“How do Spiritualists and Witches view AI?”

You know we love bringing Great People to Great People. Week after week, Jenny C. Bell and I, Granddaughter Crow, get to showcase Amazing Authors, Authentic Creators, and Dedicated Spiritualists. In such, we get to talk about the BEYOND and all of its Wonder! 

However, sometimes what is BEYOND our human experience can be very complex, and even harmful in some cases! 

In tonight’s episode, we are going to explore the complex topic of AI or Artificial Intelligence vs the HI or Human Intelligence. Not from a “AI helps me get things done fast” nor from a position of the fact that “The AI data centers are detrimental to the mother earth and are stripping basic resources from already stressed environments”. 

Tonight, we are going to go back to the heartbeat of the human race. Self-expression, self-autonomy, and the humans right to breathe! We are joined here by the Artists of our time, the Authors, and Creators: Nikki Wardwell Sleath, Deborah Blake, and Mickie Mueller sit down with Jenny C Bell and Granddaughter Crow to explore the impact of “How people in the Spiritual and Witchcraft community view AI”!

As we explore this broad topic, know that you have the liberty to explore, investigate, and ask questions, and feel all of your feeling and think all of your thoughts. And let’s all continue to educate ourselves. So, let’s explore, In our 1st Roundtable Diaglogue. 

Join the conversation by leaving a comment, text the show, or email us at BeliefBeingBeyond@gmail.com. 

________

Roundtable Guests:
Nikki Wardwell Sleath
www.nikkiwardwellsleath.com
IG: @nikki_wardwell_sleath

Deborah Blake: 
www.deborahblakeauthor.com
IG: @deborahblakeauthor & @the_crankycrone

Mickie Mueller: 
www.MickieMueller.com
IG: @mickiemueller & @hihumanbadge
YouTube: @MickieMuellerStudio

#podcast #ai #witchcraft #dialogue #spiritualgrowth 

Transcript

Why AI Vs HI Matters Here

GDC 0:01

Welcome to Belief Being and Beyond with your host, Granddaughter Crow. Hi everybody, Granddaughter Crow here with yet another episode of Belief Being and Beyond. And you know I love bringing great people to great people. Week after week, Jenny C. Bell and I get to showcase amazing authors, authentic creators, and dedicated spiritualists. You know the kind. They walk their walk, they talk their talk. You see it in everything that they do. And in such, we get to talk about the beyond and all of its wonder. However, sometimes what is beyond our human experience can be very complex. I'll just say complex and even harmful in some cases. So in tonight's episode, we are going to explore the complex topic of AI or artificial intelligence versus HI, human intelligence, not from uh AI helps me to get things done fast, nor from the position of the fact that the AI data centers are detrimental to Mother Earth and are stripping basic resources away from an already stressed environment. There are many directions we can go, but tonight we are going to go back to the heartbeat of the human race: self-expression, self-autonomy, and the human's right to breathe. We are joined here by artists of our time, the authors and the creators, to explore the impact of how people in the spiritual and witchcraft community view AI. As we explore this broad topic, know that you have the liberty to explore, investigate, ask questions, and feel all of your feelings and think all of your thoughts. And let's all continue to educate ourselves. So this is Belief Being and Beyond first round table dialogue on how people in the spiritual and witchcraft community view AI in 2026.

Meet The Roundtable Witches

GDC 2:30

And we have an expansive panel here for you tonight. Oh, so I'm gonna toss it to Nikki Wardwell's sleeve. Nikki, come on, introduce yourself.

Nikki 3:05

And uh I have been a practicing occultist for about 30 years. I'm a formally trained witch in the religious order of witchcraft back in the day. Um, and so I teach and take clients and um have authored several books and have numerous other books um coming out. Um all my stuff is uh accessible through Nikki wardwellsleath.com. Um so I'm on the regular socials and all of that, but um I'm very uh passionate about dreams and the exploration of human consciousness itself, I think is the um it it's sort of we should feel obligated, I think, as witches and spiritualists uh and things like that to try to study consciousness because I think all magic is just a combination of different iterations of energy and consciousness. So um I have a lot of different passionate topics, but that's just my quick summary, and I'm really excited to uh discuss this deeply with you guys tonight.

GDC 4:20

Oh, Nikki, it's so wonderful to have you. Thank you so much. Now, Deborah Blake, she is in the house, the cranky crone.

Deborah 4:32

I did bring my hat in case I'm feeling cranky about the subject. Um, but I am Deborah Blake. I am the author of 19 books on witchcraft, uh, most of them from Llewellyn Worldwide. Everyday Witches Book of Deities is the most recent one. You can find me at Deborah Blakeauthor.com. Yes, I made that up myself. Um and there's, you know, I'm also all over the interwebs. Um you can you can find me on most of the most of the places. Um I also have written uh fiction. Uh and I am passionate about creativity and about uh people at every level of a witchcraft journey exploring and learning. And I think the best way to do that is by embracing your inner humanness, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't many alternatives for many people. I have opinions, so many opinions. If you've seen me on this show before, you know I have opinions, and we'll get to those later.

GDC 5:55

I absolutely love this. Yes, we are gonna get those, get to those later. And then we have Mickie Mueller and the house.

Mickie 6:05

Hi, I am Nikki Mueller, and uh you can find me at Mickie Mueller.com. I've got links to all my socials there. Um it's M-I-C-K-I-E-M-U-E-L-L-E-R to find me. Um I'm an author, illustrator, and witch, not necessarily in that order. Um I also do a lot of teaching on YouTube. Um and uh I've been a practicing witch since the 90s. I've been uh just doing my thing. I I kind of uh I kind of gravitate gravitate towards kind of a folk magic approach to a lot of what I do. And uh I love teaching people how to embrace their own magic and feel empowered to uh just do magic in their own way and not really you know be afraid of it and uh you know be creative and realize that the power of witchcraft is all inside of us. It's what we do with what we have, um, more than you know, your tools and all of your different stuff. It's it's what we what we have on the inside. And I I firmly believe that, and I I think that's a a really important lesson that we all need to learn that what makes us human is also what makes us magic. Those things are interconnected uh big time. So um, yeah, um, I I think that's me in a nutshell.

GDC 7:45

Mickie, and you are so talented too. I mean, there is a reason why Witchcraft is about craft, and you are definitely a creator, and absolutely thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being here. And then, of course, we have a Jenny C. Bell is in the house.

Jenny 8:09

Hi everyone. For those that don't know me, I'm Jenny C. Bell. You can find out all about me at jennycbell.com. I have two books. I have Spirit Crystals and Now Divergent Witchcraft, and I am the host of the R Coven community, which is a private community for new witches. It's for any witch, but we tend to get a lot of new and beginner witches, which actually leads me to my first question for everybody

Should New Witches Use AI

Jenny 8:35

here, right? So I work with new witches, and a lot of them are pulled towards or drawn towards AI for lots of reasons, right? They're interested in chatting with an AI agent to get information on the ancestors, to get readings, to create card readings, to create sigils, to create spells, and they're interested in AI overviews when they research a topic instead of reading a book or going to someone's like blog, they just want that AI overview. So my question is as people who have been practicing a while, right, how do you feel about people using AI and AI information as sources for their spiritual practice, for witchcraft, for things like that?

GDC 9:26

I think we should go ahead and hit it from Nikki to Debbie to Mickie.

Nikki 9:33

Um Well, I think that it's a terrible idea because um first of all, it's I I don't think we can consider it a source. I think when you are trying to use AI as your source for learning something, you've given up on sources altogether because if you understand what's happening, AI is pulling, often completely non-consensually, from every source it can. And so you then don't get to know at all who all the various sources are and some of the sources that the AI has pulled from, maybe things that directly contradict with your beliefs, you know, the the types of traditions that you want to be learning about. You can't trust it. I mean, I I'm I'll have to say that I was chuckling to myself. I was so honored to you know be able to come talk here with you guys about this. And I thought, well, this is hilarious. Maybe I'm like the anti because I have I don't even know, I've never used Chat GPT or anything like that. I don't even know how. Um, but as we know, it's now being built into a lot of the stuff that we already use, like our email. So, you know, I have but what I have seen, so to four of those people that are wanting to learn from an overview or from a chat agent or whatever, it's a terrible idea. You cannot trust the validity of any of the information. Um, what I see, for instance, in my Gmail account, um, I get a lot of very personal magical questions from students and clients and things that are grappling with spiritual, you know, issues. Um, and down at as I go to hit reply and start to write out a thoughtful response from my more than 30 years in the craft, um, I see at the bottom of the screen that Gmail is is hopped up and ready to give me a prompted AI created answer. And sometimes I am horrified at what it wants, what it would have done if I were the kind of person who said, Oh, I'll use AI to I would be giving some really bad and even possibly magically dangerous advice to people if I had used that. Now, if you are new to the craft, you might not know that that's dangerous advice. And I think to the point of wanting an overview instead of studying books, well, I mean, I have a problem here. But um I think that a lot of what we need to do in the craft is if you're really serious, you you have to dedicate yourself to study. You there is no shortcut with an overview. Long hours of study are part of the experience of you integrating it yourself. You cannot be handed magical and spiritual information in an overview, nor taught it by a robot. Okay, I have so much else to say, but I'm gonna stop and let somebody else respond to Debbie's question. Now too.

GDC 12:49

That is so beautiful. Debbie, Deborah, Deborah Blake, what would you like to add?

Deborah 12:57

Well, first of all, ditto. Um, so yeah, I do think witchcraft is a very personal thing. It is personal for the people who are starting to learn it. There are people who are further along the path, it's personal for them. For those of us who put a lot of time and energy and soul into writing books, all of which have been stolen, literally stolen, to create this AI stuff. I mean, I'm actually part of a lawsuit by a bunch of authors because they took all of the things that I wrote and glommed onto it to make this AI. So, first of all, you're taking part in theft, which is not a cool way to start your spiritual journey. You do want to do that. But the other thing is you're missing out on the very valuable human aspect of learning from the people who have come before you. Uh, I also have been, you know, a witch for many years. Um, I came to it fairly late in life. Uh, it wasn't until my mid to late 30s. Obviously, I you know I'm really into it now. Um, but all of the wisdom that I have acquired is either personal experience from trial and error, from you know, my own personal practice, or it is the wisdom of the people who came before me. My first high priestess was a teacher. You know, that was, you know, she had a study group and she gave us assignments and you know, gave us books to read. And of course, they're not out in the open like uh Nikki's, but I also have a crap ton of books, um, written by incredible, wise, smart people who often have a very different take on things than I do, or they have a different part of knowledge. I mean, I don't know all the things. I've written a lot of books. There are plenty of things I am not an expert on. And I think if you can find the experts, if you can find the wise ones who have gone before you, you know, that is what witchcraft has always been. It has always been passed down by the wise ones who came before you. Yes, there is a big gaping hole in that because of stuff, that's a whole nother round table. Um, but that wisdom will go to waste if we don't uh use it. And by opting for the easy answer, and as Nikki said, often the wrong answer, because computers don't know spirit. They cannot you know give you a spiritual answer. They can give you a bunch of stuff that they took from a bunch of different sources, but when you put it all together, it doesn't necessarily mean what the authors and the creators originally intended it to mean. And when you take out the human element, that's what you lose.

GDC 16:20

I love that. I love that. Thank you, Deborah. So, Mickie, well, how would you respond to that question?

Mickie 16:29

I have thoughts. Um, and I jotted a couple down because I don't want to forget what I was gonna say. Um, but part of it, okay, the first thing that comes into my mind is AI hallucinates. Okay, it does. Um, it it it literally, if if you go to search something and you get that overview, that AI overview, very often it's not even correct. And uh, you know, Nikki pointed that out too. A lot of the information is incorrect. I did a search one day and found out that Margaret Hamilton really enjoyed watching Wicked, the movie, and she's longed at just with before that movie came out. It's just wrong, and it's not even just a little wrong, it's like very wrong on a lot of things. Um, so I mean, that's the first thing that comes into my mind is why would you want to use a resource that could possibly be very, very inaccurate? Um, canola oil, there's another one for you. I was searching to find out what the plant was because I couldn't remember, but I knew it wasn't the canola plant. And that's the first thing that the AI overview came up with was it's from the canola plant. And I'm like, it's not though, it's not. And I want to argue with it, but that's not gonna get us anywhere. So um, and then my my other thought is this I have used chat GPT, I have played around with it a little bit because I wanted to understand it. I wanted to, what is this about? What are we, you know, what are we getting into here? And I felt like it was important. So, yeah, not when it was brand new, but um not even not recently either. I have messed around in Chat GPT a little bit just to see what is it all about? What can it do? And I'm supposing for some people it can be useful. I used it once for something really useful because I was trying to figure out the size of a candy box that I needed to create to figure out how much candy needed to go in it. It was like a big mess, and like organizing the sizes and everything, and figuring out for how many people I was sending this. That was useful. But here's the thing: I don't think we need to be using it for everything, and we certainly shouldn't be using it for teaching us spirituality. Why it's not human? How can it possibly understand what it is to raise energy? How can it possibly understand what it is to connect with a deity? How can a machine understand what it is to be human? Because there's nothing more human than magic, you know, or nothing more human than writing or than creating art. These things are all interconnected, and I'm sorry, these might these machines might be able to regurgitate these things back from what we have done, but that's not the same thing, and it becomes a telephone game, uh, like my other uh people here were talking about too. It's a telephone game where you say one thing and then somebody else says something, and then what you get sent back to you is not what it was to begin with. So I agree with Deborah and Nikki both. It's it's not gonna work. And let me just say the in closing, my thought is this AI coming on to everything I'm trying to write, it's like clippy for people back in the day. Would you remember Clippy? It's like the worst clippy ever. It's like, oh, here I can write this for you. I'm like, I got this thing. Thanks, friend. I do know how to write. I I I don't I don't think it's a good resource for witchcraft knowledge. I I really would hope that people would you can learn more from a tree, for goodness sake, or a walk in nature, than you can listening to AI tell you what other people think it's through its weird way of figuring it out. Not into it. Also, they're they're going after my books, too. I'm also in that lawsuit.

GDC 20:36

So if you guys didn't know, now you know. There's a lot more at stake than being able to be quick. So, Jenny, what is our next question?

Paid AI Gurus And Fake Wisdom

Jenny 20:48

Yeah, so I really love those answers. Uh, I heard some things that uh resonate with me, like when Mickie was saying AI can be used to solve a math problem. Math is definitely not my strength. And so, yeah, use it for that. But to use it for something that was spirit when it doesn't have spirit makes no sense to me. So I really liked that kind of just like it's you know, you can use it for something, sure, if that's what you want to do. And like we said, it's embedded in everything. So I actually found, I mean, the news on AI is daily, like we're it's like constantly something every day, and I'm like, what's today? So recently I learned, um, I don't have the Tony Robbins information, but both Tony Robbins and Jay Shetty have AI agents that people can pay for. So I'm gonna read it to you. It's straight from Jay Shetty's site, who, for people who don't know, is considered a spiritual leader. Um, it's called the Daily Wisdom Plus AI. It's $47 a year, and you get unlimited texting and voice calls 24 7 from anywhere in the world, but it's through an AI agent. Play along with daily AI prompts, and it helps. You quote personalize your wisdom. So I found this really fascinating, and I could say a lot of things, but I'd like to hear what others think about this kind of innovation that's going on.

GDC 22:13

Yeah, Nikki, what do you think about that?

Nikki 22:19

Again, I think this is a terrible idea. But I don't know that I'm gonna um we'll we'll see if there's anything tonight that I think is a great idea. Um but um I uh no, so I really love to deal in truth, and I feel like this is super important to me in terms of every kind of relationship I have, whether it's with a mentor or with myself. And an AI agent as a as a wisdom mentor just does not seem like a great idea because first of all, I I've heard all these horror stories about um people really getting sucked in to you know thinking the AI is their therapist and even falling in love with it in some cases. Um and that's not a being. And it even though you might think like, well, it's part of the collective conscious consciousness, but it's stealing the voices and the thoughts of lots of other people. And I've seen instances, even just in very innocent situations, where um there's a discussion going on online, and like a friend of mine would use, I could tell, uh, Chat GPT or some other generative thing to construct their response to to the friend in the conversation. And it was really jarring to me to see that be it felt like a lie because she's putting these words out there, but I know they don't come from her. And when you want wisdom, think about what wisdom is. I mean, wisdom comes from lived experience combined with conscious awareness. Two things that the AI agent that you can that's a unlimited texts and calls for $47 a year. I mean, that might sound like a great deal, but you're you overpaid by $47 because it's not worth anything. You know, it's that's like throwing, you know, you you want wisdom, but you're casting your line out into just like the cesspool of everything to get what? I don't care if it was trained by whoever the guy, uh Tony Robbins or the other guy. I mean, if if that's so valuable, then they should be giving the wisdom themselves. That that's I just I just feel that. I do they want to, you know, they want to be replaced by a robot or do they just want to make billions of dollars? Right. Um I you the robot can't replace their lived wisdom. So people cannot trust that as being a wisdom mentor. I think it's a bad idea.

GDC 25:26

I love it, Nikki. Thank you. So Deborah Blake.

Deborah 25:33

I have opinions. Um I always have opinions. One of the things that I talk about a lot is that I believe that witchcraft is about connection. Connection with deity, connection with nature, connection with other human beings. You cannot connect with a machine. It is not going to be able to connect back with you. Nature will actually give you things. It's, I mean, it is real, it is tangible. You know, I was at the ocean last week and it made my soul so happy. It was just, you know, communing with Mama Ocean, you know, was so cleansing and so grounding. And talking to other witches like this is just such a gift. And without that connection, it is not witchcraft. That is my opinion, and I will die on that hell, um, or some hell. Uh, but for me, this is the thing that makes witchcraft witchcraft, is that we are connecting on so many different levels. And as Nikki said, you uh the machine, as useful as it is for measuring a box, human beings are not boxes, they cannot measure us. And only another human being can connect with you if you're if you are longing for that connection, you are not going to find it through $47 a month. And and I'm sorry, again, this is just my opinion. Lazy cheating, money grubbing, not good. I you know, I mean, you you need to ask somebody a spiritual question. I'm online all over the place. Just ask me a damn question. I will not charge you $47 a month. I'm the I get questions all the time. I answer every single one of them. That is not like absurd and perverse. Um, you know, uh all right, and I answer some of the absurd and perverse ones, but not nicely. But that connection, that human connection is the essence of witchcraft, and it cannot be replicated by a machine for any amount of money. Although, if you want to send me $47 a month, I'll take it.

GDC 28:04

No problem. No problem. You can send all of us $47 a month and we'll be on call between the five of us. We got you covered. I love it, I love it. So, Mickie, what do you have to say about that?

Mickie 28:19

Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony. What are we doing, friend? I'm sorry. If you don't have time to personally mentor people, then don't do it. That's I don't know. I I don't like it. I'm I would not be interested in such a thing. Um, if I did have the money, to be honest. I if I wanted a mentor, I would pay a human being to be my mentor. I'm not interested in what AI has to to to the wisdom that it has to bestow upon me about being a person. No, that doesn't make sense to me. Um, and you know, here's the other thing I'll say about that too. Uh having messed around with Chat GPT a little bit is a little bit of a butt kisser, you know? I mean, it is, it really is. It's like everything you type in, oh, that's such a lovely idea. You're the smartest, most you know, advanced person. And I'm just like, oh, don't even know. Come on, you know, how how are you getting I I I don't understand how you can get some spiritual wisdom from this thing that just is it's a feedback machine, it's just a feedback machine. And you know, okay, the idea of um maybe using it as a jumping off place for prompts, okay, but that's you can also get those from humans too. So I don't know, I feel like maybe we should be um using my cat's losing her mind. Cut it out. I feel like we should be using AI to help us with the things that humans can't necessarily do, so that we have the time in our day to be able to help people with the things that we're really good at, like spiritual mentoring, like giving advice, like uh encouraging people when they're down, the kinds of things that you think of Tony Robbins and people like that as doing to help people, and also the other good people in this group and in our greater community. That's what we're good at. Let AI handle some of the smaller things that we don't need to be handling, that we're maybe humans aren't great at to free us up to be able to help other people. Why are we why are we using it for the things that make us the most human? That's it's ridiculous. It doesn't, it just doesn't make sense to me. I think it's a shame. And and and it then it also comes back to the bigger, I don't, it's not the bigger problem. They're all big problems. It comes back to the other problem of the fact that we're gonna get all this good spiritual mentoring, we think, from this AI thing that's also taking our natural resources away, destroying uh someone's ability to get clean water out of their faucet. We're missing something if this is what we're doing.

GDC 31:26

So, so, so important. Thank you. I'm gonna toss the ball back over to Jenny C. Bell.

Real Alternatives To AI Learning

Jenny 31:35

Yeah, so I really um I'm hearing a lot of AI could be used for this, but not that, right? And that would be like human creation, spiritual practice, writing books, creating tarot cards. And so I want to kind of open it up as, you know, I started this off with I'm new to witchcraft, I'm using AI overview and a chat GPT type thing to learn about witchcraft. So, what are some alternatives? And I'm just curious, like all of us consider ourselves, I think, at this point, uh at least leaders or wise women or wise elders. And we've been doing this a while. Um, we all started pre-Google, I believe, on uh Witchcraft Path, and pre-like for me, pre-internet. I didn't have internet in my house when I started learning. And so let's take it back to basics. Let's tell people how you can get started, how can you learn? How can you go through and learn spiritual wisdom? How do how do we do these things without AI?

Nikki 32:43

Well, uh there's no shortcut. So in this very fast-paced world, um, if people have come to expect a nice, clean, easy answer handed to them, then maybe the magical life is not going to be your passion. Because what I would say, what can you do, is you need to learn how to meditate. Um, you need to start really being able to know yourself. I think think that some of the best sorcery techniques and magic that you can learn have to do with emotional regulation, with understanding what you really want, what happiness is, what your dreams are, how aware you are of the nature of the reality you're in at any given time and what your relationship is to those energies. Um, so it's all about that, you know, coming into relationship with yourself. So I would get um either uh books on meditation and connecting to oneself and nature, or seek people uh like us who could, you know, direct you to a teacher. There's lots of great meditation teachers, magical teachers. Um there's a lot of us who are teaching not only in through our books, but um both in person and live online, you know, um, and so these are things that do utilize the convenience of technology, but aren't forms of theft um or taking away our voice. So one of the, you know, the one for me, I think that one of the most powerful things we have as witches and magicians is our voice. And AI is the complete counter. It's it's the opposite of that, it's the taking away of the voice. And ultimately, if we use it too much for this kind of stuff, if we take it too far, uh we'll we'll be deprived of our very humanity individually. And I don't mean to be very scary about that, but it could go that way. And magic is about, like, you know, just echoing what has been said here a little bit, but our individual human experiences. So get skills, get skills like meditation, dream recall, understanding the elements, working with them day to day, in person, outside, in the natural world. And those are your best resources. There's loads of brilliant authors. I mean, I'm I'm not gonna start, you know, listing specific books. I mean, I could, but uh that we're not here for that. But I think that people have to realize that all of those sources still exist, and that the magical path is not the path of convenience. And so use those sources. Um, and that way you because why are you drawn to magic? You're drawn to magic because you know it will empower you, but you don't empower anybody by engaging with AI. And all of magic is a two-way exchange, energy out, energy in, energy out, energy in constantly, um, in cycles and exchanges everywhere throughout the world. So this is kind of karmic. You know, if you feel like you deserve or are entitled to an easy answer to to get a leg up in the craft, then you disempower yourself because what you get is also how you're going to be treated. You know, so if you expect to be empowered and have a voice, don't use a platform that takes away voices and takes away humanity and lumps us all into just, you know, a messy pot.

GDC 36:39

I love it. There are so many mic drop moments for each of you in this. I'm loving it. So Deborah Blake, she's so smart.

Deborah 36:51

Uh but yeah, I mean, I pretty much agree with everything that apparently I'm just gonna spend the whole show going, I agree with everything Nikki said. Um and also I agree with everything Mickie said. So it's Nikki and Mickie and me. Um, but I do think if you are serious about walking a spiritual path, it does take an investment of time and energy. Now, yes, we are all very busy, very tired, stretched really thin. So maybe you only have five minutes a day or 10 minutes a day or an hour once a week to use on your spiritual practice. So make the most of that time by finding your teachers. There are, as she said, so many great authors and teachers and wise people. And not everyone will be for every person. There are different schools. There are, I teach online classes as well. Once a month, I teach an online class on a different witchcraft topic. Um, and one of the ways you can find these teachers is by looking at books. If you read a book and you go, uh, that person's that person's too intense for me. Uh, or you know, that person is really wise, but they don't follow a path that feels like my path. That's absolutely fine. But then keep looking, keep finding people. And I do know, you know, a lot of times people tell me that they live in a part of the country where it is hard to find in-person other witches. So you might not be able to find an in-person teacher or in-person people to have a coven with if what you want is a coven. But if you look online, there are a lot of people. I mean, if you watch this show, you will be introduced to person after person after person. And some of them you're gonna go, well, they're interesting, but I'm not interested in what they're talking about. And some of them you're gonna say, Oh my God, that Mickie Mueller, she's so cool. Uh, I will follow her everywhere and do all the things she says to do. But you have to put the effort in, and you do, you have to be your own teacher. I mean, a lot of witchcraft is about self-exploration and about figuring out what things are missing in your life that you want to fill with the things you can learn from witchcraft. Because I think a lot of us who follow a spiritual path came to this path because the path we started out on didn't work for us, or there was no path, or whatever. And once you reach this path, take a few minutes, a few hours to think about what it is about witchcraft, about this spiritual path that resonates with you, and then find other people, whether they are official teachers or authors or just other folks online who are talking about their spiritual beliefs and something that they say resonates with you, you know, reach out, make that connection, but do it with a human being or a book written by a human being, or you know, go out into your community and find people who feel the same way that you do. Again, it's it's the connection thing, but it's also work. And as Nikki said, if you want shortcuts, witchcraft is not an easy path. It's not intended to be an easy path. That doesn't mean it's difficult. Those aren't the you know, it's not an equivalency, but it nobody's gonna hand it to you. If you want religion handed to you, there are a lot of religions who will tell you what to think, what to feel, what to believe. Witchcraft is not one of them. You have to poke in here and look at that and read this, figure it out for yourself, and anybody who tells you they have the one answer for how to practice witchcraft, well, I'm going to say they're mildly incorrect.

GDC 41:20

Read 100% incorrect, but mildly is just fine too, Deborah. So, Mickie, what? How would you respond?

Mickie 41:32

First of all, my cats are going bonkers, I apologize. But uh yeah, um what Deborah was saying about like online groups and communities, that really resonated with me too. And that was something that uh was very early on in my path. I started in the 90s and yeah, we had the internet. It was brand new. It was brand, brand, sprank, and shiny new internet. Uh and I've that was one of the very first groups that I learned with before um I really had a lot of resources was the Yahoo groups. I don't know if anybody remembers those back in the day. Uh and yeah, it was it was a Yahoo group coven that I was a member of, and we literally did online rituals and things like that. You don't have to have a physical community in order to learn from human beings as the thing. And um, you know, that was a lot of that was a lot of fun. I learned a lot in those early days. I ended up meeting a lot of those people in person later, and actually was able to stand in circle with some of those people that I actually met online. It was very cool. Um, so I mean, we can use the technology that we have to help people come together to learn from them. Um, and you know, and then also, I mean, I'm part of the uh YouTube witchcraft community. If people are having a hard time with accessibility, there's I there's a lot of people who might be neurodivergent and maybe they just feel like they can't sit and read for long periods of time. ADHD girl right here, uh also dyslexia, can be a barrier for those people. But the truth is you don't have to have it dumbed down for you by an AI bot. You can actually go watch someone talk about witchcraft on YouTube, and that's a person that's teaching you, and that's a good way to learn too. Um, if you want to learn from one of Deborah's books and you feel like, I don't know if I could sit down and read a whole book, guess what? They're all available on audiobooks, and you can listen to audiobooks while you're deriving and learn from real people, read by real people. You're hearing a human person's voice speaking in your ear, telling you the words that someone who Who has great experience is willing to share with you. It's it's a group, they're all kinds of really good resources. So, well, I do agree with everyone here that it's it's a journey. Witchcraft is a journey, and it is not something that can ever just be handed to you. Nobody has all the answers. None of the books, none of the online groups, none of the YouTube videos that you're gonna watch, nobody has all the I don't have all the answers. And you know what? I don't want to have all the answers because some of those answers are the ones you have to find for yourself for them to have value. And that and that's really the most important thing. I have a lovely young witch lean that's living with me right now, my adult daughter, who's learning and growing, and you know, is definitely cooler than I am, and doesn't need to be taught by her mom, and she's learning her own path, and I love that. But, you know, came to me the other day and was like, I just figured out that I can carve runes on candles, and that's a great way to do. And I was like, mm-hmm, absolutely. She figured that out herself. She's not going and you know, and she's read a bunch of books, but she's reading different varieties of books than what I write because again, I'm her mom and I'm not cool in that aspect. So, but yeah, it's that self-discovery, that that aha moment of I have just figured out something brand new. And if you're just, if you're just, I don't know, I think with the AI going to it with every problem that you have, the what happens is it becomes your knee-jerk thing to do. I have a question about, you know, candle magic, and I'm just gonna go type it into AI and it's gonna spit an answer out. Well, that's all fine and good. But if you sit and think about it, think about the things you've read, think about the things that you've listened to on your books on tape, think about the thing that you have seen people maybe even uh even some of those little short, short videos that you'll see on TikTok, and don't get me started on that, but you know what I mean. But you know, people do some little short reels, and you know what? You can even pick little nuggets of good things out of those and rework them in ways that are gonna work for you. So yeah, I I think that we just have to be very careful to not go find the easy way to figure something out because even when you're reading something or you're, you know, watching someone on YouTube's or you're any of those resources, you've got to have some discernment. You've got to think about it on your own and say, does this make sense to me? Or what if I thought about it a different way? Maybe it would make sense to do it in a different way, and that's how we innovate. Authors like the ones here today, all of us, we write spells. You know, we're not, those aren't just all old spells. We're we're writing spells, we're innovating, we're coming up with new ideas and new ways to do things. And that's really important that we keep our minds sharp and we're not like getting bogged down by thinking just AI's gonna do all the hard stuff for us because then we lose the most important magical tool that we have. And that's this, and that's this.

GDC 47:13

You're not doing magic without those two things, you just not your head and your heart. Absolutely. Well, we are getting close to the top of the hour.

The HI Badge And Pro Human Tools

GDC 47:27

And one, I would be remiss if we wouldn't turn it back over to Mickie, and then if Jenny has a final question, we can go there. But I really want you to talk about some forward thinking that you have been doing, some forward innovating that you have been doing and that I have seen online. It's HI Badge, Human Intelligence Badge. Hi, badge. Could you kind of let us know for somebody who doesn't know what this is, and maybe just a little bit about what you can do with this and this movement that is taking off? Thank you.

Mickie 48:10

I and it's something I'm really excited about. So the idea of it actually kind of was born from the magical idea of, and I know all of you here get it, and probably a lot of people watching or listening will get this too. And the idea is magically we don't want to go, we don't want to focus on the thing we don't want. We want to focus on the thing that we do want. So in witchcraft, if if we're working money magic, we don't we don't do a spell saying, I'm tired of being broke. I don't want to have lack, right? We focus on the positive. I want to have income. I want to have resources, I want to have abundance. So we focus on what we want. Well, this is the problem that we're having right now is I've seen so many people online talking about how upsetting upsetting it is that, you know, I don't want this AI, I don't want to see all of this. I, you know, well, okay, but that's the truth of it is what we want to see is more humans. So what we need to be doing is making sure that people can find us, that we can find each other. Because I mean, I don't know about you guys, but so much of what I'm seeing online is AI, and sometimes you don't even know until you've consumed quite a bit of it. And then it dawns on you, like, oh man, this person's not real. They just said something that didn't make sense, or they mispronounced, or who knows? You know, there's all kinds of ways that we can pick these things up. So I thought, what if we had a way for us to show that we're human? And so I got this crazy idea in my head, and it's the high badge. And what I can't I came up with it because it's like H I for human intelligence. And then I realized it's it's a high, and I thought of a hand waving, and then I thought of our ancestors and how they're probably going, What is happening right now? Right, and then I thought of the oldest forms of human expression are those palm prints on the sides of the caves where they've put their hands in the red ochre, which is so old and ancient and powerful. And they put their hand prints to say, I'm I'm here, I was here. And these are our ancient, ancient ancestors. They go way back, and that's where the design came from. That's that's the color I used, and and I have the little hand as one of those hands. I actually traced that to create it because I wanted to bring that ancestor energy in because we need them right now. We're going through some weird stuff. So the idea is, and I did it for free. If you go to MickieMuller.com, it doesn't cost you anything. I have a blog post where I talk all about it, give you all the details, download the badge, and what you can do is you can put it on your posts, and all you do is like for Instagram, you can I what I really need to do is just create uh a video to show everybody how to do that. And I'm gonna do that really soon. But basically, you can take that badge for free, you can pop it onto your posts uh and let people know this was made by a person, and then when they see it, they're gonna know it it's a real person. And more of us that do that, the easier it's gonna be for us to connect with each other. And it's not necessarily anti-AI, it's pro-human. And I think that's important. Um, and then really quick, there is also there's other groups doing this too. Deborah mentioned one, and I'm I'll let you mention that because I think it's cool and I want to get involved in that too. But there's also uh another one that if you go to, oh my gosh, I wrote it down here. Hang on a second. There is a wonderful group of people. It's it's uh human.global. And if you go there, they have resources that I didn't have. I was like, I have to put this out here for free. I don't have any way to check and see if you're human. I'm just gonna have to go on the honor system here, put a penny in the jar. I don't know. But um, these guys, they actually have uh some software created uh that by another guy that they're using and they can actually certify you as a human. It's um pretty cheap to do. I think it's like 20 something bucks, or they have a sliding scale if you can't afford that because they want it to be accessible for everybody. So um I highly recommend that you look into them and they have a certification that they're using, and you can put it on things that you've published, you can put it on your music, you can put it on your art, you can put it on your books and stuff like that. And and they and it's a registered, like it's a registered trademark, but it's a human mark. And I just love what they're doing. And uh, we are actually going to be partnering together. Um, and then I'm gonna be invited on as a brand ambassador for them because they liked what I was doing and I liked what they were doing. And we're like, it's really close to very similar to what we're both doing. We're all on the same page. Let's row together and we'll get there quicker and we'll help more people. And that's really what it is. We're trying to help humanity, and I I think we have to do that. So rather than focusing on the negative, I think that what we really need to do is be aiming towards supporting humans. If we're supporting humans, we can't go wrong, you know. We'll find each other and we'll be there for each other. And I also think about what Deborah said about the online communities. And we probably, those of us who are teaching, need to figure out ways to get some more community back and really promote that and make sure people are aware of it. And maybe that would help people not feel like they have to go to AI if they have easier accessible ways to be able to find us and have those quick back and forths. I don't know, maybe there's something we can come up with. We're all pretty clever and creative and magical.

GDC 54:07

I love it. Mickie, give us your website once again.

Mickie 54:10

Yeah, Mickie Mueller.com and it's M-I-C-K-I-E, M-U-E-L-L-E-R.com. And all my links are there for my socials, and I do have a link there for uh where you can just download the um the logo, the badge for free and just to use it. I don't care. You don't have to you don't have to call me out, you don't have to like you know give me credit, you don't have to do it, just use it and be happy. Take it. It's for you. I love you.

GDC 54:41

I want you to be human and create and be so it's it's not $47 annual fee. No, weirdly, I don't know.

Mickie 54:50

I and I don't think it's because I'm richer than Tony Robbins that I can afford to do it for free. I think there's something else going on. And I I don't know, Tony, Tony, get it together, dude. Help people, really help people.

GDC 55:04

I love it, I love it, I love it. So, Jimmy, where are we at?

Closing Advice Plus Community Invite

Jenny 55:09

Um, I have just loved this conversation, I have to say. The overall theme that I heard was that we're not totally anti-AI, we're pro-human, and witchcraft is a s is for scholars. That was the real thing I heard everybody talk about is it's a scholarly pursuit. Doesn't mean you had to have gone to college, doesn't even mean you had to graduate high school, but it's about lifelong learning, it's about learning for you, and I really, really loved that. Um, I would just like to add that I do have an online community. Um, I have to say it because everyone's talking about it. Our Coven community, we have a live chat and we're all real live witches. And people can come to the live chat and ask questions every day, and we will answer them. And that's something I started a few years ago because I was sick of scammers and people calling me beloved and trying to give me readings I didn't ask for. So it was why I started it to begin with. But I feel like we heard some really great closing thoughts from Mickie, and I loved that. And I would like to hear closing thoughts from everybody else personally. Um, so I would love to hear just closing thoughts, things you want to say, things you didn't get to say from everyone here.

Nikki 56:23

Um yeah, this has been great. I mean, that this flew by, and I feel like there's so much more that we haven't covered that we could have said that would be really useful to people. So I will just say we've mentioned a lot about um taking your own course of study and finding materials written or taught by real people, but don't just uh go get any old books because as we know now, there's lots of AI-generated books that are really bad. So when you're going to search for books um on the craft to help you along your path, before you buy it in any form, go and look up the author. With all of the social media and us usually having our own author websites and all of that, if you can't easily find that the author has proof of experience and an online presence as a real person talking about what they care about to the world, like with a face, pick a different one. You can find books by people that really have their lived experience out there and their face out there for you. Um, and I'll end on something positive, which is that um I did see two days ago um a new Wall Street Journal poll that showed that AI is becoming more and more unpopular with Americans, to the point that um it is more distrusted and disliked than anything else they asked about, including Trump and lots of other hot topics. I I'm I'm showing very good um self-control right now. But it it's the point is that people are not liking it. So I'm hoping that this will help us to temper the usage of it so that it doesn't get out of control, and that, as you mentioned, we can allow it to go forward in a way that doesn't destroy the environment, only using it for the things that it's really important for, and allowing us to retain our humanity and hold each other up as creative individual humans with inspired voices.

Deborah 58:37

Um, I'm gonna say, first of all, I Mickie, I love your idea of trying to figure out a way to put out a list of reputable people who are teaching online classes or who have online covens or things that other people can use. And you know, in our copious free time, we should figure that out. Um, yeah, when we finish our secret project and we do all the other things. Um we mentioned a little bit but didn't really touch on a lot, witchcraft is a nature-based spiritual path. We worship the earth, and AI sucks the life out of Earth. People don't, I think I only learned relatively recently, like within the last six months, about how detrimental these huge AI generating centers were. They suck up water and other resources, electricity, which you know, we are already on the slippery slope with you know resources and using up resources that should be going to people and not to just generating AI content. And the other thing I'd like to say is you can turn this off on things. If you are doing a search and you put, say, into Google, um, you know, who is the best author of them all, uh minus AI. It will do a search without an AI summary coming up. And like on your email, you can go into your settings and turn off in Gmail the that thing. None of my emails are telling me what to say. They would not dare. Uh again, I would get out the hat. But you have choices as a human being. You can choose to use a little AI, no AI, all the AI. All the choices that you make have consequences, they have physical consequences, spiritual consequences, and they affect all the other people. None of the choices we make only affect us. It might look like they do, but they don't. So be thoughtful when you're making these choices. If you want to use AI to help you measure the dimensions of a box, that is your choice. If you wanted to help you find some information that is really basic, that's fine. Double check if it's important, double check the sources. You know, my mother, when she had cancer recently, used Chat GBT as her medical advisor. No, I mean she had doctors. I go to themaclinic.com because I know those are legitimate sources. So use some discretion. Be mindful of the fact that you are making choices and that as a human being and as a witch, you can choose how you are going to use this tool. Fire is a very useful tool. It can burn down your house. Be mindful.

GDC 1:01:57

Oh brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Plus, I caught somebody saying, be by the ocean and talk to a tree. That's what I heard. I mean, there was a lot of chatter, but I heard talk to a tree, go to the ocean. And I absolutely love this. You guys, hey listeners, if you want more of this, just go ahead and let us know. You can text the show, you can write a comment, you can email us at beliefbeingbeyond at gmail.com. Give us your thoughts. Let's build community starting now. Let's ask questions and start connecting now. And all of these wonderful authors, creators, more information to come. It's in the show notes. It's in the show notes, it's in the show notes. And we are going to bring you more round table dialogues because you know what? There's nothing better than being curious about a topic and coming into circle, finding community, and being able to see different perspectives of what it is. So, with that, thank you so much for tuning in. I love you guys, and we'll see you on the flippity flip.