#4 Where does inspiration come from?
If you're feeling uninspired you need to read this.
(10 minute inspiration pep talk for subscribers — don’t forget to download the Substack app, the link is below. It makes it super easy to listen to these posts. Free subscribers never fear, you can read the pep talk below - but you should also get the APP because it’s fun and cool).
Dear Much Needed Voice,
I feel like the last couple of years has left many of us feeling uninspired. Everywhere you look on the social networks you hear people talking about grind culture. For me, I got used to staying home over the past few years and kind of forgot how to go out and have fun.
Stay home, read, work, work some more, email (and watch TV, lol, see my last post). But I’ve found myself feeling super stir crazy lately. And frustrated, hungry for inspiration - you know that feeling when you feel like your house is a prison you just want to break free of?
If you have inspiration, you have the energy and enthusiasm to create. Without it, everything feels like a chore. You’re not going to find inspiration in the place where the well has run dry.
Yesterday, I had a free day and I decided to go to a museum. I almost didn’t get out of the house because ADHD (you have to find your keys, you have to get dressed, you have to decide where to go, you have to make coffee first, you have to check your emails first, oops now it’s 4pm).
Anyway, I made it to the Hammer and within half an hour of looking at the artwork there, I felt inspired again. I had so many ideas I had to stop and sit on a bench and write them all down.
In the Fayerie Tradition of Witchcraft, inspiration is a LITERAL substance called awen. When someone is inspired the are called awenydd — possessed by the substance of inspiration.
The Spirit World, the Fairy World, the Otherworld (which are all the same place), are MADE OF this substance. And this Otherworld of inspiration overlaps with our own.
Our world is full of portholes to the Otherworld, obviously, there are Fairy Mounds, and stone circles, and all those things that the ancestors used, but there are many others as well.
Art is LITERALLY a repository of the substance of awen. When you visit art, you visit the FOUNTAIN of awen.
Some of you may find your fountain at the Opera, others in a meadow, others in the bed of your lover. There are many portholes.
But this message is just a reminder to you, if you need the substance of inspiration it is there and available for you. But you need to be like a bee, you need to go find it — especially if the well of inspiration in your home has run dry.
And here’s what’s REALLY cool, when you expose yourself to awen, it awakens a fountain of awen inside of you. And then YOU become a fountain of the sweet waters of inspiration from which the thirsty of the world can drink. I love that.
Please PLEASE leave a little comment and let me know where you go to get awen! I want to hear from you!.
Love,
Amanda
P.S. My Full Moon in Gemini Ritual is happening next Tuesday, 12/6/22 at 6pm PST — mark your calendars. The way to access it is by becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers stay tuned because the link will be going out here. If you can’t afford to become a paid subscriber right now, PLEASE email me. We will work something out, I don’t want anyone to be turned away for lack of funds. For those of you who CAN afford it, thank you so much for supporting my work. Your support helps me be able to focus on bringing forth my own awen to share with the world.
My visit to the museum helped me solve a problem.
In order for my work to thrive, I need to be visible on social media. Part of that means spending hours making videos or graphics in InDesign. Which means even more time every day spent in front of the computer - which for me feels like death. Which also means that every time I need to make a post I resist because I don’t feel like spending hours on InDesign not knowing if IG will hide my post or not and make it a total waste of time.
Also, my creativity just flows much better when I am working analogue, when I can feel my hand on paper, when I’m working with materials, when I’m not staring at a screen.
Being in proximity to awen at the museum, pouring forth from the artists that were there, reminded me: “Why the f*ck do you have to make graphics in Indesign?” “Why can’t you just draw them in your notebook, photograph them and post them?”
In my mind I felt like I had to make graphics to look profesh cuz otherwise people don’t take your work seriously, and then if they don’t take your work seriously they don’t share it and if they don’t share it then the algorithm ignores it and on and on.
But the thing that is most important to me about witchcraft is that it reminds you that you don’t have to do what the hegemonic powers of the world tell you to do. You can resist. And as long as it harm none, you can do whatever the f*ck you want.
So that is the awen I share with you today my dear witches, YOU ARE A WITCH, AND YOU DO WHAT YOU WANT, and you don’t have to apologize. Your awen is a gift, a secret spring that you offer the world, and I love you for it.
xo,
Amanda