Missing Witches - MW Empress Chen of Wu + Chen Jinggu - A Community of Sworn Sisters

00:00:00.000 The Missing Witches podcast is brought to you by the Missing Witches Coven.

00:00:04.440 Our covenmate, poet, son, said,

00:00:07.120 I came to this coven because nobody else was centering mutual aid and informed resistance like the Missing Witches,

00:00:13.100 but this community is also hugely loving and supportive and full of artists and thinkers and healers

00:00:18.420 who have such a huge diversity of experience.

00:00:22.100 Even when we're not in circle, there's magic afoot.

00:00:25.100 Also, I have a chronic illness, which makes it really hard not to swear all the time,

00:00:29.260 so I am in fabulous company here. 1.00

00:00:31.700 Bless the fucking being. 0.99

00:00:34.140 And Covenant Jen from Wheel of My Year wrote, 1.00

00:00:38.020 I discovered missing witches through Queen of All Queens,

00:00:41.140 Jinx Monsoon's podcast.

00:00:43.640 After reading their Contributor Covenant,

00:00:45.680 I thought I would give it a chance

00:00:46.740 and attended a new moon circle.

00:00:48.920 As a queer person of color living in a flyover state,

00:00:51.760 I had very low standards.

00:00:53.840 I was used to being burned by performative allyship

00:00:56.680 and virtue signalers.

00:00:58.480 These witches were different.

00:01:00.500 My first circle was a transformative experience as a solitary witch.

00:01:04.960 Missing Witches Kevin is what was missing from my practice.

00:01:07.700 I'm so grateful to be found.

00:01:10.720 Anyway, those are some of the people who bring you this podcast.

00:01:14.600 And if that sounds like your people, then come find out more at missingwitches.com.

00:01:20.880 We've been missing you. 1.00

00:01:22.600 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:01:27.800 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:01:36.500 This season, every story I started spilled out to become double, then multiple.

00:01:42.400 As always happens when we go looking for witches we've been missing, one led to more.

00:01:47.540 This story starts with a Chinese empress in the imperial palaces of the Han Dynasty,

00:01:53.180 about 150 years before the Western calendar begins with the birth of a deified carpenter.

00:02:00.680 I have to start by admitting how awkward I feel writing about ancient China. I'm a graying white

00:02:06.140 lady on unceded Anishinaabe territory out here in so-called Quebec, so far out in space and time

00:02:13.460 from these stories. At Missing Witches, we prioritize telling stories from the global

00:02:18.620 majority. Our goal was always at least 50% not white because we're looking for what we've been 0.99

00:02:25.340 missing. We're trying to learn. That's the whole point. And it's an incredible jaw-dropping joy

00:02:31.800 and pleasure, and it also means we are off and out of our comfort zones and likely to make dumb 0.95

00:02:38.340 mistakes. As we've said from the beginning, our hope is to dig our hands in, learn as we go,

00:02:43.940 and hopefully just not fog it up too much.

00:02:47.980 I enter these stories the way I entered China, actually.

00:02:51.580 Wandering in the dark.

00:02:53.600 Looking for connections.

00:02:55.700 A friend said he was booking his flight to play in an indie music festival in Shanghai and Beijing.

00:03:01.220 Flights were cheap, so I should get one too and come and sing along or something.

00:03:05.360 And I bought a ticket.

00:03:06.860 I was at a place in my life where I could do that, and I felt fearless, and I did it.

00:03:11.540 But when the time came, my friend couldn't go.

00:03:13.940 His parents were sick, and he was needed at home.

00:03:19.060 He put me in touch with the festival organizers, though,

00:03:21.700 and they gave me a few spots to play solo and a gig as a stage manager for a festival event in Beijing.

00:03:28.140 I wish I could say I was super useful to them, but I'm not totally sure, to be honest.

00:03:32.300 I got lost and overwhelmed on more than one occasion.

00:03:36.060 But, oh, I loved wandering those streets and meeting the people I met there.

00:03:40.540 in beijing i stayed in the hutongs courtyard residences connected by narrow alleys

00:03:48.580 that date back to the 13th century

00:03:50.920 palimpsest places patinaed and carved and marked by centuries of intergenerational living

00:03:58.600 warm redstone and cool gray granite i found myself in a room on a courtyard shared with

00:04:06.300 host family. Stairs brought us up to the rooftops. The city had a hazy glow, and we could not see

00:04:13.300 the stars. The first night there, I walked out alone in the evening. Wandering through dim alleys,

00:04:23.360 folks playing games, bikes and scooters buzzing gently past, laundry drying, ancient walls and

00:04:30.220 secret-looking doorways opening into temples and microbreweries, trees blowing in the wind

00:04:36.080 over the walls. I found the venue I'd be playing at days later, and I went in, and a tree grew up

00:04:42.460 through the middle of the bar. And in the inner room, a group of people, locals, tourists,

00:04:48.760 immigrants, sat and sang Appalachian folk songs together on the stage. I watched a while and then

00:04:55.640 joined in. Later, we'd sing together on my rooftop. I got lost many times, but found friends and

00:05:03.460 kindness everywhere I went despite my ignorance. I call up that memory just to say I am walking

00:05:12.380 down dark alleys in these stories. I know my ignorance will likely trip me up. But I'm out

00:05:18.200 here with my feelers out, extending love and curiosity. I hope that as we find each other

00:05:24.380 here in the coven we make in the dark between our ears, we'll meet in this same way again and again

00:05:30.060 and create expanding circles of awe and kindness both.

00:05:35.460 How magical to find you here at all.

00:05:41.340 Chen Jiao, born circa 165 BC,

00:05:46.160 comes into power and into history because of her mother.

00:05:50.760 Her mother, Princess Guantau,

00:05:53.000 is trying to figure out a strategic political marriage for her teenage daughter.

00:05:58.280 First, she tries for Emperor Jing's eldest son, the crown prince, but the empress isn't having it.

00:06:04.040 So Princess Guantau goes down the line to the next most important, the favored concubine of the emperor, Consort Wang,

00:06:11.220 and proposes they marry her daughter, Chen Zhao, to Consort Wang's five-year-old son.

00:06:16.620 And Consort Wang sees this as a smart political alliance and agrees.

00:06:21.080 But Emperor Jing doesn't approve because of the age difference.

00:06:24.640 And then, at a royal gathering, Princess Guantau held the, again, five-year-old Prince Liu Che in her arms and asked him,

00:06:32.520 do you want to marry this one or that one, pointing at dozens of palace maids?

00:06:37.100 And he rejects them all until Princess Guantau points to her own daughter, Chen Jiao.

00:06:42.560 And then little Liu Che says he's going to put her in a golden house. 0.71

00:06:46.800 And clearly, this means the marriage is destiny.

00:06:49.060 and Emperor Jing approves and Liu Che becomes crown prince two years later at the age of seven.

00:06:56.760 When Emperor Jing dies, the then 16-year-old Liu Che ascends to the throne as Emperor Wu

00:07:02.440 and formally makes Chen Zhao his empress.

00:07:06.940 But then, years go by and Chen Zhao doesn't get pregnant.

00:07:14.780 Do you know this feeling?

00:07:16.320 when the body fails or when safety suddenly becomes precarious because not getting pregnant 0.59

00:07:23.940 puts the entire empire at risk. Her husband's grandmother holds great power and resents the

00:07:29.960 young emperor's attempts to bring about Confucian reform and she uses his childlessness to campaign

00:07:35.520 for him to be replaced. Empress Chen feels her safety slipping. She tries to keep the emperor

00:07:42.660 from other concubines but it's not working nothing is working she can't make her body work 0.99

00:07:48.660 and then the story goes she's approached by a witch named Chu Fu a woman who dressed in men's 0.87

00:07:57.840 garments who offered to restore the emperor's love and curse her rival concubines and Empress

00:08:04.380 Chen says yes and conducts rituals with Chu Fu day and night drinks potions crafts magic dolls and 0.76

00:08:11.560 they sleep together like husband and wife. And I want to pause to raise a glass to the last 0.99

00:08:18.280 enchanted days of Empress Wu and the witch, Chu Fu. I hope they were delicious. It's all over so 0.90

00:08:26.500 soon. Empress Chen and Chu Fu's workings and relationship are discovered. Chu Fu is arrested 0.74

00:08:34.380 and executed by decapitation along with more than 300 others. Emperor Wu deposes Empress Chen and

00:08:42.860 exiles her to live under house arrest at the Long Gate Palace. Two years later, the emperor's consort

00:08:49.920 gives birth to his first son and Empress Chen spends the rest of her life in exile. The emperor 0.62

00:08:56.540 spends huge amounts of money visiting alchemists and magicians seeking immortality.

00:09:02.220 he also spearheaded a rage of witch hunts whipped into a frenzy of fear at magic beyond his control

00:09:11.580 he was eventually manipulated into murdering his own son

00:09:15.040 witches remember as you go seeking stay skeptical too i worry about witchcraft sometimes to be 0.99

00:09:25.260 honest recent research shows a rise in belief in the kind of witchcraft that's out to fucking get 0.98

00:09:30.300 you, the witchcraft that you might blame for your poverty, for your hardship, correlates with a lot 0.98

00:09:36.260 of misery. Quote, witchcraft beliefs are more prevalent in countries with lower confidence

00:09:42.080 in local police, judicial system, and national government. Residents of countries with widespread

00:09:49.360 witchcraft beliefs have lower levels of life satisfaction and are more likely to assess the

00:09:54.400 state of their health is poor. They also report fewer positive affect experiences of happiness,

00:10:00.900 laughter, and enjoyment, and more negative affect experiences of worry, sadness, and anger.

00:10:07.420 Furthermore, there's a very strong relationship between witchcraft beliefs and perceived lack

00:10:11.620 of control over life. Because of course there is. The more our bodies and systems fail us,

00:10:18.500 the more we are susceptible to scapegoating and magical thinking. 0.97

00:10:23.780 That's why I want a witchcraft that loves science, 1.00

00:10:26.460 that has deep roots and does due diligence, 0.88

00:10:29.420 and feels empowered to self-knowledge and growth

00:10:32.000 by the insights and the workings of the world.

00:10:36.960 Because when we're broken, we all want to know,

00:10:39.340 who is causing this pain? Who can I point to?

00:10:42.380 And when the populist rhetoric of a greedy leader points to Jews 0.93

00:10:46.280 and says blame them, points to Palestinians, Arabs, Asians, Black and Indigenous people, 0.99

00:10:52.180 trans people, drag queens, and others them. It makes them object in a way that makes their

00:10:58.020 thoughts, feelings, and experiences functionally unimaginable, inhuman, not alive, expendable. 1.00

00:11:06.920 The scapegoater has pointed to women who can't get pregnant, to old women, ugly women, loud women,

00:11:12.480 fat women, disabled women, sexy women, queer women, melanated women, and said, look over there, 0.99

00:11:20.020 danger, danger, danger. Realizing that this moving target of enemy others is in fact 0.99

00:11:29.740 just ourselves, demonized, is the greatest threat to unjust power.

00:11:34.980 hundreds of years later hundreds of miles away another woman uses magic not to get pregnant

00:11:43.800 but to abort a fetus and save her people and the epic battle of her life is with her own demon self

00:11:52.360 these stories get looped together just by me stumbling around in the dark i bumped from one

00:11:59.280 into the other and started to think about the pressure that has crushed down on generations

00:12:03.180 of our bodies telling us we have no value and no power if we don't marry, produce heirs,

00:12:09.200 incubate and reproduce the social hierarchy. This witch felt all that pressure too, 0.71

00:12:15.340 but she can be an icon for us of becoming so much more.

00:12:21.740 Her name is Chen Jinggu. She was a real person who lived around the 700s CE in Fujian on the

00:12:29.380 southeastern coast of China. Over centuries, she becomes a deity. And this is her origin story.

00:12:39.580 Guan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion, goddess of pure kindness, tries to help raise money to

00:12:46.640 finish building a bridge at a dangerous crossing where many people have died on sunken ferries.

00:12:52.260 She appears in a boat hovering on the wild waters and promises to marry whoever succeeds

00:12:57.120 in hitting her with a coin. Nothing can touch her, and the money is raining down when a man

00:13:02.120 who has been throwing all his money away, entranced by the goddess, gets help from a

00:13:07.000 prankster immortal, and his coin slips past the magic veil between human and goddess and glances

00:13:14.040 across a strand of Guan Yin's white hair. The man, Wang Xiaor, wins, but the goddess disappears.

00:13:22.100 Imagine the shock, the collision of worlds as the coin cuts the deity's hair

00:13:27.540 And in that moment, when she disappears

00:13:30.580 Wang Xiaor, the man who thought he had finally hit his future with a coin and won her hand

00:13:35.680 Only to see it all disappear before his eyes

00:13:38.780 Dies by suicide 0.87

00:13:41.240 Guan Yin sends a drop of her blood to be incarnated as Chen Jinggu 0.96

00:13:48.460 Born to keep the goddess's promise of marriage 0.99

00:13:51.160 and a man named Liu Qi 0.93

00:13:53.660 is the reincarnation

00:13:55.320 of poor Wang Xiaor

00:13:57.440 and the hair

00:13:58.660 quote

00:14:00.160 turned into a white female python

00:14:03.260 the manifestation of embittered 0.61

00:14:05.620 desire and betrayed promise

00:14:07.880 thus the nature

00:14:09.840 of their births dictated that one 0.54

00:14:11.560 become an unwilling wife and mother 0.99

00:14:13.420 and the other a creature

00:14:15.380 of constant, unfulfilled passions

00:14:17.840 Throughout the many stories of Chen Jinggu and the White Snake,

00:14:25.380 they battle at the meeting points of these two identities, wife and lover. 0.77

00:14:29.540 But what emerges in their combined deification is a goddess of going beyond.

00:14:35.120 The possibility of a religion dedicated to the hallowedness of warrior women

00:14:39.560 who study and train and are heroes,

00:14:43.660 warriors and priestesses of the goddess Compassion.

00:14:47.840 Dr. Mayfair Yang writes that Chen Jinggu, quote, started out as a historical person, born in Xiedu village outside Fuzhou, Fujian province, in the Tang dynasty.

00:14:59.560 Today in Wenzhou, the religious oral storytelling rituals called drum chants have been revived after four decades of being banned.

00:15:07.680 In these stories, Mother Chen is shown casting spells, conducting rituals and incantations,

00:15:13.700 and engaging in martial arts to exorcise people of wicked demons and free whole communities from the green and white snake demons.

00:15:22.040 In one episode, Mother Chen descends into hell to save her sworn sister, the goddess Li XIII,

00:15:28.340 whose soul was being punished for having offended the gods.

00:15:32.180 After traveling through the Ten Prisons of Hell, Mother Chen finally discovers her sister mired in the dark lake of blood and brings her back to Earth and to life. 0.63

00:15:44.760 Chen Jingu exists to fulfill the goddess's promise to marry the mortal man, but she isn't actually interested in marriage. 0.78

00:15:51.160 She wants to fight beside her sworn sisters instead. She'll travel through hell for them. 0.98

00:15:55.940 She is a spiritual scholar, spellcaster, and martial artist. 0.91

00:16:00.120 With Chen Jinggu, the goddess keeps her promise in a trickster way 0.98

00:16:03.260 that reveals another truth about what women can be. 1.00

00:16:07.460 You can try to ban that truth, but the drums won't stay quiet for long. 0.99

00:16:12.440 Chen Jinggu runs away from her predestined marriage to Mount Lu,

00:16:16.700 a place where spirit world and earth meet, to train and to study.

00:16:23.060 After three years there, she finds out her parents have been tormented this whole time

00:16:27.260 for trying to keep her from her spirit calling.

00:16:29.920 And when she finds out, she wants to leave immediately to go to them,

00:16:32.840 but her studies aren't complete.

00:16:35.360 Her master wants her to wait.

00:16:37.040 She needs to learn the ultimate ritual art.

00:16:40.580 This, quote, 1.00

00:16:43.100 would have allowed her to penetrate the secrets of pregnancy, 1.00

00:16:46.680 protect expecting women, and preside over birth.

00:16:51.820 As she departs, her master warns her that she will get pregnant at the age of 24

00:16:55.520 and she won't be able to do the ritual to protect herself. 0.97

00:16:59.200 But she has to go anyway.

00:17:02.580 Chen Jinggu was dedicated to her calling.

00:17:04.980 She mastered all but the ultimate ritual art,

00:17:07.520 the final secrets of life,

00:17:09.600 but left before she finished

00:17:11.160 because she couldn't stand the thought of her parents in pain.

00:17:16.780 After returning home and healing her parents with her own flesh,

00:17:20.200 she devotes herself to exercising in the country of demons. 0.92

00:17:23.480 And as she travels and works, she gathers her community of sworn sisters.

00:17:28.920 That includes women who helped her, and also demons she conquered and won over.

00:17:35.660 Because witches, this is a story about demons, about how we make them, demonizing others, repressing and demonizing parts of ourselves.

00:17:45.840 And it's about how we integrate them, too.

00:17:48.160 Chen Jinggu's family, Liu Qi, and his family all still believe they are cosmically destined to be

00:17:56.800 married. So when the white snake kidnaps Liu Qi and appears to him as a woman and tries to seduce

00:18:03.260 him, he says, no, I'm engaged. The white snake tries to kill him, but she can't because they 0.96

00:18:08.340 are karmically bound to each other, and so she just ends up torturing them both.

00:18:13.380 Chen Jinggu comes to the rescue with, quote,

00:18:16.680 the help of the shamanic arts she learned at Mount Lu.

00:18:20.120 And after healing Liu Qi with herbal potions and restoring him with the help of talismans,

00:18:25.320 she finally had to consent to be married.

00:18:30.440 Chen Jinggu is caught.

00:18:32.780 She has a warrior, priestess calling, but she has to get married instead.

00:18:37.100 dead. Then the white snake kidnaps the empress, takes her form, and consumes her 36 royal consorts 0.95

00:18:45.040 and demands the heart of Chen Jinggu. Chen Jinggu slices the snake in three on the royal bed and

00:18:53.720 imprisons the pieces because the demon can't die yet. Then, using talismans and a ritual of

00:19:02.820 salvation through refinement, or transmutation,

00:19:06.500 Chen Jinggu revived the 36 consorts from the pile of their bones.

00:19:13.200 They could only stay alive through her constant magical work.

00:19:17.880 She taught them, quote, the ritual arts of Mount Lu,

00:19:20.820 and they became her loyal followers. 1.00

00:19:22.660 she worked exhausting constant magic because she refused to let innocent women 0.98

00:19:34.820 she is their leader and savior but she's a wife now as well and when she turns 24 1.00

00:19:42.080 she gets pregnant 1.00

00:19:43.420 quote the ritual pollution of her pregnancy meant that she couldn't practice ritual arts

00:19:50.880 But a great drought comes, and the king threatens to burn the Taoist masters alive if they fail to bring rain, and they beg Chen Jinggu to save them.

00:20:05.980 Empress Chen turns to witchcraft to try and get pregnant, to maintain the stability of empire. 0.80

00:20:12.160 Chen Jinggu sacrifices her unborn child and ultimately herself, 0.80

00:20:17.780 using ritual magic to end the drought and save the people who came to her in need.

00:20:25.040 Quote,

00:20:25.980 At her mother's house, she removed the fetus from her womb

00:20:28.640 and hid it by making it invisible under a lake of lotuses.

00:20:33.980 But the white snake's lover, the ravine demon,

00:20:36.560 finds the fetus and brings it to her, and the white snake consumes it.

00:20:39.980 the ravine demon and the white snake then went to the min river to kill chen jinggu who was dancing

00:20:46.460 on the stars of the northern dipper magically visible on a map floating on the water torrential

00:20:54.260 rain fell while chen jinggu hemorrhaged due to the death of her aborted fetus and she was pulled

00:21:01.820 into the river by the two demons chen jinggu's master and teacher who had predicted all this

00:21:09.240 is there to rescue her, but he can only temporarily forestall her death.

00:21:15.560 Exhausted, bled out, pulled from the waters, Chen Jinggu climbs onto the white snake's head

00:21:21.020 and rides her to Lin Shui Palace, where they die together, united in chimerical form. 0.84

00:21:29.500 Her temple is established at Lin Shui, on the site of the white snake's grotto,

00:21:34.160 where previously the demon had demanded an annual offering of children.

00:21:39.240 The mystic, who doesn't even want to get married in the first place, saves the people, 0.53

00:21:47.700 stops the ritual sacrifice of children by aborting her child.

00:21:51.640 This is how the goddess of compassion kept her promise.

00:21:55.560 She brings the rain and rides the head of her demon.

00:21:59.660 Together they become a deity in a pantheon worshipped still today.

00:22:03.660 The people kept her story alive and burnished it until she and her sworn sisters

00:22:08.120 became part of the fabric of the divine.

00:22:11.480 The warrior priestess and her shadow ride into the stars

00:22:14.480 to live on in the minds and stories of the people as a hybrid god.

00:22:20.080 I don't even know for sure why I'm telling these stories together,

00:22:23.800 to be honest, Empress Chen of Wu and Chen Jinggu,

00:22:26.800 except there's something here about the magic of women,

00:22:29.800 and it's not about how we create more human life

00:22:32.580 or reproduce the social order this time.

00:22:36.520 It's this other magic about when we don't. 0.95

00:22:40.900 It's something about what our lives are worth when we are not producing airs or giving men orgasms. 0.82

00:22:48.940 Empress Chen of Wu lives in exile as witch hunts rage.

00:22:53.640 Hundreds of years later, Chen Jinggu gathers her sworn sister.

00:22:56.960 Chen Jinggu's society of sworn sisters included

00:23:02.880 Orphans or widows who wished to receive her teaching

00:23:06.580 Or daughters of local officials of the kingdom of men

00:23:09.980 Who preferred to join this ritual community of women 0.97

00:23:12.520 Rather than the royal harem 1.00

00:23:14.080 They took in repentant demons too 1.00

00:23:18.000 Like the rock press women 1.00

00:23:19.340 Who begin life stones split by lightning 1.00

00:23:23.460 Absorbing the moon

00:23:24.740 who cultivated their own life

00:23:27.300 and took on form

00:23:28.400 who, without guidance

00:23:31.480 pressed to death

00:23:32.900 anyone who came too close

00:23:34.760 One of Chen Jinggu's

00:23:37.760 closest sisters

00:23:38.660 is Lin Junyang

00:23:40.540 magician of the trigrams

00:23:42.820 The ravine demon

00:23:45.580 who finds the fetus

00:23:46.740 hidden in Chen Jinggu's 0.65

00:23:47.960 mother's house

00:23:48.660 hidden magically

00:23:49.900 under a lake of lotuses

00:23:51.140 the Buddhist symbol

00:23:52.200 of purity and enlightenment

00:23:53.700 runs through the secret hallways that link matrilineal ancestry 0.53

00:23:58.260 and feeds one possible future to Chen Jinggu's demon. 0.61

00:24:04.280 After Chen Jinggu and the White Snake's deaths,

00:24:07.980 Lin Jun Yang captures and sacrifices the ravine demon, quote,

00:24:12.260 on the Bridge of a Hundred Flowers,

00:24:14.660 the place of every birth that Chen Jinggu oversees in her role as a goddess.

00:24:18.860 The 36 consorts are projected on this same cosmic cloth

00:24:24.180 becoming masters of the time of pregnancy 0.97

00:24:26.340 who, in the ritual of Chen Jinggu's temple 0.53

00:24:29.200 can untie children's embryonic knots

00:24:31.740 that embody predestined childhood diseases

00:24:34.500 thereby helping children get through the passes

00:24:37.740 that mark the dangerous moments in the process of maturation

00:24:41.160 These consorts also correspond to the 36 stars

00:24:45.400 that surround the Big Dipper

00:24:46.760 and are responsible for activating the cosmic matrix.

00:24:53.740 They untie the knots and activate new futures. 1.00

00:24:57.840 And I see them in a constellation of ancient feminist magic 1.00

00:25:00.900 that whispers the inconvenient truth 0.99

00:25:03.120 that often our demons are also us.

00:25:08.880 Chen Jinggu used magic to fight for the marginalized and the violated

00:25:12.380 and she becomes a goddess. 0.60

00:25:15.060 And so I claim her for the missing witches pantheon.

00:25:19.760 A couple hundred years after her death, her religious sect becomes a women's movement in Taiwan, 0.64

00:25:24.680 and according to Brigitte Berthier, becomes a focal point for communities of women who refused marriage

00:25:29.420 but did not wish to become celibate and instead preferred lesbian life.

00:25:35.140 How many witch stories are fundamentally just about women who didn't want to have sex with men?

00:25:39.760 how do we see past generations of violence and control over what we could be

00:25:47.340 maybe we start as benabel when says in our interview coming out later this week

00:25:54.360 by seeking out stories of what our demonized vilified others believe what have they longed

00:26:01.220 for what have they loved how have they tried to meet and honor and know the divine

00:26:07.180 maybe that's how we cast the spell that turns those we've demonized back into flawed humble

00:26:15.320 hopeful seekers like ourselves the more inequality gapes wide open and bloody and people drop through

00:26:24.520 the more of those at the top rely on scapegoating it presses in on us and shapes the world but it

00:26:31.940 is an illusion. And witches whisper, listening for everything we've been missing can help us

00:26:38.880 break the spell. And so I call in women who were called witch for trying to protect themselves 0.82

00:26:46.900 when they couldn't bear children. Witches who conjured some sort of protection from the world 0.97

00:26:52.500 when it turned against them. People who tried to craft some life and identity for themselves 0.98

00:26:58.600 beyond pregnant, productive, or pleasure dome.

00:27:02.680 I call in all those who made the best choices they could,

00:27:06.460 who danced with their demons,

00:27:08.140 who tried to protect themselves and the ones they love,

00:27:11.440 and the world,

00:27:12.820 who even if they failed,

00:27:14.660 deserve to be taken up by the people they loved

00:27:16.860 and recognized as part of their great cloth of the divine.

00:27:21.920 I call in all of us,

00:27:24.020 hopeful and brokenhearted,

00:27:25.380 to remember we outnumber the oligarchs,

00:27:27.540 greedy, drooling, grasping at their yachts and bitcoins, slaves and palaces.

00:27:33.620 We care for each other better than they do. We have justice on our side, and they endlessly

00:27:39.200 scramble to reframe and reblame because they know, step by step, we are the rising tide.

00:27:48.300 For me, Empress Chen of Wu represents the times we use our spells, our cunning, to survive,

00:27:53.900 to claim a life out at the edges.

00:27:57.480 Keeping the magic of the world alive, even in exile.

00:28:01.600 Chen Jinggu represents the active priestess-warrior magic

00:28:05.320 that rides the wild shadow of the self, 0.74

00:28:08.320 ventures through hell,

00:28:09.880 stays with us right here in the heart of the trouble. 0.90

00:28:14.040 Dancing on the stars until she bleeds her human life away, 1.00

00:28:18.040 she continues to work for us on the other side.

00:28:21.100 seeing them both out there, might just help us nurture the re-enchantment, Dr. Mayfair Yang

00:28:27.320 writes in Re-enchanting Modernity, Ritual Economy and Society in Wenzhou, China.

00:28:34.380 For Charles Taylor, the replacement of the enchanted, porous self of spirit possession

00:28:43.200 and human-god interactions with the impermeable, buffered self was the hallmark of modern secular

00:28:50.740 society. Contemporary re-enchanting practices can be understood as an indictment of, as

00:29:01.120 well as forms of redress and repair for, the excesses of Chinese modernity's purification

00:29:08.600 procedures.

00:29:12.760 In ancient China, two Taoist religious movements emerged in the waning years of the Han dynasty.

00:29:19.400 ancient religious lines of flight that elude or retreat from the arborescent state order in the Chinese cultural zone.

00:29:31.540 Unlike rebellions or revolutions, most lines of flight seek not to overturn the despotic signifying regime or arborescent order,

00:29:42.100 but merely to open up escape routes that lead to alternative ways of life.

00:29:49.400 It would seem that revolutions or rebellions

00:29:56.840 tend to reproduce or strengthen and expand the state.

00:30:02.280 Thus, ironically, lines of flight,

00:30:05.640 in the form of modest shifts,

00:30:07.640 such as the repetition of actual actions in the longue durée,

00:30:13.520 seem to have more promise for making a real difference

00:30:16.520 than sudden totalizing transformations like revolutions.

00:30:23.560 It is the dark time of year here, in a very dark year.

00:30:30.160 Maybe, beloved covenmate, here in the dark where we meet between our ears.

00:30:37.600 Maybe you can see these people too.

00:30:40.880 Maybe they look familiar to you.

00:30:42.820 Maybe it's something in the way they survived

00:30:46.920 As warriors, priestesses, seekers and skeptics

00:30:52.660 Lovers and friends

00:30:54.880 Dancing on the stars

00:30:58.040 Dreaming of you

00:31:00.320 A community of sworn sisters

00:31:03.860 Stretching across thousands of years

00:31:07.060 Lines of flight toward a better tomorrow

00:31:11.460 Oh, so what would it be?

00:31:41.460 now wherever you get your books or audiobooks. Find out more at missingwitches.com.

Missing Witches - October 30, 2023

MW Empress Chen of Wu + Chen Jinggu - A Community of Sworn Sisters

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