Join Risa and Amy as we sit down once again with two of our favourite returning guests and future-crafters: artists Edgar Fabián Frías + Amanda Amour Lynx!
We talk about constellations and cosmology, listening for our ancestors and finding the trickster spirit that helps us laugh through the darkness and navigate toward possible futures.
NB: This episode is part of our annual Reparations season, check out details on this year's fundraiser and delicious prizes!
Transcript
Indigenous Futures + BELTANE! We Have A Lot Of Relations
[00:00:10] Amy: This conversation is part of our annual fundraiser that runs through the month of May. We call it a reparations fundraiser. Every year, we at Missing Witches, and our coven, and our extended witch community, spend the month of May joyfully, and hopefully, raising money for Indigenous support organizations, especially for us, the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal, that's our local, and gathering together with magical friends like Edgar and Amanda for conversations about Indigenous futures. So here's a quick rundown of how the fundraiser works.
One, make a donation of ten dollars or more to your local Native women's shelter or Indigenous support organization or donate to the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal.
Two, take a screenshot of your receipt and email it to missingwitches at gmail. com with the subject line reparation. 3. Be entered to win fabulous prizes donated by luminaries of the witch community. 4. Automatically receive a coupon code for a discount from one of our favourite witchy businesses, Housewitch in Salem.
As always, Risa and I will be contributing our profits for the month of May to support the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal. In addition, once again, we're asking our community to join us and make a donation. a reparation. We know that most of you are coming to us from outside of Canada, so wherever you are, we encourage you to seek out a local Native women's shelter to support.
We understand that some places don't have First Nations specific orgs, so we'll also accept donations to shelters for vulnerable women, children, sex workers, or victims of violence, but we do appreciate a focus on support of Indigenous people. This year, as wars rage across the world, we're opening the fundraiser to support all displaced people.
According to the latest UN figures, nearly 300 million people in 72 countries will require humanitarian assistance and protection in 2024. So, if you have a connection to Palestine, Sudan, or Myanmar, Ukraine, the list goes on and tragically on. We'll count donations to organizations that help affected women and children around the world.
In this, we are following the leadership of Indigenous communities in weaving and widening these circles of protection. So again, here's what you're going to do. Make your donation of 10 or more, take a screenshot of your receipt and email it to missingwitches at gmail. com with the subject line reparation.
Keep in mind we never touch the money and you keep your tax receipt. Tell us what country you're in plus the amount of your donation. The amount is important because for every 10 you'll get one entry into the raffle for these prizes. So if you donate 50 you'll get five entries and so on and so on. The fundraiser runs through the month of May.
Prize winners will be chosen at random and announced on June 1st. As always, this fundraiser is an experiment, so if you think it's a cool idea, please help us make it successful by making a small reparation to First Nations women who have been systematically marginalized. and disenfranchised both socially and economically.
Let's raise some real money, make real change, and be blown away by what we can do when we work together. Here is the list of prize donors this year. In addition to being entered in our prize draw, everyone who makes a donation of ten dollars or more will receive a discount code for their next purchase at HouseWitch as a thank you for joining our fundraiser.
We have prizes donated from Amanda Yates Garcia, a. k. a. The Oracle of Los Angeles, Jinx Monsoon, Renée Sills from Embodied Astrology, Sarah Gottesdiener, a. k. a. Gotas from Moon Studio, Gordon from Rune Soup, Kate Ballew, Maria Minnis, a. k. a. Feminis, Jessica from Dear Women, Granddaughter Crow, Tina Renaud, Heather Darby DeMarco from Wild Moon Charm School, and more.
Holly Robinson from Rituals for Longevity, Linda McGinnis and Resa and I have also donated a prize. So go to missing witches.com/reparations-fundraiser-twenty 24 or just missing witches.com. You'll see it. You'll see the link to click for the list of prizes that these witches have pledged. One more time.
One, make a donation of $10 or more to your local native. Women's Shelter or Indigenous Support Org or donate to the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal. 2. Take a screenshot of your receipt and email it to missingwitches at gmail. com with the subject line reparation. 3. Be entered to win fabulous prizes donated by luminaries of the witch community. Four, automatically receive a coupon code for a discount from one of our favorite witchy businesses, House Witch in Salem. We're wishing you a happy Beltane, happy halfway point between spring equinox and summer solstice, and remember that the present is the halfway point between the past and the future. With that in mind, I'll pass the mic to Risa to introduce today's guests. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:05:55] Risa: Thanks for that, Amy. It's always such a thrill to get to feel that a fundraiser come together. I know it's a lot to read and hopefully not too overwhelming to listen to. We just feel like a lot of joy and excitement this time of year and it helps carry us through our darker times in the year to get to do it.
So thanks for being with us for it. Thank you so much to our guests. It really does feel such an honor to get to have you back in this recurring way to get to know you as people and your work. We really feel so much love for you both. Social media is such a spiky, many headed thing, but the one great thing it does is let us watch our beloved friends from afar.
So getting to see your music journeys and digital art and ritual work and increasing infiltration of gallery spaces. All of that stuff is so electric and we're so excited to hear how it's been. And also I'm just interested to hear how you're feeling about this meeting place of identities, which indigenous, urban.
All the other pieces that are so unique to you that are just labels really, but I'm interested in how you navigate them and how you're feeling about them. And maybe that could be a starting point for an introduction, a reintroduction. What's your work like? How are you these days? Edgar, maybe we could start with you.
It's so nice to have you back.
[00:07:23] Edgar: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. So grateful to be here again. And yeah. Wow. You, I feel like that's such a deep question. I think it's, it's, it's a lot to think about the moment we're in, you know, it's such a intense time and I do feel like a lot of what we've talked about in the last few years, we're really seeing come to fruition, whether it's The joining of a lot of people coming together, casting spells, connecting, organizing making change happen, and also the rise of the reaction to that, too, and how much we're seeing the fear show up in folks who don't want to see change, your question of these, intersecting parts of self, I think I'm yeah, I do feel like I'm in a place of change and transformation.
I do feel like I'm still being impacted by that eclipse. I shared earlier that I'm still dealing with some health issues that arose during the eclipse and I definitely feel the synchronicity of that and also the message that I've been receiving of needing to slow down and needing to care for myself and resource and ground. I'm someone who gets so excited by doing millions of things.
I'm a Gemini and I do really enjoy dabbling and connecting with many different communities and people. And also I know that it's important for me to care for myself and to you know, really think about what's important for me right now. And so I've been really just focusing on rest and focusing on yeah, resourcing and also planning and strategizing, thinking about how it is that my work as an artist, as a healer, as a psychotherapist, as an educator, as a witch how these all are needing to show up in different ways and with different communities.
And I do feel like, you know, being indigenous. I've also really just been thinking a lot about rights and also relationships and the ways in which I'm so excited to see Indigenous folks reaffirming ancestral pacts and pacts that we've been dislocated or disconnected from, and that's something that I've been really thinking about with my art practice, how I can really see. bring to mind and to heart these relationships that are so important that we are needing to tend and care for. And I also want to like bring in the dead and the ancestors and obviously nature and the living and dead beings on our planet that are also part of these relationships too. And I do feel like that's a place I've been really in.
I just, yeah I feel I've been feeling the happiness and also feeling the lightness and wanting to bring in lightness and love into places that are feeling really heavy, but also being with that heaviness with that darkness too, I feel is really important.
[00:10:31] Risa: I'm interested to hear you talk more about the idea of ancestral pacts, and I'm also so moved to think about this relationship with the eclipse when you're already in a place of knowing that you need to resource, you need to be quiet, you need to be still.
[00:10:48] Edgar: Yeah, I've heard from a lot of people in my life, you know, both friends of mine and also folks that I get to connect with through my practices.
Just, I think a lot of folks are moving through different things that have been, unfolding since that eclipse, and I also should mention that on the other side, I've also had really powerful magical things happen too around the eclipse as well. So it's like all coming at once, and I think that's also something that I'm just really sitting with, is like how things can really all blossom at the same time.
[00:11:16] Risa: Yeah, that's hard for me to accept. I don't want to take the shit with the flowers, but I know that's part of the deal.
Amanda, would you tell us, Amanda Moorlinks, how are you? Reintroduce yourself for the very first time and feel free to respond to things that Edgar said or just weave your own story pieces in.
[00:11:40] Amanda: Hi, everybody. Whenever I hear When you folks speak, I feel strong. I feel brought together by forces that are greater than us.
There's a deep compassion and care for all of creation. There's that consideration for who's hurting, and there's a consideration of kind of like the seasonal shift that we're in right now of like seedlings being vulnerable at this time. point if you're growing seedlings inside. It's this really intricate and involved process of, I almost want to say, playing God with creating a natural Environment that's hospitable to growing something, whether that's putting a heat mat underneath or stratifying seeds in a freezer to replicate the patterns of what these seeds would be doing in nature if they had fallen to the ground and have been part of that ecological process.
And so to be that conscious of everything around you, of like knowing that you need sunlight, you need warmth, you need cold, you need the right balance of all those things and all this, you know, the right amount of watering. I've been a person that's accidentally killed some houseplants by thinking I know what it needs.
And there's this active listening that happens with. Caretaking and tending to something where it's not so much about what you think something needs, but rather the listening, and giving that care and sacrificing yourself and your time to do that.
I kind of come in with that. When I come to introducing myself. It's really weird and hard because I'm like, Oh God, I ought to think about all the words like the things I did or who I am in relationship to everything around me. And I want to be in right relationship to everything around me. And I guess today I come to it with that mindfulness and intentionality that I'm part of a greater whole or a symphony.
Thinking about active silence as musicality, and you need that anticipation to know when the beat drops, so to speak, and silence as sound, and that silence is purposeful. When you're talking about Beltane, I was like Ooh, fire, you know, tending a fire, and the need for all the elements to take turns.
[00:14:48] Amy: I am so excited about my first question. I'm a little giddy about it, actually, so I'm just going to jump right in and ask it so that I don't have to wait any longer. Because we think of indigeneity as, you know, tied to the earth and tied to the land. But both of you are working in outer space. Amanda, you in the fall did a project or worked on a project called Digital Constellations.
And Edgar, your art is on the moon. I'm like shaking to hear a bit how this came about, like, let's start with Edgar. How did your art end up on the moon? And how does outer space figure into your notion of everything and your notion of nature?
[00:15:43] Edgar: Yeah, thank you for That question. I feel the giddiness, really receiving that giddiness.
And yeah, I'm, I'm so honored to have my work up there along with so many other luminaries and, you know, to be a part of a larger project that's trying to really document the cultural work that we've all as humans been doing here on the planet and to have it Some were saved on the moon for future generations.
It's such an honor. And it was all because of a friend of mine named Casey Kaufman, who's an artist in Los Angeles. I think she was invited by someone through USC. And it's interesting because USC right now is having such an intense moment in the limelight. And. I was invited to share some of my spells, my digital spells, and I selected four spells that I felt all connected to either the moon or the earth and also just like a legacy that I felt was important to share around queerness, around alterity, around also other visions of the world and they Selected I think 134 artists that are contemporary artists to put on the moon, and they put our work onto these discs that we're able to engrave our art, so they, anyone who ends up finding it in the future will be able to see our work with a microscope.
And so they're hoping that whatever species or beings find this will have that technology to be able to see. And along with our art, there's also a copy of Wikipedia that's been placed up there. There's been a copy of different I think dictionaries and also encyclopedias. And so there's a way that they're really trying to encapsulate human consciousness and labor and work.
In and cultural, you know, bearing productions up in the moon, and I definitely feel really deeply connected to the universe and the moon. And also to. Alien life forms and what the alien represents in our world. I, as you all know, I love the word mutant too, and I've been really thinking a lot recently about.
You know, going back to thinking about ancestral veneration and reconnecting with different ancestral facts. I've been really connecting a lot with Takutsi Nakawé, who is a divine goddess of the Wixarika, and she's also known as Great Grandmother Growth. I actually had a moment last night where I went to an event and I was watching this performance happen and it just really all clicked to me because I've been so drawn to Takutsi Nakawé and I've been creating work with her and been really honoring her in my altar and it all clicked and it might seem funny but I just was like, oh yeah, that's the mutant energy I've been thinking about is this great grandmother growth that is inside all living beings and allows us to change and to transform and going along with the desire to have our words and our art and our spells, reach out across time and space is this desire to have things that can transcend time, but also that exist in different places and that can share something that moves beyond what can sometimes feel like the trap of living in a singular lifetime and knowing that we're also connected beyond these this illusion of a one life that we get sold by the Western world.
And yeah, so I think that's like where, you know, the question that you're asking, it really makes me think about how we're. all casting out energies and bringing our energy to amplify it. And I think the moon is such a powerful amplifier of energy. And I just feel so honored to have my work up there and to know that it's going to be found at some point by some sort of civilization or some sort of you know, Pirate , or whoever it is that finds it.
I'm just so, honored to know that I'm a part of this history now. And I think that's something that I've also just been thinking a lot about, especially as an artist who's been marginalized, who's queer, and who's also, you know, living within a system that doesn't really, uplift and historicize a lot of work of queer trans folks and indigenous folks.
And so it does feel really great to be able to like smuggle in some information into the galleries and museums and to have some of the institutions start to understand the impact of our work and how much we have been ignored and how important it is to have our stories and our words and our visions.
In these spaces.
[00:20:50] Amy: Amanda, can you expand on digital constellations? I know , you wrote a lot about being two spirit and your indigeneity and that sort of identity. Can you talk about that and being on the moon with Edgar and forming a constellation of future queer indigeneity?
[00:21:10] Amanda: I am competing with my kitty in the corner.
I think it's really exciting and wonderful to learn about your project, Edgar. The idea and prospect of the celestial space as a part of our cosmology, part of our story. And Revitalizing it in a way and like looking at that as a medium that requires nurturing.
If you could just let me deal with my cat. Can you see him in the Zoom call?
I'm so sorry. One second. Okay.
[00:21:47] Edgar: It's so sweet. It's so
[00:21:49] Risa: sweet. It happens all the time in our coven circles.
There's like someone trying to tell something like really emotional and like important and intense and their animal is like, now is the time I declare my affection.
[00:22:01] Amanda: Hello. Thanks for your patience. Yeah, no sweat. Where to begin with digital constellations.
I wanted to create a space for the youth that I have had the pleasure of working alongside the, the artworks in that curation or exhibit is it's a virtual reality piece where There are models of their works and images of their material practices that include bead work. It includes a making of basketry their connection to plant kin that they deeply connect with or feel homesick for.
And I wanted to make a sovereign space in the sky for those stories to be told. And there's An interesting juxtaposition of seeing earth objects in a celestial context, and they start floating and dancing around the space, like ancestors, like spirit beings, and interpreted in a, in a way that
asks for protection, it asks to be heard and it asks for sovereignty, and it asks To be perceived through the eyes of magic in that way. It was a response to being systematically erased through many institutions or through trying to access ceremony as two spirit individuals who want to return to our traditions, our dance, our powwows our regalias, and.
Our cultural roles from a time in a different context, and the idea of cosmology having things that we believe in is a mere reflection of our ecologies. So what's happening on Earth is also happening in space. And a lot of our star stories, a lot of our ways that we understand the land around us and how we come to name things is deeply connected to an intrinsic understanding of how that influence and vibration connects above and beyond.
Below at the same time, and through, you know, through Western doctrine, this has been something that's been really minimized, or practiced in secret. And so there's a type of intentionality I had in that in the creation of these spaces that look at how much we share and how much we hold internally, how much we keep for ourselves.
In self preservation or to protect from extraction and exploitation and that discernment of trying to know when it's purposeful to share and when we are not safe to do so, and kind of rocking the line between those two spaces, knowing that if things don't get passed down, they die with us. But if they do and end up in the wrong hands, that also has its own ways of creating complex narrative or history and our healing process from the hands of colonialism.
When you speak of objects on the moon, it reminds me of a work that I made last year as well that did consider plant relations. I named it Nibinigus, which is our word for the month of June. It means trees fully leafed. So Gemini season is a fun time for that. But that's when we start seeing fruiting happen.
And the subtitle of the work is basket on the moon. In the center of the artwork is a basket that uses our traditional Mi'kmaq practices called chukchuch, which are these sort of curled, Weavings that go into the, the structure of the basket in a unique way that is deeply tied to our ancestral knowledges.
And there's a young artist who
was acknowledged by, I believe it was NASA or the Canadian Space Station, and was able to see one of her miniature baskets on the moon as well. And my artwork, it has sort of, a sloshing rainbow That looks like the equality flag and those the continuum of those colors painting the landscape and distinguishing the separation between night sky and day sky and the plant knowledges on both sides, the ones that are closed and secret and the ones that are public knowledge or easily made visible.
And so I wanted to pay homage to her. Her basketry Gesi Daqan Basketry, and her name is Shana Francis. There's something deeply inspiring about seeing someone doing the work to maintain the tradition maintain the practice, and carry it forward.
And continue to create beautiful, masterful weavings that will pass on to future generations and not remain in that antiquity or like this idea of the past.
[00:28:29] Risa: what a tension to try to hold an ancient knowledge and bring it forward without making it vulnerable to extraction. Like that's such a delicate dance. That's that's so much emotional and intellectual and spiritual labor to piece those pieces out.
I wonder if you both would be open to expanding on that idea, especially as it relates to futures, futurisms. How do we How do we draw towards a beautiful future, a peaceful future?
How do we even sketch it? How do we even take steps toward it when things are, you know, in, in eclipse times, maybe when things are really, really fucking dark? What have you learned from your Multiple identities from your own experience with the work, your own experience with life. How do we do it?
[00:29:27] Edgar: Yeah there's so much here. I really appreciate what you were saying, Amanda, about that dance, you know, that like process that we go through and I feel like one of the big reasons why you know, I was at UC Berkeley in my, in the MFA program, and I was really inspired to see a lot of Indigenous artists who came and visited.
I was in the new media program and we had a lot of folks come who are finding ways to share their, work, their art, their music. knowledge through digital forms. And I feel like I've definitely felt a lot of conflict around bringing some of these practices and ideas into certain spaces. And it is something that has also opened up like possibility in terms of wanting to imagine other ways of being or relating and existing, and then, you know, kind of playing or working with that.
tension and starting to wonder like, okay, if I don't feel safe enough to bring some of my community's teachings into this space, what can I bring into the space, right? What makes sense here? Or, you know, something that you mentioned earlier too, of like, if Indigenous art is only seen through the lens of history, how can we help to destabilize that?
How can we help to infused imagination into what has been removed, right? This lack of imagination of you know, being able to imagine Indigenous art and people and communities in the future. And I do feel like that is something that has been so exciting for me to see a lot of Indigenous artists really taking up more and more space within what in the West we call the contemporary art realm and to really Find ways to translate, reinterpret, and also just you know, recreate or conjure new forms and new ways of thinking.
And I do feel like that it to me is a way of casting a light or casting a way of seeking possibility within what feels impossible or what, within what feels really dark and heavy. And I do feel like a big part of the state. And empires apparatus wants us to feel hopeless and feel like we don't have a way out.
And then at the same time, I do feel like there are so many stories from you know, my community, for example, that do speak about these moments of impossibility and how the ancestors. How different plant, animal, and, you know, Earth kin have come forward to support, and I do feel like that lack of hope, it, it also wants us to disconnect from those relationships that are so fully there to support us.
And I think that is part of what's been really encouraging me to remind people that we have a lot of relations, both living and non living, both in this realm and in other realms, that are here to support us, that are here to guide us, and that want to come forward and offer us these bits, these passageways, these bits of information or these downloads that can really guide us into creating within this moment of darkness and impossibility.
And you know, I've also just been really, yeah, just sitting with like, The magic that can happen when you do that, you know, one thing I'm feeling called to share is a couple of years ago, I, you know, been in my own practices with communing with my ancestors was receiving a message that I needed to create an altar to three different goddesses, and that I needed to create an altar that really connected with the cycles of rain and help to bring forward rain.
And I just kept getting this message in, within my own, like, personal moments of communion. And it ended up leading me to create this piece that is called Three of Cups because I pulled the Three of Cups tarot card when I first started this work. But it's also called Tateñera, which is A celebration, a ceremony that happens once a year to reify and reconnect with different deities that support rain and support the growth of plants and the health of community.
And what was so profound for me was that, you know, I was doing this work while I was in the bay. I was like planning all this and like kind of organizing all this and I moved to Los Angeles. And I met another artist here named Sara Rosalina, who is also Wixárika from the same community that I'm from, but I didn't know.
And she had also gotten the same message in her own work, and had created this beautiful sculpture that was meant to be in a park. And it was meant to conjure the rain also, and meant to connect and bring forward rain. Both of our projects were installed at the same time, in different spaces.
And they also happened to be during the time that California, because it was here in California, got the most rain we've had in over 100 years. And that was just so moving to me, to see that our ancestors are really speaking to us and guiding us and. Time and space doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you know or don't know someone, the ancestors are there speaking to us.
And so I just really wanted to share that, just because I do feel like you know, this The narratives or the, the cosmologies, if you even call it that, that the West is selling is really disconnecting us from these relationships. And so I really do feel like it's so important to remind people that there are so many relations that we can connect with.
And I do feel like it starts with our imagination, our ability to be open to these possibilities.
[00:35:32] Risa: That's so beautiful. I had full body shivers when you were talking about the rain. And to think of the ancestors that are there, you know, beyond the ones we know the names of many of us, we've lost so many generations of names, but that doesn't mean they aren't there singing about the rain.
[00:35:49] Edgar: Yeah.
[00:35:49] Amanda: I just had a flood of so many things I want to say all at the same time, and they're causing a traffic jam in my mouth. Like, which one's going to come out first? But at that same time, I think what I'm feeling called to say is, With the guidance of recognizing patterns it's become really important for me to acknowledge and discern between my generosity of seeing the infinite potential and friends and allies, and what is reality and what's presently there and what we have the capacity for really listening to that gut.
And. I have been misled at times to be overly generous with what I share and find the distinction between friend and enemy a little bit, like, elusive or, like, unclear and I think that kind of happens because we're very complex beings. But that voice, that feeling, the little, the gut sound, the singing inside sometimes it could be so quiet.
Sometimes it's really loud when you really have a gut feeling, and then sometimes you try something out with trust, but apprehension as well, because you hope for something better and for things not to repeat themselves. But I continue on that, not to just be like negative, but to also say that that voice is purposeful and it's it's always there.
It's the act of listening and also the, the act of choices and being very aware of the choices of the people around you. I spent my morning kind of scrolling my social media as you do before doing the things. That you should, like, acknowledge life around you. But the post that I saw was highlighting Wizard Bisan and her role as a storyteller and her choice to speak and communicate on her platform with the intention to learn English and communicate with that audience.
And I think about this in In a multitude of ways. One is
when you uplift your own communities, sovereign practices, you're in a relationship with them to build them and to think about that future to fortify the things that are good and create that guidance create a little reprieve or safety from the violence out there and to work together to acknowledge that collective healing happens on a generational level. It doesn't only happen within an individual. It happens because we're learning to trust one another. We're learning to navigate trauma. We're learning to celebrate the gifts that come from our vision and from our wisdom that comes from those hard truths as well.
The other thing that I think about is How we have non hierarchical roles in clans, and you may have a leader but a leader isn't Put on the top there sometimes in the back, protecting the elders, protecting the Children and the most vulnerable. They're the watchful eyes. And there's this conflation between hyper individualism of the West and the idea of leadership as demonstrated by actions of bringing out the strengths of everyone around you.
So when I think of. The choice that we make to speak to something outside, like not using our native tongue. There's a, there's a prayer and there's a pleading. There's like a begging for understanding and For people to act in solidarity, to see the beauty in her storytelling the generosity in her storytelling, and also taking in the, the discipline of journalism, of just stating the facts, even through suffering that's very deep.
And just considering that. People tend to find empathy through very specific and narrow idea of how a story is told, told, and how they are positioned within it as well. Like, we love the story of a hero or an underdog, and we want to see ourselves within it. So the act of othering in that storytelling kind of creates a disservice.
And you create a story or narrative of consuming trauma and making it palatable for people, they get very hungry to Look at victimhood to look at weakness and saviorism and these ideas of separating between us and them and righteousness and. evil when there really is very, it doesn't really work that way.
So I think about those two important stances that we could take and what it requires of us in our capacity to navigate those two worlds, walking between them, choosing which hat you might wear. Where code switching between dialects and identities, having certain types of institutional privileges where you can take from the opportunities that are granted and redistribute wealth and resources.
Knowing that maybe those resources aren't from a humane place or they kind of have blood on their hands as well, but still knowing that there is a redistribution that's occurring and it's never really as simple as being in one ethic or like being ethical or principled. when the systems have not shifted or changed entirely either.
[00:43:28] Amy: We,
Like to think of these conversations, especially during fundraiser month as protection spells. And since both of you are magicians but not only that, like role models of creativity and compassion, and also conduits for the infinite magic that is invisible to so many people. I'm wondering if you have a prayer or an incantation something that you can add to this cauldron as we weave a protection spell around displaced people or victims of violence around the world right now.
Edgar, it can be as long or short as you feel compelled to be, but can we put some ingredients into this, into this protection spell in this moment?
[00:44:26] Edgar: I'm feeling called to just really share the power of the elements and really bringing in the elements into this space and really feeling the energy of wind.
And especially because I. Yeah, I'm a Gemini and also I feel like part of that too is, you know, Amanda, you were bringing up stories and how stories can flatten or sometimes be used strategically to complicate or to minimize and so I, you know, I'm thinking about the power of our voices. The power of our visions and how we are sharing, you know, even our words here and they're going to be amplified and listened to in different places and so that's why I'm like really thinking about the element of wind and the potency of us sharing our words, our truths, our feelings, and how important it is for us to share and complicate stories to bring in nuance into stories to help to add other elements that are maybe missing, right?
To help to unflatten what's been flattened by these stories and knowing that there is like an imaginal warfare happening and we see it every single day, the way that reality is. It's so quickly co opted and redistributed and sanitized and flattened and made to support certain agendas and so I do feel like this really is a call to us to work with the elements to you.
share our voices and to spread our truths and spread our wisdom but also to call in the elements to assist us and to protect us and and to make sure that we're cared for as we're doing this knowing that this is really intense magic that we're conjuring during these intense moments and so we really do need the sacred support of the elements During this time and so just really wanting to remind folks that the elements are here to be called upon to be cared for to be guided with and from and to also remind us that there are resources that are always available to us that we don't need to do anything that they are here to help us when we need them and so just to remind folks to call upon the elements whenever you're wanting to work with magic yourself
[00:47:06] Amy: beautiful. Thank you Edgar. How about you Amanda? Do you have an incantation for our cauldron of protection?
[00:47:14] Amanda: I do. And I'm being reminded of how well my relationships with ancestors are tricksters, and they have a pretty weird sense of humor at times. So I may enter this as a It's kind of a winding story, but I, I'm just going to go with it.
This time of year has a lot of anniversaries connected to it for me, of which are some really good, but a lot of them are very hard and they're quite compounded at this point. And so I do a sort of grief ceremony with myself to like connect all those pieces so I can put. The things I learned forward.
I met a healer a few years ago who said, I need to find my own home fire. The idea of home fire tied to some of our traditions up here. She said to me, and I guess it's because of what Edgar shared that I was like, Oh, here's how it connects. Here's the story.
It's going to come out. It's going to be weird, but your ancestors are all around you. You have a soul group and you may not be able to see or hear them or know exactly who they are, but there are so many of them. And when you have to go into these difficult spaces, where you don't feel heard or understood or like your voice is getting silenced.
Know that they're all in that room with you. It's not just you alone there. And they all got your back and you can ask them to help you. They're holding you up. They have strength and sometimes they'll tell you what to say too, almost as a conduit or channel. And when we speak of this time of year and like the sacred fire and the bringing the return of the sun and things growing again there's, you know, there's that balance of elements there too of like, well, if you're used to water energy or you're used to earth energy, wind or air, fire could be very difficult to hold.
In a way, it's like you can't hold both at the same time, so they'll dampen or flatten each other out. The, the, the weird part is coming, and a lot of that had to do with the anniversary of this trauma. I was attacked on the street and had to go to the hospital to do some safety tests, you know, to do some tests and they gave me a change of clothes.
In Toronto, in particular in Canada, we have a restaurant here called Medieval Times, and everybody rides horses and does sword fights. Like, I've actually never been there. But the clothes that they gave me was this oversized Medieval Times t shirt and these like men cargo shorts that were way wide on the hips.
And the t shirt said chivalry in action with a hashtag. I didn't notice at the time. I was just grateful. I'm like, Hey man, thanks for the clothes. But when I woke up the next day after I've had some time to rest and go back home after a really long night of being with police and detectives and the medical system, I looked at the shirt and I was like, chivalry in action, huh?
Well, that's ironic. That's a metaphor. And so sometime In the next week or so, I returned to music to create, and it was It was very understated. It was, it was humble. I was just in my living room. I didn't have like a studio set up or anything. And I had just started chanting. And what I started chanting is fire in my body and I won't go out.
Fire in my body and I won't go out. You cannot destroy me. Chivalry is dead. And yeah, there's like, There's a, a humor to it that if I didn't get this incredibly insulting t shirt to kind of put a cherry on top and frost and glaze my traumatic experience, I maybe would have felt that my ancestors weren't present.
Because they're like, of all the hardship you endured, the one thing that you can't forget how to do is laugh. You have to learn how to laugh at yourself and laugh at the situation. Laughter heals. And you feel it through your body and it hits that vagus nerve and that whole system up and down our, our, I don't want to say, our kundalini, all of that.
So that activates and nourishes us and resuscitates us back to life. So you got to keep on laughing.
[00:53:08] Risa: Fire is inside you and you
won't go out. That goes in the cauldron forever.
[00:53:14] Edgar: Just feeling really moved by that story. And just, yeah, really sitting with like how laughter, and humor can feed that fire and can give you that moment of release or transformation.
It's very, it feels like transmutational energy and yeah, and also trickster energy and just appreciate that wink from our ancestors sometimes in those moments where we, you know, are needing that moment of respite. Levity. And so really appreciate you sharing that. And also, I literally just sang a song.
I did a performance this last week and in my song, one of the lyrics was Essentially to not forget that we have that fire within and I think that fire within is what's also kept me going and given me courage and strength and helped me feel brave and safe enough to do the things that I do in my life.
Thank you for reminding us of that fire.
[00:54:15] Amy: Edgar, I want to thank you specifically for this piece of art, which I grabbed off of my wall that you made, that has become so much a part of my practice because it, it returns me to my childhood. It returns me to that space of, of laughter, Like Amanda was talking about, and also Innocence, but it's also, like, peppered with aliens and cats, and so it is, like, it is future, past, and present.
We'll put a picture of it in the show notes, but can you talk about it just for two minutes, just, just for me?
[00:54:50] Edgar: Yeah yeah, I was honored to be invited to create a dream job spell that can exist inside of a what are they called again? A real viewfinder, right? I think that's what they're called.
And it's a dream job spell that it was with a publishing house called Stories to Change the World, and they invited different artists to share their visions. And I had been invited by the incredible queer author Michelle T. To make a dream job spell for one of her podcasts. And I just was so enamored by this idea because I do feel like I'm living in a life where I've been able to make a living doing things that are dreams and that I like really love to do.
And so I really wanted to offer that as a portal for people to also conjure their own dream job spells. And they're all still, I think, a couple available if people want one. They are available through, through Stories to Change the World. I don't know how many we have left. I think it's just a very few amount.
So if anyone wants one they're still available. So thank you for bringing them up.
[00:55:56] Amy: Yes, I'm just, I'm, I was going through the slides as you spoke, and, and one of them says, Feel the angels and ancestors. offering you support. And so I, I just want to say that to everyone who's listening right now, feel the angels and ancestors offering you support. And thank you so much, Edgar and Amanda, for being creative beings, for making fucking art in this crazy, crazy world.
Like, we need you desperately for our survival. Not just the laughter part, but the actual, like, Staying alive, keeping that fire burning inside of us. I'm just, I'm just super grateful to be in circle with you today and like in the universe with you always.
[00:56:44] Edgar: Thank you. Yeah. So honored to be a part of this and to be connected to so many people and to be a part of something that's going to support so many folks.
And so I'm wanting just to encourage people to donate and to support those local community spaces that are really lifelines for so many.
[00:57:04] Risa: Yeah, thanks for amplifying the call for that reparations fundraiser. Thank you so much to both of you for your authenticity, for the way that you sort of peel off your skins and let yourself speak is such a gift to get to be around.
[00:57:23] Amanda: Thank you so much for having me. And Having you peep aside all these amazing woven stories together.
[00:57:33] Amy: And in conclusion, 1. Make a donation of 10 or more to your local Native Women's Shelter or Indigenous Support Org, or donate to the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal. 2. Take a screenshot of your receipt and email it to missingwitches at gmail. com with the subject line reparation. 3. Be entered to win fabulous prizes.
Check our website for that whole list. 4. Automatically receive a coupon code for a discount from one of our favourite witchy businesses, Housewitch, and then post about it, share it feel good about it, even if you're only doing it to get a little boost of dopamine. Hey, you know, those organizations are still getting that money, so do it for yourself.
Do it for the world, do it for future generations, or do it for your ancestors. Join our reparations fundraiser, and I guess blessed fucking be.
[00:58:27] Risa: Blessed fucking be.
Love you guys.
