When it all gets to be too much these days I've been turning witchcraft. How to ground myself? How to balance between known and unknown? How to wayfind between possible futures? How to come back to the potent present where I can feel the power of my will? How to send my light out through the webs of the world? How to hold onto hope and to my mental health?
For me lately the answer has been in the liminal, divinatory place of tarot cards and oracle decks, lighting a candle and floating in water, journeying through my mind's eye to all fire, all water, all breath, all Earth. It's incantations whispered in the night when I can't sleep. It's freezer spells and honey jars and reading Hannah Arendt with my coven under the new moon. I've been holding stones, and holding onto my loved ones, and calling my representatives.
(Tyranny) develops the germs of its own destruction the moment it comes into existence. - Hannah Arendt
I didn't know what to offer you today, my hands ache from the chemo, things slip through my fingers, and it feels like an apt metaphor for how powerless I can feel. So I went back to our Missing Witches ancestors and pulled cards from our Deck of Oracles.
No matter how much I shuffle these days, I keep pulling Doreen Valiente and Pixie Colman Smith.
Doreen Valiente - Fertility
A mother of modern Witchcraft. A message about your own Fertility. Because Witchcraft is a fertility cult, but as Doreen teaches us: “There is a spiritual as well as a material fertility. There is the need for people to be alive and vital and creative.” Doreen was a codebreaker at Bletchley Park during WW2. She was a historian and sharp researcher who spotted forgeries and accidentally helped create a religion, though she thought religion was a curse. A prolific author and founding practitioner in the first Wiccan covens, Doreen was an unpretentious, world-conjuring Word Witch. The strange truth was her progeny.
Be alive and vital and creative. Give birth to your own truth.
Pixie Coleman Smith - Unlock The Door
Pixie is the artist behind the world’s most popular tarot deck.
She lived with migraines and synesthesia: “When I take a brush in hand and the music begins, it is like unlocking the door into a beautiful country.” Member of the Suffrage Atelier, she contributed the fight for women’s rights and donated work to the Red Cross.
Pixie’s Tarot deck was among the first to have illustrations for every card. A palimpsest of symbols and secrets that came before. She never earned royalties for her work on the deck, but she lived forty years with her love and best friend, Nora Lake.
This card calls on you to unlock doorways to that unknown country where we all live free.
After I pulled Pixie and Doreen, I laughed, shook my head, shuffled again, and Urduja and Wendy Carlos jumped out of the deck.
Urduja - Warrior
14thC warrior princess Urduja became an icon for Phillipine feminists. She is remembered as having led an army of men and women in the egalitarian island nation of Tawalisi. She practiced the ancient Indigenous faith but also wielded the Islamic folk magic of The Bismillāh. She broke through enemy lines and returned with their King’s head on a spear. She led a fleet of ships that controlled the South China sea. She has come to symbolize the warrior shaman aspect of the Babaylan: traditional leader healers who were called Bruja or Witch by the Spaniards, demonized, hunted, tortured for 100 years of colonization.
She appears to remind you of the warrior in the witch.
Wendy Carlos - Renew
Wendy Carlos built her own instruments, wired her own synthesizers, took classical baroque music and transformed it into disco bops with her 1968 album Switched On Bach. A few years before the release of this experimental, Grammy-winning album, Wendy began hormone replacement therapy. The proceeds from Switched On Bach allowed Wendy to materialize her transition. “[I had] always been concerned with liberation, and [I was] anxious to liberate myself".
Wendy’s honesty with herself and with the public gave rise to new conversations about sex and gender, solidifying her place as a cultural architect.
Wendy asks you: What can you liberate? What can you make new?
The Rx. for this week is to take strength from this pantheon of feminist ancestors:
Suffragettes, Witches who fought Nazis, Queer Witches, Trans Witches, Indigenous, Bruja, Warrior, Chronically Ill, Child-Free, Artist Witches.
They are with you, and so are we.
Blessed Fucking Be.
Invitations
Interview with Patty Krawec - Bad Indians Book Club
Wednesday Feb 12, 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EST
"Patty Krawec is an Anishinaabe/Ukrainian writer and speaker belonging to Lac Seul First Nation in Treaty 3 territory and residing in Niagara Falls. She has served on the board of the Fort Erie Native Friendship Centre and co-hosted the Medicine for the Resistance podcast.
Her first book, Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future was published in 2022 by Broadleaf Books. Her second book, Bad Indians Book Club: Reading At The Edge of a Thousand Worlds, is about the ways that marginalized writing and storytelling can help us reimagine that future will be published in the fall of 2025. She lives on the bluesky @daanis.ca and you can find her online at daanis.ca" Hosted by Risa
WITCHCRAFT 101-1: TAROT
Thursday, Feb 13, 7:30 PM - 08:30 PM EST
"For our first round of Witchcraft 101 we're looking at Tarot! These meetings will be a place and time for novices and experts to gather together to learn and teach some of the basics of Witchcraft, starting with Tarot! Bring your favourite deck(s)!
I'll do a brief introduction to the topic, then we'll open the floor to questions and discussions! My hope is that the Tarot Fluent will share their knowledge, and the Tarot Newbies will share their queries in a "There's No Such Thing As A Stupid Question" kind of environment.
We'll hold these 101s on the 13th of each month, so that the day of the week rotates from month to month. These 101s will be recorded and added to the course archive so if you miss one, you'll still have access. xo" Hosted by Amy
We love you. You are not alone.
Amy + Risa
