The Natural Born Heretic

About

My name is Anika, and I’m the creator and host of Between Two Worlds, a bi-weekly podcast born partly from a desire to get my own thoughts out into the world, and partly from wanting to help other witches navigate religious trauma, deconstruction, and the process of reclaiming their magical practice.

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Of course, like all good things, it evolved and continues to.

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What began with my own journey grew into conversations about my experience (and still learning) with folk magic, spirits, magical techniques, occult traditions, religion, history, and the strange places where all of these things overlap. At its heart, Between Two Worlds is about finding those shared veins and looking beneath the surface of magic, the occult, and religion to understand where they meet, where they diverge, and why they continue to matter.

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As a child, I experienced a more innocent kind of spirit communication, magical ways of doing things, and a way of seeing the world that came naturally to me. At the same time, I was raised with a strong Christian influence in my household and for several years, I found myself in a kind of tug-of-war between what I had been taught to believe and what seemed to come naturally to me. Over a decade ago, I accepted myself as a witch and committed to following that path, and I've never looked back.

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Between Two Worlds has become an ode to that. The constant feeling of having one foot in and one foot out. Through my experience of trying to be a good Christian and denying the craft, to being fully in the craft but leaving one foot out just in case I really would be damned to hell. Between the world of spirits and the material, and between the depths of my own mind and the "real world."

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Further, I have come to embrace my own philosophy of simply being a natural born heretic, and you may too.

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Nowadays, even after 10 years, my own practice continues to grow and change, as I think any living practice should. My particular interests trend toward folk magic, the world of spirits and the dead, and ancient and early-modern history. I’m not a ceremonial magician, though I have a great appreciation for a good grimoire, and I enjoy taking what I discover through research and experience and weaving it into a practice that is my own.