a spell for giving your big, beautiful brain a bimbo break with shadow work witch Nikki Vergakes

a sneak peek into a guest grimoire

We’ve been loud and proud sigil spell creators (Digital Altars, anyone?) for many years at Holisticism HQ.

A sigil is, most simply, a visual spell.

Here’s how it works: While creating a sigil (this can be as lo-fi as symbol you draw, or as detailed as a piece of pottery or collage), you hold an intention for a desired outcome. This directed attention “charges” the visual spell, and the magic begins to do its work. Every time you catch sight of the sigil, the magic is reinforced.

Depending on your practice, you might prefer to use sigils and visual spells as a way to communicate with your unconscious mind. The abstraction of your intention allows the conscious mind to take a backseat, which ultimately means we can let something more intuitive takeover.

We publish a weekly visual spell in our Tuesday Portal, but we thought we’d query some of our favorite intuitive folks to come on the ‘stack and cast a visual spell for us.

MEET NIKKI VERGAKES

Nikki Vergakes is an astrologer and hypnotherapist who guides their clients through cosmic self-discovery, subconscious reprograming and shadow work.

NIKKI’S INTENTION

This is a spell for when you’re teetering too close to nihilism, because you’ve accidentally consumed too much personal development content, and have thought too long about why you are the way you are. Oops!

NIKKI’S INSPIRATION

This spell is brought to you by the empty, yet gut-churning feeling of being filled to the brim with too much content and too many thoughts. It’s the moment that you stop feeling real. It’s the painful realization that if everything is everything, then nothing is also nothing. I’ve been there, which is why I’ve crafted the spell!

I take inspiration from the “Bimbo” part of this spell from some brilliant and bimbo-ified feminist and political content creators. In 2020, a year that we decided to normalize and popularize everything because we couldn't go outside, the word bimbo was reclaimed by creators on TikTok.

It’s the painful realization that if everything is everything, then nothing is also nothing.

I was curious about the origins of the word bimbo, and discovered that it has an interesting story. The patriarchy is, of course, at the scene of the crime.

The slang term is derived from the Italian word for baby boy (bimbo). This word first came into English speech in 1919, as a term for a male who was a “brutish bully”. That only lasted a year, however. In 1920, a song written for a Broadway revue titled “My Little Bimbo Down On The Bamboo.” Grant Clarke, an American songwriter of the time, is the culprit for pining this term on women. Society took that and ran, and it snowballed into a degrading term for women who like to express themselves through clothes and makeup.

It became the punishment for women adhering too well to the gender expression box that they were given by society. At some point, the term convinced the collective that if a woman is dressed up, and wears pink, she surely cannot have her own thoughts.

In 2020, content creators like Chrissy Chlapecka, Griffin Maxwell Brooks, and Fiona Fairbairn began making content in y2k-era inspired outfits, touting their bimbo manifestos. This group of Gen Z content creators also gave more race and gender diversity to the original image of the Bimbo. In the original y2k era, women were the butt of this joke, and many people actually believed that they were vapid and unintelligent. These current-day creators frame bimboism as a boundary. It’s not that they are the bimbo stereotype, and that they don’t think deeply. It’s that they very much do, but they don’t need to prove anything. They have very firm and well-researched beliefs, but choose when to share them. Their confidence comes from within, not from impressing others — especially men.

This content inspires my spell of Bimbo Saturdays, because this practice is all about practicing temperance around your analytical tendencies. Like I said, you CAN have too much information in your brain, thanks to the 24-hour news cycle and the endless access to information and opinions you can find on your phone. There’s a higher chance that you’ll hit this wall if you’re interested in philosophy, healing, or politics, and if you own a business or make content. It’s not about ignoring your thoughts, it’s about purposefully shelving them for a short time.

A RITUAL FOR GIVING YOUR BIG, BEAUTIFUL BRAIN A BREAK: BIMBO SATURDAYS