dreamsurfer

Hello again!

After talking with my friend about it, I decided I still had some more to say about sex addiction. Clearly, we’re being pushed to this way of being by our modern culture, but I also notice this coming from the holistic New Age community. The most obvious example, in this regard, would be holistic sex coach Kim Anami, who I talked about in my last post. In contrast to the standard, faster kind of sex that gets referenced in movies and music, Kim Anami wants to teach people to use slower, orgasmic sex as a means to harness energy, which can be utilized to help improve your life. However, Anami claims that this level of personal control through sex cannot be achieved until you become addicted to it. While I can see the appeal for this kind of education, I remained pretty indifferent until I looked deeper into what happens when we fall prey to addictions.

When I was younger, I had thought that things like alcohol and recreational drugs were the things that led to addictions, and as long as you stayed away from those things, you were in the clear. However, we often overlook things like electronics and artificial foods like candy, which can be just as addictive as the more typical harmful substances. In regards to sex, I think it sounds like an attractive thing to be addicted to because it doesn’t necessarily harm your body or cause your teeth to decay. Even so, by becoming addicted to any substance, including orgasmic sex, it can chip away at our identities little by little until we become, as Michael Knowles says, enslaved. We become dependent on it to cope with life and it ends up controlling how we respond to our human experience. Furthermore, an addiction of any kind leaves us vulnerable to be controlled by outside forces.

This is something I became more aware of last year, during a time when I learned how easily people can be used by unseen beings when they relinquish control of themselves. One content creator who gave me a new perspective on this is a young woman named Galatea Van Outersterp, who created the YouTube channel called the Authentic Observer. Even though she creates content about storytelling and fictional works, I think she offers a refreshing perspective on what it looks like when something or someone strives to control the collective. In this way, she also raises the question of how much power we have to resist. She does this through her videos, the primary examples being her two-part video series about the story archetypes of the Sorcerer and the Sorceress. She describes these archetypes as two sides of the same coin. They both aim for absolute power and control, but they work to achieve those goals through different realms of humanity. The sorcerer is the yang aspect of this archetype that focuses on the external realm: the physical plane, the conscious and will. The sorceress is the yin aspect that focuses on the internal realm: the emotional plane, and the subconscious.

We’ll start with the sorcerer archetype. In her opinion, Galatea states that if a character has most, if not all, of these traits, then they can be defined as an evil sorcerer. These traits are as follows: They can see all, or they have eyes everywhere. They manipulate the events of the protagonist and the people around him/her to get the hero to certain places or people. They are extremely arrogant and have massive egos (which can also be their downfall). As a result of this arrogance, they often have a title, because they’re a recognized authority; they also have many followers. They have often given up something essential to humanity to gain their power, whether it’s their soul or just their morality. They often have a non-human physical form, or some kind of deformity to show their loss of humanity. Most importantly, they only desire for power and control, “power above all.”

In regards to Kim Anami teaching students to utilize BDSM in the “Well-F*cked Woman” course, she would frequently use the book “50 Shades of Grey” as a reference for this method and its alleged importance. In some of her stories, she also talks about how some of the men she has been most drawn to in the past are “smarter versions of Christian Grey.” According to Galatea, the way the sorcerer archetype is used in modern day stories is by portraying those archetypal traits through characters like abusive partners. In other words, characters like Christian Grey are definitions of this very archetype.

For example, Galatea lists off the traits of the sorcerer that Mr. Grey exhibits in the books. She observed that “he has a beyond normal ability to know what Anastasia is doing all the time because he stalks her and hacks into her phone. He manipulates not only her, but he’s also a powerful enough to manipulate events and the people around her to get her where he wants her. He’s arrogant in the extreme and believes he’s superior and has the absolute right to exert dominance over the people around him. This is particularly the case for Anastasia, as he wants her to sign his contract against her will. He’s a figure of authority and has many followers (his employees). He has also given up something essential to his humanity to gain his power: the ability to be a good person, respect others, and have healthy relationships. Finally, above everything else, all he wants is total power and control, both of his own world and of Anastasia.”

In contrast, the sorceress archetype primarily rules the internal domain. While this archetype shares similar traits with the sorcerer, Galatea describes the sorceress as primarily wanting to be adored. They use emotions and temptations rather than blatant orders and force. They are also represented by “complete and unbalanced chaos, hysteria, unpredictability and insanity.” They understand people’s deepest desires and control them by dangling these things in front of their faces. This point also gets highlighted in Galatea’s video, where she would describe sorceresses “to generally work more through an understanding of people, through intuition, really understanding people’s deepest desires.”

So the big question is how does the holistic sex practice of Kim Anami relate to the topic of being vulnerable to someone else’s control? How does this topic of orgasmic sex addictions, or addictions of any kind, relate to the archetypes of sorcerers and sorceresses? The purpose of the sorcerer and the sorceress is to show that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Whether addictions play a role in our lives or not, when we lose the ability to think for ourselves and take control of our response to life, we become susceptible to being controlled by beings such as these. If being “well-f*cked” means becoming attracted to men like this, or even, God forbid, marrying someone like this, than I would rather not reach such a standard at all.

During my conversations about the “Well-F*cked Woman” course with Lee Yun, I often wondered if Kim Anami herself was a sorceress in some ways. In my opinion, it seems that Kim does exhibit a few of the traits: she has hundreds, if not thousands of followers (her clients and coaches-in-training), and you could argue that she gave up part of her humanity through the use of neural therapy injections to change how her body responds to trauma. She sometimes demonstrates arrogant behavior in how she disrespects her partner’s boundaries and openly insults people who are unlike her or think differently from her. In my opinion, she also works within the emotional plane through her marketing strategies to get people to take her courses, buy her tools and practice her methods. Her philosophy in becoming “well-f*cked” feels very confusing, with some conflicting teachings, which you could argue is a reflection of the sorceress’ inclination for chaos. In my previous blog, I explained how this is further demonstrated in her marketing tactics, especially during 2020 when people felt lonelier and desperate for contact during lockdown. In her podcasts, Kim states that the point of her courses isn’t necessarily to use sexual energy to get whatever you want. However, this statement feels very contradictory when you observe how she teaches and how she speaks of her relationships with her partners.

In a different way than the sorcerer archetype, Galatea observes that the sorceress is almost the scarier of the two. Galatea explains that “the truest kind of freedom is freedom over your heart and mind. No one can truly own you if you at least have that, if you’re at least free in your own heart, mind, body and soul. The sorceress wants to take that freedom away. If you aren’t sovereign over yourself, then you don’t have freedom at all, because the sorceress is a jealous mistress, and you can be damn sure she will not allow any room in your heart or mind for anyone but her.”

To conclude, I want to share some quotes from the book “The 21 Lessons of Merlyn” by Douglas Monroe. Since the system of Celtic magic seems to be what I’m naturally inclined to, this is one of first the books Lee Yun recommended for my studies as a witch. Even though the teachings in the book sound outdated for our time, some passages intrigued me in regards to how the Druidic community viewed sex. Specifically, Monroe explains, through his characters, how using sex for gaining power isn’t admired at all among the druids. He states that “the world is full of those who pretend to use sexual union as an instrument of spiritual gain under the guises of ‘soul-love, true fulfillment, destiny’, and many other romanticized notions. But such could never be the case outside of their own minds, as this purely animal behavior belongs to another world altogether, a world that minds such as these cannot pretend to change by wishing it were so.” He goes on to add that “against truth, these people will continue to say that lust elevates them into the world of Magic along with their pleasure; that sex generates a force which may be turned to loftier things. They will continue to confuse the spiritual with the physical, for the sake of convenience.”

This concept of modern feminism and pushing men out of the picture affects me differently than the average woman, because I was raised without a dad. When my mom adopted me and my other siblings, she never got married and instead asked her best female friend to step in and help raise all four of us. I was very loved, but I felt that absence of a father all my life. It affected nearly every part of my childhood and teenage years, and it continues to affect my adult life. I wanted to get a boyfriend and eventually get married, but the only constant guy in my life was my older brother. Therefore, I had very few examples of what respectful, good, masculine men looked like.

When I was a sophomore in college, my roommate at the time showed me a YouTube channel called Blimey Cow, and they had made a video called “Ten Ways to get the Right Guy to like You.” I hadn’t thought about this video or this channel in a few years, because they primarily make Christian content.  I’m not a Christian anymore, nor do I agree with all the beliefs of Christianity. However, I decided to go back to this video two days ago, because I remembered how these creators directly challenged how our culture defines female empowerment. Specifically they used this video to present that challenge, with an emphasis on noting the difference between female liberation and female objectification. Some of the suggestions they made to help girls find the right guys included showing interest in their hobbies, supporting their local chivalry, letting the guys in their lives know they appreciate them, putting less emphasis on how much skin they show and more emphasis on who they are as a person.  As a 20 year old college kid, these young content creators made a bigger impact on my views on men, women and the hyper-sexual movement than I would have thought. As a result, their video gave me the nudge to dive deeper into this topic through writing.

When you first learn of the term “female empowerment”, it sounds attractive enough: women being seen as a force to be reckoned with, authoritative, strong leaders who are goddesses in nearly every way. Rather than being stuck at home to take care of the kids, women are encouraged to pursue their career dreams, step into more masculine leadership roles and “be the boss”, for lack of a better term. It all sounds appealing until you start to dig deeper into what’s behind the phrase “female empowerment.” One big part of how I discovered this occurred last summer.

In July of 2020, I chose to invest a serious amount of money to an online holistic sex course. It was called Well-F*cked Woman, created by a woman named Kim Anami. Through using the tools learned through this six week course, Kim claims to have helped thousands of people all over the world, especially women, to connect with the untapped power of their sexual energy. She believes that a big reason why people are as stressed, unhealthy and unhappy as they are is because they’re not having the right kind of sex. Moreover, they’re not having the right kind of sex often enough. Whether you’re in a couple or single makes no difference. If you want to gain body confidence, get orgasms or even heal ancestral trauma, Kim claims this course would teach you how to obtain all those things by utilizing your sexual energy.

When I read the information on it, I became very intrigued. After several days of listening to her podcasts and reading her blogs, I became more convinced that this course could be a big help for my personal well-being.  At the time, my goal was to use the course to heal some of the imbalanced sacral energy I still had. Hopefully, it could even heal some ancestral wounds I carried in my DNA. If I achieved that, finding a romantic partner would be more of a bonus than a direct goal. So when I received the stimulus check from the government, I used that money to pay for the course and one of Kim’s jade yoni eggs.

For each of the six weeks, we would get a video with a written syllabus to discuss different topics, most of which revolved around sex. One week we would focus on self-love practices, one week we would talk about the relationship between sex and money, another week we learned about food, etc. In that first week, I began the exercises easily enough. However, I also started to feel very conflicted about the information we received in this course. For example, in the syllabus about self-love, one of the first statements Kim made about women is that “most have rape fantasies.” Admittedly, I didn’t really understand what that meant or what it was, until a friend told me. Once I did understand it, it bothered me deeply, to say the least. As someone who claimed that her work helped heal women’s sexual trauma, to hear Kim make such a statement right off the bat made me feel uneasy.

In a separate journal, I had written down my progress of the course and some of the conclusions I had made about what it taught and about the woman who taught it. In one entry, I had observed that it seemed to take a lot of money to become a “well-f*cked woman”, by Kim’s standards. If needed, it could possibly add up to hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. For instance, if you wanted to use a jade egg as a sexual healing tool, that cost $300. The six week course itself cost almost $1000. Kim also recommended using therapy injections to change your neural pathways, if you were a victim of sexual trauma.  Just getting one injection is expensive enough, but if you “need” more than one injection or appointment, that will add up fast. Sadly, such treatments are not easily accessible to everyone who wants sexual healing. It certainly wasn’t for me.

Additionally, a recurring message that came up in the course was that it’s important for couples to have sex more than once a week. In this case, it wasn’t talking about the faster paced sex described as being numb and fleeting. On the contrary, Kim wanted us to aim for the slower, orgasmic, breath focused sex where you’re working to maintain and build up a flow of sexual energy. While in some ways, this course educated people on sex differently than our modern culture, some aspects seem pretty similar to me. For example, one night stands are still seen as acceptable situations to practice generating this energy. We were encouraged to practice sex acts two to three times a week, to the point of becoming sex addicts. Also, even though Kim frowned upon pornography, we were still taught to utilize BDSM as a way to create polarity in our relationships. This was to make sure that “spark of passion” was maintained for the long term. Lastly, Kim would sometimes demonstrate problematic double standards when it came to showing examples of how to respect your partner. In one of her stories about “helping” her partner become confident with himself, she talked about making a point to touch his private parts in public, whether he was okay with it or not. If not, she claimed “it was his problem.” In my opinion, if they’re genders had been switched, she would have been called out for her disrespectful behavior immediately among the group.

In this class, Kim discouraged us from using substances like alcohol and drugs during the practice, because of how they damage the body. On the other hand, she promoted addictions to sex as something positive, as something to attain for as a human being. Whether you are in a couple doing the act or you’re a single adult who’s just masturbating, you were encouraged to have some kind of sex several times a week. According to Kim, it needed to get to the point where you felt you couldn’t go about your day without generating this energy. “What an addiction does is that it causes you to stop thinking,” says Michael Knowles, who was a guest on the Candace Owens Show discussing modern feminism.  “It enslaves you. It makes you prone to certain behavior, and when you’re not thinking, that’s when the people who want to grab power can come in and force it on you.” Too much of anything can be detrimental for your well-being, on all levels.  During a time where protection of boundaries for my spiritual life had become very important, this way of thinking pushed me to discover what kind of boundaries I had and to stick to them. In this case, it lead me to the conclusion that if being like Kim meant being addicted to sex, disrespecting the men I care about, and using methods of sexual control for the sake of “polarity”, then I would rather not be like her at all.

With all that being said, I believe the big question is this: how exactly does the WAP culture of free sex and female empowerment differ from the holistic sex culture I learned about in the summer of 2020? How does our pop culture differ from the Well-F*cked Woman course, in how we’re being educated about sex? In my opinion, one culture pushes the more superficial, fleeting benefits of sex in our faces, while the other pushes for using sex and sexual energy as a way to harness untapped power. This power can, supposedly, be used to energize us, heal our bodies, and manifest things into our lives. Regardless, both cultures seem to be more concerned with using sex to gain power than using it as a means to express true love.  Both cultures seem to encourage women to “embrace their femininity” by leaving their underwear off more often. Both cultures seem to promote double standards on how partners should respect each other and their boundaries. Both cultures still push us to become addicted to sex in order to have a fulfilled, happier life, because according to them, every aspect of our lives will disintegrate without it.

As a result of the lockdown, last year turned out to be most isolating time for us, and it was intense enough to put many people into a deep state of depression. At a time when everyone is stuck online and forced to keep further apart, this is when people in the online sex business—holistic or otherwise—will benefit the most from that loneliness. They can use it to make those profits and fill their own pockets. This becomes more obvious when you observe their marketing tactics, including the ones I noticed for Kim Anami’s website: unless you give me your money and do what I tell you to do, you will never be “well-f*cked.” Everything in your life will deteriorate unless you become “well-f*cked.” You will be a brainwashed zombie forever, easily manipulated, unless you become “well-f*cked.”As my friend Lee Yun would say, “These tactics are designed to create an empty void in people that can’t be filled.” In the cases of some individuals, even if they were to try, it would cost them more time, money and energy than they were lead to believe.

For those of you who wonder if I still keep up with the practices I learned from this course, I haven’t. At least, I haven’t kept up to the degree that would be necessary. My jade egg is sitting on my altar collecting dust, even as I write this. Because of the amount of money I spent to buy the egg, this is not something I’m proud to admit. A jade egg is a sacred, special tool that deserves to be put to use for the highest good, and eventually, I will find a teacher that can help me do so. I just don’t want to have to conform to this holistic “WAP” standard to get there.

Surprisingly, by reflecting on my past through watching Blimey Cow’s videos, I realized there are still some values about sex, intimacy and femininity that I learned as a teenage Christian that matter to me now as an adult witch. In my opinion, sex is something very sacred that should not be taken so lightly, because of how it connects you to your partner in an intense, physical and spiritual way. For me, I take it seriously enough to still choose to wait until I get a husband and to choose not to masturbate. Additionally, when I do have sex with my lifelong partner, it will be as much about him as it will be about me. This means respecting and honoring him as a man as well as I know how. In my opinion, if you encourage people to use something like sex to attain higher spiritual goals, but neglect to show basic respect to your partner’s boundaries about his body, then in the words of Jordan Taylor from Blimey Cow, “you’re doing it wrong.”

 Michael Knowles interview with Candace Owens on the Candace Owens Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejWIEMs8ecg

Hey everyone!

This blog is about some of my thoughts on “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern. I stumbled upon this book when I browsed my roommate’s bookshelf, completely by accident and it has now become of my favorite stories. If any of you have read this book, you could say that it came to my notice the same way that the circus came to the notice of its patrons. This book is heavily inspired by “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell”, and I admit that was one of the things that intrigued me about it. However, it’s also one of the most creative, unique books I’ve read in a long time.

If you haven’t read it, “The Night Circus” takes places during the late 1800s, and it’s about two young magicians who get put into a competition against each other, not quite willingly, by their two very different instructors. One student, Celia Bowen, is taught by her abusive father Hector Bowen. She gets trained in physical magic like telekinesis and changing the appearance of things telepathically. She can change the colors of her dress and turn books into birds, for example. The other student, Marco Alisdair, is taught subtler, more traditional magic by a man known as Alexander or Mr. A. H---.  Unlike Celia, he records his spells in a book, and utilizes runes, illusions, enchantments, and is even taught how to influence people’s memories.  

The arena for this competition is actually the Night Circus, or Le Cirque de Rêvés (The Circus of Dreams).  Both Celia and Marco get involved in creating the attraction and using magic to help bring it to life. Unlike most circus places, it has a black and white aesthetic, each act has its own tent among many, and it opens only at night. Instead of focusing on thrills and fast-paced entertainment, this circus is designed to be immersive and interactive. In other words, you don’t just sit there to be entertained; you get to explore it. When you read about this place, you get pulled into this world’s atmosphere and you can feel the magic that pulses under the surface. It has a very palpable, dreamlike ambiance that stays with you long after you finish the book.

In my humble opinion, the Night Circus could be described as a monochromatic version of the real-life Cirque du Soleil, but with the dreamlike quality turned up.  In addition to that, the magic is all real.

Erin Morgenstern makes the magic system in this book feel more tangible and accessible than in other fantasy books I’ve read. Even though there are specific magicians who do most of the magic, a reoccurring message in the novel is that anyone could learn how to use magic. With study and practice, anyone could do what the main protagonists do.  In a way, Morgenstern turns the famous Chosen One trope on its head by allowing the characters to choose themselves, which I loved.

Additionally, the book discusses the negative effects of immortality in a refreshing way.  One aspect about the magic in this world is that if you are a magician, you tend to age much more slowly than the people around you. The two instructors, Hector Bowen and Alexander, are two very powerful magicians who have lived longer than they appear, possibly for centuries. Even though they’ve seen so much and done so much, their sense of humanity has been altered. They fail to see the value of things like families, friends or even love. In their own ways, they even deny the humanity of their own students. Near the end of the book, one characters, the contortionist Tsukiko, actually says to Marco that their instructors “do not understand how it is, to be bound to someone in such a way. They are too old, too out of touch with their emotions. They no longer remember what it is to live and breathe in the world.” Humanity can be a hard pill to swallow, but there’s also great beauty in our humanness and in our capacity to love that deserves respect and honor.

This is something that comes up often during my shadow work and “The Night Circus” gives a beautiful reminder of that in how the characters build friendships and how Marco and Celia fall in love.  

Hey everyone,

I saw the movie “Black Panther” a couple weeks ago on Netflix. After learning dark stuff about the Disney company and remembering that they own Marvel now, this will be the last Marvel movie that I’ll be watching for a long time, if not forever. For those of you who haven’t seen the film, if you want to avoid spoilers, PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS BLOG!! Everyone else, read on.

This won’t be a review on the entire film, but I do feel the need to be candid about one or two things before I go on. First of all,  I struggled to connect to the protagonist T’Challa; he just felt very forgettable to me. Apart from him having skin like mine, I felt no reason or desire to relate to him. I also struggled to resonate with the scenes when T’Challa speaks with his father and we see the rest of his ancestors. To me, those moments ended very abruptly, like those scenes could have gone deeper than they did.  Plus, we didn’t even get to see what T’Challa experienced when he was unconscious for several scenes in the film, which really bothered me.

With all that being said, I’d actually like to talk about the antagonist, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, or N’Jadaka . To me as a viewer, it seemed like this movie gave him the agenda to spark anger in people of color for the supposed oppression that their ancestors went through by white people. He believed that since his people were oppressed, he has the right to take out that anger and injustice on the rest of the world. In this way, N’Jadaka expressed behavior that was similar to how Morgana Pendragon acted in the show “Merlin.” However, in a different way, N’Jadaka’s behavior bothers me more than Morgana’s. I’ll explain.

After coming to a better understanding about the truth behind our history as a country, I disagree with the reasoning behind N”Jadaka’s actions. We as viewers were given no reason to believe that N’Jadaka actually was descended from a family of slaves. In fact, we had no way of knowing how or if he even went out of his way to find that out. For all we know, and for all N’Jadaka knows, his ancestors could have owned slaves themselves.  Some of them could have committed a mass genocide. One or more of them could have kidnapped and severely raped innocent women.  No one was there to tell N’Jadaka otherwise.

To be even more candid, this bothered me a lot because I personally know nothing about my birth family, apart from the typical assumption that my ancestors were most likely slaves. I’m on my own journey to find out who they really were, rather than just who other people think they were. I have dark skin, but my DNA has a deeper story than I’ve been taught to believe. How I came to that conclusion would be a long story, and I can’t write too much more about that right now. For some people, the “Black Panther” film brought up this feeling of an unbroken African lineage, where we go to see a legacy passed down from one generation to another. However, I finished the movie feeling very unsatisfied, with little to no connection to the hero. T’Challa may have stood for something powerful and even good, but by the end, he was still as much a stranger to me as he was when the film started.

Hey everyone,

So for those of you who have been waiting very patiently for this one, thank you. This is the blog where I discuss how the author Susanna Clarke depicts faeries in her book “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.” There may be mild spoilers, so by all means, DO NOT READ THIS BLOG IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS!! It’s a good story, and if you’re starting with the book first, it’s worth the read. 

For everyone else, read on.

If anyone here is unfamiliar with the story, the book is about two magicians in 19th century England. The plot is a bit complex to explain on here, so for now I’ll just focus on a few primary characters. One of them is Mr. Norrell, a reclusive, anxious man who self-educated himself on magic through books, but he is also known for hoarding the information all to himself to remain to only “practical magician” in England. The second magician is Jonathan Strange, who is the opposite of Mr. Norrell in many ways. He’s more social, charismatic, and open to sharing his magical education with other people. However, besides both of them being magicians, these men unknowingly have another factor in common: they have the same antagonist, which is a faerie who the author calls “the gentleman with the thistledown hair.”

That’s as close as a name that the readers get, by the way.

In my opinion, this antagonist could be defined as an evil faerie. He is charismatic and energetic but also very manipulative towards the humans he comes into contact with. He thinks so highly of himself that he managed to take over the entire kingdom of Faerie and as a result, put it into ruin and chaos. His form of enchantment involves dragging his victims into endless faerie parties where they are forced to dance all night, every night.

That being said, the idea of faeries partying all night is not a new concept. There are multiple Irish folktales that involve long-lasting faerie revels. However, I think what sets this antagonist apart from other faerie characters is his particular fascination with violence towards humans, as well as his disdain for other faeries. He is very exclusive in his quest for control, in the sense that he wants to be the most famous and powerful of his kind. He has no friends, only captives or “admirers”.

Additionally, the desolation and decay of the realm Lost-hope reflects his severe lack of balance. Faeries do enjoy play, but in my opinion, they also know there are times when work needs to be done. This antagonist has no sense of duty to be a better “king” by respecting that balance, and instead uses his power just to get his way all the time.

If any of you haven’t read the book yet, the antagonist I describe here may be slightly different than the one portrayed in the Netflix series of the same name. While the actor who plays the gentleman still gives off a sense of madness and superiority, he also shows much more physical restraint, and he is far less emotionally expressive than the character from the novel. I personally prefer the book more so than the series, for more than one reason, but that includes the book antagonist’s ecstatic personality.

Hey everyone,

For those of you who have talked to me and know me personally, you know about my passion for the environment. If you have talked to me in the last two years, you’d know I really like faeries.  This blog will discuss both of those things, because they would go hand in hand anyway.

I had been homeschooled from the time I was four all the way up to eighth grade.   Therefore, as a way to get educated about the environment, my family would go on day trips to the arboretum in Lisle, IL. Even though science wasn’t my strong suit, learning about habitats of different animals and how they lived fascinated me. It felt like learning about a secret community of creatures that had their own neighborhoods, roles and traditions. Reading lots of children’s books also helped fuel my imagination in that regard. As a result, those arboretum visits sparked a sense of compassion for nature and animals, and inspiration for faeries as guardians of that world. The thought of faeries and that kind of magic actually being real made my mundane world feel more special, like there was a sacredness that I hadn’t seen or acknowledged before.

However, it took me over ten years to understand how much my actions affected nature and how much I had to learn about changing those actions for the better.

As someone who communes with and learns from faeries and other mystical beings, I’ve started to take caring for the environment more seriously.  However, it’s a learning process that should be done in steps rather than leaps, because the big picture can be very overwhelming. I have lived and worked in big cities like Minneapolis, Atlanta and now Charleston, and every time I’ve gone out, there are trails of garbage.  My first instinct when I notice this is to just pick up the litter and throw it away myself, which is fine. However, there was always more garbage just around the corner, and no matter how much I cleaned up, new litter would take its place the next day.  The hugeness of the job would paralyze me sometimes.

While I do still pick up trash when I can, I know now that more can be done than just throwing away perpetual litter, or even recycling. For example, when I was in college, I decided to cut out red meats from my diet to reduce the negative impacts my food choices made on the environment. After I graduated, I cut out poultry next.  When I moved to Georgia as an adult, I tried out a vegetarian diet and composting for the first time. In the year after that, I found out how the fashion industry contributes to environmental pollution, so I began switching my toxic clothes for eco-friendly fabrics.

Furthermore, this lead to reconsidering what kind of offerings I would give to faeries. Traditionally, people would leave bowls of milk or baked goods out for faeries out of respect and reverence to those beings. More recently, I’ve heard of people who have left crystals in special places in parks or on trails. However, I believe that one of the best things I’ve been able to give my faerie guides is my creative energy. When I say that, I mean the times when I create just for fun, especially dancing.  I notice their presence in a more visceral way in those moments than when I do card readings. In a different way, wearing the earth-friendly clothes has been an offering of sorts, because that’s putting my energy into businesses that are of service for the environment. Also, the clothes have helped me to tap into my identity as a witch, by connecting to the earth with fabrics like hemp or flax linen, or even just organic cotton.

Even though my faerie guides have shown me how I need to lighten up, my relationship with them has reignited my passion for taking better care of the planet. It’s a big job, and I think if I tried to tackle it all at once, it would push me over the edge. But taking it one step at a time can make a huge difference, and in my opinion, it will always be worth it.