The Animal Guide You Didn't Know You Needed...
A Venus Day Love List
A Venus Day Love List, and meditation on what you need to do to avoid tossing yourself into an abyss of anxiety. Also includes an invitation to art witches of the UK, a podcast recommendation, an animal celebration, and the meme you didn’t know you needed right now.
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I don’t know how much you’ve been watching the News or on Social Media since Monday, but… it’s a total shit show. I’ve mostly been avoiding it.
Everywhere I look there’s hysteria, panic, mayhem. The world is on fire and bathed in blood.
It makes sense that people are afraid of what happens next.
Whatever meager, even laughable corporate precautions the Democrats had in place, we know the evil clown Republican party will be worse because…
… they don’t even pretend to care about anything but “the economy.” (i.e. rich people’s investment portfolio) and they’re willing — enthusiastic even — about throwing the most vulnerable people and ecologies under the bus if it helps them get their way.
Our fear and anxiety is justifiable AND/BUT if we give ourselves over to it, our dread only helps our enemies.
Our enemies — I don’t use that word lightly — are the people and forces who mean to harm us and the people/ecologies whom we love.
Every time I go on social media I feel a riptide of fury and fear that threatens to pull us out and drown us in it.
But witchcraft, on the other hand, gives me faith and hope, because…
… witchcraft is the spirit of nature that flows through all things. Witchcraft is the force that swings the stars through the Milky Way and gurgles with the waters of every creek. Witchcraft is the life force, and the life force knows what it’s doing.
I don’t mean to imply that the violence and ecocide we’re seeing today — which is a continuation of the colonialist, supremacist violence we’ve seen for centuries — is all “part of God’s plan.”
I’m not going to spiritually bypass you like that.
I’m saying that the life force that flows through all things is a force we all have access to, INCLUDING YOU, and we shouldn’t let our enemies distract us from the work we’re here to do for the good of all.
We shouldn’t just hand over our life force to the evil clowns like they’re a bully taking our lunch money.
But, if we’re not panicking and pouring our life force down the bottomless well of distraction, what SHOULD we do?
We need to listen to our desire, not our fear. Our desire will guide us.
I’m not saying it will be easy.
Listening to your desire means looking in your heart and paying attention to your longing. Your longing is a gift from the life force that can tell you what direction to go, even when you’re confused and scared.
If we all listen to our longings, our true, deep, AUTHENTIC longings, we will do what is necessary for life on earth to thrive.
And THAT is what witches are: we are keepers and tenders of the life force. We mobilize our energy to keep life thriving. That is our purpose.
But each of us will do that work in our own way, according to our own true will.
The trick is to be able to listen to that will. Because only if we listen do we know the right direction to go.
BUT…
…it’s difficult to listen to our true will when we’re being distracted, overwhelmed, exhausted, and pulled in a million different directions by our corporate overlords who want to convince us that our true will is related to improving our position in relation to capital.
THAT is why we practice witchcraft.
Because the MAIN SKILL of witchcraft is listening to the wind of our longings. Our longings will guide each of us in the right direction.
The thing is, even though each of us has our own wind, it’s important to remember that we are being moved FOR THE GOOD OF ALL.
Which means, we also need to be seriously, deeply, devotedly IN COMMUNITY or we run the risk of deluding ourselves that our personal self interest is our true will. Which it isn’t.
Our true will can never be purely self-interested, because we are part of the ecosystem, not separate from it.
Our true will can never be to do something that is not in the best interest of the larger biosphere.
[Note: this is one of the many ways we know the Orange One and all similar evil clowns are not following their true will. Because they’re acting against the biosphere. Which means they’re slaves to their fear, and are trying to convince the rest of us to sell our souls to Fear as well.]
Our true will is always and must be in service to the collective.
And it is through our longings that the Anima Mundi (the life force, the spirit of the world, who is known in witchcraft as Hecate) communicates and directs us to the very thing that is most needed from us by the world, for the benefit of the all.
Even if we don’t understand how or why our work may be of help.
If you want to talk more about this with me personally, you can book a 1-1 appointment. (Remember Founder’s subscribers get 10% off)
Or do the work in your monthly Witch Guide (below) to strengthen your true will-wind listening skills.
But in the meantime, I leave you with a love list of fun things related to the discussion above. Because I love you, and in honor of Venus, goddess of love, whom we all adore.
Yours in gratitude,
Amanda
I love this quote by the poet Philip Booth…*
“I strongly feel that every poem, every work of art, everything that is well done, well made, well said, genuinely given, adds to our chances of survival by making the world and our lives more habitable.”
As soon as I read it I knew I wanted to share it with all of you. When you follow your longing, your true desire, and do your work as best you can, you make the world better. You might not know how, you might not understand it. But you DO!
*Booth is quoted here from Ronald J. Pelias’ essay, “Performative Writing As Scholarship.”
Beavers teach us how to manage apocalypse anxiety…
…I always think of beavers and talk about them with my clients. Beavers are so important to ecosystems. They’re a keystone species. Beavers create pools of water that attract fish and insects, which attract birds, who bring seeds for new trees. Beavers make ecosystems thrive. But my guess is, Beavers aren’t thinking, “I’m going to put this branch right here so I can replenish the water table.” They’re just following their desire. And so it’s the same for you! You don’t need to know exactly why or how your True Will is going to work. Leave that to the life force. Just follow your true will, and you will be doing the thing you need to do to help our world live its best life! Just make sure you’re doing it in service of community.
Also…
…Beavers don’t have it easy, they face hunting and habitat loss. But we too have our challenges!
Beavers are not constantly being distracted from their true will by Instagram and told that what they really need to do is lose weight, or make a million dollars by next Tuesday, or drop everything they’ve been doing to advocate for unhoused people so they can argue about if a billionaire did a fascist salute at the inauguration.
I honestly believe that when we get quiet, and listen to our clear, unmediated connection to Spirit (like we’re supposed to do in the Hermit year), we will hear the call of our true will! Huzzah!
The Orange One is Nothing… Focus on Your True Will
The quote above was made famous in 2017 when one of MLK’s daughters reposted it from someone else on Facebook the first time 45 came into office.
It’s important for us here because it reminds us not to center our lives on the whims of billionaires.
They don’t merit our time or attention. I don’t even want to say their names. I don’t want to look at their faces or hear their voices.
Instead, I want to focus on building my beaver utopias.
Have you seen that video of the rescue beaver building a dam across a hallway using stuffed animals and a Christmas tree? (You’re welcome!)
45 is nothing to that beaver. We need to be more like them. We just need to stay focused on creating the world we want to find. Be like a beaver!
The Oracular is a Creative Act - a podcast episode
Many of you have mentioned that you miss my podcast Between the Worlds coming out every week, and I miss sharing with you! Luckily, I have something wonderful to share with you now if you’re in the mood for auditory art witchery: this gorgeous episode of the Moon to Moon podcast (which I highly recommend if you’re in the market for excellent astrology podcasts!) where I sat down for an interview with the brilliant astrologer and art historian, Britten La Rue.
We talked about art, magic, and how to create with words and intentions. Join us here:
Attention Art Witches of the British Isles!
Can you get to Scotland on July 26th?
I’m going to be holding a one-day workshop on July 26th in Edinburgh with my incredible collaborator, the poet Rebecca Sharp, on working with ritual and poetry to activate creative potential.
In this workshop you’ll learn to write a sonnet (a poetic form traditionally used as a vessel for creative energy) and then work with them magically as offerings to your muse (AKA your imagination!).
I’m so excited! It will be my first workshop in the UK. So please do share this post with anyone you think might be interested.
More on this workshop soon, but in the meantime, reserve your spot here!
Did you forget to download this month’s Aquarius Season Witch Guide?
Inside this month’s Aquarius Season Witch Guide you get:
A downloadable PDF with tools to help you listen to your heart, let go of whatever you’re exhausting yourself fighting, and ground in the time of global weirdness
Journal prompts for Aquarius Season
Aquarius Season tarot spread
A spell for trust and letting go
Suggestions for somatic practices for grounding
Suggestions for your Book of Shadows (including prompts for Card of the Year and Hermit Year)
Correspondences to use on your altar, in your bath, in your daily life
Creative and ecological prompts
A link to an excellent text on astrology
Transfer texts for your Book of Shadows
and more, all in the subscribers section below!