You don’t need to be a 12-stepper to want serenity, courage, and wisdom. These things are most helpful for anyone! I wrote about my personal journey with sobriety and not-sobriety here. This was a spell I originally designed to support my 12-Step journey, but it is also perfectly appropriate for those with no history in a Program. You might be familiar with the “Serenity Prayer” (originally written in a slightly different form by Reinhold Niebuhr back in the ’40’s): God, grant... Read more
Some of y’all have been following along on the adventures of the Dirt-Heart family. Here’s the latest update. But first a little recap. In January of 2015, we moved from our home of 17 years. We’d decided to make at least a short term commitment to raising more of our own food, learning and growing more in the direction of sustainability. We moved from the mountains to the fields, from the 1800 sq ft single-family home, to the 450 sq... Read more
Previously, I have shared a couple of exercises and meditations from my book, The Secret Country of Yourself: Discover the Powerful Magic of Your Endless Inner World (Llewellyn 2017). Here’s some more good juju for a fresh start… Values and Virtues When you begin the magic of cleansing and aligning yourself with your true will, often you will find that there is a downside to your heavy spiritual practice. The discrepancies between how you think you are (or would like... Read more
Winter is hard. Especially the start of the new year. The holidays take their toll, even when they’re really good times. And after the holidays, there is the cleaning and putting things away and then everybody goes back to work. We’re not really thinking about self-love. But this time of year can be very good for workings that help us to connect to our best selves, to clean off all the accumulated detritus and start thinking and acting more skillfully... Read more
A few years back, I pitched the Secret Country of Yourself to a Llewellyn Acquisitions Editor at Pantheacon. She thought the idea was intriguing and asked me to submit a proposal. I started to created the proposal, freaked out, and stopped. A couple months later, my friend Jason Mankey asked if I’d like to contribute something to his new book, The Witch’s Athame. I said, “Sure!” and wrote a couple little somethings. After this book was published, I received a... Read more
When my daughter was very young, she loved Snow White. I did not, for a plethora of reasons. Read more
Practicing avoidance of deep feelings means we don't have that fire available to put toward our creativity. Read more
Here we are in that most excellent time of year, Lammas, which means berry-cherry-peach-nectarine-lemon-orange time! Where I live on the central coast of California, lots of local vegetables are available year-round, but not so much with the fruits. And first fruits + heat of summer = perfect fermentation. Many folks know that I abstained from alcohol for 20 years because of some truly terrible behaviors in my youth. During those many years, of course, I’d grown and matured and figured... Read more
Joy is our birthright. I believe this. As cells in the body of God (or organisms in the ecosystem of Gaia) we get to be healthy and whole, whatever that means in our particular case. We are precious, every one of us. Joy generally includes some feeling of happiness or contentment; in its highest expression, it is Grace, that sense of all-is-right-with-the-world, imperfect and broken as it is and we are. It can be activated by physical sensation: opening... Read more
At this lovely time of year, I like to use this transformational ritual as a way to center myself within desired change. Now y’all know I love to write about (and experience!) the Elemental powers, so this ritual uses those connections as a deep reminder that we are truly one with them, kith and kin. It was originally designed to be used as a self-led welcoming and intention-setting for folks just arriving to a retreat. The prayer/poems were on the... Read more
Dirt Heart Witch
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