Category: personal spirituality

Workshopping God’s Reading from Rachel Pollack’s A Walk Through the Forest of Souls

On By benebellIn cartomancy, personal spirituality, Sightsee the Tarot, tarot, tarot community, tarot exercises1 Comment

Carolyn Cushing and Jenna Matlin, in collaboration with Weiser Books, are hosting a series of content to celebrate the late Rachel Pollack’s re-release of A Walk Through the Forest of Souls. This is a day-long event for the tarot community, and you’ll find many contributors to this celebration.

Read more about the event in this announcement from Carolyn Cushing.

On May 10, 2023, Carolyn, Jenna, Weiser Books editor Judika Ilkes, and author Mark Horn will be live streaming here between 3 pm and 5 pm Eastern time.

Jenna Matlin and Mary K. Greer will be in conversation about A Walk Through the Forest of Souls here, going live at 8 pm Eastern.

My contribution is a video workshop of a tarot reading prompt:

That is a question presented in the book.

Continue reading “Workshopping God’s Reading from Rachel Pollack’s A Walk Through the Forest of Souls” →

Fragments: A Grogryn Oracle by Le Page Novembre

On By benebellIn divination, oracle deck, personal spirituality2 Comments

Those who love Renaissance fairs are going to love the Fragments Grøgryn oracle by the artist Le Page Novembre. Novembre describes themselves as “a queer, non-binary, neuro-spicy illustrator and writer” who crafts tarot and neo-medieval art, in the pursuit of “queering catholic imagery.”

They recently launched the brand Grøgryn, an indie sole proprietorship that creates oracles, tarots, and other games. One such artisanal works by Grøgryn is Fragments.

Continue reading “Fragments: A Grogryn Oracle by Le Page Novembre” →

Egyptian Gods and Goddesses (1870), 12 Prints

On By benebellIn create your own deck, divination, free download, grimoire, Magical in the Mundane, personal spirituality6 Comments

Download zip file:
Twelve Ancient Egyptian Deities

These twelve images are sourced from an 1870 publication, Bilder-Atlas – Ikonographische Encyklopädie, a multi-volume compendium of reference books in German. The images are formatted to print at 5.0” x 7.0”, but the resolution isn’t the sharpest. Nonetheless, they still printed okay.

Oops! Please ignore the typo.

After you unzip the file, you’ll see four folders for four different versions of the twelve images. I’ve included the originals, a version where I converted the images to a warmer sepia tone, then two versions with borders for printing.

I’m sharing the files here for those who are fascinated by these sorts of finds.

If you want about 3 mm of patterned border to show and you’re using makeplayingcards.com to print your deck, then go with the 6 mm margin files.

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Complete Book of North American Folk Magic, edited by Cory Thomas Hutcheson

On By benebellIn book review, Magical in the Mundane, personal spirituality, Taoism, traditional witchcraft1 Comment

Cory Thomas Hutcheson, author of New World Witchery: A Trove of North American Folk Magic (2021), has brought together an incredible assembly of folk practitioners from across North America– Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

You will get an own voices insider perspective of Appalachian mountain magic, brujeria, curanderismo, Detroit hoodoo, Florida swamp magic, French Canadian sorcellerie, Irish American folk magic, Italian American magic, Melungeon folk magic, New England cunning craft, New Orleans voodoo, Ozark folk magic, Pennsylvania powwow and braucherei, Slavic American folk magic, Southern conjure, and more.

North America stretches five thousand miles across, nestled in between two great oceans, and within that space, frozen tundra, glaciers, pine forests, deciduous rainforests, blooming deserts, prairies, and towering groves of redwood.

This is the homeland of hundreds of Indigenous nations for millennia, a land ravaged with invasions and displacements, of dark legacies but also a hope for and collective effort to forge a brighter future.

Continue reading “Complete Book of North American Folk Magic, edited by Cory Thomas Hutcheson” →

Kuan Yin art print with Great Compassion Mantra dharani

On By benebellIn feng shui, free download, Fu talismans, Magical in the Mundane, personal, personal spirituality, Spirit Keeper's Tarot19 Comments

Click on the above image file to download and use freely (but reverently, please). The image file is in 400 dpi and should print okay at 9.5 inches x 9.5 inches. So don’t go much larger than that, but you can go smaller. Actually 11″ x 11″ should still be fine.

All the extra border is to allow for bleed margins.

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What Does It Mean (to Me) to Be Taoist?

On By benebellIn opinion, personal, personal spirituality, Tao of Craft (book), Taoism2 Comments

Since I made reference to some of these regions, below is an excerpted Appendix E from I Ching, The Oracle (North Atlantic Books, forthcoming 2023).

While the maps are not drawn to scale (I did them myself, by hand…) at least they help to give you a mental reference of where these kingdoms or states are located in geographical relation to one another.

Excerpt from Appendix E of I Ching, The Oracle (June, 2023):
Shang (1600 – 1045 BC) and Zhou (1046 – 256 BC)

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The Rebellious Origins of Witchcraft (Taoist Magic Edition)

On By benebellIn I Ching, Magical in the Mundane, personal spirituality, Tao of Craft (book), Taoism, traditional witchcraftLeave a comment

What is your hypothesis on the correlation or connection, if any, between witchcraft (/ceremonial magic) and rebellion?

Uh, Wait… Are you conflating witchcraft, folk magic,  and ceremonial magic??

Yeah. Kinda. =/

This 2019 post ruminating on witchcraft vs. ceremonial magic offers some context. I wrote it while I was trying to figure out a title for my then forthcoming course Witchcraft Fundamentals.

Now that I think about it some more, “witchcraft” is probably not even the right term to be using. “Folk magic” might be the better descriptive? What do you think?

Are Esoteric Taoist Traditions Closed or Open?

On By benebellIn Bell Chimes In, opinion, personal spirituality, Tao of Craft (book), Taoism, traditional witchcraft5 Comments

Don’t forget– if it helps, turn the closed captioning on! =)

When I say “open tradition,” I mean a culture-specific practice of a magical system and set of doctrinal beliefs integrated into that practice that anyone at all can work with for themselves, that it’s free and open to the public.

When I say “closed tradition,” I mean a culture-specific practice of a magical system and set of doctrinal beliefs integrated into that practice that can only be honorably accessed if certain conditions are met, such as initiation; heredity; clan or ethnic group membership; or a formally established master-student bond.

My third book, I Ching, The Oracle: A Practical Guide to the Book of Changes, published by North Atlantic Books, is forthcoming mid-2023. It’s my translation and annotations of the Oracle with cultural and historical references that honor the shamanic origins of the I Ching.

What it really is, though, is a magical grimoire. I began with an aspiration to write a grimoire on Taoist mysticism and magical practices, and then decided to do so through the framework of the I Ching. This is going to be a practical hands-on primer on East Asian modalities of witchcraft and folk magic. A deep-dive learning experience into the history and mythological references found in the Book of Changes is the bonus.

Leading up to the release of I Ching, The Oracle will be this series of videos where I lay the foundation for working with this third book. If this is of interest to you, stay tuned! ❤

Taoist Witches? What is Asian Witchcraft?

On By benebellIn Bell Chimes In, opinion, personal, personal spirituality, traditional witchcraft3 Comments

In my previous blog post recapping NWTS 2022, I talked about how much I enjoyed the “Which Witch is Which” lunch panel discussion. So that you don’t have to click between pages, here’s what I said about it:

The best part of all? Hands down, the Which Witch is Which lunch panel discussion. Each practitioner on the panel represented a different perspective on witch identity and witchcraft, from whether they identify with the moniker “witch” (some yes, some no), what is witchcraft anyway, and their takes on covens, solitary practice, closed vs. open traditions, altars, ancestor work, and more.

Thank you, Mat, for giving a shout-out to Taoist ceremonial magic! And wish the incredible Onareo, who was present in the audience with me, could have also been up there on the panel to represent brujeria.

In this Bell Chimes In video chat, I wanted to ruminate on my own responses to the questions “Do you identify as a witch?” and “What is witchcraft, to you?”

Answers to those two questions are not at all easy to arrive at.

Continue reading “Taoist Witches? What is Asian Witchcraft?” →