Chance

The United States of America has the highest prison population in the world

Black Americans and Latin people make up the majority of this population (many of whom are non-violent offenders)

Federal Prisons in America require that their state keeps their prisons at a maximum occupancy at all times.

YES GOD FINALLY.

This is an essential part of emerging tech rights, esp for young influencers and media users. Kate Eichhorn recently wrote a fantastic book abt this called The End of Forgetting: Growing Up with Social Media that explores the ways permanent records of childhood — particularly representations the children themselves may not be in control of, such as the children of mommy-bloggers or influencers used for clout — can have lasting influences on how we mature in a digital society

Yesterday I wrote a post about how intent really isn’t everything in magic; how sometimes, intent doesn’t even matter.

So when does it matter?

This post is full of my personal beliefs and opinions, many of which stem from UPG. I present this post as an explanation of how I work my path, which is in no way “standard,” universally compatible, or even helpful or a good idea depending on where you stand.

I think intent has become an umbrella term. I think that when we say intent, it might actually mean different things depending on context.

Intent as a noun: The desired outcome of a work of magic, meditation, or ritual. E.g. “My intent for the spell was to bring a feeling of happiness and peace to my life.” This desired outcome might be crystalized into specific statement, e.g., “My intent for the spell was, ‘I live a life of joy.’”

Intent as a verb: An application of willpower, used to raise, direct, and program energy. E.g. “Remember to maintain your intent for the entire spell.”

I think that if we accept these two definitions, both are necessary aspects of practical magic, but neither are “everything.”

Let me dive into my perspectives on this!

I believe that choosing a desired outcome is a necessary part of practical witchcraft.

I believe that what separates a working of magic from just faffing about with energies is that it has an end goal.

To the extent that practical witchcraft is working towards a desired outcome, that desired outcome is by definition the intent of the spell, whether or not it’s crystalized into a single statement.

In this sense, I do not believe we can ever get around the concept of intent within witchcraft.

However, choosing intent is only a starting point. It’s the shape we’d like reality to take, a wire-frame or a template if you will. It’s choosing the road to travel down.

Once I’ve chosen that road, I still must take action to render that wire-frame; fill out that template; and roll my wheels down the road.

Intent is a necessary starting point, but it isn’t everything.

If a spell is a vehicle, your willpower is the transmission, and this makes your willpower vital.

In an automobile, the transmission is what moves power from the engine to the wheels.

It doesn’t matter how much gasoline you have or how big the engine is. The wheels aren’t going to go unless the transmission is present.

My willpower is the transmission. It is a required mechanism to convert raised metaphysical power into real movement. In this sense, my willpower must be present and can’t be substituted.

This implies, of course, that as the witch you don’t have to be the gasoline.

I do not have a huge amount of personal power. In fact it’s quite limited. So when I do spells, I can’t power them with my personal energy. I mean I could, but then I’d be in bed for a week and a half.

When I was new to witchcraft, when I heard “your will and intent are everything,” I thought this meant everything about my spell relied on me expending as much willpower and focus as possible: that its power relied on my exertions alone.

I tried for a really long time to try to be the transmission and the gasoline. It didn’t work.

I failed to realize the point of my stones, herbs, incense, and candles, were to provide that energy for me.

All I ever had to do was engage my willpower to transfer the fuel I gathered into the wheels of motion :)

So my willpower was always vital, but it was never the only thing involved in powering my spells. There were always external energies present that would readily provide the bulk of the power for the spell itself. In fact, the energy from my willpower might easily be only a fraction of the total power involved in a spell.

I always needed to expend effort and energy, but my effort and energy weren’t everything. Even without them, my spell still had power. The power would just never hit the road and start rolling without me.

In summary,

I had really similar notions at the beginning of my path that I was to generate the power rather than simply conduct it. That changed the more I understood the nature of being an energetic being in the energetic flow of the universe, and the foundational law that energy isn’t created or destroyed, that it’s all about learning to move and transform it through its infinite expressions.

In my personal practice I’ve come to see the crystals, herbs, flames, etc that I work with as having their own personal power, though in limited quantity like mine. Rather than being a source, I’ve found them to be amazing focal points to direct energy through and tune it to certain frequencies that’ll help transform the energy I’m channeling into the attributes I desire for my spell.

I believe our creative and imaginative nature lets us as humans also be skilled at manipulating energy into all sorts of frequencies and characteristics which is where I think the noun form of intention comes in, that you’re also directing in the verb form.

But having physical focal points to work with makes things a lot easier and potentially more precise! That’s why a practitioner must be critical when composing or substituting ingredients in a spell so that the ‘flavor’ of the spell reinforces your intention. Major contradictions could cancel each other out and the spell won’t be able to gather momentum in a singular direction.

And the witch who finds themselves without physical guides is still powerful!

I’ve found that developing my skills to pull from environmental/universal/source energy to be so rewarding to my practice! How a person learns to do that will probably be so unique to the individual.

But I’ve recently started practicing Qigong and it really clicked to discover ways of channeling and directing different types of source energy into and through the body. It has been such a joy to grow sensitive to and strengthen the pathways through which energy moves through the body, learn different shapes it can take and different ways to apply it to the body and outside of it, how to regenerate my personal energy centers, and utilize energy work without taking from my own reserves.

I’ve also had limited experience working with Deities, and have felt the huge power that can be directed from them! It’s like they’re the different stars radiating vast amounts of energy, all of them with their own qualities and personality that can be tapped into and another route someone can take.

I’ve found my ancestors to be a powerful source as well, like a watermill in the river of lifeforce generating a great amount of energy that can be tapped into!

For the past 64 years, Jim Enote has planted a waffle garden, sunken garden beds enclosed by clay-heavy walls that he learned to build from his grandmother. This year, he planted onions and chiles, which he waters from a nearby stream. It’s an Indigenous farming tradition suited for the semi-arid, high-altitude desert of the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, where waffle gardens have long flourished and Enote has farmed since childhood.

“They are the inverse of raised beds, and for an area where it is more arid, they’re actually very efficient at conserving water,” said Enote, who leads the Colorado Plateau Foundation to protect Indigenous land, traditions, and water. Each interior cell of the waffle covers about a square foot of land, just below ground-level, and the raised, mounded earthen walls are designed to help keep moisture in the soil.

Coming to feel like a part of something greater than yourself can be a powerful experience, and scary to someone who might struggle staying centered. A common pitfall for some can feel one with all/god/spirit/divine energy, and their mind turns it into ‘I am god/spirit/etc, I am all powerful, I am controlling and doing all of this’ because at that moment their identifying with everything as the whole but through mind instead of whatever you want to call that deeper part of yourself, and while we are all that, we’re a microscopic part of it, we’re god seeing god through god, experiencing through the vantage point of these bodies living their mundane everyday lives, but ideally what happens is that your awareness grows and you can look at your life like it’s brand new and see it for the miracle it is and do all of it, the good and bad, with love and understanding in your heart.

My personal take on the matter as an experienced witch.

I see a lot of things online (mostly Tumblr and Tiktok) saying that you can substitute any ingredients, words, components, or conditions around in a spell and it will still work because of intention. Don’t have candles? Use plastic. Don’t have Angelica? Just use whatever’s in your cupboard. And it has a lot of baby witches running around with spells that were never going to work. If intention was the ONLY thing that mattered or effected things- why bother with spells at all? Why not just think really hard and call it a day? So this post is aimed at people who want to use spells and want to consider correspondences and meanings in those spells.

Now I’m not saying you CAN’T substitute. You absolutely can, and sometimes should. But you need to know why that aspect was added in the first place to know if that is up for substitution or not. 

In a sense, spells are like recipes. 

Let’s say you want to make chili and the main parts of a chili are beef, tomatoes, chili peppers, onions, and kidney beans. 

But you’re vegetarian: ok no beef, that’s cool. Still taste like chili.

You don’t have fresh chili peppers: That’s ok too, most people use powder or a seasoning packet anyway. But if you don’t have that you just use the closest spicy thing in your cupboard. In fact, onions can be treated the same way.

You don’t like tomato’s: That’s alright but…..without that acidic element something is…different. 

And you dont have kidney beans so you use black eyed peas and now…..well it’s a soup but it’s….not necessarily recognizable as chili.

You didn’t make chili. You probably have a good soup but it’s not quite chili.

Now if your purpose of making chili was to make a yummy spicy bean soup, hey no worries! You did it! You make a yummy spicy bean soup! Tummy is filled. But if you wanted chili, or were asked specifically for chili, you’ve missed your mark. You also can’t show up with a pumpkin pie or a cup of coffee and call it the same- well you can, but it’s probably not going to have the same reception as the one you wanted from a chili. 

So let’s back up. You need to make chili, it has to taste like chili, but you don’t have anything you need. You find mushrooms to replace the savory umami of beef, chili powder to replace the spice of a real chili, garlic to replace the bite of an onion, cinnamon to add that special something where the tomato was, and pinto beans to replace kidney and hold on that’s a LOT like a chili. Because you understood why each ingredient was there and what it brought. 

Now let’s compare this to a spell. Your love spell ask you to burn a pink candle surrounded in a wreath of rose petals. If the spell is using the candle to send that wish up and out into the world then- well you really must burn a candle (or at least a slip of paper) but a white one will do! And maybe you don’t have roses, but you’ve always thought of oak trees representing love to you, well that’ll work but it may take on a more sturdy and earth tone but that’s probably fine!

So yes: 

Tl;dr: You can substitute. But think your substitutions through and make informed and intentional substitutions. 

We DID this shit- for DECADES. It was fucking awful. Companies paid people in “scrip” which was only good for use at the Company Store. So effectively, the company got your money coming and going, and they didn’t pay you at all. And the longer it went on, the less likely you were to have savings that could have helped you move away or get a different job.

I’ve already seen one ad trying very sneakily to promote the idea of “AmazonBucks”, including giving them to workers as rewards, or instead of things like healthcare, sick days, and PTO.

Here’s your reminder that scrip is fucking illegal, that company towns are always a shit idea that should stay dead and buried, and that if unions didn’t work? Every big company out there wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail to destroy them.

1. Most people that submit to literary journals are cis white men. We know this because our journal has an anonymous survey about demographics for people that submit.

2. Most things that get submitted to the creative non fiction section are on the level of middle school "What I did over the summer" essays.

There is so much work from marginalized narratives in litmags these days — people lament there is no representation in media, but that disregards the progress and diversity of the works of editors and writers who help make these litmags possible. 

There is representation, and it is flourishing. They are waiting to be read. 

The Lumiere Review compiles a list of submission opportunities every month, and it are always very useful: 

https://lumierereview.com/sub-sep-oct-2021

List of Litmags that Specifically Look for Work from Marginalized Creators or is Run by Marginalized Creators:

Warning Lines: https://warninglines.com/

With Confetti: https://with-confetti.com/

Giving Room Magazine: http://www.givingroommag.com/

The Bitchin’ Kitsch: https://www.talbot-heindl.com/

Tealight Press: https://www.tealightpress.com/

Tipping the Scales: https://www.tippingthescalesjournal.co.uk/

The Winnow Magazine: https://www.thewinnowmagazine.com/

perhappened: https://www.perhappened.com/

AZE Journal: https://azejournal.com/

Honeyfire Lit: https://honeyfirelit.com/

and so much more!!

(And even if some litmags’ mission statement isn’t specifically for marginalized creators, they will always welcome these narratives.)