Witch, please! Modern day wizard and genuine delight of a human Devin Person (host of This Podcast is a Ritual) joins Lorrae to explore the everyday magic of creating more pleasure in our lives – from using ritual, intention, and sex magic to create a slightly better reality, to embracing that magic isn’t a shortcut to getting what we want – it’s the scenic route to healing.
Devin and Lorrae take a deep dive into the magic inside us all, recognizing our own patterns, limitations, and the roles we play in life, love, and relationships. We explore how to identifying the facets of ourselves that we love AND those that no longer serve us (like the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl role Lorrae shares she’s emulated for so long!), so we can release them and transform into something even more magical than we already are.
What is sex magic?
Lorrae: I’ve just loved your work for so long, and there really is this beautiful synergy between sensuality, eroticism, magic, and the energy that we bring forward every day.
I talk so often about how sexuality is so much more than our physical bodies. It’s that energy and playfulness and connection and how we’re showing up in the world every days.
So I want to start with the basics and give people an idea of what you’re talking about when you talk about magic?
Devin: It’s evolved in my time doing it, but let’s start with magic and then we’ll see how wizard ties in with that.
The philosophy of magic I’ve evolved is that magic is about story. And so you can have a normal event where let’s say you’re looking for love, right? I went on one of those dating apps. I found somebody. We hit it off, here we are.
Now that’s a positive sequence of events, but it’s not a very exciting story. In fact, you know, I attend a lot of weddings because of the work I do, and couples are always kind of reluctant when it’s like, “what’s your story?” And they’re like, “we met on an app.” Whereas if you hear a story that’s like, “I was going through this really hard time, so I treated myself and I went out to this museum thing that I was really interested in. Then I met this person and sparks flew. Then we had this serendipitous meeting again at a coffee shop near my house and we realized we live in the same neighborhood.”
That’s an amazing story. So if we think about the difference between those two, you still end up finding someone you like, yay, but one feels more exciting because there’s an element of luck, serendipity, possibility, and significance.
Magic is a way that we can kind of invite that in.
If you think even using the app example, if you said, “I was going through this rough breakup and afterwards I took three months to myself as a magical fast and I was just focusing on myself. Then, when I was ready, I did the self reflection to figure out what are the values that I seek in partnership? And I did a spell.” Then, even if you got on the app and you met someone that feels like they fit what you were looking for, that’s magic.
Lorrae: I love that. It feels like it’s also a framework that we are approaching the world with. So it’s partially these things that happen, but it’s also our interpretation of those events – seeing the serendipity, seeing the connection.
Devin: 100%. And I think the main element that I’d like to get across is that sometimes with more traditional new age manifestation culture, it kind of feels like you’re making the universe into your personal assistant. “Hey, universe, I want exactly this, don’t get my order wrong”. And off you send your message and then you want it to be delivered.
But I think if you think about the best gifts that you’ve gotten in your life, it’s rarely when you wrote down exactly what you wanted.
It’s when somebody picks that thing out that you had mentioned in conversation three months ago. They remembered, they surprised you with it. And that surprise and delight when you go, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even know I wanted this.”
That’s magic, rather than control. How do I tell a story with the universe knowing the universe is going to deviate from my script pretty quickly?
Lorrae: So often, when we’re in a low patch or when we’re not tapped into that kind of universal energy, we can feel like it’s closed off to us. It’s more that we’re not seeing the signs, we’re not open to it and opening ourselves up to that, especially in connection, romance, and relationship.
Manifesting with Sex Magic
Lorrae: When I first started with sex magic, it’s really hard to pair pleasure and orgasm with thinking about money or a vacation or a beautiful Airbnb or something. We’re so used to having our sexual pleasure be connected to sexual imagery that switching it into something else that we want to manifest is so tough.
What has your experience been like seeing the intersection between sexuality and magic and sex magic for manifesting what you want?
Devin: I think the first thing to recognize is how sexuality is used in the culture around us. Sex sells. We’re bombarded with advertisements.
I think this next generation in particular is going to have to grapple with the role that pornography has, especially in male alienation. It affects other people in different ways. But I think there’s a lot of male populace that struggles with a very private, very shameful pornography addiction cycle. And that is negative magic. It’s using this power, but in a disempowering way.
If we flip that inside out, how do we consciously and intentionally choose how to embrace our sexuality?
That could be exploring self-pleasure. That could be exploring your own ideas of what’s attractive and trying to break out of what you were told is attractive.
We have these wonderful nervous systems that evolved a very intense reward circuit to promote us doing procreative acts. And now we have the ability to take some of the messiness of procreation out and just leave the creation.
You could think of it as “am I getting into a state that feels charged up? Am I using that kind of peak experience of orgasm to focus energy?”
One of the things that you mentioned, it’s hard to think about the vacation I want and the orgasm I’m having and the normal associations with what makes me turned on. And that’s one of the things that I think magic offers – there’s a step where we get the conscious mind out of the way by abstracting it.
A classic technique that really popularized sex magic in the latter half of the 20th century is what’s called sigil magic, where you write a statement of intent, you scramble the letters, you draw them over each other, you make this kind of witchy little symbol, and ideally you kind of forget what it’s for and your unconscious remembers.
Now, you’re just having a wonderful sexual experience alone or with other people. And at that moment of climax, you’re either visualizing that symbol or focusing on it. You can, with their permission, write it on your partner’s forehead. You know, there’s all kinds of ways that you can then just focus on that burst of energy.
Then you can relax afterwards and say, “Cool. I sent the message. Let’s hope it gets delivered.”
Lorrae: I love the idea of making it abstract. I think that’s the beautiful thing about manifestation. Give it an idea, give it a feeling, a vibe, an energy and try to tap into that energy.
For me, I feel like sex magic has been really powerful when I can be fully present in the moment. It can be difficult for me when I’m in partnership because somebody else’s body and energy and presence is there and I want to be tuned in and tapped into them. But sex magic to me has always felt like a really private experience. I get my most powerful vibrator, the Magic Wand ironically enough to just fully focus in on that moment with no distractions
If someone was wanting to explore sex magic with a partner, maybe they’re sharing a manifestation together or a goal, and they don’t wanna just be like Magic Wanding and like focusing in, how would you recommend that they are able to connect to that for a shared goal?
Devin: With both sex and magic, it starts with clarifying intentions and communication. I used to be a sex blogger, and I think sometimes we get really hung up on just that consent conversation. But I think consent is kind of just opening the door.
We both want to do something sexy and fun, great. But what do we want to do? How do we want to do that? What are we doing it for? How are we feeling? There’s so many questions that come after that.
With a partner, I’m not going to tell a big ethical commandment of whether you have to have your partner know or not, but I’d say it’s probably a lot more fun if you’re not disconnecting from your partner and like visualizing something and they’re thinking you’re not present. It’s a lot more fun if you’re doing it together and it’s for something that you’re both excited about.
My suggestion would be to take a statement of intent and then transform it into a mantra.
If you say it is my will to have a vacation opportunity or whatever it might be, however you want to put that out there, you could write that out and then kind of scramble those letters around. Then you and your partner can be pounding it out in whatever way feels good for you and chanting that together and building that energy and having that ecstatic trance experience.
One of the things that’s important about magic is that it’s not a shortcut, it’s a scenic route.
Lorrae: That really resonates with me because it’s so much about the fun and what you’re creating together. And even on the flip side of that, when I’ve done magic in moments of grief, like maybe cord cutting or I’m writing like a letter that I’ll never send and I put it in a jar and then at the end of the week, I burn all the letters.
It is really allowing yourself to feel. It’s not just like you burn the letters and you’re disembodied from it. It’s letting yourself get all the emotions onto the page, crying it out, feeling it through, and then truly feeling it dissolve from your body when you burn them. That is the magic of magic, feeling it embodied.
New York, New York – May 9 2019: Portrait of Devin Person, a professional wizard. CREDIT: Mary Inhea Kang for The New York Times
The Truth of Sacred Sexuality and Manic Pixie Dream Girls
Lorrae: I think that there is some truth that there’s energy exchange between people, but often it’s being used to discourage casual sex by saying all sex is sacred and you’re gonna be energetically and spiritually tied. It feels like the wait until marriage and you find the one or you’re gonna be chewed up gum.
What is the reality of energetic ties? Is it real? Can we protect from them? Can we cut them?
Devin: Who knows? Not me. I think you’re so right, and I’m glad you made that point.
We are in a puritanical Protestant Judeo-Christian framework in America. It sneaks into a lot of new age spirituality in various ways with not body negativity in terms of looking in the mirror and thinking, “I look so fat.” This goes back into Christian roots of the body is foul and vile and should be punished.
Instead of whipping ourselves with a scourge, we’re now doing yoga or extreme diets or pushing ourselves or purging toxins.
There’s this idea that the body is tainted and corrupted. I think that also goes into, “My sexual energy is pure, and if I sleep with someone who is toxic, now I am tainted and I have to purge that as well.”
Lorrae: I went through a really bad breakup about a year ago and I went to a tarot card reader and I was a mess. They pulled all the cards – I know what the cards mean and they were the rough cards.
But then she convinced me that I had a negative entity attached to me, that was the reason that my ex was going through addiction and trauma and pain. For $700, she could clear it from my system. I was in such a frenzy so I just paid because I was crying. I go back two days later and she’s like, “This goes back way further than you’ll ever believe I’m going to need another $2,000.” Then I realized I was getting scammed.
I feel like a lot of this stuff capitalizes on our pain. It’s meant to keep us scared. If somebody’s trying to scare you with fear, they’re trying to make money off you.
Devin: I think our communities would do a lot better if we looked into the actual tradition and historical context because using the idea of magic to scam people is very, very old.
Whereas I think the more helpful reflection is thinking about what are the stories and what are the games that you played with that person, good and bad.
Sometimes we have this martyr story that we tell – I was trying so hard and they were such a jerk and they did all these things wrong. Well, what do you get in that role?
Was that soothing for you to feel martyred on some level? Was that helpful for you to feel like you could put all of your energy into somebody else’s problems and not have to deal with your own?
There are so many ways that you can then look at that that I think you don’t need to judge, you just need to be aware of, and that can free you and help you move forward.
Otherwise, it’d be very easy to constantly be like “It’s another toxic ex, time to do another cord cutting ceremony,” and keep hopping from one to one without ever finding that pattern.
Lorrae: That’s calling me out lovingly because I do that.
I loved in past relationships being the manic pixie dream girl. I’m very sick of that role now, but part of the manic pixie dream girl is that you get to be the light of somebody’s life. You get to be that excitement, that journey, that adventure, and then when things start to fall apart I was always stuck in this let me help. Let me make it better.
Or you can say, why do I keep pouring myself into them? That doesn’t make sense. Oh, I’m actually getting validation. I’m getting an escape. I’m getting the fun of the drama of somebody else’s life instead of looking at my own.
Now that I’ve taken this intentional pause for about a year, I know I have a lot of unmet needs that I gotta look at that I was running from by filling these roles.
Devin: I think with that example, how do we explore it mythologically? There’s an idea that mythologies develop because they reflect all of these aspects of our human being. And that’s why so many mythologies are really messed up and gods are eating each other and killing each other’s kids and having all kinds of incest and weird stuff because the psyche is messy.
If we look at that label that you use, manic pixie dream girl. So manic, hypomanic can be fun. Manic causes a lot of problems. It isn’t really that sustainable.
Lorrae: It’s a role, it’s not authentic in the relationship. As soon as I’m not able to fulfill that in a relationship, what’s my use? What’s my purpose? If I’ve built a whole relationship on this codependent role, it’s not healthy.
Devin: Yeah, so we have that manic, then we have pixie. I’ll use a pop culture example with Tinkerbell. Tinkerbell, if she doesn’t get attention, she starts to wilt and die. And is that a role that you want for yourself where if there’s not X amount of praise, attention, lust that yourself disappears? I think that’s not very sustainable either.
And then a dream girl is inherently a fantasy and cuts out all of the reality of your being. It says that you’re supposed to be this perfect fantasy image, and that doesn’t leave room for your other characters and modes of being, which eventually in a relationship, you’ll probably want to let out and share with that partner. You don’t want to say, you want to date the sliver of who I am, and I have to keep everything else locked away.
Devin: Oh my gosh, you just did more for me than therapy for the past six months. Like I’m crying because it’s so true. It’s like we can’t hold up that persona forever. And then who are you beyond that and finding somebody that really loves you beyond that.
Devin: Let me go one step further. I had a lot of relationships where I was dealing with somebody who had anxiety or depression. And I would claim that I was frustrated being in this helper role where I’m trying to be like, “Let me talk you off the ledge and figure out a new system. And how do we improve this?” And eventually, I recognized that pattern and tried to move out of it.
Now I work as a hypnotherapist. And I realized that I use a lot of those same skills, but just in a context where it’s contained. I am providing services that are clearly defined. There’s nice boundaries in terms of when the session ends. And I’m not expected to have someone be the person I’m helping lift up but also the person I need to come to the party with me and be fun and all of those modes.
So I don’t think you need to reject Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
What I would say magically and wizardly is, where do you want to be that? And how do you put that on and take that off? So it’s a game you’re playing, it’s a character you embody.
Lorrae: It’s really consciousness of the roles and when we put them on in our lives. I was just turning Manic Pixie Dream Girl on whenever I met somebody and then I’d be like, “We’ve been together for three months now, I’m going through something hard, why can’t this person be there for me in return?”
But there’s also this question that you bring up of when we’re helping people, right? We have a helper personality, it comes through in our work and our relationships.
But what role is that also serving us? At the end of the day, if they were totally helped, would the relationship still even function?
Not just if I can’t fulfill Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but let’s say that they’re completely healed and everything’s good and we are smooth sailing. Does it even still work then? Or am I reliant on needing to help people to feel validated and worthy and loved?
This insightful conversation challenges us to let go of fear-based spirituality and the Puritanical aspects of “sacred sexuality” and “energetic entanglement”, and instead use our own experience of sexuality to understand ourselves and each other on a deeper level.
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