This article was originally posted on my Examiner.com column last February. I thought I'd share it here, while I get my stuff together for CNJPP. Hope you enjoy it! Find out more about Judika Illes at her website, judikailles.com.
Mrs.B.: You've stated that your interest in tarot started at age 6 when your sister brought home a deck. Do you have a particular deck that you really enjoy working with these days?
Judika: I’m not a one-deck woman. I like working with a variety of decks. Sometimes I even use several decks during one reading. When I read for other people in person, I like to bring a couple of decks so that the client can choose. When I do readings over the phone, however, I tend to use the Rider-Waite-Smith because that’s my old reliable. I was a telephone hot-line card reader for a couple of years. At that time, I did some experimenting and discovered that I could always do a fast, accurate reading with the RWS.
I still have my very first deck from when I was a child, which is the BOTA (Brothers of the Adytum). I read from the Thoth deck a lot and Oswald Wirth. Probably my all-time personal favorite is Kipling West’s Halloween Tarot but lately I’ve been very taken with Robert Place’s Vampire Tarot.
Mrs.B.: As a domestic witch, I'm curious to know, do you work with any kind of domestic deity in your own life, or have any sort of household rituals that you conduct on a regular basis?
Judika: I conduct rituals constantly, when I’m cooking, when I’m writing or preparing to write, when I’m paying bills, whatever. There’s a point, when you are really living your magic, that it just becomes incorporated and integrated into everything you do. For example, when I cook for my children, blessing and magically empowering the food becomes part of the everyday natural process. There’s a Russian spell-casting technique that involves murmuring over food and beverages- you murmur your hopes, desires and goals right into the food, which is then transmitted to the recipient.
Spell-casting and ritual teaches you to be very conscious and to live in the moment: it doesn’t work if you’re on auto-pilot. And so, you become very aware of which direction you are stirring the spoon, for instance, or the magical properties of the food that you are preparing. All kinds of tiny details develop profound meaning.
I do work very intensely with several deities, also on a daily basis. This is what I know to be true: the universe is full of spirits, all kinds of spirits, mostly benevolent, seeking to work with people- some spirits are famous but most are overlooked or neglected. The goal and beauty of spirit working is for each individual to find the deities and spirits that are their own allies and guardians. The spirit that favors one person may not be the best match for another and vice versa. So it’s really a sacred journey and quest to discover which spirits are your spirits. That’s what’s most crucial- not which spirit anyone else is working with but who is right for you. I tried very hard in my most recent book, The Encyclopedia of Spirits, to provide a good starting point for a broad spectrum of spirits and people. That said, it’s really hard to be totally objective in your writing and I think it’s pretty clear in my writing which spirits I adore: every one of my books has prominent appearances by Oshun, Lilith, Yemaya, Ogun, Simbi and some others. That’s a reflection of my personal life.
Mrs.B.: Could you reveal a bit about what you are working on right now?
Judika: I feel very privileged to be involved with the Weiser Field Guide series, which are essentially mini-encyclopedias published by Weiser Books. The first book in the series, Raymond Buckland’s The Weiser Field Guide to Ghosts was published in 2009 and my first contribution, The Weiser Field Guide to Witches should be out sometime in 2010.
If all goes well, there will also be a new encyclopedia in the near future. The Encyclopedia of Spirits originally included angels and saints as well as Pagan spirits and deities but it got way too big and so, in order to cut the book down to its present one-thousand page size, most of the saints and angels were side-lined with the goal of eventually giving them their own books. Right now, I’m working on an encyclopedia devoted to saints of many spiritual traditions, not only those that are Vatican approved. So we’ll have spells, rituals and information on working with a wide variety of saints from Joan of Arc and Saint Anthony to Santa Muerte and Jesus Malverde. And I’m always working on my fertility manuscript- I have a manuscript devoted to traditional approaches to fertility and infertility that I’ve been working on for almost two decades.??4. You've talked about your love of essential oils in past interviews. Do you plan on doing a book about them any time in the future?
After the publication of my second book, Emergency Magic, which has now been republished under the name Magic When You Need It, I sort of came to a crossroads. I was talking to two different publishers regarding future projects. One wanted me to write a massive book of spells and the other envisioned a series of books focused on essential oils, true oils and herbs. The spell-oriented publisher pursued me more aggressively and so I took the magical path, the fork in the road that led to 5000 Spells, which was a real life-changing experience for me. Sometimes I wonder, if I had done the other project instead, what my life would be like now.
I have a number of partially completed manuscripts, my old fertility manuscript plus several that are more exclusively spiritually-oriented. Essential oils appear in every one of them in some capacity, whether for ritual, magical, or therapeutic use. But at this time, I have no plans for a book on essential oils although who knows what the future holds???
Mrs.B.: I've read that between writing the 5000 Spells book and The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, you basically wrote night and day for three years. How do you handle your household during times like those? Do you still bother to cook meals?
Judika: The Encyclopedia of Spirits was like that, too. I spent a good chunk of the last decade writing. I wish I was one of those people who lose their appetites when they’re busy: I’d be thinner. For me, writing those encyclopedias is very much like being pregnant. There’s a lengthy gestation period and you’re hungry a lot. I love to cook but I tend to cook much simpler meals while writing. I save the complex and elaborate for when I have time. But I didn’t really have a conventional household when I began 5000 Spells and I don’t live alone so when the writing got very hectic, there was always someone else to do the cooking, the shopping, the errands. I received a lot of support and tolerance on that end.
What really fell by the wayside was my outside life, not what went on within the home. My personal life was very neglected. There were long stretches when I didn’t answer e-mails or return phone calls. I turned down all sorts of invitations both personal and professional. I’m only now connecting with some bookstores who wanted me to make appearances. I didn’t see movies, watch TV or visit friends. There are people who were very, very patient with me and there were also relationships that suffered, some probably permanently.
Mrs.B.: Your encyclopedias are thought to be, by many, essential books in their magical libraries. At there any books by other authors that you feel are essential reads?
Judika: Many. I always advise reading everything that you can get your hands on. Don’t worry about whether you agree with everything in a book, the goal is to expand your knowledge, not necessarily just have someone confirm what you already know although sometimes that’s useful, too. Magic is a vast topic that is related to virtually every other subject. Pretty much anything that you read can potentially further your magical education. That said, the basis of so much magic is botanical. I find that I keep returning to Mrs. Grieve’s A Modern Herbal. Even though it’s an old book, I turn to it constantly: it’s always on my shelf. I love old herbals, Nicholas Culpeper, too. One of my favorite books is Witchcraft Medicine by Claudia Muller-Ebeling, Christian Ratsch and Wolf-Dieter Storl. I love Judy Hall’s books on crystals and her book on psychic self-defense. And for those working with angels, Gustav Davidson’s Dictionary of Angels is an essential reference.
Thank you, Judika Illes for taking the time to answer these questions!
(the faith of Isis), what it means to follow it, and how the faith has been absorbed into the Christian faith (like many things with a Pagan background). He even ran through an entire daily ritual for us, which was complex and just beautiful. The workshop was endlessly fascinating on an educational level - I probably learned more from it than I have learned from any book or workshop I've read or taken since the very start of my path - but it really got me thinking about ways to expand my own practices. Seriously, if a workshop has made you think of changing something you do day-to-day? That's a pretty serious impact!
A bit later, Red Oak Grove, ADF conducted the main ritual for the CNJPP. I've never participated in a Druid ritual before, and I was so pleased to get the chance! What a great experience it was! There was singing, young girls skipping around the circle sprinkling the participants with blessed water, a few flubs that had us giggling (I love when that happens in ritual - I think it adds such a great element of joy to the event!), and I can say I learned so much about the Druid faith (and that I want to learn more!). Again at this ritual, those who came to participate were invited to sing and get involved in the ritual. It was just a wonderful, beautiful thing to have experienced.
