magic | Path of She

You are viewing the "magic" Archives

Five Things You Can Learn From a Pagan

Posted on: Jan 8, 2023 @ 10:00 Posted in: Path Basics

In my mid-twenties, I was living a corporate, achievement-driven existence that neither fed my soul nor gave me joy. A series of synchronistic events conspired to wake me up and set me on a spiritual journey in search of the missing half of my womanhood and humanity.

My journey led me to Vipassana meditation, feminist graduate studies and new age spirituality. These were all powerful and transformative, and yet something was still missing for me: the feral, sensual, dreaming, witching, life-affirming sacred feminine.

One day it came to me: I am a pagan. This was the spiritual path that sang to my soul.

Paganism invites you to the realm of what else is true and possible. Take a little journey beyond the everyday and bring back whatever sings to your soul.

Paganism isn’t just about beliefs, it’s about stepping outside of the strictures of everyday reality and stepping into full-bodied experiences of the wild, magical world of what else is true and possible. After twenty-plus years of pagan explorations, these are five precious lessons that I’ve learned:

1. Life is delicious.

Paganism is a spiritual practice that calls us to a joyful, sensual communion with Nature and our bodies.

Take a walk on the wild side with your unruly, untamable pagan nature. Turn up your favorite music and dance from the inside-out. Eat a bowl of the ripest, sweetest fruit you can find. Make love to your partner as if you were made of one skin. Breathe the blue of the sky deep into your lungs. Spin yourself dizzy under the moonlight. Be radically, delectably, unapologetically alive!

Even in those bumpy times when your challenges and losses bring your down, remember that life is delicious and that there is always a brush of beauty to sweeten your sorrows.

2. The Earth is alive.

Paganism is defined by its earth-centered ethos. While our collective humanity has lost sight of the ways of the green world, pagans hunger to touch and be touched by the powers and splendor of Nature. And in this sensual, embodied exchange, we awaken to the living world.

Hang out in your favorite green space with your senses on high. Attune to your exchange of breath with the trees: their green breath of oxygen with your red breath of carbon dioxide. Open your flat palms toward whatever wild thing catches your fancy and sense the tingling meeting of your energies. Peer into the microcosm of a rotting log, with its teeming collective of interdependent inhabitants.

The Earth is alive. One web of life connects us all, breath to breath, and essence to essence. What your mind has forgotten, your body remembers.

3. The Goddess is everywhere, in everything.

I didn’t go looking for the Goddess. I set myself on the trail of my lost humanity and womanhood, and one day there She was, everywhere and in everything.

She is the burning ember of light interwoven with matter that shines forth in all living things. She is the unending, outrageous beauty of the wild world. She is the driving force that calls us to strive and struggle, and to grow and blossom. Her cupped hands hold us in the shifting seasons of our joys and sorrows, and life and death moments.

The Goddess’s deepest presence is love, not as an emotional state, but rather as the primal desire of life to seek out, create and nurture life. Through this love, all things are made holy and infinitely worthy. We are made holy and infinitely worthy.

Lift your face toward Her living light, open your heart to Her infinite love, take in Her green-drenched beauty and feel Her holy presence in your own shining soul, and know that the Goddess is indeed everywhere and in everything.

4. So without, so within.

Pagans celebrate the wheel of the year: eight sabbats that mark the turning seasons of Nature and their shifting balance of darkness and death with light and life.

Our life too is a shifting balance of light and dark, joy and sorrow, and life and death moments.

Ponder the seasons of your own life: the death-like times when darkness, sorrow and loss swallowed you whole, and other times when the sun was shining bright and life was rich and full. Dig deep and notice that the good things in life hold you in your darkest moments, and that your sorrows and challenges can make your high points all the more poignant and precious.

So without, so within; like the natural world, our humanity is woven of darkness and death, and light and life. And in this powerful truth, we can find our balance and wholeness in the face of life’s shifting seasons.

5. Magic is real.

Magic, in basic terms, is the ability to experience and work with the Mysteries (alternative states of being and knowing). Think of reality as a frequency dial that can tune into the astounding magical possibilities of the world around us: “normal”, everyday modes of consciousness fall within a specific frequency range; the Mysteries are engaged at different frequencies on the dial.

Pagan magic practices, such as ritual and spellcrafting, develop and deepen our abilities to turn the frequency dial and work in altered states of consciousness.

Be brave: turn that dial, step between the worlds and the Mysteries will show up, in all their wonder. Brave experience by brave experience, you can come to truly know that magic is real and a natural part of our humanity.

Don’t take my word for these things I have shared. Instead, think of paganism as an invitation into the realm of what else is true and possible. Take a little journey beyond the everyday for yourself and bring back whatever sings to your soul.

Artwork by:Stephanie Law

Check out Path of She book offerings in the Path Store.

The Yes Magic of New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on: Dec 20, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in: Path Basics

With the Winter Solstice, the new solar year has begun, followed closely by the turning into a new calendar year. Now is a time of endings that mark new beginnings, and the tradition of New Year’s resolutions.

With yes magic, your New Year’s resolution aligns the potent powers of desire and will through a specific intention to guide your spiritual pathwork in the year ahead.

New Year’s resolutions can be a catalyst for profound, soul-sourced change, drawing on the Path of She practice of yes magic. Yes is the most powerful magical word in our vocabulary. It’s a word that the Universe pays close attention to. Say ‘yes’ and doors of possibilities open. Say ‘yes’ from the depths of soul, and you can transform your life.

Right now, at this very moment, the power of yes magic is at work in your life. Every choice you make and action you take, consciously or unconsciously, is a yes spoken in the language of the material world that weaves the fabric of your everyday existence. This is powerful magic: you are, in effect, spellcrafting your life.

Yes magic is a form of spellcrafting that aligns the potent, twin powers of desire and will through a specific, consciously chosen intention. Desire is what you want, will is your ability to make things happen, and intention is the spark that ignites the magic between them, and sends this magic outward into the listening Universe.

When you make a New Year’s resolution, you’re focusing your will by setting an intention for the coming calendar year. This is a perfect opportunity to use yes magic in service of your personal and spiritual growth for the new year.

Making Your Yes-Magic New Year’s Resolution

1. Heed Your Soul Desire

Yes magic operates in the domain of soul, not surface-level needs and wants. To use yes magic for your New Year’s resolution, you start by turning your awareness inward, and seeking out the soul desires that are reaching for expression in your outer life at this time.

Take out your journal book. With a few full, slow, grounding breaths, settle into your body and empty your mind. Then focus your attention on heeding your desire for profound, transformative change in the new year.

Start by exploring your existing thoughts about change in the new year. What healing and personal transformation are you hungry for? What are your fears and hopes at this time? What new skills, knowledge, lifestyle enhancements and resources would you like to cultivate? Why do you want to make these changes in your life?

Then take a few more deep, grounding breaths. Let go of everything you’ve written, and imagine yourself slipping beneath these things you know, and the wants and whys you can readily name. What is beneath these things? What soul-based longings are trying to make their way into your conscious knowing at this turning into the new year?

When your journaling feels complete, put your writing to one side, and let your insights and discoveries percolate inside of you.

Connect With Your Will

Yes magic is also about being grounded in your everyday life, and working with the impetus for change that’s already present in your outer environment. Desire turns your awareness inward, seeking out what you want to change. Will’s job is to focus your awareness outward, and to drive change in relation to your existing life circumstances.

Now that you’ve heeded your soul desire for change in the new year, you next turn your attention to your will, and its connection to what’s happening in your life at this moment.

Place your hands on your abdomen, and anchor yourself in your will by tracking the movements of your breath in the rounding and flattening of your belly. Then expand your awareness outward to your greater environment, and the energies and events of your outer life.

Ask yourself: what’s up for me right now, and demanding my attention, positive or negative? What opportunities and challenges am I facing? What unusual or synchronistic events have come my way? How are these things revealing the personal change that’s ripe for me at the beginning of this new year?

Answers may come to you immediately, or you may want to let them brew for a day. When this activity feels complete, move on to step 3.

Align Your Desire and Will

Yes magic sources its immense, transformative potential from the alignment of the twin powers of desire and will. When you say yes to your soul desire, and fire up your will to make this desire manifest in your outer life, you’re tapping into the deep, foundational roots of spellcrafting magic. It’s like sending up an intense, focused beacon into the listening Universe, and activating its mysteries of manifestation in service of your personal transformation.

Close your eyes, and put one hand each on your heart and belly. With several full, slow breaths, imagine yourself connecting to your heart with its inner knowing of your soul desires, and your belly with its outer knowing of your will. Open to the meeting and mingling of the insights that came to you in your step 1 and 2 activities. Feel these energies come into alignment in the core of your being, with your will primed to service your soul desire.

From this powerful place, ask yourself: what is my intention for the coming year? How do I want to heal, grow and transform my life? Be specific and concrete. Know you can choose to change in big or small ways. What matters is not so much the size of the change, but more the depth of the vision and energies that you’re tapping into when setting your intention for the new year.

Move directly from this activity into step 4.

Craft Your New Year’s Resolution

From the insights and information that came to you in the prior steps, craft a specific, yes-magic New Year’s resolution.

Words matter. Your soul, will and the mysteries of the Universe heed the specifics of your intention. Speak in empowering terms, naming what you want to bring into your life, rather than what you want to get rid of. Keep your resolution simple and brief, yet also use words that have power and meaning for you, and that make your soul sing. Make sure there’s an action element to your resolution, something that you’ll do to help manifest your intention. Leave lots of room for the unexpected and the unknown, so the Universe can weave its manifestation magic.

An ideal New Year’s resolution would support and nurture the new direction of your personal and spiritual growth, without being overly directive or goal-oriented. For example, you could set a resolution to develop a new skill, knowledge area or lifestyle choice that would support and enhance your soul’s desire to take your life in a new direction.

Symbolic actions matter. Design a simple ritual that can charge your New Year’s resolution, and send its message outward into the listening Universe. You can create sacred space, light a candle, and speak your New Year’s resolution out loud three times. You can charge a symbolic object, like a piece of jewelry, an altar item, or a written affirmation that can be a touchstone to your New Year’s resolution yes magic as the next days, weeks and months unfold. Or you can come up with your own ritual that speaks to your soul and intention for change.

It doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as it’s symbolically connected to your New Year’s resolution, and anchors this intention in your soul, body and physical surroundings.

Release Your New Year’s Resolution

With yes magic, like all spellcrafting, you don’t grip tight to your intention. Gather up your presence, commitment and power. Charge your New Year’s resolution through your ritual. Then release your intention, setting it free to work its yes magic, as it will, in your life.

Change will come, but not necessarily change that you can control or choose. The potent alignment of your soul-sourced desire, outer-anchored will, and the mysteries of the Universe will bring you whatever you deeply, truly need to heal and transform your life in keeping with your New Year’s resolution.

For example, if your resolution is to become a more loving person, this might show up as a big fight with your mother. As counter-intuitive as this may appear, on a deeper level your heart might be blocked because of an unresolved issue with your mother. So the Universe delivers to you what you truly need: a conflict to heal your heart with your mother so you can continue on your chosen path of becoming a more loving person.

Yes magic and your soul have their own timeframes which can manifest change in an instant, or take a long time to unfold. In practice, the work of your soul is all about process, not outcomes. What matters is the depth of your engagement, not the speed of your journey or your destination.

Do Your Soul Work

Yes magic isn’t about words. What you do is your true yes, not what you say. Unless your actions back up your New Year’s resolution, nothing is going to happen, or more accurately, something will happen, but it’ll be in alignment with the yes communicated by your actions.

In the coming weeks and months, follow through on your New Year’s resolution by backing your yes words with yes actions. Trust that the challenges and opportunities for change that arrive on your doorstep are your work of soul. Embrace the negative and positive, the light and shadow, and your beauty and wounding, knowing that all these things are the makings of your personal and spiritual pathwork in the coming year.

And remember to look for the unexpected. With your yes-magic New Year’s resolution, you’ve activated powerful manifestation energies, and these energies will reveal themselves in the insights, dreams, issues, challenges and opportunities that come your way. Expect to be surprised, to dig into places that you’d rather avoid, and to be led by mysteries that you don’t fully understand.

Do your spiritual pathwork to the best of your ability, and trust that this is enough. With conscious awareness and commitment to your New Year’s resolution, you can change in profound, transformative ways, and become ever more masterful at the yes magic of spellcrafting the blessed gift that is your life and the living of your soul desire.

Photo Credit: Gaia Orion

Check out Path of She book offerings in the Path Store.

Winter Reading for the Holiday Season: Tale of the Lost Daughter

Posted on: Dec 6, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, Goddess

The Goddess is calling you home.

Long, long ago, in the unfolding of humanity, She was lost to us — Goddess, Great Mother — priestess, healer, wise one — the Divine Feminine within.

We became the lost daughters, cut off from one half of the Universe, our humanity, self esteem and our true Self: She who is wild, confident and untameable; She who is liquid sensuality and earthly pleasure; She who wields the powers of magic and mystery; She whose laws are love and the nurturance of all life.

And we have been wounded, hungry, incomplete, ever since.

In Tale of the Lost Daughter, step beyond the everyday and discover a pagan world of magic, ritual and the Goddess on a remote island on the Canadian West Coast.

Yet what has been lost can be refound.

Sarah Ashby, a rising, young financial executive, is a lost daughter.

Sarah appears to have it all: good looks, a fantastic career and affluent lifestyle. But, in the secret recesses of her inner world, she’s not happy or well, anxiety and depression lurk beneath her polished exterior. Then one fateful evening, Sarah has an emotional breakdown that jolts her awake to the longings of her soul, and propels her on a spiritual adventure to a remote, rugged island on the Canadian West Coast.

Here Sarah discovers a pagan world of magic, ritual and the Goddess, and the lost mysteries and beauty of her divine-feminine nature. What is lost can be refound. But Sarah must choose to step beyond the everyday, corporate world that she knows, and on to this new path of the Goddess, the Path of She. And by this choice, her life will be forever changed.

Let Sarah be your inspiration and guide.

Journey with Sarah as she dives deep into the healing powers of magic and the mysteries of Hecate, an ancient Goddess whose lost tales of She can return the life-giving ways of the Divine Feminine to the waking world.

Through Sarah’s tale, discover the lost parts of your own divine-feminine nature, and those awakening moments that can change your life forever. Like Sarah, the Goddess and your own soul will guide your way home to the things you hunger for: your wild, untamed, self-confident nature; sensuality, spiritual enlightentment and connection to the living Earth; the powers of magic and mystery; and the love and nurturance that are the essence of the Goddess.

The Tale of the Lost Daughter is calling to you. Come. It’s time. You are ready. You are ripe.

What Readers Are Saying:

I suggest everyone reads this book! First time read this book like the beautiful story it is. Then read it a second time slowly to start transforming your life. Kathleen

I’ve read Tale of the Lost Daughter two times, and will read it again. Sarah is me, or at least that’s how I felt as I followed her through her adventures. She is a businesswoman and a spiritual woman at the same time, and she learns to listen to her heart rather than just her head. I didn’t want to put the book down. Sherry

This is one of those books that makes the outside world disappear and you are completely immersed in the story, feeling every feeling as the story goes! Then suddenly you realize that sometime during the story, something so deep had been awoken in you, and you know, without a doubt, that you will never be the same! Jody

It is my belief that this book has come at a time when our planet is crying out for our love, and attention, and also the Divine Feminine is calling to us. It is time to heal our world, ourselves, and find a better way to move our world forward. The times of division, and hatred and greed are coming to an end. I highly recommend this to anyone who is feeling lost, disconnected, depressed, or who is searching for something elusive something you know you need but just cannot define. You may just find it here. Kelly

“Tale of the Lost Daughter” belongs alongside Starhawk’s “The Fifth Sacred Thing”, Marge Piercy’s “Woman on the Edge of Time”, and Alice Walker’s “Temple of My Familiar”. In a world aching for the sacred and a deeper connection to ourselves, community and our Earth, “Tale of the Lost Daughter” brings us an enchanted weaving of the universal story of the archetypal journey home. So too is it a beautifully crafted modern day myth of the return of the Sacred Feminine. Christina

Tale of the Lost Daughter Available in ebook and paperback--visit the Path Store.

Renewing the Craft of Magic

Posted on: Oct 10, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, Goddess

A fire burns at the center of our large, ritual circle, its saffron flames and feral sparks spiraling into the night sky. One of the teaching priestesses at Reclaiming witchcamp stands in the center, speaking of our ancestor witches, the powerful ones who practiced the Craft in the distant past. She tells us that their magical words and practices were lost from us; our lineages were destroyed through centuries of repression, persecution and the atrocities of the Burning Times. But the world has changed, and we are awakening and once more practicing the Craft of our ancestors, renewing what was lost and creating new traditions that can be passed on to future generations.

We’re the waking witches. The powers of the ancients still sleep in our cells and our souls. It’s time to return to our sacred heritage of the Craft of magic.

Then she spoke the words we use to cast our circle, “By the Earth that is Her body. By the Air that is Her sweet breath. By the Fire of Her bright spirit. By the Waters of Her living womb. By all that is Above, and All that is Below, our circle is cast. We are between the worlds. What changes our world, changes all worlds.”

Her words cut through me, with a mixture of pain and pride, for what has been lost and what we were collective rebirthing. We were now the voices of the ancestors, renewing the Craft and reweaving its mysteries for these times. I felt the power of our casting in the rippling outwards of the resonant power of the spoken words. There was a reverence in the air, as if the Universe itself, and all those that had practiced witchcraft before us, were sacred witnesses to our stepping into the empty space left behind by the ancient ones.

We are the waking witches. The magic of the ancients still sleeps in our cells and in our souls. Mother Earth is hungry for those who know how to dance Her mysteries. Our ancestor witches cannot go to their rest until we, their descendents, return to our sacred heritage. We are saplings once more reaching for the sunlit world, stretching our limbs, anchoring our roots and flexing our powers.

May we trust ourselves to renew and rebirth the Craft for the dire needs of the precarious edge our humanity and Earth home rides. May we hone our mastery in service of our souls and the world soul. May we serve the powers of life with presence, grace and humility. And may we grow strong and cast our circles wide and deep so what was lost can flourish once more in waking world.

Check out Path of She book offerings in the Path Store.

Path of She on YouTube

Artist: Melanie Delon (www.melaniedelon.com)

Magic Your Summer Reading: Tale of the Lost Daughter

Posted on: May 9, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, From the Tale, Goddess