On The Blessedness Of Sacrifice

A homily for the Full Moon on April 1, 2026. Written, as always, without authority.

Dearly Beloved,

Blessed Full Moon, dear ones. I greet you in the name of Aphrodite and in the name of the Divine on this, the Full Moon of Aries.

I want to ask you a question, dear ones. A question that I have been asking myself almost every day for the five months it has been since I founded Magie Sans Frontières. This question chills my heart, but I know that I have to answer it again and again or I’m just not living up to my calling.

The question is this: “What are you willing to sacrifice?”

In many ways, that is the question of the entire era from the end of World War 2 to now. The generation of my parents, the Baby Boomers, answered it with a very clear “Nothing!” as they fed our country to the monsters of capitalism one bite at a time every 2 years in exchange for a few points off of their taxes. The generation of my older friends growing up (and almost all of my friends were older), Generation X, generally answered the perennial question of intergenerational duty with a resounding “We don’t care!” as they helped make apathy into a brand that MTV pumped out to us every day.

I was in high school when Kurt Cobain killed himself and it was like his whole generation heaved a sigh of despair (or perhaps ennui) and gave up at the same moment. I had become homeless shortly before this, as my time at the youth home ran out and I refused to return to the house of my abusers. I was crashing with the family of my band’s bass player when the news of Cobain’s death was announced. It was shocking, as he was a very important figure in my group of friends (and my band), but it was also not surprising at all. We had all seen it coming. We could all sense the collective despair of the generation before us, their general lack of engagement and lack of care. Oh, it wasn’t universal, of course, but it permeated the “spirit of the age”. My teenage idols were 20-something heroin addicts who wrote love songs to pain, and their anthems to nothing taught us that it was better to wallow in opioid numbness and self-destruction than to feel anything real. Where punk had once galvanized the generation of my parents with political and social anger, grunge sedated my generation with a mere caricature of rage, a pantomime of rage that was impotent, apolitical, and aimless. We were taught to yell for the sake of yelling and never really told who to yell at. At best we were told that “corporate rock” was the enemy and that (somehow) starting indie record labels and playing in alternative bands was going to change the world. I fell for it all and then it all fell apart when Cobain died, at least for me. I quit my band—the band I had started two years earlier—and gave them all the songs I had written. Grunge had died and so had my desire to be a professional musician. The nihilism, apathy, and despair of my own musical heroes were laid bare with a bang from a shotgun, and in response I turned around and walked away.

I got involved in political activism shortly after this, but it was partly by accident and completely self-serving. I was homeless in New Orleans and the police were brutalizing homeless people, so I got involved in activism intended to stop them. Street kids just like me were getting cracked skulls, broken bones, and permanent disabilities, so it seemed to be in my best interest to help the cause.

Then my ex-wife and I were in the French Quarter on the Friday before Mardi Gras and we ran into a friend who invited us to a “protest party” to support homeless rights that was going to end in a march down Bourbon Street at midnight (which was going to be mobbed with tourists). We went, mostly because they were going to feed us and it was a warm place to spend the evening. The winter of 1995-96 was very cold and we would try to spend our nights “coffee camping” wherever we could until the early morning when the Sun started to wake up and warm the abandoned theater where we were squatting.

Let me make absolutely clear: I was completely survival-oriented in that moment. All I cared about was myself and my ex-wife and I thought only in terms of getting through one night at a time. What mattered each day was getting enough resources to survive and securing a place to sleep for that night. Everything else was just finding places to be, killing time, and trying to make money. That’s what being homeless is.

It’s amazing how much a moment can change your whole life.

Around 11pm, the cops came in to intimidate us out of marching. This was not surprising…30 odd homeless people chanting about homeless rights and marching down Bourbon Street with signs the Friday night before Mardi Gras was definitely going to hurt tourism. So it was made clear to all of us that if anyone left the space where the protest party was happening before dawn, they were going to jail. We had to avoid that. People came out with serious injuries. Some people were just never seen again. But the folks holding the “protest party” that were organizing the march had only rented the space until midnight. That meant that we were going to get kicked out very soon and then all of us were going to jail. I watched faces turn grey as every other street kid and homeless adult in that room processed that we were very likely going to be beaten and imprisoned in about 20 minutes. I will tell you quite frankly that I was terrified.

And then something remarkable happened.

The owner of the space came forward. He said that everyone could stay in the space until dawn, robbing the police of their justification and opportunity for our arrest. He then sat down calmly on the couch that had been set up in the middle of the space and picked up a guitar. He started playing and I quickly recognized the song as “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield. Soon the entire tired and frightened crew of ragged street kids and older homeless, about 30 people who all badly needed a hot shower, a square meal, and a good night’s sleep, joined together in the chorus as the cops looked on in increasing rage.

“Stop now, what’s that sound, everybody look what’s going down”.

My friend Merlin pulled out his recorder. I strummed my guitar along quietly, not wanting to steal our savior’s thunder. By the end of the song the entire place was booming with our voices and instruments and the cops had retreated out to the sidewalk.

That one man, the shop owner and courageous bard who had unified us in that scary moment with a song about police brutality and political oppression, knew that he was going to pay for his heroics. He knew that we would be gone soon and he would be left to deal with the inevitable consequences as the cops got their revenge. They would refuse to come when called and harass him whenever they got the chance. His business would suffer. He would have to live with his choice.

And he did it anyway.

That lone shop owner was a hero. I didn’t get brutalized by the police that night. My ex-wife, my friends, and many of the assorted homeless of the French Quarter got to be warm and have food in our bellies that night. We got to be safe. All because one man was willing to stand up to the cops and pay the price for it. Because one man wanted to help a bunch of dirty street people be safer. Because that one man, that stranger, was willing to sacrifice his own interests for me and mine.

Shortly after Mardi Gras was over, we left New Orleans forever and ended up traveling the country until we got to Santa Cruz, California. I have written a lot about what happened then and I’m sure I will again. I found my teacher, began working within the A.’.A.’. system, and went on to pursue magick as my career. I also got heavily involved in activism, focusing especially on labor rights with the Industrial Workers Of The World and feeding the hungry with Food Not Bombs and Feed The People. I had learned the value of what one person who was willing to pay the price could do for others.

I had learned the value of sacrifice.

We live in a world that is run by (and for) people who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. People who have turned the US into a laughingstock on the world stage and a tragedy at home. People who have spent the last 50 years extracting every last cent they could out of the working poor of this country, a group that becomes larger and larger every year even as they work harder and harder to get by. This is a world run by people who think they deserve everything and are willing to sacrifice nothing, and it’s going to cost us a great deal to take this world back from them. We must be willing to do what our parents refused to do. We must be willing to show up and do the work to secure the future of life on this planet.

We must be willing to sacrifice.

Blessed Full Moon, dear ones. I apologize for yet another hard teaching, but sometimes bitter medicine is all that will cure a deadly sickness. Despite it all, I remain…

In love,

Soror Alice

Art: Odilon Redon, “Calvary”, (1897)