Book Review: ‘Aries Witch’ by Ivo Dominguez Jr. and Diotima Mantineia
Astrology is an area in which I am lacking in knowledge, beyond knowing a bit about what’s in my own chart, but I know it reaches deeply into each and every facet of life, witchcraft and spiritual practice included. So a book entitled Aries Witch? I just had to have it. I am delighted to say that this pull was for a good reason, and not just because the book is a visual work of art in its inner design. Throughout, the effect of an Aries Sun on how you might practice witchcraft, what will come more naturally to you, and how you can develop by harnessing the fiery, cardinal power of Aries and its ruling planet, Mars.
Why Some People Shouldn’t Do Shadow Work (At Least Not Yet)
However, there is a cost to this self-fulfilment. Facing the Shadow inevitably means facing parts of ourselves that we do not like; they were repressed into an unconscious personality for a reason. These are the parts of us that we would find the most disgusting, the most difficult to confront, and the most triggering.
“Does This Unit Have a Soul?”: The Problem of Using AI For Spirituality
Generative AI, as already stated, is not ensouled. It isn’t even artificially intelligent in the way this is typically described. It just spits out what it calculates as what you want to know. It is not a divinatory tool; it is a prediction machine.
Who Would Worship a Rapist?: How Literal Myth Reading is a Part of Rape Culture
While I would never claim that the gods are perfect—perfection, in my opinion, is an impossibility even for them, even if they do approach it much more than any human could ever—I would not attribute distinctly human evils to them. Not only does this dishonour them, it props up a rape culture that tells us that rape is simply a part of life, regretable but not something we can actually do much about.
Folkism: What Is It and How Do We Avoid It?
Basically, every tradition has a fascist element. This is because fascism is prevalent in our society. Just like Christianity and other religions, all forms of paganism will have fascist sects. Rather than tarnishing these religions with a brush of paint that symbolises that they’re all ‘evil’ or some such descriptor, we should instead acknowledge these elements and think about what we can do to undermine them at every turn.
Words to Live By: Audre Lorde’s ‘A Litany for Survival’
I also think about the word “speak” and how it could be replaced with “act”. We should take action for the things we care about, including making a more equitable world. But this applies to our witchcraft, too. We are not supposed to be here, but here we are, and with our magic, we can properly take a stand.
Invoking Balance: Why We Need to Complicate the Light/Dark Binary
Darkness has come to mean things in culture, often through metaphor, just as light has. But has the association between darkness and light as a binary opposition which then maps onto such concepts as fearful/awesome, evil/good, death/life, rebellion/order, primal/spiritual and others always been so? Well, in short, no it hasn’t. And is it a quite innocent practice to create these socially constructed oppositions? Again, no.
The Gods Get Their Hands Dirty: A Revivalist Approach to Ritual Purity in Hellenic Polytheism
The more I have learned about the gods, the more I have learned about the things they rule over. As I have looked into this, it has become more and more apparent that these domains are filthy, in spiritual terms.
The Gods Stand With You, Even in Defeat: Fascism, Crises of Faith, and Spiritual Allies
I will not tell you how to grieve. But I wish to share some UPG (unverified personal gnosis) on why the gods may not have been able to give us the result we want, and why they still stand with us in our fight against tyranny and oppression. Perhaps this may offer at least one person comfort.