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New Year, New You: An Experiment in Magical Radical Transformation

My muse and I have an on-going disagreement of sorts.  Well.  I do.  She is indifferent as usual to my thoughts and feelings.  She clomps into my bedroom, Manolos in hand, Aviation martinis from the Lambs Club and a burrito from Taco Morelos on her breath.

 
She (kicks the bed):  Hey.  Get up.
 
 
Me: What?  It’s bedtime and we’re not talking friends –
 
 
She: Whatever.  I have an idea.
 
 
Me: Your ideas are disorderly and often inconvenient.  I’m going back to bed.
 
 
She: No, you’re not.  I’m going to keep poking you in your brain pan until you listen.  Are you listening now?  Are you listening now?  Are you listening now?  Are you listening now?  Are you listening now?  Are you listening –
 
 
Me: JESUS CHRIST, I HATE YOU!
 
 
She: So it goes like this:
 
 
So, you’re supposed to be, like, magicians, occultists, witches in the woods and the kitchen and on the soccer field, right?  Workers of wonder.  Dream weavers.  People who get shit done.  Isn’t this the year to make your own luck?  You’re feeling especially awful with the nights that never end and run over by the holidaze. You can’t drink endless amounts joie forever before needing a meeting.  So now’s the f*cking time.  
 
Don’t wait until that stupid glitter ball drops and you’re already making drunk and/or sentimental mistakes, start now.  Start now when it’s hardest.  Start now when you feel so weighed down with emotions better left to glittery and not so glittery vampires and when you feel like you could sleep forever.  Now is the time you need to wake up.  Get up, get up!  Don’t miss this moment.  
 
Create magics great and small, mundane and mystical.  Find everything you’ve been looking for, mysteries revealed in every form of divination and song and when you f*ck it up, when you are too tired to try, bring each other up from bloodied knees to get back up smiling.  You are all made of the cosmos and you have stardust in your veins.  Do something about it.
 
 
Here is what you’ll do, Tiny Charge of Mine.  You’ll write prompts.  You’ll explore.  You’ll fall down.  Sometimes you’ll lay there awhile, finding things under rocks that you never wanted to know.  They’ll pull you back, using yarn, glue, cajoling and stern words.  You’ll keep sewing yourself into who you’ll want to be and you’ll tell them, sometimes too much, because that’s your way and what’s needed.  You’ll find how far you can really fly when you’ve made wings to carry you and be breathless from your accomplishments.  
 
 
Here is what they’ll do.  Form a community of tealight hearths and skyscraper high bonfires.  They’ll whisper their stories, spirials of success and failure.  You’ll learn from each other, make each other laugh, piss each other off.  You’ll get things done together and alone.  You’ll be afraid together, so knees up.    
 
Ready?  Let's go.
 
The entirety of my free New Year, New You: An Experiment in Magical Radical Self Transformation course can be found here, with a prompt for every week for 23 weeks.  I suggest doing them in order, starting at week 1 ("Making Way").  You can do the course in a self-guided manner, either privately journaling your process or publicly, whichever you prefer.  If you want me to see that you're doing it, link each prompt on your blog and I will get the pingback about your entry and I can find it and read about it.  
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I've never been a Witch in the woods.  The thing is, to be a proper Witch in the woods, villagers have to know where you live (no) or you need to do a lot of festivals which involves camping (no).

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  • Peggy Frye
    Peggy Frye says #
    Thank you - wonderful article.

One of the most important virtues a magician can cultivate is curiosity. While the old saying that curiosity kills the cat comes to mind, we should consider that such a saying really is a response to curiosity that favors the status quo. It discourages exploration in favor of keeping things the same. Such an attitude should be an anathema to the magician.

Curiosity is at the core of my spiritual practice. When I was much younger I was a born again Christian and I left because I realized that I couldn't find all the answers in one book and that allowing myself to be limited to what I considered to be a narrow perspective of the universe was not good. So when I discovered that magic was real I voraciously began to read books and I allowed my curiosity to explore and experiment with what I learned. Curiosity motivates me to discover my questions and answers and it is an emotion that I couldn't imagine being without.

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  • Janet Boyer
    Janet Boyer says #
    Well said! If you think about it, any seeker wanting growth and spiritual health needs curiosity. It's the only way to expand our
  • Carolina Gonzalez
    Carolina Gonzalez says #
    I couldn't agree more with your every word. I follow the same approach and give the same advice that you are giving here to my own
  • Taylor Ellwood
    Taylor Ellwood says #
    Thanks Carolina! It's important to encourage curiosity...it's how we grow.

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The Art of Career Occultism

Witchcraft gets romanticized a whole lot.  Just look at my picture of the Charmed sisters.  They're off solving problems in mid drift tops living in a huge house, learning about love and sisterhood.  My first reaction is much like yours, it can be summed up as sigh.  But.  If it wasn't for Charmed, my mother and I would be locked in the same stalemate we had been locked in since I was 22.  Charmed made modern Witchcraft accessible to my mom and made her less afraid of whatever I was doing.  

Romantic witchcraft isn't reserved for non-Pagans though.  In Paganism, being able to be a career Witch/Occult Shop Owner/Pagan Writer/Special Shaman Who Talks to Ponies/Whatever has become the dreamy eyed ideal.  And why shouldn't it be?  There's enough of us now to actually support career minded people who want to support themselves off their Craft.  I know a few people who I'm incredibly jealous of who are doing that very thing.  It's not exactly a new concept, communities generally supported an occultist who lived on the fringe of society/in the weird house at the end of the block for ages.  

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  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    I really identify with this. I support my work as priestess through writing and publishing, and before the economy tanked also thr
  • Tom Terrific
    Tom Terrific says #
    I find it difficult to keep separate the idea of devoting oneself to the occult as a career and that of being a priest or priestes
  • Deborah Castellano
    Deborah Castellano says #
    I don't really see myself as clergy really so it's not really an issue for me. But I know there are people who do both, hopefully
  • Beth Wodandis
    Beth Wodandis says #
    Ah yes, as a fellow Etsy seller and writer I can definitely relate to everything you say here! The occult marker is a difficult n

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