New Worlds of Body, Mind & Spirit Since 1901
Image by Wolfgang Liemberger I remember one winter evening from my childhood in Austria more than any other. One December 5th, shortly before I was ten years old, I heard the doorbell to our apartment ring. As I followed my father down the dark hallway to the foyer, the clanking of a chain and some eerie grunts sounded from behind the door. Before my father opened it and a huge, dark figure with mighty horns filled up the whole door frame, I was gone. I don't know how I got from there to under the dining room table that quickly, but before the monster had even made one step into the apartment, I was hidden. I also don't know why I thought that under the dining room table was the ...
My earliest memory of a limpia (a ritual practice of energy clearing) is from when I was around 6 or 7 years old. I was going through susto, a moment in time when my soul was fragmented due to a traumatic experience, and I was having trouble sleeping, eating, and feeling the happiness that a kid at that age should feel. My mother took me to one of my aunts to rebalance my energy. Growing up in Mexico, I got to witness how, despite colonization, we still practice and keep some of our pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican rituals, including the upe of limpias with herbs, eggs, and copal. Although there are some protocols to follow when performing a limpia, and certain energetic spaces in the human ...
If you want a beautiful garden, you can't just toss some seeds onto the dirt and walk away. A few ratty blooms might reach up past the insects and weeds, but that lush, colorful little patch of nature you imagine probably won't materialize. You must first prepare the soil and mindfully plan your garden so your plants can sprout and thrive. It's the same with creating a magical life. You must prepare your magical "soil"—body, mind, and spirit—so your magical practices can take root, grow, thrive, and blossom into the sparkling magical life you desire. Maybe you want to learn to read tarot or develop an herbal healing practice or dig into Pagan history and culture. Maybe you ...
It's easy to feel untethered to truth right now. When we feel untethered to truth, we begin to drift from hope and possibility, and magic starts to feel out of reach. When magic feels out of reach, we lose connection to our body. To find truth, real truth that lives in the cycles of all things, we must return to nature. Nature holds a type of truth that doesn't exist in our busy lives, where we are spoon fed fear and disconnection every time we open our devices. The life we have been conditioned to lead, ones that make us a more valuable resource for capitalism to feed on, have become a hamster wheel that drains us of life force, let alone magic. When we are untethered to truth, we ...
