he’s not a brute for this, this is the fight for survival against an inherently hostile existence that the Old Norse lived within. There’s a lot to fear, as much as there is a lot to love.
Offerings to a Sentient Nature
White-water kayaking has recently become an interest of mine over the past year, and I find it deeply fascinating to listen to conversations around water. A friend of mine was talking about cleaning up any trash she finds in the river as a way to “gain good river favor” while she’s out on the water. Similarly to caving, moving water can be unforgiving. These small offerings reflect a natural animistic worldview, where nature is sentient enough to perceive your actions and develop a relationship with you, therefore affecting the outcome of your life as well. Granted, a lot of my friends do something similar with the mindset of “I know it’s silly and I don’t *really* believe it, but I do it just in case”. But regardless, I think the fact that if there’s a gnawing feeling that there’s some intangible presence, and this feeling is big enough to warrant acting on it, it is an animistic way of living. I think that there’s this idea that faith is something you have or don’t, rather than acknowledging belief as a spectrum. What I find more and more is that people who spend prolonged periods of time outdoors do develop animistic belief.
I do find it interesting to think about whether this belief is within all people, and personal experience with the enspirited nature simply brings it forward, or if it is the inherently hostile environment of the outdoors that results in the natural emergence of superstition that is believed to bring survival (or even abundance). Maybe there isn’t a difference between these two ideas. But I do believe that an animistic worldview naturally prompts a person to consider what it means to build a relationship with the nonhuman spirits around them. How fascinating that people from all backgrounds come back to offerings! Despite the appearance, this isn’t a purely transactional relationship. There is a deep love for nature, a deep respect for its ability to affect life and limb, and an inherent relationship that emerges from simply interacting with it. The offering doesn’t represent a transaction, this is a human way we show love and care to the intangible. And in return, we hope that the river might care for us a bit more as we care for it, and although it cannot hold its very nature back from us, maybe it will allow us to navigate its forces a little easier.
Connection over Commodification
While it’s less of a sport, a lot of outings have ended with foraging, or started with some plant identification on the approach. A friend of mine was really into foraging edible plants, and she recently reflected on this phase of her life. At the time, she was interested in foraging as self-sufficiency, as a way to be less dependent on grocery stories. What she learned was that foraging is a serious investment! A lot of time and effort goes into foraging, and even more into cooking various plants so that they won’t upset your system (fiddleheads come to mind). Ultimately, trying to live off of foraging wasn’t worth the time and effort for her, but she does keep with it for the love of the activity. Foraging isn’t about what you can get out of nature. Connection remains when commodification is removed.
I think about her perspective on foraging a lot, especially as I think of how Scandinavian folklore depicts poverty foods as plants of the Devil. Blueberries, for example, earn their dark color from the Devil’s shoeshine (according to one story from Swedish folklore). When you spend a lot of time in intimate connection with nature, you become much more aware of all these little details that you’d normally miss. This time-consuming labor of love invites our imaginations to create stories, relating the world of nature to our world and understanding. If the only goal is commodification of nature, to pick as many St. John’s Wort as possible, would you notice the way that the yellow herb stains your skin red like blood? Would you create stories of connection? Would you care to understand the intricacies of how the natural world flows together?
Personal Connection to Nature as Religion
Despite the hostile conditions, so many cavers feel a sort of love with certain caves. I’ve listened to a man describe mentally moving through his favorite cave every night before bed. When he gets to the end of the last explored point, he then imagines what lies beyond (according to him, he’s pretty accurate). I’ve heard debates about whether certain caves “want” us there or not, with evidence being something like “this one rock is too perfect of a chair for the cave to not want us there”. I’ve heard similar debates about the benevolence of a cave. This isn’t about whether or not a cave wants us or not, but rather the obsession with the idea that a cave might love us as much as we love it. There is a real obsession and adoration among cavers that mirror a sort of divine love and awe I find in religion.
This goes to this belief that I deeply hold, that personal connection to nature inspires us to protect it. Personal connection fosters a desire to conserve and to care. We all (hopefully) know that nature is worth saving, but it’s a completely different emotional impact to stand in a room full of calcite formations that have lived long before you and will live long after you, yet are fragile enough that any ill-intending person could destroy living history. It’s a different emotional impact to truly see how little life can exist underground, yet to see so many forms of it thriving, and to know the threats that above-ground destruction (like climate change) can do to these extremely sensitive environments. The more time you spend in nature, the more religious you become about caring for these environments in whatever way you can. And as you care for nature, you can’t help but wonder if those same forces care for you. As I wonder if the cave cares for me, I can’t help but see the mirror of nights wondering if Hyndla cares for me too.
Allow Yourself to be Shaped
I’ve never climbed without scrapes, bruises, cuts, and blisters. In some cases, it would be so much easier (and less painful) to hike the mountain rather than climbing the cliffside up. Obviously, there’s a love for the sport of rock climbing itself, but why else climb? For me personally, there’s a real appeal that comes with being shaped by nature, the same way humans shape nature every day. My every action allows myself to be changed. The sun beats down on me, the wind tousles my hair, the rock removes skin, and I am physically changed. I sit on a cliffside in between pitches, I look out over the rolling ridges, and I understand I’m receiving a view that I can only get because I have allowed myself to step outside of my sense of protection. I shed my comfort, I let go of what makes me feel safe, I allow myself to get beat up by nature a little, and in the process, I receive a sort of magical alchemy. I really don’t have words.
Similarly, it’s special for your every action and decision to be motivated by the shape of nature. It exists as it is, it is up to you to navigate it. I find this particularly true when rock and ice climbing. If I break a particularly good ice hold, I cannot make the ice grow back, I must work with the new route laid in front of me. When I rock climb, the holds that exist in front of me are all I have to work with, and my option is going up. Learning to read the environment, and make judgements off of it, translates to so many other parts of my spiritual practice as well. How different is reading a route and reading omens really?
Conclusion
In conclusion, you should explore an outdoor sport. It doesn’t have to be any extreme or crazy, but movement can be spiritual, and if you consider yourself to engage in nature worship in any way, it will teach you so much more than you can imagine. There’s options at all levels for all people, and I truly will never shut up about this.
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!! I loved reading so many of our conversations coming to fruition in this post and I COULD NOT AGREE MORE. fantastic job writing this, it's clear this is knowledge and passion you could contribute to many a life with if you let yourself. I want more of these subject matters in the pagan community!!! bring religion into real life, into the world!!
A riddle mediates between man and the Other — its voice is sometimes the bard’s, sometimes the bird’s. We contrive to know the riddler’s meaning, the creature’s world. Through other eyes we see our own symbolic systems. With reason we separate day from night, man from monster, plant from penis — only to discover in riddles a nightmare of resemblances and crossed categories.
Can the fox be a great mother, the moon a night-bandit, the sword a celibate and serving thane? Can the dead ox revive to carry man (shoes) or sing through its skin the word of God (Bible)? Can a bird be a poet, a bagpipe a bird? This is the power the word confers — especially in the shape of metaphor.
Disguise and disclosure are the twin movements of metaphor and riddle.
- A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs, Craig Williamson
Ethnic Envy: Chapter 1 in a series on Appropriation and Ethnocide in the Witchcraft Community
It is the year of our gods, 2026, and still to this day the modern witchcraft community - though very loud about the subject - relies largely on lists of closed practices, regurgitated factoids, and hardcore policing in order to keep cultural appropriation in check. Why, in a community overwhelmingly dominated by progressives and leftists, is the fight against appropriation ever-raging? To answer this, we will explore the underlying mechanics of appropriation, and uncover a sinister aspect of the history of modern witchcraft.
Culture and Commodity: Understanding Appropriation
Most of us are content to blame racism for the prevalence of appropriation in our midst. And we should by no means downplay its significance in this matter; its existence is one of the reasons cultural appropriation is so dangerous. Racially motivated cultural appropriation perpetuates stereotypes and instils hate and misunderstanding - blackface is the prime example. But, if most appropriation that happened was explicitly racially motivated, there would not nearly be as much appropriation as we see. After all, wearing feather headdresses or sexy qipao halloween costumes has been thoroughly cracked down upon in comparison to the appropriation we still see. It's simply not that acceptable anymore. Most appropriation that occurs isn't explicitly racially motivated, or indeed, motivated at all. From what we see among our peers, most cultural appropriation is accidental, unintentional. So how does that happen?
Turns out, there is a fouler enemy using racism to deflect blame. In her essay, Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance, bell hooks famously wrote:
Within current debates about race and difference, mass culture is the contemporary location that both publicly declares and perpetuates the idea that there is pleasure to be found in the acknowledgment and enjoyment of racial difference. The commodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.
What I would like to draw special attention to here is this phrase: the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.
Most of us know white supremacy as the explicit belief that white people are better than other races, based in the idea that "races" exist at all (racial theory). But in reality, it goes quite a lot deeper than that. WS has created, and aims to perpetuate, a worldwide social system that regards whiteness as the 'default', and racial features as deviating from that default. This is the 'Otherness' Hooks describes in the above quote. This system is so thoroughly integrated into every aspect of our world, that nobody is free from this bias. You, reader, and me, and everybody we both know, have been conditioned from birth to be able to perceive whiteness, assess it, assimilate into it, and view it as the default way of existing. In order to accomplish this, white supremacy aims to destroy the existing cultures that various white peoples have, to homogenize them under the banner of 'white'. This is why so many white people truly believe that white people have no culture, and also why every time someone says that you should loudly protest.
But keen readers may think back to instances where white supremacists have stolen aspects of certain "white" cultures to justify their actions, like for example the fake Germanic spirituality of historic and contemporary Nazis. And if that was you, I applaud you! You have discovered exactly how this relates to the modern spiritual community.
Desire and Resistance: the History of Modern Witchcraft
What we now know as the modern pagan or witchy community was built on the back of the very first community who were willing to call themselves pagans and witches: Wiccans. I have a longer form post detailing the origins of Wicca and its contribution to white supremacy, but in short, here is what you need to know.
Wicca was created in the 1950s by a con artist named Gerald Gardner. He based this new religion partially off of things he learned from various Western Esotericist groups, and partially off of the pseudoscientific Witch-cult hypothesis. This hypothesis claimed that, rather than it being already marginalized groups who were being persecuted during the European witch trials, it was actually a pan-European pagan religion oriented around fertility magic that had gone underground. Gardner claimed to have met some modern descendants and practitioners of this witch-cult religion, and to have been initiated into their tradition, which he called The Wica. This new movement was supposed to be an ancient, traditionally European religion. Later evolutions of Wicca furthered this agenda, using the Lord/Lady model as a soft-polytheistic way to combine all European paganisms into one, ready-made religion. Homogenization, anyone?
At the time of its creation, Wicca was an almost direct result of the growing resentment toward industrialism and Christianity in colonial Britain. The Victorians yearned for a deviation from what they perceived as the boring, straight-laced Christian culture, their default-ness, their bland means of existing. They craved indigeneity, ethnicity, the perceived 'ancient wisdom' of a fake pagan past - so they sought it by using culture, real or imagined, as a tool for personal satisfaction. And that sense of need, along with the commodification that it causes, has persisted into the modern day. It got more severe in with the advent of the counter-culture movements in the 60s and 70s, which is where we can trace some of the appropriation of Native American spirituality that we can still see today. And then came the internet, and what was originally a fairly structured community of Wiccan and New Age practitioners unintentionally started to mix and mistake ideas and ideologies, as well as import new ones. Today, the modern community of spiritual practitioners is deeply diverse, but conventional witchcraft maintains most of its core features from those early days. Indeed, the very act of calling yourself a witch at all, comes from Wicca. But more importantly, what was once a fringe new-religious movement has turned into one of the west's leading expressions of spirituality. Why? Because the desire for ethnicity has not faded, but only gotten stronger.
So thus armed with information, we return to bell hooks. "Mass culture is the contemporary location that both publicly declares and perpetuates the idea that there is pleasure to be found in the acknowledgment and enjoyment of racial difference." Mass culture, in this context, is conventional witchcraft. Uncomfortable as it is for us to admit, over the last decades but especially since COVID, "witchcraft" has become a trend. The desire Hooks describes made this ready-made religion an easy way to deviate from the white mainstream, and a lack of resistance meant that those perpetuating this cycle couldn't and wouldn't be held accountable. The process of adopting magic into the mainstream could thus be boosted by extreme commodification, like the new idea that 'intention is everything', or the notion of 'universal substitutes', as well as quick and easy identity labels. All designed to make it as easy to swallow, practice, and make part of your identity as possible.
By being a "witch," by buying into the habit of setting yourself apart as those among the oppressed, the unconventional, the ancient or subversively traditional, one is acknowledging and enjoying the pleasure of racial difference, and perpetuating that idea. The desire to be a witch at all, is the desire to be racial. The desire to shed whiteness and embrace ethnicity. The desire to use Otherness as a spice, to season the dull dish that is what people perceive to be mainstream white culture.
And that is where we find the heart of appropriation in contemporary spiritual spaces. The appropriation we see is not that which is driven by hate or contempt, but ethnic envy. The compulsive draw towards all that which appears, to many, to deviate from what they perceive to be plain whiteness. Modern, conventional witchcraft, is often nothing but the perpetuation of a long-lived imperial tradition of cultural consumption, exoticization, and commodification that finds its roots in white supremacy. The appropriation that we see is not meant to mock, but to use culture and defiance as an escapist tool to satisfy a personal malcontent with the entrapment of a post-industrial, post-colonial world. White people's sense of self, sense of own, inherent culture, has been whipped to shreds by the vice of Christian imperialism and white supremacy. All that is left now for them is to take indigeneity from others and wear it as a costume. Right?
Race, Racialization, and the Cycle of Consumption
Wrong. Perhaps the most dangerous misconception of all, in this discussion, is that cultural appropriation only affects non-white people. It is that implicit notion - that white people have no culture, and therefore cannot be appropriated from, or alternatively that white people do not deserve their cultures to be preserved and therefore cannot be appropriated from - that has allowed this harm and envy to live so long in the first place. Appropriation itself has been racialized, perpetuating the cycle of desperate envy directed at anyone perceived as ethnic. It is no longer just racist ideals of mystique, freedom, and exoticism contained in indigeneity, it is also the fervent envy of the associated sense of home and its protection.
In actuality, the appropriation of various "white" cultures is a massive contributor to the problem. Wicca itself is the main perpetrator in our modern community, it's a case in point when it comes to homogenization. It viciously appropriated from various European (and non-European) cultures, misrepresenting them and stripping them of their identity, to create a false narrative of universal European indigeneity for people to subscribe to. It popularized this idea that European pagan religions are all more or less the same, that you can mix and match deities from various cultures and countries and worship them all the same according to a basic religious framework. It strips these cultures of their identity, their differences, their own inherent ethnicity - instead turning them into an easily commodified identity label. It thus turns the wheel of the cycle: Wicca itself became just another 'white people thing', a bland, mainstream piece of white culture that lacked seasoning and interest. We are seeing the effects currently: Wicca has fallen out of fashion, nobody is willing to self-identify as a Wiccan anymore, instead opting for such things as 'eclectic pagan' which in everything but name is the same thing.
The same thing will eventually happen to eclectic paganism, to witchcraft, to 'paganism' in general, and on and on it will go. The snake will continue to slowly devour its way up its tail for as long as we allow it to. Until we start cracking down on real, actual appropriation and homogenization hard, including when it happens to cultures you deem less ethnic, these "white" cultures will continue to phase out of the limelight as they lose their flavoring and are assimilated into mainstream, white supremacist culture - necessitating replacements, necessitating absorbing more cultures into the mainstream. Anything so the consumption at mach speed can continue.
Knowing that exoticism and the desire to participate in it is often a driving factor in people's unconscious motivation when it comes to magic and spirituality, explains why people keep unintentionally finding new ways to appropriate. Understanding that commodification is how this habit is perpetuated, explains why we want to simplify matters of appropriation down to false dichotomies like "closed" and "open" practices. It's all about how to maintain the appearance of cultural sensitivity, while taking the path of absolute least resistance. Symbolic change is easier than real ones. Staring at a list is easier than considering your personal motives.
Per bell hooks again:
Certainly from the standpoint of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the hope is that desires for the “primitive” or fantasies about the Other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that reinscribes and maintains the status quo.
False Hopes and Good Intentions
I certainly appreciate and acknowledge that people in the community have the very best of intentions. They truly believe, in most cases, that the approach they are taking by heeding lists of "closed practices" and policing other people is how they help, and that accidentally appropriating is all but par for the course when it comes to practicing magic. But we are not fighting an invisible enemy. Like many marginalized communities whose cultures are frequently appropriated have been saying for at least a decade now: "I didn't know" doesn't cut it anymore.
Our community is built on appropriation. Indeed it could be said that our entire community is fundamentally appropriative. Our founding fathers, as well as the very foundations our basic principles and common beliefs rest on, exist because of the appropriation of suffering that was never ours to claim, and cultures that we could not possibly belong to - either because they never existed, or because they did... only a thousand or more years ago. Our community is not about expressing a kind of spirituality that those who join already felt prior to their discovery of the community. If that were the case, theology, cosmology, philosophy and actual real life practice would take center stage. Magic is a trend, religion a token for identity politics. It is for that reason that people struggle to maintain a practice, that people fight for their lives to feel a connection to their supposed beliefs, that people spend more money on books by other practitioners than minutes considering the beliefs of those whose cultures they are invading into. And, indeed, it is for that reason that we simply can't help ourselves when it comes to appropriation.
We are constantly drawn to that which looks exotic to us, because all sense of novelty and individualism has been stripped from "white" cultures. To actually practice paganism, rather than a hyper-individualistic appropriation of it, you have to read archaeology books, historic accounts of folklore, ethnobotany. But nobody does that - including those who write the infotainment books geared toward practitioners. Instead, we appropriate from cultures we perceive as exotic, and when caught, we reframe our appropriations. They're not "chakras," they're energy centers. It's not "smudging," it's saining. Nevermind that "energy" as a modern concept is borrowed from Theosophy, which has its own racist and appropriative roots, and saining is a culturally distinct practice unique to Scotland - but that doesn't matter, because they're white people things. Or to take the example of masked appropriation even further: we may have started mocking the "we are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn" nonsense, but the victim complex never left our midst: the "broom closet" as a way to co-opt the suffering of queer people who get no choice in their identity, when the physical expression of individualistic spirituality is absolutely a choice; the undying lie that pagans and witches are a monolith severely oppressed under Christianity, when in reality pagans and witches everywhere are not just free from systemic oppression, but actively contributing to it.
Some grow so hopeless with the entire notion of needing to respect culture that they reject culture altogether, or at least they think they do. Some take the route of trying to create their own traditions altogether, with no pre-established framework to operate off of. They are not free from the draw toward exoticism, quite the contrary: they are more likely to end up appropriating by cherrypicking features of spirituality they see others practice or from their foggy memory. Others attempt to combat appropriation by engaging in homogenization and sanitization. They strip their practice of words that have meaning altogether, thinking that just because they call it a "smoke cleanse" or "deity work" it cannot be cultural and thus cannot be appropriation. They live their lives woefully unaware of the fact that everything people do exists within the sphere of culture.
The point of all of these examples being: good intentions aren't good enough. We may not be able to undo the damage done by the commodification of ancient and indigenous spirituality, but we can shift the tides of social expectation and accountability. It is time to stop mistaking tolerance for progress, and by that token, it is time to stop tolerating the commodification of spirituality. It may have become one, but it should not be a trend. It should not be a way to soothe one's white guilt.
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In the next chapters in this series, I aim to discuss more ways the community perpetuates appropriation, cultural imperialism and racism, such as the closed/open culture dichotomy and other disinformation, as well as how to decolonize your own practice and motivations, how to recognize appropriation and combat it, and the value and role of culture in our lives and our community. When those parts are completed, they will be linked here, as well as in each individual chapter, and eventually a masterpost. I hope to see you in the next one.
Further Reading:
Climenhaga, L. (2012). Imagining the Witch: A Comparison between Fifteenth-Century Witches within Medieval Christian Thought and the Persecution of Jews and Heretics in the Middle Ages.
“The Dehumanization and Demonization of the Medieval Jews.” Medieval Antisemitism?, by François Soyer, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds, 2019, pp. 45–66.
Simpson, Jacqueline (1994). Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her, and Why? Folklore, 105:1-2: 89-96.
Heselton, Philip (2003). Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration: An Investigation Into the Sources of Gardnerian Witchcraft. Capall Bann.
“From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation: A Review and Reconceptualisation of Cultural Appropriation”. Communication Theory. Richard A. Rogers.
“Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age Commercialization of Native American Spirituality” Lisa Aldred.
Witches need to stop using death for social clout.
witches need to stop pretending that death isn't a part of everyone's daily life.
witches need to stop pretending that most of the world doesn't experience far MORE death in their day to day life than witches in the global west.
witches need to stop going around and calling themselves "psychopomps" and "death witches" because they saw a dead body once or twice or have been told they're wise by grieving people or because they stop to pout over roadkill.
witches need to stop using people's and animals' and things' deaths as reasons that they are somehow magically set apart from the rest of practitioners.
witches need to stop claiming that they have a special relationship with death like we do not all have our own complex relationships with mortality and morbidity.
witches who think they have a special relationship with death need to stop profiting off those claims and start working hard to prevent more needless death.
witches need to stop claiming to be "surrounded" or "followed" by death when they live in first world countries and still, clearly, think of death as dark and shocking and taboo.
witches who socially profit off other people's deaths need to start donating to people in need and people who are dying.
witches need to learn when it's time to shut up and be silent about an aspect of their practice to preserve the sacredness of it.
witches need to stop mistaking performing burial rites or envisioning the transition between life and death for being a psychopomp.
witches need to stop contributing to the stigmatization of death while personally profiting off of it and getting clout because they pain't themselves as special.
witches need to stop pretending that "death magic" is somehow more powerful than other magic.
witches need to stop pretending magic isn't inherently related to death even if you don't call yourself a "death witch."
witches need to stop treating death like some arcane, untouchable, unfathomable, distant thing.
witches need to stop treating death as taboo, mysterious, dangerous, and more powerful than other forces.
witches need to accept that "death magic" isn't as dangerous as they make it out to be to look more powerful.
witches need to start acknowledging ALL death including those they cause, like the ones caused by their taxes, like the ones killed for their food, like the ones killed for their clothes.
witches need to acknowledge that ALL things die, not just animals, and consider what that means.
witches need to start acknowledging that not every death or dead thing they see is in need of their help somehow.
witches need to stop treating "death magic" as a badge of special honor.
witches who claim special relationships with death need to accept the value and necessity of lives of others and their own.
witches who claim special relationships with death need to accept that sometimes killing is necessary and consider the ethics of that deeply.
witches need to start giving a fuck about the living.
This is just personal musing, but I think there is a particular misunderstanding sometimes of what folklore intends when it paints certain archetypes and recurring figures as being "othered" or as "standing outside of society". There are many figures that are portrayed in this way in European folklore (including witches, criminals, outcasts, monsters, etc.). And, with cursory study, that can appear to imply forthrightly that, yes, witches and monsters and criminals and outcasts and so on are outsiders to society.
But it's the other way around. Folklore is not telling us that the witches and the monsters and the criminals are outsiders. We already know that and we don't need to be told. What the folklore is showing us is the belief that the outsiders to (Christian, European) society were the witches, monsters, and criminals. (Sometimes this "outsider" status was quite literal due to actual limitations on where non-Christians could reside in early modern Europe.) The prevalence of these figures who work directly against the Christian God and Christ, who denounce him, who serve the Christian Devil, etc. is there because of (Christian, European) society's innate distrust of their neighbors who were not Christian.
In modern magical practice, I do think it's absolutely valid for witches to choose to view themselves as being outside of Christian society or in opposition to the Church as an institution. But I also think there is a line that is crossed at some point where folkloric literalism or folkloric romanticism attempts to erase the historical fact that much of the corpus of European folklore is told from the perspective of Christian society, and that many of these figures exist solely as expressions or tools of theological antisemitism, Church-sanctioned misogyny, and the intentional systemic exclusion of "othered" groups.
I love folklore. I live for folklore. European folklore and fairytales have been my passions for decades. But I don't romanticize or literalize folklore. It's not history. It's not unbiased. And (at least to me) it's not a how to for witchcraft. And loving folklore (for me) means understanding and accepting that and not trying to paint over it.
April is a "5" Universal Month [4 (April) + 1 (2026) = 5] in a "1" Universal Year. "5" months tend to involve a lot of tension and strife, as they break up the perceived solidity of the "4" month that comes before it. This is in line with this month, which is dominated by a major stellium of Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, who will meet up in conjunction with one another at 07° Aries towards the end of the month. Things are going to feel complicated and acutely personal all month long.
The Set Up
We begin the month with the Sun, Saturn, and Neptune in Aries, Mercury and Mars in Pisces, Venus and Uranus in Taurus, Jupiter in Cancer, and Pluto in Aquarius. By the end of the month, the Sun will have entered Taurus, Mercury and Mars will enter Aries, and Venus and Uranus will enter Gemini. All planets will be in direct motion this month.
The Nitty Gritty
April looks much easier than February or March, but we still have to contend with Saturn in Aries, as it is Aries season. This Aries season is not going to Aries like we want it to; the natural cardinality of the Ram is significantly slowed down by the weighty presence of Saturn.
At a glance, it may seem like this is the absolute antithesis of Aries season (Saturn is detrimented in Aries, after all), but if you look deeper, Saturn energy is good, solid springtime energy. If you do not plant any seeds, there will be no harvest. Boom, Saturn energy unlocked. This is your sign to work WITH Saturn in Aries energy, not struggle against it. The work you put into your own life will be rewarded. The results may come slowly (Saturn energy...), but they are coming.
The Lights: The Sun and the Moon
We begin the month with a strong full moon on the 1st at 12° Libra. This Moon is well appointed because Libra is ruled by Venus and Venus is in the sign of her domain, Taurus. The Sun will still be widely conjunct to Saturn (06°), which will tone down the energy somewhat. This supports magic working with the Sun in Aries, Moon in Libra, Venus, or Saturn. Libra is the sign of the other and relationships, but with Saturn so tightly involved, I would avoid any relationship magic unless you are very serious about that partnership.
Energies will be heightened throughout this lunation (especially in the evening, when the full moon goes exact in the US), and it could create some domestic troubles, especially in partnerships where one person isn't holding up their end of the bargain.
We should note that the Aries Sun is already in a tightening square to Jupiter in Cancer (exact on 4/5), so I wouldn't call this lunation "lucky" by any means. More necessary.
The Sun will remain mostly unaspected all month. It makes a conjunction to Chiron at 26° Aries on 4/16 and then a major stellium with the Moon and Chiron during the new moon at 27° Aries the next day on 4/17. This is a day to step carefully. For some (especially those with planets in late Aries or Libra), this may bring back situations that arose during our total solar eclipse in Aries in the spring of 2024. There, the Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Chiron were conjunct. Chiron has been holding on to any aches and pains from that eclipse season. This is a chance to clear out anything that feels really stuck, and also an opportunity to set intention with Aries energy that isn't as inhibited by Saturn's presence.
On 4/19, the Sun enters Taurus. This is a mixed bag. Normally, this isn't great because the Sun is exalted in Aries, but, as I said above, Aries season can't Aries like it's supposed to this year. We might not get any more spring in our step until we've entered Taurus season. First they sleep, and all that...
Things are growing, and we ARE getting somewhere. It just may not feel like it for most of the month.
Our Taurus Sun will square off with Pluto in Aquarius on 4/25, but most people won't notice it.
Saturn in Aries
Saturnian energy is going to take center stage all month, at least through 4/19-4/20. This is our first Aries season with Saturn in Aries, and shit is about to get real. There is no avoiding Saturn if he comes knocking - sooner or later, even the most avoidant person needs to pay the piper.
The big flex is knowing what you owe and having your dues ready.
We can see this Aries season as a karmic tax season. I don't mean that new-agey, woo version of karma (oooh, what comes around, goes around) either. That's not astrological karma. Astrological karma is more like the pendulum swing: what goes out, must come back. You are born into a certain time, to a certain group of people, and that time and that group of people have karma. It was all of our karma to live in a time of a global pandemic - with its good, its bad, and its ugly. It is our karma to have to deal with the aftermath of the lockdowns, the misinformation, and the very real collective trauma that is still unfolding.
If you are not hiding under a rock, you can probably see that all of us - the collective We - need to have a great reckoning. Climate change tipping at the point of no return, fascism on the rise, disaster after disaster after disaster, yet another war over oil. All of these things have the potential to "come due" in the month ahead.
It's important to note that Saturn is not a personal planet. Yes, some people will have a personal reconning while Saturn is in Aries, but this is also - more accurately - going to be a collective reconning.
It will be more personal for people with the luminaries (Sun and Moon), personal planets (Mercury, Venus, or Mars), or Saturn in Aries. But it will have a social impact, and those most sensitive are always affected by this.
We are in this shit (Saturn in Aries) until April of 2028 - this is a long-haul transit; the expected value of slow-moving Saturn. The energy of this is going to be most pronounced during Aries and Libra seasons, but we'll get some pressure during Cancer and Capricorn seasons as well.
We note here that the cardinal signs have been on blast since early 2020, when we had a major planetary stellium in Capricorn; this is the continuation of a theme.
If you have Saturn in Aries, this is your Saturn return. You need to pay attention to everything Saturn does in your sign, but watch especially for when it conjuncts your natal Saturn (this may be up to 3x). If you have a luminary or personal planet in any of the cardinal signs, you might want to stay attentive as well. You will feel this the most when Saturn is within 05° aspect (conjunction, square, or opposition) to your planet.
Depending on your personal relationship to Saturn and what is going on in your life, major Saturnian transits can range from mildly challenging to back-breakingly difficult. It's wise to remember that Saturn brings the hammer of consequence, but rewards are consequences, too. Saturn doesn't have to be the bad guy - we humans paint him in that light.
Stellium: Mercury, Mars, and Saturn 07° Aries 4/19-4/20
Mercury and Mars have already been conjunct with one another twice this year, once in early Aquarius and again during Mercury's retrograde in Pisces. Now Mercury passes Mars for a third time in spunky, aggressive Aries. Mars is even in his domain in Aries! That's what I would normally say about this aspect.
Mercury and Mars are our two fastest planets. Mercury is literally fast, moving around the Sun 3-4x a year, while Mars's fiery energy is quite quick on his feet (and most especially Mars in Aries energy!). These two combined feel like nearly literal combustion, the wind running through the flame and sparking more!
Saturn is a Hard Stop. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
As you might guess, this won't end well for many people. Your goal should be to make sure that you are not one of those people. It might not be possible. Saturn is definitely not always within our control.
I am painting this cosmic STOP sign through this missive; it's your choice whether to heed the warning.
Where are you rushing too fast in your own life? Saturn in Aries can be kind of sneaky; it can trick us into thinking that if we just run fast enough and hard enough, the Storm won't catch up. Aries (and to some degree all of the cardinal signs) have the bad habit of disassociating through action.
Never stop moving seems like a sound strategy until it doesn't. If you never stop moving, you probably didn't stop to smell the flowers, and you missed the sensation of wind in your hair as you stood quietly at the peak, and you probably weren't present at your person's birthday party or on the phone with your Mom.
With such a strong planetary presence in Aries, we are all likely to feel a lot of pressure to keep going and keep moving this month.
The big flex is to step away from that collective pressure and find a place of rest. It might not be possible.
Carve out any space you can for yourself this month. Do slow things. Eat real food. Take a walk on the beach or go forest bathing. Do what will soothe your heavy heart.
This is going to be hard for many people. Do the best you can with what is coming up for you. Help others if you've got the energy.
I'm not particularly fond of any Mars-Saturn conjunction, so I'm a little bit grateful for Mercury's help here. Mercury's a great verbal negotiator, and their trickster vibes can defuse tense situations.
Our Personal Planets: Mercury, Venus, and Mars
We should all rejoice as between 4/9 and 4/24, Venus and Mars will both be in the signs of their domains (Taurus and Aries, respectively), which is a great boon for relationships of all kinds and helps the general "vibes" of the Gen Pop. We are finally seeing the planets shift back into their standard roles, with Mars as the aggressor and Venus as the diplomat. This supports all types of magic designed to support diplomacy, aggression, and all types of relationships that fit the standard M/f dynamic. (Don't disregard Mars' strong stellium with Saturn and Mercury around 4/19 and 4/20, though)
Overall, our planetary placements this month look like a major improvement. Mercury finally leaves their post-retrograde shadow and then finally Pisces (the sign of both their fall and their exile). Venus is in Taurus until 4/24, and Mars enters Aries on 4/9. Communication may get a bit on the aggressive side (Mercury in Aries), but otherwise, getting along with other people should be relatively easy, especially in comparison to how it has been since February.
Other than the major stellium mentioned above, none of our personal planets make any significant aspects this month.
Looking Forward
May looks much better than the preceding months. The two big astrological notes of the month are double full moons on 5/1 and 5/31 (not a blue moon because they don't occur in the same sign), and a square between our Gemini Sun and the lunar nodes demarking the halfway points between eclipse seasons.
The Details
4/1 - Full Moon 12° Libra
4/3 - Mercury in Pisces trine Jupiter in Cancer (3), Venus in Taurus square Pluto in Aquarius
4/5 - Sun in Aries square Jupiter in Cancer
4/9 - Mercury exits its post retrograde shadow 22° Pisces, Mars enters Aries
4/13 - Mars conjunct Neptune 02° Aries
4/14 - Mercury enters Aries
4/16 - Sun conjunct Chiron 26° Aries, Mercury conjunct Neptune 02° Aries
4/17 - New Moon 27° Aries
4/19 - Sun enters Taurus, Mars conjunct Saturn 07° Aries
4/20 - Mercury conjunct Saturn 07° Aries, Mercury conjunct Mars 07° Aries
4/23 - Venus conjunct Uranus 29° Taurus
4/24 - Venus enters Gemini
4/25 - Sun in Taurus square Pluto in Aquarius, Uranus enters Gemini
4/26 - Mercury in Aries square Jupiter in Cancer
4/28 - Venus in Gemini square the lunar nodes
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We've reached the big week of the month, when everything this week is leading towards something: the new moon in Aries, the Sun entering Taurus, and our major stellium between Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, which occurs at the end of this week and into next Monday. Overall, it's not going to feel good. We can blame this, as always, on Saturn.
We have to keep in mind that Saturn is at its fall in cardinal Aries because Aries is fast and demanding, while Saturn is a hard STOP.
That stop sign exists at the end of this week, the big flex all week long is to take your foot off the gas pedal BEFORE you need to slam on the brakes (or, worst case, run into that wall). It won't be easy; with the Sun, Mercury, and Mars in Aries, we are really feeling the manic growth energy of spring.
I'm not saying you shouldn't move this week; I'm encouraging you to slow down without riding the brakes. For some of us - especially those with strong Aries placements (and possibly even fire placements overall), this will be extremely challenging. There is always so much to do in the springtime.
There are a ton of piddly small aspects this week, but I'm not going to focus on each one of them - the end result is too big, and the outer planets just don't matter that much in this context.
Mercury enters Aries (Tuesday)
This is going to ramp up the intensity of this ascending conjunction fast. Mars entered Aries last week, and Saturn is already sitting there, waiting. Beware of thinking too fast (Mercury) or moving too fast (Mars) because Saturn is RIGHT THERE.
For the love of all of the gods: pace yourself.
You don't need to do it all right now. Besides, it will be much easier to accomplish next week after this stellium has begun to separate.
Sun conjunct Chiron 26° Aries (Thursday)
This has the feeling of a bruised ego, or perhaps the pains of doing too much, or perhaps the pains of not going enough. Chiron has been sitting in Aries for quite some time and was deeply involved in our total solar eclipse in Aries in 2024. Chiron will be tightly involved in a stellium with the Sun and Moon during the new moon the next day, which will echo the eclipse's energy without quite as much intensity.
Pain points may be activated, especially for those of you who have Chiron strongly indicated in your chart.
New Moon 27° Aries 7:52AM (EDT/UTC-4:00)
The new moon peaks early in the morning on Friday, which means if you're looking to work with this energy, you need to do so during that timeframe. Because this lunation occurs at the end of Aries, the moon will have entered Taurus by midday, completely ending this energy.
This is the best day we've had so far to set intentions for the new astrological year, as the Sun is now quite far from Saturn. Keep it simple and to the point, as that uses Aries energy to its fullest potential. One single candle burned over an intention paper is indicated here; 1 for the first astrological month of the year, and fire for Aries.
Stellium: Mercury, Mars, and Saturn 07° Aries (Sunday-Monday)
This is it, the big deal, the hard stop that I've been talking about all month long. Mars conjuncts Saturn on Sunday, and Mercury conjuncts Saturn and then Mars on Monday.
If you can't think, can't do, can't talk, can't write this weekend, know that you are right on time.
If you are forced to face the consequences of your past actions, this is likewise indicated.
We do not like to see Mars and Saturn meet, as they are our two malefic signs; it does not bode well for anyone. Does that mean something bad will happen to you? Obviously not. It's an opportunity. A checkpoint, if you will. How you personally feel about Martial and Saturnian energy will have a lot to do with how this shows up for you.
Saturn is a reminder to slow down and check yourself, but Mars in Aries is at its most driven and is singularly focused on forward movement and achievement. The thing is, Saturn outweights Mars by a lot. You can't get out of this by pushing through. You have to do the work, or you will be stuck in the quagmire.
We should be very thankful for Mercury's involvement, as they are a great negotiator. For this reason, I suspect Sunday will feel very challenging for many, but some of this may become clearer on Monday as Mercury overtakes these two signs. Being flexible will help a lot here, but when you are bending that much, it can be difficult not to tense all your muscles.
This is definitely breakup weather for a certain type of relationship - you know the type that's built entirely on adrenaline and fighting/making up.
We will get through this weekend, but it might not feel like it for a hot second in the middle. Things will level off a lot as we enter Taurus season.
Sun enters Taurus (Sunday)
This will probably pass unnoticed with our major stellium, but we enter the second astrological month of the year on Sunday when the Sun enters Taurus. Taurus season is all about enjoying springtime and embracing your own Venus nature.
"In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top--the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation--and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as "the younger brothers of Creation." We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn--we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They've been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out."
It is a personal belief that many parts of the occult community feature a sense of pastoral romanticism, identifying the witch with someone on the 'other side' - a person who rides the boundaries of the hedge representing one foot in the natural, untamed world and one in the civilized world of the village. Although this is historically true, where folk healers often made use of herbs that were accessible in their region and foraged, it is not altogether the same as the circumstances we live in now. There is some mentions of manufactured items, such as church candles which were stolen or farm goods such as a stolen potato to treat rheumatism - but it is undeniable that folk magic was based on the ingenuity and personal ability of the magician in relation to the environment they found themselves in.
Nature Spirits are not fully limited to just natural areas, and the increasing urbanization may result in new chaos egregores such as the spirits residing around train tracks, or spirits of electrical pylons and other areas of condensed electricity. One major person I know worked with a chaos egregore of nuclear material, of which certain glasses and similar items contain uranium. It is described by some that these spirits of non-natural elements are chaotic, but they undeniably fill a possible role in our spiritual work.
Spirits of Various Areas
We have the presence of the Geni Loci in folklore, spirits of place - and this is most noted in contemporary witchcraft in relation to places like crossroads, houses and other distinct landmarks such as cemeteries and churches. These spirits are often invoked when handling substances from that area such as dirt, and prove to be a staple when it comes to magic of all forms. Other spirits include:
The Spirit of Organizations represented by the places of work or corporations which may be used in job related affairs
The Spirit of Banks which may be invoked for good fortune in financial affairs
The Spirits of Universities or Institutions of Education that may be invoked for aid in learning and exams
The Spirits of Courts and Court Houses that may be invoked in affairs relating to the averting or bending of the Law.
The Spirits of Fertile Gardens which may be worked with in areas of growth, abundance and development.
The Spirits of Dry or Infertile Land which may be used to dry up curses, enemies and the like.
The Spirits of Red Dirt which are found when areas of sand are oxidized and have a red colour, useful for protection and curse breaking as well as causing conflicts.
The Spirits of Party Houses which may be invoked for acts of socializing and having a hold over others
The Spirits of Bathhouses and Cruising Areas which may be invoked for attracting a partner or sex.
These are just a few of the found spirits that one might get, but others also include
Spirits of Busy Roads which may be used to disperse conditions and send people away.
Spirits of Abandoned Buildings which can take many shapes and forms.
I despise despise despise the idea of "do christians know that easter is basically a fully moon ritual?" or "nonwitches literally practice candle magic when they blow out birthday candles!!" or etc. tracking the passage of time with nature isn't unique to modern witchcraft, nor is seeing the world as inherently whimsical. not all magic is witchcraft, and pieces of the world that are significant to witchcraft are not solely significant to witchcraft
