After a restorative weekend, my optimistic Sagittarian self wakes up early Monday morning, ready to take on the world. But by Wednesday, I’m exhausted and struggling to get out of bed. I reach for my phone to snooze my alarm, and there they are—messages from family, friends, colleagues, and clients waiting across every platform. Before my Cuban coffee has warmed my hands, I’ve skimmed headlines about growing fascism in the United States, missile and drone attacks in Ukraine, famine in Gaza, a white supremacist march in Australia, and viral toys that somehow feel equally urgent. I doomscroll through friends celebrating birthdays, managing illness, and expressing anxiety over losing their jobs, their homes, their loved ones. The weight of it all settles in my chest—urgency and despair braided together.
This happens every week—this cycle of hope and depletion, energy and collapse.
This is the age we live in: relentless, noisy, fractured. We are pulled between global crises and environmental dread, the pressures of work and the seduction of consumption, the endless hum of social media. Even when we step away, the residue lingers—restlessness, a nagging sense of being behind, an ache of helplessness.
And still, the call of the sacred whispers beneath the noise.
To be a priestess—or to live as a witch, a devotee, a spiritual practitioner of any tradition—in this world requires extraordinary discipline. Perhaps it has never been easy. What is demanded of us now is acumen and devotion: the sharpness to see clearly, discern wisely, and act with integrity, paired with the steadfastness to keep showing up for what is sacred, even when no one notices, even when the world clamours for something else.
Living amid distraction
Distraction today is not simply a matter of busyness. It is a systemic force, carefully engineered. Our devices are designed to fracture attention. Our economies reward urgency over depth. Our culture teaches that worth is measured by output, appearance, or likes. Even in spiritual spaces, there’s pressure to consume: the next tarot deck, the next certification course, the next hashtag-ready ritual that promises transformation in three easy steps.
What happens to us under these conditions? We become depleted yet wired, weary but overstimulated, informed yet powerless, connected yet profoundly lonely. Our capacity for discernment dulls, our ability to sit in silence shrinks, our spiritual will scatters like leaves in the wind.
The priestess cannot thrive in this state. And yet, it is precisely this state that makes her presence vital. This brings me to Isis.
Isis and the work of reassembly
I dedicate the month of August to Isis, the ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility, mourning, and motherhood. One way she shows up for me is as a guide for living when everything feels broken.
When I turn to Isis, I see not only the radiant goddess of magic and sovereignty but also the mourner, the seeker, the patient weaver of fragments. In her most famous myth, Set murders and dismembers the body of her husband, Osiris, scattering his body across the land. Isis searches tirelessly, gathering the pieces one by one. With her wisdom and magic, she reassembles him, restoring breath and life to him so that he can conceive their son, Horus. Osiris lives on in the Duat, or underworld.
I think of this story when everything feels broken—my attention, my sense of purpose, the world itself. Isis teaches us how to live when everything is scattered. She shows us the power of perseverance and sacred initiative: to keep searching, to keep gathering, to hold faith that wholeness is possible even amid ruin.
Her acumen is not simply cleverness but a spiritual sharpness—the capacity to see what others overlook, to recognise pattern in chaos, to cut through illusion. Her devotion is not a passing mood but a way of being—loyal, steadfast, woven through grief and love alike.
In a world that thrives on scattering, Isis teaches the art of reassembly.
The daily return: tending altar and self
For me, priestessing begins at the altar. It may be refreshing the glasses of water on my spiritist altar or offering rum to the Warriors. Every morning, I tend to my goddess altar, which is dedicated to Isis during her month. I recite prayers, offer fresh water or incense, and draw a card from the Isis Oracle.
Each altar has its own presence and its own demands. The spiritist altar is a place of guidance and communication. The Warriors are watchful and protective. The goddess altar invites beauty and reflection. Tending to these spaces is more than maintenance; it’s an act of relationship, a daily return to the sacred centre. As I refresh them, something in me shifts. My scattered thoughts gather, my hurried breathing slows.
Devotion is the training of attention and the reminder that no matter how fragmented I feel, I can always return to this centre.
Tending the altar might mean:
- Refreshing offerings of water, flowers, or incense, breathing in the frankincense that always reminds me to slow down
- Straightening and cleaning, creating order in miniature against the disorder outside
- Placing tokens from daily life—a feather I picked up during a walk, a crystal my husband bought for me at the thrift store—as threads connecting the sacred to the ordinary
- Prayers of gratitude and for peace and blessings, sometimes whispered, sometimes just held in the silence
Meditation, too, is part of this daily return. Twenty minutes of sitting in silence, watching one’s breath, and letting thoughts pass like clouds creates space between stimulus and response. On mornings when the world feels too much, meditation reminds me that I am not my anxious thoughts or the urgent demands pulling at me. This practice requires discipline and consistency; there are no shortcuts to the benefits meditation offers.
Over time, these small acts weave a rhythm. They are not grand ceremonies but daily threads of devotion, strong enough to hold me when I feel unravelled, strong enough to remind me who I am when the world tells me I am only my productivity, my anxiety, my endless to-do lists.
Anchors in the storm
Rituals are anchors when everything feels adrift. Some are elaborate, but many are small and ordinary: a whispered prayer before turning on my computer, a protective piece of jewellery, a few moments of silence before eating. Ritual marks time as sacred, reminding us that we live not only by clocks and deadlines but also by cycles and mysteries.
Boundaries, too, are rituals of devotion. I silence my phone often. I turn off all smartphone notifications except direct messages. I set limits on how often I consume news, and how much, recognising that overwhelm serves no one, least of all those who need our clear-headed service.
To live without boundaries is to surrender acumen. To live without ritual is to starve devotion. Together, they form the scaffolding that allows the priestess to endure.
Sharpening the blade
cumen is cultivated through:
Study. Reading myths, history, philosophy, and spiritual texts, not for collection but for digestion. Acumen thrives on knowledge tempered by reflection.
Discernment. Asking: Is this true? Is this useful? Is this aligned with my purpose? Learning to distinguish the sacred from the shallow, the essential from the trivial, the genuine from the performative.
Deep listening. To dreams, to omens, to the wisdom of community, to the body itself. Spiritual sharpness grows through paying attention to what others dismiss.
Integrity. Acumen without ethics is manipulation. To be truly sharp is to act with justice and compassion, even when it costs us something.
Feeding the flame
Devotion requires its own nourishment:
Consistency. Showing up for prayer, ritual, or service, especially when uninspired. Devotion grows in the soil of repetition, in the commitment to return again and again.
Service. Priestessing flows not only inward but also outward in the care for others, support of the community, and embodiment of compassion in action. This might mean hosting new moon rituals in my backyard, teaching Georgian Wicca, or gathering with my covenmates online or local kindred spirits. Devotion is both personal practice and shared sacred work.
Beauty. Devotion expresses itself through offerings, song, careful arrangement of flowers, the lighting of candles, not for performance but for joy and honour.
Resilience. Remaining devoted even when faith wavers, even when the world feels indifferent or hostile, even when no one witnesses our faithfulness.
Presence, not perfection
Acumen and devotion are not lofty ideals but daily practices, woven thread by thread. Some days the weave is strong; other days it unravels entirely. On the really dark days, when even ritual feels like too much, I turn everything off and sleep. Sometimes the most devoted act is rest.
What matters is not perfection but presence—the willingness to return, again and again, to what is sacred.
These practices require space and time, resources not everyone has. If you cannot maintain daily altars or lengthy meditations, then adapt what you can or find another path. This work is demanding and not for everyone, and that’s perfectly fine.
Priestessing is not about never being distracted. It is about choosing, in a distracted world, to reassemble your attention. To tend what is sacred. To keep weaving, even when your hands shake.
Like Isis, we gather the scattered pieces of ourselves, of our practice, of our broken world. We hold them tenderly. And with love, insight, and unwavering devotion, we breathe life back into them.
The next time I reach for my phone on a weary Wednesday, I carry this with me, the memory of flame and water, the knowledge that I can choose presence over panic, one breath at a time.
This is the work.