You see, something's going to happen. What?
What's going to happen? What? I welcome back to the Occult Rejects. Today we have Marshall, better known as Marshall the Witch of Southern Light, a practitioner of the cunning arts, a writer and a voice a lot of people in modern witchcraft have come to know through his books and
his podcast work. He is the author of Cunning Words, The Red Mother, The Diary of an American and the Diary of American witch His His work blends folklore, witchcraft, story, spirit, and lived practice in a way that feels old rooted and very real. So today we're going to get into his path, his practice, his books, and how he understands
the crooked current of witchcraft and modern world. In the modern world, And just a reminder as well, before I introduce everybody, there is a website that we do have. I am trying to just plug that more often so people know that we have it. If you're into reading, there is tons and tons and tons of stuff on there,
I highly suggest to check it out. Also multiple contributors, and we also do have a merch spot where we do have two different types of T shirts that we do have available, and now there's enough out of me, and let me introduce the other people joining us. We got Judith to the loom. What is going on, Judith? How I I'm fine?
Thank you for having me, Marshall. I can't wait to hear all you have to share with us.
You could catch me on YouTube, on x and on speaker as the loan catch me every Sunday with weekly brunch and once a month I do. If you happen to know anybody who's a veteran, I do buddy check and thank you again.
Nick, of course, of course, thank you, thank you, and Sonry. Please let everybody know what's up with you. I know you've been on the show before, but in case they don't know you are, you know, introduce yourself a little bit and let everybody know where they can find all your amazing work.
Please.
Yeah, yeah, I'm Sonray. I've got a YouTube channel and I host a cult university, a mystery school, which you can find at www dot the Order Ofcastmagic dot com. It's magical with the k. Marshall has given a guest lecture over at school, as well as many other practitioners. Marshall is one of the ones who I really look up to the most. So I'm very excited to be here and hear about your new book. I haven't read it yet, I'm going to. I'm very excited about it.
Awesome, Thank you very much. Man. Just anything else you wanted to plug or anything before we go?
Oh yeah, one thing. You know, it's cool, you know, as you guys know why. I just recently finished my own book and I'm doing fifty limited edition leather bound hardcovers which I'm i'm binding myself, which you're going to be very very cool. There are twenty two of the fifty left. If you would like to pre order one of those, They're on my website under the order ofcastmagic dot com slash books.
Well that's something good for you, Congress. Good luck on that. Yeah yeah, yeah. So Marshall, please let everybody know what's up with you where they can find any of your stuff, promote whatever you got to, let people know what's up.
Thank you so much for having them the show. I'm really excited to be here. People who don't know me, I'm Marshall, which is Southern Light or Marshall WSL is my pen name. People can find me on Instagram, threads and TikTok at, which of Southern Light all one word. I am an author and I do also have a podcast like as you said, Southern Bramble with my co host Austin. My three books please, I'm an independent author
and an artist. I do all the artwork, the cover work, everything binding your own books.
That's amaze.
That's pretty amazing. My first book is a Cunning Words Grimwore of Tales and Magic, the second one, which is kind of a spin off or a continuation, The Red Mother, and now officially The Diary of an American Witch, which is thirteen Months of my life where I document experiences, theories on magic, my own personal practice, spells, spell mistakes, memories, and really influential experiences I've had in the past that kind of shaped me to be who I am as a queer Texas witch.
There you go, awesome man, Thank you very much. I really really appreciate you coming on to talk about your books too. I feel like, kind of like looking at your stuff, I get like I get more of like the folklore and the practical witch like you know feel too, And I like that I think that's a little bit different than other people out there sometimes, you know, So it's a little bit I think different from my listeners. So I'm excited for this. Thank you, Yeah, think thank you.
I definitely would ascribe the title like folkloric witch traditional witchcraft, animism. It's much more and soon rhinos. I love the power of a story. I love the way that magic flows through a tale, and how so many stories throughout history weren't just things to say around the campfire. They taught lessons, they taught recipes, they taught songs, they taught epic tales. You know, you read about these epic poems in the
Bardic tradition of teaching a story through song. I think that that is kind of where the heart and crux of where my own practice in witchcraft lives in that power of the story. And honestly, a lot of the untold stories, I think a lot of folk practitioners, whatever that may have been described at the time, may have not had the power or ability to have told in the past. So I kind of want to reach into this.
I always call it the mystical Yesteryear because my stories don't have a timeframe, but it is very clear that they exist some point in the past and history, and they seem to motivate and inspire the practitioner of magic. Within the story, they have experiences that push them to make deals with spirits a crossroads, or seek to know the spirit of herbs or plants or sigils or conjurations.
And a lot of times, I think in modern publications, which is it's very pervasive, where we see lots of how to books, lots of one on one books, lots of people writing about their craft, which I think is lovely and beautiful. But sometimes I feel like we're missing the whimsy in witchcraft. We're missing the mysterious. We're missing that eerie fog in the forest where the witch is
believed to brasil. You know, a lot of times in history, before we get to some of the witch trials, if we go back even further, the witch was this mysterious creature. It was almost not even entirely human. They were a spirit inhabited human that existed somewhere in a liminal space. And we see that in a lot of older historical stories. We see that they aren't just a person that lives
amongst the community. They're an outsider. There's someone you go and seek when you are at your most desperate, and sometimes there's a little bit of a trickery going on, and sometimes it's just straightforward I can do this for you for a price. And I don't think a lot of those things get discussed in modern witchcraft enough. And that's kind of where a lot of my inspiration for my practice comes from.
I like how you said that, Like I would say, like you know, we could be looked at as like like you said, as an outsider, but then someone's kid gets sick enough all of a sudden, they're coming to you and ask, can you feel ain't definitely now?
I would would you say you're putting to print and hitting a larger scale than those that because what you're talking about is what people and it doesn't matter if
you're here in the US or anywhere. You're in that small town, and it's the whispers you're putting, the whispers of go over here if you need this done, and this person could do this for you, but be quiet about it and stuff like that, and they tell them that's the feeling you're giving me that you know the stories that your grandma used to tell you when they wanted you to.
Behave Oh, absolutely well, you know, that's very, very true. There's a couple of great books that I've come across that I think are really fascinating. The Silver Bullet and Other American Witch Stories, I think is a fascinating one. It was a collection of documents where this author went and interviewed a lot of Appalachian residents who had been there for generations since their families immigrated, and they brought
over with some their stories. And we see many of these stories that have that set root in America, but also come from over in the UK. They come from Europe, they come from Germany, they come from from Italy. They come from these places where where entertainment was stories but also information with stories, and so you read some of these, Like there's a whole collection of interviews where he asks these these residents, these people who are living there, how
does one become a witch? And with each story he gets,
he gets different types of folklore around. You know, under the full moon at midnight, you go up to this mountain and then you put one hand over your head and one hand under your foot, and you say, I renounce my baptism, and I give everything between these two hands to the devil, And like These are stories that were passed down and they I feel like many of them seem to have gotten somewhat lost, because when an oral tradition stops being spoken, we don't get to continue
to pass them down. And still within some families and communities we see this. But I wanted to share my craft in a way that gave new stories, stories that were clearly inspired by history, but also very much by my own life. In my first book, Cutting Words, there's a story. It's actually a story about a smallpox outbreak and these these power of three spirits who come together, the the the Red Fox, the Black Fox, and the White Fox and what they do to heal this, you know,
dying queen and this tower who's lost her husband. And what was very interesting is as I was writing that story and I promise, see the whole story gets better, but just go and read it. I think it's very fascinating. What was actually going on in my life is where at the town where I live was actually having a
huge monkey box outbreak. And this was the time, and I want to say late twenty twenty two, early twenty twenty three, when monkey pox was making its way through the country and the gay community was the largest community being affected at the time. I was watching as people were having to lock themselves away for a week, you know, one to two weeks at a time, with these painful poks that did not exist in this country for over a century and a half. We had no vaccination for it,
we had no recourse for it. I was watching as the political sphere was using it as an attack on the queer community. I was watching all these things happen, and I was like, this is history repeating itself in the most basic of ways. And I remember I had a good friend of mine. I had four different friends at that time who were all being slated from a monkey pop's outbreak, and they were positive. They were living with these deeply painful sores and hard fevers and really really,
really aggravating body aches. And it was on day ten my friend reached out to me and he said, I don't know what to do anymore. It's not going away. Is there any way that I could ask for your help? And he knew I was a witch. And it was actually this charm that I had written based off of a little story the Three Wise Healers, about these these three spirits, one with red hair, one with black hair, one with white hair, and how each one. You know, it was just a little chant that I had made
myself before I ever wrote this book. And I said this chant over a collection of verbs and put it in a little satchet, And then I braided a red thread braid necklace while continuously saying this charm. There once were three wise healers, one with hair as red as blood, one is black as a raven, one as white as flax. The first one healed your wound, the second took your pain, and the third one made you whole again. And I would just say it over and over and over again
while I'm braiding this. And I went to his place. I knocked on his door. I told him I was there, and I put it on his mat because I couldn't go in. It's a very, very contagious pox, and so I left. He texted me and said thank you. Within two days they started scatting up, the pain went away, the fever dropped, and he told his friend about it.
His friend messaged me and asked for the same thing. So, because I said this charm and gave this to them, and I watched what happened with them healing from it, I decided to write a story about it, and I built this grandiose story about a smallpox outbreak that was
affecting this kingdom. And this story kind of unfolded. And you know, because historically stories were inspired by real events that were happening at the time, always know those real events because now it's so many centuries later, Like, not many people know that Ring around the Posey was written about the Black Plague. You know, not many people know that so many of these things that were written about and passed down were actually written about modern things that
were happening at that time. And so if you read my first book and second book, Hunting Words in the Red Mother, you'll notice a lot of author's notes where what inspired the story was something that was either happening to me in my life or politically or to my community. And I wanted people to know this is where that story comes from, and this is what the outcome of that story is.
It's wild.
It was wild.
Yeah, right, that's cool. That that should work too, That is wild too.
Damn well, magic works. And I think that you know, that's that's the main message, that is, it's not that it's missing. People are shouting it from the rooftops. But it's hard to get through to people. And one of the thing that I think Marshall does better than anyone is get it through because story does that right. And you know the way the Marshall like, sorry, I'm gonna
fan boy for a second. He's not gonna give me him an air, but the way like Marshall changed my life because we needed the guest lecture over at the Order of Chaos. He talked about desire and about story, and I struggle, like, I love talking about magic, but if I were gonna talk about magic for one and three minutes, I'm gona pull up a graph and a chart and
it's gonna be with math. And that's that's the way that I do and teach magic, and that's I think that that's important also, But it doesn't penetrate the subconscious. You have to do that part through the mechanisms that I'm like, here's how you do that. But Marshall's just doing it and it's it's powerful and it makes you feel that makes the hair on the back of your next anthem.
Well, you know the power of a story is really amazing because it evokes emotion and I think emotion is the crux of magic. Like when you feel something when when when the hair on the back of your neck stands up, when the goosebumps on your arms prick, that is a vibration within the body that actually moves something
that's cellular. And I do think that sometimes when you're you know, performing a spell, there are times where I am working with there's a collection in my book that talks about working with the days of the week as magical vectors for the planets, right, And so I have these chants that I might do over a talisman that I'm calling upon the power of Saturn or Venus or Mercury for something that I've written down on their seal and fold it up and made into a little paper talisman,
and you know the numbers that correspond with those planets. I'll chant it that many times. And I notice that, you know something that may call for seven chants, or this chanted seven times. The strain that goes through me as I'm chanting it on that third, fourth, fifth time, the the firsess of my voice, the way that I call out, the cadence that changes as I can feel, you know, the power and the desire and the want and the need for change. It's building, it's energetic, it's
it's very much. It reminds me very much of that old concept of the cone of power when you have, you know, the the coven dancing, envisioning this power growing into an apex point, pushing it out as you all fall down to let it go. That happens when you chant. That happens when you use repetitive, repetitive wording, you can feel something start to move inside of you. That's not quite the same thing. As I drew this symbol, I burnt it in my cauldron, and then I went and
made breakfast like I love that. And sometimes that's simple simplicity really works. But I want to when I approach my craft, I do it very much with feeling, and when I teach it, I have to find a way to make others who are learning it feel it too.
You definitely do that with the power of the story.
Hard How do you learn to do that? Where did that? When did it click for you that that was the way to do it? Or is this is how your brain works?
Like what my brain never turns off? I was literally thinking about this earlier today. There is not a moment of silence in my life. As long as I am alive, I'm either singing something out loud, whether it's a real song or words that are stupid because I'm singing them to my dog who's deaf and can't even hear me anymore. Like I'm I'm talking to myself. I'm thinking about things. There is not a moment where my brain just shuts up. And I do find that kind of allowing that to
roam can can feel like a journey. It can be kind of fun. Sometimes it takes you to weird places. I do know. I've had some really weird experiences between where I let my take me and when I especially start to mix it with my craft. I do all my writing on the elliptical, like at the gym. Like I get on the elliptical, I put on Lindsay Sterling electric violin, and I just get in the notes app and I start writing, and sometimes you know, all.
Of the sudden, what's that again? It to some sort of flow state like that.
That's exactly what it is. It's almost like a transstate. This the repetitive movement. I used to take spin class, and I remember there was this one instructor who did a really really good job about creating this flow state. And I remember feeling something that was very different from just exercise. It felt almost transcendent, like I was pushing my body to experience something that was out of body. And I started trying to kind of channel that into
my writing. And now I cannot write if it's not on the treadmill, on the elliptical, if I'm not in this repetitive motion, I'm if I'm at the couch on my phone typing, or like on the computer, I'm just like, I don't my butt hurt, Like I don't know my mind's going other places. It's almost like I need my body to be a little bit removed so I can focus.
If that makes sense exactly. I totally get what you're saying that as well.
I use binural beats for the same.
Reason love biniral beats.
People.
That's probably a better idea I have. I have an elliptical right there that I bought and I used it one time.
But you know, there's in my book. So I wrote The Diary of American Witch alongside writing The Red Mother.
I was writing them at the same time. So one of the things that really stood out to me is as I was writing, there's a section called the Seven Nights of Celestial Transvection, which is a seven day ritual where you are doing and transvection just meaning a spirit flight or witch's flight where you are doing a meditation and transwerk to experience flying to the Temple of Saturn, flying off to the Temple of Venus, flying off to the Temple of Jupiter, then Mercury than Mars, then the Moon,
and then of course the Sun. And I was writing it based off of a story where this character, the Red Mother, is going on a pilgrimage and she's traveling across the land and she stops at each one of these temples, learning the magic of each planetary priest or priestess. And I loved this story because it was categorizing her
journey and learning the craft. And I said, well, how can I actually turn this into something that other practitioners can do, And so I started writing out these rituals that involved a kind of a step by step process of creating a trance like state and then flying off to go to these places and then actually checking in with yourself when you are there. Is what does the air feel like on your skin? What smells are you smelling? What colors are you seeing? What vegetation are you seeing?
What do you feel under your feet when you land? What color is the door of the temple? What sound does it make when you open it? What does it feel like to the touch. I want you to have a very intense sensory journey. So when you come back, whatever has come to you in this trans like state, you can then take it. You can write it down into your grimoire, your book of shadows, your magical record keeping. You now have a closer relationship with that planetary spirit.
Should you need to call on them again, you now know what stones might be better to use to call upon their power. You might know what herbs that You're not going to find it in Llewellens' Complete Book of Correspondences, because the spirit told you in this experience instead. And I thought, okay, I'm going to write this ritual out, but I can't publish it if I'm not going to do it, if I haven't done my So the diary
actually documents me doing this myself. And I recorded myself, like an actual audio recording of me going there, and then kind of vocalizing my experience along the way, and then I just stream of consciousness after the fact, wrote out what my experience was. And I had no idea what was going to happen when I went to these temples. I had no idea what I was going to see, what I was going to feel, And there were a
lot of surprises. There were a lot of things that I came out of it thinking like, Okay, I feel like I can understand that this was catered to me, and if someone else was going to do this, it's going to be catered to them. And I think I've spoken to a few people who have been doing these rituals and they're coming up with these wild experiences which are very different from mine, and I think that's very much on purpose. And it's not seven days in a row,
because the experience is backwards. It's actually seven weeks, one day a week. You start with the Temple of Saturn, then you wait a week and you go start and you continue with the Temple of Venus on Friday, and then you wait a week and you do the Temple of Jupiter on Thursday, and then Wednesday with Mercury, and then Tuesday with Mars and then Monday with the Moon,
and then finally Sunday with the sun. And because it takes set at minimum seven weeks, you have time in between these to observe your life, observe the experiences you have in between these time periods. I started noticing, especially after doing the Temple of Jupiter, some financial stresses that were happening, and I had some interesting things that happened with money popping up and savings that I didn't know i'd had. After the Temple of Mars. I'm a hairstylist
by trade. I had a client come in I'd never seen before, and he was the spitting image of the visualization I had when I was at the Temple of Mars, and he was a metal smith and a woodworker. Like it was just this crazy experience. And part of the ritual that I had written in advance was observe your life, what comes in, What experience are you having, How are you noticing that you might be able to apply the
new things that you learned. When I was leading up to the Temple of the Moon, I was having a ton of intensely emotional experiences, moments where I would, you know, burst into tears at small at small provocateurs or extremely loving moments with a very very close friend. It was very emotional, and the moon and the flow of water and water magic and emotion and psychology that is the the that is the virtues of the moon and Monday
and then straight. It was very very strange, and I got to document all of that in my diary so people could see what I experienced, take it in, and then have the opportunity to go and do it themselves.
I like the fact that you include not only the emotion, but the events that happened leading up to your ritual and events that happens after, because I think when most people practice, they forget that the energy is going to be around them, They forget to see the signs of its working.
Because I guess I don't know if you will agree with me.
People when they plan a spell, do a spell, they expect a certain outcome, and if it doesn't come in that form, they think it didn't work.
Yeah, in the beginning, for sure, that happened to me.
Of course, outcomes and spellcraft are really fascinating. Another thing I was able to document in this is like I am one of those people that believes that magic in general works, but very often does it not work in the way that you think it's going to. Magic is like water in a river. It is flowing, but you know what, it's flowing around boulders, It's flowing around tide pools.
There are times that the water is more dry and low, in times that it is a river rapid, and sometimes you might find that there are boulders that it's going to take a long time to get around, but eventually it's going to make its way to its final end. The thing is is, depending on the go arounds it has tried to make, that end result might come a little differently than you thought it would. Sometimes it's the
most mundane thing, the most mundane thing. Like I had a situation where a friend of mine ankle was swolen and hurting, and so I did a healing spell for him, and then it swoll up like crazy and he had to go to the doctor. The doctor that you have gout, Like you have gout, you need to do this, this, and this, I'm going to prescribe this, like he needed a direct medical protocol to treat this gout. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't done that.
I think that healing magic can heal something just as much as it might bring you to the medical care that you need, because especially a lot of people are really really listen, people don't like doctors. Healthcare in America is expensive. People will avoid it as much as they can, and sometimes magic might end up meaning that it exacerbates the situation to force you to get the medical care needed, and sometimes it just makes it go away, depending on
how it's going to do its job. You know, you give a spirit an assignment, the spirit's going to do that assignment. You don't always know how it's going to accomplish it.
That actually that it's sample actually brings up another question when Okay, when we do spells, we're doing it because we believe we deserve and were at a status in our life where we could accept what we're asking for. Now those turns and those boulders, would you say it is.
Bringing you up and giving you the experience to.
Better accept what you are asking for, Because sometimes you may think I may want I may think I want a million dollars. I get that million dollars from playing the lotto, and I blow it the next day, didn't pay my debt didn't do anything. So for people who likes to do money spells and lotto spells, maybe you're not getting it because you are not there, because that's what your example is showing.
No, absolutely, I also know that that's I would definitely agree with that, and I don't think it's one hundred percent always that. Sometimes those boulders and those and those tide pools, sometimes those are just real life blockades. Like sometimes those are like I have known people to cast spells that have zero road to fruition. They will, you know, they'll do a money spell for the lotto, but they won't buy a ticket, like and that's a very simple one.
You know, they'll do a job spell, but that they won't apply to any job. So a lot of times magic needs to pair with the mundane, but sometimes people won't because they just think magic should do all the work. We still have to do the physical work too. You know, if you banish someone and then you continue to call them every day, what are you doing? Like that's that's that's not real. People will do a cord cutting and then literally immediately text them it's it's wild to me.
And don't even get me started on TikTok cord cutting spells. What does this mean?
What does this mean?
I think people will do that frequently as a way, and I don't think they're doing some purpose. I think that they want to convince themselves that magic does not work, because it absolves them of some responsibility in the situation. You do cutting and then you text the person immediately, Well, magic doesn't work. God damn it. Why did I text
that person because you did that? Yeah, you know, but I do think that had you not done that spell, Marshall, it's a good chance that person would have lost their foot. Guess it goes on long enough and you just don't do shit about it. It's too late.
It's too late, and he's doing great now, awesome.
I suppose. Uh, did anybody have any questions or anything before I go into some other stuff.
I was thinking something just a second ago. But my brain, my.
Brains, my brain's the same way. I will have what I think is the most excellent thought, and then immediately it just goes out the other year.
Oh yeah, no, I know what it is now, because you mentioned something that's happened to me and a number of other practitioners as well. You talked about this person who came in to get your services as a haircylist, who was the embodiment of was it Jupiter?
You said this one was Mars actually yours.
So okay, how did that affect you? Because I've had that same experience and it's a real physical person and there's your life that is clearly archetypal and the result of bell work. But they're standing right in front of you. Yeah, they're solid And to me, it's like my brain doesn't recover from that, like it's changed permanently. So how did that affect you? Oh?
I still think about it today, like it is one of those things where I think and this kind of goes with what you were just talking about before too. I think that there are a lot of people like listen, we're all online. I think there are a lot of people who profess to be great and powerful, which is online, but in reality, they don't.
Believe in they're on that.
They don't even believe in magic like they I think that there are a lot of people who are who talk big, but then they don't actually believe in it. And to be perfect honest, I think there are a lot of spiritualities who identify with the culture that they are involved in that is part of their community, but at heart they're secular, and that in itself in general is not a bad thing, because it's great to be
part of your own culture and community. But at the same time, when it comes to witchcraft, when it comes to magic, I don't I don't understand. I don't really understand the concept of having a craft that you secretly sometimes even a secret from yourself, don't really believe in.
Like it's a shock when it actually works. And at the same time, as I even say that, for this guy to show up, I was just like, oh my god, like this is what Like it was unexpected, and and you know, I kept talking to them, asking questions, and I know that this was just enough. This was a person, but it was just weird that it was his first time and he wasn't one of my regular clients. He was actually someone else's who called out sick that day, so they moved them over to my schedule, and you know,
we had a great conversation. But at the same time, it brought me back to seeing a real life, in person outcome based off of a ritual. I was dead. I did to bring me closer to this to be a wash within the spirit for the week too, because when I was doing this, the idea was is when I come out of this, I am now a wash in the spirit of Mars. I am a wash in the spirit of the Moon. I'm a wash in the
spirit of Jupiter. I have taken in what they have to teach me, and now I need to go out into the world and either apply it, internalize it, write it down, try to figure out and understand how it applies to my own practice. And again, now I have more information when I want to call them up. We are now closer, closer to this spirit because I've done this, I've reached out, I've gone to their temple and I have said I want to learn from you. What do you have to show me?
Yeah, that's oh my God. So you know, I when this has happened to me, and I've heard this story now from three of the third practitioners who have said something to me almost identical to this. And I've had this experience myself, and I to me, it was the moment where and it's not that I didn't believe, well, I believe in spirits. I've always believed in spirits. But I I believe, and I'm not saying that you should believe or anyone else should believe unless I tell you.
Don tell people what is happening here, what's objective. But I see that as spirit inhabiting a body and coming to talk to you. And it's just it's you know, like, I don't believe in coincidence at all. That's the kind of like the crux of the way that I think of magic, because the coincidence isn't real. But I just when spirit takes form and is standing right in front of you, and I think it happens way wait, way
more often than people realize. But when you when you have the opportunity to experience it and realize it, that's when it's it's so incredibly mine. And I wanted to comment also on what you said about disbelief why people not really believe in and kind of say that that is why that exactly right there is why I have changed what I call my practice from chaos magic to chaos witchcraft. If the chas magic is said and I'm not, I'm not, that's it. Yeah, I think the chaos magic.
I'm not trying to knock it I make videos defending chaos magic, even though I have many disagreements with Peter Carroll, you know, but like at its core, it is like, oh, it's all just a trick of the.
Money, and well, I no, no, I I totally see that. And while I very much recognize the value of secular witchcraft, my personal craft is spirit based. It is very animistic. It's very animistic. Everything that exists has spirit. The herbs that we use are not a recipe. They are spirits who carry virtues. I am asking them or telling them, this is your assignment. I'm putting them in this bag. I don't know these three herbs with a scroll written
what its assignment is. And I may say a few words over it, or give it three breasts of life and lock it tight. I have done something that is way less like a recipe and more like a verbal or written contract with a single or collection of spirits. And there are grand spirits and there are small spirits. It's it's as simple as Austin likes to put it this way. I love it, and my co hosts from the podcast. There's the spirit of Rose, and then there's
the spirit of the rose. I grew in my backyard that I picked and I'm holding in my hand.
The Uh, somebody does have feedback of some buzzing noise coming through. I got really bad before. I don't know if like somebody's wires may be loose on their stuff. It comes it kind of actually yeah, it comes and goes. But it's like getting worse at this point. Now is it me?
When I talk?
Uh? No, you know what. I honestly, I've muted I think almost everybody and can't figure out who's coming from the truth. It just keeps keeps them, keeps just showing up. It's yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, they call them up, all.
Right, hold them on one second. Let me try. I think it was you, Marshall. I think it is you. Yeah, it's gone now yeah, maybe it's you, like your headset or something.
Can you try Do you want me to unplug and just use my computer one?
Oh? Yeah, yeah, try that. Maybe we'll see if that works. Yeah, you might have to go into settings and unfortunately pick the right like no, I'm so sorry, Yes, stream it isn't. I think you might be good now? How's that perfect? Oh? Much better? Yes, awesome, thank you, thank you? Oh? So one thing I was Was there anything you guys wanted to keep saying. I'm sorry it kind of interrupted you. I played three all off. Now, I don't know where you might have been. I think I'm good, all right.
One thing I did want to ask you, Marshall, uh, because you know American witch? What does that mean to you?
You know? When I first oh, that's a big question.
Sorry.
Now, Well, the reason I titled it the Diary of an American Witch is because when I first started writing it, the title was actually the Diary of a Witch, and it was very much inspired by Sybil Leek. She wrote The Diary of a Witch and it was published in nineteen sixty nine, and she was a British practitioner, generational. She lived in southern England and she had a life story to tell. But as soon as I was reading it, the first thing I noticed was this isn't a diary.
It's a memoir, which is cool and it's wonderful, and I enjoyed reading it and everything she had to share. But I really wanted to read a diary, like, oh my gosh, who doesn't love the idea of going to an old estate sale and coming across someone's diary I would pay five dollars for that, and I would absolutely read it.
It's like reading an American horror story or something possible.
It is it is. But when I finished the book, one of the things that I really took notice of was I started in October of twenty twenty three and I went all the way to the end of October twenty twenty four, and I didn't think about the fact that I'm writing this during an election year. I'm writing this during a time that war is breaking out across the world that America has involvement in. I'm writing this at a time that I am seeing a lot of
political movements and shifts happening. I'm writing this in a time where my person effective is definitely uniquely American, and it was very different from Sybil Wikus as a British witch. And I figured, you know, at this point in time, based off of everything that I have documented over these thirteen months, the viewpoint and experience of me is an American witch, and so it made a lot of sense, and it seemed to be important to make sure that
that perspective was clear when someone buys this book. So many of the books that we have that historically have been these big motivators in modern witchcraft have not come from here. They've come, you know, from the UK especially, So that seemed to be really important to me because as a traditional witch, and I'm very inspired by Jemma
Garry's works out of Cornwall. She wrote Traditional Witch Witchcraft, A Book of Cornish Ways, the Devil's Dozen and the Black Toad, all very inspiring, but again their perspective of
a West Country English witch. And because traditional witchcraft is very bioregional, meaning it is the spirit of the land on which I reside, It is the herbs I grow in my garden, it is the genius loci of my locality, it made more sense that my practice is recognizably American, and not just American, but Texan, and not just Texan, but my local neighborhood, like these are the spirits that I'm working with. I live in the gaborhood of my city.
It's literally like a small pocketed community of a lot of gay people, gay bars, shops, restaurants.
You know.
I live in a building that was built in nineteen eighty five, and when I first moved in, there was a lovely older man who, you know, I met who was living here, and he invited us over, me and my friends, and we walked in and he was showing his apartment, his condo, and this wall of pictures, and we're looking at all of these pictures that dated back decades, and he was like, that's so and so. And he lived over in unit three two one, and that's so and so. And he lived over in unit one five six,
and that's so and so. And he lived just a block down the way. And you know, Stephen up here. He died in nineteen eighty five, and that's and that's Daniel, and he died in nineteen eighty nine, and that's so and so. And he died in nineteen ninety one. And I started realizing I was looking at a cemetery of photographs of all of his friends who all died right here. You know, this was during the AIDS epidemic of the eighties and nineties, and the gighborhood has existed longer than
that here in the city I live in. And I was watching realizing by the end of him sharing this with me that he was the only one left. He was the only one who survived from all of his entire group of friends and so I really took a step back, and I thought about the place in which I live right now, the building I live in, the literal walls around me that housed these people who lived this beautiful, queer, joyous life, who then lives were cut short.
They didn't get to tell their stories. They didn't get to live all the way to the end. They didn't get to be the point where my neighbor was, where he can now share their stories with the younger generation. And I think a lot about that when it comes to the locality of my craft, the spirits, I'm calling upon the queer dead who existed here, who still want to dance, who still want to love, They still want to party, they still want to be a part of life, and I want them to be I want them to
participate in that with me. I want to show them reverence, and they're the spirits of my land.
That's great. I really like how you said, like you do have like probably except for like what maybe the last like forty fifty is, you really don't have too many people I think over the United States that have really made a name for themselves as like an American watch. Like you're saying something fairly new, at least from my experience, especially being a ceremonial magician, a lot of stuff. You know, you think he's going back to people who in Europe
tell you the truth. You know, so I hear what you're saying with that, that's pretty cool. Go ahead, you did? Sorry? Uh?
You brought up the UK and Fredo Jester and the Chat had a question on your thoughts about the Witch's Bible.
I haven't thought about that book in years.
Oh, wow, you know I don't. I mean, I have no necessarily positive or negative things to say about it. I remember skimming through it a long time ago. I was probably wait, actually too young to be reading it. Actually, a few of the books I started with I was probably a little too young to be reading. I mean, I was twelve when I discovered a witchcraft was real. I was twelve years old reading Raymond Bucklan's Complete Book
of Witchcraft. Wow, I mean, you know there were images drawn of you know, skyclad initiators that were bound and tied behind their behind their hands behind their back, and you know, it was very interesting to explain to my mother that no, no, it's a religious ceremony. No, no it's not, it's not inappropriate. And when I got a chance to kind of flip through and see the Witch's Bible, you know, it was very inspired by the time. It was the author's name, it was it Janet something, and
it was her and her husband. I believe that wrote it. I could be mistaken on that, so don't quote me, but I remember it was. It was a very traditional and ceremonialized, ceremonialized practice of wicca at the time, and Wicca and witchcraft at the time are also very synonymous, especially in America. That was really the only thing that
was traveling over here. When it comes to modern witchcraft and the religious aspect of it, I think it's probably a great read for people wanting to learn about their tradition of wicca and paganism. But I do not think that that book itself is a catch all generalization of what witchcraft is.
I don't think such a thing exists. No, couldn't exist, It doesn't exist.
I agree. M hm. Hey, I have anything that you wanted to ask or bring up before I start asking all this stuff.
Sorry, my kids asking me for candy.
Oh no, that's quite all right, that's all right. What's one thing that you hope that people will get out of American Witch, you know.
I hope that they'll find that I have had experiences as a practitioner that I think a lot of us have, but we haven't had the freedom and ability to talk about them. Sometimes they're weird, like some some of these experiences are weird, and we kind of get nervous about sharing them and the mist I think so many new practitioners are afraid of things like backfires. They're afraid of things like uh. I do think that especially, you know, modern America and horror movies have taught us to be
afraid of spirits, of conjuring, of experimenting with magic. I do a lot of magical experimentation in my book, and I want people to see what that lived experience was like, what the outcomes were like, what some of my mistakes were that I would change differently. I think when we when we read each other's experiences, not just recipes, we can start to learn from each other's mistakes as well
as successes. I hope people read it and they go, I've had a very similar experience and I didn't know if it was real or if anyone else would understand that. But Marshall had it too, So there's a validation there. There's honestly, there's there. I'm gonna be really frank here. There's also a somewhat of a voyeurist complex that I think many of us are not really ready to admit that we have. We want to watch what happens behind closed doors when people perform magic. We want to see
what happens. We want to experience that. We want to learn from each other. And it's very easy to read a how to book and a recipe and try to do that recipe, but it's very different when you watch someone or read about someone's experience when they do it. I think that there's a difference between a lived experience and a theory.
Oh yeah, totally.
I try to facilitate that through the Order of Chaost community that everyone can share and talk about their experiences. But again, like the way that I teach magic is very much like it's a textbook. Here's formulas and things that you can do to get these experiences for yourself. But I think one of the problems with being a solo so I think there's huge advantages to being a
little practitioner. But but one of the big disadvantages is people who are strictly solo practitioners, unless they just have incredible faith, will always end up saying, am I just crazy? Is am I just? Am I just crazy? Did that just happen? Or am I crazy? Right? And then and then doubt starts to creep in. And without that validation from other people having similar experiences or just you know, knowing that other people are going through the same thing, you start to doubt yourself.
To piggyback on that one, do you think you're not doing something right if you don't ask yourself if you're crazy?
That's true. I mean, that's a good point, that's a good question.
There's a new level of arrogance.
I don't know. One thing. I did also want to get into a little bit if if you're wanted to get into it the podcast as well, my podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, How did that? How did that come to be?
You know, I'm at Austin on Instagram Back in twenty twenty. I thought what he was sharing was beautiful work. I thought it was so fascinating. It was very interesting, you know, in a world of content of you know, beautiful soft aesthetics. He was kind of dirty he was kind of hard, he was getting he was doing some some things that I thought were get your hands in the dirt witchcraft. And I started, you know, just sharing these videos, these
little posts on my story. We became good friends. We started doing Instagram lives together, chatting about magic and witchcraft. And you know, we're both to Southern queer witches. He lives in Florida, I live in Texas, and we wanted to get together and make a podcast to share our perspectives, to talk about magical topics, to interview authors. The one of the things that I think we both had a heart agree in Swan was the concept of the queerness
of witchcraft to the otherness of it. And when I say queer, I don't mean specifically lgbt Q, I A plus. I don't mean you know, alphabet mafia only. I mean the otherness, the edging that the people that are marginalized and pushed to, the edges that lead them to a space of magic, that lead them to a space of finding their empowerment, finding their their place of I am now so desperate to make this thing happen, to change this thing. I don't have any other recourse. Where's my
commune like when I was young. That was my experience. That's what led me to witchcraft. Being much more of an effeminate man or a boy when I was young was a very very ostracizing experience and being led to to the church and not led to being brought to the church at a at a young age and being taught that everything I was feeling and experiencing inside was wrong. It led me to a place of when I found Witchcraft, I found the beauty in my femininity. I found the
beauty in my differentness. And so when it comes to witchcraft. In our podcast, we really found that liminal space of queerness, if you will, that space of we are living somewhat in the margins of spirituality here and being in that liminal space, we found another sense of community within other We found other authors, other creators who were also experiencing that. We would invite them on the show and we would talk and sometimes they'd be authors or other creators, or
they would be other podcast hosts. We did a lot of great crossover talks which were really fascinating, especially with different practices. Learning from each other, I think is one of the greatest things that we can do, especially in a spirituality that unfortunately has historically always been about secretiveness, and not just secretiveness, but elite exclusiveness. The Internet changed
that for so many of us. And we're going on six years now with the podcast, and we've had We've had an ability to talk to people I never thought i'd have the ability to ask direct questions. We had Jim McGary on the podcast, and you know, this is a woman who I had like, you know, download and idolizing because she taught me so much through her work. And then I met people who I never would have known just because someone suggested, Hey, you should look check them out. They be great on the show.
That's awesome. Nice, Yeah, for sure. Even with the experience I've had on this show in like the last year or two, some of the people I've had on, it's just like I cannot believe I'm out in a conversation with these people. Like when I got into the got into what I was doing, It's like I was reading their books, like listening to them on other shows, and I'm like, now you're fucking talking to me. What it was?
It was really amazing on the podcast. We were able to have the guest uh Christine Cummingham Ashworth. She is Scott Cunningham's sister, and she wrote, Yeah, she wrote his biography, uh post Morten biography, and I was reading it to prepare to have her come on the show, and I noticed so many similarities between me and my own sister, the same three year age gap, you know, me being you know, her gay older brother, uh me being into WICCA and secretly doing these things, and her kind of
figuring out about it. And then now she's also a practicing a practicing which as well. It's it's very fascinating getting to speak to having the opportunity to speak to her and ask her about her life with this man who was so in flat wind shoal throughout the eighties and nineties and witchcraft, Yeah, who I very much think of as one of our you know, our our witch ancestors. When we talk about the mighty Dead, Scott Cunningham is absolutely included in that.
He was hugely influential for me, and like I, whenever it came to herbs or crystals, I referred to his stuff. I mean, whenever I did ritual work, always referred to his like associations. I guess a lot of his spell work so yeah, I used a lot of his ship.
Yeah.
Uh so, Judith, did you have anything that you wanted to ask?
Uh?
Not asked, but I yes, it did. Actually because in your with your writings, you're you're including the mishaps as well, but with and you mentioned the TikTok witches, which I know nothing about it. I don't have TikTok, don't know who. I just keep hearing about it. I can't believe this thing. But two different questions. One do you believe you are instilling faith and ethical magic with your writings? And how do you feel about the most recent which is that right about magic?
Do you think they're missing that?
I don't necessarily think they're missing it. I think that's man Another really big question. I do think teaching ethics in witchcraft is a very very wiggly place, if I can put it any other way, it's a very wiggly place because witchcraft in itself has no inherent ethics. You as the practitioner, have the ethics, and you apply it to your craft. You know, witchcraft itself is a tool like anything in nature. A hurricane is not It's not ethical or unethical. It is a force of nature and
it creates and it destroys. Witchcraft is no different. You know, a hammer is a tool. You can use it to build something or you could use it to smash something. I think that is a big conversation when it comes to witchcraft and magic, and I do think that when it comes to spirituality in general, there are so many dogmas out there that are teaching ethics. Witchcraft isn't a dogma, but your spirituality might be. And that's going to change
from person to person. So when it comes to like witch talk and social media and whatnot, you're going to see that wildly differ from person to person. You know, you got those edge lords who are all about the curses, and then you've got the healers who are all about love and light and that's it, and then everything in between.
I actually feel like there's maybe not enough in between. I see the extremes more often than anything in the middle. I see the you should never ever, ever, ever, ever ever ever people, and that this is all I do people, And too, you know, I you know, as I always say this, this is like you said, this is hard to talk about. I just did a class on this
the other night. I did a class called the ethics of baneful magic, and it was a very difficult class to get through because I'm not here to tell anyone what their morals should be. I'm not here to tell anyone what their ethics should be. I will say though, that for the people who I see who are just deeply involved in UH in baneful work, their own lives tend to fall apart. I see it, and I see it all the time. And I'm not even saying that
that's directly the cause. But I will say, if you're walking around with hate in your heart, it's poisoning you. Like that is a puzzle fact, no matter. I mean, I don't think there's any way around that I've done. I've hexed two people in my entire life time. One tried to murder someone who's very very important to me, and the other words Jeffrey Epson, and then the third
will probably be Donald Trump. That's it to me. That's I don't want to do this unless I feel like this there's an absolute need for this.
Mhmm. You know, I think that's a really good point that we were talking about too with UH. You know, it really does kind of fall in the practitioner and like you know, when I first started this show, it was a little bit more in the conspiracy community, and I was, I guess, trying to like educate them on
like it's not all dicks and demons, you know. They're like like, you know, like, uh, it really like just because you associate Kabbalah with some fucked up, twisted, demonic shit and perverted stuff doesn't mean because I'm into the kabbala means that that's what I do with my shit.
You know.
You could be like looking at one form of magic or multiple forms of magic and just like I don't know, for whatever reason, just demonizing the whole thing. And it's like they know that really depends on the practitioner actually, because you can twist and use anything, and is the direction depending on how you want to look at it, I think, you know, so I think that's a very good point to get at it. That it's just you know, really sometimes I think depending you know, what you're doing,
it really is on the mindset of the practitioner. You could do some great things or some horrible shit, you know, And that's where I think it gets hard. Like for me sometimes I really just don't even put my own opinion in there, I just present the topic or present people who cover that stuff and just ask them questions because I'm not here to tell you what to do. This is this is an option. Yeah, that's it, you know, but uh yeah, thank you. Sorry I'm going on about it.
But I just think that is a really good point to make. You know, it really does depend on who who's doing the magic where they are on their head.
That's true.
But the thing about Marshall your unique what you do uniquely is you say I this and this happened, whether it's good or bad. We always get the good, do this and this will happen, but we never we never know the loophole of that disaster that might happen, that might ruin the life or anything like that. And you present that. Do you think that part is missing? I find that that part is missing when I'm when I'm reading different books on work.
Oh absolutely. And I think that's actually that No, that that's a very good point because I do feel like because so many books are about theory and about practice, but not about the lived experience of that practice. I remember I read a book a while back, by a long Mile of a cautt Low magic, and it was someone suggested it to me, and I had not read any of his other work, but it was it was fascinating because it was not a collection of rituals. It was a I did this, I used this, this is
what happened, and I thought it was fantastic. I thought, like, I want to see more books like this. Many of the spells that I talk about in my diary are ones that I sometimes cast when I was thirteen years old, sixteen years old, nineteen years old, ones that I cast when I was thirty years old, thirty five, thirty seven. You will notice, you will definitely notice that the motivation behind it and maturity behind it are very different at
different ages. The decisions that I made to try to curse this bully from school, and then the outcome that happened, and the way I might have actually been wrong about who I thought was doing it. That was actually one of the big ones. There was a situation where I cast a hex on someone who was treating me a specific way or who I believed was, and it was
not them. And I had my own experience where I got some call it blowback, but I would almost say I cast something that was not justified, and I was made very aware, a very aware that it was not justified, because I do believe and justified magic. I do believe that there is a larger kind. I mean it's a
very again, a wiggly place of balance. But when it comes to not expecting those bad outcomes, this is actually a really good part where to think about divination before doing magic, asking the cards, asking the bones, doing divination before you cast, to see first? Is this even a good idea? Is this the best way to go about it? Is this the best spell? Is this the best spirit
to call? I do think that divination gets forgotten. It feels very separated from spellcraft a lot of times, and I think they can be much more interwoven with each other. I have binary divination bones. It's just asking yes or no questions. Should I do this?
Yes or no?
Sometimes they're uh, what's it called up? Inconclusive? And if that's the case, I need to get more specific with my questions or more general, depending on what I'm asking.
Not to kind of go backwards a little bit. But you had mentioned something about you know, low magic and lon Milo and you know, like you even inserting your own experiences into your stuff, and then like even that we had Thump of forge On and his Chaos Apple, I kind of feel was like a little bit like that too from what I had read. And I really do feel like that those books when people kind of do that and it's you know, not I haven't read too many, like I'm saying, like Thump before Milo and
what you're doing. They really for me, they're easy reads. For some reason, I seem to go through them a lot better and if they're good authors and they're actually like kind of getting detailed in a sense for me, And I guess it depends on the type of person and if they can even visualize things in their brain at all to begin with, because some people do have
problems with that. I do visualize a lot of it, and I do think that's what really like put it this way too, even given you props, if you actually can create an image in someone's mind and it's like almost like a movie as they're reading something that's magical, because that's going to leave a series, I think a more serious imprint in the person because they're really enveloping
themselves into the story. And I think that that's that's pretty impressive, you know, and I think books like that are magical in themselves, so I agree.
Well, you know a lot of old grimoires, they were believed to be just literally holding them, being in possession of them, they were magic. You go back to the biblotech blue period of the French Wars. Okay, you know they had inscriptions on them. They some people couldn't even read them, if they weren't if they were even in a language they could read. But owning it, wearing it in the hidden pocket of your breast jacket, just having
it was an apotropeic a talisman. So, and these books were small, and sometimes they had different cover jackets because they were hidden. You know, this was a very underground book scenario going on. So I mean sometimes just the existence of the book being on your on your body is itself a magical talisman.
That's wild. You mentioned in BiblioTech, you know the bluebooks. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of alchemists, like back in Germany I think too, were like putting maybe it was wherever you were saying, they were putting them out like it was kind of like like pamphlets on like some of their bigger work to like kind of like advertise or whatever. But that's
why I haven't heard too many people mention that. I was just impressed that you said that, you know, what's really weird and this is getting conspiratorial, but like when I was like coming across that stuff, I was like, it's so weird. How like back then? I guess if you want to translate that over, that'd be blue Book, you know, and they're talking about magic and it's I guess, depend on what you think about aliens or where they're taking the Aldea of Aliens. I'm like, you know, we
got operation blue Book with that. I'm like the going on here, like.
There's blue Beam.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It just was like, hmmm, find out I don't know, just some weird shit with my conspiratorial mind. But uh yeah, so I started to ramble on about that. But yeah, that's cool that you mentioned that. Did anybody have anything that they wanted to ask her to?
Uh? Yeah, Marshall, So only if you don't mind sharing, or if you you know, however you want to answer this question, can you share what is your most memorable spell you ever cast? And why.
You know?
And this is actually great one because I do talk about it in the diary as well, one that really stood out to me. So I was building a framework of working with familiars, and these familiars were inspired by Jimmy Garry's book Traditional Witchcraft. She has the snake, the hair of the Tone, and the crow, and each one of them correspond to the quarterways the north, southeast, and west,
and each one of them correspond with an element. And the hair of the South corresponds with Earth healing healing specifically, but also I mean there's other connotations under Earth, but the hair was the familiar spirit that I wanted to work with in the concept of healing. For my mother's partner. She got divorced a few years back, and she fell in love with this really amazing man, and within the first year and a half of their relationship, he was
diagnosed with uterine cancer. And I decided, I asked, would you be okay with me doing a healing working. He said absolutely, So I drew a sigil over a picture of him, and I put it on one of those Novada candles, just a white and event of candle, and I fixed it with a few healing herbs and a cunning oil, which is a mixture of an oil that I write about in my first book, that it's just
an all general purpose which is magic oil. And I said this chant to the familiar hair nine days in a row, and I would have my chanting beads that have they connect with my familiar spirits that I've built the system with, and I would light the candle and I'd stare at his picture with the sigil over it, with a flame flickering above it or behind it, depending on which day as the flame went down, And for nine days straight, I do one hundred chants with these beads,
and I would chant to this hair and to travel to him and heal him of this cancer. And I had this whole visualization where I was visualizing this hair popping up from the direction of the south, being in my presence, and then literally hopping down the road all the way to where the house where he lived, crawling up and sitting on his chest and sinking into his body to be one with him, and carrying the assignment
that I was giving this spirit. I did this nine days in a row, and then I remember my mother called me about a week later and said that he'd had surgery to have the cancerous mass and cells removed, and they went back in to do a check on the margins and they said, I'm sorry, I'm afraid. I don't think we got it all. We're going to have to go back again, but we're gonna monitor it over this next month and a half before we make it.
We schedule it again. And I was like, it didn't work, it didn't work, I might have to just do it again. And then I didn't think about it for a while because I was waiting for them to check. And she called me up and she said he went in and there was no trace of cancer. All the cells were gone, zero margins, which was completely different diagnosed assist than they
had told him after the first round of checking. And I was just kind of floored by the whole situation again, you know, I believe, but also, wow, it was and it was so important to me, and it mattered so much to me because my mom had fallen in love with this man after thirty eight years of marriage and ten years of questioning divorce and then wondering if she was going to be alone, what her life was going to be like, she got this second chance, and then just as soon as she did, she was afraid she
was going to lose this man, and so seeing now that she was not going to lose him, that he was going to be okay. They moved in together. They're still living together and happy as ever now and he still gets you know, he still has to get checked up every now and again. It's never come back. And that was three years ago.
Lock. Yeah.
In fact, I have a picture of it in the book. It's the picture of the candle that I used because I was just very big on documenting. I think documentation of our spellcraft and taking pictures of them, even if you're never going to share them publicly, but maybe just for yourself. I think that matters. It's so important to see it right there, the novena, the picture of him on it, my chanting beads around it.
Yeah. Wow, that's awesome. That's an amazing story.
Thank you for sharing, Thank you for thank you for letting me share.
You know, I think that's so I like what you said, because one of the things that I always find.
To be.
Wondrous, I suppose, is that you can I've been practicing magic since I was fifteen, and I'm forty two. I am old, and I'm losing all the color that was ever in my hair. But I'm still I guess I'll do a terra reading and be like, wow, this works so well. It's still amazing. And I don't think that there's any value in losing that.
Never lose your whimsy.
Yeah it should still it should still give you goose ones every time. And then that's that's the coolest thing about it, because with everything else in life, we do lose. You know, you can you can. For example, I play, I used to. I haven't touched a guitar in almost a decade, but playing guitar used to be such an important part of my life and I would play for hours and hours a day, and eventually I got to a space where it just did not inspire me at
all anymore, and so I stopped playing. And it became more just about frustration about not being at the skill level that I wanted to be at, and that I never get that. With magic, it's just fun and cool and it works and it makes your life better.
M I experienced the same thing with the guitar. That's interesting.
It's a frustrating instrument.
I had a lot of fun I ain't but just yeah, one day I just kind of stopped, and it was kind of almost like what you had said. I was just frustrated that I wasn't where I would have liked to have been. I guess yeah, you know.
I when I was a kid, I was like buying tickets to every Joe Satriani concert. Oh shit, okay, Like I was so inspired by these guys. You could play it that way, but then you look at today's musicians and you're like, I, I'm done, I give up. Did this gen ds GenZ, i aga'st gen Z, These kids who were in their early twenties smoke Satriani and Steve I make him look foolish.
That's fine. I was gonna say it was more of a Steve I fed. That's funny you said. I was like, oh shit, I love Steve OI. That's great. I've been to a couple of G three counts. It's it's yeah, that's great. Nice. Nice. Did anybody else have anything yeah that they wanted to ask before? Yeah? All right. If there's uh, I don't know. If there's one thing that you would like to leave us with, Marshall, what would you like for the listeners to get out of the all this in your work?
You know, I heard someone say this years ago on Seeking Witchcraft, a podcast I was listening to back in Quarantine, and this person was She said, be promiscuous with your magic. I think about that a lot. You see that in the book, you see that in my writing a lot.
The experimentation, the promiscuity of trying things out, of building systems that you hope we're going to work, working them, and then seeing them work, or seeing how they work differently than you thought, and then adjusting to it, evolving with it. I think that magic is one of the most craziest mysterious things. And if I thought I had it all figured out, why not just roll over and
die now? I'd rather continue being curious and finding out and learning from, you know, my own experiences, from others' experiences. I hope people step away from trying to be perfect and instead just trying.
You'll remember that meme from a couple of years ago with the guys like that, the fuck around and find out chart, that was the most perfect explanation of magic that has ever existed.
And honestly, be permiscuous your magic is a really nice way of saying, fuck around and find out.
Yeah, that's true. That's true. I will even say, like as a ceremonial magician, I mean there was Tom's where I could literally mind fuck where am I gonna put the middle pillar ritual? And you am I gonna do it before the lb RP in between after you know this? That so like eventually I would have to just you know, just wing it and see what works for me, try multiple different ways do this, and then eventually for me, I did find my own rhythm that I just felt natural.
So yeah, yes, I totally agree that I'm Marshall great stuff. All right, Uh, before we wrap it all up, let's, uh, Judith, let's remind everybody where they can find all your amazing stuff.
First, thank you Marshall for a wonderful conversation. I would love to continue having conversations with you on this topic. Everyone else. You can find me on YouTube, Spreaker and x as the Loom and again, thank you again. This is a wonderful conversation.
I appreciate you coming on, thank you for joining us and Sona please let everybody know.
Yeah, the same sentiment, Marshall. I love interacting with you. This has been a lot of fun. I'm really excited to read the new book and it's it's you get it now right.
Yeah, absolutely, it's available on Amazon, the ebook and paperback Killer.
Yeah, I can't wait. I love the you did this, I love the way you're right and you're a huge inspiration to me. So this has been a lot of fun. And yeah, thanks thanks for having me on again. Of course it's been great.
No, thank you for jumping on, man, I appreciate it. That was awesome. That was a great time. And Marshall, please let everybody know where they can find anything you'd like to tell them about.
Well, first of all, thank you all so much for having me. It's it's truly been a pleasure. If you want to find me, please look me up on Instagram, TikTok, and threads. I do a lot of ship posting on threads, and I also do a lot of like horror movie posting.
I love nice.
On threads and things that I'm watching and a lot of them have to do with the occult and witchcraft. So you can find me on all of these at Witch of Southern Light by my books Cunning Words of Grimmar, Tails and Magic, The Red Mother, and the Diary of an American Witch, all available on Amazon and check out
the link tree and all of my profiles. I have everything you could want that I've ever put out on there, my Patreon, the podcast, my books, and a lot of free resources, herbal correspondences, planetary correspondences, how to work with planetary spirits, make making purple tintures, lots of just free information that people can have.
Yeah, your link tree is very impressive. I was looking for you before we started. I'm like, whoa dang, and.
It's not what my stuff, it's stuff that I've accumulated that has helped me. And I was like, this helped me, this could help other practitioners. So I just put on my link tree so everyone has that free access.
Cool.
Yeah, that is awesome. Nice. Yeah, I might have to check that out. Uh, Marshall, thank you so much for coming on. That was a blast. I really had a great time. That was a lot of fun, and I thought that was some really good Uh. I felt like there was some d points there and then there was you know, I go to overall, it was a great, great, great discussion and I would definitely a nice balance. Yeah, yes, exactly, yes, I thought exactly. Definitely get you on again in the
future and talk about some other stuff for sure. I'm sure you have a plethora of things that would be interesting. And thank you everybody in the chat. That's what's up. Thank you for the questions, thank you Judith for mentioning the questions. I appreciate you. And until the next one, everybody be well.
Lada