Winter is for Sacred Simple Pleasures

It’s a cold and cloudy day, a perfectly cozy winter’s day, promising much-needed snow and quiet time. I’m sipping cinnamon and anis-laced coffee this morning, gazing out the window above my writing desk, and relishing the cozy warmth of my home. It’s strewn with twinkle lights and smells of beeswax and more cinnamon. It’s filled with books, herbs, and all the things I love, including my two familiars gazing out the window beside me. It’s a comforting and warm antidote to the brewing storm outside.

Truly, it is the perfect day to indulge in self-care. There’s something about this heavy weather that invites us to slow down and take care of ourselves. Maybe indulge a little.

Honestly? I’ve always said magic is a hard, gritty thing. It takes work. You can’t just light candles, say positive affirmations and then expect the universe to drop miracles into your lap. You’ve got to work for it. Stay grounded but hopeful—and always, always be proactive in cultivating a magical life. Self-care is like that. I mean, you can light candles (again), say positive affirmations (again), and…expect to feel reborn. Sure, light your candles. I love my beeswax candles because they cleanse the air, smell like honey, and are just plain pretty. Affirmations can be powerful spells that help you grow. Candle magic is a thing. You see, magic and self-care have a lot in common—I mean, we think of candles and affirmations for both, right? 

In fact, seasoned witches know that radical self-care is the backbone of magical living.

It means slowing down and feeling hard feelings. It means talking with those you love to find a way forward. It means pinpointing a place in your life where the energy is stagnant and then working through things so the energy can be free-flowing. Sometimes, it means you need to reimagine your life. Things that were once generative and inspiring for a time can become sour and toxic if we hold on too long. Energies change, and it’s time to move on—it’s life’s way of making sure you keep growing. It’s also about being able to acknowledge and celebrate the moments when your life is flourishing and where energy flows. And yes, self-care is also about exercising, eating right, sleeping well… basically treating yourself like a small child who needs a lot of TLC.

But here’s the thing I’ve discovered: that work can be exhausting.

It takes a lot to face hard things, to sit with those feelings, and to map a way forward. It can be hard, too, when you experience joy because sometimes you realize you haven’t allowed yourself to experience enough of it. Who hasn’t been stingy with their joy from time to time? All this to say that sometimes, as we stay steady, conjuring change through our routines as rituals, we need a breather. 

And that’s where the fun—and ever so important—part of self-care comes in. 

I admit it: I like my candles and positive affirmations. I’ve spent the afternoon making cinnamon, orange, and peppermint bath bombs so I can indulge in festive bubble baths and share them with loved ones. I’ve also become obsessed with “fussy” skincare routines of oil cleansing, honey face masks, and painting my nails. I’ve added touches of glitter to, well, everything. These silly things—so often the things we think of when we think of self-care—are just as important as all the other hard stuff you have to do to really take care of yourself. There’s nothing like brewing a pot of mint chocolate tea, curling up on the couch in a pile of blankets (and cats), and going down a Pinterest rabbit hole to learn about the best tips for face care or what the heck latte makeup is (what I normally wear, as it turns out). 

Or there’s the pure gothic delight of listening to ghost stories while knitting by twinkle light, or, yes, watching a cheesy holiday movie for a popcorn and pizza movie night. Sometimes, it’s taking a day to go to the salon and indulge in holiday shopping. Or cozy up by the fireplace and do nothing but daydream and snooze. See what I mean? It’s frivolous and fun…and so absolutely necessary.

Choosing joy is when we let the magic in.

It’s when we allow all we’ve worked for and conjured to settle and take root and manifest in the way that is healthiest for us. It’s the fallow time when we reset and rest and let nature do its work. We can’t always be go-go-going. In fact, it’s a good way to clog up your energy and inadvertently sabotage your conjurings! All good magic is a hard, gritty thing, true. But it’s also a soft thing, a thing that needs energetic flow and divine receptivity to balance out the dirty business of cleaning up our lives.

The holidays are the perfect time to slow down and indulge in sacred simple pleasures; the sillier and more joyful, the better. All the better, in fact, to conjure magical living this year and in the next…

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational collection of musings touching on life’s simple pleasures, everyday fantasy, and absolutely delectable recipes that will guarantee to stir the kitchen witch in you.  If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is the everyday, subscribe here.

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The Witch Who Lives Down the Hall...

One of my favorite books as a child was a now-out-of-print story called The Witch Who Lives Down the Hall (1985), which you can listen to and view here. In this book, a young boy is convinced that the woman who lives down the hall from him in his new apartment complex is a witch. Why does he think this? Well, she casts spells on a magic carpet (does yoga), whips up potions (makes soup), hosts coven meetings (reading and music clubs), has a black cat, and is basically loads of fun.

The thing is, the child is not wrong. His neighbor IS a witch, only not in the way we would think.

She is the embodiment of everyday magic. Everything she does is infused with mindfulness, joy, and a touch of enchantment, as seen through the eyes of a child who can find wonder and whimsy in all things. She might not make literal potions, but isn’t a bowl of soup the perfect healing spell when we need it? So she doesn’t have a flying carpet, but her yoga practice invites an elevated perspective. Then she has her black cat and we all know black cats are pure magic!

I was reminded of this story a few years back when two little girls moved into the apartment down the hall from me. I saw them watching me from the courtyard. They took in my black cat sitting on the windowsill. Caught glimpses of me on my magic carpet (I mean my yoga mat), and stole peeks through my window at the large collection of books that just had to be filled with spells. Most importantly, they were enamored with my patio garden that overflowed with herbs, flowers, and other wild, growing things.

Obviously, mine was a witch’s garden with ingredients for spellwork.

I caught them once, picking petals from roses I’d put out to dry and taking a pinch of this or that herb. They took their stash to the fountain in the middle of the courtyard and used it to make potions. They danced around the fountain and chanted. They poured water into cups and mixed flower petals and herbs into them, making up wild songs as they did so.

One day, the younger sister returned to collect more rose petals just as I came out to water my plants. The older sister, well, she did the big sister thing and ran straight up to my patio, worried they were in trouble for stealing my rose petals and herbs.

In trouble with A WITCH, no less!

They’d read enough stories, it seemed, to know they shouldn’t upset a witch even if they couldn’t resist stealing from her garden. Or maybe they just didn’t want to get in trouble with their parents for disturbing a neighbor. Who knows?

“We’re sorry for taking your stuff. It’s just we needed it,” the older sister quickly explained while pulling her sibling away from the patio. “We’re making spells.”

“What sort of spells?” I asked, and they knew they didn’t have to fear me.

Readers, they had A LOT of spells, and it was wonderful to talk with them about the stories and worlds and potions they were making. I also showed them what they could freely take from my garden. All the dried rose petals they wanted. Honestly, those dried roses were so pretty I didn’t want to throw them out, but I also couldn’t possibly keep them all. I showed them how to pluck green tendrils from my herb plants and explained why they shouldn’t pull the heads off fresh flowers. This ensured they had fun, but my garden didn’t suffer from their enthusiasm.

Hey, I’m a practical witch.

One afternoon, I found them chanting in front of my patio garden, with a stick in hand—a wand, no doubt—and splashing water from the fountain across my plants. My familiar was most curious, watching them through the window as they went about their witchy business.

I peeked out to see what the fuss was about.

“It’s a growing spell!” The eldest explained.

They noticed, they said, that some of my plants were looking a little ragged. Their spell was going to bring them back to life. Every day after school, they ran through the courtyard to check on their spell’s progress. I told them that sometimes spells take time. We’d chat, and they’d ask me questions about all sorts of things. About my cat. About my yoga mat. About the soup cooking on the stove—they smelled it in the hall on their way to their apartment. I could see, through their eyes, that I was much like the strange woman in the children’s book, with all sorts of mysterious things in my home filled with little enchantments.

About a week after they cast their spell over my patio garden, the tired plants started coming back to life. Did their spell work? Or did those cold-weather plants just get their second wind once the heat of the summer waned and cooler temperatures coaxed them back to life? Personally, I think it was their spell. They were certainly proud of their casting abilities, and I was happy to see my plants doing so well. And, eventually, when those girls moved away, I would think of them every time I gathered dried rose petals.

I will always remember the time I got to be the witch who lived down the hall.

It brought me back to when I was their age, reading that strange little book that taught me true magic is the everyday. It’s those small enchantments—intentional living, synchronous meetings, daily rituals—that make life magical.

It reminded me, too, not to take for granted the ordinary magic I’d conjured for myself. We can get used to things, the daily workings of our lives, so much so that we can forget what it takes to craft a meaningful life and how the simplest magic is often the most extraordinary. Magic isn’t in flying carpets and cauldrons. It’s in yoga mats and cast iron pots (although, who is to say which is which?). It isn’t in grimoires or crystal balls but in cookbooks and how the light dances off water in a fountain.

We forget, as we age, that magic is all around us. That we are magic. It’s inside us and all around us, no complicated rituals necessary. And sometimes, life gives us a gift—two little girls who remind you that you are, in fact, much more magical than you feel at the moment, or a woman who lives down the hall from you who must certainly be a witch—to show us that the enchantment we’re looking for is right under our nose.

And, truly, isn’t that what witchy business is all about? Everyday conjurings for a magical life.

As I gather pumpkins and hang autumn twinkle lights with my familiars—I have two now—in preparation for Halloween, I think about the joys of being the witch who lives down the hall. I think about the new stories yet to unfold, the ones that have nourished me over the years and the ones I will one day write, and, most importantly, which ones will jump from the page and into my life as this children’s story did. After all, stories are the deepest form of magic, and there is a quiet conjuring that happens when we find the medicine we need in the pages of a good book.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Here’s to a magical life!

The Magic of Being an Amateur

In Everyday Enchantments, I have a tribute to the joys of being an amateur and another on what it takes to truly become an expert at something. These bite-sized musings came from a lifetime of experiences that reinforced the idea that everything we do must be done To Perfection and the moments in my life that were truly awe-inspiring because I wasn’t aiming for perfect, just relishing the sheer pleasure of doing something that feels good.

As a child, I couldn’t just do ballet because I liked wearing a tutu and twirling. No, at a certain point, my teacher made it clear that I needed to Get Serious and commit to the point shoes and all the aches and pains that come with more professional dance. What a way to ruin the joy of dance for a little girl that just wants to twirl! (Thankfully, my parents were advocates of being happy amateurs in the things that brought us joy; otherwise, I’d be a wreck. But they gave me permission to immerse myself in the arts and other interests without the pressure to turn it into a profession or side hustle.)

Those issues came up later when I dove into Latin dance. I took classes simply because some of my favorite college and grad school memories were staying out late dancing with friends. Even though I knew very little about the specific dance steps, we still managed to have a good time. I decided to treat myself to dance lessons once I got full-time work, an investment meant to carve time for myself outside of my life as an educator. I was allowed to learn other things simply for the sake of learning and enjoyment.

And enjoy myself I did, as I learned that Latin dance was not just salsa or merengue but bachata, cumbia, and a variety of other equally sensuous and celebratory dances. But at some point, the pressure started: if you *really* want to learn dance, if you *really* want to be good, you need to go to class every night, dance at every social you can go to, and *really* immerse yourself in the culture. Sure, okay. Some of that is true and works well as you’re learning new skills and wanting to get comfortable on the dance floor. But the truth was that this rigidity, the idea that I must eat, breathe, and live dance, made me more self-conscious, more afraid of making mistakes, and less able to enjoy myself on the dance floor. It took me time to realize I loved to dance for the sake of moving my hips and getting my wiggles out, much like the tutu-wearing girl I once was. and there’s nothing wrong with that! In fact, there were many other casual dancers like me—people who enjoyed a turn about the dance floor without getting too caught up in the dance culture surrounding it.

And let’s be real, I like doing other things. I love finding a new recipes in the New York Times cooking section to try over the weekend. I like getting lost perusing seed catalogs and learning the best ways to start your seedlings in February. I like knitting while binge-watching shows—haphazardly making blankets that are too big with stitches that are too uneven to be considered beautiful by anyone but me or someone lucky enough to cuddle under those messily-crafted blankets with me.

I like a rousing game of bocce without using regulation-grade balls imported from Italy. I’m sure someone out there understands why they are important to a good game, but I’m not one of them. I’ve gotten back into sketching and watercolors. That’s right, I’m a hardcore doodler and love my how-to-paint kits. A professional artist, I will never be. I also love learning Spanish, listening to podcasts, watching shows, and reading literature in the language—but I doubt I’ll ever comfortably speak it. When I try to study too hard, my tongue gets tied, and the words stop flowing, as Spanish is inextricably linked to my complicated feelings about my racial and cultural background. But if I bask in my appreciation of this heritage language? Then I learn, then I enjoy, then I keep at it.

I like, in other words, taking up new pastimes and learning new ways of looking at the world. My latest hobby is joyfully ignoring the well-meaning but high-pressure people who tell me I just need to practice more at [fill in the blank] and eventually, I’ll be The Best or, at least, Very Good. How about I just enjoy what I‘m doing?

I’m also always working through graduate school traumas issues rooted in perfectionism (heaven forbid you say, do, or write anything that isn’t automatically flawless!). I like being a novice. An amateur. The person who isn’t afraid to look like a fool, make a mistake or try something new. I like that I can dance freely now, without the pressure to perfect every step, or grow some of the tastiest tomatoes without being a master gardener, or even pluck at my violin strings without fear of sounding less-than-symphony ready. 

In fact, I’ve developed a profound love for doing things I’m not good at over the years. There’s magic in being like The Fool in the tarot, always open, always ready for new experiences and possibilities, focused not on a specific outcome but on the act of exploration.

This is the energy I bring to the new year: the soft, receptive magic of doing things I love loudly, happily, and with no intention of mastering any of them. What will you playfully practice this year? What delights will you devote yourself to?

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

The Bruja's Guide to Everyday Magic

With the publication of Practically Pagan ~ An Alternative Guide to Magical Living, many readers have asked me what I mean when I say I write about and practice ‘everyday magic.’ In fact, a number of people have picked up my new book expecting complex spells and occult practices, only to be disappointed by pages filled with anecdotal stories and tips about energy, intention, and conjuring so subtle it’s part of our daily lives. The irony, of course, is that these simple acts of energetic awareness—what some people call mindfulness or intentional living—are actual magical practices! These daily conjurings might lack some of the sparkle and flash of more elaborate mystic practices, but they are some of the most powerful forms of spell casting and an important foundation for any kind of magical practice.

I’m all about keeping it simple. Our thoughts are spells. Our energy tells us everything we need to know about a specific situation or person, as does their vibe. Our daily habits shape the kind of life we want to live—so we need to be intentional about it. We can also sometimes get a little carried away with the theater of the occult world, so much so that the real magic gets lost under the hocus-pocus. I think of it as burning incense to cleanse your home when the space is dirty and what you really should be doing is giving it a good scrub down. Light those incense, sure, but don’t ignore the important task of tending your sanctuary. It’s not just dust and crumbs on the floor, but stagnant energy that needs to be cleared out through the literal act of cleaning. That’s the thing with magic: the best kind is simple, but also hard work.

Hard work—but worth it. So if you’re just beginning your journey into the mystic world or are a long-time pagan or witchy soul wanting to get a refresher on foundational practices, check out my Bruja’s Guide to Everday Magic below.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Keep It Simple

When I started Enchantment Learning & Living what feels like a lifetime ago, I did so with the intention of exploring a central truth: true magic is in the everyday. That’s the tagline of much of my creative work and the backbone of my own brujeria practice.

Spiritual Gatekeeping

I wanted to get away from the idea of complex spell-work and esoteric occultism that often felt like gatekeeping to what should be an organic fluid practice. Like the church insisting they are the conduit through which God, or the numinous, speaks, these more complicated approaches to the craft can imply that people can only connect to that mystic energy within themselves and without if they perform intricate rituals. We must have an Instagram-worthy altar, a collection of large, expensive crystals, and an herbal apothecary filled with hard-to-find often dangerous herbs.

Don’t get me wrong. We all have our ways of conjuring, our rituals, and spells, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can even enjoy that Instagram-worthy set-up! The trouble occurs when we get so lost in the performance of our witchiness, yield to consumerism that tells us we can’t be magical unless we have that ultra-expensive [fill in the blank magical tool]. It’s easy to get lost in the ritual and theater of the occult, so much so that we can forget the purpose behind our spiritual practice: to reconnect to self, the universe, to others in a meaningful and life-affirming way.

This is also a way to keep people out of elitist witch circles—if you can commodify spirituality, you can choose who can and can’t have access to these energies via simple economics and cultural appropriation, which is a byproduct of this commodification. More simply, it sells the idea that you are not enough on your own to manifest what you need to, which is simply untrue.

Spiritual Bypassing & Performative Conjuring

We also run the risk of spiritual bypassing when our practice is so focused on the pomp and circumstance of witchy business. We fall into the trap of “love and light” and good feelings only, suppressing the bad so we don’t have to do the hard shadow work to truly heal. We can, in essence, get so lost in the spectacle of the occult that we successfully avoid whatever it is we need to deal with.

And it’s not just witches that do this. I’ve seen this in the yoga community, where people misuse a powerful practice to numb, rather than heal. Buearocracies roll out their anti-racism agendas that amount to nothing more than a publicity stunt—it’s easy to feel like they’re doing the hard work when a shiny new poster says they are. Actual social justice is much harder and takes more work, hence it’s easy to fall back on feel-good performativity than it is to wade into the waters of genuine activism.

The real work—spiritual, social justice, relational—happens when we show up and aren’t afraid to get messy, uncomfortable, and grounded. And, yes, sometimes those spells, rituals, and social media posts help with that—as long as people don’t stop there. That’s why one of my witchy principles is that magic is a hard, gritty thing. You have to show up and do the work every day. It’s not glamorous and it doesn’t always feel good, but if you keep at it…good stuff starts happening.

Keep It Simple

So…what do we do, knowing all of this? Easy. We keep it simple. My upcoming book, Practically Pagan ~ An Alternative Guide to Magical Living, takes a practical approach to magical living. You don’t any money to perform these proverbial spells and rituals. You don’t need fancy tools or a scholarly background in the occult. You don’t even need a lot of time. All you need is a desire to conjure more magic in your life.

Put even more simply, this book and my personal practice are all about knowing that there is magic in the mundane. As the book blurb says, “It’s a less mumbling 'double double toil and trouble' over a cauldron and trouble and a more cooking a delicious soup in a beloved cast iron pot. It’s simple. It’s mundane. It’s magic!”

You won’t find love spells or hexes in this book, but you will find simple practices rooted in self-care and energetic awareness designed to help you live a more magical life. Perhaps this is what makes this book “an alternative guide” because it side-steps the hocus pocus people expect from witchy books and gets real about the hard work it takes to conjure a more magical life.

It’s a simple concept but difficult to put into practice. I’ve been marinating on this concept more recently as reviews of my latest book are rolling in. It’s a striking contrast as the reviews can be broken into two camps: the people who are upset that they didn’t get a grimoire filled with complicated spellwork and the people who utterly and completely appreciate a more practical—alternative—guide to magical living rooted in basic energetic and mystic principles with examples and tips for how those practices play out in real life.

The magic is in the repetition, the overlap between cultivating radical self-care and developing a pleasure magic practice. These things work together to form a powerful, magical whole. And yeah, on the surface that might seem boring to practitioners who want more sparkle and flair to their witchy practice, but—and I say this with a profound love of glitter and shiny things—sometimes all that sparkle is distracting you from the very real work of sweeping up a dirty floor and thinking twice about welcoming in people who always track in mud, literally and figuratively.

Oh, and that soup in your beloved cast-iron pot? That’s a comfort spell. Pointing out, as I often do in this book, that it’s harder for women of color to acknowledge that they are allowed to do less and enjoy themselves? That’s a protection spell and boundary-setting spell. It might seem like overkill to those who haven’t had to constantly assert their right to wellness and a balanced life. But to us? The repetition is part of the conjuring and an invitation to fellow people with marginalized identities to claim our right to joy, pleasure, and the magic of everyday life. No complicated spells required.

So as you go about your daily life this week, pay attention to the energy you bring to your work, your play, your relationships. Treat every action as a conjuring, every cup of tea as a potion, every word that slips from your lips as a spell. Then see where the magic takes you.

And remember, as I always say, true magic is in the everyday.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

On Twinkle Lights

I sometimes forget the light. When it is cold and dark and I am tired of being brave. I sometimes dwell on all the ugly tangles and hidden sneaky things when the moon is out—so bold and beautiful in her naked glory. Why must I see only the shadows she casts, rather than relish her bright light that sends hungry shades fleeing?

I sometimes forget that the darkest of winter isn’t the darkness of the soul. It’s my time to tend my roots and veins, my unfurled spine and dreams tucked between my ribcage—all the things that don’t need sun to grow, just my attention. So I make space. I spread out long and wide across my mat and relearn a body with so many stories packed inside it. What a relief to let them breathe and expand! I get big and bold in my daydreams, too, crossing continents and universes when I must stay put inside my apartment. Then I let my stories get louder, sweeping away the clouds with their piercing joy. We are allowed to know the ripe sweet burst of pleasure even when we’ve forgotten what it tastes like.

I sometimes forget to be the light. When it is so much easier to go dim and stop stoking the fires of my heart. But then I see tiny dots of hope in the darkest corners of a very dark year, reminders that when the earth seems dead, it is merely sleeping, gathering energy to bloom again in the spring. And there is always a spring.

Those little twinkle lights—so small and fragile—hardly anything at all. But enough to pierce the heavy cloak of midnight. Enough to poke holes in heavy thoughts and watch them sink to the bottom of my consciousness. Enough of them to light up a whole room—even just the one that refuses to be swallowed up in despair. Now that’s a worthy achievement.

They remind me that I can be a tiny spark of hope and not the wild bonfire I’m always expecting myself to be. I don’t have to keep feeding the dry-wooden fears that too-easily ignite and burn out of control.

I once forgot to make my home in the dark so that I may see the light. Now? I watch the setting sun. I feel the cold and silence creep in with the dusk. And I smile.

Time for twinkle lights and conjuring best done in in the velvet embrace of night.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational collection of musings touching on life’s simple pleasures, everyday fantasy, and absolutely delectable recipes that will guarantee to stir the kitchen witch in you.  If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is the everyday, subscribe here.

Want even more inspiration to make your dream life a reality?  Follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.  Thanks for following!