spirits, Magic
Taylor Ellwood
The relationship between sacred kingship and ...

One of the books I’m reading lately is King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Doug Gillette. It’s a fascinating book that explores the archetypes of the mature and sacred masculine. This is currently part of the spiritual work that I’m engaged in as I explore my own relationship with masculinity and heal the ancestoral and contemporary wounds that I’m becoming aware of as it relates to how masculinity is treated and perceived in modern times.

One of the aspects I’m exploring in particular is related to sacred kingship and the land. I am in the process of exploring the new city and surrounding areas that I live in. While I’ve lived here for a year, I didn’t have much opportunity until recently to really begin exploring the area and developing a relationship with the land. I find it fitting and useful that part of the process has also involved cultivating a relationship with the land, particularly on the basis of the relationship has with their home and how that relationship plays out in sacromagical work one does in connecting with the land.

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The power of having

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One of the simplest principles of life, but one often missed out on, is the principle of having. The principle of having is a fundamental form of wealth magic and realization that actively encourages the attraction of what you already have, because when you have it, you can draw more of it to you. It is a principle that seems counter intuitive, but when you consider it in context to wanting something it actually makes sense.

When you want or need something or someone, what you experience is a neediness that can actually repel what you want from you. The reason is simple: when you want something or someone, you set up within your mind and identity the lack of that thing or person that you want and this creates tension between you and what you want, because you are establishing that it isn’t part of your identity and that you don’t really have it. You want it, but the wanting of it creates distance.

Magical Experiments Podcast: Italian Witchcraft with Giulia Turolla

In this interview Giulia Turolla shares her work and research with Italian witchcraft and discusses how to integrate ancient spiritual practices into modern times. We also discuss how to work with spirits and whether or not spirits modernize with the times.

Giulia is an Italian witch, High Priestess and teacher in the Tempio di Ara tradition. She graduated with honors in Archaeology and Ancient World Cultures from Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna and her field of specialization is ancient magical/religious technology and culture. Giulia’s personal path focuses on the practice of witchcraft as an indigenous form of shamanism and aims to rediscover and rebuild the Sacred Net that binds us to the Spirits and the Gods of the place we live in.

She has been leading circles for the Temple of Ara since 2008 and actively teaching study groups and advanced workshops since 2012. On her website http://www.boscodiartemisia.com she offers online courses, private mentoring sessions and hand-made shamanic and magical tools focused on European magical traditions.

What does magical partnership look like?

I was recently asked what its like to work with a magical partner. In this video I share my thoughts and perspectives about working with a magical partner and the lessons I’ve learned along the way as a result of doing this work. I also discuss different types of magical partnerships and share why its important to have a good understanding of what the partnership is and what the purpose of the work is.

Stepping across realities

One of my favorite metaphors, though it is more than just a metaphor, is to look space/time as a spider web. It’s a useful non-linear device for conceptualizing space/time as a web. The strands become time lines and where two or more strands meet you have spatial nodes which represent events that the strands of time intersect with. It can be a useful tool for helping you wrap your mind around the non-linear aspects of time and I’ve found it particularly helpful in relationship to identity work, because you can move from one event identity to another using the strands of time to bring you to that event.

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Magical Experiments Podcast: Appalachian Folk Magic with Byron Ballard

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This week I interview Byron Ballard about Appalchian Folk Magic. We discuss how folk magic works and how to create a spiritual lineage of your own. We also discuss the importance of research and why folk magic can be done anywhere. Byron Ballard is a rootworker and energy consultant; a freelance writer and an urban farmer; a weaver of words and webs, and the author of Roots, Branches, and Spirits, Staubs and Ditchwater, Asfidity and Madstones, Earth Works: Ceremonies in Tower Time, and Seasons of a Magical Life. Links to her books are below and are affiliate links.

Roots, Branches and Spirits

Seasons of a Magical Life

Staubs and Ditchwater

Asfidity and Madstones

Earth Works

You can Learn more about Byron and her work at https://www.myvillagewitch.com/

Why build a relationship with spirits

Recently a friend asked me what the point is around building a relationship with spirits. I think the relationship with spirits is much like any other relationship, where there is a give and take and benefits all around, but you have to be open to the relationship and what it can offer. For more of my thoughts on this watch the video.

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The process of experimenting with magic

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I think the conventional image that people must have of a magical experimenter is someone running around with crazy hair, doing all kinds of off the wall magical workings, which may or may not be grounded in conventional magical theory and practice. I can understand if that’s the image that comes to mind, but the reality of magical experimentation is that it is a careful process, grounded in the experiences of the magician and the work they have done up to the point of experimentation.

When it can be useful to go old school with your magic work

Way back, when I first started practicing magic I used to have a sword, an athame, a rod, a chalice, and candles and incense, and other various tools that people typically use with magical work. Over the years I drifted away from using such tools, taking a minimalistic approach to my magical work, or coming up with my own tools, based on unique needs I had. However of late I’ve been going back to an old school with my magical work and I’m finding it to be refreshing to do, because its like coming back to an old friend you haven’t seen in a while and picking the relationship right back up.

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Magical Experiments Podcast: Creating Magical Art with Helena Domenic

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In this episode of Magical Experiments Podcast, I interview Helena Domenic about her work as a magical artist. We discuss how she's created books with illuminated art and explore the intersection between creativity, art and magic. Helena Domenic is an accomplished artist, writer, witch, and professor of art history and studio art. Helena maintains a studio in Phoenixville, PA under the name, The Artistic Mystic, where she offers classes, workshops, and readings. Helena spent thirty years as a member of the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel and was also an Elder in that tradition. She left to carve out her own path, both as an artist and a witch. Currently, she leads the Exton Pagan Meetup and the Brandywine Kindred, a newly formed coven in Chester County.

Helena has a forthcoming book called An Illuminated Guide to Wicca, available from Schiffer Publishing (available for pre-order now) in January 2022.

Helena has also created a Tarot deck and book, The Fellowship of the Fool Tarot, as well as a Runic Oracle deck and a Lenormand deck.

Helena’s work may also be seen on her website: http:www.artofhelenadomenic.com

The role of separation in magical work

Are you the magic you work? Are you the experiences you have? Are you the clothes you wear or the car you drive? Before I go all Tyler Durden on you here, the reason I’m asking these questions is because of something I read in the book Creating (Affiliate link), where he discussed the necessity of being able to separate yourself from your work, relationships, experiences, etc. It really struck me, because there is something to be said for overly identifying with something.

In magical work this over identification is framed as a lust for results, but it could also be framed as an obsessive fixation on something. You hold on too tight to an identity and the result is that you don’t actually get what you want, because you’re too caught up in the identity instead of knowing when to separate yourself out from it. You let it define you, instead of seeing it for what is. the only way to free yourself from fixation is to recognize it for what it is and separate yourself from it.

The Role of Uniqueness in Magical Workings

Image courtesy of pexels

A magical working is unique. That may seem like an odd claim to make, but recently I was reading The Process of Life (affiliate link) and the author made a very interesting point(s). He makes the point that all order and from is derived from repetition and shares examples ranging from galaxies to atoms to demonstrate how repetition plays a role the formation of various structures. This organized repetition is found in all forms. We see it in nature and we see it in our own efforts. Yet the author makes the point that if a process is a living process this changes the nature of the repetition. There may be repetition, but within the repetition is context which changes structure of each atom and particle.

The author goes on to explain that a living process creates a geometrical order in which every part is whole, unified, but also unique, according to the conditions that part brings to the geometrical structure. What creates this uniqueness is life itself. Life is not the same. It may be similar, but it brings variation and that variation plays a role in the process that utilizes repetition but also draws on the uniqueness inherent within life.

What does any of this have to do with magic?

Magic is also a process, as I have shared elsewhere. It’s a living process. There is certainly some repetition that can be found in the techniques and rituals a person works, but what the person/people as well as the magic itself brings to those techniques and rituals is a sense of life that brings uniqueness with it. This is worth appreciating because what is brought to a process is what allows that process to work.

It may seem a bit of a stretch to explore how books on architecture could influence magical workings, but it is in such perspectives that we get a different look at what we are doing and a result gain some awareness that can help us with our magical work. For instance, when I design a magical working, one of the questions I now ask myself is what is most important about that working. It’s not always the result. Sometimes its something else and so from that awareness I’ll build the working out, allowing it to naturally unfold around what is most important. Would I have thought this way before about designing a magical working? Probably not, which is why its good to take on fresh perspectives that change your understanding of magic, or for that matter any other discipline you explore.

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Can pop culture spirits die?

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One of the questions I ask is whether or not pop culture spirits can die, especially when they die within a story and it becomes part of the canon of the story. Are the pop culture spirits because the character is dead in the story and can you still work with them? In this video I share my thoughts on these questions.

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A Writing Magic Exercise

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My latest post on Patreon explores how to apply magic to the process of writing.

I'm a firm believer that magic can be done by incorporating creative activities into your magical work. It's one reason I like to do paintings for both practical magic and spiritual offerings. Another practice I enjoy doing involves incorporating writing into my magical work.

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Magical Experiments Podcast: Experimenting with Magical Mechanics with Rich Kiska

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In this episode Rich Kiska and I discuss experimenting with the mechanics of magic. Rich shares her spiritual journey and how she became a magical experimenter and then we discuss space/time magic, pop culture magic, and how to experiment with magic in general.

Rich Kiska offers spiritual services and works with The Emotion Code which involves divination through channeling and muscle response testing; astrology; identification and removal of energetic/spiritual blocks, contracts, curses, and demons, to name a few. Learn more here

Magical workings as an unfolding process of wholeness

One of the latest sources of inspiration in my magical work is a series of books by Christopher Alexander where he explores how to create life through architecture (affiliate link). While these books admittedly, on the surface, have little to do with esoteric secrets for summoning spirits or the other types of occult lore that is usually so favored by occultists, I nonetheless find them to be quite inspiring because of how they look at the process of creating a building where people feel a sense of life. There is something profound about a discipline that explores how to bring life to the process of building.

And I find that it carries over to magical work, provided one is willing to explore the possibilities and perspectives that are offered. I’m only a bit over halfway through the second book of the series, but nonetheless I have discovered a profound amount of insight and knowledge that be applied to both space/time magic in specific and magic as a discipline in general.