Discover how Marilyn Monroe inspired the real magic behind
B*TCHCRAFT🌙: a true story of personal magnetism, meditation, and inner light.

A. T. Napoli
8/8/2025 - 4 min read

Susan Strasberg, actress and daughter of Marilyn Monroe’s acting coaches, recalled in a now-infamous interview that one day, while out with Marilyn, she experienced her performing a feat of magic right in front of her eyes.

They had walked down the streets of Manhattan, remarkably to Strasberg, unnoticed and undiscovered. Marilyn wore no makeup, just a scarf and sunglasses. That’s when Marilyn turned to her and asked...

“Do you want to see me be her?”

Suddenly, people “started doing double-takes.” It wasn’t by a change of her gait or a swish of her hips— no, Marilyn changed nothing about her appearance. To Strasberg, it was as if Marilyn had made an inner adjustment, the flip of an inner “lightbulb.” Like moths to a flame, they were mobbed. Marilyn and Strasberg had to make a quick escape in a cab.

When naysayers reduce Norma Jeane, aka Marilyn Monroe, to a persona merely manufactured by the Studios—a product of lighting, wardrobe, and cosmetic surgery—Strasberg “dis-spells” that myth. Instead, she raises them one even greater: a glimpse into one of the most mythologized beauties the world has ever known. “There was,” Strasberg said, “something she could do [that was very deliberate]:" it was a conscious choice to embody her.

After all, Marilyn herself once admitted, “I daydreamed chiefly about beauty. I dreamed of myself becoming so beautiful that people would turn to look at me when I passed." Sounds like her wish was granted, don’t you think?

Marilyn was the magic… and I think we are all meant to find our inner light and turn it on.

Marilyn Monroe and Susan Strasberg, 1955

🪞

When I planned B*TCHCRAFT🌙, I knew that glamour in Book Two would function as a kind of “spellwork” that witches are hired to cast (and paid handsomely—no, "gorgeously"—for). The magic I’ve written into B*TCHCRAFT is real, drawn from actual lived experience: zen transcendentalist wisdom, manifestation magic you can cast, astral projection, aura magic, and much, much more.

Of all the magic practiced throughout the years, Marilyn's is one that I frequent often, an energetic practice rooted in personal magnetism.

Take a night out in recent memory, for example, at Fire Island's iconic Sip N Twirl, where I exercised both this inner light—and its opposite.

I had never been more mugged in my life. Shoved, slapped, kicked, hair roughed up, you name it. I was even grabbed by my shoulders and shaken (eek!). And I let it happen to me on purpose.

The modern-day Buddha, Eckhart Tolle, in the widely regarded classic, The Power of Now, observes:

“A strong unconscious emotional pattern may even manifest as an external event that appears to just happen to you. For example, I have observed that people who carry a lot of anger inside without being aware of it and without expressing it are more likely to be attacked, verbally or even physically, by other angry people, and often for no apparent reason. They have a strong emanation of anger that certain people pick up subliminally and that triggers their own latent anger."

So, knowing this, in the bathroom, I paused. I caught my breath and made a conscious, inner adjustment: I dropped my awareness into my heartspace, and, on an inhale, filled up my being with the feelings of joy, contentment, and love. This is meditation in motion: a practice called Heart-Mind Coherence, where meditation is meant to integrate with us beyond sitting down in lotus and is consciously carried through daily life. Instantaneously, any insecure, subconscious beliefs like “I’m unattractive,” “I'm not good enough,” and (my favorite!) “no one will like me,” were silenced.

Then, I thought to myself the unspeakable:

“I’m the cutest guy in the world.”

It’s not that I actually think I’m the cutest guy in the world (not that I’d want to be— something about that sounds boring. And if you remember Book One, boring is the kiss of death 😀 ). But whether or not it was true didn’t matter. I just held the feeling of that sentiment, embodied it even—and walked back out.

I swear I’m not exaggerating when I say that suddenly I found every pair of eyes in the room on me, bartenders included. And not just with curiosity: most were smiling. Intrigued. Many paid me compliments as I passed them, even if within earshot and amongst themselves.

And later, how I knew it had worked: one young man approached me and said, “You’re the cutest guy in this whole place.”

✨

Sometimes, just to flex, I test this out on my day-to-day— eyes hid behind sunglasses, on a stroll in NYC, like Marilyn did that one day. People stop mid-sentence. Forget what they were talking about. Ask, "Who's that?" Gawk and drop things... All because of that inner light I flip on.

Sounds hard to believe, I know. But I think it was comic Kathy Griffin who once said, “The truth is always more interesting.”

Now if only I could manifest a penthouse and an emotional support yacht.

What do you think? Is personal magnetism something you can master? To that, I say try it. You’re bound to turn on your inner Marilyn and discover your personal brand of magic in the process.

A. T. Napoli

xx

"Sometimes people want to see if you're real. They kind of look on to you or towards you for some kind of something that gets away from their everyday life. I guess you call that entertainment, huh?"
—Marilyn Monroe 🌟

"Marilyn Monroe was a legend. In her lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For the entire world she became a symbol of the eternal feminine." - Lee Strasberg 🌟