The RX is back! Join Amy and Risa as we chat about options: laughing, crying, fighting, loving, mourning, dancing, amanita mushrooms, and hugging trees in times of war.
Risa: The Spirit is risin she's risin she's risin The Spirit is risin it's risin it's risin The Spirit is risin their risin their risin The Spirit is risin
Amy: My Coven. Hi. How we've missed you.
Risa: Oh, and I've missed you, Amy, honestly. Yeah. It's nice having the scheduled time where we just hang you and I. I miss the RX for that.
Amy: It's true. And I feel like I've got like, you know. Two months or whatever worth of, like, songs I want to talk about and, you know, I have
Risa: so many feelings,
Amy: so many feelings, so many feelings, not all good ones, some bad feelings too.
But again, you know, this is the wonderful thing about this coven is that I feel like it's a safe space to be wrong. No, to ask questions without, um, you know, getting um, Getting jumped on or piled on to like, feel what you're feeling. And so this is, this is what we want to bring to your day today, you know, feel what you're
Risa: feeling, feel what you're feeling.
And it's, it's nice. We were, we've done, we did some interviews promoting the book and one of the ones I really loved, whatever the book, New Moon Magic, our new book, whatever, side plug, um, One of the ones I really loved was with Sarah Godestiner and because the whole focus of that was like, how do you collaborate?
Like, tell me more about your friendship. How does this work? And just, I just thought of it just now when you said like, our coven is a space where you can be wrong and, and where you can like, ask something that you might be scared of asking in other venues or where you can like, Unpack the complexities of a feeling and feel like the other person is going to be respectful with you, even while they might also have things to teach you.
And I, I do think that that maybe is symptomatic of the fact that this coven emerged kind of accidentally out of our friendship and out of our friend coven, you know, like out of real built trust relationships. Yeah,
Amy: certainly the, the two of us like formed a coven long before we ever started the Missing Witches project.
And this has just been like a beautiful way to expand those ideas and, and meet new people and find people who, again, I don't want to say like feel the same way we do because that's certainly not a requirement for my friendship is that we agree on every nuance, you know, like, I think the important like, As long as, and my spouse and I talk about this all the time, like, as long as we agree on the fundamentals, then I'm willing to discuss the nuances.
Risa: You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and just like coming from a place of love, even though like, We can be really tapped into, like, rage and sorrow or, like, really be I can sometimes, like, be in my va Especially after looking on the internet for too long, I can be in my very, like, pugilist stance, um, but Yeah, a friendship is like a starting point for being able to talk about hard things, and so, that's what I, I wanna like, start with, I guess, is just like, a reminder that this is a space that was built on friendship, and that you're here because you felt that, and you felt like that.
We were people that maybe you were friends with, and, and because we decided to put our, like, friendship seeking online, we were, like, longing for you all. And every time we meet you, there's that first moment where you, like, you feel weird because you're talking to someone whose voice you've heard, which I, I have that issue with every podcast I listen to, too.
But then it's immediately, like, meeting an old friend. I feel like everyone I've met from the Coven, it's like, oh, yeah. Perfect. Good. Now we're besties.
Amy: And maybe there is some sort of, you know, like universal resonance or the frequency, you know, we've talked many times before about like chords and how some notes just go beautifully together and maybe they make like a sad sound when you put them together.
Maybe they make a happy sound. And there are some notes that if you put them together, it's, it's dissonant and it, it's, it's like almost disquieting in your, in your very soul. So. Hopefully, um, but again, you know, there's no such thing as a bad note, as far as we're concerned, it's just that some, some make prettier chords together than others.
And yeah, that's the space that we're seeking because we are so hyper informed. I think, I feel like our, our souls, for lack of a better word, and, and even more so, our brains are not capable of evolving at the speed of, of technology. And so, I feel like we, we feel compelled as witches, as human beings, to be as informed as possible, but then it's like our bodies don't know what to do with all of that.
Information.
Risa: Gosh. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I was listening to the Emerald podcast. They had an episode recently about sound. And I laugh because I had to turn it off halfway through, which I often have to do with that podcast because I can't absorb it all. So just exactly what you're saying, like there's just.
Too many reference points that I want to stop and think about for 10 minutes, or like go for a goog or whatever it is, or like paint a picture about, or like go walk in the woods and think about. But it just keeps coming, so I always have to stop, stop that podcast. But, um, the one image that I've been thinking about so much from that wonderful episode was, um, they were talking about, you know, when you're, when you're recording sound.
You can have mics on all different instruments, and so for each one you could get, you know, a sound wave unique to each instrument. But if you have a microphone in the room and everyone's playing, what you'll get is one wave that has all the sound in it. That all sound is one sound, that like there is room and then they're talking about the sound at the center of the black hole and the sound, like actually hearing the singing sounds of the universe.
But I don't know, I've been thinking about that too, that like we can look at things from so many different perspectives, but from a universe perspective or an earth perspective, there is sort of a oneness to things that we can maybe pull back into sometimes.
Amy: And that's, that's certainly what, like, every astronaut who has ever, you know, left our atmosphere has said, that when you, when you look down and you see Earth as like a single sphere, it, it makes you recognize the, the oneness of everything that's living on this
Risa: planet.
Okay, so this is a natural segue, I'm going to go into my first rec for the Rx. So, Amy, did you know Montreal Ian Ferrier, Ian Ferrier? Yes. So, sound, artist, poet. Um, just died this week. I don't, I didn't know him. I've been in the same rooms as him. Um, but so many of my friends from different sort of performance scenes or music scenes in Montreal have been posting really touching memories about him.
I know he had like a brain surgery last year. I don't know what the story was, but I started listening, like finding his music online and listening to it. And so there's one I'm going to put in the Rx. He made this record under the umbrella Magic Cookie Orchestra. So first of all, I have to tell you, so he says, the sound that became this record originated with their, so them is Ian Ferrier, Will Azzolini, just the two of them, and they call themselves Magic Cookie Orchestra, and it originated with their Amanita Reindeer Christmas show.
At Casa!
At Casa! In 2015, a hallucinogenic mix of music and story tracing the origins of Flying Reindeer to their grazing on Amanita mushrooms. The first live Cookie Magique show featured the band on this record at La Vitrola in 2018. So that's such a like, funny, witchy, I wish I'd been in that room in 2015.
Because what a perfect resonance with things that we have talked about and so many witches talk about that, that Santa as Amanita, you know, that that the wave, the way stories can move in a way that's kind of rhizomatic or kind of mushroomy, bringing folklore, popping it back up in ways that can continue to sustain us.
Tripping. Yeah.
Amy: And again, the like, the The mycelial nature of our stories too, how in our contemporary Western world, we've taken a mushroom with a red and white hat and turned it into an old man with a red and white hat.
Risa: Yeah, it kind of was everywhere last year when we were, I think our Yule episode ended up being like an accidental act of devotion to the Amanita Santa.
Anyway, um, the song from that record, There's two that are, I mean, they're all quite beautiful. It's like spoken word, very gentle, um, very political, but in a way that lets you feel held by it and not antagonized. Like, it's like it's bringing you along in the thought in a really loving and generous way.
And so my, my rec, because I keep listening to it as kind of a meditation is called Holy the Snow Plows. And, it's so lovely, I We have, um, a new recurring event series in our coven, which anybody can join, go to MissingWitches, click on join the coven, find out if it's for you, um, called Ritual Soup that Heather Darby DeMarco started, where we kind of each brought a piece of something Ritualized that we do that helps us and we tried to lead each other through it and I was feeling really down So I was not participating in a very positive way because I'm sad about the fucking world all the time And every time I try to go to one of my nature alters, I just feel Overwhelming I smell Smoke.
I mean, it's just feels really overwhelming out there right now. Um, but I do do this one thing when I'm going to sleep or when I wake up that I've done for a long time. That's like a gratitude meditation mixed with like Sophie Strand's naming of all the species. In her valley, either their folk name or your personal name for them, an individual stand of trees or the whole species of trees.
So combining that with what I, I kind of have. Thought of as like, um, I don't know, systems thinking or like a political economy of the space that I'm in. So I'm really interested in, like. Looking concretely at everything in my room or in my life and thinking about where it came from and thanking the individual people and materials for each thing.
And like, if you combine that the species in your area, the materials and systems that went into building the home that you're in the room that you're in. your own relations, you know, things that give you gratitude. You can do that meditation forever. Like you can do it, just it will never end because we are all connected to each other and you just do the spices in your cupboard.
You'll do it for hours. You know what I mean? So I just do it until I fall asleep or I do it until I'm distracted. I get up for the day or whatever. And this Holy of the Snow Plows is a wonderful guide for that kind of meditation. So I put it on your altar for
Amy: this week. Yes, I'm, I'm so excited to have this new, um, winter music to warm, to warm me.
I haven't heard it and I'm so excited to dive into it. I, um, of course, I'm always. And if you've listened to the Rx before, you know this about me, that I always feel compelled to bring one, two sides of the coin. You know, I refer to William Blake in Songs of Innocence and Experience. Um, so I want to start with, uh, Experience.
Excuse me. I've been revisiting Peter Gray's Apocalyptic Witchcraft, the book. It's not a perfect book, um, and it really, you know, it's, it's really confrontational, but it seemed like the right time to revisit it. And the, the line I wanna, I wanna bring is, Peter Gray wrote, I say that the power of the witch is in having every option.
Open. And I want to bring that in terms of, you know, allowing a space for joy and allowing a space for grief and knowing that whatever you are doing to make the world even a slightly better place for whomever is Good. And, you know, if you are, you know, marching on the front lines, great. If you are just trying to raise your kids to be, you know, kind and compassionate people, that's also activism.
That's also great. I just want you to know that the power of the witch is having every option open to you. We were talking earlier about you. our cub and being a safe space for like the whole range of human emotion and I want you to know that Every option is open to you You don't have to Say anything and you don't also have to keep your mouth shut There's definitely a safety and and security in not having an opinion And if you need safety and security right now, like that's okay.
That's okay I was on the phone with someone I love very much just the other day and they were Beside themselves with grief and fear and we were on the phone for about two hours and by the end we were sore from laughing, you know, there, there is, there is still space for joy and laughter and if there's not, then what are we fighting for?
If we don't allow ourselves joy and laughter, then what, what are we doing? And so on that note, I brought a song, um, that I didn't realize was what it was, and I'm sure all of you who are listening right now, Risa too, you've heard this song, and I almost guarantee you never thought about it, because this was me.
Um, so Tommy James is sort of known for songs like Hanky Panky and Moany Moany. Um, you know, that kind of, like, 60s, like, you know, sexy rock and roll, whatever. But he's got one song called Draggin the Line. And again, I'm sure you've heard of Draggin the Line, Draggin the Line, Draggin the Line. I never listened to the lyrics.
I never thought about it. Until one day when I just, like, for some reason, my ears and brain tuned into it. Here are some of the lyrics. Again, I thought this song was about, like, cars or something, you know, like I thought it was about, like, driving my fast car down the highway or whatever. It's completely not.
Um, he's saying, Lovin the free and feelin spirit of huggin a tree when you get near it, diggin the snow and the rain and the bright sunshine. I'm dragging the line. I'm like, Tommy James was a tree hugger? Who would ever have thought that the Moany Moany guy wrote a song about, like, walking around with his dog and smelling flowers?
Risa: Also, okay, I had to do a quick, like, side gook, because I was like, what is this song? What are these lyrics? Um, It's from an album called Christian of the World, and it's all about, the whole album is him being like more explicit about his Christian faith, which just showed out, like, if for you, it's possible to have a syncretic experience that you're still exploring, maybe you're not calling yourself witchcraft, but you're fucking hugging trees and embracing peace and in love with an anarchist Jesus, like, take This as a gift!
Take it! They did the lyric about his dog eating purple flowers and hugging the trees because being a witch means all options are open to you.
Amy: Exactly. That's exactly what I was gonna say. The power of the witch is having every option open. And we, we certainly, we have Christian witches in our coven. Yes!
And, and they are so, um, What's the word I'm looking for? Like, beneficial? Like, their thought processes are equally as beneficial to our group as the Satanists and the Atheists, you know? Like, we really, we really are such big Believers in like a, uh, a multi faith chaplaincy, I guess, for lack of a better term, where like, again, as long as we agree on the fundamentals, we can discuss the nuances, you know, as long as you believe fundamentally that people should be free to express who they are and what they are in a safe environment.
And yeah, we can, we can go back and forth on the details of what that might look like, as long as we agree that we're working toward a utopia, we can, we can talk about, like, what the mechanics of utopia are, and, and agree and disagree and, like, hold space for that. Because the power of the witch is in having every option open.
And Dragon the Lion. And Dragon the Lion.
Risa: I had no idea. I love that song. I, like you, I've never looked at the lyrics.
Amy: Yeah, yeah. I just heard it and I was like, because again, I'm a big Tommy James fan, like, I mean, I guess not really, but in the way that everyone who likes quote unquote oldies is like, how can you deny Crimson and Clover?
Risa: Oh my god, we've listened to that song 72 fucking thousand times because me and Mark both love it so much. You know? I love it too, but not like they do.
Amy: And so like, again, like I thought Dragon the Line was about cars or something, I don't know. And now to know that it's about like, about hugging trees, it really made me feel like, what else am I missing?
Like, what else have I not paid attention to that is actually so much more than I ever could have thought it was. And so that's, it's made me feel like, again, you were talking about like feeling like, Pugilistic, and yeah, yeah, we're fighting, but, um, not punitive. Pugilistic, but not punitive. Like, I don't want to punish anyone, you know?
I feel like my, my energy is better spent
small. Again, you know, like, I'm an old lady, and I, like, joined Amnesty International when I was 11. Um. I get it, I know that it's fucked up out there, and at this point in my life, I feel like focusing on my community. It's probably the best thing I can do. And again, all options are open to you. I'm not even suggesting that you take this on.
But for me, like, taking, taking baked goods to my neighbor who has stomach cancer, to me is like such an act of, of love. And I just want to do acts of love that in, in my witchy way, I hope will like, reverberate, reverberate into a more, Loving universe.
Risa: Yeah. I mean, I am, if your religion at its heart teaches you that all living beings are sacred, that every person, every being is divine, and they all deserve life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, however you phrase that in your culture, then like, I'm, I'm with you, you know, like, I'm on that team, whatever, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a religious person, but I love I love religious people.
There are so many people in my life that are religious, and for them, their religion moves them to activism, moves them to tears when they think about the pain of others, even if they're others of different religions, or on the other side of the world, or on the other side of these dichotomies that we get cut into.
If that's you, then fuck, I love you. I love you. We're one. We're kin. Let's do shit.
Amy: And speaking of doing shit, I just, I want to say one more thing, um, to our coven mates and to our prospective coven mates, um, is that obviously we had a lot going on in the past couple months. We did a full fledged season of the Missing Witches podcast.
We released a We've also got, you know, other projects that we've been working on a little bit behind the scenes, which we'll make big announcements about as we go. But we wanted to devote this time between Samhain and Yule. We'll still be doing episodes, we'll still be doing interviews, and we're doing the Rx, but we really want to focus on what Risa called, and I love this, uh, coven care.
So we're, uh, Risa talked about Ritual Soup. We're also starting like a sort of proto book club, um, and writing circles. Okay,
Risa: wait, I have to say it's an anti book club book club. Because I cannot join a fucking book club, but I started this one, so I have to specify. If you are like me and you hear the word book club and you're like, that sounds fun, I have failed every time I attempted that.
I cannot join a fucking book club. Then this... Might be actually for you. This is, uh, Book 11. We're doing it within the Coven. So, Sunday morning, be very cozy. If you fall asleep, we'll consider it a compliment, be extra cozy, and bring a book that you're currently, like, in love with, lit up by it, you think it's so beautiful, and then we will just gush about how much we love these books.
That's the whole club!
Amy: It's certainly not like, you have to read this chapter and then we're gonna quiz you to make sure
Risa: that you've read the same thing at the same time ever again.
Amy: Yeah, this is like, just like, let's meet and talk about books that we love and let's, um, meet and, you know, write poetry and, um, you know, talk about each other's poetry and let's meet and let's do ritual together.
So yeah, Coven Love is something that we're going to be focusing on for the next couple months. I mean, always, but like really focusing on. And don't zine if you have something, you know, that you want to say. write, sing, paint, and you want to get it out into the world and you don't have your own website, then we want to be a soft place for that to land.
Um, you can reach out to us anytime. Again, like, we are often scared and depressed and In grief, and all we can really think to do that we know is right is to create this space where we can be honest with each other about all of those things, and create this soft space for each other to land because we all fall down sometimes.
We all fall down sometimes. Like, witches, I'm not perfect, Reese is not perfect, and we don't live our lives in a constant Disney princess, you know, birds landing on our fingers kind of world, and that does happen sometimes. And if it does happen to you, we definitely want you to come and brag about, like, how magical and emotional your day was.
But also, if you need a safe place to land, like, we just want to be a safe space, we're not going to be a perfect space. But we just want to be soft and comfy and, but also like with a, I'm thinking about fire and like, you know, the destructive power of fire, but also like that, the warming hearth. Um, we can be all of those things.
We can be all those types of fire together because as a witch, every option is, is open to us.
Risa: I feel like we're going to keep coming back to that one. There's a couple things you made me think of when you said that one. Um, the other piece of Coven Care right now, and you'll see that in the Rx Newsletter this week, is we've started adding to our website the full text of our first episodes.
So I've done Pixie Coleman Smith and Maria Sabina so far. So the like, so if you If you want to just read that instead of listening to it, if that's more available to you, those are fully laid out on the website now. You can just search for the name or if you go to click on transcripts, there are everything that we have added a transcript or the full original essay for is up there now.
Um, just slowly trying to improve our accessibility. Oh my God. Um, and then. What was the other thing I wanted to tell you about? Oh, yeah. Um, I guess I've been thinking a lot about that quote from Mayfair Yang. I think she's paraphrasing Deleuze when she says that, um, you know, that revolutions, violent action seems To reinforce the status quo, it seems to lend, um, capital and those systems more extractive systems more strength, and that would seems to have more effect over Long periods of time or in the long as they, as they say, is like ritualized community action.
So when we think about like, you know, does this shit, how does this ritual work? Does this community building work mean anything in the face of, I mean, Palestinian genocide and horrific anti Semitism? And all the other layers of trauma that we live within, like, I take comfort from thinking that many people who have researched this do believe that our coming together, um, in a way lets us put down some weapons and think about, you know, this, this seeking that maybe we all have in common for like, what is the fucking point of it all?
What, what are we doing here? And if we're not trying to make Transcribed A world where every child is safe, then what are we doing? And I think ritual that holds like the sacredness of of children and of all people at its heart does change the world. I have to believe it does. I have to.
Amy: Yes. And
Risa: Also call your representatives.
Amy: Yeah, we're big on that, you know, we, the practical and then the magical. Yeah. Um, it really is very disheartening. Um, I mean, we, we don't have to stay in Gaza and Israel to find acts of war. We could go to Ethiopia right now. We could go to Kosovo. We could go to Venezuela. We could go to Yemen and. That's particularly distressing for me because Yemen is and has been experiencing the worst famine in our known human history and yet they're still finding the resources to fund.
And, um, and I think the only people that win in that situation are weapons dealers and munitions factories who are selling munitions and weapons to both sides of any given conflict. Um, so again, for me, the drive is to build community of love and hope that that Reverberates somehow, but I will say again, like going back to this sort of hyper informed place that
if you look at the data sets, this is actually, I mean, we're having a spike right now, but, um, this is one of the most peaceful times in human history and it really doesn't feel like that. It doesn't feel like that because we know every conflict we're doing scrolling and we know every single fucking conflict that's happening in the world right now.
Um, And that is too overwhelming. Again, like our human brains and our human souls are not capable of that. So, again, I would suggest that, you know, you keep your pugilism and keep your fight. But remember that we're not just fighting against, we're also fighting for. We're fighting for. And even, I mean, again, maybe this is off topic, but I think about the Cold War and what a quote unquote peaceful time the Cold War was, but every single person was living under an existential threat, a constant fear.
And that's what Cold War is, right? Like maybe, maybe there are no guns firing, but the weight of the existential fear of mutually assured destruction is not like, Good happy times. So I would encourage you to to like examine the matrix of happiness, examine the metrics of safety, and think about your own psychological safety, while you're also thinking about your own, your own physical safety, and let's try to balance those things as much as we can.
Risa: I'm going to casually segue from that, because I think this. This, for me, was like a breakthrough this week, so I'm, this is my second piece for the RX. There, we have a common mate who writes under the name Devorah Kalila, and they're a Jewish priestess. Elder, they've written books called flowers of Torah and water, wine, tree and vine, the full moon festivals.
They are really a blessed elder in our community. And, um, in our coven space, she wrote to me and said. They, she had just finished reading the cancer chapter of our book, New Moon Magic, which is all about dance and the way that dance is available to us as a way to move emotion through our body to give us back a sense of power.
It kind of circles around the question, why is a history of colonization, a history of dance is outlawed? Because They know, colonizers know, systems know that to keep people compliant when they're trying to extract from a people, taking away things that give them power and tell their stories and tell their knowledge and tell their cosmology is essential.
And D'Vorah shared a link to this video by the Northwest Hat Connection, um, which I had never seen before. So I put it on full screen and. It's the, it's called Hell You Tomb Out, and I don't really know what to say about it, except that it's a protest piece. It's a protest piece that comes out of the Black Lives Matter movement, but it's really about saying their names.
Especially the names of children. Saying the names, in this case, of black people lost to murder by police. Um. But it just, it unleashed something in me. I was sobbing and sobbing and sobbing, and I didn't even realize that at the end, the dancers, it's a circle of dancers at the end. It's these elders, these mothers that come out and dance, and I didn't even realize they were mothers, kids who had been murdered.
And I just, the whole time, as soon as they started saying people's names, I was full body shaking, sobbing. I think I was thinking about all the kids. In Gaza right now and I just I needed it though, you know, like part of me can really go numb while I process information and try to understand what's propaganda.
I can really go numb for a while. We've had people coming after us on social media for not being more vocally. anti anti anti Semitism, standing up for the rights of Jews to protect themselves, you know, to say more clearly that this is genocide. We're mostly like a witch channel on Instagram, so if you're looking to come to us for news about the world, we're generally not going to be a great source for that.
But we were also just sort of taking our time to understand what It's what is useful to say what is fucking happening. Um, and that may be wrong or right I don't know but that's how I process anyway. Um, and I just, if you, if you feel numb, and you want to be unnumb, but also held in. Dance? Like in this beautiful, empowered, there's kids dancing, it's so rad.
I, uh, the link will be in the Rx. I would suggest being alone when you watch it. Because if you are any of the cancer energy that I embody in my life, you are an ugly sob.
Amy: And we need that. We need that sometimes. I mean, again, and this is like, I should get a tattoo of this because it's basically become my motto, but like, tears are our body's natural way of releasing stress hormones.
Y'all have heard me say this a hundred times. Sometimes you just have to wail and mourn and get those like, intrusive stress hormones out of your body so that you can go and do something productive to un numb, to un numb, like you say. It's, again, there's a safety and security in numbness, much like there is in silence, and if you need to, you need that, then, like, that's okay.
We're not going to punish you for needing to Be quiet and think, um, but you can only stay numb for so long, and if you need something to, you know, get those waterworks going, and get those intrusive stress hormones out of your body, then yeah, this, this piece that Rhys is talking about is a great place to go and do that.
Risa: Sometimes I think that's what so much of witchcraft is, it's like, make a container for a certain kind of energy, and then be able to use it, because otherwise my, I'm just all over the place, like, I need to make a container for calm, and like, tell myself this is a safe space for calm, and, you know, or for love.
Like, exclude other things and really pay attention to what that energy looks like and can I use it for something. And then make a safe space for, like, storm energy, like be in storm energy or make a safe space for, like, rage and defiance energy, you know, I don't know.
Amy: And we don't know, and that's okay. Oh
Risa: yeah, we don't know anything.
Have you
Amy: missed that? We don't know. We don't know for sure, but what, okay, what we do know for sure is that the story is not finished. And we have no idea how our actions will reverberate through and into the future. That, that we know, but we know that we don't know. Um, and. So, let's do that. Let's try to find pieces of a good and loving and collective world and throw them together into our ritual soup.
Blessed fucking be.
May: The world's drifting through me, and my life is all to me. I love myself. All me. I love myself. All love me. I love myself and all. Love me. Love myself and all. Love me. I love, I love. I love myself. I love me.
Amy: If you want to support the Missing Witches project, find out how at missingwitches. com.