LESSONS IN MAGICK: Guard Your Flame

August 3, 2026

There has been a lot happening in the Witch and greater Occult communities.

Even beyond these spaces, if I’m being honest.

There are so many intersections, adjacent communities, overlapping conversations, and places where all of this bleeds into one another.

I digress.

This isn’t about one particular event.

And it certainly isn’t about any particular person.

It’s simply a friendly reminder of a few things I think some folks have lost sight of:

1. Protection Magick is necessary Magick.

Make sure you have a solid plan.

Offensive. Defensive. Preventative.

Know the difference.
Know what you’re doing.
Know why you’re doing it.

And for the love of all things Holy and Unholy, don’t wait until you’re already in the fire to figure out how you’re going to protect yourself from it.

2. Mental health is Spiritual health.

Maintain proper Spiritual hygiene.

Take care of your mind.
Take care of your psyche.

Hydrate.
Eat well.
Move your body.

Take your medications.
Take your supplements.
Meditate.
Go to therapy.
Rest.
Get outside.

Do the mundane things that keep your vessel functioning.

Your mind is part of your temple, too.

You cannot continually neglect the human being while trying to tend the Spirit.

3. Flow like water through a stream, but stand like stone beneath the current.

Create your own opinions.

Build a foundation beneath them strong enough that nothing, and no one, can simply shake you from it.

But remain willing to change.

Be willing to listen.
Be willing to encounter an opposing idea without immediately treating it as an attack.

There is an extraordinary amount of rage bait, manipulation, misinformation, disinformation, Spiritual projection, and psychological noise circulating right now.

Whether you call it psyops, propaganda, Spiritual warfare, algorithms, or simply the internet doing what the internet does best, be mindful.

Be mindful of what you consume.
Be mindful of what you amplify.
Be mindful of what you allow into your psyche.

Because energy is power.

So ask yourself:

Are you giving yours away freely?

4. Discernment in all things.

This one should speak for itself. I say it often enough.

Question everything.

Seek until you find an answer.
Then seek some more.

And more.
And more.

Use your intuition.
Use logic.
Use facts.
Use evidence.
Use your lived experience.

And yes,
use Spirit.

But don’t abandon one form of knowing simply because another feels more comfortable.

Intuition without discernment can become projection.

Logic without intuition can become rigidity.

Faith without questioning can become dogma.

You need all of your faculties.

Use them.

5. To thine own self be true.

This might be the most important one.

We live in a world of (as aforementioned) algorithms, echo chambers, outrage cycles, manufactured consensus, and endless noise.

Everyone has an opinion.

Everyone has a platform.

Everyone has an answer.

And somewhere underneath all of that noise is your own voice.

You must learn how to hear it.

Because for many of the things we question, we already know the answer.

We’ve simply forgotten how to listen.

More importantly, we must become brave enough to trust ourselves.

To take the leap.

Even when it doesn’t make sense.

Especially when it doesn’t make sense.

Follow your path.
Follow your beat.
Follow your flame.

You do not need permission to become who you are.

You do not need consensus to know what you know.

You do not need the crowd to validate the path beneath your feet.

For you are the fire.

Lux in Tenebris Lucet

The Fire Beaneath the Bones

July 27, 2026

Suffering
is not
a requirement
for life.

Nor is it
the price
of Spiritual evolution.

It is simply

one destination

along a road

few would choose,
yet many
will someday
walk.

The Plutonian Healer
does not seek
the Underworld.

She simply knows
what to do
once she arrives.

She descends.

Again.
And again.

Not because
she is broken.

Not because
Spirit delights
in suffering.

But because
there are medicines
that only grow
beneath the earth.

The world teaches us
to fear
the darkness.

The Plutonian
knows better.

She enters
the belly
of the Underworld
with empty hands
and returns
carrying fire.

She learns
that grief
isn’t punishment.

Rage
isn’t failure.

Loss
isn’t the end.

They are Crossroads.

Every death
asks a question.

Every ending
demands
another name.

The Plutonian Healer
does not emerge
without scars.

She emerges
speaking
the language
of those
still trapped
below.

She remembers
the pathways.

The hidden doors.

The monsters
that were never monsters —
only abandoned
pieces
of herself
waiting
to be loved
without illusion.

This is why
people find her
when life
falls apart.

She does not
flinch
at ruin.

She recognizes it.

She has built
Altars
from ash.

Gardens
from graves.

She has learned
that compost
and resurrection
have always shared
the same soil.

Do not mistake
her tenderness
for innocence.

She has dined
with Death.

Sat beside
Grief.

Held hands
with Madness.
Walked home
with Shadow.

And still,
she chose
Life.

Not the polished,
performative version.

The wild one.

The blood-soaked,
root-bound,
earth-scented
miracle
of becoming.

Because the Plutonian Healer
knows
what few Healers ever will.

The Underworld
was never
her prison.

It was
her apprenticeship.

Lux in Tenebris

Jaclyn Cherie

Blood Remembers

July 21, 2026

Her presence triggers me.

It cuts deep.

Memories flooding
that old ache
I keep convincing myself
has finally gone quiet.

Then she walks into the room

and suddenly
I am every age
I have ever been.

She is my home.

My safe place.

My refuge from the storm.

She is also
the storm itself.

She is both

curse

and cure.

Burn

and balm.

How can one Woman
be the place
I run toward
and the place
I have spent
my life
trying to outrun?

This is the inheritance
of Mothers and Daughters.

We are stitched together
long before
either of us
learns
how to speak.

Bound
by blood.
By bone.
By memory.

By the unspoken language
of Women
who carry one another’s
grief
inside their own bodies.

I see her.

Not just
the Mother.

The little girl
she buried
to become one.

I see
the fear
she swallowed.

The dreams
she folded away.

The love
she never learned
how to give
without it first
passing through
her own wounds.

And because I see her
I ache.

Not because
it excuses
what hurt me.

That she hurt me.

But because
love becomes
far more complicated
when you can trace
the wound
back through
the Women
who carried it
before either of you
were born.

People want
simple stories.

A villain.
A victim.
Someone to blame.

But life
rarely offers us
that simplicity.

Sometimes
the Woman
who broke you
is also
the Woman
who held you
when the rest
of the world did not.

Sometimes
the safest place
you’ve ever known
is also
where your deepest wounds
were first named.

This is the impossible
geometry
of Mothers
and Daughters.

The centuries-old question:

Who hurt whom more?
Mother?
Or child?

Perhaps
that is the wrong question.

Perhaps
the better one is:

Who was hurting first?

Who carried
a grief
so Ancient
it forgot
which generation
it belonged to?

I do not know
where she ends
and I begin.

Perhaps
that is the tragedy.

Perhaps
that is also
the miracle.

Because even
when I rage,
even
when I retreat,
even
when her presence
awakens every scar
I have fought
to heal
I still know
she is bound to me.

And I to her.

Not by obligation.

Not by guilt.

But by something
older than language.

Older than memory.

A cord
neither of us tied.

A love
neither of us
has always known
how to carry.

So I will not ask
who wounded whom more.

I will ask instead

How do we become
the first Women
in our bloodline
to love each other
without bleeding
quite so much?

The Woman Who Broke The Spell

July 19, 2026

Some wounds are generational.

They connect us
through unspoken bonds
of blood,
bone,
and memory.

They are inherited
like old recipes,
family heirlooms,
and names carved into weathered gravestones.

Except no one speaks
of these inheritances.

Only the silence.

Only the tightening jaw.

Only the little girl
who learns to apologize
before she knows
what she has done wrong.

Only the mother
who loved
the best she could
with hands that were never taught
how to hold themselves.

I used to believe
the mother wound
was born
inside one Woman.

I know better now.

It is older than her.

Older than her mother.

Older than the grandmother
whose laughter
was swallowed
by survival.

It travels.
From womb to womb.

From daughter to daughter.

A ghost
wearing
different faces.

We inherit
the unfinished grief
of Women
who were told
their hunger
was dangerous.

Their anger
unbecoming.

Their voices
too loud.

Their bodies
belonged
to everyone
but themselves.

Until one Woman…

says:

No.

Not because she hates
the Women who came before.

Because she loves
the Women
who will come after.

Do you know
what it costs
to break a generational curse?

Everything.

You become
the family disappointment.

The difficult one.

The Woman
who asks forbidden questions.

Who names
what everyone else
has learned
to survive by denying.

You mourn
people
who are still alive.

You bury
versions of yourself
that were built
only to keep
the peace.

You become
the fire alarm
inside a house
that has grown comfortable
with smoke.

And no one
thanks the alarm.

Not at first.

Breaking the curse
is not beautiful.

It is ugly.

It is blistered hands
pulling roots
that have wrapped themselves
around your spine.

It is learning
that forgiveness
does not always
mean reconciliation.

It is discovering
that compassion
does not require
your continued sacrifice.

It is standing
at the edge
of your bloodline
and saying:

It ends here.

Not because
I am stronger
than my mothers.

But because
their prayers
finally found
a body
willing
to answer them.

Perhaps
I was never born
to carry
this pain forever.

Perhaps
I was born
to become
the threshold.

The Woman
who looked
an Ancient wound
in the eyes
and refused
to pass it
to the next generation.

This is how
the spell is broken.

Not with perfect love.

Not without grief.

But with one battered hand
reaching backward
to bless the Women
who could not escape
while the other
reaches forward
to children,
to daughters,
to sons,
to every future soul
I will never meet,
unburdened.

Because I chose
to carry the wound
only long enough
to teach it
how to become
an ending.

Jaclyn Cherie

WAR CRY OF THE SURVIVOR

July 16, 2026

They told me to heal quietly.
To make my pain palatable.
To speak in soft tones and careful language.
To forgive before the wound had stopped bleeding.

To be gracious.
To be grateful.
To be anything but angry.

But anger was the first honest thing I had felt.
It arrived like a wildfire through dead timber.
Like a Goddess with blood on Her hands and justice in Her eyes.
Like a howl clawing its way from the deepest part of me.

You called me victim.
I became witness.
You called me broken.
I became weapon.
You called me ruined.
I became revelation.

What happened to me was real.
The terror was real.
The violation was real.
The grief was real.

And so is my rage.

My rage is not a flaw.
It is the part of me that knows I deserved better.

The part that refused to die.
The part that stood guard over the ashes and
whispered:

“No more.”

No more silence.
No more shrinking.
No more carrying shame that was never mine.

I return every ounce of it.
Every lie.
Every burden.
Every poisoned seed.

Take it back.
It belongs to you.

I am done carrying the weight of another’s violence.
I am done apologizing for surviving.
I am done making myself smaller so others can remain comfortable.

I am not what was done to me.

I am what survived.
I am the fire that remained.
The blade that did not break.

The voice that rose from the wreckage.

And when I speak now,

it is not with trembling.

It is with thunder.

Jaclyn Cherie

The Nephilim Rising
Girl God Books

All Rights Reserved.

My second poem from the upcoming release, Spells for Survivors: Returning to the Holy Her

Pre-order at:

https://www.thegirlgod.com/spells_for_survivors.php

Do Not Give Them Your Fear

July 16, 2026

I have a million other things to be doing right now.

Yet Spirit has reached into the quiet,
wrapped its unseen hand around my wrist,
and whispered…

Write, child.

Because someone is forgetting.

Someone is standing at the Crossroads,
convinced that fear is the only language left.

It is not.

So hear me.

Not as a Prophet.
Not as a Saint.
Not as someone untouched by darkness.

Hear me as one who has walked through it.

Who has swallowed ash and breathed fire.
Who has slept beside grief.
Who has learned that monsters are not always found in forests, dark corners or beneath the bed
sometimes they wear familiar faces,
sometimes they echo inside our own minds.

Hear me as one who knows that Shadow
is not the enemy.

Fear wants you to kneel.

Despair wants you to forget your own name.
Silence wants you to mistake survival
for surrender.

Do. Not.

Do not give them your fear.

Do not feed the machine with your Spirit.
Do not offer your terror as tribute.
Do not become the architect of your own cage.

Your fear is Sacred fire.

Guard it.
Transform it.
Temper it until it becomes resolve.

To every Witch who has ever hidden their Altar.
To every Soul whose existence has been treated as an inconvenience.
To every Seeker.
Every exile.
Every strange child who learned too early that the world does not always welcome those who refuse to fit neatly inside its smallest boxes.

I see you.
I have always seen you.

The road beneath your feet has never been easy.

It was never meant to be.

We descend because wisdom waits below.
We speak with ghosts because they remember what Empires forgot.

We carry bones, herbs, Cards, prayers, scars, and stories because every generation leaves breadcrumbs for the next.

We are not born from comfort.
We are born from remembering.

Remember who you are.

Remember those who stood before you when the fires burned hotter than they do today.

Remember those who whispered prayers beneath their breath when speaking aloud carried consequences.

Remember those who buried their books,
hid their symbols,
passed Sacred names from trembling lips to willing ears,
believing someone,
someday,
would continue the work.

You are that someone.
And so am I.

Darkness has always existed.

So have we.

The night has never belonged solely to those who wield power.

It belongs to the owl.
The wolf.
The Ancestors.
The dreamers.
The Witches who know that every seed first breaks open beneath the Earth before it ever reaches the light.

We are children of thresholds.
Liminal Spaces.
Students of endings, and beginnings.
Keepers of impossible hope. Not the fragile kind that pretends suffering isn’t real, but the fierce kind that looks directly into the Abyss and refuses to become it. We study it.

No one is coming to save us.

Perhaps that has always been our greatest strength.
Because we remember how to gather.

How to tend the Flame.
How to bind one another’s wounds.
How to laugh in the face of uncertainty.
How to sing while surrounded by ruins.

That is Magick.
That is Alchemy.
Not escaping the darkness.
But becoming so familiar with it
that it no longer tells you who you are.
You are united as One.

So let them have their fear.

Let them build kingdoms from it if they must.
We will build something older.
Something that cannot be legislated away.
Something that cannot be silenced.
Something rooted in memory,
in courage,
in Spirit,
and in the wild, untamable heart that still beats beneath every scar we carry.

Stand.
Breathe.
Remember.
Then walk forward.
Not because you are unafraid.
But because fear was never meant to be your Master.

Do not give them your fear.

Not today.
Not tomorrow.
Not ever.

Remember who you are.

The Temple They Could Not Take

July 16, 2026

They called it necessary.

Clinical.
Routine.

As though language could bleach the blood
from memory.

As though white coats
were incapable of carrying empire
beneath pressed collars.

In 2008,
they cut the seat of my power
without my consent,
because somewhere,
buried beneath textbooks,
protocols,
and signatures,
a Woman
was, is, still considered
an acceptable experiment.

Laws made against my body.

Decisions made for me.

Hands that never learned
the difference
between healing
and permission.

By 2012,
my Womb was gone.

A room in my Temple
emptied by strangers
who would never have to haunt
its silence.

And afterward…

I ran.

Not because I was weak.

Because prey learns
the shape of pursuit
long before predators
learn mercy.

I ran from hospitals.

From fluorescent lights.

From waiting rooms
that smelled of antiseptic
and forgotten prayers.

I ran from every echo
that reminded me
what it feels like
to have your body translated
into paperwork.

But there comes a day
when the hunted
stops measuring the distance
behind her
and remembers
the fire ahead.

Listen closely.

They mistook my scars
for evidence of defeat.

How little they understood
the language of Witches.

These are not wounds.

They are sigils scorn into my skin.

My sacred scars.

Each one
an initiation.
Each one
a threshold crossed
without a map.

I no longer ask
why I was made
to walk through fire.

I ask instead:

What was forged there
that could not have been born
any other way?

They took some organs.

They did not take
my abilty to Create.

They mistook flesh
for power.

But power has never lived
inside a single chamber
of the body.

It lives
in the voice
that returns.

In the Soul
that refuses
to become
what violence imagined.

It lives
in every Woman
who gathers herself
from the places
she was told
she would never bloom again.

Do not pity me.
Stand beside me.
See these scars
for what they have become.

Not disfigurement.

Consecration.

Not absence.

Alchemy.

Not the ending
of a story
but the crossing
of a threshold.

I am no less Sacred
because my Temple
was altered.

If anything,
I know now
that sanctity
has never depended
upon untouched stone.

It depends
upon the flame
that still burns
inside the Sanctuary.

And mine,

Mine has learned
to consume
every name
they ever tried
to give me.

I am no one’s experiment.

I am the Woman
who survived
the hands
that mistook themselves
for gods.

I am the scar
that became scripture.

The threshold
that became a road.

The fire
that remembered
its own name

and burned it
into eternity
until even the stars
learned how to pronounce it.

BOOK REVIEW: Spirit Work Primer

November 16, 2022

I receive a lot of messages, comments and the like asking all kinds of questions, but mostly they’re from folks seeking advice.

By far, the number one question I receive is: Where do I start on my journey to Spirit Working?

I find that people are confused about how to find a Deity.

Let’s pause and address THIS.

-You do not need a Deity

-In my humble opinion, They find and choose you

-Your journey will lead you to them (Examples: S*xual A*sault, death and pain led me to Hekate; Asanas and practicing the 6 Branches of Yoga fully committed as a Hindu led Kali to me who paved the way for Shiva through Her dance of destruction)

Carrying on..

Folks don’t know how to Evoke or Invoke and when to do which; I personally do not engage in the latter because of a pact I made with another Spirit.

We each have our own paths to walk and Practices to well, practice.

Spirit Work itself is a broad term, but it means working with Spirits.

This could be anything from a God, Goddess, to a Daemon, or an Angel.

There are many classes of Spirits and different definitions depending on Tradition, individual opinion and personal, lived experiences.

So where do you begin? How do you start?

It’s really overwhelming and not something that can be summed up in a blog or fb post.

Jason Miller recently put out an excellent book called, Consorting with Spirits: Your Guide to Working with Invisible Allies. I will be reviewing it in the future.

The thing I must say about Miller’s book (he’s one of my favorites and most influential Authors) is that he wrote it for people that already have a Magickal foundation established and honestly?

I really appreciate that.

I think it’s incredible to have books that appeal to novices and adepts alike; I like that there are books for novices only; I like that there are books for adepts only.

They can all exist, and they are all (mostly) worthy.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with writing to experienced Practitioners. I started reading it and was like, “Oh, oh, thank f*ck”.

That said, there is a book that has kind of slipped through the cracks and I believe it’s noteworthy.

I had not heard of it before, and when I did and I started reading, even though it is specifically for NEW PRACTITIONERS, I found it exceedingly interesting, and it helped refresh some things for me. Not in a redundant way, either.

I never felt like I was being spoken to like a child, and I found the entire thing educational and that, my friends, is why I am here.

The Spirit Work Primer: A Beginner’s Guide to Streamlined Spirit Work by Naag Loki Shivanath, published by Crossed Crow Books. This is a revamped, second edition from the original 2017 publication.

Image Source: Crossed Crow Books/fb

I highly recommend it if you are interested in working with Spirits but have no clue where to begin.

Covered topics are:

The Basics of Spirit Work, The Nature of Offerings, Spirit Senses, Magickal Invocation, Magickal Evocation, The Nature of Spiritual Pacts, Spirit Possession, Familiar Spirits, Spirit Keeping, Isolated Spirits, Created Spirits, Spirit Houses, Spiritual Self-Defense and Cleanup, Grimoire of the Thorn.

Publisher describes it as follows:

“Invocation, Evocation, Possession

These words conjure forth feelings of unease and confusion for many magical practitioners, even today. This book, however, is a fantastic guide intended to shed some much needed light on these often misunderstood subjects. Within these pages, spirit worker and necromancer Naag Loki Shivanath serves as guide and teacher, taking all readers through a sophisticated yet highly practical system of spirit conjuration. If you’ve been interested in learning how to sharpen your spirit senses, safely practice spirit possession, work through spirit invocation and evocation, then this tome is the book you’ve been waiting for.

Whether you are a follower of the more ritualized manifestations of the magical arts or a Witch looking to deepen your practice with the spirit world, A Spirit Work Primer will prove to be a valuable resource that is referenced time and time again.”

This is a book that is not specific to any one Tradition or path, and the Author never shames the Practitioner for the path they walk.

This is an informational guide on Spirit Work.

I will say, and this may be my only critique, the Author brings up Gender in Practice, and the way it’s worded could’ve been better. I don’t know if I agree with associating give and take (in pact work) with the masculine and feminine manifesting.

“The Principle of Gender

At last, we reach the final law, stating: “Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles: gender manifests on all planes.” This law speaks to more than just your anatomy, however. This law speaks to the fact that nothing is without balance, and that everything that is generated or regenerated consists of both masculine and feminine energies: light and dark, fire and water, air and earth, and so on. To see how this principle applies to pact working, consider that for every desire you create a pact for, you have to give something up. You have to balance the scales, or else Spirit will not deliver on their end. This forms the circle of give and take, the manifestation of male and female.”

I agree the scales must be balanced. I agree that in pact working for it to be successful you must sacrifice something; as mentioned above, I don’t agree that it is masculine and feminine manifesting.

All in all, this is an excellent book and should be talked about more.

Most importantly, it should be read.

You want this in your collection.

Musings of a Modern Mystic: Witchcraft is Political

February 11, 2022

It has been one year, two months and 20 days since I have sat down to write a blog.

I have not stopped writing; I write posts on my personal page, and the NR fb page. I have also worked on some writing projects.

The blog felt like it needed to rest.

Like it needed to be in chrysalis as badly as I did.

Emerging is scary, emerging in a new form, scarier still.

But here I am with my first blog in an awfully long time to talk about a topic that is much overdue.

A topic I have discussed many times in comments, or a few sentences here and there on the page.

As I move and shift this space to a Collective of writers, instead of just myself, I am inspired more than ever to push the limits. I am inspired to talk about what nobody wants to talk about, or topics that will surely get me trolled.

Bring it on, I say.

I am not here to make you comfortable, and I am done trying to have comfortable conversations.

Comfort gets us nowhere; it will only bring stagnation.

So, what is it exactly that I have to say that is going to get everyone in a tizzy?

I don’t often make generalized or absolute statements, there are simply too many variables and moving parts to any equation in this vast universe that I am careful what I say and how I say it.

This, however, needs to be spoken as an absolute.

Here it goes:

Witchcraft is political.

Witchcraft. Is. Political.

WITCHCRAFT IS POLITICAL.

I can hear it now, the cries and whimpers like, and I am using direct past quotes that have been said to me:

“Don’t bring politics into my Craft!”

“I don’t read your work to read about politics and social issues. Please don’t become *that*.”

“Witchcraft is not political, humans are. We don’t need politics here.”

Privilege.

P R I V I L E G E.

It’s privilege to be a Witch and say that you are not political, to ignore injustices because they “don’t affect you”.

Witchcraft is now and will always be political.

When I use the word political, I am not talking about democracy, per se. Nor am I talking about the United States’ 2 party system that has f*cked us all. This is not Democrat and Republican.

I am talking about what being a Witch, calling oneself a Witch means.

It is truly Revolutionary to call yourself a Witch.

We stand for the marginalized, the outcasts, the downtrodden, the misfits, and the weirdos.

AND WE ALWAYS HAVE!

Activism, Social Issues, Human & Civil Rights, Allyship, Anti-racism, Anti-ableism (and more!) are all pre-requisites to being a Witch.

“You are gatekeeping! How dare you tell me how to be a Witch!”

Is asking you, or telling you, rather, to be a decent human being gatekeeping?

Is it REALLY?!

I want you to think about that long and hard if your immediate reaction was/is that I am gatekeeping.

Ask yourself why you feel the way you do?

Is requesting human decency gatekeeping?

If you answer yes, then your issue is far deeper and greater than I can address here.

So, as they say, “not my circus, not my monkeys”.

Witches may have been hidden in history—even hid ourselves and moved in silence, but we got sh*t done.

We weren’t afraid to get our hands dirty.

Some of us still aren’t.

It was the Wise Woman, Man and Person who lived on the edge of the forest communing with nature and plant Spirits, carrying deep rooted herbal and plant knowledge that were Healers in days past.

It was the Healer who was shunned for knowing too much about plants that would help a Woman/Femme deal with unwanted pregnancy in a safer manner than some of her/their other options. Or help heal a Soldier’s war wounds, or gout.

It was the unsuspecting Granny who went to Church every Sunday, who knew Psalms like the back of her hand and whipped up the most glorious Kitchen Magick you ever had seen. Her prayers worked like she had a direct line to God.

To deny the power and role of the Witch is to douse our history in toxic positivity.

Many of us found our way to the Craft because we were met with injustice and/or adversity of some kind, and we needed to take our power back.

To be a Witch is to be Sovereign, without a doubt.

Then I think about this Tweet (one that I have shared on the page before) and I am left wondering:

Are we meant to be Sovereign AND in Service (to Magick) at the same time?

Why else would we have or collect all this knowledge, and even though I hate the word power?

Why not use it for the greater good?

It is time we decolonized the Craft.

There are too many people who call themselves Witch and turn the other cheek when they see oppression and continue to benefit from systems put in place long ago instead of smashing said system.

We first need equality, then we need equity and finally we will find liberation.

We have a silent oath to uphold when walking this path.

We have an obligation to fight deep in the trenches so that the systems harming us can be destroyed.

If you are not willing to pushback against the status quo, what are you even doing here?

Are you even a Witch, or are you a WINO (Witch In Name Only)?

Witchcraft requires action, to be a Witch requires action; just like the Magick we cast.

Your intentions may be well and good, but unless you act on them, they mean nothing.

Silence is compliance.

Nobody said this would be easy, but it is worth it.

The freedom, strength and courage I have found through Witchcraft and living my life as a Witch cannot be put into words for, they do it no justice.

Blessed Are the Witches, the Oathkeepers, the Torchbearers and the Balancers of Scales.

Lux in Tenebris Lucet

REVIEW: The Power of Hex: Spells, Incantations and Rituals

November 21, 2020

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It has been a long time since I sat down to write.

There is an odd comfort, like a warm embrace from a past lover, laced with a foreign feeling of no longer knowing who they are as intimately as you once did. The passion? Oh, the fierce passion is still there though.

My fire, my torch, my words are all still here, right where I set them down.

I have been forced into silence, hibernation, reflection.

Many of us have.

Admittedly, on my part, some of it is pure escapism.

Some of it is the sheer surrealism of our current reality.

This year, oy, this year! 2020 has seriously been a year for the record books.

Between everything that has been happening on the world stage; political, social, and economical and with how that has affected each of us individually

ALONG WITH

Everything that has happened to each of us individually in our personal lives/worlds (I do not know a single person having a “great” year),

we are burnt tf out.

It is like the collective is holding their breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

As an individual with CPTSD, this is such a familiar space and feeling for me; not that it makes it any better or easier for myself, or the rest of the world.

We are held up in our homes, and even though we may be understanding, it does not change how we may feel.

Like many of my readership I did not have to make many drastic life changes when the pandemic started because, well, introvert for life!

I was, however, infected with CoViD in March (as was my Mother) and have since been through the ringer regarding my health.

Currently, I have Lyme disease and a broken foot and toe from an accident at home.

The message from the universe has been clear—slow down, work smarter not harder, make your work work for you, and most importantly, turn to Witchcraft and your Spiritual practices NOW more than EVER.

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With all that said, here is the reason I am sitting down to write today:

I figured it is the perfect time to introduce a new feature to my blog: book reviews.

For transparency, some of the books on the roster to be reviewed have been because I was approached by Publicists.

I *do not get paid* to promote books, nor do I personally get anything out of it besides a copy of a book here or there.

The opinions expressed are my own.

If you have any books that you would like to be featured, please send me a message.

One of the main reasons that people reach out to me and seek advice is to ask for book recommendations.

I love to read, and I have been diving back into study since the Universe wants me to rest.

So, this is a happy medium, for me. I am still a Creative, after all, and create I must.

Today’s book is ‘The Power of Hex: Spells, Incantations and Rituals’ by Shawn Engel

You can find her on IG here

You can find her Publisher here

You can purchase her book here

If you know my work, you know that I am not against Hexing, or any kinds of Baneful Magick.

I believe it should be done ethically (I know, this can be debated as being subjective but, I digress..)

I also know, you’re probably thinking, “what the fuck, Jac? You’re literally hexing someone. How can that be ethical?”

Well, my reply would be, we have all met “hex happy” Witches who think that every little thing requires some jinx, cross, curse, or hex and I am just like…

So, before I get into my review of content let me say that aesthetically, this book is otherworldly! It is hardcover, easy to read, with beautiful illustrations and text throughout.

I admit at first, I thought this book was going to be a hot mess; not because of Shawn personally, whom I have been following on IG for a while, but because of the topic.

How could this topic be approached from a non-colonial perspective, as so many Witchcraft topics often are laced with undertones of Patriarchy, Capitalism, Misogyny and White Supremacy? How could ALL forms of this Magick (hexing) be covered, or attempt to be covered? How could this Author ARM WITCHES with knowledge and practical methods without giving *too much*?

Yes, there is such a thing as too much, and that line must be crossed by the individual Practitioner through their practice, not through a book. The journey into the Void is the most personal journey we take as Occult Practitioners.

However, this book can, and will, aid you in knowing what to do when that leap into the Void happens and/or you are faced with adversity.

This is a book that should be in all Witches’ libraries

Shawn has covered every single base in these 128 pages.

She goes over history, from many traditions.

She covers ETHICAL HEXING; when, how, why.

She talks about HEXING AS ACTIVISM: fuck yes.

This book is rich with information, spells, and it is one of those that you can grab, and because it is written like a Grimoire, you can just open to the page you want, and your spell is right there.

I do not want to give away too much because, duh, I want to support Authors and I want you to go buy this!

But all of the boxes have been checked in this book.

I have read it three times through so that my review could be honest, and I mean *really honest* even if vague.

Image: Jaclyn Cherie

‘To Hex or Not?’

“Whether a hex is necessary is something that you will feel in your gut, but there should always be a cooling off period before you perform the hex. Taking an example from everyday life to illustrate this, consider some of the gun laws in the USA: a seven-day waiting period is imposed between the time you buy the gun and when you actually own it. This is intended to curb the potential for crimes of passion. Hexing calls for a similar self-imposed waiting period. I know it may seem dramatic to compare hexing to gun ownership, but I can’t stress enough how powerful the act of focused intention can be when it is backed up by rage. So, if you’re a lover scorned who was just cheated on by her ex, take a break before you hex.

To make issue as clear as possible: when you are deciding whether or not to hex, consider the environment in which a hex may be appropriate. The approach should help you distinguish between actual oppression and merely something bad that has happened to you. It will take some dedication and forethought, but this approach should help clear away any confusion around whether the subject of your hex deserves to be locked away or is just a human being who acted unfavorably.

When deciding to hex, it can be helpful to ask yourself some basic questions. Did this person hurt you or others? And, if so, did they do so with malicious intent? Did this person continuously harm you or others? And, if so, did they do so with malicious intent? The key here is to define intention and willingness to change, and then you should be able to decide if it is worth hexing that person.”

Image: Jaclyn Cherie

Within the pages of this book, Shawn empowers her readers to safely hex, and to use this taboo form of Magick as both defensive and offensive Magick which is an imperative lesson.

This is the perfect book for personal and collective change in these tumultuous times.

Magick is activism.

Hexing is activism.

Witchcraft is activism.

I’m here for it.

Go support a fellow Witch and buy this book.

You will not be disappointed.

Blessed Are The Witches.