Every morning I forget how it is. I watch the smoke mount In great strides above the city. I belong to no one. Then I remember my shoes, How I have to put them on, How bending over to tie them up I will look into the earth. -Poem by Charles Simic   As I sat on the train, aching to be alone and carrying the news of an old friend’s sudden death in my brain, I remembered to put my Metrocard away and found this poem on the back. Sometimes the universe has a way of finding you out…

“I am always under direct inspiration. I know just what to do and give instant obedience to my intuitive leads.” According to Florence Scovel Shinn, a turn of the century metaphysical author of affirmations, your word is truly your wand. Witches, seekers and spiritualists alike know the inherent power of words when invoking spells, mantras, or chants. This summer, with its dizzying eclipses, pushes us to match the might of our words with mightier action. Thursday July 12th at 10:48pm EST is the New Moon and Solar Eclipse in Cancer, bringing forth waves of emotional turbulence. The Sun will be…

  With Beltane (the fire festival welcoming summer in its blazing, sensual glory) around the corner, the most common topic asked by tarot clients and seekers alike is about love magic. As a Libra who most definitely wears rose-tinted glasses, I fully believe in love as life’s most renewable resource one can give and receive. Yet with all my interest in the magic of ritual, I’ve been more likely to loan my copy of bell hooks’ All About Love before advising red wax, poppets and love charms. Perhaps because, like most young witches, my first spells were for love, or so I…

“A cold spring, the violet was flawed on the lawn. For two weeks or more the trees hesitated; the little leaves waited. One day in a chill white blast of sunshine, on the side of one a calf was born.” — “A Cold Spring” by Elizabeth Bishop Springtime always evokes the poet in me and there’s nothing more luxurious than having a moment to wear loose dresses, lounging out on a familiar chair while soaking up someone’s notes from the soul, be it nightmares, wishes or epic heartbreaks. We’re in a paused moment, not quite spring, as us New Yorkers…

Many of my friends celebrate New Year’s as a perfunctory holiday or as “amateur night,” because the calendar year is a creation of modern times. Pagans and Witches alike view Samhain or Halloween as the “Witches New Year,” despite varying opinions. For me, the new year actually takes flight on the eve of Imbolc (February 2nd) and St. Brigid’s Day on February 1st. One of the 4 main festivals with Celtic origins in modern day Wicca, Imbolc is the midpoint between two starkly different equinoxes, a fire festival celebrating the lengthening of the days and the awakening of the goddess…

As an enthusiast of the art of comics, one that I’ve kept taped to various incarnations of vision boards is, of all things, a Christian Jack Chick-inked pamphlet, “Hi, There!” featuring a winking grim reaper, scythe in hand waiting around the corner for a wise-cracking construction worker who is shocked to meet his maker. When I was handed this propaganda about 7 years ago, it was truly auspicious timing and little did the proselytizer know how I received this comic strip as much needed tongue in cheek humor, nudging me to make a major decision in life because time waits for…

For my one-year wedding anniversary I escaped to Woodstock and experienced the starry night sky: a cabin surrounded by woods complete with sherbet colored sunrises and falling leaves. For a brief moment, frenetic city life and work-centered commitments were on pause and for two days only pleasure mattered. I breathed in air scented with beeswax and burnt wood. From devouring an apple endive salad to sipping hot coffee next to a table of Golden Girls-esque women — one wearing a leather jacket emblazoned with Gandhi’s face — the joyful spark of Sagittarius season was lit. A life lesson for me this…

“The candles are lighted, the hearthstones are swept, the fires glow red. We shall welcome them out of the night, our home-coming dead.” ~ Hallow-E’en 1917 by Winifred M. Letts The Celtic celebration of Samhain, popularly known as All Hallow’s Eve, is the high holy day of witchcraft, which marked the Celtic new year and is an evening of reflection, honoring the dead and receiving their wise messages from the underworld. Along with magnanimous planet Jupiter firmly placed in Scorpio for the next year, the Sun and Mercury are also residing in the sign of metamorphosis, mastery and regeneration. Heavy,…