Something is dissolving and we are following our longing.
This week, the magic begins with the lost-but-found 70's psych rock album by Ted Lucas, recorded sometime after Motown left Detroit and he lost his job as the house 'exotic string specialist'. Lucas, who had studied with Ravi Shankar and recorded with the Temptations and The Supremes, took a multi-track recorder up to his attic and made a layered sound that feels like a premonition now, of where weird folk would go. And the knowing heart-ache in the song Baby Where You Are sounds like our hearts this week:
If I could be
Baby where you are
If I could see
Baby what you see
Then I would know
Baby what you know
What would we know if we could see through the Other's eyes? How would the world change? Argentine feminist philosopher and activist María Lugones writes lovingly of outsiders traveling between worlds:
As outsiders to the mainstream, women of color in the U.S. practice "world"-traveling, mostly out of necessity. I affirm this practice as a skillful, creative, rich, enriching, and, given certain circumstances, as a loving way of being and living. I recognize that much of our travelling is done unwillfully to hostile White/Anglo "worlds". The hostility of these "worlds" and the compulsory nature of the "travelling" have obscured for us the enormous value of this aspect of our living and its connection to loving. Racism has a vested interest in obscuring and devaluing the complex skills involved in it. I recommend that we affirm this travelling across "worlds" as partly constitutive of cross-cultural and cross-racial loving. Thus I recommend to women of color in the U.S. that we learn to love each other by learning to travel to each other's worlds.
So here's the invitation:
Imagine you are in an attic sending your longing for a loving world out on the waves of song. Imagine those waves singing into strangers' ears, resounding over years.
Imagine how you can listen to and uplift the insights of women of colour in your life so that hostile worlds and discourses can be disrupted and resisted by accomplished world-travellers.
Imagine sending love across time to the creative, skillful, rich, and enriching crafts and practices of your own ancestors who were forced to move through and exist in worlds that were not their own because of their race, class, gender, disability, or neurodivergence.
Imagine that great community of outsiders. Imagine them travelling to each other with love.
Imagine the great coven we create in the dark between our ears.
The prescription continues with a dose of Spiritualized, because Ladies and Gentlemen (and beloved non-binary beings) we are indeed Floating in Space.
All I want in life's a little bit of love
To take the pain away
Getting strong today
A giant step each day
All I want in life's a little bit of love
To take the pain away
Getting strong today
A giant step each day
Even a little bit of love is a giant step, and a dose of strength, isn't it?
This week, we're calling it in. The final song in the prescription this week is Shine A Light. This song calls out to the divine, and we want you to know: we welcome whatever shape that takes for you.
Maybe you're crafting a liberatory magic from within a religion that feels like home for you, maybe you are in the process of deconstructing the religion you grew up and the ways it was hostile to your true self. Maybe you're atheist or agnostic and those frameworks do not relate to you at all.
We invite you to listen for each other with love anyway. Because it's the calling out for light in the dark, and friendship from within the pit of loneliness, that we have in common, isn't it?
When I'm tired and all alone
Lord, shine a light on me
And when I'm lonesome as can be
Lord, shine a light on me
The longing is a thread we can follow to travel these hostile worlds and find each other, we gotta believe it.
Coven Invites
Coven Organized: Meditation Group (rsvp)
Sunday, Mar 3, 8:00 PM - 08:45 PM EST
Hosted by Liz: "Join us each Sunday evening to ground and clear your mind for the week ahead. Sessions will be 15-20 minutes with time to chat afterwards. I look forward to sitting with you!"
Coven Organized: Writing Circle - Workshop and Share (rsvp)
Tuesday, Mar 5, 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM EST
Coven Organized: Craftivism Cauldron (rsvp)
Tuesday, Mar 5, 8:00 PM - 09:00 PM EST
Hosted by Risa: "Let's bring our energies together to lend our support to whatever activism looks like for you right now. Maybe you want to use this time to research groups or actions in your local area, or ask questions and think out loud about activism or resistance magic. Maybe you want to work on refining a call to action and getting it laid out in Canva to share. Maybe you can bring your knitting or drawing or other craft work and bathe it in our collective desire for liberation! Maybe you're just craving being together in rage and sorrow and power. Whatever draws you, please come keep me company and let's see if we can nurture and resource our fragile selves and our world-changing magics, together."
Can you think of someone who might like.. all this? (She said, gesticulating wildly.) Forward them this email with all our love! Introduce your witch friends to each other and let's give each other hope + community.
Blessed Fucking BE!
Risa + Amy
