Initiated Read online

  For each person who entered, I would answer one question. My intention was singular: I wanted to be of service to my community. To show up with everything I had, listen closely to whatever vision or image arose from the wellspring of that listening, then dip my hand into the waters of the unconscious, catch and present the fish that would help them. I wanted to present each person with a gift. Though my magical intentions were sincere, I expected people who visited me in my little cardboard temple to view my piece with aesthetic distance, as an art object, like the other pieces in the show. But that isn’t what happened.

  Most of the petitioners to the Oracle would grip my hands, look at me earnestly, eyes wide, and whisper, “Tell me when I am going to fall in love,” or “What will happen to my father’s spirit now that he’s died?” and then await my answer, palms sweating, nervously chewing their lips. When the concept of divination was invoked, even people who knew me personally, who didn’t seek my opinion in any other context, were hungry for divine messages.

  A few people clambered into my sanctuary and immediately folded their arms, declaring, “I don’t believe in this kind of stuff.” They’d smirk, then ask, “What will Donald Duck have for breakfast tomorrow?” Even though my oracle booth was in a gallery with other artworks, people immediately interpreted me as either a “real” conduit for the divine or as an exploiter of the naïve and the credulous for personal gain. I can’t recall a time when I’ve seen someone look at a piece of art in a museum or gallery and say, “I don’t believe in this kind of stuff.” They might say they don’t like a piece of art, or don’t understand it, or feel like it’s some kind of elitist trick, but in all those cases, they’re dealing with it as an artwork. But to say that they don’t believe in it would require leaping to a philosophical position few artworks demand: do you believe in art? In this case, the question my piece brought up wasn’t “Do you believe in art?” but “Do you believe in magic?” The people who did were hungry for it, so hungry it felt almost like they would grab any enchanted bread roll sitting on the table, no matter how stale, and the people who didn’t believe immediately folded their arms and refused to eat before they even looked at the menu. When it comes to magic, for me it’s less a question of belief and more a question of value. Magic is a practice, not a belief system. Rather than asking, “Do I believe in this?” I ask myself, “Do I get something out of this? Is it meaningful to me? Is it helpful?” When it comes to magic and witchcraft, most always, my answer is: YES.

  A friend told me that while she was mingling at the opening, people kept coming up to her saying things like, “Have you been to visit the Oracle of Los Angeles yet? What she told me just saved my life.” I was in my little oracle booth for hours and hours until my voice was hoarse and the flames of my electric candles began to flicker and die. Ultimately I had to turn people away. Somehow visiting the Oracle of Los Angeles had made people’s aesthetic distance disappear. They wanted to voyage with me into the unknown; they wanted an opportunity, if only briefly, before they headed back into their lives as art handlers or nonprofit directors or bookkeepers, to enter a realm where anything was possible, where maybe reality could be enchanted after all.

  When I first studied philosophy in college, the philosophy of women was patronized as being “the Philosophy of Care.” Witchcraft has taught me that care is the most important thing there is. Care is love, and love is what heals us. When my clients come in, I fumigate them with sage and rosemary and lavender that I grow myself in my garden. I say blessings over them and cast out the troublesome spirits that haunt them, sweeping them with a cinnamon broom and ringing koshi bells. I make them moon tea from a recipe my mother taught me as a child with raspberry leaf and lemon balm, peppermint and passionflower. I remind them where they are, in my magical studio. They are safe. “Look around you,” I say. “Look at the fresh flowers and the candles and remember to take pleasure in the experience.” We lay out tarot cards and look at the pictures, the mythological figures and arcane symbols; we talk about where we can see the Magician or the Empress or the Star card at work in their lives. We light candles and anoint them with oils. We enter the realm of magic, and fresh possibilities for my clients’ lives begin to emerge. In magic is comfort and power. Both spring from the fertile earth of care.

  In our travels through the underworld, witches become map makers. Culture, art, the mystery religions, these systems of symbols are maps. Somebody has to create them. Our musicians and healers, poets and witches, travel through the corridors of the underworld by torchlight. We were not wrong to descend into these caves, but for our own sakes, for the peace of mind of those we love and for the sake of the planet, we who travel there must not get lost. We can join our lights together and return to the world. We can use our symbols, our stories, our mystical methodologies to forge connections with each other in these underground spaces. Symbols and stories order our world; they create the narratives by which we live. It matters whose stories get told; it matters how we tell them. Imagination matters. Our connections to one another matter, as does the pleasure we take in our experience. Witches stand in solidarity with those already doing this work. Because people have been doing this work since humans first appeared on the surface of the earth. Now we listen to them, we participate, we use techniques of the healer, the poet, the artist, the scholar, the cunning folk, the green men, and the medicine women to heal ourselves and care for our wounded world.

  When I think of altars, I think of sacred, ancient cairns where benzoin incense billows from a censer at the center of a circle of stones. Or an altar in the chancel of a cathedral, walls vibrating with Gregorian chants, tinted rose from stained glass, the miracles of the saints shining down upon the adoring masses. I see human hearts sacrificed to the gods upon altars deep in the recesses of an Aztec temple; plumed priests with warrior faces, serious and determined, placating the deities who wind smoke-like through the still, dark air. Altars are the thresholds between the spirit world and our material realm; they reflect the values and desires of the people who make them. When we create our altars, we create our connection to the divine. Our altars function as portholes to our own chosen Valhalla. For witches, our altars are a way to honor the divine here on earth, to recognize as sacred the ground beneath our feet.

  I’d made many altars in my lifetime, but when I formally began to dedicate myself as a witch, I understood that the altar is the place where we carve out space for the sacred in our lives and prioritize it. Before I made my first serious altar, out of necessity I’d taken a gig that was only supposed to last a few months, but that ended up stretching into years as an educational administrator in the industrial armpit of Los Angeles. After all my adventures, it looked like I was going to end up trapped by the same system that had ensnared my mother when I was a child. I spent my nine-hour workdays sprawled in my swivel chair, slunk down and splayed out like some exhausted cartoon character, fingering the fuzzy leaves of the African violets next to my Dell monitor, wondering which jungle they came from. I imagined forests dripping with rain, the whoop of monkeys as they soared overhead, mist swirling through the brambles like a nature spirit. I wanted to join them.

  This administrative period was after I’d performed in my oracle booth but before I started supporting myself as a professional witch. During one of the weekend workshops I was constantly taking to increase my understanding of the craft, I had an epiphany where the Goddess told me I needed to create a space for Her to enter my life. I couldn’t just hold her in my mind. I needed to make a place for Her with my own hands. On the night before the full moon in Taurus, I constructed a new altar in honor of Her.

  Fumigating my magical studio with the smoke of cedar and juniper, then dousing walls and floor in salt water and oil of white camphor, I cleared the dust from every corner. On my new altar I laid an opalescent violet textile, given to me by one of my mentors in grad school, a feminist who’d always advocated on my behalf. I placed seashells, exposing their slick pink underbellies,
and drenched the fabric in strings of pearls. I gave the Goddess hand-dipped beeswax candles, still smelling of honey, and laid out all my ceremonial tools that I’d carried with me since childhood: a blue ceramic cauldron that looked like it was made of sea foam, glazed with dyes made of kelp and purple sea bark; a white soapstone knife I’d received from a friend after having a vision of it in a dream; a wooden wand carved in geometric shapes, stained red with menstrual blood; a black stone with a secret split that, when pulled apart, would reveal a primordial fossil spiraling in Fibonacci perfection.

  Naked, I stood before my new Goddess altar and called in the Spirits. Evening light shone through the tangle of flowers on my sheer curtains. I lit a white candle and whistled for my familiars and my guardians. Shaking my rattle, I danced for them and let them enter my body with the rhythm, blood pulsing hot in my feet. Facing each of the four directions in succession, I visualized a blue flame shooting from my fingers as I traced pentacles in the air.

  “Hail, Guardians, Spirits of the North. Watchtowers of the Earth. Guardians of stone and bone and blood. Guardians of life and death. I call you now. Come, witness my rite and charge my spell. Be here with me.” I saw them rise in the North, the crystal spirits, the gnomes, the earth watchers, jutting up into the sky. All granite and quartz and tourmaline, smelling of pine sap and damp, loamy earth. With a beckoning gesture I called them into my circle and stomped my right foot, bringing them into the room with a thud. I continued until all of the elemental beings were present: Sylphs, airy guardians of the East; the fire Salamanders of the South; and the Mermaid guardians of the West, dripping salt water and perfuming the room with the scent of orchid and vanilla.

  Finally, I called upon the Goddess Herself. I always know when She arrives because I feel tingling along the back of my neck and arms, my heart swells, my flesh flashes hot. I imagine a similar feeling for the astronauts who leave the protective blue gauze of our atmosphere and look back on our planet from outer space. Awe. Humility. Gratitude. Wanting to fall to your knees in the face of so much beauty.

  Kneeling before the altar, I presented Her with offerings. Cakes sticky with honey, and handmade cones of incense resin: amber, jasmine, and rose. During this ritual, at my most humble and clear, I spoke my spell in a whisper, “By the powers of the Goddess within me, let me find a way out of this trap; let me find a way to devote my life to beauty and pleasure and love. O, Great Goddess of Love, let me be your servant in this world. Yours and only yours. For the greatest good of all beings. Hail and welcome!”

  Three weeks after performing the spell, I was laid off from my horrible office job, which meant I could collect unemployment. A relative unexpectedly sent me a $10,000 check. More and more people started calling me to conduct tarot readings, healing rituals, and spells on their behalf. Invitations to speak about my work at galleries and institutions began to come through. While I’d been slowly, steadily incubating, accruing performances and public rituals and the occasional tarot reading for cash, it wasn’t until I performed my simple altar spell that my initiation was complete and the Oracle of Los Angeles took her first steps. But the Goddess had made it clear that the work wasn’t just to please myself; my work in this world was to find a way to be of benefit to my community.

  Persephone, the goddess of my grad school thesis, was perpetually trying to escape the underworld. But every time she thought she’d made it out, she’d eventually discover she was still inside. The underworld was a labyrinth with no exit. Success doesn’t lead you out. That’s part of the trick; success is just another one of the mirrors that make up the walls of the fun house. I’m a professional witch now, supporting myself doing something I love, no longer drawn toward things that harm me, but I still haven’t escaped the underworld. Nevertheless, I’ve made my peace with this.

  I charge for my services. My work takes a lot of time and energy, and I saw what not getting paid for her labor did to my mother. It exhausted her and drained her resources. Living even modestly in Los Angeles is not cheap. My rent has doubled in the past five years. I have student loan debt, health care costs, car payments, car insurance, gas and electric, the bills we all have to pay. It’s only been in the last few years of working as a witch that I’ve been able to max out my yearly limit on my Roth IRA. Even though I’d prefer to focus all my time working at my altar, developing new rituals for my clients, and making new healing teas out in the desert, those things don’t pay my rent. I still have to think about my work like a business, because I still live in a world where eight super-rich men hoard as much wealth as half the human race; I still live in a world where people like them make the laws and control the narrative.

  My initiations have taught me that there is no escape and nowhere to run. There is no outside capitalism anymore. Capitalism has contacted all of our tribes. There is no persistent, everlasting fairy world where a witch can escape and be safe forevermore. But as witches, escaping isn’t our mission. Once we realize we are witches, we use our magic, not to escape into an enchanted world outside the gates of ordinary reality but to bring forth the magic from within ourselves and pour it into the world around us. Little by little, the witch expands her magic circle to everything she touches, until she can push her circle up against the circle of another enchanted creature, join forces, and find more. This work is not easy. It’s confusing, imperfect, and difficult. We are under constant pressure to sacrifice our integrity and are often forced to choose between a multitude of evils. There’s no bible to tell us what to do, no grand authority to make our choices for us. But wherever we are, we begin. As witches, our work is to recognize the resources we have, cultivate the tools we need, and midwife our magic back into the world.

  Human Resources, the art space, is closing down soon; a real estate developer bought the building and is turning it into a boutique hotel. Capitalism just keeps coming and coming. The last public ritual I performed at Human Resources was called Capitalism Exorcism. It wasn’t easy to get the ritual started; I had so little time to prepare. I was scraping price stickers off a herd of glass pillar candles until the very last minute. I worried I’d begin the performance and forget the words. Someone I’d flirted with at a Halloween party caught me upstairs in one of the unisex bathroom stalls, muttering the text of the exorcism over and over again while toilets flushed on both sides. Seeing that I was nervous, the bartender offered me a beer, but I refused, having long since given up performing under the influence.

  I entered the dark room and it fell silent. A hundred people stood in a circle around me. My ritual garb was fashioned after a snake priestess of Crete, bare chested, gold skirts cinching my waist and trailing along the floor, black paint fiercing my eyes. Later, a friend told me my hair looked like a living thing, snaky and electric, beneath my crown of rosemary and juniper. Invoking the Goddess, I howled:

  She who is within us and She who looks back at us

  She who births us and She who swallows us

  She who knows no sin

  She who knows no shame

  Spirit of Nature

  Earth Air Water Fire

  Creator

  Preserver

  Destroyer

  Arise!

  Be here with us.

  My voice thundered against the walls. Holding up a censer of dragon’s blood incense, I circled the room, filling it with smoke. Using a technique drawn from the Goetic workings of Elizabethan magician John Dee, I inscribed demon-catching symbols on the center of the gallery floor in red chalk. A five-pointed star encompassed by a circle, only rather than invoking a hierarchy of the Lord’s angels, inside I inscribed the names of goddesses and fierce female artists to form a cauldron of power at the center of the room. Nearby, I inscribed a smaller sigil stamped with a banishing rune I’d created out of a dollar sign and the phrase Capitalism, we banish you.

  I unfurled nine red cords from the capitalism sigil on the floor into the crowd around me, so that people could hold the reins and control the demon. People I knew, pal
e blue light shining off their glasses, wet cans of Tecate sweating from their hands onto the floor, shifted foot to foot, nervous, excited, gathering closer as waves of intention spiraled, joining our forces to cast the demon out.

  We reject capitalism because it is abusive. Because it’s a system that argues: as long as the oligarchy is profiting, no atrocity is too grave, no violation too gross. Slavery, genocide, atomic war, swamps drained, forests burned, animals brought to extinction. Nothing is out of bounds and there are always plenty of reasons why it has to be this way…free market, forked tongue. To be fair, it isn’t just capitalism. Before capitalism, before empire, there was still bloodlust, born at the moment of the first rape. An egregore that became stronger the first time a human roped a bull and commanded it to till the soil against its will. Every time a child’s food was stolen to stuff the belly of a king, the power of the egregore grew. But my purpose was no longer just to point out what was wrong and then hide in the wilderness hoping the demon wouldn’t come for me. Capitalism is the system we have now, and so this is where I make my stand.