Lots going on! In this video, I share a bit of a life update: I’ve got a job, and I’m settling in Utah and opening up a Gardnerian training group. More deeply, I talk about the magic that I had been doing during my job search. I probe into why I had a series of […]
Read more "Video: Magic Doesn’t Work (Until It Does)"Hmmm. Are my thoughts coherent enough to write into a blog post? We’re going to find out together. I have a few different topics swirling around in my mind, all of which are loosely related. For one, I’ve been thinking a lot about community and what it means to be in community. I’m living in […]
Read more "Late-Night Thoughts: The Lovers and the Interdependent Self"In a video last weekend, I talked about the rub that exists between philosophy, which seeks truth through reason, and mysticism, which seeks irrational ecstatic communion with the divine. As it turns out, I have more that I want to say on the matter. Specifically, I want to talk about the survival of the soul […]
Read more "Philosophy and Mysticism: Malkuth, Yesod, and the Underworld"I’m a philosopher, a mystic, and a magician–but those things don’t fit together as neatly as you might expect. In this video, I talk through a fundamental incompatibility between philosophy’s demands for rigorous reasoning and mysticism’s need to suspend reason in favor of direct ecstatic experience of the divine. And just to top it all […]
Read more "Video: Philosophy, Mysticism, and Magic"Three years ago, I was writing the manuscript that became my first book, QABALAH FOR WICCANS. But a lot can change in three years! While I’m still tremendously proud of this book, there are a number of ways that my perspectives and interests have shifted since I wrote it. In this video, I talk through […]
Read more "Video: Revisiting Qabalah for Wiccans"We now return to our regularly scheduled programming. For those who are just joining us, I’m in the midst of a year-long intensive with the Tarot de Marseille, trying to set aside all my previous assumptions about Tarot and get to know this deck entirely on its own terms. This is a project that I’ve […]
Read more "A Year of Tarot de Marseille: Why Do This?"New on YouTube. When people talk about “magic,” they mean a lot of different things. In this video, I talk through what I see as a fundamental cleavage in magical practices: Between models of magic that rely on intercessory spirits and those that rely on sympathetic or symbolic connections.
Read more "Video: Spirit-Based and Sympathetic Magic"Yesterday, the Supreme Court released its decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, overturning the nearly 50-year precedent of Roe v. Wade and dispelling federal protections for abortion under a Constitutional right to privacy. We knew this was coming, but having been forewarned doesn’t make it better. The Dobbs decision is a […]
Read more "Three Steps to Effective Political Magic"This week, I had the privilege of joining Tess Whitehurst and Natasha Levinger on the Magic Monday podcast, to talk about Hermetic Qabalah, the Tree of Life, and how to make an often impenetrable subject accessible and relevant for magical practitioners outside of the Golden Dawn paradigm. (And, of course, to promote my book, which […]
Read more "My Appearance on the Magic Monday Podcast"In all the conversations people have about Wicca, it seems they’re often not working from a shared definition of what Wicca actually is–and that can be a source of confusion and problems. In this video, I talk through what I consider to be the six basic defining features of Wicca: -It’s a form of witchcraft […]
Read more "Video: What is Wicca?"
Jack Chanek 