On the winter solstice, we celebrated the sun’s rebirth with the promise of spring. As daylight increased, we welcomed it back. Some of us reflected during the longest night, and what a perfect time for an interview with the lovely Fiona Horne. Join us for a mesmerizing glimpse into her world! Walk with us through the pyramids of Egypt and the castles of Transylvania!
Fiona Horne is a bestselling author, senior witch, and one of the original voices who helped bring modern witchcraft into the mainstream in the 1990s. A former rock musician with the iconic band Def FX, who still reunites for tours, Fiona has lived many lives in one lifetime. She is also a commercial pilot (an obvious upgrade from a broomstick), holding her flight ratings from the United States, where she lived for almost two decades, flying throughout Los Angeles and the Caribbean. During her aviation years, she flew people, animals, and supplies, volunteering extensively in animal rescue, humanitarian work, and disaster relief. Fiona is a published author of eighteen books and oracle decks since 1997, one of the very few voices from that era to remain not only relevant, but increasingly resonant, with her work continuing to become bestsellers and create a positive touchstone for a global community that has grown rapidly over the past twenty years. Today, Fiona’s deepest passion is bringing women together in sisterhood and guiding nourishing, transformative spiritual journeys in sacred places around the world, including Egypt, Bali, and, soon, Transylvania, where ancient land, lived wisdom, and modern healing meet.
Let’s dive right in, shall we?
If you had to describe the last year of your life as a spell you were inside of, the ingredients, the intention, and the unexpected side-effects, what kind of working was it?
“This past year felt like a radical initiation, one built entirely around surrender. I’m usually the one holding everything together, managing the moving parts, staying strong, staying functional. This year asked me to let it all unravel. To stop controlling. To stop micromanaging. To trust what happens when you loosen your grip instead of tightening it. I think especially when we’re younger witches, we’re taught — or we assume — that power comes from control. But this year taught me the opposite. The greatest lesson, both magical and practical, came from letting go completely and trusting that surrender itself is a form of wisdom. It was an initiation on every level.”
Fiona, you’ve said this past year held some of your most wonderful experiences and also some of your most intense challenges. When you look back now, what story does that year tell you about who you’re becoming?
“This past year tells me a story of extraordinary contrast. I’m now into my second year of offering Meet Yourself in Egypt and the very first year of offering Meet Yourself in Bali, and facilitating these nourishing, life-changing spiritual adventures for women has been one of the greatest honours and responsibilities of my life. These experiences weren’t born from a business plan or a neat structure; they came from a calling from the Goddess. There was no roadmap, just a deep knowing of “this must exist,” and somehow I made it real.
At the same time, my personal life and my body were quietly collapsing. My health — the very thing I had always relied on to be strong, capable, and resilient — fell apart. A serious autoimmune condition saw me in a wheelchair by mid-year, and long-standing issues with my hip joint, born from a life well-danced, accelerated rapidly. Just two weeks before this interview, I underwent a full right-hip replacement.
So while I was helping other women rise, expand, and heal, my own world was falling into hell behind the scenes. I still showed up. I still guided. I still held space. I smiled, stayed professional, stayed positive, and somehow, I pulled it off. That contrast has changed me forever.
What this year tells me is that even approaching sixty, the lessons never stop. There are always more layers of becoming. But the biggest shift is that I am finally truly living the self-love I’ve spoken about for decades. These days I place my hand on my heart and say out loud, “Fiona, you are safe and you are loved.” I do it not because it’s poetic, but because it works. It settles my nervous system. It brings me home to myself. And instead of making sure everyone else feels safe and loved before I do, I now place myself at the top of that list too.
This year tells me I’m becoming a gentler, wiser human. I’m thirteen years sober now. I take nothing for granted. I experience every day as a miracle, and if that miracle happens to look like a slow, quiet, uneventful day, I honour that too.”
What’s something you believed about yourself or your path a year ago that no longer feels true?
“A year ago, I truly believed I had to handle everything myself, not put anyone out, deal with my own shit, always show up, always be useful. I felt that if I couldn’t sort something out on my own, then somehow I had failed. That belief runs deep in me because I left home very young — I was barely fifteen — didn’t finish school, and just went out into the world and made something happen. I learned early to push against everything alone.
Even later, in the ’90s and early 2000s, with managers and teams around me, I still carried this deep inner aloneness, like I had to be the one holding it all together. And honestly, that became a disadvantage. I would listen… but not really listen. Part of me always wanted to hear something I already knew. I didn’t fully know how to receive.
Now, I’ve landed somewhere very different. I’ve learned that it’s okay to say, “No, I can’t do this.” It’s okay to say, “Yes, please help me.” And it’s okay to say, “Thank you for helping me.” I don’t see that as weakness anymore — I see it as strength. Letting myself be helped now feels like the birth of a new way of living after a lifetime of doing it all on my own.
I’m also learning the power of not always being the first voice in the room. Sometimes I’m quiet. Sometimes I’m not, and that’s fine too. I once wrote that the most powerful witch in the room isn’t the one standing in the centre declaring it, but the one sitting quietly in the corner. I’m learning how to move between those two places now, knowing when to lead and when to soften back.
Mostly, I’m learning I don’t have to prove anything anymore. I’m enough. Even my mistakes are okay. It’s all okay.”
Was there a moment this year when being a witch or a spiritual practitioner stopped being an idea and became raw survival or surrender for you?
“Yes. There were many moments, but one stands above the rest.
I’ve always worked with animals, long before Egypt. I’ve rescued, adopted, flown animals out of danger as a pilot after hurricanes in the Caribbean, transported dogs from kill shelters when I lived in California, donated for years to neutering programs, sanctuary care, emergency surgeries — even my Celebrity Survivor winnings went straight to ocean and marine life protection. I never had human children. I’ve had furry children. And fish children too.
So when a beautiful street dog I called Mama gave birth to her puppies under a car on my street in Cairo, and was also nursing two abandoned kittens, I didn’t hesitate. I claimed them all. I built a sanctuary for them right there in the carpark. I fenced it, hired help, arranged vet care, food, medicine — everything. For 18 months, they were my family.
Fifi is now living a beautiful life in Zürich. Gamila is thriving in Hamburg. The kittens are safe in a permanent foster home with a big yard where Mama can stay with them. Butch is still with me — stunning, intelligent, fully trained, ready for his forever family. I want the biggest life for him.
But there were two more puppies.
Someone poisoned the litter.
We rushed them all to the vet immediately. We did everything that could be done, but two of them didn’t make it. And that moment — watching one of those little bodies stiffen and die right in front of me, knowing I couldn’t save them — that’s when witchcraft became pure surrender.
There was no spell. No herb. No invocation. I could only be there and accept the inevitable.
That’s when I understood, in my bones, that our work as witches isn’t only about the time we spend inside a body. It’s also about holding a loving, sacred, calm space for the moment a soul leaves one, especially after an act of violence. And that is holy. And brutal. And devastating.
All I could do was surrender to the reality of that passage and then let it harden my resolve even more. Not into anger, but into education. Into advocacy. Into making sure every child around me understands that animals are companions and teachers, not objects for cruelty. The answers lie in education and compassion.”
Can you share a moment from one of your recent Egypt journeys that surprised you, a ritual or experience where the land or the group did something you simply couldn’t plan?
“One of the most profound moments I’ve ever witnessed happened inside the Great Pyramid, during one of our opening ceremonies for Meet Yourself in Egypt. I take my groups inside the King’s Chamber as part of the initiation of the journey, and I’ll be honest — I do not believe the Great Pyramid was built as a tomb. I experience it as something far older and far more sophisticated: a machine of sorts — a transmitter, magnifier, or amplifier of energy and consciousness.
The red granite used in the King’s Chamber has an extraordinarily high quartz content and powerful piezoelectric qualities. When sound is created inside that space, you don’t just hear it — you feel it vibrating through your body. The chamber itself becomes a resonating field.
During this particular ceremony, I played a recording of a flute that was played inside the Great Pyramid in 1973 by a brilliant musician who tuned his instrument to the frequency of the so-called sarcophagus — the large red granite structure in the centre of the chamber. He struck the granite, listened to the tone it emitted, and tuned his flute precisely to that resonance. When that sound fills the chamber, it’s deeply physical, cellular, almost otherworldly.
I guided the women into meditation as the flute played — and without any prompting, one woman began chanting. Then another. Soon the entire group was softly chanting Om, the primordial sound of creation according to the Vedic traditions. It rose organically, instinctively. No one planned it. No one led it. It simply happened.
The sound, the breath, the stone, the vibration — it all wove together into something transcendent. We weren’t performing a ritual; we were inside one. It moved through us rather than coming from us. Of all the ceremonies I’ve facilitated inside the Great Pyramid, that one stands out as the most beautiful — a moment where we were completely carried by the space itself.
To make experiences like this possible, I privately rent the Great Pyramid — with all the permits, logistics, security, negotiations, and costs that come with it — to create a protected, quiet, sacred environment for my women. A space where they can be there in peace, without interruption, inside one of the most extraordinary structures on Earth. The Great Pyramid sits at the geographical centre of the planet’s landmass, and no matter how commercialised Egypt is becoming, its power is undeniable.
That said, Egypt is changing fast. With the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum and the massive increase in tourism, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find stillness at iconic sites. That’s why I also take my groups into remote temples and lesser-visited sacred landscapes — places where the land still whispers rather than shouts. I want to balance the iconic with the intimate.
That moment inside the Great Pyramid reminded me why I do this work. Not to orchestrate transformation — but to protect the conditions where something ancient and alive can move through us, exactly as it needs to.”
Regarding The Lost Book of Spells, were there any old spells you chose not to include because they no longer felt aligned with who you are now? What changed in you or in the way you see magic?
“The Lost Book of Spells, released in March 2025, has already been reprinted three times and is now a bona fide bestseller, with over 18,000 copies sold internationally. At this point in my publishing life — I honestly don’t even know how many books I’ve written anymore, I’ve lost count — that kind of response feels incredibly humbling. Especially this far into a career, it tells me there’s still a real hunger for grounded, practical, emotionally honest magic.
No — I didn’t edit out any of the original spells. What struck me when revisiting them was how timeless the questions were. They were written in response to real people calling in with real lives: a mother struggling to help her child sleep, a mother and daughter caught in conflict, partners trying to understand one another better, people seeking love, stability, or a healthier relationship with money. Those needs don’t age. They’re universal.
What I did do was honour the immediacy and sincerity of those voices while gently translating them into the language we use now. The world has changed. The way we speak has become far more politically correct, and while that isn’t inherently a bad thing, I didn’t want to smooth away the raw emotional truth that makes spellwork effective. Magic needs feeling. It needs honesty. Anger, grief, desire, guilt, love, passion — these are not flaws in spellcasting; they’re the fuel. Especially when you’re working alone at home, raising power without a group, that emotional charge is everything.
At the same time, I expanded the book to reflect the world we’re living in now. There are whole sections that couldn’t have existed when I first created these spells — like navigating bad online dating. And after nearly three years living in Egypt, there are also Arabic love charms and Egyptian-inspired magic woven through the book, born from what I’ve learned through reverence, ritual, and time spent in this ancient land.
More than anything, The Lost Book of Spells isn’t about me — it’s about service. It’s offered from the perspective of a senior witch who’s been practising for over forty years and wants to pass something useful on. One of the core teachings that runs through the book — something that first came through strongly when I wrote The Art of Witch — is that magic works best when it’s rooted in service.
If you want your spells to work, don’t make them only about you. If you’re calling in more money, ask yourself: what will you do with it? How will it support your community, help animals, contribute to healing, create stability or care? When a spell includes a clear intention to give back — to be part of a co-creative, loving loop — the universe responds. That’s not theory. That’s lived experience.
Magic exists because we’re meant to co-create our lives with it. And service is the key that keeps that relationship alive.”
What originally called you to begin guiding women’s journeys like Meet Yourself? Was there a moment when you knew this work had to exist?
This work was never born from a business plan — it came from a calling.
In early 2023, I went on what I thought was a bucket-list trip to Egypt. I believed I was joining a small, intimate women’s group, but the reality of the trip was very different to how it had been presented. It was challenging, often frustrating, and at times deeply disappointing in terms of how it was managed. But Egypt itself — the land, the temples, the energy — was utterly undeniable.
One day, during that trip, I found myself alone in a sacred temple. And in that moment, I received a very clear communication from an ancient goddess. She spoke to me — very conveniently — in English, and she said: You need to bring women here. You need to take them to these places. For these reasons. And you need to do it this way.
So I did.
I didn’t question it. I didn’t try to reshape it into something more comfortable or convenient. I simply followed the instructions. And as I did, the work continued to evolve — not just logistically, but spiritually.
What became very clear to me through this process is something I’ve learned more deeply living in Egypt: the gods and goddesses are not here to be called upon and demanded of. They are here to be venerated, honoured, recognised, and respected. When we do that — when we approach them with humility rather than entitlement — they decide what it is we need. That understanding now sits at the very heart of my witchcraft practice and the way I guide these journeys.
Alongside that spiritual calling, there’s also my very human passion for how we move through the world. I care deeply about supporting women-led initiatives, women entrepreneurs, animal-kind practices, sensitivity toward children, and conscious travel. It’s an extraordinary privilege to be alive at a time when we can interact with other cultures, histories, and landscapes on a scale never before seen in human history — and I take that responsibility seriously.
So Meet Yourself is shaped by both forces: the ancient calling that asked me to do this work, and my lived values as a woman who believes in service, respect, and presence. I want these journeys to be expansive, nourishing, and ethical — experiences that honour the land, the people, and the unseen forces that allow us to be there at all.
And ultimately, my philosophy is simple: we only get to live this life once, in this exact shape and form. So if we’re going to live it, let’s live it fully — with reverence, courage, curiosity, and heart.”
You’ve guided women through Egypt and Bali with extraordinary success. How is Meet Yourself evolving now, and what has called you toward Transylvania?
“Meet Yourself has always been a living, evolving body of work rather than a fixed format. Egypt and Bali came first because they were places that had already profoundly shaped me — lands where I had lived, listened, apprenticed myself to the rhythms of the culture, and done my own deep inner work. Over the past three years, those journeys have sold out consistently, not because they’re “retreats” in the traditional sense, but because they are expansions — carefully held spaces where women meet themselves honestly, without performance, and allow their lives to widen rather than contract.
Transylvania is the next evolution because it’s not just a destination for me — it’s an ancestral remembering.
I’m adopted, but my biological bloodline traces back to Transylvania on my father’s side — Ashkenazi Jewish roots, generations of artists, photographers, and storytellers. When I travelled there recently, I walked the same forests my father walked, drank from the same mineral springs, stood in the same town squares my grandmother and great-uncles once stood in. There is even an entire floor of a museum in Brașov dedicated to my great-uncle, Leopold Adler. Being there wasn’t intellectual — it was cellular. Something ancient in me recognised the land immediately.
For a practising witch, Transylvania also holds a much deeper layer. This region carries one of the most brutal histories of witch persecution in Europe. In Brașov alone, women were publicly executed as witches in the 1600s, while sermons of fear and hatred were preached from the pulpit of the Black Church that still dominates the town square. Standing in those places now, with awareness and reverence, feels like an act of reclamation.
Meet Yourself in Transylvania is about consciously expanding beyond the witch wound — not denying it, not bypassing it, but allowing ourselves to grow larger than the fear, shame, and silence that history imposed. We honour the women who were silenced, we acknowledge the trauma that still lives in the collective body, and we walk those lands with dignity, presence, and respect. This isn’t about fantasy or gothic mythology — it’s about restoring truth and widening what is possible for women now.
At the same time, Transylvania is incredibly alive. We’ll be welcomed into the home of a powerful Roma witch and her daughters to create love, health, and prosperity charms together. We’ll stay in historic castles, visit King Charles’ private estate — where our presence directly supports Romanian children — and honour figures like Queen Marie of Romania, a feminist, sovereign leader, and one of the most extraordinary women in European history.
This is how Meet Yourself is evolving — from expansion through sacred land, to expansion through blood and lineage, to conscious service through travel. It’s not about escaping life. It’s about stepping more fully into it, with eyes open, heart open, and feet firmly on the ground.”
Finally, what are you excited about right now that almost no one is asking you about?
“What almost no one is asking me about is how profoundly grateful I am just to be alive — and how much energy, creativity, and excitement has returned now that I’m no longer in constant pain.
This past year, I survived a very serious autoimmune condition that completely exploded in my body. By June, I was in a wheelchair. I was unable to use my hands properly, couldn’t turn my head, and at times was essentially paralysed. On top of that, a lifetime of what I call “a life well danced” — jumping out of aeroplanes, extreme physical work, pushing my body hard — combined with long-held internalised stress and the autoimmune flare, accelerated severe degeneration in my right hip. I had a full hip replacement just four months ago.
I won’t sugar-coat it — there were moments when the pain was so relentless that I genuinely questioned whether I wanted to keep living. When it takes twenty minutes to move something as light as a bedsheet because the pain is unbearable, your relationship with life changes. I thought deeply about death, about transition, about whether this level of suffering was meant to be my new normal.
And then — slowly — things shifted.
The greatest gift that came from getting so sick was learning how to stop. How to say no. How to ask for help. How to admit, “I cannot do this on my own.” Those lessons didn’t come gently — they were carved into me — but they changed everything.
Now, just weeks after surgery, I’ve been given a full bill of health by my surgeon. I’m driving again. I’m regaining strength. And the contrast is extraordinary. When you’ve lived inside pain for so long, you forget what it feels like to have energy — and when it returns, it’s like being handed your life back.
What excites me is that instead of slowing down permanently, I feel like I’m just getting started — but from a very different place.
I’m incredibly excited about what’s coming creatively.
My publishers still create the most beautiful physical books — hardcovers with incredible illustrations and finishes. In a world where so much is digital, I feel blessed that I still get to create real books that people can hold in their hands. The Lost Book of Spells is a wonderful gift book — beautiful illustrations, timeless, practical, and personal — and it marked the beginning of a new series for me. This year sees the release of COVEN — Where Witches Gather, the second book in that journey, and next year I can share a little scoop: the third book in the series will be Bewitch: The Ultimate Guide to witchery (this is a working title, but it will be something like this!) Right now, I’m especially excited about my 18th book COVEN — Where Witches Gather and the COVEN Oracle, which I’ll be launching in Australia with a book tour in March, followed by select international appearances as the year unfolds. To still be published after all these years feels extraordinary — particularly in a niche and community I helped build in the ’90s and early 2000s, when many of us were still navigating deep misunderstanding and fear. We were out there on the front line as that wall finally came tumbling down.”
About Fiona Horne
Fiona Horne’s books and oracle decks are available internationally through major online retailers and independent bookstores, and have been published in multiple languages around the world. Full information about Fiona’s books, retreats, oracle decks, and upcoming releases can be found at www.fionahorne.com.
If you would like to join Fiona for Meet Yourself in Egypt/Bali/Transylvania or have her curate a very special experience for you and your friends you can reach out to her at fi@fionahorne.com
Instagram: @captainfifi
Facebook: @fionahorneofficial
