May 14, 2025 • 52 mins
Joining me for the eleventh episode of the season, guest Jess Karels brings us into their world that combines Wicca and geekdom. Jess speaks about their early life being a Jehovah's Witness, exploring different sects of Christianity, and finally landing on their current spiritual practices in Blue Star Wicca. We also talk about video game references and how that is relevant to spirituality.
Go check Jess out at their various places on the interwebz!
Website: https://themysticgeek.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@the_mystic_geek
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_mystic_geek/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to the Mindful Sagittarius podcast.
It's Sally and I have a cool guest here today and we've been
kind of connecting back and forth on Instagram and hey, go
buy the handle the Mystic Geek on Instagram.
I think we met on Threads, actually.
Jess, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, I'm glad to be here.
(00:22):
And yes, I think we we bonded onthreads first and then found
each other in other areas of meta.
Yeah, but seriously, like Threads is so witchy and so
like, spooky, Mystic, spiritual,whatever.
But like, I did not expect Threads to blow up the way it
has been. So I'm super excited that you're
here today and glad that we met.If you don't mind giving a
(00:44):
little introduction I would appreciate it.
Great. So again, my name is Jess.
Pronouns, are they them? I sometimes go by she her
depending on how I feel. I go by the Mystic geek as well.
So it blends like the video gaming, troubleshooting, techno
bansary side of geekdom along with like the spiritual aspects
of like mysticism as well. So those two are how I came up
(01:07):
with my brand name when I decided I was going to go and
pro. Beyond that, I am a business
systems analyst by day, which basically means I am the
troubleshooter who also has to guess how everyone's gonna set
things wrong and prevent it. So being able to have pattern
recognition helps. ADHD adult diagnosis, even
though the signs were there eversince I was a little kid.
(01:30):
And now that I'm reflecting on it, they're also with my parents
as well. And I know one of the things
we're going to be talking about is my spiritual history was
brought into the Jehovah's Witnesses when I was five years
old. My family converted through
various things, had some spiritual experiences when I was
a kid that I could not fully comprehend.
And by the time I was a teenager, I was done.
(01:50):
I tried the Baskin-robbins 31 flavors of Protestantism and I'm
not joking, there were quite a few different churches I checked
out. Ended up during that time frame
I'm dating someone who was of one of those Easter and
Christmas only families of Catholics.
So I decided well I'm going to Majestic University, might as
well check out the RCIA which iscatechism for adults so my
(02:13):
mother-in-law can claim that they had an official Catholic
wedding. All this time throughout college
was also studying a lot of witchy stuff that was
interesting and actually furthercemented my belief in the
spiritual realm as well. And was a solitary witch for a
long long time. And I think with an in the last
few years give or take ish. I just know it was right before
the pandemic. Ended up going into following
(02:36):
Blue Star Wicca. Awesome.
What a what a ride. Just I was right.
Yeah. And it was just.
So your introduction was really cool because I'm sitting here
thinking to myself, pro gamer, hold on.
What? And then you're talking about
your full time job, which I alsowork a full time job that kind
of bleeds into my craft. So I was just sitting here like,
wow, we're a lot more alike thanI thought we were.
(02:57):
So I love that. And I'm, I'm really interested
in hearing more about your journey and your history with
Christianity coming into your current day Wiccan practices.
Yeah. When you said the baskin-robbins
thing, I was laughing because the first episode of the season
with my dear friend Ruvinka, shemade that reference to
baskin-robbins when she was talking about New age
(03:18):
spiritualism and just kind of like growing up, you know, kind
of around the woo woo. And it's just, it was just
funny. It was a, it was like a
flashback moment. And I was like, this is going to
be a great episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Without further ado, go right ahead.
If you'd like to share a little bit more about how you went from
being a Jehovah's Witness to getting into Wicca, I would love
(03:40):
to hear about it. Sure.
So as I said, my family converted when I was 5.
Prior to that we really did not talk religion in the household.
We would pray at bed at, but I didn't really know who or what
we were truly praying to to makesure that we are OK.
So there was that going on. And then for those who are not
familiar, one of the big things about Jehovah Witnesses is they
(04:02):
do not celebrate any of the holidays that are out there
because they believe that even the most Christian ones have
been influenced by the pagans. We could talk about that later,
but that was where it was at. So imagine someone who's 5
learning how to make friends andthen being told having to be set
aside and can't participate in like the Christmas things or the
Easter things and they wouldn't even do Mother's Day or Father's
(04:24):
Day. It was all about selflessness.
So no human deserved like that to be left lifted up.
So yeah, Mother's Day, Father's Day out, anything patriotic out.
And it just felt very isolating as a young kid.
But I made to do. And a lot of it is with the
Jehovah's Witnesses. They really push you to believe
and prepare in looking forward to what's beyond, what's beyond
(04:47):
either death or what's beyond Armageddon, which is the whole
end times. They're one of the ones that has
a strong end time theology. So what was holding me on was
the OK, well, what would be likewhen Armageddon is done, we're
in the heavenly Kingdom and I'm able to hang out with like lions
and tigers and stuff and their children's books are basically
little kids hang out with a whole zoo.
(05:08):
So it's the how do you hold on to that for for smaller kids And
I was into that. Then came my mom was pregnant
with my youngest sibling. I'm the oldest of four and I was
about 7-8 going on 8:00-ish around that time frame.
And I remember she wasn't doing too well, but I didn't know how
bad it was and knowing now it was bad.
(05:28):
It was a very bad situation. I'm really glad she made it
through my youngest brother's healthy, but there was a lot of
concern on it. And I remember getting this
dream where I felt like I woke up in my bed but was still in
the dream and the room lit up and Jesus walked out of the
closet and told me that my mom and my sibling were gonna be
okay and to get out of the Jehovah's Witnesses because they
were poisoned. How can an 8 year old process
(05:51):
this? Yeah, no, that's a lot of
information. That's a lot.
Telling an 8 year old or that toreassure them their parents
their mom is going to be OK whenthey know their moms they're
sick but they don't know how sick.
And then also, how do I explain to my parents that Jesus, Jesus
just told me to do this? And I'm, I'm kind of screaming
(06:13):
on the inside because it's like,as someone who was raised 7th
day Adventist, this sounds so similar because, you know, like
Ellen G White is a prophet and we're just going to follow all
of her writings. And, you know, after we die, you
know, we're just asleep until Jesus is second coming.
And that's just what happens. And it's funny because you're
(06:34):
saying Jehovah's Witnesses don'tbelieve in holidays.
And it's all about selflessness and all this and all that.
And I'm just like thinking back to all the conversations that
I've had, like with my friends and family in the past, like
Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on my door.
As you're mentioning that I remember the one time my mom
brought me for the door to door and then they realized that I
was too honest and had to keep me home for future ones because
(06:57):
I was like I went straight to the consequences.
So imagine like someone who's about 6, a six year old girl
basically spelling out what happens if they don't convert
and Armageddon happens. So you had absolutely no chill
and you were just like, straightup, hi, I'm Jess, and you're
going to go to hell if I'm just kidding.
No, but it's lost enough. Yeah, but it's funny because
(07:19):
like, you were talking about, like, Jesus came to you and gave
me this message, and I was just,like, listening to everything
you were saying. And for a denomination of
Christianity that sounds very strict.
It sounds very witchy and woo woo at the same time.
I know people talk about like, they have Jesus as their spirit
guide too, right? Yeah.
So I'm just sitting here. I don't know.
(07:40):
Everything you're saying to me is just kind of clicking into
place, just like I'm referring back to a lot of things that I
thought I knew or the things that I kind of know already.
And I'm just like, wow, my mind is about to be blown.
I can already tell. The other part is they strongly
believe in demonic influence andspiritual influence leading
people to sin. So you're starting to get into
almost Pentecostal but without the speaking in tongues or
(08:03):
anything else like. That, but it's talking with the
giant snake wrapped around your shoulders.
That's that's that's not even inmost of them that I've seen, but
the big thing is put for for them it to show that you are
aligned with God is what they call the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, which is basically Holy Spirit coming on into you.
And then basically you starting to speak in tongues, which I've
(08:25):
experienced that. I don't know what language it
is. It felt more like I was doing
random syllables or like whatever it was, I don't think
it was even the human language. I was coming out of my mouth,
but it was basically it was a strong spirit.
They the spiritual evocation that they have happen is real
what it is. I don't know.
I wonder how old were you when this happened?
(08:46):
Do you remember? When I was playing around with
the various denominations and tried Pentecostal, I would say
early 20s at that point. So you're an adult and and I
wonder if you remember it being like more syllables and stuff.
I wonder if you were speaking like a light language or
something, because I really wonder.
Could be as broad range, it could have been human, it could
have been something else, but wedon't know man.
(09:08):
I wish we could just like play the clip, please, and like
listen to what you were saying and then be like, what what
happened? Like let's, let's, let's.
Go rewind time and like put a little window in that.
I mean you probably. Could talk to your past self
about it and figure it out. But it reminds me of when I was
kind of going through like, I don't know if you went through
this as you were getting older where you kind of started to
(09:28):
question, OK, why do people not ask these questions?
Like why do we only believe in one God?
Why is he saying this in the Bible?
And you know, so on and so forth.
Why do we not wake back up, you know, until the 2nd coming,
Like, whatever the beliefs may be, right?
And I think I've always believedin like reincarnation or, you
know, different spiritual aspects of things, but it was
(09:48):
never completely aligned to whatmy parents wanted me to know.
And, you know, when I was in basic training, this was like
2005, 2006, I actually went to aWiccan service.
I went to a Buddhist service. I went to a Catholic mass.
Catholic Mass scared me, by the way, because Catholics are so
ritualistic sometimes. And I think that kind of scared
(10:09):
me a little because I'm like, isthis really Christianity or
should you be your own thing? No offense to any of my Catholic
friends out there or people who are raised Catholic, but it is
kind of like there's something, there's some sort of mysticism
around Catholicism that you justcannot explain.
It's just when you walk into Catholic Mass, there's just like
something in the air. Well, it is the frankincense,
but it's, you know, the frankincense.
(10:29):
Yeah, not it. And that's something that I I
had thought about a lot because of all the all the Christian
denominations I had checked out,Catholicism was the one that
actually resonated the most withme.
And it was because of the ritual, of the physical ritual.
It was very tangible. And now that we are couple
decades later and we're looking at the spirituality landscape,
(10:51):
the term that I think is relevant here is the concept of
an embodied spiritual practice. So rather than having it be
purely cerebral, dogmatic, whereyou can fight each other on
Reddit or threads or wherever on, well, my goddess is cooler
than your goddess, this is aboutactually taking the practice and
making it real. Even if it's purely stagecraft,
(11:13):
going through and immersing in that yourself puts you into a
deeper spiritual headspace compared to having it being just
purely you sit and you listen and you have your cognitive mind
go, which is the vast majority of Protestant sermons or
ceremonies or whatever you want to call services, whatever you
want to call them. So I can see why Catholicism has
(11:34):
that type of draw and has that very different vibe compared to
Protestantism. And I think it is because of the
depth of the ritual. And I would almost say they kind
of have their own lore as well to pull in gamer terms.
They have their own deep lore that you can really delve into,
where a lot of these other denominations are maybe from
within the last century. Yeah, no, for for sure,
(11:57):
Catholicism has such a deep history.
And I mean, so does, you know, the Protestant Church.
But I think I think it was more kind of intimidating for me
because I had never experienced that type of environment before.
And for someone who was like late in the spiritualism game
here in terms of like which he practices, I think it just
(12:17):
really presented something to methat I wasn't quite ready for.
And I didn't really know what toexpect my stepdad from when I
was like 10 to like 1314, I had a lot of stepdad figures come in
and out of my life because my parents got divorced when I was
younger. And he was Catholic, but he
never went to church. He just talked about being
(12:38):
Catholic. So I don't have any kind of
experience to draw for, like, for this because other than
that, you know, like a lot of Korean people are either
Protestant or Baptist Presbyterian.
So that's what I grew up seeing outside of my 7th Day Adventist
household on my mom's side, my dad's side, they were all
Presbyterian. So they're pretty like normal.
(12:59):
Like you sit there on Sunday or you sit there on the Saturday.
Yeah. You go to church, you have
potluck, you socialize, and thenyou go home.
This was like a whole ceremony, you know, lots of music, lots of
organ music at that at the time,and just I guess the
frankincense in the air and it just, I don't know, it was just,
I guess fear of the unknown because I didn't know what the
(13:19):
hell was going on and I was justconfused religiously, like, am I
even Christian? I think we all kind of go
through that. Am I agnostic, am I atheist?
Am I actually Christian kind of phase because at the time there
wasn't really a lot of information out there about, you
know, what's beyond that. The spiritual communities now
it's so evolved past that, like I don't understand this entire,
(13:41):
this is my hill, I'm standing onit.
I'm going to fucking fight you if you don't believe in what I
believe in. Like, why?
There's room for all of us at the table, you know, unless
you're out there doing somethingcompletely heinous like killing
another human being. Like, why are we sitting here
arguing on the Internet, right? Yeah.
And I, I just think it's, that's, it's the cultural
(14:03):
landscape or zeitgeist, whateverterm of bits on it, especially
for those who may have come froma fundamentalist Christian
background or just the fundamentalist background to
begin with, because that will indoctrinate you the importance
of being right and that there's the binary of right or wrong.
There's other cultural aspects of least within the United
States where we're, where you'rebasically taught it's either
(14:25):
right, wrong. There's no Shades of Grey,
there's no gradient of what thattruth is.
So if, unless people deconstructthat absolutism, it definitely
will carry into their spiritual journey as they're trying
different things. And if they meet someone who is
belief systems or view of reality, it's contrary to
theirs. It becomes not only an attack on
their belief, but an attack on themselves because they haven't
(14:47):
gone through that mental deconstruction process.
So As for why people are becoming a bit more, this is my
hail to die on now, especially in the Internet.
I I feel like that's it. Especially with us being in such
a period of historical uncertainty, people are trying
to grasp control where they can,and their feeling of what is
correct or right or true is thatlast bastion that they're trying
(15:08):
to hold on to. Yeah, you know what?
I, I realized some of these people haven't gone through
their Saturn return yet. So they're not like they're not
on that level yet anyway. Of like realizing that there are
different opinions out there. And it's funny because we think
after we turn 21, we're old enough to drink or take part in
different things. Like that's when you're an
(15:29):
adult. And no, your brain doesn't even
fully develop until like you're in your late 20s and sometimes
in your early 30s depending. And on top of that it's Pluto
and Aquarius season until 2043. Like open up your mind.
Pluto is a planet of transformation you know.
Just because somebody is not thesame as you does not mean Jack
shit. I'm sorry.
(15:51):
I've seen so much hate on the Internet.
Not that the Internet is always a hateful place, but you know,
you're a gamer, you understand, like there's so many trolls out
there and people who are just assholes to be assholes, right?
And it's like, what do you get out of that?
What do you get out of sitting here telling somebody that
they're wrong? And and sometimes they don't
even really have a leg to stand on.
They're just spewing shit for noreason.
(16:13):
So especially when it comes to spirituality, like, I don't
think people understand how seriously people take that in
terms of like the words that they're saying and how that
affects people, especially when people in the spiritual
community work on a lot of shadow work.
And they could really take something that you say to heart
when literally has nothing to dowith them.
Yeah, exactly. And I, yes.
And I feel that you're right that we have to be tolerant of
(16:36):
other people's views when it comes to like cosmology or, or
like what deities are out there or whatnot.
But I also feel like at the sametime, for safety and also to
help teach others discernment, we got to call out shit when it
happens. Like someone saying that their
spirit guide is superior to a Google search and finding fact
(16:57):
when they're telling people absolute bullshit.
That's the type of stuff that you got to call out those who
are saying, OK, well, spirituality and good vibes can
cure cancer or we don't need ourvaccines because we have this
guardian Angel watching us. Those are some things that it's
maybe worthwhile to question. So it's learning that determined
(17:18):
on OK, when do we approach, do we engage and do we advocate for
those who may be duped into doing something dangerous versus
someone like not liking someone else's statue or their artwork?
Yeah, yeah. No, it does.
And it's kind of like people weaponize religion or weaponize
their spiritual beliefs when really, like I said, there's
(17:39):
plenty of room for everyone at the table.
There's there's no reason. And it's just a topic that I'm
so passionate about because a lot of us have a lot of
religious trauma from being Christian or some people have
trauma from the other side. You know, maybe you were raised
Pagan and you decided that you're a born again Christian.
I don't know. There's so many different
(18:00):
categories of witches out there.I mean, I consider myself, I
guess, a polytheistic witch or aPagan witch.
I mean, the labels don't really matter to me per SE because I
know what I'm doing, you know, in terms of like what I believe
in and what I have in my belief system.
But you also have Christian witches, you have Wiccan, which
is, which is why I am interestedin hearing more about Wicca
(18:21):
because I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions about
Wicca and especially the generalspiritual community.
Because at one point, like in the early 2000s when I was
delving into all this, like I mentioned before, Wicca was just
kind of presented to me like it's all about the earth working
with like the elements and just kind of working with nature.
And then it turned into like, present day, like nobody knows
(18:45):
anything about what it means to be Wiccan.
So just within my circles, yeah.No, because I don't see a lot of
people who are Wiccan. I don't, I don't mean a lot of
people who are truly Wiccan. Like they say that they're
solitary witches, eclectic witches.
They're this and this like category or like, hey, I have
(19:07):
Christian religious trauma and I'm atheist now.
I don't believe in that. I just work like with nature,
whatever. Or I will, you know, I work with
this deity or this deity, but I don't want to put a label on it.
So not to go on a tangent there,but I just hear a lot of things
but nothing about being Wiccan. All right, so I think that
before we jump into what it means to be Wiccan, which I I
(19:28):
need to share a little bit of a history of what is Wicca.
So there's a couple of branches of history going on
simultaneously. I love being neuro spicy and
being able to tell multiple stories simultaneously.
So here we go. I think it was close to the turn
of the 20th century. Don't quote me on the date.
There was this historian slash anthropologist Margaret Murray
(19:50):
who published writings about hertheories on the witch cults of
Europe. So most of us have heard various
stories and legends of how therewere witches in Europe and
they're like witch hunters. There's actually is a book.
I think it's. Ellius Maleficara about like the
hammer of witches, but her theory is that there has been
this like almost unbroken line of witches for the longest time
(20:11):
within Europe and that it's morelike this folk tradition.
A lot of her theories got debunked.
But around the same time there was a British civil servant
named Gerald Gardner who was part of the Order of the Golden
Dawn, I think. And also like the Freemasons, he
was part of some of those, more like the fraternal orders from
what I remember. No, let me correct that.
He was a Freemason. There's other around that time
(20:32):
frame that were part of the Order of Golden Dawn, but this
is more like the secret learnings, like the fraternal
groups have been ongoing on the occultist side.
So he's looking at all of this. He has his own personal.
The story that goes is that he was initiated into a coven by
someone. Whether or not that's
historical, historically accurate or not, we don't know
for sure, but that's the story is like he got initiated into a
(20:54):
coven. Wicca or the turning or bending
or whatever you call it, is whathe described what he was brought
into, and then he started to teaching others about it and
basically creating his own initiates and making turning it
into an initiate tradition. Around the same time, we have
Alex and Maxine Sanders who are doing something similar on their
end with that. So you have the two branches,
(21:16):
which are Gardenerian Wicca and Alexandria and Wicca.
Both of them are initiation based.
They have degree systems. They have it where there's what
people from the outside learn, and then there's what's taught
only to those within who have gone through that initiation
process. So these things are going on as
these initiation traditions. They start off in in Britain and
(21:39):
then they spread into the UnitedStates through, I think one of
the people that transferred overwith British traditional Wicca
was Raymond Buckland. So if you look for him, there's
a Buckland's Book of Witchcraft.That's the person.
So this is all going on. And then there's this guy Scott
Cunningham, who if anyone who's seen any Pagan or which books
that that name is going to be fairly common.
(21:59):
He was a prolific writer. He was the one of the ones who
introduced the concept of Wicca.Not necessarily initiate like
initiatory society level of Wicca, but common witchcraft
practices to the public. And he through his writings
brought up the concept of the solitary witch, someone who is
not part of an initiated coven, how to practice in service to
(22:20):
the deities and whatnot. So that is all going on timeline
wise. Then we also start hitting into
like the eco conscious movementswithin the United States that
starts bringing out more of whatwe call the Pagan.
Like the various Pagan groups orbeliefs in revised or neo
paganism, which is looking at the world being more nature
(22:41):
centered. Connection between you and deity
is whatever you want it to be, but it has more of an earth
centered bit. So all of this stuff is moving
together and weaving together ataround the same time culturally.
As for Wicca where it is today, it has taken on a lot of stuff
from the resurgence of paganism.The earth based stuff.
It was part of the initial stuff, but it's kind of been
(23:02):
enhanced in it. The whole concept of Wicca
itself is it is do with these, do with this theistic.
They have a primary male and female deity.
If you believe in other deities as well as being separate and
distinct, you're considered what's called a hard polytheist,
meaning that you see them as like Pan is Pan, a Dionysus is
(23:22):
Dionysus, Hermes is Hermes, or they have what's called soft
polytheistic, which means that you see all male deities as
aspects of the primary God and all female deities as aspects of
the primary goddess. So those are the two different
paths that are there. Beyond that is stuff that I
can't overly share because it isoath bound.
But the stuff that we can talk about is it's a 2 deity belief
(23:46):
system. Honoring the seasons is kind of
an extra bit because it's used as the story of the God and the
goddess in their relationship and its evolution.
So that's how they tie it to a lot of like more Pagan ish
concepts like the wheel of the year.
And I know I just rambled for a bit on a lot of different.
Things. No, no, no.
It's, it's a lot of information that I didn't know about, so I
(24:08):
appreciate that. Yeah, no, that's very
interesting the, the different schools of thought there and
just kind of how Wicca evolved. And correct me if I'm wrong, but
Wicca is considered like a a branch of Paganism, correct?
I always thought it would. If you take a look at paganism
as like this pan religious belief system of that involves
(24:29):
primarily that everything is connected to each other, then
yes, Wicca would fall into that or be like half in half out
depending on how ceremonial you are.
So it's it's kind of a blend of like the ceremonialist and the
folk practitioner. Gotcha.
And when you were saying about your oath, is that have to do
(24:50):
with like the initiation processand like what you can and cannot
talk about kind of like closed practices I guess?
Yeah, it's kind of like closed practices, which I feel would
make sense there on it is the idea was secrecy is more it
makes the stuff, the informationthat you learn more valuable and
it makes your ability to earn access to that even more
(25:11):
important. So I can understand the reasons
behind that from a psychologicallevel.
And then also if you're looking at it from like a practitioner
level, it is about access. It's about, and it's also about
showing your worth on making it to those different levels of
access. And it's not necessarily like,
oh, I'm this cool person, I'm going to do these different
deeds. It's more like you're what are
(25:32):
you willing? Who are you willing to serve?
And the more that you widen that, widen that circle of who
you're serving that and your readiness for it, that's what
gets you through those differentdegrees.
Gotcha. I'm just trying to kind of put
two and two together because I've heard so many different
like terminology when it comes to like relating to Wicca, Like
(25:52):
I've heard Wiccan church, which kind of, you know, it, it just
doesn't sound like it sounds right, but it doesn't at the
same time, you know what I mean?Because it's not like church,
but then, you know, you watch things on mainstream media right
now, like in chilling adventuresof Serena or, you know, like the
Church of night. I guess they're, they're a
little different because they'reworshipping Satan.
(26:14):
But you know, it's, it's a little different, but it's like,
I think mainstream media has a lot of things like skewed in a
way that people don't like to dotheir own research.
It's kind of like we get Facebook news, like you
literally believe everything that you see on social media.
So I, I appreciate you kind of going into depth there.
And I think I wanted to point out that close practices first
says gatekeeping are two totallydifferent things.
(26:36):
So if there there are closed practices like Indigenous
practices, why can't there be closed practices when it comes
to witchcraft? Like I get it.
Like if that's what you do, that's what you do.
And I just think it's really interesting where you were
talking about you kind of like earn, learn more knowledge and
kind of like level up almost kind of, I guess gaming
reference there to kind of levelling up.
(26:58):
In the circles that I'm in, we call it psychic upgrades or you
doing the work on yourself and being able to access more as
you're working with, you know, different energies or different
guides or different deities. I guess I'm just trying to
create the correlation where we're different, but we're
similar. Yeah.
To kind of break it down a little bit for not just myself,
but also the listeners. Uh huh.
(27:19):
So if you had to remember like one point of like your religious
journey here or like your spiritual journey to where you
just realize like, hey, I'm on the right path.
Like do you have like an aha moment to where you just
realize, like, man, what have I been doing?
I have found a path that I'm supposed to be on.
I mean, I've, I don't know if I will ever truly find that
(27:42):
because it's always a journey. It's always about you
reincarnating yourself. If with every decision that we
make, everything that you endure, you become a new
different person. And I don't want to have it
where I get to a point where I say I reached it because it's
like hitting the zenith, like hitting the like the peak of the
mountain. Where can I go from that point?
So that's why I'm like, I will come and acknowledge and
(28:04):
appreciate where I'm at, but I won't say like this is the
height or this is the peak of where I could be.
Yeah. No, absolutely.
But I guess maybe I should reframe that when you started
your journey with Wicca, like did you just have like this
moment where you were like, thisis this is the path that I'm
supposed to be going on versus like where I was at?
Because when my spirituality, my, my spiritual journey
(28:26):
started, and I guess I should call it like a reawakening where
my school of thought was changing the way I see the world
was changing, the way I saw the world was changing.
I guess that's when I realized, oh, this is what I'm supposed to
be doing. I was sitting.
I think it was the first time I did a protection spell for
myself again. Some people that I felt were
bullies and were messing with meand seeing the results.
(28:48):
I'm like, oh shit, magic's real.I, I I want to keep.
This Yeah, that is definitely quite the experience when you do
your first manifestation spell or your first protection spell
or just using energy or just because for those of you in the
woo woo community, you know whatI'm talking about.
When you feel that physical feeling or I don't know how to
(29:10):
describe it, like some people, it might be like a chill up your
spine. It might be like goosebumps
going up. You might feel an energy shift
in the room. But when you feel that for the
first time and you're like, holyshit, this is real.
It's crazy because even Christianity is faith-based,
right? Like you don't see it, you know,
but you know what's happening. Like you don't see it, but you
(29:30):
believe in it, right? But like with witchcraft and
just spirituality in general, well, you feel it, you know, and
those of you who are clairaudient or exercise any
Clair skill, it's you know, whenyou're getting that confirmation
and validation, you're like, holy crap.
Like I can talk to these deities, I can talk to my guys,
I can communicate with other nonhuman, non corporeal beings.
(29:53):
What is life and where have I been?
Yeah, why did I not start this sooner?
Yeah, no, exactly. And then, you know, as you're
doing shadow work, you find out,well, this is when you were
supposed to start. This is when you're supposed to
wake up. This is why you chose to come
into this life this way, becauseyou had to deal with XY and Z
before you got to the stage in your journey.
So I'm like, well that's great. Why did I pick to, you know, why
(30:15):
did I choose to live my life on not just hard mode, but expert
mode? No cheat codes, no shortcuts.
Like I start out with 0 gold like fuck.
Yeah, It's like, why did the meta me choose this?
No, seriously. Yeah.
It makes me think it's like the RPG games we have out there.
It's like if those if the characters were maneuvering
(30:36):
around or conscious, they're probably going.
Why did my higher self pick thisfor me?
Right. Like why did my higher or higher
self like give me 0 attribute points to start this journey?
Literally I'm just here, you couldn't have kind of cut me a
break. Apparently not, because they're
like, well, you did this to yourself and it's like, wait,
(30:56):
what? And then it's like, oh shit, I
did. So all right, I remember you
talking about the good, bad and the ugly of manifestation.
So why don't we get into that for a second?
Like what do you mean? OK, so I think a lot of people
became aware of the concept of manifestation slash law of
attraction through that one bookThe Secret, which pulls a lot of
(31:19):
stuff from the New Thought movement that was from the early
1900s, which takes thought. It's the idea that thoughts are
things and thus as things they have vibration.
So if you think a certain thing or if you think a certain way
that leads to vibrations, that then lead to after effects of
that manifest as different things.
So it could be like a bad thing happening to you.
It could be getting sick, it could be all of those different
(31:41):
things. So it's the importance to go
through and try and focus on vibrational shifts to try and
manifest a more positive outcome, which in itself is not
too bad, but it can lead to somepeople feeling like they can't
be sad, they can't be angry, they can't rail against the
injustices that they've experienced out of fear that
they're going to have worse happen to them.
(32:02):
It's also goes through and saying like the extremes of it
would say, well, poverty is the person's fault, sickness is the
person's fault, which is a lot that old, that new thought
movement from the turn of the century previously.
So it has a lot of problematic stuff and it doesn't take into
the nuance of we all are workingon reality collectively.
And there's also higher levels of spiritual influence because
(32:25):
of things like collective entities like egregore's like
when we have states, we have allthis thing of power.
So what you can manifest on yourown is fairly limited.
And do you have a lot of stuff that's coming up against you.
So my view on Manifestation is more like a gaming idea.
How do I open up the it's where when we look at choices as
(32:49):
unlockable dialogue options, howdo we unlock the option that we
want to have happen? So like Mass Effect, you had to
be either super Paragon or superRenegade to be able to make
certain choices in the game. The same here.
It's like, how do I figure out what decision tree is going to
take me from point A to point B?And doing what you can to
(33:10):
increase the chances that you'regoing to be able to organically
or just naturally from coincidence, open up that
opportunity that you truly want for yourself.
I just had a flashback to when Iused to play Fable 3 and yeah, I
remember those late nights afterwork and I'd be like, yeah, I'm
just going to immerse myself because I don't feel like
(33:30):
thinking about anything right now.
I guess that was avoidance. But playing Fable, I think the
storyline, from what I remember,it was like depending on what
choices you make, you either become a hero or you kind of
become a villain, right? And depending on the more evil
or bad decisions you make, you earn scars on your face or on
your body. You unlock different dialogue
(33:51):
options or different storylines depending on who your character
ends up being with or depending on the different choices that
your character makes. So I'm just sitting here like,
wow, if we looked at life as a video game, as an RPG, right?
Yeah. If we looked at it like you can
level up by doing this. You can potentially block
yourself from this by doing thisbecause, you know, you only
(34:13):
have, it's like choose your own ending.
You pick A, so you don't have access to B.
You can't go backwards. Although that would be really
cool if you could go backwards and fix things, which I don't
want to get into that you kind of can.
But like, it depends on your school of thought and what you
believe in, right? But yeah, I I think it's funny
how closely related gaming and spirituality and I didn't draw
(34:33):
that connection until I met you.And I would say if you're
looking for a storytelling game that could really help with
that, Detroit Become Human is the one where it's you have the
robots that become sentient, alive and have feelings,
whatnot. But the storytelling style is
Matrix based. And like after each chapter you
get to see the exact chain of the Matrix that you chose.
(34:55):
So if like if there was a certain ending you wanted to get
to, you'd have to trace back to,well, what actions do I have to
take unlock that story arc? So it's that same type of
concept, but it may require somelevel of larger cognition, which
divination is great for that to know.
Well, what steps do I need to take to get closer to this
timeline or this outcome that I want to bring about for myself?
(35:17):
Cool, now I wrote that down cuz I was like I need to check it
out. One of the RPGs that I super got
into was the Shin Megami Tensei series, the Persona series.
And I think looking back now, really that's how I kind of was
receiving confirmation that Tarawas in my future, even though I
didn't really delve into it then.
(35:38):
But I've always been fascinated by like divination and just like
witchy things. I was like, seriously, Sally,
like that's why Tara was so easyfor you to pick up when you
started doing it because you know, you see cards like the
full the Hierophant, the lovers,like because like things in
video games kind of like reference back to it.
So you kind of had like a base level of knowledge before you
(35:58):
even started. And now I'm just questioning my
life. You just unlocked things for me,
I guess. But in terms of manifestation,
do you believe in negative manifestation?
Because I feel like if you're not in a good headspace as
you're doing manifestation work or spells, and if you're not
very specific about it and like your heart's not in it.
Because people think that like, oh, I'm going to do a money
spell. Oh, I'm going to do, I don't
(36:20):
know, a love spell or protectionspell that is just kind of like
a set it and forget it type of deal.
And it's not, it's, I feel like it depends on your intent, how
badly you want that spell to like actually work and how much
energy you put into it. And sometimes they can backfire
on you. Yeah, I definitely.
So part of it is if you're goingto do a spell for manifestation
(36:40):
being being very specific on theterms on it, because if you're
putting that energy out, it's going to go and take the path of
Leafs resistance. Like if you want to go and like
manifest the money for like for instance, redecorating a
kitchen, make sure to include a clause for no physical harm and
no damage to existing property. Otherwise someone might light a
(37:01):
fire in your kitchen and now theinsurance company is paying for
your remodel. So stuff like that, that can
happen. Being very also being cognitive,
that cognitive that for the concept of for the highest good
does may not be a happy ending for you.
It can actually be you having todeal with suffering that will
make you better for something inthe future.
(37:21):
So be very careful on it. If you want to be selfish and be
like, I don't care. This is like the cupcake.
It's not for the highest good, but I want it be clear on it.
It's there's a lot the differentmoving parts on there.
And then also much like with with just general generic
prayer, you got to do the work. It's like I just got a + 5 diet
roll to my next die. I have to roll the dice to get
(37:44):
that +5 bonus. It's the same thing with the
spells. You still got to take action for
that spell to take form. Yeah, for sure.
And it was funny because when you said path, path of least
resistance and you're talking about the insurance thing, I was
like, yeah, because, you know, people will manifest, hey, I
want a new car, and then their car breaks down.
Yeah, Yeah. You got the new car.
(38:06):
Yeah, you, you got what you wanted.
But, you know, maybe you should have been a little bit more
specific. I was, I was, I was doing like a
money manifestation, like collective spell for my Discord
group. But somebody chimed in and they
were just like, yeah, you know, like festing this, but without
anyone dying in the process because I think they were
talking about like life insurance.
(38:26):
And I was just like, oh, I didn't think about that.
Oh wow, that's very specific. Well, that also goes back to, I
think, the story of the monkey'spaw, where someone wished for
money and then their child died,so it was the company giving
them money as compensation. And it's just like, yeah, you
gotta be very careful on what you ask for because, again, the
(38:47):
universe is gonna be like, well,I'm gonna weave it together, and
it may not be the way you want it.
That in like the universe gives,but it also takes it's a give
and take relationship. So if you're not willing to put
in the work, you can't expect the universe to just like hand
you freebies. Like like I said, no cheat
codes, no shortcuts. If if you're trying to live as
(39:08):
your authentic self and do the things you know, you can't just
expect to be given handouts. This isn't 5 of pentacles.
Like we're not we're not doing that.
Speaking of, you mentioned tarotand you're very comfortable
talking about Tarot. So tell me about that.
Do you, do you do tarot as a part?
Do you pull cards as part of your daily thing or part of your
practice or do you give tarot readings?
(39:30):
Yeah. So I started reading the tarot
in the early, early 2000s when Iwas starting to explore
witchcraft. And the way that I did it was I
was involved in a LARP and I decided I was gonna play a tarot
reader. So I had my cards, I had the
guidebook. So during the session, I would
actually go through the cards and then out a character, pull
out the guidebook and read it out basically as the meeting.
(39:52):
And then one day I forgot the guidebook.
I just did it off the cuff and people thought I was cheating
because I was saying stuff that was true that I should not have
known. Well, you became an on the spot
intuitive reader. Look at that.
Yeah. So at that point, I was like, I
just kept that as a quiet personal practice until after my
dad died, which was late 2017. In the beginning of 2018, I've
(40:18):
just felt very lost because of his death and then some other
drama in my life. So I went to a tarot reader for
help, and going through the experience of being the client
made me realize that I was squandering my gift and not
really allowing others to benefit from it because I had a
way that I could help others. So that led me to starting my
own business as a tarot reader. Back then it was Geek Girl
(40:41):
Tarot, because at that point I was playing on the geek girl
trope. As I started to become more
aware of my own gender identity,I was like, I need something
gender neutral. So that's when we went to the
Mystic Geek. I love that.
I'm so sorry about your dad. I went through something similar
with my younger sister around that time.
It was 2018, what is kind of eventually what got me into
(41:04):
spirituality. My journey started when I
reached out to a reader and theyreached out to my sister.
And then I realized like, holy shit, I could be psychic.
Let me look into this. So it's, it's unfortunate, but
sometimes I think that is kind of like the jump off wake up
point for us, something as drastic as losing someone close
to you. So yeah, I'm, I'm sorry that
that happened, but I'm glad thatyou are using tarot to help
(41:28):
because that's kind of why I do it.
At first it was like I was intrigued and now I have
messages to give people if they want it because I'm an intuitive
reader as well. I don't just look at like card
meanings. That's it depends on in the
order that I'm drawing them. It depends on which guide that
I'm working with to pull cards. And you know, I do what's called
chaos tarot readings where I kind of like really go and pull
(41:50):
things like out of the ether. And you know, it makes people
very emotional because it's I should really refer to it as
like shadow work tarot because that's literally what it ends up
being. I think it's because we've all
collectively experienced so manydifferent traumas in different
ways. The people that I read for, like
my clients who have similar experiences, it's like I pick up
(42:10):
on it right away. I don't know how I'm not going
to question it. I'm thankful that I can connect
in that way and give people validation and confirmation of
the things that they're dealing with or shit, I didn't think
about that. I kind of pushed that far away
back in my brain to where I almost forgot about it.
And then that was the block thatyou're experiencing and you
can't go any further because youhave a block there.
Because I'm sure you've had those moments where you get
(42:32):
messages where you're just like,oh, should I tell them this?
Like this is kind of like this some heavy information or about
yourself? You're just like what the fuck
did I just pull? Yeah.
Yeah, that's why I don't. I don't usually pull cards for
myself, not very often anymore. I like going to other readers
because I do like getting like afresh perspective from either
someone who doesn't know me or someone who does know me but are
(42:55):
unbiased in their reading. So yeah, didn't mean to go on
like a side quest there. But, you know, I'm also adult
PhD. Yeah.
I mean, my parents didn't know what the hell to do with me.
But, you know, in, in my culture, like being raised in a
Korean household, mental health is not like a thing.
You just kind of forget about itand you just dust yourself off
and move on. So when I was in my late 20s and
(43:16):
discovered I did have adult ADHDand I discovered Adderall, I was
like, I kind of feel somewhat productive, like a productive
human in society. That's great.
Instead of doing 20 things at once and not finishing a damn
thing and then dealing with executive dysfunction all day,
like Sally, we got to go do thisat 2:00.
OK, so until 2:00 I'm not doing anything.
(43:36):
I just learned how to automate as much as I can.
I wish I learned how to do that.I have to like keep a list
throughout the day to kind of keep myself on track or I just
get so many side quests. I I'm like a champion of side
quests, even in gaming. I'm that person who goes off and
does all the side quests and then leaves the main quest for
class. So wow, I'm learning a lot about
(43:58):
myself today, yeah. But it makes the main quest so
much easier because of how much you leveled up.
Thank you for that. Thank you because I don't feel
so bad anymore because I'm sitting here like, what am I
doing? Am I wasting time?
And it's like, you know, you're just trying to make it easier
later. Passive, least resistance.
Gotcha. Wow.
We talked about a lot of different things in such a short
period of time. I really appreciate you making
(44:19):
time today and I hope you enjoyed this conversation as
much as I did because I'm fascinated.
I'm still just like, Jess, we got to have you back so I can
like talk to you some more aboutdifferent things because you
have such a unique perspective than what I'm involved in right
now. It's just fascinating to me.
But why don't you go ahead and plug some of your socials so my
(44:39):
listeners can know where to findyou?
Sure, easiest way is the Mystic geek.
All one word dot com. My socials are either going to
be the Mystic geek one word or the under score Mystic under
score geek because some people went and took those handles and
I've been stalking them ever since and I just gave up.
(44:59):
So I am very active on threads. I'm kind of active on TikTok
more as a reposter and it will eventually figure out what I
want to do with Instagram and the other panel and the other
platforms I'm there. I have my account for when I'm
ready but it's more life is justwild right now so I'm just
mainly threads. Gotcha.
Yeah, no, you are active on threads and I.
(45:20):
Am on a hinged on threads. I'm like talking politics 24/7
because of where we're at. And then I'll find when someone
is going really off the deep endon spirituality and be like,
what the heck. Some people say some really wild
shit on threads though, like like stand on your hill,
whatever you believe it is what you believe in.
But some people say some really wild stuff.
(45:40):
Such a witchy platform. I don't know if the developers
are witchy or if they meant for this to happen or just kind of
fell into their lap, but it's, Ifeel like I'm part of some cool
kids club. Oh, we have a witchy social
media platform over here. And that's how I'm meeting a lot
of like witchy folks, like in different practices and just
from like different backgrounds.I think that's really cool.
(46:02):
Like I wouldn't have ever found some of these people.
Like, yeah, you find some peopleon TikTok.
You find some people on Instagram.
But like, Threads is like witchyTwitter.
And I love it. I'm here for it.
They've, they've really upped the game when it comes to
curating your FYP for your your profiles for the thing because
it's like narrows in on what it is that you're focused on.
(46:23):
So you're able to really find your tribe there.
I'm would not be surprised if there's a more right leaning
version of threads, but it's because they've done such a good
job of of encasing these bubbles.
I think it's harder to find unless you're deliberately
looking. Yeah, it's it's kind of
interesting because it's like the algorithm on threads.
It's like it kind of groups you with like minded people instead
(46:45):
of just like putting you in a place where you would be
uncomfortable. So, you know, I know people have
a lot of different opinions on Meta, but in terms of threads,
like I agree they've done a really good job that, you know,
once you start liking certain posts or you start hashtagging
witchy threads or, you know, tarot readers, which their
hashtag system is actually very unique because it's not like
(47:07):
Instagram. Yeah, you have that one hashtag
and that's where you can kind ofpost unless you just kind of
post out into you, you're following or into the ether.
But cool. And do you want to talk about
your spiritual business for a second?
Because I notice you make thingsand they're really.
Yeah, so I know that tarot readings are not for everyone.
And it's also, well, you go through and you have the times
that you need it and there's times that you don't.
(47:28):
So I've wanted that to be part of my business.
I used to do readings at a lot of metaphysical shops.
So I got to learn the insurance and outs of various crystals.
And one of the things that came that I saw is a lot of the
bracelets out there were very generic in their intentions.
Like you got your standard protection, but you have like
protect against the storm or whatever it is or whatnot.
(47:49):
And it's also the other part wasbecause they were not size
inclusive. So it would be the standard 7
inch length 22 beads if you're looking at the 8mm beads and
that's it. And people's bodies are
different. A7 inch bracelet is going to,
it's going to constrict me and I'm going to see gaps between
the different beads which might snag against my hair for someone
(48:10):
else whose wrist might be smaller.
The seven inch might just flop around when they're moving their
arm and it might fall off. So I decided to come up with my
designs, coming up with a specific design for every
bracelet length so someone can get a site, something that will
fit them, that will still look pretty.
I am big on tapping into the existing pop culture and feeding
(48:32):
from the beliefs and energy fromthat and the fandom from that in
my working. So in addition to your standard
Zodiac bracelets, I also do bracelets based on various
themes. I have one for a whole bunch of
Baldur's Gate characters, a couple of characters from Final
Fantasy 7, and I just finished aCommission for a design for
stuff based on Agatha Harkness, so I have a a couple of
bracelets based on her as well. I love that we have this running
(48:56):
joke in my my Discord group about assembling the coven
because we all kind of really bonded when Agatha All Along
came out. And so all my Thursday live
streams, we start by assembling the coven by singing the Ballad
of the Witch's Room. Yeah, so with the Agatha All
Along stuff, I put together one called the Witches Rd. which
(49:18):
goes through and has one type ofcrystal for each of the
elements. I also created Spirit Witch
which is which has the same color scheme as Agatha's outfit,
the one that she had when she was in the boss fights against
the Scarlet Witch. In one.
So you have the deep Blues and the deep purples, and then
there's one that is Spirit Mentor, which is based on my eye
(49:39):
from the colors from Ghost Agatha.
I love that ghost Agatha. How iconic.
Yeah, I love that. Cool.
I really enjoyed talking today and delving into so many
different topics. Truly this was one of the more
neuro spicy podcast episodes, but at the same time it wasn't
because you were so structured with your information.
(50:01):
So thank you for balancing me out.
Yeah, I thought I was going all over the place.
Wow. Oh, you, you were very
structured compared to me. I'm, I'm winging it.
I'm just raw dogging over here. So in closing, is there anything
else that you would like to kindof put out there as kind of the
sum everything up or something that you really want the
listeners to know? Biggest thing on this one is be
(50:23):
open, always think of what's possible and really going at it
from a gamer's perspective of what steps can I take to get
closer to the outcome that I want.
Using tools like divination as like a secret strategy, strategy
guide are great, but at the end you got to do the work, you got
to take the action. You can't just sit there and
hope that the perfect outcome isgoing to show up.
(50:44):
You have to earn the Game Shark Guide.
You have to earn your achievement.
Yes, yes, You can't. You can't go backwards and,
like, take the easy way out until you've, like, unlocked
those gold achievements. You've earned the right to kind
of, oh, hey, this spell, I know a shortcut.
Hey, I know how to do this, Like.
Yeah. And time is a strict and a
(51:05):
construct. Thank you.
And don't, don't be stuck in this.
This person has to be doing thisfor X amount of time to be able
to get to this. You know it think about it as
like a Mario playthrough. Those people who do speed Mario
playthroughs, like not everyone can do that, but they've gotten
to that place where they could. And maybe they figured it out
(51:25):
within the 1st 5 minutes they picked up the game.
Maybe it took them 10 years to get there.
But I, I always say our spiritual journeys look so
different. Don't sleep on other
practitioners that started laterin the game where, you know,
even people who started really early and they look at things
differently now because they've experienced different things
throughout their life and they're not just in the same
(51:47):
practice that they started and then they've evolved.
I think that's the beauty of being in spiritual communities
is that we are accepting and we are providing a safe place for
people to express themselves andto do the work that they do.
And like I said, just don't go around murdering people and
you're fine. Yeah, but good, good morning,
good afternoon and good evening for whenever you are listening
to this. Hopefully we brought some
(52:07):
entertainment and knowledge to your day and not just me being a
dumpster fire. Jess had a lot of great
knowledge drops. So go follow Jess on social
media and I will see you guys next time for another episode of
Unhinged Chaos.
Welcome back to the Mindful Sagittarius podcast.
It's Sally and I have a cool guest here today and we've been
kind of connecting back and forth on Instagram and hey, go
buy the handle the Mystic Geek on Instagram.
I think we met on Threads, actually.
Jess, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, I'm glad to be here.
(00:22):
And yes, I think we we bonded onthreads first and then found
each other in other areas of meta.
Yeah, but seriously, like Threads is so witchy and so
like, spooky, Mystic, spiritual,whatever.
But like, I did not expect Threads to blow up the way it
has been. So I'm super excited that you're
here today and glad that we met.If you don't mind giving a
(00:44):
little introduction I would appreciate it.
Great. So again, my name is Jess.
Pronouns, are they them? I sometimes go by she her
depending on how I feel. I go by the Mystic geek as well.
So it blends like the video gaming, troubleshooting, techno
bansary side of geekdom along with like the spiritual aspects
of like mysticism as well. So those two are how I came up
(01:07):
with my brand name when I decided I was going to go and
pro. Beyond that, I am a business
systems analyst by day, which basically means I am the
troubleshooter who also has to guess how everyone's gonna set
things wrong and prevent it. So being able to have pattern
recognition helps. ADHD adult diagnosis, even
though the signs were there eversince I was a little kid.
(01:30):
And now that I'm reflecting on it, they're also with my parents
as well. And I know one of the things
we're going to be talking about is my spiritual history was
brought into the Jehovah's Witnesses when I was five years
old. My family converted through
various things, had some spiritual experiences when I was
a kid that I could not fully comprehend.
And by the time I was a teenager, I was done.
(01:50):
I tried the Baskin-robbins 31 flavors of Protestantism and I'm
not joking, there were quite a few different churches I checked
out. Ended up during that time frame
I'm dating someone who was of one of those Easter and
Christmas only families of Catholics.
So I decided well I'm going to Majestic University, might as
well check out the RCIA which iscatechism for adults so my
(02:13):
mother-in-law can claim that they had an official Catholic
wedding. All this time throughout college
was also studying a lot of witchy stuff that was
interesting and actually furthercemented my belief in the
spiritual realm as well. And was a solitary witch for a
long long time. And I think with an in the last
few years give or take ish. I just know it was right before
the pandemic. Ended up going into following
(02:36):
Blue Star Wicca. Awesome.
What a what a ride. Just I was right.
Yeah. And it was just.
So your introduction was really cool because I'm sitting here
thinking to myself, pro gamer, hold on.
What? And then you're talking about
your full time job, which I alsowork a full time job that kind
of bleeds into my craft. So I was just sitting here like,
wow, we're a lot more alike thanI thought we were.
(02:57):
So I love that. And I'm, I'm really interested
in hearing more about your journey and your history with
Christianity coming into your current day Wiccan practices.
Yeah. When you said the baskin-robbins
thing, I was laughing because the first episode of the season
with my dear friend Ruvinka, shemade that reference to
baskin-robbins when she was talking about New age
(03:18):
spiritualism and just kind of like growing up, you know, kind
of around the woo woo. And it's just, it was just
funny. It was a, it was like a
flashback moment. And I was like, this is going to
be a great episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Without further ado, go right ahead.
If you'd like to share a little bit more about how you went from
being a Jehovah's Witness to getting into Wicca, I would love
(03:40):
to hear about it. Sure.
So as I said, my family converted when I was 5.
Prior to that we really did not talk religion in the household.
We would pray at bed at, but I didn't really know who or what
we were truly praying to to makesure that we are OK.
So there was that going on. And then for those who are not
familiar, one of the big things about Jehovah Witnesses is they
(04:02):
do not celebrate any of the holidays that are out there
because they believe that even the most Christian ones have
been influenced by the pagans. We could talk about that later,
but that was where it was at. So imagine someone who's 5
learning how to make friends andthen being told having to be set
aside and can't participate in like the Christmas things or the
Easter things and they wouldn't even do Mother's Day or Father's
(04:24):
Day. It was all about selflessness.
So no human deserved like that to be left lifted up.
So yeah, Mother's Day, Father's Day out, anything patriotic out.
And it just felt very isolating as a young kid.
But I made to do. And a lot of it is with the
Jehovah's Witnesses. They really push you to believe
and prepare in looking forward to what's beyond, what's beyond
(04:47):
either death or what's beyond Armageddon, which is the whole
end times. They're one of the ones that has
a strong end time theology. So what was holding me on was
the OK, well, what would be likewhen Armageddon is done, we're
in the heavenly Kingdom and I'm able to hang out with like lions
and tigers and stuff and their children's books are basically
little kids hang out with a whole zoo.
(05:08):
So it's the how do you hold on to that for for smaller kids And
I was into that. Then came my mom was pregnant
with my youngest sibling. I'm the oldest of four and I was
about 7-8 going on 8:00-ish around that time frame.
And I remember she wasn't doing too well, but I didn't know how
bad it was and knowing now it was bad.
(05:28):
It was a very bad situation. I'm really glad she made it
through my youngest brother's healthy, but there was a lot of
concern on it. And I remember getting this
dream where I felt like I woke up in my bed but was still in
the dream and the room lit up and Jesus walked out of the
closet and told me that my mom and my sibling were gonna be
okay and to get out of the Jehovah's Witnesses because they
were poisoned. How can an 8 year old process
(05:51):
this? Yeah, no, that's a lot of
information. That's a lot.
Telling an 8 year old or that toreassure them their parents
their mom is going to be OK whenthey know their moms they're
sick but they don't know how sick.
And then also, how do I explain to my parents that Jesus, Jesus
just told me to do this? And I'm, I'm kind of screaming
(06:13):
on the inside because it's like,as someone who was raised 7th
day Adventist, this sounds so similar because, you know, like
Ellen G White is a prophet and we're just going to follow all
of her writings. And, you know, after we die, you
know, we're just asleep until Jesus is second coming.
And that's just what happens. And it's funny because you're
(06:34):
saying Jehovah's Witnesses don'tbelieve in holidays.
And it's all about selflessness and all this and all that.
And I'm just like thinking back to all the conversations that
I've had, like with my friends and family in the past, like
Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on my door.
As you're mentioning that I remember the one time my mom
brought me for the door to door and then they realized that I
was too honest and had to keep me home for future ones because
(06:57):
I was like I went straight to the consequences.
So imagine like someone who's about 6, a six year old girl
basically spelling out what happens if they don't convert
and Armageddon happens. So you had absolutely no chill
and you were just like, straightup, hi, I'm Jess, and you're
going to go to hell if I'm just kidding.
No, but it's lost enough. Yeah, but it's funny because
(07:19):
like, you were talking about, like, Jesus came to you and gave
me this message, and I was just,like, listening to everything
you were saying. And for a denomination of
Christianity that sounds very strict.
It sounds very witchy and woo woo at the same time.
I know people talk about like, they have Jesus as their spirit
guide too, right? Yeah.
So I'm just sitting here. I don't know.
(07:40):
Everything you're saying to me is just kind of clicking into
place, just like I'm referring back to a lot of things that I
thought I knew or the things that I kind of know already.
And I'm just like, wow, my mind is about to be blown.
I can already tell. The other part is they strongly
believe in demonic influence andspiritual influence leading
people to sin. So you're starting to get into
almost Pentecostal but without the speaking in tongues or
(08:03):
anything else like. That, but it's talking with the
giant snake wrapped around your shoulders.
That's that's that's not even inmost of them that I've seen, but
the big thing is put for for them it to show that you are
aligned with God is what they call the baptism of the Holy
Spirit, which is basically Holy Spirit coming on into you.
And then basically you starting to speak in tongues, which I've
(08:25):
experienced that. I don't know what language it
is. It felt more like I was doing
random syllables or like whatever it was, I don't think
it was even the human language. I was coming out of my mouth,
but it was basically it was a strong spirit.
They the spiritual evocation that they have happen is real
what it is. I don't know.
I wonder how old were you when this happened?
(08:46):
Do you remember? When I was playing around with
the various denominations and tried Pentecostal, I would say
early 20s at that point. So you're an adult and and I
wonder if you remember it being like more syllables and stuff.
I wonder if you were speaking like a light language or
something, because I really wonder.
Could be as broad range, it could have been human, it could
have been something else, but wedon't know man.
(09:08):
I wish we could just like play the clip, please, and like
listen to what you were saying and then be like, what what
happened? Like let's, let's, let's.
Go rewind time and like put a little window in that.
I mean you probably. Could talk to your past self
about it and figure it out. But it reminds me of when I was
kind of going through like, I don't know if you went through
this as you were getting older where you kind of started to
(09:28):
question, OK, why do people not ask these questions?
Like why do we only believe in one God?
Why is he saying this in the Bible?
And you know, so on and so forth.
Why do we not wake back up, you know, until the 2nd coming,
Like, whatever the beliefs may be, right?
And I think I've always believedin like reincarnation or, you
know, different spiritual aspects of things, but it was
(09:48):
never completely aligned to whatmy parents wanted me to know.
And, you know, when I was in basic training, this was like
2005, 2006, I actually went to aWiccan service.
I went to a Buddhist service. I went to a Catholic mass.
Catholic Mass scared me, by the way, because Catholics are so
ritualistic sometimes. And I think that kind of scared
(10:09):
me a little because I'm like, isthis really Christianity or
should you be your own thing? No offense to any of my Catholic
friends out there or people who are raised Catholic, but it is
kind of like there's something, there's some sort of mysticism
around Catholicism that you justcannot explain.
It's just when you walk into Catholic Mass, there's just like
something in the air. Well, it is the frankincense,
but it's, you know, the frankincense.
(10:29):
Yeah, not it. And that's something that I I
had thought about a lot because of all the all the Christian
denominations I had checked out,Catholicism was the one that
actually resonated the most withme.
And it was because of the ritual, of the physical ritual.
It was very tangible. And now that we are couple
decades later and we're looking at the spirituality landscape,
(10:51):
the term that I think is relevant here is the concept of
an embodied spiritual practice. So rather than having it be
purely cerebral, dogmatic, whereyou can fight each other on
Reddit or threads or wherever on, well, my goddess is cooler
than your goddess, this is aboutactually taking the practice and
making it real. Even if it's purely stagecraft,
(11:13):
going through and immersing in that yourself puts you into a
deeper spiritual headspace compared to having it being just
purely you sit and you listen and you have your cognitive mind
go, which is the vast majority of Protestant sermons or
ceremonies or whatever you want to call services, whatever you
want to call them. So I can see why Catholicism has
(11:34):
that type of draw and has that very different vibe compared to
Protestantism. And I think it is because of the
depth of the ritual. And I would almost say they kind
of have their own lore as well to pull in gamer terms.
They have their own deep lore that you can really delve into,
where a lot of these other denominations are maybe from
within the last century. Yeah, no, for for sure,
(11:57):
Catholicism has such a deep history.
And I mean, so does, you know, the Protestant Church.
But I think I think it was more kind of intimidating for me
because I had never experienced that type of environment before.
And for someone who was like late in the spiritualism game
here in terms of like which he practices, I think it just
(12:17):
really presented something to methat I wasn't quite ready for.
And I didn't really know what toexpect my stepdad from when I
was like 10 to like 1314, I had a lot of stepdad figures come in
and out of my life because my parents got divorced when I was
younger. And he was Catholic, but he
never went to church. He just talked about being
(12:38):
Catholic. So I don't have any kind of
experience to draw for, like, for this because other than
that, you know, like a lot of Korean people are either
Protestant or Baptist Presbyterian.
So that's what I grew up seeing outside of my 7th Day Adventist
household on my mom's side, my dad's side, they were all
Presbyterian. So they're pretty like normal.
(12:59):
Like you sit there on Sunday or you sit there on the Saturday.
Yeah. You go to church, you have
potluck, you socialize, and thenyou go home.
This was like a whole ceremony, you know, lots of music, lots of
organ music at that at the time,and just I guess the
frankincense in the air and it just, I don't know, it was just,
I guess fear of the unknown because I didn't know what the
(13:19):
hell was going on and I was justconfused religiously, like, am I
even Christian? I think we all kind of go
through that. Am I agnostic, am I atheist?
Am I actually Christian kind of phase because at the time there
wasn't really a lot of information out there about, you
know, what's beyond that. The spiritual communities now
it's so evolved past that, like I don't understand this entire,
(13:41):
this is my hill, I'm standing onit.
I'm going to fucking fight you if you don't believe in what I
believe in. Like, why?
There's room for all of us at the table, you know, unless
you're out there doing somethingcompletely heinous like killing
another human being. Like, why are we sitting here
arguing on the Internet, right? Yeah.
And I, I just think it's, that's, it's the cultural
(14:03):
landscape or zeitgeist, whateverterm of bits on it, especially
for those who may have come froma fundamentalist Christian
background or just the fundamentalist background to
begin with, because that will indoctrinate you the importance
of being right and that there's the binary of right or wrong.
There's other cultural aspects of least within the United
States where we're, where you'rebasically taught it's either
(14:25):
right, wrong. There's no Shades of Grey,
there's no gradient of what thattruth is.
So if, unless people deconstructthat absolutism, it definitely
will carry into their spiritual journey as they're trying
different things. And if they meet someone who is
belief systems or view of reality, it's contrary to
theirs. It becomes not only an attack on
their belief, but an attack on themselves because they haven't
(14:47):
gone through that mental deconstruction process.
So As for why people are becoming a bit more, this is my
hail to die on now, especially in the Internet.
I I feel like that's it. Especially with us being in such
a period of historical uncertainty, people are trying
to grasp control where they can,and their feeling of what is
correct or right or true is thatlast bastion that they're trying
(15:08):
to hold on to. Yeah, you know what?
I, I realized some of these people haven't gone through
their Saturn return yet. So they're not like they're not
on that level yet anyway. Of like realizing that there are
different opinions out there. And it's funny because we think
after we turn 21, we're old enough to drink or take part in
different things. Like that's when you're an
(15:29):
adult. And no, your brain doesn't even
fully develop until like you're in your late 20s and sometimes
in your early 30s depending. And on top of that it's Pluto
and Aquarius season until 2043. Like open up your mind.
Pluto is a planet of transformation you know.
Just because somebody is not thesame as you does not mean Jack
shit. I'm sorry.
(15:51):
I've seen so much hate on the Internet.
Not that the Internet is always a hateful place, but you know,
you're a gamer, you understand, like there's so many trolls out
there and people who are just assholes to be assholes, right?
And it's like, what do you get out of that?
What do you get out of sitting here telling somebody that
they're wrong? And and sometimes they don't
even really have a leg to stand on.
They're just spewing shit for noreason.
(16:13):
So especially when it comes to spirituality, like, I don't
think people understand how seriously people take that in
terms of like the words that they're saying and how that
affects people, especially when people in the spiritual
community work on a lot of shadow work.
And they could really take something that you say to heart
when literally has nothing to dowith them.
Yeah, exactly. And I, yes.
And I feel that you're right that we have to be tolerant of
(16:36):
other people's views when it comes to like cosmology or, or
like what deities are out there or whatnot.
But I also feel like at the sametime, for safety and also to
help teach others discernment, we got to call out shit when it
happens. Like someone saying that their
spirit guide is superior to a Google search and finding fact
(16:57):
when they're telling people absolute bullshit.
That's the type of stuff that you got to call out those who
are saying, OK, well, spirituality and good vibes can
cure cancer or we don't need ourvaccines because we have this
guardian Angel watching us. Those are some things that it's
maybe worthwhile to question. So it's learning that determined
(17:18):
on OK, when do we approach, do we engage and do we advocate for
those who may be duped into doing something dangerous versus
someone like not liking someone else's statue or their artwork?
Yeah, yeah. No, it does.
And it's kind of like people weaponize religion or weaponize
their spiritual beliefs when really, like I said, there's
(17:39):
plenty of room for everyone at the table.
There's there's no reason. And it's just a topic that I'm
so passionate about because a lot of us have a lot of
religious trauma from being Christian or some people have
trauma from the other side. You know, maybe you were raised
Pagan and you decided that you're a born again Christian.
I don't know. There's so many different
(18:00):
categories of witches out there.I mean, I consider myself, I
guess, a polytheistic witch or aPagan witch.
I mean, the labels don't really matter to me per SE because I
know what I'm doing, you know, in terms of like what I believe
in and what I have in my belief system.
But you also have Christian witches, you have Wiccan, which
is, which is why I am interestedin hearing more about Wicca
(18:21):
because I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions about
Wicca and especially the generalspiritual community.
Because at one point, like in the early 2000s when I was
delving into all this, like I mentioned before, Wicca was just
kind of presented to me like it's all about the earth working
with like the elements and just kind of working with nature.
And then it turned into like, present day, like nobody knows
(18:45):
anything about what it means to be Wiccan.
So just within my circles, yeah.No, because I don't see a lot of
people who are Wiccan. I don't, I don't mean a lot of
people who are truly Wiccan. Like they say that they're
solitary witches, eclectic witches.
They're this and this like category or like, hey, I have
(19:07):
Christian religious trauma and I'm atheist now.
I don't believe in that. I just work like with nature,
whatever. Or I will, you know, I work with
this deity or this deity, but I don't want to put a label on it.
So not to go on a tangent there,but I just hear a lot of things
but nothing about being Wiccan. All right, so I think that
before we jump into what it means to be Wiccan, which I I
(19:28):
need to share a little bit of a history of what is Wicca.
So there's a couple of branches of history going on
simultaneously. I love being neuro spicy and
being able to tell multiple stories simultaneously.
So here we go. I think it was close to the turn
of the 20th century. Don't quote me on the date.
There was this historian slash anthropologist Margaret Murray
(19:50):
who published writings about hertheories on the witch cults of
Europe. So most of us have heard various
stories and legends of how therewere witches in Europe and
they're like witch hunters. There's actually is a book.
I think it's. Ellius Maleficara about like the
hammer of witches, but her theory is that there has been
this like almost unbroken line of witches for the longest time
(20:11):
within Europe and that it's morelike this folk tradition.
A lot of her theories got debunked.
But around the same time there was a British civil servant
named Gerald Gardner who was part of the Order of the Golden
Dawn, I think. And also like the Freemasons, he
was part of some of those, more like the fraternal orders from
what I remember. No, let me correct that.
He was a Freemason. There's other around that time
(20:32):
frame that were part of the Order of Golden Dawn, but this
is more like the secret learnings, like the fraternal
groups have been ongoing on the occultist side.
So he's looking at all of this. He has his own personal.
The story that goes is that he was initiated into a coven by
someone. Whether or not that's
historical, historically accurate or not, we don't know
for sure, but that's the story is like he got initiated into a
(20:54):
coven. Wicca or the turning or bending
or whatever you call it, is whathe described what he was brought
into, and then he started to teaching others about it and
basically creating his own initiates and making turning it
into an initiate tradition. Around the same time, we have
Alex and Maxine Sanders who are doing something similar on their
end with that. So you have the two branches,
(21:16):
which are Gardenerian Wicca and Alexandria and Wicca.
Both of them are initiation based.
They have degree systems. They have it where there's what
people from the outside learn, and then there's what's taught
only to those within who have gone through that initiation
process. So these things are going on as
these initiation traditions. They start off in in Britain and
(21:39):
then they spread into the UnitedStates through, I think one of
the people that transferred overwith British traditional Wicca
was Raymond Buckland. So if you look for him, there's
a Buckland's Book of Witchcraft.That's the person.
So this is all going on. And then there's this guy Scott
Cunningham, who if anyone who's seen any Pagan or which books
that that name is going to be fairly common.
(21:59):
He was a prolific writer. He was the one of the ones who
introduced the concept of Wicca.Not necessarily initiate like
initiatory society level of Wicca, but common witchcraft
practices to the public. And he through his writings
brought up the concept of the solitary witch, someone who is
not part of an initiated coven, how to practice in service to
(22:20):
the deities and whatnot. So that is all going on timeline
wise. Then we also start hitting into
like the eco conscious movementswithin the United States that
starts bringing out more of whatwe call the Pagan.
Like the various Pagan groups orbeliefs in revised or neo
paganism, which is looking at the world being more nature
(22:41):
centered. Connection between you and deity
is whatever you want it to be, but it has more of an earth
centered bit. So all of this stuff is moving
together and weaving together ataround the same time culturally.
As for Wicca where it is today, it has taken on a lot of stuff
from the resurgence of paganism.The earth based stuff.
It was part of the initial stuff, but it's kind of been
(23:02):
enhanced in it. The whole concept of Wicca
itself is it is do with these, do with this theistic.
They have a primary male and female deity.
If you believe in other deities as well as being separate and
distinct, you're considered what's called a hard polytheist,
meaning that you see them as like Pan is Pan, a Dionysus is
(23:22):
Dionysus, Hermes is Hermes, or they have what's called soft
polytheistic, which means that you see all male deities as
aspects of the primary God and all female deities as aspects of
the primary goddess. So those are the two different
paths that are there. Beyond that is stuff that I
can't overly share because it isoath bound.
But the stuff that we can talk about is it's a 2 deity belief
(23:46):
system. Honoring the seasons is kind of
an extra bit because it's used as the story of the God and the
goddess in their relationship and its evolution.
So that's how they tie it to a lot of like more Pagan ish
concepts like the wheel of the year.
And I know I just rambled for a bit on a lot of different.
Things. No, no, no.
It's, it's a lot of information that I didn't know about, so I
(24:08):
appreciate that. Yeah, no, that's very
interesting the, the different schools of thought there and
just kind of how Wicca evolved. And correct me if I'm wrong, but
Wicca is considered like a a branch of Paganism, correct?
I always thought it would. If you take a look at paganism
as like this pan religious belief system of that involves
(24:29):
primarily that everything is connected to each other, then
yes, Wicca would fall into that or be like half in half out
depending on how ceremonial you are.
So it's it's kind of a blend of like the ceremonialist and the
folk practitioner. Gotcha.
And when you were saying about your oath, is that have to do
(24:50):
with like the initiation processand like what you can and cannot
talk about kind of like closed practices I guess?
Yeah, it's kind of like closed practices, which I feel would
make sense there on it is the idea was secrecy is more it
makes the stuff, the informationthat you learn more valuable and
it makes your ability to earn access to that even more
(25:11):
important. So I can understand the reasons
behind that from a psychologicallevel.
And then also if you're looking at it from like a practitioner
level, it is about access. It's about, and it's also about
showing your worth on making it to those different levels of
access. And it's not necessarily like,
oh, I'm this cool person, I'm going to do these different
deeds. It's more like you're what are
(25:32):
you willing? Who are you willing to serve?
And the more that you widen that, widen that circle of who
you're serving that and your readiness for it, that's what
gets you through those differentdegrees.
Gotcha. I'm just trying to kind of put
two and two together because I've heard so many different
like terminology when it comes to like relating to Wicca, Like
(25:52):
I've heard Wiccan church, which kind of, you know, it, it just
doesn't sound like it sounds right, but it doesn't at the
same time, you know what I mean?Because it's not like church,
but then, you know, you watch things on mainstream media right
now, like in chilling adventuresof Serena or, you know, like the
Church of night. I guess they're, they're a
little different because they'reworshipping Satan.
(26:14):
But you know, it's, it's a little different, but it's like,
I think mainstream media has a lot of things like skewed in a
way that people don't like to dotheir own research.
It's kind of like we get Facebook news, like you
literally believe everything that you see on social media.
So I, I appreciate you kind of going into depth there.
And I think I wanted to point out that close practices first
says gatekeeping are two totallydifferent things.
(26:36):
So if there there are closed practices like Indigenous
practices, why can't there be closed practices when it comes
to witchcraft? Like I get it.
Like if that's what you do, that's what you do.
And I just think it's really interesting where you were
talking about you kind of like earn, learn more knowledge and
kind of like level up almost kind of, I guess gaming
reference there to kind of levelling up.
(26:58):
In the circles that I'm in, we call it psychic upgrades or you
doing the work on yourself and being able to access more as
you're working with, you know, different energies or different
guides or different deities. I guess I'm just trying to
create the correlation where we're different, but we're
similar. Yeah.
To kind of break it down a little bit for not just myself,
but also the listeners. Uh huh.
(27:19):
So if you had to remember like one point of like your religious
journey here or like your spiritual journey to where you
just realize like, hey, I'm on the right path.
Like do you have like an aha moment to where you just
realize, like, man, what have I been doing?
I have found a path that I'm supposed to be on.
I mean, I've, I don't know if I will ever truly find that
(27:42):
because it's always a journey. It's always about you
reincarnating yourself. If with every decision that we
make, everything that you endure, you become a new
different person. And I don't want to have it
where I get to a point where I say I reached it because it's
like hitting the zenith, like hitting the like the peak of the
mountain. Where can I go from that point?
So that's why I'm like, I will come and acknowledge and
(28:04):
appreciate where I'm at, but I won't say like this is the
height or this is the peak of where I could be.
Yeah. No, absolutely.
But I guess maybe I should reframe that when you started
your journey with Wicca, like did you just have like this
moment where you were like, thisis this is the path that I'm
supposed to be going on versus like where I was at?
Because when my spirituality, my, my spiritual journey
(28:26):
started, and I guess I should call it like a reawakening where
my school of thought was changing the way I see the world
was changing, the way I saw the world was changing.
I guess that's when I realized, oh, this is what I'm supposed to
be doing. I was sitting.
I think it was the first time I did a protection spell for
myself again. Some people that I felt were
bullies and were messing with meand seeing the results.
(28:48):
I'm like, oh shit, magic's real.I, I I want to keep.
This Yeah, that is definitely quite the experience when you do
your first manifestation spell or your first protection spell
or just using energy or just because for those of you in the
woo woo community, you know whatI'm talking about.
When you feel that physical feeling or I don't know how to
(29:10):
describe it, like some people, it might be like a chill up your
spine. It might be like goosebumps
going up. You might feel an energy shift
in the room. But when you feel that for the
first time and you're like, holyshit, this is real.
It's crazy because even Christianity is faith-based,
right? Like you don't see it, you know,
but you know what's happening. Like you don't see it, but you
(29:30):
believe in it, right? But like with witchcraft and
just spirituality in general, well, you feel it, you know, and
those of you who are clairaudient or exercise any
Clair skill, it's you know, whenyou're getting that confirmation
and validation, you're like, holy crap.
Like I can talk to these deities, I can talk to my guys,
I can communicate with other nonhuman, non corporeal beings.
(29:53):
What is life and where have I been?
Yeah, why did I not start this sooner?
Yeah, no, exactly. And then, you know, as you're
doing shadow work, you find out,well, this is when you were
supposed to start. This is when you're supposed to
wake up. This is why you chose to come
into this life this way, becauseyou had to deal with XY and Z
before you got to the stage in your journey.
So I'm like, well that's great. Why did I pick to, you know, why
(30:15):
did I choose to live my life on not just hard mode, but expert
mode? No cheat codes, no shortcuts.
Like I start out with 0 gold like fuck.
Yeah, It's like, why did the meta me choose this?
No, seriously. Yeah.
It makes me think it's like the RPG games we have out there.
It's like if those if the characters were maneuvering
(30:36):
around or conscious, they're probably going.
Why did my higher self pick thisfor me?
Right. Like why did my higher or higher
self like give me 0 attribute points to start this journey?
Literally I'm just here, you couldn't have kind of cut me a
break. Apparently not, because they're
like, well, you did this to yourself and it's like, wait,
(30:56):
what? And then it's like, oh shit, I
did. So all right, I remember you
talking about the good, bad and the ugly of manifestation.
So why don't we get into that for a second?
Like what do you mean? OK, so I think a lot of people
became aware of the concept of manifestation slash law of
attraction through that one bookThe Secret, which pulls a lot of
(31:19):
stuff from the New Thought movement that was from the early
1900s, which takes thought. It's the idea that thoughts are
things and thus as things they have vibration.
So if you think a certain thing or if you think a certain way
that leads to vibrations, that then lead to after effects of
that manifest as different things.
So it could be like a bad thing happening to you.
It could be getting sick, it could be all of those different
(31:41):
things. So it's the importance to go
through and try and focus on vibrational shifts to try and
manifest a more positive outcome, which in itself is not
too bad, but it can lead to somepeople feeling like they can't
be sad, they can't be angry, they can't rail against the
injustices that they've experienced out of fear that
they're going to have worse happen to them.
(32:02):
It's also goes through and saying like the extremes of it
would say, well, poverty is the person's fault, sickness is the
person's fault, which is a lot that old, that new thought
movement from the turn of the century previously.
So it has a lot of problematic stuff and it doesn't take into
the nuance of we all are workingon reality collectively.
And there's also higher levels of spiritual influence because
(32:25):
of things like collective entities like egregore's like
when we have states, we have allthis thing of power.
So what you can manifest on yourown is fairly limited.
And do you have a lot of stuff that's coming up against you.
So my view on Manifestation is more like a gaming idea.
How do I open up the it's where when we look at choices as
(32:49):
unlockable dialogue options, howdo we unlock the option that we
want to have happen? So like Mass Effect, you had to
be either super Paragon or superRenegade to be able to make
certain choices in the game. The same here.
It's like, how do I figure out what decision tree is going to
take me from point A to point B?And doing what you can to
(33:10):
increase the chances that you'regoing to be able to organically
or just naturally from coincidence, open up that
opportunity that you truly want for yourself.
I just had a flashback to when Iused to play Fable 3 and yeah, I
remember those late nights afterwork and I'd be like, yeah, I'm
just going to immerse myself because I don't feel like
(33:30):
thinking about anything right now.
I guess that was avoidance. But playing Fable, I think the
storyline, from what I remember,it was like depending on what
choices you make, you either become a hero or you kind of
become a villain, right? And depending on the more evil
or bad decisions you make, you earn scars on your face or on
your body. You unlock different dialogue
(33:51):
options or different storylines depending on who your character
ends up being with or depending on the different choices that
your character makes. So I'm just sitting here like,
wow, if we looked at life as a video game, as an RPG, right?
Yeah. If we looked at it like you can
level up by doing this. You can potentially block
yourself from this by doing thisbecause, you know, you only
(34:13):
have, it's like choose your own ending.
You pick A, so you don't have access to B.
You can't go backwards. Although that would be really
cool if you could go backwards and fix things, which I don't
want to get into that you kind of can.
But like, it depends on your school of thought and what you
believe in, right? But yeah, I I think it's funny
how closely related gaming and spirituality and I didn't draw
(34:33):
that connection until I met you.And I would say if you're
looking for a storytelling game that could really help with
that, Detroit Become Human is the one where it's you have the
robots that become sentient, alive and have feelings,
whatnot. But the storytelling style is
Matrix based. And like after each chapter you
get to see the exact chain of the Matrix that you chose.
(34:55):
So if like if there was a certain ending you wanted to get
to, you'd have to trace back to,well, what actions do I have to
take unlock that story arc? So it's that same type of
concept, but it may require somelevel of larger cognition, which
divination is great for that to know.
Well, what steps do I need to take to get closer to this
timeline or this outcome that I want to bring about for myself?
(35:17):
Cool, now I wrote that down cuz I was like I need to check it
out. One of the RPGs that I super got
into was the Shin Megami Tensei series, the Persona series.
And I think looking back now, really that's how I kind of was
receiving confirmation that Tarawas in my future, even though I
didn't really delve into it then.
(35:38):
But I've always been fascinated by like divination and just like
witchy things. I was like, seriously, Sally,
like that's why Tara was so easyfor you to pick up when you
started doing it because you know, you see cards like the
full the Hierophant, the lovers,like because like things in
video games kind of like reference back to it.
So you kind of had like a base level of knowledge before you
(35:58):
even started. And now I'm just questioning my
life. You just unlocked things for me,
I guess. But in terms of manifestation,
do you believe in negative manifestation?
Because I feel like if you're not in a good headspace as
you're doing manifestation work or spells, and if you're not
very specific about it and like your heart's not in it.
Because people think that like, oh, I'm going to do a money
spell. Oh, I'm going to do, I don't
(36:20):
know, a love spell or protectionspell that is just kind of like
a set it and forget it type of deal.
And it's not, it's, I feel like it depends on your intent, how
badly you want that spell to like actually work and how much
energy you put into it. And sometimes they can backfire
on you. Yeah, I definitely.
So part of it is if you're goingto do a spell for manifestation
(36:40):
being being very specific on theterms on it, because if you're
putting that energy out, it's going to go and take the path of
Leafs resistance. Like if you want to go and like
manifest the money for like for instance, redecorating a
kitchen, make sure to include a clause for no physical harm and
no damage to existing property. Otherwise someone might light a
(37:01):
fire in your kitchen and now theinsurance company is paying for
your remodel. So stuff like that, that can
happen. Being very also being cognitive,
that cognitive that for the concept of for the highest good
does may not be a happy ending for you.
It can actually be you having todeal with suffering that will
make you better for something inthe future.
(37:21):
So be very careful on it. If you want to be selfish and be
like, I don't care. This is like the cupcake.
It's not for the highest good, but I want it be clear on it.
It's there's a lot the differentmoving parts on there.
And then also much like with with just general generic
prayer, you got to do the work. It's like I just got a + 5 diet
roll to my next die. I have to roll the dice to get
(37:44):
that +5 bonus. It's the same thing with the
spells. You still got to take action for
that spell to take form. Yeah, for sure.
And it was funny because when you said path, path of least
resistance and you're talking about the insurance thing, I was
like, yeah, because, you know, people will manifest, hey, I
want a new car, and then their car breaks down.
Yeah, Yeah. You got the new car.
(38:06):
Yeah, you, you got what you wanted.
But, you know, maybe you should have been a little bit more
specific. I was, I was, I was doing like a
money manifestation, like collective spell for my Discord
group. But somebody chimed in and they
were just like, yeah, you know, like festing this, but without
anyone dying in the process because I think they were
talking about like life insurance.
(38:26):
And I was just like, oh, I didn't think about that.
Oh wow, that's very specific. Well, that also goes back to, I
think, the story of the monkey'spaw, where someone wished for
money and then their child died,so it was the company giving
them money as compensation. And it's just like, yeah, you
gotta be very careful on what you ask for because, again, the
(38:47):
universe is gonna be like, well,I'm gonna weave it together, and
it may not be the way you want it.
That in like the universe gives,but it also takes it's a give
and take relationship. So if you're not willing to put
in the work, you can't expect the universe to just like hand
you freebies. Like like I said, no cheat
codes, no shortcuts. If if you're trying to live as
(39:08):
your authentic self and do the things you know, you can't just
expect to be given handouts. This isn't 5 of pentacles.
Like we're not we're not doing that.
Speaking of, you mentioned tarotand you're very comfortable
talking about Tarot. So tell me about that.
Do you, do you do tarot as a part?
Do you pull cards as part of your daily thing or part of your
practice or do you give tarot readings?
(39:30):
Yeah. So I started reading the tarot
in the early, early 2000s when Iwas starting to explore
witchcraft. And the way that I did it was I
was involved in a LARP and I decided I was gonna play a tarot
reader. So I had my cards, I had the
guidebook. So during the session, I would
actually go through the cards and then out a character, pull
out the guidebook and read it out basically as the meeting.
(39:52):
And then one day I forgot the guidebook.
I just did it off the cuff and people thought I was cheating
because I was saying stuff that was true that I should not have
known. Well, you became an on the spot
intuitive reader. Look at that.
Yeah. So at that point, I was like, I
just kept that as a quiet personal practice until after my
dad died, which was late 2017. In the beginning of 2018, I've
(40:18):
just felt very lost because of his death and then some other
drama in my life. So I went to a tarot reader for
help, and going through the experience of being the client
made me realize that I was squandering my gift and not
really allowing others to benefit from it because I had a
way that I could help others. So that led me to starting my
own business as a tarot reader. Back then it was Geek Girl
(40:41):
Tarot, because at that point I was playing on the geek girl
trope. As I started to become more
aware of my own gender identity,I was like, I need something
gender neutral. So that's when we went to the
Mystic Geek. I love that.
I'm so sorry about your dad. I went through something similar
with my younger sister around that time.
It was 2018, what is kind of eventually what got me into
(41:04):
spirituality. My journey started when I
reached out to a reader and theyreached out to my sister.
And then I realized like, holy shit, I could be psychic.
Let me look into this. So it's, it's unfortunate, but
sometimes I think that is kind of like the jump off wake up
point for us, something as drastic as losing someone close
to you. So yeah, I'm, I'm sorry that
that happened, but I'm glad thatyou are using tarot to help
(41:28):
because that's kind of why I do it.
At first it was like I was intrigued and now I have
messages to give people if they want it because I'm an intuitive
reader as well. I don't just look at like card
meanings. That's it depends on in the
order that I'm drawing them. It depends on which guide that
I'm working with to pull cards. And you know, I do what's called
chaos tarot readings where I kind of like really go and pull
(41:50):
things like out of the ether. And you know, it makes people
very emotional because it's I should really refer to it as
like shadow work tarot because that's literally what it ends up
being. I think it's because we've all
collectively experienced so manydifferent traumas in different
ways. The people that I read for, like
my clients who have similar experiences, it's like I pick up
(42:10):
on it right away. I don't know how I'm not going
to question it. I'm thankful that I can connect
in that way and give people validation and confirmation of
the things that they're dealing with or shit, I didn't think
about that. I kind of pushed that far away
back in my brain to where I almost forgot about it.
And then that was the block thatyou're experiencing and you
can't go any further because youhave a block there.
Because I'm sure you've had those moments where you get
(42:32):
messages where you're just like,oh, should I tell them this?
Like this is kind of like this some heavy information or about
yourself? You're just like what the fuck
did I just pull? Yeah.
Yeah, that's why I don't. I don't usually pull cards for
myself, not very often anymore. I like going to other readers
because I do like getting like afresh perspective from either
someone who doesn't know me or someone who does know me but are
(42:55):
unbiased in their reading. So yeah, didn't mean to go on
like a side quest there. But, you know, I'm also adult
PhD. Yeah.
I mean, my parents didn't know what the hell to do with me.
But, you know, in, in my culture, like being raised in a
Korean household, mental health is not like a thing.
You just kind of forget about itand you just dust yourself off
and move on. So when I was in my late 20s and
(43:16):
discovered I did have adult ADHDand I discovered Adderall, I was
like, I kind of feel somewhat productive, like a productive
human in society. That's great.
Instead of doing 20 things at once and not finishing a damn
thing and then dealing with executive dysfunction all day,
like Sally, we got to go do thisat 2:00.
OK, so until 2:00 I'm not doing anything.
(43:36):
I just learned how to automate as much as I can.
I wish I learned how to do that.I have to like keep a list
throughout the day to kind of keep myself on track or I just
get so many side quests. I I'm like a champion of side
quests, even in gaming. I'm that person who goes off and
does all the side quests and then leaves the main quest for
class. So wow, I'm learning a lot about
(43:58):
myself today, yeah. But it makes the main quest so
much easier because of how much you leveled up.
Thank you for that. Thank you because I don't feel
so bad anymore because I'm sitting here like, what am I
doing? Am I wasting time?
And it's like, you know, you're just trying to make it easier
later. Passive, least resistance.
Gotcha. Wow.
We talked about a lot of different things in such a short
period of time. I really appreciate you making
(44:19):
time today and I hope you enjoyed this conversation as
much as I did because I'm fascinated.
I'm still just like, Jess, we got to have you back so I can
like talk to you some more aboutdifferent things because you
have such a unique perspective than what I'm involved in right
now. It's just fascinating to me.
But why don't you go ahead and plug some of your socials so my
(44:39):
listeners can know where to findyou?
Sure, easiest way is the Mystic geek.
All one word dot com. My socials are either going to
be the Mystic geek one word or the under score Mystic under
score geek because some people went and took those handles and
I've been stalking them ever since and I just gave up.
(44:59):
So I am very active on threads. I'm kind of active on TikTok
more as a reposter and it will eventually figure out what I
want to do with Instagram and the other panel and the other
platforms I'm there. I have my account for when I'm
ready but it's more life is justwild right now so I'm just
mainly threads. Gotcha.
Yeah, no, you are active on threads and I.
(45:20):
Am on a hinged on threads. I'm like talking politics 24/7
because of where we're at. And then I'll find when someone
is going really off the deep endon spirituality and be like,
what the heck. Some people say some really wild
shit on threads though, like like stand on your hill,
whatever you believe it is what you believe in.
But some people say some really wild stuff.
(45:40):
Such a witchy platform. I don't know if the developers
are witchy or if they meant for this to happen or just kind of
fell into their lap, but it's, Ifeel like I'm part of some cool
kids club. Oh, we have a witchy social
media platform over here. And that's how I'm meeting a lot
of like witchy folks, like in different practices and just
from like different backgrounds.I think that's really cool.
(46:02):
Like I wouldn't have ever found some of these people.
Like, yeah, you find some peopleon TikTok.
You find some people on Instagram.
But like, Threads is like witchyTwitter.
And I love it. I'm here for it.
They've, they've really upped the game when it comes to
curating your FYP for your your profiles for the thing because
it's like narrows in on what it is that you're focused on.
(46:23):
So you're able to really find your tribe there.
I'm would not be surprised if there's a more right leaning
version of threads, but it's because they've done such a good
job of of encasing these bubbles.
I think it's harder to find unless you're deliberately
looking. Yeah, it's it's kind of
interesting because it's like the algorithm on threads.
It's like it kind of groups you with like minded people instead
(46:45):
of just like putting you in a place where you would be
uncomfortable. So, you know, I know people have
a lot of different opinions on Meta, but in terms of threads,
like I agree they've done a really good job that, you know,
once you start liking certain posts or you start hashtagging
witchy threads or, you know, tarot readers, which their
hashtag system is actually very unique because it's not like
(47:07):
Instagram. Yeah, you have that one hashtag
and that's where you can kind ofpost unless you just kind of
post out into you, you're following or into the ether.
But cool. And do you want to talk about
your spiritual business for a second?
Because I notice you make thingsand they're really.
Yeah, so I know that tarot readings are not for everyone.
And it's also, well, you go through and you have the times
that you need it and there's times that you don't.
(47:28):
So I've wanted that to be part of my business.
I used to do readings at a lot of metaphysical shops.
So I got to learn the insurance and outs of various crystals.
And one of the things that came that I saw is a lot of the
bracelets out there were very generic in their intentions.
Like you got your standard protection, but you have like
protect against the storm or whatever it is or whatnot.
(47:49):
And it's also the other part wasbecause they were not size
inclusive. So it would be the standard 7
inch length 22 beads if you're looking at the 8mm beads and
that's it. And people's bodies are
different. A7 inch bracelet is going to,
it's going to constrict me and I'm going to see gaps between
the different beads which might snag against my hair for someone
(48:10):
else whose wrist might be smaller.
The seven inch might just flop around when they're moving their
arm and it might fall off. So I decided to come up with my
designs, coming up with a specific design for every
bracelet length so someone can get a site, something that will
fit them, that will still look pretty.
I am big on tapping into the existing pop culture and feeding
(48:32):
from the beliefs and energy fromthat and the fandom from that in
my working. So in addition to your standard
Zodiac bracelets, I also do bracelets based on various
themes. I have one for a whole bunch of
Baldur's Gate characters, a couple of characters from Final
Fantasy 7, and I just finished aCommission for a design for
stuff based on Agatha Harkness, so I have a a couple of
bracelets based on her as well. I love that we have this running
(48:56):
joke in my my Discord group about assembling the coven
because we all kind of really bonded when Agatha All Along
came out. And so all my Thursday live
streams, we start by assembling the coven by singing the Ballad
of the Witch's Room. Yeah, so with the Agatha All
Along stuff, I put together one called the Witches Rd. which
(49:18):
goes through and has one type ofcrystal for each of the
elements. I also created Spirit Witch
which is which has the same color scheme as Agatha's outfit,
the one that she had when she was in the boss fights against
the Scarlet Witch. In one.
So you have the deep Blues and the deep purples, and then
there's one that is Spirit Mentor, which is based on my eye
(49:39):
from the colors from Ghost Agatha.
I love that ghost Agatha. How iconic.
Yeah, I love that. Cool.
I really enjoyed talking today and delving into so many
different topics. Truly this was one of the more
neuro spicy podcast episodes, but at the same time it wasn't
because you were so structured with your information.
(50:01):
So thank you for balancing me out.
Yeah, I thought I was going all over the place.
Wow. Oh, you, you were very
structured compared to me. I'm, I'm winging it.
I'm just raw dogging over here. So in closing, is there anything
else that you would like to kindof put out there as kind of the
sum everything up or something that you really want the
listeners to know? Biggest thing on this one is be
(50:23):
open, always think of what's possible and really going at it
from a gamer's perspective of what steps can I take to get
closer to the outcome that I want.
Using tools like divination as like a secret strategy, strategy
guide are great, but at the end you got to do the work, you got
to take the action. You can't just sit there and
hope that the perfect outcome isgoing to show up.
(50:44):
You have to earn the Game Shark Guide.
You have to earn your achievement.
Yes, yes, You can't. You can't go backwards and,
like, take the easy way out until you've, like, unlocked
those gold achievements. You've earned the right to kind
of, oh, hey, this spell, I know a shortcut.
Hey, I know how to do this, Like.
Yeah. And time is a strict and a
(51:05):
construct. Thank you.
And don't, don't be stuck in this.
This person has to be doing thisfor X amount of time to be able
to get to this. You know it think about it as
like a Mario playthrough. Those people who do speed Mario
playthroughs, like not everyone can do that, but they've gotten
to that place where they could. And maybe they figured it out
(51:25):
within the 1st 5 minutes they picked up the game.
Maybe it took them 10 years to get there.
But I, I always say our spiritual journeys look so
different. Don't sleep on other
practitioners that started laterin the game where, you know,
even people who started really early and they look at things
differently now because they've experienced different things
throughout their life and they're not just in the same
(51:47):
practice that they started and then they've evolved.
I think that's the beauty of being in spiritual communities
is that we are accepting and we are providing a safe place for
people to express themselves andto do the work that they do.
And like I said, just don't go around murdering people and
you're fine. Yeah, but good, good morning,
good afternoon and good evening for whenever you are listening
to this. Hopefully we brought some
(52:07):
entertainment and knowledge to your day and not just me being a
dumpster fire. Jess had a lot of great
knowledge drops. So go follow Jess on social
media and I will see you guys next time for another episode of
Unhinged Chaos.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.