In this blog post, we‘ll delve into the world of spirituality with renowned author and spiritual teacher, Erika Ginnis. Discover the inspiration behind Erica’s latest book, “Essential Mysteries,” gain insights into her unique approach to spiritual growth and healing, and learn how her background as a High Priestess and her experiences in Hawaii have shaped her perspective and practices.
What inspired you to write Essential Mysteries: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century Mystic, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
I love to teach, and have been teaching spiritual techniques for many years. I wanted to write a book that taught the same things, was accessible and not particularly costly so anyone could access it. I was on the editorial board for Widdershins Newspaper in the late 90’s early 2000’s. One of the other editors asked me to do a series of articles and I decided to make them instructional, they eventually became the basis for my book.
It presents simple techniques that if used, can help readers feel more comfortable in their bodies, access their internal power and make changes in their lives, plus have a cumulative effect over time to give them increasing access to their own spiritual abilities. The topics range from grounding and working with earth and cosmic energy through Kundalini, healing and personal power.
How does your background as a 3rd degree High Priestess in the Sylvan Tradition influence your approach to spiritual teaching and healing?
It helps me connect with the inner life of things, people, nature, plants, the spiritual forces and energies. Having the great joy of 15 years of training and learning our tradition to the point where I could pass it on, was a very important milestone in my life.
Something has been important to me as a pagan that I also access in my work is what I would call “Goddess energy.” This is a support and a foundation for me personally. In my meditations and in my seeking for ways to assist and express, I communicate with what I experience as the Divine Feminine. In my opinion, this is an energy that is reemerging from and through the planet, and I find it extremely powerful and supporting in this kind of work.
My work in the craft is also one of the ways that I get spiritually filled. My altar and my personal rituals help to keep me in touch with my direction and focus. The group rituals that I have attended over the years are one of many things that “lift” me. This is extremely important as a healer and teacher.
Can you share how living in Hawaii has shaped your spiritual practice or enhanced your connection to energy and healing traditions?
I fell in love with Hawaiʻi at age 17, I cried when I stepped off the plane because I felt like I was home. I wasn’t expecting it, but there is was, a profound sense of connection with the islands. I made a commitment to find a way to live here for at least some portion of my life. I have had the wonderful opportunity to live on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, surrounded by jungle, since 2008. People have asked if I get island fever and it just never feels that way to me, it feels like this is the center of everything and it feels vast. I have always been able to communicate with the land since I was a child. Coming here felt like having only been spoken to in whispers and all of a sudden the volume was turned up to 10, it’s an ongoing conversation and it informs me in many ways. It is so alive here, so vibrant, so beautiful, so intense. It is very sustaining.
What role does creativity, such as writing and music, play in your spiritual journey and the work you do with clients?
I believe that as spirit we are all innately creative, everything plays into everything else. This has been an inner experience for me for as long as I can remember. I draw on all that I know to convey ideas for my own journey and in my work with clients. I use music to express a feeling or mood, which then becomes part of a meditation or healing. My writing helps me translate my thoughts and images into something relatable.
How do tabletop role-playing games influence your spiritual insights or creative process, and can you share any details about the game you’re currently writing?
I adore role playing games. I learn about myself and my connection to other people when I play them. It is “play” which is so important in a world that focuses on working, achieving and checking off “to do” lists. It’s storytelling, which is deeply important, in my opinion. Archetypes, myths and legends inform us in many ways. In a game you can try out different personalities and ways of thinking, embody whole new perspectives. It helps with understanding people and why they are like they are, why they may do the things they do. It’s an uncharted journey because you play a character who will make choices that surprise you! You find yourself learning about them as you play, and about yourself in the process.
It is a powerful way to make and deepen friendships. You go through experiences as characters that are as real to your heart and mind as if they had physically happened on some level. It is a great stress reliever, and helps you to feel connected and less alone in your experiences on the earth.
It can also be used as an allegory for being spirit in a physical body over many lifetimes, since you play many different characters over time. You get the conscious experience (as the player at the table) of being in the position of the Higher Self, and you create this existence (the character in the game) in that lifetime, and experience another version of yourself through it.
It has given me a different perspective about adversity. As a player in a game you want things to interact with, and you wouldn’t find out much at all about your character if there wasn’t some quest to follow and other characters to problem solve with. So when things happen in my own life that go differently than I would like, I can pull from my gaming experience to look at them in a different light. Plus as someone who has also run games (GM) I know that I am creating these adventures, tasks and mysteries for my players to have fun and enjoy. So how farfetched would it be for a higher version of myself (who knows that I am not my body or my experiences) to be doing the same thing in some way.
I am a member of the Hawaiʻi Game Designers group. I also do play testing and editing and have some credits in games that have been released or are about to be. In 2020 I decided to start writing an RPG that had its basis in some of my own spiritual work.
In this game you have different layers of experience. You are the person playing at your table with your friends as you would be in any game, you are each playing as a mid-level “higher being” who is in a quest like scenario which requires each to consciously stream part of themselves into the physical world as one of a series of characters (reminiscent of a normal RPG) that you play sequentially. It deals with spirit, life, death, reincarnation and the existence of a dual awareness of spiritual reality and physical reality, while still being a TTRPG with magic and quests etc.
I often think this is what is happening on some level for us as spirit having a human experience just in life. And when we play a TTRPG we are adding a new layer to that, so I decided to make that part of the game. The working title is called “The Wheel of Paths”. “The Wheel of Paths-Wheel of Ascension” is the first part of three that I will eventually be publishing.
