Missing Witches - Part 1 Missing Witches - The Divine Invites You To Dance

00:00:00.000 Happy Letha! Happy Solstice Witches! 0.97

00:00:06.000 Risa and I are so excited to finally be able to share with you our first ever Missing Witches live event, which we did in May.

00:00:15.000 We're super grateful to the AJC and to Jonathan in particular for inviting us to their conclave

00:00:22.000 and entrusting us with the beautiful space of Westmount Park United Church.

00:00:27.000 the Conclave was kind enough to set up a stationary mic for this recording but

00:00:31.860 we fooled them by moving all around the space so you may find the sound a little

00:00:35.400 inconsistent but guess what life is a little inconsistent here's part one and

00:00:42.480 part two is also online now happy solstice witches you aren't being a 0.92

00:00:47.640 proper woman therefore you must be a witch 1.00

00:00:52.560 Be a witch. You must be a witch. 1.00

00:01:22.560 And we sort of venerate an act of spirituality, we have a lot of members, even clergy, who also have connections with both magic mysticism and witchcraft.

00:01:30.980 The Mystic Witches podcast first episode was on Pixie Coleman Smith, a figure that was involved with a lot of the esoteric and occult orders of the late 1800s, early 20th century.

00:01:42.140 She helped design, well, helped design, she designed and made one of the most important terrors ever.

00:01:48.800 She's a figure we venerate.

00:01:50.160 So to make a long story short, there's actually a lot of connections between our community and that of modern magicians, modern witchcraft, modern mystics.

00:02:01.060 And you may miss that by looking at some dudes in collars.

00:02:05.920 So I'm really happy that the witches are here today.

00:02:08.740 We're kind of bringing together some streams that are actually cousins.

00:02:12.620 Maybe second or third cousins, but we are related.

00:02:15.600 So take it away.

00:02:20.160 Thank you.

00:02:50.160 Echek to Demeter Valley

00:02:53.460 Evando

00:02:55.480 Echek to Susan's art

00:02:56.680 diagnosing Diana

00:02:57.940 Echek to Degrowth Valley

00:03:00.880 Eidona

00:03:02.800 Echek to Susan's art

00:03:04.200 with Diana

00:03:05.080 Dective Demeter Valley

00:03:08.020 Eidona

00:03:09.400 Echek to Susan's art

00:03:11.580 with Diana

00:03:12.540 Echek to Demeter Valley

00:03:15.400 Eidona

00:03:16.860 Echek to Susan's art

00:03:18.760 Hi, this is a podcast.

00:03:43.060 Thanks for coming.

00:03:48.760 The theme of this conference that we were invited to participate in is the Divine Feminine.

00:03:59.820 We sort of started the Missing Witches podcast as a research project.

00:04:04.500 We wanted to go looking for our heritage.

00:04:07.860 We wanted to go looking for witches, real women, who practiced and what did they practice.

00:04:15.840 It was looking for family treats in a way.

00:04:20.220 And also we sort of stumbled into a kind of improvised witchcraft and spirituality from a place of loss.

00:04:29.080 We lost a friend and we didn't know how to mourn her.

00:04:31.980 We didn't really have the tools for that.

00:04:33.340 And for a lot of reasons, for myself anyway, the church that I grew up in bums me out.

00:04:42.260 There's a lot there that I don't feel at home in anymore.

00:04:44.840 and so for us to be in nature and making up songs and feeling empowered singing together

00:04:50.120 was sort of the place that our podcast came from many years ago so we uh started the missing

00:04:55.960 witches podcast with um this is a feminist history storytelling podcast where we try to fill in the

00:05:03.240 gaps of our mental maps of what a witch is where are they and what have they been doing so when we

00:05:09.000 we were invited to this AJC conclave, we wanted to approach it the same way. What is the divine

00:05:15.900 feminine? Where is it? And what has it been doing? And when we started looking into this, we found 1.00

00:05:21.660 by and large, the number one answer, how to access, how to engage the divine feminine is through our

00:05:28.120 dance, through our human bodies, be they male bodies or female bodies, or human bodies, animal

00:05:34.880 bodies dog bodies we saw lots of wonderful dogs today so i'm a little bit

00:05:38.940 so um that's what we're doing here we're looking at dance we're looking at divinity we're looking

00:05:46.480 at femininity we're looking at our bodies and we're seeing how all of these things connect

00:05:50.940 under the umbrella of witchcraft yeah my name is risa and i'm amy these are our panelists i mean

00:05:58.800 the ideas of divinity, femininity, we're going to unpack those. So we brought our beautiful

00:06:04.860 panelists, Jackie and Phoenix. When we do our podcast, it's usually in two parts. One

00:06:10.740 is like historical storytelling and the other half is interviews. So that's basically how

00:06:16.340 we're going to do this. Rhys is going to tell us some stories. We're going to get you guys

00:06:20.100 to dance. Yes, I see some hands clapping and some fists raising. So welcome. The Divine Feminine

00:06:29.560 invites you to dance. We have an episode that tells the history of a painter and witch named

00:06:40.000 Monica Show. And the story we love about her that we always come back to was that she was an activist

00:06:45.220 witch and she on an Easter Sunday came with a congregation of women activists into a church

00:06:54.000 and they they came in singing that burning times chant that we sang on the way in and

00:07:01.060 on the altar they debated with the priest and she told the history she interrupted a public

00:07:06.960 mass to tell the history of the women's genocide of the of the witch burning times and so in her

00:07:14.200 honor we sing that song um and we wanted to bring it into this hall of stone with you guys today

00:07:20.360 ultimately the priest that uh was the priest at the church that monica show and her group

00:07:26.900 invaded for lack of a better word ultimately he invited her and their group to finish the song

00:07:32.900 and to speak their truth so again we want to thank jonathan for being that priest who invites

00:07:38.740 witches to express themselves on a pulpit. We're super grateful to be here. My relationship

00:07:44.480 with church is a little different than Reese's. I grew up in the church, and I have very fond

00:07:50.840 memories. But again, I grew up in the United Church, which here we are. It's a progressive

00:07:56.640 church. Marriages of all kinds you saw outside. It's about love and openness, and we hope

00:08:03.540 to bring that out of you, out of your souls, out of your bodies today.

00:08:08.760 I'll close this sort of chatty part with a quote from Monica's show, and she tells the

00:08:13.220 story of coming in and coming into the church and then leaving and feeling like they were

00:08:18.600 sort of being expelled at the end and sort of feeling a little bit tired and a little

00:08:23.500 bit drained the way we sometimes are when we've been activists and we wonder if that

00:08:27.220 has any purpose, if we've changed anything.

00:08:29.060 she said we however felt immensely empowered and like we had broken the sound or mind barrier of

00:08:35.860 some sort something had happened on cosmic proportions when we returned to the conference

00:08:42.140 women were drumming ecstatically for hours and we were dancing

00:08:45.740 Today for this, our first live episode of the Missing Witches podcast in this holy hollow

00:09:12.460 stone, or hollow holy stone, in the generous and welcoming heart of the apostolic, Johannite

00:09:18.940 church's annual conflict, I want to talk about dance.

00:09:22.220 The theme is the divine feminine, and neither of those words rests exactly with me, which

00:09:29.360 probably makes it a great theme to dig into over a couple of days, this is a very smart

00:09:33.180 and thoughtful example.

00:09:34.180 The closest I've come to something that jives with my own personal definition of the divine

00:09:39.580 is this, from philosopher Martin Rupert.

00:09:42.760 When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly,

00:09:46.720 God is the electricity that surges between them.

00:09:50.000 Except my instinct is that the goddess goes much further.

00:09:53.280 She is that quick silver surge,

00:09:55.040 not just between humans, but between animals.

00:09:58.280 Crows with their generational memories,

00:10:00.820 seas gasping with ties, the living trees.

00:10:05.000 And if we are trying to relate authentically and humanly

00:10:07.360 to create that holy electricity,

00:10:08.820 and if you're trying to call and connect with ourselves and others to be that spark of the divine,

00:10:13.960 and if you want to access a different polarity of the divine than that which has been preached by the major religions,

00:10:19.900 a desire that by its very nature disrupts patriarchy,

00:10:24.500 maybe we need to approach her not sitting still and straight. 0.94

00:10:28.120 Maybe we need to dance.

00:10:34.040 I want to think about dance as a tool for your craft,

00:10:36.920 as healing magic, as ritual,

00:10:41.020 as a place where each of us can meet that surging electricity,

00:10:44.960 the divine feminine or masculine, our ancestors,

00:10:49.180 the living, emergent presence of the life principle

00:10:51.860 that spurts and twerks through our muscles.

00:10:55.220 I want to think about dancing an opportunity to move our minds

00:10:58.580 in sync with our bodies and our shadows and each other.

00:11:02.640 My very gay and very wise friend Jonathan moved to Montreal from Edmonton.

00:11:09.640 He took a class on bogey and realized that somehow unconsciously in his life he'd been

00:11:15.640 educated to hold his wrists straight, to still the swish in his hips, to pass straight, and

00:11:23.640 then unlearning those constraints unleashed in him a power.

00:11:28.640 On the flip side, I have repeatedly in my life, and even getting dressed for today, struggled to figure out what feminine is so I can perform it correctly.

00:11:38.640 Funnily enough, it was in a pole dance studio that I felt most connected to a feminine power that had previously confused me.

00:11:46.640 I got really into pole dancing for a couple months, you guys.

00:11:50.640 Spinning upside down, holding a pole with my thighs and bathing suit while a teacher yelled, 0.99

00:11:54.640 Pussies to a pole, baby! 1.00

00:11:56.860 Pussies to the pole! 1.00

00:11:58.380 With deeply trustworthy. 0.99

00:12:00.800 In general, though, feminine mostly eludes me as such a precise point.

00:12:07.300 Stereotypes of gender, whether applied to homo sapiens or divine essences,

00:12:11.720 seem mostly useful for constraining and preoccupying us.

00:12:15.320 Maybe so we don't get down to the necessary work of knowing the weird

00:12:18.820 and wonderful truths of our own bodies and our powers,

00:12:22.080 and abusing that knowledge and power to save the planet in grief.

00:12:26.080 Because make no mistake, we are in a fight for our lives.

00:12:30.080 Every tool we can grasp that gives us freedom and energy

00:12:34.080 and hope is magical, divinely.

00:12:38.080 Can I give an amen? Actually, wait.

00:12:42.080 Yes, wait.

00:12:46.080 But I was thinking, maybe in recognition of our shared sorrow

00:12:50.080 sorrow, for the damage that we brought, for the destruction that we face, I could get

00:12:57.080 a share of, aww man, aww man. I want to talk about dance as ritual, that unleashes power

00:13:08.080 and wills the sick. I'll take the example of the Korean good, which literally translates

00:13:13.080 to good, one example of the infinite variety of dance-based rituals from around the world, 0.91

00:13:19.080 performed predominantly by men's sin, which literally means 10,000 spirits.

00:13:24.940 The men's sin are priestesses, women's shaman, each dance with its own unique power

00:13:29.880 during healing or prosperity to individuals, families, or communities.

00:13:34.460 And I want to talk about Anna Halperin.

00:13:37.100 She's considered one of the mothers of postmodern dance.

00:13:40.620 She used dance to capture a serial killer, to diagnose and then recover from her own

00:13:45.940 cancer and launching movement in our therapy and before i start my weird quick step through

00:13:52.820 these loosely connected ideas i want to treat you gentle listener whether you are in this room in

00:13:58.740 the west mountain united church or in the holy room that we create together between our ears

00:14:06.340 to close your eyes and in silence to hear your breath

00:14:10.500 and beneath your breath your heart place your hands on your heart and listen to the baseline

00:14:22.740 that is with you all the time please keep your eyes open and bring your awareness down to feel

00:14:31.220 that internal rhythm in your pelvis in between your hips and sway just a little private saloon

00:14:40.500 Nobody's watching. 0.93

00:14:41.880 Your own horror Babylon sex goddess early Elvis moment. 0.93

00:14:47.400 Do it in the room or do it in your mind.

00:14:50.640 The neurons that fire when you dance or when you remember dancing are almost exactly the same.

00:14:57.200 Almost as though spirit is dancing within us all the time.

00:15:02.440 Imagine your hips are wrapping you side to side with a safe and quiet seat

00:15:07.840 beneath the vast depths of planets and stars.

00:15:12.320 Imagine you are a tree in a summer wind.

00:15:15.780 Imagine you are holding a sleeping child

00:15:17.920 in your arms, and you are rocking,

00:15:22.040 and you are beyond tired,

00:15:24.280 but the movement comes at its own volition.

00:15:28.260 This is the beginning of the dance of this episode.

00:15:32.800 Rock your child, and by your child,

00:15:35.480 I mean that unique spark of life that is in each of us to bring forth into the world whatever form it may end up taking from you.

00:15:43.480 Rock this spark of potential in your mind back.

00:15:48.480 Let your strict spine and tense wrists go softly and feel the milking, bone, blood of your strength.

00:15:59.480 It is holding you rock naturally.

00:16:03.480 The space in your pelvis is full of echoes of the mothers who have rocked us, and the

00:16:09.580 mother-self who is one of ourselves, who rocks us even when we are alone.

00:16:15.920 Bayou, your mother, Gaya, if you like, who gives air every time we hope to take a breath.

00:16:23.560 Hold her safely in your belly and her heart and in your lungs as we get to. 0.89

00:16:32.200 From 1979-1981, from 1979-1981, six women were raped and murdered on the map to alt-days 0.95

00:16:43.680 across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

00:16:47.880 The trails were closed, and the community lived with helplessness and range.

00:16:53.040 At the time, Anna and Lawrence Halkin were reading a community workshop called A Search

00:16:57.280 for Living Myths and Riches.

00:17:00.580 The participants decided to enact a positive myth in dance, the reclaiming of the mountain.

00:17:05.580 That ritual, called In and On the Mountain, was performed over several days and included

00:17:10.580 a walk along the very trails of the killings of the world. 0.96

00:17:15.580 The Tanaka dancers performed dance offerings in honor of the waters, the winds, the earth, and the fire. 0.75

00:17:21.580 In the fire dance, they enacted the violence of the victim and the killer, reversing roles

00:17:26.580 roles in some of every body.

00:17:31.280 The evening's portion of the ritual ended with a plea for restoration and peace.

00:17:36.880 After the dance, the audience and performers continued the ritual aspect of the evening

00:17:40.580 by creating, in smaller groups, a passage the next day's event.

00:17:44.580 The main ingredients of this passage consisted of a feast, a dream wheel, and a sunrise ceremony.

00:17:50.580 The dream wheel is a community ritual in which members of the group sleep together in a circle

00:17:54.580 with their heads towards the center.

00:17:57.580 The intention is to form a group vision,

00:17:59.580 which is constructed collectively in the morning

00:18:01.580 as members share their night's dreams.

00:18:05.580 On the Mount completed the ritual with the dancers

00:18:07.580 and other participants challenging the killer directly

00:18:10.580 by walking down the mountain with each alone.

00:18:15.580 A few days later, police received an analysis tip

00:18:18.580 of ultimately the lead to the capture of the trail site.

00:18:23.580 Don Jose Monsua, a huge old shaman, then 109 years old, visited Anne Halpern and heard this story.

00:18:30.140 He said, this mountain is one of the most sacred places.

00:18:34.460 I believe in what your people did, but to be successful in purifying this mountain,

00:18:37.980 you must return to it and dance for five years.

00:18:41.660 And so the living myth grew. Inspired by the philicidal capture of the killer

00:18:46.700 and mindful of the shaman's counseling, the dance continued for five years every spring,

00:18:50.860 Each time, deeply when participants ever stand and expand their vision.

00:18:55.860 In 1985, the dance was renamed Circle of the Earth, where participants had once danced

00:19:02.860 to reclaim a small measure of peace on the mountain.

00:19:05.860 They now danced to restore health and peace to the planet.

00:19:10.860 Circle of the Earth's planetary dance continues today.

00:19:14.860 The 39th Animal Planetary Dance on Mount to Mount Base is coming up June 2, 2019.

00:19:20.700 I've been assured the parking situation will be much remodeled to create this place.

00:19:26.140 As her biographer, Janice Ross, an experience as dance puts it,

00:19:30.140 Anna claims the capacity for contemporary Western life to create its own ritual.

00:19:36.940 Circle of the Earth was informed by singular ritual dances like Sundance.

00:19:40.540 From the description, a few years ago Anna had the privilege of attending a Native American

00:19:46.160 Sundance.

00:19:47.160 The Sundance requires a deep commitment on the part of the participants.

00:19:50.540 They must spend a year preparing to do it, ten days before they fast and take sweats.

00:19:57.540 The performer begins the dance with prayers and blessings and then submits to having the

00:20:01.540 leader take sharp bear claws and penetrate his chest.

00:20:05.900 The bear claws are attached to the thorns who stretch out like a maple to the young green tree planted in the center with dance wings.

00:20:13.900 They dance in rhythm around the pole until it is time to release.

00:20:17.900 Then they pull away, with the weight of their bodies, until the bear claws tear open in flesh.

00:20:25.900 At this particular performance, one male dancer was unable to release the claws, and we saw his excruciating and painful struggle.

00:20:34.900 Anna turned away. 0.99

00:20:37.140 But next to her, an old woman sitting on the tile ground suddenly and fiercely snatched 1.00

00:20:41.700 a twig and walloped Anna on the shins of such force that she doubled over.

00:20:46.040 And Anna learned in that one split second that as a witness, her role was to support

00:20:51.020 the performer.

00:20:52.620 She was not there to be a judge, to be entertained, to see a spectacle.

00:20:58.040 She was there to pray, to encourage, to make sure the performers achieved their task and

00:21:03.480 to be totally and irrevocably present.

00:21:06.280 She was there to admit peace.

00:21:09.160 Circle the Earth is a peace dance.

00:21:11.300 Not a dance about peace.

00:21:13.400 Not a dance for peace, but a peace dance.

00:21:15.580 A dance in the spirit of peace.

00:21:17.260 It is a dance that abides our fears of death and destruction.

00:21:20.860 A dance that becomes a bridge and then crosses over

00:21:23.420 into the dynamic state of being called peace.

00:21:27.500 Circle the Earth is a dance of peacemakers.

00:21:29.960 A dance that makes peace with itself.

00:21:32.100 makes peace between the performers, makes peace with the spirit, and ultimately makes peace with the earth on legit means.

00:21:39.100 In a world where war has become a national science, peacemaking has become a community, a planetary art in the deepest sense of the world,

00:21:48.100 an exemplification of our ability to cooperate with creation, an expression of our best collective aspirations, and a powerful act of magic.

00:21:59.100 We'll circle back to Anne Hall, but first, more of her powerful magical and collective

00:22:05.140 dancing tradition.

00:22:08.140 Shamanism is Korea's oldest religion, predating the introduction of Buddhism and Confucianism.

00:22:14.100 Some of the dances performed by the Madison, or more collectively known as the Udine, trace

00:22:19.700 steps that are literally pre-story.

00:22:23.340 Since the 15th century, non-Confucian religions were suppressed, and in the 1890s, Protestant

00:22:28.420 missionary demonized Korean traditional religion and led campaigns of violence and oppression.

00:22:34.820 South Korean anti-superstition policies in the 1970s and 1980s wiped out ancestral shrines.

00:22:41.420 In North Korea, shamans and her famines were targeted as members of the hostile class

00:22:46.420 and were considered to have a battle so hard to maintain the body.

00:22:51.420 But Korean shamism was blossoming in any way in South Korea.

00:22:55.420 Sometimes as a nationalist performance, sometimes as a contemporary art practice, and sometimes

00:23:00.920 as a longing for a spiritual value that is nature and excess performance.

00:23:06.420 A personal connection to the spirit world.

00:23:09.420 In North Korea, it's estimated that close to 16% of the population practices some form

00:23:14.420 of traditional religion or shamanism.

00:23:19.420 Contemporary Korean shaman Yoon Mi said,

00:23:22.420 I also compare our practices to those of the Native American people.

00:23:26.020 We pray for the mountains.

00:23:27.740 We pray for the sea and for the sky.

00:23:30.460 When we perform a ritual dance, we communicate with the spirits of our ancestors who serve

00:23:34.540 as a bridge between us and God.

00:23:37.420 We find solutions to problems people face with the health of the spirit world.

00:23:42.420 Young Koreans see us as a sort of therapy.

00:23:46.780 South Korean artist Park Chan-kyung sees his country's traditional spiritual practices

00:23:51.100 as a way to imagine a way beyond modernization,

00:23:54.840 the speed of which he believes is in part responsible

00:23:57.080 for creating a capitalist greed and lack of concern for others

00:24:00.540 that leads to catastrophes like the Seawall Pharisee, 2014,

00:24:05.140 where 304 people were there. 1.00

00:24:07.080 Yeah, mostly true.

00:24:11.220 In his film, Citizen's Forest,

00:24:13.600 Park stages a haunted procession of ghost-like figures in silver masks.

00:24:18.520 He based the scene partially on the good.

00:24:21.100 of rites like a village festival with dancing, chanting, and sacrifices to gods.

00:24:27.020 Shamanism, he says, encourages not only community, but also feminist community,

00:24:31.260 as well as branding participants as sense of their place in the larger popular future.

00:24:37.020 When we go looking for the witches we've been missing, part of what motivates that for us 0.94

00:24:41.980 is a need for a feminist history. That is, not just a history of women, 0.98

00:24:48.300 but of stories that move in different ways and to different places because they follow not only

00:24:53.580 the women's and underrepresented people's biographies, but also their ideas and their

00:24:58.700 spiritualities, their rituals, and their methods of forming a human community.

00:25:06.620 Shang-Umi and me describes her experience being hit with the Shang sickness that would change the

00:25:10.940 direction of her life. Prior to the ceremony, I may recall falling very ill to the brink of death. 0.65

00:25:17.580 I was 26 when I first showed symptoms of what we call shamanic illness, or shamanic crisis.

00:25:23.580 I first started to experience facial paralysis.

00:25:27.900 Every night I was filled with terrifying visions and even visits from the spirits.

00:25:31.800 I tried both traditional Korean and Western medicine, but doctors failed to diagnose my illness. 0.93

00:25:38.020 After four months of visiting doctors for their consultations, my mother took me to a local Uday house. 0.98

00:25:43.780 At the time, I thought only psychologically people visited the mudang. 1.00

00:25:49.780 With just one glance at me, the mudang said, 1.00

00:25:52.780 You need to accept your calling, or else you're going to die. 1.00

00:25:57.780 You need to accept the calling, or else you're going to die. 0.63

00:26:02.780 If by chance you listen to our episode on Mama Lola and the Aoife voodoo tradition, 0.90

00:26:07.780 this idea of spirit sickness will sound familiar.

00:26:10.780 and the Mauritius made contact, attention must be paid.

00:26:14.780 Which is not to say that modern medicine isn't spectacular when we live.

00:26:18.780 We are witches who love science.

00:26:22.780 Sometimes the sickness, though, has its roots in the soul,

00:26:26.780 or in the spirit. Sometimes sickness is a call to change our lives.

00:26:30.780 Maybe a magnetic pull from a polarity we've been missing

00:26:34.780 in a world crushed under patriarchy is so much more complex.

00:26:38.780 A call to healing, or to seeking, or to creating, or to being in our body and in our natural world again.

00:26:46.780 As Gus Beth, former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in my bio,

00:26:52.780 two presidents famously wrote,

00:26:54.780 I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change.

00:27:00.780 I thought there was 30 years of good science when we could address those problems.

00:27:04.780 That is wrong.

00:27:06.960 The top environmental problems are selfishness, need, and I.

00:27:11.500 And to deal with those will be the spiritual and cultural transformation.

00:27:15.780 And scientists don't know how to do that.

00:27:22.060 You see that boy quote you said, Lee?

00:27:25.220 That's a great boy.

00:27:25.940 That's what I tell you, too.

00:27:30.560 One way to do that might be to dance.

00:27:34.780 I don't know, it might be. Maybe alone, maybe together.

00:27:38.780 As Cynthia Wiggen-Henry points out in Dance, the Sacred Art,

00:27:42.780 religious anxiety about the body seems to perfectly sink out

00:27:46.780 with the timing of the onset of industrialization and colonization.

00:27:50.780 Wanting to believe that commercial prosperity would bring happiness

00:27:54.780 and immediate suffering, a lot of people would keep proud of the industrial machine.

00:27:58.780 And as they did, their folk songs, stories, and dances diminished 1.00

00:28:02.780 diminished like the Indian species. 1.00

00:28:06.080 Decade after decade, new industrialized, civilized, 1.00

00:28:09.680 progressive values spread to other continents,

00:28:11.980 they began to devastate many of the world's dancing cultures.

00:28:15.780 Indigenous leaders like the Northern Plains Shaman, 0.89

00:28:18.180 Wilboka, who dragged and created the sun dance,

00:28:21.280 saw the effects of this, and warned his people,

00:28:24.480 all Indians must dance, everywhere, keep on dancing.

00:28:28.980 Pretty soon, in the next spring, great spirit will come.

00:28:32.280 enhance your dog dance or grow little, just about a foot high in the state of life. 0.89

00:28:38.600 Losing sight of the goodness of the body in dancing held the likes of Jewish theologian 0.63

00:28:43.920 Mark Hoover to state the obvious scenarios again.

00:28:46.960 The soul is not really united unless all bodily energies, all the limbs of the body, are united.

00:28:56.040 Colonization, religious conversion, and the monotone of capital swallowed dance with Aaron

00:29:00.600 and the answers, and treated witches and shamanes alike.

00:29:05.600 In Muda and German Discourses on Shamanism in Global Korea,

00:29:09.600 a PhD thesis by Rose Wren, she writes,

00:29:13.600 the first reports on shamanism in Europe coinciding with the rising tide of the European spirit witchcraft.

00:29:19.600 Christian Russian settlers in Siberia chose this expression, shaman,

00:29:23.600 and eventually began to apply it to all native spiritual leaders.

00:29:28.600 Western civilization would find itself in a shamanism, creating an adversarial relationship

00:29:33.560 between the developed world and indigenous people, between science and magic, between

00:29:38.360 established and charismatic religion, and between institutional and alternative ethics.

00:29:45.360 A word gets picked up and used to define, constrain, contain, demonize, convert, and compromise.

00:29:53.280 In some places, that word is witch,

00:29:55.740 and in others, it is shamming.

00:29:58.900 At the same time, as part of a parallel process,

00:30:01.840 an equal and opposite reaction,

00:30:03.720 definitions are disrupting,

00:30:05.560 and shamans and witches whirl,

00:30:07.440 and smashing, reinventing, and reclaiming words

00:30:10.480 as their home in the fertile, 1.00

00:30:12.980 divine and feminist process of decolonization.

00:30:18.940 Anna Halpin says, seeing her grandfather dancing,

00:30:21.900 Twirling in the ecstasy of movement in his temple lit the fire movement within her.

00:30:26.700 She couldn't speak the same language as him, but she understood something fundamental about how they were connected when she saw the ecstasy of the body in prayer.

00:30:36.000 She's been explicit in her work and writing about the goal of creating contemporary urban rituals.

00:30:42.160 Rituals that are part of the great work of healing our communities and our earth and our sons.

00:30:46.600 Her biographer wrote through dance and has authored the possibility of reconstituting

00:30:53.480 dance.

00:30:54.480 In her book, Returning to Hell's Dance, Movement, and Imagery, Al Pelprin describes the dance

00:31:01.360 which reconstituted her own world and her own body.

00:31:05.920 I have wanted people to draw the own images, she writes, reflect upon them, and begin to

00:31:09.960 learn the language of these images in their own bodies.

00:31:13.440 This process of connecting our internal imagery involved dancing with images that welled up

00:31:18.440 from the unconscious as another way to connect the mind and body.

00:31:23.440 Over time it became clear that I was receiving messages from an intelligence within the body,

00:31:28.440 deeper and more unpredictable than anything I can understand with my rational thought.

00:31:35.440 While I was exploring this process, I drew an image of myself that I was unable to dance.

00:31:41.440 It was a signal to me, why couldn't I dance it?

00:31:44.580 I had drawn a round ball in my pelvic area.

00:31:48.280 I intellectualized it, but then later that night

00:31:50.640 when my mind was quiet, I had intimations

00:31:52.940 that the image had something to tell me

00:31:54.680 and that I was in your mind.

00:31:57.760 The next day I made an appointment with my doctor.

00:32:00.620 I asked him to examine me precisely

00:32:02.660 where I had drawn a round ball,

00:32:05.180 and he died of his rectum cancer.

00:32:08.380 I went through the traditional operation procedures

00:32:10.740 radical ones at that which left me with a colossal feeling of real uncertainty about my future.

00:32:16.580 Would I ever dance again? My doctor assured me that if I didn't have an occurrence within five

00:32:20.980 years, I would be out of the woods. Three years after my operation, I had to record this. And I

00:32:27.060 knew that I would have to make some drastic changes in my life. Let me describe an example of how I

00:32:33.140 was able to learn something about my life story, the mystery of my own personal imagery, and my

00:32:37.940 connection to the natural world by dancing my self-portrait. When I construed myself,

00:32:42.940 I made myself look perfect. I was young in bright color. My hair was glowing in the wind.

00:32:48.940 I was the picture of health and vitality. When I looked at the picture after drawing

00:32:53.940 it, I knew I couldn't even begin to dance. It just didn't feel like me. I turned the

00:32:59.940 paper over and seriously began to draw a leather hair to myself. It was black and angular and

00:33:04.940 and angry, violent. I knew this back-side language was the dance I had to do. 0.99

00:33:10.940 When I did it, I was overwhelmed at the rage of anger inside of me.

00:33:14.940 I kept stabbing at myself and making howling noises like a wounded animal.

00:33:18.940 Some say I spoke in tongues.

00:33:20.940 I had to have witnesses because I knew that unless I did, I would never be able to go through this video.

00:33:26.940 My witnesses were my family and my colleagues and my students, and I kept honest,

00:33:30.940 urging me to go deeper. Reinforcing my sounds, calling out parts of the picture, it was to dance.

00:33:37.940 I danced until I was spent. When I collapsed, I began to stop with a sense of great relief.

00:33:43.940 Now, I was ready to turn the picture over and dance a healing image of myself.

00:33:48.940 As I danced this image, I imagined my breath as water, and my movements flowed through my body just as water would flow.

00:33:56.940 I imagined the water was cleansing me.

00:33:58.940 I had an image of water casting over the mountains near my home,

00:34:01.940 and then the water flowed through me

00:34:03.940 out to the endless vastness of the sea,

00:34:05.940 taking visit my illness.

00:34:07.940 I believed I was experiencing the forces of nature

00:34:10.940 as they are recruited onto my body.

00:34:13.940 Something happened in that dance that I can't explain.

00:34:17.940 I felt I had been on a mysterious journey to an ancient place.

00:34:22.940 I am so captivated by the discoveries that happened

00:34:25.940 process and in this roadmap for healing journey that I often forget to tell my friends and

00:34:30.940 readers that after this dance my cancer went into spontaneous remission.

00:34:35.940 It has always seemed more important to me that I have found a way to live my life while

00:34:40.940 coping with this, than what the actual outcome has been.

00:34:44.940 In a certain sense, it is the healing aspects that interest me more than the cure, because

00:34:49.940 healing is a whole process available to all of us, all the time.

00:34:54.940 A cure is an event, and it is neither predictable nor always available.

00:34:58.940 In my personal journey from the self to the many,

00:35:02.940 I have learned that we are all connected to each other and to the natural world in which we live.

00:35:08.940 The power of the dance to heal reaches its fullest potential

00:35:12.940 when we are able to tap into this sense of illness,

00:35:15.940 and to feel this connection to all that is around us.

00:35:19.940 I think whether we are seeking to heal ourselves, or to heal the sickness of grief and poison

00:35:28.140 in the world, or both, because maybe they're wrong, we need to tap into the sense of others.

00:35:34.940 Dr. Mike Samuel, director of the Art of the Healing Force Center in California, writes,

00:35:39.940 Art and Ritual are the doorways into the realm of the heart, the tool for the transformation

00:35:45.940 now see. They are what opens and what changes. When a person dances or imagines dancing,

00:35:52.940 the area of the cerebrum that holds images across a movement is stimulated and sends

00:35:57.940 messages to the hypothalamus. If the dance image is one of deep joy or grace, the body

00:36:02.940 is put into a healing state through the hyperbolic pathways. The body conveying every cell in

00:36:07.940 the body with a hormone multiplier, this imagery lights up and around that same brain.

00:36:12.940 Throughout recorded history, artists have believed that their images have power in themselves.

00:36:17.940 The shamans are the first artists in healing.

00:36:19.940 The shamans have lived in them, lived in spirits, acted, brought back the healing of the main art.

00:36:25.940 He or she told the tale, crafted the masks, dance of song, and brought the inner world outwards through ritual.

00:36:32.940 Shamanic ritual is believed to actually have the power to change the physical world.

00:36:37.940 Art and ritual is a healing force of being born as we speak.

00:36:41.940 This art is meant to change now. It has the power to transform.

00:36:46.940 We are on the doorstep of a great journey, and I call this work as one of the first steps.

00:36:51.940 Imagine where we would go from here.

00:36:54.940 Imagine the dance shows of the world, and the kitchen dances you do when cooking alone,

00:36:58.940 and the dance I hope you'll make of your own self-portraits,

00:37:01.940 and of your drawings of the world as it is and could be when you all go home,

00:37:05.940 when no one is watching, or when you're having them there to witness and uphold you.

00:37:10.940 you. Imagine all of these

00:37:12.980 and more are part of how we will witness

00:37:14.820 and imagine the past human.

00:37:17.380 Imagine the dance of celebration

00:37:18.960 we will do when we are free.

00:37:37.620 End of part one.

00:37:39.900 Listen to part two now.

00:37:41.420 If you have questions or comments,

00:37:43.080 hit us up on social media at MissingWitches

00:37:45.320 or at MissingWitches at gmail.com.

Missing Witches - June 21, 2019

Part 1 Missing Witches - The Divine Invites You To Dance

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