Apotropaica:
A 9-week Protection Course
Starting October 2026
If you want to participate in the practice of full presence in life with intention, magic, and embodiment this is for you.
The tools and ritual techniques of apotropaic or protection traditions are just the mediums or portals that open us into greater resilience, creativity, and expansion. They help us build the necessary structures and containers where our beings can grow and live in dynamic fullness as individuals and relationally.
Apotropaic magic
is WORLD BUILDING
The word “apotropaic” (pronounced ap-oh-troh-PAY-ik) comes from the Greek word apotropaios and means to avert evil or to turn away unwanted influences.
Apotropaic medicine and magic includes collections of symbols, gestures, rituals and other cultural traditions and practices that are used to protect and ward against something or someone.
But this is just one layer of apotropaic medicine: the most literal and obvious one.
The depth Lisa brings through research, storytelling, lineage, and lived experience is profound. It’s not just intellectual, it is deeply somatic, intuitive, and alive. Lisa holds space in a way that supports my nervous system to feel safe, grounded, and gently expanded.
- Lizzy McDonald LMSW, New Body Psychotherapy & Spiritual Healing
The real magic of protection practices works on psychic and energetic layers that cultivate our deepest presence and consciousness to the fullness of life and our relationships with others, human and otherwise.
Protection doesn’t guarantee total safety.
Instead, it attunes our capacity to engage with what comes, as well as use our agency to make choices for what we let in and what we do not.
This course is not a bag of magic tricks (though we’ll talk about those too).
It's a conscious relationship with the forces of creation we inherit when we arrive here on Earth.
Boundaries >>>> Sovereignty
We set boundaries to allow us to move into full creativity and sovereignty, while staying grounded and in relationship to the landscape and other humans.
Using protection magic as tools for transformation and embodiment
Protection is the work of coming into full consciousness. It’s creative, and our protection magic works with creation patterns and formulas. It’s less about building walls (except when necessary), and more about working with eros. Protection work is driven by self-knowledge, embodied, attuned, intentional, and without bypass.
Protection doesn’t save us from the uncertainty of life, but it puts us in an intimate relationship with it. That uncertainty is eros; exciting, full of juiciness.
Healthy, generative protection creates a kind of contraction that is temporary and flexible. We’re not in a permanent state of defensiveness, restriction, or rigidity.
Protection magic helps us direct the tension and friction we experience as a result of being part of creation, so we can use it to participate in the web of life. It’s alchemy.
Apotropaic magic is much more than defensiveness or fending off unwanted influences. It’s the cultural, ritual, and energetic techniques we use to anchor our fullness of being. It’s a practice of resiliency of body, mind, and spirit; as well as a practice of attunement with the creative forces of nature.
Usually “protection” is taught as superficial tools of defense, which are needed sometimes. But this course goes far beyond that into the art of being in full presence with the flow of creation, the uncertainty of life, and the way we relate as individuals and communities that exist in this physical space-time reality.
PRoGRAM DETAILS
Dates: Tuesdays from October 20, 2026 - December 15, 2026
Time: 11am Eastern time
Each live session will be about 90 minutes long and will be recorded.
Everyone will have lifetime access to the recordings.
The tools, techniques, and traditions we will learn originate from:
Italian and Italian American folk medicine
Jungian Psychology
Myth
The teaching of “The Fourth Way”
Modern Physics
American Witchcraft.
This course will include live 9 lessons intentionally organized to take you into the transformative process of apotropaic magic.
Each week will be part of a full cycle of teachings starting with the foundations of what protection is beyond the material tools and objects used traditionally. Then we’ll take those foundations into a full alchemical process. Many lessons will be based around myths that take us into storied realms of this powerful magic.
“Lisa is an amazing teacher.
Her classes are informative and her personality is joyful and fierce in turn. I’m so blessed to have had her as a guide.”
-Beth S
curriculum
MYTHS WE WILL DISCUSS ARE:
“Maggots and Gold” as told by Michael Meade
“Eros and Psyche”
“Medusa and Perseus”
“The Maiden Czar”
“Artemis”
“The Moon Mother” as told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Also included: a private Discord chat group where we can discuss topics, practice, and ask questions.
CLASS SCHEDULE (SUBJECT TO CHANGE):
Class 1: Apotropaic magic: What is it? What is protection?
Class 2: Repulsion and Attraction: How can we participate in Creation?
Class 3: Apotropaic force: il malocchio (the evil eye) and i punti (the points) How can we turn something dangerous into a protective force?
Class 4: Transformation: the 3 phases of magic: How do we live in paradox but beyond dualism?
Class 5: Limitations: Mars and binding spells: what is the psychology of aggression and non-violence
Class 6: Relational protection: Individuation and being part of the collective. What does it mean when someone is in your “danger”?
Class 7: Apotropaic devices: How to move from understanding protection to doing it?
Class 8: The Apotropaic world: Protective Saints, Plants, and Orphic possession
Class 9: Preserving vitality: living in apotropaic fullness and how to work with “egregores”
“Forever grateful for everything you've taught me about protection, Lisa”
-Jade Alicandro, Milk and Honey Herbs
“Lisa’s attention to care, ethics, and detail is very inspiring and she creates a wonderful immersion online for connect with your ancestral roots.”
-Cara Piazza
JOIN APOTROPAICA
9 weeks to learn the transformative process of apotropaic magic
Full price:
$699
or 2 payments of $350
Early bird discount:
$399
or 2 payments of $200
Refund Policy:
All purchases are final sale. No refunds.