Think of your descendants: perhaps biological children, or the people who will inherit your art or join whatever groups you are a part of after you’re gone.

What naming patterns exist in your family? Are any of your relatives named after official or folk saints? After other relatives?

In magically operative communities throughout the world, we find the idea that like attracts like. This is especially true when it comes to scent, perhaps because smell is the sense that is most closely related to our capacity for memory. Thus, evil spirits are often believed to be attracted to foul odors. These spirits are generally avoided in

I’ve heard it said that a spell is a prayer in three dimensions.

This is an intimate spot. It is not simply a place for rest; it is a ship for journeying through altered states and other realms. This is where you lie vulnerable and sleeping, night after night. It’s where you dream.

pronoia, the opposite state of mind to paranoia—where one has the sense of a grand conspiracy that exists to help, rather than harm. It is also used to describe a philosophy that the world is secretly set up to benefit people. If a mediumistic message leaves you with the feeling that you are loved, supported, and part of something bigger than

There are three things we can do to ensure that the buck stops here with us in this lifetime, so future generations won’t have to deal with the same old ghosts: we can face our ancestral trauma, we can make art, and we can die well.

At first this will seem like greater self-knowledge—that is, a better understanding of who you are. But then it will expand into conscious awareness that transcends your lifetime and what you think of as yourself. The story that

Don’t let anyone else’s narrative override your own experience.