Category: personal

Is magic and mysticism a replacement for trauma therapy?

On By benebellIn opinion, personal, personal spirituality, traditional witchcraft6 Comments

This commentary sums up my responsive thoughts to a certain heated, well, highly-engaged – we’ll call it – provocative discussion that was going on in my social network. The assertion presented was: Magick is not a replacement for therapy and definitely not a form of trauma therapy. By extension, anyone making such claims is unethical, misleading, and hurting vulnerable populations.

Just for the full context so you can catch me if I’m off, the quote was:

“Guys, Magick IS NOT a replacement for therapy and it’s DEFINITELY NOT a form of trauma therapy. Please do not listen to anyone who tells you differently. Such a claim is unethical, misleading; and even worse, hurtful to vulnerable people who seek healing. I am a licensed therapist with 20 years of mental health experience and an occultist. I hope this means something. . . . Jessica says magicians posing as ‘magick healers’ are no different than evangelical faith healers who prey on the vulnerable. She say the key is EMDR, not LBRP.”

I want to start by saying there is nothing there that I disagree with. In principle, the author of this original post is right. And also, this is the right messaging.

“Magick,” beyond Aleister Crowley’s definition of “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will,” is use of ceremonial rituals, sigils, visualization meditations, meditations in general maybe, mantra work maybe and so by extension, affirmations (?), herbalism to an extent, and various other “woo-woo” practices like candle magic, spell jars, spellwork, trying to time certain forms of workings to seasons, lunar phases, or planetary movements, and/or using divination as a form of diagnostics tool.

So what do I really think? Can such modalities that we categorize under “magick” replace trauma therapy administered by a licensed, qualified healthcare provider?

Continue reading “Is magic and mysticism a replacement for trauma therapy?” →

2025 Year in Review and Reflection

On By benebellIn opinion, personal6 Comments
Random photos of my 2025 sights and experiences interspersed throughout this post…

Oopsie doopsie, this “2025 Year in Review” is coming so, so late. A bit emblematic of my 2025, though, which is anything online-related gets relegated to lowest priority. Eeps. It’s because this past year I’ve kept my work more local community oriented, and my focus more family oriented.

I find that too much gets lots in translation when it’s via social media. I notice how in person, we assume the best in people, but online, we assume the worst. In person, we delight in how similar we actually are; but social media would have you think we can never get along.

2025 has been a year that demanded discernment. Can you discern truth from falsity, what’s natural and what’s edited, what is authenticated and what is entirely AI generated. Economic fissures between the have’s and the have-not’s are widening, which in turn is stoking civil unrest, all while we ravage our environment.

Continue reading “2025 Year in Review and Reflection” →

Seeing Auras; Ascribing Meaning: Sensory Experience vs. Moral Evaluation

On By benebellIn personal, personal spirituality8 Comments

Cross-posted from my newly minted Substack

I see auras. And also, I pay no attention to them. For most of my life I presumed it was a defect with my eyesight or brain or both — which by the way, that’s most likely it.

That said, medical explanations don’t take away from the spiritual implications, at least not for me. Ocular migraines and severe astigmatism are both known to cause a person to see a halo-like glow around people. Chronic dry eyes and corneal irregularities compounding ocular migraines and astigmatism can then make the glow appear to bear color.

Synesthesia can also be another culprit for what we think of as seeing auras. Your senses get cross-wired, so you see color when you hear sounds, hear musical notes when you see colors, and feel notes and numbers on a musical scale in different bones; likewise, someone’s presence — which we can all sense, it’s the “vibes” you get off a person — can get color-coded, and that’s the aura color a synthesthete might see.

Having not just one or some but all of the aforementioned conditions is probably why, medically speaking, this is what I see when I look at people:

Trying to use colored pencils to show what auras look like to me…

Continue reading “Seeing Auras; Ascribing Meaning: Sensory Experience vs. Moral Evaluation” →

When People Call My Work “New Age,” What They Really Mean

On By benebellIn opinion, personal12 Comments

Note: I wrote this after two generous glasses of port on an empty stomach…

Every so often, someone calls my translation of the I Ching or my work-in-progress on the Tao Te Ching “New Age.” They’ll say it dismissively, as if they’ve discredited the authenticity of my work, and the legitimacy of my scholarship. Funnier yet, not one has been able to competently articulate how and why my work is more “New Age” than its counterparts. For some reason, my interpretation is automatically assumed to be wrong if it departs from what some old white guy from the 50s wrote about these Chinese texts, and we give the old white guy, taking a Christianized outsider perspective, miles and miles of grace.

When pressed, their explanation collapses onto itself in circular reasoning. “It just sounds New Agey.” Or “Well it’s because she’s an occultist so she can’t possibly be unbiased, neutral, objective, and scholarly.” They’ll say it doesn’t sound like “ancient Chinese wisdom.” And that expectation is problematic.

Continue reading “When People Call My Work “New Age,” What They Really Mean” →

Are Authors and Content Creators Obligated to Engage?

On By benebellIn opinion, personal, professional tarot, tarot community26 Comments

Recently I came across this video essay by a fellow community content creator on YouTube who had some candid critiques of authors, influencers, and content creators from our mutual community. She shared frustrations about seeing a growing disconnect between those who create content and those who consume content, i.e., the audience that supports an author or content creator.

She had a lot of very legit criticism of the present day online creator ecosystem. Bots and AI-generated responses, monetizing parasocial relationships in a way that feels exploitative, the end of peer to peer communications and the rise of transactional relationships, alienating many socioeconomic classes with paywalls, and having assistants manage community spaces rather than the big-name content creator themselves engaging in those community spaces — I hear you. All valid points speaking truth to power. Also, her concerns speak to something deeper– the loneliness and disconnection many of us feel online these days. Where has that sense of fellowship gone?

Though as someone who also writes, publishes, and maintains an online presence, I have some strong feelings about these points, particularly around community engagement and the unrealistic expectations that get imposed on authors and content creators.

I’d like to unpack some of those critiques, not just from that one YouTuber or from that particular video essay, but because what she said reflects a majority view currently held against content creators when they’re not being responsive in their comments section. I want to offer my perspective. But this isn’t a response to that video, no. These are just my reflections on the realities of engagement, from a content creator’s perspective, inspired by the points she raised in that video.

Continue reading “Are Authors and Content Creators Obligated to Engage?” →

Create Your Own Metaphysician’s Day Planner: Downloadable Templates

On By benebellIn astrology, cartomancy, create your own deck, divination, free download, grimoire, personal, personal spirituality, promotional, tarot community, traditional witchcraft18 Comments

A few weeks ago I announced that we were retiring the annual Metaphysician’s Day Planner offering, after nine consecutive years of making them, each one custom-made to order with your birth chart and that year’s solar return chart. Plus the companion Metaphysician’s Guide that comes with the year ahead’s astrological forecasts, auspicious dates, inauspicious dates, and the dates to notable astrological or astronomical events.

Although we won’t be selling and making them anymore, we also didn’t want to leave you in a lurch, especially since we acknowledge that many of you have come to rely on it year after year. First, thank you so, so very much for your support over so many years. That’s amazing! Second, thank you for your understanding, patience, and sympathies that it’s just no longer feasible for us to be doing this, as our process is entirely manual and “old school” in this new world of everything getting generated instantly by digital automation.

I changed my mind and I am offering a “MDP Lite” version for 2026, which you can learn more about HERE. The layout design for many of the classic sections have been updated, and I will be updating some of the reference content as well.

You can still download the templates for the past day planner design and layout, however.

Continue reading “Create Your Own Metaphysician’s Day Planner: Downloadable Templates” →

Overview of Western Art Movements: Art History Timeline (Handout Download)

On By benebellIn create your own deck, free download, Magical in the Mundane, personal, personal spirituality1 Comment

Back in 2021 after completing SKT the Third, I shared a scan of my personal art study notes here, “Download My Art Study Journal.”

I converted the handwritten notes from pages 25 – 33, and integrating notes from other pages in that notebook into the following cleaned-up and expanded handout:

Download Handout

Art History Timeline

PDF

DOCX

The PDF file will be easier to work with. However, for those who want to cut and paste or edit the contents in the handout to create something more custom-tailored to your own needs and purposes, feel free to do so from the DOCX file.

Continue reading “Overview of Western Art Movements: Art History Timeline (Handout Download)” →

Critiquing Your Own Art (Handbook)

On By benebellIn create your own deck, free download, Magical in the Mundane, personal, personal spirituality8 Comments

I’ve written about my self-taught art journey during the pandemic here. I found a bunch of MFA art program syllabuses online and aggregated them together into my own curriculum, then scoured the interwebs for online courses, video lectures, tutorials, books, blogs, anything and everything I could get my hands on to learn composition and the core principles of art making.

You can also download my art study journal here, which is what this handbook, a free download, is based on.

Critiquing Your Own Art

PDF Download

It reads as if after you’ve produced a work of art, you’re supposed to run through the checklist of items for review page after page in this handbook and self-audit how well you did in each of the categories. Yes and no.

It’s funny, whenever I endeavor to unpack something into its parts to analyze, people accuse me of being too analytical at the cost of creativity and intuition.

But if you observe me in the everyday, you’d think me a hypocrite, because in life, I very much operate off intuition rather than pure, cold logic. I go off my feelings way more than I go off rational deduction.

Yet rational analysis is the necessary checks and balances to your supposed intuition. Your intuition can get tainted by bias. So you have to be hyper self-aware and mindful.

While I would be the first to agree that you do not need a checklist to determine and define what is or is not great art, there is some value to deconstructing why we consider certain pieces “great art” and others not.

And if you can deconstruct that, can you then use it as elements to construct “great art”? I don’t know, but why not try? Even if you fail, you’re going to learn valuable lessons from that failure, so I welcome it, don’t you?

If anything, this sort of guided checklist helps you to more likely spot areas for improvement in your craft.

Anyway, that’s how this handbook got started, and you’ll see that the contents are extracted from that art study journal from 2021, which I kept as reference throughout 2020 while I was working on the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot. I converted the content into, well, a bunch of concrete, tangible points for consideration when critiquing your own art.

It’s not like every single one of the points in this handbook will be 100% applicable to you. It’s more about using it as a general reference, to help you navigate self-assessment of your craft.

Here’s the MS Word doc version for those who want to cut and paste around, and change it up to make it personalized:

Critiquing Your Own Art

DOCX Download

The content within this handbook is free for you to use, share, adapt, and build upon in any way that serves you, be that for personal or commercial purposes. Whether you distribute the PDF or DOCX as-is, remix it into your own content, my goal is for this to reach those who will benefit from it. So do whatever you Will with it.

My 30 Days on the Ketogenic Diet

On By benebellIn holistic food, personal11 Comments
Thank goodness uni (sea urchin) is keto-friendly!

I guess I’ll start with the ending spoiler: this was not for me. Yet if keto was a cult (sometimes I think it is), the Hubby says he’d join in a heartbeat (he jokes, but you get what he’s saying). The Hubby now swears by keto.

Everything about having to be on a ketogenic diet fundamentally runs against my impulses, inclinations, my intuition, my preferred lifestyle, my joie de vivre, like this was 30 days of stripping away the meaning of life from me.

Also, at the tail end of this blog post I’ll share some woo thoughts on keto, and what I felt like was the impact of a ketogenic diet on those who are psychic or hyper-intuitive.

Keto-Compliant Huli Huli Chicken over Green Beans in Garlic Sauce

Balancing out the text reviewing my 30 days of keto will be keto food pics. I’ll also share a pdf download of 30 days of keto dinners. On weekends I meal-prepped for weekday breakfasts and lunches, i.e., fridge fully stocked with soft-boiled eggs, various seasoned ingredients to easily build salads, foods cut and at the ready for easy charcuterie boards.

30 Days Keto: Meal Plan Print-Out

In case you’re curious, here’s a print-out of what we ate for 30 days:

Click here for the PDF

To any keto purists reading this, yes, our meal planning included several vegetables considered “not keto-friendly,” but are nutrient-packed. I found that I had to integrate “not keto-friendly” vegetables into our meal planning to avoid vitamin deficiencies.

The problem with the keto diet (if I may…) is the high risk of nutrient deficiencies, and if you eat “dirty keto” (more on that later), then you’re probably taking in way too much sodium, way too much bad fats, etc. If you aren’t hyper-aware of what exactly you’re eating just to stay keto, you’re putting yourself at a much higher risk for elevated cholesterol, liver stress, kidney stones, and if you already have digestive issues and lack of gut microbiome diversity, you’re gonna exacerbate those conditions if you’re not super-careful on keto.

Before we continue, in case it’s not overtly obvious to you already, I’m not a nutrition scientist, I’m not an anything at all that would remotely qualify me to talk about dieting or ketogenesis. This is just a lay person cooking food in a lay people kinda way and sharing my lay person opinions on something I know nothing about (but experienced for 30 days).

Local Northern California white surgeon roe (aka cheap caviar)

Oh, and one more thing about that print-out of meal prep. Cuisine-wise, it’s primarily East Asian, but California (specifically Bay Area) influenced, as “farm to table” as practicable, local and seasonal. If that’s not your palate, then the print-out is going to be quite useless to you. =P

Continue reading “My 30 Days on the Ketogenic Diet” →

Strategic Communications and People Skills Workbook

On By benebellIn free download, personal, personal spirituality21 Comments
Master strategic communication, executive presence, and people skills with "Speak with Power, Lead with Trust." This powerful workbook offers tactical drills, emotional intelligence training, and leadership communication strategies to help you build trust, influence, and authority in any professional environment.
Master strategic communication, executive presence, and people skills with “Speak with Power, Lead with Trust.” This powerful workbook offers tactical drills, emotional intelligence training, and leadership communication strategies to help you build trust, influence, and authority in any professional environment.

I would rather not share this publicly, except geez do I wish someone had spared me so many failures and missteps simply by sharing something like this with me earlier, back when I was just starting out in my career, and life.

When you come from an immigrant family…

From a lower socioeconomic background and then suddenly for your career leap into an environment where everyone comes from so much more privilege and status than you ever knew…

When you’re a person of color and what goes for communication and people skills in your culture is not at all the same as what goes for communication and people skills in this society…

When you’re the only woman in a male-dominated industry…

When you’re neurodivergent and an introvert…

…when any of these situations are familiar to you, often a big obstacle that holds you back from the level of success you would otherwise enjoy is this: you’re terrible at corporate-friendly communication and people skills.

I know I am.

In my head I think I’m smiling, warm, affable, speaking clearly, slowly, and concisely, in a structured organized manner…

…in reality I’m looking nervous, shifty, I’m rambling off on tangents, I’m info-dumping on you, and I can’t seem to get to the point.

Improving Emotional Intelligence (EQ). What is Strategic Empathy.

Because I never had a workbook like this, my growth and improvement rate was slooooow. Like how many times did many, many people have to tell me I speak way too fast and am rambling and info-dumping before I made any effort to speak slower and enunciate better. How often did I cross my arms and slouch and avoid eye contact at important social gatherings and as a result made terrible first impressions with a load of very important people. Either I over-share or I under-share, and can never seem to “strategically share to present micro-vulnerability as a signal of authenticity.” (Like, did you even know that is a thing someone has methodically and intentionally thought through??)

Speech Cadence Skills

This is a free downloadable workbook based on strategic communication skills development and pattern-rewiring for executive leadership presence, with pretty easy-to-follow actionable techniques, skill development, and practice exercises to improve your people skills, your “executive presence,” and just all around be better at communicating to others.

Continue reading “Strategic Communications and People Skills Workbook” →