This is probably the last email you'll get from us this year. Save for a solstice/thank you gift we'll be sending out to our paid members in the days to come, we won't be in your inbox again till the calendar is reborn. We're going fallow instead, ringing bells in the night for peace, making snow forts, moving studios, helping where we can, and we invite you to join us in tending to what's alive and real for you.
Next week on the podcast we'll share our last episode of 2023, our annual Yule Special recorded with the help of the Missing Witches coven community. We're still glowing from that gathering and feeling thankful for every small hope and tiny light, every voice uplifted for peace, re-enchantment, and liberation for all beings. Endlessly in awe of this community and how it comforts and challenges us. We never felt magic like this!
The prescription begins with the Northern Sky:
I never felt magic crazy as this
I never saw moons, knew the meaning of the sea
I never held emotion in the palm of my hand
Or felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree
But now you're here
Brighten my northern sky
Amy says it's appropriate for the time of year, and for the state of the world, that we're kind of a mess in this one. Sprawling, chatty, and a bit broken-of-brain.
The prescription continues with Don't Dream It's Over; don't let them build walls between us. Let's disrupt and resist division and death machines with our magical, mycelial fingers, sprawling, fruiting, loving, still a total mess, endlessly cracking through.
We deviate for a while with love for Miley Cyrus's version (as one does) so here she is in the prescription with a little grind-it-out medicine for leaving shit behind, I Forgive Yieu.
As we approach the solstice, the longest night when the sun holds still, we remind ourselves to spend time with the night.
The prescription continues with the impeccable Samantha Crain of the Choctaw Nation, Holding To The Edge of Night.
What's that silence inside me that expands into the dark? With the traffic lights all changing for no one any more. The karaoke laughter tumbling out the door. My eyes well with contemplation of the pleasures I endure. Holding to the edge of night.
It feels like we're holding onto the edge of something, maybe we are pulling at the edges of a new world coming from the laughing night. Maybe we're gripping at scraps of joy, wherever we can get them. Either way, rock your night self gently to this one, feel the silence inside you expand in the dark.
Remember Mother's Night is a deep-time festival hidden at the heart of the Christmas Season. The All Mother is woven from all the interlinking bodies who gave birth down the lines to where we stand now, blood rushing. Yule begins with Mother's Night: see them all, carrying their children, across the generations. Listen to the original 1997 recording of My Mother's Savage Daughter by Karen Kahan as Wyndreth Berginsdottir. Light a candle, sing down your matrilineal line until you feel the All Mother in the lines of your hands, remember all are welcome here, remember Kahan wrote:
In 1990, I woke up with the chorus in my head, and as soon as I found a pen, the rest of it poured out. The tune came the same day. It was clear to me that this was a song that wanted to be sung by anyone who found their own voice within it.
It is an anthem of empowerment--not a song meant to serve a specific blood or people or skin. If you find strength and power and your own voice in it, this is your song and I hope you sing it with the strength and rage and beauty and power that is within you--whoever you are.
We are our mother's savage daughters
We will not cut our hair
We will not lower our voice
Finally, Amy ends the year offering us all an earworm of self-love and survival from that magical icon of healing, holy masculinity, Fred Rogers. We have to stop rocking back and forth at the edge of night long enough to look around and say we're proud of what we've accomplished in our small way this year, and we're proud of you too. You're here, your light goes on. Whisper this one like a chant to yourself and let's keep going. I'm proud of you.
Coven Events and Courses
Coven Writing Circle
Tue, Dec 19 2023 07:00 PM - 09:00 PM EST
Bring your poems, stories, musings, spells, jokes, wisdom, and nonsense; any writing you'd like to share and/or workshop with the group!
Collaborative Open Book Tarot Course
Sun, Jan 7 2024 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EST
Join us for a communal divination for the new year, rooted in a cozy ethos of learning together.
Weavers Only: January Full Moon
Wed, Jan 3 202408:00 PM - 09:30 PM EST
Let's speak some good vibes for ourselves, our loved ones, our causes, and world into existence, and have a little cheers to being here (wherever here is) together.
Mutual Aid
Support the Mohawk Mothers
McGill University is carrying out construction work on the site of the former Royal Victoria Hospital (Tekanontak / Mount Royal). This site, like all of McGill campus, is located on unceded Kanien’keha:ka territory. Additionally, evidence shows that this site contains remains of pre-colonial Iroquois villages and the unmarked graves of Indigenous children who were atrociously experimented on at the Allan Memorial Institute in the 1950s and 60s as part of the CIA funded MK Ultra.
On November 20th 2023, the Kahnistensera won a case (again) against McGill and SQI that requires them to reinstate a panel of archaeological experts to oversee the excavation. This is an important win, but there is still a long way to go to ensure that the graves and forensic evidence are not destroyed. Donations are needed to help with the legal, administrative and research costs of uncovering and sharing the truth.
With Thanks and Hope
Imagining you out there is the wildest gift and gentlest balm. Blessed Yule, buds! And BFB!
R+A
PS - Did you know you can listen to every song we've ever shared in the MW Rx. over on our YouTube Channel? FYI. 🤷♀️
