Albert Einstein once famously said…
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is magickal. The other is as though everything is.”
I used to have a picture of Einstein taped onto my guitar case. For a long while, I also had a plaster bust of Einstein’s head on my shelf.
Why?
Honestly, I don’t really know. He always seemed like a pretty cool dude to me. It’s kind of insane to think that he died less than a hundred years ago in 1955. There’s so much in science that we’ve only come to learn very recently.
Anyway, I should probably tell you that Einstein never said the above quote. I tweaked it.
The actual quote that is popularly attributed to Einstein is this:
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.” (See? I added the magickal part.)
Einstein probably didn’t say that either, however. Despite the fact that a lot of people copy and paste it, it’s actually heavily disputed. Apparently some guy named Gilbert Fowler White wrote about it in the 1940’s. Ever since then, everyone thought the quote sounded really cool and kept repeating it.
But this post isn’t about Albert Einstein. It’s about the concept of living a very long life.
Perhaps the best way to live a long life is to live a magickal one.
I’m not talking about elaborate ceremonies or expensive rituals. I’m talking about simplicity. Every intentional act can be a magickal one.
Think about that when you’re making your morning coffee. You didn’t just make a regular, mundane cup of coffee. You just brewed a friggin potion.
Did you take a boring shower today? Or did you participate in an elaborate, full-body, energetic cleansing that utilized the element of water (and hopefully a little soap)?
The point is… a lot changes when you shift the perspective.
I don’t want to just live a very long life. I want to live a long and magickal one.
Good morning and Happy Monday, friends.
The first full week of 2024 is down. I’m actually a little surprised I haven’t written a date wrong yet, like accidentally naming this post “Weekly Recap 1/8/2023” … writing a different digit in the year usually feels a little weird to me for the first month, but this year I’m not getting that vibe.
I’ve been journaling a bit about the weekend in Cassadaga… trying to organize all my thoughts so I can present them in a logical way. I also made a photo collage of 144 pictures that I took on the “find the spirits” tour. Want to do some ghost hunting with me?
It took me far, far too long to upload, resize and align all of those photos. Subscribers on Patreon can view a high-res image to really zoom in and find evidence of orbs or spirit activity — I’ll upload it soon — but I can pretty much guarantee you won’t find any. This is just to say… we really did put forth the effort in trying to find something, but I guess the spirits felt like being silent on that evening.
In other news…
I’ve got a couple festivals booked, so here’s what the calendar looks like so far…
- February – Turning the Tide (playing a concert and teaching a workshop)
- June – Summer Magick (teaching a workshop)
I’d love to add to this list if anyone has any suggestions.
I’ve made some “promo” stuff for these appearances recently. At least half of the time, it’s Selene’s idea. She’ll say “you should make a flyer for your next show” and I’m like “oh wow, I should!” Something hidden deep inside of me just completely rejects original thoughts of putting my face on things. I don’t know what inner demon is responsible for these feelings, but it makes for an interesting challenge when it comes to marketing or YouTube. It’s definitely something I’ve been struggling to get over since around the time that I made my first YouTube video several months ago.
So anyway, here’s the promo image for Turning the Tide.
And for Summer Magick, I actually filmed a 60-second commercial. You’ll have to wait a few more days to see that, however, as I sent it over to the hosts and they’ll be posting it soon.
If you didn’t see it by now, I’m also I am happy to say that I finally finished Episode 6 last week. It took a lot of work and a ton of editing, but it’s nice to have the sense of completion.
We had a volunteer session at the prison this past weekend, which came as a surprise, seeing as how there’s been zero communication from the facility for the past month. I haven’t even been able to reach anyone over the phone to find out what has been going on. On Friday afternoon, we got an email telling us that we were on the schedule for the next morning. We’ve always tried to plan our visits weeks in advance, so the last minute scheduling was a little irksome. With the lack of communication, we had certainly never told anyone we were planning on going that particular day. It was almost tempting to say “no” just to avoid a slight feeling of mistreatment, but instead we decided to do the right thing and go be of service.
I say “we” decided, but also… the runes decided. I threw some out on the table and they were very clear that the right decision was to go.
We found out that everyone has been in lockdown for a month. There’s a new warden in place, so things have been running a bit differently.
Volunteering within the prison system can be a difficult process sometimes, but if more people don’t do it, Wicca will continue to be a drastically underrepresented faith. I plan to make a post soon that outlines how we got started… with some instructions to help others who might plan on undertaking this type of thing.
Has anyone been keeping track of all the things I keep saying I plan on doing? I sure hope so. The list grows longer and longer… but I can guarantee I only mention about 5% of the things that float around inside my head.
My head is a cluttered place.
Coming up soon, there are a couple of things to be looking forward to! Thorn Mooney seems to be on board for an interview later this month, and then Deborah Lipp In February. It still kind of blows me away how many cool people I get to meet and talk to while doing all of this stuff.
Wishing you a magickal week!
Aerik Arkadian 
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