Tami Simon: Hello friends, my name’s Tami Simon, and I’m the founder of Sounds True. I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original premium transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, and special weekly live shows, including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an after-show community question-and-answer session with featured guests. I hope you’ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us and connect with others. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
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In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Jamie Della. Jamie Della is a priestess, a healer, a Xicana witch, and a creativity mentor. She’s the author of 10 books, including The Book of Spells, The Magick of Witchcraft, and with Sounds True, a new book that chronicles her relationship and the many teachings she received from her mentor, Connie DeMasters. The book is called A Box of Magick: A Guided Journey to Crafting a Magickal Life Through Witchcraft, Ritual Herbalism, and Spellcrafting. You’re about to feel Jamie’s warm heart and intelligence, and you’ll sense her courage to be public as a practicing witch in our contemporary world. Here’s my conversation with Jamie Della.
Jamie, you identify as a priestess, healer, creativity mentor and Xicana witch. And here at the beginning, I’d love to know a little bit about how you became a witch and the process of claiming that.
Jamie Della: Oh, thank you so much for having me here. First of all, Tami, I appreciate that. And that’s always a really fun question. I think a lot of people are born witches, just like you’re born a tree hugger or born as someone who cares about the Earth and wants to make a deep connection. So that’s part of it. I also really give credit to the fact that my mother’s mother crossed the threshold the month before I was born, and so that left open a portal to speak to the spirit world without it being strange, to believe that there are entities, energies, spirits that you can speak to even if you can’t see them. So that was able to extend into, from persons who have died, to tree spirits, to the wind, to the river, to land itself. So that was one of the things that prepared the soul, my soul and the soil of taking on witchcraft as part of my practice.
And then I had, my other grandmother was a psychic tarot reader, and so she taught us from a very early age about soul families and portal connections and listening to the spirit world. And also that, as humans having a human experience, we get to choose when that is an option for us and when we decide that we don’t want to listen to our ancestors, we need to just put food on the table or something like that. So giving me that autonomy, even with the spirit world.
And then finally, I was raised Christian Scientist, so I was raised with this concept of mental magic or the ability to focus mind over matter, and that it wasn’t just about healing our physical bodies, but really healing our mental and emotional bodies with that focused mind. All of that prepared me for a witchcraft practice. And then it just became friends that we would do baby blessings and house blessings and read tarot cards for each other. And then I got into massage in the healing practice, and then I met more people and was invited to my first pagan sabbat and I began really celebrating the Wheel of the Year, otherwise known as the mandala of nature. So the religion of Wicca just made sense to me—to follow the cycles of the seasons as guides. In fall, we let go; in winter, we rest; in spring, we birth; and in summer, we bloom. That just made sense to me.
TS: Interesting that you refer to it as the religion of Wicca. I’m sure some people are like, “What? It’s a religion? I didn’t know that.” Tell me more about that.
JD: Wicca is a religion, witchcraft is not. So witchcraft is a lifestyle, a philosophy, a worldview. And one of those sects or one of those practices or traditions is called Wicca. And Wicca is a formally recognized religion in the United States brought here—traditionally considered to have been brought here by Gerald Gardner in the 1940s or ‘50s, depending on who you talk to. But it became a recognized, and therefore, supposedly protected religion in terms of protecting religious beliefs.
TS: And I wanted to talk to you about that, because I’m sure that when some people hear you say, “Oh, she identifies as a witch,” all kinds of taunting occurs and fun making and ridicule. And I’m curious, for you, what the journey has been to stand in being a witch and not necessarily create an othering with people, which is part of what I’ve read in your writing—this importance of creating a bridge and understanding, but also your own journey to be proud, loud, and tall in a world where people make fun of, many times, someone who calls themselves a witch.
JD: Absolutely. And because my first book, The Wicca Cookbook, came out in 2000, that’s when I began this journey of standing up and ducking the rotten tomatoes from people who were afraid of what you’re saying. And so what I had the advantage of, in the early 2000s, in talking about Wicca and witchcraft in public places like a Barnes & Noble, for example, I would use the farm-to-table, farm-to-fork movement, and talk about how important… Because that was starting to grow, the idea of coming back to sustainability with our food, looking at architecture from Frank Lloyd Wright, and that whole idea of working with nature versus against. It began at our tables. So that was the first way I would explain to people. I would take them back to something that isn’t as frightening. It’s something we do every day. You could just say you notice the difference between a tomato you plucked from the ground and one that came from the grocery store.
So that’s part of what witches do, is align with what’s in season. So the first thing was to pretty much talk their language. So I would say things like, “Spells are prayers in 3D.” And then using examples like It’s a Wonderful Life, when Donna Reed is saying here, “The salt, you may always know flavor; this bread, you’ll never know hunger; this wine, you’ll always know joy.” That’s a spell. And a spell is a word—to speak our word, to cast our word, to write it out. That’s all it is. We’re doing spell work every day. We just don’t call it that. And beginning to understand the languaging.
And then I studied public relations in college, so I know about propaganda. And so I could say, this is propaganda that has been embedded into our psyche and you have fallen for it. Do you want to continue to make a choice based on somebody else’s marketing or do you want to make a choice for yourself based on what you experience?
And do I look scary? That would be the other thing. Do I fit your stereotypical witch? No. Well then, that’s part of the expansion. And it was a long process, the first time. My mother was raised in Mexican Catholic—raised in a Catholic church. She raised money for the pagan baby so that she could name them. That was, like you said, the thought process was so different. My grandfather stopped talking to me when an article came out in the Orange County Register about my witchcraft practices in 2006. So I’ve had people make comments when I was in Barnes & Noble. And the reason I keep standing there is because I believe so much in the powerful healing of being connected to nature in a way that just runs so deep—that she really is our mother and we have this energy to connect to and we’re never alone.
And I just keep pushing. And the last couple years, one of the books was in Target, and I felt like I had really broken through the glass ceiling. And now it’s just a matter of people slowly coming. And I feel like all the other marginalized people, from African Americans, to gender fluidity and all these other aspects have actually started to help witchcraft, because people are starting to look at that closed-mindedness as something that is holding them back and also holding back a lot of people. And that’s not fair. And moving towards that equality, even with witchcraft, it’s happening.
TS: For the record, you look very friendly. You have a very friendly and warm smile.
JD: Thank you.
TS: What would you say, just to take this a little further though, for that person who says, “I actually identify internally as a nature lover, as someone who works between the worlds, but I don’t want to make this kind of claim in public because I’m just afraid of how my family will respond, how other people will respond. So the truth is I’m in the closet.”
JD: Of course.
TS: “I’m a witch in the closet.”
JD: In the broom closet.
TS: What would you say to that person?
JD: I’d say, “We’re in the broom closet.”
TS: Ah, there we go.
JD: Yes, we definitely say, “We’re the witch in the broom closet.” And I feel that everyone needs to do what they can do. And it’s not imperative that you call yourself a witch or a pagan or a Wiccan or any of the words that have triggers for yourself or triggers for people whom you love, that you feel like it might distance yourself. As a writer, I love etymology. So the word witch and word Wicca comes from the word wicce, W-I-C-C-E, which means wise. So this whole philosophy is about being wise, because you follow the cycles of the seasons and nature. And there is nobody who has more power over you to “cast a spell on you.” That was one of the first things that happened. I used to sign my books at Celtic festivals, because often the Irish and the Scottish are either pagan or Catholic or both. We just love our rituals.
So I would go to these events. And one time I had a woman come up to me and say, “Oh, there’s a teen spell book. Does that mean my daughter’s going to cast spells on me?” And my first question was, “Do you deserve it?” And she looked at me. And I said, “Your relationship is more important than anything. And if she lights a candle to your demise, you can choose to take on that energy or you can choose tai chi to move around it and let the energy go past you and work with the communication. Because she has no more power than you.” Those spells, you can choose.
I personally believe that whatever you do comes back to you. When you point one finger forward, you have three pointing back. So do you choose to hex someone? Do you choose to harm, send energy towards them? You’re really only harming yourself when we throw that anger out there in the world. And for people who just want to follow this practice and are witch-curious, I think you can continue to be witch-curious your entire life. There’s no reason you ever need to go to a public ritual. There’s no reason that you ever need to even cast a spell if you don’t want to. If you just want to have a seasonal altar—so that every spring you put that up and you have eggs and different things that represent what’s happening in spring. Or fall, have leaves or pine cones because it helps you feel connected. Because to me, whatever’s happening in nature is the collective consciousness. It’s a flow like a river and a current. So you can step into that current and glide with it or you can fight against it. It’s up to you.
TS: In the beginning of your new book, A Box of Magick, you write that underneath witchcraft is the fundamental belief in animism, that there’s “a consciousness in everything alive, whether it’s animals, plants, weather systems, human handiwork, and even words and stories.”
So I wanted to talk to you about that some, because when I was reading a consciousness in everything alive, animals, sure. Plants, sure. Weather systems, OK, I am kind of with you—the elements, nature is changing. But then we get to human handiwork, and even words and stories. And that’s where I had a moment of like, I’m going to need more clarification here. Because when I think of human handiwork, I suddenly, I’m relating, for example, to my desk, the desk right here with me. And I’m like, would Jamie Della say that this desk is alive? That there’s a consciousness in everything alive? Is the desk alive?
JD: Is it made of wood?
TS: Well, the desk is not, but let’s take the studio—I’m in here—which is made of wood. It’s a wood-constructed space.
JD: So I believe that that tree spirit is still there in some consciousness. So, my children went to a Waldorf school. So the pedagogy is that the children only play with wood blocks because it came from a tree, because they can connect to the spirit of the tree. They only play with silks because of the silk worms. So I believe that yes, something that has wood, it feels different. Straw bale homes feel different. Cob homes feel different, because they’re being made from Earth material and not the plastic or the chemicals that are in most of our homes.
And then to speak about words, just to look at the word “gay,” how that word has evolved over time. And does it have its own notion of itself that it is evolving over time to mean something else? It feels like it has a life. Stories have a life. In the book I reveal that my father left when I was very young. That story has changed over time. At first it was something about me. I did something wrong—What I Did Wrong at Six Years Old—I don’t know. But that was what my thought was. And over time, that story itself has worked on me, developed at first a self-consciousness, and then eventually, moving into compassion for somebody who didn’t feel worthy enough to even stick around for a child. And so that story itself has evolved. And I do believe that there is a certain consciousness in our stories, just like our constellations work on our consciousness and in the astrology or whatever it is. And I do believe that there is an awareness of themselves. And I realize that’s a stretch for some people.
TS: Well, I’m stretching with you here. And what I want to appreciate is what it’s like for you to live with this animist conviction, how it changes how you approach everything. How do you approach everything with this animism alive in you?
JD: OK, so when I step outside and I’m feeling really uptight, and I look down and there’s a feather. To me, that feather has shown up because I need to lighten up. I’m also a body worker. So when I am working with somebody and I can feel the lavender calling to me, “Can you please—this woman, this client of yours needs to feel my calm, please use me.” And I find that I am being pulled by different aspects. Even candles or my drum or a rattle or even a painting of a goddess, they are calling to me with their own consciousness, because of a desire to elevate the full consciousness of all of us. Because when humans, when we raise our consciousness to see ourselves as one member of community versus the keepers of the Earth, we somehow know better how to take care of Mother Earth than she knows how to take care of herself, recognizing that humility, but also that connectivity.
And I do feel that pictures—like today, prior to this meeting, my friend who would’ve wanted to be a Sounds True author for so long, and she crossed over. Her picture’s here. A picture of myself when I was that age, 33, with my young sons is here to remind me, to call me back into that part of me. There’s also a picture of my mentor here, a candle, some tea. I wanted to make a red clover tea, because that is very empowering and strengthening, especially for women.
And so bringing all of these elements around me so that I can stand in my fullest self, that’s part of animism, just looking at everything around you as a potential ally, and it’s a relationship that you develop with it. So this red clover, I picked myself. It’s in our property, so that red clover and I have a relationship. And I never say “using herbs,” because I would never say I used you for this podcast or I used my mentor to learn more things. We work together. And the same thing is with the herbs. And when we have that reciprocity of respect, the world opens up, so that there’s so much more potential of healing for us.
TS: Let’s talk some about your mentor. Your new book, A Box of Magick, is actually a deep dive that chronicles the relationship that you had with this figure. Can you introduce us to her, bring her right here into our presence?
JD: Absolutely. Connie. So I met Connie in 2001. So you talk about being out of the broom closet and maybe not always welcoming that attention. So at this point, I had two books out, and 9/11 had just happened a couple of months prior. Like I said, this is December of 2001. So here I was, I felt like I was completely—the doors had slammed shut. The Christian Coalition was getting really strong, and I felt very attacked and vulnerable. And yet that felt like what was really important for me, is to continue to be that presence in the world. It just felt like such a calling. So I was at the Universal Unitarian Church for this winter solstice women’s spirit event. And she was behind me, a bigger woman. Same age as I am now, which is also a wonderful serendipity. So she’s in her mid-fifties. And she was sitting behind me, a larger woman, cat-like eyes, a pixie haircut, and she giggled like a schoolgirl.
It was just like water cascading over, trickling, a little brook or something, the way she would laugh. And she would just get so thrilled with herself. So she was watching this parade of bohos and people dressed in their goddess garb with just this huge smile, this grandmotherly energy. Pagans had a moment. Because we only had moments. We had the Pagan Pride Festival and we would have some winter solstice festival, so there’d only be very few times where we could actually be ourselves. And this was one of those times. And she was watching us with such joy. She was sitting behind me and she was in one booth. If you think of a festival, she was in the booth next to me. And every time someone would stand up and decide—do I want a book? I’m not sure—and talk to me, I would feel this rush of energy behind me. And the person would say, “You know, I think I really do need this.”
And it was amazing to be supported. I had the one grandmother who had crossed over, the other grandmother who was this psychic tarot reader, cruising Princess cruise lines as the resident tarot reader. I had no grandmotherly figure to really hold me. And she called me a couple days later and said, “The spirits tell me I’m supposed to teach you.” Now, this happens now on Instagram. People will say, “Oh, the spirits tell me I’m supposed to give you a reading.” But that didn’t happen 20 years ago. People didn’t just randomly offer to give all their energy and all their time to you. I asked Connie, I said I was so ready. I had young boys, I was struggling in that marriage, and I was just out of the broom closet with these two books. There was no way I was going to go back in.
And I didn’t know how to have that conviction, and I needed that guidance. And so I said, “What can I bring?” And it was a caramel macchiato and a maple nut scone. So every week, I would secure a babysitter and sit at her knee and ask her to tell me, how do I apply these principles of spirituality and the nature guides to my life. Getting my kid into the kindergarten I want, fixing the marriage. It’s all well and fine if it’s esoteric, but if you can’t apply it to your life, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t help. And so she would sit on her Barcalounger and she would light this white candle and we would just dive in. And she was so proud of me. So she would tell me how hard it was, what I was doing going out there in public. She was inviting people into her home.
She was teaching out of the Eye of the Cat witch shop in Long Beach. She was with the people who spoke our language. I was trying to go out there and introduce, and wasn’t trying to convert or anything like that, it was just, we’re here. We’re here and we want our own space in the sunshine. And so she was a Greek yiayia. She always was someone who was always proud of you. And even the days that I would show up and maybe I did something crappy and maybe not kind or whatever, she would never let you get away with it. She would look at you until you came to your own, “OK, yeah, I did that thing.” And would just be like, “OK, how are we going to work through it now?” So I felt like she was the mentor who saw in me the light that I didn’t quite see in myself.
TS: You mentioned that you have a photograph with you of Connie. And one of the things I wonder about is, when we remember or invoke the presence of someone dear to us, and it’s almost like we feel like they’re with us. And some people are like, they are with us. And other people are like, no, I just feel like this person’s with me. They’re not actually with me. I just feel like they’re with me. It’s different. What’s it like for you?
JD: For me, it’s a presence in the room. So I do feel that they’re with me, but I feel that their spirit is with me. It’s not like they show up, especially people who have crossed over. Even if you’re doing an astral projection, I feel it’s more like their spirit. So it’s not tainted by some of the human foibles that we have. It’s pure spirit. Their reflection of the divine essence, their own essence that way. And so for me, it feels like a heaviness, like a density. Well, my nana used to say that the room would turn cold when the spirits were there. And they even show that in Harry Potter, where they go through the spirits and they’re like, oh, that was cold. And so for me though, it’s this sense of being held up, being held up by their presence, being supported in such a way.
And then sometimes I can even feel how proud they are because of having bushwhacked through 20 years of people saying, “You’re crazy to call yourself a witch. Why would you even do that? Just call yourself a tree hugger. Just call yourself… You love nature. Why would you push that envelope and say those words?” For me, it’s because it’s reclaiming a word that someone has bastardized. It’s important to reclaim the fact that this just means wise. Witchcraft means the craft of the wise. Just because someone else has interpreted it to be something different, doesn’t mean we have to abide by those rules.
TS: Now I can feel Connie’s, how her love and her support and her affirmation of you, how healing and important that was in your own emotional life and your flowering as a person. When it comes to the actual witchcraft tools and techniques you learned from Connie, what would you say were the most important witchcraft lessons?
JD: Thank you. I like that question. I think the most important witchcraft lesson is the first lesson, which is: you are always your own best teacher. For me, that’s one of the hardest and most palpable lessons. You can ask people. What should you do? Someone was recently disrespectful, and do you continue a relationship with them? Whatever was happening, where do you go with that? Well, it was always finding your center, and that is trusting your intuition. And so, one of those first lessons was, know your yes/no answers in your body. So when you walk into a room and people are being kind and loving, where do you feel that? Do you feel that in your heart? Is that what’s tingling and opening it up? Is the front of the heart, the back of the heart? Where are you feeling that?
Then if you were to walk into a room where you could feel the hostility, where do you feel that? Do your hands turn cold, because the energy is just contracting into your core? So the first important thing is to know your own self. Know what’s the yes and the no. So that way, when you move forward with the mundane questions of your life, do you continue in business with someone? Do you take a job? Do you choose to have a second baby? If you know your yes or no internally within your own self, then you know how to step forward. And then the other lesson was that she gave me a beautiful meditation. And it’s in the book. It’s a protection spell where you imagine this silver light that encases your entire body like an egg shape. And this silver light is who you are. Maybe the you that not everybody knows, the quiet you. And giving that energy, that’s like the moon and the lunar light, that it is its own entity, its own quiet nature.
And you imagine yourself protected in this silver light. And then there’s a golden light that comes up over that. And this golden light is what others see. It’s the reflection. And there is this synergy that happens between the silver and the gold that forms this layer of protection that then encases you in the egg shape. And then the final layer is an astral plane or an angelic plane or your ancestors or your higher spirit or whatever you call that. Witchcraft was called “the nameless arts” for the longest time, because we can’t always put boxes of words around big feelings. And so this last is this angelic light, and it protects you so that you know that you are guided. Your soul self is not going to be harmed by whatever experience. Your spirit may be hurt or maybe not appreciate what’s happening, but your soul self will not be hurt.
And having this egg shaped layer, triple layer of protection is what I could take out with me to brave those conversations with people, to let them understand, what is witchcraft? Can you suspend your disbelief long enough just to hear that it’s really about celebrating the cycles? And if someone goes, “Well, that’s not what I heard.” Well then let’s discuss what you’ve heard. Oh, you worship the devil. That’s the first one that usually comes up. You worship the devil. And that was a rumor that began, because as many pagans and people did long time ago, we personified aspects of the divine source. So we have Quan Yin that represents compassion, we have Thor with his hammer, we have all these different aspects of how we can look at the world. And I find that with witchcraft, it just gives us so many opportunities to feel into how we can express the divine self.
TS: Now I just want to ask for a clarification about this visualization for protection, because I found it really exciting to be able to use. And I was with you with the egg shaped silver layer and then a gold layer outside of that around the egg. And then when we got to the third layer, the angelic level, I wasn’t quite sure how to invoke or visualize that.
JD: I’m sorry. I meant to say it was a light blue light. I apologize. A light blue—
TS: No, that’s OK.
JD: —like a glacier blue light. So that’s more the angelic realm. I tell people, if you know the color larimar, like the stone, or a sky blue color, that’s that final cover. And that allows you to walk out and know that that protection—that protection is important for a job interview, for a difficult conversation. It doesn’t always have to be talking about witchcraft or something.
TS: So many things in our lives that we feel are coming at us, that could harm us from other people or the world or just the violence of our times. So that’s why I wanted to make sure—
JD: Yes, I’m sorry.
TS: —that I understood it.
JD: Silver, gold, and pale blue or glacier blue. Like when you see a glacier and you see that iridescent blue that sparkles with different colors. That is so powerful as a protection, even if you’re just feeling attacked by anybody in any circumstance or just even losing yourself or having to define boundaries and being really afraid of that. And I feel that it’s so important, because it honors our internal self, our quiet self, the reflection, what everybody sees, and then our divine right to be protected and guided and supported by unseen energy that holds us.
Because Wicca also means to bend or shape the unseen forces. An example I gave for that is when I gave childbirth, I only used a lemon. I just scratched the lemon because that aroma cut the nausea so that I could then again center myself in my own internal strength. That nausea is an unseen force. The lemon shifts it. So it’s not always about, I don’t know, something negative. We can shift those energies. We can shift anxiety to calm with lavender. That’s part of the witchcraft methodology, is finding ways to align our whole body—mind, body, spirit—with our highest good and with the direction that we choose because we are co-creating. Another aspect is that we do co-create.
TS: And you mentioned earlier in our conversation spellcasting. And I think many people have this notion of, OK, there’s something that I want. And it could be a person, a partnership, an intimate relationship. It could be material goods, it could be something to do with their purpose, growing in the world and having more impact. What is an ethical, aligned way to use spellcasting for good?
JD: Well, I believe there are four steps that you first need to ask yourself. First of all, have you done everything on the mundane plane? So whether you want to partner or if you want to be a professional soccer player or artist or whatever, are you getting yourself out there? Are you taking art classes or soccer classes? Are you applying yourself? Because magick isn’t about magick tricks, it’s about aligning your will with the forces of the universe. So that’s the first thing you need to do is ask yourself, have you done everything?
And then secondly, will it harm anyone, including yourself? Because you have to ask, if you want a job, you can’t say, “Well, I want that person’s job.” Hopefully, maybe, that person will move on. So it would be the highest good for that person. Maybe they’ll get a promotion if you could step into their position.
Another question to ask yourself is whether or not it’s a need or a want—just trying to ascertain. And sometimes people, I know in our language today, we blend those two together, but really finding out what it is. So when I first wrote these spells that were for kids, so one of my examples is wanting an A in school, whatever it is. So maybe it’s a good progress report from work or wherever, your yearly review or something, and you want to get top marks. And ask yourself, are you doing it for yourself? Are you doing it to impress somebody else? Are you doing it because you have to be an A+ student? What is the reasoning behind? What is the motivation? Is your motivation to meet with somebody because you want to share your life experiences or because you want intimacy, physical intimacy? What is it that you need?
And then finally, are you willing to own the results? So for example, a very long time ago, I cast a spell. I wanted a New York publisher to call me and offer me a book deal. And so I went to a writing conference. I met an editor from Simon & Schuster, and she asked me to write a book on Santería. And I knew nothing about this path. This was 20 years ago. There was not the Internet to look it up. Just because I’m Mexican didn’t mean—I haven’t had any relationship to this practice. So I got my wish. And New York editor asked me to write a book, but I could not write the book they asked me to write. And I was not willing to take on the backlash of writing about a culture that I knew nothing about.
So I wasn’t willing to accept those responsibilities. So I said, “No, thank you.” And what happened was two years later, she ended up finding an offer for me to write a totally different book, a book that I could write, a young adult book about curanderismo and the Mexican culture with magick. That I could do. And so I think spellcrafting is very important to align with, making sure that you’re taking the responsibility of co-creating. And you don’t cast spells all the time, because I feel that for myself, I feel that’s a selfish thing. I feel like once you put your energy out there, and it dilutes your focus. So if you’re praying or if you’re doing a spell for a best friend to get pregnant and to get a job and all these things at once, your attention is divided among those things and you can’t fully focus on one of them to bring it to manifestation.
TS: OK, so let’s say someone answers those four questions and they’re able to say, “I’m aligned, I’ve gone through that, and I’m ready to write my spell and put it out into the world. How do I do it, Jamie?”
JD: OK, so give me a desire. What’s a desire? What’s a spell?
TS: Well, let’s take one of the things you just said, to become pregnant.
JD: OK.
TS: Let’s just say that’s what a woman wants.
JD: So to become pregnant. So what I like to do is work with three, the number of three. So three is usually, third time’s a charm. It’s a number that, from a numerology perspective, three is the number of manifestations. So I like to work with that because a collective consciousness, like a current of a river is already flowing in that direction in giving that number three a lot of energy for manifestation. So I like to come up with three symbols. So if someone wanted to become pregnant, you could have an egg. An egg is a symbol of fertility. So you would think, what are those things that you want? And part of it is fertility, so it could be anything that represents that. So it could be an egg, nuts, seeds, you get the idea.
Then you might have an herb such as the red clover that is good for blood cleansing. So it’s good to keep you healthy and prepare. So you take an herb that actually prepares your body to become pregnant. And then another symbol could be picture of a baby or a picture of the family, the family unit. It could also be—what is that feeling? Yes, you want fertility, but maybe you also want motherhood. So maybe there’s pictures of mothers from all over the world or yourself. So you could create this altar that every time you look at, it works like a visual affirmation to help attract the pregnancy that you want to actualize for your life.
And then you might write. I like to write poems or chants or incantations. And the reason we write them in rhyme is because, like our dream mind, like our right brain, we just, is it right brain? Yeah, right brain creative, that when you’re dreaming and suddenly you’re flying, and then one minute you’re in New York, and then you’re in Paris, it doesn’t matter. So when you write in these, “I want to be pregnant today, I will find my way, the baby is coming to me,” you just do this chant because then it speaks to that right side of your brain. It doesn’t need the logical, “Well, the doctor said your count was low or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah” all these different things. It bypasses the logical brain and just gets on to the manifesting.
TS: I’m curious, have you ever had an experience in your life, a time in your life where you thought, I really wonder if this stuff is, maybe just doesn’t work.
JD: Totally.
TS: It just doesn’t work. I’ve lost my faith, I’ve lost my belief. And if maybe you could share how you got through that period.
JD: I think divorce was definitely how I lost my faith, because that wasn’t what I wanted to happen. I wanted the complete family. And I had thought I was going to… It looked like for a while there that witchcraft was going to break through 10 years ago when it didn’t quite. Now it’s a lot stronger than it was 10 years ago. So I felt like the goddess let me down. Here I am advocating out there for you, taking the hits, living on the margins, because there’s not a lot of us to feed the coffers. What did I do wrong? Where are you? And there was a lot of just trudging, just trudging through and not believing. And then someone said to me, it was a scientist who said, “This is all a load of hoo-ha. This is BS. And I’d like to break your wand. I’d like you to not believe in this anymore because it’s ridiculous.”
And I said, “You know what? At the end of the day, it makes me feel better to hug a tree. At the end of the day, it makes me feel better to know that the wind longs to play in my hair. And this is what feels good. This aligns with my joy.” And so for me, it was a couple of years of living without and being frustrated by not being able to actualize the dreams that I wanted and the time that I wanted. But there is such a thing, I believe, as divine timing. And sometimes our dreams don’t manifest when we want them to, because we’re not actually ready to take them on. And so for me, it was really, honestly getting this box of magick in the mail at the beginning of the pandemic.
TS: Tell us about that. Tell us what happened.
JD: OK. So I was on a book signing tour for The Book of Spells. And I went to a psychic reading, and the gentleman said, “There’s a spirit here who wants to speak to you.” And he started describing Connie. And she told the psychic, “Tell her to get a picture of me. I want to go on her next book signing tour.” So when you get these messages, you just say, “OK, I’m doing it. I don’t know what this is going to lead to, but OK.” So I reached out on Facebook, and Connie’s daughter Alexa responded with a picture of her mom. And then a couple months later, she asked me, the pandemic hit, and then she asked me, “Would you like to have my mom’s teaching curricula and her magickal education? The family has been consulted and we’d like you to have it.”
And I said, “Well, of course. I’d love that.” And then the snow is still on the ground in May when my mentor’s life work showed up. And it was 23 pounds of paperwork. Things back from 1971, the ESP Institute newsletter, to things from the school of Wicca, to handwritten hand-fasting rituals. And I sat with it and I didn’t know what to do. For the longest time, I just looked at this huge collection, I couldn’t make any sense of it. And then one day, I heard Connie say in my head, I heard those messages. If anyone’s ever had that resounding message from whatever spirit, your parent, mentor. And she said, “Tell them about us.” But she said it in her sexy way, “Tell them about us.” She said it like that. And so I said, “Oh yes, let me sit with it.” And so for me, one of my favorite books was always Tuesdays with Morrie.
So for me, it was like Tuesdays with Morrie, but instead of being a professor and a student, it was a Greek yiayia and a Mexican mama, that was the two of us who sat down. And I soaked up her wisdom. I soaked up how to live this life and how important it is to share and how important the mentor relationship is. And that’s why I really was so encouraged to write this book. It’s a love letter to my mentor, but it’s also a love letter to those of us who have magick within that we haven’t actualized yet. The miracles, the beliefs that a box of magick could come 15 years after my mentor had gone, at a time when I needed strong arms around me and I needed to believe again.
At the time the box arrived, I was menopausal, empty nest. I was already isolated, because I had moved to the mountains before the pandemic hit. I was a hot mess. So this box gave me this structure to channel my energy, like the Shiva and Shakti energy, like the energy of the female as this strong creative force. And like the river, the water of the river. And the Shiva is the sides, the river banks that help guide that water that would otherwise spill outwards.
So this idea of chronicling our relationship along a structure of the hero’s journey, which is what the book is also based on, this idea of answering a call of the wild within, our feral nature that we don’t let out because we’re afraid of it, that it might not be fine-tuned enough for society. But this idea of sitting with her and having her remind me of what it was like to teach others and help others and how good it feels to share our knowledge and to add to the community of magick makers, finding our herbal allies, facing our shadow self and looking at the stories that have harmed us over time that we keep repeating, the ideas we tell about ourselves, and utilizing my own story of coming to grips with being a teacher.
I told her at one point I said, “I have mommy issues.” How can I be still mad at my mom at 32 and say, “I love the goddess.”
TS: One of the things I wanted to ask you about was this section of A Box of Magick that’s dedicated to shadow work. And in it, you do a lot of deep work that has to do with the healing of your relationship with both your mother and your father, using some of the principles of magick. And I wonder if you can share a little bit about that, especially for that listener who has some broken relationship in their life or unhealed relationship or relationship they’d like to work on using some of these principles.
JD: Thank you. I believe, again, like I said earlier, a spell is a prayer in 3D because of these things that we’ve decided have meaning for us, the salt flavor, the egg, fertility. So if we have these things that represent what’s important to us, ritual helps us move through that process. Because what’s hurt is a smaller child, an inner child, or a very vulnerable part of ourselves that needs those ritual markers and that ceremony to move ourselves out of being isolated, alone, back into a feeling of belonging and community and connection. And so my mother and I are two powerhouse Latina women. And so we hit loggerheads. And we came to that point where we were just recycling old stories and repeating them with maybe a little nuance, but pretty much the same damn thing. And so I came to her after talking with Connie, and Connie explained to me that each of us, through our mothers, are little mothers. And that the Mother Earth is this great big mother and the goddess energy and the divine feminine. That’s the full spectrum of motherhood and all the opportunities.
And my mother, just like me, like myself, I am one aspect, one ray of light from the golden sun, one ray of sunshine expressing itself in the world. And my mother was doing her best and came into motherhood as a teenager, motherless. So it was very difficult. So to begin to look at her in that way, how can you shift that? Well, you might put a mirror, that reflection as part of your ritual. We used a bury-the-hatchet ritual. So I came to my mother and I said, “I want there to be more peace between us.” And she said, “Of course. So do I.” And I said, “Could we create a ritual together? Could we create a ritual that we’re both working on that gives us the tools to work through some of the pain?” So I could say to her, I told her all the ways in which she had hurt me.
And the only answer that anyone could say was, “I hear you.” Not, “Well, that day was really hard.” Or, “Remember I was pregnant with your little sister at that time?” There was no excuses. It was just being present. And then she got to express that same, “This is how I was hurt.” And it’s all on accountability. It wasn’t, “You do this and this is why I’m hurting.” It was, “This is what hurt me.” And there was no explaining it away. It was just being present for it so that the pain could be felt, aired out and released. And then we spoke about the relationship. We wanted to have the dream relationship with each other. And to be able to sit with someone and say, “I don’t want to fight with you. I want to go on vacation with you. I want to have dinner with you once a week. I want to have phone calls. I want you in my life.” For someone to hear that is so validating.
And then that symbol of the hatchet. So we took these words that we had written to each other, we dug out a hole in her backyard and we buried them as seeds of something we want to blossom. And then we buried the hatchet as a way of symbolizing, we’re putting our arms down, our weaponry, we’re no longer attacking each other, we’re coming from love. And so it was such a powerful, palpable way to not stay stuck in the shadows of, “She just hates me, I know it,” or whatever the story is, to recognize that she’s a human with her own experiences. And she wasn’t put on this Earth primarily to be my mother, but to have her own experience. And this is one aspect of her that she’s willing to heal because it’s one of the most important relationships in her life as well. And to see that.
TS: I notice as you’re speaking, what I’m reflecting on is a relationship in my own life that I would like to have greater healing in. And I’m imagining listeners thinking about the same thing, and how bringing in these ritual elements, not just making it a conversation, but bringing in the ritual elements really makes a shift. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit, how do you see that working? That it’s so powerful, that we did something, we took an actual physical sharp object and put it in the ground. That’s different than saying to each other, “Let’s move on, let’s forgive.”
JD: Well, I think the easiest thing is to think of our rituals that we might have around Thanksgiving or other holidays. Sometimes, if you grew up in a family, for example, like I did with a lot of kids, there’s always someone to trace their foot and write everybody’s name on and make a place marker for everybody. There’s always the fight over whether the mashed potatoes has lumpy or if it’s smooth. There’s always these different things that Thanksgiving isn’t without. Thanksgiving or Christmas or your birthday or an anniversary isn’t the same unless you go to the dock again where you met or unless you play that song. So if you recognize it in things that aren’t magickal but mundane, then you can kind of move it over to the relationships in our lives and what we want to manifest.
So I feel that even though my mom and I might slip up every once in a while, we know we had this ritual, we know that we’re coming from love. And we have this visceral, kinesthetic—that’s the other thing, because rituals involve movement as well. So it’s not like you said, just the talking head that maybe just doesn’t go all the way through, but that it actually physically takes you to a place and you’re physically doing something with somebody else so that it goes into your body in a deeper way. And so that I know that when my mom does something or whatever that sets me off, I can remember back to a time when she was just a person. I wasn’t relating to her trying to heal that relationship as my mother. It was a person, a human being.
And I think it’s so important for us to see these people that we’re fighting with as having their own contradictions. They’re not living just to figure it out with us. They have their own things that are going on. And if we can step back and not just look at them as the role that they serve us, but as equal partners working through life and walking a parallel path together that we’d like there to be more smoothness. I feel like it’s really important to distance ourselves from the role we think they’re supposed to play.
TS: Important. Good point. Now, one of the things that moved me, several, so many things in A Box of Magick, but this one thing that you shared towards the end of the book about how in your own life you’ve felt this focus on healing the pain of your ancestors. And I think that moved me because I’ve also, I feel that very strongly in my life as a call. And I’ve been like, “Wow, why is this so important to me?” It’s so important to me that somehow there’s something I am supposed to create and do in my life that will have these reverberations back through my family lineage. And I wonder if you can share a little bit about how you used magick to help you with that.
JD: Oh, thank you. So my ancestry goes back ten generations in Orange County, California. So my ancestors were the Spanish colonists who came and established the mission system in California, and established Los Angeles and got some of the first ranchos. So if you think of fandangos and you think of this Old California, riding horseback and whatnot, those were my ancestors. I used to be proud of that until it occurred to me, well, when I had grown up, I was told that the Indigenous people of California no longer existed. That was in the books, that the Spanish invaders had decimated their population. That wasn’t true. The decimation was true, but the total decimation wasn’t. There are many descendants from that time period. So feeling that huge rift of being connected to the Earth as… And my Indigenous roots go back to Mexico, so it goes back 7,000 years to Jalisco, Mexico.
So that’s where I feel like I feel very connected. It comes from something very old and in my line, but there’s also this arrogance of coming into a place and saying, “This is ours now. And as a matter of fact, we’d like you to be the slaves to this.” I’m not saying I felt responsible for it, but I felt the pain in such a way that it was almost as if nobody else saw what I saw. And so you live on that land, and if you’re awake and maybe empathic, you can feel the pain of the land itself. And I think because I felt it, that’s why I wanted to put whatever balm or salve that I could. And I also feel that there was a really big, there’s evidence in our family line, because we can trace back these ten generations, of a lot of discord between the female, the mother and daughter.
And in some cases, I wonder if that isn’t what started such a discord between women in Orange County, California. It’s such a fight. Did it start early with those ancestors? Can we get rid of this? And again, I feel, because I can feel into both sides, I feel that desire, just like if you see someone who’s in pain and you know you’re holding an antidote, then you go and give it. So for me, that antidote is recognizing that pain. When my second son was born, I was able to take his placenta home from the hospital and I buried it in the dry river bed as part of an Indigenous practice. But also recognizing those ancestors that did build their own empire and feeling into the Earth.
I mean, not everyone’s going to have a handy placenta, so that’s not always something we can do, but there are other things. You can tie a small braid of yourself and bury that. A small braid of yourself, I’m sorry. You can take a small braid from your hair, very tiny one. And your hair is very powerful, it’s part of who you are. You can braid that, put that and bury that in the land. You can tend maybe native gardens that you see or visit the most raw part of that land or that place that you feel needs the love that you have to give.
TS: Now, Jamie, just one dot I want to connect from our conversation. You said this box of magick arrived right at the beginning of the pandemic when it was also a dark period for you. And do you think that Connie was coming 15 years later and saying to you, “Hey, come on, girl” or some version of that, by that box arriving at a time when your faith needed rehabilitation and reenergizing?
JD: I absolutely do. It began with that reading, because now she’s coming on tour with me. We’re talking about her. She would love this. She completed the cycle.
TS: Finally, if someone says, “I wish I had a mentor. I would love to have some type of spiritual guide, mentor, that kind of relationship.” You can’t just necessarily dream it up or drum it up. How could I invoke that, bring that into my life if someone wants that?
JD: I feel that one of the ways to do that is, like I said earlier, I work a lot with nature and the elements. So we have earth, air, fire, water, and all of those have their own energy. So it gets back to, I want that mentor. Well, what do you want? Do you want a mentor who is going to challenge your brain, your magickal studies, help you study all the magickal correspondences, the herbs, the crystals, the gods, the goddesses, the mythology? Do you want someone who’s going to tickle your brain? Do you want an earthy person who’s going to hug you and be there with you? It is more cozy, and will sit and listen to your relationship stories and help you process through a very earthy way of doing things. Do you want someone who’s going to help you with your emotional life? Or do you want someone who’s going to invoke this fire and this drive in you?
So whether they’re one of those four elements, you can choose symbols that represent each one. So for example, a chalice represents a cup, is like the womb. It’s like ocean that holds our emotions. So you could create an altar that looks like the ocean. If you needed someone who was going to help guide you through tough emotions on your magickal journey. If you wanted somebody who was going to help you with that mental aspect, you could put feathers or pens or pencils or other aspects that represent air energy. And so I believe in creating those altars again. And those altars can be anything. It could be part of a bookshelf, it could be a little section of your desk, it could be on the back of your toilet. Anything that you look at on a regular basis that sends a message to your right brain: we’re co-creating this, we’re going to create this. This is what’s important to us.
And then you could even put a mentor. And again, writing some kind of poem or chant, something that you could say an affirmation about this mentor who is on its way. And she’s calling you as much as you are calling it. Just like Rumi says, those things are calling to us as much as we’re calling to them. Mentors need to share, because they could die with all that information. But then where would it go? We have this need at the end of our life, regardless of what our spiritual practice is, it’s to share with others what we know and what we’ve learned. And it’s just an innate human thing for many of us to want that. So there are mentors who want the mentee. So it’s also important to remember that you’re not taking from anybody. You’re not pulling their energy away. They say a candle doesn’t lose anything by lighting another candle. And that’s what this is. So if we remember that and we remember that worthiness and we remember that the mentor is calling to us, because they need a student.
TS: Beautiful answer. Jamie, can we end with a blessing? Will you offer us some type of magickal blessing?
JD: Oh my gosh. Some type of magickal blessing. OK. All right. It’s another meditation. So a lot of us need that. This world is very frenetic. It’s changing all the time. It’s scary as anything right now. So I like to imagine us standing tall, standing, sitting, wherever you are, sitting, holding yourself centered. Imagine your spine is the trunk of a tree. And feel your roots going into Mother Earth and drawing up that energy of this earth energy, of this mother energy that is bigger than any mother you have ever met, because she is every mother that has ever existed. And that energy is coming up to us, up through our knees, up our body, our whole self, all the way up through our heart, to the top of our head. And then branches sprout out from the top of our head and come down almost like a willow tree or a big oak tree, whatever tree you like to see.
Imagine those leaves going back down to the earth and then connecting to that source energy again and flowing up through us and out and up through us. And so that we are this continuum of an energy, a force field, a human body filled with Mother Earth energy, filled with the expression of the sky from our leaves and our branches that are coming up. And I have a—we say source to source, “Flow through me, above to below, turn to return, clearly face to grow. As I will it, so shall it be. Spell make it so.”
TS: Jamie Della, she’s the author of the new book with Sounds True, A Box of Magick: A Guided Journey to Crafting a Magickal Life Through Witchcraft, Ritual Herbalism, and Spellcrafting. Jamie, thank you so much. Thank you for all of your great work and your big, beautiful heart.
JD: Thank you for having me.
TS: And if you’d like to watch Insights at the Edge on video and participate in the after-show Q&A session with our guests, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community featuring award-winning original shows, live classes, community learning, guided meditations, and more with the leading wisdom teachers of our time. Use promo code PODCAST to get your first month free. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com. Sounds True: waking up the world.
