Missing Witches - MW Rx. 42 - Join The March To The Witch's Castle

00:00:00.000 Spirit is rising, she's rising, she's rising, the spirit is rising, it's rising, it's rising,

00:00:10.420 the spirit is rising, they're rising, they're rising, the spirit is rising, they're rising,

00:00:19.460 Hi Amy

00:00:25.740 Hi Risa, hi Coven, hi witches

00:00:28.540 This is the ASMR version of the RA

00:00:34.800 No, it's not

00:00:36.740 We get too yelly

00:00:38.260 We get too excited to keep up an ASMR whisper

00:00:41.660 How are you doing this week?

00:00:46.080 What's getting you through?

00:00:47.140 well um i brought prescription wise um cosmic slop i'll take it i'll take whatever slop

00:00:58.540 the cosmos has to offer let's just sit in that turn of phrase for a second cosmic slop

00:01:04.960 so um cosmic slop is a funkadelic record and i believe risa correct me if i'm wrong but

00:01:22.940 the first ever prescription that i brought to our rx was funkadelic i think it was maggot brain

00:01:30.240 yeah and so obviously you know funkadelic is a place that i turn to um but this record in

00:01:38.980 particular i'm holding it up y'all so risa can see it but um you'll you'll get some pictures if

00:01:45.200 you go to the website and check out the newsletter that is attached to this um so the conceit is kind

00:01:53.500 of uh like um funkadelic are aliens who have come to earth and this comes up a lot with funkadelic

00:02:04.300 like the mothership connection and and this kind of thing um but the liner notes the gatefold

00:02:10.280 includes this like bizarre essay from the perspective of this alien who is like watching

00:02:18.320 earth like horrified and disgusted by our behavior um it's still funkadelic so the cosmic slop

00:02:29.800 in the song cosmic slop is like a dance we'll do the cosmic slop um but i want to read some of this

00:02:37.080 it's so long and so bewildering um so i might skip around a bit but um it reads like the colorless

00:02:46.920 This monster of racism is gleefully unchained by garrotted gibbons and her stooped hooligans, whose abbreviated mentalities cripple their own minds as racist specters cripple their victims' bodies.

00:03:04.720 Premature ecological doom, through the reactionary efforts of polluting enterprises of capitalistic pimpism, foreshadow the Earth's demise. 0.96

00:03:15.360 These cachetic mumruffians of madness continue to hasten total biological Armageddon for the benefit of consumerism, and without shame, declare their eventual victims as the bangling Argyle bargies responsible for the ecological pimpster game that they cheerfully continue. 0.99

00:03:40.900 Be it known, therefore, that I have forruled to verbally ostracize these ostrobogulous oafs of occluded obliquity, the frenzied incipients of the pimpification hath risen to the point of cosmicide. 1.00

00:04:04.400 Enough of this madness! Cease! For I, to carnate my macrological rhetoric upon this wicked edifice of Babylon, truly care that the undeserving species of man be snatched from self-destruction. 1.00

00:04:21.540 therefore become aware of yourselves become aware of your actions the ass thou pimpest 0.90

00:04:32.040 shall be thine own cease all manners of exploitive gyvation should there be some who

00:04:41.540 choose to ignore this maldwotted message of doom i further proclaim it is to be the right of the

00:04:49.860 noble followers of Funkadelia to counteract the inane infantile actions of those pimpatory

00:04:59.540 sapless stooges and exploitive exdesience of evil, Funkadelia is upon thee.

00:05:11.360 So I guess the conceit here is that Funkadelic can save us.

00:05:19.860 and i don't know how far-fetched that is really i uh i mean george clinton is like one of the

00:05:29.840 most sampled artists of all time um i think second only to james brown you can fact check

00:05:36.440 me on that y'all um but i wanted to draw attention to one song in particular because it is of

00:05:44.380 interest to us um it's called march to the witch's castle and the song is basically about like

00:05:53.940 empathy for ptsd so lyrically like the war is over but now begins the the quote the nightmare

00:06:04.200 of readjustment like how when a war ends and you know in the lyrics like the boys are coming home

00:06:11.620 they are not

00:06:13.920 the war is not over for them

00:06:15.980 you know and there's this one

00:06:18.160 bit that I

00:06:19.980 specifically want to underline

00:06:21.700 oh lord give us the strength

00:06:26.100 to understand ourselves

00:06:28.400 for we are a mysterious

00:06:32.420 animal

00:06:33.360 man

00:06:35.400 and as the boys

00:06:40.380 march home to the witch's castle, they will all need your help.

00:06:49.620 Give us the strength to understand ourselves, for we are mysterious animals. And as the boys

00:06:58.820 march home to the witch's castle, they will all need your help. And especially, this came out in

00:07:08.120 1973. So this is like, you know, Vietnam anti-war movement. But here we have this like really

00:07:14.300 empathetic plea, you know, for the innocent boys who were sent off to fight and they didn't

00:07:23.660 understand what they were doing. But as witches, what's really interesting to me is that George

00:07:29.920 Clinton presents the witch's castle as the safe place that we come home to. And of course, like

00:07:36.000 normally we would think of the witch's castle as like, oh, Hansel and Gretel, like, this is the

00:07:40.580 scary place. The witch's castle is dangerous. But for Funkadelic, and for us too, the witch's castle

00:07:48.760 is a place that we can march home to. And again, I just want to kind of bring back this, like,

00:07:57.180 maybe, like, megalomaniacal George Clinton idea that, you know, humanity can be saved by

00:08:03.400 getting functified. So the second part of my prescription is Marjorie Bocage. She just won

00:08:15.680 a Governor General's Award. So I'm going to read a bit of her bio. So these are in her words.

00:08:22.300 She's a two-spirit Métis auntie, filmmaker, artivist, and educator, a land protector and

00:08:30.740 Water Walker. Born in Manitoba to a large Métis family, Marjorie has dedicated her life's work to

00:08:37.980 creating social change, working to give people the tools for creating possibilities and right

00:08:44.700 relations. For Marjorie, story is medicine. And here's the kicker. Marjorie harnesses the power

00:08:52.640 of art as medicine to create transformative change for individuals as well as communities.

00:09:02.440 So we'll link to her Vimeo so you can check out some of her documentary work. But I want to bring

00:09:08.720 Marjorie and Funkadelic together in this notion of story is medicine, art as medicine, harnessing

00:09:19.300 that power with the possibility to create transformative change for individuals as well

00:09:25.660 as communities so like while it might sound funny for the liner notes of cosmic slop

00:09:31.820 who is like again title track is like would you like to dance with me we'll do the cosmic slop

00:09:38.780 but like what is the transformative power of getting functified like what can that do

00:09:46.380 to to save our souls for us to to give us the strength to understand ourselves as as March to

00:09:55.800 the Witch's Castle goes and I think maybe that's the real thing about artivism um is that maybe it

00:10:04.280 gives us the strength to understand ourselves so that's my big fractal you know from from a

00:10:12.940 two-spirit matey auntie filmmaker to you know back in the 70s with george clinton um telling

00:10:20.720 us that funkadelic is going to save humanity i i don't know i buy it i believe in it i can get

00:10:27.080 there i'm here for it i'm here for it and i'm here too for like um strange bedfellows or like uh

00:10:37.520 you know strange juxtapositions like we're gonna have to make we're gonna have to make

00:10:42.580 unconventional allies and that's sort of what i'm totally yeah that's what i'm bringing today okay

00:10:47.860 so first i want to bring twin temple i've been really loving and playing a lot of twin temple

00:10:58.660 um if you're not familiar there are a couple um alexandra and zachary james

00:11:05.280 the music is sounds like 50s kind of doo-wop but they're practicing like art satanists

00:11:14.720 and so the songs are like so pretty so fun so danceable and they're about like god is dead

00:11:20.960 or they're you know um and they it's like it's really in this like modern spirit of satanism

00:11:29.620 where you know it's sort of like i read a description of some witchcraft acts of protest

00:11:38.340 as being an absurdist response to absurdist times and i'll find the article and link to it so i can

00:11:44.100 properly attribute that quote but i've thought a lot about that recently that yes that like

00:11:50.260 some that there's some real power in displaying absurdism back to absurdist times and in like

00:11:58.180 letting ourselves put it on and also letting ourselves like find joy um while we find power 0.99

00:12:05.280 together like while we laugh and scream fuck you and have our rage that we also get to dance and 0.99

00:12:11.540 have a really good time because we refuse to let go of the vital force that we're fighting for the 1.00

00:12:17.680 whole point you know the whole point of being alive together is this like dancing spurting joy

00:12:24.000 okay the re-enchantment piece of resistance absolutely so the song i'm bringing from twin

00:12:32.060 temple is i'm a witch um and i just i want you to just play it on repeat i'm just like dance sexy

00:12:42.060 and have so much fun with it um but i also want like i want you to imagine the crowds of people

00:12:50.620 dancing and listening to this song especially the refrain at the end like

00:12:54.380 they repeat at the end hex the patriarchy you know

00:13:20.320 like this is happening in the world where all the other horrors that we know are happening

00:13:27.080 like this is also happening like large communities of people are getting together to dance and hold

00:13:33.780 each other and laugh and sing hex the patriarchy it's not an isolated movement it's not like a

00:13:38.980 tiny marginal movement it's like very much part of our culture and you get to be a piece of that

00:13:47.900 even if it's far from where you are at physically so i want you to like dance around your house

00:13:53.800 like you're you know in a beautiful vintage theater and with a crowd of 5 000 other people

00:14:02.180 who play with the upheaval play with their rejection of religion in a way to be inclusive

00:14:09.060 and to reject the nightmares of you know traumatized culture of colonized culture as

00:14:15.600 like a decolonizing practice to play with the language of things that have been really harmful

00:14:22.640 and used to dominate and control and it's not to say that everyone's religion or response

00:14:27.620 relationship to religion is toxic but i want you to allow yourself for a little while to play with

00:14:33.860 like the implicit revolutionary power of claiming i'm a witch in a room full of people singing i'm 0.88

00:14:44.220 a witch I like sex I use it to manifest I throw a mean curse I do whatever I please hex the

00:14:50.680 patriarchy there is one verse in here that I like want to flag and say don't do this we don't do 0.97

00:14:57.880 this it's here as a joke she says when I bleed I put it in your coffee we don't don't do that

00:15:02.760 that's gross and dangerous well at least not without consent some people are into that and

00:15:09.960 that's also fine for sure with consent totally fine consent is core um but yeah man my power is

00:15:20.740 real i'm a witch and i'll never kneel i just it's so fun it's so fun to think of also this modern

00:15:28.720 community of satanists that are taking on some of these legal battles as a direct response to

00:15:35.180 you know Americans claiming that they have a right to a freedom of religion but not other

00:15:39.940 people's religion only theirs it's the same thing that happens here in Quebec Bill 21 was just

00:15:44.400 upheld making you know the a state religion bringing us closer to idea of a nationalized

00:15:51.320 religion and that's terrifying and it comes at the expense of so many generations of organizing

00:15:57.380 and we're going to have to resist it really hard but we have to keep our joy as we do it so my

00:16:03.760 second prescription in the name of strange bedfellows um there's this union song it first

00:16:12.140 appears in like the red book of union songs like this week but a long time ago um and you might

00:16:20.500 know the billy brag version it's called sorry it's called there's power in a union

00:16:27.440 um it makes me cry basically any grouping of people doing something together makes me cry

00:16:56.200 i'm really but this song has a choir in it singing about the power and coming together

00:17:01.140 and it's from it appears in the soundtrack to the movie pride which also if you want to feel

00:17:07.480 strength and and inspired by the idea of strange bedfellows or of lichenized lovers right lichen

00:17:14.640 exists because fungus and

00:17:19.760 um algae or cyanobacteria make this symbiotic relationship fungus makes space for the algae

00:17:28.640 and lets it grow inside of it um and it only happens under conditions of extreme environmental

00:17:36.060 distress uh scientists can't reproduce it in the lab unless they make life really really hard for

00:17:41.620 both of those entities and then they will choose to collaborate and then they can you know bring 0.91

00:17:47.620 life to barren places and so the movie pride is about the um queer activists who joined the

00:17:59.380 miners strike and how radical that was and how after all their organizing and their work the 0.53

00:18:06.920 miners enshrined protection for lgbtq people into the heart of their union and that unions have been

00:18:15.100 you know at the forefront of protecting abortion rights um have been at the forefront of protecting

00:18:21.620 workers rights and so i don't know i just want to bring this magic i want to bring satanists

00:18:28.180 into the union do you know what i mean and i want funkadelic there too absolutely i mean you made me

00:18:35.480 think so much about this like sort of shakespearean notion of the the court jester being the one who

00:18:41.580 tells the truth you know like the the bare honesty of absurdism and how that that they sound like

00:18:49.660 they're opposites but really they they're so entwined together yes and they sing look there's

00:18:57.240 power in a factory power in the land power in the hand of the worker but it all amounts to nothing

00:19:02.900 if together we don't stand there's power in a union there's power in every kind of union you

00:19:10.860 know there's power in radical love there's power in falling in love with someone who you're not

00:19:16.540 supposed to talk to across racial lines class lines gender lines there's power in forming

00:19:22.220 unions our our bonding is what makes a revolution happen right

00:19:26.340 that's that judy gran quote from when you oh yes when you interviewed her yeah we'll link to that

00:19:35.400 in the show notes yeah we're just we're just here in our small you know houses in the woods alone

00:19:46.380 so much of the time sending out our our our hyphae sending out our poetry sending out our spells

00:19:55.960 sending out our songs with a hope for making a union with a hope for a coven or a covenant

00:20:02.480 with the hope for making a network bond that's strong enough to survive collapse and get us to

00:20:11.080 the other side of the re-enchantment yes or as i will from now on be calling it the march to the

00:20:17.960 witch's castle which we can we can all ideally do together like let's march together to the

00:20:23.720 witch's castle where we recognize that people need help and that humans are mysterious animals

00:20:31.080 And, you know, again, to go back to Marjorie Bocage, like, that we can harness the power of story as medicine and art as medicine and, you know, unity, togetherness as medicine, marching as medicine.

00:20:49.260 But also, like, the likenization of our relationships where we can create space for people to grow and exist in ways that wouldn't have been possible if we hadn't, you know, formed a union with them, but then also created and given them that space to, you know.

00:21:11.020 Like, I feel like that so much of our role in the revolution, I mean, again, we're always quoting Lolly Moon, Mystic Moon Medicine, you know, that she said that part of her study of astrology was to like, or that what you can use astrology for is to help you figure out your role in the revolution.

00:21:28.660 And I feel like right now we're just trying to create an empathetic space, you know, like I don't believe that like bad people do bad things and good people do good things.

00:21:43.160 I think that that's harmful and super reductive. And, you know, what I want to create and what Risa, I'll speak for you, I guess, wants to create is like a space of empathy that is contained, but also, you know, the rippling effect of like, like last night, Risa, you hosted this, you called it craftivism.

00:22:08.800 And we were just kind of a conversation about activism and what works and what doesn't.

00:22:13.920 And I was telling the story about how I had watched a short talk about the unhoused and their access to menstrual products.

00:22:21.060 And so, you know, when we were having a party anyway, we were like, bring menstrual products and, you know, we'll donate them to Don La Rue.

00:22:28.620 and then risa you sort of took that idea and and passed it on to like a larger organizer who then

00:22:37.360 added menstrual products to their you know donation list then they're still they're still

00:22:43.040 doing that so even these like tiny little things these tiny little seeds that we plant really like

00:22:48.240 can have a rippling effect which is again like one of the most magical things about being magical

00:22:54.760 is that you recognize that even a tiny action that you perform

00:22:59.140 can have a rippling effect, like, throughout the universe.

00:23:03.700 It's amazing.

00:23:06.360 It's really heartening, I guess, is maybe the word,

00:23:08.760 because we feel so small.

00:23:10.560 And we are, you know.

00:23:12.620 We are, again, tiny insects on a rock hurdling through space.

00:23:17.380 But the tiny little flap of our butterfly wings,

00:23:21.660 like we don't know what effect that that will have on the future so um yeah so yeah

00:23:28.620 we we really are at a time where we have to have faith in that and and and we have to have faith

00:23:35.520 that we are with others that we are in union and communion and working for peace and advocating

00:23:43.140 for peace and advocating for ceasefire and advocating for an end to genocides everywhere

00:23:49.640 across all species you know we you are not alone in seeing the madness of that

00:23:56.120 your walk with many on this march to the witch's castle and if you know you feel like you don't

00:24:04.840 know why then maybe just like do it for the funkadelic aliens that are watching us from

00:24:11.540 space and are and and are and don't want us to fail you know and don't want us to fail i could

00:24:17.200 if i'm like oh why am i doing this like i feel like i can conjure some kind of motivation by

00:24:22.920 saying like the funkadelic aliens on the mothership connection are watching me and i want i want them

00:24:29.240 to be proud of humanity i want them to want to hang out with us you know it's silly and so absurd

00:24:35.100 but like however i gotta get there is how i'm gonna get there oh my gosh the funkadelic aliens

00:24:40.040 are totally watching me right now i have to tell you i my tv's been turning itself on uh loudly

00:24:46.660 and the other day mark was doing may's bedtime and i heard the tv go on really loud and i was

00:24:52.900 like what is happening down there i went downstairs and the tv like if you turn it on from the button

00:24:58.640 it goes to a menu you know like a roku menu or whatever um but it hadn't done that it was straight

00:25:06.900 on like some sort of alien hunting tv show i don't know how it had gotten itself there but it

00:25:13.640 turned itself on and it was like it was like a night vision camera like guys going through

00:25:19.680 the fields like the alien ships were over here they're totally watching us we're gonna get

00:25:25.020 evidence right now turned it off and was like i had a message for the alien and now i think it's

00:25:31.080 probably the funkadelic aliens absolutely like they want to they want to dance with you and do

00:25:36.960 the cosmic slop so you know let's do that if you're feeling like cosmic slop these days we get it

00:25:43.240 we do and that's okay too you can just be porridge or you know you can you can dance on

00:25:50.600 the march to the witch's castle you know you can say into the mirror as you listen to that twin

00:25:56.900 temples song like i'm a witch i am a witch i'm a witch i'm a witch patriarchy i do what i like

00:26:04.820 all that stuff and you know give us the strength to understand ourselves

00:26:10.040 Call back your power 0.95

00:26:12.300 On the march to the witch's castle 0.96

00:26:13.840 Or just melt into cosmic slop 0.78

00:26:16.100 We're here for either 1.00

00:26:17.060 And bless the fuck 1.00

00:26:18.700 We love you 1.00

00:26:40.040 If you want to support the Missing Witches project, join the coven.

00:26:51.860 Find out how at missingwitches.com.

Missing Witches - March 11, 2024

MW Rx. 42 - Join The March To The Witch's Castle

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