A homily for the Autumn Equinox on September 20, 2025. Written, as always, without authority.
Dearly Beloved,
Blessed Autumn Equinox, dear ones, and blessed Spring Equinox to everyone in the Southern Hemisphere. I greet you in the name of Aphrodite and the name of the Divine on this, the Autumn Equinox of 2025.
Well, it’s been a hell of a six weeks since the last spoke in the Wheel Of The Year. The seeds planted in the Spring have begun to be harvested, and as I predicted in my Lammas homily, that harvest is bitter indeed. Recent political events have been alternately saddening, enraging, and terrifying for me, depending on the moment.
I don’t write about the political/economic world very much, even though I care about it immensely and have been involved in various forms of activism during my life. This is because I generally don’t see the point. I’m a priestess, poet, philosopher, and mage, not a political scientist or a journalist. It’s just not my field and I believe that it is an epistemic virtue to respect expertise. I also just don’t get the same emotional reinforcement from all of it that so many people seem to enjoy. This might be the old autism talking, but I don’t feel particularly reassured or energized by repeating the tribal slogans of any political faction or by witnessing those slogans repeated. I don’t trust any politician or political party and I find it all gross, tiring, and deeply insulting. No one thinks less of other people than a politician. They literally turn our basic needs into fodder for their careers. They become famous and buy mansions with money squeezed out of our hopes and our suffering. And most of the time the only thing they really give us in return is an emotional rush, a fleeting high we keep chasing by reading the news and sifting through social media feeds, often perversely looking for exactly the “content” that will enrage us the most. I just don’t enjoy feeling angry and call me old-fashioned, but I prefer drugs to be my drugs. I would rather just purchase my intoxicants and consume them in peace rather than spend endless hours pursuing weird and exhausting social activities. Politics is just way too expensive and destructive for a really, really fleeting high. It’s basically the cocaine of social behaviors, and I grew out of coke in my early 20s.
I also don’t trust Democrats any more than Republicans to do anything other than protect and further the interests of the rich and powerful. I’m trans, I’m a woman, I’m gay, I’m permanently disabled with a progressive illness, I’m neurodivergent, I’m poor, and I’m pagan. Since the Republican Party has decided to define themselves as the party of bigotry, Christian Nationalism, genocide, and rapacious Empire, I am ethically required to set myself against them. They have made themselves my enemies by their choices. We live in a two-party system, thus I vote Democrat because I have no choice, not because I like their politicians or believe in that mess of vague contradictions they call a platform. The Democrats want to feed me to the rich, too, inch by inch and pound by pound, they just want to do it more slowly and a bit more humanely (to best maximize profits and tenderize the meat, of course). I’m not a constituent, I’m a blackmail victim, and I resent that fact deeply. So politics is generally a sore subject for me and I try to avoid it when possible. I’d much rather write about magick, mysticism, art, love, philosophy, and games.
That said, the assassination of Charlie Kirk and its aftermath has made an impact on me. This man was truly awful. He was actually—and I almost never use this word—evil. He didn’t just do bad things, he made a career out of convincing other people to do bad things. He was a monster who made a lot of money off of turning other people into monsters. My Grandfather (the one who helped raise me) taught me a really simple lesson when I was a kid that I have unfortunately had to use many times in my life: if someone wants to harm or exploit you, they are your enemy and should be treated as such (paraphrased and probably misremembered…this was 40 odd years ago and my grandfather was a Texan who was both prolifically and poetically foul-mouthed). Charlie Kirk wanted to harm people like me. He publicly urged others to do so and and built a career out of motivating people to do so. Therefore he was my enemy. While I find political violence problematic for various reasons, I don’t mourn this man. I wish he had not been murdered, but I am happy that he is no longer in the world. One less enemy on the board is usually a good thing. But a problem presents itself when I consider the larger ramifications and implications of the death of Charlie Kirk and others like him.
In a vision I experienced during a ritual on the evening of 7-21-25, the Fury Alecto both demanded of me and assured me that everyone must—and eventually will—get exactly what they deserve. I find that both reassuring and deeply saddening. It is reassuring because it satisfies my intensely demanding sense of justice and it satisfies my theology and metaphysics. Deities like Themis, the Furies, and Nemesis are partially responsible for making sure that the ethical universe makes sense. They are literally part of the universal structures that connect cause and effect on the ethical plane. The fact that this ethical and metaphysical machinery is working properly is incredibly reassuring to me on a very deep level. I very much want everyone to get what they deserve. However, despite the fact that I find this satisfying on one level, on another level I cannot truly accept it. There is another value that moves me more than my sense of justice.
Despite my deep concern with ethics, I am not a priestess of Themis. That was a path I could have taken once, long ago. I have always been called to service of the Divine, since my earliest memories, but as a polytheist I am generally able to live with the complexity of values that I hold. I can happily sacrifice to Ares on Tuesday and Hermes on Wednesday, after all. But at a certain point I had to choose what mattered more to me, justice or love, and the result, years later, is that I am a priestess of Aphrodite. I was ordained 4 years ago and I don’t regret my choice at all. I am privileged to serve. Thus my path is defined not by justice, equilibrium, and order but by service to love, desire, and beauty.
Love cares nothing for justice. On the contrary, love is always biased. I prefer my wife to all others and would die before surrendering my love for her or allowing her to come to harm.
Love cares nothing for equilibrium. I will lose my cool in a minute if my family is threatened, even though I hate feeling angry and usually regret what I do when I am angry.
Love is unfair (often to ourselves) and sometimes deeply selfish. I want to be with my wife for the rest of my life and will try to live as long as possible to be with her longer, even though my health suffers more and I am in more and more pain as each year passes.
We love who we love, and it will break our hearts to say goodbye to them even if we know that they are truly and epically bad for us (I speak from experience). We don’t love who we don’t love, no matter how much it might make sense or how much we might want to. The heart wants what it wants, as the cliché goes, but it’s more than that, more difficult, because what the heart wants is often confusing and conflicted and a little bit self-destructive.
So despite myself, despite my righteous rage, despite my cruel satisfaction at the fact that the moral machinery of the universe is ticking along exactly as it should be, that punishments are being meted out and virtue is being honored, I am called this Equinox to speak of those times that we see someone struggling so we let them think they scammed us out of money for a sandwich. I am inspired to write of those moments when we let the kid in the online game beat us because they need a win, even though they are a horrible player. I am moved to speak of those times we have our defiant enemy dead to rights and we choose to stay our hand anyway.
I am called to speak of mercy.
I am the magus of the aeonic word Xenē, the Way Of The Friendly Stranger. This word expresses a way of interacting with others and with the world that can be expressed with the sentence: “I am a Stranger here and I would like to get to know you”. This aeonic word defines a current of magickal energy, the Xenē Current. The other pole in this current is Theiatry, the Healing Of The Family Of The Gods. This word expresses a new formula of magick, a type of magickal operation which attempts to heal the relationships between the deities, spirits, humans, and other sorts of people that work together to create the world in which we all live. By healing the relationships that give rise to our world, we can heal our world.
I have had several mystical experiences that have told me what theiatry is, how it works, and what I must do. The most important messages I have received can be summed up in two sets of three sentences.
First, Theiatry says that:
All the gods are family.
This family is broken.
This family must be healed.
Line 1 says that the gods are family, not a family. This implies that they are family with us as well as with each other. Most anthropogenic myths agree with this…humans are either descended directly from the gods or are their special creations, putting us in the same web of kinship relationships. The same is true of spirits, plants, and animals of all types. The ancient Greeks talked about this in terms of the various sorts of nymphs and other primal beings such as satyrs, the Dactyls, and giants all sitting somewhere within the family tree of the gods. The myths also show that the various parts of primordial nature, such as our planet Herself, Gaia; the sky, Ouranos; the night, Nyx; Helios the Sun; and Selene our Moon, are all part of this impossibly large and complex family of the gods.
Everywhere we look, we see only family.
Line 2 says that the relationships between the members of this family have been broken. We are not in free, loving, and healthy relationships with each other. This can be easily illustrated by hundreds of myths from all over the world, much of recorded human history, the current state of human affairs, and the current states of disequilibrium and disease in our ecosystem. Things are not good.
Line 3 says what must be done: this family must be healed. This message was given to me, a mage, and magickal technology exists to help us accomplish this task. More magickal technology, unique to the needs and formulae of theiatry, can be developed with time. I am working on this. So some of this is clearly supposed to be done magickally. But this line does not limit our activity to the temple or the circle at all. Theiatry is about healing the family…that plant on the corner of the street that is looking parched is part of the family. Giving that plant some water, helping out your cousin the plant, helps repair the relationships between humans and plants. The homeless guy panhandling on the corner is part of the family. Buying him dinner helps repair the relationships between humans. That stray cat is part of the family. Giving her some food and water and making sure she is healthy helps repair the relationships between humans and non-human animals. That spirit in the woods near your house might like it if you cleaned the area up a bit and maybe left an offering once in a while. Asking what they need and then doing it (within reason…boundaries are healthy) helps repair the relationships between humans and spirits. The primary goal of theiatry applies to all beings.
The second set of three sentences simultaneously lists the goals and the prophecies of theiatry. They are both what we must do and what will in fact happen (eventually).
The family shall be healed.
The prisoners shall be freed.
The curses shall be lifted.
Line 1 says clearly that healing the relationships between the members of the family, all of the family, is the mission. That is incredibly important, and I have talked about that before and will talk about it again, but what I want to talk about today is captured in the second two prophecies.
Lines 2 and 3 say that, despite the fact that our physical universe is built on bonds of cause and effect and our moral universe is built on bonds of personal and corporate responsibility, someday all will be mended. That despite the fact that the law of the universe is that everyone will get what they deserve, someday, when our work is done, when the family is healed, all debts shall be paid. All harms shall be healed. The prisoners of the Underworld, the shades like Sisyphus and Tantalus, shall be freed from their punishments. The curses, like those on Medusa, Arachne, Echo, and so many others, shall be lifted. We will all be free to live together in that complicated joy that is existence. We will be free to be a family again.
But that can’t happen without mercy.
Mercy is not about what we deserve. In fact, it is often exactly contrary to what we deserve. Mercy is when by all rights I can take what someone has…and I choose not to anyway. Mercy is when the criminal did the crime and only served part of the time, but we let them go free anyway. Mercy is when my rage is righteous and everything in me is screaming to punch that smarmy bigot yelling at me on the street…and I keep on walking anyway.
Mercy happens in the “anyway” and it is always difficult. It is always a sacrifice. Because Themis, the Furies, Nemesis, and all of the rest of the deities who tend to the laws of ethical causality are not to be denied. Someone has to take the hit. In order for the prisoners to be freed, their sentences have to be borne out somehow.
Please forgive me, the language of the Underworld fails me here…let me make clear that this is not some notion of salvation by penal substitution. Such ideas are suitable only for scaring children (or spiritual children) into obedience. This is magick. This is about the causal energy set into motion by our freely chosen actions. Charlie Kirk spoke violence and hatred into being and violence and hatred came to destroy him. That is Nemesis at work…he caused harm and died at the hands of the harm he created. Again, that is magick…like called out to like and a powerful goddess, a daughter of the Primordial Nyx, responded. On this level, the personal level of his death, all happened as it should…persistent and unrepentant harm was answered with retribution.
But the harm he set into motion is far larger than what can be absorbed just by his own poetically just death. This was not merely personal evil, the sort that harms another person or perhaps a family. This man influenced millions to do evil. Yes, they all make their own choices but he influenced them all to make those choices and he is responsible for that. All of that energy he set into motion has to be absorbed by something. It has to be expended in some way. Energy wants to do work, to cause change…that’s what energy is. So all of that hatred and violence he set into motion has to be absorbed by something. That something can be him, as he experiences some torment-loop in the Underworld, perhaps living as a 12 year old trans girl in a Southern Texas middle school in the late 1980s for a few centuries (as a completely random and not at all personal example), and then reincarnates into a new life. That’s what usually happens, as far as I know from both my learning and my mystical experiences. Punishments and rewards do happen in the Underworld, they just aren’t eternal. So that’s one possibility. Another possible something that absorbs all of that hateful and violent energy can be our world and the people in it. Let us all pray that isn’t coming. But that energy can also be redirected and reabsorbed by various magickal techniques, in whole or in part, all at once or a bit at a time. We have the magickal technology and will develop more. That’s what the second line of the goals/prophecies of theiatry is all about.
I’m sure you can see where I am going here.
Charlie Kirk is a potential candidate for theiatry. He is—or will shortly be—a prisoner in the Underworld who must eventually be freed. He will have a long sentence, maximizing chances for an eventual successful intervention. He sits at the center of a lot of broken and unhealthy relationships, meaning that if we can heal those relationships magickally, or at least limit the psychic blight as much as possible, we can probably do a lot of good for the world at large. All told, he is actually a pretty ideal candidate.
He most likely won’t cooperate for a long time and, since all theiatry requires cooperation from the candidate (consent matters!), that means that hopefully no one who has been harmed by his actions will actually be asked to do that particular theiatric work. That is too much to ask of any of us and, frankly, it reeks of the worst kind of unhealthy fetishization of self-sacrifice. No victim of oppression should ever be expected to forgive or aid their oppressor. That is nothing but elevating codependency into a virtue, and that just can’t be right. I will never again participate in my own abuse and I would never ask that of any of you, dear ones. My goddess demands that I love myself fiercely and that is what I do and what I preach.
But mercy is an act of ethical beauty. When we reach out and help others, when we have compassion on others, when we empathize, these are all good things not just because they fulfill the rules of ethics (whatever they may be), but because they are beautiful. These acts of ethical beauty, like all acts of beauty, are always besides and beyond anything the rules could consistently require of us. Beauty is not utilitarian. Beauty does not follow rules. Beauty does not come when called and shies away when we make demands.
Basically, beauty is a cat.
Beauty often happens opportunistically, in the spaces between the normal events dictated by the rules. The rules say the streets shall be paved and the sewers shall be contained. Beauty says that occasionally a plant will break through the pavement, slowly, inch by imperceptible inch, that a sprout will come popping up slowly to surprise us from a storm drain, until suddenly there is a beautiful flower, a dazzling bit of color in the middle of concrete gray, glory unfolding from the depths. We drive by, mostly oblivious to the monotony of the world around us, and suddenly that flower stands out at us, a brilliant ray of living light in a banal world. Witnessing this changes us. We are transformed by that beauty. We are made better than we were before.
This is the power of beauty. It transforms everyone involved, the creator and the sacred witness. It causes a spiritual change of state. Beauty is a sacrament. Ethical beauty doubly so.
I made a very specific example earlier that comes from a personal experience. I want to leave you with this story today because it illustrates mercy and ethical beauty perfectly.
My teacher, the late Tony Saltana, found me at age 18 while I was waiting in line for a feeding when I was homeless in Santa Cruz. He then trained me through my first year while I was still on the streets. He had two other students at the time, both also homeless and both quite gifted magickally. They were basically like my brothers. We didn’t always get along, and ten years later I had a serious falling out with one of them over my relationship with the person who became my wife, but they were a big part of my life when I was young and I spent a lot of time with both of them. We shared a lot of meals, squatted in a lot of the same abandoned buildings, and shared a lot of the same camps. They were both assholes and I loved them dearly.
I am ashamed to say that in those days I was not exactly the most truthful person. I had not yet taken my oath of honesty that has defined so much of my adult life, and I regularly stole, lied, and manipulated people to get what my ex and I needed (and wanted) to survive and thrive as homeless people. My teacher had been pushing me on this issue for a while, challenging me on my dishonesty and especially on my tendency to be manipulative.
One morning, I got up early and went downtown by myself, saw Tony, sat down next to him on a bench, and we started chatting. Up strolled one of my two magickal brothers, R***r, who promptly started trying to (badly) manipulate Tony into giving him some money. His lies were obvious and I waited for Tony to call him out on it the way he had been doing with me. But the Old Man surprised me, as he almost always did. He smiled, listened patiently to the elaborate dishonesty falling out of my magickal brother’s mouth, and then happily forked over twice as much money as he had been asked for.
I was astonished and a little angry. Okay, more than a little. My brother walked off to get his fancy deli sandwich and I just sat there staring at Tony for a minute or two. He smiled serenely at me and held my gaze. Finally I exploded and said something along the lines of “What the fuck? I lie about how many cigarettes I have left and you lecture me for days, but R***r scams you out of six bucks and you happily turn it over?” Remember, this was 1996 and I was homeless…six dollars was a lot of money to me.
He sat for a long moment, still smiling serenely and looking at me, and then asked, “Puck, why did you lie about how many cigarettes you had left?” I said because I didn’t want to bum a cigarette to the random kid on Hippie Corner that had asked me for it. He said “So because of a little selfishness combined with a little anxiety over running out of a substance you are addicted to?” I grumbled a bit but finally acknowledged that he was correct. “And why do you think R***r tried to ‘scam’ me out of that money?” I thought about it for a while, turning it around in my head. I have always been able to see auras and spirits, a talent I was born with. I knew what my “sight” had told me while R***r was talking. He hadn’t been lying about exactly one part of his story.
“Because he was hungry.”
“Bingo. Now, don’t you want him to be able to eat? Isn’t it a good thing when a homeless teenager gets to eat a healthy meal?” He beamed that big, wistful smile at me and his eyes crinkled up at the edges. “Shouldn’t the hungry be fed?”
I thought about it some more. I knew what he wanted me to say, but I was young and stubborn. I wanted to get there on my own if I was going to get there at all. But I could find no fault in his argument. It is a good thing when a homeless teenager gets to eat a healthy meal. The hungry should be fed.
That last one, especially, broke me. I had been hungry many times, sometimes desperately hungry. I knew what it meant to me to be fed by those who had helped me over the years. He was right.
He almost always was.
But I was still feeling stubborn and protested anyway. “But he should have just asked you for the money straight out. He should have been honest about it. You would have given it to him. He had to know that.”
“Yes, he should have been honest,” he said. “But he wasn’t. Perhaps he felt embarrassed and vulnerable asking for it directly in front of you. Perhaps he was worried that I wouldn’t give it to him. Perhaps he’s just made a bad habit out of lying and it felt easier than telling the truth.” He leaned forward in his wheelchair earnestly, and his voice was animated. He cared deeply about what he was saying. “But isn’t it still a good thing for the hungry to be fed? Does it stop being a good thing to help him just because he did something wrong? Isn’t the story better if it ends with the hungry street kid getting a sandwich? Don’t we want a happy ending?”
Ethical beauty. Ain’t it a hell of a thing?
I have to leave it at that. I know this is a difficult teaching. Perhaps the most difficult I will ever have to teach. I’m sorry. I struggle with this every day and I have no better way to show you what I am moved to show you than to point at my own teacher. At the man who changed my life forever. At the man who I will spend the rest of my life trying to live up to.
So let us give the enemy a chance to be someone better tomorrow. Let us free the prisoners. Let us feed the hungry. Let us work together towards ethical beauty.
Let us be merciful.
Blessed Equinox, dear ones. May all the blessings of the gods be with you in the coming season.
In love,
Soror Alice
Art: Odilon Redon, “Icarus”, (Unknown Year)
Wow, difficult and very beautiful. I can feel the rightness. Very hard for me to get there, with my age and stubbornness and privilege and baggage.
The Demeter Erinys in me salutes the Aphrodite in you.
I’m glad it spoke to you, Suz. It was hard to write.
Thank you for reading.
Happy Equinox, in spite of everything! Thank you for sharing this complex and thoughtful piece.
Thank you, happy Equinox to you as well.
I really love learning more about how the Greek pantheon works. I got into a rupture with someone recently because I was locked into “justice” mode in terms of standing up for myself. At several points, I could have chosen mercy. I had a blog in the 2010s called Mercy not sacrifice. It’s such a core of my Christian beliefs. There’s a verse where Jesus says, “I desire mercy not sacrifice.” Of course we have to make a sacrifice to be merciful but that’s different than weaponizing sacrifice as a way of feeling morally superior. I will keep aspiring to the higher way of mercy.