Do as you Will, do as you Must in your own circumstances and what is right for you.
This is just a guideline that has helped me. I don’t do all of them 100% of the time but putting my money and attention where it can best serve good is important to me.
I get asked “what can I do?” by others often and by no means am I a socio-political expert, I’m a Witchcraft teacher of healing and consciousness, but these are the helpful things I’ve come across or had shared with me that I’ve tried putting into action. So I share in the hope it can help others struggling to take action. They are mostly little inconveniences that suck for us but start to chip away at the bigger machines of our social-entertainment-food-pharmaceutical-prison-technological-corporate-military-industrial-complex.
I’m not big on “resistance” as a word. There is magickal truth to the idea that what you resist, persists. What you are anti-, evokes its opposite to perpetuate the identity of being against it. Like antimatter and matter, and explosive results that can destroy all. As a magician you have to hold both as tools and over-identification with one results in your own harm and often your transmutation into your opposite.* The magician is not the positive or negative end of the magnet, but the person holding and using the magnet itself.
I’m big on Destruction. Binding. Transmutation. Transcending. Going around/under/over if you can’t go through. Noncompliance and non-recognition of authority. Ignoring deliberately, as an act, not passivity. And most importantly outcreating. The future is in new visions of the world and creative solutions that can entice and inspire. Destruction as in catabolic function, not wanton cruelty. There is a show, an illusion that has always been a part of the world and we have to be better in being illusionists for good, for inspiration, ethics and justice. We have to present an option that everyone wants to choose. We not only have to outcreate, but use those tools to sell the new vision to others.
At this moment I do feel the magick is in play and my guidance is let what has been cast unfold, keep to your practice, keep open hearted, and do the good you can before you. Sometimes it’s harder to do the inconvenient tangible thing than the big ritual. I often think of the Taoist proverb often named “Good Luck, Bad Luck”.**
I’ve spent the better part of my adult life with both amazing privilege and being rejected, condemned, and sometimes illegal. I was openly married before I ever had a piece of paper and still don’t have that paper, but I’m no less married. I’ve lost opportunities being queer and gained opportunities for being queer. Witchcraft and queerness prepared me for a life on the outside yet amazing connection and synchronicity. We are now all on the outside but we must also live our lives amid horror.
Find joy.
Share joy.
Be joy!
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Keep your Practice – spiritual practice, contemplative practice, reflective practice, journaling, whatever. Keep something that aids you in finding your center while also inspiring you to more.
Take time to rest and be quiet from the news and people.
Be present with the people in your life, build, maintain and grow relationships amid friends, family, and all loved ones. Check-in, support, and most importantly, allow yourself to be supported.
Share your skills with your community, but don’t try to do it all. I won’t be growing tons of vegetables or fixing cars, but I do make herbal remedies and distribute them to those in need who want them. And I connect people to other people who can help because I know a lot of people.
Support Local Credit Unions and get out of corporate banks. If you can’t get all your accounts out, get some of them out.
If you invest, talk to your investment company about ethical and environmental investments. After years of taking hits compared to less ethical investments, they are starting to balance out. Every step towards starving unethical corporations.
Give to charities to avoid the taxes. Give to individuals who are not supported by institutions and charities. You can’t save everyone. Make a budget and make giving a part of that budget if you can. When you run out for the month, don’t feel guilty you can’t help someone. Help those you can and don’t lose your own security and be reasonable in your aid. Losing your own shirt when you don’t have another just shifts the problem, but doesn’t solve anything.
Don’t use AI, Artificial Intelligence, like ChaptGPT and the like. Beyond the concern of what it is doing cognitively, beyond the ethical and moral concerns of stealing work in its training, the disproportional environmental concern and its effect on the poor in terms of air, water and electricity should have us all alarmed. Links below!***
Break the Google Addiction. Change your default search engine. I use Ecosia, but there are others, depending on what you want out of it. I like planting trees. Friends use Duckduckgo. But get off of Google. If you can get off Gmail even better!
Get Off Twitter. Get Off Substack. They give platforms to literal Nazis. Tell your favorites you wish to support them on other platforms and they should get off too.
Limit your time on social media and “consume” art, beauty, literature and not “content” that is essentially advertisements for social media companies trying to keep your eyeballs on them. Even if they have pretty people in them. Look at your attention as a resource you cannot squander. I say limit, as many wonderful artists, authors, teachers, and movements use social media and feel they need it, myself included. So just be mindful of how you use it and don’t give yourself or your life away. Recognize the mesmerism inherent in the way social media operates and do not submit.
Make and share art. If you can go to a live community event or a non social media (zoom or other live forum) event and meet with real people in real time, do it.
Call your reps and governor. I used to get the feeling that it does nothing but I’ve seen just a little movement in a better direction and I must write them all 2-5 times a month. Show them you are paying attention. Voice your displeasure when they are cowards or complicit.
Limit your use of Amazon, Target, and Walmart, if not eliminate it. We must use our financial power to stop people who fund our downfall. Target is certainly feeling the pressure. I know its hard, but find other online retailers and direct bookshops. Libro.fm, betterworldbooks.com, bookshop.org, and powells.com.
Phone your credit card companies when they comply with unjust pressure against creative communities and queer communities. Tie up the lines and make it hard for them to ignore.
Adult Content – Do not upload your ID, Info or biometrics to access. Get a VPN! (free for 1 device: protonvpn.com). Don’t buy into the current adult verification. First step in bigger problems of surveillance. Support legal porn! The censorship or banning of pornography on different platforms is often the first step towards banning other things declared “obscene” like LGBTQ+ content. Support filtering options and personal responsibility.
Stop supporting JK Rowling. I get it. Many of us loved it and still love it but every dollar to her now potentially supports active harm. There are a ton of quite frankly better written similar worlds. Try Rainbow Rowell’s Simon Snow series starting with Carry On. It’s really fun and surprisingly deep.
Protest if you can. Know you are not alone. Magicians, use the energy at the protests for fuel for a magickal working. Or be present to keep peace and protection up for the protesters.
Get your affairs in order: Do you have all of the legal paperwork you need? Will, power of attorney, medical proxy, passport, etc.? Legal documents are not a guarantee but they’re a useful tool and trying to use the legal system to your benefit.
If you are asked to do harm in your job and feel you cannot refuse for your own safety, do it poorly. Do it slowly. Make mistakes. Sand in the gears of the machine.
Talk to new people, and be yourself as much as you are safe to do so. Have uncomfortable conversations with new people. Be a visible reminder of difference and humanity. Talk to allies and those who demographically might be against you. My whole gym is pretty clear I’m a gay poly Witch and if someone is leaving the sauna due to discomfort over that, it’s not me. But I’ve gotten conservative folk to realize I’m not different from them, and shared some sharp political takes that affect me that they had no idea about, due to their own media consumption. Also requires you to listen to people’s concerns even if you feel they are unhinged. It’s a battle of empathy and while frustrated, I can make sure we can all win that in my small groups. But it requires patience.
Make friends and check In with the more vulnerable. Same gym has a high immigrant (for NH) staff and we have had quiet conversations about ICE escape plans and how to get help, and where to go. Let people know what you can and can’t do, but you see and you support, and you too could be in need of support.
If you can and you’re so inclined, run for something! runforsomething.net – Democracy isn’t a spectator sport and, along with voting, we can step up and run for elected office. If you feel you could be doing it better than the representatives you have, do it! I know a lot of us in the religious nonprofit world feel we cannot, but support those who do.
Find humor. Keep your sense of humor. Use humor as a tool for joy and if needed, for attack.
While tempted to be violent, and I think we all are, remain nonviolent. If we advocate for violence and not justice, we are welcoming violence upon us more than is already being done. I am not sure if this something that will change for the better with violence and I don’t think I”m the one to do it, though I get tempted. I often want the ends to justify the means, but the how is as important as the what and why. Of course, defend yourself in immediate danger, but don’t become the very thing you wish to change.*
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* “To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox; whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies.” – Phillip K. Dick
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse
*** AI and the environment : https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/ai-has-environmental-problem-heres-what-world-can-do-about
and https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117 and here https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107172
Photo by Vlad: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-black-coat-standing-near-body-of-water-3894874/