The Sacred Pleasure Temple

Witchcraft is a sacred journey of exploring your spirituality, transmuting your shadows into strengths, and empowering the oppressed. But it's not all serious all the time - being a witch is actually super fun too!

Your practice should include things that bring you joy. Rituals should feel fun and fulfilling. Nothing should ever feel like an obligation or pointless to you. No, we don't always feel like doing our rituals and shadow work is never going to be fun - but there is a balance to be struck. 

For one thing, all the fun seasonal things you do like going to the beach in summer and carving pumpkins in the fall can actually be part of your spiritual practice. 

Things that are fun for me include the whole process of planning, planting, harvesting and working with my herbs, (makes me feel like Claire from Outlander), travel, genealogy research, and just curling up at home with a cozy meal and a glass of wine. These might not sound particularly spiritual and yet, I connect with nature by working in my garden, I use my herbs to make delicious, magickal tea blends, I've taken pilgrimages to ancestral spots which were deeply spiritual experiences, and this cottage witch finds food and wine to be downright transcendent...

Not everything in your spiritual practice has to look super witchy in order to be fulfilling! But I found that I didn't always know what I found fun or what brought me joy. 

Luckily, my astrological chart had tons of insight for me. The sun rules joy and inspiration, as well as the sign of Leo and the 5th house. Look up where these are in your chart to get some insight into how you can have more fun as a witch, (and in the rest of your life too!)

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This month in the Starlight Coven, we're learning all about Leo season and how to find the joy in your spiritual practice. Sign up today for just $49.95 per month and you'll receive the beautiful PDF magazine for Leo season, access to our private Facebook group for live trainings and a Lammas ritual, daily text messages and more! No obligation - cancel anytime.

Self-care are the actions we take to nurture our spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional needs. Seasonal self-care is a practice that nurtures our needs in alignment with the cycles of nature - the seasons, moon phases, and movement of the planets. 

Seasonal self-care rituals reconnect us with the ancient rhythms we've been exiled from, thanks to electric lights, indoor air conditioning, and an intentional break from the ways of our ancestors. Seasonal self-care means tapping into the energy around you and within you so that you can flow with everything in its natural time, instead of fighting against nature. 

It is so much easier to create what we desire when we're aligned with the right season and time for creation, instead of trying to create during a period of rest and release, for example! In fact, constantly trying to create out of sync with nature leads to burnout and exhaustion - and not a lot of results. 

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My book, The Modern Witch's Guide to Magickal Self-Care, also dives into exploration of these topics - and it's available now for pre-order! The book will be released October 6, 2020 and will help you to create daily rituals that honor the cycles of nature and their unique impact on you and that fit effortlessly into your real, daily life. 

Submit proof of your pre-order purchase by July 31, 2020 and you can redeem an exclusive pre-order bonus - one FREE month in the Starlight Coven! Purchase and submit here: www.witchoflupinehollow.com/book

Start exploring how the seasons, moon phases, and astrological transits impact you personally so you're all ready to create your rituals when the book arrives in October. Coven is $49.95 per month after FREE first month - no obligation to remain past free period.

Cultural appropriation is a rampant problem in the spiritual and witchcraft community and it's time for us to speak up and take action to choose a better path. Cultural appropriation is the act of stealing ideas, traditions, practices, and objects without giving any attribution to people indigenous to that culture. It happens all the time in our community, as many "new age" practices are rooted in especially Native American and Asian traditions. 

We can choose to do better by: 

Buying and learning from indigenous peoples

Reclaiming the lineage of magick in our own ancestral cultures

Amplifying the voices of witches of color (share their work, buy their stuff!)

Knowing when it's time to speak up and act versus when it's time to listen and be still

I'm claiming the importance of this work and standing for what I believe to be our responsibility as witches. We exist at the intersection of magick and justice, (credit to one of my mentors, Lauren Elizabeth for that concept). It's our duty to use our voices and our privilege to transform this world and our own practices into one that honors and seeks out complexity. 

Join the FREE Facebook group, where I'm sharing new, revised guidelines this week, all about centering justice and nurturing safety.

Keeping your practice simple is more essential than ever, so it can support you during this time of quarantine, social distancing, stress, and uncertainty, instead of contributing to overwhelm. 

Though quarantine has been a time of rest for some, it's stressful regardless of whether you are working or not, homeschooling kids, or simply trying to maintain your mental health while living alone. Even seasonal schedule changes can be enough to throw off your spiritual and self-care practice, so this massive upheaval is a whole other beast!

But this week is the full moon in Scorpio and it's the perfect opportunity to prioritize self-care and time for yourself, especially in terms of your spiritual and magickal practice. 

The full moon in Scorpio always happens during Taurus season, as Scorpio and Taurus are naturally opposites. Scorpio is deep, dark, shadowy magick and Taurus is simple, consistent, pleasurable ease. We need both in order to have balance in our practices! 

It's easier to commit to a practice, even a mystical, magickal one, when that practice is simple. Use the energy of this powerful full moon to commit to allowing your practice to be simple, magickal, and flexible with your current lifestyle - whatever that may look like. 

Join the FREE Facebook group, Empowered Modern Witches, and share with us how you'll be celebrating the full moon in Scorpio this week!

In today's episode, we're talking all about how you can create consistency in your life by honoring the inconsistency of nature with seasonal rituals. 

Nature is always evolving and changing, but returns to the same spaces and energies each season, year after year. We celebrate these energetic returns with the eight pagan sabbats. Two of the most important of these are Beltane on May 1 and Samhain on October 31 in the Northern Hemisphere, (reversed in the Southern Hemisphere.)

Beltane is the witches' celebration of life - when the earth laughs in flowers. 

Samhain is the witches' new year and celebration of death - when Persephone descends into the Underworld once more, to be crowned queen. 

These energies of life and death are both equally essential to the life cycle, to witchcraft, and to your own energy. 

Practicing seasonal rituals to mark the sabbats is an excellent way to check in with your own energy and ask how you can adapt your practices. Our energy shifts and evolves throughout the seasons which is why it's simply not realistic to expect yourself to be able to show up in the same exact way every day of the year. However, if you can adapt your rituals to support your unique needs throughout the seasons, (whether those are daily rituals, moon, seasonal, or otherwise), then you make space for consistency within the ever-evolving cycle of your real, daily life. 

In this episode, you'll find ideas for celebrating Beltane with a maypole, gardening, connecting with the fae, and literally stopping to smell the roses and celebrating Samhain with visits to a pumpkin patch, pumpkin carving, or a traditional Dumb Supper. 

I'm sharing some of my own favorite memories of these seasons and how those experiences help me tap into my own energy and create consistent spiritual practices to support myself!

In today's episode, we're exploring the difference between "collective" and "sovereign" energies and how you can work with them to make your practice feel more intentional. 

The collective energies of the universe are basically the cycles of the moon, sun, and planets, (or the moon phases, seasons, and astrology):

There are four moon phases, (new, waxing, full, and waning).

The moon moves through all twelve astrological signs in one month. 

There are four seasons which we experience based on the movement of the sun through the astrological signs over one year, (spring, summer, fall, and winter). 

There are eight seasonal sabbat celebrations, (Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lammas, Mabon, Samhain, Yule, and Imbolc). 

The planets all move through the twelve astrological signs at different speeds. 

These cycles impact us all collectively - everyone experiences them. The sovereign energies are simply how those cycles impact YOU in your real, daily life. To learn more about how those cycles impact you, you'll want to find out: 

Which moon phase you were born under so you can understand how you personally relate to the four phases

Which house in your chart, (which area of your life), is activated by the moon in each sign 

How the seasons make you feel, (which you love, maybe which you dread)

How the planets interact with the planets and houses in your own astrological chart

When you work with these sovereign energies, you can make your moon, sabbat, and daily rituals and all aspects of your practice feel way more personal, intentional and fulfilling!

This is just a brief overview - I'll be getting deeper into each of these cycles in future podcast episodes! 

If you want more right away though, I'd like to invite you to join me in the Starlight Coven, a monthly program to learn my simple method for working with collective and sovereign energies. It's all about learning these cycles and systems in a way that is actionable and can be implemented in your real spiritual practice. Click here to join the Coven today for just $49.95 per month - join now, cancel anytime!

Also, as promised in the episode, my favorite resource for magickal correspondences, (the elemental, planetary, and astrological rulers of herbs), is Scott Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs! (Not sponsored or affiliate link - just a personal favorite!)

In today's episode, I'm getting into exactly how the moon phases actually impact you personally and how to work with them in your real, daily life. It's so important that we not just treat all of the systems and cycles that we use as witches like mere knowledge - facts and trivia to be learned by rote. 

Rather, the cycles of the seasons and the stars, (the seasons, moon phases and astrology), are sacred, universal rhythms that impact you on a deep, personal level every day. Just learning what each of the phases of the moon or each season means is pretty much useless to you - 

But learning what those phases and seasons actually mean to you personally, how they show up in your life, and impact your moods, energy, and magick? Now that's powerful. 

Today, we're talking about the four basic phases of the moon and the twelve moon signs. You'll learn about your natal moon phase and about how the moon sign impacts you every single day! 

The Starlight Coven is perfect for you if you've been craving community, guidance and support as you create your own path as a witch - a path with no rules! This monthly program is a sacred, intimate space for like-minded modern witches to gather, support one another, and learn together. You'll learn how the moon, the sun, and all of the planets impact you personally - no more overwhelm or feeling like you need to learn all the things. Instead, you get to focus on what truly matters to you and how all of this information applies to your real, daily life. 

Join the Starlight Coven today - just $49.95 per month, no obligation.

Cultures all over the world have worked with the sun, moon, and stars. There are systems of astrology from the Middle East, China, India, Britain, and more. The solstices and equinoxes are celebrated worldwide. 

We all have roots in ancient pagan cultures and reclaiming their wisdom is simple and essential. Though we live in wildly modern times with crazy new technology, we actually experience many of the same daily rhythms that our ancient ancestors did: we cook food, we make love, we look up at the moon. 

You have the power and ability to reclaim the power of those simple systems in your real, daily life, (yes, even in quarantine!)

Join us in the Starlight Coven for just $49.95 per month to get support and guidance in reclaiming potent simplicity in your spiritual practice and learning my super simple method for working with astrology, the seasons, and the moon. 

Books Mentioned in This Episode: Celtic Moon Signs by Helena Paterson, Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes

Happy New Moon in Aries! In this episode, I'm sharing practical, actionable tips for how to work with the upcoming moon cycle during quarantine. 

This is a crazy, unprecedented time and since today is the new moon, it's the perfect opportunity to connect with the moon phases over the next month to support you in creating or maintaining a daily spiritual practice. 

It might be tempting to think that with no privacy and no quiet time right now, that your rituals are doomed. But they're actually more essential than ever and the moon phases can help you maintain them! 

New Moon in Aries: March 24, 2020

Waxing Quarter Moon in Cancer: April 1, 2020

Full Moon in Libra: April 7, 2020

Waning Quarter Moon in Capricorn: April 14, 2020

If you want to embody simplicity in your rituals right now and get support learning how not only the moon phases but also astrology and the seasons impact you personally, then join us in the Starlight Coven today. 

In fact, claim your free 7-day trial of the Starlight Coven right now! Click here to sign up: bit.ly/coven-free-trial

In this episode, I'm diving into how Aries season and the placement of Mars and Pallas in Capricorn can support us during this crazy, chaotic, and uncertain time. 

As we all learn to navigate this new world of coronavirus, social distancing, and the breakdown of some of our most essential structures and systems, Aries can help you find your deepest wellsprings of courage and empower you to support yourself and those around you. 

The sun heads into Aries on Thursday, marking the spring equinox and the beginning of the season of the Warrior. Mars and Pallas are also lighting up the intense conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto in Capricorn right now, acting as a balanced force of the divine masculine and feminine, guiding us through the chaos. 

Learn more about all of these energies and how they can support you personally during this time in The Starlight Coven. Only $49.95 per month.