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 assumed it was something that everyone experienced.

It wasn't until my teens that I learned 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" move 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 communities 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 as if everything had consciousness or was connected by our actions between each other. Doctors could not provide an explanation so I went to religions. I met various religious leaders to understand what a "spirit" was (and was kicked out of a couple of church's just for asking questions) I found them fascinating, but none really landed for me or felt right.

As time went on, 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. I suppose I was 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 come 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, so I reached out to some of the local botanicas and an elder at a local nation to help answer my questions.

I was pointed in a direction to figure out what nationalities my grandfather came from. I went on an ancestor journey and met with various elders from different cultures and backgrounds learning 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.

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 and learned our spiritual history together. Then, in 2019, he asked me to be his High Priestess. This was a very foreign concept to me, and frankly I hated how cliche it sounded. For the most part my practice had been meditation, dream work, developing my psychic skills, exploring my ancestral ways with the occasional westernized spell in the spring or on a new moon. I began to meet other spirit guides of mine and understood each of their roles in my life. I 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.

I found real world value in the work, where 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.

This led me to meeting a medium who worked with law enforcement. Together we worked to help with missing person's cases, which was pivotal to learning to trust my intuition and how to use it in tandem with my OSINT skills.

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.

When I started to use TikTok I realized the sheer amount of misinformation on the internet about nature-based spirituality and how many people take up the craft to fill the hole that the good parts of Christianity left behind, clinging on to the western way of thinking that could hold them back from their practice. I decided to learn the western way of spirituality/occultism 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.

Up to this point I never really accepted the title "Witch" or even "High Priestess" I just saw myself as a spiritual atheist. Because of public visibility though, I accepted the title of "witch" to remove the stigma around 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 supporting one's own community.

This led to new westernized spirits showing 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.

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 it's 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 to her and magic. I vowed that I would teach others how to navigate the liminal, to help them in their practice to create 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.

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.
I view plants as medicine, animals as our siblings, and ecosystems of consciousness as deities. Spirituality can be treated and taught by observing nature and 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. Using the universe as a body analogy. I believe King Belial is the name I put to the physical body of the universe. Hecate is the name I put to the physiology of the body of the universe. He is the structure; she is the process. When I psychically tune in, they look like people to me, but that is my human brain making sense of something far bigger than I truly understand. (I realize Belial carries demonological history, I am not using it nor do I believe in it. Demons are how Christian occultists indexed the spiritual side of the universe to villainize anything that was not their god, this includes pagan gods and eco systems of consciousness)
- 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 and affect our shared reality. 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 our brain is a navigation tool to explore and influence spiritual space.
- Ethics: My ethics are consequentialist. Nothing is wrong because of what it is. It is wrong because of what it does, to whom and inside what relationship. There are some things that are close to absolute though. Closed practices and reciprocity are my two closest views on this. Closed practices are closed because specific tools, spirits, ancestral initiations carry relational obligations. Violation happens because there are real parties on the other side of that relationships who did not consent. Reciprocity I think is a bit self-explanatory, if being kicked is something you don't want to happen to you, your evidence that it's bad is that doing it unprovoked is shitty and not defensible. If someone kicks you deliberately, harming them back is available to you. Baneful magic is acceptable in my practice. If someone breaks the relationship first, they change the dynamic. The unit of judgment is based on the situation. The concept of "good vs evil" and "spiritual warfare" are not a thing to me. Nothing carries moral weight as a property of itself. There is one body. It does not wage war on itself, it regulates, creates balance, and corrects by self-reflecting then learning and growing.
- 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 we can integrate or reincarnate.

Spiritual Hygiene:

When it comes to cleansing me, I like egg cleanses, gin 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 or an entertaining audiobook.
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, floramancy and aeromancy etc. You name it, I've probably experimented with it at some point.
I believe divination is an instrument, not prophecy. We read the current conditions, recognize patterns, and provide guidance and advice on how best to navigate.

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 draw to me, or create.

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 using the planet 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, experience, learn, the better you can navigate the mind. If you don't use it, you tend to default towards collective behaviors.
I create a mind palace in my mind. This is an active space that I go to every night or during a reading. These are stable psychic environments I make that when an external spirit comes in or I call in, the environment changes helping me discern the difference between my mind, and the subconscious of what I'm channeling.
I mostly prefer to use my gifts to provide guidance/advice and teach other's how to develop their own abilities. I'm not a fan of predictive fortune telling. While we can make safe guestimates based on pattern recognition, the current energy can always change and lead to a different destiny. I do not find it constructive.
I rarely choose to channel the dead that aren't my own loved ones. When I do it, it's in service to my community and those who need it when the timing and situation is right, not for money as I said above. It's mainly to help find missing peoples. If a family member comes through on a service I won't hide it, I simply don't offer it as a service explicitly for profit. If you do have a missing person and you are trying to find someone, feel free to email me and I'll see what I can do. I typically bring it to a group of seers, psychics and mediums, and find the through line to help give you direction on where to look. We make no guarantees of anything but do our best to provide another path if your trail has run cold for free. I also recommend reaching out to TraceLabs a non-profit that helps find missing persons using OSINT.

My Spirit Team:

Hekate - She appears as a woman specifically she looks like the way I picture Manon from Throne of Glass without the teeth, when I asked why she looks that way to me, she clarified that 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 are not a magical practitioner, she will look like an archetype of a matriarch of great importance or an animal guide.
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. To me he looks like a very tall man 6'4"ish in a suit, long black hair and tawny skin.
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 it's because I respect death? He's never come in my dreams the way the others have.
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 her in my garden by 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 to me, and communicated similar to how Hekate does with me.
The spirits of the canids, hummingbirds, snakes, monarch butterflies, narrowleaf milkweed, orchids, aloe, roses, pothos and anubias.

Unique to me:

Eubub - He looks like a green dragon. He usually facilitates the relationship between me and my ancestors and often comes in during times of great distress to provide comfort. I've asked him what he would like readers of this to know, "embrace dragon magic" I don't really know what that means, honestly. When I figure it out, I'll get back to you, but I suspect it has to do with your ancestors.
Fred - I don't know what the heck he is, my current understanding is that he is a friend from a past life potentially from another planet in another era. I don't even think Fred is his real name; it's just a name that I use to make sense of our relationships. I associate the name with a close friend of mine I had when I was younger around the time he showed up. He kind of looks like White Jesus.
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 whose appearance looks human adjacent it's 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. Other 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 could be a deity tied to shapeshifting or is/was once a being perhaps not of this world. I witch friend of mine has described her as the collective consciousness of an extinct bird species. Its very unclear.
The wolves - Subconscious constructs of my living relatives, they are essentially tulpas created to psychically read my family to check in on their wellbeing. If something seems off with one of them, I check in on that family member. They do not verbally communicate. They function like a pack of wolves.

(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.)