Without Authority

No longer posting. Check out https://open.substack.com/pub/sororalice for current content.

[sororalice]

The Ladder Of Love

Mystical poem written 5-5-25. Hymn To Aphrodite 5.

1.

“Let me hear your song,” You said,

So I laughed long and loud,

“Beautiful,” You said,

So I turned myself over to You

“We two. We are misunderstood,”

You said this and I fell to my knees,

And made myself into a comfort,

For Your people

Blessing the path before me,

And bidding farewell,

To the winding road behind,

I winced only once in momentary pain

Oh sweet Beloved,

Born of Sky,

And churning purple Sea,

Aphrodite, I adore You

2.

I am striving, Beloved,

To love as You love,

Even before,

I am loved

To be soft and hard,

Strong and gentle,

To honor all of You,

Shaper and shaped

God is love and love is the law,

Or so I’ve been taught,

By prophets and teachers,

Mystics and tragedies

I believe it, too,

On my better days,

On the other days,

I do the best I can

3.

Once upon a time,

I was a priestess,

In fabled Mantinea,

Well, perhaps

I was asked about love,

And spoke first of beauty,

Guiding my eager student,

Who, thankfully, knew nothing

He and I climbed together,

Up the Ladder Of Love,

From the love of one to the many,

From the love of many to the All

Like my goddess,

I was misunderstood,

But I can always clear my throat,

And try again tomorrow

Art: Franc Kavčič, “Socrates With A Disciple And Diotima”, (unknown date, before 1810)

[sororalice]

On The Blessedness Of Dreams

A homily for the New Moon on May 26, 2025.

Dearly Beloved,

Blessed New Moon, dear ones. I greet you in the name of Aphrodite and in the name of the Divine on this, the New Moon in Gemini.

I want to always be honest with you, dear ones. I want to always lead with my vulnerability and to speak to you with an open heart. So I want to be clear: I’ve been struggling a bit these last two weeks since the Full Moon. Some of that has been due to current events, of course. I’m sure a lot of you are struggling with the way the world seems determined to go down in flames in as banal and awful a way as possible as the American Empire collapses all around us. But some of it has been strictly personal.

I have bad dreams, you see. Almost every night. The reasons are prosaic and boring, just another story of childhood abuse and trauma (please don’t blame my late father, I was raised by my mother and her family), teenage homelessness, and chronic illness. Sadly, these things are all too common in this aching world. I have meds and I do daily invocations of Hermes in His aspect as Hegetor Oneiron (Hγήτωρ Ονειρον), and that definitely helps with both frequency and intensity, but I still don’t get much restful sleep. This last week I had some pretty horrible nightmares almost every night and I am pretty raw right now.

So I am moved this month to speak on that place we go each night when we close our eyes. That state of being that lies between waking and deep, sound, restful sleep. That realm that lies beyond the Gates Of Horn and Gates of Ivory.

I am moved to speak on dreams.

I have always been fascinated with dreams. My sleep disorders started at the age of eight, and back then there was a franchise of horror movies that obsessed me, the “A Nightmare On Elm Street” series. I watched them over and over, not because they scared me, but because the movies actually took dreams seriously. Wes Craven understood the power of dreams, both good and bad, and the heroes in his movies always found ways to cope with and defeat their nightmares. One of my first personal heroes was Nancy Thompson, played by the wonderful Heather Langenkamp, and the first lesson I learned from her was that you have to take the nightmares seriously. “It’s just a dream” doesn’t work. You have to care about survival. You have to be ready to fight. My nightmares isolated me in a maze of images and terrors that no one around me could understand, but in those early years those silly slasher movies showed me a path to follow.

The next lesson I learned was that it’s okay to be afraid. Fear is normal and fear can even be helpful. Sometimes the most rational thing you can do is scream and run away. Fear can become a good friend, a cold place in your gut that you can use to center you when the world goes a bit crooked, and a guide to show you how to get home safe at night. Fear—so long as it doesn’t paralyze you—can be a goad to survival and a spur to courage. Some mages will tell you that fear is an enemy, and “Liber Librae” says that “fear is failure, and the forerunner of failure”, but in my opinion only a child thinks that puffing out their chest and pretending to be fearless makes them seem very grown up. Real wisdom is recognizing that fear serves a purpose and has lessons to teach.

The final thing that I learned was that dreams are real. Oh, I don’t mean that the things that happen in them are physically real, of course. I’m not that crazy. I mean that the symbols, feelings, and images of our dreams have a sort of reality all their own and have real lessons that they can teach us. Like stories and myths, dreams have their own kind of logic, their own kind of meaning, and if we attend to what our dreams—even our nightmares—have to teach us, we can become more than what we were before. Dreams, like visions, can be initiatory and sacramental, and by exploring our dreams, even when they are deeply unpleasant, we can grow and transform in important ways inaccessible by other methods.

As mages and mystics, this is doubly, even triply, true. I have learned invocations and new magickal techniques, met spirits that have become huge parts of my life, undergone moments of initiation, been guided into new regions of the astral plane, and been called out on my bullshit by deities, all in dreams. I have discovered a more or less consistent “place” I call the Nameless City, where I frequently return, sometimes as often as one night in every ten. This enormous city, full of labyrinthine streets, libraries, museums, and shops full of secrets, lecture halls where classes are always being taught, and wandering, befuddled people who seem to be other dreamers just as mystified as myself, stands on the edge of a seemingly endless sea reminiscent of Clive Barker’s “Quiddity”. I wander its streets and through rooms, hallways, and buildings, always to return to that sparkling, purple sea before I awake, and I often wonder what—and who—is on the far shore.

So yes, I mean what I say. Dreams are real, and what happens in them is meaningful, even when it is horrifying. They are not always true, of course. Most dreams seem to come through the Gates Of Ivory, after all. But they are meaningful, and they often have much they can teach us. Even the nightmares can be an opportunity to learn. Even the nightmares can teach us new magick. Even the nightmares can be a chance to flourish, a chance to thrive.

And we all deserve to thrive, don’t we?

So let us make the bed and turn down the sheets. Let us say our goodnights and lay our heads down upon the pillow. Let us close our eyes and let ourselves drift…off…to…sleep…

Let us dream.

Blessed New Moon, dear ones.

In love,

Soror Alice

Art: Jean-Bernard Restout, “Morpheus”, (1771)

[sororalice]

The Divine Liturgy Of Setting Sail

A liturgy in celebration of the greater feast (death) of a community member for one or many celebrants.

0.

When one among you has passed,

And mourning has begun,

Assemble the wailing ones,

In a safe place resonant of joy

1.

Choose from among you,

Those wailing ones,

Whose hearts are full to bursting,

And begging to be heard

2.

Let those who have been chosen,

Choose again among themselves,

The one who will sing,

And bear the burdens

3.

Remember you live,

Always in relationship,

Honor the land,

And its rightful stewards

4.

Fix what is free,

Bind what is loose,

Close the circle,

To embrace the sacred witnesses

5.

Call the Elements

Stars and spirits,

Mighty Ones and ancestors,

In loving intimacy

6.

Let the one who is to sing,

Come forward and say,

“Let us remember,”

“Let us tell sweet stories,”

7.

Then let the singer fall back,

And let the wailing ones,

Sing their own songs, one by one,

Of the one who has fallen

8.

When each story ends,

Pass a silent moment together,

Feel what the fallen meant,

Feel the hole they leave behind

9.

When the stories are ended,

Let the singer raise their hands,

Let them pull down starlight,

And bind it to the iron core of the Earth

10.

Let the singer say,

“All this takes getting used to,”

“But you do get used to it,”

“One day you will fly again”

“One day you will dream,”

“And no one will be missing,”

“Only a light shadow will be cast,

“And you will remember how to dance”

“But today is not that day,

“So weep if you will,”

“Laugh if you will,”

“And let no one shame you”

11.

Let those who have come together,

To say goodbye,

Share a Dumb Supper,

Silent and reversed, sweet to savory

12.

As you chew, consider the dead,

Remember them and hold them,

Dear in your hearts,

Feel them near you

13.

Let the silence deafen you,

To all but the whispers,

Of the fallen,

And listen

14.

Is there a message here,

A bit of starry wisdom,

Won back from beyond,

What any of us can imagine?

15.

Do the dead speak?

And if they do,

What mysteries do they reveal?

What intimacies do they share?

16.

Finish your meal,

With a thanksgiving,

For our dear one,

Who has won their Greater Feast

17.

As light they were shed by the Divine,

They walked among us awhile,

Sharing their warmth,

And now they sail home

18.

Honor those who weep,

Hold each other in your pain,

Recognize loss,

Help each other say goodbye

19.

Finally, let the one who sings say,

“One day your tears will dry,”

“But it need not be today,”

“Be kind to your own hearts”

20.

Release all who were called,

Tell them “Thank you”,

Tell them “We love you”,

Tell them “Goodbye”

21.

Let what was bound be loosed,

Let the circle be opened,

Let those who wail be released,

Let the one who has fallen be free

Art: Claude Monet, “Impression, Sunrise”, 1872

[sororalice]

Cotton Pajamas

Mystical poem written 4-28-25. Hymn To Aphrodite 4.

1.

“Lay down, my dear,

You always were such a deep sleeper”,

I drip golden like honey down the path,

Between one door and another

“Remember, my love,

The shadows are never out of reach”,

She says this to me calmly,

As if I were not coming unthreaded

“If you can just remember,

Then I will let you wake up”,

My rough wool blanket pulled tight,

Volumes still unwritten and unsung

My robes are cotton pajamas,

Vestments of a dreaming priestess,

Of anxious strivings,

And childhood aspirations

2.

If I can only begin to reach up to You,

If I can only begin to smell the roses,

If I can only come ever so close,

To touching Your cheek

Then I might be able to finally,

Crawl out of the cold, warm,

Embracing, lonely shadows,

Cast by my far-away forever

That person that,

I only sort of was,

But with whom,

I am forever trapped

Every time I wake up,

I feel that phantom pain,

Every time I lose sight of You,

I am haunted

3.

I will not let You be forgotten,

Even if I am left alone and dry,

Thirsting for Your lustral waters,

In the Desert Of The Real

I will puzzle out Your mysteries,

I will squint out a glimpse of You,

Against all odds,

Against the grain

I will read Your messages,

Rolled up and bound into a bottle,

And tossed up onto the war-torn shores,

Of this contested reality

I am Yours, my Beloved,

My Beautiful, my Heavenly,

You have laid Your hands upon me,

And made me real

Art: Odilon Redon, “Sleep”, (1898)

[sororalice]

On The Blessedness Of Leadership

A homily for the Full Moon on May 12, 2025.

Dearly Beloved,

Blessed Full Moon, dear ones. I greet you in the name of Aphrodite and the name of the Divine on this, the Full Moon in Taurus.

Times are (unfortunately) interesting. There is a new patriarch of Rome (known by most of the world as the pope) and while I always have doubts about the Roman Church’s ability to withstand the temptations of power and empire, and I have nothing but condemnation for their history of colonization, corruption, and many sexual abuse scandals and coverups, I also recognize that the new patriarch of Rome holds immense power in the spiritual lives of billions of people all over the world. He is the neck that turns the head of many, and that sort of power is not to be ignored.

And so I pray: may the Wisdom of the Divine, known by some as Holy Sophia, inform and guide the new Patriarch Leo XIV. May his heart, mind, and spirit be guided by the Good, the True, and the Beautiful throughout his reign to the benefit of all, but especially to the benefit of women, BIPOC, the poor, queer people, and the victims of poverty and violence all over the world. May he be a worthy leader. May he serve with love and virtue in the name of the Divine.

So mote it be.

As I usually do, I pulled a Tarot card while choosing the virtue I wish to speak on in this homily, and this time I pulled The Emperor. The Emperor is a powerful and deeply layered card, like all of the Major Arcana, but more than anything the card manifests a type of aggressive or martial authority. The card is associated with the Zodiac sign Aries, the cardinal sign of Fire, which is ruled by Mars and in which the Sun in exalted. It is also associated with the alchemical element Sulphur. These correspondences reveal to us a deeply fiery, aggressive, martial, and authoritative (if not authoritarian) force. Used in cartomancy and well-dignified, the card can signify a powerful, usually masculine-presenting, leader, victory in conflict, or an intense beginning to a new endeavor. Ill-dignified, this card often represents corrupted authority and the worst type of leader…the despot.

I am assuredly a fool, but I like to think that I am not stupid. I know that the issue of authority—its legitimacy, basis, and use—is the issue at the core of our world’s problems. I know that the eyes of the whole world are on America right now, desperately hoping that we pull back from the brink, that we can somehow reign in the evil—yes, evil—that has been loosed upon us and which we have loosed upon the world.

So this month I am moved to speak on that role that some of the greatest blessings and curses in human history have played. I am moved to speak on the one that comes to the front, the one that sets an example, the one who has a vision for the future and, for good or ill, is willing to do what it takes to fulfill that vision.

I am moved to speak on leadership.

I have very complex feelings about the concept of leadership. For most of my life, I have identified as some form of anarchist. For about twenty years or so, I was an anarcho-syndicalist, and now I am more or less an anarcho-communist. I believe that leadership, when legitimate, has to come from below, from the people who actually have to implement and live with the consequences of the important choices that leaders have to make.

This attitude on leadership extends to my magickal and spiritual beliefs. I believe that we are all our own spiritual authorities and that we are all responsible for the state of our own souls. While I am no longer very active in the Thelemite community, I am still a Thelemite, and at the core of Thelema is the conviction that our wills, our own free choices and the consequences that arise from those choices, are holy.

But while I hold these values, I am also forced by this aching world to accept, again and again, that leaders are a real thing. Some people want to lead, some people want to follow (though few will admit it), and very few people have the strength and the stamina to consistently refuse to do either. I have watched activist and pagan communities fall apart again and again because of a basic refusal to accept this reality. Thinking for ourselves all the time isn’t just extremely difficult, it is impossible for humans. We are social creatures and, as such, we are primed by biology to learn our behaviors from our parents and childhood communities. From birth, humans are looking for models, other people to give us cues on how to act and what to think. That is natural and normal and we should not indulge in some sort of toxic individualism or oppositional defiance that says any influence from others is somehow wrong.

So while I still cherish my desires for a bottom-up system of authority where we all fire our bosses, seize the means of production, and live in self-sufficient communities that are smaller than Dunbar’s Number and organized around common values and interwoven relationships, leaders of some sort will always be a thing. Some people are always going to be more aggressive, more willing to push their ideas and desires on others, and sometimes they will even be good at the job. There actually is such a thing as a good leader. The damage that the absence of good leaders has caused in our world is immense and speaks to the need to address that absence. It is unrealistic and childish to simply throw up our hands and say “no one should be in charge”, because if no one is in charge, if the chain of responsibility doesn’t finally end somewhere with someone, then no one can ever be held accountable. Things just sort of happen by the path of least resistance and while no one person or set of people is ever exactly “to blame”, bad things just keep happening and the most vulnerable people just keep suffering.

That is exactly what is happening now in the US…we have people who are leaders in name only because they can never be held accountable for their choices. Bad things just keep happening (and they’ve been happening since long, long before Trump) because there are no real consequences except for the victims. These people are like screeching, drunken toddlers, running around the government with swinging arms and dirty hands, and apparently no one can stop them from breaking the good plates and getting handprints on all the furniture.

Dearly beloved, if you will not accept it as an ethical justification for leadership, then for pragmatic reasons alone, for the purpose of having a chance to achieve justice and to get beyond a world of exploitation, corruption, and “good old boy networks”, accept that we must be able to hold people accountable in a constructive, healthy way. We need accountability in order to keep the vulnerable people among us safe and to make sure that bad actors don’t rise to positions of power and stay there.

For me, what it means to be a pagan is that I believe in a naturalized theology, which means that I believe that the Divine, in all of Their myriad forms, manifests Their essence and will in and through the natural world. The reality that we see throughout the natural world, including the worlds of our minds, emotions, and relationships, reveals the nature and will of the Divine. The creation points at the creator(s).

And the creation has leaders all over the place.

But nature is a crafty goddess. She hides secrets in plain sight. The leaders in nature are naturally held accountable by their own participation in the systems they lead. A queen ant is the leader of the nest in the sense that the other ants defend her and work for her benefit, even up to and including their own deaths. She is absolutely the most important single member of the nest. But if the nest fails, she dies. If she stops doing her job of eating and laying eggs, even for a short while, her hive, her children, will die. And then, in very short order, she will die.

Similarly, in a pack of wolves, the genetic parents of most of the pack—the misnamed “alphas”—are in every meaningful way the leaders. They lead movements and hunts and are treated preferentially by the pack. But if they fail their pack and that pack suffers and dies, the parents of the pack starve and their own family line may end forever.

Nature holds leaders accountable for their actions.

Now, nature has a lot of amazing, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying variety, and there are a lot of different ways we see relationships show up in our cousins among the other species on this planet. Notions of leadership like we have among humans aren’t universal by any means. But the fact that they show up in other species at all, the fact that leadership is not just a scam made up by the powerful and rich to rip the rest of us off, tells us that such a thing as virtuous leadership is possible. We can have leaders—both official and unofficial—that are good leaders. People that can help us clarify our wills and focus our aspirations. People that can help us solve problems. People that can help us thrive.

But it all falls apart when leaders cannot be held accountable. In nature, leaders depend upon those they lead and are personally invested in their lives and success. If the nest suffers, the queen suffers. If the pack suffers, the parents suffer. Thus nature teaches us the solution to our leadership problem: accountability. A direct causal connection between the welfare of the leaders and the welfare of those they lead. If our leaders thrive, we must also thrive. If we suffer, our leaders must also feel our pain.

I apologize, dear ones. Perhaps I have misnamed this homily. I set out to praise leadership and instead I have spent my time praising accountability. I must also confess that I am currently carrying a great burden related to this issue. The lack of accountability in our government, in our society, in our economy, and even in my most cherished spiritual and magickal communities, is causing so much harm to so many people that it is breaking my heart every day. And I am one of those people who are being targeted. My wife is one of those people. Friends and family all over the world are among those suffering. But even if I was safe and everyone I knew was immune from this great and ongoing suffering, so many others would not be. And that’s just not okay with me. We all deserve to thrive. I want good leaders and I believe that good leadership—virtuous leadership, in the Aristotelian sense—is possible. But without accountability, it is impossible.

I know many of you personally. I have been lucky enough to share sacred space and do magick with some of you. Some of you are leaders in our shared communities, and many more of you have it in you to be leaders. I ask you here, from my heart to yours: step up. Step forward. Speak up. Serve as ritualists. Write, create, and teach. Become. Take the reigns from those who will not be held accountable by creating a better alternative. New mages are coming to our traditions and new communities are forming every day. More tools for building and strengthening communities exist than ever before.

Use them.

So let us raise our voices and extend our hands to do the work (and the Work) that is necessary for all of us to thrive. Let us reform and repair or create and establish communities where those with power are held accountable in healthy and constructive ways. Let us reach out and take up the reigns of the imperfect world we have inherited.

Let us become leaders.

Blessed Full Moon, dear ones.

In love,

Soror Alice

Art: Rogelio de Egusquiza y Barrena, “Parsifal”, (1910)

[philosophybits]

“He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”

— John Stuart Mill, “Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews”, Feb. 1st 1867

[sororalice]

This Broken Toy

Mystical poem written 4-10-25. Hymn To The Divine 16.

1.

Don’t you know,

That all the gods are tragic,

That what it means to be divine,

Is to participate in eternity?

Even were the Moon and Sun,

To falter, and Their light to fail,

The Powers and delightful Selves,

Behind those lights would persist

Ever-present and eternal,

Inexhaustible by expression,

Always remembering, always giving,

Their constant and infinite becoming

We stand always in Their blessed circle,

Healed, revealed, and made real,

Through aspiration and participation,

In the warm gaze of the Divine

2.

But I remain bound,

Chained down and spoken for,

By the limited and temporal,

The painful real of the Real

How can I feel so alone,

When I can see Your light,

And hear the wondrous Word,

Being sung throughout the world?

How can I hunger for You,

When I feel You without and within,

And see You everywhere,

That I can bring myself to look?

I hurt,

I am incomplete and lonely,

Stranded here,

Wondering at my pain

3.

Alas, I am only me,

Except when I am You,

But even then I am but the shadow,

That You cast as You move

A ripple on the surface of the deep,

The quiddity of Your gaze,

That makes me real only,

When I can catch Your eye

Caught between mean and extreme,

Just a number and a person,

Who can never quite tell the difference,

Between the two

Just a broken toy that loves You,

Though I sometimes fear,

That I have been tossed aside,

And replaced

Art: Alfred Edward Chalon, “The Broken Toy”, (unknown date)

[sororalice]

On The Blessedness Of Community

A homily for Beltane on May 1, 2025.

Dearly Beloved,

Blessed Beltane to all those in the Northern Hemisphere and blessed Samhain to all those in the Southern Hemisphere. All bright blessings of the season upon you, dear ones. I deeply hope that all of you are thriving.

I always want to be truthful with you all, and I always want to lead with my vulnerability, so I must admit, I’m not feeling particularly sexy this Beltane. Fascists in power and people suffering because of them tend to do that to me. I also suffer from chronic pain (I have severe spinal stenosis) and have been hurting quite a bit lately. Finally, my spiritual/magickal communities have been suffering from ethical problems and a distinct lack of accountability, which has led to a different sort of pain, the pain of a crisis of community.

This is not a crisis of faith, mind you…my faith, devotion, and engagement in my spiritual life is as ardent and pious as ever. More so, honestly. I love the gods and love the Divine with everything I have and everything I am, and I will continue to serve as a priestess as long as I am able. But I am questioning where I wish to put my time and energy, and after years of entanglement and investment with specific communities, that can definitely be painful. I hope that I can continue to be a part of these communities in the future, but I am also afraid that I just can’t move forward with things as they stand without becoming ethically blameworthy myself. That kind of fear and uncertainty about something that is so important to me is a hard place to be.

So I am moved this Beltane to speak not on sex or fertility or luscious sensuality. Nor am I moved to speak, as I so often do, on the holiness of the physical world, our bodies, and nature Herself. Instead I am called to speak on the people with whom we share our lives, especially our spiritual and magickal lives.

I am moved to speak on community.

Community is a double-edged sword. Always has been. Trying to live with others is difficult, trying to live alone is almost impossible, and because of these facts most of us have to find some balance between loneliness and wanting to be left alone. Here is where I want to take a breath and acknowledge how hard that can be. I want to witness my own efforts and the efforts of all of you to show up again and again for these communities even when we all know how difficult that can be. It’s hard to live together well and I want to say that I see and I honor those of you doing the work.

I have always had very mixed experiences with community. I grew up in Southern Texas and suffered that culture’s typical ways of treating young queer people interested in magick and mysticism. In addition to this, a large number of my peers had heard stories about my parents (who were witches) from their own parents, which led to a lot of bullying and persecution. The worst part was that the occult scene in my home town was quite small, incredibly toxic, and I was young and stupid and didn’t yet know how to be ethical or set healthy boundaries. This was not a recipe for good experiences.

But then I moved to Santa Cruz, California, a place as different from Southern Texas as I could want. I found my honored and beloved late teacher, did my year and a day, and set down roots in both the local witchcraft and ceremonial magick communities. Soon I found myself working at an occult shop (13: Real Magick, if anyone remembers it) and I was thrilled to meet all sorts of new and interesting people every day.

And therein, as the saying goes, lies the rub.

Some witches didn’t like that I did ceremonial magick and spread rumors about my ethics, calling me a “black magician” and claiming that I went around cursing people and sending demons to hurt them (I didn’t). Some ceremonial magicians were condescending and dismissive about me doing witchcraft, calling me a “dabbler” and comparing me with Silver Ravenwolf (just plain rude, to both me and Silver Ravenwolf). Neither group wanted to spend time with the other and neither accepted the fact that I wanted to spend time with both. I felt a lot of pressure to “pick a lane”, which I was mostly able to resist, but it was hard to live with that sort of complexity without the support of community, so I also sometimes behaved poorly in response. Overall, community for me in those days was a pretty awful experience.

One of the other employees of 13 and I left and we founded our own shop, The Sacred Grove, with the rest of our polycule. We started teaching classes and holding public rituals. “At last”, I thought, “I will find community”. As I’m sure you will guess, it didn’t really work out like that. Nothing really changed.

I did my Abramelin Operation in 2002-2003 and, fortified with some knowledge of what the hell I was supposed to do with myself, I left the Grove to go to college. My HGA was very clear: I needed to learn how to think, then what to think about, and then finally what to do about it. I set out to do so, and excelled in an academic setting as I never had before in any other part of my life. It was during this time that my HGA led me towards Christianity (quite to my surprise). I ended up converting to Orthodoxy and serving as a chanter at a Greek Orthodox Church (pre-transition, obviously). Again, I thought I would find community, and again I was wrong. My spiritual father, Fr. Timothy, was driven from the parish in a scandal (he was blameless, the scandal was the behavior of the church council) and as his spiritual child, it was made clear I was no longer welcome in a million ways. I started going to a different Church for a while and they were nice enough and happy for a new chanter to join the liturgy team, but I was emotionally devastated by the loss of my mentor and it was very hard for me to trust the people at the new church (through no fault of their own). I soon left, never to return.

Fast forward a lot of years. I have found a way in my own Great Work to straddle ceremonial magick (Thelema), witchcraft (Reclaiming), and Christian mysticism (hesychasm). I still get dirty looks, condescending remarks, and sometimes outright hostility from members of all three communities about my involvement with each of the others. I still haven’t had a community that did not make me sad more than it made me happy. I still haven’t had a relationship with community that I could call “good”.

I am still caught between loneliness and wanting to be left alone.

And yet I could not live without you all, dear ones. I think about my duty to you constantly. I pray for you every day. I sacrifice at my altars in your names. I write homilies hoping that I can brighten your hard days and offer some comfort during your sleepless nights. I want nothing but the best for each and every one of you.

I love you, and I would be devastated to lose you. Even when you frustrate me or scare me or make me mad or upset. Even when you treat each other so badly it makes me weep and shudder in fear for the future. Even when it is so clear and obvious to me that I will never truly find a home among you.

You break my heart over and over, and I love you.

I love you all.

So let us reach out to either side and hold hands with whomever we find there, even if that person is a stranger. Even if they are an outsider, an alien. Even if they don’t ever quite fit in. Let us hold each other up and celebrate each other’s accomplishments. Let us share in each other’s pains. Let us recognize that we are together, even when we are apart. Even when we feel so, so alone.

Let us be in community.

Blessed Beltane and Samhain, beloved ones. Be well.

In love,

Soror Alice

Art: Odilon Redon, “Profil bleu”, (1895)

[sororalice]

The Divine Liturgy Of The Lingering Will

A Liturgy In Celebration Of The Transcendence And Immanence Of The Will For One Or Many Celebrants.

0.

Let the celebrants assemble,

And let one who is to sing,

Be chosen to serve

1.

Open as you will, but mind,

Every world begins and ends,

In darkness and in silence

2.

Let the one who will sing,

Light the flames,

And burn the incense

3.

Let the space be made one,

Between the worlds,

In all the worlds

4.

Call the stars that burn bright,

And want to join,

In the Work

5.

Let the one who will sing,

Tell all who will listen,

Why they have come

6.

Let the one who sings,

Bare their souls,

Let them tell the truth

7.

Let them say:

“I have eaten my heart,

And become my shadow

I have let go of unneeded things,

And fixed my will upon the needful

I have become a nobody,

A beginning unknown

And the whirlwind is living,

In the dot of my eye”

8.

Let the one who sings,

Stalk deosil among those,

Who would join in

9.

Let those who would,

Join the dance,

With the singer

10.

Let the celebrants,

Look within their hearts,

As they stalk their own futures

11.

Share your triumphs,

Let virtue be celebrated,

As beauty among you

12.

Share your errors,

Let repair be done,

With self and others

13.

Come to know each other,

In true fellowship and love,

Free of burdens

14.

See the light,

See the darkness,

See the colors

15.

See and hear each other,

For who you are,

Who you could be

16.

Finally, share a meal,

And let the singer,

Celebrate each celebrant

17.

Let each be held up,

Let each be witnessed,

Let each sing their own song

18.

Honor what has been done here,

And who and what we are,

Light made flesh

19.

Say goodbye to all stars,

Mighty Ones and spirits,

Ancestors and elements

Say that you are thankful,

Say that you love them,

Say what you mean

20.

Open what has been closed,

Loosen what has been bound,

Let what was fixed become flux

21.

Return to the world,

Reminded of who you are,

Free and beautiful

Art: 19th Century Greek Vase Illustration of Eros Before an Altar with a Woman

[sororalice]

On The Blessedness Of Warmth

A homily for the New Moon on April 27, 2025.

Dearly Beloved,

Blessed New Moon, dear ones. I greet you in the name of Aphrodite and of the Divine on this, the New Moon in Taurus.

Spring has truly sprung in my home of beautiful northern California. We are coming up on Beltane and the spark of life that was reborn on the Winter Solstice has grown into a gentle flame. Every day I see more flowers, more bees (thank the gods, keep it up, everyone!), and more birds. The rushing, meandering, expanding, and contracting life of the natural world—never truly gone or dead but merely asleep and dreaming—has gotten out of bed, finished Her first cup of coffee, and is officially starting the agenda for the year.

As such, I am moved to talk about that luscious delight that draws us into bed each night and out into the light each morning. That sheer hedonistic pleasure that greets us at the end of the long, dark winter. That sudden and leaping joy, that quickening heartbeat, that beams down upon us from our beloved Sun every day.

I am moved to speak of warmth.

Now, before I continue, I wish to make it clear: physical warmth isn’t always a good thing and is not the subject of this homily. Just like anything else in existence, the wrong amount of warmth or warmth in the wrong place can ruin your whole day. As we move forward into a world where it looks like too much warmth is going to be the theme of the next millennia or so, I am the first to acknowledge that warmth is a double-edged sword. But we’re mages…we already know that. Too much of any element is a recipe for trouble, and too much Fire can most definitely cause problems. So I want to talk instead about a different sort of warmth…emotional warmth.

In my last homily, I praised the virtue of thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness can be summed up as simply caring enough to think about the welfare of others and then trying to do something about it. I urged that we should all try to devote some energy to making the lives of the people around us—especially the people about whom we care the most—just a little bit easier each day. That we should try to shoulder each other’s burdens, just a little bit. This is a way of living out our basic duty of care to others.

I also urged that we should think of ourselves as someone of whom we should be thoughtful…that we should think about our own future selves and their needs and desires. I said that we should try to put just a little bit of energy each day into making the life of “future us” just a little bit better. This might seem obvious or like simple self-interest, but you would be surprised how many people need some help caring about themselves in this way. I know I do. Just like with others, we owe ourselves a duty of care, thus we should also be thoughtful of ourselves.

However, warmth is something else. Warmth comes before thoughtfulness. Warmth is the emotional attitude that leads us to care about others or ourselves enough to be thoughtful in the first place. To be “warm” is the opposite of being “cold”, and while we often hear people admonished about being cold—often playfully, as if to say “you scamp, you don’t care about others, how cute and funny!”—we seldom hear anyone urged to be warm. It’s as if the most we believe we can expect from ourselves or each other is a basic neutrality, a sort of casual disregard. True hostility is wrong, of course, almost everyone agrees with that, but to ask people to care enough about others as a rule to actually be warm…that just seems like too much.

Well, I think that we can do a bit better than that.

My whole life, everyone from my grandparents to every news network to my freshman economics professor has been trying to convince me that humans are awful. That we are violent, lazy, stupid, gluttonous, rapacious, bigoted, exploitative monsters who can’t be trusted with our own welfare. That’s why we need all of the various authorities these people are always trying to sell us, from clergy and churches to sovereigns and governments. These people, although ostensibly humans themselves, are special humans, you see, here to save mere normal humans from ourselves, and all for the low, low price of our money, our lives, and, of course, our endless, undying obedience. We can’t just trust ourselves and each other to live in communities of care together—of course not, that would be silly!—but we can definitely trust this tiny minority of special humans with all of the really important decisions and control of the communal resources. What could possibly go wrong?

Now, here is the part where a lot of people would cynically use my last set of statements to conclude that “therefore we shouldn’t trust anyone!”. My snide tone and statements criticizing authority figures are leading there, right? That is where the “hermeneutics of suspicion” that has sold so many books of Continental Philosophy always leads, after all, and who am I to disagree with luminaries like Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault?

Well, I’m nobody special, but I must apologetically disagree anyway. I think that humanity is a lot better than these bad actors who are always trying to get into positions of power and privilege want us to believe. I think that we have it within us to do horrible things, of course…but I also think that most of the time most us don’t actually want to do those horrible things.

Consider the following anecdote, remarkable only because it is so darned typical: I went to the grocery store today, like I do every couple of days. I walked to the store, picked out groceries, paid for them, and took them home. I interacted with a few people. I didn’t see any cops. I almost never see any cops, and when I do they are almost never actually enforcing laws or making people behave themselves. But the business of the grocery store—the buying and selling of goods, the storage of goods and currency, and thousands of interactions between humans—all mostly happened without any problems whatsoever. People mostly said “please” and “thank you”, they mostly said “excuse me” and “go ahead, you first”, and they mostly did not harm each other or steal from the store or each other. All without anyone to force them to behave themselves and without any realistic threats of violence or imprisonment. Humans, monsters that we are, mostly behaved ourselves without anyone forcing us to do so, just like we do almost every single minute of almost every single day, all over most of the world.

There are, of course, regions where wars and atrocities are currently occurring, and there are also the systemic injustices and cruelties that plague almost all of our civilizations, in which we often participate and of which we are often also victims. And of course there is actual crime, both organized and improvisational. These horrors, both obvious and subtle, are very real and I do not wish to minimize them. But I do want to point out the fact that most of our world isn’t like that. I don’t wish to debate the fact that some people are bad actors, what I wish to point out is that the pessimistic view of humanity that is so persistent in our world simply can’t account for how many people are actually good (or at least not bad). If humanity were truly the monsters that some people want us to believe we are, every ruler would have been a tyrant. Every government would have been totalitarian. Chattel slavery would still be the norm. Brutal violence would be the way every conflict of interests was ever resolved. We would still be fighting the first world war that was ever declared or we would have rendered ourselves extinct fighting it. The people who think humanity is intrinsically evil simply don’t have enough imagination—or perhaps they just don’t have the hearts—to imagine what evil truly is. If they did, then they would know exactly how lucky humanity has been.

There are some people out there—a vanishingly tiny proportion overall, but still there and disproportionately powerful and privileged—that are actual bad people. Sadly, this is true. And often those bad people find themselves in positions of power and privilege precisely because they are willing to do unethical things to gain power and privilege that the rest of us aren’t. Those people often then do things like wage wars, engage in colonialism, commit genocides, and generally act like…well, bad people is my nice way of saying it. I can think of several worse terms. People like this are why we shouldn’t have positions of power and privilege at all. Authoritarian systems of power assume that someone, somewhere exists that can be trusted with power over others and we just need to find that person or people and put them in charge, and they are wrong. Every one of them. I think most of us can be trusted with power over ourselves, more or less, but that no one, not one single person, including (and especially) myself, can be trusted with coercive power over others. Even parents should not possess that sort of power over their children. We all need checks on our power, limits on our behavior, and accountability when we transgress.

But most of us don’t actually need too much of any of those things. Most of us don’t rob our neighbors even when we know we could get away with it. Most of us don’t murder the person ahead of us in line for that big promotion or kidnap the kids we were supposed to drive to the football game and sell them into slavery. In fact, almost none of us do. Most of us are…well, not good, exactly, but we are mostly not bad, either. Definitely not bad enough to justify the coercive power of the authoritarians among us and the consequences of their inevitable abuses of power. We are…okay. Both saints and monsters exist, it’s true, but we are mostly just okay.

And okay is actually pretty good. Good enough, at least. Maybe not good enough to love; I know not all of us are called to that as I am (and trust me, I have to work at it sometimes). But definitely good enough to care about. Good enough to give a few moments of consideration. Good enough to give a bit of warmth.

So let us look to each other and ourselves to make the world just a little bit better, just a little bit more loving, just a little bit kinder, each and every day. Let us look around and recognize that each of us is worthy of care. Let us try to think well of each other, even when we are tired or angry or hungry or sad.

Let us be warm.

Blessed New Moon, dear ones.

In love,

Soror Alice

Art: Edvard Munch, “The Sun”, (1910-1911)

[sororalice]

The Elegy Of Beatrice Rose

Narrative horror poem written 4-20-25. The Beatrice Cycle 2. Content warning: violent imagery, mental illness, suicide.

1.

When the darkness falls,

Will either of us

Be found worthy

Of the light?

Which of me is me?

The waking girl,

Silly as she is,

Or that beautiful other

The black-haired goddess,

With my eyes,

Who rides with me,

As I walk the world?

2.

My dreams had consequences,

As the cult of Beatrice Gold,

Bled out like spilled ink,

Into the world of Beatrice Rose

After emptying myself,

Into her life every night,

She finally emptied,

Herself into mine

The yew tree thirsts,

And my mother and brother,

Fell to the curved blade,

She hid under my pillow

3.

The hospital is like any other,

Sad piss-colored walls,

Staff and doctors,

Following us like starving jackals

We wait to wait to wait,

But waiting is punctuated,

By sudden violence and terror,

And then everyone laughs

I try to make friends,

But everyone is wary,

Wounded and wakeful,

Angry and afraid

4.

One boy with watchful blue eyes,

Seems to care,

I feel a flushed combination,

Of excitement and terror

He has a mohawk,

Shaved sides fuzzy,

With short blonde hairs

That tickle my face

We hide away in secret places,

Shyly holding hands,

Stealing chaste kisses,

In the moments between therapy

5.

I start to feel sick,

Tired and scared,

Even when he’s there,

Especially when he’s there

As I get worse,

He seems to get better,

Brightening as I darken,

Laughing as I cry

Finally I begin to plan,

When to make the attempt,

But first I give him my guitar,

He accepts with a smile

6.

The jagged night comes,

Blood drips down my arms,

To stain the cheap carpet,

Beneath the institutional walls

Against all odds, I live,

By the time I am free,

From the emergency stabilization unit,

My blonde boy is gone

I ask and I am told,

My heart sinks as I understand,

He knew he was being released,

He wanted a thrill

7.

I have since become feisty,

I sit in the Quiet Area,

For the twelfth time,

This week

The doctors think this is better,

That I am turning my anger,

Towards the world,

Instead of inwards

Beatrice Gold whispers in my ear,

Telling me the myth-cycles,

Of blood and tempests,

And angry young girls

8.

The doctors tell me she’s not there,

As she tells me their secrets,

So I can taunt them,

With my knowledge

They assure me,

There was no such person,

They need not bother,

I know she isn’t really real

But reality isn’t what it used to be,

Before that spring evening,

When I was eight years old,

And she came to me

9.

Even indoors the Moon is close,

I can feel Her silver light,

Reflecting off of my hair,

And pulling at my blood

The door of the Quiet Area,

Unlocks and opens,

And there my dark other stands,

Waiting for me

She hands me the curving knife,

And reminds me of my duty,

The debt that we all owe,

To the old yew tree

10.

It’s almost too easy,

The blade seems to dance,

My hands know their business,

As I work my way from room to room

No one awakens,

The other Beatrice has pulled sleep,

Across the darkened halls,

And silenced all the staff

At the end we share a moment,

Smiling and out of breath,

When we’re done we say it together,

“Beatrice is beautiful”

Art: Edvard Munch, “The Death Of Marat I”, (1907)

[sororalice]

The Squatter

A mystical poem in honor of Pascha on April 20, 2025. Truly He is risen.

1.

“Go, for you have been sent”,

I can only laugh,

To hide my tears,

I must become a fool

I took His words seriously,

I was in need of a place,

To hang my heart,

A world to call my own

But once I found myself there,

On mission and stalking,

The tears and smiles,

Spoke loud volumes

The precious ones,

That I spoke to,

The sad mothers,

The proud daughters

2.

Fallen and broken,

Beautiful and gleaming,

Singing out the last bits,

Of their hearts

All with hollow, hungry eyes,

And gorgeous, crooked smiles,

Sleeping in squats,

And crowded shelters

Waiting in line to eat,

Waiting in line to go to bed,

Waiting in line to take a shower,

Waiting in line to wait

These are my people,

Living in cars,

Camping in tents,

Hiding in abandoned buildings

3.

Blessed are the panhandlers,

Blessed are the buskers,

Blessed is the girl crying in the parking lot,

And the child in her arms

Blessed are the street kids,

Tripping their wandering ways,

Through psychedelic midnight adventures,

Just trying to survive

I see you all, I love you all,

Tell me your stories,

Grant me the privilege,

Of witnessing you shine

For I have come alive among you,

With nowhere to lay my head,

I have walked the lonely road,

And held out my thumb

Art: Odilon Redon, “Christ In Silence”, (1897)

[philosophybits]

“Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good.”

— Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

[hadit93]

I love how trans women can no longer use women only spaces but the conversation doesn’t extend to trans men. Seems a bit suspicious to me. It’s almost like men are making laws about women but pretending it’s not about supressing a portion of women because trans women do not equate to women in their own definitions.

I wonder how many trans men they’ve passed in a public toilet and not even known? Weirdly they aren’t interested in what’s going on downstairs in that instance. But if you are a woman it matters what parts you’ve got.

Trans people are not a modern social trend. They’ve always existed, will always exist, and deserve to be respected.

Any queer person not supporting trans rights should seriously question themselves. Trans people are the easiest target in a small community. It won’t take long before they try to eradicate anything that is not heteronormative.

My question is how are we going to protect trans women from being attacked? Or does their safety not matter?

I’m starting to feel like I live in the US with that tangerine clown with the bad toupee.

[sororalice]

Preach.

[sororalice]

On Wrath And Love

A sermon for Good Friday on April 18, 2025

Dearly Beloved,

Blessings upon you, dear siblings. I greet you in the name of Aphrodite and the Divine.

I was not going to write a post for today. That’s why I’m posting so late. While I straddle the three traditions of witchcraft, Thelema, and Christian mysticism in my own Work and spiritual life, I am a priestess of Aphrodite and the spiritual community that I serve is primarily pagan. I do not serve the Christian sacraments and do not receive them, and while I engage in personal exegesis of the Tanakh and New Testament for myself, normally I would not engage in public exegesis of those texts in the same way that I would with Liber AL or the Hermetica.

However, I had an experience today that was so singular, so strange, that I had to take it as inspiration from the Divine. I saw a doomsayer. That’s right, you read that right, an actual doomsayer. He had a megaphone and a big sandwich-board he was wearing with John 3:16 written on it in big, red, angry letters. He was holding a sign, and it was this sign that made me feel the calling to write this piece today. His sign read, in the same big, red, angry letters, “God Is Angry With The Wicked Every Day” and cited Psalms 7:11.

This man was pacing angrily back and forth on the street corner, screaming into his megaphone so intensely I could see the spit flying. His face was red and distorted, his voice cracked and tragic. He looked tired.

He looked miserable.

This man was weighed down by a burden no one could ever live up to: perfection. He saw the same thing in himself that he saw in the world, a mass of confusion where people so often fall short of the goodness, truth, and beauty of which we are all capable. He saw viciousness and pain and people who are greedily harming others for their own benefit, and he had the reaction that most of us have: moral outrage. And most likely, when he tried to confront people about their ethical failures, the response was not what he expected. He expected people to be horrified at the harm they had caused, to experience remorse and compunction like he does, and when they didn’t, he experienced even more moral outrage, until finally it crossed over from outrage into anger and from anger into rage, until finally he was pacing angrily on the street corner, screaming about the rage of the Divine.

I can relate.

An anecdote: one of my earliest memories is of being bullied by a group of neighborhood boys. Once they realized I was an easy target—at that age—they all crowded around me in a big circle and started yelling insults and hitting and kicking me. I fell to my knees in the center of the circle and endured their attacks with my head down, until finally I screamed out, in rage and pain, the most horrible thing I could think of: “I hate you!”.

In my naïveté, the young heart that was being raised on equal parts She-Ra cartoons, witchcraft, the Bible, and the tail end of the Cold War thought that the worst thing that anyone could feel was hatred. When I learned about the Holocaust, about the gulags, about slavery, about Jim Crow, it was always couched in terms of horrible wrongs being caused by hatred. I had read a scripture that literally said that God is love, and my dictionary said that hatred is the opposite of love. My little autistic brain had just done the math and come to a result.

So when I felt so hurt, so humiliated, so driven to my limits, it was the only thing I could think of to say. “I hate you”. It hurts just to write it. It’s against everything I stand for, everything to which I have sworn myself. And yet I said it to them. In my rage and pain, I missed the mark.

And they laughed.

I had committed the most horrible sin my six year old mind could conceive, and they just laughed at me. I had hated, and it wounded me horribly.

They beat me down that day. I was covered with wounds and bruises for a couple of weeks as I healed physically. But I have never truly healed from that moment. That was my “original sin”. That was the moment where I did wrong not out of a childish impulse or simply not understanding the rules, but out of rage and pain.

The same rage and pain that I saw on that young man’s face as he screamed into that megaphone.

When we see others do wrong, especially when we are hurt by it, it’s common to feel moral outrage and anger. The psalmist in Psalm 7:11 (traditionally believed to be King David) recognized this. When read completely, the psalm reveals a singer who was persecuted by enemies, just as I was on that street corner in Texas, oh so many years ago. The psalmist is hurt and angry and calling out for justice in what feels like an unjust world, and he is trying to assert that the Divine will punish these “wicked” people that he sees around him every day. This is not an assertion of the nature of the Divine. It is not a theological exposition on the attributes of the Divine. It is a song written by a deeply faithful man wrestling with pain and anger and a lack of understanding.

This is why good exegetical practices are so important. Using “clobber-texts” or proof texts in this way removes all context about what is being said. The Book Of Psalms is incredibly beautiful and an inspired text, but it is also the spiritual songs of a particular set of people living a particular set of experiences during a particular time.

Part of the glory of holy texts and myths is that they are able to speak to each of us in whatever moment we are living, thus we can learn and grow from reading and contemplating these texts, praying the psalms, and even writing our own psalms. But we cannot take sections from these texts to excuse our own moral failures. And I want to make clear, this young man screaming about the rage of the Divine was failing morally. He is blameworthy. He was committing a wrong. He was filled with anger at the injustices of the world around him and projected that feeling onto the Divine, thus deeply, deeply misrepresenting the Divine as wrathful and vindictive. He cherry-picked a single sentence from a book that is filled with glorious messages of the grace of the Divine, the love of the Divine, the forgiveness of the Divine, and used that sentence to make a monster out of the Divine.

This bothers me.

A long time ago, on a day very much like today, the Divine incarnated as a person, lived a life, had a family and friends, tried to do His will, and was tortured and executed by the colonizing forces of the Roman State for his efforts. It wasn’t the first time the incarnate Divine had been killed by a human, though according to the canon tale Krishna’s death was a hunting accident. There may be others that we don’t have records of, of course. But what distinguishes the tale of Christ is that He is wrongly executed, that He is persecuted both by His own people and the Roman state. His torture and death is ethically wrong as well as unfortunate.

And yet…forgiveness.

And yet…love.

Yes, bad actors, empires and churches and pastors who cloaked their crimes in the Cross, have and are committed great wrongs in the name of Christ and in the name of the Divine. But the actual messages of the Divine, both inside and outside Christianity, reveal to us a Divine that manifests in the best of everything we can imagine. The Good, the True, and the Beautiful…these are the fundamental attributes of the Divine we can reason our way to from our basic spiritual intuitions. Scriptures from the civilizations of the world fill in some of the gaps from there. Reason helps us a bit. Gnosis helps us more. But when an avatar like Krishna or Christ comes into our world, when we experience a “divine invasion” as Philip K. Dick put it, we can experience the Divine as a person. When we experience the Divine as a person, we see that that person has specific traits. Krishna would not lift a weapon, even as He served as Arjuna’s charioteer. Christ preached forgiveness, even as an oppressed minority in an occupied land. Both talked about the Divine as love. Both preached forgiveness. Both preached peace.

So six-year old me wasn’t exactly wrong. By hating, I was missing the mark. I was transgressing against the Divine by acting against love. Hate is, in fact, wrong. But the devastating guilt that I felt about it was just me torturing myself. In believing that the Divine could not forgive my childish transgression, I was believing in the wrath of the Divine over the love of the Divine. I made the pain I felt because of my initial wrong far worse by doubting the love of the Divine, by doubting Their forgiveness and grace. But when the Divine has revealed Themselves as a person, that person has always been loving, peaceful, and forgiving. To the degree that the Divine has been revealed through the theosis of the blessed saints, the Divine has always been revealed in those people as loving, peaceful, and forgiving. In the vast majority of the holy texts that have been revealed to the world, the Divine has been revealed, in all Their myriad faces, as peaceful, loving, and forgiving, and it has been shown that even when wrath is necessary, that that wrath is like the fire that kills off the brush and dead wood so that the forest can thrive. Nature reveals the same truth…when winter comes it feels harsh and cold, but that time allows the old life that has died to be composted into the soil for new life to grow.

Malice is human, vengeance is human, wrath is human…these are human vices, ethical errors that we are prone to fall into because of what sort of being we are. But when we are at our best, when we look to the virtues, we aspire towards the Good, the Good that we experience as an attribute of the Divine. And the Good is loving. The Good is kind. The Good is willing to do the necessary work to bring the Good into the world, even when that work hurts.

Most of all, the Divine is love. St. John The Evangelist said it and I believe it from the bottom of my heart. That’s why I serve Aphrodite as priestess. That’s why I’m both a Christian (of sorts) and a Thelemite (of sorts). I believe in love, devoutly and absolutely.

As usual, I’m putting my heart right out there on my sleeve and trying to lead with my vulnerability, so I will acknowledge that I have written all of this because an angry young man with a sign and a megaphone preached a monstrous, vindictive, and deeply impious view of the Divine to an audience of zero and it provoked me. It’s actual, and I do not use this word lightly, heresy, as well as blasphemy. And it made me deeply upset.

So on this day when an incarnation of the Divine was executed unjustly by a wrathful state desperate to maintain colonial control, a day when a wrathful young man screamed himself hoarse preaching a vision of a wrathful god, I must assert, with many others and of one voice and mind with both tradition and scripture, that the Divine is love.

Thus I serve love.

Blessed Good Friday to all who celebrate. I will wait, as I do every year, for the promise to be fulfilled yet again on Sunday. Until then…

In love,

Soror Alice

Art: Edouard Manet, “The Dead Christ With Angels”, (1864)

[sororalice]

The Ballad Of Beatrice Gold

Mystical poem written 4-14-25. Songs Of The Spirits 1. Content warning: Violent imagery.

1.

Arising anew,

A fresh creature gasping,

Whimpering,

Opening my eyes

A flash of recognition,

Strikes me as I see,

As I begin to resonate,

As I begin to know

You, Mother, are the first,

The glowing face that burns,

The glance that can make me,

Real in a moment

Yet you look away,

To other sharp-edged silhouettes,

You make others real,

Bargaining away my foothold

2.

Despite myself, I grow,

I find new glances,

To make and unmake,

My stretching sinews

A specter of a girl,

Who I always was,

But never quite am,

Haunts my mind

Black-haired and pale,

With eyes like mine,

Beautiful in all the many ways,

That I am not

Yet she frightens me,

Even as she invites,

And pulls me, whimpering,

Into that jagged history

3.

All aboard the Orphan Train,

We cross the tiny world,

She and I as one,

And everyone, everywhere, is hungry

The fire in my belly,

That never finds enough to burn,

Spreads into my bones and brain,

Birthing a new and dread power

Hunger begets pain begets hatred,

And finally contempt for all that lives,

Until the train stops and I see,

The open farmlands before me

I am brought to a new home,

The itch of cut hay,

And the sharp stink of manure,

Fill me with uneasy hope

4.

That hope is dashed,

Quickly and completely,

My new home is a workhouse,

My new siblings are slaves

Our work is endless, meaningless,

We don’t even feed the hungry,

Every last grain of wheat,

Is mere grist for the still

This farm trades in pain,

Importing children,

And exporting drunkenness,

To slake the country’s endless thirst

The darkness in my waking life grows,

Until I have the next vision,

The girl with black hair embraces me,

Then at last begins to speak

5.

“Beatrice is beautiful,” she whispers,

And all at once I am in shadows,

“Beatrice is beautiful” she sings,

And the crawling things skitter

The world behind me fades away,

And before me stands a great yew tree,

Echoing death’s endless transcendence,

And fixing the center of our devotions

Worship begets tribute begets sacrifice,

The trunk of the yew is bloodied,

As my wounding miracles speak softly,

To the wounded hearts of my siblings

It was just a matter of time, really,

Before the blades of my priesthood,

Fell one upon another upon another,

Long red wounds grinning wide

6.

Which of me came first, I ask,

The dreamer or the orphan,

The black-haired newborn goddess,

Or the merely me?

Which of me is really real,

Which of me can live on,

Beyond the gaze of my siblings,

Who have become my prey?

The time is coming,

When I must choose,

For the bloodthirst rises,

And there will be more than pain

The watchful boy with the blue eyes,

Wishes to catch me, to hold me down,

To make the black-haired goddess his alone,

So I must become

7.

My voice begins low then rises,

A keening, rhythmic song,

I point all fingers at him,

Making him preen and shine

The others spin and circle,

Round and round they dance,

The blue-eyed boy in the middle,

His back against the old yew tree

Too late he begins to realize,

That the wind has shifted,

He relishes the eyes upon him,

But finally hears the manic song

It happens all at once,

I thought it would be harder, but no,

Just suddenly slumping meat,

And children proudly looking to me

8.

In silence we cleaned the scene,

A wave of nothing covering,

The evidence of the blessed work,

That had happened there

We all knew, of course,

The indifferent hearts of our “parents”,

No questions were asked,

And a new orphan soon appeared

But as each came of age and left,

They held their memories tight,

They held the yew tree in their minds,

Remembering well the lesson:

Make a sacrifice to your own might,

Of any who would hold you down,

Beatrice is beautiful and will come to all,

Who would call her name

9.

Now a woman grown,

And as happy as is reasonable,

I wonder at my childhood visions,

Of that black-haired girl with my eyes

I have read of the Orphan Train,

I know the ways of blood and yew trees,

I have gained the Mark Of Mastery,

And worked my will in the world

I know that true and untrue,

Is a matter of what we can live with,

I have attended upon spirits,

And been attended in turn

So I know that what I saw was true,

Even if it wasn’t exactly real,

I know that, always and forever,

Beatrice is beautiful

Art: Giovanni Boldini, “Spanish Dancer At The Moulin Rouge”, (1905)

[sororalice]

On The Blessedness Of Thoughtfulness

A homily for the Full Moon on April 12, 2025.

Dearly Beloved,

Blessed Full Moon, dear ones. I greet you in the name of Aphrodite and in the name of the Divine on this, the Full Moon in Aries.

As I often do, I pulled a Tarot card when picking the virtue that I am to honor in this homily, and this month I pulled the Queen Of Swords. While there are several ways to relate to this card, one way of talking about her is from an elemental perspective, and from that perspective, this card corresponds to Water of Air. Thus this month I wish to speak of the intersection of Water and Air, that place where we are motivated in our thoughts by our emotions, that place where the caring and fluid reflection that is possible for Water can come into manifestation through the reasoning and planning that is possible for Air.

I wish to speak of thoughtfulness.

In our lives it is very, very easy to become distracted from what is most important to us. There is no shame in it. Sometimes we simply forget to do the things that are necessary to maintain our own health or relationships. Sometimes we risk everything we have built our lives upon on an exciting choice that, were we thinking clearly, we would know was doomed. Sometimes we become dazzled by something or someone and let ourselves forget our own worth, so that we give away our dignity without even realizing it. And sometimes one thing becomes so big in our minds that it becomes the only thing we can see, so we end up hurting others and ourselves as we flail around, reacting to that one thing.

In these moments, we have a clear antidote, a virtue so precious that it should be cultivated carefully: thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness, in this sense, is not about being full of thoughts…it’s about remembering what is really important even when we are distracted. It’s about paying attention to the little things. Thoughtfulness is an attitude, a way of caring about others and ourselves even when we would otherwise allow our attention to wane. Thoughtfulness orients us and our actions towards others and ourselves. And thoughtfulness is an act of ethical beauty.

Most of us know what ethical beauty is, even if we don’t use those words for it. It’s those moments when someone does the right thing, even when it would be easier and completely understandable if they didn’t. We behold ethical beauty in those moments when someone is kind for no reason, when someone sacrifices themselves for others, or when someone forgives a horrible wrong or a large debt. In such moments, when we recognize that someone has performed a particularly virtuous act, we are sometimes moved by it in a way that is similar to the way we are moved when we see a breathtaking work of art or hear a beautiful song. This is our recognition of ethical beauty.

When I experience moments like that, I am often moved to tears. I am especially moved by moments where we see ethical heroism, where we see people do the right thing even when no one will see or care, even when they will be hated for it, even when it is the hardest thing in the world to do. I believe that in those moments we see who we can really be when we try.

And we can be glorious.

When we think of such acts of ethical heroism, we often think of people like firefighters, healthcare professionals, and people serving in the military. We think of people who endanger and sacrifice themselves for the common good or to save and protect others. We think about big actions that have big consequences. And that makes sense; many of those people are heroes and deserve our admiration and praise.

But most of life isn’t like that. If we are lucky, we will only be in one or two true emergencies in our whole lives. If we are lucky, most of us will never have to run into a burning building to save our neighbors or have to take a bullet for our spouse. If we are lucky, most of us will probably never be in a situation where we have to do something big and dramatic for the common good or to save or protect someone else, and that is a good thing, a blessing. Let us pray to be lucky in this way. It is a privilege to enjoy such security and there are many in our world who are not so privileged.

But almost every one of us, no matter how privileged, will be given the opportunity to open the door for someone else. To do the laundry so someone else doesn’t have to. To buy someone lunch. To give a homeless person some water. To wear a mask when sick and we have to go out in public. Almost every one of us will have a chance to do some of the little things that help take weight off of the backs of the people around us. This is what being thoughtful really means…remembering to do the little things. The world is built on little things, so if we attend to the little things, the big things tend to take care of themselves. This is what I have called the “love of ants and bees” in my poetry.

Now, sometimes this can be a pain. Sometimes we are feeling tired or hungry or maybe just a little bit selfish, and it’s really, really hard to be thoughtful in those moments. Again, there is no shame in it. It’s just part of being a person. But if you’re interested in trying to be thoughtful even in those moments, solutions exist. One such solution is to try to build being thoughtful into a habit. Habits make doing things second nature. Habits make things easier to do than not to do. That’s why it’s so important to make a habit out of pursuing virtue, because sometimes it is really hard to do the right thing, and we need all the help we can get.

So how can we build the habit of being thoughtful? Well, one way is to work up to it step by step. Most of us have at least one person in our world that we care about, at least one person whose life we would like to make just a little bit better. If you have no one like that in your life right now, pick a co-worker, a homeless person in your neighborhood, or just a random person in your world. We are all part of one world, one tapestry being woven into the future, and helping anyone to thrive helps everyone to thrive. Try to pay attention to what that person does all day just to get by. Don’t be intrusive or spy on them, of course, just be aware of them. A big part of being thoughtful is just paying attention to other people and the burdens they bear. Pick one small thing, one simple, mundane thing you can do to make that person’s life easier, and then—with consent as appropriate—do it. If nothing presents itself, simply ask if you can help them with anything. The less glamorous the better. Pay for lunch. Do the dishes. Give them a ride to the doctor. Take out the garbage. Replace a light bulb. Offer to run an errand or do a chore that is usually their responsibility. Just do some small thing that will help that person thrive.

Don’t make a show out of it. Don’t expect to be thanked. These small things are usually not noticed. But at the end of the day, that person will have just a little bit more energy, will be in just a little bit better of a mood, and they will rest just a little bit better.

Keep looking for things like that, little things you can do, little ways you can help that person out. Make it a habit to pay attention, to look for those little things that you can do. Get to where most of the time you do it without even thinking about it. Then pick another person in your life and do the same thing, just doing little things here and there, helping to lighten their load just a little bit at a time, until it becomes a habit.

Repeat this process until it would feel burdensome for you to add any more things that you are doing. Don’t do a particular thing if you think you would feel resentful about it. Be sensitive to the reactions of others and take a big step back if someone wants to do something for themselves. Feel free to change what you are doing or switch things out as situations demand. Don’t get attached to any particular way you are helping any particular person. The important thing is that you are consistently helping the people around you be just a little bit better off. And (this part is really important) don’t throw yourself under the bus. The point is to remember the little things that matter and to help other people out a little, not to let the little things take over your life.

Again, don’t expect to be thanked. Don’t make a big production out of it. You aren’t doing this so people will think about how wonderful of a person you are. You aren’t doing it so others will do the same for you or so that you will gain some sort of social benefit. There is nothing transactional in this. If you are doing this right, most of the time no one will notice that you’re doing anything at all, and that’s how it should be. You are doing this because it is very simply a good thing to help people thrive, and we can all do so with just a little bit of time and effort. In a world that so often feels like so many people are actively trying to make things worse, we can try to make things just a little bit better.

But it is not enough just to be thoughtful towards other people. You deserve to thrive, too. Future you needs to be hydrated, so be thoughtful towards them…if you can, try to drink some water. Future you needs energy to do their will, so be thoughtful towards them…if you can, try to eat plenty of healthy food in the present. Future you needs rest to thrive…so if you can, try to go to bed at a reasonable time in the present. And, perhaps most importantly, present you deserves to have fun, to enjoy pleasure, to relish in the joy of your own existence, to thrive. You are one of the people to whom you owe care, so if you can—and I recognize that not all of us are so privileged that we can—make sure to take some time just for you so that you can make sure to get what you need to thrive.

You deserve it. We all do.

No act that helps us all thrive is too small. It all adds up. Any one act of thoughtfulness doesn’t take much time or energy, but it can make all the difference in the world to a person who is being pushed to the edge of their resources. And sometimes that person is you.

So let us look to the little things. Let us remember the small moments. Let us commit to pay attention and to do those tiny good deeds that come to us piecemeal and opportunistically. Let us try to help each other and ourselves be just a little better off.

Let us be thoughtful.

Blessed Full Moon, dear ones. May all the blessings of Her silver light be upon you all.

In love,

Soror Alice

Art: Luke Fildes, “The Doctor”, (1891)