Speaker 1: You see, something's going to happen. What?
Speaker 2: What's going to happen? What? I welcome back to the
Speaker 2: Occult Rejects. Today we have Marshall, better known as Marshall
Speaker 2: the Witch of Southern Light, a practitioner of the cunning arts,
Speaker 2: a writer and a voice a lot of people in
Speaker 2: modern witchcraft have come to know through his books and
Speaker 2: his podcast work. He is the author of Cunning Words,
Speaker 2: The Red Mother, The Diary of an American and the
Speaker 2: Diary of American witch His His work blends folklore, witchcraft, story, spirit,
Speaker 2: and lived practice in a way that feels old rooted
Speaker 2: and very real. So today we're going to get into
Speaker 2: his path, his practice, his books, and how he understands
Speaker 2: the crooked current of witchcraft and modern world. In the
Speaker 2: modern world, And just a reminder as well, before I
Speaker 2: introduce everybody, there is a website that we do have.
Speaker 2: I am trying to just plug that more often so
Speaker 2: people know that we have it. If you're into reading,
Speaker 2: there is tons and tons and tons of stuff on there,
Speaker 2: I highly suggest to check it out. Also multiple contributors,
Speaker 2: and we also do have a merch spot where we
Speaker 2: do have two different types of T shirts that we
Speaker 2: do have available, and now there's enough out of me,
Speaker 2: and let me introduce the other people joining us. We
Speaker 2: got Judith to the loom. What is going on, Judith?
Speaker 2: How I I'm fine?
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me, Marshall. I can't wait to
Speaker 3: hear all you have to share with us.
Speaker 4: You could catch me on YouTube, on x and on
Speaker 4: speaker as the loan catch me every Sunday with weekly
Speaker 4: brunch and once a month I do. If you happen
Speaker 4: to know anybody who's a veteran, I do buddy check
Speaker 4: and thank you again.
Speaker 2: Nick, of course, of course, thank you, thank you, and Sonry.
Speaker 2: Please let everybody know what's up with you. I know
Speaker 2: you've been on the show before, but in case they
Speaker 2: don't know you are, you know, introduce yourself a little
Speaker 2: bit and let everybody know where they can find all
Speaker 2: your amazing work.
Speaker 5: Please.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm Sonray. I've got a YouTube channel and
Speaker 1: I host a cult university, a mystery school, which you
Speaker 1: can find at www dot the Order Ofcastmagic dot com.
Speaker 1: It's magical with the k. Marshall has given a guest
Speaker 1: lecture over at school, as well as many other practitioners.
Speaker 1: Marshall is one of the ones who I really look
Speaker 1: up to the most. So I'm very excited to be
Speaker 1: here and hear about your new book. I haven't read
Speaker 1: it yet, I'm going to. I'm very excited about it.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Thank you very much. Man. Just anything else you
Speaker 2: wanted to plug or anything before we go?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, one thing. You know, it's cool, you know,
Speaker 1: as you guys know why. I just recently finished my
Speaker 1: own book and I'm doing fifty limited edition leather bound
Speaker 1: hardcovers which I'm i'm binding myself, which you're going to
Speaker 1: be very very cool. There are twenty two of the
Speaker 1: fifty left. If you would like to pre order one
Speaker 1: of those, They're on my website under the order ofcastmagic
Speaker 1: dot com slash books.
Speaker 2: Well that's something good for you, Congress. Good luck on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. So Marshall, please let everybody know what's
Speaker 2: up with you where they can find any of your stuff,
Speaker 2: promote whatever you got to, let people know what's up.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having them the show. I'm
Speaker 5: really excited to be here. People who don't know me,
Speaker 5: I'm Marshall, which is Southern Light or Marshall WSL is
Speaker 5: my pen name. People can find me on Instagram, threads
Speaker 5: and TikTok at, which of Southern Light all one word.
Speaker 5: I am an author and I do also have a
Speaker 5: podcast like as you said, Southern Bramble with my co
Speaker 5: host Austin. My three books please, I'm an independent author
Speaker 5: and an artist. I do all the artwork, the cover work,
Speaker 5: everything binding your own books.
Speaker 2: That's amaze.
Speaker 5: That's pretty amazing. My first book is a Cunning Words
Speaker 5: Grimwore of Tales and Magic, the second one, which is
Speaker 5: kind of a spin off or a continuation, The Red Mother,
Speaker 5: and now officially The Diary of an American Witch, which
Speaker 5: is thirteen Months of my life where I document experiences,
Speaker 5: theories on magic, my own personal practice, spells, spell mistakes, memories,
Speaker 5: and really influential experiences I've had in the past that
Speaker 5: kind of shaped me to be who I am as
Speaker 5: a queer Texas witch.
Speaker 2: There you go, awesome man, Thank you very much. I
Speaker 2: really really appreciate you coming on to talk about your
Speaker 2: books too. I feel like, kind of like looking at
Speaker 2: your stuff, I get like I get more of like
Speaker 2: the folklore and the practical witch like you know feel too,
Speaker 2: And I like that I think that's a little bit
Speaker 2: different than other people out there sometimes, you know, So
Speaker 2: it's a little bit I think different from my listeners.
Speaker 2: So I'm excited for this. Thank you, Yeah, think thank you.
Speaker 5: I definitely would ascribe the title like folkloric witch traditional witchcraft, animism.
Speaker 5: It's much more and soon rhinos. I love the power
Speaker 5: of a story. I love the way that magic flows
Speaker 5: through a tale, and how so many stories throughout history
Speaker 5: weren't just things to say around the campfire. They taught lessons,
Speaker 5: they taught recipes, they taught songs, they taught epic tales.
Speaker 5: You know, you read about these epic poems in the
Speaker 5: Bardic tradition of teaching a story through song. I think
Speaker 5: that that is kind of where the heart and crux
Speaker 5: of where my own practice in witchcraft lives in that
Speaker 5: power of the story. And honestly, a lot of the
Speaker 5: untold stories, I think a lot of folk practitioners, whatever
Speaker 5: that may have been described at the time, may have
Speaker 5: not had the power or ability to have told in
Speaker 5: the past. So I kind of want to reach into this.
Speaker 5: I always call it the mystical Yesteryear because my stories
Speaker 5: don't have a timeframe, but it is very clear that
Speaker 5: they exist some point in the past and history, and
Speaker 5: they seem to motivate and inspire the practitioner of magic.
Speaker 5: Within the story, they have experiences that push them to
Speaker 5: make deals with spirits a crossroads, or seek to know
Speaker 5: the spirit of herbs or plants or sigils or conjurations.
Speaker 5: And a lot of times, I think in modern publications,
Speaker 5: which is it's very pervasive, where we see lots of
Speaker 5: how to books, lots of one on one books, lots
Speaker 5: of people writing about their craft, which I think is
Speaker 5: lovely and beautiful. But sometimes I feel like we're missing
Speaker 5: the whimsy in witchcraft. We're missing the mysterious. We're missing
Speaker 5: that eerie fog in the forest where the witch is
Speaker 5: believed to brasil. You know, a lot of times in history,
Speaker 5: before we get to some of the witch trials, if
Speaker 5: we go back even further, the witch was this mysterious creature.
Speaker 5: It was almost not even entirely human. They were a
Speaker 5: spirit inhabited human that existed somewhere in a liminal space.
Speaker 5: And we see that in a lot of older historical stories.
Speaker 5: We see that they aren't just a person that lives
Speaker 5: amongst the community. They're an outsider. There's someone you go
Speaker 5: and seek when you are at your most desperate, and
Speaker 5: sometimes there's a little bit of a trickery going on,
Speaker 5: and sometimes it's just straightforward I can do this for
Speaker 5: you for a price. And I don't think a lot
Speaker 5: of those things get discussed in modern witchcraft enough. And
Speaker 5: that's kind of where a lot of my inspiration for
Speaker 5: my practice comes from.
Speaker 2: I like how you said that, Like I would say,
Speaker 2: like you know, we could be looked at as like
Speaker 2: like you said, as an outsider, but then someone's kid
Speaker 2: gets sick enough all of a sudden, they're coming to
Speaker 2: you and ask, can you feel ain't definitely now?
Speaker 4: I would would you say you're putting to print and
Speaker 4: hitting a larger scale than those that because what you're
Speaker 4: talking about is what people and it doesn't matter if
Speaker 4: you're here in the US or anywhere. You're in that
Speaker 4: small town, and it's the whispers you're putting, the whispers
Speaker 4: of go over here if you need this done, and
Speaker 4: this person could do this for you, but be quiet
Speaker 4: about it and stuff like that, and they tell them
Speaker 4: that's the feeling you're giving me that you know the
Speaker 4: stories that your grandma used to tell you when they
Speaker 4: wanted you to.
Speaker 5: Behave Oh, absolutely well, you know, that's very, very true.
Speaker 5: There's a couple of great books that I've come across
Speaker 5: that I think are really fascinating. The Silver Bullet and
Speaker 5: Other American Witch Stories, I think is a fascinating one.
Speaker 5: It was a collection of documents where this author went
Speaker 5: and interviewed a lot of Appalachian residents who had been
Speaker 5: there for generations since their families immigrated, and they brought
Speaker 5: over with some their stories. And we see many of
Speaker 5: these stories that have that set root in America, but
Speaker 5: also come from over in the UK. They come from Europe,
Speaker 5: they come from Germany, they come from from Italy. They
Speaker 5: come from these places where where entertainment was stories but
Speaker 5: also information with stories, and so you read some of these,
Speaker 5: Like there's a whole collection of interviews where he asks
Speaker 5: these these residents, these people who are living there, how
Speaker 5: does one become a witch? And with each story he gets,
Speaker 5: he gets different types of folklore around. You know, under
Speaker 5: the full moon at midnight, you go up to this
Speaker 5: mountain and then you put one hand over your head
Speaker 5: and one hand under your foot, and you say, I
Speaker 5: renounce my baptism, and I give everything between these two
Speaker 5: hands to the devil, And like These are stories that
Speaker 5: were passed down and they I feel like many of
Speaker 5: them seem to have gotten somewhat lost, because when an
Speaker 5: oral tradition stops being spoken, we don't get to continue
Speaker 5: to pass them down. And still within some families and
Speaker 5: communities we see this. But I wanted to share my
Speaker 5: craft in a way that gave new stories, stories that
Speaker 5: were clearly inspired by history, but also very much by
Speaker 5: my own life. In my first book, Cutting Words, there's
Speaker 5: a story. It's actually a story about a smallpox outbreak
Speaker 5: and these these power of three spirits who come together,
Speaker 5: the the the Red Fox, the Black Fox, and the
Speaker 5: White Fox and what they do to heal this, you know,
Speaker 5: dying queen and this tower who's lost her husband. And
Speaker 5: what was very interesting is as I was writing that
Speaker 5: story and I promise, see the whole story gets better,
Speaker 5: but just go and read it. I think it's very fascinating.
Speaker 5: What was actually going on in my life is where
Speaker 5: at the town where I live was actually having a
Speaker 5: huge monkey box outbreak. And this was the time, and
Speaker 5: I want to say late twenty twenty two, early twenty
Speaker 5: twenty three, when monkey pox was making its way through
Speaker 5: the country and the gay community was the largest community
Speaker 5: being affected at the time. I was watching as people
Speaker 5: were having to lock themselves away for a week, you know,
Speaker 5: one to two weeks at a time, with these painful
Speaker 5: poks that did not exist in this country for over
Speaker 5: a century and a half. We had no vaccination for it,
Speaker 5: we had no recourse for it. I was watching as
Speaker 5: the political sphere was using it as an attack on
Speaker 5: the queer community. I was watching all these things happen,
Speaker 5: and I was like, this is history repeating itself in
Speaker 5: the most basic of ways. And I remember I had
Speaker 5: a good friend of mine. I had four different friends
Speaker 5: at that time who were all being slated from a
Speaker 5: monkey pop's outbreak, and they were positive. They were living
Speaker 5: with these deeply painful sores and hard fevers and really really,
Speaker 5: really aggravating body aches. And it was on day ten
Speaker 5: my friend reached out to me and he said, I
Speaker 5: don't know what to do anymore. It's not going away.
Speaker 5: Is there any way that I could ask for your help?
Speaker 5: And he knew I was a witch. And it was
Speaker 5: actually this charm that I had written based off of
Speaker 5: a little story the Three Wise Healers, about these these
Speaker 5: three spirits, one with red hair, one with black hair,
Speaker 5: one with white hair, and how each one. You know,
Speaker 5: it was just a little chant that I had made
Speaker 5: myself before I ever wrote this book. And I said
Speaker 5: this chant over a collection of verbs and put it
Speaker 5: in a little satchet, And then I braided a red
Speaker 5: thread braid necklace while continuously saying this charm. There once
Speaker 5: were three wise healers, one with hair as red as blood,
Speaker 5: one is black as a raven, one as white as flax.
Speaker 5: The first one healed your wound, the second took your pain,
Speaker 5: and the third one made you whole again. And I
Speaker 5: would just say it over and over and over again
Speaker 5: while I'm braiding this. And I went to his place.
Speaker 5: I knocked on his door. I told him I was there,
Speaker 5: and I put it on his mat because I couldn't
Speaker 5: go in. It's a very, very contagious pox, and so
Speaker 5: I left. He texted me and said thank you. Within
Speaker 5: two days they started scatting up, the pain went away,
Speaker 5: the fever dropped, and he told his friend about it.
Speaker 5: His friend messaged me and asked for the same thing. So,
Speaker 5: because I said this charm and gave this to them,
Speaker 5: and I watched what happened with them healing from it,
Speaker 5: I decided to write a story about it, and I
Speaker 5: built this grandiose story about a smallpox outbreak that was
Speaker 5: affecting this kingdom. And this story kind of unfolded. And
Speaker 5: you know, because historically stories were inspired by real events
Speaker 5: that were happening at the time, always know those real
Speaker 5: events because now it's so many centuries later, Like, not
Speaker 5: many people know that Ring around the Posey was written
Speaker 5: about the Black Plague. You know, not many people know
Speaker 5: that so many of these things that were written about
Speaker 5: and passed down were actually written about modern things that
Speaker 5: were happening at that time. And so if you read
Speaker 5: my first book and second book, Hunting Words in the
Speaker 5: Red Mother, you'll notice a lot of author's notes where
Speaker 5: what inspired the story was something that was either happening
Speaker 5: to me in my life or politically or to my community.
Speaker 5: And I wanted people to know this is where that
Speaker 5: story comes from, and this is what the outcome of
Speaker 5: that story is.
Speaker 2: It's wild.
Speaker 5: It was wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, that's cool. That that should work too, That
Speaker 2: is wild too.
Speaker 1: Damn well, magic works. And I think that you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's the main message, that is, it's not that
Speaker 1: it's missing. People are shouting it from the rooftops. But
Speaker 1: it's hard to get through to people. And one of
Speaker 1: the thing that I think Marshall does better than anyone
Speaker 1: is get it through because story does that right. And
Speaker 1: you know the way the Marshall like, sorry, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: fan boy for a second. He's not gonna give me
Speaker 1: him an air, but the way like Marshall changed my
Speaker 1: life because we needed the guest lecture over at the
Speaker 1: Order of Chaos. He talked about desire and about story,
Speaker 1: and I struggle, like, I love talking about magic, but
Speaker 1: if I were gonna talk about magic for one and three minutes,
Speaker 1: I'm gona pull up a graph and a chart and
Speaker 1: it's gonna be with math. And that's that's the way
Speaker 1: that I do and teach magic, and that's I think
Speaker 1: that that's important also, But it doesn't penetrate the subconscious.
Speaker 1: You have to do that part through the mechanisms that
Speaker 1: I'm like, here's how you do that. But Marshall's just
Speaker 1: doing it and it's it's powerful and it makes you
Speaker 1: feel that makes the hair on the back of your
Speaker 1: next anthem.
Speaker 5: Well, you know the power of a story is really
Speaker 5: amazing because it evokes emotion and I think emotion is
Speaker 5: the crux of magic. Like when you feel something when
Speaker 5: when when the hair on the back of your neck
Speaker 5: stands up, when the goosebumps on your arms prick, that
Speaker 5: is a vibration within the body that actually moves something
Speaker 5: that's cellular. And I do think that sometimes when you're
Speaker 5: you know, performing a spell, there are times where I
Speaker 5: am working with there's a collection in my book that
Speaker 5: talks about working with the days of the week as
Speaker 5: magical vectors for the planets, right, And so I have
Speaker 5: these chants that I might do over a talisman that
Speaker 5: I'm calling upon the power of Saturn or Venus or
Speaker 5: Mercury for something that I've written down on their seal
Speaker 5: and fold it up and made into a little paper talisman,
Speaker 5: and you know the numbers that correspond with those planets.
Speaker 5: I'll chant it that many times. And I notice that,
Speaker 5: you know something that may call for seven chants, or
Speaker 5: this chanted seven times. The strain that goes through me
Speaker 5: as I'm chanting it on that third, fourth, fifth time,
Speaker 5: the the firsess of my voice, the way that I
Speaker 5: call out, the cadence that changes as I can feel,
Speaker 5: you know, the power and the desire and the want
Speaker 5: and the need for change. It's building, it's energetic, it's
Speaker 5: it's very much. It reminds me very much of that
Speaker 5: old concept of the cone of power when you have,
Speaker 5: you know, the the coven dancing, envisioning this power growing
Speaker 5: into an apex point, pushing it out as you all
Speaker 5: fall down to let it go. That happens when you chant.
Speaker 5: That happens when you use repetitive, repetitive wording, you can
Speaker 5: feel something start to move inside of you. That's not
Speaker 5: quite the same thing. As I drew this symbol, I
Speaker 5: burnt it in my cauldron, and then I went and
Speaker 5: made breakfast like I love that. And sometimes that's simple
Speaker 5: simplicity really works. But I want to when I approach
Speaker 5: my craft, I do it very much with feeling, and
Speaker 5: when I teach it, I have to find a way
Speaker 5: to make others who are learning it feel it too.
Speaker 2: You definitely do that with the power of the story.
Speaker 1: Hard How do you learn to do that? Where did that?
Speaker 1: When did it click for you that that was the
Speaker 1: way to do it? Or is this is how your
Speaker 1: brain works?
Speaker 5: Like what my brain never turns off? I was literally
Speaker 5: thinking about this earlier today. There is not a moment
Speaker 5: of silence in my life. As long as I am alive,
Speaker 5: I'm either singing something out loud, whether it's a real
Speaker 5: song or words that are stupid because I'm singing them
Speaker 5: to my dog who's deaf and can't even hear me anymore.
Speaker 5: Like I'm I'm talking to myself. I'm thinking about things.
Speaker 5: There is not a moment where my brain just shuts up.
Speaker 5: And I do find that kind of allowing that to
Speaker 5: roam can can feel like a journey. It can be
Speaker 5: kind of fun. Sometimes it takes you to weird places.
Speaker 5: I do know. I've had some really weird experiences between
Speaker 5: where I let my take me and when I especially
Speaker 5: start to mix it with my craft. I do all
Speaker 5: my writing on the elliptical, like at the gym. Like
Speaker 5: I get on the elliptical, I put on Lindsay Sterling
Speaker 5: electric violin, and I just get in the notes app
Speaker 5: and I start writing, and sometimes you know, all.
Speaker 2: Of the sudden, what's that again? It to some sort of
Speaker 2: flow state like that.
Speaker 5: That's exactly what it is. It's almost like a transstate.
Speaker 5: This the repetitive movement. I used to take spin class,
Speaker 5: and I remember there was this one instructor who did
Speaker 5: a really really good job about creating this flow state.
Speaker 5: And I remember feeling something that was very different from
Speaker 5: just exercise. It felt almost transcendent, like I was pushing
Speaker 5: my body to experience something that was out of body.
Speaker 5: And I started trying to kind of channel that into
Speaker 5: my writing. And now I cannot write if it's not
Speaker 5: on the treadmill, on the elliptical, if I'm not in
Speaker 5: this repetitive motion, I'm if I'm at the couch on
Speaker 5: my phone typing, or like on the computer, I'm just like,
Speaker 5: I don't my butt hurt, Like I don't know my
Speaker 5: mind's going other places. It's almost like I need my
Speaker 5: body to be a little bit removed so I can focus.
Speaker 2: If that makes sense exactly. I totally get what you're
Speaker 2: saying that as well.
Speaker 1: I use binural beats for the same.
Speaker 5: Reason love biniral beats.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 1: That's probably a better idea I have. I have an
Speaker 1: elliptical right there that I bought and I used it
Speaker 1: one time.
Speaker 5: But you know, there's in my book. So I wrote
Speaker 5: The Diary of American Witch alongside writing The Red Mother.
Speaker 5: I was writing them at the same time. So one
Speaker 5: of the things that really stood out to me is
Speaker 5: as I was writing, there's a section called the Seven
Speaker 5: Nights of Celestial Transvection, which is a seven day ritual
Speaker 5: where you are doing and transvection just meaning a spirit
Speaker 5: flight or witch's flight where you are doing a meditation
Speaker 5: and transwerk to experience flying to the Temple of Saturn,
Speaker 5: flying off to the Temple of Venus, flying off to
Speaker 5: the Temple of Jupiter, then Mercury than Mars, then the Moon,
Speaker 5: and then of course the Sun. And I was writing
Speaker 5: it based off of a story where this character, the
Speaker 5: Red Mother, is going on a pilgrimage and she's traveling
Speaker 5: across the land and she stops at each one of
Speaker 5: these temples, learning the magic of each planetary priest or priestess.
Speaker 5: And I loved this story because it was categorizing her
Speaker 5: journey and learning the craft. And I said, well, how
Speaker 5: can I actually turn this into something that other practitioners
Speaker 5: can do, And so I started writing out these rituals
Speaker 5: that involved a kind of a step by step process
Speaker 5: of creating a trance like state and then flying off
Speaker 5: to go to these places and then actually checking in
Speaker 5: with yourself when you are there. Is what does the
Speaker 5: air feel like on your skin? What smells are you smelling?
Speaker 5: What colors are you seeing? What vegetation are you seeing?
Speaker 5: What do you feel under your feet when you land?
Speaker 5: What color is the door of the temple? What sound
Speaker 5: does it make when you open it? What does it
Speaker 5: feel like to the touch. I want you to have
Speaker 5: a very intense sensory journey. So when you come back,
Speaker 5: whatever has come to you in this trans like state,
Speaker 5: you can then take it. You can write it down
Speaker 5: into your grimoire, your book of shadows, your magical record keeping.
Speaker 5: You now have a closer relationship with that planetary spirit.
Speaker 5: Should you need to call on them again, you now
Speaker 5: know what stones might be better to use to call
Speaker 5: upon their power. You might know what herbs that You're
Speaker 5: not going to find it in Llewellens' Complete Book of Correspondences,
Speaker 5: because the spirit told you in this experience instead. And
Speaker 5: I thought, okay, I'm going to write this ritual out,
Speaker 5: but I can't publish it if I'm not going to
Speaker 5: do it, if I haven't done my So the diary
Speaker 5: actually documents me doing this myself. And I recorded myself,
Speaker 5: like an actual audio recording of me going there, and
Speaker 5: then kind of vocalizing my experience along the way, and
Speaker 5: then I just stream of consciousness after the fact, wrote
Speaker 5: out what my experience was. And I had no idea
Speaker 5: what was going to happen when I went to these temples.
Speaker 5: I had no idea what I was going to see,
Speaker 5: what I was going to feel, And there were a
Speaker 5: lot of surprises. There were a lot of things that
Speaker 5: I came out of it thinking like, Okay, I feel
Speaker 5: like I can understand that this was catered to me,
Speaker 5: and if someone else was going to do this, it's
Speaker 5: going to be catered to them. And I think I've
Speaker 5: spoken to a few people who have been doing these
Speaker 5: rituals and they're coming up with these wild experiences which
Speaker 5: are very different from mine, and I think that's very
Speaker 5: much on purpose. And it's not seven days in a row,
Speaker 5: because the experience is backwards. It's actually seven weeks, one
Speaker 5: day a week. You start with the Temple of Saturn,
Speaker 5: then you wait a week and you go start and
Speaker 5: you continue with the Temple of Venus on Friday, and
Speaker 5: then you wait a week and you do the Temple
Speaker 5: of Jupiter on Thursday, and then Wednesday with Mercury, and
Speaker 5: then Tuesday with Mars and then Monday with the Moon,
Speaker 5: and then finally Sunday with the sun. And because it
Speaker 5: takes set at minimum seven weeks, you have time in
Speaker 5: between these to observe your life, observe the experiences you
Speaker 5: have in between these time periods. I started noticing, especially
Speaker 5: after doing the Temple of Jupiter, some financial stresses that
Speaker 5: were happening, and I had some interesting things that happened
Speaker 5: with money popping up and savings that I didn't know
Speaker 5: i'd had. After the Temple of Mars. I'm a hairstylist
Speaker 5: by trade. I had a client come in I'd never
Speaker 5: seen before, and he was the spitting image of the
Speaker 5: visualization I had when I was at the Temple of Mars,
Speaker 5: and he was a metal smith and a woodworker. Like
Speaker 5: it was just this crazy experience. And part of the
Speaker 5: ritual that I had written in advance was observe your life,
Speaker 5: what comes in, What experience are you having, How are
Speaker 5: you noticing that you might be able to apply the
Speaker 5: new things that you learned. When I was leading up
Speaker 5: to the Temple of the Moon, I was having a
Speaker 5: ton of intensely emotional experiences, moments where I would, you know,
Speaker 5: burst into tears at small at small provocateurs or extremely
Speaker 5: loving moments with a very very close friend. It was
Speaker 5: very emotional, and the moon and the flow of water
Speaker 5: and water magic and emotion and psychology that is the
Speaker 5: the that is the virtues of the moon and Monday
Speaker 5: and then straight. It was very very strange, and I
Speaker 5: got to document all of that in my diary so
Speaker 5: people could see what I experienced, take it in, and
Speaker 5: then have the opportunity to go and do it themselves.
Speaker 4: I like the fact that you include not only the emotion,
Speaker 4: but the events that happened leading up to your ritual
Speaker 4: and events that happens after, because I think when most
Speaker 4: people practice, they forget that the energy is going to
Speaker 4: be around them, They forget to see the signs of
Speaker 4: its working.
Speaker 3: Because I guess I don't know if you will agree
Speaker 3: with me.
Speaker 4: People when they plan a spell, do a spell, they
Speaker 4: expect a certain outcome, and if it doesn't come in
Speaker 4: that form, they think it didn't work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the beginning, for sure, that happened to me.
Speaker 5: Of course, outcomes and spellcraft are really fascinating. Another thing
Speaker 5: I was able to document in this is like I
Speaker 5: am one of those people that believes that magic in
Speaker 5: general works, but very often does it not work in
Speaker 5: the way that you think it's going to. Magic is
Speaker 5: like water in a river. It is flowing, but you
Speaker 5: know what, it's flowing around boulders, It's flowing around tide pools.
Speaker 5: There are times that the water is more dry and low,
Speaker 5: in times that it is a river rapid, and sometimes
Speaker 5: you might find that there are boulders that it's going
Speaker 5: to take a long time to get around, but eventually
Speaker 5: it's going to make its way to its final end.
Speaker 5: The thing is is, depending on the go arounds it
Speaker 5: has tried to make, that end result might come a
Speaker 5: little differently than you thought it would. Sometimes it's the
Speaker 5: most mundane thing, the most mundane thing. Like I had
Speaker 5: a situation where a friend of mine ankle was swolen
Speaker 5: and hurting, and so I did a healing spell for him,
Speaker 5: and then it swoll up like crazy and he had
Speaker 5: to go to the doctor. The doctor that you have gout,
Speaker 5: Like you have gout, you need to do this, this,
Speaker 5: and this, I'm going to prescribe this, like he needed
Speaker 5: a direct medical protocol to treat this gout. I don't
Speaker 5: know what would have happened if I hadn't done that.
Speaker 5: I think that healing magic can heal something just as
Speaker 5: much as it might bring you to the medical care
Speaker 5: that you need, because especially a lot of people are
Speaker 5: really really listen, people don't like doctors. Healthcare in America
Speaker 5: is expensive. People will avoid it as much as they can,
Speaker 5: and sometimes magic might end up meaning that it exacerbates
Speaker 5: the situation to force you to get the medical care needed,
Speaker 5: and sometimes it just makes it go away, depending on
Speaker 5: how it's going to do its job. You know, you
Speaker 5: give a spirit an assignment, the spirit's going to do
Speaker 5: that assignment. You don't always know how it's going to
Speaker 5: accomplish it.
Speaker 4: That actually that it's sample actually brings up another question
Speaker 4: when Okay, when we do spells, we're doing it because
Speaker 4: we believe we deserve and were at a status in
Speaker 4: our life where we could accept what we're asking for.
Speaker 4: Now those turns and those boulders, would you say it is.
Speaker 3: Bringing you up and giving you the experience to.
Speaker 4: Better accept what you are asking for, Because sometimes you
Speaker 4: may think I may want I may think I want
Speaker 4: a million dollars. I get that million dollars from playing
Speaker 4: the lotto, and I blow it the next day, didn't
Speaker 4: pay my debt didn't do anything. So for people who
Speaker 4: likes to do money spells and lotto spells, maybe you're
Speaker 4: not getting it because you are not there, because that's
Speaker 4: what your example is showing.
Speaker 5: No, absolutely, I also know that that's I would definitely
Speaker 5: agree with that, and I don't think it's one hundred
Speaker 5: percent always that. Sometimes those boulders and those and those
Speaker 5: tide pools, sometimes those are just real life blockades. Like
Speaker 5: sometimes those are like I have known people to cast
Speaker 5: spells that have zero road to fruition. They will, you know,
Speaker 5: they'll do a money spell for the lotto, but they
Speaker 5: won't buy a ticket, like and that's a very simple one.
Speaker 5: You know, they'll do a job spell, but that they
Speaker 5: won't apply to any job. So a lot of times
Speaker 5: magic needs to pair with the mundane, but sometimes people
Speaker 5: won't because they just think magic should do all the work.
Speaker 5: We still have to do the physical work too. You know,
Speaker 5: if you banish someone and then you continue to call
Speaker 5: them every day, what are you doing? Like that's that's
Speaker 5: that's not real. People will do a cord cutting and
Speaker 5: then literally immediately text them it's it's wild to me.
Speaker 5: And don't even get me started on TikTok cord cutting spells.
Speaker 5: What does this mean?
Speaker 3: What does this mean?
Speaker 1: I think people will do that frequently as a way,
Speaker 1: and I don't think they're doing some purpose. I think
Speaker 1: that they want to convince themselves that magic does not work,
Speaker 1: because it absolves them of some responsibility in the situation.
Speaker 1: You do cutting and then you text the person immediately, Well,
Speaker 1: magic doesn't work. God damn it. Why did I text
Speaker 1: that person because you did that? Yeah, you know, but
Speaker 1: I do think that had you not done that spell, Marshall,
Speaker 1: it's a good chance that person would have lost their foot.
Speaker 1: Guess it goes on long enough and you just don't
Speaker 1: do shit about it. It's too late.
Speaker 5: It's too late, and he's doing great now, awesome.
Speaker 2: I suppose. Uh, did anybody have any questions or anything
Speaker 2: before I go into some other stuff.
Speaker 1: I was thinking something just a second ago. But my brain, my.
Speaker 5: Brains, my brain's the same way. I will have what
Speaker 5: I think is the most excellent thought, and then immediately
Speaker 5: it just goes out the other year.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, I know what it is now, because
Speaker 1: you mentioned something that's happened to me and a number
Speaker 1: of other practitioners as well. You talked about this person
Speaker 1: who came in to get your services as a haircylist,
Speaker 1: who was the embodiment of was it Jupiter?
Speaker 5: You said this one was Mars actually yours.
Speaker 1: So okay, how did that affect you? Because I've had
Speaker 1: that same experience and it's a real physical person and
Speaker 1: there's your life that is clearly archetypal and the result
Speaker 1: of bell work. But they're standing right in front of you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're solid And to me, it's like my brain doesn't
Speaker 1: recover from that, like it's changed permanently. So how did
Speaker 1: that affect you? Oh?
Speaker 5: I still think about it today, like it is one
Speaker 5: of those things where I think and this kind of
Speaker 5: goes with what you were just talking about before too.
Speaker 5: I think that there are a lot of people like listen,
Speaker 5: we're all online. I think there are a lot of
Speaker 5: people who profess to be great and powerful, which is online,
Speaker 5: but in reality, they don't.
Speaker 1: Believe in they're on that.
Speaker 5: They don't even believe in magic like they I think
Speaker 5: that there are a lot of people who are who
Speaker 5: talk big, but then they don't actually believe in it.
Speaker 5: And to be perfect honest, I think there are a
Speaker 5: lot of spiritualities who identify with the culture that they
Speaker 5: are involved in that is part of their community, but
Speaker 5: at heart they're secular, and that in itself in general
Speaker 5: is not a bad thing, because it's great to be
Speaker 5: part of your own culture and community. But at the
Speaker 5: same time, when it comes to witchcraft, when it comes
Speaker 5: to magic, I don't I don't understand. I don't really
Speaker 5: understand the concept of having a craft that you secretly
Speaker 5: sometimes even a secret from yourself, don't really believe in.
Speaker 5: Like it's a shock when it actually works. And at
Speaker 5: the same time, as I even say that, for this
Speaker 5: guy to show up, I was just like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: like this is what Like it was unexpected, and and
Speaker 5: you know, I kept talking to them, asking questions, and
Speaker 5: I know that this was just enough. This was a person,
Speaker 5: but it was just weird that it was his first
Speaker 5: time and he wasn't one of my regular clients. He
Speaker 5: was actually someone else's who called out sick that day,
Speaker 5: so they moved them over to my schedule, and you know,
Speaker 5: we had a great conversation. But at the same time,
Speaker 5: it brought me back to seeing a real life, in
Speaker 5: person outcome based off of a ritual. I was dead.
Speaker 5: I did to bring me closer to this to be
Speaker 5: a wash within the spirit for the week too, because
Speaker 5: when I was doing this, the idea was is when
Speaker 5: I come out of this, I am now a wash
Speaker 5: in the spirit of Mars. I am a wash in
Speaker 5: the spirit of the Moon. I'm a wash in the
Speaker 5: spirit of Jupiter. I have taken in what they have
Speaker 5: to teach me, and now I need to go out
Speaker 5: into the world and either apply it, internalize it, write
Speaker 5: it down, try to figure out and understand how it
Speaker 5: applies to my own practice. And again, now I have
Speaker 5: more information when I want to call them up. We
Speaker 5: are now closer, closer to this spirit because I've done this,
Speaker 5: I've reached out, I've gone to their temple and I
Speaker 5: have said I want to learn from you. What do
Speaker 5: you have to show me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's oh my God. So you know, I when
Speaker 1: this has happened to me, and I've heard this story
Speaker 1: now from three of the third practitioners who have said
Speaker 1: something to me almost identical to this. And I've had
Speaker 1: this experience myself, and I to me, it was the
Speaker 1: moment where and it's not that I didn't believe, well,
Speaker 1: I believe in spirits. I've always believed in spirits. But
Speaker 1: I I believe, and I'm not saying that you should
Speaker 1: believe or anyone else should believe unless I tell you.
Speaker 1: Don tell people what is happening here, what's objective. But
Speaker 1: I see that as spirit inhabiting a body and coming
Speaker 1: to talk to you. And it's just it's you know, like,
Speaker 1: I don't believe in coincidence at all. That's the kind
Speaker 1: of like the crux of the way that I think
Speaker 1: of magic, because the coincidence isn't real. But I just
Speaker 1: when spirit takes form and is standing right in front
Speaker 1: of you, and I think it happens way wait, way
Speaker 1: more often than people realize. But when you when you
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to experience it and realize it, that's
Speaker 1: when it's it's so incredibly mine. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: comment also on what you said about disbelief why people
Speaker 1: not really believe in and kind of say that that
Speaker 1: is why that exactly right there is why I have
Speaker 1: changed what I call my practice from chaos magic to
Speaker 1: chaos witchcraft. If the chas magic is said and I'm not,
Speaker 1: I'm not, that's it. Yeah, I think the chaos magic.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to knock it I make videos defending
Speaker 1: chaos magic, even though I have many disagreements with Peter Carroll,
Speaker 1: you know, but like at its core, it is like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's all just a trick of the.
Speaker 5: Money, and well, I no, no, I I totally see that.
Speaker 5: And while I very much recognize the value of secular witchcraft,
Speaker 5: my personal craft is spirit based. It is very animistic.
Speaker 5: It's very animistic. Everything that exists has spirit. The herbs
Speaker 5: that we use are not a recipe. They are spirits
Speaker 5: who carry virtues. I am asking them or telling them,
Speaker 5: this is your assignment. I'm putting them in this bag.
Speaker 5: I don't know these three herbs with a scroll written
Speaker 5: what its assignment is. And I may say a few
Speaker 5: words over it, or give it three breasts of life
Speaker 5: and lock it tight. I have done something that is
Speaker 5: way less like a recipe and more like a verbal
Speaker 5: or written contract with a single or collection of spirits.
Speaker 5: And there are grand spirits and there are small spirits.
Speaker 5: It's it's as simple as Austin likes to put it
Speaker 5: this way. I love it, and my co hosts from
Speaker 5: the podcast. There's the spirit of Rose, and then there's
Speaker 5: the spirit of the rose. I grew in my backyard
Speaker 5: that I picked and I'm holding in my hand.
Speaker 2: The Uh, somebody does have feedback of some buzzing noise
Speaker 2: coming through. I got really bad before. I don't know
Speaker 2: if like somebody's wires may be loose on their stuff.
Speaker 2: It comes it kind of actually yeah, it comes and goes.
Speaker 2: But it's like getting worse at this point. Now is
Speaker 2: it me?
Speaker 5: When I talk?
Speaker 2: Uh? No, you know what. I honestly, I've muted I
Speaker 2: think almost everybody and can't figure out who's coming from
Speaker 2: the truth. It just keeps keeps them, keeps just showing up.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they call them up, all.
Speaker 2: Right, hold them on one second. Let me try. I
Speaker 2: think it was you, Marshall. I think it is you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's gone now yeah, maybe it's you, like your headset
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 5: Can you try Do you want me to unplug and
Speaker 5: just use my computer one?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, yeah, try that. Maybe we'll see if that works. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you might have to go into settings and unfortunately pick
Speaker 2: the right like no, I'm so sorry, Yes, stream it isn't.
Speaker 2: I think you might be good now? How's that perfect? Oh?
Speaker 2: Much better? Yes, awesome, thank you, thank you? Oh? So
Speaker 2: one thing I was Was there anything you guys wanted
Speaker 2: to keep saying. I'm sorry it kind of interrupted you.
Speaker 2: I played three all off. Now, I don't know where
Speaker 2: you might have been. I think I'm good, all right.
Speaker 2: One thing I did want to ask you, Marshall, uh,
Speaker 2: because you know American witch? What does that mean to you?
Speaker 5: You know? When I first oh, that's a big question.
Speaker 2: Sorry.
Speaker 5: Now, Well, the reason I titled it the Diary of
Speaker 5: an American Witch is because when I first started writing it,
Speaker 5: the title was actually the Diary of a Witch, and
Speaker 5: it was very much inspired by Sybil Leek. She wrote
Speaker 5: The Diary of a Witch and it was published in
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty nine, and she was a British practitioner, generational.
Speaker 5: She lived in southern England and she had a life
Speaker 5: story to tell. But as soon as I was reading it,
Speaker 5: the first thing I noticed was this isn't a diary.
Speaker 5: It's a memoir, which is cool and it's wonderful, and
Speaker 5: I enjoyed reading it and everything she had to share.
Speaker 5: But I really wanted to read a diary, like, oh
Speaker 5: my gosh, who doesn't love the idea of going to
Speaker 5: an old estate sale and coming across someone's diary I
Speaker 5: would pay five dollars for that, and I would absolutely
Speaker 5: read it.
Speaker 2: It's like reading an American horror story or something possible.
Speaker 5: It is it is. But when I finished the book,
Speaker 5: one of the things that I really took notice of
Speaker 5: was I started in October of twenty twenty three and
Speaker 5: I went all the way to the end of October
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four, and I didn't think about the fact
Speaker 5: that I'm writing this during an election year. I'm writing
Speaker 5: this during a time that war is breaking out across
Speaker 5: the world that America has involvement in. I'm writing this
Speaker 5: at a time that I am seeing a lot of
Speaker 5: political movements and shifts happening. I'm writing this in a
Speaker 5: time where my person effective is definitely uniquely American, and
Speaker 5: it was very different from Sybil Wikus as a British witch.
Speaker 5: And I figured, you know, at this point in time,
Speaker 5: based off of everything that I have documented over these
Speaker 5: thirteen months, the viewpoint and experience of me is an
Speaker 5: American witch, and so it made a lot of sense,
Speaker 5: and it seemed to be important to make sure that
Speaker 5: that perspective was clear when someone buys this book. So
Speaker 5: many of the books that we have that historically have
Speaker 5: been these big motivators in modern witchcraft have not come
Speaker 5: from here. They've come, you know, from the UK especially,
Speaker 5: So that seemed to be really important to me because
Speaker 5: as a traditional witch, and I'm very inspired by Jemma
Speaker 5: Garry's works out of Cornwall. She wrote Traditional Witch Witchcraft,
Speaker 5: A Book of Cornish Ways, the Devil's Dozen and the
Speaker 5: Black Toad, all very inspiring, but again their perspective of
Speaker 5: a West Country English witch. And because traditional witchcraft is
Speaker 5: very bioregional, meaning it is the spirit of the land
Speaker 5: on which I reside, It is the herbs I grow
Speaker 5: in my garden, it is the genius loci of my locality,
Speaker 5: it made more sense that my practice is recognizably American,
Speaker 5: and not just American, but Texan, and not just Texan,
Speaker 5: but my local neighborhood, like these are the spirits that
Speaker 5: I'm working with. I live in the gaborhood of my city.
Speaker 5: It's literally like a small pocketed community of a lot
Speaker 5: of gay people, gay bars, shops, restaurants.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I live in a building that was built in nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty five, and when I first moved in, there was
Speaker 5: a lovely older man who, you know, I met who
Speaker 5: was living here, and he invited us over, me and
Speaker 5: my friends, and we walked in and he was showing
Speaker 5: his apartment, his condo, and this wall of pictures, and
Speaker 5: we're looking at all of these pictures that dated back decades,
Speaker 5: and he was like, that's so and so. And he
Speaker 5: lived over in unit three two one, and that's so
Speaker 5: and so. And he lived over in unit one five six,
Speaker 5: and that's so and so. And he lived just a
Speaker 5: block down the way. And you know, Stephen up here.
Speaker 5: He died in nineteen eighty five, and that's and that's Daniel,
Speaker 5: and he died in nineteen eighty nine, and that's so
Speaker 5: and so. And he died in nineteen ninety one. And
Speaker 5: I started realizing I was looking at a cemetery of
Speaker 5: photographs of all of his friends who all died right here.
Speaker 5: You know, this was during the AIDS epidemic of the
Speaker 5: eighties and nineties, and the gighborhood has existed longer than
Speaker 5: that here in the city I live in. And I
Speaker 5: was watching realizing by the end of him sharing this
Speaker 5: with me that he was the only one left. He
Speaker 5: was the only one who survived from all of his
Speaker 5: entire group of friends and so I really took a
Speaker 5: step back, and I thought about the place in which
Speaker 5: I live right now, the building I live in, the
Speaker 5: literal walls around me that housed these people who lived
Speaker 5: this beautiful, queer, joyous life, who then lives were cut short.
Speaker 5: They didn't get to tell their stories. They didn't get
Speaker 5: to live all the way to the end. They didn't
Speaker 5: get to be the point where my neighbor was, where
Speaker 5: he can now share their stories with the younger generation.
Speaker 5: And I think a lot about that when it comes
Speaker 5: to the locality of my craft, the spirits, I'm calling
Speaker 5: upon the queer dead who existed here, who still want
Speaker 5: to dance, who still want to love, They still want
Speaker 5: to party, they still want to be a part of life,
Speaker 5: and I want them to be I want them to
Speaker 5: participate in that with me. I want to show them reverence,
Speaker 5: and they're the spirits of my land.
Speaker 2: That's great. I really like how you said, like you
Speaker 2: do have like probably except for like what maybe the
Speaker 2: last like forty fifty is, you really don't have too
Speaker 2: many people I think over the United States that have
Speaker 2: really made a name for themselves as like an American watch.
Speaker 2: Like you're saying something fairly new, at least from my experience,
Speaker 2: especially being a ceremonial magician, a lot of stuff. You know,
Speaker 2: you think he's going back to people who in Europe
Speaker 2: tell you the truth. You know, so I hear what you're
Speaker 2: saying with that, that's pretty cool. Go ahead, you did? Sorry? Uh?
Speaker 4: You brought up the UK and Fredo Jester and the
Speaker 4: Chat had a question on your thoughts about the Witch's Bible.
Speaker 3: I haven't thought about that book in years.
Speaker 5: Oh, wow, you know I don't. I mean, I have
Speaker 5: no necessarily positive or negative things to say about it.
Speaker 5: I remember skimming through it a long time ago. I
Speaker 5: was probably wait, actually too young to be reading it. Actually,
Speaker 5: a few of the books I started with I was
Speaker 5: probably a little too young to be reading. I mean,
Speaker 5: I was twelve when I discovered a witchcraft was real.
Speaker 5: I was twelve years old reading Raymond Bucklan's Complete Book
Speaker 5: of Witchcraft. Wow, I mean, you know there were images
Speaker 5: drawn of you know, skyclad initiators that were bound and
Speaker 5: tied behind their behind their hands behind their back, and
Speaker 5: you know, it was very interesting to explain to my
Speaker 5: mother that no, no, it's a religious ceremony. No, no
Speaker 5: it's not, it's not inappropriate. And when I got a
Speaker 5: chance to kind of flip through and see the Witch's Bible,
Speaker 5: you know, it was very inspired by the time. It
Speaker 5: was the author's name, it was it Janet something, and
Speaker 5: it was her and her husband. I believe that wrote it.
Speaker 5: I could be mistaken on that, so don't quote me,
Speaker 5: but I remember it was. It was a very traditional
Speaker 5: and ceremonialized, ceremonialized practice of wicca at the time, and
Speaker 5: Wicca and witchcraft at the time are also very synonymous,
Speaker 5: especially in America. That was really the only thing that
Speaker 5: was traveling over here. When it comes to modern witchcraft
Speaker 5: and the religious aspect of it, I think it's probably
Speaker 5: a great read for people wanting to learn about their
Speaker 5: tradition of wicca and paganism. But I do not think
Speaker 5: that that book itself is a catch all generalization of
Speaker 5: what witchcraft is.
Speaker 1: I don't think such a thing exists. No, couldn't exist,
Speaker 1: It doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: I agree. M hm. Hey, I have anything that you
Speaker 2: wanted to ask or bring up before I start asking
Speaker 2: all this stuff.
Speaker 1: Sorry, my kids asking me for candy.
Speaker 2: Oh no, that's quite all right, that's all right. What's
Speaker 2: one thing that you hope that people will get out
Speaker 2: of American Witch, you know.
Speaker 5: I hope that they'll find that I have had experiences
Speaker 5: as a practitioner that I think a lot of us have,
Speaker 5: but we haven't had the freedom and ability to talk
Speaker 5: about them. Sometimes they're weird, like some some of these
Speaker 5: experiences are weird, and we kind of get nervous about
Speaker 5: sharing them and the mist I think so many new
Speaker 5: practitioners are afraid of things like backfires. They're afraid of
Speaker 5: things like uh. I do think that especially, you know,
Speaker 5: modern America and horror movies have taught us to be
Speaker 5: afraid of spirits, of conjuring, of experimenting with magic. I
Speaker 5: do a lot of magical experimentation in my book, and
Speaker 5: I want people to see what that lived experience was like,
Speaker 5: what the outcomes were like, what some of my mistakes
Speaker 5: were that I would change differently. I think when we
Speaker 5: when we read each other's experiences, not just recipes, we
Speaker 5: can start to learn from each other's mistakes as well
Speaker 5: as successes. I hope people read it and they go,
Speaker 5: I've had a very similar experience and I didn't know
Speaker 5: if it was real or if anyone else would understand that.
Speaker 5: But Marshall had it too, So there's a validation there.
Speaker 5: There's honestly, there's there. I'm gonna be really frank here.
Speaker 5: There's also a somewhat of a voyeurist complex that I
Speaker 5: think many of us are not really ready to admit
Speaker 5: that we have. We want to watch what happens behind
Speaker 5: closed doors when people perform magic. We want to see
Speaker 5: what happens. We want to experience that. We want to
Speaker 5: learn from each other. And it's very easy to read
Speaker 5: a how to book and a recipe and try to
Speaker 5: do that recipe, but it's very different when you watch
Speaker 5: someone or read about someone's experience when they do it.
Speaker 5: I think that there's a difference between a lived experience
Speaker 5: and a theory.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I try to facilitate that through the Order of Chaost
Speaker 1: community that everyone can share and talk about their experiences.
Speaker 1: But again, like the way that I teach magic is
Speaker 1: very much like it's a textbook. Here's formulas and things
Speaker 1: that you can do to get these experiences for yourself.
Speaker 1: But I think one of the problems with being a
Speaker 1: solo so I think there's huge advantages to being a
Speaker 1: little practitioner. But but one of the big disadvantages is
Speaker 1: people who are strictly solo practitioners, unless they just have
Speaker 1: incredible faith, will always end up saying, am I just crazy?
Speaker 1: Is am I just? Am I just crazy? Did that
Speaker 1: just happen? Or am I crazy? Right? And then and
Speaker 1: then doubt starts to creep in. And without that validation
Speaker 1: from other people having similar experiences or just you know,
Speaker 1: knowing that other people are going through the same thing,
Speaker 1: you start to doubt yourself.
Speaker 4: To piggyback on that one, do you think you're not
Speaker 4: doing something right if you don't ask yourself if you're crazy?
Speaker 2: That's true. I mean, that's a good point, that's a
Speaker 2: good question.
Speaker 1: There's a new level of arrogance.
Speaker 2: I don't know. One thing. I did also want to
Speaker 2: get into a little bit if if you're wanted to
Speaker 2: get into it the podcast as well, my podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: How did that? How did that come to be?
Speaker 5: You know, I'm at Austin on Instagram Back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: I thought what he was sharing was beautiful work. I
Speaker 5: thought it was so fascinating. It was very interesting, you know,
Speaker 5: in a world of content of you know, beautiful soft aesthetics.
Speaker 5: He was kind of dirty he was kind of hard,
Speaker 5: he was getting he was doing some some things that
Speaker 5: I thought were get your hands in the dirt witchcraft.
Speaker 5: And I started, you know, just sharing these videos, these
Speaker 5: little posts on my story. We became good friends. We
Speaker 5: started doing Instagram lives together, chatting about magic and witchcraft.
Speaker 5: And you know, we're both to Southern queer witches. He
Speaker 5: lives in Florida, I live in Texas, and we wanted
Speaker 5: to get together and make a podcast to share our perspectives,
Speaker 5: to talk about magical topics, to interview authors. The one
Speaker 5: of the things that I think we both had a
Speaker 5: heart agree in Swan was the concept of the queerness
Speaker 5: of witchcraft to the otherness of it. And when I
Speaker 5: say queer, I don't mean specifically lgbt Q, I A plus.
Speaker 5: I don't mean you know, alphabet mafia only. I mean
Speaker 5: the otherness, the edging that the people that are marginalized
Speaker 5: and pushed to, the edges that lead them to a
Speaker 5: space of magic, that lead them to a space of
Speaker 5: finding their empowerment, finding their their place of I am
Speaker 5: now so desperate to make this thing happen, to change
Speaker 5: this thing. I don't have any other recourse. Where's my
Speaker 5: commune like when I was young. That was my experience.
Speaker 5: That's what led me to witchcraft. Being much more of
Speaker 5: an effeminate man or a boy when I was young
Speaker 5: was a very very ostracizing experience and being led to
Speaker 5: to the church and not led to being brought to
Speaker 5: the church at a at a young age and being
Speaker 5: taught that everything I was feeling and experiencing inside was wrong.
Speaker 5: It led me to a place of when I found Witchcraft,
Speaker 5: I found the beauty in my femininity. I found the
Speaker 5: beauty in my differentness. And so when it comes to witchcraft.
Speaker 5: In our podcast, we really found that liminal space of queerness,
Speaker 5: if you will, that space of we are living somewhat
Speaker 5: in the margins of spirituality here and being in that
Speaker 5: liminal space, we found another sense of community within other
Speaker 5: We found other authors, other creators who were also experiencing that.
Speaker 5: We would invite them on the show and we would
Speaker 5: talk and sometimes they'd be authors or other creators, or
Speaker 5: they would be other podcast hosts. We did a lot
Speaker 5: of great crossover talks which were really fascinating, especially with
Speaker 5: different practices. Learning from each other, I think is one
Speaker 5: of the greatest things that we can do, especially in
Speaker 5: a spirituality that unfortunately has historically always been about secretiveness,
Speaker 5: and not just secretiveness, but elite exclusiveness. The Internet changed
Speaker 5: that for so many of us. And we're going on
Speaker 5: six years now with the podcast, and we've had We've
Speaker 5: had an ability to talk to people I never thought
Speaker 5: i'd have the ability to ask direct questions. We had
Speaker 5: Jim McGary on the podcast, and you know, this is
Speaker 5: a woman who I had like, you know, download and
Speaker 5: idolizing because she taught me so much through her work.
Speaker 5: And then I met people who I never would have
Speaker 5: known just because someone suggested, Hey, you should look check
Speaker 5: them out. They be great on the show.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Nice, Yeah, for sure. Even with the experience
Speaker 2: I've had on this show in like the last year
Speaker 2: or two, some of the people I've had on, it's
Speaker 2: just like I cannot believe I'm out in a conversation
Speaker 2: with these people. Like when I got into the got
Speaker 2: into what I was doing, It's like I was reading
Speaker 2: their books, like listening to them on other shows, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, now you're fucking talking to me. What it was?
Speaker 5: It was really amazing on the podcast. We were able
Speaker 5: to have the guest uh Christine Cummingham Ashworth. She is
Speaker 5: Scott Cunningham's sister, and she wrote, Yeah, she wrote his biography,
Speaker 5: uh post Morten biography, and I was reading it to
Speaker 5: prepare to have her come on the show, and I
Speaker 5: noticed so many similarities between me and my own sister,
Speaker 5: the same three year age gap, you know, me being
Speaker 5: you know, her gay older brother, uh me being into
Speaker 5: WICCA and secretly doing these things, and her kind of
Speaker 5: figuring out about it. And then now she's also a
Speaker 5: practicing a practicing which as well. It's it's very fascinating
Speaker 5: getting to speak to having the opportunity to speak to
Speaker 5: her and ask her about her life with this man
Speaker 5: who was so in flat wind shoal throughout the eighties
Speaker 5: and nineties and witchcraft, Yeah, who I very much think
Speaker 5: of as one of our you know, our our witch ancestors.
Speaker 5: When we talk about the mighty Dead, Scott Cunningham is
Speaker 5: absolutely included in that.
Speaker 2: He was hugely influential for me, and like I, whenever
Speaker 2: it came to herbs or crystals, I referred to his stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, whenever I did ritual work, always referred to
Speaker 2: his like associations. I guess a lot of his spell
Speaker 2: work so yeah, I used a lot of his ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh so, Judith, did you have anything that you wanted
Speaker 2: to ask?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 4: Not asked, but I yes, it did. Actually because in
Speaker 4: your with your writings, you're you're including the mishaps as well,
Speaker 4: but with and you mentioned the TikTok witches, which I
Speaker 4: know nothing about it. I don't have TikTok, don't know who.
Speaker 4: I just keep hearing about it. I can't believe this thing.
Speaker 4: But two different questions. One do you believe you are
Speaker 4: instilling faith and ethical magic with your writings? And how
Speaker 4: do you feel about the most recent which is that
Speaker 4: right about magic?
Speaker 3: Do you think they're missing that?
Speaker 5: I don't necessarily think they're missing it. I think that's
Speaker 5: man Another really big question. I do think teaching ethics
Speaker 5: in witchcraft is a very very wiggly place, if I
Speaker 5: can put it any other way, it's a very wiggly
Speaker 5: place because witchcraft in itself has no inherent ethics. You
Speaker 5: as the practitioner, have the ethics, and you apply it
Speaker 5: to your craft. You know, witchcraft itself is a tool
Speaker 5: like anything in nature. A hurricane is not It's not
Speaker 5: ethical or unethical. It is a force of nature and
Speaker 5: it creates and it destroys. Witchcraft is no different. You know,
Speaker 5: a hammer is a tool. You can use it to
Speaker 5: build something or you could use it to smash something.
Speaker 5: I think that is a big conversation when it comes
Speaker 5: to witchcraft and magic, and I do think that when
Speaker 5: it comes to spirituality in general, there are so many
Speaker 5: dogmas out there that are teaching ethics. Witchcraft isn't a dogma,
Speaker 5: but your spirituality might be. And that's going to change
Speaker 5: from person to person. So when it comes to like
Speaker 5: witch talk and social media and whatnot, you're going to
Speaker 5: see that wildly differ from person to person. You know,
Speaker 5: you got those edge lords who are all about the curses,
Speaker 5: and then you've got the healers who are all about
Speaker 5: love and light and that's it, and then everything in between.
Speaker 1: I actually feel like there's maybe not enough in between.
Speaker 1: I see the extremes more often than anything in the middle.
Speaker 1: I see the you should never ever, ever, ever, ever
Speaker 1: ever ever people, and that this is all I do people,
Speaker 1: And too, you know, I you know, as I always
Speaker 1: say this, this is like you said, this is hard
Speaker 1: to talk about. I just did a class on this
Speaker 1: the other night. I did a class called the ethics
Speaker 1: of baneful magic, and it was a very difficult class
Speaker 1: to get through because I'm not here to tell anyone
Speaker 1: what their morals should be. I'm not here to tell
Speaker 1: anyone what their ethics should be. I will say though,
Speaker 1: that for the people who I see who are just
Speaker 1: deeply involved in UH in baneful work, their own lives
Speaker 1: tend to fall apart. I see it, and I see
Speaker 1: it all the time. And I'm not even saying that
Speaker 1: that's directly the cause. But I will say, if you're
Speaker 1: walking around with hate in your heart, it's poisoning you.
Speaker 1: Like that is a puzzle fact, no matter. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any way around that I've done.
Speaker 1: I've hexed two people in my entire life time. One
Speaker 1: tried to murder someone who's very very important to me,
Speaker 1: and the other words Jeffrey Epson, and then the third
Speaker 1: will probably be Donald Trump. That's it to me. That's
Speaker 1: I don't want to do this unless I feel like
Speaker 1: this there's an absolute need for this.
Speaker 2: Mhmm. You know, I think that's a really good point
Speaker 2: that we were talking about too with UH. You know,
Speaker 2: it really does kind of fall in the practitioner and
Speaker 2: like you know, when I first started this show, it
Speaker 2: was a little bit more in the conspiracy community, and
Speaker 2: I was, I guess, trying to like educate them on
Speaker 2: like it's not all dicks and demons, you know. They're
Speaker 2: like like, you know, like, uh, it really like just
Speaker 2: because you associate Kabbalah with some fucked up, twisted, demonic
Speaker 2: shit and perverted stuff doesn't mean because I'm into the
Speaker 2: kabbala means that that's what I do with my shit.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: You could be like looking at one form of magic
Speaker 2: or multiple forms of magic and just like I don't know,
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, just demonizing the whole thing. And it's
Speaker 2: like they know that really depends on the practitioner actually,
Speaker 2: because you can twist and use anything, and is the
Speaker 2: direction depending on how you want to look at it,
Speaker 2: I think, you know, so I think that's a very
Speaker 2: good point to get at it. That it's just you know,
Speaker 2: really sometimes I think depending you know, what you're doing,
Speaker 2: it really is on the mindset of the practitioner. You
Speaker 2: could do some great things or some horrible shit, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's where I think it gets hard. Like for
Speaker 2: me sometimes I really just don't even put my own
Speaker 2: opinion in there, I just present the topic or present
Speaker 2: people who cover that stuff and just ask them questions
Speaker 2: because I'm not here to tell you what to do.
Speaker 2: This is this is an option. Yeah, that's it, you know,
Speaker 2: but uh yeah, thank you. Sorry I'm going on about it.
Speaker 2: But I just think that is a really good point
Speaker 2: to make. You know, it really does depend on who
Speaker 2: who's doing the magic where they are on their head.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 4: But the thing about Marshall your unique what you do
Speaker 4: uniquely is you say I this and this happened, whether
Speaker 4: it's good or bad. We always get the good, do
Speaker 4: this and this will happen, but we never we never
Speaker 4: know the loophole of that disaster that might happen, that
Speaker 4: might ruin the life or anything like that. And you
Speaker 4: present that. Do you think that part is missing? I
Speaker 4: find that that part is missing when I'm when I'm
Speaker 4: reading different books on work.
Speaker 5: Oh absolutely. And I think that's actually that No, that
Speaker 5: that's a very good point because I do feel like
Speaker 5: because so many books are about theory and about practice,
Speaker 5: but not about the lived experience of that practice. I
Speaker 5: remember I read a book a while back, by a
Speaker 5: long Mile of a cautt Low magic, and it was
Speaker 5: someone suggested it to me, and I had not read
Speaker 5: any of his other work, but it was it was
Speaker 5: fascinating because it was not a collection of rituals. It
Speaker 5: was a I did this, I used this, this is
Speaker 5: what happened, and I thought it was fantastic. I thought, like,
Speaker 5: I want to see more books like this. Many of
Speaker 5: the spells that I talk about in my diary are
Speaker 5: ones that I sometimes cast when I was thirteen years old,
Speaker 5: sixteen years old, nineteen years old, ones that I cast
Speaker 5: when I was thirty years old, thirty five, thirty seven.
Speaker 5: You will notice, you will definitely notice that the motivation
Speaker 5: behind it and maturity behind it are very different at
Speaker 5: different ages. The decisions that I made to try to
Speaker 5: curse this bully from school, and then the outcome that happened,
Speaker 5: and the way I might have actually been wrong about
Speaker 5: who I thought was doing it. That was actually one
Speaker 5: of the big ones. There was a situation where I
Speaker 5: cast a hex on someone who was treating me a
Speaker 5: specific way or who I believed was, and it was
Speaker 5: not them. And I had my own experience where I
Speaker 5: got some call it blowback, but I would almost say
Speaker 5: I cast something that was not justified, and I was
Speaker 5: made very aware, a very aware that it was not justified,
Speaker 5: because I do believe and justified magic. I do believe
Speaker 5: that there is a larger kind. I mean it's a
Speaker 5: very again, a wiggly place of balance. But when it
Speaker 5: comes to not expecting those bad outcomes, this is actually
Speaker 5: a really good part where to think about divination before
Speaker 5: doing magic, asking the cards, asking the bones, doing divination
Speaker 5: before you cast, to see first? Is this even a
Speaker 5: good idea? Is this the best way to go about it?
Speaker 5: Is this the best spell? Is this the best spirit
Speaker 5: to call? I do think that divination gets forgotten. It
Speaker 5: feels very separated from spellcraft a lot of times, and
Speaker 5: I think they can be much more interwoven with each other.
Speaker 5: I have binary divination bones. It's just asking yes or
Speaker 5: no questions. Should I do this?
Speaker 2: Yes or no?
Speaker 5: Sometimes they're uh, what's it called up? Inconclusive? And if
Speaker 5: that's the case, I need to get more specific with
Speaker 5: my questions or more general, depending on what I'm asking.
Speaker 2: Not to kind of go backwards a little bit. But
Speaker 2: you had mentioned something about you know, low magic and
Speaker 2: lon Milo and you know, like you even inserting your
Speaker 2: own experiences into your stuff, and then like even that
Speaker 2: we had Thump of forge On and his Chaos Apple,
Speaker 2: I kind of feel was like a little bit like
Speaker 2: that too from what I had read. And I really
Speaker 2: do feel like that those books when people kind of
Speaker 2: do that and it's you know, not I haven't read
Speaker 2: too many, like I'm saying, like Thump before Milo and
Speaker 2: what you're doing. They really for me, they're easy reads.
Speaker 2: For some reason, I seem to go through them a
Speaker 2: lot better and if they're good authors and they're actually
Speaker 2: like kind of getting detailed in a sense for me,
Speaker 2: And I guess it depends on the type of person
Speaker 2: and if they can even visualize things in their brain
Speaker 2: at all to begin with, because some people do have
Speaker 2: problems with that. I do visualize a lot of it,
Speaker 2: and I do think that's what really like put it
Speaker 2: this way too, even given you props, if you actually
Speaker 2: can create an image in someone's mind and it's like
Speaker 2: almost like a movie as they're reading something that's magical,
Speaker 2: because that's going to leave a series, I think a
Speaker 2: more serious imprint in the person because they're really enveloping
Speaker 2: themselves into the story. And I think that that's that's
Speaker 2: pretty impressive, you know, and I think books like that
Speaker 2: are magical in themselves, so I agree.
Speaker 5: Well, you know a lot of old grimoires, they were
Speaker 5: believed to be just literally holding them, being in possession
Speaker 5: of them, they were magic. You go back to the
Speaker 5: biblotech blue period of the French Wars. Okay, you know
Speaker 5: they had inscriptions on them. They some people couldn't even
Speaker 5: read them, if they weren't if they were even in
Speaker 5: a language they could read. But owning it, wearing it
Speaker 5: in the hidden pocket of your breast jacket, just having
Speaker 5: it was an apotropeic a talisman. So, and these books
Speaker 5: were small, and sometimes they had different cover jackets because
Speaker 5: they were hidden. You know, this was a very underground
Speaker 5: book scenario going on. So I mean sometimes just the
Speaker 5: existence of the book being on your on your body
Speaker 5: is itself a magical talisman.
Speaker 2: That's wild. You mentioned in BiblioTech, you know the bluebooks. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of alchemists, like back in Germany I think too,
Speaker 2: were like putting maybe it was wherever you were saying,
Speaker 2: they were putting them out like it was kind of
Speaker 2: like like pamphlets on like some of their bigger work
Speaker 2: to like kind of like advertise or whatever. But that's
Speaker 2: why I haven't heard too many people mention that. I
Speaker 2: was just impressed that you said that, you know, what's
Speaker 2: really weird and this is getting conspiratorial, but like when
Speaker 2: I was like coming across that stuff, I was like,
Speaker 2: it's so weird. How like back then? I guess if
Speaker 2: you want to translate that over, that'd be blue Book,
Speaker 2: you know, and they're talking about magic and it's I guess,
Speaker 2: depend on what you think about aliens or where they're
Speaker 2: taking the Aldea of Aliens. I'm like, you know, we
Speaker 2: got operation blue Book with that. I'm like the going
Speaker 2: on here, like.
Speaker 1: There's blue Beam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It just was like, hmmm,
Speaker 2: find out I don't know, just some weird shit with
Speaker 2: my conspiratorial mind. But uh yeah, so I started to
Speaker 2: ramble on about that. But yeah, that's cool that you
Speaker 2: mentioned that. Did anybody have anything that they wanted to
Speaker 2: ask her to?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah, Marshall, So only if you don't mind sharing,
Speaker 1: or if you you know, however you want to answer
Speaker 1: this question, can you share what is your most memorable
Speaker 1: spell you ever cast? And why.
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 5: And this is actually great one because I do talk
Speaker 5: about it in the diary as well, one that really
Speaker 5: stood out to me. So I was building a framework
Speaker 5: of working with familiars, and these familiars were inspired by
Speaker 5: Jimmy Garry's book Traditional Witchcraft. She has the snake, the
Speaker 5: hair of the Tone, and the crow, and each one
Speaker 5: of them correspond to the quarterways the north, southeast, and west,
Speaker 5: and each one of them correspond with an element. And
Speaker 5: the hair of the South corresponds with Earth healing healing specifically,
Speaker 5: but also I mean there's other connotations under Earth, but
Speaker 5: the hair was the familiar spirit that I wanted to
Speaker 5: work with in the concept of healing. For my mother's partner.
Speaker 5: She got divorced a few years back, and she fell
Speaker 5: in love with this really amazing man, and within the
Speaker 5: first year and a half of their relationship, he was
Speaker 5: diagnosed with uterine cancer. And I decided, I asked, would
Speaker 5: you be okay with me doing a healing working. He
Speaker 5: said absolutely, So I drew a sigil over a picture
Speaker 5: of him, and I put it on one of those
Speaker 5: Novada candles, just a white and event of candle, and
Speaker 5: I fixed it with a few healing herbs and a
Speaker 5: cunning oil, which is a mixture of an oil that
Speaker 5: I write about in my first book, that it's just
Speaker 5: an all general purpose which is magic oil. And I
Speaker 5: said this chant to the familiar hair nine days in
Speaker 5: a row, and I would have my chanting beads that
Speaker 5: have they connect with my familiar spirits that I've built
Speaker 5: the system with, and I would light the candle and
Speaker 5: I'd stare at his picture with the sigil over it,
Speaker 5: with a flame flickering above it or behind it, depending
Speaker 5: on which day as the flame went down, And for
Speaker 5: nine days straight, I do one hundred chants with these beads,
Speaker 5: and I would chant to this hair and to travel
Speaker 5: to him and heal him of this cancer. And I
Speaker 5: had this whole visualization where I was visualizing this hair
Speaker 5: popping up from the direction of the south, being in
Speaker 5: my presence, and then literally hopping down the road all
Speaker 5: the way to where the house where he lived, crawling
Speaker 5: up and sitting on his chest and sinking into his
Speaker 5: body to be one with him, and carrying the assignment
Speaker 5: that I was giving this spirit. I did this nine
Speaker 5: days in a row, and then I remember my mother
Speaker 5: called me about a week later and said that he'd
Speaker 5: had surgery to have the cancerous mass and cells removed,
Speaker 5: and they went back in to do a check on
Speaker 5: the margins and they said, I'm sorry, I'm afraid. I
Speaker 5: don't think we got it all. We're going to have
Speaker 5: to go back again, but we're gonna monitor it over
Speaker 5: this next month and a half before we make it.
Speaker 5: We schedule it again. And I was like, it didn't work,
Speaker 5: it didn't work, I might have to just do it again.
Speaker 5: And then I didn't think about it for a while
Speaker 5: because I was waiting for them to check. And she
Speaker 5: called me up and she said he went in and
Speaker 5: there was no trace of cancer. All the cells were gone,
Speaker 5: zero margins, which was completely different diagnosed assist than they
Speaker 5: had told him after the first round of checking. And
Speaker 5: I was just kind of floored by the whole situation again,
Speaker 5: you know, I believe, but also, wow, it was and
Speaker 5: it was so important to me, and it mattered so
Speaker 5: much to me because my mom had fallen in love
Speaker 5: with this man after thirty eight years of marriage and
Speaker 5: ten years of questioning divorce and then wondering if she
Speaker 5: was going to be alone, what her life was going
Speaker 5: to be like, she got this second chance, and then
Speaker 5: just as soon as she did, she was afraid she
Speaker 5: was going to lose this man, and so seeing now
Speaker 5: that she was not going to lose him, that he
Speaker 5: was going to be okay. They moved in together. They're
Speaker 5: still living together and happy as ever now and he
Speaker 5: still gets you know, he still has to get checked
Speaker 5: up every now and again. It's never come back. And
Speaker 5: that was three years ago.
Speaker 2: Lock. Yeah.
Speaker 5: In fact, I have a picture of it in the book.
Speaker 5: It's the picture of the candle that I used because
Speaker 5: I was just very big on documenting. I think documentation
Speaker 5: of our spellcraft and taking pictures of them, even if
Speaker 5: you're never going to share them publicly, but maybe just
Speaker 5: for yourself. I think that matters. It's so important to
Speaker 5: see it right there, the novena, the picture of him
Speaker 5: on it, my chanting beads around it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, that's awesome. That's an amazing story.
Speaker 5: Thank you for sharing, Thank you for thank you for
Speaker 5: letting me share.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that's so I like what you said,
Speaker 1: because one of the things that I always find.
Speaker 5: To be.
Speaker 1: Wondrous, I suppose, is that you can I've been practicing
Speaker 1: magic since I was fifteen, and I'm forty two. I
Speaker 1: am old, and I'm losing all the color that was
Speaker 1: ever in my hair. But I'm still I guess I'll
Speaker 1: do a terra reading and be like, wow, this works
Speaker 1: so well. It's still amazing. And I don't think that
Speaker 1: there's any value in losing that.
Speaker 5: Never lose your whimsy.
Speaker 1: Yeah it should still it should still give you goose
Speaker 1: ones every time. And then that's that's the coolest thing
Speaker 1: about it, because with everything else in life, we do lose.
Speaker 1: You know, you can you can. For example, I play,
Speaker 1: I used to. I haven't touched a guitar in almost
Speaker 1: a decade, but playing guitar used to be such an
Speaker 1: important part of my life and I would play for
Speaker 1: hours and hours a day, and eventually I got to
Speaker 1: a space where it just did not inspire me at
Speaker 1: all anymore, and so I stopped playing. And it became
Speaker 1: more just about frustration about not being at the skill
Speaker 1: level that I wanted to be at, and that I
Speaker 1: never get that. With magic, it's just fun and cool
Speaker 1: and it works and it makes your life better.
Speaker 2: M I experienced the same thing with the guitar. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's a frustrating instrument.
Speaker 2: I had a lot of fun I ain't but just yeah,
Speaker 2: one day I just kind of stopped, and it was
Speaker 2: kind of almost like what you had said. I was
Speaker 2: just frustrated that I wasn't where I would have liked
Speaker 2: to have been. I guess yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: I when I was a kid, I was like buying
Speaker 1: tickets to every Joe Satriani concert. Oh shit, okay, Like
Speaker 1: I was so inspired by these guys. You could play
Speaker 1: it that way, but then you look at today's musicians
Speaker 1: and you're like, I, I'm done, I give up. Did
Speaker 1: this gen ds GenZ, i aga'st gen Z, These kids
Speaker 1: who were in their early twenties smoke Satriani and Steve
Speaker 1: I make him look foolish.
Speaker 2: That's fine. I was gonna say it was more of
Speaker 2: a Steve I fed. That's funny you said. I was like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, I love Steve OI. That's great. I've been
Speaker 2: to a couple of G three counts. It's it's yeah,
Speaker 2: that's great. Nice. Nice. Did anybody else have anything yeah
Speaker 2: that they wanted to ask before? Yeah? All right. If
Speaker 2: there's uh, I don't know. If there's one thing that
Speaker 2: you would like to leave us with, Marshall, what would
Speaker 2: you like for the listeners to get out of the
Speaker 2: all this in your work?
Speaker 5: You know, I heard someone say this years ago on
Speaker 5: Seeking Witchcraft, a podcast I was listening to back in Quarantine,
Speaker 5: and this person was She said, be promiscuous with your magic.
Speaker 5: I think about that a lot. You see that in
Speaker 5: the book, you see that in my writing a lot.
Speaker 5: The experimentation, the promiscuity of trying things out, of building
Speaker 5: systems that you hope we're going to work, working them,
Speaker 5: and then seeing them work, or seeing how they work
Speaker 5: differently than you thought, and then adjusting to it, evolving
Speaker 5: with it. I think that magic is one of the
Speaker 5: most craziest mysterious things. And if I thought I had
Speaker 5: it all figured out, why not just roll over and
Speaker 5: die now? I'd rather continue being curious and finding out
Speaker 5: and learning from, you know, my own experiences, from others' experiences.
Speaker 5: I hope people step away from trying to be perfect
Speaker 5: and instead just trying.
Speaker 1: You'll remember that meme from a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: with the guys like that, the fuck around and find
Speaker 1: out chart, that was the most perfect explanation of magic
Speaker 1: that has ever existed.
Speaker 5: And honestly, be permiscuous your magic is a really nice
Speaker 5: way of saying, fuck around and find out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. That's true. I will even say, like
Speaker 2: as a ceremonial magician, I mean there was Tom's where
Speaker 2: I could literally mind fuck where am I gonna put
Speaker 2: the middle pillar ritual? And you am I gonna do
Speaker 2: it before the lb RP in between after you know this?
Speaker 2: That so like eventually I would have to just you know,
Speaker 2: just wing it and see what works for me, try
Speaker 2: multiple different ways do this, and then eventually for me,
Speaker 2: I did find my own rhythm that I just felt natural.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yes, I totally agree that I'm Marshall great stuff.
Speaker 2: All right, Uh, before we wrap it all up, let's, uh, Judith,
Speaker 2: let's remind everybody where they can find all your amazing stuff.
Speaker 4: First, thank you Marshall for a wonderful conversation. I would
Speaker 4: love to continue having conversations with you on this topic.
Speaker 4: Everyone else. You can find me on YouTube, Spreaker and
Speaker 4: x as the Loom and again, thank you again. This
Speaker 4: is a wonderful conversation.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you coming on, thank you for joining us
Speaker 2: and Sona please let everybody know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the same sentiment, Marshall. I love interacting with you.
Speaker 1: This has been a lot of fun. I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to read the new book and it's it's you get
Speaker 1: it now right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, it's available on Amazon, the ebook and paperback Killer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't wait. I love the you did this,
Speaker 1: I love the way you're right and you're a huge
Speaker 1: inspiration to me. So this has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: And yeah, thanks thanks for having me on again. Of
Speaker 1: course it's been great.
Speaker 2: No, thank you for jumping on, man, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: That was awesome. That was a great time. And Marshall,
Speaker 2: please let everybody know where they can find anything you'd
Speaker 2: like to tell them about.
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, thank you all so much for
Speaker 5: having me. It's it's truly been a pleasure. If you
Speaker 5: want to find me, please look me up on Instagram, TikTok,
Speaker 5: and threads. I do a lot of ship posting on threads,
Speaker 5: and I also do a lot of like horror movie posting.
Speaker 2: I love nice.
Speaker 5: On threads and things that I'm watching and a lot
Speaker 5: of them have to do with the occult and witchcraft.
Speaker 5: So you can find me on all of these at
Speaker 5: Witch of Southern Light by my books Cunning Words of Grimmar,
Speaker 5: Tails and Magic, The Red Mother, and the Diary of
Speaker 5: an American Witch, all available on Amazon and check out
Speaker 5: the link tree and all of my profiles. I have
Speaker 5: everything you could want that I've ever put out on there,
Speaker 5: my Patreon, the podcast, my books, and a lot of
Speaker 5: free resources, herbal correspondences, planetary correspondences, how to work with
Speaker 5: planetary spirits, make making purple tintures, lots of just free
Speaker 5: information that people can have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your link tree is very impressive. I was looking
Speaker 1: for you before we started. I'm like, whoa dang, and.
Speaker 5: It's not what my stuff, it's stuff that I've accumulated
Speaker 5: that has helped me. And I was like, this helped me,
Speaker 5: this could help other practitioners. So I just put on
Speaker 5: my link tree so everyone has that free access.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is awesome. Nice. Yeah, I might have to
Speaker 2: check that out. Uh, Marshall, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: coming on. That was a blast. I really had a
Speaker 2: great time. That was a lot of fun, and I
Speaker 2: thought that was some really good Uh. I felt like
Speaker 2: there was some d points there and then there was
Speaker 2: you know, I go to overall, it was a great, great,
Speaker 2: great discussion and I would definitely a nice balance. Yeah, yes, exactly, yes,
Speaker 2: I thought exactly. Definitely get you on again in the
Speaker 2: future and talk about some other stuff for sure. I'm
Speaker 2: sure you have a plethora of things that would be interesting.
Speaker 2: And thank you everybody in the chat. That's what's up.
Speaker 2: Thank you for the questions, thank you Judith for mentioning
Speaker 2: the questions. I appreciate you. And until the next one,
Speaker 2: everybody be well.
Speaker 1: Lada