“Take your own negative statements out of the Law. Take the negative statements of others out of the Law, whether directed at you or viciously at someone else… Instead, invoke ‘for the good of all,’ and ‘according to free will’ just as in using Words of Power.”

Often, I choose scholarly texts for our Mystery Cult Reading Group.

I’m a scholar with a background in the arts, and my work tends to attract others with similar interests.

I choose texts that I, myself, am wrestling with because your rich perspectives help take me deeper into my own understanding. I love hearing what you think and collectively making sense of complexity together.

However, this month, I chose chapter 8 of, Positive Magic, a book that is essentially a classic Witchcraft 101 How-To book.

In it, author Marion Weinstein – who comes from the Dianic tradition of witchcraft and had one of the first pagan radio shows in the United States – describes her theory of how magic works.

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I selected this chapter for two reasons:

1) the book was one of my influences in the recent Pagan Prayer workshop for Yearly Subscribers. I thought it would be interesting for those of you who attended the workshop to root around for yourselves in one of its primary sources.

And 2) because Weinstein gives such a lucid description of how magic works in this chapter, providing clear step-by-step instructions for designing your own rites. I thought many of you would find it useful.

This chapter includes sections on:

• Words of Power for yourself and others

• Magic for financial gain and inviting love

• Common missteps from daily life and how to fix them

I find the more we understand how magic works, the more likely we are to integrate it into our lives.

The more we integrate magic into our daily lives, the more enchanted our lives become. We don’t have to try. It just happens.

Hope you can join us tonight or watch the replay of the Reading Group discussion when you can.

Zoom link, reading text, and study guide in the Subscriber section below.

P.S. *Yearly subscribers also receive access to the recent Pagan Prayer workshop! If you’re a yearly subscriber and haven’t yet received the Pagan Prayer workshop replay, email us at guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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Dear Mystics,

Wow. Our collective dream to speak to the Spirit of Water is still has tears pouring down my cheeks nearly an hour later. Even as a witch with decades of practice under her girdle, I’m still awestruck by the generosity and grace of the ancient beings who never refuse to show up for us when we call. In this case, perhaps in every case, it was by the power of our collective magic that the vision was able to come through with such power. Thank you all.

Below you’ll find the replay of the Full Moon ritual, as well as follow up practices to help you integrate the materials.

Reminder: You can watch the video replay of the ritual whenever you get the chance. Even if you don’t have time to watch the video, in the follow up below, I give you suggestions for working with the power of this moon.

Please find below some guidance for building an altar in honor of this eclipse, some directions for the clearing bath, a book recommendation, tarot pull instructions, and more. Enjoy!

Happy the Water Will Hold You Moon!

Love,

Amanda

Our Full Moon gatherings are part of Mystery Cult membership – a gathering space where we practice tarot, seasonal magic, spiritual ecology, and collective care together. Contributing subscribers* are invited to join us live on Zoom and receive the replay in the section below.

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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Rather than appealing to primal powers or deities, you blend with them. You merge your consciousness into theirs and see the world through their eyes.

As the Full Moon in Pisces approaches, I think of how Pisces is the sign of the fish, and how fish do not exist without oceans and rivers; they are one.

In the folk animism we practice here at Mystery Cult, our aim is less towards self-help and more towards collective thriving. When we merge, we merge with the sea, the kelp, the manta rays, the jet stream, the tinkling sand. We remember that we are already one.

Tonight, at our Full Moon in Pisces ritual, we will be doing a variation on the Prayers of Affirmation* practice known as Collective Dreaming, where we will merge with the Piscean beings of the underwater worlds.

What does it mean to merge with the ocean at a time when sea temperatures are hotter than they’ve been in 120,000 years?

I think back to the reading we did a few months ago of Sunaura Taylor’s book Disabled Ecologies, where one of her central questions is:

how do we honor land that doesn’t conform to idealized standards of ‘pristine’ nature, and uphold our duty to care for ecosystems that have been deliberately disabled?

Caring for our world through ritual is one of the primary concerns of the contemporary witch, IMO.

In paganism and witchcraft, the gods need us as much as we need them. The ocean is a god, She needs us. Ritual is one way to offer her care.

I hope you can join me tonight at 6pm PT in honor of our sacred oceans. In tarot, Pisces corresponds to the Moon card. The tides will be high, and an eclipse is a foot. Come blend with the Piscean depths and honor the mysteries that abound there.

Find the Zoom link to join the ceremony in the subscriber* section below.

Our Full Moon gatherings are part of Mystery Cult membership – a gathering space where we practice tarot, seasonal magic, spiritual ecology, and collective care together. Contributing subscribers* are invited to join us live on Zoom and receive will receive a replay to watch later.

*Yearly subscribers will also receive access to the recent Pagan Prayer workshop! If you’re a yearly subscriber and haven’t received the Pagan Prayer workshop replay, email us at guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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As I mentioned a few days ago in my Virgo Season newsletter, Virgo is the sign of the Maiden. Persephone before she enters the underworld. Each of us when we are fresh and scarless. Virgo as the part of us who never was and can never be defiled by hurt, or abandonment, or loss.

The Maiden in each of us has much to teach. She sees the point in caring. She has boundless energy. She can lose herself in focused concentration without stumbling over self-doubt.

In my Virgo Season Witch Guide this month, I offered some suggestions for building your inner Maiden a healing temple at your home altar.

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Persephone is abducted and taken to the underworld in Scorpio season.

But every year, Virgo season comes again, offering us an opportunity to revive the undaunted wisdom of our youth.

You can access this month’s Witch Guide in the Subscriber section below.

But in the meantime, I have another gift for you, a poem in honor of Persephone by my friend Lauren Eggert Crowe. It first appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review.

Remember, poetry allows us to glimpse between the veils into the Otherworld. It offers a kind of language that allows us to speak intimately with the spirits that dance there.

I know you’ll be as obsessed with this piece as I was!

Queen of Any World That Took Me
by Lauren Eggert Crowe

By the time he arrived, night 
had lengthened by a whole

minute. Near the close of pomegranate
season, all that had ripened in the heat

now smoldered in another heat.
I knew exactly what kind of winter 

I was inviting in when his mouth
met my own, when I tasted black

pepper, chlorine, mint, ash. 
The warmth lingered like a dry red. 

I knew that bite would hold me
there in the humming dark.

He touched me as a swan touches thick 
water: velvet on silk. So I slackened,

I tumbled deeper in sweet. But my word 
is forward. My mother is waiting. I am 

my mother and I wait for my unroping. 
So few know the trick, how to split 

the heart in ice water, let 
arils spill cleanly, skim the sponge

off the heavy treasure. How red and wet 
I look to the boys with their amps 

and sweaty denim. Who hasn’t
ignored the gods for a plate

of cut fruit, jewel-packed 
and glowing like a lamp? I did 

what any daughter would do: I managed
opposing promises and halved the year

with a cold knife. I created more 
of myself. That didn’t keep anyone

from blaming me for the weather. 
You try learning the thievery of 

your body kick-started the calendar.
Then you, too, might offer yourself to 

be sliced by the teeth on an iron gate. 
You would dive and surface, a needle

sewing your home to his until neither
is yours. You would even unbraid 

the flaxen sheaves of your girlhood
at the lip of a continent aching

to combust, crumble, and melt.
If my throat is an altar, everything 

I swallow is sacred. Ask me 
to regret that handful of garnets.

Gorgeous, no? I feel like that piece reaches into the underworld and pulls out the part of my younger self that fell in, shining her up until she remembers she’s sacred again. You can find out more about Lauren’s work and follow her newsletter here.

Let me know your favorite line in the comments below! Mine was the one I used to title this newsletter, obvs. But there were so many beauties to choose from!

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P.S. Again, Virgo Season Witch Guide available in subscriber section below, and don’t forget that next Wednesday we’ve got our Full Moon in Pisces Ritual at 6pm PT — all about dreaming magic and trance states. To join us, become a subscriber today. xo

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The word for Zodiac comes from the ancient Greek, zōidion, meaning – loosely – ‘sign’. *

For the Ancients, when a planetary angels (like the Sun or Jupiter, or any of the other planets) travelled through different areas of the Zodiac, it was a sign in the most divinatory sense: a sign of the mood of the gods, which dictated how events were likely to transpire.

But planets moving through the images of the Zodiac (image of the Ram, image of the Crab, image of the Twins and so on) was also a sign in the literal sense, because the movement of the planets through different points in the sky was tightly bound to the movements of the Sun through the equinoxes and solstices.

For instance, in the Tropical Zodiac Aries season always begins on the Spring Equinox, while Capricorn always begins on the Winter Solstice.

The images of the Zodiac are ‘signs’ of the seasons. Virgo season is a ‘sign’ that the Sun now gallops the final stretch towards the Autumn Equinox.

The word Virgo (and indeed all the names of the Zodiac we use in English) derive from Latin translations of Greek terms. Virgo is the Latin word for ‘virgin’, from the Greek parthenos, meaning ‘maiden’.

Today the Sun, life giver, and holy spirit, enters the Sign of the Maiden, and brings all of us with Him. We are all in the sign of the Maiden together, she becomes the air we breathe and the color of the light. We dwell in her perfume.

Incidentally, those of you who have been to Athens may have visited the Parthenōn, the temple of Athena, goddess of wisdom and craft.

Parthenōn means: “literally ‘temple of the virgin goddess’ (Athene), but also can be used in a general sense to mean ‘the young women’s apartments in a house.’” (Etymology Dictionary Online)

So, Virgo season signals that we have returned to the young women’s apartments together.

Virgo’s connection with the virgin (originally meaning ‘unmarried’) goddess Athena is obvious, but another myth with astrological importance is the story of Persephone’s descent and rebirth from the underworld.

Since Tropical (Western) astrology weaves tightly together with the changing of the seasons, Persephone’s descent and her mother Demeter’s grief provide one mythological explanation for the barren winter months.

Virgo season, coming at the beginning of the harvest, represents Persephone as maiden. Libra season is her passage into the underworld. Scorpio season marks the moment when Persephone, maiden no longer, becomes wife of Hades and Queen of the dead.

So, to reiterate, Virgo season is:

• a ‘sign’ of the coming autumn equinox

• a ‘sign’ the harvest (for the ancients) was beginning to take place

• a ‘sign’ we collectively are in the maiden’s apartments

• a ‘sign’ that the maiden is soon to go on her voyage into the underworld, though she doesn’t know it yet

While the harvest happens year-round now, and the coming winter months are predicted to be among the hottest in recorded history, Virgo season can help us bind our roots back into the soil of our ancestors throughout the world who grew their own food and attended carefully to the weather, the seasons, and the shifting of the stars.

In his brilliant book, Wisdom Sits in Places, author Keith Basso describes how place names in the Athabaskan language help contemporary Apache communities understand how the land has changed over thousands of years.

The Apache’s ancestors named places to help future descendants understand their significance. So, if a place named Deep Pools of Water is now rocky and barren, it lets the community know a cataclysm has taken place but also reminds them of the need for and possibility of healing.

By attending to the astrological seasons, we are doing more than amusing ourselves with predictions about possible job interviews or hot dates.

By attending to the astrological seasons, we are re-enchanting our world by seeing meaning as something that permeates the universe, rather than something that exists merely and exclusively inside the human mind. We are weaving mythology, botany, astronomy, and psychology together with our ancestral knowledges going back to Mesopotamia (at least!).

My intention is that the Virgo Season Witch Guide below help you put these aspirations into practice through ritual, divination, creativity, and somatic embodiment.

*If you’d like to read more about the history of Hellenistic Astrology, check out Chris Brennan’s comprehensive and scholarly text, “Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune.”

This month’s Virgo Season Witch Guide offers…

… rituals and inspiration to help you cultivate craftsmanship and empowering our inner teenager (because it is often in our teenage years that we unconsciously decide what kind of life is possible for us to achieve).

In the Leo Season Witch Guide, you get…

• A guide for working with your Book of Shadows

• Journal Prompts for the season

• A tarot guide for finding your path

• Altar suggestions

• Herb and Stone guide

• A creativity practice for developing strong technique

• and more!

The Virgo Season Witch Guide is available to all members of Mystery Cult – a gathering space where we practice ritual, seasonal magic, spiritual ecology, and collective care together.

Paid subscribers* receive the Witch Guide in the section below.

*Note that Yearly subscribers will also receive access to our recent Pagan Prayer workshop, about how to cultivate intimate relation with the numinous through magical speech.

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

♍️ Had you ever thought about Zodiac signs as actual signs before? What is Virgo season a sign of in your life/area? Let us know below! Virgo season warm up!

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As a gift for everyone who follows this newsletter, I thought I’d share some offerings normally only available to contributing subscribers.

The first is an audio recording (available up top) of the most recent Tarot Studio practice class, a meditation on the theme of Lugh, Lúnasa, Leo Season, Strength and Authenticity.

Pull out your tarot cards and follow along. We do a meditation, discuss the meaning of the cards, Leo and the season of Lúnasa, and practice a tarot spread that helps us identify which skills could help us live more authentically.

Listen, and learn about the tarot and about yourself.

Zoom didn’t record the session and instead tricked me into transcribing the session via AI. It’s so annoying how every company is trying to foist AI upon us!

The transcription wasn’t even good! I had to reformat the entire thing and re-record the session as an audio file, but in doing so I thought I could make lemonade out of my Zoom lemons and offer it to everyone to enjoy.

You can listen by clicking the audio file above, or click the download button. It’s about an hour and ten minutes long.

The second offering is an easy suggestion from this month’s Witch Guide for the New Moon in Leo, Exact on Wednesday, August 12, 2026, at 10:37 AM PT. Here:

If you haven’t already set up your Leo season altar, then the New Moon is be a great day to do it.

Every year, the New Moon in Leo, and Leo season more broadly, invites us to return to the Leonine themes of confidence, creativity, storytelling, etc. and how they manifest in our lives.

Since today’s New Moon includes an eclipse, now is a great time to set up an altar to disrupt (or eclipse) whatever has been impeding you in your pursuit of the above.

On this New Moon, take a look around you and notice how issues relating to the Leonine themes of confidence, creativity, and storytelling have showing up for you recently.

Then, add an image to your altar that reminds you of a character from one of your favorite stories, or an energy that you’d like to call in and cultivate.

Give the image an offering that feels resonant.

Write your intentions for the month in your Book of Shadows and pull a card to ask for guidance for the month.

If you’d like to add a few more easy steps to your New Moon ceremony, the journal prompts for this month can be found in this month’s Leo Season Witch Guide, along with further instructions on how to set up an altar.

P.S. Tonight is the dark moon — the night before the New Moon — and is therefore the feast of Hecate. Don’t forget to leave your offerings for Hecate at the crossroads. You can find out all about how to do so here.

P. P. S. Do you live in or near the Bay Area? If so, I’ll be coming up there to lead a workshop called, Ritual Strategies: Techniques for Stewarding Community Through Change with Amanda Yates Garcia, at the Berkeley Alembic on September 13th. Find out more here!

Tonight at 6pm PT we have our tarot practice class for contributing subscribers to Mystery Cult.

Theme: Your Authenticity is Your Strength.

We’ll be practicing the spread from the Leo Season Witch Guide and talking about how Strength shows up throughout the arcana of the tarot.

We’ll also be discussing which cards correspond to the holiday of Lúnasa, and the solar god, Lugh.

Our Tarot Studio for this season will discuss these cards, noting what can support each of their ‘goals’ and offering a chance to practice integrating their teachings into your tarot readings.

Hope to see you there, but if you can’t make it you’ll get the replay.

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Trigger Warning: This essay speaks about suicide and childhood sexual abuse. Be gentle with yourself, check in before you read it and see if this is the right time.

Last night, at four in the morning, trying to sleep, I checked in with my tender heart and asked her how she was, and she responded, “I wish Carolyn Elliott were still alive.”

Since she took her own life last week, Carolyn has often been in my thoughts.

We didn’t know each other well. We hadn’t spoken in years. I think the last time I saw her may have been in 2019. We went to lunch at ‘Gracias Madre,’ a Mexican restaurant in Hollywood. She seemed a little nervous, fragile, heavily pregnant. Her eyes were too bright, nostrils rimmed red around the edges from the hapé — a quasi psychedelic Amazonian shamanic tobacco — which she snuffed every few minutes over our huevos rancheros while we chatted about magic and fame and politics.

I don’t know why that image of her keeps coming back to me since I heard of her passing, except that something about it captures how I always felt about her presence. Simultaneously dangerous and electrically alive, but also, vulnerable.

I’d first heard about her years before that meeting, on Facebook. Witchcraft was re-emerging into the zeitgeist in a big way then. I’d already been quietly growing own practice as a ‘professional witch’ in LA for several years, though I hadn’t quite yet found the courage to tell the world that I meant it, that it was more than an art practice to me. That when I said witch I meant it literally. That witchcraft was real.

Carolyn, on the other hand, was out and proud. With her online magazine Bad Witches, she didn’t try to make witchcraft seem palatable or cozy. She didn’t try to defang it. Her witchcraft was sexy, scary, dangerous. She sold it, shamelessly. Magic could get you everything you wanted, she said. It wasn’t wrong to want things. ‘Witchcraft,’ she told the world, ‘was making her millions.’

I bought a three-month life coaching package with her, and she really did help me. The fact that I’m able to support myself now doing the work I do is partly because of the work she and I did together.

As you, dear reader, probably know, I have a conflicted relationship with capitalism, and money in general. When Carolyn and I first starting working together, I felt called to share my work with a broader audience, but I couldn’t do that without being able to pay my rent, which meant charging more. By the power of her will, it felt almost like an electronic transmission, head to head, a jolt, she made me see the value of my work. She made me see the selfishness of playing it small and hiding. She gave me courage. Success followed. I’ll always be grateful to her for that.

A few years after that, my star was on the rise. She booked an Rituals, Spells, and Ceremonies appointment with me. She wanted to call in love and she felt like she needed support. It’s often difficult to do spells on your own behalf. Your shadow can get in the way. A disinterested witch who knows what they’re doing can help you avoid your common roadblocks. A few months after we worked together, she met her future husband, with whom she had two children. After that, she started sending me clients, and would generously tell people about me in her newsletter.

But by that time, I found it difficult to return the favor. Her work was luminous, thrilling, but also barbed. I worried if receive by tender hands, it could draw blood.

Carolyn’s main thing, her brand, was a philosophy she called Existential Kink. It’s motto was the phrase: having is evidence of wanting.

Having is evidence of wanting. If you’ve been betrayed by your lover, it’s because on some level, deep down, you got off on that feeling of betrayal, in a kinky, even sadomasochistic way. If your business was failing, it was because on some level you liked being a failure. You reveled in the ‘delicious kink’ of being an abject loser. As a brilliant writer with a PhD, she could see, and openly spoke about, the tricky consequences of a logic like that.

For instance, Carolyn often spoke about how her father had sexually abused her when she was a child. I don’t think she’d disagree that ‘it fucked her up.’ As a young adult, she was homeless for a time. In her 20s she’d had a bad heroin addiction, which isn’t a surprising consequence for someone who experienced a violation like from someone who was supposed to protect her, who she depended on, who prioritized their sexual gratification over her safety and future.

But Carolyn argued, as is common to many New Age practitioners, and wrongly in my view, that on some level, maybe even before she was born, she decided she wanted to be abused by her father. Her soul wanted to have that experience. But did it? Or is that simply a perfectly understandable way of reclaiming some agency over a devastating betrayal that as a child she had no control over?

I keep thinking of her father and hating him on her behalf since she died.

I keep thinking of what Carl Jung, one of Carolyn’s most beloved spiritual ancestors, said about Wotan, the Germanic god of storm and frenzy in the wake of WWII. He said that though Germany had become a modern, Christian nation, the violent pagan Wotan lay in German consciousness like a dried river bed, waiting for the winter to come and flood its banks again with blood and slaughter.

I think of baby Carolyn, a precocious sprite in patent leather shoes, with a river of grief cutting through her that evaporated as she grew confident and famous. But the dry river bed remained, cutting deep into the valley of her heart. And then a sudden a storm of grief came, a flash flood, and she, the Scarlet Woman, the terrible and tender goddess of Babalon, drowned in it.

I think of all the woman, all the people, today, suffering similar injuries. How infuriatingly unfair it is to have to live with that. To think you’re okay, that you’ve made it, but to never be able to completely exorcise the wound.

I also strugged with Carolyn’s philosophy for political reasons. How can anyone reasonably say that the millions of Africans enslaved and brutalized for generations were secretly getting off on it? Or that the Palestinian parents gathering the entrails of their children from the dirt derived some kinky pleasure from it. No. No way. I categorically reject that.

But I think Carolyn would have said that, regardless of what I personally reject, the fact is, those things are happening. And if they are happening, whether or not they should doesn’t matter. On some level, the universe wants violence to happen. And that since we ARE the universe, or at least some small aspect of it, until we want violence to stop happening, until we find a way to completely love and accept our shadow, to integrate it, all of it – even the parts that are most repulsive, the bloodshed will continue.

Carolyn followed what’s called the left-hand path in magic of breaking taboos and accepting everything. Reputed to be the ‘fast track’, the accelerated path to enlightenment, it’s also the most dangerous. The left-hand path is littered with the bones of those who lived hard and died young.

Carolyn was provocative, but also incredibly loving. She loved life. She loved the world. She loved love. She took a bodhisattva vow, the Buddhist vow, to put off her own escape to Nirvana until all souls can reach it with her. Now I think of her children, toddlers, who now have their own riverbeds of grief that will be with them throughout their lives, for generations. The brutal loss of it. The years wondering if there was something they could have done. It’s… devastating. I can’t wrap my head around it.

I have been on anti-depressants for years; they make it difficult for me to cry. But Carolyn’s death has cut through the muffling around my heart.

Since I heard of her death, I can’t stop crying. For her children. For her. For all of us.

I wasn’t in Carolyn’s life. I don’t know what was going on for her. I send boundless love to her close network and family, to her followers who I am sure will be wrestling with how her death computes in the math of their spiritual understanding for years to come.

We belong to the universe, and the universe never ends. There is no real death. As the universe, we just go on and on and on. Given that, if our death is simply a change, which does not end our suffering, what choice do we have but to stay here? To reach towards each other? To provide care and gentleness where we can?

In psychedelic therapy training, and I know Carolyn was a fan of psychedelics, if the tripper is afraid that they might ‘die’, the trip sitter is supposed to gently suggest that they let themselves do it. The death would only be an ego death.

I can’t help but wonder where Carolyn’s life could have gone if she could’ve allowed the old version of Carolyn to die, her old persona. Who would’ve been born again from those ashes? I wish she would have stayed with us so we could’ve all found out.

When I told Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs (a different Carolyn, my dear friend and the producer of my podcast) of Carolyn Elliott’s death, she said, “It’s the end of an era.” There were so many things I treasured about Carolyn Elliott’s era of witchcraft, which she takes with her to her grave. I hope they bring her some comfort there.

Many people who suicide do it because they think they, in their woundedness, are a burden to their families and loved ones. In their grief and agony, they think they’re doing a kindness by removing themselves.

What would a world look like that had a place for those people? I think it would have to start with:

• Affordable, safe, beautiful temples to healing where people could go to rebirth themselves from the ashes of their old forms

• Safe communities where the children of those at risk could go, where the parent knew they would be loved and cared for until they could return

• A world where people like Carolyn could choose to jump ship on the businesses and lives they’d built, which may have started to feel like a prison, and know they’d still be housed and fed and clothed, and wouldn’t be judged but cherished and encouraged to re-vision and dream

We all deserve to live in such a world.

I hope that Carolyn Elliott’s death will galvanize all of us to continue creating a world that can care for people in crisis.

That we can hold each other and bring medicine to the ancient wounds we all carry. I wish this, for all of us, and so that when Carolyn Elliott incarnates again, she has a softer landing next time.

In closing, a song, to Carolyn, from the Sikh tradition, to aid in her passing:

May the long time sun
Shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light
Within you
Guide your way on

Good-bye Carolyn Elliott. You were a force. And you will be missed as long as the sun shines.

Please feel free to share your feelings below. I’m wondering how my witch community is holding the news of Carolyn Elliott’s passing.

Leave a comment

Please note that death, but particularly suicide, can bring up a torrent of conflicting feelings, which I think you can see me wrestling with here. If you comment, we embrace wherever you’re at, with the gentle reminder to be loving.

P.S. If you’re experiencing suicidal ideation, please reach out to the people close to you, or call 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline Available 24/7 via phone, text, or online chat. Call: 988

P.P.S. This is horrible to have to do this, but before I wrote this, today’s email was supposed to be simply a reminder that we have Tarot Studio, our quarterly tarot practice class for contributing subscribers this week on Wednesday evening at 6pm PT. Link is here, on the events page. I hope there we can create a space of comfort together.

I felt the old forms starting to loosen and a new pattern beginning to take shape in our ritual today. I don’t know about you but I can’t wait to light our Lion’s Gate spell on August 1st — I’m ready for a breakthrough. Let us know how it goes for you as you complete the spell. In the meantime, don’t forget to set up your spell altar…

…further instructions below, along with the replay of the Full Moon ritual, as well as follow up practices to help you integrate the materials.

Reminder: You can watch the video replay of the ritual whenever you feel stuck and need to “see” a clear path forward.

Happy Moon of the First Fruits!

Love,

Amanda

Our Full Moon gatherings are part of Mystery Cult membership – a gathering space where we practice tarot, seasonal magic, spiritual ecology, and collective care together. Contributing subscribers* are invited to join us live on Zoom and receive the replay in the section below.

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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Preparation guidelines for the Lúnasa/Lion’s Gate moon ritual tonight are in the subscriber section below.

Join the Full Moon Ritual at 6pm PST (7pm Central, 9pm Eastern, 2am GMT)

When: Wednesday, 7/29/26, 6pm-7:30pm PST

Where: Zoom, link below.

This ceremony will include:

• Somatic practice for confidence

• Cataphatic prayerwork for gentling the fires around the world

• Celebration of Lúnasa, the pagan holiday of the First Fruits

• Preparation for Lion’s Gate candle spell to generate a big breakthrough

How to prepare / please bring:

• make a simple altar with water, a stone, a candle and incense

• have your journal and writing implement handy

• bring your tarot cards or any other cards (like Oracle cards)

• ingredients list for Lion’s Gate spell is in Subscriber section below

Our Full Moon gatherings are part of Mystery Cult membership – a gathering space where we practice tarot, seasonal magic, spiritual ecology, and collective care together. All contributing subscribers* are invited to join us live on Zoom.

If you can’t join us in person, you’ll get the replay within 24 hours.

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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One of my research questions for my doctoral dissertation is simply: why do some people care about the land while others do not? The third chapter is set at Big Trees State Park, the very place you see in the image above.

The Sierra Miwok people had made their summer home amidst these trees for over 10,000 years. Less than one year after white people ‘discovered’ these Giant Sequoia, one of them – the largest of them, over 1,200 years old – had been cut down, its bark stripped and shipped back to the East Coast to be put on display at a novelty show for a nickel a ticket.

There are many reasons some people can’t seem to recognize our moral imperative to honor the beauty of the living world. But one major reason for it, I believe, is the loss of land-based rituals.

Rituals don’t just emerge from the values and culture of a people; they actually PRODUCE those values.

Rituals are generative. They conjure our systems of ethics from the stone of our imaginations. They weave together our relations to the land and to each other.

When those rituals cease to exist, so do our relations to the land.

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For our Full Moon ritual this Wednesday at 6pm PT, we’ll be celebrating the pagan holiday of Lúnasa together – a holiday that honors our relation to the land – as well as preparing for our yearly Lion’s Gate spell (an 8-day practice beginning on the 1st of August).

Durational spells require more gumption to complete, but they also offer us more time to internalize the practices that get us great results.

Even before I started Mystery Cult in 2022, I’d been leading this Lion’s Gate ritual with my online witch community.

The Lion’s Gate is a controversial idea for some witches because they say the Lion’s Gate doesn’t correspond to an actual celestial event. Even so, it appeals to my imagination, and I can’t tell you how many of my ‘followers’ have grown life-changing fruits from this spell.

The Lion’s Gate opens on the 8th day of the 8th month, when the Sun is in the sign of the Lion and the air is ripe with heat.

Imagine this time as a porthole.

Crossing the threshold of the Lion’s Gate takes courage. On the other side of that gate is you, burning brighter, using your true voice, and standing in your dignity as your most authentic self.

Many things need to fall away before we step through that gate.

We must let go of the idea that we are small, that we don’t matter, that we don’t know what we’re doing, that there’s no room for us.

We must let go of excuses we’ve made as to why we’re not doing the thing. We must let go of the fear that we’ll be punished, or that we’ll do it wrong.

The good news is that on the other side of that gate is Your Calling. The contribution you’re here to make. The thing only you can do.

Your calling, longing for you to begin.

Preparation guidelines for the Lúnasa/Lion’s Gate moon ritual on Wednesday are in the subscriber section below.

*Note if you sign up as a Yearly subscriber, you’ll also receive access to our recent Pagan Prayer workshop about how to cultivate intimate relation with the numinous through magical speech.

**Reminder: we have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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My father hates tattoos. If he saw them, the worst that would happen would be that he’d make a comment about how he much he hates them, but I also worry that he and his wife might be a little afraid of me.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s evil strategist, has been all over FOX News (yes, we see a lot of FOX up at the cabin) saying that radical leftists want the downfall of America and that they all mutilate themselves and are ‘weird-looking’.

I’m not sure what he means by that but I imagine tattoos are involved.

If my father hates my tattoos and thinks I’m a scary weirdo, nothing much would happen. Still, I guess the discomfort of my knowing it must trump the discomfort of wearing long sleeves in a hot cabin since that’s what I’m doing.

I mention all this to you because Leo season begins today. I’ve been working on the Leo Season Witch Guide all week, so I’ve been thinking about courage and authenticity. I’ve been thinking about how we generate the courage to live as we believe.

All the political accounts I follow say that these are times that require courage. Sometimes it feels easier to face a line of militarized cops at a protest than it does to face the disapproval of our parents.

I think that’s because we usually come into political consciousness as we enter adulthood, but it’s our child selves who worry about what our parents or schoolmates think.

So often, in my 1-on-1 work, I see my clients struggling to overcome similar fears. We want to speak out, we want to make changes in our own lives and in the world, but we’re afraid of ‘what the neighbors will think’.

One part of me thinks that fear of disapproval is a result of white supremacy culture. After all, people and ecologies are facing unimaginable horrors right now. Who cares if the church ladies don’t like your hair dye?

But I also think that fear of community disapproval is a phenomena all social animals face: even the fiercest dog could be shamed by their pack.

Ultimately, when it comes to courage, what’s most important is that we ask ourselves if it’s worth the risk. And, what is the likely outcome if we don’t take that risk?

Fast forward a year from now, and hiding my tattoos from my elderly father is probably a good choice. He and I only have so many opportunities left to cultivate happy memories together.

But if I’m unwilling to risk his disapproval by writing the books I want to write, then it changes the whole outcome of my life.

If we, collectively, aren’t willing to take the risk of standing up for ecological justice now, there may be no one to do it in the future.

Our ritual practices here at Mystery Cult are designed to help us understand what’s worth our courage, not just intellectually, but on an embodied level.

Embodied transformation takes practice. It has to be lived, in our bodies and our imaginations, to fully take root.

In the Leo Season Witch Guide I share with you below, the theme for the month is courage. It’s full of ritual suggestions to help you find your voice.

What would YOU do if you weren’t afraid to try? May Leo season guide you to the answer.

*Note that Yearly subscribers will also receive access to our recent Pagan Prayer workshop, about how to cultivate intimate relation with the numinous through magical speech.

This month’s Leo Season Witch Guide offers…

… rituals and inspiration to help you cultivate courage and authenticity.

In the Leo Season Witch Guide, you get…

• A Lúnasa Lion’s Gate ritual guide for cultivating courage

• Journal Prompts for the season

• A tarot guide

• Altar suggestions

• Herb and Stone guide

• A daily prayer practice for energy and confidence

• and more!

The Leo Season Witch Guide is available to all members of Mystery Cult – a gathering space where we practice ritual, seasonal magic, spiritual ecology, and collective care together.

Paid subscribers* receive the Witch Guide in the section below.

*Note that Yearly subscribers will also receive access to our recent Pagan Prayer workshop, about how to cultivate intimate relation with the numinous through magical speech.

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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There was no one to help me. No one can do my schoolwork for me. No doctor could figure out the ambient pain shooting through my limbs, keeping me up at night.

My antidepressants weren’t helping with the sword of anxiety hanging over me: climate crisis, genocide, financial pressure, ICE raids, and on and on.

Intuitively, I turned to prayer. But as a pagan, a witch, I have a different relationship to prayer than your average evangelical.

Part of what made me return to my prayer practice was going to a Al-Anon meeting to support a friend of mine.

You know, that AA thing of accepting that your life has become unmanageable and giving it over to a higher power.

Part of the reason that works is because addiction (or in Al-Anon’s case, co-dependency) is about control. Or more precisely, the understanding that trying to control things you can’t control could literally destroy your life.

As a pagan witch, I don’t believe in a transcendental higher power. I don’t believe there’s a god sitting in a cloud judging my behavior. I believe that god IS a cloud, doing its cloud thang, minding its cloud business. Making it rain.

How do you pray to precipitation?

Pagan prayer is generative, rather than descriptive. Which means that it generates, it CREATES, a reality where I am in relation with the clouds, my ancestors, with wise and powerful personages who have my best interest at heart.

I found my pagan prayer practice so helpful, I immediately wanted to share it with all of you, and so I started crafting my Pagan Prayer workshop, which will take place this Sunday at 11am Pacific Time.

Since planning the workshop, I’ve researched many qualitative studies on the proven benefits of prayer. Here are just a few. Prayer:

• Helps people move through challenging transitions (grief, growth, birth, etc.)

• Improves general life satisfaction, existential well-being, and overall happiness

• Decreases heart rate, lowers blood pressure, alters brain activity, and improves immune function and self-regulation (IOW, it makes you healthier)

There’s a reason people in every culture, in every time period return to prayer again and again.

I’m so excited to teach you what I’ve learned this Sunday!

We will be learning more about the benefits of prayer (backed by academic research) and practicing simple techniques to help you integrate it into your daily life.

Participants in the workshop get access to the Live Call on Sunday, a downloadable PDF with follow along instructions for creating prayers to support them in daily life, and a follow up discussion group to help integrate the knowledge.

This workshop is available ONLY to Yearly and Founder’s level subscribers in gratitude for their dedication to my work.

Note that becoming a subscriber at a Yearly level is 20% cheaper than subscribing month to month, AND you get 4 additional workshops a year.

Links to join us and downloadable PDF will go out Saturday evening to Yearly subscribers.

Looking forward to seeing you at the workshop!

P.S. If you’re already a Monthly subscriber, but would like to switch to Yearly, simply enter your email in the Subscribe box above to start the transition.

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

In Celtic tradition, over the Western seas lie the Summer Isles – the lands of the dead.

That day, I climbed onto rocks jutting into the pewter waters and called my grandmother’s name three times then chanted to form a bridge between the living and the dead.

As my singing echoed across the waves, I could feel a presence. I felt seen. I was seen, two black eyes blinked above the water. A seal had come, a selkie, a messenger from my grandmother who’d heard me call her name.

In Solitary Pagans – our Mystery Cult Reading Group text for this month – Helen Berger, a Harvard sociologist of religion and one of the most prominent scholars of contemporary paganism in North America, conducted studies asking pagans questions like:

• Have you ever felt you were very close to a powerful spiritual force?

• Have you ever received prophecy, visions, or messages from the spirit world?

Berger discovered that the more pagans practice magic, the more likely they are to have experiences like the one I described above.

The more magic you practice, the more likely you are to experience the sensation of magic “working.”

Happily, for members of Mystery Cult, according to Berger, pagans are FAR more likely to practice magic, and to have a shared vocabulary of meaning, when they are part of a group.

Through group practice, we gain the skills necessary to experience the Otherworld.

Rituals help us enter a trance state where mystical experiences are more likely to happen. Entering trance states requires some work, which you’re just more likely to do when you share that labor with a group. Hence the power of Mystery Cult!

I hope you can join us on Wednesday, July 8^th at 6pm PT, to discuss, the “Magic, the Otherworld, and Spiritual Practices” chapter of Berger’s book (linked below).

In any case, I know you’ll probably want to come because according to Berger’s statistical analysis…

…pagans are readers. We’re proud of our libraries. We’re more likely than the average American to have gone to college. And typically our ethics are rooted in relationships and care instead of rules and commandments.

So many reasons to love being pagan! Can’t wait to discuss them all with you! Link to the text and to the questions for closer reading in the Subscriber section below.

P.S. Also, don’t forget to mark this Sunday, July 12^th in your calendars for our Pagan Prayer workshop for Yearly subscribers.

Prayer is a technique for cultivating intimacy with the spiritual force that moves through all things. It has proven benefit for helping us navigate challenges and make choices with confidence. Come learn how to do it the Pagan way! Valued at $79, this workshop is FREE to all Yearly subscribers in gratitude for their commitment to my work.

*If you’d like to update your membership from monthly to yearly so that you can join the Pagan Prayer workshop, and save 20% on your membership cost, simply enter your email in the Subscribe box above. Or email us at guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com and we can help you from there.

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It was such an honor to be with you today making Moon Water Protection Sprays! I can’t wait to see how all of your potions turned out.

Below you’ll find the replay of the Full Moon ritual, as well as follow up practices to help you integrate the materials.

Reminder: You can watch the video replay of the ritual whenever you feel stuck and need to “see” a clear path forward.

Please find below everything you need to complete your sprays. I’ve included a tarot pull, the Protection Chant MP3, and the words of the prayer we used to bless the plants, plus some book recommendations. Enjoy!

Happy Slow Regeneration Moon!

Love,

Amanda

Our Full Moon gatherings are part of Mystery Cult membership – a gathering space where we practice tarot, seasonal magic, spiritual ecology, and collective care together. Contributing subscribers* are invited to join us live on Zoom and receive the replay in the section below.

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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The theme for today’s ritual is creating healthy boundaries. We’ll be making Moon water clearing sprays. I use clearing sprays after appointments with my 1-1 clients to clear my energy (if you want to avoid burnout, energetic hygiene like this is crucial for anyone who works intensively with other people).

Join the Full Moon Ritual at 11am PST (1pm Central, 2pm Eastern, 7pm GMT)

When: Sunday, 6/28/26, 11am-12:30pm PST

Where: Zoom, link below.

This ceremony will include:

• Somatic practice for clearing

• Divination guide for honoring boundaries

• Book of Shadows reflection time & prompts

• Discussion of the meaning and import of boundaries

• A ritual to create a clearing spray for body and home (you’ll also get a downloadable PDF of this so you can make it anytime)

How to prepare / please bring:

• make a simple altar with water, a stone, a candle and incense

• have your journal and writing implement handy

• bring your tarot cards or any other cards (like Oracle cards)

• ingredients list for clearing spray in Subscriber section below

Our Full Moon gatherings are part of Mystery Cult membership – a gathering space where we practice tarot, seasonal magic, spiritual ecology, and collective care together. Contributing subscribers* are invited to join us live on Zoom and receive will receive a replay to watch later.

If you can’t join us in person, you’ll get the replay on Sunday afternoon.

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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Full Moon in Capricorn Ritual, this Sunday!

Quick reminder that our next Full Moon ritual is this Sunday at 11am PT (1pm CT, 2pm ET, 7pm GMT). THEME: creating healthy boundaries. We’ll be making Moon water clearing sprays. I use clearing sprays after appointments with my 1-1 clients to clear my energy (if you want to avoid burnout, energetic hygiene like this is crucial for anyone who works intensively with other people). Subscribers scroll down to get your Ritual Prep Guide. If you can’t join us in person, you’ll get the replay on Sunday afternoon. All contributing subscribers welcome!

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

The Alchemical Imagination by Eliza Swann

Eliza Swann, creatrix of the Golden Dome Mystery School just came out with a new book about alchemy. The ancient practice of alchemy unites science, spirituality, and healing, spanning continents from Europe to Africa to East Asia. Alchemy teaches about the transformative capacities of Jupiter and Mars, but also how to transform ourselves by mobilizing our creative power. I highly recommend this fantastic book, especially for anyone interested in developing their imagination while also learning the foundations of mysticism.

Say Nothing (on Hulu)

I loved this TV series about The Troubles, set in 1970s Ireland. I love how it both avoids romanticizing the Republican Army nor condemning it, instead the series wades into the complexity and personal cost of resisting colonization. The pace is fast and griping, the character development sharp and nuanced, the style and cinematography are gorgeous. If you’re looking for a new show to watch that doesn’t make you feel like you’re intravenously feeding yourself Overculture propaganda, you’ll love this one!

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Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions Exhibition

I wish I was in New York to see this new exhibition up at The Morgan Library. “[The Tarot!] exhibition explores the origins of tarot in Renaissance Italy and its contemporary relevance as an enduring source of inspiration for twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists.” UGH. The pre-exhibition walk-throughs I’ve seen online look so great, I might have to make an impromptu trip. If you’re nearby please go and let us know if it’s worth the trip!

Pagan Prayer Workshop — Sunday 7/12/26, 11am PT

Yearly subscribers, mark your calendars. I’ve got a great new workshop coming up for you: Pagan Prayer! Prayers are simple devotional tools that help you build a deeper relationship with your practice and tradition.

In this workshop you will:

• Identify pagan prayers useful for common occassions

• Define the building blocks of a good prayer so you can make your own

• Describe the spiritual and physical benefits of prayer

• Compare pagan and other forms of prayer

• Experiment with prayers to find your choice for a simple daily practice

Note: this workshop is exclusively for Yearly subscribers in gratitude for their commitment to my work. In addition to the monthly moon rituals, Yearly and Founder’s level subscribers receive 4 workshops per year, each a $99 value (which means Yearly subscribers get nearly $400 worth of bonus value per year. Wow!).

If you’d like to join the Pagan Prayer workshop, become a Yearly subscriber today, or update your membership below.

Subscribe now

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There’s little I enjoy less than being held hostage to the moods of other people.

I was thinking about this the other day when my dear brother (and oracular assistant), Conor, dm’d me an Iranian agitprop video where Lego Trump tantrums because Obama’s presidential center’s ceremony gets a shitload of celebrity endorsements.

According to my brother, Iran has a group of psychologists brainstorming how to manipulate Trump.

Honestly, triggering an epic narcissist like Trump probably isn’t that hard. When your ego is a black hole, it doesn’t take much effort to fall in.

But my concern is less with Trump than how we, as a species, have accepted a situation where one person’s mood has such an excessive impact on the wellbeing of our entire community? Of the entire world?

Humans have been held hostage again and again by tyrants. If we keep getting held hostage, maybe it isn’t just the tyrant that’s the problem.

I’m not trying to blame the victim here, but I do think that until the entire culture wakes up, we’re condemned to repeat this history. (Marx said it first, but I second his emotion).

Tyrants take over cultures by force, but they maintain their power through indoctrination. They convince people to justify and maintain their own oppression.

We live in a culture that produces hostages and tyrants. Culture entails all human activity, therefore all humans play a part in creating it.

Recently an influencer I follow suggested that Leftists should be more forgiving of their parents. They pointed out that many Leftists believe we need to expand our sense of community beyond the nuclear family.

In Leftist circles it’s common for people to carry a lot of resentment towards their parents.

And yet, our parents are just wee little humans, not super heroes. Of COURSE they can’t meet all of our needs. Humans require a full community to be healthy (which most of us don’t have).

If everyone in a family cowers and tiptoes because Daddy (or Trump) is in a bad mood that is the COMMUNITY’S problem — not just the kid’s.

Patriarchal culture teaches us to conform, to accept authority, to believe that cultural change is Sky Daddy’s responsibility, not our own.

But if we continue to accept Daddy’s tantrums, we condemn future generations to endure them.

Global transformation requires that we all change together. Little by little, we all must reorient ourselves towards liberation and community.

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Despite our upbringing or our culture, we all must practice taking responsibility for our own happiness and liberation, instead of outsourcing it to distant gods and violent men.

Normies may think it sounds strange, but I do believe witchcraft can help us reorient.

We require a spiritual transformation if we want future generations to thrive.

By ‘spiritual’ I mean ‘relational’. I mean privileging values that serve life and the dignity of life.

Our spiritual traditions must encourage us both towards interdependence and animism, but also towards personal agency.

The rituals of witchcraft offer us opportunities to dissolve the old worlds obsessed with domination and acquisition, and build new worlds oriented towards creativity and care.

This Sunday at our Full Moon ceremony, we’ll be working with the Daddy/Mommy polarity of Cancer and Capricorn. We’ll be finding liberation within that paradigm. Searching for new ways to experience structure and care. Making ourselves less beholden to the whims of the patriarchs.

On a practical level, we’ll also be making Moon water clearing sprays.

I use clearing sprays after my appointments with my clients to cleanse myself of energy that isn’t mine to carry (energetic hygiene like this is crucial for people in healing professions, if you want to avoid burnout).

But anyone can use these sprays anytime they want to bring their energy back to neutral.

The clearing spray ingredients list and link to join the Ritual is in the subscribers section below. If you can’t be there in person, you’ll get the replay on Sunday afternoon.

Join the Full Moon Ritual Sunday 6/28/26 at 11am PST (1pm Central, 2pm Eastern, 7pm GMT)

The Full Moon rituals are available to all members of Mystery Cult – a gathering space where we practice ritual, seasonal magic, spiritual ecology, and collective care together. Paid subscribers* receive the Zoom link and ingredients list for the ceremony in the subscriber section below.

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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As Cancer season arrives, in my practice I’m focusing on creating a sanctuary for myself. For me, now is a time to recuperate from the inundation and overwhelm of the school year.

I’m considering ways to make my home more comfortable.

Cancer rules the 4th house of Home in astrology, rooting into our ancestral memories and the stories written into the land itself.

The archetype of mother lives in our 4^th house. Whether your own mother offered you a great model for care, or even if she was unable to care for you in the way you needed, as the sun transits through Cancer issues related to mothering, nurture, care and comfort become illuminated by His powerful solar rays.

What you do with that illumination is up to you.

Cancer season is always an invitation to heal the mother wound.

I saw a post by Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle on Instagram the other day that said:

This quote makes me think of how our culture often tries to convince us that the best way to heal our wounds – when we feel scared, anxious, or overwhelmed – is to push ourselves harder, do more work, be more critical of ourselves. When really what we need is to lean into, well, a nice soft bed.

I’ll be prioritizing rest, gentleness, and care this month.

In astrology, Cancer is ruled by the Moon, She who never burns us with her soft silver light.

I wish I could tell you that the Sun simply transiting through the lovely sign of Cancer would be enough to heal your mother wounds and bring you comfort and rest, but all those yummy results won’t have a chance to manifest without at least a little effort on our part.

That’s where the rituals and offerings I share with you in this month’s Witch Guide come in.

Rather than thinking of these offerings as chores you should do, see them as opportunities to care for yourself and create space for rest and ease to enter your life. Enjoy them!

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P.S. Tomorrow is also Summer Solstice! I offer some ritual suggestions for you in this month’s Witch Guide, so be sure to scan through it soon!

This month’s Cancer Season Witch Guide offers…

… rituals and inspiration to help bring more care and comfort into your life.

In the Cancer Season Witch Guide, you get…

• A Summer Solstice ritual guide

• Journal Prompts for the season

• A tarot guide

• Altar suggestions

• Herb and Stone guide

• a practical practice for making your home a sanctuary

• and more!

The Cancer Season Witch Guide is available to all members of Mystery Cult – a gathering space where we practice ritual, seasonal magic, spiritual ecology, and collective care together. Paid subscribers* receive the Witch Guide in the section below.

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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Three important things are happening: today, Venus enters Leo for three weeks, and it’s also the deipnon (feast day) for Hecate. Then, tomorrow is the New Moon!

I go deep into the deipnon in this essay here, but briefly, the deipnon is our opportunity to ritually release whatever we’re wanting to clear: our ex, our stupid city council, our stress, etc.

To do this releasing work, tonight, on the dark moon, take the dregs of your life to the crossroads and offer them to Hecate, goddess of the compost, she who brings us through periods of transition and awakens us to new life.

By dregs I mean, sweep off your altars, burn your old love letters or whatever, and take the ashes to a place where three roads come together. Leave them there for Hecate with a silver coin. She also likes eggs and/or old veggies. Say “Hecate, Hecate, Hecate, an offering for you,” as you set them down.

Second, Venus enters Leo today. Venus is the honey bringer, the delight giver. And Leo is the sign of the storyteller. This three-week transit reminds you to…

… call in the future you want. Speak your spells to draw the future you desire into your orbit.

Don’t let the Musks and Theil’s of the world, or any other villains, convince you that the future is already theirs.

They want us to think apocalyptic robot world is a done deal. That the future is theirs and we should just concede it to them.

But the future isn’t written yet. Witches, claim it! S-p-e-l-l out the vision you wish to create, for yourself and for the world.

Say it out loud. Describe it. Hold space for it to become real.

If you’d like support, I’ve created a simple 20-minute follow-along video spell for you to do tomorrow on the New Moon in Gemini, ruler of the Lovers card and the relational world-view.

Join me in insisting on enchantment.

This New Moon video is an offering for members of Mystery Cult – a gathering space where we practice ritual, seasonal magic, spiritual ecology, and collective care together. Paid subscribers* receive the video link in the section below.

*We have discounts for those in financial need. Let’s find something that works for both of us. Don’t be shy. To find out more, email us at: guardian@oracleoflosangeles.com

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