Pagans With Disabilities & Chronic Illnesses

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Lydia M. N. Crabtree (she/her) is a distinguished pagan activist, author, community leader, and advocate for individuals living with disabilities. Known as “Rev. Dia,” she serves as founder and current High Priestess of the progressive Willow Dragonstone Community & Coven, LLC, located in Georgia, USA. She established Pagans with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses in 2025. Her approach to priestesshood centers on service to the gods and goddesses through dedicated support of their communities. Rev. Dia is part of the Podcast Duo Urban Unwitches, available on all podcasting platforms and hosted by Circle Podcast. All the pagan information you need with a side split of laughter hosted with Kyler Pettry. Rev. Dia holds academic credentials in organizational psychology, journalism, and Shakespearean Theater from North Georgia University (1994). Her personal history includes overcoming significant challenges such as surviving incest, severe childhood abuse, neglect, and trauma. She frequently writes about subjects at the intersection of paganism, disability, social justice, and recovery from PTSD. Her work is informed by a breadth of lived experiences. Her debut book was Family Coven: Birthing Hereditary Witchcraft (Immanion Press, 2015). Rev. Dia’s writing has been featured in numerous anthologies that examine paganism, racism, and sexuality, as well as in publications such as previous editions of the Llewellyn Almanac, Circle Sanctuary Magazine, and Modern Witch Magazine. She has attained her Wiccan 3rd Degree and completed ordination training with Circle Sanctuary in Madison, WI, in 2024. Rev. Dia can be contacted through her website at revdia.net. Rev. Dia does not use AI to produce content or writing for any of the blogs she authors.

Light a Candle for Me?

I have a good friend who has been hospitalized. I went into my coven’s Discord to post about her condition and ask for energy and prayers. I found myself dissatisfied with what to request: Light a candle? Pray for healing? Pray for wellness? Pray for a resolution to the current issue? Pray for a definitive diagnosis with a known solution? I was left stumped about how to move forward.

This angst comes from the belief that what we think about manifests and is tied to the Axioms of Magic. These “laws” are meant to explain and describe how magick (or more precisely, energy) works. The Axioms at play in the act of healing are the Law of Association and the Law of Contagion.

The Law of Association says that if A and B have something in common then that thing in common can be used to influence both A and B. Further B can influence A and A can influence B. Additionally, cause and effect have resonance with each other (the Law of Similarity). After you bring things into contact with each other, they will continue to affect each other after separation.

In my example, my friend is A and energy sent to them is B. The thing they have in common is that energy is a universal entity that is always having an effect on the Universe and my friend. Once the energy has been brought to bare on my friend it continues to act upon my friend even after the person who initiated this energy stops sending it.

This is important in illness because if that energy is not quantified, it is just energy with an unknown effect on my friend’s body. Is this positive or negative? Can my friend’s body handle more undirected energy in her body or does that energetic excitement cause her to have a higher likelihood of infection or abnormal growth of cells?

Other Axioms at play are the Laws of Words or Symbols of Power, The Law of Labeling, and the Law of Knowledge.

The Law of Words says, in short, words have power; what we say and how we say it has an effect upon the Universe, and in this example, a person. The Law of Labeling says that when you label a thing, you exclude information from that thing. In this case, labeling my friend as ill, which is true, magically disallows the idea of “well” from them. Lastly is the Law of Knowledge, which says the more you know about a thing, the more power you can exert over that thing. The problem here is that medicine is an art – an art informed by science but an art nonetheless. The Doctors have a guess about what is causing my friend to be hospitalized but they cannot say for certain what is wrong. They know her symptoms and can quantify those, but the cause, as is often the case with persons with autoimmune disorders, can remain a mystery. The ability to KNOW concretely what is wrong with my friend may be beyond our reach.

Does it track then that we cannot affect some positive change in her condition by lighting candles and sending energy? What should the request be in that moment? How can we quantify it to have the most beneficial result?

Typically, that is simply, “Please light a candle for my friend.” I would argue, however, that that just sends random energy into the Universe at best. At worse it sends undirected energy to my friend who is in no condition to process and utilize energy in her weakened physical condition.

Hence my conundrum.

I think when we generically ask for energy, we aren’t being specific enough to get specific results. The great Janice Farrar taught me that healing magic works best when it is specefic and everyone is specifically focused on the same thing. Our Coven had an opportunity to try this that same year and was wildly successful keeping the side effects of chemotherapy from running amok in a covener.

However, letting everyone know the intimate information about your physical condition may not be something you want to do. If you have enemies, it gives them an opportunity to be very specific about harmful uses of the Axioms of Magic. This can be safer in covens with oaths that protect membership. However, as open as I am about my physical conditions, there is always information I hold back to protect myself.

After some thought, I think it is better if you can ask for specific, visualized outcomes. If you are the sender to a generic request for good thoughts, try sending the energy to be used to the best and highest good of the person you are thinking about. Or to the doctors around the patient, that they make the right decisions to lead the patient back to optimum health. The more specific you can be, the better the results will be.

Now I suppose I should write another blog about why adding the caveat “and it harm none” is not a good one when the goal is optimum healing.

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