A homily for the Full Moon on November 5, 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 of Scorpio.
I have to be honest with you all, dear ones…I’m still wading in the Samhain current right now. I’m still sitting with the dead. Still thinking about the ways that death and loss have shaped my life.
And I look at the world around me, at what’s happening in Palestine, at what’s happening in China, at what’s happening in Ukraine, and what’s happening right here at home in the good old US of A, and my heart and thoughts are moved even more to the ways that death and loss have shaped history. How every act of growth and creation has cast a shadow and how every time we shoot for the stars we are forced to dive deep down into the depths in order to make the trip.
How in the end every price comes due.
So tonight I am called to speak of what happens when the dinner is over and the bill has come. I am moved to write of those moments when our actions finally catch up with us. I am inspired to speak of what happens when push meets shove, painfully.
I am called to speak of judgment.
I am not what one would normally call a “hellfire and brimstone” preacher. I am too touchy-feely for that. Too dedicated to the values of my goddess. I like to preach about love and how love manifests itself in the natural world that we all experience. And in the end I think that love is what is going to save us. After all, as a nod to my Thelemic siblings, both Thelema and Agape add up to 93. The gods themselves have declared that Will and Love shall lead the way in the current aeon…who am I to disagree?
But sometimes I can smell blood in the air. I can sense the spirits roiling around, some full of excitement and others full of dread, as the world tenses up. My dark companion whispers to me of war and the rumors of war. She says that the Underworld is roiling even as the Heavens thunder, and that I must do my work in earnest.
So it is because of all these things and more that it comes to this, that I must speak on a pagan concept of judgment, of the eschaton, of the end of an age.
The ancient poets and sages spoke of several ages. Some spoke of them in terms of metals, of a Golden Age ruled over by the Titans and remaining Primordials, led by Cronus, where the few humans that existed lived without fire but also without war, in plenty, and for long, long lives with young, healthy bodies. And the same poets speak of what ended this Golden Age.
War.
War between the gods ended the Golden Age. Just like war between humans is ending our age now. The martial deities, the red deities of war, given little choice by mortal actions, have taken the reigns. My goddess is in Her warlike aspect of Aphrodite Areia. Mother Demeter wears a grim face.
And even as I steel my heart for what is coming and the part I am to play, I am weeping.
I grew up with horrible stories, recited endlessly by my traumatized grandparents. Over 550,000 people, both Allied and Axis, died in the Normandy Invasion. Almost 3 million people total, both Allied and Axis forces, died in the Battle Of Stalingrad. Over 250,000 people—mostly civilians—died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Most of a generation of young men, slaughtered in a handful of years. Millions of civilians murdered. All because some powerful men in rooms far away from the fighting decided it was time to divide up the resources and territory of the world in a new way.
I cannot accept this. Every time I think of the harm war causes, it breaks my heart. And I think about it all the time. It haunts me. I literally sit up at night trying to come up with ways to get people not to fight wars and to limit the harm that will inevitably happen when they do.
But this is what’s happening, and I am my Grandfather’s child and no pacifist by any means. So I have to deal with it.
I have talked a lot of shit lately about how our community is failing to respond to what is happening in a way that befits our callings as mages and clergy. And I stand by it. Everything is clearly escalating, especially as the government shutdown in the US goes on and services begin to break down. The fact that so many of us can’t even take a break from selling our books and classes long enough to acknowledge it breaks my heart every day.
The age is ending. We have to face it honestly if we are to survive.
There is a path I can see. I call it the Road To Dawn (which I totally stole from “Kingdom Hearts”). A way through all of this where as many people live free and thrive as possible. It’s not a perfect path. Trust me, I’m looking for a better path and I’ve got several spirits looking for a better path, but I can only see so far ahead with divinatory methods combined with reason and time is short, so here we are. We’re gonna have to do some things that are going to be pretty difficult. Some people—people who deserve better—probably aren’t going to make it, despite our efforts. Like I said, it’s not a perfect path. But it’s a path.
I’m starting a new kind of magickal organization to try to navigate that path. We’re just getting started, but I can tell you that some of the best mages I know, some truly powerful people, are enlisting, which really gives me a lot of hope. The shit is hitting the fan and things may get a lot worse before they get better, but good people are showing up to do the work. Every application I process gives me hope.
We can’t stop the end of an age and we shouldn’t try to. This is part of the cycle of nature as it manifests in human history. We have changed our environment and ourselves so much that it is forcing a fundamental and structural change in our way of existing. This isn’t the first time. To quote “Battlestar Galactica”, this has all happened before and it will all happen again. But as mages and mystics, I believe that we have certain duties during times like this.
Protect who we can.
Heal the sick (and that, gratis) and wounded.
Feed the hungry.
Preserve knowledge.
Serve our communities.
Maintain proper relationships with deities and spirits.
I know as a priestess I shouldn’t say this, but we need to deal with this crisis with the full honesty it requires: we can’t necessarily count on the gods in this. At least not all of them. I am sadly forced by my ethics to disclose to you all that I have excellent reason to believe that least one Primordial is ready to consign us to our self-appointed doom, and I think it’s more true to say that there is a faction of deities and powerful spirits (several distinct factions, from what I understand) that have given up on us. Of course, there is also a faction of deities and powerful spirits (well documented in lore from all over the world) that have just never really liked us and are actively hostile, so this isn’t really some sort of weird tragedy or revelation. It’s just a fact of polytheism and the spirit world…there are a lot of deities and spirits and not all of them like humans or care about what happens to humanity.
So we can’t necessarily count on all of the deities of our various pantheons to help out very much. And frankly, that’s fair…we’ve locked ourselves in the house and, when various forces have tried to help us get out, we have defiantly set that house on fire and counted ourselves very clever for doing so. It’s reasonable that the assorted Powers That Be are a tad bit exasperated with humanity at this point.
So we can’t count on miracles to stop the weapons from firing or to feed the hungry. We have to help ourselves. This is a time for heroes, and we have to become our own heroes.
Every one of you, adept, student, apprentice, or interested onlooker: those who want us enslaved or dead want you to feel weak. To feel like you can’t do anything. Like you have to just let it all happen.
But you are not weak. You have more strength than you would ever believe. You have the strength to shape the age to come.
You have the strength to face judgment.
Blessed Full Moon, dear ones. May all the blessings of Aphrodite and the Divine be upon you all in the coming weeks.
In love,
Soror Alice
Art: Odilon Redon, “Saint John (The Blue Tunic)”, (1892)