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Carey’s Bio – Ritualist

Welcome! My name is Carey, and I’m glad to be joining the Sorcerous Arts Collective. I practice a feral sort of witchcraft influenced by the Feri tradition, and am a devoted Hellenic Polytheist. I specialize in ecstatic embodied ritual that comes from the current of Reclaiming, Diana’s Grove, and Gaia Community. I teach classes on devotional mysticism, practical craft, and ritual arts. As an artist, maker, and lover of languages, I’m finding how my skills can add to the cauldron of talents already assembled in the SAC.

My religious upbringing was a sort of benign unsupervision, so between my parents’ bookshelves and free rein at the school library, I fell deeply in love with Erica Jong’s Witches and Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. I was That Precocious Kid who brought Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs and a pack of tarot cards to school to do readings on the playground during recess. I never really grew out of it.

In middle school, I discovered this new thing called the internet, and Witchvox, and discovered there were more people like me out there and it seemed most of them were practicing Wicca. So I got some Cunningham and a copy of Bucky’s Big Blue Book, and signed petitions protesting the media circus and injustice around the West Memphis Three. Some highschool friends were experimenting with energy work, shielding, aura sensing, healing, and chakra work. Soon out of highschool I joined Gaia Community, and served there as a ritualist for many years. Through friends and relationships made there, I learned about other traditions, like ADF Druidry, Kemetic Orthodoxy, Algard British Traditional Wicca, Reclaiming, Huna, and Hellenic Polytheism. I expanded out to work with CUUPs and with the Diana’s Grove Mystery School. My Saturn Return called me to Feri Tradition, and I studied under T Thorn Coyle for two intense and amazing years at Diana’s Grove before they closed their doors.

A lifelong artist and creator, I’m poised between projects right now, waiting to see where the Muses take me next. Some of my art can be viewed on DeviantArt.

My goal is to present ritual experiences that weave the ancient myths with the deeply personal; to create accessible, welcoming, safe spaces to work magic and open to the divine; to develop processes and praxis that are in service to excellence, enchantment, and radical personal evolution; to dive deeply into the technology or ritual and magic and discover how many levels of engagement can be possible, and how to make these mysteries accessible, practical, inspiring, and relevant to modern seekers of ecstasy, wisdom, liberation, and empowerment.

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JS Groves Bio – Satyr and Magician

Good day!  I am JS Groves, one of your hosts. I practice an eclectic blend of modern neo-Pagan witchcraft, Chaos Magick, and ceremonial magic, and specialize in blending ancient and modern magical styles and techniques.  I teach classes on energy work, ritual design, and spirit conjuration.  I am a jeweler by trade, a published novelist, and the artist behind the majority of photos and graphic designs you’ll see on the site.

The beginnings of my magical career are less than dignified. Some come to magic and witchcraft as a calling – through love of a god, a spontaneous vision, or whatnot. Some come to the occult through ambition — the iconic trio of greed, lust, and/or revenge. Myself … well, I was young and dumb. At ten or twelve, I thought I could reproduce the magic of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. When the movie failed me, I turned to the novel. When that failed me, I turned to the rest of the library. It was around the age of thirteen that I found astrology and tarot and the Chariots of the Gods, and turned suddenly from idiot to prescient, and dedicated myself to studying magic, putting off practice until I was sixteen. The rest, as we say, is history.

I began with energy work. Tarot. The Simonomicon. Past life regression. Aura reading and energetic “tag” as I came into contact with more and more magical people. Played with Ouija boards a time or ten. Haunted graveyards and college dormitories. Dabbled in eclectic Wicca for most of a decade. Made a serious study of neo-shamanic visionary practices from ’08-2012. Did an intensive study of ceremonial and Chaos magics that started in 2010 and waned in 2014 but continues to this day. I tried my hand at public leadership with a major KC-area pagan festival from 2014-17. That last ended in burnout and bad feelings all around, but I suspect that’s common with one’s first forays into such public work.

In the meantime, I have been a jeweler and illustrator for twenty years, incorporating occult and magical themes into my work. I have acquired a Bachelors degree in Classical Studies, bringing Greek and Latin language and history to bear in my modern practice. I have published a novel, in and about the Pagan community in the late 1990s — and, you know, werewolves.

Now, I bring my twenty-two years of experience in art and magic to bear to this project: the Kansas City Sorcerous Arts Collective. My goal is to integrate my arts and academic backgrounds into my public magical practice, to use those skills to help teach excellence in ritual and magical techniques to the community. My knowledge is not endowed from on high, not divinely gifted; it is hard-won through research, trial, and error. I come to teach not from a place of high and enlightenment, but rather to share with the community my joy in the craft and practice of magic, that they might learn from my failures and successes, and that I might, in turn, learn from theirs.