La Vecchia Religione

Posted on January 30, 2023 by Francesca

Online Course:
La Vecchia Religione—
An Inside View of Traditional Italian Witchcraft

“La Vecchia Religione” is Italian for “The Old Religion” and refers to the traditional practices of a strega. “Strega” translates into “witch.”

I was born into an Italian shamanic family tradition that dates back hundreds of years. Our family has many magics. This online course focuses on one of the most pivotal. Traditional magic is taught contextually, so lessons also provide a mystical overview of La Vecchia Religione.

The Strega practice we’ll focus on is considered the most advanced magic possible, can improve every aspect of life substantially, yet is accessible to a magical beginner.

This course has five powerful aspects:

One) Weekly lessons received by email. Each lesson is a digital Book of Shadows entry (PDF).

Storytelling relays a great deal of the course’s information, making lessons easy and fun for you. I’ll share tales of an Italian shamanic family tradition.

I’ll add other relevant chronicles, too, as well as more material needed to understand the aforementioned pivotal strega practice and traditional Italian witchcraft as a whole.

La Vecchia Religione is a shamanic path. Some shamans invoke magic simply through their personal, quite human stories. If you want strega magic, it’s in such stories.

Your reading this course’s stories, with no more effort on your part than when you read a fantasy novel, magically transforms every part of your life—large improvements everywhere. After the course, a special enchantment always remains available to continue creating numerous, marvelous changes for you.

Benefits of merely reading the stories:

* You automatically start becoming a new you, with greater wholeness of being and peace. You notice your power growing magically and in other parts of your life, so you have better access to all the inner resources needed to reach life goals.

* Your circumstances automatically start improving. Your most cherished goals become more viable and attainable.

* The stories transport you to a Fey-touched realm. And this course’s stories are true-life Faerie tales with real magic that helps you live in your own special Faerie tale: dreams can come true.

Our lessons will bring us into the presence of Diana Magna Mater (Great Mother Goddess). She gave humankind magic so we can live free and prosperously, overcoming challenges, including liberating ourselves from oppression. She will protect and guide us in our journey.

Lessons also provide easy shamanic exercises that reinforce the tales’ enchantments and deepen your relationship with them.

Two) My full-color art ornaments the PDF Book of Shadows pages, including new paintings created especially for this course. I joyfully painted for ages to create fifty new page ornamentations specifically for these lessons! I wanted imagery to convey the enchantment of Italian sorcery.

Think of medieval illuminations, except they are not painted by a stuffy repressed monk but by a modern wild-hearted Pagan. My paintings are filled with magic that blesses your day.

Three) Nine audio files recorded expressly for this course. Spoken word is a way you and I can be in a sacred space together. So I recite excerpts of the PDFs.

Four) Two fun, easy crafts projects. I’m thrilled about my Pagan-style craft ideas because they’re sooo magical: they help you experience the power of Italian witchery, deepen the magical journey, and increase its benefits. I’ve never seen anything like these projects, and I’m not going to say here what they are, heh. They’re special, and I’m saving them for you.

I painted art especially for these projects, making your part easy: you receive full-color digital files of my Pagan art, so you only need to print the artwork and follow a few simple instructions. I can barely wait for you to have the art! Heck, I’m chomping at the bit, waiting for you to have the rest of the course, too.

Five) One-on-one support. I’m available by phone for up to 45 minutes. If you have questions about the material, need help because your commitment to doing the lessons falters, want to further explore a particularly tantalizing part of the curriculum, or have other concerns, feel free to phone.

You can divide the 45 minutes into two or three conversations. Conversations must occur during the span of the course or within a month after.

I love integrating my art into my writing. Ditto creating audio portions and being available by phone. The five parts of the course (text, art, audio, etc.,) weave together to take you on a mystical journey into the heart of Italian witchery. During it, along with the benefits already listed:

* You gain confidence in your own journey—its spiritual, magical, and mundane aspects.

* You find confidence in yourself, just as you are, right now.

* Important insights come to you—wisdom needed to get the maximum out of life.

* You claim your birthright—your heritage of magic and wildness as a Fey-touched child of the Old Gods.

In addition to being transformative, this journey is core to understanding Italian witchcraft as a whole. In other words, along with improving your life, the journey is also an experiential lesson that conveys a mystical overview of: traditional Italian witchcraft as a magical culture, its otherworldly sensibilities, and its history.

Though they impart an overview and history, lessons are easy, not like reading a textbook. This is not dry history, not dry material, not a dreary recitation of facts, charts, and lists that you have to memorize, plod your way through, or otherwise labor over. You experience La Vecchia Religione in your spirit.

This look into my family’s magic is traditional Italian shamanism no one else teaches. A lot of this is material I’ve never taught until this course.

The course starts February 27, with your first lesson. You receive one lesson a week by email for 11 weeks.

If an unexpected event makes me unable to send one week’s planned material, I’ll extend the course an extra week.

Tuition: The regular price is $209 a month for three months, but I’ve lowered the cost to $167 a month. That is 20% off!

Scroll down to pay securely with PayPal:

No experience needed. But even advanced practitioners benefit greatly. If you need more information, or want to discuss scholarship, trade, or a payment plan other than the above subscription, call me at the number below. No refunds. My online courses aren’t transcriptions of oral tradition lessons. (I teach oral tradition by phone.) The online courses are special unto themselves—magic tailored to be spectacularly effective, relevant, exciting, and safe when learned online.

The Practical Fairy Witch Mystic Training

Posted on December 19, 2022 by Francesca

The Practical Fairy Witch Mystic Training
Be Prosperous, Feral, Free,
and Magic Like The Moon

Contents
If this table of contents’ links don’t work, scroll past the table of contents for all the event information.
* Magical Overview of the Training
* Attend by Phone. It’s Easy!
* Class 1: Center and Circumference
* Class 2: Faeries Love Gaia, and Gaia Loves Faeries
* Class 3: Myth, Body, Gaia, and Faerie
* Class 4: Come Home to the Faerie Queen
* Schedule
* Enrollment
* Four Master-of-the Arts Magics Will Fuel Your Success

Magical Overview of the Event

This eight-month Shamanic journey
begins January 22, 2023

Harness power
in the far reaches of Fairy Witch mysticism.

The Practical Fairy Witch Mystic Training consists of four courses. Each one helps create a magical repertoire with spells that cover any situation.

The Old Gods don’t try to tame you,
or insist you become dour.
They help you find great freedom,
and They help you find your power.

They guide you when you’re lost
and don’t scold you when you’re wrong.
They hold you when you’re hurting.
They show you how you’re strong.

In this mystic training’s rites,
the Old Gods help you be
prosperous, wild,
magical, and free.
So mote it be!

Classes are teleseminars—group meetings by phone. Call the event phone number to attend. No special equipment or app is required.

Here are the four courses.

Class 1: Center and CircumferenceBe Your Fullest Self, and Be in Union with All Things

This is mysticism that creates a new reality. We’ll address worldly (e.g., finances) and spiritual (e.g., your life purpose) concerns.

The course helps you live fully. Here’s one way that will happen:

The lessons free you from society’s lie that important parts of life conflict with each other, so you have to sacrifice unnecessarily. Here’s an example to make that clearer:

Part of becoming utterly ourselves is interacting with others. However, many of us were taught from childhood that we must give up the self to be part of a group. Not true! You can be immersed in love from others and still be you.

We’ll do rituals that empower you to be your true self. We’ll add other rituals that nurture your ability to remain your true self while you’re in the company of loved ones and the larger community. You don’t have to isolate so you feel comfortable being you.

Bringing full self together with thriving participation in community can be daunting. In this course, you don’t have to choose. You’ll gain what you personally need to be fully yourself and also integrate self with community—center and circumference.

Another example of supposed conflicts that the course conquers: The lessons nurture the self-fulfillment that comes through knowing one’s talents while also helping you use them to the max to serve others.

Expect rituals that help you stay in the center. I mean your inner center. I also mean the center of what really happens in life—the grandeur of the cosmos, the beauty of tribe, life’s miraculous possibilities, the big ups and downs, the little ups and downs. You remain safely centered within the circumference of truths.

In addition, the rituals help these centerings remain while you thrive within the circumference of a loving community.

We’re going to accomplish a lot in this course because of its innovative modalities.

Center and Circumference is tailored step by step to its participants. For example, you may need rites that show you your unique place in community and give you the power to take that place.

This course is an intensive = soul-depth, pivotal movements, and playtime.

You’ll be magic like the moon.
You’ll be in union with all things.

The last nine yards to personal well-being and life goals can require evolving past how we’ve always done things—as mystics, as a species, and as unique individuals.

I’ve spent my life channeling a new approach, working full-time to develop and refine it. I continue to evolve material as the global psyche shifts and the Gods give me more information. All the courses in this series have such material.

This post outlines my visions, realizations, and other reasons for creating these four curriculums years ago. Reviewing the post reminded me that I was way ahead of the curve. And I spent decades building up to these courses before that. Do not accept teachers who threw a curriculum together because they’re jumping on the bandwagon late in the game.

Each of the four courses in The Practical Fairy Witch Mystic Training is a complete training in itself. These life-changing courses also weave together into a transformative journey that is even greater than the sum of its parts.

Each course emphasizes specific topics in depth.

The courses also overlap. Some overlaps are mentioned in the course descriptions here. Paradoxically, focusing on a few things, while including several others in that week’s lesson, deepens focus. Far-reaching connectivity is part of Fairy mysticism. You’ll receive experiential shamanic lessons in which you can feel all of creation as a weave that lovingly supports you.

If you do a lot for people, you need someone to take care of you. Healers, parents, teachers, psychics, nurses, and other givers, enroll in The Practical Fairy Witch Mystic Training. In every one of its courses, I take care of you, and you soar.

Class 2: Faeries Love Gaia, and Gaia Loves Faeries Nature Spirituality, Ecstatic Union, and Personal Wholeness

This class’s nature spirituality is without dogma. Just straight-ahead earthy mysticism.

We’ll delve into a connectivity with nature that makes you whole, happy, and powerful. If you have that connection already, it will grow quite a bit.

We’ll explore mysticism that heals Mother Earth and ceremonies with Her that, in turn, heal and empower us. If you already have that, it will be amplified.

You’ll experience a spiritual connection with nature while you’re also thoroughly in touch with the psychic realms, creating an ecstatic union and wholeness. This results in maximum physical and spiritual health.

All the courses in The Practical Fairy Witch Mystic Training include material to achieve an utter integration, within and without. (Interesting sidebar: In a lifetime of channeling rituals and teachings, they almost all foster this integration. When the rituals and teachings focus elsewhere, even then they are potent tools for integration.)

In the process, Faeries Love Gaia, and Gaia Loves Faeries will also explore how our joys and our delights—including our lovemaking—can heal the earth.

As another part of that process, we’ll look at 20th and 21st-century shifts in the global psyche, spirit realms, and environment. The shifts require that at least a handful of mystics take steps that hadn’t been needed previously. The course addresses these steps, which go the last nine yards to human rights for all, our planet’s health, and our personal life goals.

I truly trust that we’re ready to take alternative spirituality and healing another step.

Gaia Spirituality! My star-touched cells long to dance with Gaia’s. She, in turn, needs my best. She and I are in a joyous union, in part through maximum service to each other. The training will facilitate each participant taking the next step and becoming their best, whatever those mean for each of us. We’ll nurture our uniqueness and celebrate it as pivotal to the salvation of the planet. Oh, union!

The course also includes shamanic techniques that maintain your home and the land on which it sits as a healing hearth and sacred site, respectively.

Hidden power spots and overlooked nature spirits abound, needing our blessings, and waiting to bless us in turn. We’ll discuss the power of your residence’s area. Included will be a ritual to wake up and empower the spirit of your local land.

In addition, the course shows how we can best be Gaia’s stewards on the mundane plane, according to our circumstances, personalities, and desires.

And the curriculum does so much more:

Most mystics face emotional wounds and health problems. Some of these might open a person to their metaphysical power. Nonetheless, healing wounds stops them from limiting our happiness. Healing is also required for mysticism to be safe and effective.

In Faeries Love Gaia, and Gaia Loves Faeries, we heal these soul wounds and transform them into safer doorways to power.

Mystics might suffer other emotional wounds and health problems caused by mystical exploration. Possible negative impacts of vigorous otherworldly exploration have been insufficiently addressed. My curriculums are exceptions.

This course’s innovative theories and methods support wild flights into fantastic realms and train you to come back whole.

Lessons in Faeries Love Gaia, and Gaia Loves Faeries are multi-faceted. All the material, even when it seems disparate, comes together to create personal inner integration and integration with Mother Nature. An effective approach to Nature Spirituality must include many far-ranging aspects, combined in a way that adds up to a larger whole. This course ranges from deep mysticism to practical stewardship of land to inner change that helps you with worldly matters.

We can be Gaia’s Faeries—Her children who love Her, tend Her, and dwell within the fullness of Her love and care. Participants in this course visit the realm of Faerie. We drink star-water. Our cells dance with Gaia’s. And our recognition of our beauty becomes an unstoppable agent of change for the better.

Each course in the Practical Fairy Witch Mystic Training has a diversity of intertwining topics. Humans, life, magic, and all of creation are wondrously complex weaves that are somehow also wondrously simple.

The magic of all four courses evolves our DNA toward inner wholeness and integration. Our new state will be a blueprint that the rest of Gaia’s children (animal, mineral, vegetable, and spirit) and Gaia Herself will fashion themselves after, sometimes on a conscious level, just as often not. In other words, we become a psychic template for society and Gaia, simply by changing ourselves. Our inner change empowers the rest of the cosmos to do the same. Any spiritual evolution we achieve in any of these courses helps everyone.

Faeries Love Gaia, and Gaia Loves Faeries is core material for mystics—central to personal and global evolution. I see how much it helps my students.

This class is an intensive.

Class 3: Myth, Body, Gaia, and FaerieFairy Wisdom and Rituals for Otherworldly Adventures

Shamanic rituals for Faerie shamans, bardic poets, visionary painters, cosmic clowns, spiritual outlaws, and other fey-touched seekers. And for anyone who wants to become a fey adventurer.

For now, I’ll oversimplify the definition of myth and define it in a way that might seem eccentric until it’s explained in the course. Let’s call myth an altered state, otherworldly realm, or mythic self-identification. Myth has a more complex, inclusive meaning that we’ll explore during the event.

Myth, Body, Gaia, and Faerie combines myth, the physical body, Mother Earth, and Fairy realms. We will experientially integrate living in myth, being in a physical body, interacting with Gaia on the embodied and mystical planes, and visiting otherworldly lands of Faerie.

This weave produces rich experiences and ecstatic mysticism that are uniquely and innately available to you, then deepens those wonders more, then deepens them beyond more.

Such an extensive weave is made up of many things, including the power to meet practical needs. The class helps star-children improve daily life in worldly ways (e.g. finances, love, home, and career).

There will also be magic to
* Manifest physical health by meeting the needs of your star-touched physiology.
* Heal your soul wounds.
* Make mystical experiences safe. (Star-drenched!)
* Keep you, as a Fey-touched individual, safe in your mundane activities. (Stardust still falls on us when we walk on the earth!)

Part of the healing available in the course will be a chance to address loneliness, self-doubt, and other challenges star-wanderers might face because society misunderstands the mythological and therefore judges us as deluded, immature, or otherwise “wrong.”

Class 4: Come Home to the Faerie QueenBe Star Drenched! Fulfill Your “Impossible” Dreams.

This class was first taught years back, after I had a vision. Here’s a short version of it:

The Faerie Queen tells us,
“I am Mother to the Fey.
More of you are awake now.
Lovers, warriors, children, elders,
cats in disguise, and Fey-blooded humans,
wolves, bards, dragons,
gardeners, herbalists, corporate executives,
changelings, tricksters, moon-children, star-children,
and so many more of you,
you are awake now.
Come unto me, come home to me, I am your Mother,
and I will protect you, uphold you,
tutor you until your starlit blood shines
like the milky way in all its immense luminosity.
Dance with me! I have been lonely for my children.
But you are awake now, so come to me, my Faerie children.
The new Fey tribe begins—a mystical global village.

This course delves into the full version of the vision and responds to the Faerie Queen’s call. We go home to reside within Her love and care. And we enter a global Fey community.

Before I offered this class for the first time, I’d waited lifetimes for the Fey-spark in humans to fully re-ignite. More and more, the ancient starlit blood came forward. Finally, momentum hit critical mass; Fairy magic was thoroughly awake in huge numbers of people. Fey-touched! This left us with new questions:

* Have you sensed shifts in the human/plant/mineral psyche?

* What do you require for self-healing, prosperity, and great sex during present times?

* Are your mystical aspects desperately needed by everyone right now, including by you?

* Would you like to learn how to (better) use your new/old/undiscovered/shifted powers, both magical and mundane?

* Is Paganism too dogmatic, not pagan enough? Do you long for fellowship that supports unique visions?

* How can mystics—ranging from activists to quiet magicians—come together to love, celebrate, and protect Gaia?

* Can Gaia—can we—be happy, or even survive, without such a tribe happening globally?

To address all these concerns, I developed a curriculum that has fresh ideas and innovative magic that help us embody the answers to these questions.

That’s how this course was born, revealing unprecedented steps and new approaches to be taken.

Various individuals copied the course’s title or other parts of the event’s announcements and used the imitations for their retreat, course, blog, or book. My vision for a new way of being had such relevance that it was receiving a lot of attention. So some people wanted to seem like they could teach the same thing. No imitator can teach the original, life-changing, reality-shifting material but me.

Included are lessons about how to be your style Faerie shaman. Faerie is filled with different places, each special. One is your home. This class helps you go home. If you’re already home, you’ll learn (more) about its unique magic and spirituality, and how to use them practically to empower your mundane life.

The curriculums in The Practical Fairy Witch Mystic Training culminate decades of work. Rewrite your DNA with me and break through to the stars. You’ll create previously-impossible possibilities for yourself, Gaia, and all beings.

Creating Come Home to the Faerie Queen lessons inspired me to develop the other courses in this series. Now, we’ll use the beginning as the end—the instigating course is now the culminating one. The juicy beginning can be even juicier magic after the other three courses are taken.

Schedule

This eight-month training has 29 classes, meeting on Sundays from 6:00 to 7:00 pm pacific time, starting January 22.

Class 1: Center and Circumference is seven weeks long, from January 22 through March 5. Reserve 6:00 to 7:00 pm pacific time, Sunday March 12, for a makeup class in case I can’t attend one of the planned sessions.

Class 2: Faeries Love Gaia, and Gaia Loves Faeries lasts eights weeks, April 2 through May 21. Reserve 6:00 to 7:00 pm pacific time, Sunday May 28, for a makeup class in case I can’t attend one of the planned sessions.

Class 3: Myth, Body, Gaia, and Faerie is seven meetings, June 18 through July 30, skipping over July 2. Reserve 6:00 to 7:00 pm pacific time, Sunday August 6, for a makeup class.

Class 4: Come Home to the Faerie Queen lasts seven weeks, August 27 through October 8. Reserve 6:00 to 7:00 pm pacific time, Sunday October 15, for a makeup class.

A break after each course keeps the schedule from overwhelming you.

Enrollment

Enroll securely with PayPal. Use the Subscribe button below for automatic monthly payments of $200, for eight months.

Your place is reserved upon receipt of payment. If you don’t receive an email confirming payment within a few days, check your spam filter and spam mailbox. If the email isn’t there, or you want to discuss a scholarship, semi-scholarship, trade, or payment plan other than the above subscription option, or you need more information about the course, please call me at the number below. A few days before our first class, you receive an email with course details—e.g., the phone number to call for the meetings. No refunds. However, you can cancel your subscription after two payments for the specific course you’re attending.

To participate in only part of this training, tell me which course or courses you want. I’ll invoice you through PayPal for $400 per course, paid in installments of $200 a month. Each course stands on its own, a training unto itself.

If you’ve taken any of these courses, repeat enrollment is half-price. Let me know which course(s) you want to repeat, and I’ll invoice you.

The training is suitable to all levels. Adepts experience sufficient depth. Beginners are not overwhelmed or left to fall behind but are given the support they need.

Any two of these courses, except Center and Circumference, can be used as the two qualifying electives needed to participate in the advanced Fairy Witch Training.

Four Master-of-the Arts Magics
Will Fuel Your Success

The price for the event is a deal because I bring four Master-of-the Arts magics to this eight-month shamanic journey. I do a lot to ensure Fairy magic enchants your life:

1) Twenty-Nine Oral Tradition Lessons

Each meeting is not only a lesson but also a ritual because traditional shamanic lessons include material taught experientially. I use master-level Witchcraft techniques to create ceremonies safe for beginners and substantive enough for adepts.

Drawing on ancient transformative practices and ancestral wisdoms, I developed innovative modalities and theories.

Enrollment is limited so we can work in Fairy oral tradition, which happens in small groups, and in which headway can happen quickly. Limited enrollment also allows participants to request individualized support. Authentic connectivity.

A shamanic journey is personal. Traditional shamanic lessons include individualized attention, which tailors the training to you. In-depth guidance.

2) Every Week, I Do a Spell For Your Success

I cast spells that give you good luck, add power to your efforts to improve your life, strengthen the magic of our meetings, make life safer, awaken your magic to its next level of power, and awaken your mundane strengths further too.

Good luck can be required to create the life and state of mind you want. The spells I’ll cast give you so much luck.

They also adapt to your needs automatically (instead of me arrogantly deciding what you need), e.g., prosperity, personal growth, physical health, peace, business opportunities, confidence.

The spells adapting to your needs means they not only create specific benefits but also bless you as a whole being and enrich your entire life.

3) Psychic Readings about Your Goals

During at least one meeting per course (and likely several in each course), you receive a psychic reading about how you can best implement the lessons, apply them to your specific situations, or otherwise use them. This might include uncovering and overcoming blocks to the life you want.

No matter how serious, complex, sophisticated, or unusual, I will address your circumstances and personal state.

4) One-on-one support by phone. I’m available should you need a private discussion, or if something comes up during a group meeting that would take too long to discuss during the meeting.

Mysticism is practical. It can transform you and your life in ways nothing else can. My approach has changed person after person’s life substantially for the better.

Reviews:

“Life-changing. I don’t have words adequate to thank you. … One of the most deeply meaningful experiences of my life.”—Melissa

“I am truly blown away at how much I was able to resolve and heal.”—Chad Woodward

“My life just seems to go better when I’m taking one of your classes!”—Shauna Farabaugh

Total cost for eight months of Faerie Shamanism training—29 classes, 29 weeks of my spells for you, psychic readings, and one-on-one support—is $200 a month. Your carrier might charge you for the calls into the lessons.

I don’t know when or if I’ll teach this series again. I’d guess the last time I taught Faeries Love Gaia was in 2007, Center and Circumference in 2010, Myth, Body, Gaia, and Faerie in 2014, and Come Home in 2015.

A lot was shifting in the Faerie and mundane worlds, so I
originated these classes. I saw that new methods were needed to work toward your happiness right to the finish line. The same goes for human rights and care of our planet.

To be part of this four-part breakthrough Faerie Shamanism training and acquire its in-depth expertise, enroll now.

Fairy witch, Francesca De Grandis, is the bestselling author of the books Be a Goddess! and Goddess Initiation.

A mystical event is no substitute for medical care by a trained physician or psychiatric counseling. Participants are responsible for the consequences of their participation.

In the land of Faerie, miracles are bestowed upon me every day.

Italian Ancestors, Prejudice, Life’s Cycles, & Useful Magic

Posted on December 12, 2022 by Francesca

Italian Ancestors, Prejudice, Life’s Cycles, & Useful Magic

I’ve been looking into immigration to Italy.

As I research to see if immigrating to Italy is possible for me, I think about my ancestors and the cycles of life.

If I move to Italy, a cycle completes.

You see, Nonna arrived in New York in 1902 or 1903, when prejudice against Italians was rampant. Things have changed.

Things have not changed. They have become the same again because life is cyclical.

In rural Pennsylvania, from which I moved a few years ago, people used the N-word for me because my looks are typical Southern Italian (as opposed to the northern Italian blonde, blue-eyed, and very pale stereotype). I lived in fear for my life because my “nice white” neighbors did not want me in their “nice white” neighborhood. The growing fascism in the U.S. had emboldened them.

I’m not going into all the details because any intelligent person can imagine what they were.

But I’ll say these few things: Someone stood in my living room threatening me. They stood in my home, the place that should’ve been my safety. Toward the end of my time in Pennsylvania, as the hostility escalated, a friend visited a few times a week, so my neighbors would see that I was not an old woman living alone and vulnerable. I was driven from my home by racists. My home, which I worked decades to be able to buy, is gone.

I have no Pollyanna statement to make about what happened.

That does not mean I am without hope or optimism. Nor am I without useful, practical magic that makes all the difference.

A Good Life in All Seasons, with Help from Fairy Gods and Other Ancestors

Things come, things go. That is the nature of life. Always, the cycles.

And I have Fairy Gods. They have always backed up struggling individuals, lending powerful magic to fight oppression and other problems. In every cycle of my life, the good and the bad, the Fairy Queen and King and Their court stand by me.

I am part of the cycles of life, part of the cycle of the comings and goings. And my ancestors, which include the Fairy Gods, line up behind me in every season.

Nonna, whose picture is at the top of this post, arrived in the U.S. at the age of 15. The strength it took for her to settle in at that young age and build a life here is part of my heritage. It fuels my magical spells.

Mine is a good life. During my last three years in Pennsylvania, before I could get everything organized to leave, I feared for my life every day. Despite the terror and possibility of violence and death at any moment, it was still a good life.

The Fairy Gods Created Useful, Practical Magic for Us

I know my spells helped keep me safe and sane and helped me move from Pennsylvania as soon as possible. It is normal to be afraid in dire circumstances—even if you trust the protection magic you do. But Fairy magic mitigated the fear tremendously and kept me spiritually whole—instead of utterly traumatized—in other ways as well.

My sweet Fairy Queen and King offer us—Their children—practical spells for real life. They put Their divine power and down-to-earth wisdom into those spells.

My Gods, thank you for Fairy magic and everything else you give me.

If you want practical, useful spells relevant to all situations, take my classes. Click the newsletter banner below to receive notice of new classes.

Francesca De Grandis, bestselling author of Be a Goddess!, trained from birth in a centuries-old Shamanic family tradition that includes both Italian magic (La Vecchia Religione) and Celtic Witchcraft.

The Year’s Dark Months Are a Magic Cauldron

Posted on December 4, 2022 by Francesca

The Year’s Dark Months Are a Magic Cauldron

A Fairy Yearwheel Ritual With Flowers

My paperwhite bulbs arrived a few weeks ago. The above photo shows some of them the day they arrived, after I nestled them into water, to start growing.

Growing paperwhites inside has become one of my Pagan holiday season rituals in recent years.

I developed a ritual that is the growing of paperwhites. It is one of my year wheel practices. Now I consider growing paperwhites to be among the Fairy Queen’s magic spells for the fall and winter months.

Over the dark months of the year, the ritual unfolds, giving me many blessings.

For example, the bulbs I started a few weeks ago will bloom in the dark of winter. The flowers’ bright star shapes and luxurious scent will lift my spirits from winter doldrums. Lovely flowers lift the spirits, but my paperwhites will do it all the more because I add ritual elements to growing them.

They’ll also remind me that the winter darkness is the Goddess’ womb. This understanding can be a bit of an antidote to depression caused by winter darkness. The ritual elements I add allow the paperwhites to help me experience myself as Her luscious, beloved child within that womb—that winter darkness. The experience is an effective antidote.

The blossoms also remind me that in the winter darkness, I am a bright star reborn every year.

Traditional European Witchcraft’s Power and Subtlety

Traditional European Witchcraft is not always overt. Instead of visible rituals, Witch Spirituality is often internal, an ongoing Shamanic journey through life. Visible manifestations might be, as an example, enjoying one’s day. Another visible manifestation might be attempts to make a positive difference in the world. In other words, visable manifestations might the rituals’ results on the mundane plane. They can be quite striking even though the rituals are not always so “impressive.”

Growing my paperwhites unfolds as subtle rituals throughout the dark time. The rituals include contemplations but they are more than thoughts in my head. These musings are enmeshed in magical spells, and thus shift my energy and the energy of my home, blessing it. The magic might help bring prosperity, wisdom about challenges I face, and just about any other blessing.

So not only do I remember that I am their child reborn. I experience the rebirth, in all its glory and power, as the paperwhites ritual develops over the later dark months.

I experience being held lovingly close by my Goddess, the Fairy queen, as well as by the Fairy king. I need this experience because I can get SADD during the winter. The paperwhite magic mitigates that.

Paperwhites rituals are hearth magic. Kitchen magic is often viewed as shallow and not very powerful. It can be one of the most powerful magics on the planet. I teach a Kitchen Magic course that goes deep deep deep.

We find Fairy secrets in many ways. We lose them if we become ego-ridden and think the only way we can claim them is to boast of them, shouting from the rooftops. We lose them unless we have the humility to hold them close in simple practices.

All my classes embody the Fairy secrets and include lessons about the various ways you can find Fairy secrets, as well as ways you can maintain them in your life. Several of my courses do this without any of their lessons including the term Fairy secrets.

Click the newsletter banner below to receive notice of new classes.

Fairy Witch, Francesca De Grandis, is the bestselling author of Be a Goddess!. She offers classes, psychic readings, and healings. Her Goddess spirituality embraces practical magic spells. Trained from birth in a Shamanic family tradition of Italian (La Vecchia Religione) and Celtic Witchcraft, her Witchcraft is an ancient Faerie Shamanism. An Italian Witch is also known as a Strega. Francesca equates Fairy Witchcraft with Faerie Shamanism.

Africa—The Origin of Fairies

Posted on September 28, 2022 by Francesca

Africa—The Origin of Fairies

Contents of Africa—The Origin of Fairies

Who Were the Original Fairies (Faeries) of Ancient Lore?

The Appropriation of African Fairy Culture and Magic

Goddess Tiamat—The Babylonian Origin of Mermaids

“It’s Not True to the Original Vision” Is a Racist Remark

Every Culture Has Wondrous Fairy Lore and Myth

Faerie Magic Isn’t a Commodity for Oppressors to Appropriate

Faerie Secrets & Sacred Mysteries Thrive Only in Shamanic Cultures

Honoring African Faery Faith Ancestors

Diversity, the Fairy Witch, Magic How-To Books and Classes

Here’s one of the most frequently asked questions about Fairies and the ancient Faery Faith:

Who Were the Original Fairies (Faeries) of Ancient Lore?

The original Fairies (Faeries / Faery / Fey …) were an ancient African tribe near the Dahomey coast. They were people of tiny stature and migrated throughout the world, teaching their enchantments.

That history was taught to me orally decades back (by someone who needs to remain anonymous) and still makes sense to me. Africa has been the birthplace of so much of the world’s culture that it likely had to be an initial source of magical culture. (Later, this post touches on how magic is not separate from culture.) Plus almost every ancient society has lore about a small, dark, magical people. One example is the Menehune—the Fey Folk of Hawaii.

Lore about the origins of Fairies differs. Some, at least on an overt level, are more mystical than what I’ve provided here. But I find none of the versions incongruent with the others.

For example, it is said Faeries descended from human women who mated with Gods. Ancient stories of Gods falling in love with human women were worldwide. Whether such lore is taken literally or not, myths in which humans and Deities couple are part of many cultures. These myths have deep roots in humankind’s psyche and echo a Fey origin that is fairly consistent outside of colonizer culture, even if we never know the actual events that underpin the myths. Not speaking necessarily literally here but, perhaps the aforementioned migratory individuals of Africa were the first descendants of women who dared to be adored by a God.

(For other lore about Fey origins, click here: Fairy, Faerie, Faery, Fey, Fay, …)

Note: I tend to use the following words interchangeably: Fairy, Faerie, Faery, Fey, Fay, Fae, … If you want to know why, click the link in the previous paragraph.

The Appropriation of African Fairy Culture and Magic

White writers almost never cite the tale of migrating Fey Africans. This lack exemplifies Africans and people of the African Diaspora originating something that is then credited elsewhere. In this case, it is the insistence that Fairies are innately a European construct.

Also, racists consistently turn BIPOC away from the very things their cultures helped create. If drawn to European shamanism, they are often treated condescendingly or excluded. When they dress up as Fairies for cosplay, they are often harassed in cosplay groups.

And lack of representation of BIPOC in modern fantasy art, literature, and film has been rampant.

Goddess Tiamat—The Babylonian Origin of Mermaids

At the time of this writing, there is tremendous backlash against Disney for selecting Halle Bailey, a black woman, to play Ariel. Ariel, the lead character in Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, is a mermaid.

This brings to mind another erasure: Tiamat, an ancient Babylonian Goddess, was the forerunner of all mermaids. No way was She Anglo.

After examining a goodly number of online debates and articles about Disney’s casting choice, I have not seen one mention of Tiamat. It hurts my heart that Her erasure has been thorough enough that I saw no one bring up Tiamat to counter arguments that a white woman was the only appropriate person to play Ariel.

I hope mentioning Tiamat here helps a little in healing wounds from the racist comments that Halle Bailey should not have been cast in the role.

“It’s Not True to the Original Vision” Is a Racist Remark

The lack of diverse representation in modern fantasy art, literature, and film is starting to shift. But it’s a bare beginning in the face of the overwhelming colonizer culture that portrays whiteness as the norm.

(One of the exceptions to white-only fantasy movies before recent shifts is Hong Kong Cinema’s decades-long fantasy genre. Check it out if you like fantasy because it includes the most visually-stunning, pulse-racing, wildly-imaginative movies I’ve ever seen.)

One argument against Halle Bailey playing Ariel is “It’s not true to the original vision.” That’s a racist remark. For one thing, the original vision was Babylonian.

At this point, a racist will want to interject, “I was referring to staying true to the Hans Christian Andersen version from which Disney adapted their script.”

Sorry, no go. Hans Christian Andersen contributed a lot to the world, but his work also upholds racism. Disney’s cast selection is helping remedy that.

Racists are insisting that casting BIPOC in the current Lord of the Rings series goes against Tolkien’s original vision. Going against his vision is a good thing. His vision was racist.

Supposedly erudite arguments that putting BIPOC in Fairytales is inconsistent with the original tales are erroneous. Often, white people’s Fairytales are Anglicized bastardizations of BIPOC’s lore or myth.

“Upholding tradition” often means maintaining the tradition of systemic oppression.

Well-meaning white people who say, “We need to change representations of Fey legends to be more inclusive” might want to examine that sentence. It defines “we” as innately white. The global majority is not white.

Much of that majority population never viewed Fey creatures as only Scandinavian, Welsh, French, German, etc. Fairy Folk are part of most native cultures.

Every people has wondrous Fairy lore. This prevalence of beauty and power is something to celebrate, not deny.

Every Culture Has Wondrous Fairy Lore and Myth

Whether Fairy lore is Polynesian, Chinese, European, or stems from another place, it shows humankind has always had a relationship with Fairy magic. It is a human heritage that left its marks in all societies and belongs to all people.

For example, Witches centuries back in my Italian family lineage and in many ancient Mediterranean villages viewed the Goddess Diana as the Queen of Fairies.

Faerie Magic Isn’t a Commodity for Oppressors to Appropriate

Magic is not a commodity for oppressors to steal for their greedy purposes. Lore throughout the world tells of Fairy magic spells that free us from oppression. The Goddess Diana was known as the champion of the oppressed.

Magic is not an object like gold in the earth that someone can cleave from rock for selfish ends. Magic is not an object to be owned. Magic is a heritage. Magic is not separate from its environment. When stolen, the Fairy Queen’s magic spells become impotent. Here’s why:

Faerie Secrets & Sacred Mysteries Thrive Only in Shamanic Cultures

For me, Witch spirituality includes living in the understanding that everything is connected.

Faerie secrets have context. Mysteries abide in Shamanic cultures. (For brevity’s sake, I am not defining Shamanic culture here. If you need a definition, imagine what it might be. You’ll probably be close enough to understand the rest of what I’m saying.) Faerie secrets are stripped of magic when they are stolen, their cultural context dismissed.

No wonder many dishonorable culture-thieves who divide all of life up into components insist that magic doesn’t work.

Another reason they can’t find magic’s power:

Magic is the living presence of the old Gods’ loving care of Their human children. Cultural thievery breaks the link to the Gods and hence to magic. In other words, ripping magic from its culture disintegrates connection to source, which ultimately is Deity.

Honoring African Faery Faith Ancestors

The British Isles’ ancient Faery Faith is not a rigidly-defined entity, divorced from the rest of the globe. African spirituality and the Faerie Faith were never separate. The Faerie Faith originated in Africa.

Another thing Witch Spirituality means for me is that the Old Gods are my ancestors. This is more than a belief. It is also my experience.

I believe in greatness because I experience the Old Gods’ powers in me.

But no one can honor or stay connected to the Old Gods unless they honor their human ancestors. That includes humans to whom they are not related but who helped create their culture.

And all humans are related, so there we are.

As to more immediate ancestors—both cultural and biological—I’ll use myself as an example. Traditional African-based spirituality is strikingly similar to the ancient European Shamanic family lineage in which I was raised. Africans are among my Faery Faith ancestors in more than one generation. Many Africans lived in the ancient Mediterranean, intermarrying and influencing its spiritual culture. The same is true of other parts of Europe, though colonizer history denies it.

Dishonoring human sources distances one from the Old Gods.

Part of addressing ancestral trauma is healing trauma from cultural thievery that ancestors suffered. I hope attributing origins in this essay helps that healing some.

Diversity, the Fairy Witch, Magic How-To Books and Classes

I teach Goddess spirituality and Witchcraft as tools for transforming one’s inner and outer realities.

No one should be turned away from magic’s miraculous powers and joys.

Anyone who wants can be a Fairy Witch. Meditations with the Fairy Queen and other Fey rituals belong to everyone. Magna Mater—Great Mother Goddess, Creator of All—is known as the Queen of Fairies, in culture after culture. She is a loving Mother who welcomes all Her children to the empowering magic of the Fey.

If you want fellow seekers who embody diversity, study with me. Click the newsletter banner below to receive notice of new classes:

Francesca De Grandis, Fairy Witch and bestselling author of Be a Goddess!, offers long-distance classes, Shamanic counseling, and healings. Her Goddess spirituality embraces practical magic spells. Trained from birth in a Shamanic family tradition of Italian (La Vecchia Religione) and Celtic Witchcraft, she practices Witchcraft that is an ancient Faerie Shamanism. An Italian Witch is also called a Strega. Francesca equates Fairy Witchcraft with Faerie Shamanism. Nowadays, most people do not view European Witchcraft as a Shamanic practice, but traditionally it was for many practitioners.

Protected: Fall Equinox Fairy Ritual, 2022

Posted on September 14, 2022 by Francesca

Urban Hedge Witch

Posted on April 21, 2022 by Francesca

Urban Hedge Witch

City Magic, Parking Lots as Mystic Thresholds, & Rose Mysteries

Before I share what’s been going on lately, a few introductory thoughts:

What is a Hedge Witch?

In Britain, hedges between properties are considered liminal spaces—potent realms suited to magic spells. A Hedge Witch is a magical practitioner who takes advantage of such powerful spaces to do rites.

You can think of hedges not only as as thresholds between properties but also as thresholds between the mundane and mystic planes.

A Hedge Witch is a shaman who often walks between the worlds regardless of whether a physical hedge is nearby.

Liminal spaces also provide thresholds through which we can enter into a new life, such as a transition from poverty into financial well-being or from lack of self-esteem into self-confidence.

I Love and Hate the Term Hedge Witch

When I first heard the term Hedge Witch, I was delighted. It evokes magical green depths, mysterious going-ons, and fantastical activities. However, I hate the way the term is often used nowadays aka I am a Hedge Witch. I am not like other Witches. I’m better than other Witches.

When we define ourselves by our differences, ignoring our commonalities, we strangle ourselves with categories. Definitions like Hedge Witch, Fairy Witch, and Green Witch can be wonderful when they help us find and affirm who we are magically. But they tend currently to be used divisively and arrogantly, neither of which helps magic work well.

And—I’m only talking for myself—the divisions don’t make complete sense for me because I’m a Hedge Witch, Fairy Witch, Green Witch, Shamanic Witch, and other types of Witches. They are all part and parcel of Witchcraft as I know it. I cannot be one type without being the other types. In fact, in my case, shamanism and Witchcraft are synonymous, as they were traditionally in Europe.

Again, only speaking for my Witchcraft: I need phrases like Kitchen Witch, Hedge Witch, or Solitary Witch because they each invoke a special magic that I want. They are lyric—not definitive—terms. Were I to use them as strict categories, they become cages that trap my spirit and my magic.

What is an Urban Hedge Witch?

Urban Hedge Witch is a term I made up. In the spirit of what I’ve said above, I don’t want to give Urban Hedge Witch a definitive meaning. Rather than provide a glib category, I prefer to let you read this post.

End of introductory thoughts.

A Happiness and Prosperity Ritual Using Rose Petals

I am having the best time! A friend sent me boxes of fresh rose petals.

We were on the phone, and I told her I wanted to strewn petals throughout my new apartment and, still on the phone with her, I looked up how to buy fresh rose petals online. I was stunned by the cost. My friend generously offered to buy the petals.

I’m becoming an urban shaman again after almost two decades of living in the woods. The rose petals became part and parcel of my return to city magic.

The petals strewn all over the floor are just a third of what my friend sent!

That same third is swept up against the door, waiting to be used again in the ritual:

I decided not to dump all the petals on the floor. I loved the amount that I dumped.

I’ve been walking through it, sweeping it up as a ritual for happiness and prosperity. Later, I re-scattered the petals I swept up, strewn them all over the floor again, to finish the ritual. (I’m not giving complete details of the ritual I channeled because I want to move on with the post, but here’s lots of Rose Magic info: https://stardrenched.com/2020/11/24/rose-magic/.)

And then there’s a great big container that I dumped the rest of the petals in. I put my phone next to it for scale. So many petals!

The rose petals were part of returning to urban shamanism not only because I used them in a housewarming rite but also because they were a gift from a friend. Generosity is pure magic.

The Right to Love Life and Live My Dreams

I’ve been running my fingers through the container’s rose petals, loving the licentiousness of so many petals against my skin and how it gives me permission to love life and go for broke. I also crush them in my hands for the sheer visceral pleasure of organic matter in my palms when I’m no longer in the country but in the middle of the gray dusty city.

Ritual Is as Inherent to Living as Breathing Is

My new apartment is tiny. After I moved in, it was wall-to-wall boxes. It kind of still was after only a week and a half here, though it was much better already.

I almost asked my friend to wait, not send me petals until a lot of my boxes were unpacked. I thought gobs of strewn vegetation might be a big mess, what with the crowded space.

Then I realized I should relish the roses whenever they came, and if they arrived soon, they would be a beautiful tool to bless my unpacking and other nesting.

I try to practice what I preach, and I teach to not wait until the “right” time to do a ritual, for example not wait until you are focused, or until you know what you want to get out of the ritual. Ritual is part of life, as inherent to living as is breathing, it was as much a part of the first humans’ life as was hunting.

Thresholds Can Appear Any Time, Any Place

The time when I’m not fully unpacked is betwixt and between; it is a threshold, which makes it a liminal space, a realm in which all possibilities can come forward for my choosing.

This is a perfect opportunity for rose magic. Rose is a symbol of the deepest Mysteries. Sometimes, they are more easily touched when circumstances are new or uncertain.

Plus Mysteries transcend time and space, so are always available to us, whether we’re in the country, the city, the suburbs …

Thresholds can open anytime, anywhere. I can be a hedge Witch anywhere, anytime. Someday, perhaps I’ll open the wardrobe that peeks into Narnia. That door can appear if I watch for it, continue to believe in magic, and ever-acknowledge that life’s problems are constant opportunities for spiritual growth—thresholds, for example, from self-obsession to self-care, from fear-induced stagnation to self-expression, or from resentments to emotional freedom.

To play with rose petals when there was unpacking I might have been doing was gloriously foolish and magically potent.

For one thing, it distracted me from the studio being filled with boxes, and from my being knee-deep in the chaos of constantly figuring out this new dwelling’s basics—where is the light switch I need right now, how do I buzz the person in who is trying to deliver a package, oops there’s no longer a door to my right, a wall is there now. My focus instead shifted to the eternal, the joyful, the potential for all I want to be manifested.

I’m an urban shaman again, using the magic that’s here, and the rose petal ritual was part of my reentry into that.

Urban shamanism was crucial to me till I moved to the country 17 years ago. My book, Be a Goddess!, originally had a passage about city magic. It was taken out, right before the book went to press. We needed to cut page count, and the section wasn’t pivotal to the lessons in the book. But I hated to delete that section. Remembering how crucial it was is important because it affirms my connection to the song I hear from sidewalks.

Urban Hedge Witch at Goddess Diana’s TriVia—Three Roads

In the city, I tend to rent places on the margins between two parts of town. It happens without my trying. I simply find an apartment I like, and it’s betwixt and between.

Now I’m living on the exact border between Duboce Triangle and the Mission District. I am the urban equivalent of a Hedge Witch, a shaman dwelling in liminal city spaces, living at a threshold.

There are actually three realities that my building borders because the Castro is so near that, as soon as I go out, I’m walking alongside members of the LGBTQ+ community.

I am at my Goddess Diana’s archetypal trivia—three roads. (See Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia by C.M.C. Green for more information. Or click here: https://stardrenched.com/2020/03/25/dianas-crossroads-during-the-pandemic/ )

The junction of three roads in the wilderness, another liminal space.

All of San Francisco Is Betwixt and Between

The geological features beneath San Francisco are, for me, congruent with the definition of liminal spaces. The earth under the sidewalks enlivens them until they speak to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of serpentine stone—California’s State Rock—hides below this city. Serpentine, unassuming, yet rich with secrets.

When I first returned to San Francisco, I stayed at a friend’s place for a few months in a posh area—Nob Hill.

I opened my friend’s front door one day, prepared to walk down the steps to go on an errand. But two fellows sat on the front stoop, clearly setting up for a “transaction.” When they saw me, they immediately stood but instead of walking off as I expected, they ambled only a few feet away. Then one of these shady-looking fellows leaned against a car, while his companion relaxed nonchalantly against a tree. There, they continued to prepare for commerce.

This was not an unusual occurrence. All of San Francisco is liminal, betwixt and between.

Greed’s Heartless Threshold between Wealth and Poverty

San Francisco has a merciless border—a thin transparent line between wealth and a poverty reminiscent of my worst nightmares, ones that woke me up in terror and left a foreboding I could not blithely shake.

There’s no San Francisco street where you will not see someone unsheltered. It terrifies me: the American attitude of “I want it all so will ensure very little is left for anyone else” is starkly revealed in San Francisco, and that American greedy norm could easily catapult me into poverty, as it could anyone, even someone wealthy.

I am also petrified by the fact that, were I to take a financial spill, the threshold through which one might travel from poverty to financial well-being is often impermeable. So I try not to morbidly focus on it.

Instead, I strive to acknowledge the possibility of deprivation as an ongoing fact of life, and I choose to participate in life. I must view my enormous fear and the possibility of destitution as thresholds for spiritual growth. I must face this fear yet leave it behind me. None of this is easy for someone who has known deprivation. But I have no choice. Fear will destroy the song in my soul.

I must also remember magic removes barriers (though my fear would tell me otherwise and can be hard to shake off) and take life’s ever-present possibility of pauperization as a threshold in which magic abounds—enchantment that I can embrace as a tool to, among other things, manifest prosperity.

Magic is miracle, so I can let go of the self-defeating belief “The deck is stacked. Success is impossible” and replace it with “All goodness is possible. All thresholds into plenty are possible to traverse.”

My Home in the Hedges

All San Francisco residents are liminal dwellers, but this current apartment stands at so many crossroads and borders, more than I’ve already mentioned. For example, the range of incomes demonstrated by the homes on my one block is remarkably wide. And then there’s the large parking lot by my building.

The lot accommodates a few businesses—a Fed Ex, a pet supply store, and a law office. The lot is a beehive of wildly disparate activity all day, ranging from elderly individuals carrying packages (usually well-off elders, or so their vehicles would imply), to truck drivers who I suspect are long-haulers taking a break, to drug dealers, to teenagers whose cars blare loud tunes, to elegant young gay couples with their dogs.

Unsheltered individuals go to and from the parking lot, as they do throughout San Francisco, though the proprietor of one of the stores makes sure no one sets up camp there.

One day, I looked out to see a homeless man whack back all the overgrowth that had come through the lot’s back fence. I don’t know why he did that. Did the owner of the parking lot hire him? A huge pile of cut-down brush is there now, weeks later. I don’t think it’s all from that one incident. I’m surprised no one’s taken it to build shelter.

Another day, I looked out and, in the corner of the parking lot right below my kitchen window, a homeless man performed obsessive and compulsive movement patterns for about ten minutes. … Well, I’m not sure he did it the whole 10 minutes since I walked away from the window and returned only briefly to peek surreptitiously.

Last week, I happened to notice a woman in the same spot below my kitchen window. As I said, it is not only homeless people who come to that parking lot but San Francisco residents of all kinds, constantly. Beautifully dressed and sharply focused, she was exiting her car. Then she placed a small rug on the ground. After removing her shoes, she stepped on the rug and knelt for, perhaps, Islamic prayer. I backed away from the window, not wanting to disturb her worship. I returned to the window moments later to see her put her shoes back on, pick up her rug, get in her car, and drive away.

This week, a man appeared in the same spot, with his own car, prayer rug, and fulfillment of sacred obligations. Like the woman who had been praying, he appeared to be well-off.

That spot below my window is the parking lot’s most recessed corner, so has become a haven for city dwellers.

How could a parking lot not be a mystic threshold, with the constant comings and goings and potential for anything to occur?

My Home Is in My Heart

I think the Old Gods sent me to this apartment to grow spiritually, become more prosperous than ever, indulge in glorious Mysteries, hone my urban shamanism, and dwell in my full power during my elderly years (I turn 73 this fall).

I may not remain in this apartment for more than a year. It might be a transition. Yet another liminal space.

But my home is in my soul and in care from my Gods, including Gaia and Mother California.

I do not feel rooted into this apartment. I feel rooted into the land beneath it. This plot of earth loves me. As did stony Nob Hill when I briefly lived there.

My roots extend deep. My roots extend wide throughout the West Coast. Uprooting myself to move to Pennsylvania was awful and unsuccessful. I felt like my legs had been cut off, my roots still here. In my 18 years in Pennsylvania, there wasn’t a day I didn’t miss being here.

Children Understand Magic and Liminal Spaces

I grab a huge bunch of rose petals. It is a small amount compared to the exuberant quantity in the container. I drop the bunch back in, I repeat this—grab and drop, over and over, the feel of the petals in my hand, then I squeeze the red velvet as it heals my weary eyes, squeeze, drop, squeeze, drop, then press my face hard against the vegetative red.

One of my favorite childhood memories appears—my father clipped the hedges (oh my, hedges, I never made that connection until right this second) then put the clippings into a huge barrel, after which I found a long something, stick he had chopped from the hedge? Shovel? and I used it to stir the clippings, stir the leaves, pretending to be a Witch, one of my favorite childhood memories, my young heart delighted by the fancy.

The delight made child-me as big as a fairy tale.

All my rose play now and the memory remind my belly and soul that anything is possible; I have all the power I need to achieve what I want.

Taming the Wild? I won’t Let That Happen!

My father, who was a terrible man, burnt down my mother’s rosebushes. (Roses! Everything is connecting. Mom’s beautiful womanly magic in the backyard.)

When he cut the hedges, he must have been trying to tame them, sculpting them into typical bourgeois rectangles. I suspect my child self felt, deep down unbeknownst to herself, that she was rescuing that liminal space, freeing it to be wild again.

I have all the power I need to achieve what I want.

So mote it be! Thank you, thank you, my Gods, my California, and my friend who sent me rose petals!

In the Goddess’ Care

Posted on April 4, 2022 by Francesca

Basking in Goddess Love

A Three-Month Immersion in the Presence of the Divine

The Goddess’ care of you will improve everything in your life, both mystic and mundane. Consistently experience Her love for you. Viscerally feel trust in love from the Divine so you relax as you go about your day. Reside in empowerment from the Fairy Gods.

What Is Basking in Goddess Love?

Basking in Goddess Love is a three-month immersion in the Presence of the Divine.

The event consists of half-hour rituals, three times a week, via teleseminar—group phone calls. No special technology; just dial your phone.

The whole time, every meeting, will be ritual, during which we simply spend time with Fairy Gods. (The word Gods includes male, female, and any other gender Deity.) In other words, our sole activity: to be in the presence of the Divine.

The exceptions will be a few preparatory steps, which I lead during the meetings. For example, we’ll set up protection to create a safe space for ritual or will center so you can focus on the rite. You’ll also need three minutes after each session to do a special grounding I’ll teach.

How Can a Half-Hour Just Being with Fairy Gods Help Me?

Simply being in Their company is to receive all blessings.

The rituals will be a chance to completely give yourself over to care from the Fey Gods.

When I spend a half-hour visiting my Gods, everything changes. No matter how much negativity or despair I feel, how many problems have piled up, or how much evil I see in the world, if I spend a half-hour with my Gods, I turn into a completely different person—the truest me. I become more centered and strong. Ideas and solutions I need come to me intuitively. A positive attitude is easier to sustain.

The energy around me shifts, too. My luck is better. Throughout the day, I’m more likely to feel my Gods by my side, the wind at my back, and my feet firmly on my path.

Trauma, Shamanism, Divinity

I want the world to be my talisman. I want the whole day to be my talisman. But how do I reach that talismanic reality when there’s so much horror and woundedness all around me in the world, every day?

Despite challenges, trauma, and the cruelty we see, the Great Mother Goddess—Magna Mater, known worldwide as the Fairy Queen—and other loving Gods can help us have the inner power to control our lives and make a better world.

Simple experiential awareness of Their presence helps heal trauma.

Repeatedly focusing on companionship with Them also brings us into a beautiful liminal space in which we shift into peace, prosperity, healing, power, and happiness.

Some of us need empowerment more than ever right now. Experiential awareness of the presence of the Old Gods provides it.

Consistent ritual is vital in difficult times. During crisis, enrolling in this event might be one of the most important steps you take. For one thing, it’ll help bring the most powerful you forward to face challenges and accomplish exactly what’s needed.

Schedule

Basking in Goddess Love meets for three months, starting May 2.

Three times a week, I will lead half-hour-long ceremonies via group telephone calls.

To participate, simply dial the phone.

We’ll meet from 2:00 to 2:30, Eastern standard time—11:00 to 11:30, Pacific time—on Mondays, Wednesday, and Thursdays.

Reserve Wednesday August 3 and Thursday August 4, the usual time, for makeup sessions in case I’m unavailable for planned sessions.

Enrollment is $250 a month for three months. Your carrier might charge you for the calls.

I’m charging far less than I would usually for the amount of work I’ll be doing, because you needn’t attend every ritual. You have the yummy option of coming to all of them, but you can miss meetings without wasting your money. Show up when you can, even if it’s only half of the meetings.

I won’t repeat information and rituals that you missed. If that leaves you unclear about something during a meeting you’re in, just do the best you can, going along for the ride. You receive huge benefits when you simply show up for rituals in which you feel a Divine presence. Plus the accumulative effect of the rituals’ loving energy is huge. More about the accumulative effect is below.

Click the Subscribe button to enroll securely through PayPal:

Limited enrollment. Upon receipt of payment, your seat is reserved. You receive event phone number, etc., by email. Refunds unavailable. Call me if you want more information or to discuss scholarship, trade, or payment plan. My number is below.

Basking in Goddess Love can be used as one of the two qualifying electives needed to participate in the advanced Fairy Witch Training .

Are You Thinking, “I’m Too Busy for These Rituals”?

When I’m not centered in my Gods’ love for me, I lose far more time than the three half-hours a week we’ll do ritual. Without that centering, I waste time on worry, obsession, time-robbing bad habits like too much social media, and ineffective solutions to problems so I am battling them endlessly.

In ancient shamanic culture, tribes were busy—hunting, weaving, etc.,—and all the more so during crisis. However, they didn’t try to shoulder on without group rites. Sacred group meetings were part of the everyday, even during major upheaval.

More Benefits from Being in the Presence of Fairy Gods

I find the Old Gods so beautiful that, when I am conscious of Them, as we will be during the rituals, Their beauty somehow reveals and affirms the full extent of my own inner and outer beauty. This is self-confidence to the max.

Experiencing Their beauty also centers me into my wisdom, gloriousness, and power. I also center into a flow of beneficial synchronicities.

Their beauty washes away my doubt and pain.

When I am aware of the presence of the Fairy Queen and the other kindly Fairy Gods, They are more able to lend me all Their powers.

They are more able to give me assistance, sustenance, magic, joy, and good luck.

**How Do I Benefit from Repeatedly Spending a Half-Hour with Gods?**

After visiting with Them on a regular basis for a while, you start to feel Them with you more consistently, not just during our rituals or on the days you attend them.

A half-hour with Pagan Gods three times a week snowballs into ongoing blessings, for example, you more consistently go about your life centered into your truest needs and wants, and you live in peace and love.

The sum of the whole becomes greater than its parts. This includes extensive healing. This three-month immersion is a soul-healing, which is greatly needed by some of us in these crazy times.

Healing includes recovering from ancestral traumas.

If You Know How to Visit Gods Without a Facilitator:

If you have the skills to visit Gods on your own, it might be hard for you to get around to doing that, unless you are part of a scheduled group.

And it can be hard—if not near impossible—to find time and willingness to spiritually tend to oneself on one’s own.

Honestly, part of why I’m leading this group is so that I have to show up three times a week to hang out with beautiful people and my sweet Gods. It’s amazing how much we humans can resist the very things that are best for us and that we love.

If lack of time keeps you from shamanic self-care, including creating or choosing rituals to take care of yourself, I have your back. I have rituals already prepared for you.

You needn’t go it alone.

What Will Our Visits with Gods Be Like?

To be in the company of the Fairy Queen and all our other good Fairy Gods is to be in Their hearts, Their care, Their magic, Their realm.

The Old Gods are miracle makers so a half-hour with Them can accomplish a lot.

For three months, we will be immersed in the source of all power.

Otherworldly time spent with Them is a nourishment and joy unlike almost anything else.

There will be various rituals. Here are some of them. We will:

* Visit the Goddess’ garden of bounty. She never kicked us out of the primordial garden. The Biblical story that we were thrust from the garden is a lie tailored to convince us we need to toil miserably for our nourishments. No! The Old Gods will welcome us into the garden and shower bounty on us.

* Also visit the Avalon isle and other Fey realms where Gods walk.

* Dwell in magic. The current of magic that flows through the universe is the living presence of the Gods and Their love for us. When we sink into that magical flow, it carries us to our dearest goals.

* Abide in Their Love for us, in the sense of settling into that love and experiencing its transformation of us and our lives.

* Revel in connectivity with the cosmos. That connectivity is union with the Gods.

* Worship the Gods, not in the usual sense of uplifting them while demeaning ourselves but in a mutual, empowering celebration of ourselves and Them.

* Nestle into the good luck that flows throughout existence. Good luck is the Fairy Gods’ care for us.

We Will Avoid Hard Spiritual Work, LOL

I am planning rites that are joyful and easy. Sometimes shamanism is hard. But not always.

Though this event nurtures inner growth, it is unlike many of my events. We will not pursue the usual vigorous disciplines I teach. For example, the focus on inner growth will not include examining oneself for behavior, feelings, and ideas that hurt oneself and others.

A mystical approach that does not include hard work can be escapism and function like a drug unless accompanied by the ongoing spiritual practices that I teach. But they are not part of this upcoming event because everything has its season.

There is a time to simply be in the presence of Deity. That is what we will do.

Catch a breath. Rest, recoup, regroup.

Relax. Let yourself have ongoing easy spiritual sustenance.

During every ritual, I also give a direct spiritual transmission.

To define my transmissions: I was born generating a beneficial field of energy. During our meetings, it adapts to your needs, e.g., personal growth, soul-healing, physical health, joy, safety on the mundane and etheric planes, the spiritual strength to get back up after life’s knocked you down. The transmissions do not focus on one benefit only, but bless you as a whole being. They also add luck to your efforts to improve your life.

Skepticism about Spirituality Is Healthy

Be Skeptical.

If you’re dubious about these rituals accomplishing what I’ve outlined, you’re smart. The world is full of “spiritual” con-artists.

My claims aren’t hype. If one of my services or books accomplished something for you that nothing else had, that begins to give you the real picture.

I trained from childhood as a shaman. I dedicated my life to developing shamanic skills and innovative ritual methodologies and to becoming a guide capable of addressing different life arenas at depth.

I can make a half-hour shamanic experience extraordinary.

Don’t take my word. Trust what your gut tells you. … Does it say my methods create miracles?

Click the Subscribe button to enroll securely through PayPal:

Pagans, Publishing, Morals, and More

Posted on March 24, 2022 by Francesca

Francesca De Grandis and Anne Newkirk Niven discuss Pagan publishing, spirituality that gets you through hard times, building Pagan community, and ethics.

Anne Newkirk Niven is the editor and publisher of Witches&Pagans magazine and SageWoman magazine. She has been a Pagan publisher since 1988, and lives with her family in Forest Grove, OR.

Francesca De Grandis, bestselling author of Be a Goddess!, is a fairy witch. She offers long-distance classes, shamanic counseling, and healings. Her Goddess spirituality embraces practical magic spells.

Francesca De Grandis: Anne has maintained high ethical and professional standards over the decades I’ve known her. That, along with her devotion to community service, make her a precious spiritual force. So I felt impelled to interview her. Anne, how have your goals as a priestess-publisher evolved over the years?

Anne Newkirk Niven: My goals as a priestess-publisher remain the same over 30+ years in this profession, but how I implement them has changed over the years.

Those goals are (in order of importance): foster and promote Pagan-centric community; provide information of use to Pagans, witches, Wiccans, polytheists and Goddess-centric folks; not go broke (personally) in the process.

What’s changed is an original emphasis on ink-on-paper magazine publishing, then a 5 year stint with an emphasis on social media, and now, a return to magazine publishing. Social media was a bit of a sugar high: lots of fast, short term growth, but no long-term satisfaction for me as a publisher.

Francesca De Grandis (FDG): Please tell me something in your specific, personal Pagan spirituality that gets you through hard times.

Anne Newkirk Niven (ANN): My personal Pagan spirituality is very eclectic, but nourishing. The one ritual that gets me through is saying grace with my family once a day (some days that’s brunch, other days it is dinner, depending on schedules) before meals. Our grace is idiosyncratic, was created by me, then added to be our oldest son when he was about seven, then amended again by adding a Japanese phrase taught to us by an exchange student from Japan. It roots our days in each other, as well as in gratitude for what we are given.

FDG: I’ve known you a long time and have seen you continue to strive toward a high moral standard. What helps you keep working toward your ideals?

ANN: Honestly, that’s a hard question. What else would I do? I guess that I really don’t think I’m doing anything extraordinary. I was raised Christian, but in a liberal church (the type that’s almost extinct these days, sadly) and I internalized the concept of self-sacrifice, honor, and compassion. That didn’t change when I became Pagan. So, it’s pretty much key to my self-image to do my best to uphold these ideals. If I did otherwise, I wouldn’t recognize myself.

FDG: Is there a Deity who has substantially supported you in your community work or personal life? If so, can you explain Their particular powers and how those powers have helped you?

ANN: I seem to be something of a serial monotheist: a series of gods (only one, actually) and goddesses have influenced my life, but seemingly for specific purposes. Usually a deity speaks to me, asks me to do something, and then when I’ve accomplished that goal, bids me farewell. First was Jesus (who I call “J.C.”) who I was very devoted to as a tween and in my teens; then a large number of goddesses in my twenties and thirties, and then a slow parade since then. I’ve had relationships with, including Mary, Kuan Yin, Oshun, and Frigga, among others. Although I have felt upheld by each of them, I wouldn’t say I relate to their powers or attributes, more to their personalities. Lately I think I’ve been called by Sigyn, but I haven’t quite figured out that relationship yet.

FDG: Is there anything else on your mind you want to share?

ANN: I’d like to share the idea of being kind to one another. I’m acutely aware that, as an interlocking set of communities, we Pagans, Witches, Wiccans, Polytheists, and Heathens (and more and allies) are a fractious bunch. But I would like to ask us all to elevate the virtues of compassion, kind-heartedness, steadfastness, and empathy. This is a very challenging time to be alive, but the gods and goddesses called us to be here, and I believe it was to share their love with the whole world, not through evangelism or bringing people to a specific path, but through living as if we gave a care about others. That’s my guiding light.

FDG: I love the beauty and honesty of your answers and cherish your closing remark. You are my spiritual sister, Anne. Thanks so much for talking to my website visitors.

ANN: I love you right back, sister!

For anouncements of upcoming fairy shamanism classes, freebies, and other sparkly yummies, click the newsletter link below.

The Well-Rounded Witch Training

Posted on December 21, 2021 by Francesca

The Well-Rounded Witch Training

Learn Different Fairy Magics
so You Can Improve Your Whole Life

Starts January 23, 2022

Classes are teleseminars—group meetings by phone. Just dial the phone to participate.

The Well-Rounded Witch Training consists of four courses, each focused on a different magical speciality.

These four areas of magical expertise contribute to your being a well-rounded witch who has the exact powers needed for any situation.

Fairy witches tend to be eclectic. I strive to be a sorceress who can use all the types of magic that’ll improve my inner and outer life. This series of courses is for individuals like me.

I want magical abilities that can meet any challenge or opportunity. This includes rituals that foster the mundane abilities needed to meet any challenge or opportunity. This series of courses is for individuals like me.

I’ve taught some of these classes since the ‘80s because they’re magical training that makes a difference.

The courses are Fey-touched, not abstract theory about Faerie shamanism. The Well-Rounded Witch courses train you in elven wizardry—application of Faerie shamanism to real life. Shamanism can not be learned in a vacuum. Learning shamanism requires applying it to real life. As a result, you enjoy a wonderful life blessed by the Fay Gods, and your own unique Fey light shines fully.

The Fairy Gods are alive. They are movement. They are fecundity. Reduced to theory, They’d be immobile, dead, and fruitless.

The Fairy Gods are every moment.

Life is movement and a series of ever-changing moments, not static. These classes help you feel your movement, fecundity, and ever-evolving being, within a larger fecundity, a bardic symphony, an enchanted dance—a beneficial flow of blessings surrounding you and your days to create positive change, right direction, and the happy breaths of a fulfilled person. You directly meet and dance with the Old Gods.

This is mysticism grounded in practical spell-crafting—witch spirituality integrated with common sense; the combination improves your whole life.

The four courses of The Well-Rounded Witch Training combine to make a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Lessons help your innate metaphysical power grow, so spells you cast from any course become more effective because you’ve taken the other courses. Also, you learn enchantments that, while actualizing the goals on which they’re focused, also spread blessings to the rest of your life; the more magic you do toward some of your goals, the more all your other dreams are fulfilled.

The weave of the four classes also provides the following benefits or brings them to the next level:
** Profound soul-healing occurs, sometimes so easily you don’t notice it till later.
* You Honor and draw on the Deity within.
* Serving all our relations in the ways your heart wants becomes more possible.

No prerequisites required to delight in these Faery Faith rituals and mysteries.

The training is suitable to all levels. Adepts experience sufficient depth. Beginners are not overwhelmed or left to fall behind but given the guidance they need.

Any two of these courses can be used as the two qualifying electives needed to participate in the autumn 2022 advanced Fairy Witch Training.

This eight-month shamanic journey has four powerful aspects:

1) 28 lessons. We meet in teleseminars—group phone calls. To participate, just dial your phone.

We’ll work in old-style oral tradition, allowing immense headway quickly. Enrollment is limited to 16 people, to allow ceremonies that can only happen in a small group, and so each participant can receive individualized attention, should they want that support.

I commit to my students. A shamanic journey is personal. Traditional shamanic lessons include individualized attention, which tailors the training to you.

2) Direct spiritual transmissions occur each meeting, deepen the rituals, make them safer, and increase experiential understanding of the course material.

The transmissions also enliven your cells, so your magic wakes to its next level of power as do your mundane strengths.

There are other benefits; the transmissions’ energies adapt to your needs, blessing your internal and external life.

I cannot imagine oral tradition without direct spiritual transmissions. They seem part and parcel.

(I’m not explaining what spiritual transmissions are because the important thing is the benefits they’ll give you during the training. If you want a definition, click here—https://outlawbunny.com/2020/11/19/what-is-a-spiritual-transmission/—and be apprised that my definition is not typical.)

3) One-on-one support by phone. I’m available should you need to privately discuss anything, or if something comes up for you during a group meeting and would take too long to discuss during that meeting.

Below are the four courses, in the order they’ll be held.

Course One: Herbal Magic of the Faerie Faith

Learn magical herbalism taught by the Fey Folk.

* theoretical underpinnings of effective plant-based rites

* practical herbal spells for love, protection, and bounty

* green enchantments for spiritual-healing and inner wisdom

* sexual health through mystical foliage enchantment

* the hidden freedom, wildness, and passion that flora offer us

* spells based in solid effective magical techniques

Plus, your connection to the Old Gods automatically deepens so Their blessings in your life increase, and you can revel in the blissful joy of Their company.

These particular herb lessons also ignite a Fey-touched joy that helps make life worth living.

Since 1988, this Third Road herbal training has provided rare Faerie spells and lore. (Third Road is the name for the body of material I teach.)

I channeled this sigil and put it here to bless these courses.

Course Two: Writing Magic!—Word-Craft to Transform Your Spirit and Your Life

Anyone can use word-magic, not just people who think of themselves as writers or are experienced wordsmiths.

Learn the bards’ skills—the magical art of shaping reality for yourself and others by writing, e.g., journal entries, musings, stream of consciousness, poems, songs, rituals, or tales.

Writing Magic! draws on traditional witch wisdoms to:

* Reach your life goals through bardic magic.

* Use word magic as a tool for inner and outer transformation.

* Use writing to heal your spirit, enrich your inner and outer life, and also to make a difference in the world.

* Overcome challenges to authentic self-expression.

* Meet the Muse and find inspiration for writing, other art, and a happy life.

* Learn how to get yourself writing, which helps you also get going on any project, e.g., cleaning the house, exercising, or practicing a new art form.

Bardic magic also automatically imbues your daily activities with confidence, passion, and vigor. You are better able to center into your power and essence so you make powerful decisions.

Whether you’re a complete novice or professional writer, whether you prefer to journal unread or hope to publish, you can expect to grow as a person, magician, and wordsmith.

You’ll create a new world, not merely on the page but in your actual reality. A word-magician’s language comes alive with enchantment and joy.

“A lot of melody just comes to me but I hated the lyrics I wrote, so stopped trying. After three weeks of using Francesca’s material, two whole songs just came to me. I’m writing!”—Bob W, producer, songwriter

Relevant background: Francesca De Grandis’s bardic works—written texts and oral teachings—shaped the liturgy and culture of the Pagan movement. Her bestselling, lyrical album of original songs Pick The Apple From The Tree was a top ten in New Age Voice and selected by SageWoman magazine as one of the thirteen most important albums of the Goddess Spirituality movement.

Course Three: Living Tarot—the Major Arcana

A tarot deck traditionally consists of Major Arcana cards and Minor Arcana cards.

This class focuses on the Major Arcana cards, which represent major changes and patterns, such as the overall spiritual and mundane journey through life. We will explore the Major Arcana’s

* divinatory meanings (fortune-telling)

* metaphysical teachings—esoteric wisdoms that empower you on the otherworldly and worldly planes

Strength, tarot card, Francesca De Grandis, 12-03. Click on the painting to see it larger.

This two-pronged approach to tarot fosters your Fey-touched mysticism while also providing you with down-to-earth guidance about finances, love, and other worldly concerns.

You will learn how the Major Arcana can guide and inform you about anything. For example, the cards can
* Expose the back-stabbing at your place of business so you can navigate it successfully.
* Reveal your inner blocks to happiness and how to move past them.
* Affirm your particular abilities as valuable to community.
* Point out the steps toward being of maximum service to your tribe.

And your inner guide will automatically become stronger.

Methods to draw on the Major Arcana’s divinatory and esoteric powers will be taught in an organized and experiential program of inner change and magical spell-work.

No previous background in Tarot required..

Fool, tarot card, Francesca De Grandis, 12-03

Students need a deck of Rider Waite Smith cards (also known as the Rider Waite deck) with them during class meetings. If you prefer using another Tarot deck, the lessons are applicable to most, but we all need the Rider Waite Smith deck as a common visual reference during the course.

My qualifications: I have been a tarot reader since the 70s, professionally since the 80s. Most folks do not know that Third Road classes started with Tarot classes. I regularly taught Tarot as a tool for divination, personal growth, and magic for many years. Now I teach Tarot only occasionally. My Tarot—and other mystical—methods are so innovative that they have been integrated worldwide into numerous systems of inner change. This has happened so often that a lot of my techniques are considered traditional, anonymous material.

Course Four: Animus Power

A Ritual to Claim Your Healthy, Joyous Masculine Power

This course is a seven-week shamanic ritual for women, men, and individuals of any other gender identity or lack thereof.

My description of this event and ideas about related matters are not intended as definitive gender statements, but are how I express theories and modalities I developed based on my experiences of my animus and the animus of other individuals.

Language can limit communication. Shamanic empowerment is communicated energetically and experientially. I encourage you to revise my words according to your beliefs if you want. You can use this course’s tools to transform you and your life in ways nothing else can. They’ve changed person after person’s life substantially for the better. So much freedom has been reached!

And with that:

Everyone has a male aspect. (The word animus means a person’s male aspect.)

In most people, the male aspect gets seriously wounded. Society works hard to blind us to this wound. Many individuals with a wounded animus don’t recognize that some of their major life problems stem from that wound.

In this course, we heal that injury and empower a caring, healthy, holy, joyous masculinity within ourselves.

We also discover and embrace the internal, loving father.

The animus healing and empowerment I’ve described helps you:

* Take action on your visions, making your dreams a reality. E.g., you acquire the power to serve your tribe

* Replace frustration and hopelessness with the determination to accomplish whatever is important to you.

* Stop procrastination and other self-sabotage that keeps you from following through on your objectives. Work toward your happiness right to the finish line.

* Express yourself fully and with confidence. When we set free the suppressed animus, we become assured and buoyant. It can be overwhelmingly difficult on one’s own to find one’s animus let alone recognize it as suppressed. I will show you how to do both.

* Heal the (often subconscious) shame of a suppressed animus. Expect a big boost in self-respect when you take this journey with me.

* Leave behind the depressing inability to find solutions. More easily see ways to survive, thrive, and self-express, and have the power to do so.

Those are big benefits that spare us misery and help make life joyful.

Starting about 1987, I led this Animus Power ceremony regularly for years. Though it helped attendees considerably, I stopped offering the event for a long time to focus on other shamanic work, though I consistently shared some of the ceremony’s material in my classes and with clients one-on-one. I started offering the ritual again but not on a regular basis. I’m thrilled to be in a position to lead the ritual this year so you can experience all its joyous, important material.

My relevant background: I developed innovative modalities for—and understandings of—gender empowerment (for example, my concept of, and rites to free, a suppressed animus). I am trained in traditional shamanic healing forms of gender empowerment and also did original, related anthropological research.

“Her insightful research in anthropology led to her innovative work in the modalities of spiritual healing.”—S.S. Kush, Professor of Anthropology

Participants have found this ceremony to be an irreplaceable pivot point toward reaching inner and outer goals that previously had them stymied. Nothing like this process is available elsewhere, even after three decades of my teaching it.

Schedule

This eight-month training has 28 lessons, all on Sundays, 3:00 to 4:00 pm, EST (noon to 1:00 pacific time), starting January 23.

Course One, Herbal Magic of the Faerie Faith, is seven weeks long, from January 23 through March 6. Reserve 3:00 to 4:00 pm est, Sunday March 13, for a makeup class in the unlikely chance I’m unavailable for one of the planned sessions.

Course Two, Writing Magic, is six weeks long, from March 27 through May 1. Reserve 3:00 to 4:00 pm est, Sunday May 8, for a makeup class in the unlikely chance I’m unavailable for one of the planned sessions.

Course Three, Living Tarot, lasts eight weeks, May 29 through July 17. Reserve 3:00 to 4:00 pm est, Sunday July 24, for a makeup class in case I can’t attend one of the planned sessions.

Course Four, Animus Power, lasts seven weeks, from August 14 through Sept 25. Reserve 3:00 to 4:00 pm est, Sunday Oct 2, for a makeup class in case I can’t attend one of the planned sessions.

There is a break after each course to keep the schedule from being overwhelming.

Enrollment

Total cost—for 28 classes, direct spiritual transmissions, and one-on-one private support should you desire—is $200 a month. Your carrier might charge you for the phone calls into the lessons.

Enroll securely with PayPal. Use the Subscribe button below for automatic monthly payments of $200, for eight months.

Upon receipt of payment, your place is reserved. If you do not receive an email confirming your payment within a few days, please check your spam filter and spam mailbox. If the email isn’t there, or you want to discuss a scholarship, semi-scholarship, trade, or a payment plan other than the subscription option on this page, or you need more information about the course, please call me at the number below. No refunds. However, you can cancel your subscription any time after the two payments for the specific course you’re in at the time of cancellation.

A few days before your first class, you receive an email with the course details—e.g., the phone number to dial for the meetings.

To participate in only part of this training, contact me, letting me know which course or courses you want. I will invoice you for $400 per course, paid in installments of $200 a month. Each course stands on its own, a training unto itself.

If you’ve taken any of these courses, repeat enrollment is half-price. Contact me, letting me know which courses you want to repeat, and I’ll invoice you through PayPal.

If you want to study these fields of magical expertise, now is the time. I’m pretty sure I haven’t taught the Tarot course and the Herbal Magic course since 2012, so who knows how long it will be before I teach them again. I probably won’t offer Animus Power again for another five years. It’s been years since I’ve taught Writing Magic!, and I don’t know if I’ll teach it again. Take these classes while you can. Embrace your animus power, herbal power, bardic power, Tarot power.

These lessons have saved me over and over. I’m blessed that the Goddess whispered them to me. More on my curriculum-creation process:

* When teaching orally, I’m ensconced within a family oral tradition I entered in infancy, learning magic con leche. I received experiential wisdom-lessons not taught elsewhere.
* Raised in a European-based shamanic family tradition that includes both Italian sorcery and Celtic shamanism, I teach a multicultural Faerie shamanism.
* I joyfully, carefully channel curriculums, constructing lessons over time. This tunes us into enormous, subtle powers. You won’t pay for a jumbled rehash of same-old same-old white-bread ideas that an unprepared teacher declared, “Voila, genuine Paganism!” 🙂 Instead, I committed my life to developing material for you.
* I received full-time, long-term shamanic training. It was not academic but an experiential training of skills. That focused study gave me the ability to trance into the heart of reality, 24-7, where I channeled lessons for seven years.
* For decades since, to ground me, my Gods asked me to trance only part of the day. Feet more on the ground than ever, I continue to explore our magical yet earthy cosmos and channel new earth-based mystic material, because resting on my laurels would be no fun. I like fun.

Fairy witch, Francesca De Grandis, is the bestselling author of the books Be a Goddess! and Goddess Initiation.

A mystical event is no substitute for medical care by a trained physician, psychiatric counseling, or other therapeutic treatments. Participants are personally responsible for the consequences of their voluntary participation.

Italian Ancestors, Prejudice, Life’s Cycles, & Useful Magic

A Good Life in All Seasons, with Help from Fairy Gods and Other Ancestors

The Fairy Gods Created Useful, Practical Magic for Us

The Year’s Dark Months Are a Magic Cauldron

A Fairy Yearwheel Ritual With Flowers

Traditional European Witchcraft’s Power and Subtlety

Africa—The Origin of Fairies

Who Were the Original Fairies (Faeries) of Ancient Lore?

The Appropriation of African Fairy Culture and Magic

Goddess Tiamat—The Babylonian Origin of Mermaids

“It’s Not True to the Original Vision” Is a Racist Remark

Every Culture Has Wondrous Fairy Lore and Myth

Faerie Magic Isn’t a Commodity for Oppressors to Appropriate

Faerie Secrets & Sacred Mysteries Thrive Only in Shamanic Cultures

Honoring African Faery Faith Ancestors

Diversity, the Fairy Witch, Magic How-To Books and Classes

Urban Hedge Witch

City Magic, Parking Lots as Mystic Thresholds, & Rose Mysteries

What is a Hedge Witch?

I Love and Hate the Term Hedge Witch

What is an Urban Hedge Witch?

A Happiness and Prosperity Ritual Using Rose Petals

The Right to Love Life and Live My Dreams

Ritual Is as Inherent to Living as Breathing Is

Thresholds Can Appear Any Time, Any Place

Urban Hedge Witch at Goddess Diana’s TriVia—Three Roads

All of San Francisco Is Betwixt and Between

Greed’s Heartless Threshold between Wealth and Poverty

My Home in the Hedges

My Home Is in My Heart

Children Understand Magic and Liminal Spaces

Taming the Wild? I won’t Let That Happen!

Basking in Goddess Love

A Three-Month Immersion in the Presence of the Divine

What Is Basking in Goddess Love?

How Can a Half-Hour Just Being with Fairy Gods Help Me?

Trauma, Shamanism, Divinity

Schedule

Are You Thinking, “I’m Too Busy for These Rituals”?

More Benefits from Being in the Presence of Fairy Gods

How Do I Benefit from Repeatedly Spending a Half-Hour with Gods?

If You Know How to Visit Gods Without a Facilitator:

What Will Our Visits with Gods Be Like?

We Will Avoid Hard Spiritual Work, LOL

Skepticism about Spirituality Is Healthy

The Well-Rounded Witch Training

Learn Different Fairy Magics so You Can Improve Your Whole Life

This eight-month shamanic journey has four powerful aspects:

Course One: Herbal Magic of the Faerie Faith

Course Two: Writing Magic!—Word-Craft to Transform Your Spirit and Your Life

Course Three: Living Tarot—the Major Arcana

Course Four: Animus Power

**How Do I Benefit from Repeatedly Spending a Half-Hour with Gods?**

Learn Different Fairy Magics
so You Can Improve Your Whole Life