Aerik Arkadian

When I was a kid, I remember how my parents dragged me to church multiple times a week. And I hated it.

There were two Sunday morning services — “Sunday School” first and then a larger service next. There was a Sunday evening service. And there was a midweek group, usually on Wednesday nights.

Okay, okay, I know some people have had similar experiences, but that was just the start.

At some point or another, my entire family was singing in the church choir, including me. Choir practice took place about 90 minutes before the first services on Sunday morning. Sometimes when we had a big production coming up, we’d go practice on Saturdays, too.

It was a rather small church, but eventually the congregation grew enough to merit having two main Sunday morning services (in addition to Sunday School), with a short break in between. My mom played the piano and my dad ran the sound for both services, which meant I had to be there, too. That’s a total of five church services a week that I had to sit through, not including choir practices, prayer groups, Bible studies, and whatever other events might have been going on. Aside from the preacher’s family, I think we might have clocked more total church time than anyone else.

All of that time sacrifice was worth it — I mean, that’s what my parents tried to tell me… because spirituality is important.

So naturally, I’m sure they’d be delighted to hear how much time that my wife and I spend running a coven today. Between coven, writing, workshops, videos, festivals, zoom meetings, book clubs, prison ministry, and everything else we do, it’s safe to say that spirituality is a very central point in our lives.

I learned how important it was from my parent’s example. The irony is… it’s just a very different form of spirituality.

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Good morning and happy Monday, friends! Another non-stop week has passed. I think we had something scheduled every single night! Here’s what’s been going on in our neck of the woods.

I spoke with Jack Chanek on Monday. We talked about his story, Qabalah, and Tarot. I don’t usually do this, but since I’m over a month behind in video editing, I went ahead and made the raw interview footage public on Patreon — you just have to follow there as a free member to watch. It was a great conversation. As soon as I can, I’ll be turning it into Season 2, Episode 3.

On Tuesday, we had a Zoom meeting scheduled with someone who was interested in getting started with a prison ministry. It’s always nice to talk to people who want to help out and give back to the Craft.

We answered a lot of messages from inmates this week. On a surface level, it might not sound very time consuming to answer 3 or 4 emails per day, but when you actually give them the care and attention they deserve, it becomes a lot like answering 3 or 4 letters. Someone I’ve been corresponding with is just trying to get their hands on a copy of the Satanic Bible, so I’ve reached out to some of the Satanic Temple’s congregations to see if they offer any sort of prison outreach… I’ll let you know what I find out!

On Wednesday, we had our coven book club meeting — we went over the second half of The Mighty Dead by Christopher Penczak. It’s the only book so far that we’ve split up into two meetings, but it’s also probably one of the more densely-packed books on our reading list.

I posted an article on Thursday on The Three Principles of Alchemy, also known as the tria prima. Go give it a read.

Friday night was our Summer Solstice celebration. It’s been a running tradition now that we light a bunch of candles with one big central candle to represent the sun. It burned for close to two days.

While we were in circle, we made floor wash… with some secret ingredients!

Our home is about to be so cleansed.

On Saturday, I got some pictures taken. Blargh. For some reason, setting my phone on.a tripod with a timer just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Maybe I’ll show you after its up on a festival website. But after that, we went back to the Argentinian bakery and got more delicious medialunas.

I’ve been working on fixing up the audio for Alexander Cabot’s interview. There were some car noises and sirens in the background that were really distracting to the listening experience. If you’re curious on how I do that, by the way, here’s a short video that explains. All I need to now is get the intro done and we’ll have Episode 2 up and ready for all to see!

On Sunday, Selene and I spent most of the day catching up on some spiritual homework. Quiet time with my wife is nice. I enjoyed it.

We’ve got an astrology reading scheduled later today with one of our favorite readers, Joseph. As soon as I get a nice copy of my chart from him, I’m going to apply some of what I learned from Ivo Dominguez Jr. at Summer Magick Fest 2024… and ward that sucker! Can’t wait to hear all that he has to say!

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more!