Katie Rempe: Welcome everyone to a brand new episode of Knit a Spell. Today we have a very special guest. It is Diana Rajchel.
Diana Rajchel: Yay! Hi!
Katie Rempe: Diana is the author of Hex Twisting! Countermagic spells for the irritated witch. And also, Urban Magic, a guide for city witches, among other titles, as well as being an ardent teacher of witchcraft mindset.
Today, we're talking to Diana specifically about her book, Hex Twisting and ways that we might be able to apply these techniques to knitting in general and life. Welcome back to Knit A Spell or welcome for the first time to Knit A Spell rather. Maybe that's foreshadowing. Perhaps you'll be back in the future.
Light From Lantern presents: Knit A Spell.
I'm magical maker: Katie Rempe.
And I'm the maker of magic: James Divine.
Join us as we stitch together the symbiotic relationship between crafting and 'The Craft'.
About Diana
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Katie Rempe: Let's start off Diana with you telling us a little bit about your magical journey and how that all began.
Diana Rajchel: Oh, geez. That might take the whole show. So officially I started, like I started consciously when I was about 19 and I was at home from college and I was broke and trying to figure out how I was going to pay for the next year because my parents were not in a position to help with that.
And my love life was predictably at 19 because I think this is just like 19 is like the golden age for bad relationships for women. My love life was a spectacular disaster. And so in the comings and goings, because I lived in a very small town in Northwest Indiana, where there really was not much to do without a fake ID.
And I was just Too goody to do a fake ID. So they just built a Barnes and Noble. So that was the whole of my social life at the time was like, Barnes and Noble and the 69 cent cup of coffee at Denny's. Cause it was 69 cents back then. I'm really aging myself and I was.
It's at my wit's end and my southern Baptist friend was getting into tarot cards because that was his rebellion. And since I was hanging out with him in those aisles anyway, of course, the first thing I got my hands on was Laurie Cabot's Love Magic. And of course, the way Cabot teaches things, she shows you how to get the magic working.
I had a little too much time on my hands and got a little too good at it because I did not really have the emotional maturity to filter what I got as a result. But oh boy, did I get some results. Oh, good lessons. Magic worked a little bit until it stopped working, and I think the advanced witchcraft behind things that the beginners find out.
Yeah. And of course, now that I'm like on the other end of the maturity side and still finding stupid things to do. I know more about the, okay, there may have been a past life thing. There may have been a thing where my father knew what I was up to and intervened. There may have been all of these things that you can't really find until you grow into it.
Yeah. So that's where I started. I did eclectic Wicca. I did get elevated to third and two different eclectic covens. And then I got to the point where. I don't know if either one of you is queer. I am queer, but I got there after I was 40, and you just go with what everybody tells you is normal, and then you realize something ain't working here.
My queer journey pretty much coincided with my witchcraft journey on the something isn't quite right, Wicca isn't quite right for me. It's not that there's not an enormous amount of depth, but there's a reason people are pushing back against it being a default. Sure. And I am very much an animist that actually traces back in both of my major ancestral paths, which is far mixed than I would appear to be.
And it just became a thing as I got called into the city priest thing, which is, I promise I'm not making it up and no, I was not looking for it. You do not look for something like this. You have to start letting go of your boxes, or especially when you move to San Francisco, there's something about moving there in adulthood, where it's, hi, welcome, we are going to burn down all of your boxes.
Some of them from the inside, but not all of them, and you will not know which ones are going to go first. Yes. And so I am absolutely a witch. I also call myself a spirit worker now because I've engaged in things that we were taught that especially early weekends get told not to or that they're not real.
No religion gets to say what is and isn't real. I'm seeing so many people encountering stuff where shit gets real and then doing everything they can to cram it into their belief box instead of just knocking down a wall like they're supposed to.
You do that when you cram it in, that's called cognitive dissonance and will cause you mental health issues. There is the discomfort of that wall being knocked down going, Oh, I guess I have to incorporate this into my reality, which means something I was holding onto is wrong. And you can process the feelings of not feeling safe, or you will eventually cause much, much worse internal issues.
James Divine: This is the deeper ideas of magic and how magic, psychology, the human experience. I think once we've been doing witchcraft for a while and been leading or teaching or experimenting and getting our ass handed back to us in different things we try, We go from a beginner where, wow, this is really working to understanding the sort of matrix underneath it.
And I love how you talk about that because it's so powerful and it has me think about a lot of what seems like beginners on social media. talking about witchcraft and all of us who are like, Oh, honey, wait, and you'll see there's so much underneath that or like why we would advise people not to just teach something on the surface level because there's layers beneath.
But then again, people got to learn, maybe.
Diana Rajchel: Whether witchcraft is a cultural practice for you or religious practice, it is experiential first and foremost. And that is consistent across all the traditions.
James Divine: It's experiential. That's right. When I teach my students, I can teach them, but where they really learn is once they start doing.
So once we teach them something, they start doing it and in practice. And I'm like, cause I just told you something that's nothing, but now do it.
Diana Rajchel: In social culture, in the conversations about improving society, there's so much that comes back to lived experience. Academics are super important. Anybody who's read Urban Magic can see how important academics are to me and academic backing, but nothing replaces lived experience.
Katie Rempe: Absolutely. Even just knitting or any hobby, anything you're into. If you don't have experience in the spot, that's where you're going to be scared and where things are going to stick. But as soon as you try, I can't tell you how many people used to be scared of doing cables.
And then they would do it and guess what? Oh, this is so easy. I didn't realize. The best thing about knitting is, the worst that happens is you just undo it and redo it again.
Diana Rajchel: That is awesome. I've only knitted a little bit. I'm usually more of a crochet person when I do fiber arts at all.
My hobbies tend to be more of the one, I've been a devout an avid herbalist since I was like eight years old. So there are some unpleasant things that can happen to it with it. I think people are less scared of herbalists and then they should be
I'm the person who spent my time reading up on the poisons in order to avoid them. And then I found out what working on an allyship level is. And that's very useful because it saves you a lot of nasty rashes!
Katie Rempe: Yes. I thought the same with mushrooms.
Diana Rajchel: Yes. Yes. And you have to be know exactly what you're doing with those, thinking of ourselves as the top of the food chain is just a formality so we don't feel bad all the time.
Hex Twisting
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James Divine: Absolutely. I want to talk about the book. What made you decide like through all this experiential learning. Witchcraft, why did you decide to write this book that you said, what was your phrasing? Unfortunately, I had to write it or something like that.
Diana Rajchel: Like I hate that book was necessary. You hate
James Divine: that it was necessary. So tell us what led to you writing this.
Diana Rajchel: You don't write that in a vacuum. While I was writing urban magic, a lot of people got very worked up about that because they have their personal identities tied to a certain concept of nature that isn't actually nature, but it is very prevalent in paganism in Wicca.
And it is very much based on a classist, racist, and eugenic system that we don't want to talk about. But people are very attached to that, to the point where it's become their whole identities, to the point of there are some people who felt like, I must be stopped. And they came completely fucking unhinged.
And also, I am a femme person with a very large body, and opinions, and I don't play nice to people that think of themselves as famous. Because my dad was an actor. I just don't have that celebrity worship. And so if someone's an asshole, I will tell them to their face, they're an asshole, which is not a good way to avoid getting attacked when you're dealing with other witches.
Oh, yeah. The people that say nice witches don't do those things.
Katie Rempe: Not familiar with all the cultures out there.
James Divine: So you're a femme person expressing some traditionally masculine traits, if you will, and people get butthurt over it and can't handle the truth that you're spilling about the inherent racist and classist structures within Wicca and within witchcraft.
Diana Rajchel: Yeah. Meanwhile, because of San Francisco just going, you're my priest now. What started happening is when I finally opened my own tarot shingle is most of my clients were either Catholic, Hmong, Filipino. These are not European witchcraft cultures.
A lot of the times they did have their own magic workers in their communities they could go to, but because of the way the communities worked, they weren't guaranteed privacy like they were with me. There's a lot about cultural appropriation that we need to have better conversations on, because mostly it's just shouting each other down right now.
And one of the big things getting missed, and this is a, the internet is not a reliable source and it's gotten worse. Like Google cannot be trusted anymore. There are so many parallel practices and if you understand magic, you understand the underlying principles, you can look at a practice and figure out the principles of it.
Do not mess with the spirits, unless the spirits come to you. That is a personal rule I have. And even then, be very careful, and know the laws of hospitality. That and death are the two universals I understand. Something comes to you, you don't know what it is, you invoke the laws of hospitality right now.
That is your only safety and there's no guarantees. These people would be coming to me and saying, I need this. Normally I'd go to someone from my culture. Can I teach you how we do it? And if you want to figure out your own way to do it, that's fine. Or I need something from outside my culture because they don't have a counter for it.
And these were serious situations, like people doing reconciliation spells as a form of domestic abuse. There was one lady who she needed to work on her shit, but it was also. There was energetic stuff attached to divorce specific to her culture that had to be undone a certain way.
There were people that were sexual assault victims where, I'm not a shaman, I don't do soul retrieval, but I was able to help do a power reclaiming. She's still connected to me, I've seen her have much more success in life because we were able to take back what was stolen, while the person who assaulted her well, we need plausible deniability there.
It was just almost as soon as it was the, guess what, you're going to be doing this specific work for a spirit, and for a collection of spirits. And we're also going to bring you the people. You belong to the people. And these people are not just the people that look like you or think like you, or live like you.
And so I didn't have a lot of bubbles. I had some bubbles and there were some pretty privileged bubbles. Cause I was a Google wife for a while. They all got popped hard. Sociocultural equivalent of running naked through a quad, except so much worse. But it did lead to Hex Twisting where it was the, these are the common problems that either I was dealing with or that I was seeing. And because I had decided to step outside of initiatory system, in part because on the city priest level, I was starting to work with spirits where like we, people are so scandalized by this and it just says so much again about being in a certain kind of box.
Is when you're in a coven and you're part of a trad everyone is part of an energetic chain that is the protection that is the gift.
When you've got one person in there dealing with godzilla sized spirits that endangers everybody and my calling was godzilla. City spirits are not small you're dealing animism you have to build up your energy bodies to even handle the mindset shifts. There is a reason that You know, shamanic traditions are usually closed and I'm again, I'm not a shaman.
I had to figure this out on my own because the city priest tradition got killed around ancient Rome. So I've had to like, figure it out as I've gone and people need a hell of a lot more autonomy then they had back then because we don't have housing and shelter and healing provided for us like the old priests used to.
And it can't really explain to your employer, Oh yeah, I was out all night because this African spirit wanted me to do something in a neighborhood that I probably wasn't welcome in, but it was just like what was needed. So you're going to get crap work today. Like it's, you have to find a different way.
No sick days for that. You don't even get sick days for your own sick days. But the way animistic spirit temple sick days is we're going to make you six you fucking rest. Oh, yeah, I see. Yeah, it's not the easy pleasant things you can work around and things are not nice.
They just are what they are. Yeah. So yeah, I just ended up diving in.
James Divine: Yeah, I really appreciate the book because, here I am in the Pacific Northwest, we're so passive aggressive. We're polite.
Diana Rajchel: I encourage the quiet part
James Divine: out loud.
Coming up in, an initiatory tradition in the nineties. We always avoided the topic of cursing and hexing in our tradition. Our high priestess was pretty awesome kick ass person.
was like, okay yeah, All right. You can hex, it's not necessarily bad, you can curse somebody, but, why? And so there was a lot of that sort of, still, avoidance of it. Until really recently, and I'm down in New Orleans, and what I say to everyone is, they'll hex a bitch in New Orleans
for looking at you, and I'm like, that is just not the experience that I've had in the PNW in San Francisco, in that sort of areas. It's not really part of the lexicon, but it totally freaking happens, and is much more common in places where hoodoo and voodoo are more prevalent, Where the folk magic is also more prevalent in the Appalachias and other places.
So I love how you bring this stuff up in this book, because you do reference a lot of that in here. And is that why you have this term, hex twisting? Instead of hex breaking,
Diana Rajchel: Actually, it didn't even occur to me to call it a Spellbreakers manual, even though that is largely what it is.
And there's a few reasons. And it sounds like you've both read the book. One of them is Breaking the curse doesn't necessarily solve the problem. Thank you. And a lot of the times especially as I've been getting further and further into this, because of course now my book has been bringing me a lot of clients and causing me to find new things and new challenges.
And so like I had just taught a class magic for impossible people and I'm looking at that going I probably have a sequel to Hex Twisting in this. One of the things about the cultural stuff that I want to address is, and I do talk about this, is a lot of cursing and hexing was devised as survival.
If you're a slave and the person that has stolen you is stealing your children. Or is doing violence to you for personal amusement. The only choice you've got is to kill somebody and you need to do it in such a way that you can't get caught. Magic is very efficient for that.
I will say. And again, I really do believe that this idea of cursing isn't really a thing is very ethnocentric in nature. Is the, if you're in the bubble, and a lot of Wiccan people were largely white women in a very specific bubble at a very specific time in history. I think it started off as, oh no, we don't do these things, but we do.
To people really, especially as neurodivergents and people more likely to take you literally, it became more common. People thinking, oh no, we really don't do these things. And then it turned into a lot of pearl clutching when people found they had to do these things. But the other thing I found is I would agree that curses are not as common, definitely in New Orleans.
That's just part of the culture. And I have found ways to sidestep it by just confusing everyone in submission, but also there's some city priest privilege that goes with that too. Yeah. That you wouldn't like, if I went elsewhere in the swamp, I would not be nearly so protected, but that's why.
My partner is a full on shaman. So we have that workaround.
City Priest
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James Divine: What's the idea of a city witch so that we know what you're talking about with that?
Diana Rajchel: I am not going to claim one specific one.
A city priest is Oh, a city priest, thank you. A city priest, because a city witch can be a witch that just happens to live in the city. Got it. That's what I meant. A city priest is someone who interacts with and works with a city spirit after the city spirit has evolved from an Agregor to an independent animistic spirit.
James Divine: Okay, and so an Agregor is
Diana Rajchel: And a Gregor is an entity that is developed through collective belief either deliberately or by accident. And
James Divine: after a while those can become their own. They
Diana Rajchel: can become completely independent. Generally there is a sort of flow because the way a Gregor's in cities come about is through shared identity.
So Chicago and San Franciscan, Burkino and Albuquerque and so on, which is why Albuquerque is so small but still has a city spirit, which was shocking to people.
But a city which can be someone who just lives in the city, works with whatever spells they could work with anywhere, or it can be someone who is deliberately working with energies generated from city life.
James Divine: I love that distinction and a city priest. You're saying it's a person that works with the energy or the spirit of that
Diana Rajchel: the spirit of the city. Yep. All of the neighbors, including the non corporate real ones.
James Divine: Yes. When I go to New Orleans, there she is. That's oh, yeah. Female. Yeah. It's not gendered, but it occurs that way to me.
She asks
Diana Rajchel: me to call her mama. And every time I go, I am required to go sing as loudly as possible at the Mississippi River where people can hear This is what I'm required to do for safe passage there.
James Divine: When you visit New Orleans, all you witches and witches up and coming, go to the river and make an offering.
Whatever you feel called to do, listen to her, she'll tell you. I put my three oranges covered in local honey on the bank. That's what I do. Diana sings. So when you go to New Orleans, make your offering. And guess what? You won't trip and rip your pants. And hurt your knee after you do that, my trips turn right around once I make the offering.
Diana Rajchel: Yeah, I just don't mess around. I go and do it. You can do it in any city, right? Yeah, I do. It's actually hilarious because the way I met my partner is I met them at Convocation in Detroit, which is happening next month. And I hadn't been to Detroit since 96. It's a very different city now.
Like much, much healthier than its national reputation. And I went and made an offering. And like, all I could do because I didn't have transportation was like, do something at a tree and just let you know, pour some water in the tree said, hi, I'm here. I'm just asking for a safe passage. And I heard it say back.
If you don't visit a crossroads before you leave here, I'm making sure you're coming back. And a month later, because Like within minutes of that, I met my partner and that's a whole other hilarious story. But within minutes of that, I met my partner and things worked out where they invited me to come back the next month.
And of course, I was like at the end of a marriage and I really had nothing else to do. Let's be real here. I just had a book to promote and that was it. So I came out on, I think it was March 14th. And shelter in place at San Francisco, March 16th, shelter in place at Michigan, March 18th. So I couldn't go and I couldn't leave.
I was looking at the boys going, I'm not trying to be your new mom, but hi. And we own a house, we're engaged. Like was made very clear that was a very deliberate setup because they knew what was coming.
James Divine: So there you go.
Diana Rajchel: Yeah.
Katie Rempe: Please. So make friends with any town or city that you visit because you never know what might come your way.
Diana Rajchel: There's a lot to be said about being a good guest everywhere you go. Yeah. That's a
Katie Rempe: great point, yeah. I often think of Mount Rainier as the most flamboyant mountain because it's the only one that I've ever had described as, the mountain quote, is out. And I'm always like, YES! It's out! It's very proud today!
Like Oh, I
Diana Rajchel: love it. I could see that mountains can actually have big personalities, which makes sense. They're mountains. Yeah.
Katie Rempe: And ours is so shy. So anytime it pops out, I'm like,
James Divine: also known as Tahoma. She is. Phenomenal presence over the city all the time. It's like when you see Mount Fuji over Tokyo or those pictures.
Humor in Magic
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James Divine: So your book has a very good helping of something that Katie and I love. Which is some wry humor, some LOL humor even. What was your favorite, Katie? It was the one, the chapter. Oh,
Katie Rempe: hi, here's your butt back, which is funny because we were just talking about that earlier.
It's so great to have a little bit of, lifting you out of the significance. So I'm curious, what is the role of humor? Is there a role of humor, not taking things so damn seriously in protection magic?
Katie Rempe: That's what we
really realized this book was.
We were like, Oh, this is a protection book.
Diana Rajchel: There is a lot to be said. Laughter is freaking powerful and. while I was writing this book, again, I was going through some things that were frankly pretty tragic while I was writing the book. And it was getting to the point, like I still have trouble like seeing, like feeling that sense of joy when you see Christmas lights, like I can see the lights now, but that joy is gone and it's starting to come back. Cause I'd been finally even getting time to heal from it. And again, there was just a lot going on, but I was at the point where I honestly wasn't sure I was going to live to see the book come to print.
Things were that bad. Because I didn't really care, I didn't really care about hiding my real self. So that's just the real Diana. That's how I really am day to day, in private, in public. I polish it up a little bit when I'm teaching, because people need that, and people can be far more literal than I think, and I'm surrounded by, I'm the only person in my house that does not have ADHD or something on the spectrum.
So I really have to think about that all the time now. At the time I did not, and it was just the somebody's probably going to criticize me for showing I have a sense of humor because women especially get criticized for not taking things seriously enough, even though this is how we frickin survive.
Yeah. And so I'm like, Oh, I don't care. Probably not gonna live to see it anyway. So it was really dark place that led to that. I am hoping now that I'm in a much healthier place that I can maintain that level of authenticity in an ethical and non show offy way. And I know that people really appreciate that it helped.
And it's also just, when you are in situations where you're being attacked in any way, you need that kind of gallows humor to get through it. You do. life is serious. That's why we don't need to take it so seriously.
James Divine: Let's just say that again. Life is serious. That's why you don't have to take it so damn seriously.
Yeah, it takes care of itself. Put that on a magnet. Damn, that is so good.
Katie Rempe: Dark humor is some of my favorite types of humor because like you said it's really when you need it most and you can't believe you're laughing like you just found out someone passed but then you're reliving a fun old memory and you're laughing about it and all of a sudden you're like oh no should I feel bad and I always release that guilt from myself because that is part of what made it such a great relationship like that you care so much.
Diana Rajchel: My best friend died in 2016. And that still breaks my heart. Like it's a big personal loss. But at the same time, I know that if I tried to be serious about everything, he would have kicked my ass. half of our relationship was passing a bottle Jameson back and forth and figuring out what trouble we were going to get into.
James Divine: There was a, Class course that I took on death when I was at college it was a really great class cause we really had an opportunity to deconstruct the white gaze on death. And we started looking at, decolonizing death culture and death ritual in the academic course, and we looked at other traditions outside of, all kinds of things, as much as we could understand our own perspective and then deconstruct it, it was sociology.
So we were practicing that all the time. And it was interesting to think about the cool thing that this one guest speaker said, who was from one of the tribes and they will carve a totem pole when someone passes is death doesn't end a relationship, it just changes it.
And it has stuck with me. After that we looked up. Like psychological research on death and grieving and moving beyond the Google Ross information, which is outdated and was barely a lot of privileged white people that were doing that there is a lot of information about.
Psychological health associated with continuing a relationship with the beloved dead. So I love this we can have freedom. People, we have this social sort of norm of like, when are you going to be done grieving? And it's such bullshit, or, is she over it? Is she healed?
Is she done? And it's no, never. You just change your relationship.
Diana Rajchel: Grief is an ongoing process. My dad hangs around here every day and I still miss him even when he's driving me nuts because now he can be more of a pest now that he's dead. But I want to really recommend, I know that Courtney Weber recently wrote a book on witchcraft and grieving.
I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but. So people know about that one. I know that there was a book of pagan living and dying by Macha Nightmare, like in the 80s, but one book I really want to recommend, and it is completely outside of that bubble, is Of Water and Spirit by Melodoma Patrice Sommet, and this was a man who Africa had its version of the tribal school, so he was taken from his parents and forced through a Christian school and found his way back to his culture.
And so he was there to witness the death of one of the tribal leaders. I think it may have been his grandfather. And the process for grieving is so different and so communal. And it's this community mindedness while we are still in white culture shrugging off the rugged individualism stuff that is just so toxic and so intrusive and so based on a certain kind of English classism that just isn't sustainable.
Yeah,
James Divine: that stiff upper lip Victorian bullshit, yeah. Yeah.
Diana Rajchel: And the we are clearly the superior ones because something corsets. So we're just going to take your stuff.
James Divine: Because of something, something corsets.
Diana Rajchel: Like you still see that with people from the British museum. And I'm just like they didn't take care of it.
And like they were using it. What the hell is wrong with you? That's not yours. Put it back. I have some feels about that. Something that I'm starting to get in touch with more, and that's probably going to show up in my work in the future, is I am half Wasp, so I do have that slightly old money culture thing.
Funerals were awful. If you cried, it was an embarrassment. But I am also half Polish. And my dad was basically may as well have been first generation immigrant the way it worked out. And I even know what happens when people of color aren't around, because I'm one of the ones they go at.
And it is culturally so very different, and there's this ancestral memory thing that is so very different and frequently in conflict. Because it's the express yourself, or don't, because this might lower your status.
James Divine: That's a really good connection with that is the how your status is connected with your debasing behavior as seen by others.
And yet in other cultures, my husband is Hungarian and they have this death of the fiddle ritual, but it is this wailing and this, It's like laughing and partying and then it turns into wailing and sadness and then it turns into partying and laughing again and it keeps going back and forth and it's meant to give a demonstration on like how you grieve.
Diana Rajchel: Yeah, that sounds like a beautiful grief cycle to me,
James Divine: He is the hungarian romani type folks that were wanderers.
Diana Rajchel: And so that means that sometimes you also see some of the status stuff and some of the racial stuff.
James Divine: My husband his parents are still alive. They're in their 90s. His mom is like 94 impressive. And they're totally healthy in western Pennsylvania,
so we go back. And there's this woman who speaks Hungarian and his mother still remembers Hungarian. She's first generation one of 12. And she hears the woman speaking Hungarian and she's shy to speak with her. And afterwards. My sister in law is like, Mom, what's up with you? Why didn't you want to speak?
She's like, Oh, she spoke really formal, really high class. And it turned out that she was embarrassed about the type of Hungarian that she spoke, which was type of, Hungarian. And it is a total class thing. And it's fascinating because I'm like, they really were like, Yeah,
Diana Rajchel: we, I had that with my father.
He wouldn't let me learn Polish because he spoke the hill people. Not the formal dialect. He would get made fun of for his accents. Yeah. So he didn't want his daughters, especially since he became an English teacher and he was an actor. And so he wanted to speaking with our formal Anglicized manners and speech.
And. It has definitely led to a very odd diction for me, but it comes in handy. people can generally tell what I'm being funny.
James Divine: Anyway, it's super, super interesting.
Book Topics To Fight For
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Katie Rempe: And so before we wrap up our first half here, I'm curious to know. Was there a chapter or a topic within this book that you really had to fight to get in?
Because so often we talk to authors and they're like, Ah, yeah, the real meat was the last chapter, and I really had to fight for that topic for whatever reason.
Diana Rajchel: Oddly, no. And I was expecting that, especially since I was working with Llewellyn, and at one point they had a no negative magic policy, even if it was defensive.
But this was, like, I've been writing for them since 2000. So things have changed, they have evolved a lot, and just like a lot of other publishers have evolved as well. I think the only thing was, and I wasn't particularly fighting for it, it was the, I had some stuff in dealing with ancestral cursing, and my editor didn't want that in because she felt like it was going to be too much, and I had been so late on Urban Magic because of the stuff I was dealing through, she was worried I was going to be late in this book too, I'm not sure if she was right or wrong because there's a lot of whenever you're dealing with an author in books, it's like fighting the last war.
You don't really know what equipment you need. And I will say that Spirit was speaking on that one because there's a lot more I've learned since then that I'd be comfortable publishing now that would not have been enough at the time. So I had some things to learn because again, everything I do is experiential.
It comes straight for something I've actually done.
Katie Rempe: Well, like you said, maybe that's just open the door for a great sequel for you.
James Divine: Being an author. That's a learner. Sometimes we get authors that are knowers and tellers and I'm like, how did you write a book? I love your language around.
You're a learner and an explorer and you're writing about your experience. It's really evident in this book because you feel so, did you feel this, Katie? I felt so invited in when I was reading it and it wasn't like you were telling me with a finger pointed. It was like, Oh, and then there's, you could do this.
And then there's also this. It really felt invited into your journey of research and discovery.
Diana Rajchel: Good. That is actually how I treat people when they come into my space. For real.
Katie Rempe: As soon as I read the title chapters, the first thing I made note of was these are hilarious, like great sense of humor.
So I figured okay, if you're coming at it from this sort of direction with this kind of topic that's my niche. I like that. We're taking it seriously, but we're not taking ourselves seriously. Which helps.
Diana Rajchel: Yeah. Yes. For me there, there hasn't been a lot of it, but there's been times where I did deserve what I got and I needed to be taught.
Katie Rempe: Haven't we all? Yes. Part of the human experience. All right. Let's take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about some of these applications and how we might be able to use them in our knitting. So we'll be right back.
Break
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Hey Knit Aspel fans, we are back on Patreon with a new dedicated page. For just 5 a month, you'll gain access to behind the scenes posts, exclusive downloads and resources, and you'll be able to participate in influential polls with fellow fans. You'll also receive a free exclusive Knit Aspel sticker sent right to your door after being a subscriber for three consecutive months.
It's a great way to support the podcast and Jim and I are so appreciative to everyone who's joined so far. To learn more and patreon. If you'd like to sign up, visit patreon. com forward slash knit a spell. See you there.
James Divine: So you've taken my intro to palmistry course, and I'm wondering, do you have any realizations as a result? I realized that this entire time I have been a Muppet who uses their hands to express and emote. After taking your course, I've realized I've probably been giving away my own unconscious motivations this whole time.
But only to the people who know the divine hand palmistry method. I gotta be in the know. And if people are familiar with the divine hand method, your repeated gestures with your hands. definitely give away your unconscious motivations. You can be a mind reader. Do you find that you can get insight into other people based on their hand gestures?
Oh yes. I'm hyper aware of, is it the right hand where it's more of your outer personality? Is it the left hand that's featured more of your inner personality? I am now overanalyzing. Especially as you come into election season, which seems to happen every year these days. It's so fun to watch for repeated gestures.
I highly recommend anyone who might be interested or curious in learning more about Intro to Palmistry to take Jim's brand new online course. It's self paced and it's available at introtopalmistry. com. That's where you can find out more information and sign up.
Katie Rempe: Hey there fellow knitters! Are you ready to enchant your stitches with the power of color? Discover how in my online workshop, Knit with Color Magic. In Knit with Color Magic, you'll learn how to use color as an intention setting tool. This self paced workshop will teach you everything you need to know to get out of your color ruts and conjure bewitching combinations while adding intention.
You'll also learn how to build a strong and simple intention, how to translate intention into colors, and to develop and develop. A personal gir of color correspondences. With a simple shift in your mindset and some personal reflection, you can start knitting color magic into any project. And for a limited time, listeners of the show can save $20 off this workshop by using the code color 20 at checkout.
Find all the information in the description or visit light from lantern.com/knit with color magic to learn more. Merry make.
Binding Out & Binding Off
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Katie Rempe: Welcome back. One topic that is in your book, Diana, is binding out. So before I ask my question, can you explain to our listeners what binding out?
Is and that it's not a knitting term, which is binding off.
Diana Rajchel: Yes. And again, I don't knit, so this is language I may not understand as well, but what binding is in magic is sometimes it is. It can be, just for the baseline, tying two or more energies together, or frequently what is done, this is popularized by the 1990s version of the movie The Craft.
I bind you, Nancy. Yes, I bind you, Nancy, against harm against others. And this was something that was provided to them by someone who's part of Covenant of the Goddess. And that was like, I'd already figured out how to do that style of binding one. That's really assuming some moral superiority that most of us probably don't have.
Because harm is a much more complicated conversation, especially now with the decolonizing. We have a lot more to understand about it, but it is also. The way it was framed was this was white magic, which I do not like that term anyway. The intention was not to control the person's actions, although most people that do bindings are trying to bind their actions.
Binding with Acrylics
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Diana Rajchel: If it works effectively, you don't bind their actions, you bind their outcomes. You can try to go at me all you want, you're just not going to succeed. Which, since I think in cartoons, there were a few occasions where that was quite gratifying to watch, but Bindings can break, and if you are doing binding in an intelligent way, you are not using anything acrylic, so you don't have a continued problem that gets toxic.
Huh. Do not use acrylics in your magic that involves strings, unless you really fucking know it needs to be permanent. Don't do it. And if it needs to be permanent, you can't bury it in the woods, you need to be able to maintain it. Because entropy is a part of physics that witchcraft cannot avoid.
Your stuff does and will break down unless it is independently living and aware already.
James Divine: And often part of the spell is that my organic material that I buried in the wood decomposes and goes back to the earth. That's part of what we imagine. But if you're using acrylic yarn, if you're using nylon, if you're using those things, they don't do that.
They become plastic waste in the wood and very dangerous to animals and others. That's a very cool point that if you're doing something with an unnatural, a non biodegradable fiber, that you could consider that work super permanent.
Diana Rajchel: And I am one of the people that gets hired to fix it when we figure out that's happened.
And there is no easy way. And it usually does involve me having to wear a mask. Because most witchcraft, especially most folk magic spells, in some way or other based on poetic metaphor or physical chemistry. Those are the two ways they manifest the most, and that does include binding, so please keep this in mind.
So when I do a bind out, when I'm usually using hemp thread, because I love I literally just keep it in my desk drawer here I have it right here, because I use this for so much stuff. Candle wicking, binding, knot spells, all of the things. Do a lot of cutting clips with it. But when you're binding out, and I actually just had to demonstrate this for a client last week.
So in the book it's you write your name on one side of the paper, the person who you just need the F out of your energy on the other side, you split it. You bind the other person. So it's not even binding their outcomes. It's not finding anything. It's basically I bind you out of my energy and out of our crossover energies.
So you can just exist right there and still be in a parallel universe. And I am good with that. And there's been a few people who have been very determined and broken out because I am learning that sometimes when they're doing that, you need to add some herbs that counter obsession. Aniseed is fantastic for countering obsession.
So if there's someone who's obsessive star anise or regular aniseed on the paper, when you bind it in, because that combats obsession without being dominating, of course, sometimes I just don't even mess with it and just go straight to the licorice, which is dominating because I aint putting up with it. But it is the idea of just getting them separate from you.
So you're not carrying stuff for them anymore. I will recommend this because I also teach empath trainings. I am an empath. I do believe a lot of people misunderstand what empaths are in a big way. empaths don't necessarily take accountability for the trauma that God is here. But one of the things is I will recommend they do that with specific people that they carry too much for, even if they're still in a relationship with that person, because you have to exist, you still have to exist in parallel space.
With a cut and clear, it's not going to work unless you stop speaking and interacting with the person. But a bind out is the, you can be throwing whatever, you can be doing that thing that so much is do worthy, I'm the biggest energy in the room and just if you do this you won't even feel it.
Katie Rempe: Oh, see?
Anti-Gossip Spell Jar
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Katie Rempe: Perfect. The reason that I'm asking this is because in the book you give examples for covens that might be, thinking about you doing spells or, church groups that are maybe praying for you, but you didn't ask for it. I was thinking, my personal experience, the knitting group. Which is always like a group of Like minded knitting folk sitting around at the table very Coven esque in my mind.
We're a group of makers that meet there regularly, not everyone's a winner. Sometimes there's some stinkers, and you can't just tell them to buzz off. You could if there's really a problem, but if you just Are just looking to avoid getting mixed up with them more, but not looking to boot them.
Diana Rajchel: Okay, so I have a recommendation that might be lower effort than that. Oh, okay. And this is something that I learned from one of my Swamp Witch groups, so it's a mix of Hoodoo and Appalachian. The principles are the same and this works across things. Depending on how crowded the room is, get yourself a jar, preferably like one of the blue tinted ones that Ball Jars makes.
And some alum crystal, which you can get from the grocery store. That's used for pickling because it's the anti gossip thing. And this depends if you get a rash from rude, do not do this. But if you do not get a rush from Rue, add some Rue put a little bit of white vinegar, apple cider vinegar can make things a little weird for some reason.
Add some sea salt. You don't need witch's black salt unless you've got an energy vampire in the group. Energy vampires are more complicated than they're advertised to be, so it doesn't mean you need to be eliminated. They just need to be made aware most of the time, depending on the person. But just have that in the room and like half vinegar, half water with the rue and the alum crystal.
And so it create literally adds an atmosphere of anti gossip. Which will keep the bad energy from generating since a lot of stuff where there's a lot of socially founded spells and things start with social manipulation because people don't realize they're generating energy. And think about when you get in a good gossip cycle.
One, you're getting a little bit high from it. It's very interesting and you're pouring a lot of energy into it. So if there's one person who's deliberately directing energy at you, whether it is consciously magical or not. But this way, you've got that in the atmosphere to offset that. Oh. And it's not incense, so nobody can complain about a smoke allergy.
Smart. And if someone complains about the vinegar smell, just add some rosemary essential oil or some peppermint.
James Divine: Very smart. Do you leave the jar open, or do you leave it closed and
Diana Rajchel: just put it? You leave it open, but the way ball jars work, because you can have the two part lid, you can just have it slightly unscrewed so it looks like you were absent minded about closing it if you want somebody not to know what it is.
Katie Rempe: Oh, smart. And then what's the Length of time that works for disposal.
Diana Rajchel: Basically, it works until it evaporates. So you can like if you're doing the lid on I just leave them open around my house because I have teenagers said that but you can like recap it and then reopen it until it evaporates.
Salt Crust
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Diana Rajchel: And one of the cool things, especially if you add salt is if there is some kind of conscious energy or a spirit around that's creating issues, it will form a salt crust in the jar. Like I live with a shaman, so I always get salt crust because we've got just so much damn traffic here. My house is just haunted because that's what comes with living with a shaman.
Like I can show you for the one that I have in my nook because I was using cider vinegar because of a conversation with a squirrel.
Katie Rempe: She's just going to leave it at that because of a conversation with a squirrel.
Diana Rajchel: So like this one, there's been a lot of traffic coming through here, partly because the property we're on.
is a little bit conflicted because we're the only second family to live on this over 100 year old property. So this one is definitely a lot more, and this is all salt fuzz. So there was a lot going on.
James Divine: It's also pretty. It's really cool looking.
Diana Rajchel: Yeah. It is really cool looking, but it does mean that there are some things where I need to go out and say, okay, simmer down.
Katie Rempe: Am asking This looks like the most amazing salt rimmed jar of a cocktail situation. Don't drink it. Don't drink
Diana Rajchel: it. It's a cocktail that you
Katie Rempe: don't want to drink. Don't drink
James Divine: it. How to haunt yourself in three steps.
Cursed Objects Box
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Diana Rajchel: I am probably going to be soaking that in my uncursed object bucket. I had an ex boyfriend get very creative and start cursing objects around my home because he was using magic as a form of domestic abuse.
So I basically have an entire bucket in my garden that is all just things that I need to like leave for three seasons before I can even touch them again. It was bad. It was bad.
James Divine: I have a burn box, but that's for like spell leavings and things, whatever, but I love this like bucket of cursed objects.
It's like the island of the misfit toys.
Diana Rajchel: It is. No, that's part of my personal brand with golden apple.
James Divine: There you go. Okay. Okay. I love how you gave a little bit about the jar. When you read this book, you can check 187 and find these things.
But I want to know just off the top of your head, thinking about. Fibers, knotwork, cord, magic, you talked a little bit about using the fibers that, matter.
What's a type of knotwork or cord magic have you ever done that with crochet?
Diana Rajchel: Not with crochet. I'm not on purpose with crochet. And again, because I don't do a lot of fiber arts, my partner is actually the big crocheter in the family, but I do work a lot with fiber and knittering for things that I burn later.
And the latest one I've done is, so Dreamcatchers are a specific. somewhat closed indigenous tradition, but again, this is why we need to start understanding about parallel practices. There are many other cultures, some of which do not consider them closed and encourage other people to use them that are energy traps and the like.
So there's a few people where I'm in a position where I can't bind them out. There are things going on where I just cannot do that. So what I've been doing is, taking embroidery. hoops And taking the cotton strings like you get in the big packs at Michael's, make sure they're cotton, and basically it's my bullshit catcher.
I will write the name of the specific person, or in some cases the specific location where there's like government energy or whatever, and I will just go ahead and weave on the inner hoop. And it's challenging because holding it taut, that concentration it requires, that energy it requires, is part of you pulling those energies.
That you want to be able to trap the crap on and pull it together
James Divine: you're basically weaving a little web.
Diana Rajchel: I'm weaving a little web basically putting it in embroidery hoop and then I put it in a sunny window because what most people don't know about dream catchers and most of these traps is you are supposed to put them out in the sun periodically to burn off the stuff so you can keep using them and then of course when the thread breaks it's time to get a new one.
And it's the same way with these. And, some of mine are for like Godzilla's type spirit, Agrobor type things, but some of them are quite personal, and having these has partly because, One, I don't really do smoke cleansing. My partner is partially indigenous.
So smudging is a thing that happens, but it's their job. So this is my way of not having to do that work day to day because there's something that just takes care of it. And it's still just using the string. Other one, it's not fiber, but something, because my partner works in mental health in Kalamazoo and they are case managers.
Braid Magic
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Diana Rajchel: So sometimes the job gets a little dangerous. So it's a little. Part of our daily protection is I braid their hair. If I am feeling concerned or like people are going to be intrusive I will have hidden braids in my hair. You never know what defenses I'm using. And so keep my hair long, like some people would say inappropriate long for a woman my age.
And we know how I'm going to respond to that.
James Divine: You're going to submit and listen to the man who's telling you that.
Diana Rajchel: If I am submitting and listening to some man, he should be very worried because I am just waiting.
Katie Rempe: Yes. Oh, I love you. Like the cat with the swishy
Diana Rajchel: tail. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. As I watch what's coming behind him and trying not to laugh.
James Divine: I'm here for it.
Fibers for Spells
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Katie Rempe: And you mentioned cotton.
Why specifically cotton? And when are there situations for other fibers?
Diana Rajchel: Cotton is just the one that's most accessible, so that's what popped to mind. Yeah. There's no reason not to use wool or other fibers. It's more about accessibility and affordability. Most of the magic I work is stuff where you should be able to get most of it in your kitchen.
Yeah. Yeah. In my opinion, most witches are at heart net beginning kitchen witches, and then they expand to beyond the spice rack, but that spice rack is important.
Katie Rempe: Absolutely.
Diana Rajchel: For me, it was the, this is the one that I know. I know that there are many other natural fibers available. Obviously I have a preference for hemp.
Part of the reason I like camp is it is Neptune rolled, which means it is really hard to figure out where the hell anything came from. Oh, and it is very left field. It's a very aquarium in nature
James Divine: very handy for that. Don't look at me. Where's this coming from,
Diana Rajchel: People, I usually just confuse them horribly because that's more effective.
Katie Rempe: And it's more fun, I think.
Animism
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Diana Rajchel: Because I work as an animist, so everything is inherently alive to me. And animism is not anthropomorphization. There are no talking teacups in here. There are, but not in any way you'd see on Disney.
I am planning on making some Slavic thunder candles.
Like this is something that I'm connecting with my ancestry, but it's going to have the hemp, it's going to have the beast wax, and these will be used in very specific sacred things, but there'll be one that is not blessed the same way, and that's going to be my protection candle where the only energy I'm going to put into it is.
Hi. Have fun with it. And then I have no idea what's going to happen, but I will be very entertained.
Katie Rempe: That is a guarantee.
Keeping Stashes Safe
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Katie Rempe: Another thing that you mentioned in the book is stagnant energy and how if you have places in your home, in a closet, wherever, where you're not going much or Dust might be building up that's where little energies might want to hang out and find homes too, which immediately brought to mind, Oh my gosh, what am I missing out protection wise that I could put in like my very perfectly sized yarn stash.
This would be great for people who also collect tarot cards or whatever your collection of choice may be.
Diana Rajchel: I want to add a caveat to that because I have had some education improved there. First, my understanding of Stagnant Energy actually came from reading all of Laurie Cabot's books, so just crediting where that came from. So even though it's been many years, they're always worth the read even if you don't necessarily align religiously or philosophically, the magic is solid.
Yes. The other side of this one, and I want to add this because There are a lot more people with chronic illnesses, there are a lot more people with disabilities. Keeping up with cleaning can be f ing impossible. I have a house that I think it just sucks in dust at this point.
I cannot keep up with it. And I am now surrounded by neurodivergent people. Doom piles are just part of our life now.
So, there's a couple different ways you can do it. What I would recommend is if you are a person who doesn't have a lot of things holding you back or exhausting you, the best you can do is just have a cleaning routine.
Be very clear with yourself about why you have the things you have. They're pretty as a valid reason, but if it is interfering with your ability to live, then you may need to seek some support in learning how to let things go.
However, if, for example, you don't have that, one of the things I would recommend, and this is purely animistic approach, it doesn't really exist in deity centered traditions, although it doesn't conflict with them either, there's no reason you couldn't do this.
Part of Slavic animistic belief is that the house itself has a spirit, and it can become a companion and protector to you. And I know from direct experience, both because my partner is Finnish and Sami, and also because I am Polish, We have a spirit snake that lives under our stove. It was just going to be there with one or the other of us.
So I'm surprised we only have one, but I imagine they'd probably just be trying to out stubborn each other. We have two. It's two headed. It might be. No, because it would just get in a fight and stop speaking to itself, and it would last centuries, so we can't do that. It's Polish versus Finnish. But what you can do is when you come into the house, you can talk to the house and ask it, to help you in managing energies and moving them out.
and because I do have a chronic illness, I do struggle with just shitting all of my energy doing one thing in a day. Like my ability to create a slow down a lot since the pandemic. And it was already slowing down because of really horrific stuff happening before. what will happen in my relationship with my house is I would be struggling to unpack something for the kitchen.
And I would hear this gentle voice saying, Oh, look in this cupboard. It turned out I had a lazy Susan there and have more storage than we'd realized. Or I'll hear a suggestion or a today you do need to sweep. Or today, vacuum this one spot. The other thing is like what I suggested with your knitting group is having things that naturally cleanse the air that don't take a lot of effort.
So I tend to recommend against incense because asthma is so common these days, but incense is a way to do it sometimes as well. Having a window open. If you are a servitor person, we actually made a servitor that works like a Roomba.
James Divine: Explain what a servitor is. To
Diana Rajchel: a servitor. So the easiest shorthand is a servitor is a spirit you create, except it's not really a spirit because it doesn't have any autonomy and you can create them for just about anything.
So
James Divine: I would maybe call that a thought form or that has a certain.
Diana Rajchel: It's definitely in the Thoughtform class. I would say like Servitor would be the non sentient and then a Tulpa would be the sentient.
James Divine: Okay, so the purpose of it is to help you out.
Diana Rajchel: To help you in whatever way you need help with.
To do things, yeah. Yes, to do things and it can be anything you can imagine.
James Divine: It's programming energy to do sort of something on auto mode just like you would program your Roomba.
Diana Rajchel: Yeah. So I have one where its job is to just find energy that is about to take on a mind of its own and absorb that and then ground it.
Yeah. And that's what it does. Fantastic. And that is definitely because of ADHD and chronic illness. Because some days you just have to wait till the dust bunnies are big enough that they ask to move out. This is just one of the realities of modern life.
James Divine: Yeah, the dust buffalo. Oh, yes, it's perfect.
They don't fit under the bed anymore. They
Katie Rempe: are the bed now. They are the bed now.
Diana Rajchel: Yeah, pretty much. It's one way to stuff a pillow.
James Divine: What's interesting is cleanliness is so associated with The classist and our value as humans. And it's just so effed up because, we are our perspective on what is clean or just like magic, right?
What our perspective on what is like good magic versus, bad magic. Is the same. And I wish that we could evolve beyond that and realize, for ourselves, a person and they're keeping house doesn't have to look like the magazines, just like our body doesn't have to look like the magazines.
Let's start to take that on and accept the fact that, if it's functional, it's okay.
Diana Rajchel: And I am liking that there's a big push against purity culture because purity culture seems to be the most toxic thing there is that ends up leading to the destructive things it criticizes people for.
So I like a cleaner house, but there is no such thing as perfect. Entropy again is a thing that which is especially need to learn how to live with and understand
James Divine: Entropy is that slowly devolving chaotic nature that you know things are going to devolve they're going to decompose.
We know that's the direction that things are going back and sort of power. A lot of the energy that's there. If you know how to do that, I love how you've made some hints that you're harnessing that, or we're learning how to harness that
Diana Rajchel: better. And it is a slow process where I'm learning many things the hard way as I do.
Didn't want that to fall apart so fast. What made it faster? Yeah,
Unrequested Magic
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James Divine: so here's the thing that in the 90s was a big thing and I know Lori Cabot has a completely different spin on this, but we were taught don't do healing for someone that hasn't specifically asked for specific healing because it's manipulative magic and Love magic can be manipulative you're influencing someone's will and that's not okay.
Can a blessing, my intention of a blessing to you actually be a curse on the other side?
Diana Rajchel: Yes. Yes, I would say that most things people read at curses are people protecting from them. Or trying to protect what they're doing.
James Divine: If I'm praying for you in my Baptist church, does that gonna end up as a curse on your end?
Or is that gonna end up as a blessing? What's your opinion?
Diana Rajchel: In my direct experience, having been a target of an entire church group, it very much manifested as a curse because it was trying to alter free will. And I had to fight that off I finally had to go within Christian magic, fortunately.
Because I've maintained an open mind about these things, I have friends that are devout Christians that were able to help me out of that situation, because the only thing that combats Christian magic is Christian magic. It's tricky. Everything has an opposite side. There is no doing something as beneficial that would not be seen as the opposite.
in some aspect of it. Healing, I tend to advise people not to do that. One, I've had so many people who just were not quite as aligned in Reiki as they thought they were, that completely threw off some very hard work some other healers had done for me, because they didn't check in. In my personal practice, consent is sacred.
It is not just about sexuality. It is in everything. I absolutely take that to the spirits that I work with. There are times where we live in a world where people really desperately want absolutes, and that's just not workable. Yeah. I will say that from, again, from direct experience, if you are trying to do love magic to directly influence someone, you need to take a step back, get a mental health check.
There is something else going on there. And especially because people are becoming more informed, not just about narcissistic dynamics, but about avoidant personalities. There's a lot of things where they do eventually figure out that it's diminishing returns, but given the way marriage is tied to the economy, That's a really impoverishing way to find out that stuff doesn't work well. And I'm looking at this in relationships, this is completely separate from sex worker magic where you're doing what you got to do. And I am very pro de stigmatization of that because Me too. I still have to deal with straight men and God bless the sex workers.
WitchCon
---
James Divine: I guess I'm thinking about it in okay, so we're knitting hats for the cancer hospital. And we're putting positive intentions into the hats as we're knitting them, magical intent, magical blessings.
Maybe you're like, Oh, this will really help Diana with her neurodivergent kids or whatever the hell. I don't know. I'm just making it up. And here's your neurodivergent kid shawl.
And you're like, WTF how would you advise someone to make something
Diana Rajchel: like that? Okay, so this is a little sample of what I'm going to be teaching at WitchCon. Here's what it is.
James Divine: Ooh! WitchCon! So let's talk about WitchCon really quick. WitchCon is?
Diana Rajchel: WitchCon is an online conference for magic workers that is Hex Education Network, with a few from Christian Day and Brian Kane that own the Hex stores in New Orleans and Salem.
And so this is the online one for the people because they can't cram everybody into their New Orleans Event Hacks Fest. It's just not possible. And it is, I think, usually around a hundred presenters of completely different traditions. Like from your own living room, you can get a sample of just about anything that they can dig And it's always people that have really solid reputations.
James Divine: And the recordings last, you can listen to them. I've taught there twice. I've taught two years in a row. Yeah. I'm so glad you're going to be there, Diana. That's awesome.
Diana Rajchel: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I really love working with the WitchCon folks it's such a great community.
Tweaking spells for better results
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Diana Rajchel: So what I'm teaching this year, I'm actually doing something beginners for once, instead of, oh, you're in the middle of it. So I'm teaching tweaking spells for getting better results. Ooh. Which is relevant to this conversation. And a lot of what I realized what's unique to the way I'm teaching most magic it's more about mindsets and self examination before you dive in, like this is what makes how I teach a little bit different these days.
When you've got your intention, you want to weave the intentions in, and I have come to believe that intention can be plenty, but it is not everything. Your intention needs support and measurements and usually a little divination to see how that's going to go.
Sometimes there's advice. It's so what I tell people is and what I'm working on for this class is it's not just intent one. What's your motivation? What is your motivation before you shape your intent? So you understand deep down why you're really doing this because this is going to be the truth about what you really want.
Then the intention. But then craft your intention, but think about how you want the impact to land. And the impact is where you can control for collateral damage. You can make sure it doesn't conflict with anything anybody else is doing. And so when you look at the impact and how you want it to work I want this person to have more energy day to day.
Or I want this person to have more clarity. Now, granted, if there's a cancer patient, clarity may not be a particular blessing. Because you're in pain all the time, having that shit fuzzed out is probably the healthiest thing for you. So it might be something that alleviates pain, but only enough that they can function, not so much that they hurt themselves.
when you're doing your intent, do an impact statement and actually do the impact statement first. Do the impact statement, look at your motivations, which may change the impact statement, and then craft your intention. And then you can pick your material, enchant, whatever, and craft it so that it does leave that impact woven in.
Yeah. So it can be, okay, I want this person to heal faster. Now, this is the other part, because cancer is so close to death for some people, is there may be some things that magic will not have an impact on, because death is its own universe, and it has its own rules. But it can be something where the pain is alleviated or something practical, small, and applicable.
The other part that I taught in Urban Magic that I keep teaching, magic doesn't multitask. So if you're knitting, you can either have it do one thing, you can make each stitch a separate spell if you want even. Or each row a separate spell. But it's only going to do that one thing. One, adding too much will block things out.
I watched in San Francisco's people with beautiful intentions, try to solve all the world's problems in one ritual. And of course, this ginormous power just fizzled out. And I made a comment about it to someone who practices that tradition, and then just that they started narrowing it down again yeah, I'm sorry, the world's in triage.
You just, you got to pick one. Yeah. It's
James Divine: like a, it's
Katie Rempe: like a fashion design that you're like, oh, and it needs bobbles and it needs bows and it needs fringe. Okay, these could all be three different designs that are really great instead of an overwhelming amount of distraction on one thing.
Diana Rajchel: Coco Chanel was right.
at whatever you're wearing before you go out the door and take one thing off. That's right. Girl,
James Divine: she was.
Katie Rempe: Must have been a fashion witch.
Boyfriend Sweater Curse Explained
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James Divine: This ties right into The
Katie Rempe: boyfriend sweater. Yes. There is a agrigore almost in itself of a belief within the knitting, crochet, and making community.
Specifically knitting, though, is where I've heard it the most. And it's the curse of the boyfriend sweater. And it has to do with, essentially, whether it's, boyfriend or not. That's It doesn't really matter, but it's more that you as the maker are going to put a bad taste over this relationship that you have by making this huge project for this person who hasn't really committed to the full relationship yet.
And what happens more often than not. Because of reasons in life is that time goes by you break up and then you didn't finish the sweater and then you've broken up or you finish it. They don't like it. They don't appreciate it for whatever reason. And then that breaks you up. That's the curse of the boyfriend sweater.
Diana Rajchel: So I'm a magical hacker. So I'm like, I could just reach for my cards and look at this, but I don't think I need to. Oh, yes. Break it down for us. Let me break this down for you. One, it takes a really long time to knit anything. Yes. And your energy is going into it. Second, and because my partner recently crocheted me this beautiful Doctor Who length scarf like I love it.
It is gorgeous. One of the things they did is they only crocheted it when they had loving feelings for me. Yes. If you're knitting to de stress and very few people are able to watch every thought that goes into their head.
That stuff is gonna come out in fiber absolutely. So there's that, but here's the other thing, is you are, I don't think it's an egregore that's necessarily interrupting things, I think it's an egregore that is editing appropriately. Ah. Someone you continue to feel loving feelings for, where there's not an issue in the relationship, where there's not a mismatch, where there's not a values mismatch.
Because a lot of people are dating according to only attraction, And they're hoping that this person that they're randomly attracted to works out. Random attraction is just bodies being bodies. Shared values is a different thing. they need to be looking for partners that think it's really freaking cool that they knit.
That value, that talent, that's an indicator for them of someone that's going to be a workable long term partner, long term enough that they're around when you finish making the sweater. So it's. It's an edit button. It's yeetin the bad ones. Let it do its job. Ha. If
Katie Rempe: your partner is saying instead of, Wow, that's awesome, I can't wait to see it done, is instead saying, I'm sorry, it cost 5 a ball for you to make this?
Diana Rajchel: That's a sign. No. No. And it's very cut and clear for you. The fact that you have a passionate hobby and intense hobby is a way of seeing if somebody is aligned.
If they don't respect that hobby, they're not going to respect other things about you. And so it is a protection of the weaving. Doing its job because I am guessing that almost every other person where the boyfriend went, it wasn't just a sudden thing. It was a, there were other issues and other misalignments, or there is so much around young men being encouraged to be jealous of and resentful of women having interest in hobbies, especially of people, it's the, everything should be centered on me, except no, that's not healthy.
Yes. And so this is someone, because knitters need their time, they need their time alone, they need that healthy space. And so someone's able to ride that balance. It's going to show you.
Katie Rempe: Huh. So instead of it being a curse, it's more of a blessing. A boyfriend blessing. It is a protection.
Diana Rajchel: There you go.
But it is a protection and a damn good one.
Katie Rempe: You never look back at those relationships and think Ah, if only I had finished that sweater for that asshole sooner. No.
Diana Rajchel: I can wear it. Even the crappy stuff.
Katie Rempe: Yeah, exactly. I can't believe I spent my time and money on this.
James Divine: Yeah. What a fantastic way to reframe the boyfriend sweater as the a-hole protection spell.
Yes. Now that's genius.
Katie Rempe: Relationship alignment spell. I,
James Divine: now that makes you want to the first person you start dating, start on that sweater. That's right. It'll
Diana Rajchel: protect you. With you to take. Take the person with you to a yarn shop. Oh, and see what happens.
Katie Rempe: They want to stay in the car. That's a huge
Diana Rajchel: sign.
That is a significant sign. Also, I know with Cintia, I really should have locked my credit card in the car.
James Divine: It's a yarn store. Come on.
Diana Rajchel: Yeah, I learned.
Katie Rempe: It's a boutique experience. Helping small businesses.
Diana Rajchel: It was a really nice one in the Castro. Yes.
Katie Rempe: Yeah, it's not a cheap hobby, that's for sure.
James Divine: I really love the conversation about the boyfriend sweater. I think that's fantastic. Yeah,
Katie Rempe: very eye opening.
Follow Diana!
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Katie Rempe: we already talked a little bit about what you have going on this year. How can folks find out more about you, your offerings? Do you have a newsletter, website, social media, all of that?
Diana Rajchel: I have all of the things and I have a hard time keeping up on all of them, but I am trying.
The fastest and easiest way is to go to my website, dianarajchael.Com. That is where you can subscribe to my sub stack, where right now I'm doing a sub stack and working with the dead in between various announcements about classes I'm teaching with Wicked Grounds.
For those unfamiliar, Wicked Grounds is an adult sex and magic education organization out of San Francisco. They're largely online right now and I teach for their magic branch so I got asked to do a bunch more urban magic stuff so I'm doing a series on that this year.
I think the next one I'm doing is, urban magic, rebuilding community in times of social collapse, and then the next one after that is tarot for kinky people. Ooh. I get a broad variety of things I get to teach with this group.
I also work with Golden Apple Metaphysical, that is a shop that I co own that we are still building. It is largely products that come directly from Nikki and I getting ourselves in trouble and then having to come up with things to get out of it.
I love that. Fun. We have in that store and Sabbath stuff she's very much a kitchen witch and very into those holiday cycles. I am still the person who has to be called reminded. Can find me on Facebook under Diana Rajchel author, you can find me on Instagram at D Rajchel.
And I do have a tick tock spoon cherry 01, where usually I am talking about one topic for two minutes, or I'm doing my which writes daily because I'm working my urban magic workbook. Right now for my next project so that people can take this with them in the city they've lived in all their life or take this with them when they visit cities and go, I want to try this exercise today and start developing their own personal spellbooks grimoires and so on by doing that deep dive in that direct experience since direct experience is what I teach from.
I
Katie Rempe: love that. So fun. It's like a workbook and a travel guide all in one.
Diana Rajchel: And it's a DIY travel guide because you do still have to do the research, but this way you find a way to incorporate the research and not go, Oh, there's a giant pie pan. That's interesting. Okay. Here's what to do with a giant pie pan.
Let's figure out something to do with a giant pie pan.
Katie Rempe: Make those experiences matter. this has been so wonderful. Seriously, we knew as soon as we got this book, we were like, oh yeah, no brainer. If she's willing to come on here, we got to ask her all these fun questions. And I'm sure we'll have you back to promote one of your upcoming events very soon.
Upcoming books, all sorts of fun stuff. So thank you for spending time with us and sharing all your knowledge.
Diana Rajchel: My pleasure. This was a lot of fun. It
James Divine: was a blast. You're fabulous.
Diana Rajchel: If you guys have questions, feel free to ask when I have time, I do try to answer.
James Divine: So great. I'm so glad. Yeah. So visit her website, check this out and grab this book. It's invaluable information.
Katie Rempe: So we'll have everything linked in our show notes. So it's super easy to find and follow no matter what.
James Divine: Thank you again, Rajchel. We'll see you next time.
Katie Rempe: All right, everybody, we'll see you then.
Diana Rajchel: Thank you.
Outtro 2022: Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show, consider sharing it with a friend, leaving a review on iTunes and Spotify or following Knit A Spell on Instagram.
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See you next week. Next week.
