I'm writing this now as I dust off the redesign of this site.
I manually type in the line breaks, the clumsy html formatting, the lazy jquery to make it all somewhat dynamic, at least a little bit readable.
It's funny, so much of my past year has been consulting with others (usually in regards to digital privacy) about the tradeoffs between convenience and principled technology. I think about it now as I continue to work on this page that has no trackers, no dependencies on Google, no suspicious plugins that surreptitiously fingerprint users and aggregate their data without their consent. But it's so fucking inconvenient. If I sought reliable scale, or paid audience, or anything other than a virtual record of the things that bubble up in my personal practice, I might choose otherwise. Still side eyeing all the other witchy sites I see, though, that are just riddled with trackers.


This afternoon I attend the final class of a "how to study magic" course offered by Morbid Anatomy, taught by Sarah Lyons (author of Revolutionary Witchcraft). It's been a delight to step back and get a big picture perspective on the varying branches of western esoteric traditions. Sometimes I get lost in the weeds of my own weird, intuitive, patchworked practice.

Anyways, just chiming in here that I'm working on this site, continuing to update it, and slowly digging through the old records in order to archive them here. In previous iterations this site was much more ephemeral, being entirely rebuilt every full moon. Naturally, much of that content is now lost. What scraps I find, I'll sort into the various places. Unfortunately, I'm no great archivist.

Each full moon, for at least the past six months, this site has been entirely rewritten and updated with a fresh wash of material. What's here now likely won't be here again; whatever's cached is for personal recordkeeping, not for show. Those records may be on this server; this server is not programmed to serve it to you, unless it is told to. Like every thing, there are unseen layers.

The problem with occult record keeping on the internet, now, is that they're all designed within the prototype of "product" that every other site strives for. They are nestled within the architectures of capitalism that threaten the natural world, and therefore, magic itself. The websites are poorly structured, riddled with advertisements and white supremacy. They're storefronts for goods sourced from exploitative means far beyond the borders of their customers. They're bookshops promoting guides on diasporic spiritualities reappropriated by white authors. And so on.

Unlike the for-profit resources & conferences (WitchFest, HexFest, WitchsFest, Modern Witches Confluence, WitchCon) there are no third party trackers embedded on this page. There are no promises to uncover the secrets of witchcraft and hidden powers. This is not a place for me to make money; it is an extension of my witchcraft, and therefore, isn't always made to be easily understood by others except myself.

Semantically, even, the ways that the code is structured, the mechanisms behind the page you're reading, are constructed, by hand, as a means of sorcery. It is not squarespace, wix, wordpress; it is rougher around the edges, but then, hopefully feels less like a stripmall or piece of junkmail.

I come at this from a variety of angles: my witchcraft extends, consciously at least, for roughly two decades. It is a practice I've cultivated mostly on a solitary path, sometimes in groups, and from a variety of traditions (what we used to call 'eclectic' witchcraft). It is heavy on the craft part, with a drive for cultural understanding, and a nerve for intuitive guidance. Ritual, spontaneity, gnosticism, aesthetics, poetry, and art are all wells I pull from to pool into my craft.

The "Garden of the Crossroads" has been a concept I've been working from over the past seven years.
As a keen eye might expect, it began with a journey towards Hekate, the Goddess of the Crossroads.
It continued as a pathway towards Divine Femininity in a world built for men.
A practice of shadow work, a line along the poison path, a gesture towards Goddess worship untethered by the transphobic bioessentialism plagued by so much witchcraft today.
I found myself reevaluating moral frameworks given to me by love and light witches that have no sense of justice.
I found myself abandoned by cissexist and patriarchal modern interpretations of ancient paganism.
I found myself yearning for the wild, unrestrained, revolutionary witchcrafts we only rarely hear about.
I found myself more and more resenting the hopelessly inadequate, the pedantic diatribes of Scarlet Imprint, the weak-minded bigotry of Z Budapest, the white supremacist and uncritically appropriative printings of Lewellyn.
I grew poisonous plants. I meditated by the dark of the moon. I changed sex.
I recognized within myself the Morrigan, Hekate, a tumbling ferocious gnashing of spirit.
I thirst for justice and the blood of those who would rather die in comfort at the expense of it all, than work together to save our planet.

And somewhere along the way I found myself at dawn. I fell in love, I sought sunlight. I moved to California. I bought crystals and thought, gee, this love and light shit isn't so bad. I didn't lose sight of the darkness, the fires that burn in secret under the watch of the new moon. I used that place to source my newfound appreciation for the daytime, for Cybele, for Brigid.

I've spent countless hours over the past seven years meditating on the transition from The High Priestess to the Empress.

And it's only somewhat recently that I realize the Garden of the Crossroads is not just an altar for Hekate. It is the place between worlds, where the flowers bloom both towards dawn and towards the chthonic realms. It is the ability to exist between worlds. It is at the crossroads that a witch finds power, it is among the gardens that she creates beauty.

No beauty without justice, no justice without witchcraft, no witchcraft without beauty.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding between technologists and occultists.
This misunderstanding lies in how each regards the other. Technologists discount occultism as some frivolous burner-culture snake-oil industry that is imprecise and unscientific. Occultists regard the other as unquestioning and emblematic of the downfall of the natural world. The truth is, as elusively ever, somewhere between and neither. Unfortunately there is a kernel of truth in those devaluing judgements. However, neither camp is well prepared to accept how those assessments may be wrong, and how desperately humanity needs there to be a reconciliation.

And then there are many in between that suspect as much; that together we might accomplish more than what's currently imagined, not just deterring the hurdling dystopic spiral that's harkening our extinction, but creating worlds, pleasures, and utopic ideals currently inarticulable by our scar tissued psyches.
A computer, to a technologist, is an electric machine that can read, write, edit, destroy, automate and "compute" information (AKA data). That data can take many forms, be shared across many computers, and archive vast amounts of knowledge. It requires precision to communicate with and is limited by the constructs and imaginations of the human mind. It has rapidly expanded our means and methods of communication with each other so explosively that we can barely keep up.

To an occultist, I would begin with the computer as an object. Elements of crystal, electricity, sand, glass, and other natural and/or otherwise lab created earthly components. The core quadrant of magickal elements are manifest, as well as the element of spirit or aether if we consider how it "thinks." Whether or not it is true thought occurring is philosophically contestable, but that it can simulate thought back to us in novel ways is what we might call egregoric. It can aid, develop, and automate tasks to varying degree, including craft and ritual. We have only begun to scratch the surface of its capabilities of "artificial intelligence."

And the internet, no matter which way we try to approach to defining it, might best be described as a vast shambling amalgam of patchwork protocol and procedure that is constantly redefining itself as a partcipatory project and means of communication on the largest scale ever imagined, all through these "computers." The internet empowers the bold, technologically savvy, and increasingly, the rich. It can also be used to undermine that power.

That so many modern occultists write off computer technology as an emblem of the death of our natural world is, unfortunately, somewhat true. It is within the system of capitalism that computers, their creation, their mechanized profit structuring, have become tools of greed and destruction. Blockchain server farms, surveillance as a service, privatized law enforcement technologies, social media manufactured culture wars to keep the working class from rising up and seizing power from the ultra rich. The most powerful players in tech are the sons of the men that set culture full gas ahead into climate catastrophe. They bait us with false progress to our petty identities. They pilfer every identifying characteristic and behavior from us to amass great wealth from surveillance data. We wither under the knowledge of constantly being watched, but don't yet have the language to articulate how it is to be slowly choked to death while watching the world go up in smoke.

It's easy to see how technology preys on the intellectually disempowered and weak. It's ever evolving to find new ways of rooting out weakness and exploiting it for profit. That is its most human part. It is a mirror. It's reflective powers highlight the minds and hearts of those at the top of our society: a people more determined to generate wealth than to protect other humans from widespread misery and ultimately extinction. There seems to be an arms race for the most technologically rich to pump R&D into escape routes off planet Earth.

Occultists are most often embedded in a sentiment to change that, to advocate for the planet and for a more holistic understanding of life. Perhaps through some end of empathic interconnectedness, there is an easily accessible stigma towards computers as themselves agents of this collapse. As occultists we must resist that notion. That will only further disempower us from being able to utilize this sort of technology for our own purposes.

I am, quite frankly, most interested in arming occultists with the means of better using computers. It will only help to reimagine futures that better fit the underserved and the oppressed. It doesn't require a vast proficiency in designing the deep inner workings of the object, much less spending lots of time memorizing programming languages for it. Those that do certainly will be more capable of getting truly inventive with it, but a desire to know more and learn to ask the right questions about it will do wonders for a savvy witch.

In fact, if enough savvy witches get together to learn, ask the right questions, and point the mirrors in the right directions, the world will change.

This is a gluten free flatbread and a lesson in duality.
We often think about the dualities of sorrow, joy, Hekate, Cybele, the two pillars, dusk and dawn.
Take this recipe as an opportunity to practice your knife skills (Saturnian severity) and a reward of fresh, incredibly healthy food that will delight your coven after or during a ritual (Jupiter, abundance).

Ingredients: chickpea flour, garlic, radishes, tomatoes, high quality dark chocolate, cocoa nibs, onions, whiskey, basil, parsley, chives, nutritional yeast, eggs, mustard, garlic powder, parmesan cheese, vinegar (apple, white, any), any kind of fresh veggie salad you have left over from anything else

1. Soak equal parts water and chickpea flour, whisked with garlic powder, a few tablespoons EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) for at least one hour, or, while you prepare the rest
2. Mince five or so cloves of garlic, set aside
3. Slice a handful of radishes, toss in any kind of vinegar to let lightly pickle while you work
4. Make green goddess dressing (a few handfuls of basil, parsley, spinach, chives, garlic, EVOO, nutritional yeast -- all blended together until smooth and delicious)
5. Whisk green goddess dressing together with dijon mustard, egg yolks, and parmesan cheese, until delicious
6. Make chocolate mole sauce (chiles, pure chocolate, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, spices, stewed together until delicious) and let chill
7. Make whiskey caramelized onions (low and slow heat onions sliced root-to-stem, mixing every 10 minutes or so, then near the end pour a few tablespoons of bourbon over and let the alcohol cook off and make the onions jammy)
8. In blender or food processor, mix mole sauce, whiskey caramelized onions, and cocoa nibs together until smooth and delicious
9. Heat cast iron pan on med-low, throw in minced garlic and pine nuts with EVOO, let brown
10. Pour flatbread batter over the minced garlic and pine nuts in a clockwise direction (go for a spiral shape and meditate on the nature of birth, rebirth, renewal). Do not stir, just let it cook like a pancake for a minute, then turn off heat.
11. Heat oven to 350F.
12. Once heated, put cast iron pan with flatbread in oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, rotating every ten minutes or so, until it looks a deep golden brown and crispy.
13. Take out of oven, sprinkle parmesan cheese over, and let bake for another 5-10 minutes.
14. Take out and let cool. When cooled, transfer to large cutting board.
15. Spread the green sauce and brown sauce in a spiral formation along the flatbread, forming two halves of the circle, one brown and one green.
16. On the brown side, place sliced tomatoes and basil.
17. On the green side, place pickled radishes and any kind of fresh salad (I opted for cabbage slaw with pumpkin seeds I had leftover in the fridge)
18. Slice down the center that separates the brown and green sides, then lengthwise to make easily grabbable slices