Not into weekly newsletters? You can opt-out of the weekly newsletter without removing yourself from other updates HERE!

Hey, Reader!

I’ve had chaos and power and order on the brain lately. Maybe it’s Tuesday’s Scorpion Full Moon. Maybe it’s Eclipse season, or Jupiter’s recent conjunction Uranus, or maybe it’s just *gestures to indicate the current state of the world*...

And I think these questions of power and order are particularly important ones for those of us who seek a new paradigm, a world of love and liberation, a world of magic and enchantment and justice.

A long time ago, I saw a picture online of the bough of a pine tree. In one half of the picture, the bough appeared as it grows from the tree. This half was labelled “order”. In the other half of the picture, all the needles were pulled off the tree and arranged neatly into lines, the individual branches of wood pulled apart and set into another set of lines, and the small pine cones all removed and laid in still more lines. This half was labelled “chaos”.

It was an elegant illustration of the folly of the so-called “order” of the status quo, of Empire. And I think it offers a valuable perspective for those of use who are magically and politically active against Empire, in service of a new world and a new paradigm.

When we are dreaming of change, what is chaos and what is order? When we advocate change to the “rational”, highly-ordered, and hierarchical structures of Empire, we are accused of advocating for chaos. But really, what is order and what is chaos? And if change, a natural and omnipresent fact of life can throw these “ordered” systems into chaos, does that not meat that those advocating change have immense power?

This quote from June Jordan is really what first got me thinking along these lines: “We are not powerless. We are indispensable despite all atrocities of state and corporate policy to the contrary. At a minimum we have the power to stop cooperating with our enemies. We have the power to stop the courtesies and let the feelings be real. We have the power to not vote, and not to register for the draft, and not to applaud, and not to attend, and not to buy, and not to pay taxes or rent or utilities. At the very least, if we cannot control things we certainly can mess them up.”

Sure, we cannot control these systems. But do we want to? What might be the power of giving up cooperation and saying ‘no’ to the unnatural systems of order of Empire, instead saying ‘yes’ to the systems of order that oppose and threaten and put the lie to Empire’s order?

This is the power of solidarity. Solidarity is chaotic to an unnaturally regimented and segmented Empire. It is the chaos of a collective, of individual agency and sovereignty harnessed together towards a different vision diametrically opposed to that of Empire.

This is the power of the cyclical and the fractal to a linear, centralized order.
The more you integrate an animistic worldview…
The more you find relationship, congruence, allyship, community, with the cosmos, the land, your human and other-than-human communities…
The more you say ‘yes’ to other ways of seeing, ordering, and operating in the world…
The more power you take back from centralized and linear Empire and the less power it has to maintain its unnatural order.

​

In Case You Missed It:

• On Instagram:
  • ​MEMES FOR MERCURY! Which cartoon character was your queer witch awakening?????​

This Week's Joys & Gratitudes

• A dear friend gifted me an amazing book of animism and chaos magic and it's amazing and I'm so excited to dive into it!
• This week I re-joined the D&D group that I played with in grad school and I was super nervous about it because it was years ago and I wasn't even out as trans or non-binary then, but they were all super chill about it and so welcoming! It was really wonderful!
• My dreams have been fascinating, meaningful, and so deeply symbolic and I'm feeling very grateful to have such a vibrant dream practice!

What's bringing you joy this week? Where are you finding magic? Feel free to hit reply and let me know!

Until next time!

In Joy, Magic, and Solidarity,
Lex

​

P.S. Know someone who would find magic in this newsletter? Please forward it on! Word of mouth is one way we weave connection & magic!

​