Self-Awareness and Introspection
This page lists articles I have written on witchcraft, paganism, and spirituality. Some articles are listed under multiple headings.
These articles are all about shadow work, getting to know yourself, finding and living your personal truth, and healing your inner wounds so you can live your most authentic and fulfilling life, whatever that means for you.
Shadow Work and the Magic of Critical Introspection
Shadow work is profoundly important. If you do not understand what lives in your shadow, you are never going to fully understand yourself, or why you do and believe all the things you do. Read More
Practicing Loving Honesty Instead of Brutal Honesty
I have mentioned repeatedly in various articles that it is important to be completely honest with yourself, especially when engaging with shadow work. I also usually include a few words about how critical it is to be compassionate and non-judgmental in your honesty, but what exactly does that mean? How do you avoid being hyper-critical or beating yourself up when you are honest with yourself about things you do not like? It is far easier said than done, but I believe that process works best with loving honesty instead of brutal honesty. Read More
Working With Fear as a Positive Force for Good
No emotion is inherently good or bad, which is a fantastic thing, because we cannot simply will ourselves into not having the emotions we feel. If our emotions were inherently good or bad, we would not be able to escape that valuation because our emotions exist whether or not we want them to. Instead, what can sometimes be classified as good or bad is how we respond to our emotions, and the actions we take because of their presence. That means that if we are conscientious and deliberate in working with our fears, we can choose responses and actions which foster good instead of adding to the misery in the world. Read More
Magic to Encourage Self-Love
If you are among the multitudes of people who have trouble loving, or even liking, themselves, love magic can be a powerful tool to help yourself love yourself more. It can support shadow work and therapy, by adding a magical push to the mental and physical efforts you make. Read More
Living a Life Free From Regrets
As far back as I can remember into my childhood, I wanted to live a life free from regrets. Now that I am in my 40’s I have a rather large number of them, but I also do not feel like I let myself down. When I said “free from regrets”, what I really meant was “wouldn’t go back to change it if I could.” Accumulating regrets is a natural part of living, and although I do regret how things turned out now and again, I respect and understand all my choices that led up to those things. I can’t think of a single one where I look back and genuinely wish I had made another choice. Read More…
What Chronic Pain Can Teach Us About Avoiding Shadow Work
Doing shadow work is hard. Managing chronic pain is hard. Both have less negative impact on quality of life when they are managed in healthy ways. Read More
Beyond Magical Names – Many Names for Many Reasons
Names, even magical names, are mutable and can change over time as we and our circumstances change, so most people have multiple names they use every day. Most of those names have deeper meaning than the specific letters spelled out on our birth certificates or driver’s licenses. Read More
Is It Fate, Cause and Effect, Coincidence, or Self-Determination?
How the events of our lives shape reality is a complicated mess of interrelations, cause & effect, random chance, personal choices, & metaphysical impetus. Read More
Transgender Awareness and Living Personal Truths
We all have personal Truths, whether we have no idea yet what they are, we are figuring it out, or we fully understand and embrace them. All of us have more than one. That is one of the appeals of paganism – the foundational belief that we can find our own Truths. Read More
Accountability Culture, Personal Responsibility, and Our Communities
I am a very strong proponent of Accountability Culture. Accountability is key to personal and community growth, healing and reconciliation, and achieving peaceful intersectional inclusion. Accountability Culture is to Cancel Culture, what Call-In Culture is to Call-Out Culture, in that it holds people responsible for their words and actions, while also providing the opportunity for growth, change, and reconciliation before bringing down the hammer of ultimate judgement and banishment on those who refuse to be accountable. Read More
Contemplations of the Void
When I talk about the Void, I am talking about a place of unreality which is pure undetermined potential, the origin and ending of the entire universe. Read More
No Wrong Way to Grieve
Grief is love with nowhere to go. There is a lot to grieve right now, and there will be a great many more losses before the COVID-19 mess is over. Read More
Nonbinary Perspective on Gendered Divinity
Having a nonbinary perspective is for anyone, of any gender identity. It is about framing your view of life, the universe, and everything, to include nonbinary ways of being. You can view the world from a nonbinary perspective, regardless of whether your personal gender is binary or nonbinary. Read More
Seeking Balance During Extremes
COVID-19 has dealt the entire world an unbalancing upset. Even in cases where this pandemic doesn’t strike to the very hearts of our daily lives, we are still seeing dramatic effects on our lives and the lives of those we care about. Here are some suggestions to help you find your balance. Read More
Tarot Thoughts: Hanged Man Vibes for Tower Times
If you find yourself thrown off your foundation and hanging by your foot, relax and take the time to see what that new point of view can reveal to you. Read More
The Magic of Unfriending, Blocking, and Banning on Social Media
Curating, unfriending, blocking, and banning in online spaces creates peace and has magical application for both social justice and personal wellbeing. Read More
What “The Balancing Path” Means
Life balance is never static. It is a moving target, which you might find briefly, but usually spins away again as life circumstances inevitably change. Read More
Productive Ways to Panic
What about when you can’t stop panicking, no matter how much you breathe and try to be compassionate with yourself? That’s not an easy question to answer. Here are some of my suggestions for how to refocus or otherwise provide an outlet to your panic and anxiety. Read More
Menstrual Magic for Uterus-Owners of All Genders
If your body includes a uterus that produces a period, you can perform menstrual magic. It is an incredibly powerful component in spellwork, which can be used for a wide variety of purposes, including baneful magic, banishing and warding, manifestation and prosperity magic, connecting with divine feminine, and affirmation of female, male, or nonbinary gender. Read More
Embodiment – The Magic of Claiming Ownership of Your Body
Claiming unconditional ownership of your own body has profound positive implications for mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and magical wellbeing. Read More
Why to Appreciate, and How to Be a Good Teacher
It is important to recognize that teaching is a separate skill from the subject being taught, and skill at teaching is necessary to be a good teacher. Read More
25 Forms of Banishing – A Versatile Tool in Witchcraft
Banishing is used across all forms of magic. It is a loss that is welcome or needed, and most deliberate changes involve some kind of loss or banishment. Read More
Toxic Forgiveness and Warring Definitions of Forgiveness
Instead of promoting healing, toxic forgiveness usually gives perpetrators a free pass on bad behavior and allows toxic or abusive situations to continue. Read More
Neurospicy Take on Positive Affirmations
Positive affirmations as they are typically done, do not work for me, and I am certain that is also true for a lot of other people who are also neurodivergent, and others as well. But, the idea has value, and affirmations can be approached in ways that will work even for those of us who recoil at typical positive affirmations. Read More
Love is Conditional and Unlimited
Love is always conditional, and that’s not an inherently bad thing. In fact, it can be a very beneficial thing when we understand the circumstances when we do or do not feel love. That understanding can help us to fine-tune our conscious boundaries so that we can avoid giving love to those who do not deserve it, and give love with abandon to those who do deserve it. Read More
Winter Solstice and Finding Balance in Extremes
As an extreme, the winter solstice can teach us a great deal about how to move through life and retain balance even in the most trying of times. Read More
Making Room for Anger in Your Life and Practice
Anger is an incredibly powerful emotion, and at the same time an incredibly tricky emotion to wield in healthy ways. It is a volatile fuel that is usually unsustainable and will burn you if you try to hold it for too long, but when given healthy space, that same volatile fuel will naturally burn itself out and can facilitate the most amazing transformations. Read More
Psychic Skin Meditation for Cultivating Energy Body Health and Awareness
This psychic skin meditation is designed to help you cultivate conscious awareness of your energy body, and develop the ability to heal and protect yourself from psychic/energetic/magical intrusion without sacrificing awareness or sensitivity to the energetic aspects of the world around you. It also encourages the development of introspection and self-awareness as a path to both better understanding yourself, and also making conscious changes to your self. Read More
Why “Haters Mean I am Doing Something Right” Is Wrong
I think it is safe to say that everyone has at some point seen someone declare, “Haters mean I am doing something right!” In person it is usually stated with a puffed-up chest and a proud, egotistical smile. Online it is usually written in response to criticism, or pandered to followers and friends who are likely to shower the statement with enthusiastic approval. This is a concept which is applied by people in any area of interest, and paganism and witchcraft are not exceptions. The problem is, this is an ego-driven false equivalency. Sure, haters do not inherently mean you are doing something wrong, but they also do not inherently mean you are doing something right. Read More
Ethical Love Magic
Most love magic is ethical, but the unethical kinds of love magic are so flashy and sensational that unethical love magic is usually the first, and often the only kind of love magic to come to mind when the subject is mentioned. What makes love magic ethical or unethical usually boils down to matters of consent. Read More
Clear Vision Sigil
The Clear Vision Sigil is designed to help clear blockages to intuition so that you can have the clearest possible vision and understanding of your own intuition. It may be used for focused purposes, like with divination, mediumship, or communicating with deities, ancestors, and spirits. It can also be used to help generally increase your connection to your own intuition and your understanding of the subtler things around you. Read More
What Exactly Is the Point of Divination Anyway?
One very common practice in witchcraft, paganism, and most pagan-tangential traditions is divination. It is found worldwide, in every culture, in some form or another, throughout history, and is one of the few fundamentally human activities found anywhere and anywhen. But why do we do it? What exactly do we get out of it? Read More
Explorations of the Subconscious
Join me on a journey. The following narrative and visualizations are a blending of several trance journeys I have taken through my subconscious. Read More
Do Your Magic – It is Worth It
Sometimes when self-doubt is at play, a witch ends up fucking around and finding out, which is what I did to myself this past week. Instead of doing my magic, I fucked around. I found out. Don’t fuck around. Do your magic. Read More
Gatekeeping Gender Terms is Patently Harmful
Gatekeeping gender terms is patently harmful, because it also erases and denies the gender experiences of people the gatekeepers feel do not “qualify”. Gender transcends the sex and the sex traits a person is born with, and so too must gender terms. Read More
Tarot Spread for Problem Solving and Shadow Work
This tarot spread was created for when anxiety, lack of confidence, or misperception creates an inability to effectively proceed or problem solve. Read More
Deluding Yourself Feels Amazingly Good
Deluding yourself, lying to yourself, might seem bad, but it can feel amazingly good. It allows us to have hope and feel good about bad situations, helps to cushion the psyche against ongoing trauma and abuse, and helps us keep equilibrium in difficult situations. Read More
Trauma Response and Trying to Find Joy
I am in a weird place emotionally right now, and in many ways I am struggling. I am wrestling with the demons of old trauma response as I try to find joy, hope, and brevity in my life. Like any time I struggle with trauma response, it is ugly, painful, messy, and difficult. There is no one answer to the problem of finding joy and alleviating the trauma, especially right now. Read More
Cats Can Teach Us Many Fantastic Spiritual and Personal Lessons
I am not saying cats are perfect (although cats are perfect). However, they have ways of dealing with the things they encounter in life that are different from how most humans are inclined to handle things. We can learn a lot by observing how different dynamics, actions, and attitudes affect the outcomes of circumstances not so different from our own. Read More
Revisiting The Longest Night
My 2012 drawing, The Longest Night, is a dedication to the deeper meanings behind the sabbat of Yule, of the winter solstice, of the longest night of the year. That symbolism is relevant throughout the year. Read More
Revisiting 20-Year Gone Personal Practice
This past weekend a box was found in the back shed at my partner’s parent’s home. This box, thought long gone, had been missing since a move twenty years ago, and it contained almost all my magical tools and altar supplies at the time. I would have been homeless at the time if not for my chosen family. What belongings I kept went into the garage, apparently except for this one box, turning it into a personal time capsule of my magical practice at the age of 23. Read More
The Paradox of Estrangement in the Time of COVID-19
As cases of COVID-19 are surging throughout the United States, I cannot help but wonder about my birth family, how they are faring, and if they are safe. It is a strange thing to have no idea, to be aware that I may never know, to be glad for the estrangement which prevents that knowledge, and yet to wonder and hope that they are well. It creates a paradox of conflicting emotions, a cognitive dissonance, to be so concerned, and yet know that it is far and away in my best interest to retain the distance of estrangement I created. Read More
Finding Confidence and Direction as a Pagan Blogger
Since I became a pagan blogger, at times I have drowned in doubt. I finally have a plan to tackle it, and the first step is sharing that plan with you. Read More