Hedge Spells

Equinox, pomegranates & grief

Casey Zabala — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 21:51:02 GMT

Dear Witches! Casey Zabala here, emerging from the dusty September hedge with quite a few thorns tangled in my hair. Sharing my melancholy thoughts with you this Equinox, with the hope that they may resonate and give you permission to be messy this time of year, at this particularly unnerving collective moment.

Read on for more ways to connect — I’m hosting a spiritual development circle for those who want to connect with basic spiritual hygiene and magical fundamentals to further re-enchant your life. Drop into circle & build your spiritual trust. Starting October 14th!

Thanks for reading Hedge Spells! This post is public so feel free to share it.

For me, the Autumn Equinox season is murky, faded celluloid, dusky scented, and dimly lit. While the wheel of the year remains an ancestral map for Earth’s major shifts, grief rearranges our cycles in indelible ways - birthdays become mortality markers, anniversaries become hollows for retreat. At the Equinox, the beginning of the descent into the dark season, the ghosts begin to tap on my window, hungry for something to eat, somewhere to rest.

It may not be this way for you – in honoring Persephone’s dance back down to the underworld to be reunited with her otherworldly lover, you might find inspiration, purpose, delight. There may be a joyous revelry in the undoing, the decay, the return to dust. We need courageous shepherds of this descent more than ever, as we navigate the acceleration of climate collapse, and our inevitable slide into collective crisis.

For some like myself, this season marks a time of grieving. The Fall Equinox has brought death, bad news, and shock to my doorstep, and each season at this time of year, I fumble through some recipe for devotion, sometimes desperately trying to keep the candles lit.

Hugo Simberg - The Garden of Death - 1896

The keeners, care-takers, revelers, each have their own crucial medicine for honoring the grief we carry. One season you might be tending to the dead through compassionate connection with the bereaved, and another cycle you might find yourself on the floor, collapsing into yourself. And then there are the phases of total numbness, an inability to touch the edges of your sadness because it is burning white hot.

Learn more about Spirit in Practice

We often focus on Persephone’s story at this time of year, her necessary return to the underworld to fulfill her role as Queen. But we often forget to honor Demeter’s immense, ecosystem shattering grief that punctuates Persephone’s descent. Death is demanding and unwavering, and it comes with tidal waves of mourning, rage, and melancholy.

For this reason I have no ritual to offer you. No remedy, no spells. Just the open hearted invitation to examine the darkness that has been lingering at the periphery of your inner vision all Summer long. What happens when we carefully, thoughtfully, edge closer to our fears, our shadow, our pain?

The Equinox is well illustrated by the half-moon phase. A perfect split between illumination and inky black unknown. We have come halfway home to the Winter Solstice, and we are descending into the darker season, psychically called to honor the shadow, the unknown, to sit with the uncertainties that lie ahead. In an ideal world, we could discuss the necessity for balancing the two powers of knowing and un-knowing. But we live in a deeply imperfect world, a world on the brink of collapse.

How can we both grieve what is being destroyed all around us, and celebrate the places where we find hope, inspiration, and truth?

Each of us will respond differently to this prompt, and each of us exists on a spectrum of acknowledging the pain and suffering of our world – while “functioning” in our day-to-day realities.

So at the Equinox, please consider if you could use more hope, more joyful resistance, or perhaps you would benefit from the permission to crumble, grieve, to not be “okay” for a while.

While there is so much suffering unfolding, I still firmly believe in the power of re-enchanting our earthly experience. Magic is the balm that sees me through my darkest moments. Even when I’m fumbling through my spiritual toolkit, I can still access resources that ground and guide me. So, I’m offering a 7 week spiritual development circle for cultivating your own magical repertoire to help empower you through these challenging times. Spirit in Practice begins October 14th!

Meet your spirit guides, build a spiritual practice you trust, and remember what it feels like to see the world as enchanted again. Register for Spirit in Practice today!

virgo season magick

Casey Zabala — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 15:46:29 GMT

Greetings ~ your resident hedge witch Casey here, crawling to my keyboard despite eclipse induced exhaustion. This is an immense period of change, and your exhaustion is completely valid. Take time to rest and do less!

Sharing some magical notes and ideas for how to weather Virgo season, without perfectionism or prudence, but rather from a tender hearted care orientation. Meet yourself, and others, in this moment with compassion whenever possible.

I write to you from the depths of eclipse season recalibrations - and honestly I’m a bit dizzy. Are you too standing betwixt realities and contemplating what path is coalescing underneath your feet?

Virgo season (Aug 22 - Sept 22) meets us in this transformational moment with notes on our personal integrity and suggestions for how to take better care, particularly when we find ourselves dysregulated, triggered, or floundering in the depths of ourselves. Virgo is the wise maiden, the earthy healer with a quiet yet profound touch, the Hermit standing high on the hill, shining its beacon for other seekers to follow. If you are searching for tidy solutions or miraculous remedies, it is time to ground back into the humble nourishing magic sparkling at your fingertips.

Here are some guiding Virgoan principles to ground and guide you this season:

🧹 Small steps are big steps:

We start off this Virgo season with a Pisces Lunar Eclipse, kicking up the cosmic space dust, causing us to lose sight of the bigger picture, or let totally lost in the weeds. Gather mystic breadcrumbs under the influence of this Pisces Eclipse. Record your dreams and pay attention to synchronicities. Whatever is activated now, will be rippling into the fabric of your reality for the next six months.

Timeline shifts are out of our control. Take a deep breath and release any attachment to idealized outcomes. Make room for the hand of fate to embroider a secret knot into the weft of your story. It’s not about grand sweeping gestures at this time, rather a moment for making meaningful adjustments to your daily life to support your overall wellbeing. Get more rest. Move your body consciously. Commit to less screen time and more reading by candlelight.

Virgo season prepares us for the down shift into Autumn. Slowly acclimatize to less light, more internal processing, and juice the last shimmer days of summer for their vitality, presence, and abundance.

Spell suggestions:

3 items max (actionalable!) to do lists, kind affirmations, oatstraw tea with honey, quiet solitary walks, baking projects

🧹 Allow mutable magic to shepherd your shifts:

Virgo is a mutable sign, meaning that its energy is naturally about realignment. Mutable signs fall before seasonal climaxes and pivots. Virgo is the season that ushers us into the Autumn Equinox and the transition into the Fall; its energy readies us for cooler shorter days, and the season of decay and remembrance.

Mutable energy teaches us about flexibility. How often do we find ourselves entrenched in our own certainty only to be bowled over into self-doubt or confusion? Leaving room for a change of heart is the medicine of mutable signs. Virgo season is teaching us how to stay in our center while accommodating for our necessary growth and evolution.

Spell suggestions:

Games of “would you rather,” spending time in open spaces, prayers and petitions to Hermes Mercury, venn diagrams, Rainbow Fluorite for increasing mental flexibility.

🧹 Create something nourishing

Virgo’s zodiacal symbol is the Maiden, but her more ancient association is with the Goddess of the Harvest. Her star lore is connected with the myth of Demeter, mother of Persephone whose grief legendarily caused widespread drought. When Virgo is depleted, disrespected, or neglected, it sends shockwaves through ecosystems. Balanced and nurtured Virgo is the ultimate healer and mystic, tender of femme wisdom ways. The goddess of the harvest is the overseer of abundance for future months, ensuring that the collective with thrive while the earth rests.

Virgo season is for collecting and making medicine. It is a fantastic time for fine tuning your daily routines and habits so that you are centering your wellbeing. Carve out time for internal processing. Protect your art-making practice. Make yourself a cup of tea instead of numbing out or caffeinating. Plan the rest of your year with self-care as the baseline goal. Bake yourself treats. Keep your body hydrated and cared for.

Spell suggestions:

Cook or bake something delicious and imbue it with your healing intentions, whisper your well wishes into your tea, practice your aura cleansing meditations while in the shower, release pent up anger and frustrations before you scorch the earth unintentionally.

🧹 Eat your humble pie without the shame

Virgo season is for back to basics, everyday, practical magic. Less high ceremonial rituals and more garden, scissor, and stone spells. “Humble pie” has its roots in medieval customs of making pies from kitchen scraps, which is the thrifty witch energy we are after this season. Eating your “humble pie” morphed into a term about swallowing your pride, and we could perhaps use a dose of that too.

But this season is not about doubling down into our shame spirals or over analyzing our faults (so easy to do, but not a productive path to take!) Eating your humble pie is about getting into a right sized relationship with your energetic capacity and your current reality, and setting your to-do lists from that honest perspective. Wisely commit your time and energy to the people and projects that are more aligned to your north star.

Spell ingredients:

Lighting candles to mark the beginning of daily tasks, rewriting your own negative self-reviews, building everyday altars to your soul’s purpose, cultivating gratitude for basic needs being met.

🧹 Sacred space is healing space

Virgos are excellent editors. They are precise, particular, and detail oriented. Take advantage of this seasonal proclivity and run a fine tooth comb to the areas of your life that are drawing in chaos and disorder. It is time to shake up and reset the energy in order to cultivate more calm, clarity, and comfort.

Reset and reorganize your open browser tabs (close that one you haven’t thought about in a week!), deep clean the kitchen, dust those out of sight spaces, tackle the stacks of paperwork, or rearrange the furniture if the energy has become stagnant. Virgo season (and mutable seasons in general) are ideal times for physical and spiritual-emotional cleansing.

Virgo season is helping us to reorient to our own healing process – whatever shape that might take. Taking the time to reorganize, declutter, and cleanse your spaces will call in the most resonant sacred support for you in this moment.

Spell ingredients:

Selenite (everywhere). Cleansing music turned up. Grounding incense like vetiver or sandalwood. Salt water. Baking soda baths.

P.S. More announcements are coming soon about my new seasonal client offerings AND my spiritual development circle: Spirit in Practice. Eclipse season has naturally reset my energetic expectations and I am realigning my schedule to be most fruitful and sustainable… more news on course dates soon! I promise!

eclipses & the magic of release

Casey Zabala — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:05:03 GMT

Greetings from my hedge brimming with ripe blackberries and edged with leggy golden grasses. Sending hugs to all those dealing with wild-fires and smoke this season - may you, and Earth, find respite soon.

It’s time to book your summer intuitive check-ins!

August’s divination journal is a dive into the upcoming eclipses and some notes on release work from a spiritual point of view. Cultivate the bright and playful moments wherever you can, magical ones.

August’s altar is solar saturated, brimming with overflowing cups, spilling their light into glimmering fractals. We chase these pools of light, splashing through possibility and creating new prisms of wishes. There is no collecting these rainbows, only appreciating their fleeting existence.

August’s altar is a net, and in that net we are collecting what is most magnetized to our soul’s vision. We are learning to hold tight to what wants to embrace us back. In August we start to harvest what is ours for the keeping, and we offer up whatever is ready to be transformed to the gods, letting the dross and excess spill through the net to find another home.

July ends with a potent Aquarius Full Moon, kicking the sparkles of Leo into high gear. Our playlists are punchy, our hearts are wide-open like the kitchen window at midnight. August is a month for playfully engaging with the world, even – and especially when – there is so much heartache to tend. This month we are learning how to turn up the volume of our joy to help us ride the ways of release, destruction, and transition we are about to weather through Eclipse season.

I recently spoke with a dear witch friend Antigone, who asked me, “what actually happened in July?” So much yet so little. High drama with low blow-back. For me, it felt like rumbling internal earthquakes were knocking things back into place.

Take a moment to sit with the dust that was kicked up in your life throughout the month of July. Were you internally navigating a series of unsettling nightmares? Leaving your psyche nowhere to rest? Did your emotions take you on psychedelic side trips so disorienting that you forgot how to return back to your center? Or are you feeling unnaturally jaded by all the dishonesty and manipulation of our world? Or are you learning to face your truth in a way that is steady, trusting?

July turned over the soil that had long been left to toxify. August is a month for identifying the poison, clearing up the wreckage, and creating a rectification road-map. So put on your glitter.

It’s eclipse season, witches.

The magic of eclipse season is revelatory, swift and irrevocable, filled with karmic activations and cosmic soul work. Eclipse weather is electric, masterful, and mystical. The implications of eclipse happenings cannot fully be divined until the next domino falls. These periods of cosmic reset require a deep trust in a bigger vision of ourselves, our purpose, and the universe itself. This trust is not one that we have been encouraged to develop or acknowledge, but it is precisely the kind of trust that a witch (or sincere spiritual person) cultivates during their lifetime. Lean into the faith you have in yourself and a larger vision of love that holds together the constellations of our lives.

The Lunar nodes are now in Aquarius (North Node) and Leo (South Node), calling us out on our ego trips and calling us into greater participation with the world.

Incoming: A total Solar Eclipse on August 12th at 20°2’ Leo

Here we have the Sun and Moon at 20° Leo, alongside the South Node 29°, Jupiter 9°, and Mercury 5° all hanging out in the solar sign. The culture of Leo is changing. A sign that empowers our egos to shine, is letting go of the toxic main character energy that has led the collective into calamity. It’s no longer about follower count, a person’s personal brand, or the amplification of personality politics. Leo’s strength comes from its heart, its loyalty and capacity for loving devotion. Clear away the parts of yourself too attached to egoic outcomes, and remember what it was like to be a child performing in front of her friends. What story are you telling now? What stories need to be released so you can be more honest about your true motivations? Clear the path for something more generous and ultimately more fulfilling to take shape.

A chapter closes: Full Moon partial Lunar Eclipse at 4°56’ Pisces

This last in the Virgo-Pisces eclipse story arc that has been progressing over the last 18months. We are revisioning the ways we relate to the world, and by proxy ourselves. It’s less about transcending the chaos, or keeping calm, and so much more about embracing our highly sensitive natures as a superpower. Sensitivity can be complex to navigate in a world that is sharp, boundary-less, and ailing, but if we don’t feel the pain, how are we ever going to fully address it? Forget 4-D matrixes of “awakening” and tune back into the health of our soil, the wellbeing of children, and whether or not we can show up for each-other when the going gets tough. This eclipse is asking that we let go of theatrics, or hiding behind perfectionism, and do our best to push through discomfort for the sake of healing. Spoiler alert, everyone is a failable human also trying to figure out how to survive their current incarnation. There is no quick fix, so palatable advice or solution. There are only the daily attempts to show up fully and take care of each other.

When the cosmos is demanding so much release and change, prepare to be exhausted. When you are consciously co-creating with the world, you also have to take into account the tides of your own body. Transformation, shifting patterns, breaking curses, shedding old skin, it all takes an immense amount of energy and attention, so be tender with yourself as you move through the release work of the month.

Practices that can support the release process:

🦋 Taking salt & baking soda (in equal parts) baths to clear your aura of sticky energy that is not yours. After a cleansing bath, apply an oil that seals and grounds your aura (rose, jasmine, or lavender work well.)

🦋 Consciously declutter. If there are areas of your home that give you the -ick, it’s time to shift the energy. Rearrange the furniture, create new storage solutions, or re-home things that are not bringing you joy.

🦋 Spend time around bodies of water. Water is always on the move; tides sculpt coastlines, rivers dwindle and swell, ponds transcend back into clouds. Contemplate the wisdom of the water table, and think of the ways your energy is also shape-shifting season by season.

🦋 Work with sound to energetically clear and reset spaces. Blast your favorite tunes and feel the vibrations of your mood change shape. Ring out any stagnant energy from your home. Sound triggers emotional release, and is a great ally if you are needing support in processing your grief/rage/loneliness. Tune in and go deeper.

🦋 Drink more water! Make iced beverages! Lemon slices! Iced herbal teas! Hydration is an underrated assistant in the work of clearing away our sluggish energy.

Release work is a spiralic process.

Rarely are we able to “let go” of something and be completely resolved, healed, transformed after a single prayer, spell, eclipse, or break-up conversation. Release takes patience, commitment, revision, and continuous tending in order for the energetic attachments we are holding to dull, dissolve, and take a new shape.

These practices are not quick-fixes, and the eclipse won’t wipe the slate clean. However, I encourage you to usher the process along through your intentions, your actions, and your commitment to your own personal growth – that is woven into the fabric of our collective growth.

May you feel resourced to turn towards what lights you up, and ready to let go of whatever it is that is holding you back! Remember, we have so many opportunities to practice, to support the process, and to learn from our mistakes along the way.

ANNOUNCING: SPIRIT IN PRACTICE

I’m launching an intimate circle series soon, and we begin weekly meet-ups in early September! Join the waitlist to be the first to register for Spirit in Practice, a 7-week online course for embracing and aligning with your personal spiritual practice. I only have 12 spots available!

JOIN THE LIST

My tarot initiation

Casey Zabala — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:06:32 GMT

Greetings from the hedge!

I’m celebrating 10 years (!) since the publication of Wanderer’s Tarot, a feminist tarot deck for modern witches. I am in awe of the experiences the deck has brought me; the friends I have made, the folks I am honored to support through magical counsel, and the community of collaborators I am blessed to orbit with. Wanderer’s Tarot initiated my life as a public witch, supported my work as an intuitive, guided me through the pain of the witch-wound, sparked pure magic, and creative growth.

From a young age I felt unseen presences, had revelatory dreams, and was identified as an “old soul,” but it was my first encounter with the Tarot that initiated my life guided by spirit. It would be safe to say that tarot is my spiritual center, and divination is my way of life.

After 10 years of Wanderer’s Tarot out in the world, its magic being worked by countless witches in their own practices, a new evolution of my work and practice are taking shape. Here’s to continuing to nurture our spiritual roots, expand into our soul’s calling, and live by the cosmic truth of our interconnection. Tarot is magic, and it activates magic in our world.

Below is a revised essay from the Wanderer’s Tarot Guidebook on my tarot initiation, the esoteric lineage of the deck, and a prayer for this work to continue to support those who go with the goddess.

On my twelfth birthday I was introduced to the oracle. The sun was sinking behind the aspen trees, creating a lacy August light, pooling over the table where we sat. We were by the river that afternoon, my mother, her friend and I, watching the gnats frenzy above the rivulets of cool dark matter, a powerful presence anchoring us. I unwrapped the package set before me, and joy tingled through me as I realized what I had been gifted. A deck of cards, speckled with stars, with vibrant, illuminating images. In the waning summer light we all had our cards read and I still remember what those cards shared with us. After that evening my life was permanently altered. Something about how the cards shuffled in my hands, and how they spoke with such clarity and grace enamored me, and I initiated my divinatory practice then and there.

My first tarot reading was a genuine moment of spiritual awakening. After many years of struggling through long Sunday services and awkwardly grappling with the mythos of my Catholic upbringing, the experience of communicating directly with what felt like a divine force fundamentally altered the way I would make meaning in this world. My communion with tarot felt divine because it witnessed parts of myself that I had kept secret, tenderly hidden away from the world. Despite the walls I had built up around myself, the spirit of the Tarot saw right through me. No longer did I feel alienated and alone in a world that had no inherent meaning. Tarot initiated a connection to the sacredness in my own existence, to the life force in the falsely inanimate, and in the potential to follow a path which might lead to some grain of truth. The fluidity of my first encounter with divination compounded my understanding that Tarot cards offer revelation, particularly for those who have a basic trust in their intuition. Over time, I learned that Tarot can become a potent ally in honoring and empowering our innate intuitive abilities. Beyond this powerful potential, the Tarot itself holds keys for unlocking an understanding of the esoteric undercurrents of humanity, and potentially consciousness itself. The energies I continue to encounter within the tarot, and the truths it connects us with, are of an esoteric lineage, one that is important to encounter and honor in its full complexity if one is to sincerely work with Tarot.

The mystical teachings of the Tarot are products of a complex network of occult philosophies. In order to fully grasp Tarot’s teachings, as well as its spiritual capacity, the earnest seeker must endeavor to understand the occult basics. While there is no definitive origin for Tarot, there is a rich narrative of occult philosophies that participated in its inception and consequential development throughout the ages. Countless secret societies, mystical orders, witches and ceremonial magicians have shaped and protected the magical art of the tarot, each leaving their mark on the tradition of decks, correspondences, and spiritual energies which comprise the 78 card pack. Without a basic understanding of what these cultural currents and thinkers believed and practiced, we will understand very little about the spiritual essence of our beloved Tarot decks.

To begin to understand Tarot’s spiritual essence, one must peer into the culture from which it was formulated. The first tarocchi cards were crafted in Italy in the 14th century. These decks were commissioned by wealthy aristocratic families. The ornate quality of these decks can be likened to devotional images, or prayer cards, and were perhaps used not solely as a deck of cards, or for divination purposes, but for purposes of meditation, prayer, and magic. Unlike today, worldviews of 14th-15th century Italy were steeped in magical tradition. During the time, Hermeticism experienced a resurgence, largely due to the translation of the Corpus Hermeticum by Marsilio Ficino commissioned by the Cosimo de’Medici in 1463. At the time, Astrology was still a respected science, and the use of images to capture and enhance magical essences was widely practiced. It was in this moment in time—when magical worldviews still persisted and when images and symbols held powerful grips over the human psyche and interfaced meaningfully with the natural world—that Tarot cards emerged.

If we accept the basic magical worldview of the Renaissance, we can see how Tarot was born within a lineage of image-magic. This means that each archetype and card have the potential to house spirits. The Strength card with its gentle yet formidable lion tamer not only represents the power of the will when married with spirit, it actually can invoke the daimon who enchants wild beasts and embodies effortless grace. Tarot not only empowers our intuitive faculties, it weaves us back into a web of spirit communion and connection, with the archetypes illuminated on each card. When communing with spirits of any sort, it is wise to have a clear understanding of their character, intentions, and their story. To work with the spirits of the tarot, we have to gain a clearer understanding of the lineage of these spiritual identities, Hermeticism.

To work with the tarot is to enter into conversation with the Hermetic arts, whether one is aware of it or not. The Hermetic philosophical framework was born of the mysterious figure and works of Hermes Trismegistus, and the body of writings known as the Corpus Hermeticum. Hermes Trismegistus, also known as Hermes the Thrice Great, is at once a magical synthesis of the Greek God Hermes and the Egyptian God Thoth, and potentially a historical scholar, or a lineage of many scholars who published under the pseudonym. One pathway to a deeper understanding of the Hermetic lineage is to read portions of the Corpus Hermeticum, and to work with the constellation of deity and archetype that give shape to Hermes Trismegistus. The Corpus Hermeticum inspired countless esotericists and occultists to cultivate magical sciences and practices, one such art being the tarot.

The ultimate goal of the Hermetic path is to achieve gnosis. Gnosis is a direct embodied experience of wisdom, the kind of wisdom that floods our consciousness with novel awareness and facilitates a lived experience of the interconnectedness of all things. The project of attaining gnosis is what sets esotericists apart from other spiritual paths. The pathway to gnosis is littered with hidden treasures, encoded secrets, and signposts in plainsite. An esotericist is a collector of symbols, associations, and ultimately meaning. As we walk the Hermetic path of gnosis we gain greater awareness of the spiritual essence and meaning of all elements of life; for example, Venus’ descent into the underworld teaches us about our own interior shadowlands, or the caw of a crow heralds the call to justice in some matter. Hermeticism’s cosmological framework holds that all elements of life are inherently meaningful. One of the more famous Hermetic axioms attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, “as above, so below,” refers to the macrocosm mirroring the microcosm, and likewise, intimating that all levels of reality are intricately related and correspond to one another. Meaning, that the world we exist within is a reflection of our interior psyche, and likewise, our interior psyche projects out and shapes the external world we experience. Or as Jungian analyst and tarot reader Richard Roberts frames it from a psychological viewpoint, “as within, so without.’’ When we approach Tarot from this Hermetic framework, we have more grounding in how the deck wishes to operate. Through interacting with these archetypes, we are being given clues as to how to access gnosis, awakening, inner knowing. Each Tarot symbol is a mirror through which deeper understanding of oneself and one’s world can be gleaned. In the Tarot as in Hermeticism, through the study of nature, humankind studies the psyche.

Hermeticism is one fragment of the philosophical make-up of the tarot, which itself is an occult library of sorts. Occult symbolism is an amalgamation of many different traditions; Numerology, Cabalistic cosmology, Alchemy, Tantra, Astrology, the teachings of Pythagoras, the mystery schools of Ancient Greece, and others. Yet, Tarot’s symbolism is often seen as a clear summation of Hermeticism by scholars. P.D. Ouspensky, acclaimed Russian esotericist, explains this connection further: “For it represents, as, indeed, many commentators of the Tarot think, a summary of the Hermetic Sciences - the Kabala, Alchemy, Astrology, Magic, with their different divisions. All these sciences, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, really represent one system of a very broad and deep psychological investigation of the nature of man in his relation to the world of noumena (God, the world of Spirit) and to the world of phenomena (the visible, physical world).” At the heart of the many complex pathways of Occult philosophies, there is an invitation to live in an enchanted world, one that speaks, listens, and participates in our life paths. It is similar for the modern practicing witch; we experience the world as animated, full of soul and spirits to connect and commune with. Bringing a magical approach to our Tarot practice allows us space to connect with the spiritual allies and teachers indwelling the Tarot itself.

Wanderer’s Tarot - first printing.

When working consciously with Tarot, we must accept that we are invoking a host of spiritual allies and energies; the more aware of these spirit personalities we become, the more able we will be to receive and integrate their wisdom. The realm of occult studies has not, until recent history, been cautious about cultural appropriation or cultural appreciation. The cannon of occult philosophy includes a vast syncretism of many diverse cultural lineages and wisdom practices. It is our responsibility as modern practitioners to be aware of the multidimensional quality of the tarot pack, and all the energies, personalities, and cultures who have contributed to its long winding history. We must be discerning about what spirits and lineages we choose to work with, to integrate into our practices, and to research with reverence. It is the role of the modern witch to be clear and confident about the historical and energetic frameworks of the tools we use to channel our magic. When we understand the history and context of our tools and practices, our magic grows stronger and more authentically aligned with our souls.

Fifteen years after my first encounter with Tarot, I endeavored to create my own deck—the deck that would become Wanderer’s Tarot. My first task was to make contact with the spirits and energies that would make up this mysterious creation, and culminate through me under the guidance of unseen forces. In order to create a Tarot deck that spoke to my witchcraft, and my evolving feminism, the guiding invocation for the project was to the Goddess, in their many multidimensional gender non-conforming forms. For me, the Goddess is one who inspires, who destroys and creates, who cultivates peace and creates chaos. Just as the Tarot illuminates a rich spectrum of lessons we have the capacity to experience throughout our human incarnations, the Goddess teaches us to find wisdom in all of life’s kin, relationships, opportunities, and challenges. By invoking the Goddess to hold space for this work, I drew a sacred boundary around how the Wanderer’s Tarot expresses its magic. Each card was drawn within a ritual framework to allow space for the spirits who inhabit each card to show up, to bless the work, and to direct the symbolic meaning.

Wanderer’s Tarot (Solar Edition, no longer in print.)

It is my sincere hope that Wanderer’s Tarot provides a pathway to connecting with the Goddess throughout and within, as well as inspires all who encounter its magic to tune into femme wisdom ways. These femme wisdom ways include our intuition, our emotions, our sense of kinship. Humanity finds itself grappling with the dire need for a collective psychic shift, a shift away from patriarchal dominance and towards a re-enchantment of our world. Through the wisdom of the heart (the suit of cups), the mastery of the mind (the suit of swords), a rekindling of magic (the suit of wands), and an ensouled shift towards relating with our Earth (the suit of pentacles) we might have a fighting chance at sustainable transformation. Tarot is not only a tool for self-actualization; it expresses our fundamental interconnectedness. Through tarot we reconnect with our basic need to co-exist within a meaningful universe. The Tarot offers a key through its symbolism, a key to rediscovering human’s place in the interconnected web of life.

May we find hope in the glimpse of a shooting star, feel exalted by the rising of the full moon, and whisper thanks for the gift of a wild turkey feather. May our tarot decks be tools that expand our capacity to imagine new worlds, and support us in cultivating cultures which center care.

Shop Wanderer's Tarot

Learn more about Casey’s work, and book your 1-1 intuitive sessions with her here.

on high simmer

Casey Zabala — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:20:22 GMT

Greetings ~

Casey Zabala here, with your July Divination Journal for 2026. This month offers high drama, high magick, high tension. This missive gives astrological narrative to the energetics, with some magical self-care suggestions woven in.

After sitting with the energetics of this Summer, I’m called to share more maps of the soul, give shape to spirit and share ideas for unpacking our purpose. I believe we all have an assignment — and that we all flourish when we each embody our authentic genius. July invites us to let go of what keeps us trapped in other people’s webs of perception, and to daringly embrace our individuality.

Book a session with me for support in this work!

Work with Casey

Read on below for insights and spiritual grounding:

I had to lay down on the floor of my studio, calling down the angels to anchor me into the task of illustrating the mythic threads of these high summer days. The energy of July 2026 is precarious, cresting, and ready to split us into surprising and novel timelines. We are simmering in the crucible of transformation. So, this monthly divination journal will be an attempt to give language to the energetics of this precious and precipitous month, as well as offer magical self-care tools to forge your path through the thorns.

In the undergrowth, the brambles are buzzing with bird song and pollinators, branches drooping with ripening fruits, while the buzzards circle overhead. Our world is rife with the emergent scenarios with potentially violent outcomes. In our own magical, enchanted, purpose-aligned lives, how might we balance out the path that leads to destruction, with our own reconstruction of care?

July’s overall assignment is to accept our soul work.

MERCURY RETROGRADE:

Tensions and tides are rising as we enter the heat of Summer, July. Mercury is retrograde in the sensitive and oft tearful world of Cancer, tracking a deep yet elusive longing until it is forced to retreat and rest. Our words might come out coded or laden with past wounding. Our triggers might lead to feelings based choices. Mercury retrograde here will be offering new insights into the areas of our lives where compassion is accessible, craved, or lacking all together. Identify the ways in which you are seeking more tenderness, support, or healing, and attempt to adjust towards nurturance. While Mercury is retrograde in Cancer, it might be a difficult time to make decisions that affect your long-term plans for the future. You are moving through a cycle of revision, recommitment, and resetting of expectations. Make no firm or binding propositions until later in the Summer season, when the air is crisping back into Autumn.

Mercury stations direct 16° Cancer on July 23rd.

DARE TO FEEL: Mercury in Cancer is for vulnerable emotional insights.

If you are having trouble with overwhelm - specifically when it feels difficult to identify your feelings at any given moment - this is a great time for slowing down your emotional process and learning what feelings you are experiencing. When overwhelm creeps in, notice what you are doing. Are you at work, on your phone, deep in your inbox, with your partner or alone? Stop and take three deep breaths, noticing where the breath feels stuck or heavy in your body. Next, ask yourself what your overwhelm is protecting you from feeling? Wait and listen for any intuitive insights from your body, spirit, or mind. Take note of your findings somewhere where you can track your feelings over time.

Perhaps you will realize that a habit or activity is causing unnecessary stress. Maybe you will realize that there is something needing to be communicated or processed through. Set aside time to address your emotional needs. They are valid and important for your health and wellness!

MARS-URANUS CONJUNCTION:

Mars slides closer and closer to Uranus at the beginning of the month, with a conjunction (or collision) perfecting on July 4th. Mars Uranus conjunctions bring about aggressive bursts of action, potent releases of pent-up energy, or surprising outcomes that expend massive amounts of fuel.

There are so many important implications of this transit for the collective. We are primed to witness escalations of war, outrageous power grabs by unfettered fascist leaders, or worse. Here, I am going to focus on how this transit might land for you personally, especially when the world at large can disempower our sense of authority. Big picture vision, this year is a great time to: prepare your emergency go-bag, know your community’s emergency planning provisions, and have an emergency plan with your nearest and dearest.

If you have found yourself burning the candle at both ends, the Mars-Uranus conjunction may relieve your personal limitations - limitations that are designed to be honored. We cannot continue to give all of our energy away to others, and expect to cultivate a rich, meaningful and fruitful relationship with the world.

If your field has become filled with static energy, or your inbox is overflowing with newsletters, offers, and updates, it may be time to reset your information centers to hone the flow of input you are receiving. Mars-Uranus could reveal the areas in which we have information over-load, that is causing interference in our own inner spiritual landscapes. Return to moments of pause and silence, for the answers you seek.

If you have a debt of pent up frustration, rage, or aggression, you are going to want to find a safe way to release your fire. The Mars-Uranus conjunction can cause an eruption of unprocessed desires to flood our system. Take note of all the ideas, projects, plans, that you have wanted to actualize but haven’t had the room for. Instead of taking out your tension on others, acknowledge the ways you have been holding your own spirit back from its full radical expression. Dance, shake, run, or scream out the tension that you are carrying around with you. Find a big, or small, outlet for your freedom.

MOON MAPPING:

July’s lunations offer profound opportunities for our conscious co-creation and deepening of our self awareness. The Moon leads us into a connection with the divinity of our mundane experience; it connects us with the tides, the swelling of the earth, the morphic field of our cultural experience. July is an important month for facing emotional truths and stepping into a new elevated practice of emotional regulation.

🌑 Cancer New Moon July 14th (conjunct Mercury)

~ This New Moon is a dark and still reflecting pool, a sentient scrying mirror, ready to reveal coveted soul material to those who ponder the glassy surface long enough.

🌝 Aquarius Full Moon July 29th (with a Jupiter cazimi and Pluto-Moon conjunction!)

~ Oppositions illuminate powerful opportunities for growth and integration, and this Full Moon is a power house for collective ritual. Release what is holding you back with an abundance of optimism for the life you are calling into reality. May we step into a paradigm centering the needs and care of all living beings!

by Gilbert Williams

JUPITER IN LEO: coaxing your purest form to the surface

Thoughtfully abandon those parts of yourself that keep us tame, small, or afraid of our creative potential. Leap onto the dancefloor, dare to be noticed, relish in your authentic expression.

July’s grasses are high and golden, the Sun is saturated, the call to embody your wildest notions is dialed up and crackling through the stereo. While the world around us burns and tensions roil, learn how to walk on the embers. Our innately human creativity and genius is in our sensual experience of Eros, grief, rage, and all the experiences in between.

When stress rears its demonic head, ground back into the sensual. Smell a sun baked rose, stretch your body like a lazy cat, or ask someone to hold your hand tight. Re-attune to the mundane yet magical moments of connection that keep us present to the miraculous nature of being.

Major activations are coalescing as we move through the month of July. Timelines are ending. New chapters are being initiated. You may be surprised or perplexed by where you find yourself. The central quest of this month, simmering with intensity, is to further align with your soul’s purpose here on this precious planet.

A SPELL / A PRAYER :

“I ask for my beloved helping spirits to conspire benevolently to illuminate and actualize my soul’s calling. I release attachment to any behaviors or beliefs that are clouding my vision or occulting my purpose. I am ready to live in alignment with my soul’s path. ”

Solstice at the crossroads:

Casey Zabala — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 04:26:31 GMT

Solstice pivots & magical pacts from my hedge to yours ~ Casey Z

For the past few months I have felt expansive. Exhibiting an uncharacteristic flexibility in the face of dramatic changes in my own life, I have been optimistic about the next chapter, welcoming the transformative twists and turns that may lay ahead. I chalked it up to my Jupiter return. But in concert with my Jupiterian optimism, my schedule started to overflow with calendar invites, bookings, and networking dates. “It’s all good things!” Truly an introvert, I simultaneously winced. Jupiter returns are lovely enlivening transits, but without the optimal boundaries in place to say “yes!” to the good, and “no” to the draining/taxing/out of orbit invitations, things can get out of hand very quickly.

Now, as Jupiter sits directly on top of my natal Jupiter, my hand has been forced. Childcare hiccups, overcommitting myself, and months without proper days off have truly caught up to me. Rather than brimming with opportunities that sparkle with the promise of fulfillment, I am stuck rescheduling appointments, cramming in moments of reflection and creation, and praying for a break in the action. The time has come for me to let go of the projects that once fueled me, in favor of the work and commitments that are right sized for my current life pace. (May it be so!)

The 8 of Cups describes this dilemma of the over-abundant crossroads well. We will be minding our business, meandering along on our soul’s path peacefully enough until a fork in the road presents itself. Hesitating at the decision point leads to sleepless nights, but there is something fruitful emerging from staying up and listening to the wisdom of the dark night, and contemplating the curvature of the Moon. The soul always makes itself known, if you get quiet enough to trace its shadow. Outcomes are uncertain, but your intuition is the best guide you have available to you. Will you choose the path that pulls on your heartstrings, or stay the comfortable course?

As we cross the threshold of Summer Solstice, we are invited into a radical honesty with ourselves and our growth since the Winter Solstice.

🕯️ What prayers did you weave into action six months ago, and how have they materialized in your world?

🕯️ What energetic state are you in now, and what has changed since Winter’s darkness?

🕯️ What is the Sun’s solar vision revealing to you about your progress, your purpose, your joy?

🕯️ What are you still seeking to achieve at this Solar peak in the year?

For some, Summer Solstice is a time of exuberant displays of generosity, community connection, celebration, and expression. For others, this time of year comes with an oppressive pressure to be extroverted, and a performative glee that is out of step with one’s true emotional state. Some will meet themselves at a crossroads, with new boundaries to delineate and communicate. Others will realize that it is time to actually attend to the burnout that has been plaguing their lives.

Wherever you find yourself on the witchy spectrum, Solstice is a time for tending to your spirit. We have made it halfway through the year, the Sun is at its peak potency, and our psychic antennae are poised to channel divine guidance that sparks healing, inspiration, and integration.

Carve out the sacred space to tune into your authentic presence at the Solstice:

🕯️ Reflect upon your current wishes; what are you craving or calling into being?

🕯️ Think about your patterns of behavior: what routines are nourishing for you, and what habits are holding you back?

🕯️ Get tender and honest about your emotional state of being, and acknowledge those feelings through embodied engagement with them…

At the Solstice, there may be some hard-to-face truths ready to be witnessed. Know you are not alone in this process of honest awareness. To be present to the raw reality of your nature, capacity, and desire, is an act of authentic devotion. From awareness, empowered action blossoms.

As I stew in the final moments of my Jupiter return, I’m acknowledging what I can sustain, what I genuinely enjoy, and what major shifts are authentically aligned. At the Solstice threshold I will be shedding old skins and asking for healing waters to provide clarity of purpose and capacity.

Solstice magical acts:

~ Spend time practicing or receiving a healing art; reiki, bodywork, channeling, making art, or divination of any kind.

~ Spend time with a body of water, and ritually cleanse yourself there.

~ Harvest herbs and pick flowers for a wild bouquet.

~ Watch the sunset in silence, and send your energy out into the setting Sun to be transformed.

~ Honor all that you have accomplished this year with a cheering circle of community and loved ones. Take turns sharing your accomplishments and cheering each other on.

~ Step into your authentic presence, even if no one is watching…

Sending you all solar healing and sacred blessings ~

Casey

* all photos on 35mm film by Casey Zabala

4. my occult archive

Casey Zabala — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:59:32 GMT

Greetings, witchy-ones! Casey Zabala here, with another list of titles from my occult library for you. These are books that are in my current reading cue, or titles I recently enjoyed, featuring fiction, zines, and even a recommendation for witchy-parents.

🌞 Summer Solstice is just days away! If you are in the Bay Area, I’d love to connect IRL at MYSTIC, Mill Valley on June 21st at my Summer Solstice Vision Board workshop for guided intention setting, Solstice magic, and art spells!

Gemini season made me extra book hungry, so I’m sharing a few of the reads I have been feasting on of late. I just returned from spending a few days in LA for the LA Festival of Tarot, and I arrived home with way too many books to disclose. Gemini season is both a spiral into mental overdrive, and also a delicious exercise in thinking too many too weird thoughts. I find myself truly overwhelmed by the number of books I hope to devour, and the lack of free hours to do so.

“Every book I ever bought, I have. I can’t throw it away. It’s physically impossible to leave my hand! Some of them are in warehouses. I’ve got a library that I keep the ones I really really like. I look around my library some nights and I do these terrible things to myself--I count up the books and think, how long I might have to live and think, ‘Fuck, I can’t read two-thirds of these books.’ It overwhelms me with sadness.” - David Bowie

I too, have book grief. However, I don’t let that stop my insatiable curiosity, or the obsessive collector in me. Hopefully these book recommendations will offer some delights for your hungry brain.

DEVOURED : “Wax Child” by Olga Ravn

A poetic novella about the Danish witch trails narrated by a wax child - need I say more? Exquisitely written and translated, this book will make poetic witches drool. Wax Child features historically accurate characters and accounts of real witch trials taking place in 17th century Denmark, creatively constructed and stunningly written. If you are looking for a simmering gothic queer foray for summer reading, this is for you.

LOVING : “Bargain Witch: Essays in Self Initiation” by Brooke Palmieri

Finding so much resonance in these self reflective yet philosophical essays by occultist and scholar Brooke Palmieri. Their meandering essays touch on the true essence of being a witch: a sense of the multidimensional practice of magic, and how we are constantly informed by a host of spirit allies; human, land, and otherwise. As someone who has worked in various metaphysical and mineral shops, I can relate to the psycho-spiritual trials of working at a shop like Treadwell’s. Reading about Brooke’s life and the influential characters in their orbit is an initiation in itself.

INTERVIEWED THE AUTHOR : Courtney LaFaive “Follow the Signs: Searching for Linda Goodman, America’s Forgotten Astrology Queen”

Do you too have a copy of Star Signs in your occult library that you keep out of a deep sense of nostalgia? At the beginning of my astrology journey as a teenager, my friends and I would stay up late reading Love Signs and deciding that all of our crushes were not astrologically aligned (but wondering if that mattered. Spoiler alert - it did.) Linda Goodman was the first pop astrologer that pulled astrology out of the dusty margins and into the mainstream. She was also a deeply troubled person, with a host of mental health issues that were not adequately addressed by 80’s new age culture. Courtney’s book explores the murky waters of Linda Goodman’s world, as she attempts to resurrect Linda’s biography and make sense of her allure. I truly enjoyed this alt-biography of a misrepresented and misunderstood astrologer from the not so distant past. It was a treat to be able to connect with Courtney and record an interview with her for the Modern Witches podcast - coming soon!

BOOKMARKED : Void Moon Press zine series

I’m so delighted to share Void Moon Press’s zine series with you. Created as a collaboration between two San Francisco occultists and readers, their zines are mini erudite explorations on themes like protection magic, working with angelic forms, and tarot philosophy. I’m particularly excited to recommend mental magic to my clients looking to enhance their meditation practices.

FOR THE YOUNG WITCHES! : “Catwings”

Adding in a children’s book recommendation because I am serious about indoctrinating the young ones through picture books and tall tales. While I was in LA I stumbled into WolfCat Books and discovered that Ursula K Le Guin wrote a series of children’s books about cats. With wings. (!)

My 3 year old son is a fan of oddball tales, so I knew it would be up his alley (although I intend to mail a copy to my older nephews who are just starting to read.) Catwings is surreal, a little bit dark, a little bit dangerous, and so very wonderful.

Tell me, have you read any of these books? Are you looking for specfic recommendations for summer reading? You are welcome to witch-out with me in the comments.

As ever, if you are seeking spiritual grounding or guidance this summer, please book a session:

WORK WITH CASEY

“If you’re looking for a grounded, thoughtful, and insightful birth chart and tarot reading, I highly recommend Casey. She brings a warm, attuned presence along with deep knowledge, clarity, and wisdom to her work and communication. I especially appreciated how seen, supported, and clear I felt afterward, and I would wholeheartedly recommend working with her.” Bridget, SF (2026)

june divination journal

Casey Zabala — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:56:49 GMT

Greetings hedge dwellers! Casey Zabala here, interdisciplinary witch, artist, mother, and proud wyrd-o. This month’s divination journal features energetic musings, astral keys to hold onto for the month, and a Summer Solstice tarot spread to ground your seasonal celebrations. Enjoy — and if you feel called, pass this note along to a witchy friend seeking grounding as the Solstice looms.

Thanks for reading Hedge Spells! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This June begins under a full yet waning Sagittarius moon. We find ourselves integrating realization and digesting inspiration - all while a bit buzzy and tired. The Earth is trembling under the weight of war, genocide, and unfettered carelessness. The roses are blooming, tender and perfumed, reverberating in the early summer Sun. As we swing through the days that lead up to the Summer Solstice, we are aching for change that garners some measurable form of relief.

I’ve lived in many high desert regions, where June is synonymous with thunderstorms. I used to love the pressure of the humidity, the ominous clouds forming on the horizon, and watching the weft of rain cascading across the sky. Over the years my wonder turned into fear, as I scanned for flashes of lighting and worried about impending wildfires. Wonder and doom now live as side-by-side sisters, and hope has become a buoy during these times of precarious circumstances.

The energetics of this June find us sitting on the porch in the sticky heat, watching those dark clotting clouds roll into formation. Can we stay rooted in the wonder of the moment? Or do we fall prey to the worry, fall down the spiral towards disaster? Did you pick the perfumed roses and bring them indoors to enjoy before they lost their sweet scent?

My therapist told me that people who are depressed often have a better grip on reality. (I think she was trying to make me feel better?) Those who aren’t afraid of the doom, or death, are more able to understand life’s true reality: change. The trick is being able to hold both; to understand the destructive forces of life gives us a chance to behold the miraculous nature of our existence.

We witches, magical thinkers, new-world builders, and cycle worshippers have a difficult task to hold as we traverse the wheel of the year during late stage capitalism and polycrisis. We must hold space for Earth’s poetry of becoming, while casting spells that destroy the systems that threaten all of life’s magic. Perhaps practicing our devotions more fiercely, creatively, and ebulliently is part of this sacred duty.

🤖 Why AI isn’t an Oracle — with Casey Zabala

The astrology on the horizon is building into a peak in early July. But we have June to fortify our spirits and the all important rite of Solstice to ground our wishes and cast our spells for a healing, just, and liberated future.

Solstice Magick:

All of the elements are celebrated at the Summer Solstice, but two that I like to pay special attention to are water and fire. Summer Solstice falls at the beginning of Cancer season (cardinal water sign) and initiates a time of sweetness, emotional care-giving, and comfort seeking. The Solstice commemorates the moment of the Sun’s peak potency, and so solar magic, solar gratitude, and solar healing are all ancestral practices at this time of year. At the Sun’s zenith, the Earth is receiving the Sun’s full radiance, and all beings are able to channel the Sun’s full vitality. Traditionally, medicinal herbs are collected at noon on the Summer Solstice for this very reason; the plants will have absorbed the Sun’s full healing potency.

Solar qualities are warming, life-giving, consistent, sustaining, light, brightening, and ever-lasting. If we are able to embrace Solar wisdom at the Solstice, we will be asking the Sun to embolden and increase the aspects within us and the aspects of our world that we hold most healing and central to our survival.

Make an herbal infused oil at Solstice and share it with someone who might need a reminder of light’s gifts. On Solstice eve, revel in the world that is ending; burn effigies that represent the toxic destructive forces at work in our world. Watch sunrise on the Solstice, imagining a new dawn illuminating a world turning towards healing, restorative justice, reparation, and repair. Make (compostable! sensible!) offerings to sacred water ways or springs to acknowledge their wisdom, intelligence, and necessity. Take a dip, cleanse yourself ritually, and set intentions for the next chapter of your conscious co-creation with the cosmos.

Sweet Spots:

June 9th, Jupiter - Venus conjunction: This is a moment to center emotional delights. Activate the pleasure seeking parts of you and luxuriate in a sensual experience that lights up your sense of connection and kinship.
June 21st, Summer Solstice: protect this sacred moment by practicing ritual, gathering in community, making art, relishing in the magical universe we are all inseparable from.

Lunations:

Gemini New Moon June 14th ~ a new moon for dynamic inner healing work
Capricorn Full Moon June 29th ~ a full moon for reviewing commitments

Solstice SUN Tarot Spread:

The Sun: in this spread The Sun symbolizes a core truth or point of vitality to orient around. Think of it as an anchoring and sustaining light in your life.
Area of increase: what is expanding, advancing, progressing and/or becoming within and around you?
Make an offering of: how can you show your gratitude or be of service at this station on the wheel?
What to harvest: Something is seeking resolution. What has ended its growth cycle and now needs to be used, enjoyed, celebrated and evolved away from?

Solstice Spell ingredients:

On the solstice altar are cottage roses, pink and lavender candles, every shade of green, a bowl of sweet water, ribbons for spell ladders, beach stones, cornmeal, liquid offerings for the gods. Bells and cymbals, a crescent shaped tambourine. Malachite, pyrite, Gold gem essence on the tongue.

Tell me, what patterns are emerging from your verge? What is taking up the most space on your Solstice altar?

Sending love through the madness!

Connect with Casey in the wild!

Crawling through the hedge:

Casey Zabala — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:44:33 GMT

Happy Beltane!

Casey Zabala here, intuitive witch, artist, author and mother, crawling through the proverbial hedge to source magical gems to inspire collective re-enchantment. This “hedge” is a traditionally psychic space, alive with spiritual remedies for all who are willing to travel to the outskirts of modern consciousness, and connect with magic.

Work with Casey

Here’s a short piece on Beltane energetics (with a Full Scorpio Moon, no less) and some celebratory suggestions for your personal magical practice:

Oxblood, crimson and golden nasturtiums are tumbling over our neighbor’s fences. I’ve taught my son how to sip the peppery sap from the nectar spur. He calls it faery juice. The irises keep blossoming in speckled patches of pale yellows, whites and soft purples. At the community garden we sat below a pomegranate tree, admiring how the flower is eaten up by the fruit. How the fruit swells to envelope the flower. We wonder at the prospect of returning for ripe round glossy globes filled with jewel-like seeds. We pet the soft climbing roses, and we linger in the spotty shade on an old stone bench.

At Beltane, wonder is the destination. To be in a state of awe at the bubbling up of life.

At Beltane my hedge is brimming with the verdant greens provided by late Spring rain, with soft as tissue blackberry petals, with hearty borage constellations. While the hedge is bursting with new growth, my inner verge is emerging with a cautious optimism, with more specific boundaries coalescing, with deeper root systems and crystalline intentions.

My grief for the world has shape-shifted. Still raw and unwieldy in moments, yet held by a new confidence in those who are spinning immense healing webs. I am held by the generous activists who are guiding collective change. I am held by elder witches who have held torches up to the darkness and persist in challenging toxic systems. I am held by astrologers who share symbolic keys to our collective evolution with tenderness. I am held by the healers who are tending to individual trauma as a spell for wider collective healing underway. I am guided by the truth that change is the only truth. Change and evolve we must – just like the neon pomegranate flowers that are absorbed into sacred fruits. We are becoming new versions of ourselves, we must, we are.

Beltane is traditionally celebrated on May 1st, or the celestial moment that marks the midway point between Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice. Beltane is a fire festival that heralds the beginning of Summer. It is a time of celebrating fertility, increase, delight, growth, creativity, and sacred sexuality. At Beltane, traditionally cattle were driven through fires as a form of protection magic. During Beltane ritual vigils, people would leap through bonfires to cleanse and protect and fortify their spirits.

If leaping through a fire isn’t an affirmation of life, what is?

How are you affirming your life, your holy existence, your sacred commitments? Beltane is a time for invoking wonder, awe, pleasure and possibility back into your lived experience. What juicy rituals or intentional practices will be guiding your spirit back to a sense of eros?

🌝 This particular Beltane is encircled by a potent Full Moon in Scorpio, a Full Moon that will pull our emotions to the surface to be explored. Circle yourself in presence and protection, know the limits of your resilience, and tend to yourself like the highly sensitive witch you are. Perhaps what is exposed is your authentic passion. Perhaps your desires will be shimmering in lunar glow.

Beltane magicks: (inspired by ancestral folk traditions with modern adaptations)

Create a Beltane altar that is an expression of your eros. Decorate the altar with flowers, with symbols of your joy, with images and affirmations of your creative potential. Feed it honey and make offerings to deities of abundance, creativity, and fertility.
Get intimate with the Earth. Take a barefoot hike. Go for a sultry walk on the beach. Feel the erotic draw of a canyon. Listen to the bird song and let it resonate through your heart.
Make a fire (safely!!!) and practice fire gazing. Dance around the fire and delight in its warmth and power. Share song and story with the night.
Jump over a Beltane candle. Charge a candle with Beltane energetics, dress it with oil and dried flowers. Light the candle with the intention to call forth cleansing and protective energies. When you are ready, leap over the candle, imagining you are leaping through a portal into a new season or yourself, a new chapter of evolution.
Leave offerings to the spirits of land, earth, and home. Ale, cakes, breads, honey, and milk are some traditional offerings, but you know best.

The veil is gossamer thin at Beltane. Elves, gnomes, the good people, and elemental earth energies are running, roaming, and playing their tricks at this time of year. From my ancestral perspective, offerings to these beings is a relational pact of non-aggression. Feeding the fae affirms their power, and is a show of respect. Tend to your garden, wild spaces, or cross roads as portals to their worlds. Tread softly and in reverence of the otherworlds they are tending for us.

Call forth the inspiration that you require to keep evolving, to keep flowering and fruiting. Nurture the artist within you. Delight in your lore. Center pleasure as you persist. Watch in awe as the world continues to present its diversity of flower to us, in spite of all the forces that seek to destroy it.

I have a flurry of very exciting happenings as the Spring turns! I hope to connect with your IRL at a few of the following events:

May 1st: Beltane Ritual & Show @ The Sunshine Prophecy in Oakland, CA

May 3rd: Beltane Marketplace @ The Sunshine Prophecy in Oakland, CA - I’ll be giving readings!

May 6th: Tarot as a Magical Practice (Workshop!) @ the eleventh house, Fairfax CA

June 4-7th: I’m leading a ritual and presenting at the LA Festival of Tarot, Los Angeles CA

Casey's Events Calendar

Work 1-1 with Casey

april divination journal

Casey Zabala — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 15:44:17 GMT

Greetings from the Hedge! Casey Zabala here, intuitive witch, artist & author, sharing my divinations and musings for living a magical life during these precarious times.

Here is your divination journal for April 2026, insights into the lunation cycle and a three-card reading to guide you through the heat of Spring. Tune in for spiritual grounding, insights, and tips for this cosmic weather. Learn more about my practice, and book a session here.

April arrives with mischief, a gentle Spring rain, apple blossoms (already), and the promise of seismic shifts on the horizon. On the Libra Full Moon I was jostled awake by an earthquake, an omen of the intensity and magnitude of the changes to taking shape amongst the roots.

I sit to write and share this monthly divination letter recovering from a cold, frazzled by the landslide that occurs when the body demands a break but the world never quits – scattered like sea-tumbled stones on the beach. I’m reminded that Aries season can demand a series of initiations, but the urgency to experience {insert impulsive drive to create/consume/commit} can sometimes cloud the necessity of it. If you too are a highly sensitive person drowning in overwhelm this season, remember to examine how urgency can trip us into careless choices and actions.

15 things to do before asking AI for spiritual advice

Casey Zabala — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 18:46:00 GMT

Wait! Before you ask ChatGpt to interpret your tarot spread or analyze your astrological transits, take a deep breath and turn to one of these tools instead. Your intuition will thank you later.

I was inspired to create this spiritual trouble-shooting list due to the infiltration of AI into spiritual spaces and practices. This is a collection of ideas for you to turn to when you are stuck, fumbling, and tempted to turn to a chatbot for spiritual grounding and guidance.

It’s time to get critical about how we use AI in our daily lives, as well as how we turn to it for psychological and spiritual support. I had a very interesting (witchy, nerdy, aquarian coded) conversation with Amelia Hruby on the Off the Grid Podcast alllll about it.

Tune into the conversation to learn a bit more of my spiritual perspective on the implications and harms of outsourcing our spiritual practices to LLMs.

🖤 I hope the below list offers some practical spiritual tips on how to navigate this AI era as a magical-spiritual being.

THINGS TO TRY BEFORE ASKING CHATGPT FOR SPIRITUAL/MAGICAL ADVICE:

Take 3 very deep grounding breaths. Let each exhale help you let go of any fixations, and let each inhale ground you back into the present moment.
Bodyscan: notice what is going on in your body in a moment of confusion/stress/activation/craving answers. Take notes if its helpful. Don’t go too deep if it is too painful. Perhaps you’ll notice that underneath your agitation is dehydration. Maybe your empty stomach will clue you into the need for nourishment. Tend to what is immediate, and be gentle.
Ask a friend to pull a tarot or oracle card for you, and offer up an interpretation. Maybe they offer up a feeling, a word, a vague sense of the situation. Accept their reading as the gift it is.
Go for a meandering walk. Walk with as much attention as possible. Notice the temperature, the sky, the weeds, your neighbors.
Pull a book from the shelf and open up to a random page. Read with the intention of accessing guidance or direction.
Light a candle and ask for inner illumination. Gaze into the flame until you are warmed from within.
Start a spiritual study group to practice meditation, nerd out about astrology, and pull tarot cards in a safe container.
Integrate whatever you are wrestling with through collage / coloring books / doodling while listening to your favorite album.
Notice what phase the Moon is in. Waxing? Waning? Full or New? Does the Moon’s phase of transformation correlate with what you are experiencing?
Work with a seasoned professional intuitive.
Spend time in nature to connect with something bigger than yourself.
Go to an art museum.
Tell your story or struggles to a tree or body of water. Introduce yourself first, and ask permission to share before unburdening yourself.
Lay down on the floor (or the earth) and let your energy settle.
Make a cup of tea. (Go on, have a biscuit as well.)

Spiritual processes are so much more nuanced, subtle, interconnected and embodied than what a LLM can provide us with. Think of it this way: AI is a super MIND. The supremacy of human intelligence, the idolization of MIND is what has lead us into dire climate catastrophe, collective body dysmorphia, and the sustained negation of magical-intuitive-embodied knowing. Being a spiritual person is the practice of honoring all the other-than-MIND forms of intelligence that are equally valid, important, and true. AI does not access nor account for those other forms of intelligence.

If you’re aiming to strengthen your intuition, embrace the full spectrum of wisdom, cultivate belonging and build a future rooted in care, you won’t find the support or answers in an LLM. Steer back towards the difficult yet highly rewarding process of showing up for yourself and others in their quest for meaning. Return to the village for resources and witnessing. Creativity, quietude, and connection are better places to invest your precious energy.

Read on:

Thanks for reading Hedge Spells! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Spring Equinox: on holding everything

Casey Zabala — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 19:38:00 GMT

Happy Equinox from hedge witch and interdisciplinary artist, Casey Zabala! Read on for an energetic exploration of the Spring Equinox, witchy advice for your seasonal celebrations, and oracular fragments (aka horoscopes) for the Spring.

Thank you for reading & supporting my work!

At the edge of the Equinox here in Northern California we are in the midst of a heatwave. The daffodils are crumpled up like discarded tissue paper. Poison oak roils along the trails. Wildflowers which should appear in June are glittering in full flower on the headlands. The unusual heat brings waves of ebullient Spring feelings, with a sharp edge of fear. If this is the climate of our Spring Equinox, what will our Summer Solstice bring?

What is nature mirroring for you, at your precious edge of the earth? What trees are renewing themselves? What birdsong is punctuating your days? What is happening in your garden?

Above all else, this is the season of tuning into the rebirth happening all around us, from the soil to the skies to the waters. Give your attention to what is becoming, and see what awakens within you.

"While You Are Sleeping" by artist Christina Bothwell

Equinoxes are moments of celestial balance, when the day is equal to night. Here we are, at a cosmic crossroads, holding both the digested material of Winter’s dark, and the thrust of new life, warmth returning, and the crystallization of our dreams. As practitioners of magic, creative artists of a new world, we get to decide what we are cultivating as life returns to a period of increase, growth, and expansion. May we choose what to prioritize wisely.

What are you holding at this precious and precarious moment?

What opposites are you grappling with?

What is taking up too much space in your existence?

What do you crave more of?

This Spring Equinox, celebrate the turning of the wheel as an act of spiritual & energetic rebalancing. Call forth loving connection, and send your material and spiritual support to those in dire need these dark days. Celebrate the joyful and miraculous returning of life to the Earth, as an affirmation that we may continue to flourish forth for many generations to come. Slowing down at these seasonal celebrations is also an opportunity to return to your humanity. Put down the endless scroll device, listen to your body, attune to the needs of your community, center pleasure, share abundance with others, notice and celebrate the Earth itself — despite the destruction, perhaps because of the destruction.

At the Equinox our capacity to express and embrace our humanity is heightened. This is an ancestral time for familial connection, for traditional rites and customs, for ancestral foods and tales. Equinox is a re-emergence into the meadow, a scramble into the hedge, an invitation to gather in shared spaces, to explore ensouled natural places, to commune with life-giving solar energy. Equinox is an honoring of all that is becoming, and an acknowledgement of the depths of despair we are navigating. Solar consciousness has equal strength as lunar consciousness in this pivotal period of rebalance. Hold your grief next to your hopes for the future. May your wild hope spark creation. May your grief be embraced with fierce compassion.

Magic helps us to step deeper into our personal power through a process of exploring and honoring our sovereignty, alongside the sovereignty of all our kin (seen and unseen.) Our power is cultivated through a network of relationships. We are learning how to model and practice the kind of power that strengths and supports others. Remember, the oligarchs and billionaires would rather us be in a power-less state of apathy and despair. Don’t let them crush your spirit, it is not theirs to exploit.

It’s okay to be falling apart at this particularly poignant crossroads. Honor what you still have to face, process, and integrate before charging forth into new projects, the pressure to preform, or other toxic forms of capitalist pressure. Equinox offers us an opportunity to get deeply honest with ourselves about our needs and capacity moving into the next season of our lives.

I’ll admit I’m personally feeling particularly challenged by grief and anxiety at this stage of transformation. So I am going to bed early, reading more and watching less tv. I’m committing to my meditation and journaling routines, and creating more space for simply being, rather than over-prioritizing doing. I’m working with iris and yarrow flower essence, and making more art. I’m doing what I need to do to access more of myself and my humanity, rather than run away from the immensity of the experience of it. Holding more, more tenderly.

Seeking more personalized support? Find your oracular fragment for the Spring Equinox crafted for your Sun & Rising sign below… and also, connect with me for 1-1 guidance.

Celebration Suggestions for the Spring Equinox:

~ Clear your space and body with sacred smoke, music, and movement

~ Enjoy a magical bath with petals & body oil (and glitter if you’re feeling fancy)

~ Reset your altars to make your inner child smile

~ Make a list of all the evils in the world you hope to see dismantled, and burn the list safely away. Bury the ashes and ask them to transform into networks of care.

~ Ask your guides to send you messages about how to align with your spiritual purpose

~ Cleanse any crystal and stone friends in your stewardship in freshwater. Let them dry in the sunshine. (Don’t get your blue kyanite or selenite wet, folks!)

~ Make a completely compostable nature altar in some wild and special place

aka your Spring Equinox horoscopes :)

ARIES:

Stay tuned for mystic visions that set your heart aflame. The prism of your life is undergoing kaleidoscopic renovations. Take a peek at the miraculous pathways available to you. Before betting it all on 7’s, take a deep breath and stay with the multiplicity. Clarity will come your way, but first you have to dance with uncertainty and kick up more dust.

TAURUS:

Tending to your hearth and home is a part of your spiritual practice. Address the areas of your life that are feeling stagnant by rearranging the furniture. Some of your houseplants have outgrown their pots. Honor renewal in your life by getting sensual with your practical up-keep. Everything is an altar.

GEMINI:

Time to take a deep breath and open all the windows. Let fresh air and light into the darker more cluttered corners of your existence. Take stock of your current tasks, obligations, and curiosities. Your life is a research project and it is time to write a reference manual so that others can decode your brilliance. This is an ideal time for revision, rewrites, and re-engaging projects that have been collecting dust but still feel holy and alive.

CANCER:

What do you need in order to feel safe? What brings you the greatest sense of belonging? Whatever your answers, hold them close, like heirloom pearls of wisdom to pass along to your kin. Elevate your relationships through honest reflection, deep listening, and artfully expressing the boundaries that set you up for success. Step into the safe harbor of your authenticity.

LEO:

The occult aspects of your personality are calling, and they won’t quit until you venture into the kinks and curiosities that most excite you. While you are radiant, you are also burning. Follow the inklings and synchronicities that are leading you into a more profound understanding of your healing potential. Feed the inner fires with incantation, honey, and laughter.

VIRGO:

It may feel as though you have nothing left to give, but in truth you are in the richest process of renewal. Surrender is challenging and miraculous medicine. Let go of the avoidant behaviors that keep you from compassion and empathy. Accept a new orientation to service that cultivates spiritual connections. Your precious energy is not up for grabs, but it is wise to have boundaries that flex and bend to allow spaciousness for your own transformation.

LIBRA:

As the arbiter of fairness in the room, you are mediating way too much energy. Clear out old emails, unsubscribe from the noise, and retire lines of communication that are filled with static. Try taking two steps back rather than leaning in. A new perspective is catalyzing, and it is going to take long range vision, and maybe some psychedelic insights, for you to integrate the immensity of your learnings.

SCORPIO:

Suffering is inescapable these days, and perhaps it is your gift to be able to honor and metabolize it. If the weight of the world is keeping you from facing your own pain, take a moment to reflect on cosmic interconnection. Living in the shadows and dwelling in the realm of mystery is all well and good, as is resourcing yourself well enough to resist tyranny through acts of love and joy. Make room for more than just the fight.

SAGITTARIUS:

Let your edges soften as Spring blossoms within you. Progress is not the only meter of success. Strive for profound integration, self-acceptance, and implementing new care routines as you emerge out of your winter cocoon. A new self is taking shape, and they require curiosity and picnic dinners.

Capricorn:

Spiral paths, labyrinths, getting lost in the maze. Accept that the detour is a peculiar offshoot of your healing trajectory. Remember, there is no end to our evolution, and the work of the revolution is ongoing. Perhaps sitting in loving contemplation of your soul will satiate your desire for answers. Tap into the unseen system of support all around you for grounding – they are waiting for you.

AQUARIUS:

While Persephone is returning to meadows of wildflowers and sunshine, someone has to hold it down in the underworld. Find yourself lingering by reflecting pools and scrying into the night sky for answers. There is so much shapeshifting within you. Tend to the inner churning through journaling, cooking, making music, tai chi, or simply cultivating presence. Be prepared to shed some skins this Spring, as you make your way into the light at your own pace.

PISCES:

Let yourself sleep in, if you can. Linger in the dream state a while longer. You are swimming amidst an explosion of idea, symbol, and sensation, stitching together a new tapestry of your being. Integration takes time and spaciousness. Have less of an agenda, and trust the alchemical fermentation that is renewing and reorienting your spirit to this rapidly changing world. Better to keep one foot firmly in the mystic mire.

Thanks for reading Hedge Spells! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Thank you for supporting my work! The greatest gift is being able to connect and support you on your spiritual path. Book your intuitive divination and astrology consultations with me here:

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3. my occult archive: early teachers

Casey Zabala — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:41:33 GMT

Hello, fellow wyrd ones. I’m delighted to offer up another selection from my occult archive for my newish series all about books. This is a digital altar devoted to my occult library, with the hopes that some of these titles will provide you with nourishment, solace, or inspiration. Each book I share has a story, a message, and a healing note for you, dear reader (you who are likely a creative, magical, interdisciplinary bibliophile too.)

Perhaps it’s the reminiscence of Mercury retrograde in Pisces that drew me towards this month’s selection from my library. These books represent some of the very early influences of my craft. Books that I found in dusty thrift shops, and books that found me, all in my early years of practicing witchcraft and studying occultism. For bibliophiles, there are those books that unlock core aspects of our hearts, whose influence is forever imprinted upon our character; these are a few of the important books that have shaped my craft.

Books are portals to other worlds. They are keys to the betwixt and between. They are like hedges filled with medicine, just waiting for us to forge their fruits. May you be nourished and fortified by whatever speaks to your magical quest.*

BOUGHT and battered a bit: THREE BOOKS OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY OR MAGIC (1898)

I’m completely stumped as to how I acquired this copy of Three Books of Occult Philosophy or Magic by Agrippa... Was it an off hand recommendation from a drunk relative at some family dinner? Was it a random purchase from early-days internet research? In any case, reading this book as a teenager is like tripping into another version of Wonderland, without sweet Alice, giant caterpillars or psilocybin, but with “celestial rays,” “decoctions, the “roots of violets,” and “basilisks.” It took me years to completely read this text, and I have since re-read it twice. This book has traveled with me all across the country, a text I took backpacking, used as an astray (I’m not proud of it, but the burn marks on the cover tell no lies) and return to in moments when I need a dose of wonder. This book was my primer in philosophy. It made me read Blake, Rimbaud, and T.S. Eliot with the eyes of an esotericist. It framed my orientation to reality.

In his Three Books (first published in 1533), Henry Cornelius Agrippa coalesced the bulk of the occult knowledge available to him into a compendium of wisdom. He was a scholar, theologian, and physician with a fascinating career. At one point he lost employment after defending a woman who was accused of witchcraft, a rare position to take at that time, to say the least.

What I learned from Three Books initially was that there were scholars who believed something that I had intuited about the world – that Spirit indwelled in all things. Behind the esoteric language of virtues, rays, and bizarre prescriptions using cocks and chameleons and ambergris, was the law of sympathetic magic. Agrippa confirmed for me that everything is infused with Soul, and beyond that there is an etheric chain of interconnection between all things.

“For as the powers of the soul are communicated to the members of the body by the spirit, so also the Virtue of the Soul of the World is diffused through all things by the quintessence: For there is nothing found in the whole world that hath not a spark of the virtue thereof….By this Spirit, therefore, every occult property is conveyed into herbs, stones, metals, and animals, through the Sun, Moon, Planets, and through Stars higher than the Planets.” (Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy or Magic. Chicago: Hahn & Whitehead, 1898. Reprint.)

A rich resource for magicians, witches, and creative writers alike.

DISCOVERED miraculously in my family home: THE HISTORY OF MAGIC

When I discovered this book in my family home, no one could tell me where it came from. Perhaps it materialized out of thin air, or was left on the bookshelf by a friend who stayed with us for a time. The book could have belonged to my grandfather (who did have a stash of peculiar occult-leaning books), but it seems a stretch to think why he would have brought a book on magic into the home, when no one else seemed to be keen on the subject.

“The History of Magic” by Kurt Seligmann is another collection on occultism, which surveyed alchemy, oracles, cabbala, tarot, astrology, and so much more. Seligmann (1990-1962) was an occultist and surrealist artist, and the collection of “The History of Magic” sources heavily from his own occult collection, displaying a dizzying array of occult artwork. Perhaps this book offered me my first window into alchemical drawings, old tarot imagery, and emblems from secret societies. I was instantly drawn to the art on the pages, before exploring the actual text itself.

Here’s a taste, “What Aristotle said of mysteries in general must hold true for those of Eleusis: ‘The initiates had not to learn, but to experience.’

BOOKMARKED ~ Dreaming The Dark: Magic, Sex & Politics by Starhawk

Upon pulling this book from my shelf, I was transported back to the tiny thrift shop in rural Montanna where I picked it up, and the electric sense of belonging I sensed in my belly reading it for the first time. My hunger for structural magic was growing then, in my early teens, and I believe it was this book that crystallized my desire to seek out the Reclaiming Collective in San Francisco. Starhawk’s work in this book is all about magic as a political force, and it details much of her early activism.

“When we plant, when we weave, when we write, when we give birth, when we organize, when we heal, when we run through the park while the redwoods sweat mist, when we do what we’re afraid to do, we are not separate. We are of the world and each other, and the power within us is great, if not an invincible power. Though we can be hurt, we can heal; though each one of us can be destroyed, within us is the power of renewal.

And there is still time to choose that power.” - Starhawk, from Dreaming The Dark.

Returning to this text at this troubling collective moment, for me, feels like an invitation to go deeper into the world of marrying our politics with our spirituality. We would be foolish to believe that the oppressive fascist powers are not also using magic to aid their actions. It’s time to bulk up on our spiritual power and presence, to continue to weave into our spells and our political actions rituals for liberation and peace.

“But though power-from-within can burst forth in an instant, its rising is mostly a process slow as the turning wheels of generations. If we cannot live to see the completion of that revolution, we can plant its seeds in our circles, we can dream its shape in our visions, and our rituals can feed its growing power.” - Starhawk from Dreaming The Dark

While there are aspects of this book that are out-of-date (it was published in 1982 and focuses heavily on a gendered expression of the divine) there are so many solid roots and seeds here to incorporate into your own workings. Let the revolution continue to evolve through our spells and rituals!

BORROWED & BOUGHT ~ DRAWING DOWN THE MOON: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today

It’s nearly impossible to describe the importance of Margot Adler’s contribution to contemporary paganism and witchcraft. She brought rigor to her study of the craft and highlighted witchcraft as a serious spiritual pursuit, in contrast to one of the prevailing opinions of witchcraft of the time, pagan revivalism as a path for regressed, unintelligent people. What could be farther from the truth?

Adler draws together her personal experiences with covens, pagan practitioners, occult groups, Satanists, as well as her extensive research in the field to pull together a formidable snapshot of the state of paganism in the 1980’s. Of course, so much has changed since the initial publication of Drawing Down the Moon. Yet the threads of this work are still red, glowing with the keen observations and core themes of an emergent, anti-authoritanian, alternative, and innately creative practice which ultimately centered a kind of human liberation and freedom. So much has progressed since then, while so much remains the same.

“Harriet Whitehead, in an article on Scientology, science fiction, and the occult, makes the point that, contrary to the popular assumption, most occultists have an intellectual style, ‘a process of sorting, surveying, analyzing and abstracting.’ One of the hallmarks of that style is lack of dogmatism. ‘The occult world,’ she writes, ‘offers to the individual a ‘free marketplace’ of ideas…’ what this resembles, ‘and not by coincidence is the intellectual democracy of the scientific and academic communities.’… Occultists continually affirm that ‘certain experiences do not cease to exist simply because there is no place for them in our customary order.’ Occultists display an extraordinary ability to shift from one dimension of reality to another with ease, feeling that the whole world ‘hangs together in one unified peace.’”

This is a passage my 20 year old self highlighted. I can still trace her excitement: No dogma? Sign me up. Registering my strange interest in unseen and mystical phenomena as a serious intellectual area of rigor. Yes please!

Regarding the “occult revival” of the past 50 years, “Eliade writes that…the rebellion against Western religious values and the search for renewal reappear. But, he contends, the most important aspect for all groups from astrologists to Satanists is the hope for an individual and collective renovatio, or renewal.”

Drawing Down the Moon was begrudgingly recommended to me by a professor at Naropa University. I was studying comparative religion at the time, and my rebellious heart was set on researching witchcraft rather than Buddhism (Naropa is a Buddhist institution.) Little did that professor know what they were awakening in me, or maybe they did.

Pick up a copy of Drawing Down the Moon if you love a bibliography. This one will set your witchy heart aflame. The section in the back of the book with the names and descriptions of working covens is a joy to behold. The list of FESTIVALS AND GATHERINGS - a treasure trove of delights.

Imagine being a solitary witch pre-internet and getting a copy of this transformative text. Suddenly you could make sense of the pagan landscape, order magical magazine subscriptions, and meet fellow witches at “Ravenwood Gathering” held on top of Mt Tamalpais. Swoon.

Please excuse me while I go and google every single one of the gatherings listed to see who is still convening on some magical mountain someplace…

* NOTE: My occult archive is full of the works of wild and wondrous individuals, but my politics and approaches to my craft are not 100% in alignment with everything they have produced, written, shared, or patronized. This archive is meant to showcase what has touched me and why, and offer up the resources for you to make your own decisions and estimations. I do not put authors on pedestals, and I believe all artists, authors, and teachers are humans who make mistakes. This note is important to disclose because some of these texts are old and out-dated in their scope. My beliefs are rooted in equity, liberation, and care for all beings, particularly those who have been classically marginalized and oppressed.

LET’S GO DEEPER! Book your 1-1 sessions with me here:

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march divination journal

Casey Zabala — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 19:43:58 GMT

Greetings from the Hedge!

It’s Casey Zabala, intuitive witch, interdisciplinary artist, and mother, crawling through the proverbial hedge to source magical wisdom to inspire collective re-enchantment. The hedge is a traditionally psychic space, alive with spiritual remedies for all who are willing to travel to the outskirts of modern consciousness and connect with their magic.

Below is your divination journal for the month! Apologies for being a bit late with this one — the eclipse found me curled up on the floor, sick with a sick toddler. Happily, we’re back to health with witch advice to share.

Stay tuned for more recommendations form my occult archive, and Spring Equinox brambles… oh, and please check-out my latest zine offering for Spring Equinox!

Praise the tulip, the cherry, iris, plum! May the soul of the world sing through everyone!

Off the heels of a dizzying eclipse in Virgo, we move into the waning Moon phase – time for picking up the scattered debris of our lives, to try to reformulate a coherent whole (a lifetime’s effort!) The Lunar Eclipse in Virgo challenged any area of our lives or consciousness where perfectionism is hindering our progress. It’s time to unhook ourselves from rigid ideals of rightness, and instead align to our intentions to do the best we can within our capacity.

How can our kindness and compassion infect those who have too little of it to offer? How can we encourage those around us to wake up to the power of love? The eclipse lit up the Pisces-Virgo polarity of transcendent love and immanent love. Loving what is beyond us can distract us from the love that is so necessary right in front of us. May we continue to tend to the love in our lives, and the love that is so desperately necessary, and dare I say missing, from our collective experiences.

March is a moment that roots us back into life. Milky magnolias dripping from waxy clusters of dark leaves, iris radioing messages to unnamable gods, plum stars dazzling forests dominated by green. The earth is immersed in remembering itself. Beckoning for your soul to do the same.

Your divination journal this month offering prompts & insights into how to do just that. Time for soul resuscitation:

my story with the stones

Casey Zabala — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:18:37 GMT

Greetings from your resident wyrd-o ~ dropping in with a piece about how this intuitive witch became initiated into the world of crystal stewardship. Hint: it’s about stages of awakening, treading new age tracks, and finding my way to something deeper - more expansive than capitalism wants us to believe.

🌈 If you’re interested in learning more about crystals and forging intimate relationships with your stone friends, consider joining me on March 5th for an in-person crystal connection workshop at the lovely eleventh house in Fairfax, CA. Can’t make it live and want to learn more? Book a 1-1 session :)

Looking back at my spiritual awakening as a depressed teenager living in bleached-out always-sunny southern California I register a deep sense of hunger. I was always getting lost during those sun-bleached years chasing the breadcrumbs that might lead to answers, meaning, or care. I was hungry for whatever would fill the great void of meaning pressing in all around me. I would walk for miles through orange orchards just to be caught in a matrix of trees, a net of roots. My inward disorientation led me on various rambling walks, long detours and journeys without destinations. Down orchard rows, through parking lots, a ghost in grocery stores aisles, and into the local metaphysical store.

The local metaphysical shoppe was a place of wonder for my hungry spirit. Colors, prisms, cards, scents, books. In the metaphysical store, I found other people who were hungry too. This is where I first met the stones.

It’s funny how getting carried away – being lost – has a way of reorienting the path, so that we can find ourselves on it again. By letting myself be utterly directionless I miraculously found the grounding tethers I so desperately needed at that time in my life.

The kind metaphysical shop proprietress got to know me, another hungry ghost haunting her shop, buying a single ten cent incense stick at a time after sitting on the floor for an hour reading about kundalini yoga. She was so patient. One day she took pity on me (or it was a slow day) and invited me to the sunroom at the back of the store to see her crystal healing table. Since I had no concept of what a “crystal healing table” was, I needed to find out. There, glowing in the sunlight was a seven foot long table encrusted with stones and gems, an inexplicable rainbow galaxy of shimmering crystals. She patted the table gently, and said, “Come on, lay down.”

I crawled onto the gemstone table and a gentle breeze washed over me. Tingling started ringing through my head, feet and hands. My eyes slowly closed. The kind woman smiled, “Rest - I’ll be back in a minute.”

I have no clue how long I was lying there on that rainbow galaxy of stones, but I do remember feeling incredibly altered by the experience. I could feel the stones doing something. Suspended in time, anchored in that moment, layers of sadness shape-shifting, cumulous clouds floating inside of my teenage being. Color sensation tears. A brass singing bowl rang out and the gentle witch helped me off of the table, and handed me a glass of water. I felt as though a great wind had rushed through me, reorganizing the layers of my spirit, and polishing others so they sparkled.

That transformative moment on the crystal healing table awakened a somatic experience of the stones that has only deepened in me since.

Later that same year I would find myself at a “peddler’s fair” (their words, not mine) in the local village hall, where I would connect with my first crystal ally. A small quartz crystal - clear and concise. When I picked it up my ears started ringing. When I asked the crystal peddler for the price of the stone, he told me a figure I couldn’t afford. My heart sank. He watched me silently, registering the heart break spreading across my face. I reluctantly put the crystal back on his table and started to walk away, but he called me back – “Actually, this crystal belongs with you. Take it.” He was gruff yet sincere, and I wondered how he knew the crystal wanted to be with me. I’m still grateful to this day for his generosity, and for the persistence of the stone.

Many years later, crystals have become compasses, anchors, and guides, as I navigate through stages of healing and awakening. The initiation on the crystal healing table, and the gift of my first clear quartz from an awakened elder, (how I adopted a 5 pound smokey quartz from an ex-boyfriend (not as interesting as the other tales)), were moments of magical affirmation. Affirmations that satiated that hunger for meaning, affirmations that I am not alone in this world. The crystals circled up around me, guiding me in my own expansion.

The clear quartz I was gifted would become my first guide to meditation, channeling, and mediumship - language I didn’t have at the time, when I would spend afternoons speaking to my small quartz, gazing into it, and listening. Those first experiences of working with stones were silent, somatic, imaginal, and participatory. The crystals initiated me into the subtle practices of energy work.

Later, in my twenties I was offered a job working at a crystal shop in San Francisco and I leapt at the opportunity. Those years were a haven of wonder which deepened my love and passion for the stone kingdom, and taught me many necessary lessons on psychic boundary work. After my time in the shop, I connected with Cybele, a stone priestess (poet, queer witch, among other amazing things), and undertook years of stone medicine apprenticeship, moving through a transformative cycle of stone work which honed my relationship with the mineral world, the energy body, and the magic of color.

Like most aspects of our lives, working with crystals and stones has been commodified and corrupted by capitalism. The mining industry that extracts the stones from the earth is rife with exploitation and abuse, with a toxic environmental impact. It is deeply important to be aware of a stone’s life-cycle, and to treat your crystals and stones with respect for their origins. As I’ve shared, there are moments when stones call out to you! In those moments, it is important to slow down your process and investigate where the call or craving is coming from. Are you forging an intimate connection with a stone being, or are you feeding the learned consumerist impulse to collect? Working with the crystals can slow down our internal voices and invite in more discernment, if we are willing to pause and listen.

A first step in the process of increasing our intuitive discernment when working with stones is to sincerely attune to the crystals you already have in your stewardship. Treating the stones with reverence and kinship slows down our desire to consume them, and deepens the richness of our magical perception of the earth. Consider sharing crystals in community, returning them to the earth if it feels right, and taking good care of the stones you share space with.

Stones, crystals, minerals, are a rich well of resource for our intuitive practices, but the first step towards accessing their wisdom is connecting with their sacred energy. Stones have taught me that human consciousness is but one form of consciousness that we have access to. Stones have auric fields, hold memory and information, speak in the languages of geology and alchemy. They are multidimensional beings, and must be treated as such.

Recently a distant family member, who is a geologist, told me they had a dream about giving me a particular stone. Surprisingly but wisely, after the dream they sought out that very stone, a double terminated quartz, and gifted it to me. “Odd I know,” they said, “but it is a really cool crystal!” What he didn’t know is that I believed both how odd it was, and how totally right it felt for crystals to be calling out for connection. And they can call for you too, if you are awake to their wisdom.

Crystal connection begins with reverence and respect, somatic attunement, deep listening, and care. Cultivating a stone healing practice is a supportive anchor for anyone hoping to sharpen or empower their own inner knowing. If you are drawn to the stone realm, and are hoping to go deeper into your relationship with stones, crystals, and minerals, begin with silent reverence for their gifts.

Join me for an introductory Crystal Healing workshop on March 5th at eleventh house in Fairfax, CA. Learn meditative somatic crystal practices to support your intuitive unfolding:

Working with stones is one of the many modalities I incorporate into my intuitive witchcraft work. Book your 1-1 session with me here.

Thanks for reading Hedge Spells! This post is public so feel free to share it.

2. my occult archive

Casey Zabala — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 22:04:51 GMT

Hello, fellow wyrd ones. I’m delighted to offer up another selection from my occult archive for my newish series all about BOOKS. I’m building a digital altar devoted to my occult library, with the hopes that some of these titles will provide you with nourishment, solace, or inspiration. Some of these books have been haunting my shelves since I was a teenager, others are more recent reads, and with each book I share has a story, a message, and a healing note for you, dear reader (you who are likely a creative, magical, interdisciplinary bibliophile too.)

My journey as an occultist has been through many used book shops, connecting the dots between bibliographies, and researching the authors that I seem to show up everywhere. Occult research is a winding, intuitive, interdisciplinary path, and I’m delighted to share the many threads of research through my library.

Books are portals to other worlds. They are keys to the betwixt and between. They are hedges filled with medicinal remedies, just waiting for us to forge their fruits. May you be nourished and fortified by whatever speaks to your magical quest.

This selection is inspired by Imbolc, and by the goddess Brigid; a triple goddess of healing, poetry/prophecy, and craft.

BOUGHT:

In the pregnant turning between mid-Winter and Spring Equinox, the spirit seeks inspiration, a rekindling of the senses as we navigate the expectation of rebirth. Goddess Brigid offers us her gifts of inspiration and poetry to bless us with soul nourishment. Reading, or writing, poetry is a magical form of soul nourishment. The poet taps into the liminal layers of our existence, giving shape and voice to what is oftentimes ineffable. In the Druidic tradition the poet or the bard is a divine calling. To be a bard was to be in communion with the sacred, magical, and to have a relationship with spirit.

A favorite traditional but contemporary volume of Celtic poetry is Cinderbiter, edited and compiled by storyteller Martin Shaw and the late poet Tony Hoagland. Their collection is a retelling and reinvention of traditional Celtic poetry, from one bard’s mind through another. (Sidenote: if you are interested in storytelling and myth, definitely trip down Martin Shaw’s rabbit hole.)

Here’s one of my favorite traditional poems, retold:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

THE YARROW CHARM
Scottish-Gaelic traditional folk charm 

I kneel and pluck 
the smooth yarrow

to spell-make, 
to intrigue the stars to me. 

Give elegance to my figure. 
Subtract a little from the hips. 

May my voice carry cheer, 
like the yellowed sun, 

may my lips be succulent, full and red, 
like the juice of strawberries. 

I shall be an island
in the blue-black waves, 

a wooded hill on the land, 
a sturdy ash staff when my heart is weak. 

And just to be clear:

I shall wound every man, 
but no man shall wound me.

BY THE BEDSIDE:

I don’t know about you, but I am deep in an underworld state of mind lately (which I could blame on a number of things; personal Pluto transits, the horrific revelations from the Epstein files, the state of our world as we awaken to more layers of patriarchal and white supremacists bullshit...) Rather than resisting the underworld pull I am anchoring myself deeper, turning to myths for more language, technologies, and grounding in the underworld. Perhaps in paying reverence to the shadow lands, we will once again know how to be in right relationship with them… Myths of descent are often coupled with myths of renewal and rebirth. Something glimmers in the depths.

The oldest myth of descent (one of the oldest written goddess narratives, written by a Sumerian priestess) is the myth of Inanna, Queen of Heaven. Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer (1983) is a collaboration between a folklorist (Wolkstein) and Sumerian scholar (Kramer.) The result is a beautiful collection of translated works and scholarly annotations. If you are interested in Inanna, the Venus cycle, and myths of descent, this is a classic for your collection.

BOOK MARKED:

Much of my ancestral reclamation process has been a study of Celtic lore, spirituality, and healing practices. I have many resources and reference books on this topic (which I will likely share more of!), but one that I pull from regularly as I meditate on the seasonal rites is: A Druid’s Herbal for the Sacred Earth Year by Ellen Evert Hopman. This book offers suggestions for weaving herbs into one’s magical practice of honoring the changing seasons, and is deeply rooted in Celtic Druidic tradition.

At the crest of Imbolc, where I live in Northern California, I spied the first cherry blossoms budding on bare branches. After the 1st of February (Imbolc) I have delighted in a cascade of plum blossoms, fluorescent quince flowers, and the re-emergence of buckeye leaves, popping up like chartreuse flames. When we notice what the Earth speaks at these ancestral festivals of the turning wheel, we begin to weave ourselves into the awakening process, begin to speak the silent language of the Earth.

“The cycles of the ritual year remind us that like the plants that lie fallow in winter to reappear in spring, no psychological or material state persists, and we who are life, which is motion, have the continual option of rebirth before us.” - Hopman

For each festival of the year, with special focus on the Celtic traditions, Hopman shares herbs and lore, offering both the herbal uses and magical uses of the plants. For Imbolc she suggests Angelica, Bay, Basil, Blackberry, Coltsfoot, Heather, Iris, Myrrh, Tansy, and Violets. Coincidentally, I started taking Iris flower essence this month. Cultivating the creative stirrings within me.

MY OCCULT ARCHIVE ~ will be an ongoing series! A space to explore the magical texts that have inspired me, and a love letter to the magic that books unlock on and off the page.

Tell me, have you read any of these titles? What magic have these books inspired for you?

Contact me for magical mentorship and 1-1 intuitive divination:

Work with Casey

Remembering the oracular way

Casey Zabala — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 18:31:33 GMT

Greetings from the Hedge! Casey Zabala here, resident hedge-rider, intuitive witch, artist & author, sharing my divinations and musings for living a magical life during these precarious times.

As promised, an introduction to oracular consciousness, and a plea for us to return to an ensouled relationship with our planet, the otherworld of spirits, and each other. As we enter a new era of relating, my dream is to reconnect the oracles to their places of power, and to collaboratively recenter our soul back into the Earth. Let me know if this dream resonates.

Learn more about my practice, and book a session here.

“The future has an ancient heart” - Carlo Levi

Imagine, for a moment, that rather than feeling isolated in your uncertainty, that you had access to well worn paths, paths of inspiration, poetry, action and deep witnessing from the cosmos. Oracular consciousness illuminates these paths, paths that have been traveled by countless pilgrims before you. It is time for us to gather up our uncertainties and travel back to an ancient oracular center to ask for guidance in our time of need…

Ancient paths to wisdom ~

We have been journeying for days on dusty rocky slopes gaining elevation on the sacred mountain. Along with our curiosity, we carry gifts for the temple guardians. A goat trudges alongside us, its bell keeping time with each step. We finally reach the temple complex, in awe of the panoramic view of the mountain range, honeyed by the evening light. The smell of burning laurel leaves mixes with an unplaceable sweet fragrance, wafting up from the springs meandering through the many stone temples. You have arrived at the center of the world, the omphalos, and you will be able to connect with the Pythia to receive your guidance in the morning…

There is no doubt about it, we are moving through a dark night of our collective soul. The chaos is quickening and the world splintering into greater fractals of disaster, as harsh realities and incredible atrocities flood our experience. And in this darkest moment we are tasked with calling forth a new dawn, new ways to relate, to care for each other, to survive - and many communities are already doing so. During these troubling times, spirit provides invaluable guidance in our world building and world healing practices, if we are willing and able to listen.

Now it is your turn to consult the oracle. You have made your offerings to the temple guardians and are now being led into the central temple, the aduton. There, in the dimly lit room, the Pythia awaits you, seated on a three legged tripod over a small crack in the Earth. The sweet fragrance has intensified, and your heart rate drops. Your question is delivered, and you wait in silence until the Pythia speaks… you watch a wave of motion moves through her body, from her legs to her lips, and when she speaks she sounds like a hive of bees as she chants a lyrical riddle back to you.…

When we travel back to a time when oracles were consulted as a course of everyday life, we find an ecosystem of meaningful relationship and connection. The oracle is tended by community, inspired by the Earth’s essences, and in relationship to the spirits they channel as well as the pilgrim asking for their guidance. There, in a dusty dark temple complex, we might recover the archetypes, spirits, and forms of relation which might support us as we navigate great destruction, and cultivate our rebirth. These oracular centers steeped in myth and tradition (of which there were many all over the world) are where we will find healing keys for integrating lost aspects of our collective psyche. Keys that unlock belonging, connection with the other (unseen / spiritual) world, and access to a living relationship with the natural world.

Oracles are ecosystems ~

Our future rebirth requires a massive collaboration of interdisciplinary healers, artists, activists, organizers, teachers, and seers. Multi-passionate, multi-faithed, multi-hyphenate doers and believers. Together we are resuscitating the “ancient heart” of our future, a heart that reveres natural cycles, that honors many wisdom ways, and honors death and dying as an integral step in a healthy evolutionary process. Our archetypal guides, as we co-create our future, are Plutonic and primordial; the soul of the world, or anima mundi, our ancestors, guides and gods, and the oracles who receive, channel, and disseminate these spirits’ wisdom.

“Spiritual knowing is a participatory event: It can involve the creative participation of not only our minds, but also our hearts, bodies, souls, and most vital essence. Furthermore, spiritual energies are not confined to our inner world, but can also flow out of relationships, communities, and even places.” Jorge N. Ferrer. Revisioning Transpersonal Theory : A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality.

As a student of the oracular and a practitioner of divination, I have experienced how moments of oracular consciousness can break through the spell of the materialist paradigm. Oracles have the ability to peel back the veil of disenchantment, to tap us into a far older paradigm where our individual psyches were embedded into the cosmos, inseparable from the soul of the world. Tuning into oracular consciousness offers us modern individuals an ancestral and ensouled perspective while we collectively navigate our current planetary crisis. Imagine gaining direct access to the world’s heartbeat, being a channel for otherworldly wisdom, and stitching the worlds meaningfully back together again. This is a quest for actualization beyond our egos, the task of relocating spirit in the material world.

Our crisis is collective, so our solutions must be a woven tapestry of healing measures, interconnected. Now more than ever, we must leave no stone unturned in our quest to engage with the struggle that we face as planetary citizens. Some of us must journey back to the ancient center of the world, to a time when oracular consciousness permeated daily life, to resurrect valuable forms of knowing.

Participating in oracular consciousness is no passive or receptive vehicle to new awareness. Oracular comes from the Greek root: orare, which means to pray or to speak. Central to oracular consciousness is communication, or an exchange of ideas between oracle and channeled being, and the receiver of the messages. In order to activate oracular consciousness we must remember how to communicate with elements of the natural world, the land, animals, ancestors, and planetary archetypes. How might one go about opening this line of communication? Begin to listen to the birdsong with your whole body. Notice the music of water whenever it is singing. Become conscious of the subtle language of your home, its creaks, groans, sighs... Everything is speaking to us, all the time.

One way we can enter into oracular awareness is through mythological histories, which offer us the participatory language and landscape of the ancestors, those peoples who had not yet fully separated from nature. Mythical history connects us to those who read the night sky for direction, consulted the flight patterns of birds for daily wisdom, and read the wind whistling through the trees. For our ancient ancestors, this sort of conscious participation with the Earth was a way of life, woven into lineage through their mythology. Oracular consciousness requires that we once again embed ourselves into the macrocosm of the cosmos in such a way that we are aware of how inseparable we truly are. Just as there are many diverse oracular traditions, there are many ways to connect with the wisdom of the oracle, whether you are channeling wisdom, or receiving it.

Our current modern paradigm has become untethered from its soul source, the anima mundi. The anima mundi is the ensouled presence and intelligence of Earth; this soul presence is not only located in the natural world, but is also located within us. If we are to tap into healing solutions to humanity’s current destructive trajectory, we must reconnect with this inter-being intelligence, soul intelligence. This is our greatest spiritual task, to recognize and acknowledge the spiritual wisdom all around us. Once we begin to reconnect with the spiritual energy of the world around us, we open up lines of creative communication.

Thanks for reading Hedge Spells! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Honoring non-human intelligence ~

By reconnecting with the consciousness of our ancient ancestors through the oracles, we trigger a deep remembrance of the language and spirit of the anima mundi, as well as pathways of communing with the archetypes around and within us. Through oracular consciousness we can forge and renew pathways of communication with the intelligence of the Earth itself.

In this quest for reconnection with the Earth’s soul, we must honor our Earth as evolving, regenerative, and able to both destroy as well as create. In our modern mechanistic schema, we believe that we can rationalize and understand the inner workings of our world and therefore control it – and this is pure hubris. In an extreme expression of this, we have created new modes of “intelligence” that are completely untethered from biology, ecology, and soul in the form of AI. How can this artificial intelligence solve the world’s most pressing problems, when it is so alien to them? Worse still, AI perpetuates the language and impulse of extraction which is leading to our ultimate demise.

Collectively, we have forgotten that we exist as a community member within a conscious ecosystem, teeming with other forms of consciousness, organic cycles of evolution, and mysteries beyond our human perceptions. Our “human” intelligence, intuition, and spirituality is not created or nurtured in isolation. Oracles and oracular consciousness plugs us back into a meaningful matrix of wisdom, wisdom that is collective, rooted in systems of reciprocity, and informed by life’s natural mysterious cycles. Oracles throughout time have been a bridge to those mysteries and cycles. Oracles are a bridge to the otherworld, the Plutonic realms, straddling the threshold of the living and the dead. For example, oracles at Delphi practiced a deep form of spirit communion with the Earth and the Pythia (chthonic serpent), the guardian at the threshold of life and death. The powerful wisdom of the oracles is rooted in their connection with what is unknowable and captivated humans for millennia; the mysteries of death, life, and rebirth.

The oracles are returning, as more of us understand that we are stewarding the death of one world, and the birth of another. As we navigate apocalyptic territory, it is more prudent than ever to understand the importance of endings. Capitalism is a lie, endless progress is impossible. Now we must return to the reality of death and inevitable decay, as processes to honor, revere, and turn to in times of trouble. The oracles can show us the way. Oracular consciousness teaches us the rituals and shows us how to dance with the greatest mysteries in order to shepherd forth renewal.

I have so much more to share about oracular ways… I will be returning with oracular myths, cultures, poetry, and methodologies to support us all as we reconnect with the anima mundi, and usher forth a new worlds into being. Please send me your curiosities and questions regarding this topic. I’d love to hear from you.

Thank you for reading and supporting my work!

february divination journal

Casey Zabala — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 16:08:19 GMT

Greetings from the Hedge! Casey Zabala here, resident hedge-rider, intuitive witch, artist & author, sharing my divinations and musings for living a magical life during these precarious times.

Here is your divination journal for February 2026. Initiated by Imbolc, a Leo Full Moon, and punctuated by the Saturn Neptune conjunction, this month is revelatory and ripe with grief. Tune in for spiritual grounding, insights, and tools for weathering the cosmic storms. Learn more about my practice, and book a session here.

I write to you heart open and heavy, on this threshold of Imbolc, under a Leo Full Moon, as futures coalesce and crystallize yet remain a mystery. Inside of me something ancient has broken open, a clay vessel with honeyed wine, gone stale. Yet this break has set a prayer spiraling into motion…

At the threshold of February I am grappling with both collective grief for our world unraveling into its darkest state, and my own personal grief which is raw and unwieldy. I write to you from an underworld place, a place that feels both revelatory and rife with confusion. This grief is not just sorrow, but also a profound gateway to presence, and in moments, hope. Beside this grief I lay down daffodils, light a candle, and make offerings of milk and honey.

The language of oracles is metaphor. Riddles that unspool in the heart and land in the gut. Paradoxes that can only be held in the body, a body of knowing that is more like a river than an algorithm. Our knowing at this time is more sensual, primal, futuristic and fragmented than how we have been trained to “know.” We are in a period of undoing and becoming, as the dissolving alchemy of Neptune coincides with Saturn’s harsh reality principle. Saturn and Neptune will finally form an exact conjunction on February 20th in Aries, but these planets have been drawing closer and dancing with each other for some time now, their confounding effects penetrating all facets of reality, and I’m sure you’ve felt it. We are in a time of collective grief, grief that is simultaneously earth shattering and radically clarifying.

Laboring with our grief is a central aspect of the spiritual revolution of our time. Our grief will bring about major structural changes, with deep spiritual implications, if we are able to integrate its wisdom. We are being tasked with centering humanity, or else losing sight of it - as sadly so many already have. In times of great upheaval and transformation we cannot loose sight of our spirit, the spark that makes humanity worth fighting for.

Our resilience building task is to hold the suffering of humanity, as we learn to regulate our increasingly taxed nervous system. Being awake to the depths of our human pain is the locus of transformation, the birthplace of creative healing solutions. We are not alone in this process of stretching and fortifying our spirits.

We must weave together the political and the spiritual if we are to weather this storm. I listen to the news, I read about the atrocities, I call my senators, participate in mutual aid, and parent my young child as an act of resistance. I tend my altar space, I arrange flowers on the table, light candles, send my prayers into the universe to collaborate with your prayers, and call on sacred guidance for support and the liberation of all people.

Amidst the underworld currents I’m swimming in, here are some earthly delights that have been providing so much comfort:

Rainbow prisms.
Nina Simone.
Borage flower essence.
Grounding with my crystal allies.

February 1st is Imbolc, a time for honoring the turning from Winter to Spring (in the northern hemisphere). At this time we ask, what is taking shape in the belly? What worlds are we dreaming up? What will we grow with the seeds we are able to tend and harvest? This month begins with a glimmer of hope, hope that we should celebrate, amplify, bottle and treasure. Above all, Imbolc is a time for calling in sacred inspiration.

🕯️ I am calling in inspiration that protects us from the fear mongering of the oppressors. I am calling in creativity that enlivens the spirit. I am calling in the muses to fertilize the most healing spells for a safe and sustainable future for all.

If your grief for the world is calcifying into depression and anxiety that is limiting your ability to show up fully, now is the time to stretch yourself. Crash into bed and rest deeply, then wake up and light a candle to remind yourself of the magical spark you carry within you. Go gently, without bypassing your important expressions of grief, rage, and longing. Let Earth’s sacred cycle remind you of your miraculous ability to begin again, to travel to the deepest valleys of yourself, and return with a rare bundle of medicine to buoy you through the next challenge.

{Solidarity with everyone on the front lines in Minnesota}

Now for your collective divination for the month ahead:

imbolc magic for resilience & renewal

Casey Zabala — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 23:11:12 GMT

Greetings from the Hedge! Casey Zabala here, resident hedge-rider, intuitive witch, artist & author, sharing my divinations and musings for living a magical life during these precarious times.

This essay is about Imbolc, traditionally celebrated on February 1st, the fiery goddess Brigid, and how to honor this emergent moment on the wheel of the year. Learn more about my practice, and book a session here.

We are hurdling towards Imbolc, the sabbath that marks the mid-point between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. Hurdling because Neptune just moved into Aries, falling into the future as the chaos and violence of fascism picks up in tempo, and running towards Spring because rebirth feels like the balm we all need right now. In my corner of the world I am witnessing the miracle of pink magnolias blossoming on bare branches. I spotted citrine yellow daffodils clustering at the curb. These are signs that Spring is stirring, the sap beginning to rise.

on the Imbolc altar:

Daffodils, snowdrops, a red cloth or scarf to leave out overnight to capture Brigid’s healing dew, beeswax candles, metal work, ink and pen, a cauldron for burning herbs, a tended flame, cream, milk, honey, your favorite book of poems, old notebooks, love letters, silk ribbons, horse shoes and tackle, beer, bright bold blessings, woven spells, apophyllite, malachite, prehnite, an equal armed cross, protective charms shared with those who need it most…

"Leucojam Varium” by Anna Atkins...

I had planned to share another piece with you this week about ORACLES, which I am holding back for now, because I think the magic salve most needed at the moment is situating ourselves in sensual mythic cycles that can guide us in embodying our current challenges. The saturation of the news cycle, the distortion and commodification of our awareness, and the lack of tools to help us make sense of reality is staggering (and engineered), and very much a symptom of our current evolutionary cycle. Reality is being warped so that we are forced to consciously recalibrate.

Celebrating the wheel of the year, or seasonal rites and holy days, is a practice that helps us return to ancestral consciousness, cultural reverence, and the mythic embodiment of Earth’s life-death-rebirth mystery. Imbolc is a cross-quarter holy day sacred to the Goddess Brigid, who was so important to the Celtic people that colonizing Christians adopted/appropriated her as a saint.

Working with Brigid at this time of year is an invocation of hope, a prayer for awakening new consciousness, and a potent affirmation of our innate ability to begin again, after a period of great darkness. Brigid has many sacred names: “bright-one,” “sudden-flame,” and “bright arrow” among them. She is a triple goddess, who manifests as a goddess of healing, a goddess of inspiration and poetry/prophecy, and a goddess of smith-craft. Her triple nature is an indication of her power and prowess. For ancient Celtic people, Brigid was patron to integral pillars of society, and her body was known as the Earth’s body.

Brigid, being a midwife and healer, is the archetypal doula of our transition from the depths of Winter to the new dawn of Spring. Imbolc translates to “in the belly,” and it is at this time in Earth’s regenerative cycle that so much transformation takes place underground in the soil, as seeds warm, germinate, crack open, and bulbs send their heralding green shoots to pierce Winter’s iced veil. Imbolc honors the magic of gestation, and Brigid offers us strength and encouragement as we face the heavy energetic lift of renewal. Her magic is in kindling our inner fire, sending us inspiration to excite us, medicine to shape shift, and fortification as we nurture life back into being. This is a time for strategizing, organizing, researching and drafting. This is a time for strengthening our networks of care, both in the external community sense, and internal spiritual ways.

This year, Imbolc arrives at a moment of heightened desperation and confusion for so many of us. What hope are you holding in our belly? What inspiration is essential for us to continue to resist and reimagine a world without white supremacy running the show? Brigid, the bright one, is a fire goddess. She brings warmth, illumination, purification and protection. Fire to melt away the ICE. If invoked in the appropriate ways, Brigid helps to fortify souls in deep need of healing and transformative growth.

Pre-Christian colonization of Ireland, it was said that Brigid had priestesses that would tend to her sacred flame in the hills of Kildare. The fire was tended in devotion, and as a magical act of protection. When we invoke and make offerings to Brigid, we are calling forth her protection. In the Christianized myth of Brigid, the powerful saint has a sacred flame at her Abbey established at Kildare, which was tended daily by 19 virgins. On the 20th day, the flame was left to be tended by Brigid, an act of faith and a confirmation of the goddesses power.

As we each emerge from Winter’s depth at our own pace, and as we grapple with the turmoil and suffering of the world, Imbolc serves as a moment to re-attune to our center (or belly) as an act of seeding hope, building resilience, and coping with the challenges of the moment. Relish in the flora emerging in your local verge. Step outside and feel the Sun wash over you, replenishing your vitality. Germinate seeds for your Spring gardens. Step back into a meaningful relationship with your spirit - give it space to sing through you.

The fascist forces at work want us to be buried and numb in our grief for the world. They want to beat the hope out of us. Returning to the cycle, Earth’s unyielding mystery, and take solace in the triumphant return of the iris, the forsythia, the snowdrop. While the world is aflame with chaos, we can look to mythic and ecological patterns that ground us back into sustainable systems of life.

spell and ritual ideas for your personal practice

~ Make a protective amulet and hang it in your home. Ward away evil spirits, ICE agents, and tyranical fascism. The traditional amulet for Imbolc is Brigid’s Cross, though iron and smith-crafted talismans are also sacred to her. A protest sign is also an amulet. Use the symbols or words or materials that ignite your inner fire, spark your imagination, and feel intuitively aligned.

~ Leave offerings for Brigid: milk, beer, bread or a meal. Feed the goddess and ask for their protection and blessings.

~ If you live in a place with snow (most of the US is currently stuck inside due to crazy winter storms!) gather some snow in a bowl and in the snow bury symbols (written on paper) of the groups, people, and toxic ideologies you are working to dismantle and thwart. Place candles into the bowl of snow, and watch gleefully as it melts. As your candles burn imagine the power that these entities and individuals have is waning, melting, and dissolving away.

~ Get inspired. This is a great time of year for reading, research, and reconnecting with art of all mediums. Brigid is traditionally sacred to poetry, so it’s a great time to read poetry (aloud - for extra magical momentum) and write your own verses.

~ Candle magic. Tend to a sacred flame on February 1st as a spell for safety and inspiration. Light the candle before dawn and engage with it all day, noticing the quality of the flame. Dedicate the candle to dismantling systems of hate, and building systems of care.

~ Tend to your belly. Our core, our solar plexus and sacral chakras hold so much wisdom and tenderness. If you are feeling physically out of whack, this is a great time to align with your bodies’ intuitive needs. The work of renewal and rebirth requires movement. Find ways to fire up your belly and see what inspiration takes shape.