Missing Witches - MW Rx. 51 - Darkness Bring The Light

00:00:00.000 The Missing Witches podcast follows the wheel of the year, with true histories of real witches in the autumn, and meditations on kinship with the more-than-human world in the spring.

00:00:11.820 Stay with us in the off-season for The Missing Witches prescription, plus interviews and Sabbath specials all year round.

00:00:19.340 Join us as we change with the seasons, but always return to our roots.

00:00:24.520 If you want to support The Missing Witches project, join the coven!

00:00:28.920 Find out all about it at MissingWitches.com.

00:00:46.700 Hi, Coven.

00:00:48.880 Hi, Risa.

00:00:50.440 Hi, Amesie.

00:00:51.980 Hi, Coven. 0.99

00:00:54.340 How the fuck are you? 0.99

00:00:55.960 it's spring and spring is springing which is just so hopeful and such a wonderful reminder 0.99

00:01:06.280 that you know what is dormant can come alive again and um it's amazing to me that i can

00:01:14.220 look outside and there's there's nothing and then literally like two days later

00:01:19.940 the stuff is just shooting out of the ground like fireworks it's it's amazing how quickly

00:01:26.180 things can change and again it makes me hopeful that things can change quickly

00:01:32.720 yeah I feel the reminder of joy everywhere in the spring you know it's such a relief like

00:01:41.540 our joy is very powerful our joy is more powerful even than our rage and our sorrow I think

00:01:47.800 although those things are crucial and deeply powerful and part of the wheel of feeling

00:01:53.380 in the wheel of the year but joy man I need a little bit of it I love to see the kids at the

00:02:02.220 students at the encampment I loved to see the joy in Montreal this week when McGill tried to bring

00:02:07.320 an injunction against the encampment the kids and have the police clear it out and the police for

00:02:12.520 the second time were like no like they're not doing anything illegal so no we're like they're

00:02:20.420 allowed to do this hey guess what we're the courts guess what peaceful protest is legal

00:02:27.480 and i i had a funny conversation with my stepdad about it he's a professor at mcgill and

00:02:33.440 was very moved by peace movements in the past and now he's in this sort of authority position

00:02:39.640 He's trying to understand it. The things that he's hearing about what the kids are doing is so different from what I hear from the perspective of people who are inside the encampment, who are organizing arts events or whatever. And I'm following on Instagram because I live far away. But I had an interesting conversation with him about it.

00:03:00.260 And it was really, the most moving part was for us to both remember that, like, there is this brutal urgency to it.

00:03:14.160 And so to ask the kids, the protesters, the brave students who are out there living out there trying to write their final exams to, you know, to adjust elements of their demands to be less demanding.

00:03:33.980 you know he even said like you know if we cut all academic ties with Israel then aren't we

00:03:41.700 cutting ties with the most left wing often like the people who have been arguing against Netanyahu

00:03:48.760 for so long and I was like yeah I don't know like I don't know why they would ask that and he said

00:03:53.760 oh well it puts pressure like it puts an urgent pressure if we start to sever links it puts more

00:03:59.020 and more pressure internally and I was like well then it makes a lot of sense to me to do it like

00:04:04.400 this pressure of bursting through the urgency it's like it's right now it's I understand that

00:04:11.160 like bureaucracy has to move the way bureaucracy has to move and courts have to move and all those

00:04:17.020 systems like they take time but people are dying right now so I absolutely understand pushing

00:04:23.920 everywhere you possibly can pushing with that urgency to say that this has to be resolved

00:04:29.600 there has to be a way for people to be at peace like anyway I know I'm still talking about that

00:04:35.860 it's still it's still happening it's still deeply in my mind and in my heart and I see it when I

00:04:41.340 look at my yellow forsythia flowers in bloom they the joy is always going to be tinged with sorrow

00:04:47.040 while the world is still at war and we're always going to be conjuring for for for joy for peace 0.86

00:04:53.960 for the whole whole fucking world you know i i insist upon my utopian imaginings and and so

00:05:00.780 that's part of my prescription today i my family go ahead i just want to shout out world central 0.98

00:05:07.620 kitchen you know they were made big news because um the idf killed seven of their team members

00:05:16.000 um but despite that they have opened a third field kitchen in gaza like they just won't stop

00:05:26.100 helping and just as an aside if you're looking to make a contribution to the missing witches

00:05:31.240 reparations fundraiser i made a donation to world central kitchen like a couple months ago

00:05:36.100 and i really um i i recommend that you know you can enter our fundraiser by donating to

00:05:42.620 world central kitchen who again like the idf killed seven of their members and their response

00:05:49.720 to that was not to shut down but rather to open a third field kitchen in gaza so shout out world

00:05:56.320 central kitchen risa you were you were saying i was just gonna say my prescription for this week

00:06:02.060 is is rooted in joy um and it's rooted in indigenous joy there's my family loves

00:06:11.560 the original tribe called red album may request it in the car um

00:06:17.620 we you know it's so intense the rhythms are so intense the chanting is so intense it's like 0.93

00:06:24.580 we're having a fucking dubstep party in the car on the way to school in the morning on the way 0.94

00:06:29.760 of free gay um they've renamed to the hallucination and the video i want to bring the song i want to 0.98

00:06:40.080 bring is called sisters oh i'm so happy i love that song but i i do have to say that um they

00:06:51.280 changed their name to hallucination hallucination um based on the work of john trudel the poet the

00:06:59.320 poet and musician that i brought a couple weeks ago so it's all connected which is we are all

00:07:04.820 connected we are all connected and i love my sisters i'm so excited you brought that song

00:07:09.820 it's so joyful and watch this video and feel these women's joy and power and let's lean in

00:07:17.960 if you're making a reparation donation to a native women's support org in defiance of the epidemic

00:07:24.620 the genocide of missing and murdered indigenous women in north america this these unsolved and

00:07:30.720 constantly building and terrorizing murders and kidnappings and loss in this community

00:07:36.800 as an antidote to that make a donation reparation and then dance with these joyful 0.99

00:07:41.900 fucking powerful women and remember their joy and power too um and let's all embody that 1.00

00:07:49.240 joy as a revolutionary act 1.00

00:07:51.820 I think

00:07:52.440 Yes, I brought 0.86

00:07:55.360 Ellis Sapi

00:07:59.240 who is

00:08:01.080 originally from Nunavik

00:08:03.800 which is like way far north Quebec

00:08:05.680 like you can only get there by airplane

00:08:07.460 but she lives in Jojage

00:08:09.280 aka Montreal now

00:08:11.620 and she sort of 0.89

00:08:13.780 rose to prominence

00:08:15.920 when she put out this album of

00:08:17.720 cover songs like Heart of Glass by Blondie and Unforgiven by Metallica, but translates them

00:08:25.000 into Inuktitut. Yeah, Heart of Glass was one of the first prescriptions.

00:08:30.640 Really? Yeah, I brought Elisipi to one of the very first prescriptions because Ivy's dad is in that

00:08:37.600 band. Mae's little bestie, her dad's in the band, so is often touring with Elisipi. We love them.

00:08:45.100 We love this album so much

00:08:46.900 I'm so happy you're bringing another song by her

00:08:49.380 Well I brought one of her

00:08:51.440 Original songs

00:08:52.960 Because like while the covers are super cool

00:08:55.060 And wonderful this is the one that struck me

00:08:57.420 It's a song called Darkness Bring the Light

00:08:59.580 Darkness bring the light

00:09:03.460 Darkness bring the light

00:09:06.400 Darkness bring my light

00:09:15.100 and a lot of the lyrics are just this repetition of darkness bring the light

00:09:42.620 darkness bring the light darkness bring the light and um i hope you'll listen to the song

00:09:49.100 it's become sort of like a mantra for me when i'm when i'm feeling low i'm like darkness bring

00:09:55.800 the light darkness bring the light and and it's it's been useful for me as like a call out to the

00:10:03.540 universe i know risa you had quite an encounter with a light in the darkness and i want you to

00:10:10.560 tell us more about it right now before we say blessed monkey me okay okay darkest bring the

00:10:17.180 light i have to tell my borealis story just briefly i'm still processing this experience

00:10:25.060 but i just want to share with you if you didn't see it or you saw glimpses of it i want i wish i

00:10:33.380 could just share the entire experience with you but we were we'd gotten the kids to bed it was me

00:10:39.460 two friends who were up with their little kid they finally got to sleep at like 10 we went outside

00:10:44.780 we were just finally relaxing and then the first thing we saw was this sort of beam of green

00:10:52.400 and we're kind of shooting across the sky not moving quickly shooting is the wrong word but

00:10:58.320 and we're like you know it would kind of look like that if it was gonna be visible here it would that

00:11:03.860 would be what we would see that's what we've seen once or twice before a couple of just bands of

00:11:08.360 glowing green but then it was like it got turned up and turned up and more complex and more

00:11:16.600 beautiful and louder for hours and hours and hours there was these shapes in the sky that were

00:11:25.880 moving like a slow motion stop motion animation and they were spread out across the entire sky

00:11:33.200 and it had these long feathered shapes at the bottom and a curve in the middle and a beak and

00:11:39.020 it was the three of us it was so clear we were watching this bird in flight it was moving its

00:11:44.760 head it was moving its wings up and down but it was this beautiful massive I don't know what a

00:11:50.620 thunderbird looks like but I imagine it looks like that it was so so beautiful and the way that the

00:11:59.220 light moved in it was unlike anything I've ever seen except in digital art there was sort of these

00:12:04.420 prismatic rainbow colors that sort of shimmered through like they were like they were passing over

00:12:11.620 it really quickly and then there were these moments where whole shapes would light up and

00:12:18.600 glow like they'd been hit with lightning but the lightning was sort of slow motion so it was like

00:12:23.540 pieces of the sky and these different shapes getting lit up and to think that that was happening

00:12:29.380 because of a storm on our sun you know that we we circle this glorious massive ball of flame

00:12:40.680 that may marigold has informed me is where heaven is and everyone who lives in heaven is made of

00:12:47.000 light um and it's a big crank door you gotta crank it to get in oh the crank door is

00:12:53.520 It's new.

00:12:54.300 That was a new detail.

00:12:55.520 Yeah. 0.99

00:12:57.760 Bless her.

00:12:58.800 I love the crank.

00:13:00.340 She stands up on her chair when she tells us about it.

00:13:02.920 It's really fiery.

00:13:05.760 Yeah, it was in that darkness.

00:13:09.040 And we just couldn't leave.

00:13:10.380 We lay out for hours and hours watching it.

00:13:13.720 Every time we went to leave, something more spectacular would happen.

00:13:17.200 And we really felt in that moment, one, that we understood.

00:13:23.520 centuries millennia of cultures feeling that the sky was a place of deity or or of magic or of

00:13:32.780 spirit that's kind of undeniable when we were watching it and that there was a message there

00:13:38.920 about our kinship felt really undeniable and the other piece that was really emotional for us when

00:13:46.220 we spoke about it the next day was that it made the bubble of the atmosphere visible because the

00:13:53.060 images curve around the sky and so it also made us feel incredibly vulnerable and fragile that

00:14:03.480 these are there's this massive storm happening and it's it's so big it's like 12 times our planet

00:14:09.620 the field where the storm is and this teeny little bubble of just the right gases is sort of

00:14:17.920 protecting us you know and and jupiter this massive gas bubble is is protecting us from

00:14:23.720 asteroids it's gathering them up in its gravitational pull like we are being loved

00:14:28.560 and protected by these forces we think of as inanimate um and maybe they are but they're

00:14:34.940 they're protecting us nevertheless thank you jupiter right i also um i want to do a quick

00:14:44.080 update like as of this moment when Risa and I are recording this um we are at the exact halfway

00:14:51.940 point of May which means we're halfway through our fundraiser and we are like less than three

00:15:00.560 thousand dollars away from besting what we did last year so I really want to call out um if

00:15:07.980 everybody who's listening to this podcast can scrounge around in their couch cushions you know

00:15:13.520 check last year's winter coats to see if there's a ten dollar bill in there then then we will

00:15:20.980 we will really really really blast past what we did last year so you don't have to go broke

00:15:30.200 but again if you can scrounge up ten dollars for the coins from your couch cushions or

00:15:36.500 the tray in your car or return some bottles like we really we we do this fundraiser ten dollars at

00:15:47.780 a time and we do have some donors shout out brie um our biggest donor every year but ten dollars

00:15:54.700 at a time is how we is how we make like baby steps you know the journey of a thousand miles

00:16:00.400 begins with just one step and all that and i really will tell you that like you could buy a

00:16:07.340 couple lattes but i can't guarantee that you're gonna feel better about spending that ten dollars

00:16:14.920 um supporting your local indigenous support organization or like i said before world central

00:16:21.660 kitchen again like how inspiring to know that they they dealt with the murders of um their

00:16:30.100 their staff and the the murders of the palestinian people by opening another field kitchen like that

00:16:38.780 to me is so there's not even a proper word like inspiring doesn't cut it you know so once again 1.00

00:16:48.300 I guarantee, like, if you spend $10 on donating to a humanitarian organization, you're going to get more of a boost than you do from caffeine. That is for sure.

00:17:03.420 And so, again, like, we're halfway through as of this recording, and you've still got two weeks left to make a donation of $10 or more to your local indigenous support organization.

00:17:16.440 and a reminder too like there are thousands of dollars worth of prizes that you can win

00:17:21.820 and you as soon as you make a donation you'll get a discount code from house which so

00:17:26.480 they're everyone's a winner and especially like when we work together to just insist on hope

00:17:34.120 to just insist upon hoping if you think of it as a ritual sacrifice if you think of it as

00:17:42.440 you know buying yourself some flowers but like emotional flowers soul flowers you know we've

00:17:50.660 been talking a lot about actual flowers that grow out of the ground and have petals and all that

00:17:54.480 but just like the notion of flowers as as a way that humans articulate joy and pain and hope um

00:18:05.200 yeah scrounge around in your couch cushions take a look in the little tray of your car

00:18:10.540 go and look in your winter coat from last year and see if you left a couple bucks in there

00:18:15.840 see if you can scrounge up ten dollars and donate it to your local or to the native women's shelter

00:18:22.400 of montreal of course yeah i just want to add my favorite stories from this are people write

00:18:29.720 into us to tell us you know i didn't know if there was any native run operated non-profit

00:18:38.020 in my community at all. And I had like never looked like it just never came up for me. I never

00:18:44.020 googled that. And so I did. And then it turns out like the place around the corner from where I

00:18:51.320 work where I always thought the mural was really beautiful is a Native women's support organization.

00:18:56.740 And now I donated my money to it. And now I've signed up to attend this event. And it's like

00:19:02.520 people suddenly feel like oh there's this I want you to find these networks of hope like I want you

00:19:09.240 to find these pockets because it can feel so dark but like people have been working together for a

00:19:16.820 really long time to solve these problems and just because they aren't solved yet and they're still

00:19:21.740 heartbreaking doesn't mean that work isn't deeply rooted and you can find it and you can put 10

00:19:28.920 bucks at it and also just like feel your life move towards these i don't know these sort of

00:19:36.360 magnetic wells of of insisting upon joy i want that for all of us darkness bring the light 0.98

00:19:44.980 i mean and blessed fucking me and blessed fucking be we love you 0.98

00:19:54.380 the missing witches podcast follows the wheel of the year with true histories of real witches 0.99

00:20:23.320 in the autumn and meditations on kinship with the more than human world in the spring stay with us

00:20:29.420 in the off season for the missing witches prescription plus interviews and sabbat specials

00:20:34.840 all year round join us as we change with the seasons but always return to our roots if you

00:20:42.220 want to support the missing witches project join the coven find out all about it at missingwitches.com

Missing Witches - May 20, 2024

MW Rx. 51 - Darkness Bring The Light

Episode Stats

Transcript