This week, on Nov 19, Pluto left Capricorn after telling its wildcard stories there for 16 years, and it entered Aquarius. That night I had a not-uncommon but not-unheard of side-effect of chemo where I turned to rain. Huge droplets of water suddenly rained down my bald head and all over my body, drenched the sheets, then stopped. In the morning, I had a new infection, red and painful, at the site of my mastectomy. I thought I was healed and there I was in crisis again, chemo delayed again.
I have had so many odd reactions along the way that when my pivot nurse found out about this one she laughed and said “what kind of person are you!?” I dunno lady, I've been asking myself the same thing.
Anyway, I’ve been here before. I got the prescriptions. I rested. The crisis pushed my partner and I to tell the nurse how stretched thin we are, dissolving, and they referred us for free therapy. We finally reached out to families from school who had offered to help with meals. They surrounded us with love. We did a gentle stretch video. The meds started to kick in. We aren't fixed, but maybe through repeated crisis we learn something about how to do this.
Maybe I am the kind of person who will turn to rain. Laugh and cry, finally, awkwardly, ask for help.
We had Book Love Club in our coven last week and the theme was YA and Kid Witches.
Afterward, new covenmate Jazimina wrote to me to say:
As I floated on the life-raft of joy created in my heart by this great pile of books, I felt the power they hold to utterly unfetter our imagination when we enter into their worlds– and that this is work of seminal importance, now more than ever, to strengthen our capacity to imagine beyond what seems possible or impossible. There are hearts and minds so fervently engaged in imagining a world based in fear right now, and how beautifully subversive it is to dive deep into the pleasure of worlds based in enchantment– and to live and create from THAT place, no matter what.
So this is the prescription: deep dive into the pleasure of worlds based on enchantment. Find or remember a childhood witch hero. Let them gently call forth the answer to the question: What kind of person are you?
Here are some of our guides, some of the YA Witch books folks brought to Witch Love Club. We've added these and more to our BookShop, in a new section called "Coven-Approved Witch Fiction". If we missed a book you love, reply to this email to let us know and we'll add it! It's already a great and delicious list.
If you live in the US and want to buy witch books and support us while supporting independent bookstores, BookShop is a great way to go. Outside the US, requesting books from your local indie is amazing for authors and for keeping money in local communities. But honestly, no judgement, get books however works. If buying books is not feasible right now please know that requesting books through your library and using their services helps them keep their funding.
Asking for what we want, asking for help, naming what we need and desire, calling in what gives us pleasure and joy, calling our representatives and making them listen: all this active truth telling IS an act of world-building magic.
I'll have to say it again and again till I remember.
Let's chant it till it becomes a habit.
Let's craft.
BFB.
Invitations
Witch and Stitch
Sunday, 24 Nov, 1:00 – 2:30, PM EST
Hosted by Risa: "An open circle for crafting and yapping together. Take crafting in the widest possible sense: bring your mending or your art practice, or come to talk about spellwork, or bring your divination tools and offer a reading. Or just come to hang out! I just feel like I want to host a cozy Sunday circle for new and old witch friends to pull their threads, remember we're not alone, and bitch about the world as needed."
Weavers Co-Working Cauldron
Monday, 25 Nov, 12:00 – 1:30 PM EST
Hosted by Amy: "A casual space and time for Weavers to discuss what we're working on, get advice and bounce ideas, and/or just procrastinate and chat!!"
Astro Chat: Moon in Libra
Tuesday, 26 Nov, 7:00 – 8:00 PM EST
Hosted by Spooky K: "Time to talk about all things Libra! If you are comfortable with sharing please come prepared with your birth chart or you birth details and we can discuss how Libra energies show up in your life. Birth details are time, date, and location, but even you don't have a time we can still look at your chart just bring as much info as you have."
First Sundays Tarot Reading Practice
Sunday, 1 Dec, 12:00 – 1:00 PM EST
Hosted by Heather: "Let's play. This is a card reading practice. Bring a tarot or oracle deck that you want to use for practice and bring questions."
New moon in Sagittarius: Where can I be a medicine?
Sunday, 1 Dec, 4:00 – 5:30 PM EST
Hosted by Amy + Risa: "Starting with a single, simple household ingredient allows us to follow its unique story and to "make the relay" as Donna Haraway puts it from our practical choices like shopping or gardening, out to unseen systems and webs that shape our possibles, like capitalism, trade alliances, colonialism. Of each ingredient, we can ask: how did this ingredient come to be used here where I live? Who makes it and packages and sells it now? What were traditional knowledges about it in your ancestral culture or other cultures? We can also ask: what does this ingredient want?
We will invite the spirit of each ingredient lovingly into our circle, and together over the following moon cycle ask these kin the question (following Sophie Strand in the Sagittarius chapter of our book New Moon Magic): How can we be a medicine?
✨
Let's end with a quote from a book almost all of us brought to book club, A Wrinkle in Time:
Thee onnlly wway ttoo ccope withh ssometthingg ddeadly sseriouss iss ttoo ttry ttoo trreatt itt a llittlle lligghtly.
May we go together lightly even when things are very dark, lightly skipping over obstructions like a stream, like the night rain.
Love you.
oxoA+R
PS. A coven mate recently told a story in our circle about going to a divorce party, and meeting a female-presenting person there whose jaw dropped and heart swelled at seeing our Innocence and Experience tee. The covenmate told her about us - a science-loving, trans-inclusive online coven - and gave her the shirt off her back, and they cried. And we cried reading this because man, it can be so scary out there and your kindness and bravery wherever, however you can spark it matters so much. If by chance you are in a position to support this project and offer any of our lovingly-designed items as a gift with an invite for the recipient to come home to the coven, then Blessed Fucking Be!
PPS Order your Missing Witches tree ornaments ASAP for delivery by Yule!!
