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.
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 Danger Within: A Critical Assessment of the Witch as a Monstrous Other
As walkers between worlds—that of life and death, here and the Otherworld, mundane and magical—the witch is naturally a monster. They also even traverse the lines between human and animal, with their ability to turn themselves or others into animals, thereby crossing even the border between the natural order of God and the unholy powers of the Devil.
I am Blessed, I am Damned: On Having Psychosis With Religious Themes When You’re a Witch
…psychosis with religious or spiritual themes is exceedingly common in those with this form of mental distress: the linked article above, from the website Living with Schizophrenia, explains that around half of people with schizophrenia will have some form of religious delusion at some point.