More On The Magic & Witchcraft 101 Course

Image from Pixabay

Since I’ve been asked a few times, I wanted to talk a bit more about my Magic & Witchcraft 101 class coming up and who it’s good for.

The internet is a double edged sword. There’s so much info out there and it’s really challenging to know where to start or what to even do. This class is for people who are getting started on their journey but are completely confused on what’s a good source of info, what they want to do, what traditions & practices are out there, and are completely overloaded & overwhelmed with info. My goal is to break it down.

It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of misinformation out there. Anyone with a platform is assumed to be knowledgeable and an expert. And there’s so much out there to learn and do. Where to start? If you’re in that boat or know someone who is, you may benefit from my class.

The class breaks down the history of well known Western traditions, defines various terms, and tackles common misconceptions. I even discuss cultural appropriation vs appreciation as well as what to look and watch out for in groups, traditions, and teachers.

Magic & Witchcraft 101 starts Nov 21st, deadline to register is Nov 14th.

More info here: https://riverenodian.com/classes

The Fall 2022 Class Cycle Starts Soon!

The Fall 2022 class cycle is starting Nov 21st!


Information on the Psychic Development 101, Psychic Development 102, and Magic & Witchcraft 101 classes and how to register can be found here: https://www.riverenodian.com/classes

Patreon discounts are available as well as a hardship scholarship to apply to.


Deadline to register is Nov 14th.


Any questions, please feel free to drop me a message!

How To Magically Overthrow Fascism: Occult Resistance For The 21st Century

“Medusa” by Luciano Garbati, image from Garbati’s Instagram

Today I’m here to cover the hypothetical scenario of doing magic in order to affect political change.

How To Magically Overthrow Fascism: Occult Resistance For The 21st Century: https://patreon.com/posts/68236166

Why I Absolutely Loathe And Despise The “Maiden-Mother-Crone” Model

Image from Pixabay

In my recent blog post on the objectification of women in the Craft and other occult circles, I briefly touched upon the notion of “Maiden-Mother-Crone” which I’ll be abbreviating as MMC for the duration of this post. MMC is a well known modern depiction of female divinity, most specifically that of the patron goddess of the Wicca, frequently used in Wiccan groups both of the initiatory variety and non.

MMC is also known as “the Triple Goddess”, and was essentially derived by Robert Graves in his poetic work The White Goddess. Yes, once again, we are relying on a man’s interpretation of women and the divine feminine within our respective traditions. All that aside and to be fair, he was ahead of his times for that era. Back in the day, the notion of making sacred any aspect of being a woman, I am sure, was liberating and progressive. Finally, female can be divine! Female can be good! Female can be celebrated! And of course, don’t all women go from being a young woman, fresh in her prime and not yet married and no kids to that of bearing a child and finally, to no longer being able to bear children? Of course in this day and age we know better than that, as not all women are getting married and having kids. Some of us have gone on to do entirely different things with our lives. This isn’t to say that having children is bad and motherhood isn’t to be honored and celebrated, but we are so much more than just that and mothers have lives and identities outside of their children, too. There’s room for you too, mothers–but there’s always been room for you because you have long considered to be the default female role. Why should women be all about our wombs and what we do or don’t do with them? And why are we still relying on an outdated model created by a man in a culture that we no longer live in let alone can relate to in this day and age?

As I stated in my original post: “Women are more than their bits and fertility status; this is offensive to cis and trans women both. This is why the “Maiden-Mother-Crone” model has always left me cold–I avoid it like the plague.” From women who had hysterectomies to those who have never had a womb, for those who choose not to have children, and for those who have tried and failed to conceive, why should any woman–let alone a goddess–be reduced to the role of simply “childbearer”? Why should our status be centered around that of having kids? Haven’t we in the twenty-first century gone past the notion of women just being caregiver and childbearers and are so much more? Why reduce goddesses to a standard that we ourselves have long since moved past?

There are people who have tried to amend MMC by adding a Warrior aspect. Honestly, this is the only aspect I could possibly relate to. Who wouldn’t love goddesses such as Athena, the Morrigan, or Sekhmet? I still feel that it falls short of fully embracing the notion that as we evolve as a culture and our notions of gender, femininity, and sexuality evolve, why shouldn’t our notions of the witches’ goddess? The men get a hero’s journey in their god, hunter and hunted. Shouldn’t we rethink our approach to goddess worship in order to see the divine feminine as being so much more?

My tutelary deity is Hekate who is also a triple goddess, but not MMC. Her triplicity is a reflection of the three-way crossroads, the liminal space between the worlds. There is far more magic in women than that of just childbirth, and we have countless goddesses who accurately reflect that. If we need to take these old stories from ancient times and better fit them to make our own new, modern myths for the divine feminine, then now is the time to do so. Athena may be a virgin goddess of battle strategy but she also is a weaver; how is this not an example of creativity and creation? Why haven’t we given greater thought about examples such as this? And if you still love certain aspects of the MMC model and want to rethink that triplicity from a different perspective, there’s something to be said for the Moirae, better known as the Fates: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. They’re literally creating Fate as they spin, measure, and cut the fabric of life! How is this not a powerful example of the divine feminine’s creativity and progression without resorting to the old song and dance about our wombs?

I admit that I come to the table as a hard polytheist; my notion of the gods is already vastly complex and within one deity can contain a bundle of contradictions. And being a polytheist, I am super comfortable with handling those levels of complexity. But I have less problems with the idea of soft polytheism than I do the philosophy that worshipping a female divinity should be limited to her childbearing status and that alone, especially since such notions tend to extend into the women within the related traditions. We are not unaffected by this limited approach to feminine divinity.

It is sad that in this day and age that a witch and priestess can still be scrutinized or disregarded for her age, fertility status, ability to be conventionally attractive, for possessing or not possessing a womb, or any of these things–all because of our instance upon having a MMC Goddess Barbie and wanting to see that reflected in our female witches. And some of the scenarios it proposes are hilariously outdated. It is ludicrous to consider a women in her thirties or forties as a “crone” because she is infertile and/or does not possess a womb. Fertility is far more than literal childbirth, and can carry into many things into one’s life. Creativity and creation aren’t limited in scope to developing babies in our respective wombs, and my femininity is not defined by whether or not I can or will have children.

People are welcome to their own traditions and if they choose to carry on the old model of “man and woman” and all of that fertility-womb sacredness, that’s perfectly fine and valid. It’s still sacred in its own right; it’s just not all that is sacred for women. And there’s so much more to fertility than the classic understanding of it. Women are welcome to also celebrate their motherhoods as they see fit and have insular traditions for them and for these traditional aspects of the craft. However, this isn’t for everyone–nor should it be. There is fertility within women and in general that can be honored and celebrated in new ways beyond just the traditional. Models such as MMC, defining gender by their parts, the old interpretation of gender binary, and the traditions which see these concepts as unalterable and rigidly defined are rapidly becoming a minority in a world and culture whose ideas on gender and sexuality are quickly evolving and encompassing so much more than the binary, cut and dry approach to these topics. The rest of us are moving on and embracing a more progressive and inclusive witchcraft. We continue to teach what was and also why we moved away from it. We do not forget nor seek to distance ourselves from our past, but to learn from it and why we have chosen a new approach.

The future is not just female; it is intersectional. It does not seek to exclude women who lack wombs, nor does it seek to exclude those who do. All forms of women are sacred. There is room for everyone, and we have a lot of work to do.

How to magic the money: tips and tricks learned the absolute hard way

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I’m part of a blog hop for topics concerning financial sorcery! Today I will blog about having learned how to do financial magic right after having learned the absolute hard way how not to do the thing.

 

Learning how to do magic to boost wealth and finances has been a series of trials and errors. Along the way, I’ve learned a good deal about what you should and should not do if you want to do magic in order to gain money:

  1. If you decide to employ a blind force such as planetary influences, invoke an over-arching influence to keep them in check. After two attempts to do a Jupiter talisman resulted in basement floods both times, I started invoking Zeus to manage the wild thing called Jupiter. Success! Jupiter and I get along much better now.
  2. Don’t only do money magic for emergencies. It won’t be anywhere near as effective, and won’t solve the underlying problems that got you there to begin with. You will ALWAYS need money like you will always need to bathe, eat, and sleep; that’s just the reality of life in order to survive. Treat it in your magic that way and the results will follow.
  3. Do maintain regular practices and energies going towards money magic. You need money regularly, and like a bank account you make deposits into, you need to make regular deposits into your money magic.
  4. For regular practice, I recommend a permanent shrine using whatever symbols, items, statuary, etc that pertain to your wealth and finances. I keep statues to Zeus and Hera on mine along with a candle holder I got from my current job (and it happens to be green!), various Jupiter related items, and a Jupiter money box that I made from Jason Miller’s Financial Sorcery book. Feed the shrine with incense, prayers, ritual, items, any sort of attention and energy whenever you can.
  5. Ignore every ounce of Law of Attraction bullshit that tells you to constantly spend money in order to make money. Enchanting bills in your money box to spend and replace is a good practice, but spending outside your means and beyond what is necessary is not. Learn to recognize the difference between self care and enabling bad habits.
  6. Do the practical as well. I recommend using sites like Learnvest.com in order to organize your accounts and figure out where your money goes for budgeting purposes.
  7. Aside from Jason Miller’s book above, I also recommend Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. It’s practical, down to earth, and saved my ass.
  8. Keep a log of your practices, and make note of what’s coming in along with the practices. If you do a ritual one day and find a $20 bill on the ground two days later, that’s noteworthy–literally.
  9. Winning the lottery is possible but not practical. It’s also far easier to change the circumstances around you and affect things in your favor than the amount it would require to do one, big, drastic windfall all at once.
  10. Keep feeding that damn shrine.

I credit money magic with going from being tens of thousands in debt with maxed out credit cards in a terrible job to being in my ideal job, about 70-80% of that debt now gone, and making more than enough to support myself and have a savings account. It took a while and a LOT of trial and error but it’s real and it worked.

 

Liked this blog post? Check out the others in this blog hop:

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Magic for a cause: when a single vs an ongoing ritual is best

There have been, in my experience, three different forms of magic:

  1. The kind where you need to perform a single ritual, let it go, and the results come
  2. The kind where you need to perform a ritual more than once over a specified period of time, then let it go…and the results come
  3. The kind where you need to contribute to it on a regular basis in order for the results to come, and keep coming

How do you determine which of the following types will suit your needs? To be honest, it depends on the goal. Is this something you will continuously be requiring? Or is this for a particular need-of-the-moment? Or is this something more serious which requires formal attention over a length of time?

I used to struggle with money/financial magic until I realized that I was responding to emergencies as they came up and not dealing with the long term. Most of the magic I’d do was in type #1 and sometimes type #2. Realizing that I needed a constant and more consistent flow I switched to type #3 and suddenly the results came–and stayed. I didn’t just get a job that turned sour later; I got myself what amounted to my dream job and was not only able to stay in it but make it even better. I created a cash box from Jason Miller’s Financial Sorcery book, and take out and put in cash into it regularly. That cash box rests on my money/Jupiter altar in my temple room where I keep my statues of Zeus and HEra. When I do, money comes in. When I don’t, I notice it–and a lot. The results I get are as consistent as my practice.

Some forms of magic require more maintenance and attention than others, but it all comes down to intent. If it’s something that you KNOW you will constantly, constantly need, I recommend creating a particular designed space or an altar for it and do magical work for it regularly. Could be daily or once a week, whatever works for you–but I recommend making the day work for you as well. For instance, if you’re gearing magic towards making and keeping yourself healthy, I recommend picking Sunday for the solar work. For financial concerns, Thursday is the obvious pick. If you’re unable to do it that particular day, use the corresponding nighttime planetary hour instead–that’s the planet of the first hour of that night. For Sunday, that’s Jupiter. If you’re looking to have a solar background to your Jupiter work, that’d be a great backup day/time to do your work. The idea is regular investments on a magical level towards getting what you want, keeping what you want, and getting even more of what you want.

In addition, I definitely recommend tying in your work to a particular deity or daemon, preferably a being you already have a connection to, and appeal to them in your work. I found Jupiter energies extremely difficult to control until I made regular prayers and offerings to Zeus and later on both Zeus and Hera to act as guiding, controlling forces. Prior to that, I found myself creating basement floods and hot water heater breakages–which I obviously don’t recommend. 🙂 If gods aren’t your thing, there are many daemons to pick from who can assist such as angels, saints, etc.

Respecting your magical neighbors vs banishing

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Part of being a magician and/or a witch is being in harmony with your environment and local spirits. You may not always chat with or say hello to your neighbor, but it’s not nice to blare music at 12:30am and if you’re going to have a loud and widely attended party, it’s good to warn them in case they want to be elsewhere. And then there are the sorts whom you do not NOT want to invite because of the fallout which will inevitably occur. So what’s an occultist to do under similar conditions in their practice?

My roots as a pagan and my very first spiritual community was with ADF, a pan-Indo European Druidic organization. It was here that I learned the concept of giving offerings to the “outsiders.” These outsiders could include anything from trickster deities like Eris (who already has a tale about her and what happened when she wasn’t invited to a party) to the fae, whom I think pretty much everyone knows you REALLY don’t want to piss off. By doing this, it was making it clear that these weren’t spirits to be banished or cast out but instead “Hey, we’re doing a private ritual and intend no disrespect, but here’s a token of respect so you can party over here instead”.

Nineveh Shadrach details similar practices with the Djinn in his books such as Magic That Works in which the idea is that you warn the neighboring Djinn that you’re about to do a ritual so if they don’t want to be there to get the hell out. Courtesy again in this case matters, as the Djinn and the fae have similar traditions in dealing with them and pissing either off isn’t something you want to do.

I sometimes wonder how much of “imp” or “trickster” activity in one’s home is instead a manifestation of this: a spirit feels forgotten, left out, wanting attention. Maybe they outright feel snubbed or slighted for whatever reason. What’s an attention-seeking daemon to do? Why, hide your things, of course! If you’re finding that a lot of weird activity is happening within your home or surroundings at any given point in time, it might be helpful to do a divination to determine the identity or type of spirit or just go for broke and leave an offering for the local spirits in whatever form or forms they may be in.

It’s good to save the outright banishing rituals for entities of malicious or evil intent, and cases like this where they just simply happen to live near you instead give them courtesy and respect. Be kind to your neighbors, you never know when they too might decide to have a party or otherwise remember you. Allies are just as good to have as are friends.

 

This blog post is part of a blog hop. Feel free to check out the rest of the posts in this theme when you’re done with this one. 🙂

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On being magic

This was a blog post I was going to make before the total proverbial shit hit the fan and I had to make a post about that instead. What I am about to discuss is a case of “no one’s wrong, it’s just a matter of different perspectives and words getting in the way of understanding.” It’s a kinder, gentler post, but no less important. So without further adieu….

I posted a link to a blog a week or so ago entitled Magick, Money, & Bullshit: Do the F**cking Work. Literally my only complaint about this post was the need to censor an excellent word such as “fucking”, but I digress. One of the best parts about it was this section here: “Magick isn’t something you do. Magick is something YOU ARE. How you think. How you live. How you love. How you behave all affect any magickal working you perform.” 

When I posted this to Facebook, I was surprised at a few who didn’t seem to understand the spirit of what was being said, namely “Magick isn’t something you do. Magick is something you are.” One felt the need to point out that magic(k) is a practice while another voiced the idea that once you hit Adepthood, magical practice is something you do less often out of pursuit of other things. Neither of these statements are “wrong”; they just weren’t the point that I felt the deep need to express and celebrate. I also fell short of being able to explain it on Facebook, as the medium really isn’t sufficient for this sort of discussion. Expressing why magic is who you are and not just what you do requires more than it provides.

Magic is a mindset. It’s a mentality. There is no separation between your “mundane” life and your “magical” life, and when you live out your life in a way that expresses that, all of the barriers towards manifestation come tumbling down. It’s not just something you do when you’re lighting that candle, casting that spell, doing that working, this invocation, robing up and entering your temple room, or spending all of your hard earned money over at Wolf & Goat.

Yes Virginia, you ARE magic. This is why it’s so important to take care of yourself, get your physical needs met, and don’t neglect any part of your life. If there’s an area where you’re struggling to manifest something take a good look at why. Maybe it’s your approach, maybe it’s something you haven’t quite digested yet, or maybe you’ve been treating it as something you’re not yet worthy of. Maybe you’ve only done it when you desperately needed to as opposed to making it something you do on a regular basis, like brushing your teeth. Perhaps it’s a fear of failure o the belief that magic is somehow limited to certain things. It’s time to put all of that away and set aside the notion that you’re not deserving. Yes, you ARE worthy. You don’t need to feel guilty or make excuses as to why you can’t do money/job/career magic or any sort of magic; you are the vessel from which the power of the gods flow. You are a magical being, and with every step you take to perfect both the person whom you are and what you put forth into the world, you can make the world around you more in touch with the very essence of magic.

I’ve always found that magicians who quote the statement “As above, so below” and yet draw lines in the sand on their spiritual/personal and “mundane” lives to be demonstrating a sad cognitive dissonance. Repeat after me: it’s all the same. There are no lines, no boundaries, no differences between them. You cannot keep your altars tidy and not extend that into the rest of your life, and while doing one can help to improve the other it’s not enough. Take action, get it done.

One of my magical teachers once said to me that magic is about making a connection. And it’s true. We need to make connections between all of the bits of our lives, and if it’s the physical world we’re struggling with we cannot continue to divorce ourselves from it. Ultimately it’s about striving for what is termed in my faith as aretéexcellence in all things and living up to one’s full potential.

Don’t just do magic, be magic.

Sex, BDSM, magic, and the potential for abuse

I’m tackling this as a blog post because it needs to be said, someone needs to say it who does not identify as a male given the gendered nature of some of what has been said, and so it might as well be me. Given the subject matter I want to make a few disclaimers utterly crystal clear before I begin so that there is no misunderstanding:

  1. There is nothing wrong with sex in ritual, sex magic, or sexuality in magic and witchcraft–or sex, period.
  2. There is nothing wrong with BDSM providing all parties involved are consenting adults in ritual, magic, sex magic, or in general.
  3. I neither look down upon, judge, or condemn those who choose to do either #1 or #2, and it is utterly none of my business if you do or don’t.

A particular blog post has been making the rounds in the occult communities entitled Forging the body of a witch. While I agree with a number of points this post attempted to make, there are a few things in it which are decidedly problematic. I won’t get into the health points as they’ve been covered to death elsewhere, but I’d like to discuss one which was covered towards the end, namely that women need to submit in a ritual BDSM setting in order to have any power as a witch. To be fair Grey adds the disclaimer that “The kind of witchcraft (he) discuss(es) can be used as an excuse for abuse. For power over the aspirant rather than liberation. For sexual exploitation rather than liberation. That does not make the techniques anathema.”

No, it does not. But let me vehemently disagree on the following points:

  1. That women or people in general need to be sexual in order to be powerful beings, or in order to practice magic or witchcraft
  2. That women need to submit to anyone or be in “dungeons” in order to be initiated, be witches, and have any true magical power

The thing is this: you can add all of the disclaimers to the post that you want, but the implications are clear, and they are fairly disturbing. Of course sex can be abused. Of course BDSM can be done by people looking to abuse. Hells, I myself was raped by a “dom” and can speak volumes about that alone. But as always, I’m not saying that BDSM is abuse or that sex or sex magic is bad. What I am saying is that implying that they are expected, necessary, or required is bad, and does open the door wide open for abuse no matter what you may claim.

And do I really need to get into why a man suggesting a woman must submit, be sexual and submissive in order to fulfill his requirements of what he considers to be a witch is a serious problem? I’ll leave this comment here, no more need be said.

Then there’s the issue of sexuality. As someone who is on the asexual spectrum, I have no need nor desire to be sexual. Nor should anyone feel that it is required or a requirement of being a witch. Even if someone who identifies as pansexual was engaged in witchcraft or any sort of ritual or initiation, their consensual participation in such acts of sex or BDSM should not be assumed or required either. Having a ritual scourge, symbolic or otherwise is one thing, but what was described in this blog post was something else entirely. If people want to have such things in their rites, fine. Do we really need it? No. Can we do just fine without it? Yes. Am I still a witch if I don’t? Absolutely.

I had to deal recently within my own communities a few months back with a similar argument due to a very problematic situation which arose, and it became clear that there were people who felt that if you attended the ritual that you were open to being sexual and you were consenting to this. Had these ideas been clearly communicated and in advance, this would not have been a problem. The problem which arose was that no communication occurred, consent was just assumed. This presumptuous attitude which denies the opportunity to consent and consent knowingly needs to be discussed and at great length, and to ignore it is abuse.

Ultimately this is what makes Grey’s post problematic: the implication that we must all have sex magic and BDSM in our rites to be witches or otherwise have power. I don’t need to be beaten, tied up, or whipped in order to be a witch or have power. I don’t need to have sex or be sexual either, and I find it incredibly disturbing that this is even a subject for debate. It’s not just a matter of “safe spaces”; it’s a matter of not supporting what has been described elsewhere quite accurately as rape culture. Consent should never be required or assumed; it should be given freely, with perfect love and perfect trust.

Without that, your magic is in vain, and you have no right to call yourself a proper person let alone a witch.