About Rachel Izabella

Parent, writer, sorceress, geomancer (geomantrix?), book lover, amateur linguist, amateur astronomer, Hekatean and DIY Hellenic Polytheist, animist, tree-hugger. Also trans. Also queer. ⚥

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My identity as a woman is not a choice for me. The alternative would have been spending the remainder of my life deeply depressed, as I spent my whole life depressed before I came out to myself as trans. I am not ashamed. I regret nothing.

I practice sorcery. I’m a comparative newbie at it, I didn’t start when I was 12 or 13 as most practitioners seem to have done. But I have spoken with Archangels, demons, and Gods. When I do a shoal of sigils, I get results, usually very fast results. When I practice divination, I know it’s going to rain tomorrow, or that so-and-so will win the next election. I need to work on my financial sorcery, though — it’s never been a priority till now. SRS, sex reassignment surgery, is very expensive.

I call myself a sorceress, adding the so-called diminutive “-ess” with pride. I am not a magician nor a witch.What other word is available? The word sorcery has sinister connotations for some. Myself, I don’t think so.

Transition — and if you don’t know, that’s the process and the all hard work of switching gender rolls — is currently distracting me from my practice somewhat. But it’s getting easier now that I am consistently passing as a woman. I hate the word passing, by the way. It makes it sound as if a trans woman weren’t a real woman. But no other word will do. Trans folk are different, however, and consequently we’re frequently despised by the ignorant, the stupid (though I’ve encountered little of that myself). “Haters gonna hate.” Passing just makes life easier.

Back to “why sorceress?” —Witchcraft I believe is a specific calling, and it’s not mine. Traditional Witchcraft and Wicca have magical and spiritual emphases that I’ll have nothing of. There are types of magic that most witches won’t do, just because they’re witches. I won’t be bound so. Witchcraft tends to focus on the Lunar current — the Night, the Moon, ecstatic rites, types of spirituality that I don’t share, wilderness settings — neglecting the Solar. (One might, almost accurately, think of the Lunar Current as Dionysian and the Solar Current as Apollonian.) Again, I won’t be so bound.

Unlike most Wiccans and New Agers I don’t believe in karma. You think thoughts and do deeds, and these have their effects on you. That’s not what Westerners means when they say karma though. The Western idea of karma is, pardon the language, bullshit. I don’t look down on Wicca or the New Age, though. Who am I to criticize?

Strangely, most magicians, almost all self-styled magicians, are men. Maybe it’s because being a magician is such a nerdy affair, memorizing tables of attributes, correspondences, names of the angels of the days of the week, constantly, constantly word-burning their tables of practice and creating roomfuls of tools and doodads. There are, however, a lot of women Chaos Magicians, but then Chaos Magicians don’t do the things I just described, or am about to. Magicians neglect the Lunar current almost completely, favoring all things Solar. Aleister Crowley often called it the Solar-Phallic current. Magicians usually do things by the book. Many are almost completely Apollonian in their practice. Many disesteem achieving practical results at all, making magic their religion and spirituality, striving to achieve union with God, whatever that may mean. I suppose such magicians were born rich, or they have high paying day jobs.

None of that applies to Chaos Magicians. Chaos Magicians are cool. They tend to be atheists, though, and I’m no atheist. They tend to be skeptical, even of their own experiences, which I think is dumb. They’re not skeptical of their skepticism though. Hypocrites.

So I’m a sorceress. All the division and compartmentalization I’ve described above depresses me. The descriptions above are stereotypes, by the way. Many witches and magicians do not fall prey to these stereotypes. Many do.

I’m a polytheist. I prefer Gods who actually answer prayers. I do not believe in any ultimate or One True God. The closest thing is the Azoth, the subtle substance of which all things are composed, no matter how complex, and which you’ve probably never heard of (look it up, read a book or something). The Azoth may even be sentient and benevolent, but it doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t answer prayers, it isn’t “God”. —I’m also an animist. I believe all things are to some extent alive.

I believe these things because of my lived experiences. Believe or disbelieve what you wish. Atheism and Scientism — they’re religions, and damned sorry religions at that. Reason and Common Sense — they’re what somebody told you to believe, and you fell for it, you have faith in it.

I walk by knowledge, not by faith.