Tomorrow I'm casting a friendship spell for me and my husband, and I'm recording this before I do it... so I have no idea yet whether it works.

On the drive home last Sunday we finally said it out loud: we don't have anybody where we live. My best friend is across the state. His is too. So I'm doing a three-night working with Hekate. A Deipnon clearing at the dark moon, three candles for three roads as the light comes back, and a sealing at the full moon.

But this one isn't really about the candles. When I sat down to write out who I was asking for, almost all of it came out as what I don't want. Not fake, not surface-level, not somebody half-assing their own life. A full page of nos. And reading it back, I found myself in it asking for a friend who's honest about money while I struggle to talk about mine, asking for someone who doesn't complain constantly while I get stuck doing exactly that.

In this episode: the history of Hekate's (Hecate's) Deipnon and why the ancient offering included the sweepings of your own house; why I'm keeping the words of the spell private; the ethics of asking for people without casting on anyone's will; and why the hardest part of a friendship working isn't magical at all.

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What happens when a relationship, a belief, or a version of yourself hasn't done anything wrong, but it's stopped adding anything to your life?

In this episode of Salt & Sovereignty, Ash sits with the guilt of outgrowing something you still love, the fear of becoming someone who abandons people, and the difference between fading away from a connection versus consciously closing the door on it. Drawing on Hekate as goddess of crossroads and thresholds, she talks honestly about why releasing doesn't require a villain, and why gratitude and grief can coexist in the same ending.

The episode closes with an original ritual, The Release at the Crossroads, a gentler alternative to traditional cord-cutting that works for people, practices, or old versions of yourself, and is written to adapt to any spiritual practice or none at all.

What makes a curse unethical, and who gets to decide? In this episode of Salt & Sovereignty, Ashley explores curses, baneful magic, consent, protection, anger, justice, and personal responsibility through the complicated lens of witchcraft ethics.

Ashley begins with something she has never tried to hide or soften: she has cursed someone before, she believed the working was justified, and she still stands by that decision. From there, the conversation moves beyond whether curses are simply “good” or “bad” and into the much harder questions underneath magical ethics.

In this episode:

• Ashley shares the story of a mirror curse she performed and why she considers it both baneful and ultimately healing
• We explore the long history of curses, bindings, and defixiones in ancient Greek and Roman magical practice
• Ashley examines the Wiccan Rede, the Threefold Law, and why “harm none” is not a universal rule of witchcraft
• We look at consent, protection, revenge, justice, return-to-sender work, and the uncomfortable overlap between them
• Ashley reflects on anger, survivorhood, spiritual darkness, and the pressure to sanitize difficult emotions
• We question whether “light” magic is automatically ethical and whether “dark” magic deserves the assumptions placed upon it

This is not an argument that curses are good, or that everyone should practice baneful magic. It is a reflection on what happens when spiritual ethics collide with real human lives, where harm, consent, protection, intention, and consequence are rarely as simple as we want them to be.

If you have ever wondered where your magical ethics came from, what responsibility means inside your practice, or whether darkness and light are really useful moral categories at all, this episode is an invitation to become curious before becoming certain.

In this episode of Salt & Sovereignty, Ashley shares her experience beginning Reiki through Brett Bevel’s self-attunement method after years of feeling unable to afford traditional Reiki training. She reflects on spiritual accessibility, the ethics of paid spiritual education, and the difference between receiving an attunement and truly integrating an energy healing practice. Ashley also explores how Reiki is beginning to coexist with her witchcraft, devotional practice, and relationship with Mother Earth, especially through a quiet morning walk using Choku Rei. This episode is a grounded reflection on Reiki, self-attunement, embodied spirituality, and learning to move slowly enough for a practice to become real.

What happens when fear of rejection, people pleasing, and overthinking turn every social interaction into a test someone is trying not to fail? In this episode of Salt & Sovereignty, Ash explores the constant self-monitoring underneath her long-held belief that she hates small talk, and how old survival patterns can quietly shape the way a person sees themselves.

She unpacks social anxiety, fear of abandonment, emotional perfectionism, hypervigilance, fawning, and the pressure to perform the “correct” version of yourself around other people. She also explores how the same invisible test can show up in witchcraft, intuition, and spiritual discernment, especially when someone has learned to distrust their own instincts.

This episode isn’t about forcing yourself to become more social or pretending every limitation is simply a mindset problem. It’s about questioning the identities and thought patterns we can start treating as permanent truths, and asking how much of ourselves we may have held back while trying not to get the answer wrong.

What do we actually mean when we talk about masculine and feminine energy?

In this episode of Salt & Sovereignty, Ash explores a question that began with a simple conversation and quickly turned into one of the deepest spiritual rabbit holes she's encountered in years. Why do we call Hekate a goddess? What makes a deity masculine or feminine? Are divine beings gendered in the same way humans are, or are we describing something entirely different?

Together, we'll explore Hekate as a case study while unpacking some of the biggest questions surrounding the Divine Feminine, Divine Masculine, masculine and feminine energy, and modern witchcraft. Along the way, we'll examine ancient tradition, personal spiritual experience, the role of mythology, and whether concepts like intuition, strength, compassion, discipline, and wisdom truly belong to one energy over another.

This isn't an episode about proving who's right. It's an invitation to question assumptions, deepen your relationship with your spiritual practice, and explore what these ideas actually mean in your own life.

Whether you're a Hekate devotee, a practicing witch, a pagan, or simply someone interested in spirituality and consciousness, this conversation will leave you with new questions to carry into your next ritual and meditation.

A meditation beneath a copper pyramid led Ashley into a much larger question: how often do we mistake control for safety?

In this episode of Salt & Sovereignty, Ashley explores the relationship between trauma, surrender, spiritual practice, and the meaning of personal sovereignty. She reflects on the ways hypervigilance and control can begin as intelligent survival strategies, only to later limit our ability to experience joy, vulnerability, mystery, and trust.

That realization also changed the way she thinks about witchcraft and spellcraft. What if magic is not about controlling reality, but consciously participating in it? Through meditation, protection work, devotion to Hekate, and the metaphor of tending a garden, this episode examines the difference between fear-based control and intentional spiritual partnership.

She also explores why surrender is not the same as powerlessness, why healthy boundaries remain essential, and how true sovereignty may be less about domination and more about remaining rooted enough to meet whatever comes.

Labels can help us understand our identity, find community, and name our experiences, but they can also become cages when we mistake them for the whole truth.

In this episode of Salt & Sovereignty, Ashley reflects on labels, trauma, identity, witchcraft, ADHD, religion, and spiritual practice. Beginning with an expansive meditation experience, Ashley explores why language can point toward an experience without ever fully containing it, and why the same is true of human beings.

She shares how the ADHD label became tangled with shame and self-worth, how religious trauma shaped her nervous system’s response to Christianity, and how curiosity helped transform her mother’s understanding of witchcraft. This is not an argument against labels. It is a personal reflection on using them as guides without allowing them to become laws.

In this episode:

• How labels shape identity and self-perception
• Why trauma can turn categories into protective assumptions
• Ashley’s experience with ADHD, shame, and changing health symptoms
• Religious trauma, Christianity, and nervous system awareness
• Labels within witchcraft, including “baby witch” and black magic
• The difference between assumption and genuine discernment

Trauma may teach us to survive through labels, but healing can give us enough space to look beyond them. This episode is an invitation to remain curious about ourselves, other people, and the identities no single word could ever fully contain.

This personal reflection explores Ashley’s evolving relationship with Hekate, from religious fear and spiritual anxiety to trust, devotion, historical curiosity, and a more sovereign spiritual practice.

When Ashley first encountered Hekate, she saw a dark and potentially dangerous goddess who might punish mistakes, demand obedience, or expose her to something unsafe. Over time, she began to recognize that many of those fears did not come from Hekate herself. They came from religious trauma, cultural portrayals of witchcraft, painful experiences with trust, and a nervous system shaped by abandonment and abuse.

Ashley also reflects on discernment, modern Hekatean practice, the Triple Goddess, Hekate’s Wheel, ancient traditions, personal signs, and the freedom to learn without treating every mistake as proof of spiritual failure.

This is not a guide to working with Hekate or a universal account of who she is. It is one person’s lived relationship with a goddess who once represented everything she feared and eventually became a source of trust, truth, protection, and belonging.

May this episode remind you that learning more does not invalidate the relationship you had before you knew more, and that tradition can ground your practice without becoming another source of fear.

Pronunciation note: Ashley did her best with the names and terms in this episode, but she may not have gotten every pronunciation quite right. Thank you for your grace!

In this episode, Ashley shares the deeply personal story behind the Salt & Sovereignty platform, a project that began as a simple podcast website and gradually became something much bigger: a spiritual home designed to make meaningful practice more accessible for everyone.

In this reflective episode, Ashley explores how three weeks of building led to a much larger realization about accessibility, spiritual practice, and what it means to create a place where people can belong without needing perfect circumstances.

In this episode:

• Why Salt & Sovereignty began as “just a website”
• The meditation with Hekate that changed Ashley’s perspective on the podcast
• How accessibility became the guiding philosophy behind every feature
• Why digital tools aren’t meant to replace physical spiritual practice
• The vision for a Living Library, digital Book of Shadows, and spiritual community
• Why success is measured by people, not download numbers

Whether you’re new to witchcraft, devoted to Hekate, navigating chronic illness, practicing in secret, or simply searching for an authentic spiritual path, this episode is an invitation to remember that meaningful practice doesn’t require perfect circumstances.

Thank you for being part of this journey.