Tag Archives: magic

Wisdom Adventures

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Wisdom Adventures

Updated 2021-5-2

What Is a Wisdom Adventure?

It is a shamanic quest tailored to you. Ritual tools and ancient wisdoms are individualized, shaped according to your blocks, strengths, spirit, current circumstances, and past experiences, to move you toward your truest material and spiritual goals.

During six, private, shamanic sessions, I channel a personalized shamanic journey for you, as well as the shamanic tools and wisdoms you need for that journey. I also work on developing your program between our meetings.

We meet by phone or, if you prefer, Zoom.

Since the ’80s, shamans, artists, healers, political leaders, and others who want to live fully have gone on Wisdom Adventures with me. Also called “Wisdom Coaching,” these six private visits help you create your own destiny and fulfill it.

I offer single shamanic counseling sessions, but sometimes a person wants ongoing attention. Perhaps you’re working toward big breakthroughs in your life and need help removing inner blocks to success, layer by layer. Or maybe you need the courage to follow your star and want the strength that builds over several meetings. Or confusion and doubt require ongoing exploration to find a way to personal power.

Wholeness, prosperity, spiritual fulfillment, greatness, better sex, artistic achievements? Something else? Whatever you want, let’s go! Don’t know what you want? I’ll help you figure it out. Whatever you need materially and spiritually can be on the table. Wisdom Coaching is tailored to you.

What Do We Do during Wisdom Adventure meetings?

First, we decide: should your journey last six weeks, three months. or six months (shall we meet every week, every two weeks, or once a month, respectively)? Then we discuss your primary goal(s)—or help you discover it. Building block by building block, I offer tools, inspiration, and power when you’re following a dream, facing a challenge, embracing a rare opportunity, or doing all three. Each session builds on the ones before it, making the sum greater than its parts. On the road of life, I’m by your side, a guide and cheerleader every step of the way.

Even in our initial session, we travel deeply journey into the shamanic world of transformation. If you’ve ever worked with me, you know I can facilitate a process whereby you quickly reach great depths and stunning changes.

What do I actually do for you during our our meetings? Whatever is needed! You are unique, with unique needs. I have an extensive otherworldly toolkit from my years of training and experience, providing me with many options to draw on so you get what you need to transform your life.

Guided by Deity and the moment, we go where the sacred road leads. Each moment of a visit, I intuit what is needed and how to address that need. You might receive answers to mundane questions, then the next minute be led into a mystical experience that increases your trust of your own wisdom. A few minutes later, we could do a ritual in which you find spiritual healing or a dynamite marketing plan for your new business. I helped a gymnast choose the best set of moves for his Olympic performance.

I often combine the practical and the mystical.

In every session, you also receive direct spiritual transmissions. Spiritual transmissions are an ancient Faery Faith method that increases the serenity, power, and safety of your shamanic journey, fosters personal growth, deepens the experiential nature of the journey’s lessons, and adds good luck to your life overall.

You’re the Star of Your Wisdom Adventure

You choose the course a session takes, as little or as much as you want. If a method or topic I feel divinely directed toward doesn’t feel right to you, you’re the star. This is your adventure. You and I are both conduits for the divine. If you want to take a tack other than one I suggest in a session, I am your servant.

Extensive, Lasting Change

I don’t put rhetorical Band-Aids on deep soul-wounds. Participants of Wisdom Adventures report lasting change. Seemingly immoveable obstacles to happiness leave. For example, maybe you can’t find your life’s purpose. Or you can’t find a way to escape ruinous circumstances. Or past problems still haunt you. Client after client has called my work miraculous in changing their circumstances. Trauma survivors and members of the recovery community have found crucial growth. Happy, successful folks report an increase in self-fulfillment and passion.

Did one of my counseling sessions, books, blogs, or classes provide strength, spiritual succor, answers to important questions, or freedom from inner bondage? We’ve been a great match. Now get everything you want. Love yourself up with one-on-one, ongoing coaching that a book or class can’t provide. We’ll discover all the unique gold within you and polish away what keeps you from shining.

How to Go On Your Personalized Shamanic Adventure:

1. Use my online booking calendar to make and pay for your first appointment. Important: when using the calendar, type “Wisdom Adventure” in the Comments/Questions field. Each appointment lasts an hour and costs $200. To go to the calendar, click here: http://stardrenched.com/archetypal-power-appointment/

2. If our appointment is, let’s say, Friday, April 3 at 2 pm est, then you phone me Friday, April 3, at 2 pm est.

3. At the end of each meeting, we schedule the next.

4. After our first meeting, I set up an automatically recurring payment for you, to make payment for the rest of the sessions easy. They’re paced with your appointments: every week, every two weeks, or every month.

5. If our first session is not all you hoped, no further obligation. You only pay for the one meeting.

If you have questions about whether a Wisdom Adventure is right for you, phone me. I’m happy to talk with you for as long as it takes to address your concerns. My number is below.

Who is Francesca De Grandis?

De Grandis is the best-selling author of “Be a Goddess!” She’s a full-time community shaman, as a teacher, guide, healer, and artist. Her work couples Goddess mysticism with practical magic and a down-to-earth philosophy.

Raised in a traditional Strega family tradition that has Celtic shamanism in its heritage—the family is originally from France—she practices an ancient European witchcraft that is a form of Faerie shamanism.

She founded The Third Road—an internationally practiced shamanic tradition–and guides individuals of all faiths and those perfectly happy without one.

A spiritual counselor since 1982. Francesca has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, and Cosmopolitan, as well as on National Public Radio and national television.

Her nickname is Outlaw Bunny.

Reviews

Matt O’Brien: “I’d been working on a problem for years, and Francesca unlocked and released it in just five minutes. It was exactly what I needed. Wow!”

Kathy Crabbe, Soul Reader, Artist, Astrologer: “Francesca is a beacon for me in every kind of weather. I love and adore her with all my heart and I recommend her classes, books, readings and other offerings 100%.”

Adrienne Amundsen, Ph.D., and clinical psychologist says Francesca, “has the trustworthy ethics of a Buddhist priest, psychologically sound respect for the complexity of human process, and a wicked sense of humor that keeps serious material in healthy perspective.”

Lynn Andrews, author of “Medicine Woman,” writes, “Francesca De Grandis has given us an inspirational bridge between ancient wisdom and our current life.”

If you’re ready to move forward in your life, or you want help getting ready to move forward, start your Wisdom Adventure here: http://stardrenched.com/archetypal-power-appointment/

Ethical (and Unethical) Fey Teachers

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Info about December 2020 update is at bottom of post.

Eagle with Iris in Great Darkness, OutlawBunny.

Ethical (and Unethical) Fey Teachers

Overview: Fey Folk can help us find freedom and joy. But there are evil Fairies, too—the Unseelie. They want to hurt humans. Some witch teachers work with the Unseelie. Honor your wild heart, but stay safe.

Fey Folk Can Help Us Find Freedom, Joy, and Magic

For hundreds of years, fairy glimmers in the woods have beckoned, reflecting our secret longings and illuminating our honest needs. Puritanical moralists insist the Fey are undeniably evil. However, we know better: the Good Folk can help free us from repressive religions and absurd social strictures. (Good Folk is another name for Fairies.) In addition, when we are barraged by a logic that denies magic and miracles, that fairy glimmer reassures us, telling us that mysticism is real and that the wondrous is possible.

But not all dwellers of the fairy realms are beneficent.

The Seelie Queen, Unseelie Queen, and Evil Magicians

For our purposes, this oversimplified definition of Seelie and Unseelie works well:

The Faery Queen (Fairy Queen, Faerie Queen…) is also known as the Seelie Queen and Her court known as the Seelie court. She and Her Seelie want to help us. They devote Themselves to that … when they are not off having a great time dancing, singing, and otherwise carrying on. … And even their joyful activities ring through the cosmos blessing us. However, there is an Unseelie Court–Fairies who are evil. The Unseelie Queen and her followers malevolently perpetuate great tragedy for humans.

And not all fey-touched magicians can be trusted, whether they call themselves Fey, Fay, Fae, Faerie, Feri, Fairy, or Faery.

Fulfill Your Longing and Stay Safe

Sate your hunger for luminous mystery and faerie mysticism, and for the fellowship thereof. However, it’s easy for that ferocious appetite, authentic and important though it is, to blind a person to the following: some individuals with immense glamour and fey power are pawns of the Unseelie Court. Perhaps this happens because power has made them so haughty that they are unwitting dupes for the forces of evil. Or perhaps they themselves become outright evil. Whatever the reason, it does happen.

Silence allows it to continue. I will not tolerate Fey practitioners who molest children, sexually harass students, disregard magical safety, and offer flashy curriculums that lack a moral compass strong enough to withstand the rigors of daily life. That lack of compass leaves many students frustrated and miserable for years because they’re working hard to grow without sufficient measures to guide them toward real spiritual progress. I’m available by phone if you’re concerned about yourself or a friend. I want to support newbies to the community—because they might be especially vulnerable—or anyone else who needs support.

Honor Your Wild Heart and Protect It

Francesca De Grandis, May 2012

While many cautions against the fey realms can be rightly interpreted as disguised attempts to suppress us, and to make us milquetoast, there are valid cautions. Dark mysteries needn’t be an excuse for a teacher to dominate. Wild hearts don’t mean that a teacher can ignore your sexual boundaries. Powerful magic needn’t lack caution. The quest for utter fulfillment needn’t lead to hollow longings or addiction.

There are dark mysteries that are wholesome, wildness that is authentic, satiation that is both attainable and ethical. Powerful magic can be safe. Fey fellowship, wild lovers, and powerful teachers can be both otherworldly and good. I hope you find them all.

If your Faerie heart resonates with what you read on this site, I invite you to my events. My newsletter will let you know about upcoming events, including free monthly Fey rituals via teleseminar or Zoom. Click the banner below to subscribe.

Click this banner to subscribe to my Faerie newsletter. Upcoming events, freebies, and stardust.

Update: December 2020 I expanded on my above essay for clarity. I posted it on this site in 2012 and, before that, in 2008, to friends in a now defunct Yahoo forum. Sadly, the problems addressed by the post continue and happen to both newbies and longtime time witches. However, we can stop this. So mote it be!

Paper Cutting and Candle Magic

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Papercutting, Horned God, FDG, 1994

I find folk art intrinsically magical. And I find the art of papercutting wondrous in and of itself: I am amazed that something as humble as an old piece of paper can be recycled—using nothing more than a pair of scissors—into an object of beauty. I just can’t get enough of it.

I may not always be good at it, but I love doing it. I’ve filled my home—and that of my friends’—with paper cuttings since the 70s, if not earlier.

I also came up with a way paper cutting can augment the power of candle magic. Here it is:

1) Choose a magical goal—e.g. love, money, confidence.

2) Choose a simple symbol or symbols of your magical goal. E.g. a heart for a love spell. I often like to do more than one spell on a candle at a time. The house blessing candle below is also in remembrance of my mom; she read playing cards; so, in addition to symbols that represent houseblessing for me, I also chose the shapes of the suits in her honor.

A House Blessing

Optional: Also add symbols you find powerful, just to add more “juice” to the spell. For example, in the cutting to the left, I added a seven pointed star.

3) Cut the symbol(s) into a piece of paper that will wrap around the glass container of a seven-day candle. Use fancy paper, plain paper, newspaper, a pretty page from a mag, whatever.

When doing this kind of papercutting, I usually am not concerned about making it fancy or artistically “right.” I might make a quick rough cutting, instead of the more laborious precise efforts I made for the above Horned God cutting. I can be a perfectionist when making that sort of cutting but, when cutting for candle magic, I usually prefer ease—to just have fun, keep it simple, unless I feel like taking time on making it ornate and “just so” visually.

4) Wrap your glass container, fastening the ends of the paper together with a bit of tape.

Be safe: Do not let the paper wrapping extend even to the lip of the glass container; do not wrap paper directly around a candle itself; do not leave a candle burning unattended.

4) Light your candle as you make a wish for your goal. That’s it! Simple, fun, powerful, and a chance to be creative.

Another example: For a money spell, I cut the word “cash” into paper. Here is the paper cutting before I wrapped it around the candle.

Below is the paper cutting for my above house blessing, laid out flat. (It is the reverse side so, being a magazine page, has entirely different print on it.)

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I hope you like my idea! If you do, please share a link to it—that would be lovely and needed support. Do not lift my idea wholesale onto your site without my permission. Play fair. Power to the people means the right to choose what is done with the fruits of your labor. And the contents of this site are under copyright. Thank you so much!

The Ecstatic Path, Serving Community, & False Ego

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The Ecstatic Path, Community Service, and Arrogance

A few thoughts, May Day, 2012
Updated May, 2022

Detail from Root Woman, painting by Francesca De Grandis

Detail, Root Woman, Digital Art, Francesca De Grandis .

The occult shop I worked in during the 80s had lockers out back, behind the building. Our customers would buy candles, which we would dress (for example, anoint with magical oils), bless, and then burn in the lockers. Some customers requested candles for prosperity blessings. Some asked for healing candles. The variety of magical candles covered every imaginable situation from justice to romance.

By some standards, it was such an odd priesthood, if not utterly dismissed and invalidated. The bunch of grungy lockers with wax dripping all over them was part of something many would consider hokey, outright ridiculous. But it was the real deal—powerful magic that was of service to community.

Priesthood (ministry, service, call it what you will) takes many sincere forms. Some have more prestige than others. But whether one receives a lot of acclaim or none at all, the Gods know when the heart is filled with juicy desire to serve. This desire fuels our joy constantly. And the Gods bless such a heart with peace and happiness.

The ecstatic path I walk includes a commitment to serve.

The Gods also know when the heart is heavily burdened, made sad by a self-deceiving ego-drive to be at the top of the heap. And the Gods bless this heart, too. This compassion is sorely needed for individuals who don’t understand that service fueled by the desire for prestige and ego-feed will only get them snared by false ego, which twists their magic in knots so it works against them. Goddess help them. They can end up on a hard road! I know this because I had to learn it through personal experience.

Decades back, I went into media to serve my Gods. I’m a shy and reclusive person who did not want to be in media, I just wanted to remain in oral tradition, but my Gods insisted I also enter the media. And sometimes, working in the media, my thoughts dwelt on fame or ego. When they did, it hurt me, what a mess! Luckily, my overall reason for being in media was service, so I was able to spot my arrogance and move past it. … Well, I still am arrogant to some degree, but I imagine all humans are. As long as I remain aware of when my false ego is leading the way, and I make ongoing attempts to stop that, I think I am OK.

I am amazed at the amount of serenity to which I have become accustomed. I have noted that, when my arrogance comes alive, my serenity does not remain at the level that’s become typical of me. When serving my Gods in sincerity, Their peace flows through me to empower my work. I can have a reasonable degree of serenity and, therefore, my health is good, my abundance continues, and from my peace emerges ecstasy. So mote it be.

As to the aforementioned ego drive to be at the top of the heap, ha! There is no heap. There is only the joyous dance of life and the chance to serve within it. May all we humans learn at deeper and deeper levels to dive into life fully, not mistaking titles and pomp for ecstasy and caring. And may we always know that ecstasy and caring go hand in hand, like lovers.

Root Woman, painting by Francesca De Grandis

Root Woman, painting by Francesca De Grandis. If you’d like a limited first edition-print of this art, email me at outlawbunny at outlawbunny.com

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With its relaunch in 2012, this site was split between three servers. (I know there are other options, it’s a long and grassroots story.)

http://www.stardrenched.com is mostly for the site’s blog, events announcements, and new additions to the site’s Grimoire.

The site’s original domain remains https://people.well.com/user/zthirdrd/. Among other things, it has online Grimoire entries prior to 2012.

Way back, there wasn’t space for everything I wanted on the well.com site (my site there is ancient, started back when they were very few women on the web, and site storage space was minuscule), so some side pages got put on feri.com.

This old blog explains it a bit more.

I continue to blog at my other site, www.outlawbunny.com. Two separate blogs.

Ta Da!

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Announcing the renewal and relaunch, the cosmic—and cosmically comic—revitalization of this here ol’ website. Come one, come all, join the Chaos Circus. To explore the wonders, the fantastic, the massive changes I made to this site, use the newly-added, new-fangled nav bar above. Yup, we got modern conveniences to go along with the ancient mysteries you will find here.

Stardusted Traveler, come get your weary soul shined. Have your spirit refreshed by its own beauty, then shanghaied by its own magic.

Have your peculiar ways oohed and awed at—everyone here, including you, is the main attraction.

Sit in the front row to get a good view. I’ll sit with you. Or get in the circus ring: introduce yourself in the comment field.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am the authentic, the original, the amazing and death-defying Francesca De Grandis. That translates Great Freedom, your purveyor of shamanic wonders and mystical madness. Curator of curiosities, middle management for the Chaos Gods, seer, guide, and utter fool.

I make up fancy phrases to describe myself, like bardic brat. They’re true as tar.

My mother was a fortuneteller, my father hit the road when he was 12, hard traveling. His mother was a “showgirl.” After the war, dad went down south and got into trouble. We don’t know what it was, but the story is “he hung out with hillbillies.” I do remember he loved folk music. This is all truth, it’s family history, told the first time on the web right now. I am an old woman, too old to hide those tales anymore.

That’s a bit of my tale, a bit of my myth—real and honest. Be your myth here. Dragons, Faeries, poets, and other inhabitants of the fantastic, please walk your myths alongside mine, I long for company on the spiritual path.

Tell me a bit of your story in the comment field. I welcome and invite you, praise you and incite you—Join the cosmic circus!

 On a more serious note, Terry Pratchett wrote “Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things.” Ok, quoting Terry is hardly a way to convince most people that I even can be serious. But
I take my work as a shamanic guide and healer seriously, and I am good at it. And I have
fun. Walking an ecstatic path frees you from restrictive either/or rules. And building a convincing persona as Oh-Great-Shaman wouldn’t leave time to serve community. Can I hear a “So mote it be?”
Middle Management for Chaos Gods, Francesca De Grandis

Middle Management for Chaos Gods. Self-Portrait

Magic can be quiet, subtle. I am blessed that, amidst my loud joy and silliness, some people “see” me—just another flawed human whom, for some reason, the Divine uses as a shaman.

I’ll be blogging here, while I continue to blog at my other site . Two blogs with two separate RRS feeds.

As we prepped the relaunch, I started blogging here—just four blogs sharing my personal process renewing the site, and what we revamped. I hope you read them. And this blog has info that will help you find your way around.

Whether you travel with me only on the web, or move into oral tradition with me, whether you post here or I never know you visit, I’m grateful for your wild wyrd ways. Thank you so much for coming!

Please explore the site. I’d love it if you posted feedback. You will be dazzled by dancing Deities, heartfelt happenings, genuine living breathing paradox, and more.