Lately, I have found it difficult to say the words “Perfect Love and Perfect Trust” without feeling the tightness of dissonance in my chest. I’ve been locked in a Witch’s crises of ethical reckoning. Not because I no longer believe in Perfect Love and Trust, but because I am witnessing, in real time, how far our collective culture has drifted from the conditions that make such unconditional love possible.
Witchcraft, at its core, is a practice of alignment. We align ourselves with the cycles of nature, the tides of the Moon, the turning of the seasons, and the living presence of divinity within all things. When the world moves in harmony with those patterns, there is a sense of rightness—a felt coherence between inner and outer worlds. I call that ease. When it does not, Witches feel the fracture as dis-ease.
For many of us walking this path, that fracture has become a societal condition that is impossible to ignore.
Across the United States, journalists, legal scholars, and human rights observers have raised concerns about the erosion of civil liberties, restrictions on bodily autonomy, widening economic inequality, gaps in healthcare access, the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers, and the accelerating impacts of climate change. These are lived conditions that shape whether human beings can exist with dignity, safety, and hope.
As a Witch, I cannot separate my spiritual practice from these realities. The ethics of my path demand that I look directly at the world as it is and ask whether it reflects the Divine Love I claim to serve.
REAL STAAR: Nine Divine Love Conditions
In Elemental Witchcraft, I offered a framework for understanding Divine Love as more than sentiment. These are material conditions through which the love of the God/dess becomes manifest in the Middle World. I call them the Nine Divine Love Conditions, remembered through the mnemonic REAL STAAR: Resources, Expression, Affection, Liberty, Security, Trustworthiness, Acceptance, Authenticity, and Reciprocity. This philosophy was revealed to me directly from Aphrodite, and I believe that when these conditions are present, humanity can at last experience the wholeness of “Perfect Love and Perfect Trust.” When these conditions are absent, strain is felt and fear emerges—and from that fear, harmful choices follow. If we use REAL STAAR as a diagnostic lens, the dissonance so many of us feel begins to make sense.
R — Resources
Resources, the most basic condition of survival, are increasingly unstable for large segments of the population. The cost of housing, food, and healthcare continues to rise faster than wages, while wealth concentrates among a small percentage of individuals. When access to the essentials of life becomes precarious, we are no longer operating within Divine Love, but within scarcity.
E — Expression
Expression—the freedom to speak, create, and be heard—is under pressure. Debates around censorship, book bans, and restrictions on education reveal a culture struggling over who is allowed to tell their story. When voices are silenced, the web of interconnection frays.
A — Affection
Affection is the freedom to form bonds of love, intimacy, and care rooted in consent. Ongoing political battles over reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ protections bring this condition into sharp focus. Love constrained by coercion or denied by law ceases to be love; it becomes a tool of control.
L — Liberty
“Liberty and justice for all” is meant to be more than a slogan. Liberty is the ability to shape one’s life in accordance with one’s will. When individuals lose agency over their bodies, identities, or futures, liberty is diminished. The fear of detention without due process or of state interference in personal autonomy erodes that foundation.
S — Security
Security is the assurance that one will not be subject to violence, exploitation, or deprivation. Reports on detention conditions, family separations, and the treatment of vulnerable populations have raised serious ethical questions. When people do not feel safe in their own bodies, homes, or communities, the circle of trust is already broken.
It is also within this condition of security and liberty that we must acknowledge ongoing public concern about the exploitation of human beings, including the documented reality of sex trafficking. Investigations connected to figures such as Jeffrey Epstein have raised broader questions about abuses of power and the vulnerability of those exploited. Whatever the scope of any individual case, the exploitation of human beings—especially children—is a profound violation of both liberty and security, and stands in direct opposition to Divine Love.
T — Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness is under strain in an era of misinformation, polarization, and technological manipulation. AI-generated media, scams, and deepfakes make discernment increasingly difficult. At the same time, repeated false or misleading claims within political discourse erode public trust. When truth itself becomes contested terrain, cooperation fractures.
A — Acceptance
Acceptance—the experience of belonging—is challenged when individuals are marginalized or excluded for who they are. A path that recognizes divinity in all beings cannot reconcile itself with systems that deny the humanity of any group. The lived reality of systemic discrimination continues to shape the experiences of many in this country.
A — Authenticity
Authenticity, the commitment to truth in word and action, is tested when deception, propaganda, or performative narratives replace honest engagement.
We are living in a time when truth itself is under pressure. The repeated circulation of false or misleading claims within political discourse—most visibly amplified during the Trump presidencies—has blurred the line between reality and propaganda. When verifiable facts are dismissed or reshaped for convenience, trust in leadership erodes, and with it our shared sense of reality.
R — Reciprocity
Reciprocity, the balance of giving and receiving, is strained within an extractive economic and ecological system. When wealth, labor, and natural resources are taken without equitable return, imbalance accumulates. The Earth itself reflects this imbalance through climate instability and environmental degradation. If we can’t rest easy in the sureness of our society returning back to us the same care and respect we offer to others, then the whole system of societal interconnection ravels into nothing. The Cooperative society of the Great God/dess is impossible without reciprocity.
The Moral of the Story
Taken together, these conditions reveal a disturbing pattern. The dissonance many witches, pagans, and spiritually attuned people feel arises from an intuitive recognition that the world we are living in is not aligned with the principles we hold as sacred.
Within Modern Witchcraft, divinity is known to be both immanent and transcendent—present within nature, within the body, and within one another. “An ye harm none, do what ye will.” If all beings are expressions of the Divine Mind, then harm to any part of the web is harmful to all. This perspective naturally inclines many practitioners toward values of equity, compassion, bodily autonomy, and environmental stewardship. What is often labeled as “left-leaning” or “woke” can, from this view, be understood as an attempt to uphold the conditions of Divine Love.
This does not mean witches are politically uniform, nor that spiritual practice can be reduced to ideology. It does mean that when systems of power undermine those conditions, many practitioners experience that as moral and spiritual dissonance. There are days when the weight of this dissonance feels overwhelming to me. Days when the scale of suffering seems too vast to comprehend and I drown in the ocean of despair. Most days the best I can manage is the retreat into my own private despair, coping through poetry, art, and simple tending of my family’s needs. But Witchcraft isn’t a path of avoidance. Or, not as I understand witchcraft, anyway.
Four Rules of Personal Sovereignty
In Elemental Witchcraft, I offered the Four Rules of Personal Sovereignty as a way to navigate this tension. I expounded on these ideas here. “Don’t Burn the Witch” reminds us to care for ourselves. “Don’t Be the Problem” calls us to ethical action. “Don’t Be the Weak Link” asks for responsibility. “Must Be Present to Win” insists that we remain engaged with reality.
Pithy as they sound, these are not easy instructions. “Perfect Love and Perfect Trust” requires a commitment to the cooperative world we are building. If the conditions of Divine Love are absent, then we must cultivate them where we can—in our homes, our communities, our relationships, our work, and the discerning use of our own voices and platforms. Let our spheres of influence become the places where Resources are shared, Expression is honored, Affection is freely given, Liberty is respected, Security is protected, Trust is built, Acceptance is extended, Authenticity is practiced, and Reciprocity is restored. We may not be able to repair the entire world, but we can refuse to replicate its harms.
“Keep pure your highest ideal, strive ever towards it. Let naught stop you or turn you aside.” – The Charge of the Goddess
In Perfect love and trustworthiness,
~Heron
If this perspective resonates, I invite you to explore the deeper foundations of this path in Elemental Witchcraft, join my on-line course at HeronMichelle.com, and subscribe to my Substack newsletter as I continue the work of living these principles in real time.
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