A homily for the Full Moon on August 9, 2025. Written, as always, without authority.
Dearly Beloved,
Blessed Full Moon, dear ones. I greet you in the name of Aphrodite and the name of the Divine on this, the Full Moon in Leo.
It’s been a big month for me. I have gone through a momentous initiation and revealed my spiritual agenda to the world (well, the 250 or so people who currently read my work…hello!). I have turned 48 (and trust me, dear ones, I feel my age!). And my little family of spirits gained a new member (well, really an old member…I first met her when I was 8 but I didn’t react well). All in all, a month well spent.
But as I approach the initiatory ritual I will be doing tonight, the final ritual of a lunar cycle of rituals, I find myself thinking of how I got here. I find myself thinking back along the long and winding path that goes back to when I was a child and I first experienced the calling to magick and to the service of the gods. I find myself remembering my childhood self looking forward into the future and experiencing something deep inside that told me who and what I was going to be. It wasn’t a voice or a dream or a set of thoughts leading off to the horizon of the future, but it had elements of all of those. It wasn’t quite a vision of who I would become, the path I would take—it wasn’t that clear—but looking back, I remember squinting with my mind’s eye and seeing someone like the person I have become. I could see just enough to point me in the right direction, so I started walking and eventually I got where I was supposed to be. I felt my way here to the person I am now far more than I thought my way here.
Oh, I know that sounds strange for a philosopher to say. And it’s true that logic comes easily to me. I like logic. As long as you follow the rules, follow the right strategies and tactics, you get the right results. It’s simple, predictable, and easy. But the reality is that my gift isn’t for logic at all…that’s just a side-effect of my real talent. My true loyalty, my true love, is for games, and logic is just another game. One of my patrons is Hermes for a reason. In a game, you have to feel your way to a win just as much as you have to think your way there. Game designers model games as math, and then gamers come along and break the math, manipulate the game, and end up speedrunning the whole thing in less than five minutes for fun. Given enough time to work at the problem, some gamers can learn to completely break the games they are playing, performing amazing feats. But they usually don’t do that by doing math…they do it by playing the game. A lot. So much that it becomes a part of them. So much that they can stop thinking, get out of their own way, and let something higher move through them, something that can come closer to that pinnacle of skill, that lofty goal of “perfect play”, that they know is possible.
So when I was living out all the choices that led me to becoming the person I am now, I was being pulled by a thread that I took hold of as a child and held onto for dear life. I felt my way forwards through time like a caver pulling themselves along a rope in the dark, sometimes cautiously and sometimes daringly, trusting that rope to lead them to light and air. To lead them to where they are supposed to be.
So today, on the Full Moon of Leo, on the final day of the biggest moment of my spiritual life, I want to speak of that rope in the darkness. I am moved to talk about the light at the end of the tunnel. I am called to speak of the siren’s song that pulls so many of us forward into the future.
I am moved to speak of inspiration.
The word “inspiration” can mean a lot of things. It can mean artistic, philosophical, or scientific inspiration, where an idea for a given work comes to us from apparently nowhere. Another use of the word can be spiritual…we often hear talk of a given text being “inspired” by a deity or a particular person being “inspired” as a prophet or as a magus of an aeonic word (to use Thelemic language). Both of these ways of talking about inspiration are important, so I want to talk about the place where they intersect: the experience of inspiration itself.
Inspiration, even when it comes to us in mundane moments and seems to be about mundane things, always feels like magick, like it came from somewhere else, some other mind, some other person. When it truly flows through us, we feel excited, driven, and for many of us, it can drive us a little mad. I have been known to be so obsessive about writing something that I wouldn’t sleep or eat until it was finished and revised to my satisfaction. Obviously this was deeply unhealthy, and I have since learned restraint, but it gives you an example of the intensity of inspiration, the way it can take you over and make you a little crazy. I can easily imagine the poets, prophets, and sibyls of old, franticly trying to tell someone, anyone who would listen, about their vision. I have wondered if writing was invented not for the practical purposes of keeping records and sending messages, but by people so swept away by inspiration that they just had to find a way to store it, to fix it in place so it wouldn’t be lost.
This is a part of the experience of inspiration, too…the deeply felt belief that it is important, worth working for, sacrificing for, losing sleep and eating at your desk for, worth whatever it takes. This can be flabbergasting to the people around us, because it’s hard to explain how a picture or poem or even a ritual rubric can be worth all of that. But in our hearts, in our bones, we know that our inspiration is worth everything. That it is not just worth dying for—many things are worth dying for, so many I’ve lost count—but also worth living for. We die and it’s over, once and done until our next life. But when we live for something we have to do it day in, day out, for the duration. Very, very few things are worth living for. Worth dedicating your life to.
Inspiration is one of them.
Depending on your tradition of magick or spiritual background, you may believe that inspiration comes from many different sources. For me, inspiration comes through the Muses and, on extra special occasions, from another deity. I have an altar to the Muses in my temple and regularly invoke Them in my more important workings. I have been very blessed by Them, in my opinion. Where I have managed to create beauty or produce insight in my work, it is because of these blessed goddesses. I have managed to cobble together something like skill at my craft over the years, but the inspiration absolutely comes from beyond me.
Sometimes inspiration is violent. It can strike like lightning or a wound opening up in your heart. I have been known to shoot up in bed, suddenly wide awake, or to stop in mid-conversation, intensely possessed by the urge to write something down. I have been so stricken by a sudden idea that I have felt sick, my heart pounding and my thoughts churning. I have felt inspiration like a heartbreak, ready to tear me apart with weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Other times inspiration comes gently, like a light, warm rain. You can sit with it for weeks, months, even years, nurturing it like a rare plant that you know will one day produce a beautiful bloom. This is the low flame of the Muses, cooking up the sort of meal that takes time to simmer. Goethe took most of his life to finish his version of the Faust myth, and it is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. Truly a sumptuous meal, prepared over decades with love and care. I can only pray that one day I will be so inspired.
As mages and mystics, we have access to sources of inspiration that are special. We can connect with deities and spirits, building relationships that can become fruitful sources of inspiration. We can also connect with the more fundamental forces like the elements, the planets, and the zodiac signs or even locations like mountains or rivers. The Nymphs and spirits of the land have inspired many amazing works. Sometimes going for a walk is all it takes to find inspiration.
Of course, this sort of thing has rules. I am sometimes blessed with inspiration when I use such methods, but I must act upon it within a certain period or it is taken away. Writing down the idea will help me remember it, but if I wait too long to act upon it, the well of inspiration dries up, no matter how many notes I took.
Now I want to ask you a question, dear ones: have you been inspired? Do you hear the voices of the Muses? I know that some of you have. I have seen and heard the results of your inspiration and sat awestruck by the beauty and meaning you have created. I have been truly privileged to experience what you have shared. Thank you so much. I am truly grateful.
But I also know that some of you hear the call of the Muses but do not act upon that inspiration. Let’s call it an inspiration of my own, right now…I know in my bones that, right this moment, some of you reading this are feeling inspired. You want to create something. Write something. Paint something. Invent something. Maybe it’s just the beginning of an idea, the merest whisper of the voice of a Muse. Maybe it’s something that has been burning in you for a long time. But you have been given a vision. A song. A poem. A tapestry. You have been given a story to tell.
Do it.
Maybe you’ve been told that you have no talent or skill. Maybe you’ve been told that your painting and five dollars will get you a cup of coffee. Maybe you’ve been told not to quit your day job so many times that you stopped counting years ago.
Do it anyway.
It doesn’t need to be “good” or “professional”. Inspiration shines through. It doesn’t need to be “marketable” or “accessible”. Sometimes the weirdest, most challenging stuff is what makes a big impact (just look at H.P. Lovecraft or Philip K. Dick). It just needs to be honest to your inspiration. It needs to be true to the voices of the Muses and it needs to be true to your voice. You are the one to do this work. Only you have been chosen for your particular inspiration. Only you can hear that particular Muse’s voice in that particular way. Only you can do what must be done, create what must be created. Only you can bring this particular beauty and meaning into the world.
Do it.
Please.
We need you.
So on this blessed Full Moon in Leo, let us open up our hearts wide, wide, wide to the powers of creativity. Let us open up our ears to the voices of the gods. Let us open up our hands and take up the tools of our work, whatever they may be.
Let us be inspired.
Blessed Full Moon, dear ones. I pray that the voices of the Muses ring out for each and every one of you.
In love,
Soror Alice
Art: Gustave Moreau, “The Voices”, (1967)
It really is the most wonderful feeling to be spoken through by the gods.
Wonderful, frightening, and addictive, all in one go!
Thank you for reading!
alice, i really loved hearing the thread you’ve followed since childhood, the way you describe feeling your way toward what you already knew was yours. this piece feels like sitting beside a fire listening to someone speak straight from the heart of their devotion. i’m grateful for how you open the door for others to meet their own muses.
Thank you! I’m very glad that it spoke to you.