Money Magic Part 3 - Battling Budgets

I'm back with more on Money Magic.  If you missed Part 1 and Part 2, you may want to read those articles first.

A lot of young witches make the mistake of gathering up exotic ingredients for their spells. They burn some sage, cast a circle, and release their spell into the universe. Sadly, when their spell doesn’t work, they start giving up on magic. I learned that magic has little to do with eyes of poor little newts and everything to do with will. Will – as in – “What am I willing to do to make a change?” The universe, the Gods, the magic itself is very willing to help, but the person who has to do the actual work is most certainly the witch. When I found myself buried under a mountain of debt I knew I needed a very mundane action plan and probably some tools that were a little more associated with money beyond my magic wand.

When it comes to money, the first tool that many people think of are budgets. I had tried budgeting in the past. It hadn’t worked for me. Every month I broke the budget on multiple categories and not only did it put my bank account in the red, I felt like a total failure. My income was exactly the same every month, my expenses…rather, my Fundamental Needs, fluctuated. Not only did I not know how much gas was going to cost each week, it was hard to predict sometimes just how much I might need. 

Budgets, in my opinion, are a lot like diets. I had been on lots of diets. My parents had tried one that I can remember when I was a child. My one-time husband had tried many. Despite my athletic physique, I wasn’t given the option not to be on those diets. In each case, neither my parents nor my husband had lost a significant amount of weight. I, on the other hand, was left starving. These diet foods did not have enough calories to balance my physical life and the food tasted bad. The only thing diets dwindle in my experience is positive attitudes, not waistlines.

Diets work on the premise of deprivation. The theory is that if you remove certain foods from your life, and carefully calculate calories, you will lose weight. Budgets work from a similar position – you will only allow yourself to spend a certain dollar amount in set categories and when you reach that point, you will simply deprive yourself of anything more in that category. More often than not, deprivation just leads to frustration and then to hopelessness, hence the reason why most budgets and diets fails.

In my case, no matter how I much I tried, there was never enough in my paycheck to spread out to all of my expenses. Something always had to suffer. Well what was ultimately suffering was me – anxiety at the grocery store, sleepless nights, and a lot of tears. Getting a second job was out of the question. I had already gone over the advantages and disadvantages of getting a second job and the disadvantages heavily outweighed the advantages. There weren’t any expenses to be cut either. I hadn’t had a haircut in years, and I certainly wasn’t visiting Starbucks daily. I didn’t have expenses, I had Fundamental Needs I had to figure out how to pay for.

When my son brought home his homework assignment of his Fundamental Needs I couldn’t recycle it. I loved it so much that I actually still have it to this day.

My son's Fundamental Needs Chart

I had even made my own fundamental needs chart, although it was less exciting without all the colorful photographs of my son’s chart.

Fundamental Needs

Material Needs
Transportation	Defense	Shelter	Clothing	Food
Auto Fuel	Medical	Water Bill	Child Clothing	Groceries
Car Maintenance	Pet care	Mortgage	Personal Clothing	Dining out
I-pass and Tolls	Child care	Home Maintenance	Work Uniforms
Parking fees	Cell Phone	Electric
Alternate transportation	Internet	Gas
Registration	Insurance	Cleaning Supplies
	Gym Membership	Office Supplies

Spiritual Needs
Culture	Religion	Vanity
Outings	Debt repayment	Kid’s Activities
Vacation	Education	Costumes
Mementos	Fees	Gifts
	Taxes	Donations
		Makeup
		Personal Care

My chart did make me feel a bit better about spending money, but it wasn’t making magic happen. Some element from my own chart was missing. There was something magical about my son’s chart, so I compared them to see if I could figure out what it was (beyond those colorful pictures) that made my son’s chart special.

My son had chosen to place transportation first on his chart. That could have been completely random, but for a child of divorce living in two households, transportation is a pretty big deal. I could make the argument that transportation was probably the most significant event my son regularly dealt with.  I could understand that so clearly, and I appreciated why my son had arbitrarily chosen to place transportation first on his chart. I wondered what the other children in his class had put first on theirs. 

I knew what I would put first, I thought - Food.

It was food. That was what was most important to me. It was so important that I gave myself a panic attack at the grocery store every time I went. The question that haunted me at night was “How am I going to feed my child?” And for me, food was more than nourishment for the body. When I thought about the cakes I made with my son, that time being together was nourishment for the soul. Moreover, I attributed the health my son and I enjoyed to the food that we ate. I wasn’t succumbing to the lure of fast food on my crazy schedule and shoestring budget, I was actually cooking at home. It was so important to me I served “dinner” at lunchtime, so I got to prepare the biggest meal of the day and left the sandwich making to the babysitter when I went to work at night. Food was my most significant event.

But when I tried to budget my groceries, I always felt like a failure. Food prices, just like gasoline, fluctuated all the time. I couldn’t predict it accurately. However there was one glaring issue that I had never considered, I waited to go grocery shopping after I paid bills, usually leaving almost nothing (and sometimes actually nothing) to make food purchases. I couldn’t even be tempted by the seemingly low prices of fast food, there wasn’t anything in my account to pay even the clown.

But if food was so important to me - my personal most significant fundamental need - why on earth was it the last thing I bought with my limited income? It simply didn’t make sense to do that. My reality was simple: I had a very fixed income that wasn’t going to change and I had a number of expenses that fluctuated but were also unchangeable. Something else I had to face was that I had more expenses than I earned in income. This was my reality and there was little that I could do about it. But I was so tired of the panic attacks at the grocery store, they were exhausting and they wasted so much of my time.

So, I made a radical decision. I decided that before I paid a single bill, I would go grocery shopping first. When payday rolled around and there was money back in my account I would buy food. I would buy anything I thought I needed. If it was food and somebody was going to eat it, it was going to be purchased. And whatever the price on the sale receipt, I would pay it and I would simply stop freaking out about it. Because if I went shopping first, I would not be turned away for lack of funds. I also knew that food would be eaten. It wasn’t going to languish or rot in my refrigerator, I knew I was going to cook it, and feed healthy food to my child. I was absolutely sure of that. When it came to food at the grocery store, I knew with certainty, that I had nothing to feel guilty about.

Defense as a whole was the next category that was obviously important to me. I filed a number of things under defense that perhaps wasn’t an obvious fit to someone else. But this was not about what was obvious to other people, this was about what I needed. Both my son and I had chronic health conditions, I in particular, required daily medication. So, I decided that the first bill I would pay after going to the grocery store would be medical bills. I could do a payment plan to make them manageable. And as an added bonus, this was not necessarily a regular expense.

The health and well-being of my child was always at the forefront of my mind and that was largely the reason for the category of defense having a number of expenses listed there. The babysitter’s payment was what I decided I would pay next. She was my son’s caretaker and protector when I was unavailable to fill that role.

Next, was the mortgage. Having food was priority number 1 for me, protecting my child was obviously number 2, but if I didn’t have a place to keep and serve the food or to house the child and the babysitter, that would be problematic. I had two mortgages which did not make that an easy feat to tackle. I had to get a little creative here. What if I broke them up? What if I paid the smaller 20 percent mortgage early, at the end of the month? Then I could pay the larger 80 percent mortgage after payday on the first of the month. The mortgage company would hardly balk at getting their money early. Most of my smaller bills were due at the end of the month anyway, so I really only had to worry about groceries and the larger mortgage payment at the first of the month. That would make things a little bit easier. My anxiety lessened.

I took every expense I had and ranked it. Defense was very important to me, but the car insurance which was filed under defense would be useless if I didn’t have gasoline to power my transportation. Both my work uniforms and regular clothing were filed under clothing, but I wasn’t growing like my son was. In fact, I’ve been the same size my entire work career. I knew there would be times that an unavoidable tear might require me to make an emergency purchase, but as a general rule, clothing could take a backseat to other fundamental needs.

Culture was very important to me but as I was looking carefully at what I spent my money on I had to give myself some kudos here. I was pretty creative. I regularly searched the internet for fun (and free!) events happening in the city. My local library had passes for free entry to many museums for children and their caretakers too. I was always expanding my son’s world with culture (Not such a bad mom after all!).  So, I was able to push culture to a lower quarter of my financial priority list without feeling like I was depriving myself and my child.

That allowed me to address some other shelter needs; like the utilities. I decided that gas was more important than electrics. Gas powered my stove which tied it to the all-important food, but I decided that if the electric company cut me off, well, I’d use an ice chest and camping stove if I had to.

The Moment Magic Happened

It was at that moment – choosing to pay the gas bill before the electric bill – that the magic started to take root. Because, I had foreseen a possible consequence to my action, and I decided I was willing to live with it. It was at that moment that I stepped beyond the role of victim, and into the role of a survivor.

Being a victim, sometimes is inevitable. It isn’t karma, sometimes bad things happen to good people and there isn’t a reason or a purpose to it at all. It’s a happening, and it is tragic and terrible. Being a victim is nothing to be ashamed of. However, getting stuck in that role, as I had for nine years, is a terrible place to live. In fact, I believe I’ve already stated, it’s not living, it’s dying - every day  - for the rest of your life. For me, the difference between a victim and a survivor, is one simple thing: choice. A victim cannot choose. They are unfortunately at the mercy of their attacker and abuser and that is not their fault or their karma. A survivor though, gets to a place where they make choices and regain control of the path their life takes.

Book Spotlight: Underworld by Chris Allaun

I am very fortunate to have been a student of Chris Allaun.  I was very pleased to see his magic come to fruition and be able to own an autographed copy of Underworld: Shamanism, Myth, Magic.

I do think that this book does requires some prerequisite work.  In order to get the most out of this work, you should have some working knowledge of some magical system - preferably with some kind of astral journeying work, and you should be familiar with the concepts of Underworld, Mid-world and Upper-world.  If you live in the Chicago Area, applying for private lessons with Chris Allaun would be the perfect supplement to this volume and his following books.  You can contact him through his Facebook page if you this is an option for you. 

If you have never explored the concept of ancestral work and the Underworld, I would suggest Walking the Twilight Path by Michelle Belanger as a starting point and then moving into the work of Chris Allaun. 

What drew me in:

1. One of my favorite things about this work is that it reads much like a memoir.  There are many descriptive narratives of the author's personal travels through the Underworld.  
2. I appreciate that he describes frightening beings that you can sometimes encounter in your Underworld journeys as "chaotic" rather than evil because things that make us afraid can be great teachers.  Good and evil are very subjective.  Hilter, for example, thought he was saving his country.
3. I really loved his commentary about myth and story.  Imagination is a gateway to personal gnosis and myth and story engage the imagination.

How I think I can apply this magically:

1. I mentioned that I was fortunate to be Chris Allaun's student.  I have used the techniques in his book to explore the Underworld and I had some interesting revelations there.
2. I am constantly trying to be the best person that I can be.  I thought this book very much resonated with my personal mission to "have courage to be who I could be."
3. I was fascinated by his descriptions of the Kabbalah and Qliphoth and is something I would like to explore more.

I would also like to announce that Chris Allaun will be making a guest appearance on my alter ego's YouTube channel in the very near future.  Please visit Fairy Fortunes by Ruby Ruse on YouTube, subscribe and hit the notification bell so you will notified of this interview release!

If you liked this post, you may enjoy some of my other book spotlights:

Psychic Protection by Ted Andrews

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Art and Practice of Geomancy by John Michael Greer

I Have Cursed Someone. Maybe You Should Too.

Talking about magic is still a bit of a tricky subject in our world that is so driven by technology. It has, however, become perfectly acceptable to say (virtually, via technology) to a friend in stress, or ill health, “I’m sending positive energy your way!” There does seem to be a belief that this imagined energy can somehow help the friend despite no actual evidence. I’d argue that there is evidence, because most times, the friend appreciates these imaginary positive waves and they really do feel magically better. If only because they know that they are in people’s thoughts.  Negative energy or curses though…that can be a downright taboo subject, even for people who believe in magic, cast magic spells under the full moon, and call themselves witches.

An It Harm None vs. “Don’t Be A Jerk” 

I think part of the taboo comes from the pervasive Wiccan Rede: An It Harm None. This touches a cord in even the Non-Wiccan, magical practitioner. Talking about negative energy is frowned upon.

I get that avoiding harming people is a good general guideline to go by. I’m not Wiccan, however my son and I have our own version of the Rede. We say, “Don’t be a jerk.” To elaborate,  this means, don’t be jerk because you’re afraid of getting in trouble or because you are expecting something in return; but be helpful, be kind, because it is the right thing to do. That is how I try to live my life.

But sometimes no matter how helpful and kind I am, I find that some people are still jerks to me. Repeated interactions from the same jerks can be so demoralizing that I’ve lost myself in depression over it. I’ve known too many people who have committed suicide because of the jerks in their lives. I can appreciate their pain, because it feels hopeless. A jerk isn’t necessarily a criminal. You can’t take someone to court for emotional abuse. So, you just have to endure it - over and over again. Because the reality is, sometimes you can’t escape your jerk.

Let’s say you’re married to a jerk. He doesn’t hit you. He does, however, criticize your cooking. You could be a size 2 in clothing, and he will tell you that you are fat. He tells you that you’re lousy in bed. He compares you to every other woman he knows. Nothing you ever do is ever good enough, ever.

What are your options here? You could take a cooking class. You could hit the gym hard. You could read every single sexual help book you can find and watch a lot of porn. You could listen to the comparisons to other women, treat it like feedback – start dressing like his young coworker, dye your hair the same color as his boss, take up tennis like his sister…or you could get divorced.

In my case, I was served the divorce papers.

You would think that my suffering would have diminished, because my former husband made it expressly clear that he was leaving me; but it was only the beginning. The parenting agreement was refused because it didn’t have a motorcycle clause (for the record, I have never, nor will I ever, own a motorcycle. I don’t have any intention of ever riding on one, so why on earth would I place my toddler on one?). I asked for absolutely nothing, but the divorce dragged on in ugly battles for over a year.

He called me for every single little thing. It was driving me so crazy, I went to see a therapist. She suggested that I not answer, then listen to the voice mail, decide on a course of action, and then calmly respond – preferably by text. Except there were no voice mails. He would call me on my cellphone and if I didn’t answer, he immediately called the hardline phone. If I didn’t answer that he then would call my babysitter, demanding to know where I was, where our son was, and why I was such an irresponsible and stupid mother. Any engagement with him would end with him screaming at me two inches from my face.

But he never once hit me. And he never threatened to hit me. There was absolutely nothing to take to the courts. And he was, legally, a decent father. He was gainfully employed, he provided for his son, had a better family support system than I did, and he was under no circumstances a physical abuser. But more importantly, my son loved his father. He loved him, period. And I was hell bound and determined to make sure my son had a relationship with his father if that’s what my son wanted. Hell bound would be a pretty precise word for what I was going through to accomplish that though. It got so bad, I almost gave up on joint custody, and handed over my son. But my former husband didn’t want to be a full-time parent. And more importantly, my son loved me too, and he needed me just as much as his father…maybe more…

So, what could I do? I could not escape this jerk. There was no justice available to me. Well, for nearly nine years I did nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. I pleaded. I attempted to explain. I repeatedly promised to do better. I did a lot of crying. And I believed that I was a worthless person. I believed that I was such a terrible wife that I had been discarded and replaced. I believed that I was a terrible mother and my son may in fact be better off without me. And I lost a great deal of myself for nine years.

One day after a co-worker witnessed me take a phone call that he couldn’t help over hearing for all the shouting on the other end; he asked me, “Why do you let him do that to you?”

And I said, “I’ve endured it for nine years, I can take it for another nine.”

My co-worker did not respond, but the horror on his face truly shocked me. My world was not normal, and something needed to change. This was not living, it was dying, every day, for the rest of my life.

But there was no court of law that could help me. What could I do? I did the only thing I could, I wrote a curse. Instead of positive energy, I used all nine years of negative energy and I mixed in all of the trauma from the eight years of marriage, and I sent the whole bubble, bubble, toil and trouble, dark and foul brew to my former husband via virtual express. For the record, no newts lost any eyes in the making of this curse. I did, however, know exactly what I was doing. There was nothing kind or helpful about that energy. Imaginary or not, it was absolutely harmful. I had very personal experience with precisely how harmful that energy was.

Garbage In, Garbage Out 

I think another part to the taboo concerning curses is that in magic, it is believed that what comes around goes around. Or in technology terminology: garbage in, garbage out. People often don’t need to be cursed with magic by someone else, because they generally do such a fine job of cursing themselves. If you’re a jerk, the people around you will eventually figure that out, and they will handle you accordingly. Or, much more dastardly still, if you are a jerk, there will always be a part of you that assumes everyone is a jerk – someone who wants to harm others, and only doesn’t because they might get in trouble. What a truly terrible life to live. It is terrible yes, but a jerk, in my experience, is not very likely to suddenly see the light and stop being a jerk.

“Don’t be a jerk,” for me just sums up things so much more succinctly than “An it harm none.” Because the reality is, we can cause a lot of harm with our most helpful and kind intentions. “An it harm none,” does not leave much room for self-defense either. “Don’t be a jerk,” implies that if someone hits you, you don't sit there and patiently let them hit you again, you hit them back and harder.

When I read Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia or The Gospel of Witches, I got the impression that Mr. Leland believed that witches were people without legal status or real power and that their witchcraft was a way for them to believe they had some control (without affecting any real change in the balance of power). I would agree that magic, and especially curses, can come from the person who is suffering an egregious imbalance of control and power. Magic may be imaginary, but I would argue that one can experience very tangible results.

The Role of “The Victim” 

When I finally launched my curse, one of the results I experienced was that I stopped being “the victim.” That is a very real change in the position of power. A victim is trapped in a state of helplessness, always waiting for someone to save her. There is no hope for the victim, because a victim’s only option is nothing. Do nothing. My curse was something. I was giving myself another option over helplessness. Imaginary or not, that new found status and balance correction did wonders for my mental health.

However, there are a few things, even my very adept therapist found a bit hard to explain. After I held my ritual to unleash my curse, the phone calls from my son’s father stopped. They just stopped out of the blue. Now, if he has a question, he sends me a short text. He calls occasionally but his tone is calm and respectful. My son’s step-mother invited me to share their Christmas Eve dinner with them last year. I accepted and it was actually quite pleasant. My son continues to enjoy his relationship with his father and he is happy, thriving and well-adjusted.

Something else quite miraculous happened too. I started thriving as well. I started singing, and writing, and laughing…I hadn’t done any of that in nine years. Part of my curse was that my former husband would not get what he wanted most; but he has a lovely condo, a charming wife, a very cute new baby, and he’s still gainfully employed and doing well. And I'm glad about that, because my son is happy and I really kind of like my son's step-mom.  It dawned on me though, that maybe what my ex-husband wanted most, was to be a jerk to me and for me to suffer for it. That, I think is, much scarier than me using a curse.

Beyond short briefings before parent-teacher conferences, I don’t think about my former husband much anymore. Truth be told, I wish I had cursed him sooner, we all would have been better for it.

If you enjoyed this post you may also like

So What About That Desk?

Why Do We Keep Broken Things?

Financial Fiasco + Fundamental Need = Money Magic (Part 1)

The Pleasure Path

Two weeks before New Year’s Eve I was in the grocery store and I made sure to grab a package of black eyed peas while they were in stock. My son and I have an established tradition at our house. I make Mice and Beans, we drink champagne, we state one resolution and then we stay up until midnight to greet the brand new year. The champagne is sparkling grape juice. The Mice and Beans is actually Hoppin’ John a dish made with black eyed peas because my mother and Martha Stewart say that they bring you luck for the New Year. My son doesn’t remember why we call it Mice and Beans, but when he was little we read about Skippy John, a Siamese cat that had an adventure to Mexico in his magic closet. He met some Chihuahuas who asked him if he liked rice and beans. Skippy John responded “Si! I love Mice and Beans!” Because he’s a cat…not a Chihuahua. Anyway, I held those black eyed peas in my hand for several minutes remembering Skippy John Jones. I won’t ever forget that silly cat even though my son doesn’t remember that story anymore.

I was laughing outright as I tossed those peas into my cart. Then it hit me – by the Gods I was laughing! With reckless abandon in a grocery store filled with people who might be judging me! What the heck was going on? I was actually happy.

Sadly, that’s really not my default setting. I really like to simmer in my sadness and delve into my despondency. I live to mourn my life.

Singing along to the Christmas Carols in that grocery store I started to ponder if maybe there was a different route to consider. I went home and I began working on a project to reflect on 2016. I wanted to know precisely what made me unhappy. Although, I knew that if I really wanted to make a change – that is if I wanted to keep this mysterious mirthful mood – what might be even more important was to consider what made me happy.

Research in behavioral science has suggested that there seems to be an evolutionary factor for why it is easier to remember the worst things that happen, rather than the good things. It stands to reason that if something can kill you, you might want the memory of that permanently etched on the back of your eyelids. But if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s how easily mired I can become with all that negativity. Really, most of the things I carry with me looming like a dark cloud over my head, while uncomfortable, are not really environmental threats to my survival. Yes, I wanted to learn and grow from the mistakes I made in 2016, but really the burning question I had was, “What makes me happy?” I couldn’t necessarily find that by reliving my failures.

Then, I was sifting through blogs on Tumblr and came across a post by TheCrownedCrow. It was a divination challenge to create a personal map for 2017 in order to help you realize your goals. Although I knew I’d probably be the only geomancer in the challenge, I was hooked. Particularly when I read the seeking question for day 2: The New Year also brings a moment of reflection. What is something I learned in the previous year that will help me grow in this one? That is the beauty of geomancy. There’s very little about it that’s cryptic. Geomancy says, “Look right here for your answer.” I already had the memory project well underway. All I had to do was roll my geomancy dice, and cast the house chart. A repeat of the first symbol would tell me exactly what memory would be the most helpful to focus on! Part of me thought that it would lead to a particularly painful lesson I endured in 2016, if I could master that it would be the key to lasting happiness in 2017! But my dice had a different tale to tell.

The first figure was Via or Way, I often interpret this as path or road. I was very pleased to see this figure. This was going to be an interesting reading. I cast the chart, and Via reappeared in none other than the House of Children. The Fifth Astrological House can represent actual growing children, but it also uses the concept of children as a metaphor. Children are strongly motivated by pleasure, so in a geomantic reading, the symbol in the fifth house also represents things that refer to pleasure. So, the key to my growth in 2017? It was to look at what makes me happy. I must look at everything that brought me a semblance of joy in 2016 and instead of collecting negativity to loom over me, I needed to draw my positive experiences with me into 2017.

I’m so obsessed with my work with Accidental Talismans and getting rid of things, I had never really taken the time to consider what things are important to keep. The key to my growth was waiting for me in those treasures of memory rolling around in the back of mind. I just needed to give them a place of prominence. I needed them to tell me their stories.

January 2016 

In January I was looking for something my son and I could do and I found a Dog Sledding event called Musher Mania. It was fun and spontaneous. We got out of the house and participated in an event that fed our connection. Then, I did some pretty scrapbook pages because I gave myself the time to do this small hobby that brings me joy.

The lesson that I took from this was the celebration of the spontaneous. There actually wasn’t a lick of snow, we mushed in the mud which probably made it that much more hilarious. The event planners worked with the weather they were given and it was still a blast. I learned that you don’t need perfection to have a perfect day. Just live in the moment.

Capturing the moment was also significant. The scrapbook pages I made were some of my favorites of the year. I love scrapbooking. I love it. It makes me happy. If I am to follow a new path, scrapbooking then is important. It is a mile marker on the road to happiness.

February 2016 

Every year in association with Valentine’s Day my son and I visit Medieval Times. It is a tradition that we both look forward to every year. I love the show and I love the tradition. I worry so much about being repetitive and boring but tradition is a touchstone so worth keeping.

March 2016 

I am a serious homebody, vacations are often not relaxing for me. In 2016 I took a huge risk, for the first time I traveled to another country with my child! We went to Grand Cayman. My son took me snorkeling and in Devil’s Grotto, we looked down over the edge of the reef and saw two huge sharks enjoying the waters. I have absolutely no photographic evidence of the event. My son and I were so stunned by these magnificent creatures that we just observed them in frozen awe.

I learned that I was capable of risk! I was also pretty proud that I paid for that risk in cold hard cash! No banks were broken in the making of this moment. Definitely my financial planning is a skill to be proud of!

April 2016 

I really loved doing the Council Oak Fundraiser as Ruby Ruse. I loved telling fortunes and found that I was very good at it. I often give people the option to consider that I might just be reading their body language and reactions more than I am looking into their future; because if what I say is helpful, then it doesn’t really matter where the information comes from.

But how I knew a former accountant was changing careers to be a librarian?…that’s a bit difficult to explain away with body language. You know what? Being a creepy fortune teller in pink sparkles really makes me deliriously happy.

May 2016 

In May I finally got the opportunity to work with visual art in a three dimensional way. Joan Forest Mage teamed me up to create an Art Adventure for the Life Force Arts Center with Errol McLendon. I created the second event, a Creative Drama program called Come Play With Me.

The participants really got into it and I was delighted to dust off my skills in improvisational performance. I learned that I am indeed a creative individual. More than anything else, it is my creativity that I feel defines me. And, when I am being creative, I am happy.

June 2016 

I really love fitness. That is a fact. I was intensely involved in my training and doing research on fitness for a summer presentation. I was perhaps in the best shape of my life in June of 2016 and that really made me happy. Scientific research suggests that a fit body releases endorphins in the brain that perpetuates happiness.

July 2016 

Very few people know when my birthday is. I don’t like to share the information partly because it is on the holiday weekend and my birthday gets swept away under the national fervor. But the deeper (and darker) reason is my belief that my birth was an accident and that my parents really didn’t want me. It’s a little difficult to celebrate your birthday if you wonder whether you really were meant to be born.

However, hopped up on all those fitness endorphins I was hell bound and determined to have a happy birthday. As I was polling my friends for trip suggestions, one clever soul offered up the City Museum in St. Louis and I was hooked from the mention of seven-story slide. The City Museum was completely awesome yet I loved pretty much everything about that trip!

The most important thing I learned was that I didn’t always have to worry about what everyone else may or may not be thinking. I spent my childhood and a great deal of my adult life trying to do what I thought my parents wanted me to do. I did this hoping to prove to them that I was worth their love, even though I was an accident. I carried that mentality into my most of my relationships. I chose activities based on what I thought somebody else might want. This isn’t the fortune telling that makes me happy, this is just crazy making!

This time, in July of 2016, I went somewhere I wanted to go without worrying about what someone else wanted. And it not only turned out okay – it was better than okay – it was awesome!

August 2016 

For reasons I may write about later (or perhaps never) I was in an exceptionally dark place in August. It was quite possibly the lowest I have ever been yet. My child brings me joy, but my happiness is not his responsibility. He knew I was depressed, but there was nothing he could have done and I sure wasn’t going to disclose to him just how bad I really felt.

It was my cat Bing who pulled me out of the dark. When I picked her up from the groomer she was so darn happy to see me! And she was just so cute with her hair all shaved off, rolling on her back and telling me to rub her belly. She loves getting her hair cut. She just would rather be naked – she’s a weird cat.

She made me laugh and then she licked away my tears with that sandpaper tongue. She quietly listened to all of my darkness and took in all of it without so much as flick of her tail.

“Silly Amy Alice,” she said to me. “I love you. See, you’re worthy of love. Now rub this naked belly!”

Bing, a half blind naked cat, taught me that there is unconditional love in this world, I just have to be willing to accept it in whatever package it may come in.

September 2016 

September was about just surviving; it was just about putting one foot in front of the other. As luck would have it, the Summer of 2016 was the summer Pokemon Go became all the rage. As the season was coming to a close I put one foot in front of the other while capturing Pokemons with my son. We would walk for hours and talk about all sorts of things. I don’t think that I will ever forget that. What a wonderful game. Sometimes happiness comes in tiny packages – in this case, anime animals on an IPhone.

October 2016 

I adore Halloween. It was hard for me to choose just one highlight; it was a toss-up between the Trick-or-Treat in Oak Park or Fright Fest at Six Flags – both were Halloween themed fun. I love making Halloween Costumes. I just love it! It’s not lost on me that this is another example of a hobby. It was also the aspect of using a skill. A part of the joy in those events was the oohs and ahhs my son and I received over our one-of-a-kind costumes. I also love to see the obvious surge of pride on my son’s face when he informs his fans, “This costume is handmade.” I love that my son gives me a picture and trusts that I will bring it to life. My sewing skill alone can bring me happiness, but to share that joy with my son makes me that much more deliriously joyful!

November 2016 

This makes me feel a little sheepish to admit…but the best thing in November was discovering how much I like the television show Supernatural. And not just the show, the character of Sam Winchester.

I finally felt like a normal human being because I had a legitimate crush! Albeit it was on a fictional character who I would consider far too young for me in real life, but I hadn’t had a sweet and innocent crush since William Shatner ruled 1970’s syndication as Captain Kirk, so I’ll just take it

This little crush made me research the actor Jared Padalecki; and I learned that he too suffered from depression. He had a crisis in the early seasons of the show, probably because he was enjoying so much success and a part of himself was screaming that there was no way that he could possibly deserve it. I was able to make that assumption because I feel that way so much of the time. I love too that he used his own creation of Sam Winchester to see himself through. He reminded himself that Sam always kept fighting, and that became his mantra. He founded a whole awareness campaign with that as the slogan.

Jared Padalecki is a hero to me because he risked stigma and rejection to help others who share the battle with depression. In him, I found someone to model. Isn’t that what the arts are supposed to do? Give you something to model so that you can find and become the very best version of yourself? Art shows us the possibilities. And when it comes to possibilities you want the outlandish, the bigger the better! If we imagine ourselves fighting the very Darkness Herself then perhaps it is then easier to find a flashlight when the circuit in the kitchen blows.

Watching Supernatural gave me the ability to see possibilities as I shrieked in gleeful terror watching the impossible adventures of the Winchester brothers. It made me laugh when I needed a break from my sadness. It gave me adventure when I wanted to get away from the monotony of my job. It made me realize that I had emotions…even the flirty one I wasn’t sure I had. It gave me hope.

It would seem that frivolity has its wisdom too.

December 2016 

While sweet Sam Winchester was leading me down a new path of hope, the day everything suddenly changed was when I responded to Errol McLendon’s request to share my thoughts about death and what happens after that event. I wrote to him about my son’s birth, and how it nearly killed me. I had such a strong, spiritual, and life changing experience. I found my Goddess and I found my purpose - I found that when I died.

I sent him a long message detailing my experience and then I went to his show. It was so very profound that the audience stayed for more than an hour afterwards to talk, and to be with one another. After that, it was as if the dark cloud that I had carrying over my head burst. I was free. I was happy again. I felt more myself than I had for longer than I could remember. Errol’s show stayed with me and I thought about it that whole week. Then, I decided to write about the experience again. This time I posted it on my blog (The post is called, The Day I Died). It was one of the most well received posts I had ever written; probably because it was the very best article I had ever written. It was the best, because it was so true.

I learn so much about myself when I write. In my blog post about my death, it was during the process of writing that I discovered something so important: when my body was dead and there was nothing left of me except my own instinct and my own feelings, what I wanted – what I needed more than anything – was to be a mother. I realized that it was really the first time I had expressed a deep desire that came not from someone else’s expectations of me, but truly from my own desire – my own instinct and feelings. Despite the mistakes I had made as a mother and despite the fact that I had been unable to control all the circumstances, ultimately being a mother had brought me the greatest joy I had ever known. It made me wonder what I could accomplish if I trusted my desire more often. I wondered what I could accomplish if I listened to my own instinct and my feelings instead of giving that power away to someone else.

I wondered this because I wrote. The dark cloud burst when I told my story.

There were things from 2015 that I stuffed into that dark cloud and I carried it all through 2016. My geomancy reading suggests that there is a new path for 2017 through the House of Children. It is the Path of Pleasure.  I must make time for hobbies. I must celebrate my traditions. I must take pride in the financial freedom I worked so hard to earn. I must acknowledge my talents. I must be creative at every opportunity. I must pump my iron. I must exercise my independence. I must love my pets (particularly by rubbing my naked cat’s belly). I must play, just play. I must utilize my skills. I must give myself every opportunity to experience possibility, the more impossible the better. And finally, I must tell my story. It really doesn’t matter if it isn’t important to someone else, it’s important to me. I matter – to my son, to my weird cat, to me.

Happy New Year!

The Magic of Meditation

As openly pagan, and now that I’m embracing the title of “witch,” I get a lot of curious questioners asking about magic and my spells. I do cast spells, but I’m one that takes a great deal of time designing them, so it really has to be for something I consider very important. That usually does not involve turning a particularly nasty co-worker into a toad. If she already is a slimy mud slinger how would I transform anything by giving her green skin? Though people seem disappointed that I’m not interested in seeing if that might be possible. Spell work is more akin to goal planning than Harry Potter. What I am interested in pursuing, is not precisely what may be possible, but what I can make probable. 

Imagination is the cornerstone of magic. You have to be able to imagine what you wish to accomplish. Once you can see the possibilities, it’s much easier, if not simplistic, to move on to what is probable. I think it is the possibilities that magic offers that pulls people towards a magical path, whether it is interest in witchcraft or the pursuit of ceremonial magic. Those new to it want to dive straight in – let’s cast a spell! I know from experience that it is a huge let down when instead of being trained how to use a wand, one is told to meditate. How can there be any possibility in something that sounds so dismally boring?

I certainly can appreciate that. I have yet to find enlightenment by monitoring my breathing. I am also decidedly not an advocate for spending hours on end chanting “om” in uncomfortable positions while sniffing headache inducing incense. If I were only to describe mediation as simply “quieting” or “focusing” the mind, or counting breaths I can easily see how this might be seen as boring. The point of meditation is to clear all of the mundane noise out of my head so that I can actually see the possibilities. Meditation is used to explore the possibilities to find the probability - which is exactly what fuels magic.

 

The Mantra 

When I first moved to Chicago in 1998, I was very fortunate to see an advertisement for a class on magic being offered by the late and great Karen Jackson. It was the first formal magical classwork of which I had ever been a part and I have never forgotten what she taught me. Karen explained that meditation was important ground work for the magical process but she also said that it certainly did not need to be painful! She explained that clearing one’s mind of all thought was a highly advanced technique that Eastern Monks practice their entire lives with varying degrees of success. Since I’m certainly not living in a monastery, and have to contend with the mundane pressures of bills, parent/teacher conferences and rush hour traffic, I don’t have to aim that high in order to work some magic.

“Set a timer for ten minutes,” Karen said. “See if you can make it that long. Try to do it once a day. See if you can. If you can’t, that’s fine. See if you can work up to it.”

She also explained that getting your mind to focus is much harder than one might think -as the brain is constantly thinking about a hundred different things in a fraction of a second. She had a brilliant plan to redirect all of those thoughts in a more cohesive direction: the mantra. A mantra can be the cliché phrase “om” or it can be any repeated word. Karen Jackson gave me a phrase. I have never forgotten it and I still use this meditation to help me focus, calm down, or just because it makes me feel good.

Karen’s suggested phrase is: I am (my name). I am a part of the earth. I am a part of the unmanifest. I am alive in a universe that is alive. I am here and it is now. 

Naming myself calls me to focus on myself. I am the most important person in these 10 minutes that I’ve set aside for myself. The focus is me.

Focusing briefly on the earth reminds me of the physical world, and the significance of being a member of the flora and fauna that together is the planet earth.

But I am more than physicality. I am also a part of something that is unknown and unknowable. The mantra calls my attention to my life and the role that I play with the living earth which is both physical and tangible and yet vast and mysterious.

The present moment is the focus. Where am I really? The answer is here. What time is it? The answer is now. I cannot process the past nor plan for the future if I am not present in the moment.

Karen Jackson founded the Temple of the Four Winds, an inclusive group of pagan women and men based in Evanston, Illinois. Sadly, it passed into the ether with her. She was a teacher, writer and publisher. I am grateful that I knew her.

The Cleansing White Fire Vortex 

The Cleansing White Fire Vortex meditation is one of the many reasons I loved Ted Andrew’s excellent book Psychic Protection.

This is a visualization to cleanse and revitalize the aura and the main energy vortexes of the energetic body commonly known as chakras.

In this meditation, I visualize a ball of cleansing white energy which ignites the power center above my head (crown chakra). As I exhale, the ball of light travels down to the front of my forehead. When I next inhale it enters the power center within (the chakra associated with “the third eye”). On the exhale it exits the back of my head and travels back to the top of my head. On the next exhale, it then goes to my throat (throat chakra), in that same triangle fashion. This cycling continues for each power center – heart, solar plexus, womb, below the genitals, knees, and feet. The final point is below my feet, at this point, I visualize the ball of energy splitting in two. One ball shoots deep down into the earth, like an anchor, the second returns to the crown chakra traveling up all of the chakras on route. Once it returns to the top it starts circling around my body. I like to imagine it increasing in speed and magnitude as it passes each chakra. I imagine it cleansing and pulling out any stuck “debris” whirling it into the vortex which is now pulsating with all this bright energy. Then, I imagine it spinning itself out, scattering anything it has picked up down into the earth. Ted Andrew says this is good psychic fertilizer for the earth and I love that imagery.

I find that this is especially a good meditation when I am worn out from over stimulus, but I like to engage this meditation for really no particular reason other than it feels like a terrific hot shower after a long or even satisfying day.

Discursive Meditation 

This method was not only described in John Michael Greer’s excellent book, The Art and Practice of Geomancy, but I was also fortunate to hear him speak about it in person.

The word discursive is used to describe an inner discourse. This meditation technique is particularly useful regarding magical symbols. I use it to further my understanding of the 16 divination symbols of Geomancy, a Renaissance and mathematical divination system I absolutely love (and of which John Michael Greer is the leading expert).

The geomantic symbols are simple and easy to hold in my mind, but if I’m working with a more complex symbol, such as a tarot card, then I place the card where I can comfortably see it. Then I just allow my mind to flow. Sometimes characters come alive from the symbol to tell me more about their meaning. Sometimes it’s a series of thoughts and emotions. Either way, I come out of it with a profound understanding of an element of that symbol.

I also use discursive meditation to explore abstract concepts. I have explored what courage, commitment, connection and a host of other topic mean to me on a uniquely personal level.

John Michael Greer suggested that when I catch my mind wandering off topic, not to simply refocus, but retrace the steps that got me off track. The reason for this is to further my development by studying the individual workings of my own mind.

 

The Tree of Life Meditation 

Geda Parma is a young man with an ancient soul. I was fortunate enough to meet him and was truly in awe of the power and the peace that radiates from him. He describes the Tree of Life Mediation in his book By Land, Sky and Sea.

In this meditation I focus on my feet and I imagine that my toes become roots. They start to grow down, burrowing into the carpet under them and piercing the cement foundations of my home until they find the reddish clay earth under my Illinois home. These toe roots continue to push through each layer of the earth’s core until they reach the fire of the earth itself. But as powerful and heated as this life force energy is, it doesn’t burn me, instead that energy fills each of these long and powerful roots with its pulsating heat. This energy travels back up those long roots, through each layer, back to the clay and cement and carpet and back into my feet. My body then continues to drink in the energy, alighting each part of it with the life force energy of the earth until it reaches my head. Then much like my toes became roots, I imagine branches growing from my head until they touch the stars.

This is incredibly healing to me, I absolutely love the feeling of being literally grounded to the earth. Once, I experienced what I can only describe as being as one with the universe. For a fraction of a second I had a glimpse into what was everything. But I collapsed quickly into awe, and it was gone. I have never been able to reach celestial heights since, but if that is not magic in its full magnitude, then I don’t know what is.

 

Witch Sight 

I found Robin Artisson to be a very difficult author to follow while reading his book Witching Way of Hollow Hill. I really had to press through the dream like pattern of his thought process, but he does have some really beautiful gems of knowledge to offer.

One of those is his Witch Sight Meditation. The first step is to allow myself to feel everything - to hone in on every sensation of touch from the very basic of temperature, to the easy to ignore, like the touch of fabric on my skin. Next, without letting my awareness of all those sensations fade, I then open myself up to sound – again from the overt - like the ticking of the clock in the room - to the faded distant sounds of the wind blowing through the trees in the park several blocks away. I don’t imagine what I hear, I just open myself up to everything that I can hear. It can be pretty surprising and it makes me wonder at the living universe that I am living in.

Artisson goes straight to sight next, but I think it is important to go through the senses of taste and smell. Particularly if I have incense burning, I like to explore the different scent notes in the air and how something so removed can affect the palate while I do nothing but sit and take it within.

The final sense to explore is sight. However the goal is something more than just seeing a clock, some fabric – it’s about a deep awareness. The first time I did this exercise I was actually hopping with anxiety! I think it was the intensity of it all. Away from meditation, it is so easy to filter what I experience. It’s a natural process to let some things fade into the background in order to better focus on something more specific. The goal of this mediation is to get me to achieve heightened focus with all of my senses engaged equally.

I keep a journal of all my meditation sessions. I find that if I write them down they are etched better in my memory. And if I still forget them, there is a record to peruse later. There is no doubt that I am more focused and grounded when I am keeping up with daily meditation. Truth be told I’m much calmer, more patient and generally a much nicer person. It helps me to see the possibilities in others around me, I experience deeper empathy, but in a calm way that does not overwhelm me. I am better able to help others if I am grounded in the present and open to the nuances of varied experience.

More than that, mediation shows me paths to try when I am feeling like I have lost options. It shows me possibility and probability.

My meditation is where my magic begins.