After being highlighted by the fantastic @per-aspera-ad-tenebrae , I felt a need to follow suit and introduce myself more thoroughly. Thanks to @slewfootwitch for the movement in the community here. Great idea!
You can call me Gray Lady or Stephanie Celeste. I’m a 41 year old Academic who is focusing her work on research and the magical world.
I started my path with a quiet nudge of intuition that I promptly ignored until my blindness dumped me into a Near-Death Experience. The first of my massive transcendence experiences that changed my life in a highly formative manner. Almost dying changed the way I thought about life, priorities, and god. Beforehand, I had been a struggling Roman Catholic, though my brief foray into the idea of witchcraft and the alternative religions in the 90’s was highly inspirational at the time. After the NDE, I was nearly obsessed with finding out more. I visited every library looking for more info on what could have possibly happened, and ended up squarely in the realm of Goddess Worship.
By Sophomore year of HS (2000) I had started an underage coven focused on self improvement and magical development. By Freshman year of college(2003), the group had survived two witch wars with some extreme circumstances. We had founded a presence in an astral realm and started working with otherworldly courts. I had not been the leader of this particular group since HS and it expanded then devolved into a cult of personality by the time we graduated from Undergrad(2007).
In the heart of the worst part of it all, after undergrad, we moved to China. Further isolated from the familiar world and forced into deeper and deeper levels of abuse on all areas of life. I can click every measure on the BITE scale and have written old posts on this blog about those years after coming back to some level of normal life away from that.
I both love and hate those years of learning to adult in a foreign country. There is something inexplicably beautiful about Asia that has drawn me back in recent years. The call to serve the population in the location we were in at that time continues to pull me. I am constantly surprised by the resiliency and ability of the people there. I welcome the overwhelming feeling of growth and potential I feel when I have returned to those places. The recent visit was a second fantastic adventure that well overshadowed and outshined the first two. I have witnessed the growth of a nation and am humbled by the strength and progress I see there.
I’ve moved through various eclectic Wiccan styles in the 90’s, to some group-bound astral work in my post-college cult-of-personality-participation phase, then to my own explorations of similar spaces in the astral, sans-cult, during my Sovereign Era years. Within that period is when I met @per-aspera-ad-tenebrae , and we started practicing together. Somewhere in there I had a cosmic witchcraft phase, a kitchen witch phase (Sage and lemon cookies for internal cleansing, what?), and a run-with-coyotes/non-physical shapeshifting phase that moved me into traditional witchcraft.
In an official way, I shifted into a richer physical focus with 🍄mushroom hunting in 2020, and then an 🌳EcoPsych Certification in 2021-2022, followed by my 💜Masters in Transpersonal Psychology graduation in 2023. I am now in my 🎓PhD program with my 🌙Dream Studies Certification just accomplished in summer 2025. Graduation looks like 2027, but we’ll see.
I teach massage therapy, transpersonal psychology, biosciences, humanities, and creative expression. I have passion for all spiritual topics but especially the impact of steady Othering that comes from the committed path of magic and witchcraft. I especially love the benefits that neurospicy individuals have when they engage deeply into witchcraft practices.
My magical work spans an eclectic and traditional witchcraft background with elements of folk work and world travel. That’s a fancy way to say I pick up things as I learn and they feel like they apply to me and my work based on lived experience. I use things from various cultures if they are offered to me during my visit to that culture.
I was raised Polish Roman Catholic with various ancestor practices, was born German Roman Catholic with heritage energy practices, and am still discovering the male lineage in my family line. My birth father has yet to believe me that all families have some kind of folk practice inherit in their living style. When I discover more about that side of my family, I will likely incorporate it.
I have been told by people who study such things that my bloodline carries some measure of both Native and African American from a rural county in North Carolina, but until I can confirm this for myself, I have not incorporated any part of this into my practice since I was not raised in this fashion.
My current magic work focuses on spirit communication, visiting the wild places to share with the spirits, and connecting to them in order to find my proper path. I have had my skills amplified through this practice and while it is still in a fledgling style at a development of 5 years and counting, I believe I am finding a format that is comfortable for me.
The Dark Man/ Forest Lord/ Man in Black approached me in 2020/2021 and I was uncertain of my ability to honor that call. Since then, I have had several spirits leading me and I now work with one in particular who feels like the proper match. I have been studying with this spirit off and on for more than a year.
My current hyper focuses include academic framing of magical topics, psi/telepathy/clairs as a study opportunity within popular acceptance, magical lives of neurospicy folks, and spiritual refuge for those who combat mental health.





















