Why your intentions aren't working...
Plus an invitation to today's Live Chat at 12pm PST.
Inside: a discussion on how to set intentions; why witches are the visionaries our world needs right now; the wisdom of Mystery Cult — a subscriber shares a tip for “moon water”; and get the text for the Reading Group next week!
Also, the voice over for today’s oracular message (newsletter is a very unsexy term, let’s go with oracular message for now) is longer than the written message because, well, I go off a bit - so for those of you who enjoy that, have a listen).
For witches transformation happens “on yes.”
Just wanting to “get away” from something we don’t like isn’t enough to reliably power a lasting change.
Change can only happen if we have a vision for what we want to become. Our desires give us the WILL to change.
This is true both personally and politically. We all need to be holding a strong vision of the world we want to be moving towards. It will help us move past inertia into action.
Holding a strong vision is a gift we witches can give to our communities and the world.
Together, our collective vision can be a star that guides our way forward.
Rather than moving away from a world of relentless colonial violence, we can move towards communities based on cooperation and mutual interdependence.
Rather than moving away from relationships with narcissists, we can move towards relationships founded in care and deep listening.
The same goes for work. Would you rather escape from your evil boss or partner with colleagues who genuinely enjoy relating to and honoring each other as human beings?
I know which one I’d choose.
The trouble is, setting intentions for what we want to call in isn’t always that easy, we often run into a common set of problems…
Every month, we have a community Live Chat on the Substack app to discuss what we’re working on in our witchcraft practices.
(Note: our next Live Chat is TODAY at 12pm PST — pop in and say hello! Substack APP.)
Last month during the Live Chat, we discussed how to set intentions.
For instance, we noticed that our…
Petitions (intentions for our spells) need to be more specific. Petitioning for happiness is less likely to work than petitioning for more picnics. You could have a picnic tomorrow - easy peasy!
We also discussed how, when we’re not specific about intentions we usually have unexamined reasons for that, for example…
part of us might feel like we’re not allowed to get what we want
we might feel like we’re asking for too much
we actually might want something else than what we feel like we “should” ask for
if you can relate to any of these, leave a comment!
None of this is wrong or bad. It’s simply information we can use next time we’re putting our intentions together.
We refine our spells through repetition, patience, and practice. The good news is, those things help us with everything in our lives!
Here are some more things we discovered about magic together:
daily practice is not a competition, and there’s no punishment if we do it wrong, it’s low stakes: the better we get at it, the more satisfied we feel
doing daily practice well takes time and patience
like any other craft (knitting, playing guitar) being able to transform reality according to our will (that’s what magic is!) is all about muscle memory, you just need to practice to get good at it
it’s important to identify how we’ll know when our spell has been accomplished - it’s easy to be abstract, but we want to be able to identify our conditions of satisfaction. (“I will know I am happy … when I go on a picnic” vs. “I’m not sure what happiness is but I will know it when I feel it, err, fingers crossed”)
Another great thing that happens at our Live Chats is that folks share their successes and spell recipes. For instance…
Mystery Culter Larva X Shared an Awesome Abundance Spell With Us…
She said she wrote out a petition for what she desired and then, “waved smoke on it to “cleanse” it and then sprinkled moon water on it with my hand. Repeating, “What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine. May I open my heart to all that is divine. Abundance flow in, abundance flow out. May I have enough, to share with those without.”
Isn’t that great? Just in case you were ever wondering to do with that Moon Water. Now you know! Thank you, thank you, Larva X!
If you want to join us for the Live Chat today at 12pm PST, we’ll be talking about Ancestor Magic, ancestral legacies, “curses” and blessings — and an “Ask Me Anything” about magic.
Don’t forget to download the Substack APP if you haven’t already, then just click the chat button (it looks like thought bubbles) at the bottom right hand corner.