Casey Giovinco - Magick from the Mat: Using Yoga to Enhance Your Witchcraft

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Magick from the Mat: Using Yoga to Enhance Your Witchcraft 2021 by Casey Giovinco.

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First e-book edition 2021

E-book ISBN: 9780738766201

Cover design by Shira Atakpu

Interior art by Mary Ann Zapalac

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Giovinco, Casey, author.

Title: Magick from the mat : using yoga to enhance your witchcraft / Casey

Giovinco.

Description: First edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota : Llewellyn Publication,

2021. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021013223 (print) | LCCN 2021013224 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738765952 | ISBN 9780738766201 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Magic. | Witchcraft. | Yoga.

Classification: LCC BF1623.Y64 G56 2021 (print) | LCC BF1623.Y64 (ebook)

| DDC 133.4/3dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021013223

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021013224

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 publishers website for links to current author websites.

Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

To my big sister, who has always had my back.

The way you battled cancer during the Covid-19 crisis taught me more about integrity, grace, and strength than you will ever know. I love you.

Contents

by Thorn Mooney

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3:

Chapter 4:

Chapter 5:

Chapter 6:

Chapter 7:

Chapter 8:

Chapter 9:

Chapter 10:

Chapter 11:

: Base Poses

Exercises

Medical Disclaimer

Please consult a medical doctor before you begin any exercise program. While yoga is for everyone and provides amazing health benefits, only you know your own limitations. The techniques and suggestions in this book are not meant as a substitution for medical advice.

Foreword

Like a lot of Americans, my own introduction to yoga was as a component of physical fitness. It was an exercisesort of a fancy way to stretch, and good for when you werent cut out for team sports. It was offered as an alternative to conventional gym classes at my (admittedly unusual) high school, and its still a popular way to satisfy the physical fitness requirement at a lot of colleges and universities. Even now, when the New Year rolls around and people start posting about their fitness and weight loss goals, yoga is often front and center. Its touted as a cure-all: tone your body, exercise without strain or the risk of injury, feel sexy, build flexibility, and tune out the stresses of your busy daily life. Come December, my social media feed fills up with ads for local studios, practically always featuring extraordinarily slim, serene-looking models, almost always white, blonde, and fashionably coordinated. For years, I would think, Good for them. But my body doesnt do that.

When I became seriously involved in witchcraft as a young adult, I was exposed to another yoga entirely. Yoga is everywhere in Pagan, New Age, and other kinds of magical communities, and though the focus isnt usually on physical fitness, it was just as difficult for me to navigate. Wasnt this an Indian tradition? Perhaps even a religion all by itself ? I had friends who had grown up in churches that didnt allow members to practice yoga because they saw it as another, conflicting spiritual practice. And here I was, suddenly meeting Pagans who incorporated yoga into their own meditation and ritual practices as though it was a matter of course. But wasnt yoga something separate? Were we just appropriating something out of context?

How confusing! Its a strange thingyoga is both ubiquitous and mysterious. Its everywhereboth in mundane and magical spacesand yet it remains widely misunderstood.

I didnt begin to seriously reconsider the practice of yoga from the perspective of witchcraft until I cast a wider net and started learning about the development of contemporary witchcraftespecially Wiccathrough the work of Western occultists around the turn of the twentieth century and later. Yoga has a deep and expansive history within its original Hindu contexts, as anyone who explores it readily discovers. What many dont realize, however, is that it also has a rich history among occultists and magicians, long before ever becoming a fitness craze. It is impossible to spend any time at all in occult communities without being exposed to ideas and traditions born in Asia, and then translated through American and European new religious movements, particularly Theosophy. Such traditions often go unsung in popular books, but their influence on contemporary witchcraft of practically any variety you can name cannot be overstated. Indeed, many concepts that we take for granted in Pagan, New Age, and witchcraft communities todayenergy healing and balancing, the mind-body connection in matters of health, the emphasis on manifestationcome to us not from our ancient Pagan forebears, but from modern traditions like Theosophy and New Thought. We can thank them (and also critique them) for introducing many Westerners to yoga. We also see yoga when we study ceremonial magic, particularly the works of Aleister Crowley, that most influential of modern occult luminaries. Yoga is simply impossible to avoid, whatever flavor of magic calls to us.

In Magick from the Mat , Casey brings all of these worlds together, leading readers on a fascinating tour through history while also detailing how contemporary practitionersof either yoga or witchcraftcan incorporate their practice of one into the other, thereby deepening them both. This is a massive undertaking, and he handles it with aplomb, doing justice to yogas rich history outside of Western contexts and advising witches in how they might approach a yoga practice with both respect and confidence. If your objective is to practice yoga for the first time, Casey serves as an experienced, knowledgeable guide who will help you build firm foundations. If you are already firmly rooted in a yoga practice of your own, Casey will teach you to harness what youre already doing and direct it to enrich your life even further through the practice of witchcraft. You dont have to have a particular sort of body or a predetermined level of experience in either yoga or witchcraft to enjoy the wealth of information and encouragement here.