Creating Your Own Projects, Creating Your Own Reality: How A Witch Does Business

Today I wanted to share about an important way I choose to create. How I create what I do, and why.

I don't create the things I make and sell— printed matter, apparel, and accessories—by googling what other people are doing, taking out spreadsheets, or trying to come up with what I *think* would sell. That feels really unnatural and contrived to me. It doesn't really resonate with my own creative process.

I also need to be completely transparent and share that I make the majority of my living by being a graphic designer, art director, and intuitive Tarot reader: so if what I create doesn't sell, it isn't the end of the world. This is a way for my creativity breathe, and to not feel obligated to make money from it. (Liz Gilbert talks a lot about this in her book Big Magic, and it resonates with me. Intertwining financial "success" with creative "success" can be a fast track recipe for disaster.)

I do create the pieces I sell based upon what I would like to see in the world, and what I need. The Many Moons Workbooks fall into that category.

For years, I would work diligently with each Moon cycle—energetically, emotionally, practically, and magically. I'd have all these pieces of paper filled with notes and spells stuffed in a drawer under my altar! I thought: wouldn't it be great to have these all in one place? I thought, wouldn't it be great to share my own process with others who are curious?

A lot of the workbooks were also born out of resources I was searching for, but could not find. Lots of the Moon Magic books I came across were just filled with one-size-fits-all-spells, with not much more on deepening up to your own process or suggestions on deepening one's own intuition. Lots of workbooks I came across weren't organized in a way where one could follow along in real time, checking in on progress and process. Lots of self-help books I came across made no mention of magic. And TONS of spiritual, New Age books I read made absolutely no mention of feminism, civil rights, mental health issues, intersectionality, capitalism, or the patriarchy. They seemed to assume everyone was starting from the same— privileged, cisgendered, white— place.

So, I tried my best to create a project that incorporated mind-body-spirit, that attempted to draw parallels between inner and outer worlds, and to attempt to make the project as inclusive as possible. I went back over my journals and dove deep into my experiences with my Tarot clients to formulate questions and pools of inquiry—as asking oneself questions is a great way to get in touch with one's intuition, and one's desires. I invited collaborators I respected to contribute to the project so that there would be a chorus of voices from different specialities and backgrounds.

I tried to share every spell, every Tarot spread, every tip and technique and author and and herb and crystal and resource that has helped me over the years in healing low self-esteem and self-hate, chronic depression, deep scarcity issues, and PTSD from various abusive backgrounds.

I tried to impart every last bit of manifestation advice that has allowed to me live the life I adore and love. Surrounded by amazing friends and community, making art, design, or creating and communicating every single day, helping other women and queer people with my intuitive consult, and allowing myself to enjoy my life and a lot of the time, do what I would like with a flexible schedule and plenty of money to create new projects, care for myself, be booked out 6 months in advance, and donate thousands of dollars every year to grassroots orgs and more established non-profits alike. My life is interesting and rewarding. A lot of it is due to my white privilege and other privileges— too many to name. Some of it is because I've worked quite hard and never gave up. A bunch of it is because I committed myself to therapy and to breaking through patterns of abuse and shame via other modalities, such as meditation, EMDR, TRE, and breath work. And some of it is due to magic, spell work, and manifestation techniques consistently worked over years.

This was what I wanted to give others. I was writing it for my friends, friends of friends. For you, dear reader.

And I was writing it for myself.

I speak more about my process in this interview here.

I get really in-depth about other aspects of my business, working for myself, and living with a serious health condition  here.

The goal was to make something truly helpful, and create something that truly did not exist. This project is also a feminist project, as it aims to center marginalized and/or historically oppressed groups. It posits that our intuition, our emotions, our energy are our true soft power. When we identity, harness, and work with our own unique gifts, we are unstoppable. This project wants everyone's dreams to come true. At the very least, this project wants you to realize how wonderful you are, how deserving you are of love and of kindness and care.

I speak more in-depth about this edition of Many Moons on Natalie Ross' inspiring podcast Dream Freedom Beauty here.

On Lindsay Mack's amazing Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast I talk about the creative process, fears and spirituality. 

If you are a creative person*, in any way, you can ask yourself:

What do I wish existed?

What do I need to make for myself?

What do I need to make for my friends or community?

What are the projects of my life? How do I need to express these projects, what forms could these take, large or small?

What is my intuition telling me to dive more deeply into?

*If you are a person, you are creative.

Go to buy a print on demand version here. 

If you are trying to track down the original, hot pink version, go to a list of my stockists here.