Dr Angela Puca AP: Hello everyone. I am Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. As you know I am a PhD and a Religious Studies scholar – more precisely a Pagan Studies scholar and on this occasion, it seems particularly relevant to mention that. And this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Paganism, Shamanism and all things occult.
s you know on this YouTube channel I disseminate academic, peer-reviewed knowledge on the study of Magick, Witchcraft and Paganism. And I also aim to create a bridge between the world of academia, the world of scholars and the world of practitioners. So I’m really, really happy to have today a very special guest who I will be introducing in just a second.
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Now we are ready to start. Are you as excited as I am? So our very special guest is Phyllis Curott and let me bring her on. Hello Phyllis.
Phyllis Curott PC: Hello, Bellissima.
AP: I just realised that she speaks Italian.
PC: Enough to get in trouble.
AP: Yeah, but your pronunciation is pretty good.
PC: Thank you.
[Laughter]
AP: Well, I’m really, really excited to have you, Phyllis, here on the channel. And as I was briefly mentioning earlier, I just have to express my gratitude for your work because being an Italian and having attended the Pagan community for a long time I can tell you that you and your work have been extremely influential for Pagans. And they have, you know, it has provided meaning and it has massively affected the community. And when I posted about this interview I got messages from my friends, my old-time friends saying, Angela, are you really interviewing Phyllis Curott? I can’t believe it.
[Laughing]
PC: Any time.
AP: So thank you so much. I’m really happy to have you here. How are you today, first of all?
PC: I’m much better. I was in Scotland for a couple of weeks doing all kinds of work. I’m the Program Chair for the Parliament of World Religions for 2023 and I have to talk to you about that later. And there were all kinds of meetings with the Pagan community in Scotland who were marvellous and who’ve been incredibly engaged there – that’s a longer conversation. And the inter-faith community and I were filming with a documentary crew and came home and got Covid. When I got back my husband had Covid. So he’s out here in this remote part of where we live and he was sick. So I was sick but I’m much better now. I’m a vaccine and booster enthusiast and I highly recommend it because I would have been much sicker if I hadn’t had it. But I am better now and really, really thrilled to be talking with you, I really am.
AP: Oh, thank you. I guess that my first question would be how would you describe Wicca? Because different people, different Wiccans and we know you are a Wiccan Priestess and a lawyer and, as I said, a massive influence in the community. Yeah, so how would you define Wicca?
PC: Ha. I do a lot of defining.
[Laughter]
AP: That sounds very much like the work of an academic – defining, defining, defining.
PC: So I was a lawyer, so my brain works that way. But at the same time, I am a Priestess and a Shamanic Practitioner and you know, a Mystic and I resist definitions because they put us in boxes and the boxes then confine us and restrict us from having the experience of the mystery and mystery is always beyond definition. However, that’s not necessarily useful and Wicca has become the fastest-growing spiritual movement in the United States, which is astonishing. Also, I have always called myself a Witch. And I know people make a distinction between Witchcraft, at least in the United States, between Witchcraft and Wicca. So we don’t want to spend hours and hours on this, which one easily could, right? To me what’s most significant about Wicca, and there is a difference between the point of origin and the modern incarnation and all of its myriad interpretations and forms now.
But I am really interested in the points of origin, the shamanic roots of contemporary Wicca, and contemporary Witchcraft. And that is 55 hundred years old, at least. We now know we didn’t when I started to practice, I was initiated into a neo-Gardnerian coven that was also very feminist and therefore very radical at the time, in the very early ‘80s. We just called ourselves Witches. But we came through the Gardnerian lineage. So it is this interesting, sort of, traditional, British traditional Wicca or Witchcraft already being stimulated and innervated with feminist, American thought, right? So I was part of this cauldron of transformation but to me, it has always been a living tradition.
We didn’t know, I didn’t know at the time the word Witch and then Wicca which has become the word used to refer to the entire movement was 5,000 years old. More actually 55 hundred years old. Bless the academics. I know that there is some controversy about this and some dispute at Oxford and at other places but it appears that witch – W-I-T-C-H – which appears about the 1600s just as the witch-craze was really, you know, succeeding in obliterating remnants of the old religion. That W-I-T-C-H appears for the first time. The word that preceded it wicce – W-I-C-C-E – which is actually the word I prefer to use these days, in reference to myself, is a feminine spelling of wicca – W-I-C-C-A – referred to a masculine and meant a wise one, a seer, a seer of the sacred.
Later comes this interpretation of wicca, of bending, bending comes later. Initially, it is a seer of the sacred, essentially a Shaman. When you are talking 55 hundred years ago it is from the Proto Indo-European and it moved westward across Europe and ends up taking root. About 500 AD it moves across from Germany, Holland and etc. and takes root in what’s now England and really becomes the indigenous traditions there. So we are talking about a current of spiritual pursuit that moved throughout Europe, mostly Northern Europe, really – sort of more. I think that the Italian, Spanish, and part of French moved up from the Fertile Crescent. But there are these overlaps because we are talking about these universal techniques, universal shamanic techniques and therefore universal wisdom that is derived from their use. And to me now, you see these sorts of essential practices, skills, and techniques that are used by indigenous cultures all over the globe and were part of our ancestral traditions. And when you look, I mean this is of incredible value, of academic research. We’re retrieving shards, we’re recreating from bits and pieces. There’s no way that we can do what our ancestors did precisely.
Nor is it, I think, necessary but we have these essential practices that open us, that expand our consciousness and our perception from our narrow human preoccupations into the context of a sacred world within which we reside. Realms of spirit that become accessible to us and that we begin to rediscover as embodied by the natural world. And to me, contemporary Wicca, in the way that I practice it, is deeply shamanic, it’s very experiential, and it’s not narrowed to a particular pantheon because at least in America we are all mutts. I have Russian and I have German and I have Norwegian, then a little Dutch. I mean, you know, all of that is a part of who I am now and I’m American.
But we have before us I think – and this to me is the heart of contemporary Wicca, the way that I approach it and practice it, the challenge to re-indigenise ourselves. To come back into a sacred relationship, not just with spirit but with the earth as the embodiment of spirit. Without that our future is grim. With that I think our future is regenerative and full of life as it is meant to be, it’s a life in harmony with a divine mother Earth and all of her children. And so to me, Wicca is the modern child or great-great-great-great-great grandchild of our indigenous Euro, indigenous and very shamanic ancestors.
AP: This is interesting because it reminds me of the President of Pagan Pride Italy who, during an interview for my research, he defined Paganism as the indigenous religion of Europe. And he was also mentioning the World Parliament of Religions. So yeah, he was mentioning the fact that this was being discussed and he agreed with that point. And I think that maybe when we talk about indigeneity it can be a bit controversial but I also authored the peer-reviewed publication on the, you know, how important it is to disentangle the category of indigenous people, which is a political category related to specific countries, from indigenous religion. So the two should not really be seen as one and the same. So an indigenous religion can be practised by non-indigenous people. That the two categories should be disentangled and that advantages both I would argue.
PC: Yeah, I think that one of the greatest challenges that I have seen in the United States is the hunger, right, for spiritual practice, for an encounter with the divine. And I think that drives most people into various faith traditions and most Western and patriarchal faith traditions are, you know, very questionable in what they offer women in particular. Which has been oppression, you know, rather than liberation.
AP: That they offer and plenty of it.
[Laughter]
PC: And participation and women have been at the forefront, certainly in Wicca, in contemporary Wicca of seeking that spiritual home that honours and respects them. And one of the, you know, the wanderings in this journey for revelation and communion was into other traditions because people didn’t realise that they had their own. So they were drawn to Native American traditions, they’re drawn to Yoga, they are drawn to Daoism, to other faith traditions. Looking, especially looking for praxis, for practice, for things that move you from abstract thinking into an embodied experience. And what’s marvellous is to discover that you have your own ancestral traditions. I mean before we obliterated or attempted to obliterate these traditions of other peoples to just oppress, suppress and obliterate indigenous peoples and their ways of worship and their spiritualities and their religious forms and their language and their culture we did it to ourselves.
We did it to ourselves, that’s what the witch craze was. It was, sort of, the final – there was Charlemagne in 1000 AD marching through Europe obliterating a lot of what was left of the indigenous traditions up into Scandinavian countries by the sword. And then you had from the 1400s into the 1700s you had the oppression of what was left. Interestingly enough there were far fewer persecutions in Italy than in other parts, right. Scotland had a huge number, and Germany and the Protestant countries ended up having more persecution and the obliteration of the indigenous traditions. But they survived, you know, they become syncretic. So, and you found this in the African cultures, right, in the diaspora, when people were enslaved and bought to the islands and bought to the United States and you find that the indigenous traditions survived by disguising themselves, in Santería and Vodun where they take on the names of, you know, the Orishas and the spirits and the ancestors take on the names and the appearances and the guises of the Saints. This is true in Italy too. So, you know, in the end, the truth can be denied but it can’t be destroyed. And the sacred is embodied, appears, we’ve separated ourselves as far we possibly can from the natural world. But now we must deal with the consequences of that right.
So we’re finding ourselves the direct recipients of our abuse of nature coming back and so it confronts us with the necessity of re-establishing the relationship. And that is the point of indigenising that there are cultural forms and traditions of indigenous cultures which we do not want to appropriate. The more we find our own, retrieve our own, rediscover, reinvent, and learn. Because we have many of the same techniques, the spiritual technologies and we have the same teacher. And so we humble ourselves and we go into the natural world and we use the techniques to open our consciousness into spirit and we ask to be taught, we learn and the process of that is to learn how to be in a sacred reciprocal, reverential relationship with the world that we live in. That’s at the heart of virtually all indigenous cultures – not to glamourise them, you know, many of them are patriarchal, they go to war. We can’t turn them into a fantasy, you know, an Avatar fantasy of what we think indigenous cultures should be but we do have to set about the task of discovering how to be indigenous ourselves. And rather than appropriating from other cultures, it’s wise for us to do our best to retrieve them from our own. And when we do that we also come back into a larger community of indigenous cultures. And we find what we share.
One of the most profound experiences that I had years ago was going to Italy. When I first arrived with “Il sentiero della dea” was at a New Age conference and there was a young woman, my age in full traditional dress. She was a Siberian Shaman and there she was with her drum. And there I was in my Armani suit, the lawyer that I am, trying to transform the image of the Strega, of the Witch and we had two or three translators. So there was somebody translating from her dialect into Russian and someone translating from Russian into Italian and then my friend Lorenza Menegoni.
AP: I did fieldwork with her for my PhD.
PC: There you go. She was in my first, the very first drumming circle to come out of Michael Harner’s work. And then she was in the very first coven that I was the Priestess of. And she was translating from Italian into English for me. After about five minutes of this, we looked at each other, we pointed at our drums and we just walked off into a quiet little corner of this massive conference space and we started drumming, and rhythms and we recognised each other and we shared the same technologies. And so we shared the same capacities for experiencing, for seeing, for learning from the sacred. So we are all indigenous to mother earth. If we’ll pay attention she’ll teach us how to be indigenous. That’s our task, I think that’s our role. I think that is why Witchcraft is the fastest-growing spirituality in the United States, and why it’s taken off in Italy. And when you approach it that way there is room for all the cultural nuances to be rediscovered and retrieved to the best extent that we can do it. So, you know, Italian traditions, Lithuanian traditions and Scandinavian and French. It’s good, as long as we don’t get trapped in, you know, fascist nationalism we’re good.
AP: Let’s leave that aside.
[Laughter]
PC: I’ve seen it creeping into the pagan culture in both Europe and the United States. You know we have an obligation to confront it. But we don’t have to do that now.
[Laughter]
AP: Yeah, but I can say that I agree with you politically. I know what your political views are.
PC: My long answer to your short question.
AP: But I was thinking about something that I heard you say once and that kind of stuck with me. When you said that people respect what they believe to be sacred and so seeing that nature is sacred allows us to respect nature and each other as sacred. So it also seems like a form of religiosity and spirituality that, in a way, is perhaps helpful in preserving and helping each other and being in a state of connection and harmony with the environment. I know that also you are an environmentalist.
PC: Yes, I think that that is very true. I’ve seen this because I’ve worked in the inter-faith community for 35 years, 30 years, as an effort of banishing the negative stereotypes with which Pagans… in fact, I prefer to use the term Euro-indigenous rather than Pagan. With Pagans and Witches and Wiccans they continue to be seen and one of the wonderful things that are finally happening, you know, is this awakening in the Abrahamic traditions and in some of the Eastern Dharmic traditions to the necessity for addressing this wound that we’ve inflicted on the planet. And there was even something in COP in Egypt, there were a group of religious professionals from the mostly Abrahamic faiths who put forward this ritual of repentance. But in positing, you know, what they think is necessary going forward, they are still using the term stewardship. And that implies the definition… I like etymology and the definition of stewardship is that you are taking care of something, that you are the steward of it. Well, to take care of it you have to understand how it operates, right? There is still this implicit superiority – like we know what is necessary to take care of you. When in fact it’s the planet that is taking care of us, right? And I think this is one of the gifts that we contribute to the religious world, that we experience, not just believe, but experience nature, to embody spirit, to be sacred, to be inherently of first and profound value. To be the teacher. And we are not stewards, we are students. We are the children of the planet, you know.
Yes, we have a role as caretakers but not until we understand what it means truly. And I think that even if we don’t have the skills yet, right, because we are practising a faith that doesn’t give us those techniques to come into this kind of communion. If we can begin to see it as sacred from whatever your faith tradition is. Say, you know, you’re Christian and God created the planet. Well, the source of creation is sacred. So then you take the next step and say that the creation itself is sacred. And if you can do that your position starts to shift, you become more humble which is essential to learning. And yes, what you see as sacred you treat with great respect and care and you understand the limits, you are humbled, you are humbled and that is the appropriate posture from which to enter back into a relationship. And you nailed it. I’m very touched that that remark sat with you because yeah, that which we hold sacred we treat with respect, with care, with reverence. And that is essential now, it’s essential. I mean that’s the thing that contemporary Witchcraft, Wicca, and Paganism contribute to the question of healing the wound and contending with this environmental crisis. It is the thing that is missing. It is that little piece that is missing. And that once people have it, you know, it can precipitate a very profound shift. That’s the work that I’m attending to now.
AP: So is this how you define Wicca then? A religion, spirituality that allows you to indigenise which, if I am understanding your definition, means to reconnect with the earth and our heritage.
PC: Yeah, I would say that it is a little bit more. That it’s a spiritual praxis, it is not a belief system. It’s a praxis, a retrieval of ancient spiritual technologies that open our minds and our hearts, our entire beings to the presence of the sacred, to the numinous. And enables us to see, recognise, to experience that the world we live in is sacred. You could say that it embodies spirit and this is what Shamans have always known that energy and embodiment, that spirit and world are one, it’s a continuum. It is a continuum as opposed to the Western model which separated them and into that separation, that chasm, you know, we have plummeted and created a real kind of hell for ourselves. That’s a deep wound to separate yourself from the sacred. So to me, Wicca is the path back home. It’s a path back home to a sacred world and a way to rediscover how to live in a sacred way because you’re living in a sacred world. And it is not an idea. I mean I’m using words to express an idea but I teach the practices to enable you to have the experience and to me, that is what Wicca is, it’s a spiritual praxis. That you have the experience and what you experience you have confidence in, you know, rather than believing in what someone else tells you.
AP: And what are the practices that would allow you to achieve such a goal?
PC: Well, lots of time in nature, you know, just time in nature. Because when we are in nature human nature is simply made better. We become more altruistic, and we experience awe, which is soul-activating and consciousness-altering. You are in a context which changes you in good ways. People will put their lives at risk to rescue a stranger who is injured falling off a cliff. It is extraordinary, you know, we see baby animals and we’re just like ooohhhh, right. We’re peaceful, we’re calmer, our stress levels drop, our cortisol, you know, the hormones – the stress – the fight or flight hormones diminish. We get calmer and people pay a premium to go to Fiji where there are no people or to go to Taormina and sit with the best possible view of the water, right? So time in nature I’ve been saying for a long time. And the very first thing that we did that a lot of religious practices, Buddhism, Yoga, and very consciously breathe, Lots of people are doing breathing meditation now.
One of the practices that I was shown, I took a long time off to basically re-apprentice myself with the planet and mother earth. The trees taught me to actually pay attention to what was happening when I was breathing. Breathing l learned, you know, yogic breathing when I was a teenager and I practised Yoga. When I got into circle it was the first thing that we did, it was the first thing that I taught, the calming meditative breath to quiet the mind and calm the body and yeah, the trees were like yeah, that’s good but you know there is something else happening. And I was like but the trees are talking. OK, and I’d been in a long depressive – depression funk because of what we were doing to the planet, the sense of despair that was overwhelming. And I couldn’t figure out how to get myself out of it. The trees started to speak basically. Mother Earth said, breathe. I was choking on my own breath. I realised that I had stopped breathing, right? And I started breathing and it took a while I was calm and quiet and suddenly I heard them speaking -” speaking” and they said, do you know what you are doing? And I was like, I am breathing. And they said no, no, no – you’re receiving the breath of life for us. Stop doing that exhale thing. Where I was like breathing out all that depression and toxicity because that is what I was taught, right? Breathe in the pure clean magnificent, you know, life-generating energies and oxygen and exhale the carbon dioxide, the tension, the sorrow, the depression – exhale your garbage. The trees said s-s-s-stop, just stop doing that. They said, breathe in and feel the blessing that we are giving you, we’re blessing you with the breath of life. And when you exhale you are returning that blessing to us. The carbon dioxide that you exhale is the breath of life for us. There is no waste in the natural world. One thing becomes another. We create the breath of life for you and I could feel them exhaling the oxygen to me. Breathe it in, breathe in this blessing, breathe in this gift of life, the breath of life that we create for you and when you exhale return it to us, we live in a reciprocal giving and receiving of the breath of life. And we are always connected by the breath of life.
This is ridiculous. I’ve taught this a million times and every time I start to talk about it and I start breathing in my consciousness gets clear and I remember what I’m doing. Mostly we’re unconscious when we’re breathing. Simply by bringing my attention to what is happening when I am breathing, I am in communion with the plant people of this planet, who are very wise, and who are the foundational beings of life, right? Who give us medicine and food and themselves and wisdom, especially the medicine plants. But all of whom are teaching us and what they are teaching us is that we live in a relationship, a relationship of mutual giving and receiving and it‘s holy and it’s sacred and it really is true that the divine, which is this (hand motion). That it is not a being, it is a process that connects all beings. It’s an exchange of life, of Magick, of wonder. In the case of plants, it’s an exchange of the breath of life. So all you have to do is breathe. Go sit with a house plant and you breathe quietly and slowly, calm the mind, relax the body and then you simply bring your attention to the experience of the energy, the quality of the energy, the blessing nature of the gift of air that you are given – of oxygen and you exhale and you do so with gratitude. Because receiving the gift of life evokes in you this feeling of deep gratitude. And you realise what you’ve been given – you can only live three minutes without it. And so then there is a desire to give back and when you are exhaling – it’s a gift, it’s Magick and the offering that you are making and in fact, it’s the way nature works.
There is an organising principle at the heart of creation that came to me through practices, through journeying and breathing and being in nature and casting circle and asking, what do I need to know? And mother earth and sitting on her and grounding, which is one of our practices, you know, where we connect ourselves and bring her energy into ourselves and then bless her by sending our love back to her. And she spoke and she said all living things live according to my wisdom – except humans. This is the blessing, the work we do, right, that we are able to receive direct revelation and guidance from the spirit of the planet, from the plants and the animals – they speak to us. The Shamans have always spoken… you don’t speak you listen to them speaking. And she said, all living things, except you. And at the heart of how everything works, how I create life, how I sustained life for six billion years is very simple. All living things are meant to be healthy and happy. It’s in your DNA, just like it’s in the DNA of the dog at your feet, the oak tree in the garden and all of nature, everything that lives and everything that supports life – the water and the air and the soil. You’re meant to be healthy and happy, it’s in you how to do that and when you do it properly, all living things when they do it properly, it turns out they are making the world healthier, better, and more welcoming. The biologists who confirmed this for me five years later – there are these biologists who specialise in bio-mimicry, studying how nature solves problems they confirmed this, and it blew my mind. Just like pew – it’s true. In taking good care of themselves all of the beings, all of the children of mother earth make the planet healthier, and more welcoming, the biologists say conducive for all life. That’s a profound spiritual principle, profound, a profound moral principle. Take good care of yourself, you are meant to. And you know how and when you do it you’ll make the world a better place because you are here. That’s how you make Magick, that’s how you cast spells, that’s how you proceed, right? That’s how you live your life, that’s the moral compass that’s been missing, of how we use our brains that we haven’t figured out how to use, right? Because we have to make choices, we don’t rely on instinct as animals do, you know. And the deep consciousness that plants have where they are absolutely in harmony with their purpose on the planet, their role on the planet. We’ve screwed that all up.
So we have to ask ourselves when I make this choice, whatever it is, the food that I’m buying, the clothes that I’m wearing, the car that I’m driving, the energy sources that I’m using, are all of those things that I need to take care of myself and be happy, are they contributing to the well-being of the planet? It’s the next step from that which we hold sacred, we treat with respect, we treat it with respect, we attend to its wisdom. Its wisdom is all living things are meant to be healthy and happy but do it in a way that makes the planet better for all life. That’s a step beyond stewardship. That’s a step beyond sustainability. That’s making things better, that evolutionary principle at work. And that’s what’s been missing. That we haven’t seen that. We’ve been living in the opposite way, we do what we please. We think we’re in charge, we think we know best. We think it doesn’t matter if we do injury to everything else as long as we have the biggest yacht and the fastest car and blah and all this nonsense. And the result of that is that we’ve bought the planet to the brink of destruction.
I think religions come into being when the old ones don’t explain the world properly, right. When the lived reality challenges the theory, the cosmology, and the ideas about divinity. And I think that there’s a reason why the most ancient spiritual perspective is returning – because we need it. Because without it we won’t survive. Then this is a way to come home, to rediscover who we are and how to operate this thing (points at her head). Journeying, you asked about technologies – there is my drum, one of them. It’s ancient, we did it, our European, you know, it was done in Greece, in Rome, throughout Italy, throughout Europe, up into the Scandinavian countries. The Sami Shamans, with the drums. It alters your perception. To me it is a very effective tool for beginning to expand our consciousness and that we have experiences beyond our normal human anthropocentric perception – misperception so that we start to see in a different way to see the sacred and it works. That’s the thing. And it works and you start and you think, oh I just made that up. But when what you were shown is then shown to you in the material world then you start to realise that there are many more dimensions of reality and many more capacities for participating in it than we’ve used. And part of what you are shown is the sacredness of the world and the sacredness of creation, the accessibility of spirit and its willingness to work with us. Generally speaking, you know, nature can be ruthless. You know there are viruses and snakes that can kill you, you know, and predators. It’s not a Disney World, I’m not talking about Avatar, not a cartoon, but it’s pretty damn amazing, it’s pretty damn magical, it’s pretty darn sacred kids, yeah. And so that’s what it’s, you know, to me that’s what contemporary Wicca… I think in part because I immediately integrated Core Shamanism into my modality and that helped me to begin deconstructing Abrahamic remnants and from the ceremonial magical traditions and ideas of Magick of having power over and control over and you know, that kind of thing.
AP: I was about to ask about Magick, and what is Magick to you and how do you practice it?
PC: Yeah, to me Magick is the flow of the sacred, of energy into embodiment and embodiment back into energy. In the Welsh, so I’ll mangle it, they call it nwyf right. The Daoists use the word Dao while saying, you know, that which can be named is not the Dao. It’s mystery, we’re always limited by our, you know, human capacities to know what it is to understand, what it is. But to me, Magick is sacred because it is that flow. It’s embodied by the natural world which is why working in harmony with the lunar rhythms, the tidal flows, the seasonal dynamics, the movement and the relationship between the Sun and the Earth, these massive migrating shifts and currents of energy. As we bring ourselves more and more into harmony with those we become, you know, more in harmony with the planet, more capable of seeing. It’s the spiritual wisdom that’s embodied. Magick for me is not about manipulation. I think a lot of the approach to Magick, I mean if you look in so many…
I just did a book called “Spells for Living Well.” I didn’t intend to write a spell book but my publisher asked me to do one and so it was a great opportunity to sort of go back and look at all of this and certainly when I started practising the idea of, you know like wow, I could have superpowers, you know. I’ve set my intention and raised the energy and shoot it into the thought form and poof, it’ll materialize in my life, was fabulous. And you know, sometimes that works and sometimes it works in really weird ways, you know, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all. But over time I began to recognise that a lot of ideas about Magick and ways of practising were coming from ceremonial magical traditions that were very heavily influenced by Abrahamic perspectives of having control and power over supernatural forces, over nature, right?
And to me that’s just a continuation of this patriarchal idea, you know, that God’s gone and you know, here kids. here are the keys to the car, you know, just don’t wrap it around a tree – which is what we’ve done – but you’re in charge, right, the planet’s yours do with it what you want. It’s just a variation of that theme you know here’s the esoteric incantation, you know, the forces of creation, of Magick, of wonder, of mystery, of spirit, you know, are yours to command as you wish, you know. Try not to wrap it around a tree. And to keep people from wrapping it around a tree Gardener made up, you know, the threefold law that if that which you send out will return to you three times over. So don’t wrap it around a tree, don’t do anything bad, that’s just a rule, that’s just punishment, it’s not even true, right? And it’s certainly unnatural, it’s just, you know, behave yourself or something worse will happen to you. It’s ridiculous, it’s not appropriate for a spirituality that experiences the divine as embodied, right? You don’t need that, you need the experience of being immersed in a sacred reality. That’s more than sufficient to help you figure out how to behave, you want to behave right. That’s inhale – exhale, you want, you are motivated, you are deeply moved to participate in ways that make the world better because you recognize how much of everything is organised to sustain and love and support and nourish you, so you want to give back.
I think that’s what Magick is, I think Magick is bringing ourselves into harmony with that flow, of inviting it into ourselves of allowing ourselves to be opened and moved and transformed and made better and healed and brought into communion with the sacred. And then you learn to shape it, right? To shape your life, to write a book, to sing a song, to have, you know, a show on YouTube, to create a child, to cast a spell, to manifest a dream. And those things become your offering, your way of reciprocating for all of the blessings that you are being bestowed, all the Magick that exists to sustain and nourish and inspire you. And you reciprocate and it flows into you, transforms you and then moves through you back into the world, shaped into something meaningful, something beautiful, something valuable, something that makes the world a better place – that’s Magic.
AP: So do you not see any more Magick as a way of widening our agency as human beings?
PC: Yeah, sure, it does.
AP: To affect our reality, for instance, to alter events?
PC: Well, it will, it’s why or not, it may not. But the first thing Magick changes is you, at least it should, right? And the one thing you can count on when you cast a spell is that you will be changed. You may not change the circumstances around you, you may have no influence or you may have a very unexpected one, right? Or the changes that you precipitate may have a very unexpected influence on you. But the one thing that will always happen with a spell, even when it doesn’t change things around you when it doesn’t seem to have influence in transforming realities externally is that it’s going to change you on the inside. It’s going to show you who you are, what’s important to you, what you need, what you fear, what inhibits you, right, where your shadows lurk, where your doubts are, what needs to be healed, right? What needs to be learned, what’s really important to you – which is especially true when a spell doesn’t come to manifestation in the way that you thought you wanted. There’s always wisdom in the outcome, even if the outcome is not what you intended and that’s, I mean that’s part of the Magick of Magick is that the first thing it changes is you and then you have agency to change reality.
But spells that work spells that are constructed, that are… and we would cast our spells, raise our energy and direct it into our desires, the thought-form, you know, the image, the intention, the goal without regard for where that energy was actually going. You know there’s a label stuck on it. Oh, it’s the Akashic Plane, oh it’s the Realm of Infinite Potential, oh it’s like actually, it’s the Womb of Creation, isn’t it? It was very phallic, we’re shooting all this energy, you know, into the thing we want, right, without regard for where it’s going. Did we ask? Did we say please? Did we say thank you? Did we make offerings afterwards? Did we recognize that the energy that we are generating and putting forward is going into a living organic reality that is infinitely greater than we are, right? Are we coming with respect and reverence? Are we asking or are we demanding? Are we expecting in this entitled way of infants, which is where we still are culturally and psychologically in this infancy of entitlement or are we bringing ourselves into harmony and asking for the things that we need to live well, understanding we have a responsibility to take no more than we need, right? To be generous in giving back, to participate in this exquisite, mutually-supportive sacred reality that we’re part of. So yeah, you have agency. Are you using it properly? You know, you’re coming with respect and reverence and gratitude.
One of the things that I see, one of the things that I saw early on that I recognised because my shamanic work was bringing me into, through, you know, synchronicities and signs and circumstances I was brought into the company and relationships, some friendships with indigenous American people, South American, some African indigenous practitioners, Yoruban practitioners and I was seeing… I mean there are cultural variants and there are always ways of seeking to have influence but it was so much less important for them to be manipulating, to get stuff and so much more important for them to be expressing gratitude. Gratitude and I thought to myself there’s wisdom here and this is part of what’s missing from the modern way of trying to practice Witchcraft and Wicca, that we’re missing gratitude. Why? Because we’re not really in the right relationship. Why? Because we’re practising like fish swimming in the ocean that they don’t recognize they’re in, right? We don’t recognise but the influence of the old patriarchal thousand-year-old model of commanding and controlling and self-gratification and it’s all about me and right.
So that’s something that we need to attend to, you know. It’s not all about us, we’re meant to be healthy and happy. Magick is happening all the time, I mean all the time. We’re just like you can’t survive if you’re always in the magical mode, right? If you’re always in an expanded Theta, you know, Alpha you can’t, right? You’ve got to go shopping, you got to go to the supermarket, you know, you gotta drive your car, you got to make sure your kids didn’t just run into the street, you know. So you can’t be in that state all the time. But we need to be in it enough to remember where we are and to remember that Magick is sacred because everything is sacred, including us. And so when we cast it the context has to be one of connection and reciprocity and responsibility and above all gratitude. And then I think that changes the way in which we make Magick, what kind of Magick we make, its efficacy. Yeah, yeah, I could talk about that much. In fact, I’m doing a two-part workshop on spell casting and I think it’s the next step in the maturation of people coming to this as a, you know, as something that appeals to them that they’ll stop putting stuff in jars and sealing it with wax and figuring that, you know, they just made Magick and they’ll start to think of, you know, where the stuff in the jar came from and you know, what the effect of their attempt to influence creation is and how much they’re already receiving, yeah.
AP: Yeah and I was wondering…
PC: To me, a spell is actually a spiritual practice it’s not an esoteric manipulation of a machine. The universe is not a machine to be manipulated, you know, with esoteric and it’s not supernatural. That whole idea of the supernatural is actually very, it’s Catholic.
AP: Andrew, who is also the moderator of the chat, so thank you for moderating – he says this is an interesting point. Do we treat Magick as an auto-mat – intention in, results out? Okay auto-mat intention in, results out.
PC: Yeah, the approach has been very mechanistic, it’s been very mechanical.
AP: And I was wondering since you mentioned that Magick can not work, so how do you relate that? I mean does it make your belief in Magic less strong? Have you ever, you know, questioned?
PC: Oh yeah, we have time for me to tell you about my love spell that manifested my second husband?
[Laughter]
It worked, it was amazing. It was amazing but you know I’m divorced, so it looked like it was exactly as I meant. It was amazing, it couldn’t have been more precise.
AP: I’ve heard many stories like that, not necessarily ending in marriage but …
PC: Yeah and in the end right, it wasn’t the relationship that was meant to be for the rest of my life but it served its purpose and it required an essential ingredient in the spell and that was to discover who I really was and where my shadows lived, how to stop projecting them onto others especially, you know, love interests to do the work here right, to become whole here and then I would be better able to find somebody. It could be very different from what I thought and it wouldn’t require a love spell, right? Love is the greatest Magick it’s just, you know, you have to be open and ready and that in time, perhaps, the right person would come along and so it was useful, right? It wasn’t the outcome that I expected but it was the outcome, as I was saying right, that taught me the first thing Magick changes is you. And the outcome of that spell was not about creating, you know, this relationship that I thought was gonna be about creating the relationship with myself which was essential without which there could be no true, deep, mature, joyful love.
AP: So when you talked about Magick not working you actually meant that it works but it just doesn’t lead you to the final outcome that you would have wanted like you know, the love of your life forever and ever, that’s what you meant?
PC: Well and sometimes it just doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s just like, you know, it’s like you turn your computer on and it’s just like, you know, you’re not connecting to the internet, it doesn’t happen. So why not? I don’t think it’s because you used rue instead of vervain, you know and I don’t think it’s because you did it at the wrong time of the astrological thing, although I don’t think it helps to try to banish at the full moon. I’m just so tired of seeing it on InstagramWitches. There are real energies right, real currents of energy and when we are in alignment with those and in attunement with those, the Magick that we’re working, works better in our lives as our Magick works better. But one of the things you learn about attuning yourself to the natural world is that you know, there’s winter and there’s summer. There’s, you know, slumber, sleep – the Earth is not growing, there’s no food out there. I mean there is, I’m watching the deer decimate my evergreens right now because nothing is growing but there are times of dormancy and then there are times of manifestation, you know, you’re not supposed to manifest everything, it’s fine.
Also, people have a tendency to look to, in the beginning, they go to Magick to solve things so that they can just take care of themselves. you don’t need Magick. I mean your life is your Magick, you are Magick, right? Say you want a job, get a job – get your resumé together, you know, get a haircut put on a good suit, get your skill set, get out there.
AP: That’s the best advice that I haven’t followed. I’m not the suit kind of person.
[Laughter]
PC: Well it doesn’t have to be a suit, you know, it’s a metaphor, we have the opportunity to do that right it’s like oh I’m gonna go to Magick and it’s like just live your life, you know.
AP: Yeah but in some cases, you know for instance, if you want to do a PhD and you have no idea where to do it, well you know, if you get guided by Magic to find out where you’re supposed to be doing it.
PC: Absolutely true. I mean divination to me is a great Magick, profound Magick, wonderful Magick. It can be hard to read for yourself and to interpret, you know because we have a tendency to impose what we want or our fears on what’s coming to us. The message that we’re getting – but divination is wonderful. I mean it’s in how it works in the world right? It’s engaging in a conversation with the sacred, it’s having a dialogue with the divine, it’s asking a question and being given an answer. It’s such a gift and it’s one of the things that was immediately destroyed by the patriarchal faiths. That you were not allowed to do that, right? That it was demonic and it’s one of the most powerful, immediate experiences of the presence of Magick, right? That there’s a divinity, a presence with you that sees you and cares about you and sees you with your scars and your wounds and your fears but also sees the best in you, sees the potential, sees your power and your capacity to heal, to fix, to improve, to figure out what your dissertation subject is. You know, to figure out whether you need to move to find a job or whether the person that you think is, you know, the right person is actually the right person for you. There’s guidance, there’s guidance whether it’s through shamanic drumming or runes or I mean that’s… where is it? You can see her there. That’s The Pilgrim from the Major Arcana the Tarot deck that I created with Danielle Barlow this incredible Witch and artist, British.
AP: Oh wow.
PC: That’s a very different orientation than the traditional Rider Waite Smith deck which is what most decks are based on now – totally different. The divine is present, right and so we forget that and we forget to ask but that’s one of the things that most young Witches learn, they learn divination – they just don’t realize that what they’re doing is speaking to the divine but if you ask you’ll get an answer. The problem is in interpreting the answer because the cards are always right, and the rune is always correct. It’s the interpretation where we can make mistakes right. So it’s always helpful to have, I think it’s helpful to have somebody else who’s objective to help you discern what you’re being shown. But yeah, there’s guidance all the time we just have to ask for it. There’s a difference between a prayer and a spell. The difference between prayer and divination because you get an answer, and you get guidance. The voice speaking back to you it’s not just like you praying out, the answer is provided. It’s Magick.
AP: And how have you seen Wicca changing over the years since you’ve been, you know, an active part of the community for decades I think now?
PC: Horrible face. Oh I just, yeah…
AP: I was no, I think that I think that I saw interviews in from the ‘90s, I think, they were.
PC: Yeah, yeah. I’ve been, well I’ve been public since the ‘80s and I started in the late ‘70s and I was initiated in ‘81, yeah ‘80 or ‘81 – ‘81. Yeah, it’s really changed. First of all, it was hidden when, you know, I think you read “Il sentiero della dea,” I mean it was hidden. When I was led there, I wasn’t looking, I was led and if you looked you have a hard time finding. Now it’s everywhere, it’s everywhere. I mean how many views have they been on WitchTok? No, I don’t know the quality of that, you know, or Instagram. Well, others I’m …
AP: I’m also on WitchTok, as an educator but still.
PC: Okay, so there it is that’s it there’s quality, there are good people, wise people, that’s wonderful. It’s become the fastest growing… Witchcraft, Wicca has become the fastest-growing spirituality in the United States according to the Pew Research Foundation which is phenomenal. The fact that they you can even say that is amazing because for years we had no idea how many Witches there were and I think we still are not 100% sure but it’s millions. As we become more visible and more mainstream I think there are more opportunities for charlatans, although that was always a possibility, because, without a centralised institution, there’s never been quality control right. Anybody at… the more books were published the more classes were offered the more conferences were convened…
[Phone rings]
Sorry about that. The more, you know, you could read a book and say oh I’m a Priest or, you know, take three courses and say you’re a Priestess, that doesn’t make you a Priest or a Priestess right. And there’s nobody to say you aren’t, there are people to say well maybe you want to check their credentials and how long have they’ve been doing this and you know. So the bigger we get, the more possibility there is for that. So our blessing is our curse. So, you know, we have to be attentive. – caveat emptor.
AP: And in terms of the practices, how have they changed? Because I imagine that in the beginning, they were more Gardnerian.
PC: Yeah, I think they were more… well I still see it, you know, I see it everywhere where people say what is Magick? You know it’s the control, you know, it’s using your intention to control or manipulate supernatural forces, you know, to manifest your goal. That’s one of the most common definitions I see in spell-casting books that are really popular. That’s very Victorian ceremonial Magic, you know, from the neck up it was all about your head and your recitations which were very elaborate. I think because they were men and they needed to saturate, over saturate their brains with all this verbiage in order to shut them down so that something else could take over – my theory. And will, you know, these very masculine things, the mind and you know, the willpower and that’s still very pervasive. But I think there’s an increasing awareness of the work as spiritual work that, you know, this is not about self-gratification, this is not just an esoteric system for mechanically manipulating the universe in order to get stuff, that we are not living in a machine, a universe that’s a machine that exists for our pleasure, you know. But that we are part of an organic and sacred mystery that we’re meant to participate in, in sacred ways. I think there’s definitely a movement towards that. There’s much more attention to nature and to working in harmony with nature and to being reverential in nature.
There are many more people, I mean when I started I was the only one journeying, drumming and journeying and I was the only Witch that I knew of in America, anyway that was drumming and journeying. Then there was drumming everywhere because people were having these big conferences. So there were huge bonfires and lots of drumming and now there are people doing shamanic drumming, and there are people integrating. That’s how we created The Witch’s Wisdom Tarot. I mean 40 years ago I was the only Witch I knew practising Core Shamanism and journeying and Danielle, 40 years later, living in England knows how to journey, you know and we journeyed for every card, right. That’s a big change, that’s a huge change and that shamanic influence, I think, has really deepened the practice. A lot of people didn’t call themselves Wiccans, they call themselves hedge, like Danielle, who calls herself a Hedge Witch. People call themselves Witches, they see Wicca as Gardnerian and as an initiatory tradition. You know, we’re back where we started, you know. Is the label helpful or is it limiting? I think initiations can be helpful but you don’t need them to practice spirituality, although I do think that life will initiate you and it can be very useful to have wise people who understand initiations as a spiritual praxis. It’s growing, it’s spreading, it’s deepening while it’s simultaneously quite superficial, you know and fraught with mistakes. Things that I think are mistakes like saying that you can banish at the full moon. I mean that’s not the energy, the literal physical energy of a full moon.
AP: By the way happy full moon to everybody. The first full moon of the year.
Yay, for the new year? Fab. I think, you know, I think it’s deepening as it widens. I think, you know, it becomes more superficial and fraught with mistakes but because there are so many more people practising it in deep sacred spiritual ways that are the trend that I think is going to carry it forward. And that’s where the gift that it has to offer the world resides – in that depth. You know it’s not in the jar with the stuff in it, it’s in the capacity to be in the presence of the sacred to find it inside of you and to be in this really profound sacred divinely magical relationship and to finally come home to that. I think that’s where we’re headed and I do see more and more of that. So I’m optimistic. I also see lots of, you know, there are lots of variations cropping up right and traditions and you know, people practising and practising for five years, ten years, building community, creating traditions around that. And you always see Gardnerian elements because that’s where it started but at the heart of the Gardnerian elements are these, you know, universal shamanic things – the casting of a circle, the honouring of the four directions, above – below and at the centre, the creation of an altar, working with the elements. Yeah, I’m happy to see people doing a lot. When we started we were commanding and controlling. I summon, stir, call you up mighty ones of the East, you know, Powers of the Air, Guardians of the Watchtowers. Very ceremonial, commanding and controlling. I summoned, stir and call you up. And you know, I stopped doing that a long time ago and I see a lot more people who are far more what I would call shamanic where they’re inviting the elements, right? They’re not commanding or trying to control, they’re seeking to commune and to create with. That’s a shift remember, that’s something.
Language is very important, you know and I look at my second book “Witch Crafting” and I think I use the and I’m not even sure, maybe the “Wicca Made Easy” that might have used use, the word “use,” use air, I think by then, I hope by then I changed it. But to use the elements right, very patriarchal. I’m going to use the air for my Magick, I’m gonna use the fire for the Magick that I want to do for my spell casting. It’s like nope, you know, took a long time for that shift in dynamic to really take root and then to check to recognise that the language didn’t reflect the change in the relationship or the dynamic. So that you’re working with the elements rather than commanding or trying to control or manipulate them. That you’re not trying to have power over anything except yourself. You’re trying to enter into a relationship, you’re asking for help, you’re asking for your powers to be expanded by the blessings the powers, the gifts of air, of plants, of animals, of Earth, of fire, and water and you’re grateful, right. And that gratitude then asks that you reciprocate, that you not manipulate, you reciprocate, different. I’d like to see more of that. I think in time there’ll be more of that and that’s an indigenous perspective.
AP: An indigenising one, as you said in the beginning.
PC: Yes, exactly, exactly.
[Phone rings]
I thought I turned that off. What that is, right, it’s the experience that transforms the perspective and then we think critically and try to change our vocabulary because of certain, you know, words or gestures. I mean I was taught summon, stir and we were gesturing out there and it took me years to recognise that the earth is not out there, you know, there might be mountains up and out but the earth is under my feet right? Kneel down, touch the earth, takes time, takes time. Takes time to wake up to the water you’re swimming in and to start to, you know, transform how you swim but I think we’re doing good. I don’t know, are we gonna get there in time? Now that’s the thing I worry about. You know I’m a little old for the use of… I think it’s possible because social media is astonishing right and you can reach so many people so quickly. So I think it is possible to begin to have an impact because it’s not just about a change in Wicca, it’s about the change in Wicca’s impact or, you know, Witchcraft’s impact or Paganism’s impact on the broader culture.
AP: Yeah, I think it’s already happening.
PC:
I hope so, I hope so, I think so. I mean I can see some critical things that we need to do and some critical conversations where we
need to be present, where we need to be affecting the vocabulary, the thinking, the relationship, vocabulary of other people. Good that you’re repenting, but not enough if you still think you’re going to steward the earth, you know. So I think that critical component of offering because you don’t have to be aware. This is the thing that I think is. Thank you for being so indulgent in letting me over-talk but I think that one of the things that we
contribute is the recognition that a practice doesn’t require… you don’t have to be a Witch to breathe and be in communion with the plants and the planet right, because we’re all doing it. You don’t have to be a Witch in fact to make Magick, to cast a spell, to use the spiritual practices that I think are at the heart of what we’re doing and why we’re doing them. Just so you don’t have to be Buddhist to meditate or Hindu to practice Yoga and to benefit from the spiritual practices. I think you don’t have to be a Witch, you certainly don’t have to be a Shaman. It’s not a word, you know, that we use to refer to ourselves. If somebody else used that to describe us or what we do but yeah, be careful about appropriation right, and making distinctions. But I’m very comfortable saying I’m a Witch but you don’t have to be a Witch to use the practices. So that’s a gift that we can give to the world right? The wisdom that comes from those practices we can share. It should not have to be initiated. You can just learn how to breathe with the plants, you can learn how to honour the four directions, you can learn how to work with air, to work with fire, with the sun, you know, to experience gratitude and reciprocity, to journey.
All these things are practices that people can use. The experiences that they have and the conclusions that they come to will challenge, I think, Abrahamic, some elements of Abrahamic belief and practice and behaviour. But that would be a good thing. Yeah, that’d be a good thing because Jesus and love – good, God someplace else, yeah and man having dominion over the Earth – not good. Helpful not, useful not helpful, not accurate. So I think that we, you know, we’re bringing something that’s been missing and that’s essential. That, I think, is changing, that’s one of the ways I think that Wicca is changing. When we started you absolutely, you know, it was and we still are – we don’t proselytise, right? We’re not trying to get millions of people to, you know, to come – well I am.
[Laughter]
AP: You are proselytising.
PC: I confess, I am, I confess.
AP: I am definitely not a fan of Abrahamic religions.
PC: Like, but you know what I’m proselytising is practice right. I’m proselytising your capacity to have the experience. Not believe what I’m saying but experience, have the experience yourself and that’s, I think, that’s a change. I think that in the past we were hidden and now we’re in plain view. In the past we were afraid and now people are not. When I, you know, came out publicly in 1981 and said I was a Witch that was a crazy, almost self-destructive thing to do. I mean it’s astonishing that I was able to continue to have a good law career and when I was super, super public as you saw in the ‘90s when I was doing tons of stuff it affected my law practice. I suffered for that. People say now, people wear that word as a badge of honour. That’s a big change, that’s a big change, huge you know. I mean I had to articulate, you know, the Witch was a feminist icon. You know, that I did it in order to confront patriarchy with its misogyny. You don’t have to say that anymore, you know, especially young women and you know, people who are non-binary and stuff, they get it, you know, you put on that label and it’s a declaration of resistance in a certain sense and of something else.
But now it’s like it’s popular. I mean a worry, you know, that people say it without understanding the full implications because there are responsibilities that go with that word, you know, you need to know what you’re doing and you need to know why you’re doing it and why you’re doing it is about more than you, right. You know I think a lot of people get drawn to it initially for the power or the anticipation of the power that it’s going to give them. And the sets of rebellion that they need to express which needs to be expressed but ultimately it’s not just about you, right? That’s about where you are and why you’re here, why you, yes you are here, right? So the you is really important because there’s a reason why each of us is here. Each of us is very unique, we each have a specific shadow to grapple with and a gift to offer. There’s a reason that we’re here, we have a role to play. But with that word, you know, to be a Witch is to be a wise one and it’s to be in service and so, you know, good, welcome to the club wear it and now you need to work it, you need to do the work that gives that word its meaning. Because the Witch was, right, the Witch was the Seer of the Sacred, was the Creator of Ceremony, the Keeper of the Stories, the Old Ways, the Maker of the Magick, the Healer, the Midwife, the Midwife of babies but also of souls crossing over. With that word comes a responsibility of service to something greater than yourself. But the gift of learning how to do that is that when you serve something greater than yourself, it makes you greater than you ever could have imagined you could be, you know, and the things that you long for and the things that you want to create with your Magick are very simple, you know, very fundamental but they are also, you know, deep and wide and great and really needed – the world needs their Witches. Not just that we need Witchcraft – the world needs a Witch.
AP: Thank you Rachel for thanking us for our conversation. So I guess as a last question – what would you hope that people would take away from this conversation in terms of understanding what the essence of Wicca is?
PC: I think that there’s a Witch, a Wicce, a Wiccan, a wise one in everybody. I really do because we’re all children of Mother Earth and I know that, you know, there’s risk in any spiritual-path thinking, you know, that it’s the way because there are many, many ways, right? And each culture has the one that’s appropriate to it. But we’re blessed to have the remembering, re-membering of who we are and where we are and why we’re here. And you don’t have to be a Witch, you know, to take that step into the realms of Magick, they’re inside of us and they’re all around us. So if you want to take that step, you’re welcome and you’re needed and there are many ways of rediscovering, yeah, why you’re here and of manifesting the Magick of who you are. So yeah, I don’t know, what do you say, taking this step, the good path it’s a path home, it’s a path home. It’s not without a challenge and it requires a measure of discipline, you know and work and courage. But it’s extraordinary, my life has been amazing. Not without Covid and not without crisis and not without sorrow and not without loss but always with Magick, always with Magick.
AP: So, thank you and before we wrap up is there anything that you want to share about your work? By the way, your books are linked in the info box so if people are interested in buying them they can click the Amazon link. But is there any other thing that you want my audience to know about, your work, workshops or how they can reach out if you have social media or…
PC: Yeah I do, I have social… I mean it’s insane to me, you know like I just want to go out and be in the woods behind my house which is usually where I am but having been there for a long time now I’m back and I’m really working like mad, I’m working as much as I can. So after the pandemic, I did a lot of, you know, because of the pandemic suddenly, you know, here I am.
So I have a website, I have newsletters, I’m doing a lot of teaching online – I’m teaching tomorrow with this “Spells for Living Well” book. Like I’m doing a two-part class on spell-casting as spiritual praxis which is both for people who’ve been casting for a while and people who’ve never cast a spell. Like you, I have a Patreon circle because I needed a circle to work with. So I have a circle that meets every month and I love working with them and they’re from all over the world. We have a lot of Italians and people from Holland and New Zealand and Australia and Mexico and the Caribbean Islands, in Canada and Scandinavia. I mean it’s amazing and England – people come and go but there’s also a group that comes every month and it’s such a joy. I wasn’t sure about making Magick online. Yeah, absolutely you can make Magick and you can make Magick in a closet and you definitely make Magick online when you have good people to do it with because the energy’s everywhere. I’m teaching, I’m working, I’m working on the next book which is very much about nature’s Magick that you allowed me to talk so extensively about today and I’m teaching, if not every month, a lot. So I’m trying to be out there as much as I can and I’m doing private mentoring and doing readings with my deck which has been a very moving experience for me and to hear from people that they’re working with it and that it’s really responsive. We trusted the journey and what we were shown and we trusted each other. I trusted her as an artist to interpret visually and she trusted me as a writer to articulate but we weren’t sure if it would work – and it’s working. And it’s this incredibly benevolent compassionate wise presence that speaks to people. That when you were asking like you need to know like what’s my dissertation subject? Like it’s right there. Seeing the best of who we can be. So yeah, I’m happy to work with people – come help me, come help me do the work that the world needs doing, yeah.
AP: There’s somebody saying that they attended an amazing workshop with you called Dancing with your Shadow.
PC: And l learned more in than that and then 20 years of therapy. Thank you, I’m very touched. The community in Italy has grown so amazingly. Particularly with the care of Valeria Trisoglio who was the first Priestess and initiated in Italy, although of course, the first Priestess was Lorenza Menegoni, but she’s worked primarily with …
AP: Core Shamanism.
PC: Core Shamanism and the foundation and Dario Pastore and Amalia Dalacula and Julia Torola, the priestesses. Now we have hundreds of initiates just in Italy and a whole bunch of people who are dedicated and are going to become clergy and more Priests and Priestesses. It just took root which makes perfect sense, it really has taken root in Italy and I think in part that’s because we’re so shamanic in our approach, right. That there’s room for, you know, if somebody is fascinated by a particular, you know, if they’re called by a Scandinavian deity there’s room for that and if they want to really focus on rediscovering and drawing forth any of the many, you know, indigenous modes within Italy itself, there’s room. We’re a big circle, and there’s lots of room for individuals, that’s the idea is that everybody’s path is unique but we’re all travelling in the same sacred landscape and there are these core values at the heart that unites us.
AP: Sounds like a great way to end this conversation. Thank you so much Phyllis for accepting to be on my YouTube channel and I will leave obviously your links in the info box so everybody go check it out.
PC: Thank you, it was a joy and when you stop recording we should have a talk for a few minutes. I want to talk to you about being at the Parliament of the World’s Religions.
AP: Yes we will. So when this ends just don’t leave this place. Sorry everybody we’re just having like a private moment. But yeah, thank you again, Phyllis, it was really amazing.
PC: It was a joy.
AP: And as for you my kind viewer, please don’t forget to share this video with your friends, Like and Subscribe and leave me a comment down below if you’re watching this after the live stream. I always love to read your comments and know what you think about our conversation and of course, as always, stay tuned for all the Academic Fun.
Bye for now.
More info about our special guest can be found here https://www.phylliscurott.com/about-p…
Links to a few of her books:
Wicca Made Easy https://amzn.to/3jMGgCN
Book of Shadows https://amzn.to/3iaH043
Witch Crafting https://amzn.to/3CiQnpc
Spells for Living Well https://amzn.to/3Gy6Jwx
Streamed 6 Jan 2023