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?"I like to believe I’m a smart person. I think critically. I have a master’s degree in philosophy and I’m working on my Ph.D, and contrary to popular belief, academic philosophy is not, in fact, a free-for-all of sloppy thinking and vague bullshit. My discipline is overwhelmingly, exhaustingly oriented toward rigorously defined concepts and motivated […]
Read more "Ten Doubts About Magic"It’s longstanding wisdom in Western occultism that there are multiple planes of existence above the material. Thanks in large part to the influence of Mme Blavatsky and the Theosophical society, the number of planes that gets discussed most often is seven: One physical plane, and then “upper” and “lower” planes corresponding to the astral, mental, […]
Read more "The Astral is Enough"Have you ever heard of “SMART” goals? It’s a trite human-resources motivational speaking aphorism that gets bumped around in certain middle management corporate retreat sorts of environments. “SMART” is an acronym. SMART goals are said to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Sensitive. S-M-A-R-T. Trite though it is, it’s damn good advice. When setting goals […]
Read more "Getting SMART About Witchcraft & Magic"This is going to be a Wicca post. If that turns you off, I completely understand, seeing as how this is actually not a Wicca blog, and I promise my next post will be 100% Tarot.* For anyone who’s relatively new to my blog and doesn’t know this about me, I am a onetime atheist […]
Read more "Magic and Mental Causation"The idea of using Tarot in magic(k) is not exactly new. The Aeclectic Tarot Forum has a whole constellation of discussions on this topic, and Kelly-Ann Maddox at the Four Queens did a video on it not too long ago. Here, I want to take a bit of a different tack and talk about how […]
Read more "Tarot and Timing Spellwork"
Jack Chanek 