This week we're inspired by Jeremy Dutcher, Lakeesha Harris, Viktor Frankl, Labyrinth, Natalie Merchant, Joan Didion, and The Pointer Sisters, to shake out the rugs - literally and metaphorically. Let us not be divided. Let us gather, and make ourselves unconquerable.
Amy: Hi, Coven!
Risa: Hi. Hi, listeners. Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Missing Witches podcast. This is the podcast we do kind of between seasons. This is the Rx, how we tell each other how to survive another week in late stage capital.
Amy: Yes, um, Rx is a term that's used in like pharmacies for, um, it comes from the Latin for a prescription. And, That's what this is. This is like, you know, take two and call me in the morning, as the old doctor jokes used to go, but like, what are, what are we doing? And again, this isn't like, we're the doctor and you're the patient.
This is like, we're all together in a single room of doctors and patients. Trying to figure out, like, how to keep our bodies and minds and souls and our intellect intact when it feels like we're always in crisis. Um, the past few years feels really very much like just, you know, a constant crisis, whether that be personal, political, um, the health of, Our plants and animals and also ourselves and, and I think that was kind of the impetus for the starting of this, like, Risa and I getting together and be like, okay, how the fuck did you get through this week?
And then we just want to like, share those and sometimes it's poetry and There's almost always music in there. We are huge believers in the like divine nature of music and also its power to shift and affect us again, personally, politically, our souls, our environment. And so if you're new here, and I think there might be some new folks, you know, in this, what we call, you know, the, the circle that we, we host between our ears and in our headphones, because we had a coven meeting.
On the new moon, as we do, and there were so many new phases there. It was really beautiful to see such a gathering and it got really emotional. I mean, we don't host these circles, excuse me. It's like. An invitation to trauma dump, but at the same time, like, that's often what happens because a lot of us are in this safe, brave space that we can't find anywhere else.
And it's like the one opportunity where we can sort of speak our truth to power. And I know last week I was talking about how it's okay to be silent. Like, that's okay, for many reasons, um, but of course, like, now it's a week later and I'm on the flip side of that coin, and I'm like, you know, let's talk, let's talk, let's talk, let's shout, let's scream, let's howl.
Um, so on that note, um, Bex Mui of House of Our Queer did some reading from the Scorpio New Moon chapter. of our newest book, New Moon Magic, and it was so beautiful to see someone else, like, I kind of forget what we wrote a lot, and then someone will read something and I'll be like, wow, thank you for reminding me that that's, that's out there in the world.
Now, Bex didn't read this specific piece, but our circle this week really made me again, like, I was talking about the power of silence last week, and this week, I really want to talk about the power of, like, Of getting it out. Um, this is just a quick paragraph from New Moon Magic and New Moon and Scorpio, and the theme of this chapter is the circle, which is like exactly kind of what we're doing here and what we do with our coven mates.
Founder of Black Witch University, Lakeisha Harris, has expanded her vision of the radical healing circle. Shifting her vocabulary from calling it a safe space to describing the circle as a brave space. She wrote, quote, We must cease to suffer trauma in silence and alone. We must call out and call in and gather in truth and stand in our magic.
When we spoke to Lakeisha, she said, There is no safe space for us, especially as witches. But we can be brave together. And so again, the prescription, part of the prescription this week for me, is this idea of being brave together, of forming some kind of alliance with your friends or your family or your coven mates where you group.
know that you're not going to be judged too harshly, if at all, and that you can, you know, explore the shit that happened to you, or is happening to you, and see how we can take the power back. One of our Heavenmates brought up that amazing sort of like, climactic scene in movie Labyrinth, where Jennifer Connelly says to David Bowie, and this In fact, turns out to be like the magic words you have no power over me and just the effect of And again, this is a fantasy movie, and you know, we understand that this is fantasy, but it really, if you watch the scene, and we'll put the whole scene in the newsletter, if you watch the whole scene, it really rings of like, an abusive relationship, the way that David Bowie talks to you.
Um, Jennifer Connelly, it really has the echoes of abusive relationship, even though he's a goblin king and you know, not everyone who heard us, it's like technically a goblin king. But again, you know, I love a metaphor. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep that vocabulary of like, well, that guy's a fucking goblin king, or that woman's a goblin king.
But the magic words turn out to be you have no power over me. And so how can we conjure that? In our own lives, how can we, like, hold up a hand in that, like, stop in the name of love way and say to whatever it is, be it the government or, you know, our families, you have no power over me. How do we conjure that?
And I think a circle is a, is a good place to start conjuring that energy. Yeah,
Risa: I've been thinking a lot about Scorpio New Moon time. It was, Those water currents under, under freezing layers, you know, like the water that's, that's moving in the earth, the water that's unseen and how we make that like unseen force, how we tap into that unseen force, you know, and like, everything is like noise and terror and, you know, there's a really scary election on the horizon in the United States.
There's many, many forces actively funneling millions of dollars to drive. Divisiveness in places that are not at war and generating war. I want to have an idea of a spirituality or of a practice or of a community building that is empowering, that is activist. And that's something we talked about in our circle too, is like, how do, how do we use This idea of witchcraft or ourselves as witches to not feel disempowered by this idea that like things are written out and Maleficent forces are out consuming us and, you know, the Illuminati and all these things that are so often antisemitic as well.
But like, how do we really stay rooted with each other and use. These tools and practices to fuel our sense of power and to fuel our like, creative, imaginative, world building power too, you know, as, and I, I mean, one thing that I, that I really rooted in this week, I guess I keep using that word rooted in.
I, I'm thinking a lot about that. I don't know. I want to have roots. I don't want to just be like, floating on the wind, you know, and being in circle really does make me feel like that. Yeah. Just listening to people's stories or listening to people's ideas, just having people be there in that circle. I mean that we were like 50 people, not everyone speaks.
That's totally fine. You just listen, but just feeling that presence of like that same sort of longing. Um, yeah, it's really grounding. One of our Coven mates recommended we check out, uh, Jeremy Dutcher. Is it Dutcher or Dutcher? Do you know? I'm going to go Dutcher, uh, such beautiful music. I guess his first albums he released in his indigenous language in Ojibwe.
Um, and then this album that just came out in the last couple of months that he's touring now is in English, but has indigenous words in it. And the name of the album he explains is like basically the word witch in Anishinaabe. Um, and it is that idea of like queer magic, two spirit magic, indigenous magic, like these places that power and the sacred have, have been hiding, as Marian Peck said in our interview with her way back.
Um, so that's the one song, one of the two songs I'm going to, I'm going to prescribe you this week, Amy, and maybe our listeners too. And for both of these. songs I brought. It's the music video I'm prescribing, okay? I want you to not just listen to it, but sit with this video art piece that was made and just let it be like immersive.
I don't know. I was like one of those kids who didn't have TV, so when I went to my grandparents house and they had MTV, it was really fucking hard to get me out of the basement because all I wanted to do was watch music videos. I think music videos are the coolest. I love that art form. Um, Yeah, Jeremy Dutcher, Take My Hand, so emotional, this beautiful, beautiful song, and the lyrics, I mean at one point in the lyrics he says, take my hand but not my light, the words that we find are new, and all of the ghosts that we sing back to, teach us our way of listening, give yourself to dancing days, sorrow and grief create a place, for new love to enter in.
If you listen for its name, I will always be there for you. It really feels, and the way the video opens and closes, you are in the presence of two spirit ancestors, and it feels very sacred, and like you're being called in to listen to a new kind of love. And that feels very healing and hopeful.
Amy: Yeah, you know, in continuing the In Defense of Silence from last week.
Um, something that we forget sometimes is that this is like a requirement for real listening, that sitting in silence is like active. If you are listening, if you are paying attention to the voice of your friend or your ghost, your ancestors. Um, and I think so much about this, like, Old, you know, military adage of like divide and conquer.
So if we need to divide in order to conquer, then to me that means that if we gather, we can fortify and make ourselves unconquerable. Um, and listening is part of that. You know, shouting from the rooftops is part of that too, but also like the silent act of listening to what other people who are going through their own things is like a huge.
Huge part of the, the gathering and the coming together, as much as we also love a choir, you know, a hundred voices all at once singing in harmony. There is a, there is a place for, for the silence as well. Yeah,
Risa: it's that interweaving. And I mean, we got to try to figure out how to listen to each other.
We're going to build some, some new kind of piece. It's gonna be a, it's gonna be a process of conversation and of mourning, you know, and of truth telling, you know, and of building entirely new systems of faith and spirituality that are based on believing that living in this world, being alive in this world, not the next world, this one, being here, With each other holding our children that every everyone has a right to that like we we need systems that value this breathing moment together.
Listening for that.
Amy: Ideally, you know, that's What we hope to create is this space where, you know, we can, we can do these, like, idealistic, um, dreams that we're, we're talking about. I, I watched a short video recently, and I'll have to dig it up again, because now that I think of it, I want to put it in the Rx.
Viktor Frankl, who, of course, is, like, a Holocaust survivor, talks about how idealists... are the real realists. And I love this notion of someone who has been through so much, to still hold fast to this notion of idealism, that if you tell someone they are capable, instead of telling someone that they're not capable, then like, this is, this, this becomes the reality that you put.
into their mind, you know, we talked at our meeting about this, the, you know, systems of control and, and part of that is like, um, the propagandizing of, of ideas and, and for most of us, like our first propagandists. We're our parents or our family who tell us what to believe and how to believe it and what to think and how to think it and how to feel or not feel or behave or not all of that stuff.
And it's so hard to shake those like foundational pieces of propaganda when you know, again, they're foundational, like this is the pouring of the concrete that is the foundation of the hell upon we, you know, upon which we build our lives. And so how do we, how do we shake free? How do we shake free from like all systems of control, whether they be like governments that don't have our best interests in mind or or parents who want us to live out their fantasies of what they wanted their life to be, and so they put their disappointment from themselves onto us, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you know, abusive relationships we talked about, and, and how do we, like, just put up that Diana Ross and the Supreme's hand of like, stop in the name of love, like, stop.
How do we, how do we just put that hand up and have that resonate in our, in our systems? We don't know. Again, this is what we always come to is like, we don't know, but we're trying to figure it out. And we would love for you to, like, help us figure out how to
Risa: do that. I mean, Diana Ross is probably a good place to start, right?
Amy: Well, I sort of, and again, this is how my mind works. It's like, you know, some people have a train of thought and mine is like a swarm of bees of thought that sort of, like, seems random, but maybe not. I was thinking about this, like, physical act and I would love those of you who are listening right now to, like, try it, to, like, Hold up your hand like in that stop and like really stretch your arm out and think like stop and see what effect that has on you.
So I was thinking about that. And then I was thinking about like, what else we can do with our hands that are like magical gestures. And so of course, you know, as my mind goes, I started thinking about the Pointer Sisters. I started thinking about pointing and how this, you know, this can be like a very defiant act as well, you know, whether it's like pointing at someone, you, or pointing away, I cast thee out.
And I'm sort of like, for those of you who can't see me, I'm like gesturing, you know, to the, with my finger to the right, like I cast thee out. And so, you know. I'm thinking about the Pointer Sisters always, but specifically in this moment. And so I brought two Pointer Sisters numbers. Again, sort of two sides of the same coin.
The first one is Neutron Dance. Which is like a complaint. It's like getting it out of your system. And the song itself is relentless. Like the beat comes in and it just never fucking stops. And that's sort of the thrust of the song. It's like, uh, kind of energy. And Neutron Dance, it's funny because the people who wrote the song, they were, they wrote it because they were hoping to like get it on the soundtrack of a movie that was like about some kind of like a sci fi movie about some kind of nuclear event.
But the song has absolutely nothing to do with that. However, Um, the song came out during the height of the Cold War, and so, like, the Russian government was like, Neutron dance, is this some kind of, you know, anti Russian propaganda? And it's funny, because the song is actually an anti capitalist song, so, you know, if the Russian communists, and again, I'm, I don't think that, you know, Soviet military communism is the version of communism that those, I, those of us who are idealists about these ideas have in mind, but.
Um, it's, it's the opposite, you know, it's, it's, it's, they're, they're criticizing late stage capitalism, and also this idea of just wanting to hide, the song starts, I don't want to take it anymore, I'll just stay here locked behind the door, just no time to stop and get away, cause I work so hard to make it every day, and I just, I want to give a bit of, like, Credence to that feeling, like I was talking about last week, like if you need to be in silence, if you need to stay locked behind the door, because as the song goes on, the whole thing is about like how in this day and age, everything feels like a scam.
Or the theft, um, that there's no fair way of like making your way your heart starts pumping schemes is one of the, is one of the lyrics like when you live in this like scammy, schemey world, you feel compelled to do scammy schemes because it feels like there's no other way to survive. And I just want to acknowledge that feeling.
I'm not advocating for scammy schemes in any way, shape, or form. But that feeling of like, I can't be good and loving in this world because there's no space for that in my survival. Um, but again, Neutron Dance is like, it's relentless and if you put it on, you can be angry and some I put it on and I'm like screaming the lyrics and just like shaking and like doing the craziest dance that I could muster and sort of getting those angry feelings out of me.
But then, then we turned to like earlier Pointer Sisters. This was in the seventies, things were a bit funkier and, you know, Ronald Reagan wasn't the president yet. And so we had different ideas maybe about how to come together and, um. This is a song called Yes We Can, and it wasn't originally recorded by the Pointer Sisters.
There's like a master of New Orleans funk, um, named, well, I can't remember right now, it's escaping me, but it was written by Alan Toussaint. and recorded by Lee Dorsey. I got it, everybody. It came to me. It came to me like a New Orleans funk master. And so with the Pointer Sisters doing it, who were actually sisters, by the way, can I just say that the Pointer Sisters are actually like biological sisters?
And I just kind of love that part of this, right? This song is called Yes, We Can. And imagine these like four sisters. I'm gonna put the live version in to the Rx because really just like watching them deliver this message and then there's like a drum solo in it, you know? Anyway, my point is, um, Yes We Can is a song about trying to find peace within without stepping on one another.
And do respect the women of the world. Remember, you all had mothers. We got to make this land a better land than the world in which we live. And we got to help each man be a better man with the kindness that we give. I know we can make it. I know darn well we can work it out. Oh yes we can. I know we can.
Yes we can. Why can't we? If we wanna. Yes we can. And so, again, this is like, we can use our voices to rage, but then the other side of this Pointer Sisters coin is that we can use our voices, like, almost our kindness as a weapon. In and of itself to enact change, if you want people to be kinder. Maybe the solution is to be kinder to them, and not to try to criticize or knock them down.
Maybe that's the solution, is to help each man be a better man. We don't need to gender that, but that's the lyric. With the kindness that we give, maybe kindness is the solution. And it's also a beautiful, funky tune, so once again, I always recommend that you dance. Along with everything, all of your political messaging.
You can dance along with it. Yeah.
Risa: Oh, well, I guess I can segue that right into my next song, although I'm going to actually not do that. Is there something I wanted to say before I wanted to tell you before. So, um, two weekends ago I did like a, I improvised a retreat for myself in my own house. Mark and May like went to the city for the weekend.
I spent a bunch of the weekend just cleaning and organizing. Dancing around. I was only allowed, by myself, the rules I made up for my retreat, I was only allowed to like, listen to good music, no, no murder stories, nothing even narrative, you know, just music, dancing, cleaning. I had this really intense moment.
I was shaking rugs. The sun came out and I took the rugs outside and I was shaking them. I was sort of shaking them so angrily and I was crying. And I was just like, get away! Like, get the fuck away. Like, get this violence, get this This extractiveness, like, get this away from our families, our communities, get this away from children, you know, get this away, let, let them just see us love and care for each other.
Like, ah! Anyway, I was thinking about that when you were, you were pointing.
Amy: Yeah. And again, like, maybe it sounds glib to, like, suggest dancing, I mean, we know better. We are witches and we've both written about dance in both of our books. Um, but how like a physical process like shaking a rug can really like activate a symbolic process of like ridding ourselves of the dirt and dust and grime that we've, we have trampled ourselves into our own spaces, right?
Like, and so the very powerful Physical motion of shaking a rug can really loosen those like symbolic ideas. And
Risa: shake your, shake your nervous system, shake your parasympathetic nervous system, shake it out, like remember that you have, for me, I often forget I have ranges of movement outside of what I am normally.
Constrained into by writing or, you know, podcasting the chair, driving, picking up the kid. Like, I need to be remembered that my body has bigger power in it. And, and that helps me when I need to. Say what I think, you know, just clearly say what I think and, and I think like being in spaces where I exude love and kindness, nonjudgmental, I'm going to like embrace people of different faiths, but I'm also going to say exactly what I think.
So not, that's not for everybody, but there's people who are always going to see that and be like, that person makes me feel safe in a way. That this person who tells me what I need to believe or what doesn't, doesn't make me feel safe. And that does crack things open for the future, you know? I really believe that.
Or if you're somebody who is around children, and you can take that moment to be like, I love you for exactly who you are, you little light. You're just such a good little light. You are perfect just the way you are. You're perfectly imperfect. You are just the way you are is just excellent. Look at your beautiful face.
Like if you can give that to children and the world for them is so malleable, time and space is so malleable that they might live in a world where they are never being told that and to have someone tell them that once can like bloom into possibility in their whole lives in ways you don't know. So
Amy: And, I mean, let's not confine it to children, right?
Like, every adult I know needs to be told that. And, you know, one of my most magical practices, I feel, is that sometimes when I I'm feeling a type of way and I need something. I just randomly give that thing that I need to someone else. And I feel that, that magic reflecting back on to me, you know, if I, if I need to be told I'm, I'm good, or whatever, then I might like.
text somebody and be like, I just wanted to let you know that I think you're awesome. And like, it's something, it's not phishing, like, it's not like, I'm gonna text as many people as I can and see who gets back to me and then I'll eat those, those notifications. No shade.
Risa: Get it any way you can, I think.
There's nothing wrong with texting a bunch of people you love them so they text you back. Right? That wouldn't be evil, I don't
Amy: think. Definitely not evil. Definitely not evil. Not how you do
Risa: it, but.
Amy: Um, but I mean. That, that to me, again, is a huge magic. Like, if you are lacking something in your life, try giving that thing to someone else and then see how it is reflected back to you.
If you are feeling like you need to be told that you are fucking good enough to, like, be allowed to fucking exist, then, like, maybe, maybe try telling somebody else. But they're good enough to fucking exist and see what happens. Give me your last number. Give me your last tune, Risa. What's Non sequitur.
Here we go. Natalie Merchant. Okay. Okay. We're we're going we're going back in time. I love it. We are not going back
Risa: in time. It is a brand new Natalie
Amy: Merchant jam. Wait, what? Yeah. You know when, like, people that you have placed in a certain filing cabinet, like, escape that filing cabinet? And you're like, wait a minute.
Risa: She's out. She's escaped. She's a full witch. I was like, what? Natalie Burch was, like, recommended to me. I was on YouTube or something. It popped up and I was like, okay, alright. Fully talking about patriarchy, talking about women's bodies. I mean, goddess fully. And then this song, this video. Okay. So this is from her new albums came out this year.
The video just, just came out like, I think two weeks ago. Um, it's called Sister Tilly and it's all, a lot of archival footage and a lot of her with flowers singing directly to the camera, archival footage of women's protests and. So just sit with it when you're ready for it. It is so loving. It's so loving of those women.
So, and it's like it's got four songs in one song. It really goes a lot of places, but um, At one point she's like, oh Miss Tilly, I think you should know everyone's missing you here. You're fortune telling cards. Prayer Flags in the Yard, your Rilke poems and your Stacks of Mother Jones, your Feminist Raves and your Didion Shades, and your Zeppelins so loud and proud, here's to your days at the barricades, here's to the girls in the fray.
I just like Fuck yeah! I know! I know! And it really reminded me of when we first, first started writing Missing Witches. It was like one of the first episodes we wrote about. Actually, it was Monica's show, it was in the Monica's show episode, wrote about those like, those like, witchy, feminist, like, aunts, or, you know, stepmothers, or like, those ladies that you're like, That for us represented this mix of feminist activism, political activism, and also a commitment to nature and to spirit and to exploring their own spiritualities and exploring their own minds and their own curiosity.
There was like, Those, those old ladies with their fucking tarot cards on the barricades. I mean, and watching the archival footage, it's very, very beautiful, but then the song like releases her. So if you had someone in your life who gave you that and they're gone and you feel conflicted sometimes about wishing they were here, wishing you had them as guidance, this song is such.
A ritual piece for that, I find, because it also releases her, it also sets, like, she has, she's, she's in the everything now, you know, it says, it's, you go on without us. Don't even think about us now. Everything fades. Sister Tilly, you're a superpower. Sister Tilly, you're a lotus flower now. You're a constellation.
You're a white light vibration. It's like, she's, she's here. She's in all of us. Don't worry about it. We've got you, you've got us, but you don't have to hold on so tight and it's, it's a seven minute song and it'll, it'll, I don't know, I found it really beautiful and really healing. And then the last, um, screen or whatever is she dedicates it to Joan Didion, who I have loved since I first read it.
I mean, I think I read the Book of Common Prayer first. I read, uh, the White Album. I mean, I read so many of her books in undergrad and out, and it just really was so much a part of my life. I love Joan Didion. I've always been in awe of her writing. And so to have that tribute to Joan Didion, At the end of this, where I don't always associate her, I don't really associate Joan Didion with those women that she, that she conjures when she's describing, yes, feminists at the barricades, but not, you know, the, the prayer flags and the tarot cards, Joan Didion had this really like, I don't know, she wasn't always hopeful, she was really clear eyed and, um, sometimes just really sad and she stayed right about it.
In the midst of where she felt things were wrong and she described them. And, so I also just wanted to offer this Joan Didion quote. She gave it, um, it was like a commencement address in 1975. She says, I'm not telling you to make the world better because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package.
I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it. Not just to suffer it. Not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture, to live recklessly, to take chances, to make your own work and take pride in it, to seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.
Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the title boar on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do. And get it while you can, and good luck at it.
Amy: I mean... And blessed fucking be, I, I, you know, this is, this is the perfect summation of everything that we've been talking about today. Thank you, Joan Didion. Thanks,
Risa: Joan Didion. I don't, I am so weepy and choked up just today. I don't, I wasn't until we started this call, but I feel really emotional about these songs and, and about Joan Didion and about holding our kids while we can, so.
Blessed fucking be.