In this episode, Alison Chicosky and I discuss the various magical artifacts she's created and she tells us how she created those artifacts and what her research process is. We also address the recent controversies she's been dealing with in the occult community.
Visit Alison's website at http://www.practicaloccult.com
To see pictures and links of the products we discussed in the show visit: https://www.magicalexperiments.com/blog/2021/11/4/further-experiments-with-pentacles
Picture courtesy of Jennifer G 2022
The Triangle of Hekate - Being used her for skrying purposes and to connect with the goddess Hekate. Comes with a pdf about the archaeological history of the triangle.
Picture Taylor Ellwood 2022
Pentacles - Individual planetary pentacles that can be worked with. Each one has specific attributes that can be drawn upon.
Picture Taylor Ellwood 2022
Hermes-Thoth Prosperity box comes with a papyrus with the spell written out, as well as incense to burn. The box is made of olive wood.
Taylor Ellwood 2022
Mercurial Mind Bracelet - It has each of the pentacles of Mercury on it. Very useful for prompting creativity and helping with communication.
Taylor Ellwood 2022
Bracelet of Blessings - Jupiterian bracelet that lets you tap into the expansive and protection of the Jupiterian current.
Book Review: Kinesic Magic by Donald Tyson (Affiliate link)
This is an intriguing book that presents a system of magic that’s based on poses and hand gestures. It reminds me of Pascal Beverly Randolph’s work, but the author does a good job of creating a unique system of his own and based it around the classical elemental and planetary models of magic. If you’re looking for a system of magic that you can do strictly with your body, this is a good book to start with.
Book Review: The Four Elements of the Wise by Ivo Dominguez Jr (Affiliate Link)
If there’s one book I would recommend on elemental magic, its this book. I’ve been practicing elemental magic for over 25 years and I got new insights, perspectives, and ideas for my practice from this book. I don’t say that lightly, because I develop my own systems of magic, but this book gave me ideas on how to further flesh out my own work. It’s a book that will help you go deep with elemental magic. Pick it up today!
I discuss how I have worked with elemental portals in elemental magic and share why these can be useful tools for learning and connecting with the elemental spirits.
Restore and reinvent yourself through the inner alchemy of wintering
Sometimes we hit spiritual burnout because of events in our lives, or in our spiritual work, or because we’ve just hit the wall and can’t go any further. We hit a state of wintering, where we need to rest, reflect, and reinvent ourselves. In this book you will learn:
What wintering is and how it applies to spiritual and magical work.
How to make peace with spiritual burnout, instead of trying to fight it.
Why we need to integrate rest and reflection into your spiritual and magical work.
How to discover what is truly essential in the face of burnout.
How to use the ritual of reinvention to transform your life.
If you’ve hit a state of burnout or wintering, this book will help you work through those states. You’ll learn how to use the inner alchemy of wintering to turn the burnout in your life into inspiration that drives the reinvention of your life through practical magic.
In this interview Irisanya Moon discusses what Heart Magic is and shares how it can be used to help you heal your heart as well as sharing her work with Aphrodite as a goddess of love and initiation. We talk about what the relationship with a godd can look like and what that entails for one's personal work as a result.
Get Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow and Messenger of the Godds - https://amzn.to/3r7XPgj (affiliate link)
Get Aphrodite: encountering the Goddess of Love, Beauty, & Initiation - https://amzn.to/3ngHfK6 (affiliate link)
Get practically pagan: An alternative guide to health and well-being: https://amzn.to/3Gen3A5 (affiliate link)
Get Reclaiming Witchcraft: https://amzn.to/3tkKjsy (affiliate link)
Irisanya Moon (she/they) is a writer, priestess, and teacher, and has facilitated classes and camps around the world, including the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. She was initiated into the Reclaiming Witchcraft tradition in 2014. She is a frequent contributor to Moon Books anthologies, a contributor to Witches & Pagans magazine, a columnist for Pagan Dawn, a blogger for Moon Books, and a blogger for Patheos.com (Charged by the Goddess). Irisanya has written and published four books: Pagan Portals - Reclaiming Witchcraft; Pagan Portals - Aphrodite; Practically Pagan: An Alternative Guide to Health and Well-being; and Pagan Portals - Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow & Messenger of the Godds. Three more are in the works. She is a devotee of Aphrodite, Hecate, the Norns, and Iris. They seek to find love and to inspire love by reminding us we are not alone, while meeting at crossroads, holding the threads of time, and bringing down messages from the godds. She is passionate about the idea that life is a love spell, a dance of desire and connection, a moving in and out of the heart, always returning to love.
Have you ever had that feeling, that sense of certainty, a feeling of fate or destiny when it comes to your life, where you just know that certain things will happen? I have and each time I’ve experienced it I have recognized that what I’ve tapped into is a possible future state of being, a potential maybe that could be a reality in my life. It’s an awareness of reality that transcends the present moment and the linear experience of time and aligns you with the future spiral.
One of the simplest principles of life, but one often missed out on, is the principle of having. The principle of having is a fundamental form of wealth magic and realization that actively encourages the attraction of what you already have, because when you have it, you can draw more of it to you. It is a principle that seems counter intuitive, but when you consider it in context to wanting something it actually makes sense.
When you want or need something or someone, what you experience is a neediness that can actually repel what you want from you. The reason is simple: when you want something or someone, you set up within your mind and identity the lack of that thing or person that you want and this creates tension between you and what you want, because you are establishing that it isn’t part of your identity and that you don’t really have it. You want it, but the wanting of it creates distance.
In this interview Giulia Turolla shares her work and research with Italian witchcraft and discusses how to integrate ancient spiritual practices into modern times. We also discuss how to work with spirits and whether or not spirits modernize with the times.
Giulia is an Italian witch, High Priestess and teacher in the Tempio di Ara tradition. She graduated with honors in Archaeology and Ancient World Cultures from Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna and her field of specialization is ancient magical/religious technology and culture. Giulia’s personal path focuses on the practice of witchcraft as an indigenous form of shamanism and aims to rediscover and rebuild the Sacred Net that binds us to the Spirits and the Gods of the place we live in.
She has been leading circles for the Temple of Ara since 2008 and actively teaching study groups and advanced workshops since 2012. On her website http://www.boscodiartemisia.com she offers online courses, private mentoring sessions and hand-made shamanic and magical tools focused on European magical traditions.
I share some specific examples of what magical partnership looks like and how it has changed my approach to magic, as a result. I discuss synchronicities, working with deities, as well as discovering new directions in a person’s magical work.
I was recently asked what its like to work with a magical partner. In this video I share my thoughts and perspectives about working with a magical partner and the lessons I’ve learned along the way as a result of doing this work. I also discuss different types of magical partnerships and share why its important to have a good understanding of what the partnership is and what the purpose of the work is.
One of my favorite metaphors, though it is more than just a metaphor, is to look space/time as a spider web. It’s a useful non-linear device for conceptualizing space/time as a web. The strands become time lines and where two or more strands meet you have spatial nodes which represent events that the strands of time intersect with. It can be a useful tool for helping you wrap your mind around the non-linear aspects of time and I’ve found it particularly helpful in relationship to identity work, because you can move from one event identity to another using the strands of time to bring you to that event.
This week I interview Byron Ballard about Appalchian Folk Magic. We discuss how folk magic works and how to create a spiritual lineage of your own. We also discuss the importance of research and why folk magic can be done anywhere. Byron Ballard is a rootworker and energy consultant; a freelance writer and an urban farmer; a weaver of words and webs, and the author of Roots, Branches, and Spirits, Staubs and Ditchwater, Asfidity and Madstones, Earth Works: Ceremonies in Tower Time, and Seasons of a Magical Life. Links to her books are below and are affiliate links.
You can Learn more about Byron and her work at https://www.myvillagewitch.com/
Recently a friend asked me what the point is around building a relationship with spirits. I think the relationship with spirits is much like any other relationship, where there is a give and take and benefits all around, but you have to be open to the relationship and what it can offer. For more of my thoughts on this watch the video.
I think the conventional image that people must have of a magical experimenter is someone running around with crazy hair, doing all kinds of off the wall magical workings, which may or may not be grounded in conventional magical theory and practice. I can understand if that’s the image that comes to mind, but the reality of magical experimentation is that it is a careful process, grounded in the experiences of the magician and the work they have done up to the point of experimentation.
Way back, when I first started practicing magic I used to have a sword, an athame, a rod, a chalice, and candles and incense, and other various tools that people typically use with magical work. Over the years I drifted away from using such tools, taking a minimalistic approach to my magical work, or coming up with my own tools, based on unique needs I had. However of late I’ve been going back to an old school with my magical work and I’m finding it to be refreshing to do, because its like coming back to an old friend you haven’t seen in a while and picking the relationship right back up.
In this episode of Magical Experiments Podcast, I interview Helena Domenic about her work as a magical artist. We discuss how she's created books with illuminated art and explore the intersection between creativity, art and magic. Helena Domenic is an accomplished artist, writer, witch, and professor of art history and studio art. Helena maintains a studio in Phoenixville, PA under the name, The Artistic Mystic, where she offers classes, workshops, and readings. Helena spent thirty years as a member of the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel and was also an Elder in that tradition. She left to carve out her own path, both as an artist and a witch. Currently, she leads the Exton Pagan Meetup and the Brandywine Kindred, a newly formed coven in Chester County.
Helena has a forthcoming book called An Illuminated Guide to Wicca, available from Schiffer Publishing (available for pre-order now) in January 2022.
Helena has also created a Tarot deck and book, The Fellowship of the Fool Tarot, as well as a Runic Oracle deck and a Lenormand deck.
Helena’s work may also be seen on her website: http:www.artofhelenadomenic.com
I discuss why I work with more than five elements in my elemental magic and share an example of working with the element of movement in order to release blockages and create opportunity.
Are you the magic you work? Are you the experiences you have? Are you the clothes you wear or the car you drive? Before I go all Tyler Durden on you here, the reason I’m asking these questions is because of something I read in the book Creating (Affiliate link), where he discussed the necessity of being able to separate yourself from your work, relationships, experiences, etc. It really struck me, because there is something to be said for overly identifying with something.
In magical work this over identification is framed as a lust for results, but it could also be framed as an obsessive fixation on something. You hold on too tight to an identity and the result is that you don’t actually get what you want, because you’re too caught up in the identity instead of knowing when to separate yourself out from it. You let it define you, instead of seeing it for what is. the only way to free yourself from fixation is to recognize it for what it is and separate yourself from it.
Should you call someone into your life? I weigh the pros and cons of evoking people into your life and share some of my experiences with this kind of work.
