I think the craft gently invites us to face our fears pretty regularly. Or at least, I think it should if it’s being approached the right way. And the further you go, the more fears you have to conquer.
Lucky for us, you don’t have to face them all at once. You can take them one at a time.
For me, there’s a particular set of fears in the realm of personal development and another set for coven leadership.
Personal development fears are sometimes uncovered and dealt with while meditating or doing shadow work. Coming from over a decade as a Christian (and a hardcore Christian at that — I was the guy knocking on your door asking if you knew where you’d spend eternity), I had a lot of issues with witchcraft in general. This is something I talk about pretty openly in my Q&A Video, but the base fear here tended to revolve around a “what if I’m wrong and going to hell” line of thinking.
Continuing through the degrees presented a myriad of fears, but most of those have to be dealt with by actions. I was scared to be skyclad. I was scared to do divination in front of people. I was scared to teach classes. I was scared to lead ritual. Oh… and I was scared as hell to try drawing down for the first time. You can’t really logic your way out of those situations… you just have to do it.
I’m not sure what I’m most scared to do, but when I look back, I can see all these little fears that I’ve managed to deal with along the way.
Good morning and happy Monday, friends!
I spoke with Thorn Mooney on Thursday last week. The raw footage is available on Patreon for those who are interested in early access, but I’ve been cleaning it up a bit for inclusion in Episode 7 later on. We spent a while talking about what to do when you don’t feel magickal, how social media is influencing the craft, and some other cool stuff — don’t worry, you’ll all be able to see it pretty soon! My goal is to have Ep 7 finished this week.
But… then again, I’m also practicing my setlist and finishing up a workshop for Tides this weekend, so I’m going to be pretty packed. We’ll be headed to Miami on Friday, so that means I really only have Mon – Thurs to wrap everything up.
I finished some little giveaway trinkets for my workshop. It’s a bunch of bottled condenser from a previous show. Honestly, I throw this stuff on my wrists all the time (it’s basically distilled water and essential oils) for a quick energetic refresh. It works fantastically.
These bottles are TINY. There’s nothing for size reference in the picture, but I think they’re just shy of an inch tall. So yeah, drawing the smallest-ever treble clef and cutting a tiny label 20 times was a task. But the important part is that they’re finished.
I usually like to post my Sabbat articles a day or two before the observed date, but I knew I wasn’t going to have time to do that properly this time. In light of that, I posted my Imbolc article last week. There’s only one more Sabbat left and I’ll have a completed series on the entire Wheel of the Year! I’ll say… it sure was fun to start out with, but has felt more like a chore toward the end.
It was my intention to record an instructional video on how to make Saint Brigid’s Crosses out of corn husks. I’ve made them before this way and was pretty happy with the results! But my most recent attempt left me feeling rather uninspired — It just wasn’t as pretty as I hoped. Perhaps this will be a project for next year.
No short videos this past week. And honestly I might skip out on posting any shorts this week as well. I really have to focus on what I already have planned for the weekend or I know I’ll end up regretting it. But… speaking of videos and my YouTube channel, have you checked it out? If you find that it’s enjoyable to watch anything there, you have NO IDEA how much of a difference it makes if you subscribe or leave a comment.
We’re going to be doing some fun experiments with flying ointments and magick mirrors soon. Actually, we have a pretty badass black mirror that was just finished, but I’m not ready to show it off yet.
In mundane news, we tried to take a family day trip to a local animal sanctuary, but found out they were closed when we got there! Bummer. There was actually a giant “closed” sign on the corner as soon as we started pulled in, but I didn’t want to believe it. I also didn’t want to believe a similar sign in the middle of the parking lot. And I especially didn’t want to believe the sign that was directly on the door. Maybe it was all just a weird miscommunication, so… just to be sure, I did try the door. It was locked.
Luckily, there was a nice park nearby, so we recalibrated and took a long walk instead. I think we saw a turtle. At least, everyone else saw a turtle. For the record, I did not see the turtle.
Aerik Arkadian 
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