by Brenda Roswess
When we think of Venus we typically think of love, but Venus also rules our aesthetics, our values, and our finances. Venus has so much potent medicine to offer us, and one of HausWitch’s core values is making magick accessible, so we're putting that Venusian value to (soft, sweet, supportive) work with a series filled with anticapitalist magick!
Magick and witchcraft have saturated mainstream consciousness, and more than ever folks are getting into magickal tools, books, readings, and workshops. Which duh, we absolutely want more magick in the world! However, ultimately like-attracts-like, so where we ARE getting to see a world with more witches, we're ALSO experiencing more of the hallmarks of capitalism in our magickal communities.
Plenty of folks get sucked into the black hole energy of capitalism, because that's LITERALLY its goal. And there are those who are happy to abuse the vulnerable position people can be in when they’re looking for magickal guidance or mentorship. This can appear as people and businesses "gatekeeping" knowledge in an attempt to retain a sense of superiority over their following.
OBVIOUSLY not all spiritual teachers and artists are scammers; you're literally on our website right now, where you can purchase classes and products from amazing, magical people who know their shit and deserve to be paid fairly for their work. But we'll never, ever tell you that you NEED those things, or that you have to believe what we believe. We dig teachers who are there to facilitate, not dictate, and we sure love bringing new treasures into our home. Commerce itself isn't capitalism. But when big companies like Sephora start selling spell kits and educators are more about showing off than sharing- well, that's crossing the capitalist finish line.
If you follow Tarot you know that this a Hierophant year, so it's high time for us to discern who our teachers are and what their intentions towards us may be. If you don't follow Tarot (totally cool!), you've probably picked up on some fed up energies anyways concerning the ways information gets to us and who it comes from. Personally, I’ve seen enough of witches who call for the dissolution of hierarchy and then assert themselves as an authority to sell products, workshops, and readings to people who are convinced they have the final word. So many people are looking for magickal guidance and mentorship these days, making it pretty easy for those who are self-serving to abuse that. For the record, this has nothing to do with weakness as consumers or students: capitalism can be an irresistible force no matter how enlightened you are.
Ultimately your intuition is the most valuable knowledge there is. We love the DIY approach at HausWitch because it confirms YOU as the authority on your practice, and can push you to develop your own understanding of magick. Books and workshops offer excellent "suggestions", but there's some stuff you just can't learn from someone else. A book on spirit guides can introduce you to the concepts and traditions of working with spirit guide energy, but it can't tell you your guide's name and purpose! And a spirit guide instructor or reader might be able to tell you your guide's name, but a good teacher will also help you figure out the tools to connect on your own time. If someone is telling you that the only way to speak to your spirit team is by paying them every time you want to hear from the other side, they're not being honest with you.
Also, trust your own answers to your questions about magick! Even if you feel like you know nothing about the subject, it’s worth it to ask yourself first. What DOES this crystal do? How many drops of this essence SHOULD I take? There’s probably an answer somewhere inside of you if you take the time to look. A huge part of the curse of capitalism is the devaluation of all that doesn't have a monetary value placed on it, so the information in the book written by someone else seems more valuable because you had to give something away for it. Have you ever felt really attracted to a crystal, or even just a color, and then found out that it "means" something different than the vibe you got? Us too! But that doesn't mean we're wrong, and it doesn't mean we need to buy more books until one tells us we're right. Instead, ask yourself: Does tuning into this crystal and waiting for the answer it gives me feel less real or important than reading it from a book? Why do I feel these authors have information that is better suited to my magickal practice than my own intuition? And these aren't trick questions! They're tough questions, which can widen your awareness and help you find teachers and creators that you do vibe with.
The capitalist black hole can also look like the never-ending acquisition of magickal tools, books, workshops, and readings without extracting the necessary medicine. I'm a huge fan of the research phase of just soaking information up (Aquarius Sun, here!) but it doesn't serve us very much if we don't really process the information or use the tools. It's like eating a big meal that never gets digested. And it can be a physical roadblock to our practice too; if we're always convinced we need one more thing, it can psyche us out of doing the "craft" part of "witchcraft". Finishing a spell shouldn't feel like leaving an audition: "If only I had a blue candle instead of a white one, now I'll never be on Broadway!"
Now that you’ve started to ask yourself some tough questions, and sat in some discomfort, you deserve lots of love and compassion for yourself. Capitalism wants us to feel shame at all times, but try to keep in mind that just by getting curious you're already accomplishing more than some folks ever will. You should feel supported and empowered by your magickal process, and I have a perfect easy meditation for that! To me, drag is magick, and anyone who’s a fan of Rupaul’s drag race may remember Sasha Velour’s beautiful performance to So Emotional by Whitney Huston. If you really want to enjoy yourself go watch it and be completely enamoured with her glamour magick. The moment of all moments is when Sasha takes her wig off and loads of rose petals fall on her head out of her wig. So as an initiation into receiving all of Venus’s medicine, and some love and compassion for yourself do a meditation where you visualize rose petals falling on your head. It's simple, but a really beautiful way to give yourself some love.
