Today we're joined by the one and only - Witch of all trades - practitioner and scholar, choreographer, film maker, YouTuber, author of many incredible books including the brand new Tarot Every Witch Way: Unlock the Power of the Cards
for Spellcraft & Magic, Lilith Dorsey!
We talk about the transformative nature of 'shock value', from NYC Club Kids to the films of Jodorowsky, and being proud weirdos. We talk about how witchcraft can be a tool of protection and empowerment, and a mode of living in harmony with nature and divinity - how we can enlist magic to explore ancestry, find the next right action, and move into being our best selves.
Together we trace Lilith's herstory as a pathfinder whose work all comes together to create a recipe for reclamation and re-connection. They assure us, "The ancient ways have come home."
Listen now, transcript below:
Tarot Every Witch Way provides an extensive array of magical correspondences witches can use to connect with the cards, including animals, astrology, crystals, herbs, musical notes, and more. You will also receive step-by-step instructions for deeper workings with the tarot, such as making altars, shrines, and crystal grids to help awaken your deck. Featuring a dozen illustrations of tarot spreads as well
as recipes for crafts, charms, and tasty foods, this book brings the magic of the arcana into your life.
Find Lilith on their website, on Instagram, their blog, and on YouTube. Keep an eye out for Lilith Dorsey in-person events near you!!!
And check out ALL of Lilith's books: 55 Ways to Connect to Goddess, Love Magic, Water Magic, Voodoo and African Traditional Religion, Orishas, Goddesses, and Voodoo Queens and Tarot Every Witch Way!
Lilith Dorsey (New Orleans, Louisiana) comes from a Celtic, Afro-Caribbean, and
Native American spirituality. They are the editor and publisher of Oshun-African
Magickal Quarterly and filmmaker of the documentary Bodies of Water: Voodoo
Identity and Tranceformation. They are co-host of the YouTube show Witchcraft &
Voodoo. Lilith is also the author of Voodoo and Afro-Caribbean Paganism (Citadel,
2005) and Orishas, Goddesses, and Voodoo Queens (Weiser, 2020).
patheos.com/blogs/voodoouniverse
TRANSCRIPT
AMY: If you want to support the Missing Witches project, join the coven! Find out how at missingwitches. com, or buy our books New Moon Magic and Missing Witches. And check out our deck of oracles! The Missing Witches, Deck of Oracles.
AMY: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Missing Witches podcast. I'm Amy and I'm so deeply excited, like vibrating, to be sitting in circle with the one and only witch of all trades, practitioner and scholar, choreographer. Filmmaker, YouTuber, author of many incredible books, including the brand new Tarot Every Witch Way, Lilith motherfucking Dorsey is here.
AMY: Hi, Lilith. Thank you so much for tearing yourself away from the community garden to be here.
LILITH: . Oh, you're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you for having me on the show.
AMY: So before I dive into my, like, long list of questions, um, I just want to ask you, like, what do you want our listeners to know about you? Like, who are you today, to sort of ground them in your personality?
LILITH: Um, I, I think people think, like, they hear that I do all these things and whatever. I think people think it was easy or, you know, You know, I came from this place where I had all these advantages and stuff like that. And none of that's true. Like I had, you know, people are wanting to be me. I'm like, you don't want to be me.
LILITH: It's not, it's not fun over here. So I, I have done a lot, but you know, it's, There's a lot of hard work behind it. There's a lot of hustle. There's a lot of 60, 70, 80 hour weeks and no breaks and not a lot of fun and all of those things. So yeah, the hustle is real.
AMY: Where do you get the energy?
LILITH: Uh, there's a lot of things I don't do.
LILITH: You know, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and he's like, I don't know why people go to clubs. And I'm like, that's because you don't want to have sex with anybody. You don't want to do any drugs. You don't drink. And I was like, I got that out of my system when I was 14. And I think I only went because I really didn't want to be in my house, you know, that kind of a thing.
LILITH: It was like, Oh, where are you going to go? Let's go to the club, you know, and I grew up in New York city. So it was limelight and all of this kind of like insane club kid scene, you know, so that was definitely more fun than staying at home. I lived with my grandparents, you know, so. That was like, what's the choice, you know, go to a converted church with four stories worth of like, you know, music and disco and partying and like epic everything or stay home with my, you know, cranky drunk grandparents.
LILITH: But,
AMY: you know, so I, you know, I've actually written about this before because I saw the club kids like on Geraldo when I was It's pretty young. And it just blew my mind. Like, I was like, this is where it's at. Just the, and maybe we, I wasn't going to bring this up till later, but maybe let's start here. Like, you did, you did an episode of your, um, YouTube show, Pop O Culture, and maybe you can tell us a little bit about how that came about.
AMY: Came to be. But, but you did an episode about the Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain. So I want to know, like, somehow there's some connective tissue there between, like, the Club Kid scene and Jodorowskky and Holy Mountain. So tell us about the place of, like, the absurd and the surreal in your magic and in your life.
LILITH: Yeah, I love Jodorovsky. I was doing an event this weekend and somebody started talking to me about it and I was like, I met the maestro, you know, he shook my hand and it was amazing. But I love this Jodorowsky concept of the shock value and in order to transform and transcend our normal existence.
LILITH: Distance. We have to have that shocking thing, you know? And in his book, psychomagic, he talks about, you know, if you're going to a, this is gonna sound weird to everybody. If you're going to a job interview and you're really nervous and anxious and everything like that, put some raw meat in your pocket.
LILITH: And then when you get nervous, stick your hand in your pocket and feel the meat. And that will like ground you and bring you back. And then he is like, if you don't wanna use raw meat, how about lavender? And I just love that it's like, okay. Pinky dripping meat in my pocket, but lavender will also ground me and bring me back.
LILITH: It feels kind of nubbly when it's in your pocket, you know, so just these things to shift your perception shift you into a different kind of reality, different dimension, that kind of thing. So I really appreciate Jodorowsky for that. And, uh, I think you're right. There is a connection between him and the club kids because there was this extreme shock value.
LILITH: There was this kind of, you know, the rules are being rewritten for us in this moment and it's bizarre and insane and beautiful and creepy and possibly criminal and, you know, all of that's okay. You know, I think some of them did go to jail. So that part's not okay. But in general, that there was this expansion that came out of actually those club kids were a little older.
LILITH: I mean, a little younger than me. So I was kind of on the scene before that, you know, that was sort of late eighties. And I think I first started clubbing and I'm gonna tell everybody how old I am. Probably I was sneaking in when I was about 15, 16. So like 85, you know, So there was a lot of that going on.
AMY: Listeners, I think Lilith is just laughing at my face. Yeah, I know. I had, I had no idea that this is like part of your story. And like I say, this is really part of my story too. Like I wasn't there. But the influence is, like, very how I dressed, how I behaved, how I thought about, like, being a quote unquote weirdo, and how that became, like, a compliment to me instead of an insult.
AMY: And I was really able to, like, wear weirdness as an armor. Um, so I'm just, like, I had no idea this was part of your story, so I'm, like, shaking with excitement here.
LILITH: Yeah, definitely. I got up to some stuff as a kid, you know, like I started out doing Broadway, which is so funny because like three of the kids that I was on Broadway with are now like epic Grammy winners, Eagle Eye Cherry.
LILITH: I had a crush on him when I was 12 and he was 14 and he was like, you're too young Lilith. And I was like, that's it. I'm never liking anybody who doesn't like me first, you know, was crying and whatnot, you know, so. That deal. And then I had the club kid moment. And then I was telling another friend of mine that I was there at like those beginning rap battles because I grew up in Brooklyn.
LILITH: So those beginning rap battles would run DMC. And like we used to have Fresh Prince used to come in Will Smith and we'd make fun of him because he was like the little kid outsider who wasn't very good, you know, so it was it was nuts. It was wild.
AMY: I really have to just, like, snatch myself back from spending our whole time talking about New York and Brooklyn in the, in the 80s because I do want to talk about Tarot Every Which Way, um, your newest book.
AMY: Uh, one of many. I got that same kind of excited chills. Um, in the introduction you wrote, the ancient ways have come home. And I just want you to like, tell me all about that. What does that look like to you?
LILITH: Yeah, I mean, I practice voodoo. I'm a voodoo priestess. So there's a way in which voodoo. We've got like the earliest written records of African traditional religions going back about 4, 000 years, and there really wasn't a break in any of that.
LILITH: There was changes that came through, you know, the history of enslaved people and things like that, but that was continuous. But when we look at things like tarot and witchcraft, There was a break in that. So, so much of what people are doing now is really either information that was lost to us or stuff that they're trying to recreate from these lost records.
LILITH: So, I think there's a lot of recovery that's been happening. And even when you look at the scholarship from 30 or 40 years ago, So much of that, they were like, Oh, we thought this. No, it's not really that way. You know, cause that's how scholarship is. You discover something else, you find something else, and then you have to sort of amend it and change it.
LILITH: So this ancient reclaiming that I think a lot of us are doing when it comes to witchcraft, like you just said, you know, this weirdo aesthetic. I, I did a podcast with Rachel true and she said, we are the weirdos. And I was like, yeah, yeah, we are though.
AMY: It's a motto for so many of us.
LILITH: It's true. That was like a rallying cry for us, you know, so, and I think that unfortunately what happened was a lot of the people that were weirdos back, you know, hundreds of years ago didn't survive.
LILITH: they were persecuted even for the littlest kinds of magic and things like that, you know, so I think it's beautiful that people can sort of have this, you know, almost a renaissance of these kinds of witchy thoughts and feelings and knowledge and embrace that, you know, uh, I was a nanny for years and one of the moms sent me a message and she's like, well, little Sadie thinks she's a witch and all the kids do now.
LILITH: And I was like, That's great. I always knew she was a witch. I knew she was a witch when I told her about fairies when she was three years old and I said, some people don't believe and she said, I do. So, you know, there's that thing where it's okay now for them to say, yes, I believe in fairies and I believe in witches and.
LILITH: I'm going to do things to make my life more positive and more successful. And I think that's an empowerment tool that I'm so happy the younger generation can have, you know, because for us, it was, it was hard. It was hard.
AMY: Yeah. The, the sort of origins of the Missing Witches project were to just like try to research and figure out what it even means to be.
AMY: A witch, you know, um, I was speaking to Lakeisha Harris, Black Witch University, and I told her, like, studying African traditional religion, for me, obviously, I'm not doing it so I can practice it. But for me, this study, like, reveals the lie of white supremacy. You know, I hadn't even heard the word Orisha until maybe, you know, 10 years ago, which is kind of ridiculous, right?
AMY: So I want to know about why, first of all, what does the word witch mean to you? What does it mean to be a witch? Oh, that's
LILITH: a big question. Okay. I mean, I think there's a harmony with nature. I mean, again, I think if there's anything that I get upset about these days is when people are running around, you know, commanding nature or commanding, you know, deity, I'm like, that's just so arrogant to me, you know, it's really about living in harmony, living in symbiosis.
LILITH: with nature and divinity and recognizing it wherever you see it. It might be in the face of a two year old child. It might be in a tree or a flower or something like that, like that we can recognize the sacred all around us. And, and as I said before, it's about using that to be your best self, you know, we're not necessarily all going to get to be, you know, King or, you know, the president of some giant corporation, because there's only so many of those jobs, but.
LILITH: You can be your best self and you can be the most effective, happy, productive self that you can be. And it's about using the tools you have at your disposal to put yourself in that place. So that to me, I think is definitely a thing about that. I think is the definition of witches. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's in there, but it's such a, it's such a complicated thing, you know, writing the tarot every which way.
LILITH: I was like, what kind of witches are there? There's chaos witches and kitchen witches and hedge witches and, you know, so many different kinds of witches and how they each look at the world and interact with the world is slightly different and each one of them is valid. And I salute that.
AMY: Yeah, and that really comes through in your work, like you, your work covers Celtic and Afro Caribbean and Indigenous American, and I'm wondering, like, how you gave yourself permission to cast such a wide aspect of your work.
LILITH: Well, I have, you know, indigenous ancestry. I have African ancestry. I have a tiny bit of European ancestry, you know, Scottish specifically, you know, but also my daughter tested for some Irish DNA. So and so did my sister. So I guess there's some Irish in there as well. So I think that You know, for me, it was really just about an exploration of my ancestral heritage and things that I'd learned.
LILITH: And then also things that had been stolen from me, you know, like my, uh, paternal grandmother died when I was very little, you know, my mom has stories of me sort of getting me out of the way while people are rushing towards the coffin, throwing themselves on it and weeping, you know, so I don't remember her at all.
LILITH: I remember the stories and things like that. But, uh, You know, one of my aunts came by for the feast day that we did. And she said to me, this is exactly like this recipe is exactly like your great grandma used to make. And I was like, that's beautiful. You know, I never met this woman. I didn't have her recipe book, but somehow through that connection and through that honoring the right way to make that was brought back to me.
LILITH: And, and it was so joyous for me to hear my aunt say that.
AMY: And, uh, everything that I've read that you've done, um, they, it includes recipes, and I, I also note your use of the word herstory, and I believe it's in Orishas Goddesses and Voodoo Queens where you wrote: Modern women seriously need ways to connect with and understand their ancestral warrior strength and power.
AMY: And I'm wondering, like, since recipes are often sort of coded as women's work, are, are those recipes that you either inherited or concocted, like, part of that ancestral power?
LILITH: Yeah, definitely. You know, like so many of us, I grew up In the kitchen learning how to cook, you know, like I would climb up on the counter and help my grandmother make stuff.
LILITH: And, you know, it's funny. My sister wasn't allowed because she refused to wash her hands to
this day. She doesn't really, which I think is hilarious. But that's so my sister if you know her, but just just this way of of it's something that You know, we think of, you know, famous chefs as men, but we think of like cooking for the family, cooking for home, cooking for holidays.
LILITH: We think of that as traditionally feminine work, you know? So this is, I think, an area that we were allowed to shine and allowed to flourish and allowed to, I mean, how many people's grandmothers were like, get out of my kitchen, you know, with the wooden spoon yelling at them, you know? So there's this kind of place that that was the domain.
LILITH: for the sacred feminine. And that was the way we could nourish our family. That was a way we could heal our family. You know, so many of those things and those recipes are so cherished. So I did my best to put all the recipes I had pretty much in my in my books. Um, you know, I tell my daughter, I'm like, well, I didn't write them down for you, but they're in the books.
LILITH: You can find them and all of that stuff. stuff, you know, but they're all slightly different because there is that again, you know, whatever you make will taste really good and it'll be fantastic, but it's not exactly the same because they're my recipes and that's how, but yeah, I think, I, I think that is a way we can access the divine feminine.
LILITH: And I've always felt that I've definitely always felt that. And I've also always felt this power of women, you know, people ask me, Oh, you call yourself you know, like make this noise. That's the name my parents gave me. You can take it up with them. You know, I probably wouldn't have chose it, but I think I came in with this knowledge of the divine feminine.
LILITH: We look at Lilith, right? That goes back thousands and thousands of years. So we, we've got this sacred person that was demonized. That was everybody, every, so much of her stuff was destroyed and everything. You know, so I grew up knowing that she had this power and it was not something that a lot of people were going to be happy about.
AMY: And did, did they ever talk to you about why? I mean, it's not a common name, really. What, why did they choose this for you?
LILITH: I mean, they knew the goddess lore and they were sort of, you know, they never had any sort of formalized witchy training, you know, but they were very eclectic. I was actually named after the movie with Gene Seberg and, uh, introducing Warren Beatty.
LILITH: So, which is a very weird movie and I love Jean Seberg and, uh, but yeah, it's very strange. She's like a mental patient who's like in love with everybody, you know, sort of capitalizes on that sexualized feminine, but not necessarily in a bad way either. You know, yes, the movie's not great in the end result, but it's interesting.
AMY: But it is relatable to be like weird and crazy and in love with everybody. I feel like that. Yes, yes, yes,
LILITH: yes. And wanting everybody to be in love with her and the whole thing, you know, so, which probably tells you more about my parents than they'd be happy about. But, you know, if they listen to it, they're, you know, whatever.
AMY: So what drew you to, like, start examining or practicing the, the witchy arts? I know that your education is in film and in anthropology. Why the focus on witchy arts?
LILITH: Um, I think I always was a witch. I had a lot of trauma growing up. A lot of really bad things happened to me. And I think, you know, the same way they have certain cultures that bind their feet to turn the foot into a different shape.
LILITH: I think having that, you know, Early childhood trauma sort of changed my brain and my outlook on the world. So it was very important to learn magical ways to keep safe, magical ways to stay protected, magical ways to figure out what was happening around me. You know, I'm not, Tall. I'm 5'3 on a good day. I think I may be shrinking, but, um, you know, so I'm not this looming giant Amazon warrior presence.
LILITH: I just came back from Dahomey and, or in, uh, Benin and I saw the Amazon warrior statue that is huge. And everybody's, you know, do I go? Yay. The chant like in the warrior. It's so beautiful. So beautiful. But no, that's not the body I got, you know, I got this little body. So I had and I had a lot of difficulties.
LILITH: So I had to really learn how to make my magic work if I wanted to survive and even remotely thrive. So that's where it was with that. I don't think it was a choice. But, you know, I certainly grew up with yeah. I do have a sibling, but she's seven years younger. So those early years were really just me there by myself.
LILITH: I watched a lot of TV. That's how I ended up being a film person. And I would watch Bewitched and I'd watch I Dream of Jeannie. And I would be like, Oh, look, here we go again. Here's. These women that are in lesser roles than their husband or the society around them, but they have their own special magic and they can get over on people in the, in the best way possible.
LILITH: You know, by the end of the episode, everybody was happy. It didn't matter what Jeannie or Samantha did. Everybody was happy and you know, yeah, you know, that's so, I was like, okay, we're gonna figure out how to do that.
AMY: And how did Tarot
LILITH: work its way into your, into your life? Your practice. My mother had, she still has it.
LILITH: Actually, I made her find it the other day. She had a first edition copy of the tough book, the hardcover. And I, I always loved books. You know, I, I started again, I was left alone a lot of the time, you know, not necessarily physically, but the adults were doing something else. They weren't playing with me. I had to be.
LILITH: Okay, what can I do? Here's all these beautiful books, you know, and then I was like, can I have that beautiful book? And they told me, well, you have to be able to read it. So when I was three years old, I was like, give me the book. So at that point I was already reading. So by the time I was like seven or eight, I was like, Oh, this tarot book is beautiful, man.
LILITH: Those, you know, those cards, those Toth cards are so beautiful. And it has the original plates on it. with like paper in it and stuff. And I was like, Ooh, so it was just so exciting to me, just the magic. And even the way it's written, you know, is so magical. It sounds like an incantation. You know, that was one of Crowley's things that the words themselves have to have magic.
LILITH: So just looking at it, I was like, Oh, this is beautiful. You know, so she wouldn't give me the. book. She still won't give me the book. She still has it. But when I was probably about 12 or 13, she got me the Rider Waite Smith deck. And I started just reading with that. And I read about everything, you know, I, I get, I don't know if I want to say obsessed, but I get fixated on things.
LILITH: So I would do a reading for, Oh, okay. You know, and I didn't have an easy time in high school, either people hated me. So I would be like, okay, you know, who's that? who's stabbing me in the back, who's trying to get with my boyfriend, all of those things, you know. So I would just do readings about that over and over again.
LILITH: And then when I got older, I would do readings for anybody who would let me, you know, do you want a reading? You want a reading? You know, so that just sort of blossomed and uh, yeah, you know, it's, it's a really good tool. I like it. I love the imagery. I love the way it frames things, not just for me, but whoever might be coming to you for a reading.
LILITH: It's got, you know, if you have a good deck, it's got imagery that's easily relatable. And hopefully you understand it. And hopefully whoever's coming for the reading also understands it, or at least you can explain it to them in some way.
AMY: Yeah. Um, there's so much in Tarot Every Which Way, um, to help me focus.
AMY: Um, I've been asking some Tarot readers. Um, this year because 2025, if you subscribe to this notion, each year has a tarot card that's, you know, sort of applied to it. And next year is the Hermit. So I'm going to read a couple sentences, um, from tarot, every which way from, from chapter 11, the Hermit, um, by Lilith Dorsey, go pick it up right now.
AMY: Um, the Hermit urges us to be mindful. It is about stilling our thoughts. and earthly cares, and submitting to the silence. Here are precious moments saluting both the breath and the body, so they may tell us what we need. Instead of looking to external sources, We turn our attention inward to find solutions.
AMY: Tell me about how you think this hermit energy might manifest in 2025, if indeed next year is the year of the hermit. What's that going to look like? Or feel like?
LILITH: First, that was some good words. I don't ever remember what I say. Like, if you had told me someone else wrote that, I would have been like, yeah, that's intense.
LILITH: You're like, damn, I
AMY: wrote that? Nice. Nice. Nice. You did. You wrote that. Wow. Okay.
LILITH: Um, but yeah, I think that, Yeah, I mean, I'm not one for predictions or anything like that, but I think whatever we're stuck with, whatever we're stuck with at the state of the planet, the state of the United States government and other governments that are having big elections and turmoil and changes this year, whatever we're stuck with, we're going to have to be very mindful and very purposeful.
LILITH: Right. Like what I've been getting a lot lately from people is this sort of energy of the snake. And when you think about the snake, like I've had snakes lots of times, and I just came back. So I said I was in Benin and I went to the temple of pythons. Basically, those snakes in the temple of pythons just sit there in a lump most of the time.
LILITH: Like if you have a snake, it just sits there. It doesn't move, right? Like you might think it's dead because it'll sit there for like days. It won't move or do anything. And it's conserving energy. And the way I see that in the hermit is it's conserving energy. It's trying to figure out How to make purposeful and successful movements with the least energy possible.
LILITH: And I think that's what we're going to have to be doing. We're going to have to make sure our own stuff is okay. And whatever moves or connections or things like that, that we make in the outer world, it's going to have to be as purposeful as possible because we're not going to have the luxury of having everything we want or being able to do everything that we want, no matter who, you know, gets elected or no matter.
LILITH: Who gets a storm or who doesn't get a storm? Everything is going to have to be very calculated and very purposeful. And I think that's how the hermit energy is going to come through. I really do.
AMY: Um, for people who are maybe struggling to find their purpose, I find you to be quite a purposeful human. And so how, how do you think that that hermit energy of conservation can help people find their purpose?
LILITH: My godmother, my Santeria godmother, you see, yeah, Oshun Olokare Aleye. She's no longer with us, unfortunately, but she used to say, what's your next right action? And one of my friends was calling it the new NRA, next right action. But okay, maybe you can't figure, oh, okay, maybe you want to write a book, or maybe you want to open a store, or maybe whatever, you know, that's a huge task.
LILITH: But what's the first right thing you need to do? In order to do that, Maybe you need to do the laundry. In order to do that, maybe you need to make sure the dishes are done in the sink because that is going to be taking away from your energy, your thought process, your calm, your togetherness. So even if you can't think of the 2011 billion things you need to do to get where you want to be, what's the one thing you can do right now that you know is the right thing that will keep you moving forward on your path towards the right thing to do?
AMY: That's just such a relief to hear for me and for I think so many of our listeners that we've got this big global picture of everything that needs to happen and everything that needs to happen and all of the million things that need to happen. But if we can sort of conjure this hermit energy into focusing on the next right.
AMY: Action, the new NRA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sort of eliminates some of that like frantic, frenetic, I don't know the word I'm looking for, so I'm just gonna. No, no, that's,
LILITH: that's it, I mean, I think so many of us get in that anxiety moment or end up right? Literally and not knowing which way to go or what to do, you know?
LILITH: So just, and that's where the mindfulness comes in. You know, I was not a big believer in mindfulness or meditation or anything like that. I've had a lot of trauma. So sometimes that stillness can mean that there's a lot of negativity and negative thoughts. So mindfulness can bring you back to the way you were before.
LILITH: Like I said, your mind and your body. So what are my hands feel like? What are my feet feel like? Where am I sitting? What is the space, you know? So taking it back to that and that energy of just being mindful and trying to stay in your body, trying to stay present and figure out in a practical way, what's the next steps for you to do?
LILITH: We'll get you where you need to go.
AMY: You said you're not, you're not a big believer in. Um, and I've been thinking so much about belief lately. You know, I was raised in the church, but I couldn't, I just couldn't, like, make myself believe in, in what they were telling me. And I think it was like the philosopher Ortega claimed that our beliefs choose us, that we don't choose them.
AMY: What, what do you believe? I know I think I believe, right? No, it's fine. I certainly believe
LILITH: in the divine feminine. Like I said, I was named Lilith. So that sort of started me out on the right direction. You're talking about, you know, being in that kind of Christian background. And even though my family wasn't Christian, they sent me to Lutheran school and I was I think I must have been in kindergarten.
LILITH: I was four years old and they had the nativity play and they chose me to be the Virgin Mary. So I was very serious. I was like, you know, I come from a long line of theater people. I was like, okay, we're going to do this. You're going to be up there on stage. And the thing went on forever. You know, sometimes those things go on forever and you just want to punch yourself in the face, but I was going to be the Virgin Mary four years old.
LILITH: They gave me a real baby. And even at this point, I'm like, who were these people that gave me a real baby at four years old to sit up on the stage for two hours? So I, I thought my job was to just make sure this baby was happy. And the baby was quiet the whole time. Like I was just sort of like humming to it and patting it.
LILITH: It's like a Christmas
AMY: miracle that that baby was quiet. I know,
LILITH: like divine. I was like, Oh yes, I'm, I'm, I'm the divine feminine. Here we are. Here's my baby. It's Jesus. You know, went on and on. Like, okay, but that was the gig, right? You got to sit there and you got to do that, you know, so I think that I certainly believe in the divine feminine.
LILITH: There is that you mentioned the her story. There is so many women that I think came before me that are responsible. I'm so grateful for me being here today. You know, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them and I'm so grateful and, you know, just I, I try and remember them to, you know, I've done a lot of interviews where people like, oh, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, how do we get through this?
LILITH: Or how do we get through this election? Or how do we get through whatever? You know, and I'm like, well. You know, when I think about my grandmother, she went through the 1918, you know, pandemic and she always had this story where she, back to cooking, she made a, four years old, she made a whole chicken, roast chicken for her family because they were all sick and I was like, wait a minute, that was the 1918 pandemic, but that was the next right action for her, she knew people needed to eat, she knew they were sick, she knew nobody else was going to cook, so she, you know, she'd watched how to do it, so she did it, you know, you know.
LILITH: And so for me, I think that I believe in the ancestors and the power of the ancestors to help me as, as much as they can. Um, I believe that I also need to help myself as much as I can, cause you know, if, if I don't do it, there's probably not anybody else who's going to help me, you know, so not in this world anyway.
LILITH: So I have to take those actions. I have to take those steps to make sure I'm doing the right thing. And I'm, I'm moving forward in a positive way. So I believe that what else do I believe? I mean, there's not much. When my niece was going through her, you know, first moon time, I was supposed to write down, what does it mean to be a woman for her?
LILITH: And I was like, I don't even know what to tell her. I think I wrote down men are more romantic than women. Cause that's what I wished I knew when I was 14, you know, because being the age I am now, so many of them came back to me and they're like, I remember you by your locker when you were 13 and you looked beautiful.
LILITH: And I think about it often and I'm like, what? What are you talking about?
AMY: That's so contrary to what, you know, we have been sort of socialized to believe that women are the, are the romantics and men are the practical. But you're really inverting that, like women's work is so practical and men are the romantics.
AMY: Tell me more.
LILITH: They are a lot. I mean, I think that they're not allowed to show that side. They're not allowed to show that sort of feeling side, you know, and I said I was a nanny for years. So, you know. You know, even though I had girls at this point, now I've raised both boys and girls. So, and a lot of them, so I've seen them go through all the things and honestly, like, you know, the boys were trained to be more physical, trained to be more sports oriented, and the women were told to, you know, have the dolls and stuff like that and, and have this kind of like home care.
LILITH: But honestly, if you take a kid and they don't have that conditioning there, they're pretty much 50, 50. There's boys that like that nurturing aspect and that side of things. And there's girls that don't, you know, want to do any of that and really just want to get all physical and, and that kind of stuff.
LILITH: So, you know, I think everything, obviously gender is more fluid than we, we think about it in that way. But I, and. Because of that, I think we can all access the divine feminine. I really do. I really do. But, uh, I'm so happy to still have those kids in my life. So happy to see them growing up, you know, like some of them are starting high school this year and I'm so proud of them.
LILITH: It's so nice to, to be able to, you know, I remember you when you were six months old and I took care of you, you know, and I knew that you were going to be wonderful and I'm watching them be wonderful and it's just so nice.
AMY: I know you prefer to use a they them pronoun. Is that part of this, just the upsetting of gender binaries and how you view the world?
LILITH: I never felt particularly feminine. I really didn't. I had all those sort of tomboy qualities, right? Like that's what they used to call it back in the 70s and the 80s. You know, not that I do sports. I'm not, you know, I'm not about that. I always felt more at home in a group of guys. I still feel more at home in a group of guys, you know, like that's just, even though I do like to cook and I like babies, I just, there's just, I don't know, there's something about, I'm not really one for those things that are traditionally thought of as feminine.
LILITH: And I never have been.
AMY: I. recently did an episode, a research episode about Alice Coltrane. Um, and so I've been thinking so much about like spiritual jazz as like a way that we can talk about witchcraft. Um, that, yeah, that you, that you really, you have to know, you have to know how to play your instrument before you can go off, before you can improvise.
AMY: Yeah. And, um, you wrote, it's in your, like, About Me section, so I don't know if you wrote it or someone wrote it on your behalf, but it is written. Um, training is vital in any discipline, but takes on special significance in a spiritual context. So please tell me about that special significance, and where you see, like, the The intersection of education and intuition in your life and your work and your magic.
LILITH: Yeah, I'm going to get in trouble for this, but that's okay.
AMY: Let's
LILITH: make good trouble. Let's go. You know, I mean, I, I always explain it. You're right. You do need to, it is spiritual jazz. You do need to know the notes, you know, otherwise it's not. going to work the way it's supposed to, you know, and it's, there's other things that come into it if you know what's happening and that'll open up more things.
LILITH: I always use the cooking analogy, you know, if you go in the kitchen and you just sort of intuit, I did a cooking class once, this woman, I have a recipe. I don't know if it's in any of the books that you have. It was in my cookbook, which is out of print right now. But, um, it was for coconut rice for Yemaya, which is really just you substitute coconut milk for some of the water when you're making rice.
LILITH: It's not rocket science, you know, but you have to know how to make rice. So I was doing the cooking class and I said, okay. Who wants to make the rice? This woman raised her hand. She's all excited. You know, she gets up. I give her the rice and the water and the coconut milk. And then she proceeds to stand there for 45 minutes, poking the rice and stirring it.
LILITH: And I'm looking at her. I'm like, is this some sort of weird way to make rice that I've never heard of before? And her husband was like, She's never made rice before. I don't know what possessed her. And it was horrible. I mean, I apologize if she listening, but like, we could not eat that. It was a sticky gluey, but the parts of it were hard.
LILITH: It was terrible. So you have to know what you're doing. You have to know that, like, if you're making rice, you simmer it, you cover it, you leave it. Otherwise it's going to be inedible. You know, like some people would have thrown it out the window right then. I don't know.
LILITH: Somebody was telling me that, like a friend of mine was telling me their grandmother used to throw their cooking out the window if it was bad while they were trying to make things. But that's the thing. It's going to be, you're not going to know what's up. And I feel like magic is even more serious than cooking, you know, cooking.
LILITH: Yeah. Okay. You're probably not going to die from some gloppy rice. But if you put there's so many people who are intuiting things now, Oh, take this ingredient and put it in your bathtub or take this ingredient and like do these things that can be really, really dangerous, you know, so you have to know what's going on right now.
LILITH: And it might work differently. I also have friends that are authors that are like, I wrote 100 spells today. And I was like, How is that possible? Like, every spell that's in my book has been tested. It's been tested on young people, old people, you know, gay, straight, non binary, all the things. Things, you know, because it might work different for different people.
LILITH: The same way different foods are toxic. Some people eat a peanut and they're in the emergency room and can't breathe. Some people eat peanuts, you know, three times a day, and they love it, you know? So you have to see how it's gonna work in these different situations, and you have to be prepared. For whatever happens, if it has that kind of negative or opposite effect.
LILITH: So it can't just be something that you only into it as much as I really want to. I love that people have intuition and I love that it works for them, but you can't really translate that to, it's going to work for thousands of people because it won't, it just won't.
AMY: Absolutely. You're making spiritual jazz. You have to know what chords are going to sound like before you You know, you hit those keys or you hit those.
LILITH: Yes. Yes. You know, I mean, your point about spiritual jazz, I'm here in New Orleans. We got Jean Baptiste, look at that. So many Grammys, so much, whatever. He went to Juilliard.
LILITH: People look at him and goes, Oh, why is he do all that? I was like. He went to Juilliard, you know, he got that classical music training in addition to being baptized and being part of the New Orleans, you know, culture and jazz history here. So he had it on both sides, you know, and that's why he's as successful and wonderful as he is, because he knows both of those things.
AMY: Yeah, because you can make up your own recipes, but you have to, you have to have a foundation in like, you know, ketchup and ice cream is probably not going to taste good together, you know, like. Yes, salt and sugar look
LILITH: the same. They're not interchangeable in a recipe, you know, they're not interchangeable in your magic either, you know, so you need to get with the program and figure out that's what it is.
LILITH: And I'm not trying to yuck anybody's yum, as the kids say, I'm just trying to be practical about it, you know, and that's. You asked me earlier about how did I end up doing all those things. I mean, I think I also ended up getting an anthropology degree because I wanted to understand how people from different cultures do it.
LILITH: And I wanted to understand from their mouths. I didn't want to read about, Oh, here's some, you know, Pale, stale, and male anthropologists that went and, you know, took all the secrets from them. No. I want to learn from the actual Indigenous people, from the culture, what they think is okay to share, and what they think might be helpful to those that are outside the culture.
LILITH: And then do what I can with that, with their permission.
AMY: I am hoping that your next book will be about sacred dance, and if not, what's the next thing you are going to work on, and please give me a little taste of what your book about sacred dance might, might be like.
LILITH: I love that. I love that. I, I, no, I had never even thought about doing a book about sacred dance, just because I think it's hard to write a book about dance, you know.
LILITH: Um, I'm a big fan of Catherine Dunham. A lot of people don't know that she was a voodoo priestess, you know, cause she kind of, as she went and also a filmmaker, as she went on over and over again, she sort of ended up downplaying that and focused at, you know, calling it traditional African dance or something like that.
LILITH: But, you know, she had her foundations in Haiti and was an initiated Mambo. But I think that. It would definitely be a lot about Katherine Dunham and the spiritual origins of Katherine Dunham. I've worked with, uh, Julio Jean in New York who studied with Katherine Dunham and, uh, teaches sacred Haitian dance.
LILITH: I've worked obviously as a choreographer for Dr. John and, and Mac asked me when I was doing it. That's his real name is Mac Revenant. Well, he asked me before I started. He's like, so what are these, you know, early religious dances about? And I was like, well, they're about power. And they're also about subversion.
LILITH: And he was so happy. He's like, I love that. Okay, let's go there. So I think that that these things like the envelope that were serpent dances again, I'm all about the serpent lately, were about where you're basically doing these undulating movements and your hands are like serpent arms and things like that.
LILITH: But there's also movements, especially in the dances they did. For the envelope here in New Orleans, we do this like chopping motion, which was supposed to be like, okay, now we're going to go jump the police or the, you know, government or the overseer or whatever. So it was like a coded signal to attack and revolt.
LILITH: So I thought that that was beautiful as well. So this just whole thing about. Dance being something that's joyous, I did a reading the other day for a famous dancer who does tap to honor the ancestors and I was like, well, it's about honoring your ancestors, but it's also about freeing yourself. It's also about, you know, we talk about the Igbo people and when you do the ritual Igbo dance, they say that the Igbo people used to fly.
LILITH: So there's these leaping moments in the Igbo dance. But flying was coded for committing suicide because you couldn't get back to Africa, you know, so there's this kind of thing about, I'll be free when I get out of this body. I'll be free when I can transcend these traumas and terrors that I live in every day.
LILITH: And, uh, so yeah, it would include all of that. I, and I don't know what my next book is. I'm always, it's going to be really hard, but I'm always kind of toying with the idea of writing a biography autobiography. Because there's so much, as you said, what I was talking about, you know, my, I have a friend that went, no one would read that.
LILITH: I was like, it's a true story of like, murder and Broadway and voodoo and like, someone will buy this. Like, someone will I would read
AMY: the shit out of that. Your friend does not know your audience if they think, like. Yeah, I think
LILITH: she just hears that a lot. So she was like, oh, nobody wants to read an autobiography.
LILITH: I was like. They'll want to read this thing. Let me tell you.
AMY: I've, I, that has now jumped the line for me. I want you to write a book about sacred dance, but I need that autobiography first. You're talking about working with Dr. John and you're like, I'm like, Oh, we only have two more minutes. Like,
AMY: I need the book. I need the book. I need the book. Um, someone from the coven has a question. So let, let's sort of half conclude with that. If that's cool with you, she asks. What advice do you have for someone who has been very disconnected from their lineage and wants to reconnect, especially magically, but can't really do that through familial ties and don't have the ability to go to the area that their, their lineage is from?
AMY: How to reconnect magically with familial ties that you don't have practical access to?
LILITH: Well, first of all, I understand that not having contact or connection with with certain family members, and if they're not good family members, then don't have contact with them. I'm never going to tell anybody you have to or anything like that.
LILITH: Because if somebody is really, you said, I concur. Somebody's really shitty. They're really shitty. Don't don't have contact with. But I think there's a way you know, like I have a ex partner who was adopted, but he knew he was, you know, German. So, uh, what I tell people to do when they're adopted and they're connecting with their lineage is think about the common names.
LILITH: Think about the most popular names for those kinds of heritage groups. Get out your dowsing rods, get out your tarot cards. I have a really good yes, no in the tarot cards. If you use a pendulum for yes, no, do that and be like, you know, my father's parents were named John and Mary, right? Like if I was going to start with two of the most normal names ever, I would add John and Mary on the list, you know, so start with those common names.
LILITH: See if you get a yes. If you get a yes, then take that name, write it down, put it on your ancestor altar and use your, that's where you can use your intuition, you know? Oh, okay. I think they might like pink roses. If you put the pink rose on and it. balls off, then they didn't like it. You know, if you put the pink rose on and it stays for a week and it's beautiful and fresh and fragrant, you could smell it all through the house.
LILITH: They really liked that. And maybe you should keep giving them roses, you know? So things like that, just go with what you do know, expand on it, expand on it, expand on it until it gets better.
AMY: And that's that spiritual jazz. Go with what you know, and then expand on it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much, Lilith.
AMY: This has been, uh, an appetizer. Like, now that you've talked about writing an autobiography, I'm like, okay, I can relax. I don't have to ask all of the thousand more questions that are running through my head because you are going to write them down for me. But in the meantime, The newest book is Tarot, Every Which Way.
AMY: You have a number of books that people can support you by purchasing. We love book royalties. Send them our way. Um, how else can our listeners reach out to you, support you, follow you? Yeah, sure.
LILITH: Um, my website is littledorsey. com. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, whatever that is now, you know, I have a blog, Voodoo Universe, which is the largest Voodoo blog in the world.
LILITH: We've Been going for, I think, 12 or 13 years. I can't even remember. It's been going so damn long at this point. So there's over 700 posts on there. So if there's something you didn't ask me, chances are the answers are on there or in one of the books. So I'm happy to connect with people. I'm doing lots of in person appearances coming up the next few months.
LILITH: Um, obviously here in New Orleans, but I'm also going to Pittsburgh and Ohio and back home to New York city. So I'll be all over the place.
AMY: And there's also the YouTube channel, Pop O Culture is so fun. Y'all, if you, those of you who are listening, there's like an episode about 90 Day Fiancé, it really is just a blast.
AMY: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, we have fun with that. Check out Pop O Culture as well, for sure, and of course, everything that, not everything, many things that Lilith talked about will be in the show notes in the webpage, so if you're looking for links, I will list them there. Ugh. Thank you so much, Lilith, again for tearing yourself away from the community garden to come and hang out with me for a bit.
AMY: It's, I'm like, so jazzed is the word. I'm so jazzed. And I look forward to Oh no,
LILITH: thank you for having me on. It was beautiful.
AMY: Oh, it's been amazing to meet you. Thank you so very much for being in circle with me today.
LILITH: Oh, no problem. Thank you.
AMY: And blessed fucking be! Haha!
LILITH: Alright, you were delightful, thank you!
AMY: Bye! You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! You must be a witch. If you want to support the Missing Witches project, join the coven! Find out how at missingwitches. com or buy our books New Moon Magic and Missing Witches and check out our deck of oracles!
AMY: The Missing Witches, Deck of Oracles.
