About the Author Diana Rajchel (San Francisco, CA) is the author of Mabon and Samhain in the Llewellyn Sabbat Essentials series and is a long-time contributor to Llewellyn annuals. She is in a lifelong, passionate love affair with magick itself and runs the Emperor Norton Magickal People social. Rajchel has gone through many transmutations: from Wiccan to witch, from Pagan to animist, from magician to alchemist. She serves as a city priestess to the spirit of San Francisco and offers tarot life coaching and spell technique consulting to the public. Llewellyn Publications Woodbury, Minnesota Copyright Information Urban Magick: A Guide for the City Witch © 2020 by Diana Rajchel. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non- exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means. Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law. First e-book edition © 2020 E-book ISBN: 9780738755991 Book design: Samantha Penn Cover design: Shira Atakpu Editing: Laura Kurtz Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Pending) ISBN: 978-0-7387-5274-7 Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public. Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites. Llewellyn Publications Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive Woodbury, MN 55125 Llewellyn.com Manufactured in the United States of America I dedicate this book to the many spirits and beings that helped me make this book happen. There are many crossroads in this work, and I have stood in them all. Contents Introduction One: What Is Urban Magick? Two: Laws of Urban Magick Three: Foundation Skills for Urban Magick Four: The Birth of Cities Five: Urban Design as Occult Art Six: Urban Art and Magick Seven: Nature Magick in the Cement Jungle Eight: Spirit Work and the City Nine: Life in the City Ten: Spells for Urban Living Eleven: So Now What? Bibliography Introduction W hen I began working with city spirits, I did not see myself as a priest. I saw myself as a person with a passionate interest in magick who wanted to get really good at it. Cities and their magickal potential certainly called to me, but so did many things. The occult is a bursting closet with behemothic layers of interesting. When you begin the study, you become that prize contestant standing in a wind tunnel, trying to grasp the dollar bill equivalents of different topics. Even now, twenty years later, putting together a coherent narrative for other urban magickal people feels like flailing in that tunnel. I had too many interests within the topic to settle for one. Becoming something specific—especially something city-related—snuck up on me. I wasn’t looking to engage the city spirit when I moved to Minneapolis. After a divorce, I had to move to the nearest big city because the city had the jobs. With what was going on in my life at the time—mainly being broke in my late twenties—I invested most of my study into figuring out why some of my spells worked and others didn’t. I could feel the city spirit of Minneapolis watching but paid little mind. I was too busy working magick like the rent was due tomorrow, because usually it was. About the time of my move, Llewellyn published Urban Primitive. This was the first time I saw any acknowledgement of the intelligence I felt hovering over me. It read to me like a palliative for nature workers living in cities; the premise hinged on someone “stuck” in the city and negotiating the necessity of a job while feeling that call to a pristine, idealized nature. I winced a little at that idea without fully knowing why but kept reading. I already knew that I rarely aligned fully with other people’s magickal perspectives. I found it valuable, even if I disagreed with some of it on a subterranean level. For me, city life was medicine for too many years in places of controlling isolation. Knowing this about myself, I took much of what Kaldera and Schwartzstein presented into my personal practice and reframed it for someone who needed life in a large city. Not long after moving into my new urban apartment, an old college friend came to visit. During this visit she introduced me to a hipster obsessed with the architecture and urban design of Minneapolis. By the end of our first date, so to speak, I recognized him: the priest to the city of Minneapolis. As an atheist with a degree of contempt for “woo” folk like me, he probably still has no idea. For about two years, he and I went on weekly outings always centered on exploring some aspect of the city. Once we walked the labyrinthine skyways. Another time we watched clouds obscure the city skyline. Yet another time we explored a lock station on the Mississippi River. Every adventure tapped me into some part of the city that he already instinctively knew. While he would never admit it, he seemed pulled along by some intuitive call to bring me to these oft-obscure places. I became aware of the magick of Minneapolis and Saint Paul and felt its