We have always valued beautiful things. People traded for visually stunning materials to make their tools out of, discovered pigments in nature for body decoration, spirituality in everything from the fragrance of flowers to the shapes of mountains. We have landscape photography, perfume is an industry that brings in billions of dollars, and people feel healthier living in places where aesthetic detail matters. Social elites have tried to define what is truly beautiful and some people out there would argue that beauty in life does not matter. I say it does.
A basket of makeup beside two jewelry boxes, several perfume bottles, a decorative dish, gold tray, and a small pile of headbands
A little about me. The early beauty YouTube community helped me start to learn to love myself. It was easier to get out of bed when I wanted to put on a nice outfit, do my make up, take care of my skin. Gradually over the years I linked this with my spirituality, which has a divine feminine focus. now I encourage people to care for their spirit by dressing in ways that make them feel both beautiful and comfortable, and creating an aesthetic environment that nurtures a sense of peace and contentment.
A black cat rests on one of two velvet cushions, which are pink and yellow, in front of a wood and glass piece of furniture used as an altar. The altar holds several handmade God and goddess statues, offering cups, plates holding crystals, and several other symbolic and decorative objects.
The copper plates, ceramic espresso cups, and many other items here were created by small business owners online who have a great sense of aesthetic. I created the statues by hand, though I wish I could have done more detail work, as a self-taught amateur sculpter. The photography is also my work. The layout is meant to be visually aesthetic with balance and symmetry. I really worked to choose colors that I find inviting. There are also some vintage items such as the two jewelry boxes I use for long-term spells, and the two candleholders on either side. I chose natural materials wherever possible as a connection to the Earth, which is why I also included the photography. And most of us appreciate the feel of luxurious material on our skin, such as velvet or silk, which is how I decided on my floor cushions.
Luxe magic is intentional living for the purpose of being happy and fulfilled. This means self-care, cultivating beauty in your life, doing the same for others around you and being involved in your community, actively choosing intellectual pursuits and experiences that change your perspective, and above all, taking care of the divine aspect of yourself while having a strong relationship with your higher powers. Over the next several months I plan to chat with you on the various aspects of this practice. Subscribe if you are interested.
One conflict I’ve always had a hard time with is feeling that different aspects of my nature just don’t make sense together, and it’s not a great feeling. I try to be self-aware and that’s difficult when you feel somewhat internally disconnected. Too edgy to really feel like I belong in elegant spaces. Two elegant to feel welcome in occult spaces. Too loud, opinionated, and conventionally unattractive to really feel socially validated as feminine. But all of these are genuine aspects of my nature. I love silk or cashmere when I can find it secondhand, but I have tattoos. I write poetry, paint and sculpt, but if you knew me in person you would know my conversational style could be called spicy. I am a student of the occult, but I have a somewhat materialistic nature. Because I am all about the richness of life, getting all I can out of this experience since the universe and the gods are going to guide us where we need to go. We have to take agency, that’s our gift and our responsibility simultaneously, but they will get us there. In the meantime I think it’s absolutely fine to try to live for the purpose of enjoying the experience, creating a legacy that made your world a better place, and moving forward with as few regrets as possible.
Here’s the revelation that hit me a couple of hours ago. I used the phrase your world. What this means is the social structures that are relevant to your experience, not necessarily the big arbitrary ones that have been set up for us all. This means your people, your gods or lack there of, your values. How you frame yourself within your world or your reality. You start with a foundation. Those people you have a genuine connection with. A moral compass that is based on experience and not whatever comes down the ladder of hierarchy we are supposed to climb. I was thinking about how I used to sort of be known as the pagan church lady because I had a very reserved, conservative style. Thinking about this made me realize that it’s not really about how your world sees you. It’s how you see yourself in your world, your framework. So if I want to be that practitioner with spiritual tattoos and a fairly elegant sense of style, then I create that space for myself to exist within my framework. And then all of those pieces can be united potentially, because focusing on your own framework, building your own world around that framework for a visual metaphor, means that the wider, careless, anonymous reality we all share, has less relevance. It’s reclaiming your power, ruling your domain. Then you can do two things. you can refuse access to your world for certain energies, whether that’s people or currents or experiences that you think will negatively impact your personal growth and happiness. And you can begin to manifest what fills this world of yours. I am currently exploring how daydreaming, intentionally living out those experiences in your head, can serve as a basis for manifestation. I know lots of us daydream to get a break from whatever personal circumstances we wish to escape, creating other versions of ourselves to live other lives. But what if it was an idealized version of yourself, with your knowledge, all your good points, with an appearance you actually like, living out things you desire, moments you want to see happen. Perhaps building in a little bit of focus to help channel those daydreams into energy you can put toward making your desires part of your external reality. Maybe it’s a big city condo somewhere warm. Maybe it’s travel. Maybe it’s family dinners on inherited China with children you haven’t met yet. Build yourself into your daydreams so they can be part of your world build.
A lot of us worry I think about how we are perceived. But I think it might be more important to ask how we want to be perceived only by those who are actually relevant to us and impact our lives. And before that, how we want to perceive ourselves within our own Framework. For me it’s important that how I present actually matches my genuine nature. I believe most of us are scared of who we genuinely are, and so are more willing than we should be to accept messaging that tries to feed on our insecurities and get us to obey Certain rules. And when we are scared of any aspect of ourselves we project that onto everyone and everything around us, so that anything straying beyond what we perceive as normal or right becomes a problem to us. Honestly my thoughts on how to get past this are you have to grow a backbone, look your naked ass in the mirror, be real about the good and the bad of who you are not just by physical appearance, but asking yourself questions like do you trust yourself, what actions have been mistakes and what have you intentionally done wrong, which are two different things, are you willfully choosing to ignore truth in favor of your own opinions, and what’s good about who you are. And then, just stop minding other people’s business. Those people who are personally relevant to you, their valid experience plays a role in how you let them exist within your world, your understanding of reality, because you cannot ignore their truth, and should not ignore your own. You have to find a place where you can both live if there’s conflict, or it’s time to make some space. Everyone has the right to agency, to building their own worlds, and have who they are respected, as long as they are not infringing on those rights for others. You have a right to finding your own happiness, building your own world and identity within it, but so does everyone else. Meanwhile, now that you focused on doing your own internal work, you can enter those parts of yourself you rejected, reckon with the choices you’ve made, and maybe start to build self-respect that is not based on surface level social perceptions or standards set by others. If you are focused on your own happiness and growth, your identity within your world will make sense beautifully, and maybe won’t feel so contradictory when dealing on the outside. Internal contradictions are human, sometimes we can integrate those pieces into a hole or at least figure out how to balance them, but I think the deeper issue is a question you might not have found the answer to about yourself as a hole. And that’s why I think about this stuff at three in the morning.
Most skilled magic practitioners and spirit workers are not going to share methods in depth. This is because it is actually a good thing for people to earn their own knowledge, and because there are many people in these online spaces who will try to mess with your workings For an ego trip. I’m here to share the lessons I learn through my efforts. Not necessarily how I came to understand them.
We all need deep, mutually respectful, open connections with one another. But many people are quite shallow and overextend themselves, through a sense of entitlement, demanding too much of us without building a trusting relationship where boundaries are respected. This can be emotionally invasive or abusive communication that makes us uncomfortable, invasion of personal space or physical contact that is unwanted, among other things. What this does is put us on the offensive, where we are trying to repel any potential threat and we are stuck in that state of mind. This behavior is often rooted in a sense of superiority.
On the flipside, sometimes the people we love give us a sense of being able to trust them and we pour into them, but they don’t give back. They don’t open up to us. So we’ve shared our emotional and spiritual resources with them, and left ourselves with less than what we need. It has to go both ways. Then we shut down in order to protect what we have. In our own minds we become both the giver and the receiver. We literally feed on our own energies while we are closed off from everything else. This is stagnation. This lack of natural flow of energies between you and those who genuinely love and reciprocate with you actually undermines your ability to manifest. You want to protect your resources from those presuming to take from you. That’s wise sometimes as I’ve talked about in other posts. When you create a new connection with someone you start off giving in small ways and you see how much actually comes back. Be honest with yourself about what you are experiencing. another difficulty arises when someone pours into you so much that you are overwhelmed, literally your energy shrinks to accommodate how much they are giving you. So you want to watch for those who drain you, those who demand too much from you, and those who overwhelm you. These issues are all talked about in psychological spaces, but they affect you on a spiritual level as well by creating blockages that make it hard for you to grow, evolve, and manifest.
The other thing I have discovered recently is the way you want to be perceived can very much undermine your own growth. Within certain parts of the broader occult community, even among the so-called left-hand path practitioners, a hierarchy of purity and virtue, of power, of ascendance, is pushed, even subtly. even when supposedly we are forging our own paths, there are still prescribed ways we are to go about magic and spirit work. And most people don’t seem to realize that they are allowed to experiment, be authentic, and question what they are taught. Sometimes there is wisdom, but sometimes it is OK to create something new and evolve.
What I discovered about myself is that even though I considered myself somewhat of a dark magic practitioner, even though I mostly rejected the conventions of western magic practice or so I thought, I still really liked it when I was perceived as friendly, digestible, someone to be looked up to. But I like every other human am messy, gray area, random and chaotic. And because magic is fundamentally about sentience, that’s how magic is as well. Magic is about forging relationships with spirits of open communication, respect and honesty. It’s about dirt, blood, how we feel in our bodies, and bringing together the parts of ourselves we have lost or disregarded. Even the parts that suck. Because the worst in ourselves is usually based in experience that has to be acknowledged and healed. And that’s messy work.
The best of your magic comes through when you are honest with yourself, neither trying to force an external perception of your value, nor looking down on yourself. It comes through when you are able to listen to wisdom but also be authentic, intuitive, and experimental. And it comes through when you are able to forge relationships where there is a mutual, respectful, and deep seated connection based on trust and open communication. Because you starve when you only have yourself to feed on.
I have not worked with Kali Long. I was encouraged to work with her because what she does is clear away those things that interfere with you fully stepping into your divine feminine. As this is the focus of my spirituality, in a global sense, I agreed. Very quickly a few messages were delivered.
If you want to influence changes in the world, you have to stand on your own 2 feet. You cannot rely on others to support or save you. This goes back to the idea I have presented before of being a ruler of your own domain. You can’t wait for scraps, claw your way up some metaphorical ladder, You have to build your own throne. The only one who can sabotage that throne is yourself. This means going as deep as possible in order to face things you might have been avoiding.
If you live with constant stress, if you’ve always had to protect what’s yours or who you are, you can develop a constant conflict mindset where it feels like everything and everyone is against you. You have to drop this. I know not everyone is ready to hear this message in the insane, turbulent world we live in. It feels like we are always treading water. A lot of the advice out there is how to react, how to deflect or diffuse, how to counter attack. And while you might need to have those strategies in your back pocket, because there are those who will want to bring you down, if you walk around in a constant defensive state, it actually attracts those who want to take what you have. If instead you recognize the boundaries of your domain, and move with the understanding that what is yours is already yours, without question, if you can cultivate a sense of security within yourself, you go from treading to just floating. You go from just trying to hold your place to trusting that you’re not going to sync and you will get where you want to go.
Finally, anger is a shallow thing. An explosive thing for sure, but shallow. Deep, sincere feminine rage is slow, but far reaching and much more powerful. This is still something I work with her on, as one of my own personal flaws is a short fuse. So this one I’m still trying to understand. But destruction should create fertile ground for building something new, not a breeding ground for toxicity and corruption.
I’d like to wish everyone a happy summer solstice. I made it a point to be outside for the sunrise this morning. I wanted to do something to honor her power, to draw on that strength for myself, and to connect with the Earth.
For the first part of my working I aligned 3 favorite stones I always carry with me for specific purposes. One of my core beliefs is that the fulfillment of desire and the active choosing of contentment our spiritual acts you can do in-service to the gods you work with. The first stone I worked with was Rose Calcedony, to remind me of the beauty of the summer solstice and that things will always change for the better. We are always evolving and progressing. This was connected with the energy of Lakshmi, who is a goddess I work with. One of many. She is said in lore to have the luster of the sun. The second stone I brought was a piece of Chevron smoky quartz. In order to truly feel the incredible ups and downs of life, I think a lot of us as adults have to reconnect with ourselves. This involves shadow work and soul retrieval so that is how I programmed this stone.
For the second part of this working I had a piece of white jade. This I used to connect with angelic energies, reaching out to align with feminine angelic spirits of a fiery nature. The darker spirits I work with are often aligned with water so it’s a balance. Three came to me And channeled their names. I think I will keep those private. But their energies flowed together and through me. But the element of fire was significant to them. All three had a similar build, long red hair and white gowns. They did not show wings.
The third segment of this working was to connect with the Earth, the sun, and the wind, to recharge and heal my body. The currents of energy from the Earth and the wind were especially strong and I could physically feel them.
The last part went a little sideways. There is a large tree behind my apartment building. I attempted to work with its energy and discovered that it contains a parasitic spirit who attempted to feed me toxic energy. I was going to invite several spirits I work with to a further part of this ritual but ended up having to go back inside.
I did not want technology involved in this ritual so I have no pictures of the sunrise which was in any case blocked by another building and the trees. But the wave of power that came with the light this morning was truly spectacular.
I have never really been into the organic shapes and earthy look of a lot of spiritual jewelry. I’ve always liked pieces that are bold, but still classic in their design.
These pendants have been collected over the last decade. A few are a little more ornate, but they are all basically the same simple cabochon and setting design. I love chunky brooches, pendants, bangles and medallions. They are personally expressive but in ways that translate well to the culture we live in. I’ve always liked to blend my spirituality with my sense of style. I feel no need to stand out and in fact I prefer keeping my practice quite subtle. There is something so powerful in disguising your workings this way. Someone sees a beautiful dress or piece of jewelry, and there might be a spirit housed in the jewelry, the dress might have symbols sewn into the lining. Your fragrance might be charged, you might have tiny mojo bags in the heels of your shoes. Your wallet might be blessed with prosperity oil, the one you Thrifted for $.50 because it was beautiful embossed leather.
By the way I will be offering a glamour magic course, in print downloads, later this year. Those will be $10 each for the different sections. I also offer a live course for $30 and accept Cashapp or PayPal. If you leave me a comment we can figure out how to connect. The live courses are available now.
You can do so much with gemstone jewelry. Of course you can work with the stone itself for many different purposes. But the piece can also be used for spirit keeping, that is housing a companion spirit if necessary. They can be used for all sorts of other types of spell work. I primarily use this collection for spirit keeping, although this is a process I am just now initiating, and managing my energetic body and environment as a practitioner. 
One of these is for the body, one is for the mind, and one is for the spirit. I try to employ all of these in my daily life although not always successfully. When I do, I find they are quite effective.
For the mind: self-care. This is taking baths with luxurious products, dressing up just for yourself, setting up date nights for just you and maybe some girlfriends with good food and maybe champagne. This is getting your hair and nails done, going for a walk in the park, working out or keeping your space clean. You want to recharge your emotional batteries, physically enjoy the life you live, so when life is difficult, it isn’t quite so draining. This isn’t a time to worry about having a certain body type, adhering to hustle culture, or trying to live up to unrealistic standards.
For the body: breath work and slow communication. A lot of feminine coaches will tell you to speak slower to be perceived as more feminine. This is for purposes of social acceptance. What I would add to that that they usually don’t is that you want to also speak from the diaphragm. When I am anxious or upset I have a tendency to speak very fast and from the throat, which is where a lot of women speak from. This is called up speak. If you slow down and speak from the diaphragm, you find that anger or anxiety turns to power, that people will better listen to you and are more likely to agree to what you have to say, and will perceive you as more assertive. Our deeper intuition is rooted in the solar plexus chakra which is right by the diaphragm. And I find explosions of anger or aggression are very shallow in their roots in your body, making them unstable. Up speak is great to soothe your best female friends during a bad break up. But when dealing with a world that wants to force its will on you, it’s better to speak from a deeper place of power. also making your language more direct and less equivocal, not overly apologizing or using verbal pauses, is a great way to govern an interaction in your favor. Learning how to properly project the way a vocalist does is helpful with this. You don’t want to breathe from your shoulders, you want to breathe from your stomach region. And projecting isn’t making your voice higher, it’s using deeper breath to throw it farther. All of this is an antidote to how we as women are taught to make ourselves smaller and more digestible to those around us.
For the spirit: rule your domain. A lot of feminine energy coaches will tell you that we should be about rejecting hustle culture and having soft lives. This usually trails into commentary on how we need leaders and protectors. And this is where I diverge. We can have those soft lives if we set strong boundaries and rule our domain. We narrowly define the things we want and we do not permit people or environments to introduce energies that corrupt those desires. We only take in to our spheres of influence those people and things that will align with our goals. When we don’t allow society to dictate what we should desire, beyond using it as a sort of browser to find those things, we aren’t trapped in a cycle of chasing Everything we are supposed to want and then failing ourselves. I want specific handbags, a specific make up style, train travel, enough cash to buy a nicer apartment preferably near a public beach. I don’t care to have a socially acceptable body, a perfectly attractive partner, or excessive wealth. This is what I mean. It’s partially about shedding baggage, partially not begging for scraps, and partially dictating what is allowed to influence your choices and worldview. The way I see it is, you can be a queen on her throne and accept gifts of quality, or you can sit on the floor and take only what falls from a table where those who want your worship sit and feast. You deserve your own throne. And you can build your own table with your own people.
Just remember that the feminine within you is like the sun, it gives life. You project but not in a shallow cheap aggressive way, but in a deeper way that illuminates everything. Respect yourself as the center of your universe, but also respect that everyone else is the center of theirs. Learn how to validate things you don’t understand and see new concepts as equally worthy of consideration as what you have been taught. Welcome to the path.
After 17 years officially of being a magic practitioner, I had lost my love for this essential aspect of my life. This was caused by a few factors. I couldn’t summon the energy to make my working stick. I found constantly setting up candle rituals and all of the paraphernalia you need for a western based magic practice tedious and cumbersome. I still, and always will, speak with the gods I worked with, but I didn’t want to do and own all of the things without some serious results. I had to do some investigating, and I had to change course. The moment I made that decision, everything opened up. Here’s how.
I had to stop blaming myself for the low rate of successful spell work when it came to my own goals. The work I did for others was generally successful. Through some divination I came to understand that I just didn’t have the energy to support my workings. I had to learn to find healthy external sources. And I had to learn to be proud of the skills I had gained thus far.
I had to put the wonder back in magic. Science and spirituality go hand-in-hand. And no matter the religion, people have always observed the workings of nature fairly accurately, with simple differences in terms of who these workings were attributed to. Science gives us understanding of the atmospheric patterns that create storms, but that does not mean that gods or spirits associated with those storms aren’t involved. The science will be there behind the currents of energy in the universe, as well as our gods and spirits, and I don’t necessarily need to grasp that mystery in order to have a healthy practice. I just need to trust it. Dreams and imagination play a large role in a healthy spiritual and magical practice, but when those things are overshadowed by rigid logic, the joy and authenticity drain away and my heart wasn’t in it anymore. I had to learn to set aside rationality and analysis and just allow my practice to breathe and evolve. I think in part this comes from feeling that my very creative and intuitive nature is less valuable than an analytical one in the culture we live in, which feeds on creative energy until creators are starving, but does not foster new creative growth.
I needed to lean into my dark feminine power. It was time to focus on rebuilding the connections between body and spirit, accepting that my nature is intense and chaotic, and learning to love that. There was also some emotional decluttering to be done. Of hobbies that were not enjoyable anymore, of connections that did not serve my growth, And of the self doubt created by negative reception of my ideas by others in this community. I had to shed some emotional and intellectual baggage. My spiritual energy is precious and it was being spent in too many places. Now I am in the process of rebuilding those stores and mostly trying to take a break from expending them.
At least for the moment I no longer feel the need to necessarily talk to anyone in my personal life about my practice. Right now I don’t want any of the types of input that I’ve experienced for the last 17 years to interfere with my work. And I don’t feel the need anymore to have my methods validated. I feel like I am turning inward, to become as strong as I can. but here and now, I am sharing my experience and tips with all of you who read this, in the hope that you find what I have to say valid and useful, and maybe what I have to say can help you evolve your own practice. 
Solaria Divina 