Brandi Amara Skyy’s Magick for Transformation ✨Is Ready for YOU 📖

Wormies, 

Cozy season is here, y’all. And we’re putting on our sweaters and socks and knit hats and more sweaters. We’re slurping from mugs of cider or coffee or chocolate, and everything is feeling comfy and warm. The only other thing us wormies need to make cozy season perfect? A good, old-fashioned page-turner (or page-clicker for our digital worms).  

Look no further than Brandi Amara Skyy’s Magick for Transformation.

In this transformational guide, Brandi offers the wisdom, praxis (practices), and rituals you need to say a full-bodied “hell yeah” to releasing all the magick that resides in you and then follow up with action—in whatever form you so choose.

This is EXACTLY what I like to read during the fall-winter months when things slow down and it feels easier to turn inward and reflective before jumping back into action. 

Here's my conversation with Brandi Amara Skyy. And y’all, I loved this one. You’ll see in just a moment, but her responses are so thoughtful and read almost like poems. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did writing. 

My questions are in bold, and Brandi’s responses are directly below each question.

Why do you write? (Question inspired by Joan Didion’s loveliest of essays.)

i write to process, understand, and communicate with the world—humxns, trees, Earth, animals, elements—myself, and Spirit.   

i write because i feel better when i do and out of alignment with life when i don’t. 

i write to reveal the hidden magick, wonder, and miracles in all things—and because i enjoy the adventure and surprise of finding the right words to describe what i’m seeing. 

i write to express and connect with myself while trying to unearth how my experiences connect and reflect the whole. i write to deepen my relationship with Spirit, Source, Universe, God, Goddess—whatever word feels best to you/i/we/us to describe the force that animates all things. And to, hopefully, channel a touch of the Divine into my writing, so that i might share a bit of the miraculous with you.

How do you know what to write? Where do your ideas come from?

i don’t know if i ever really “know” what to write. 

Instead, i do a lot of listening and a lot of sensing. When i do that, one of two things usually happens:

1. i am gifted the idea by Spirit so clearly that i can’t turn it down (and if i try, it keeps rearing its head over and over).
   

2. i let the writing take the lead. Meaning, i try things on by first writing about them—like opening up a blank document and vomiting my feelings, thoughts, and/or emotions on the page—and then usually what desires to come out subtly shines through. 

Even still, there are times when something is so present and real in my life—like an experience i’m going through—that i have to write about and on it to help me process. Sometimes those musings become articles, blog posts, podcasts, journals, and book topics.

The takeaway here is don’t limit yourself—or your muses. Ideas and writing topics can emerge from anywhere. Our job as writers isn’t to dictate or corral where they came from but to channel whatever’s there down onto the page.

What singular piece of advice do you have to offer aspiring writers?

It was self-publishing my first book in 2014: How To Be A Drag Queen. i had actually written the book years before, but i didn’t want to publish it because i was so afraid of what others might think or say if i did. 

My fear was all-consuming until i decided that my dream of being a published author outweighed the momentary discomfort i felt hitting the actual publish button. It’s a good thing i did, too, because i received my first traditional publishing deal because of that book!

An indie press was looking for someone to write a little book on drag and their editor found me and my self-published How To Be A Drag Queen—the one i was so afraid to put out—on Amazon and contacted ME! 

i want to be clear: it wasn’t the publishing deal that shifted my author trajectory, it was me—trusting and betting on myself first. That leap of faith opened up a whole new witchery world.

How do you balance writing what you love with writing what you think will appeal to your audience?

i really believe that if you write from your heart and soul, you will forge a connection to your audience, regardless. 

Why? Because we ALL have the humxn experience in common. While the expressions (the circumstances, stories, and beliefs of our lives) of our humxn experience differ greatly, the emotions and feelings we experience—love, loss, grief, significance, pain, elation, joy—are shared. 

When we write from the center of humxness—our hearts, emotional experiences, and soul—we can’t help but create connection. It's this realness, vulnerability, and honesty that generates appeal. 

i always try to write with this truth in mind, that if i write with my heart and from the depths of my soul my words will always find and have an audience. 

Most books have some sort of core message or theme that drives it. Or a feeling you want your reader to walk away having felt. For your book, what would you say is its heart? How did you weave this central theme into the narrative or discussion, and why is it important to you personally?

The heart of this book is: YOU. 

You hold the power to be, do, have, create, and experience any and everything you want. 

The core message: be proof of what is possible. 

The tools gifted in this book to help you do that: magick, writing, transformation, and reflection. This book is a love letter to the part in all of us who dream wild, bold, and audacious dreams. And to the pieces in us that question how and if we can really do that big, bold, wild thing. Like i wrote in the book, your dreams are the most important thing in this world. And you/i/we/us will never feel fulfilled without movement towards them. 

It’s my life’s mission and this life’s soul work for me to help you believe in yourself enough to chase (and catch!) your Wild Dreams—those dreams that others have told you were impossible. And help you do impossible things. This book is how i can help you do that!

Is there a particular scene or chapter in your book that holds special significance for you as the writer?

While the entire book was written in collaboration with my ancestors and Spirit, i particularly really love Part II: Your Magickal Tools For Transformation. 

Each of the ten tools in that chapter has its own origin story—i.e. how that tool came to be. And each of those stories was divinely downloaded, co-created in tandem, and channeled with my ancestors. It was really a magickal experience as some of the stories i share are modern retellings of ancestral creation stories (i’m thinking about Moon’s story) while others are brand new beginnings (like Tarot’s story). 

In my lineage, stories are medicine. Within them is the ability to help strengthen, balm, and heal the mind/body/soul. As i wrote about each tool in this chapter, their origin story presented itself to me to be included as another element and deeper layer to aid you, dear reader, in harnessing the ancient generational power of each tool.

For me, these stories hold the most potent portals of transformation for us all.

How did you decide on the title of your book?

The title of this book came to me in an auditory way. 

i literally heard the name of the book, Magick For Transformation, as i was mapping out the bones and outline for it. i believe it came so easily to me because it was the kind of magick i had been practicing my entire life—magick in service to the transformation that needed to happen for me to keep evolving into who i came here to be so i could create the things that are mine to create. 

The entire book is filled with words, spells, praxises, and even a 30-day challenge to help you learn, embody, and action magick that will radically aid your personal growth and transformation. 

When it came to the cover, it was my publisher’s idea to have the Aztec medicine wheel front and center which i loved because you can’t find a lot of images of my people’s particular Indigenous Medicine Wheel. i worked with the designers to create edits that felt impactful to the overall medicine this book houses—like having each of the Four Directions animal allies facing their respective part of The Wheel.

Fam, as always, thanks for reading. 

Looking for another friend on Bookworm? Connect with Brandi.

Brandi has opened a beta version of The Wild Dream Journal Club—a monthly journal membership to help you transform through the power of journaling and writing.

On the hunt for a new podcast? Check out The Wild Dream here or on YouTube. Not a podcast wormie? No problem, Brandi has a Substack. 

Want to read Magick for Transformation? Buy Brandi’s book from your favorite indie.

Yours in compost,

Ali