A homily for the New Moon on April 17, 2026. Written, as always, without authority.
Dearly Beloved,
Blessed New Moon, dear ones. I greet you in the name of Aphrodite and the name of the Divine on this, the New Moon of Aries.
Today I want to switch gears a little bit. I have been throwing one hard teaching at you after another for months. We need some air. Some springtime. So today I want to talk about those figures that loom large in our lives, guiding us to become new people. Those people, both real and mythical, who tell us what we value by embodying what—and who—we want to be.
I want to talk about heroes.
My first magickal hero was a fictional character named Raistlin Majere. He was a main character in the “Dragonlance” novels, a fantasy series set on Krynn, one of the worlds created for the fantasy roleplaying game “Dungeons & Dragons”. I got sucked into the game at the age of 11, started reading the novels, and fell in love with the character. He was a mage, for one thing, and, thanks to my rather unique childhood, I was already keenly aware that magick was real. I also knew that I was very, very interested in doing it. But he was also sickly, like me. His health issues were a major part of the character, and it was revealed in later novels that his health was the price that he had paid to pass his “Test”, an initiatory ordeal staged by his magickal order. He paid for his magick with his health, and I have often felt that—in some way I don’t understand or remember doing—I have done the same thing.
He also, like me, lives out parts of his life shadowed in darkness. Even in his most redemptive moments, he is always ethically complex. In the “Chronicles”, the first trilogy in which he is a major character, he begins by wearing “red robes”, which means he is “neutral” ethically, but by the end of that trilogy he dons the black robes of evil in pursuit of power. In the “Legends” trilogy, his grand plan is to slay the goddess of evil, Takhisis, so that he can then replace her as ruler of the Abyss and finally have so much power that he will never have to suffer again.
I was, undoubtedly, a weird kid.
Raistlin spoke to me so much that, when I started studying real magick a year later, I took his symbol, the hourglass, as my own. I have added to it over the years, but I still incorporate the hourglass as my primary symbol. My wife, Alex, made this beautiful version recently for my new website, https://aliceadoraspurlock.com.
That’s right, dear ones, I’m putting out my shingle for the first time in almost 20 years. I am officially available for hire. Tell your friends.
But my bad marketing aside, this new version of my symbol has got me thinking a lot about Raistlin and the role his example played in my life as a young mage. It could be argued that he was a bad influence, a bad hero who led me into the dark. That’s totally fair. I had some really rough years and the role of the “dark one” chafed a great deal as I matured. But I think that we can learn a lot of important lessons in the dark, so long as we are willing to pay for them. The secret is to always remember that the reason that we are in the dark is to learn, not because we necessarily belong there. Just because there is darkness within us does not mean that darkness defines us. If we choose to live in many worlds—and work with “both hands”—we can come back out into the light wiser and, yes, more powerful, than when we went into the dark. But if we think that we belong in the dark, or even worse, that we deserve it, then we just get lost in the shadows, and it can take years to climb back out again.
I speak from experience.
Thinking about Raistlin also made me think about my relationship with power, because his whole story is about seeking power as a way to feel safe. I have been taking one of the core classes of the Reclaiming witchcraft tradition where we study the Iron Pentacle. This particular form of pentacle magick comes from Feri witchcraft originally, the tradition of my late father, so it means a lot to me on a purely visceral level of wanting a deeper connection with him, but pentacle magick is also just a damned cool magickal technology, so I have been working diligently to learn how put it to good use. One of the points on the Iron Pentacle is “Power”, so, since I try to be a good student, working with that point has led me to think about what power means to me.
I think there are at least two views of power. One sees in terms of self vs other. Other people, the world, and even parts of ourselves that can be affected through things like magick, are just parts of the world, to be affected and changed as we will. The second view is relational. It’s about how power moves between people, including deities, spirits, animals, plants, mycelium, and every other aspect of reality that can be interacted with as a person. As a priestess of Aphrodite, it is this kind of relational power that interests me the most.
In her book “Truth Or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority and Mystery”, (HarperSanFrancisco, 1988), Starhawk distinguishes between 3 types of the sort of relational power I mean. “Power-over” relations are defined as those of domination and control, the kind of power exerted by governments and bosses where they dictate the terms and we all have to live with them. “Power-from-within” relations refer to your own abilities and to your integrity on all levels, your own ability to choose, grow, and transform in relation to yourself. Finally, “power-with” relations are more or less horizontal, where we work together with others to bring about changes we all want.
I like this breakdown a lot. I also tend to value the latter view of power, the relational view, over the former, one-sided, category. But both sorts of power dynamics, those that model us as a “person” dealing with a world that is fundamentally a “thing” full of “things” and those that model us as a “person” dealing with a world of other “people”, are about causing changes. So we can simply say that power—like energy—is the ability to cause change and be accurate, though unnuanced, in our statement.
So what, then, is a hero? I think that a hero is a person who models to us the sort of changes we want to be able to cause. Therefore there can never be such a thing as an absolute hero, someone who is a hero to everyone at all times. There can only be my hero, your hero, and so on. And since the sorts of changes we want to be able to cause usually vary a great deal over the course of our lives, that also means that the people who are our heroes when we are 11 are usually not our heroes when we are 48.
And yet Raistlin still speaks to me. I have been thinking a lot about him, trying to figure out why. Perhaps I am just immature. The novels were not good, especially the “Chronicles” trilogy. I have tried to reread them as an adult and I can’t make it though even one. And Raistlin is not a good person. In fact, he embodies all of the possibilities I recognize and hate the most within myself. He is cynical and manipulative, cruel and extractive, cold and brutally ambitious, all of the things I have generally wanted to not be. I have spent decades pursuing exactly the opposite values. And he is so impious that he literally tries to pull a coup on a goddess, which I would never do. I’m a fool for the gods. I pray at least five times a day, every day. I would never dream of doing anything to harm Them. My entire theiatry trip is about trying to help the gods.
But there the hourglass sits, still my chosen symbol, but now wedded with the rose, a symbol of my goddess, Aphrodite, and the bundle of wheat, a symbol of my mother, Demeter. There the hourglass sits, reminding me of that darkness within me that I have spent my adult life trying to harness and turn towards the light. There the hourglass sits, reminding me always of the past and present of which I am, somehow, supposed to be the mistress.
There the hourglass sits, reminding me of my hero.
Blessed New Moon, dear ones. After a whole string of hard teachings in the last few months, I feel like this New Moon is simply a moment for meditation. So let us look to our heroes, those of our past and our present. Let us look to our heroes to orient us towards the future and show us how to be. Let us look to our heroes and recognize our own best possibilities within them.
Through it all, I remain…
In love,
Soror Alice
Art: Gavin Hamilton, “Achilles Lamenting The Death Of Patroclus”, 1760-1763
Alice Adora Spurlock, also known as Soror Alice, Xenē, and Despoina, is a professional witch and ceremonial magician with 30 years of experience. She is available for hire to help you accomplish your goals. Learn more here. Book a session now (Tarot reading included!).