I Joined the Fairy Circus

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Francesca

I Joined the Fairy Circus

Look at my face as a child. Do I look like I was ever suited to a “normal” life?

Obviously, I had to join the circus of life, become a fairground barker, jump on a magic carousel, perform in the Fairy Big Top, and travel with a carnival between the worlds.

Hard Traveling

William, the man who raised me, started traveling poor and hard when he was about twelve. My research indicates that his mom couldn’t afford to feed him, so he left home at age seven to work on a farm. A census puts him on a farm at that time, but not in his mom’s household. This is corroborated by a family member mentioning an “uncle” whose farm she visited as a child. The “uncle’s” name is the same as little William’s employer. There is also a relevant photo.

A census also shows that William (Bill) returned home, where his mother now lived with a new husband and his son. That unfortunate young boy stole milk from his front porch after the milkman delivered it because there was not enough food in the home. He would drink from the bottle and then add water to hide his theft. He told this to his daughter, my cousin, who passed the story on to me when I told her I suspected Dad had lived in poverty as a child.

It appears that young Bill left home again soon, to hit the road at age twelve. This was a common solution if a household had too many mouths to feed.

If my earlier writing about Bill contradicts anything here, it is likely because my research netted new information.

Request: It seems that the expression hard traveling predates its use in a Woody Guthrie song. If you know otherwise, please tell me. The expression is magical to me.

It might seem odd that a phrase describing hardship is magical to me. It might even appear callous toward individuals who suffer—or have suffered—on the road. I am in no way romanticizing hard traveling or otherwise minimizing it. My family history, including my own, is why the phrase is magic for me. I won’t didactically spell out further explanation here. The situation is nuanced, so perhaps explanations require an oral give-and-take dialogue. But this essay explains in part, not didactically but experientially and embodied.

A Witch Raised on Optimism and Descended from Society’s Hedge Rows

I wonder if Dad’s love of music came from traveling. His adoration of music seemed incongruent with everything else about him. He even loved musicals. But perhaps his love of show tunes came from his mother, who was a showgirl.

I descended from people who were on the edges of society, but they were not always what most people would imagine.

I assumed showgirl was the family euphemism for stripper. But later, I saw a family painting that I was told is a portrait of Bill’s mom. Curious, I went online, armed with the painter’s name: W Haskell Coffin. I discovered he was known for painting Ziegfeld showgirls. If the portrait is Bill’s mother, she was probably in the Ziegfeld Follies or a similar group.

That is not incompatible with being poor. Here are two reasons. Many performers experience economic hardship. As in any business, some people accumulate wealth, some people barely scrape by. If she did make decent money, she would’ve been past the age of a youthful Ziegfeld girl by the time she suffered poverty with young William. He was born six years after the Follies began. Her money could’ve run out by then.

I’ve spent decades researching my family history, trying to understand it. I’m not a trained researcher. My conclusions could easily be amiss. I tell the story best I can. That’s the job of a circus barker. Perhaps putting a family history together best you can is a necessity when you come from the margins. There were so many roadblocks. For example, I contacted an organization that archives material on Ziegfeld girls. The person with whom I spoke explained that a lot of material was lost because, after Ziegfeld died, there was no money to be made from the archives, so no one took care of them. Marginalized because of lack of money.

The following snapshot of the portrait isn’t great. I took it without great equipment decades ago at a family member’s home:

(Update: Further investigation suggests this might not be my grandmother, despite the family’s claim and all the time I’d already spent researching the painting. At least it opened my mind to her being a showgirl instead of a stripper. I hope I discover the group(s) in which she performed, and I am still looking into Ziegfeld. Research is a living process; new findings lead to—or suggest—new conclusions. Unfortunately, most people in the know have passed on. Of the few that remain, I only know one who is a reliable source. Speaking of new findings: After I wrote the above part of this paragraph, I spoke with that trustworthy source—e.g., when her source might be unreliable, she acknowledges it. She provided new history: She too was told Grandma was a showgirl. She was also told that Grandma was an actress. She added that it was implied—though not said outright—that Grandma was not well regarded by the family because of her work.)

Another example of outliers in the family: Bill was as close-minded as they come. But as a teenager, I brought home a stranger. He had no place to sleep, was due to enter the Marines the next day, and carried a guitar. I assumed Dad would angrily turn him away. That would’ve been typical of my close-minded, bitter father. But he gave the guy a bed. I imagine it was in part because the fellow was soon to be a Marine, but that the guitar had a lot to do with it too.

Dad, unexpectedly, adored folk music, not just show tunes. After his World War II military stint, he didn’t return from Europe to his wife and kids right away (I wasn’t born yet, but I know the story). He went south and hung out with hillbillies. Had they met as hard-traveling children? Thus far, I don’t know where else this extremely conservative man could’ve acquired a love of folk music. And unless he had experienced it rooted in his life experiences and worldview, he would’ve loathed it in the ‘60s when it was associated with radical politics.

I am 74 years old. Previous generations of my family are long gone. Their deaths impelled me to investigate old newspapers, public records, etc., long ago. That has been and continues to be fruitful and fascinating. I will keep at it to answer my new questions about Bill and the rest of the family. Plus, the family member who I know to be reliable remains, ever-ready to talk. And the beloved dead appear in visions to point out directions I might pursue or even tell me stories.)

More Lineage from Society’s Hedge-Row Edges

Bill was not my biological dad. DNA indicates my biological father likely descended from nomads. A family story: An Indian prince proposed to Mom but she chose Bill instead. I don’t know what the family meant by Indian. Mom aside, the family’s lack of education and abundance of prejudice means family members might have considered various peoples as Indian. Was my father Arabic? Iranian? Or?

Grandma a showgirl, Bill a hard traveler, biological father possibly a royal nomad, and Mom a fortuneteller from a long line of Italian witches. I was grown in the edges—society’s hedge rows. Add that I was raised on old musicals with their fantastically optimistic themes, and I had to become a performer in the Fairy circus of life—a nomad traveling for sheer joy, both the experience of it and the giving of it.

Hard Times Taught Me Unapologetic Joy

I am grateful to know a beautiful joy that you can learn from hard times. It is a joy you learn to nurture regardless of circumstances. It is a pure, untainted joy.

That’s one reason I love the circus. Circus artists focus on creating joy and wonder, whether as a clown or trapeze artist. Their shows embody unapologetic joy.

Run away and join the Fairy Magic Circus, for sheer joy:
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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.

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.

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.

The Enchanted Kitchen: an Online Course

Posted on July 15, 2021 by Francesca

Starts the week of August 15, 2021

Learn kitchen magic for prosperity, protection, peace, confidence, courage, and nearly anything else you want.

These are quick, easy spells for life’s essentials and life’s joys. Lessons are quick and easy, too.

The way I teach you, a complete beginner can be a powerful kitchen witch.

My style hearth magic fits into your day. Most of it can be done while cooking, cleaning, and other customary activities, which means you can do plenty of witchcraft to manifest the life you want.

Use ordinary household objects, like spoons and culinary herbs, as mystical tools.

When busy, stressed, or ill, it’s hard to find time and energy for spellwork. Learn sixty-second enchantments, manageable for anyone. These spells are so easy and powerful.

And learn longer hearth rituals, for special occasions when you have time and desire.

The Enchanted Kitchen is one of the Faerie shamanism courses I channel: this style of hearth witchery is potent mystically, spiritually, and magically, and we’ll access these immense blessings easily. The Fey Folk add beauty to the magic and reveal mystical secrets. Beginners and adepts gain huge improvement, inside and out. I have something unique in this class—channeled from past lives.

You receive:

1) Twenty lessons, one a week. Each lesson is a digital Book of Shadows entry (PDF), ornamented by my original shamanic art, which blesses our work.

Course material is spread over 20 lessons to make every lesson bite-sized, so it fits into your busy week. You also get three weeks off for the holidays.

You’ll learn a lot a lot a lot. But I tailored lessons to be manageable even for super-busy folks who have countless responsibilities and constant, unexpected commitments. I want you to have tools to overcome the challenges life throws at you.

2) Four audio recordings, from my Faerie hearth to your Fey heart. Hearing a spell’s words can be enchanting. Each recording is a quick audio snack: a recitation of a bit of that week’s PDF.

3) I’m available by phone for up to 45 minutes. If you have questions about the material, need support 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.

You can also ask for support from fellow students:

4) Access to my website’s exclusive online hearth. This private page is where classmates can support each other, share victories, and ask each other questions.

This sacred discussion is just for students, without “teacher looking over your shoulder,” so you feel free to express yourself. E.g., I won’t check for “mistakes” in your magical viewpoints. You’re a grown up, in your unique process, and if you feel you might be on the wrong track with something in the curriculum, you can ask me about it by phone or ask your fellow students. My students tend to give wise feedback.

I will however pop in regularly to check that no one’s being a meanie. You deserve a safe space.

5) A free bonus: a PDF Book of Shadows for optional journaling about the lessons. Every page has my shamanic art and no text. Either type into the PDF or print the file to handwrite in.

6) A surprise gift: I commissioned fantasy artist Kathleen Marshall to paint a modern rendition of a traditional hearth blessing. You receive a digital file of the art for your kitchen, plus lore about the blessing.

Starts the week of August 15. The course is 20 weeks, which are consecutive except we skip the holiday weeks of Nov 21, Dec 19, and Dec 26. If an unexpected event makes me unable to send one week’s planned material, I’ll extend the course one extra week.

Tuition for this four-month course—20 lessons, four audio recordings, access to our private online hearth, free bonus, and surprise gift, plus one-on-one private support—~~$600~~ . Special reduced rate: $200 savings. Your cost is $400. $100 a month for four months.

Use the Subscribe button below for four monthly payments of $100. Enroll securely with PayPal:

If you need more info or want to discuss scholarship, trade, or payment plan other than the subscription, phone me. No refunds.

My online courses aren’t my oral tradition or transcriptions of oral tradition classes. The online courses are something special unto themselves—spectacularly useful and powerful.

I’ll continue to teach oral tradition classes by phone. My oral tradition cannot be conveyed online.

The online courses are curriculums I’ve worked on for years. I channeled magic tailored specifically to be exciting, effective, and safe when learned online. I was willing to spend years figuring out how to make this course worthy of you. So mote it be.

2021 Fairy Witch Training

Posted on March 5, 2021 by Francesca

Fairy Witch Training aka Third Road Faerie Shamanism Training

Third Road is the tradition I teach.

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

Training consists of four courses I’ve taught for almost two decades because they’re the core entry-level witch training and prerequisites for Third Road advanced shamanic training.

* Witchcraft, straight up * accessible to beginners * spells to manifest worldly goals * personal growth * increased intuition * power to serve your tribe *

Each course provides:
* down-to-earth applications of Pagan mysticism. This is mysticism grounded in practical spell-crafting—witch spirituality integrated with common sense; the combination improves your whole life
* experiences of the Goddess and God as living entities Who protect, bless, and utterly adore you
* the ancient Faery Faith’s transformative beauty
* empowerment to be of maximum service to your tribe
* solid magical techniques
* spells for worldly goals
* rites for personal growth
* increased intuition
* core Third Road teachings
* ancient Goddess spirituality: the Great Mother Goddess embraces men, male Gods, gender-bending, and beyond. She embraces all people. You won’t find a more motley crew than in my events. Truly inclusive.

Each person has unique magical and mundane talents. This training nurtures these passions: your particular shamanic and worldly skill sets are invoked and fostered. You attain rich selfhood and can serve tribe by expressing yourself.

Lessons don’t delineate a path we’re all supposed to walk (ick!) but instead support your particular path—your life, your needs, your spiritual and mundane journey.

Instead of a shamanic approach to which you’re expected to conform to be a “real” shaman (ick!), you’ll be in a shamanic journey designed to meet you exactly as who, where, and how you are.

The four courses weave into a whole far greater than the sum of its parts.

A teacher in probably the world’s largest Pagan tradition studied with me. She later said, “I wish my tradition had material as advanced as Francesca’s.” She was referring to my entry-level classes. This is witchcraft, straight up, and accessible to beginners.

The training is multi-leveled, suitable to all levels, and provides access to power at whatever level your spirit, life, and magic require. Adepts experience sufficient depth and challenges, but beginners are not overwhelmed or left to fall behind.

Don’t spin your wheels. In our very first meeting, you enter a circle of power. Expect immense progress in a fraction of the time you’ve spent elsewhere on typical lessons.

No prerequisites required except for one course—The Be a Goddess Master Class. That class’s description (below) explains further.

This eight-month shamanic journey has four powerful aspects:

1) 27 lessons. We meet via 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, so we can perform 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 foster 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 here because the important thing is the benefits they’ll give you during the training. But if you want a definition, you can read mine here. Be apprised that my definition is not typical: https://outlawbunny.com/2020/11/19/what-is-a-spiritual-transmission/.)

Take the entire training or participate in a single course. Each course stands on its own, a training unto itself.

Below are the four courses, in the order they’ll be held. Their descriptions are flawed but will work once you’ve read this caveat:

Descriptions divide Fairy magic into categories, which isn’t true of Fey magic as I know it. When I cast a spell to shift a part of myself or my life, the magic is nonetheless all-encompassing. Fae magic is the living, loving presence of the Faery Queen and King. During a Fairy ceremony, these Gods not only achieve my goal(s) for the ceremony but, in Their enthusiastic love for me, bless my whole person and enchant my entire life.

Thus, while each course focuses overtly on certain benefits or approaches, other benefits come too. Additional approaches come into play, perhaps subtly. This style is integrative.

A description of a course focuses on its overt aspects, though each course, to a significant extent, provides all benefits the other courses do.

Also note, near its top, this post lists benefits each one of these courses offers. I don’t repeat all that in a course description.

Course One: Faerie Shamanism—an Ecstatic Path

Curriculum focuses on ecstatic ritual, Faerie wisdoms, theoretical basics of Faerie Shamanism, and some of its more complex aspects.

Course material also helps you discover or deepen your Fey magic: Faerie Shamanism expresses itself differently in each practitioner. I help you build that personal expression, while I also offer techniques for your magical toolbox.

You are on a unique journey. The Faerie Shamanism class steadies your feet.

You also:
* learn training practices and moral stances that increase pleasure
* Gain the material satisfactions of an ecstatic practitioner, without being snared by addictions or illusions
* Embrace wholeness in all your many facets.

Holy Sweaty Joy—Ecstatic Spirituality & Sacred Sexuality

Witches are considered unholy by religious bigots because our religion teaches us to take life by the horns and use revelry to reach our life’s goals—goals of bounty, beauty, self-fulfillment, joy, service to our community, and more.

Claim these old revelry magics of the Faerie ecstatic path. Learn fun rites that do the job when all else fails. This is ritual that transforms you and your life.

Delight in Faery Faith rituals and mysteries:
* Reach your life goals—and heal your spirit—through both magical and worldly celebration.
* Imbue daily activities with confidence, passion, and vigor.
* Move past inner blocks to your inherent, sacred sensuality.
* Be a sex God(dess)!
* Affirm your unique, bewitching sexuality.
* Own your true self, so your authenticity shapes decisions.
* Own your joy.

Gentle Heart, Palm Up—Peacefully Conquering Challenges

Overcoming challenges, great or small, mundane or spiritual, is a traditional path to gaining shamanic power.

This course offers shamanic tools to triumph over problems, whether an “everyday dilemma” or traumatizing devastation. These same tools build the magical strengths to manifest whatever your heart desires in any area of your life. Since the process outlined in this paragraph is a traditional means of gaining shamanic power, this course provides an aspect of core shamanism (as do all four courses).

As always, lessons are not theoretical. This class provides the experience of gaining mystic power to conquer your immediate problems and how that creates the exact magical strengths, methods, and mental shifts needed to overcome all life’s difficulties and fulfill your life goals.

The last thing any of us need is a class that’s too hard. Like most of my classes, this witchcraft is gentle, peaceful, and potent.

Gentle rituals can be more effective than obviously strong rites. Sometimes, only gentleness draws forth our wildness and helps us live free.

You’ll learn a witchy fluidity that makes you unstoppable. I jokingly coined the terms Faerie Taoism and Fae Chi Gung to explain this course: we relaxedly flow with nature’s patterns, so nothing can stop us.

Gentle Heart, Palm Up training saves you mega-time: move through roadblocks quickly and serenely, instead of wandering stymied and anxious. Conquer problems peacefully.

This material helped heal me and my life from the trauma of becoming crippled overnight in 2001 and the crises—e.g., financial problems—that can domino from major illness. I was so depleted that, when channeling these lessons, I was too ill to type or even hand-write them. I dictated them to someone. Then, because of these lessons, I rose like the Phoenix. At age 70, I’m healthier than I was in 2001, my finances recovered, and my spirit is whole.

Course Four: The Be a Goddess Master Class

This Witch Training provides the following benefits. If you’ve already received them, they reach the next level:
* Your inner guide becomes stronger.
* Your connection to the Old Gods deepens so Their blessings in your life increase, and you can revel in the blissful joy of Their company.
* You acquire magical and mundane abilities to meet any challenge or opportunity.
* Profound soul-healing comes—sometimes so easily you don’t notice it till later.
* You Honor and draw on the Deity within.
* Serving all our relations in the way your heart wants becomes possible.
* Fey-touched joy that makes life worth living ignites.

The magic in my book, Be a Goddess, has unpublished, more advanced facets. They meet you as you are now, in whatever circumstances you’re in now, that you may live the way you truly want. I’ll teach you that material.

The tools you already have from one of the prerequisites will gain deeper layers of power, which you can apply to your current situations.

Feeling powerless? This class will change that.

Already feel plenty of power? Rock on! And if you’re not achieving everything you want, this course is the next step.

You also learn new techniques: I’ll teach you new tools and how to apply tools from the books—for whatever you need: prosperity, creativity, or anything else.

Prerequisite for The Be a Goddess Master Class

Complete one of the following to take the Master Class:
* first 12 lessons in my book, Be a Goddess!
* first 8 lessons in my book, Goddess Initiation
* one entry-level class in Third Road’s Mystic Rose branch (which I taught face-to-face in San Francisco)

I scheduled The Be a Goddess Master Class as the last of the four classes, to give you time to fulfill one of the prerequisites if you haven’t already.

If you start soon, there’s time to do the first 12 lessons in my book Be a Goddess!.

Been a long time since you did one of the prerequisites? It doesn’t matter. Don’t think you have to start again. You’ve done the work.

Don’t feel like you did it well enough? Doesn’t matter. You did the lessons. Learning witchcraft is a process. Give yourself a chance to move ahead with it, toward your life goals. You can always return to earlier work later to do it “better.”

Schedule

The eight month training has 27 lessons, all on Sundays, 6:00 to 7:00 pm, EST, starting April 25.

Each course is seven weeks except The Be a Goddess Master Class is six.

Course One, Faerie Shamanism—an Ecstatic Path—runs April 25 through June 6. Reserve 6:00 to 7:00 pm, Sunday June 13, for a makeup class in the unlikely chance I’m unavailable for one of the planned sessions.

Course Two: Holy Sweaty Joy—Ecstatic Spirituality and Sacred Sexuality—runs June 27 through August 8. Reserve 6:00 to 7:00 pm, Sunday August 15 for a makeup class in the unlikely chance I can’t attend one of the planned sessions.

Course Three: Gentle Heart, Palm Up—Peacefully Conquering Challenges—is August 29 through October 10. Reserve 6:00 to 7:00 pm, Sunday October 17 for a makeup class in the unlikely chance I can’t attend one of the planned sessions.

Course Four: The Be a Goddess Master Class meets October 31 through December 12, skipping November 28 for Thanksgiving. Reserve 6:00 to 7:00 pm, Sunday December 19 for a makeup class in the unlikely chance I’m unavailable for one of the planned sessions.

There is a break after each course, so the schedule is not overwhelming. Plus chances are good we won’t need to use the make-up dates so will have them off too. We break on June 20, August 22, October 24, and November 28.

Enrollment

Full cost—for 27 classes, direct spiritual transmissions, handouts, 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.

If you’ve taken this training or one of its courses, repeat enrollment is half-price. Contact me, and I’ll invoice you through PayPal. To participate in a single course, contact me for invoice.

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. You receive course details—e.g., the phone number to dial for the meetings—by email. For more information or to discuss scholarship, semi-scholarship, trade, or a payment plan other than the subscription option on this page, phone me. No refunds. However, you can cancel your subscription after the two payments for the specific course you’re in.

There Is Only Now

If you want witch training with me, now is the time. It’s been between six and three years since I’ve taught some of these courses.

There is only now, and sky’s the limit. We’ll immediately dive into ultra-focused lessons between the worlds.

Please note: along with the four above prerequisites, participating in advanced training requires two electives. You might have already taken one without even knowing it. Here are some recent events that qualify (and there are plenty of other qualifying electives to choose from):
* One of the 2020 or 2021 daylong retreats
* Dragon Magic
* Magic For Business Success
* Laughing Vulva, Goddess Womb
* the breath healing course and the sound healing course combined qualify as one elective
* ditto combining both three-week Trauma, Shamanism, and Victory groups

Advanced training will start 2022 (if enough folks are interested) and not until well into the year, so there’s time for you to take electives. Sometimes, we can delay an elective if you haven’t done two before the advanced training begins.

You can’t find these lessons elsewhere. I’m utterly grateful the Goddess whispered them to me because they’ve saved me over and over. More about my curriculum-creation process:

* When teaching orally, I’m ensconced within a family oral tradition I entered in infancy, learning magic con leche. I receive 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 thoughtfully, joyfully, carefully channel curriculums, constructing lessons over time. This tunes us into enormous, subtle powers. You won’t pay for a jumble of undigested white-bread ideas that an unprepared teacher declared, “Voila, genuine Pagan stuff!” 🙂 Instead, I committed my life to developing material for you.
* I received full-time, longterm shamanic training. It was not academic but an experiential training of skill sets. That focused study allowed me into the heart of reality, in trance 24-7, channeling lessons for seven years.
* For decades since, my Gods asked me to trance only part of the day, to ground me. Feet more on the ground than ever, I continue to explore our magical yet earthy cosmos and channel new earth-based mysticism material, because resting on my laurels would be no fun. I like fun.

Fairy witch, Francesca De Grandis, is the bestselling author of Be a Goddess! and Goddess Initiation. A teacher, guide, and healer, she offers long distance classes, rituals, private counseling, and healings. Her Goddess spirituality embraces practical magic spells. Raised in a European-based shamanic family tradition with both La Vecchia Religione and Celtic shamanism in its lineage, Francesca’s witchcraft is a multicultural Faerie shamanism. La Vecchia Religione translates the Old Religion and refers to the practices of an Italian witch, also known as a Strega.

Upcoming Fairy Ritual

Posted on January 21, 2021 by Francesca

Ancestors, Past Lives, and Witch Power:

A Seven-Week Fairy Ceremony for Magical and Worldly Success

Our Heritage from Ancestors

My first ancestors spun threads of wisdom and power. Generation upon generation wove in more threads, until now thick ropes connect me to all powers and wisdoms.

In this seven-week rite, we become more connected to these ancestral cords by shifting our cells and awareness. Thus linked, our intuitions and hearts discover wisdoms and powers lost over the ages, e.g., hidden enchantments, obscure herbal medicines, extraordinary spiritual balance during the hardest times, the weave of mysticism and down-to-earth savvy, and other empowering choices suppressed by mainstream society.

We Are Magic

Our DNA is stardust; magic fills every cell of our bodies.

In our veins, ancestors’ blood flows, coursing back to the fiery explosion that bloomed into all existence. That creative force is the oldest, most powerful enchantment and is ours to use. It is within us. We can manifest anything. We will claim this power in our meetings.

Healing Ancestral Trauma and Living Our Innate Magic

Trauma suppresses stardust DNA. Ancestral trauma transforms the familial DNA, thwarting its magic. We will:

* Heal ancestral traumas—or call them ancestral wounds—which are sufferings of a family member or members that pass down to every generation, ad infinitum, until healed.

* Heal from centuries of stardust DNA being refuted and suppressed.

* Center into our stardust DNA. We’ll cast off confusion and doubt about our fey essence and insightful common sense. We’ll gain confident clarity about our innate magic and mundane skills.

If you choose to avoid some ancestors or don’t know who any of your ancestors are, you can still do this seven-week ceremony. I’ll show you how.

We Will Strengthen Our Magic, Hearts, and Minds
The Old Gods promise freedom:
we have the right to
an enchanted, fulfilling life,
ease in our steps,
wildness in our hearts,
health in our bodies,
trust of our beautiful fey souls,
and confidence in our intellects.
This is a witch’s freedom.
Find it,
celebrate it,
live it: enroll to attend the Witch Power ceremony.

More information about the event:

Working Directly with Ancestors

We will
* Invoke ancestors for guidance, empowerment, and healing
* Heal ancestors and be aligned with them. Aligning one’s energy with ancestors is a traditional shamanic practice that makes your witchcraft and mundane endeavors powerful and creates both physical and spiritual health.

Every Past Life Weaves with Ancestral Lineage

I experienced in my bones that the powers I knew in past lives and the traumas I suffered in them are woven into the threads of power and trauma that link me to ancestors. The seven weeks will:
* heal trauma from past lives
* restore us to wildness, enchantment, and beauty of past incarnations
* give us not only worldly and magical powers of our ancestors but also power we held in past lives

This ritual is suitable to both novices and adepts.

The last time I taught this was five years ago, so if you’re interested in it, grab the chance now. I don’t know if and when I’ll offer it again.

This event is a Faerie Druid rite and a prerequisite for advanced Third Road Druidic training.

These rituals are group meetings by phone. To participate, just dial the phone from anywhere.

We meet seven Sundays, from 3:00 to 4:00 pm EST, starting February 7, 2021. Meetings are held consecutive weeks except we skip February 28. Reserve Sunday March 4, same time, for a makeup session in case I’m unavailable for one of the planned meetings.

Tuition: $400. Your service provider may charge you for the call. The event’s area code is a U.S. #.

Half price if you’ve taken this course before. It was previously called Witch Power, Ancestors, and Past Lives. The half-price option is in the drop-down menu below.

Enroll securely using PayPal:

Upon receipt of payment, your place is reserved. Seating is limited. Event phone #, etc., is emailed to you. If you need more info, or want to discuss payment plan, scholarship, or trade, phone me. No refunds.

The above photo is of my mom, may she rest in peace. Her witch blood flows in me, telling me I’m a Goddess. We’re each a God, descendant of the Faerie race. This ritual helps us access our Divine power.

The Old Ways can be fully embraced. They give us mystical and worldly strengths. My mom modeled for me a path of Goddess mysticism coupled with down-to-earth practical savviness. For example, she was an amazing businesswoman.

Enroll securely with PayPal:

A Garden Is Magic

Posted on November 16, 2020 by Francesca

Photo of Jenelle’s Garden. In the garden is a statue of Quan Yen and a street sign that reads “Queen Street.”

Months back, I gathered with some of my sister Third Road initiates, by phone, to do a magical spell. (Third Road is a tradition of Fairy magic that I channeled and continue to channel.) During our ceremony, Jenelle Leigh Campion read a poem she’d written about her garden, pictured above. Her artistry wowed me once again.

The poem also portrays themes dear to me:

* Inner wholeness created through connection with the larger whole and through appreciation of every part of the whole. This sensibility is central to my journey as a spiritual seeker and Fairy shaman.

* The green world as an enchanted realm in which each plant is a living spirit. Plants are my friends who give me great joy with their beauty and wisdom, while they help me with my witch spirituality.

Here’s Jenelle’s poem, prefaced by her introduction:

This piece was inspired by a writing prompt that asked me to write from a “family consciousness” perspective and use the “royal we” pronoun to describe a family having a group experience. Instantly, my garden called out as the collective voice that would like to be channeled into my writing and this was the result.

Garden

We are the garden.
We are the ones who grow.

In the misty, humid dawn we drink in dew
collectively unfurling
from the evening’s contraction.

Hibiscus sees the light first,
standing almost as tall as the wall behind us.
Only a few shy flowers appearing amidst the bush.

Our bright pink petals of Lady Magenta
highlight brightly
in the sea of our green.

The tender arrives to inspect
our changes and newness
and inspire the cherished waters to flow,
refreshing and preparing us
for the work of the day.
Growth.
New achievements unlocked.
New blossoms to bloom.

Magnolia is always in the light drawing nutrients
down from the heavens and
up from below the foundation.
She hugs the earth and sky.

The cluster of Bamboo and Rosemary
are the grandmothers in the garden.
Kwan Yin stands in their heart,
reminding compassion.
These plant darlings shimmer in green
and laugh into the wind as they bend.

The potted plant party corner thinks
it’s having an exclusive event.
And they are right.
The late day sun is their jam!
Drinking in and
reveling in brightness
their medicine becomes
plump and potent.

We all become more
plump and potent,
happy in our brightness
or shade.

Easter Lillies, Holly, and Queen of the Nile
liking their cool calm zones
to chill and become beautiful.

We are the garden.
We are the ones who grow.

We are one circle,
within a larger neighborhood circle,
and a city circle,
state,
country,
continent,
world.

One global plant family
everyday turning up
to bring delight
to our courtyard.

Jenelle, who also paints amazing pictures, says, ”It is my joy to send art out into the world because it nurtures happiness, creates feelings of abundance in our lives, and shares the spiritual support and magical empowerment that the sweetness of beauty can provide.

I’m blessed by my students because, like Jenelle, they are amazing companions for me along the Faerie path. Join us. My newsletter tells you about upcoming classes and other events. Click the banner below to subscribe.

Honoring the Ancestors: The Man Who Raised Me

Posted on October 5, 2020 by Francesca

Photo of my beautiful young parents

Honoring the Ancestors: The Man Who Raised Me

Honoring ancestors has many aspects for me as a witch, and just as many for me as a human and individual. I want to touch on a few, before talking about my dad.

Ancestors Who Were Oppressors

Human nature being what it is, we all have ancestors who were horrible people, and some who were outright oppressors.

When I teach how to contact ancestors, do ritual with them, and live in alignment with the old ways of our forebearers, someone inevitably asks, “What should I do about awful ancestors? I don’t want any contact with them, let alone honor them.”

Whether the student deems those ancestors oppressors or terrible in other ways, the question is important.

The answer can’t be one-fits-all. Nor can I personally hang the problem all on one hook; I’ve had to approach it from a lot of different angles, including the following:

I myself have had to make peace with awful ancestors. For one thing, I don’t want hate in my heart. I can no longer bear the damage it does me.

For another, making peace helps me regain wisdom lost over the ages—herbal medicine, witchcraft, and other empowering choices suppressed by oppressors.

My very first ancestors at the beginning of human time (well, I believe the line from which I descended started long before that, but I won’t get into that here) started threads of wisdom and power that have spun forward in time. Every one of my ancestors has held and holds a piece of that thread. I don’t want my resentments to break the thread any further than has already happened. Even if an ancestor contributed to that breakage, I want to repair it.

Making peace doesn’t mean I ignore injustices ancestors have perpetrated, any more than I’d bury my head in the sand about living family members who are complete racists or otherwise awful.

But I find some peace in my heart, and that is how I honor ancestors whom I otherwise want nothing to do with, and thus repair threads that might’ve been damaged by them and my own hate. This is what I’ve learned through my own trial and error and what works for me.

What Is Ancestral trauma?

Ancestral trauma—or ancestral wound—is the suffering of a family member or members that then passes down to the next generation and the next, until it is healed. Though it’s passed down through behaviors and internalized oppression, as a shaman I also sense a maimed energy that each generation picks up. That energy also transforms the familial DNA. The behaviors and internalized oppression help create and maintain the energy. And vice versa.

Finding peace about awful people in my familial line is part of how I’ve healed the ancestral wound they passed down to me from the trauma they themselves caused to my other ancestors and that they themselves might have suffered. Carrying hate in my heart continues the legacy of hate and holds trauma securely in my DNA. Feeling hate is one thing. Holding onto that hate is another.

Ancestors if You’re Adopted

Another common question is how to deal with ancestors if you’re adopted. There are so many questions when it comes to that, including one relevant to this post: making peace with an abusive adoptive parent who has passed on, or with their ancestors.

A family member of any kind carries (or breaks) the thread of ancestral wisdom, power, and information. My theory is that, should that family member have adopted you, they hold a piece of the thread not only in their own bloodline, but surprisingly enough, hold a piece of the thread in your own bloodline. There’s not space here to go into that theory. But, if you’re like me, making peace with adoptive parents who’ve died could be important.

Awful ancestors are no small concern. There can be huge challenges, including endless questions. It takes time to deal with it all.

For example, it’s taken years to make peace with my father who has passed on. And I still experience some hate for him. I will continue to work on it.

Learning to align with my ancestors that I might live in the magic, beauty, wisdom, and power known by my forebearers has been an ongoing process. There’s been no single step then, voila, all done. But I take one step at a time, and that yields big results.

I’ve repeatedly needed to take different types of action.

For example. I’ve had to channel a lot of ritual to do this work. But now I have a body of rituals I can continue to use and also teach in my classes, and draw on for one-on-one shamanic counseling sessions. (Links to information about classes and counseling are below this essay.)

My first ancestors spun threads of wisdom and magic. Generation upon generation added more threads, until now thick ropes connect me back into the past, to my very first ancestors.

The answers that help me might not be the right ones for you. My experiences are not your experiences. But sharing our experiences can be healing. The following story about my father represents a bit of my journey making peace with him.

May 12, 2020:

Honoring the Ancestors: William Stafford

Dad, looking worn My father was always on the outside looking in. And he loved music beyond all reason.

He was a small-minded, violent man, who suffered a hard life.

I found his name in the census, which shows that, at seven years old, he disappeared from his mother’s household.

I found someone by his name in another household, that of a farming family. I suspect Bill had been sent out to work and live on a farm because there were too many mouths to feed in his own home. This is possibly corroborated by information one of my relatives has provided. In the census, Bill appears back with his mother a few years later.

Around the time he disappeared from home, his mom remarried. Did Bill’s stepfather not want him? Was this one of the first times Bill was on the outside looking in, face pressed up against the glass?

After a stint in the military during World War II, he returned from overseas and disappeared again. As a child, I was told that, during that period, he was in the south, “living with hillbillies, and ended up on a Georgia chain gang.”

My young father in uniform

Decades later, I asked him about it. All he’d tell me is that it wasn’t a chain gang. It was prison or jail, I can’t remember which, and he wouldn’t tell me why he was arrested.

After his time in the south, Dad came back to Boston—where we lived—and continued to be on the outside looking in.

He would pretend to be Irish, in a town that adored the Irish.

He would pretend to be a cop. In 1964, I was 14, and the Beatles were playing in Boston. The arena was a madhouse. When the concert was over, the crowd poured out into the lobby, and there was my dad, come to drive me home.

“How did you get in, Dad? Why did they let you in?”

He had convinced the security guards that he was a cop. Perhaps he’d flashed them a fake badge; I can no longer remember.

There was a police radio in his work room in the basement. My dad, the not-cop.

He chased fire engines. One time, he pursued one of those howling trucks, only to see it turn onto our street. He kept following. The truck stopped at our house.

Always on the outside looking in. A spectator to his own house on fire.

The man was as right wing, racist, sexist, -ist, -ist, -ist, as you can get. But when I was sixteen, I met a guitar-carrying hippie who didn’t have a place to stay. I brought him home. In retrospect, I don’t know why. Dad hated hippies.

But dad didn’t throw the kid out, didn’t care that he was a peace-loving hippy with long hair. The guy was carrying a guitar, and that’s all that mattered.

Or, maybe, Dad knew what it was like to not have a place to stay. Perhaps that’s what happened.

Bill loved folk music as much as he hated liberals. In those days, folk music was paired with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and revolution. Dad didn’t care.

I wonder if his appreciation of folk music came from his hillbilly friends.

Bill loved show tunes. This macho man raised me in a home where vinyl recordings of Broadway musicals constantly played in the background. I still know a lot of those lyrics by heart, and still happily belt them out to entertain myself.

Dad looking worn but happy When I was 14, I asked him and Mom if I could start going to folk music clubs. These were clubs for adults, and were not in my neighborhood. They were in downtown Boston and Cambridge.

Mom and Dad went to a club with me and decided I could go to them on my own.

Their attending the club with me was bizarre because they usually had very little to do with me. I was a feral kid who’d raised herself.

But there was Dad’s love of music again (and Mom’s huge-hearted ability to foster my wild dreams and artistic escapades).

Within months, I was playing some of those clubs myself as a musician.

When Bill died, I felt like someone hit me in the head with a 2 x 4. But only days later, I needed to be in the music studio. Before recording my album, there’d been 10 years of starts and stops. Recording were finally underway, due to circumstances that were temporary, the deadlines were incredibly tight, and I didn’t know how much longer Bruce Smith—my coproducer—would be available. It was now or never for this, my first, album.

It just so happened we were scheduled to record a song I’d written about Dad years back. When I arrived at the studio, I told Bruce that I’d probably break into tears at some point, and to give me five minutes to cry, and that then I’d be as professional as always. I also told him to not pull any punches when we were critiquing the mix; I didn’t want him being sensitive to my feelings; I wanted the best possible recording.

When recording the song, I thought of how Dad’s face was always pressed up against the glass, an outsider looking in. He would’ve loved to have been in that studio with me that day when I was recording a song about him, would’ve loved to have been on the same side of the recording booth’s glass walls.

The album was a bestseller. Dad would’ve loved that.

Mark Chimsky, who’s edited some of my books, asked me for a blurb today. I don’t usually give blurbs. The whole blurb thing is often just one big dishonest elitist scam, with people in power giving blurbs only to other people in power, and excluding most everyone else. But Mark is one of the most ethical, dear individuals I’ve ever met. He would’ve opened the window if he’d seen Dad’s nose pressed against the glass.

Later that day, I saw my blurb along with 19 others. The top blurb was from Johnny Cash. There was my name right below Johnny’s. I wanted to cry. The two names together would’ve meant a lot to Bill.

It doesn’t matter whose name is where. It’s all ego and illusion. Bill’s lack of self-worth drove him to construct a false ego, which he kept inflated by pretending to be Irish in the Boston of my youth, where Irish was a big deal—and an Irish cop at that, which was an even bigger deal—and by bragging about his teenage kid who played guitar.

He kept his false sense of self inflated by hating everyone who wasn’t … him. America was better than the rest of the world. Massachusetts was better than the rest of the country. Our neighborhood was better than all the other neighborhoods. Our family was better than all other families. And he was better than everyone else in the family.

He’d disappeared from the census, disappeared into prison, and disappeared into the recesses of his own self-doubt. So he bragged and hated.

I’m not saying his choice to brag and hate is the inevitable result of being made invisible and being shoved to the other side of the glass.

I’m not saying he shouldn’t have been made accountable for his hatred. I’m saying his choice is understandable.

I didn’t like Bill. He was an awful man, in ways there’s no point in giving details about here. A few years ago, when I found out that he wasn’t my biological father, it was a relief to know that we didn’t share DNA.

But I’ve come to understand that he was an intelligent, passionate, inventive fellow, and that he was shoved around and denied, denied, denied. (For one thing, he was a self-taught electronics engineer and resented that lack of college education kept his earnings low, despite many years in the electronics field.) I’ve come to compassion for this guy who helped make my childhood miserable.

No, I didn’t like Bill. But I’ve come to appreciate him.

… I guess in that sense I’ve come to like him. I appreciate his wandering restless spirit that led him to the south after he’d already been in Europe, long from home.

I appreciate his intelligence, vehemence, passion, and determination.

I’ve often wondered if he was one of the young boys who hopped trains during the depression, thrown out of the house because there wasn’t enough food. If so, that was a hard time, and he was a vagrant, wandering. I appreciate that he wandered away from his own soul, and the closest he could get to chasing after it was running after fire engines.

Wherever he thought the fire engines would bring him was an illusion, even when a fire truck brought him home to our house. And somehow, I’ve come to even like Bill for that.

I imagine somewhere, on the other side of the veil, Bill is wandering. I can’t imagine he’s been laid to rest. I can almost see him with my otherworldly eyes, see him waiting for reincarnation, needing another chance.

Dad looking worn but happy Though it’s geared to inflate his false ego, I’m happy today to tell his spirit, wherever he is, “Dad, look, look where my name is. Next to Johnny Cash’s.” And, “Dad, I never mentioned it before. My album with the song about you on it? It was a bestseller. And that book I told you I was writing, right before you died? Bestseller and dedicated to you.”

It doesn’t matter whose name is where. The prestige of a best seller doesn’t matter either. It’s all ego and illusion. But I’m happy to tell Dad where my name went today and to tell him the album and book gained recognition. Because illusions can be all someone has. Blessed be, William.

Additional Material

Honoring mothers: https://stardrenched.com/2017/09/18/ancestor-magic-mothers/

Mentioned above, the best editor ever: https://markchimskyeditorial.com

Newsletters to stay abreast of upcoming classes: https://outlawbunny.com/newsletter/

Spiritual counseling for ancestral trauma and other concerns: https://outlawbunny.com/pastoral-counseling/

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