"Enchantment exists when things are themselves and not their uses" writes Anne Boyer in The Undying, a book about her breast cancer and about women's death. As a woman with breast cancer, I am interested, though I have been assured I have the "good kind" of breast cancer, as though there is a winning version, as though we won't all die. Season's greetings! If you are here I hope I can assume you are at home with both the dark and the light.
I am interested in enchantment, and re-enchantment, and I struggle with what use my life will have been, and I rest in this idea of enchantment being in me when I am myself, and not my uses. The ancestor altars creak behind me as I write. Above my head hangs a bundle of sticks wrapped in white cord, a dried bouquet of roses from my sister's wedding, a string of dried marigolds, a fat cordelière of pink, purple, and blue yarn made by my daughter's deft knotting. Things which serve no purpose and enchant a bower over the window where my small desk sits. Some days all my hopes hang on them, useless, beautiful, knot by knot.
This is the prescription for early December: notice the enchantment of what is without uses, without being optimized, or capitalized upon, or commercialized. Let this shore you up against despair.
As Asli Aydintasbas wrote this week in "Trump Will Overplay His Hand", drawing on his experience as a journalist during the rise of authoritarian Turkey "in the end, Donald Trump really only has two years to try to execute state capture. Legal battles, congressional pushback, market forces, midterm elections in 2026 and internal Republican dissent will slow him down and restrain him." He urges Americans to stay connected, to dance and take breaks, but then return to each other.
Witches take this call to heart. Craft a vision of hope together that resists. Craft workings that will slow and restrain their death cults.
Here, in this interregnum time before the fascist takes power, before the new year, December offers us both the deepest darkness and the promise of the light. We face each of us again the fact of dying, even if, this time, we manage to slip past the scythe. Let's remember together that enchantment exists, hope exists, resistance has won before and will again. Widen our gaze to see how other nations and times and places have defeated their dictators. Dance and craft and rest and love what your soft body loves, and don't give up hope.
Blessed fucking be,
R+A
Invitations
TODAY Witch and Stitch Saturday, Dec 7, 2:00 – 3:00 PM EST
9 Dec Weavers Co-Working Cauldron Monday, 12:00 – 1:00 PM EST
10 Dec Invitation: with Iya Omigbemi Tuesday, 2:00 – 2:30 PM EST
10 Dec Business Mastermind Group Support Tuesday, 6:30 – 7:30 PM EST
12 Dec Weavers Loom: The Fruit and the Briar Thursday, 8:30 – 10:00 PM EST
15 Dec YULE We Are Witches We Make Our Own Light Sunday, 4:00 – 6:00 PM EST
18 Dec Legal Protection - Steps to Protect your Family from the New USA Administration Wednesday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM EST
PS. Book Riot's All The Books podcast episode on Great Books for Giving shouted out our book Missing Witches: Reclaiming True Histories of Feminist Magic as "a really great book for someone interested in feminist history, all things witchy, who just likes stuff that approaches powerful movements from an intersectional lens, or just a nerd that likes to know stuff." The episode is stacked with wonderful gift ideas for spreading a little magic this season. Check it out!
