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In The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow, June says proper witching only ever takes three things: the will, the words, and the way. This episode is how I actually write my own spells, through those three: listening for the feeling that lingers, finding words that feel right in your mouth (borrowed, rewritten or talked out with someone you trust), and putting it out into the world as simply as you like. Along the way: the sisters of the book, the maiden, mother and crone, why a spell doesn't need a perfect setup to count, and what spell work has done for my own voice. (Recorded while I was sick, so bear with the voice.)

Chapters

0:00 It's still your spell

0:25 The will, the words, and the way

1:09 A conversation with the red heartbeat

2:03 The sisters, and the maiden, mother and crone

4:07 Spells as small as nursery rhymes

5:04 I. The will: the feeling that lingers

6:41 The moment June's will changed

7:59 II. The words: rhyme, scraps and grimoires

8:55 Borrowing spells until they feel right

10:41 III. The way: putting it out there

11:40 It doesn't need to be a full ritual

12:19 Saying it out loud

14:09 Start with the will

If you've been wanting to write your own spells but felt like you didn't know enough, or like it had to be complicated to count: start with the will. A rhyme and a match is enough.

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Until next time, honor the truth that keeps you sovereign.

#witchcraft #spellwork #howtocastaspell #theonceandfuturewitches #paganism #saltandsovereignty

I've been dry for months, and I suspect some of you have too. This is an honest look at a long quiet season in my deity work with Hekate (Hecate): why I came back to her wanting something, what happened when I tried to audit a month of results, and why a practice built to be unfalsifiable can't tell a gentle absence from a dead one. Along the way: ancient Greek religion's indifference to belief, the healing sanctuaries that carved their cures in stone and never their misses, the monthly supper rite and the one rule I've never broken, and where faith ends and stubbornness begins. (I've been a practicing witch for years; Hekate has been my patron for about a year.)

Chapters

0:00 A living relationship, or a dead one?

0:37 I've been dry for months

2:18 An introduction, then a relationship

3:25 Two questions, thirty days later

4:46 Auditing her

5:36 Unfalsifiable by design

6:35 The prediction I wrote down first

7:38 What a long dry stretch is actually like

8:38 Is it all in my head?

10:14 Right practice, not right belief

11:42 The stones that only recorded the hits

13:19 The supper, and the rule I never break

15:12 The cost of being gentle with yourself

16:53 Empty rooms, and the one piece of evidence I have

If you're in a spiritual dry spell right now: it doesn't mean you did something wrong. Keep the practice if you can, and let it go if you can't. Neither of those is a verdict. And come tell me, especially if you presumed you were the only one sitting in a quiet stretch.

Join the conversation in the Discord (free): Salt & Sovereignty

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If this meant something to you, following, rating and leaving a review really does help the next person who needs this find us.

Until next time, honor the truth that keeps you sovereign.

#hekate #deitywork #witchcraft #spiritualdryness #paganism #saltandsovereignty

Most of us speak more than one language to the people we love: the careful voice we save for occasions, and the plain one that shows up at two in the morning. At the top of every ritual I write a line of ancient Greek, one of Hekate's (Hecate's) epithets, and I'm not confident I pronounce any of it right. So what is that line doing on the page?

This episode follows that question through the old Egyptian spell books and her many names (Triodītis, Enodia, Phosphoros, Chthonia, Polyōnymos, the "many-named"), the strange "words that aren't words" in those prayers, and an ancient argument that the power was never in the meaning but in the sound. Then three honest answers about what ritual words are for, the one I don't like, and what I call the emergency voice: the one that shows up when there's no time to be heard properly at all.

Chapters

0:00 Cold open

0:33 Two voices for the people we love

3:25 Talking to her like an old friend

5:17 One woman, two languages

6:09 What the oldest books say

9:07 Words that aren't words

11:31 Three answers

14:52 How do you tell which one you've been doing?

16:01 The emergency voice

17:33 Borrowed words and the workbook

19:54 The traffic between us

22:38 Something to try

24:14 What's still there when we haven't prepared

Something to try: think of who you talk to when nobody's there. Notice which voice you use, and which one comes out when something is genuinely wrong. Then come tell me which voice showed up.

Join the conversation in the Discord (free): Salt & Sovereignty

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The show is on video on Spotify and YouTube.

If this meant something to you, following, rating and leaving a review really does help the next person who needs this find us.

Until next time, honor the truth that keeps you sovereign.

#hekate #hecate #witchcraft #prayer #deitywork #saltandsovereignty