MY STORY

My story begins like most people in this space. As a child I could see things that many others could not. Growing up in western culture I was told, "It's just in your imagination," as I got older, I learned it was something more. For as long as I can remember I could see something interact with things, usually in times of trauma or when I needed it for heightened awareness. I thought it was something that everyone experienced.

It wasn't until my teens that I learn that there was something more to it. In the late 90's I watched Charmed and Practical Magic like most teen girls at the time I tried doing a spell, and I could see that "thing" moved with it. This became a constant experiment. I did some investigating and the closest thing I could compare it to was animism or spiritual energy. Much of what I witnessed with energy in spell work is what I could see on larger scale with similar energies. When working with plants and animals I discovered they have their own language if you simply understand our energetic connections and examine the patterns as this unseen force animates the world around us.

Now I wasn't raised with religion, my family mainly spent time sharing stories, embracing their respective community and celebrating those we care about. I was fortunate to grow up in a blended family with various cultural and religious backgrounds, but what truly brought us together was storytelling and gaming.

And while we got along, my parents were essentially kids having kids. As life got difficult with them, and I found myself being bullied more and more at school, I started to really struggle emotionally. I noticed a particular man would visit me in my dreams. He would counsel me and provide support.

I assumed he was my subconscious with a face. But then he told me that "another spirit" was going to come and help reconnect me with my family. When he called himself a spirit, that is when I decided to understand what spirituality was. I was an atheist, I viewed the spell work I was doing more like a science experiment and that magic was something that scientists hadn't discovered yet. A few times I had encountered ghosts but explained them away. The only thing that was for certain was that I could see this energy. I believed that the energy I could see was likely something similar to synesthesia with music, but instead of visualizing music, I was visualizing emotions and how they interacted. It made me view the world like everything had consciousness or was connected by our actions between each other. This was when I decided to seek religious answers. I went to various religious leaders to understand what a "spirit" was (and was kicked out of a couple of church's just asking questions) I found them fascinating, but none really landed for me or felt right.

As time went one, I continued to do magic as a way to self-improve, create focus and ritual around my goals, and to connect with plants and animals. I believed it was a way to bio-hack my brain to undo the unhealthy habits and coping skills I learned as a kid, and essentially reprogram new, good habits. Tricking myself into having some sense of control. And it worked! I landed a dream career, met the love of my life, and formed an amazing group of open minded and supportive friends.

And then the man in my dreams did something beyond what I could explain. He told me that my biological grandfather was not my mother's father, and that I needed to learn my true grandfather's migration story. Around the same time, my mother had gone to a psychic. She told her that we comes from a long line of "mavericks and witches." If there's anything my mother and I love, it's a good story. "Wouldn't it be fascinating if it were true?" We got DNA tests and sure enough, he was not her father! He appeared to be mixed Native Americas (Mexican and North American) So I reached out to some of botanicas and an elder at a local nation to help answer my questions.

He told me a few oral traditions from his nation, and pointed me in a direction to figure out what nationalities my grandfather came from. I went on an ancestor journey and learned where my lineage came from. I met with various elders from different cultures and backgrounds and learned the stories that had been lost to me, bringing them back to my family.

One story in particular stood out. It was, a migration story. When we migrated we encountered diverse cultures and people, and some of whom were not of this world. When we blended with these people it gave us unique ability. Abilities that I was experiencing.

This completely shifted how I viewed "spirits." Initially I believed they were fragments of our mind, or memories of our loved ones. What I learned was that there is something far more beyond our shared understanding. I became obsessed with figuring out who and what this man was in my dreams and challenged him many times to prove to me he was more than a figment of my imagination. He obliged. As I got to know him, I learned that he had been worshipped under different names among different cultures and discovered his personality and identity was broken up and reclassified as "demons" by the Church.

As we worked together, I began to understand who he was in other cultures and learned our spiritual history together. I began to meet other spirit guides of mine and understood each of their roles in my life. I developed my psychic ability better, did exercises to understand how I could see energy better, and experimented with different practices from my ancestral cultures while continuing to compare my lived experience and development with structured western ones. I kept what worked and discarded what didn't.

Then, in 2019, he asked me to be his High Priestess. As someone who was not raised in religion I didn't understand what that meant and frankly hated the cliche behind the title. For the most part my practice had been meditation, dream work, exploring my ancestral ways with the occasional westernized spell in the spring or on a new moon. I would use my psychic ability in my day job. At the time I was a threat investigator at a global video game company and was able to use it to help find missing children, discover the identity of cheat developers and to help find the PII for someone online who showed signs of potentially harming themselves so that a wellness check could be performed. I was taught that if one has a gift, we should use it in service to our communities.

I spent the next two years trying to understand what being a high priestess meant for me, and ultimately I agreed. Then the unthinkable happened, he showed himself to me, corporeal, in a human form. Again, my world was rocked, and I realized we, people, genuinely do not understand our reality as much as we think we do. And I started to surrender to the idea that perhaps non-human intelligence is far more expansive than we realize.

It is around this time, that I started TikTok, and realized the sheer amount of misinformation on the internet about magic, nature-based spirituality and how many witches took up the craft in response to fill the hole that the good parts of Christianity left behind, and they cling on to the western way of thinking that could hold them back from their practice. Or being open enough to connect to new ways of being. I decided to learn the western way of spirituality, Abrahamic religions and occult western esoteric magic so I could bridge the knowledge between non-western spirituality and western, to deconstruct the new age scene and provide a way for others to develop their practices that is unique to them, their lifestyle and beliefs. My goal is to challenge western belief and embrace the natural rhythms of the universe. But only could do so, if I accepted the title of "witch" to remove the stigma of the word, to show the world that the thing that once villainized healers, and female spiritual leaders is just a different way of navigating the mind and community.

And then new westernized spirits showed up. Artemis appeared while I was navigating a difficult pregnancy. She showed herself as a deer who would demonstrate to me what I was supposed to do to get me through it. When she ate, I ate, when she was in distress, I knew I needed to go to the doctor. And when I was in labor, she coached me on how to feel my body and respond to doctors. After I had my daughter, she moved on a few months later.

And then Hekate came in. Which, timing wise was incredibly appropriate. She expanded my understanding about magic, beyond the woo woo. She has taught me that everyone is capable of it as its a fundamental part of nature. She helped me understand my psychic ability and discover my love of tarot. As I work with her I realize its primarily over our common goal of deconstructing what colonization has broken and our shared connection to King Belial. This relationship led me to become a Votaress of hers and magic. I vowed that I would teach others how to navigate the liminal, the world between worlds and help them in their practice to manifest the reality of their dreams.

Today, I would say I am still an atheist despite how I label myself. I don't believe deities are these all powerful omnipotent sky parents. They are cosmic forces, ecosystems of consciousness within our reality, and sapient (some even sophont) people from other aspects of the universe, they are cosmic family, no different from us, after all we all made by the same crucibles that created the stars.

Today, my practices looks like this:

Cosmological Perspective and Philosophy

I believe that everything is connected through relationships to one another.
I view spirits where they are not separate from the physical world, but extensions of a single, flowing life-force. A life force, I believe I can see in my mind's eye.
I view plants as medicine, animals are our siblings, and ecosystems of consciousness as deities. Spirituality can be treated and taught by working with physical allies both human and non-human alike.
For the scholars, here is the best way I can describe it:
- Cosmology: Personally established.
- Ontology: I am monist where matter and mind are co-primary and neither are derived from the other. To a philosopher of religion, its closest equivalent is Spinoza's one-substance view but I reject the rationalist scaffolding.
- Theology: I'm non-realist about deities, but realist about how they are indexed. Deities are culturally constructed interfaces to real energetic patterns that tie to different cosmic forces or collective behaviors. How people perceive them has real world impact therefore they are "real" by proxy to human behavior because our relationship to one another affect us all.
- Practice: Animist and folk-rooted. It is learned though observing how energy moves through nature and travels within nature's cycles. If science is the physical universes way of searching for the closest answer to the truth. My practice looks as the spiritual universe's way of searching for the closest answer to the truth. Where many believe the brain generates consciousness, I believe we are processors of consciousness and is a navigation tool to explore and influence spiritual space.
- Ethics: My ethics are consequentialist rather than essentialist. There are near absolutes on how we should treat one another. For example, Closed practices are closed because of relational obligations attached to specific tools, spirits, and ancestral initiation. If someone kicks you and you don't like it, why would you kick them back. If someone harms you intentionally, you can harm them back. They may contradict each other because each scene
- Eschatology: I believe that the self is reabsorbed into a networked collective self, rather than individual survival. When we die our consciousness reconnects to our higher self and the we can integrate or reincarnate.

Spiritual Hygiene:

When it comes to cleansing, I like egg cleanses, and ritual baths.
When it comes to cleansing my space, I do it with old fashioned elbow grease mixing plants that correspond with spiritual cleansing with my cleaning supplies. I open windows for some sunlight and play feel good music. I only smoke cleanse if I'm doing a ritual outside.
For protection magic I prefer spelling amulets. And put up other protections on full moons.
I work with plants and animals as spiritual allies and wards.

Divination:

I pay attention to natural omens and divine through the environment. When I do it within my garden, I call it hortimancy.
I use divination tools for personal insight and reading for others. Tarot & Bibliomancy happens to be the most accessible, and what I enjoy for professional reads, but I've used Pokémon cards, bone throwing, charm casting, fire/water scrying, tasseomancy, aeromancy etc. You name it, I've probably experimented with it at some point.
I believe divination is an instrument, not prophecy: current conditions plus my subconscious read.

Sacred Space:

My garden, my home, natural spaces, my mind palace. There are many places I find sacred. I do keep devotional altars to Hecate and King Belial, but for the most part my practicing altar is anywhere in my home, from my kitchen counter, to my bathtub. My stairwell honors my family, my vanity honors my higher self.

Spell work:

I prefer to spell objects and consumables. Energy is in everything so spell work to create magic can be done with anything.
My go to is to create a talisman for energy I want to attract.
I also sow seeds of plants that correspond with energy I want to manifest.

Rituals:

On the new moons I dedicate that time to work with Hekate while honoring my magic or doing spell work. The holiday I honor her is "The Procession of the Key" the new moon closest to the spring equinox.
On full moons I dedicate that time to work with Belial, and focus on my self improvement. The days I honor him is the Winter Solstice (as a nod to demonolatry's day the rite of Belial is celebrated) and Valentine's day (the day that Belial likes most energetically.)

Celestial Timing:

For spell work I focus on astrological timing so that results can be monitored, analyzed and documented as a time tracking tool for data analysis.
I use western astrology when it comes to examining life changes and interpersonal dynamics through astrological synastry.

Psychic Ability:

I believe everyone has psychic ability, like anything with our bodies the more you practice and refine, the better you can be at it. I truly believe knowledge is power, the more you read, the more you learn the better you can navigate the mind. If you don't use it its harder to do and you can lose it.
I rarely choose to channel the dead that aren't my own loved ones. When I do its in service to my community and those who need it when the timing and situation is right, not for money. If one comes through on a service I don't hide it, I simply don't do it explicitly for a service.

My Spirit Team:

Hekate - She appears as a woman specifically she looks like the way I picture Manon from Throne of Glass, when I asked why she looks that way to me, she said she comes to practitioners in a form that most makes sense to them and how they view the epitome of what magic is if they aren't a magical practitioner is. If they are not a magical practitioner she will look like an archetype of a matriarch of great importance.
King Belial - I've called him "The Storm" or "Venom" a majority of my practice. Historically he's been worshiped as Tyr or The Carian Zues. He looks like a very tall man 6'4"ish in a suit, long black hair.
Azrael, The Angel of Death - He comes around during major change. I haven't really done enough work with him to really make a judgement of his purpose. When he is around he feels like a process/robotic, a parsed embodiment of the universe? It's not like a cosmic force or fabric of the cosmos. I really struggle to explain him. Someday I may feel inclined to research Enochian work. Perhaps its because I respect death? He's never come in my dreams the way the others have. He's just there.
Artemis - This was a temporary relationship, she came around during my pregnancy and helped me with childbirth. She has since left, but I still honor in my garden by work planting pollinators for the bees as a thank you. Anecdotally and I mean no disrespect to anyone who works with her, I wonder if she is an epithet to Hekate, as she's never shown herself in a human form, and communicated similar to how Hekate does.
The spirits of the dog, hummingbirds, snakes, monarch butterflies, narrowleaf milkweed, orchids, aloe, roses, pothos and anubias.

Unique to me:

Eubub - He looks like a green dragon. He usually facilities
Fred - I don't know what the heck he is, my current understanding is that he is a a friend from a past life potentially from another planet in another era. I don't even think Fred is his real name, its just a name that I can understand and associate with a close friend of mine around the time he showed up. He kind of looks like White Jesus or
The bird - I don't know her name, she typically comes in when I need survival instincts or being protective of my child. She doesn't talk except for once in a dream where she thanked me for speaking on behalf of shapeshifting practices. I see her as a woman who's appearance looks human adjacent its like her skin is all skin colors freckled and marbled that shifts around with a blue/teal glow to it, she looks like she could be from any ethnicity. The odd thing is that she has laugh lines and expressive wrinkles, but she still looks young. Others seers who read my spirit team have described her as a bird, or are equally confused as to what she is. I suspect that she is a deity tied to shapeshifting or is/was once a being perhaps not of this world.
The wolves - Subconscious constructs of my living relatives.

(I give all these details that many wouldn't in the hopes that if anyone has similar experiences that they would share. I am truly intrigued by The Bird and if anyone has seen a similar entity please reach out.)