What My Blog Is Like:

Ecstatic Spirituality, a Shamanic Joyful Wholeness,
and Practical Empowerment

Update 2026: I wrote this post twenty years ago. I feel good that the Shamanic priorities stated in it are among those that I still strive to live and teach. I also feel good that the priorities I had back then were not passing fancies but timeless and important.

The update below has not changed the post’s basic content. I saw ways I could make it clearer, and that’s what I’ve done.

Ecstatic Spirituality Can Be Down-to-Earth

A wisecrack can crack open the cosmos. Then we can rearrange it to make a better home for our species and the other beings in this galaxy.

A good-natured joke can crack open the pretenses of an oppressive society. Then we can rearrange it, make a better world for everyone.

A Shamanic Joyful Wholeness

My blog deals with everything from talismans to environmental issues to the self-help movement to makeup tips.

I might share makeup tips as a way to discuss the environment, talismans, or self-help.

There’s a fundamental logic to my approach:

I usually don’t want purely spiritual, political, magical, or environmental dialogues. I talk about a million different topics simultaneously and through the lens of a million different disciplines.

I want it all. And I want it all woven, every last part of it, into an inclusive, sustainable, joyful whole. I want it woven by threads of love, careful analysis, and—one of the points of my work is to prove that the following does not contradict the previous part of this sentence—celebratory chaos.

My blogs reflect my approach as a Shamanic teacher. I help the students in my Faerie Witch classes achieve the same mind-boggling wholeness that I want for myself.

I use Shamanism to create a personal wholeness by becoming part of a larger whole. It is a weaving of all things. So for my wholeness, spirituality has to weave with politics, analysis has to weave with laughter, and intellect has to weave with silliness. And in this weaving, chaos is revealed as a magnificent and orderly part of the whole.

Practical Empowerment

Trust Your Intellect, Intuitions, Experiences, and Observations

Break out of the box labeled, “You can’t discuss this! You’re not authorized (by education, gender, class, whatever).” Talk about it all! In any context!

I am not suggesting that your ideas, intuitions, or assessments are inevitably accurate. But they are as trustworthy as anyone else’s. And you have a lifetime of experiences that inform your ideas, intuitions, and observations. Weaving.

To make a good life can require claiming one’s authority.

Practical Shamanic Rituals

My blogs often include suggestions, geared toward helping you both have the life you want and make a difference in the world. These ideas— or call them magical tools—might take the form of my personal Shamanic philosophy or rituals I’ve developed. Often, I share my philosophy through stories, instead of didactic lecture. And the rituals might be poems that are affirmations, invocations, or other Pagan liturgy.

All my jokes aside, for decades the tools I’ve developed have helped my clients and students reach cherished goals. So do try my ideas—sitting on the page, they can’t change your life. … Well, some can change your life if you simply read them. … Even then they might change a lot more if you use them.

I shouldn’t have said, “All my jokes aside.” Some of them are among the magical tools that took me years of work to create.

Francesca De Grandis is the best-selling author of Be a Goddess!. Fifty years as a full-time community Shaman inform her classes, Shamanic counseling, healings, and other services. Francesca was also trained from birth in a European Shamanic family tradition of Celtic and Italian Witchcraft. She has lived this lesser-known Faerie Shamanism for 76 years. Her Goddess mysticism combines otherworldly travel with practical magic and down-to-earth wisdom. Nickname: Outlaw Bunny.

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