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Irene Glasse on Foundations of Witchcraft, Spirit Work & Divination · Coffee & Divination

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  this is this is the beauty of spirit relationships this is why you want guides and spirit friends and various beings and ancestral guardians that you work with because teamwork really does make the dream work right succeeding in this life this is a group project you know every now and then I'll have somebody be like well why spirit work like cause it makes life easier why do any witchcraft at all what's the point of it unless we're actually going to find a way to soften the edges this is a pretty hard timeline we're all in magic is to make this more more gentle you know it's not gonna fix everything but it fixes a lot you know and it makes you more resilient that's all worth doing welcome to coffee and divination a podcast about the arts of obtaining hidden knowledge in changing times join me Joanna Ferrar to chat with experts from around the world on tarot runes geomancy and the many ways divination can help us navigate and plan our paths ahead it's lovely to welcome back today's guest Irene Glass I had a wonderful chance to see Irene in person again a couple of weekends ago at templefest where she was one of this year's keynote speakers and where I was teaching as well it was a truly fantastic weekend and if that event has ever been on your radar I really recommend keeping an eye out for registration for next year I am sure that I will want to be back again Irene is a heathen witch based in Western Maryland and a longtime teacher of witchcraft meditation and magic throughout the mid Atlantic states she is the co author with Kane Dreamwalker of the newly released foundations of Witchcraft a Black Feather Mystery School Training Manual which is what she was on the show to discuss today we also went over a number of elements of her work as a minister with UU churches and also how her work as a Seidh practitioner has influenced the tradition that she is a part of and the way that she thinks about teaching and passing on these important traditions of spirit contact we also talk about sovereignty and self knowledge and how that plays into divination and our wider spiritual paths as well as the practices of life sculpting guising and energetic transformation there's so much for us to unpack in this short conversation and I really hope that you enjoy it before we dive in just an announcement that my very first cohort of the Diviners Pathway which will be a live small group divination course happening this year will be starting in November of 2026 it will run for six weeks it's going to be limited to only eight practitioners to join me for this so if that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of you can find the details online at coffee and divination.com and of course you can always reach out to me on Instagram where I am at coffee and divination and I love to hear your thoughts about the guest that we have on and where your journeys with divination are taking you so enjoy this conversation so it is my pleasure to have back on the show Irene Glass she is now I would I would venture to say a friend of the show and I know that many of you enjoyed the episode where she was on a little while back and now it is my pleasure to have her back to talk about her new book so thank you for being here thank you so much for having me it is a pleasure to be back so the last time that you were on we spent a fair amount of time talking about one of your you know specialities which is of course safe work and I'm sure we will be diving into that at times in this interview but in this in this particular conversation we're gonna be talking about the very exciting book that you have that is just freshly out the foundations of witchcraft and um I was wondering what was the impetus for you for writing that book because I feel like it's it's a mixture of like the rational you know logical things and also sometimes like spirit LED interactions that kind of lead us into our creative actions so where did this book come from so it's funny that you sort of bring up say then mention that some of the Black Feather material which this book is an outgrowth of the the magical school of the same name because the entire thing exists due to a safe ritual haha so haha you know I sometimes joke that that black feather uh the mystery school and the book of course uh the books that go with it um was like a homework assignment that I was given from the gods so I was at a safe ritual I think it was 2016 and it was one where different seers we're channeling the spirits of the Norns and if you don't know heathen mythology these are shapers of fate they are not quite the same as the Greek fates but for lack of wanting to get into the intricacies of that we're just gonna say that this is kind of a similar concept uh and so there were at that ritual one for each of the three named Norns within Norse mythology and so I talked to the Norn uh that or the person channeling the Norn that represented the future and I asked how best do I serve my community and the answer was teach make them like you and then I was like okay I think I've had enough and anybody who's been in one of those rituals you know you stand in front of someone channeling a power and it's really like getting hit with a waterfall so I backed away and thought about it for like a year because specifically make them like you is an interesting thing to say I taught within my own tradition I'm originally from you know sort of a very classical Wiccan style tradition I taught metaphysics for many years I taught tarot I'm a third generation teacher my family loves sharing knowledge this is a thing we do and I'd been previously teaching either material that came from my tradition or things that I had Learned from other places and it was me sharing based on what I thought was really cool or what people were asking for but this idea of could I create or inspire or teach a witch that has the exact same skill sets that I do that has the same capacity right and that's a different question because of course who I am as a practitioner was never a conscious choice I think like most of us I've sort of bounced around and absorbed information from different places so that that year of contemplation was okay if I could reverse engineer this what would it look like and that's a lot of where the spirit work in conjunction with Foundational Witchcraft comes in because I think the thing that informs so much of my practice now are my spirit relationships and it's also part of where Kane my co writer and the co teacher of Black Feather Mystery School came in is a good friend of mine member of Kindred Crow my band and I was talking about this and I transferred into spirit work late because I'm a pretty good witch so I can bump around into different forms of magic and I know enough to like Fafo and recover you know and but I didn't know how to teach foundational spirit work because I'd skipped that bit and Kane did so we cooperated to sort of build the world that is Black Feather Mystery School we started the first cohort in 2019 and have been teaching ever since and so the books are one piece of the the vision that was Black Feather so it was you know in person training courses online training courses books and then the third strand that I haven't addressed yet and hopefully will at some point in time our retreats simply because there are advanced levels to Black Feather that cannot be taught via distance first year though absolutely can so that is foundations of witchcraft and I'm really excited to see it come out and make its way into the light of day haha yes absolutely and there's a there's a very um clearly very uh conscious thought to how the flow of the exercises and what is taught is placed in there and of course I think that anyone who is practicing divination will understand the importance of know thyself as being very very important and you put that sort of knowledge of self and sovereignty very front and center particularly early on um what are some of the ways that you feel like in that book or in other aspects of your life that you know that that idea of understanding what is your own voice or coming to that self knowledge is important for this type of spirit working it's absolutely vital I I always try to remember and I I teach that within the mind are many different voices and that's normal right that's a normal thing for people we have manager voices and we have judge parent voices from when we're children and we have guilt and shame cycles and flights of fancy and suppressed personality traits and and God's only knows what else right like there is like a school bus of chaos inside a human brain for most of us even when we've had years of therapy and I have right that we are complicated beings and so when we are engaged in mystical practice we are filtering through this very noisy space and so an understanding of and familiarity with the ways our inner voices can sound and how they can present themselves and the kinds of messages they like to send we have to know that information in order for those true mystical experiences to come through effectively right because they can be corrupted you know and not even consciously none of us are doing this on purpose you know no one's like I'm gonna give a bad message it's not a thing you know but it's also not unusual to have oh gosh an example from a client um they were doing a whole lot of work with sort of the Mother Earth concept and giving offerings and most of us are aware that our our world is hurting right now because of many variables and so what they were hearing in their head was help me I hate you and that last part I think upon reflection and discussion and them also talking with their mental health professionals had a lot more to do with childhood upbringing issues than with a direct mystical voice but this is part of why it's so important you know help me absolutely but that next piece this is where we wanna be so careful and I think it's where people can scare themselves in early witchcraft like a lot of folks who come into my classes uh especially the foundational ones the ones that are open to beginners many times have given themselves a good stare with a mystical experience freaked out shut everything down and 15 years later are like oh you know I kind of miss my knowings I kind of miss the intuition I wonder if it would be different now and so it's that that balance point and it's why we put that so front and center in the training is like yes we need you to know your mind and we also need to build in a lot more sovereignty simply because most of us are in a place where we have sort of an internal war where part of us is trying to succeed and part of us is tearing us down it's not universal obviously there are some people out there who maybe didn't have fucked up upbringings I don't know very many of them but most of us you know I survived the 80s like I there's there's things that come with with everything you know like I don't know many adults that don't have baggage so getting into a place where our will is clean is also very important so if we are let's say working on a spell and we are projecting our will into the world and then part of us is deliberately trying to that and to tear it down this becomes unhelpful it doesn't mean the spell won't work but it means it won't be nearly as effective so a lot of the empowerment practices and centering that sovereignty is reclaiming power and reclaiming sense of of will upon the world the idea that yes some things are fated but you also have free will and you can change things and you should you know yes and I I think that there's a there's a an important balance point there of recognizing our own issues without denigrating that and and that is part of that recognition that of course we are all coming to this from with our own peculiarities and our our own um thresholds of you know what like what amount of self knowledge we've gotten to because there's always more it's just an onion that you will continue peeling and until this incarnation's over so get comfortable with it um cause you're never done but that's also in a sense giving ourselves Grace while we're going through that as well through the work well I think that's the thing we're not asking everybody you don't have to fix it all you just need to be aware of it you need to know it's there be working on it you know it it's a little bit I have um I have various body issues right I was in the Marine Corps and that did some stuff I come from a family where migraines happen and all of us have these things and so it doesn't mean I can't go for a hike it just means that I might need to bring a knee brace or a bottle of Excedrin like I might need to rest afterwards it's knowing that about your mind you know what are the things that you live with that might influence this experience and how do you soften the edges of those so that then your mystical experiences are our cleaner are more accurate for you and for others yeah absolutely that's that also gives people a nice framework for where they are placing all these practices and exercises and speaking of which uh the way that you have things laid out in this particular book um there's there's homework I'm a fan of homework I'm one of those weird people I'm like oh yay it's homework I don't think there's anything wrong with calling it homework in my opinion um no I don't think anything can label this that but you know what I mean it's it's like there's there's a certain amount where we need to be able to take on bite size amounts in a in a certain framework and that also means that you you can fight the demon of overwhelm or paralysis of not knowing where to begin so hence if it's done well I think that's super helpful so you have a lot of practices in there as a part of the the the mystery teachings of daily practices so can you just I don't know give us an example of what you what you think is important about daily practices cause I think this also ties into when people are working on forms of divination like the incorporation which I'm a a very much a proponent of the incorporation of these things regularly into our lives which you know builds our fluency so what are some of those daily things that you encourage people to have so I'm a big believer in the phrase that which is fed increases so when we engage regularly with anything at all whether it's playing solitaire on your phone or doing a self blessing every day whatever we are doing by engaging with it frequently we open that pathway and strengthen it this is part of how skill is built but also how relationship is formed between yourself and your higher self your other selves between yourself and your spirits all of that so a lot of what Black Feather focuses on our very first altar is to the practitioner right we don't have deity figures or spirits on it at all it's literally let's start you on reclaiming your power so a lot of it is we're gonna practice stilling the mind you know we introduce meditation fairly early but one of the big pieces is self blessing and for me it's just I think a big counter to sort of a world you know here in the United States and having grown up in it that tends to want to tear you down capitalism is based on the idea that we can convince you you're not enough ergo you need to spend money and so we have all been fed this idea our entire lives and so the self blessing isn't you know isn't sort of you know a what is it a Stewart Smalley I'm good enough and smart enough and gosh darn it people like me and instead it is this intentional use of a mirror of gazing into our own eyes and saying I'm opening to my power I'm opening to my strength I'm opening to my sovereignty to the idea that there is something more than this and it begins to heal that piece and get us just in contact with the wholeness of self and then the other big things we do grounded centering and shielding you know do not raw dog the universe wear your Protection kids right like foundational practices and what's cool about a regular practice like that and it's okay that it's not daily you know I'm not perfect no one is we all get sick you know sometimes
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  our kid keeps us up until 3: 00 o'clock in the morning cause they've got the flu and then the daily practice gets thrown off but regular you know what I in person what I encourage is like you want about five times a week if you can pull it off but a practice like this we make it sort of bite sized so that this can take five minutes 10 minutes even if you're doing a full meditation right it doesn't have to take a ton of time once the pattern is set so it's all about that opening and strengthening of this particular connection um a friend of mine who is you know a wonderful uh minister and and pagan has this great phrase which is if you hold the practice it will hold you and that is so true for individual regular practices some of it is setting that foundation but the other piece of it is so that when everything does go to shit and it does sometimes for humans things happen you have this structure that you've built of connection and strength that is there and waiting for you and so that's the other side of it the idea that the practices hold you is I think part of the it's one of those things that I I frequently have to remind myself and so this is you know again we're always reminding ourselves of each of these things as we're as we're telling others we're telling ourselves but the don't wait until magic is a in case of emergency break glass because that is not how that should be functioning in your life because the the relationships to it built slowly over time with regularity are a lot more effective than having to go grab it like it's a fire extinguisher and also much less pleasant for the rest of your life so it is it is more effective and it will hold you so much better I love that phrase um when we when we have that to to the best of our abilities and I I'm sure it is no uh surprise to anyone listening that rather early on in this book you also of course talk about interactions with spirit and having those interactions be safe and knowing about boundaries and how you don't have to do something just because the spirit says so um so can you talk about like maybe what some of your your first thoughts are for people who if they were new to this kind of like thing what are some of the pieces of advice that you think are most crucial in these in the early stages I think it's Jason Miller who's a another wonderful writer thinker practitioner who has something along the lines of like spirits are people and as soon as we can start wrapping our heads around the idea that spirits are people the better off we're all gonna be and it's true so spirits are complex beings they have their own goals and their own needs and their own priorities and their own works in the world and those are gonna intersect with what you need and are doing and want and what is safe for you in interesting and variable ways just like dealing with any other human that you run into you know spirits have different abilities than we do they're more skilled in some ways less skilled in others which is always interesting so I think it's that piece and and part of why it appears early is that spirit contact is not that unusual um part of why we put that so early is that both Kane and I had experienced folks being like hey I had this big transcendental experience this spirit was there and I think now because I've had this vision I have to serve them like no no no no no no no ha ha ha you know just because someone bought you a coffee doesn't mean you now owe them subservience that's not how that fucking works right but because we have a wider culture that doesn't really teach mystical experience or what to do about them or frameworks for making it you know none of this is ever safe right but we can make it safer haha so with that we try to build in some hey here's how you actually can go about that it's okay to ask questions it's okay to put a relationship on hold if the spirit is encouraging you to do terrible things or to act outside of consent or to hurt yourself or others you can tell them to fuck right off that is a thing you can do you are a sovereign being you're the practitioner here they came to you and so beginning with that I think it's also important just because spirit contact isn't limited to adepts it happens more and more frequently to beginners I think especially uh you know folks who experiment with the path of poison which is very you know valid way of experiencing visions and of expanding the mind and can be done very safely you know gods know that there's wonderful work in the PTSD world with uh hallucinogens and healing trauma and things like that but the the wider use of all of those means that more people are having more powerful transcendental experiences and we need a safe place to hang those I think that's also very true for people who are coming into a more shall we say an animist or a a spirit contact aware framework where it is suddenly the awareness changes the way that we otherwise in the past might have just discounted something like when a crow just like lands in front of you for a lot of uh western culture that may just be a thing that's like I don't know the bird was there and you don't even remember it it doesn't it never gets past your short term memory versus when you start to put like emphasis on this and the spirit you do start to notice spirit contact all of a sudden you have a lot more information to take in and a lot more to parse through so that is very overwhelming at first because you've before it had not even entered your consciousness now it is so it can feel overwhelming even if the actual their attempts to contact us may have been the same throughout um and then having that yeah oh sorry I was gonna say I do think that's one of my favorite things where someone's like well I finally had this experience with this deity and or this spirit and then I went and Learned about them and then I found out that they've been trying to contact me about my car's extended warranty for about five years now right like it's that piece but yeah it can be overwhelming yes yes when we realize that the knock at the door you know is has actually been sounding for a little while I think it's also a difference between coming from either a you can call it call it like a scientific progressive like mindset I'm not there's no real term for it I materialist I suppose mindset um of sort of like a monotheistic or or monoperspective way of looking at things where the moment something is true so if there is a spirit that contacts you and you're like oh oh this is this is real then that reality can harden into thinking well it is the one reality now this is the god that has contacted me because where if that that mindset of a mono thing has always been there than the multiplicity of nope that could just be one god that's contacting you that's one spirit that's contacting out of many and that is still that's a that's a wider shift in perspective that takes time and it's it's confusing when we don't have a lot of the wider culture around us sort of encouraging understanding that yes absolutely and it's as you say it's a conditioning piece as well um one of the things I just to briefly sort of switch tracks that I I wrestle with not wrestle with but I encounter a lot in heathery and talk a lot about is that those of us who are raised in Christian supremacist culture which is most of of the western civilized world are conditioned to only go to a a god with issues right there's one just one being that you can talk to it's it's very narrow minded and it's also really hard to begin doing that deconstruction work I I consider myself really lucky because I was kind of raised by wolves so I didn't have a lot of a theistic upbringing which means there was less heaviness but even with that of course I was raised in the United States like this concept of of god is a singular being permeates everything in our culture and so that work of understanding that rather than one magical vending machine what you have instead is a spiritual polyculture of relationships all of which like your Social Circle require their own forms of tending and they all conform to their own rules right you have your friend that you love going to see movies with and you have your friend that you're in roller Derby with and you have your friends that you play drum circle you know play a drug circles with right like these are different friendships they occupy different spaces they do different things the spirit world is the same you know and so shifting from this very this very narrow place of how we relate to spirits to this much more broad understanding it's hard it's hard and it takes some deconstruction work I was actually really glad to see John Beckett uh offer some like deconstructing internalized Christianity pieces cause he knows that world better than I do I sent a bunch of students his way just because I'm like no this is necessary it's really hard stuff yeah absolutely um so we are now starting to talk about shifts in consciousness and shifts in perspectives and you talk about life sculpting so I figured that we could talk maybe a little bit about the elemental life sculpting and what you what do you mean by by sculpting when we are we are looking at these practices can you give us a little overview of that to start hey so elemental life sculpting is what I consider like my consolation prize for having been married to a horrible human right like there's a thing that happens for many of us where through various things in my case it was a you know a relationship with someone who is deeply unhealthy where we end up out of alignment with our own lives and values where we end up in a place where we have sort of accidentally stumbled backwards found ourselves in a life that doesn't fit our individual true north I really do think people have a like a an alignment that is how we wish to be in the world and the gifts we wish to bring to the world and how we want to be in relationship with the world around us and that that's a soft voice that lives within for most of us but because it's a soft voice that lives within the screaming of the world around us and sometimes the situations we find ourselves in mean that we can really get pulled off course so elemental life sculpting is the process of evaluating how we are living and whether or not that actually fits our core desires and our deepest sense of self and our moral and ethical frameworks and it uses the elements as a way to look at different areas of life my lived experience is that all of it matters you know literally the space we live in matters the friendships we have matter our mental health and the self talk we use matters our spiritual life matters but if we try to do that all at once it's fucking overwhelming and insane so elemental life sculpting sort of takes you through step by step and interestingly it's it's a body of work that my spouse and I basically developed as we were recovering from the relationships that preceded our relationship with each other so it's you know like this is what I Learned from from my divorce but it's wonderful useful stuff and I think it's also an answer to the fact that and you've probably observed the same thing when people are in like their first year or so maybe two years of witchcraft of active pagan practice they tend to change a lot many times marriages explode because that person is realigning to who they actually are and the things that don't fit start to experience the stress of that and so elemental life sculpting is also a nice way to to figure that out and then it you know I think the last thing that it does that's really useful is that if you are subject to an explosion which happens we lose our jobs people die marriages end very suddenly if you've done the work of elemental life sculpting you already know what the roadmap is for an aligned life and you can start building it then so there's a few different ways that body of work can be used um but more than anything it really centers on the know thyself bit I you know I do a lot of pastoral counseling many times one of the questions I'll ask is what what do you want you know how many people don't actually fucking know the answer to that question most of them like haven't thought about it I know exactly what I want and I think everyone else should too or at least have an idea of the direction we're going holy crap like how are we supposed to make any progress if we have no idea even the direction that we want to stumble you know absolutely it's I think a a lot a lot more common an issue than people realize and I think that's also important for people who might be out there saying like oh I don't know what I want I'm probably the only one in the world that doesn't know what they want because I think it's also just like our our modern culture pushes such a everyone's already out there living their best lives you know with social media telling us that everyone's got their stuff together look look at all these amazing things they're going towards you might be the only one that isn't doing it look at you it's like no no no no I mean we're all reorienting on one level exactly no I was I was talking about it with one of my student groups I uh my my intermediate level black feathers are about to graduate uh and so we're doing course wrap UPS and things like that and one of them was like you know I feel like I've Learned all of this and I have all of these skills and experiences and I still feel like I don't know enough and I'm kind of waiting for someone else to come in and and you know and save us and I'm like oh yeah yeah we all that's most of us I'm still waiting for the grown up witches to arrive I'm 46 right I'm like surely there's a real adult in the room somewhere there isn't one you know it's it's just us with all of our flaws all of the adults you know are making it up as they go along too you know I think one of the moments where I felt a lot of tension release was realizing at some point in my life that I was like the same age that my parents were when I was a child and being like oh they had no idea what they were doing either you know what that's actually refreshing in some ways we were just we're all just doing the best we can hahaha but this is also part of why you know all of these practices help right know thyself connect with your spirit develop your spirit relationships shield yourself learn grow change all of that's good because because we are all making it up as we go along and that's a that's a really great part of it and I think then as we are figuring that out I will I will give an example from myself because maybe that will be helpful to somebody out there where I kept waiting to make sometimes decisions because I was like well I'll wait and I'll make that decision when I figure it out and it's like no actually you have to go in a direction and then you'll find out by taking those steps was this the correct or or maybe I just I can just back up a little bit but if you if you stay locked in one place oh no it'll it'll just stay in unknown so it's better it's better to give yourself the time to just try you go into the direction and then if it doesn't work out then you can go in a different one but this is also why divination and doing spirit work helps because then you have more information to hopefully guide before you make the mistakes so you'll continue to make them sorry no I was gonna say like this is this is the beauty of spirit relationships this is why you want guides and spirit friends and various beings and ancestral guardians that you work with because teamwork really does make the dream work right succeeding in this life this is a group project haha and so if you can develop allies become better connected and in better relationship with the land spirits that you live with and encounter all the time if you can get better connected to the wisdom in your ancestral line and into the spirits that are part of your your spiritual tradition none of that's bad all of it helps it you know it it allows you to to dodge some things to think outside the box to gain solutions that you might not otherwise have you know every now and then I'll have somebody be like well why spirit work like cause it makes life easier why do any witchcraft at all what's the point of it unless we're actually going to find a way to soften the edges this is a pretty hard timeline we're all in magic is to make this more more gentle you know it's not gonna fix everything but it fixes a lot you know and it makes you more resilient that's all worth doing yes make life taste better you know you get a little bit of yeah extra extra sugar sometimes and I think that's important to put in there cause otherwise it sounds like we're just saying well you do magic and then your life explodes what a great sales pitch for doing magic I feel like jumping in um it also it makes your life better there we go divination and magic done without question yes so when we're talking about this there's there's another piece to this so we've talked about the elemental life sculpting that going to and deepening our relationships with the qualities of the elements and what those bring to different aspects of our life and then we get more into the spirit contact bits and the idea of guising and I like that phrase it's not the phrase that my tradition uses but I think it's a beautiful one and could you perhaps describe that term and what you mean by that absolutely I think in some traditions this is referred to as aspecting I Learned it at as guising I Learned from Duncan and Moira of of of Croclan tradition and they are part of the Earth Spirit community in Massachusetts so Guising is embodying the energy of another being right so this could be a being from the natural world so we can guise as an owl this could be a being from the spirit world so we could guise as a Nana but what's beautiful about Guising is we step into the energy and then can move and experience and sort of you know see the world feel the world through this energy shape but we remain in the driver's seat in terms of our consciousness we can stop this process at any point in time and within the beautiful wide world that is modern paganism there are also traditions that use transposessary work that use full shape shifting and guising can be a wonderful bridge and practice shape and of course form in and of itself for supporting that form of mystical work another thing with Guising that's wonderful for those of us who do a lot of serving of community within the context of larger rituals many times we are there as a being that is not us whether that's a guardian whether that is you know a figure from the tarot whether you are you know presenting yourself as Queen of wands right and we can then channel that energy but then we can step out and we can have one hand on the driver's wheel and that's what makes it different than trans possessory where sometimes the experience is more like ah someone else is driving the car and I'm sitting in the back seat which is totally valid but is more advanced guising is open to pretty much everyone it can be a really wonderful way to communicate with beings that do not normally have human voice as well so when we are guising as say a wolf or a serpent then it gives that being a chance to speak and that can be a powerful thing when we're we're talking about the difference between transposessory and guising is shape shifting kind of equivalent to the more possessory experience or how would you relate those those two together in my head in witchcraft according to Irene Glass uh Guising is first right so this is very much still one hand on the driver's wheel we still know we are human being in a human body and then we go to shape shifting where we really begin to fully embody move as think as another being or an aspect of self or a fusion of self and one of our guides right and then we move into trans possessory where we've started to actually let go of visual identity quite a bit and you know for those of us who engage in these practices and I am someone who does I will have big gaps in my memory after a very strong possessory experience because I kind of was barely in the room for that and it's part of why your safety protocols matter so much and it's why god is something that we can absolutely work with as a beginner quite safely but transposessary requires uh more of more safety protocols and a fair bit more training so we start that process fairly early in Black Feather just because people encounter it and it's a you know it's a wonderful way to gain information to communicate with the spirit world and also you know there is very much like a stair step of here's here's how we want to approach this but toward the end of the first year we go guising and then shape shifting and we talk about shape shifting if this seems scary and out of your comfort zone work with guising for a while like this is a wonderful way to have this experience to move with and through these beings and to not feel like you have to let go of control uh my own experience with many of my students is that once you have let's call it significant trauma in their background the trust that's necessary to let go of the wheel is very hard for some of us just based on what we've been through the hyper vigilance piece is very hard to step away from can be a really good gentle way to begin experimenting with that in a safe way and for the purposes of guising in in what you present what what types of beings are you thinking um that are best for people to be doing this with is this are these animal spirits are these gods like in and and I'm also asking like within you know the the exercises in this book who or what is the the guising being done with in this foundational level of black feather we focus on aspects of self so all of us are along with having all of these wonderful voices and the school bus of chaos inside our heads all of us are a million different people we have different ways of being in the world and one of the self archetypes we work with in Black Feather is the empowered witch self that is you as the magical badass you are with all of the strength and sovereignty and beauty and power and force that goes with that and of course this is not a self that we can constantly maintain right like we can't show up at the bank at well I mean we could but haha it might be unpleasant for the tellers if the empowered witch self was there doing our checking so instead as we begin working with Guising some of the very first work we do here is we work with elements with Guising but then we use this primarily as stepping into these enhanced selves and it's actually really where I recommend people begin because you already have guises you have the guys that you wear at work you have the guys that you wear around your parents you know you have the guys that you wear if you have to address a figure of authority start making that conscious instead who is that self can we can we make them even stronger even more effective so I absolutely have a guise that I wear when I'm presenting at a conference you know I'm kind of a nervous and anxious little being as a as a person but those traits aren't great to have present when I'm talking to a room of 150 people especially 150 people who are pretty damn good witches themselves so instead I step into a guise that is my empowered witch self that gives me access to all of those beautiful pieces of knowledge but also the pieces of self that most serve that guise and that that section of self and so this is a wonderful way to begin working with guiding you know next steps are then guiding as animals that we work with guiding as some of our ancestors guiding as the spirits that we work but we start just with Guising as the self and the different selves that we all are I think that's a really important piece because there is that element to sort of it is very especially when we are we are new to things it's very fascinating to realize that there are others that are spirits that we can have contact with so of course we like we want to understandably dive into aspecting and and doing this kind of work with those other beings but again we go back to the self knowledge piece if we are not able to understand who which aspects of ourselves we are in at any given time very difficult to uh let anybody else you know in in whatever way I was gonna say there's a reason Geising is like chapter 20 or whatever yeah it is the very end of the book just for those well not the very end but we gotta get there there's a lot of groundwork and there's a lot of mapping out to be done in and I I really appreciate that at many points in the book you bring in if not journaling like the the importance of reflecting back on and how has this gone for you over the last so if you've been going through these exercises this has taken a little while and what is the reflection on how has it made things better what have you actually experienced are there ways that you incorporate divination or other forms of divination into sort of checks and balances for the the works of this absolutely so we do talk a lot about particularly with spirit contact using divination as a confirmation method this is one of my favorite forms of discernment simply because particularly with an emotionally charged experience you know again it's coming through our brains which are complicated places and then along with that maybe we've had something happen and we have really big feelings about it your divinatory tools are gonna be a wonderful way to dial down on okay what is actually the core message here because it it can be hard right so you know some examples that have come across my desk where people will have visions involving a person they loved who isn't on this side of the ground anymore that's gonna bring up a lot you know and it might mean that the core message of the of the vision or the dream gets a little bit muddy because it brings up really big feelings and some pain and and love of course but grief is hard so being able to actually dial in on that and get uh let's call it a more objective view is so important um the Cross Crow has the second manuscript for the intermediate training we actually use divination significantly in year two uh because we expand upon the work of year one right so as we're getting even more weird and mystical we want to have checks and balances in place and divination tools sort of like base systems are so good for this I'm a tarot user myself Kane is more oriented toward Oracle decks almost all of them have the capacity to add to sort of act as a really wonderful net underneath your high wire act absolutely I uh well I think you're not surprised to find that I completely agree with that hahaha it's weird it's like this show has something about divination in the title no hahaha that it should be incorporated into many elements of your life and spell work what but yes yes absolutely um I'll be I'll be very excited to see the the intermediate levels I'm sure many people are very happy to hear that so it also is speaking to the fact that you know when we are doing these things we're having these big emotions and these big experiences potentially you know with spirit contact and and all these practices it can be easy to get you know just because of our own excitement and the emotions blown off course a little bit from what are the the real guiding points of our life which then I think goes back to that elemental piece of you know knowing what is your true north what is it that you are really kind of orienting around and finding that so that you can stay stable or or come back to center and then continue moving forward and you talk about that I think at one point in the book about with ritual construction like understanding the why of things outside of just the rote but also like finding the the central point the kernel of the why in any ritual action and I think that's for me at least that also comes down to like divination can help you find that or you know help orient a little bit back towards that can you maybe take that vague question where you would like yes I you know I think that there are a a couple layers there I think one piece is that it's it's very easy when we are beginning to get kind of overwhelmed by the smells and bells and trappings and ritual language and the different spells and rituals we encounter in the wild whether that's in books or online right we go okay I want to do a spell for a new job and then we find a bunch of different spells for new employment and we go okay which one do I choose and having a really good understanding of what the the kernel of that needs to be what is the desired outcome let that be very very clear and then along with that of what actually makes that work you know what makes a spell effective and how does that tie in with what you want what you desire for your own life all of that's vital and I think the other thing with the being overwhelmed and being blown off course kind of coming back to the regular practice piece once we introduce spirit work and trance work it becomes part of weekly homework one thing that can happen is if we are not regularly engaging with transcendental practices is that then when one comes through it's like being hit by a truck whereas if this just becomes part of our normal spiritual life I sometimes refer to it as office hours right if we're showing up trance with our spirits fairly regularly then the benevolent beings that help guide our lives don't have to hit us with the truck we can go more gently so you know we don't get the message of you need to blow up your life and move to Portland or whatever right and instead we get you know one of our benevolent spirits being like so hey uh I think it would be a really good idea for you to have X conversation or it seems like your job is maybe not serving you right now can we look for another one so we don't get to that crisis point nearly as much just by being in better and closer and more regular relationship with these different powers so you know it's that combined tool kit thing right so yes absolutely divination serves this purpose yes thinking more clearly about what we're doing and why helps a lot and also your spirit relationships and making sure those are solid and regular parts of your life all of this creates a more balanced and effective life it it it helps you move through the world in a way that works better for you there's one more element of this book that I would love to touch on because it is it's I think it's somewhere towards the middle would you have a chapter on the labyrinth yeah some very interesting conversation that you have about why the labyrinth our coffin has very strong connections with labyrinth we're in the middle of building a labyrinth here on our land this summer which is really exciting um I know there's lots of different styles of labyrinth so we won't go down that rabbit hole but um why did you include the labyrinth in this book and why do you consider that to be important because it is a cornerstone of my own spiritual practice and the directive was make them like you like that's the main reason right haha so uh for those of you who are watching at home of course I have a labyrinth right here on my arm haha so this is a huge part of my own practice every time you make a turn in the labyrinth there is an opportunity to make a change to release something to welcome something in to change your perspective around something and I have been a labyrinth practitioner for about 17 years now and I think it was 15 or so years ago I became a labyrinth facilitator through the New England Guild and I find them to just be one of the most useful spiritual tools they are wonderful for solving problems for bringing us closer to the spirits um almost every time I have some sort of a you know every time I'm I'm in a labyrinth when I get to the center there is some sort of useful revelation right there one of the wonderful tools that we also share I kind of love that they're part of um what I think of as human spiritual DNA and the love pattern of some sort occurs in multiple multiple cultures that probably have a lot of contact with each other it's just a thing that humans do and they tend to be in places that are spiritually potent in some way so for me labyrinths have been at the center of moving past periods of feeling burned out they've been part of building more compassion into my own mind they've been a huge part of my growth I've run full moon labyrinth walks for I think about 16 years on and off obviously during the pandemic the isolation portion of the pandemic that changed um but they are just a really big part of my practice and I think they are so useful that it is worth putting it into foundational practice when we are teaching witchcraft so with all this being said you've already mentioned that there's going to be an intermediate book haha spoiler alert um what I there is gonna be one final question after this but but so haha there will be one more question but where can there of course will be links in the show notes for the book itself and and things like that um what do you have coming up that you are offering I'm assuming there are things that are gonna be surrounding this this book absolutely so uh Kane and I do run trainings of Black Feather so um we have the first year starting up later this fall so the in person cohort in Frederick Maryland begins in November and the online cohort will begin in December of 2026 those will be going up online shortly we're basically still getting the discord together haha and making sure it works the way we want it to but those will be online if they are not online right now they will be online very very shortly uh and of course these books you know you can completely work through Black Feather independently but one of the nice things about a training cohort is just the ability to ask questions bounce ideas around and of course one of my favorite things of about studying with people in person is sometimes the funny little rabbit trails that come up you know that aren't necessarily in the book but are useful information to know uh so that can be a really fun piece so that will definitely be available there is a Black Feather mystery.com website it has studio recordings of the meditations in the book we will do our very best to keep that website online obviously you can also take the text of those meditations record it yourself and then go on that meditation but please know that you can also just hop over to the website the recordings are right there so you know feel free to use them it's completely free we put a lot of free resources up online I like to leave space for any piece of advice or thoughts that you have that you want to leave listeners with or it could be something that you just find yourself repeating a lot either to other people or to yourself you know I was actually reflecting on this a little bit as we were talking about some of the regular practice aspects so uh for those of you playing along at home uh I also do sermons within UU tradition Unitarian Universalist tradition and many times I will post online before one being like hey what do you all want 2,000 words from me about and a lot of times the answer to that lately has been resilience we're exhausted everyone's fried and we're at that sort of place where if you do not have some internal structures that help you hold resilience that help you generate it it's getting really hard you know I think many of us can muscle through for a while but then we must come back to that place where holding the practice is part of how we get through so you know I always think of magic ultimately as being agency right magic has long been the Providence of people who did not have the advantages of money and power because when you don't have those things you must turn to the mystical in order to find solutions and that's where a lot of us are right now so right now your foundational practices whether they're Black Feather or any other system in the world are going to be so important to your own resilience along with that try to be with other people right uh I'm a community tender I have been for the better part of 30 years now part of why communities of like mind are so important is that it is sheltered from what is happening outside so these resiliency practices you know your home practice but then also trying to be around around your people sometimes it's not optional right now I could not agree more that is absolutely true we we all need to be each other's um safe harbors at different times so we do our own personal work and then we go and we find some others that can that can be with us too and help each other that's right well that is a beautiful thing and I am so excited to see where the second book goes and have you back on to talk about that and there might be other excuses that we'll come up with before then so we'll figure that out but thank you so much for your time and all those things will be in the show notes for people to check out and find and yeah can't wait to see you in person and in interviews again thank you so much Joanna