Kai Crawford’s Reviews > Initiated: Memoir of a Witch > Status Update

Magic is the ultimate adventure, because even if you get what you want, you rarely get it in the way you expect.

...And relationships require listening, not just for what you want, but also what your partner is trying to say. When you receive a sign, your interpretation matters. And then, how you act on that message is just as important as the fact that you received it in the first place.

Magic is a duet between you and the Universe. A romance. Signs are the way the Universe speaks to you; they’re sweet whispers, not orders. Still, as in ordinary life, if your lover gives you a bouquet of roses, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be together forever. It can have a dozen different meanings: apology, gratitude, obligation, affection. Most importantly, it means connection. It means relationship....

On our life paths, signs are abundant. It’s when we stop paying attention to the details of these messages that we take the wrong road, the road with the ruts in it, carved from all the times we’ve moved toward our wounds instead of toward healing.

Empathy is a spell that creates intimacy and connection, a free exchange of information. Protection spells are sometimes necessary, but their objective is to keep things out. Create peace, and protection becomes less necessary.

Western post-Enlightenment civilization defines itself as being rationalist and against magic, but all cultures have magical practices. Christianity is full of magical practices, and the language of economics is permeated by spirits and invisible hands. Magic is everywhere; it’s just that the central power figures of a culture get to determine whose magic is considered “real” and whose is just considered embarrassing

I could have money to the degree that I suffered. I could suffer fast, like I did in the motel room while risking my life, or I could suffer slow like I did at the coffee shop, physically safe but grueling away my hours, not being able to eat well or pay rent or be creative or afford a therapist or medical care, maybe for the rest of my days. I chose to suffer fast.

...choosing a life of convention, hoping that the authorities won’t notice you and will leave you alone; or take the third road, the shadowy animal path, carved into the edges of a cliff, half covered in vines, a trail you have to forge on your own.

Hecate stands at the place where three roads converge. As the Goddess in her crone aspect, avatar of age and experience, the most existential of goddesses, she tells you, “When everything breaks, you still have choices.” You can take the road that walks you deeper into your trauma, deeper into the knife, until it kills you; you can walk away from the knife, away from risk and potentially any feeling at all...

"For witches, the portholes of the imagination do not slam shut at puberty. The animal spirits and guardians that came to us in our childhood are with us throughout our lifetimes. Even when we forget them, they wait, water sheening off their backs in blankets of light, watching for our return."