Working energy before a street performance

My version of witchcraft is deeply experiential. I don’t read about it, or think about it, or talk about it, as much as I experience it. I live it. Of course, I have read and thought and talked about witchcraft and magic a whole lot throughout my life, and that has been interesting, useful, and fun. But it has not been the experience of BEING a witch and WORKING magic.

There are as many practices, tools, and rituals as there are witches. Because there is no doctrine, no guidebook, no rules, a curious newcomer to the Craft can get easily overwhelmed. Astrology, Tarot, colors, days of the week, numbers, plants, animals, goddesses and gods, metals, stones, crystals, angels…there is so much to choose from! So many things can aid our work. These things are extremely helpful, and really fun as well – at least I think so.

But my foundational approach to magic, and to being a Witch, is my relationship with energy. The mysterious life force that keeps me breathing without me having to consciously will it. The “capacity for doing work”, as they say in physics. The quality of someone’s being. I start with my own energy. Being as self-aware as possible is a critical piece of working powerful magic. I need to know how much energy I’m running, what’s the quality of it, if it is being projected to others in unconscious ways, how I’m using it every waking (and even sleeping) moment. As I become more conscious of how the Life Force is embodied in me, I can also become a loving observer of how energy is manifesting in all the things in the Universe: other people, plants, animals, ideas, relationships…all of the things!

Here is a quick exercise for you to start noticing energy. Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and take a few deep breaths.  Notice how you are feeling in your body: are you cold, warm, too hot, just right? Are you joyful, bored, excited, sad? Are you worried, or at ease? Are you aware of the you that is not you? Are you feeling a part of you that is not your body, maybe not even in your body? Breathe through this exercise for a few minutes, and see if you can connect with images, sounds, smells, textures, or flavors that seem to you to capture the whole essence of how your energy is today. Remember that this exercise is more like poetry than empirical observation, so the important thing is for you to get a clear sense of your own whole energetic body, not how “accurately” you’d be able to describe it to someone else. One you get a hit of your energy, come back to it throughout the day and see if it’s still the same or if it’s shifting, and start to pay attention to how the awareness of your energy affects your interactions and behaviors.

Over time, you will be able to connect very quickly to how your energy is, and also to will it into being different, which is what I call energy work. Then, you can start sensing others’ energies, and even working into shifting those energy patterns as well. Witches are deeply skilled at the dance of perpetual interaction and deep interdependence. The beauty of this is that while energy is the “capacity for doing work” and power is “the rate at which work is performed”, you can only imagine what knowing how to work energy can do for someone’s power. And power is also the ability to do, act, or have influence. You can see how energy work cannot be fully described or captured in a short few paragraphs, but I’m sure you begin to get an idea of why working with energy is an important skill: it will allow you to shift your shape to your own liking first, and then expand that reach to help shapeshift the world into one that welcomes and supports all.

My current set up

I have had an altar in my home for most of my adult life. The most recent incarnation of my altar is about 15 years old, it’s an Ikea coffee table that is totally beaten up and has lived in my bedroom, living room, or spare bedroom when I’ve been lucky enough to have one. An altar is to a witch like a desk is to a business person. I am both, and I can’t imagine trying to write proposals, facilitate meetings over Zoom, and deliver projects without my desk. I could, but I’d rather not.  

My altar is the same thing: a workspace. I’ve talked about why I like the turn of phrase “working magic” because it is actually work, and having a dedicated workspace is such a luxury. When it comes to energy work, it matters even more because coming back to the same place over and over for all things witchy creates a certain habit and energetic pathway in my being that is quite helpful. My deep spiritual knowing, my ego, my Highest Self, the Goddess, all Spirits I may be working with, my subconscious mind, my personality, even my boyfriend, they all know that when I go to sit at the altar, something special is about to happen. 

My daily routine at my altar is super straight forward: I do a few simple basic offerings, as a show of gratitude to the Universe for having me be a human at this time (and what a time it is!). I pull a card, which is a focal point for the day: something I need to develop, something that will be salient, something that I need to be aware of. I’ve used different decks over the years for my daily card. For about 11 years I used the Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards by Doreen Virtue (whom I just found out is now a born again Christian!! And I think it’s awesome, that’s for another time), but I gave them to my Melboourne bestie Rainbow Brownz when I left Australia, and now I’ve been using the trusty Rider Waite Tarot deck for a few years.

After I pull the card, I journal for a while. I usually record noteworthy events (because my memory is shit and if I want to remember something, I have to write it down or take a picture of it), write about how I’m feeling, what magic I’m working, and how I want to be a channel of love and transformation and courage and faith and truth and action and joy. And other things along those lines. Sometimes it’s about gratitude. Sometimes it’s about the people I wish were getting ready to leave this earth ASAP. Sometimes it’s about what I want, my deepest desires and most horrifying fears. It’s always about revealing the truth to myself and embracing the paradox of life.

Finally, I meditate for 20 minutes. How I meditate changes depending on what I’m working on and what I want to accomplish, but the main point of it is that it’s a practice that I’m committed to and will do every day for 20 minutes and I haven’t missed a day in many many years. Which is super shocking to me, I can’t believe I’ve stuck to it for so long. E-v-e-r-y day. Damn. But I do it because it helps me enormously and I’m committed to the practice and knowing how to see a commitment through makes me a more powerful Witch #protip.

Another layer of activity is added if I’m doing spellwork, or healings, or energy work, or other stuff. But this is just my basic daily practice. So yes, it takes at least 30 minutes, and sometimes longer if I need it, want it, or have the luxury of extra time. But half an hour a day is really not that much when you think that it allows me to show up for my life present, clear, grounded, powerful, and filled with visions for a better life for myself and a better world for everybody.

You may wanna try it!

The Time For Magic

It’s time for me to teach magic. As in, formally, to aspiring witches that need guidance in bridging Earth and Fire.To those that sense Spirit, that even know it well, but realize that they can’t go much further alone. Because while magic is a solitary practice to a large degree, it is also true that no witch has ever explored the vast realms of the astral completely on her own. Even those that didn’t have the benefit of human support, they still had the guidance of the ancestors, the loud whispers of dreams, the pathshowing of visitations, and so many other channels of connection.

Connection is a big part of magic, and connection with other humans is one of my favorite kinds of connection. So I’m gonna put together a few folks that wanna learn the Craft and go for it. Super exciting! I’m doing this for two reasons, and they both relate to different ideas of time. My own personal Witch Time is a whole nother deep and dense story, but for practicality’s sake, I’ll be borrowing concepts of time from the Greeks: Chronos, Kairos, and Aion.

Chronos is linear, chronological time with a past, present, and future, the only time most of the industrialized west acknowledges. We measure it in seconds and centuries. In contrast, Kairos is about a qualitative kind of time, measured in moments, the right moment, a special moment, an opportunity. A time that is not happening because of what time it is, but because it is time.

I’ve been thinking about teaching magic for many many years. Decades, really. But there are a few things that are different now that make it the right time. The first one has to do with Chronos: I’m freaking old. Not like old as dirt, but old enough to teach the Craft. I’m 45 years old, and back in the day, I would probably have been considered Crone, more than Mother, and my Maiden days are long gone for certain. I know that when I was new in having Teachers and Mentors in the Craft, it really mattered that they knew what they were doing. And while I relate with Kairos and Aion, I also know that as long as we are incarnated in these human bodies, we do have a certain kind of relationship with Chronos, and so having a teacher have chronological experience matters. So I think it matters that I’ve been practicing the Craft my whole life which means that I don’t have a decade or two of experience, but s-e-v-e-r-a-l. Damn. 

The second reason for choosing to teach now has to do with Kairos. Kairos is calling me, because this time is indeed special. Simply, because it’s time. It’s time for anyone who is inclined to get in touch with their power, and work it in a good way for the benefit of us all. It’s time to learn to use our voices powerfully, to speak the truth and find liberation in the process, to stand up against oppression and fascism (magic is basically the opposite of fascism, and so witches are antifa by definition), to create the world anew. Right now, the intensity of our environmental, political, social, and economic challenges being exacerbated by The Plague of Covid makes this the perfect time for magic to unleash its power. And that is not a small thing and that is not to be taken lightly and that is not something that I can feel shy about any longer. 

Finally, Aion is not just a concept of time, as in Generation, Age, Eternity, but it’s also Vital Force, the Source of All, Life. So that’s why it’s the time for magic. Because Aion cannot wait.