Over the last 8+ years, I’ve thought/talked/wrote/taught about magical resistance work a whole lot. And the thing I keep coming back to is this: the work we do at the local level that aids, builds, and protects community is the most essential and effective.
People have referred to me as “hex-positive” when talking about my general magic approach, but the reality is that magic is magic – and its effects are rarely easily sliced up into good/bad, heal/curse, etc.
People have asked my opinion of various public political workings over the years. I think there are merits & I’m not the kind of a**hole to disparage the sincere work of others.
Instead, I point out that I prefer to focus on working at the root level. That it is key to understand that what’s going on now has been seeded 30-50 years ago, and that is a model for cunning that needs both serious consideration and action. You have to get at the roots to pull something out and to start something new.
And when considering if I thought like “they” thought, that I would perhaps craft a protection that feeds on raw emotion: fear, anger, hatred, distrust, anxiety. That the harder someone tried to attack the target, the stronger it becomes. Much like a virus or bacteria that becomes harder to kill as it mutates. It’s not hard to imagine, nor is it anything new.
Technically, a lot of basic protection work is about transmuting energy to strengthen or repelling it back as a defense. Basic, yet crucial to understand and utilize in daily practice.
So IMHO, instead of hurling raw anger and aggressive attacks at a distant target that’s going to just feed on those efforts, transmute that energy within instead to strengthen your own goals, defenses, community.
This is not “love & light” work as some would be too quick to label. It’s dirt work: planting seeds, cultivating, pruning, and fertilizing within your local sphere of influence. There’s love here, but it’s fierce and resilient. There’s light here, but it illuminates and glares.
There’s darkness here too, because the dark plays an important role in germination, generation, and overcoming fear.
2025 is a Hermit year (2+0+2+5=9). The Hermit represents introspection, guidance, gathering wisdom, knowing when to lift up the lantern, and when to use the darkness to your advantage.
It’s also a Serpent year rising. Throughout the world, the snake is a symbol of creation and renewal, life and death cycling, protection and healing, primal wisdom unbound. The Serpent is both revered and reviled, just like Witches in many ways.
Lessons from both the Serpent & Hermit remind us to be wise and creative, daring yet stealthy, flexible and untamed. To not come from a place of kneejerk reaction, but of being both re-wilded-wise and responsive. Sovereign and steadfast.
Lift up your lantern, transform the rising power, and walk the serpentine path with wisdom, integrity, and resilience. We are Aradia.
(This short article I initially posted on threads late on 1-22-25. I collected the posts into one and then expanded some ideas and adjusted grammar to share it here.)
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