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I’m Althaea, a spiritworker, writer, and priest whose work focuses on helping people navigate the realities of deep spiritual practice. |
As a religious specialist, my work primarily takes the forms of spiritual counseling and education framed within the contexts of animism, polytheism, and witchcraft. I contend that witchcraft is a toolkit for us to see—and interact with—the world more honestly. The world is alive with spirits and Gods, witchcraft provides the tools for seeing the world for what it is and for navigating this reality. It helps us to have a healthy and more honest relationship with ourselves and each other, on top of helping us to seek and have those healthy, honest, and beneficial relationships with the Gods and the spirits around us.
Through bone readings and an ever growing collection of courses and books focused on embodied practice, my work seeks to help other witches take what they’re already doing and become more effective with it by helping them root themselves more deeply into the Land and really sink themselves into the web of relationships with the many varied beings that exist around them. And, as a result, these witches find themselves more strongly connected to the world and more confident in themselves and their abilities as witches because they have firsthand experience of just how capable they are. Ultimately, they find themselves and their practices transformed as a direct result of their own efforts because they have begun to truly live the life of a witch and not just "practice" witchcraft.
Through bone readings and an ever growing collection of courses and books focused on embodied practice, my work seeks to help other witches take what they’re already doing and become more effective with it by helping them root themselves more deeply into the Land and really sink themselves into the web of relationships with the many varied beings that exist around them. And, as a result, these witches find themselves more strongly connected to the world and more confident in themselves and their abilities as witches because they have firsthand experience of just how capable they are. Ultimately, they find themselves and their practices transformed as a direct result of their own efforts because they have begun to truly live the life of a witch and not just "practice" witchcraft.
Professional Experience
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As a Pagan minister, I have led public rituals, officiated handfastings and wedding ceremonies, organized and ran a publicly open community service focused nondenominational Pagan group, provided death midwifery services to humans and animals, and continue to teach and provide spiritual counseling. I have adjacent professional experience of several years in the mental health field, working directly with autistic teens, as well as adults struggling with mental illness, self-harm, suicidality, and trauma.
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Throughout my work, you will find a number of key points that remain constant and define who I am and what you can expect from me.
Embodied Practice: A firm no-bullshit approach to witchcraft that emphasizes practicality and accessibility. Witchcraft has always belonged to the common people; it does not require extensive tools or books to practice nor to become good at it—yet witchcraft does demand a daring heart and the willingness to do the work required. There is no way to learn witchcraft except through active practice because so much of learning it involves learning how to move our physical bodies and spirit bodies in unison. That is something that can only be learned through the doing, through putting in the effort to develop and hone skill. A witch is someone who practices witchcraft, there are no other requirements. We can all develop and hone skill.
Based in Animism: Emphasizing a relational approach to witchcraft that is predicated on seeing ourselves as one among many and recognizing that our world is deeply layered and inherently founded upon diversity and variation. To be a witch is to be in active relationship with the land and its spirits, as well as the living beings around us, and to recognize the right to consent for all people—including other-than-human people. Animism encourages us to expand our awareness of the wholeness of ourselves and the world in which we live—wholeness that is founded upon an intense layering of the physical and spiritual with no true separation between them but, instead, an interconnection made possible due to a lack of intrinsic separation.
Personal Responsibility: Witchcraft is inherently amoral; a craft that places you into closer contact with your own power is not going to simultaneously take away your power by telling you what you cannot do with it. Yet witchcraft does emphasize personal responsibility—which it teaches us repeatedly through its practice. And it emphasizes the responsibility we have to those with whom we are in relationship—including other-than-human people—because without holding ourselves accountable and meeting our responsibilities to others, those relationships suffer. We suffer. Our witchcraft suffers. Humans are not meant to be alone.
Commitment to Community: A commitment to ensuring the safety of the most vulnerable members of the Pagan and witch communities through zero tolerance for the racism, white supremacy, and transphobic bullshit that continue to plague these communities. This zero tolerance demonstrated through the maintenance of a diverse and thriving online community; through anti-racism and actively calling out and confronting the racism, white supremacy, and transphobia in all spaces in which I’m present; and by providing resources for others to recognize the racism and bigotry within themselves so they can do the hard work of unpacking this baggage and actively confront this hate within our communities. It is only through an active and consistent approach that we can burn out this rot, maintain the integrity of our communities by actually adhering to our values, and ensure the safety of all our members.
Based in Animism: Emphasizing a relational approach to witchcraft that is predicated on seeing ourselves as one among many and recognizing that our world is deeply layered and inherently founded upon diversity and variation. To be a witch is to be in active relationship with the land and its spirits, as well as the living beings around us, and to recognize the right to consent for all people—including other-than-human people. Animism encourages us to expand our awareness of the wholeness of ourselves and the world in which we live—wholeness that is founded upon an intense layering of the physical and spiritual with no true separation between them but, instead, an interconnection made possible due to a lack of intrinsic separation.
Personal Responsibility: Witchcraft is inherently amoral; a craft that places you into closer contact with your own power is not going to simultaneously take away your power by telling you what you cannot do with it. Yet witchcraft does emphasize personal responsibility—which it teaches us repeatedly through its practice. And it emphasizes the responsibility we have to those with whom we are in relationship—including other-than-human people—because without holding ourselves accountable and meeting our responsibilities to others, those relationships suffer. We suffer. Our witchcraft suffers. Humans are not meant to be alone.
Commitment to Community: A commitment to ensuring the safety of the most vulnerable members of the Pagan and witch communities through zero tolerance for the racism, white supremacy, and transphobic bullshit that continue to plague these communities. This zero tolerance demonstrated through the maintenance of a diverse and thriving online community; through anti-racism and actively calling out and confronting the racism, white supremacy, and transphobia in all spaces in which I’m present; and by providing resources for others to recognize the racism and bigotry within themselves so they can do the hard work of unpacking this baggage and actively confront this hate within our communities. It is only through an active and consistent approach that we can burn out this rot, maintain the integrity of our communities by actually adhering to our values, and ensure the safety of all our members.
