00:06:25.300Amy. Thank you. Now I'm going to pass it to Risa and I will let in these people who have been,
00:06:33.020who missed the song. Oh, beautiful people. What a pleasure to see you. I'm going to just
00:06:43.240suggest a couple of quick things about Zoom. I know it's 2021 and we've all been in Zoom
00:06:50.480for forever but just in case um if you remember at the top right you can change the view if you
00:06:58.000want to change to gallery to see everyone or if you want to just see who's speaking you can adjust
00:07:03.040that if you want to mute yourself it's in the bottom left and and right at the bottom there's
00:07:09.520a chat so i invite you to introduce yourselves in the chat we're really excited to see you
00:07:17.200our guests will be our formal official i guess um our our primary participants our primary
00:07:26.720collaborators today will be introducing themselves but while they're doing that we'll invite you to
00:07:30.960do the same so we're inviting them to share where they are and who their unseen collaborators are
00:07:37.920so think about it we want to hear that from you too in the chat um my name is risa i am the co-host
00:07:45.360and co-creator of the Missing Witches podcast. I am the co-author with Amy of our book. And
00:07:52.600the book is the reason we decided to throw this event. We do these monthly within our Patreon
00:07:58.680and they were sort of something we stumbled into and have been really profound experiences for us
00:08:05.180in getting to know other people, other practitioners who are thinking about this
00:08:09.340intersection of awe and science and so we thought maybe as a way to celebrate this book in a weird
00:08:18.260pandemic time we would do these and open up the invitation and we were really floored to see
00:08:23.320people wanted to join us so in that spirit I'm going to read a little kind of segmented piece
00:08:30.860from the Samhain chapter of the book because it's a book event and we want to share with you
00:08:35.800the words that we worked on and the reason why we called this event
00:08:39.420um what we did look look for a door into the unknown country um
00:08:46.400yeah so I'm going to begin with that and take a deep breath and sort of settle into my nerves
00:08:53.120of sitting and reading in a strange way
00:08:55.500Samhain sits in the space between one year dying and the next being born and in that time we get
00:09:04.380glimpse into an unknown country the word means summer's end and it is a window ledge a lintel
00:09:11.580on the doorway a liminal evening through which we are leaning into the darker half of the year
00:09:17.420at least from here it is a festival of death a festival of meeting our end as well as our ideas
00:09:23.420about death it is a time for encountering the knowledge that this comes to us all stepping out
00:09:29.340off the edges of all maps in our travels through the underworld witches become map makers writes
00:09:35.340amanda yates garcia the oracle of los angeles meeting death is beautiful and horrible inspiring
00:09:42.700and the most terrifying and so we dress up to meet this specter in ways that hide us or empower us
00:09:51.020disguise and amplify us in past years amy and i have celebrated this season together
00:09:57.020she'd get dressed up in full glorious drag and we'd give out candy for hours or until it ran out0.77
00:10:03.260where i would throw a party for hundreds of masked revelers playing one of my favorite roles1.00
00:10:08.620lurking in the background in black making my magic unseen and amy would roll in just in time to win
00:10:14.700the costume contest but this year death looms and hangs all around us like spider webs
00:10:21.980we are mid-pandemic at the time of writing the coronavirus counter jumping by tens of thousands
00:10:29.300every day my parents are in self-isolation a friend is separated from her children working
00:10:35.60012-hour days in the ICU others from our coven are on the front lines in grocery stores or
00:10:41.900supporting women quarantined in unsafe homes another loses her daughter to cancer and can't
00:10:47.840collapse into her parents' arms. A friend's sister dies of suicide. My great-aunt drives herself to
00:10:55.080the hospital rather than telling anyone she is sick and risk infecting them, and she dies of
00:11:00.320coronavirus there alone. We are weighted with loss and afraid for our elders and ourselves and for
00:11:08.320the future. By the time this book comes out, the world will be different somehow. We usually look
00:11:14.180the future with a certain kind of confidence that things will progress rationally gradually but the
00:11:18.900future itself is that unknown country it is a box in which we are both alive and dead and we know it
00:11:25.300now more than ever the borders have closed and people sing to each other from their balconies
00:11:30.500trying to remember the touch and friendly crush of crowded bars or a joyful hug or sloppy two cheek
00:11:35.940kiss on the street maybe by the time you hold this book we will all have rushed back into each other's
00:11:41.940on us. Arundhadi Roy writes, our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to
00:11:49.500normality, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture.
00:11:55.120But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink
00:12:00.720the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
00:12:07.400Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew.
00:12:11.940This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
00:12:17.540We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our databanks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us.
00:12:27.080Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world and ready to fight for it.
00:12:34.380for me it turns out that the best way to face death and to prepare to walk through this portal
00:12:40.820lightly and to fight for a new world is to continue to do this work to see you all here with me this
00:12:47.400great circle we make with our sympathy and our hope this work of prying open the stories we've
00:12:53.380been told not just to include the spectacular and heroic lives of women and witches of all genders
00:12:58.700and gender-conforming magical beings, but also their shocking and glittering ideas, this is
00:13:04.460healing work for me. Together we disrupt the death spiral that has tried to erase what is magical in
00:13:11.100all of us. Together we cast a circle, keep a portal open, and we help each other through.
00:13:19.740The guide we've chosen for this season is iconic tarot artist Fixie Coleman-Smith.
00:13:25.020we tell some of her story in this book a life on the road with artists and theater people and
00:13:29.660sailors in the late 19th century art school at pratt which she doesn't finish because her mother
00:13:34.940dies in jamaica and she's wrecked by migraines she writes and illustrates a book and her father
00:13:40.540takes her on a book tour and she meets bram stoker and william butler yates and finds a family in 1907
00:13:47.420she had a major show of 72 drawings and watercolors in new york and a major critic called her pieces
00:13:54.460absolutely nerve-shattering. Back in London Pixie hosts a weekly at home for artists
00:14:01.820performing Anansi stories from the Jamaican tradition she'd grown up in. This young woman
00:14:07.260living all alone became a connector and a focal point for artists and thinkers.
00:14:14.060And at this time she was living in parallel. She was a working artist and she was also a member of
00:14:19.820of the Golden Dawn, immersed in ceremonial magic.
00:35:20.480Hi everyone. I am Angela Alberto. I live in Portland, Oregon on Cowlitz, Chinook, unceded lands.
00:35:30.000and I am a death midwife. I am someone who helps families remember how to take care of their
00:35:40.440ill and dying and have, if they want, host home funerals, etc. This is my spiel, right? Like,
00:35:51.340you know, what else, what else do I do? I also, I work with kids and I help parents, teachers,
00:36:00.100and educators talk, learn how to talk to their kids about death and dying. It's so funny because
00:36:09.040I, I love the opportunity to be able to bring my witchy self out as well. And I do pretty
00:36:19.200frequently but it's really nice to be able to tie those things together here like being a death
00:36:25.240midwife and being a witch is what gives me the ability to do this work um one of the things that
00:36:35.480we uh amy and risa requested is that we send photos of our work and what's interesting is
00:36:41.120each photo that you see here that first one was um my favorite place to go hiking the second one
00:36:48.460was the moon in my house. This one is right around the street, like right around the corner
00:36:54.960in my neighborhood. And what I feel like I've recently been going through is a homecoming
00:37:04.580to myself. And I feel like 2020 has been a time for me and 2021, a time for me to like really
00:37:12.820claim the things that I know I'm supposed to be doing, like helping the dead, helping those
00:37:19.840loved ones who are dealing with the death of a loved one, talking with kids about this work.
00:37:27.760And it's just, there's been so much death, as we all know, and so much grief.
00:37:35.760and our society has refused to to face it in in for years past right and now I feel like
00:37:47.700the dead are leading the way and asking to be held and looked at and moved forward and
00:37:54.740cared for and given offerings and there's no denying it the fact that we are all mortal
00:38:03.340and like how do we want to accept that and choose to live each day and how can we like hold this
00:38:13.220collective grief that we're all going through the grief of our planet dying or shifting I don't know
00:38:19.400how you want to look at it right now the grief of like all the all the people we lost due to this
00:38:27.400virus like all of us have been affected from this and like I'm here to hold that torch in the dark
00:38:37.280so we can like tend to our hearts and it's really scary being in the dark sometimes but there are
00:38:44.440those of us who know the way through the labyrinth and that's why I'm here and that's what I do and
00:38:52.240And I still, you know, even though I'm in the dark often with this work and, like, looking at death, you know, I still have very human reactions to it sometimes.
00:39:08.380What you see here in front of me is on the screen, these are my bones that I throw and cast.
00:39:15.460um I'm a bone thrower this is something that also links me to my death work and links me to my
00:39:22.340ancestors um I don't know what else to say about it other than it's one of my favorite ways to
00:39:31.180to divinate to do divination um and I feel like I'm rambly trying to like keep up with the slides
00:39:37.520and then share what's on my mind but whatever it's all good um and this is my the image of
00:39:42.980my presentation that I am releasing out to the public at the end of this month. So this is like
00:39:48.580a new thing where because of all the death that's happening and because of all the ways that
00:39:57.220some of the, you know, like the kids, they know that like things are going on for their parents
00:40:07.040and for themselves. You know, some of the older children that I work with who are
00:40:12.3207, 8, 9, they remember being in school and didn't have to wear masks, right? There's grief there
00:40:19.080for these kids. So I feel like right now it's this collective energy where we're being asked
00:40:29.200to look at how we interact with our own grief when it comes to death, loss, and dying. And that
00:40:36.280could be, you know, it doesn't have to be a physical death of a person. It could be the death
00:40:39.720of the way things once were, right, the transition of that, but I think we're all being asked right
00:40:48.500now to look at these dark places, especially because of the fact that it's Samhain, and also
00:40:55.720the fact that, you know, the past two years have been so much collective death, so I ask you to,
00:41:06.800the question that i wrote was this but i think i'm going to change it on the fly
00:41:12.120um no it's the same okay my question is more of a brainstorm like how like i want to hear
00:41:23.040how are we going to move forward with this collective grief that we're carrying
00:41:27.460and how are we going to handle our grief remember to grieve how are we going to celebrate
00:41:34.260like find hope and balance right and i i just ask of you to
00:41:41.280to know yourself when grief arises because how you handle it is how your kids are going to handle it
00:41:50.640they you model for them when death and loss and grief and happiness and joy and love
00:41:58.900when all the emotions come around you as the adult in kids lives and this isn't i'm not just
00:42:03.880talking to like people who have kids like I don't have children and they model from me because I'm
00:42:09.180around kids right kids watch adults so I just ask you to know yourself well when it comes to your
00:42:16.060grief and find appropriate healthy ways to converse about it and deal with it and move
00:42:23.940with it because it's a cycle grief it doesn't there's no end point it's just gonna like the
00:42:33.040turn of the wheel it's going to keep going round and sometimes it'll be easier and sometimes it'll
00:42:38.800be harder thanks Angela yeah beautiful and Carol you're here I'm so glad to be here and I want to
00:42:52.760thank everyone who's here with us today and especially Risa and Amy and the guests so I'm
00:43:00.900going to show you nine images that will tell you a little bit about my interspecies art practice
00:43:06.840huh what's that um i think of my practice as being part of a working team of mycelia sheep
00:43:16.060dive plants herbs all the critters of the earth soil chickens and bees and what we're doing
00:43:25.780together is trying to bring to life in people the concept that the idea of the biological
00:43:33.440individual is really a lie. We are made up of all kinds of critters. We have more non-human DNA
00:43:40.980in us than human DNA. Part of this work is dissolving the boundary between life and death
00:43:48.080as the mycelia lead and teach us. And by doing that, we're kind of reinforcing the understanding
00:43:55.540of the web of life. That's all the text. Now I'm going to show you eight images to bring this to
00:44:01.040life. This is my backyard in Hartford. It's a little urban space that's full of dye plants,
00:44:08.860all the beings I described except for the sheep. And that little building in the back is where I0.83
00:44:16.740weave with mycelia. So basically the idea is that mycelia and I are weaving together. We are
00:44:25.260co-weavers of sculptures that are used in workshops to help people, and we can look at the next one
00:44:31.760now, to help people understand that they are part of this kind of biological multiplicity.
00:44:39.780And after those sculptures are finished working in workshops, the mycelia and the textiles that
00:44:47.860we make together go back into the earth. And this is the revivified earth that we depave to find in
00:44:56.660our backyard and that we nourish through these sculptures. So here's a little detail of the
00:45:03.680mycelia of oyster mushrooms poking forth in one of these sculptures. And here's my friend Lauren
00:45:10.260in one of the workshops. I like to create sculptural objects where your skin biome can have a little
00:45:18.000chat with the mycelia of the oyster mushroom. And so there's skin to mycelia, contact mycelia from
00:45:27.220the skin, talking to mycelia from the weavings. And then they go back into the earth and they
00:45:36.840just dissolve. They bring the living mycelia into the backyard. And so then I have these
00:45:47.600mushrooms popping up. I've taken to placing wood chips as part of my soil sustenance practices.
00:45:57.220and the mycelia love love love this and it's been delightful to see how now I have a run of mycelia
00:46:06.580through the backyard from these oyster mushrooms as well as the honey mushrooms and other mycelia
00:46:14.420that are already there. So this spring was the first spring that the oyster mushrooms volunteered
00:46:33.700is that recently my dear friend Rob and I
00:46:37.560started a small spinner's flock in rural Connecticut.
00:46:44.440And so here we have Thor on the left and Rob on the right.
00:46:48.840And this has deepened my awareness of death and life and blurring these lines a little bit because part of the responsibility of tending sheep is understanding the web of life in terms of predation and the critters who are looking for food constantly.
00:47:11.260and aren't we all but coyotes bobcats and bear in particular are the apex predators in this
00:47:21.600part of the world and recently we had a lone male young coyote who we saw on our wildlife cameras
00:47:32.300out there that kept getting closer and closer and visiting and revisiting and preparing to take one
00:47:39.140of our sheep. And we made the decision to trap and kill it. And then I did a ritual to0.98
00:47:50.940honor its life, plan to use its pelt, nourish the soil with its body, and made this sigil on the
00:48:04.080left that's part of that awareness that when we're part of the web of life, there is life
00:48:11.440and death that's part of that. And when we are shepherds with these very domesticated
00:48:18.920animals, there are times where we may need to protect them in that way.
00:48:25.860So when I got the invitation to talk about death and had recently had this experience,
00:48:33.180I thought I would bring it in. I know it's a difficult subject, but I feel it's important to acknowledge this complexity of being part of the web of life where we're all dying, living, feeding, nourishing, sacrificing, being sacrificed together in a way.
00:48:54.360So my question for the group is, what experience have you had recently that has helped you go deeper with your experiences of death?
00:49:05.600And what traces does that leave you in your life?
00:49:12.100Thanks, Carol. And thanks, everyone. These questions are all so profound.
00:49:20.100i'm going to switch turn off screen share and switch to speaker review and i invite you to do
00:49:26.340the same so you can see whoever is speaking or you can stay gallery view it doesn't really matter
00:49:32.020we will have a little bit of time to dig into these open questions not enough time as any of
00:49:38.340these questions deserves there are sort of an endless interweaving questioning for ourselves
00:49:43.860i'll also share them on all of our social media after so if you want to come back to those
00:49:50.380questions and keep opening them up and like i said before we do have these conversations on
00:49:56.260our patreon so if you want to come and chat with us when we're over there all the time
00:50:00.760um i invite you to pick up any of those questions but maybe um we could turn first
00:50:09.020to this idea um I don't know Carol or Becky if you had thoughts on this
00:50:16.020a white feathers question about our owning our our power our our our manipulation and how do we
00:50:26.120find that balance um with our collaborators or our ways of of manipulating the world that are
00:50:35.440not in perhaps collaboration sorry if i didn't phrase that well wait further
00:50:42.240and yeah i'm happy to i'm happy to uh step in and attempt to respond to that magnificent and
00:50:50.960magnitudinous question um i um i really love this question and i've been thinking and wondering
00:50:57.760whether um as with your position as a witch you're well placed to kind of bring this idea of kind of
00:51:06.320um ritual as a kind of care practice into the way you're working with materials um yeah so i i
00:51:15.580totally agree that the idea of kind of more than human collaborators so often gets bandied around
00:51:21.540and again it's things we've discussed previously that collaboration implies that level of consent
00:51:27.520so if we don't have the consent what other things could we do that bring care into the mix
00:51:32.840and it could be things such as kind of how we ask permissions how we respect that material whether
00:51:39.660it's kind of how we handle waste or the um or yeah by adding that element of ritual perhaps
00:51:47.560that extra time that extra layer of um noticing and attention and gratitude for the material that
00:51:55.480you're working with um yeah we can infuse those moments of um yeah what was so-called manipulation
00:52:03.340um with kind of care and consideration and and a sense of reciprocity um so yeah I think that's
00:52:11.280something especially as from a witch standpoint we are well placed to try and introduce into some
00:52:19.100of those spaces perhaps beautiful beautiful i i really appreciate the question and also becky's
00:52:27.920thoughts on this um one of the things that has struck me recently about this manipulation
00:52:34.240and the hand is the practice of letting go i'm currently here in marshfield um vermont at the
00:52:44.380marshfield school of weaving learning ancestral practices of spinning and weaving and there's a
00:52:50.680gesture in spinning where you're drafting with the wool and you're letting the spinning of the wheel
00:52:58.240carry the wool right out of your hand you're letting go um i knew the phone was going to ring
00:53:05.560if i spoke let's consider it the ancestors calling in yeah um but this idea that you uh can manipulate
00:53:14.140by being still and letting go and listening and learning by releasing is something that's
00:53:22.820really palpable for me right now. And I think part of that is that I was raised to always have this
00:53:30.440agency and do things. And so for me, one of my lessons is to be still and to release and listen
00:53:38.820more go ahead Amy yeah I just wanted to sort of include this like you know paradoxical notion
00:53:52.440that comes up in all aspects of our lives and especially witchcraft these things that
00:53:58.640don't have singular meaning um Whitefeather you bring up this word manipulation and and it has0.65
00:54:06.900a negative connotation oh she's a manipulative person they're just doing that to manipulate me
00:54:13.020but there's also this notion like you say white feather just using our hands to do things and
00:54:20.240Risa and I of course are authors we're writers um so when we we think about language all the time
00:54:30.140we manipulate words and put them in different places to create sentence structure and even
00:54:36.160a single word such as manipulate can be manipulated to mean other things to form
00:54:44.360other ideas so i just wanted to draw attention to this like non-binary universe of of you know
00:54:52.360mushrooms and magic and language and when we even when we ask these questions of each other they're
00:54:59.100sort of bound by our vocabulary the words that we know the sentences structures that are familiar to
00:55:07.000us so I'm trying to sort of shake off this idea of manipulative and the heavy negative connotation
00:55:15.840that I feel like it has for me when I hear it as someone who who who strives to be you know
00:55:22.640authentic and honest and collaborative you know to use that word in the same sense that
00:55:29.660White Feather said it implies consent and all of these other things you know so
00:55:34.460when I boil pasta I'm manipulating the laws of physics in order to make this meal for myself
00:55:43.540you know heating water and boiling it and putting dry goods into it so I just get excited about this
00:55:51.880notion of being conscious of our manipulations and I think that works when we're trying to get
00:55:59.060other people to bend to our will and being more conscious that that's what we're doing
00:56:04.760but also the the magic of our hands and our ability to create sentences
00:56:09.780use those sentences to create ideas use those ideas to create things
00:56:16.020anyway um someone in the chat is is saying manipulation and participation and putting
00:56:23.280those words together you know it's the mere act of existence um thank you jonathan oh it's jonathan
00:56:29.100so that's what i wanted to say about that that everything is is it has the possibility of
00:56:35.700manipulation including the words that we use at all times yeah i think a lot of people are
00:56:43.240responding to what you're saying in the chat Amy and I did want to circle back we had the question
00:56:49.780about how are we Carol's question and Angela's question I think are related how what is an
00:56:55.820experience that has deepened your relationship with death and how are you mourning um those
00:57:03.960questions hit really hard for me when I got to my inbox after asking for them um I mean this year I
00:57:12.240I keep realizing how numb I am and keep trying to do the work to not be numb but also to protect
00:57:18.980myself um I think it relates to how I think about manipulation as well actually that for me it's
00:57:25.780about hospitality and boundaries what what can I welcome and how can I care for the things that I
00:57:31.540have called in and welcomed and when do I need to make safe boundaries um and I need to welcome
00:57:38.180my mourning and my sense of being too far afield after the last year and being unmoored and I need
00:57:48.300to find like Angela said safe places to sit with that but I also need to put up walls around it
00:57:57.060sometimes. Angela do you want to speak to that and I know also someone in the chat was generous
00:58:05.140with sharing their experience that a miscarriage even over a decade ago has shaped their whole
00:58:11.040understanding of death and I know that that is true for so many of us and is such an unhad
00:58:19.880conversation that I wanted to make sure I say it out loud that so so many of us have experienced
00:58:27.660life and death within our own bodies absolutely um there's a great woman named joanne and her
00:58:37.600instagram handle is inviting abundance and she has a class called holding space for pregnancy loss
00:58:44.200um that i'm currently taking and it's a beautiful beautiful thing and she talks about what i feel
00:58:52.680passionate about is like we need to have these conversations because so often people who have
00:58:57.340miscarriages or people who have stillbirths etc don't have the support system around them because
00:59:04.160people don't want to look at it they don't acknowledge it like when a death happens to like
00:59:08.980an elderly person people show up with the flowers and the food and they do the cultural
00:59:13.660thing that they're supposed to do but when it happens in a tragic way or um suicide or silver
00:59:22.620you know in the ways that are really hard to look at people forget to show up for the person
00:59:27.220who's in who's the griever not that they forget but it's that hard and I want to like Risa I want
00:59:33.900to acknowledge what you just said about the idea of being numb I think that's okay because you see0.66
00:59:40.440you see it and you know you're like I'm numbing now and that's okay because you know I think it's
00:59:47.600when we don't see it that it can become you know not a problem but it can become tricky
00:59:57.020so like good on you for being like yes i see this i know this about myself and i'm gonna need that
01:00:02.880boundary and that's great that's great um but yes i you know i'm so passionate about bringing
01:00:11.220these conversations to the table because there's so many ways that we grieve and there's so many
01:00:17.100ways we can support um you know i want to offer the idea like in our culture it's you know we say
01:00:24.640I'm sorry for your loss and what that does is like that cuts the connection between you and
01:00:31.200the person who's grieving so like figure out a way to like keep that heart connection with
01:00:36.860the griever by saying like that sounds so hard or I don't know what to say but I know I'm here for
01:00:44.580you that tells that that gives space for the griever to feel held right and all every single
01:00:54.640one of us is grieving right now so like I ask all of you like I don't know what to say but like I
01:01:00.320love you and I'm here and like legit like reach out to me if you're having a hard day and I'll
01:01:05.980take a moment to like send you love and support you because that's what we need to be doing right
01:01:10.500now is like weaving that web of connection and love and support as we all like walk this fucking
01:01:16.760dark path we're in it together you may not you might be dark but like I'm next to you on the
01:01:23.640floor and I have your hand and someone has my hand on this side we're not alone in this even
01:01:32.040though it might feel like that we're not i love you all thanks angela wait so long oh go ahead
01:01:41.680thank you oh sorry no i just wanted to respond to that and also to tie in something that angela was
01:01:47.400saying and uh with what amy presented to us at the beginning so um i've been thinking more i've been
01:01:54.620introduced more with the idea of lament and the fact that we do not collectively lament enough
01:02:00.040in society even with kind of this full planet grieving that's happening we jump to how do we
01:02:06.540solve it how do we get rid of it and we don't create that space with just that collective
01:02:11.260regret sadness sorrow and there's some wonderful work by artist Julia Adzuki who's talking about
01:02:20.640music she studies the Finnish Aurelian tradition I hope I've said that correctly and she says
01:02:26.740when one person sings their pain it strikes a chord and resonates with others and the idea that
01:02:33.760this sound needs to be heard and held by others in order to land somewhere and resonate and I think
01:02:39.680we kind of felt that at the beginning with Amy's wonderful offering um so yeah allowing places for
01:02:46.220those reverberations to to ripple amongst each other um yeah for me it's a way that I'm thinking
01:02:54.880around you know the missing part between uh crisis and resolution is actually this big space in1.00
01:03:03.720between for um yeah for lamenting the collective whale is needed there there's women in who used
01:03:14.880to get paid to go to funerals they're called keeners in ireland um in sardinia in italy they're
01:03:21.780the grieving women and they would get paid to go wail at funerals and that's a lost art that like0.98
01:03:29.720I want to bring it the fuck back because it is needed there's power in our in our storehouse0.99
01:03:36.380in our bellies when we let ourselves like wail from that space there's shedding of grief you0.99
01:03:45.480let it out of your body there's a um a talk by martin prischel called grief and praise and he
01:03:54.240talks about how grief can get stuck in the body and become hardened and become disease in some
01:04:00.440ways and like when you flow with it and move with it and do that one thing for five minutes if it's
01:04:06.700that you move it up out of your body and that like you know maybe i'll host the collective whale at
01:04:13.680some point we all can yell together muted maybe but you know or not I don't know um yeah thank
01:04:22.020you Becky that's it's so yes so true collective whale please um I want to tie that into a question
01:04:30.740that came in earlier on the chat from Jonathan my friend and collaborator here in Montreal
01:04:37.400and and maybe turn this one to white feather and then maybe to carol because this is a question
01:04:43.920about how we feel what are tactics what's your practice for feeling that you are not alone that
01:04:52.840you are ecosystem are there ways you can suggest first i've seen pictures of carol's um mushroom
01:05:01.580sculptures i balanced on on people just living and breathing that moment and then i went out and
01:05:06.820like dug my hands into the mushrooms near my house as the king of you charles so i know one
01:05:11.420one piece of the answer but i'd love to hear you both speak about that wait father do you want to
01:05:15.480start i know you had your hand up earlier too i was going to come back around to this idea of
01:05:23.440manipulation its relationship to death and mushrooms all together
01:05:30.380um in my practice and maybe it'll kind of swing around to what you're asking um i want i want for
01:05:39.900all of us to own our power to manipulate and you know i liked what you were talking about amy with
01:05:48.480acknowledging that it has this negative connotation but i think also that negative
01:05:53.820connotation has been used against us to take our power away. You know, and for me, working in a lab
01:06:02.100with microorganisms that I control and care for requires a great amount of humility, you know,
01:06:11.020working in science fields. And this is something that may often be missing, you know, from
01:06:17.480scientific experimentation, this sense of humility. And for me, my direct and immediate
01:06:24.380experience with death over the past two years, brought me to my knees brought me to a place of
01:06:31.140humility, on a very personal level, because I was infected with COVID in March 2020, you know,
01:06:39.240when nobody knew anything about it. And I was living every single day with the fear of death,
01:06:45.920I felt it close to me. It was in bed with me for weeks. And that made me realize that
01:06:53.720my experiences and my conceptions of death up until that point had been very much centered in
01:07:01.740the iconography of death. And, you know, these are tools that we use as witches to navigate these
01:07:10.180spaces that are perhaps unknown to us you know and they're scary and when you're in it and it
01:07:20.260becomes palpable and real and you're on the precipice and you know you can die at any moment
01:07:25.980this becomes a really traumatic experience and I feel like this is why it's so important
01:07:31.920to have people like Angela to, you know, support us in this space, in this transitional space.
01:07:42.220For me, I was able to get a lot of support from the mushroom world, you know, from microdosing
01:07:50.000psilocybin, which helped move me past that space of trauma and, you know, come back into the land
01:07:57.400of the living. This was my doorway, um, you know, through this unknown space, this, this was my,
01:08:05.860my Hecate, I guess, um, you know, this is what mushrooms did for me. So I feel like by sort of
01:08:16.580acknowledging the power of these non-human agents, um, also acknowledging, you know,0.95
01:08:24.160what I have to offer in terms of care, like Becky was talking about, how that reciprocal
01:08:29.420relationship can, you know, be conducted through a space of humility is sort of one way that I've
01:08:37.180been able to not feel quite so alone in one of the darkest times of my life. Yeah. Yeah. I think
01:08:48.220you have a lot of people who resonate with what you're saying, and I'm glad the mushrooms were
01:08:53.760there with you on that road back i'm glad glad you're here with us on this side whatever this
01:08:59.200side is carol will you take us take us home i think this will be thank you for sharing that
01:09:06.080white feather that was um i think part of our conversation that we really needed to hear
01:09:11.620um as we're thinking about uh ways of tapping into our fundamental connection with the web
01:09:20.780of life on the planet. I have a few thoughts. One is to definitely notice what creatures,
01:09:31.620beings are calling you and are tapping on your shoulder, because I think we are living in a time
01:09:37.880where the tree ones, the winged ones, the swimming ones, the four-legged ones are indeed reaching
01:09:47.840out to us, as are the ones who are no longer breathing. And so keep an ear out and respond
01:09:55.020and play. That's number one. My second idea is to remember the capacity you have through your
01:10:01.880senses. For me, I do a practice of every night as I'm falling asleep, opening up my senses to all
01:10:11.600of the life that lives within my body and it helps me relax. I put my arms over my head and
01:10:18.720it kind of stimulates that vagus nerve that just kind of calms your nervous system. And then I
01:10:25.120follow that with gratitude for the beings that are in me and around me. But I think the senses
01:10:30.680are such a reliable capacity we're gifted with in our bodies. And then I also wanted to say
01:10:39.860there's no coincidence that right now there's such a resurgence in mushrooms um they are
01:10:48.300caretaking us right now and whether um you're a psilocybin uh aficionado or want to be or whether
01:10:58.640you are somebody who just wants to think about the ways they are decomposing and building new
01:11:06.440worlds through death um there's so much that um mycelia can teach us so those were my thoughts
01:11:15.120thanks carol i'm glad you were the one to bring us home with that i know for myself one of the
01:11:23.520great quiet joys for me right now i i recently got a copy of julia skinner doctor which dr julia
01:11:30.860Skinner's fermentation oracle deck and she has in it the most simple recipe for mead which is just
01:11:38.000water and honey and you shake it every day and it glows in the light and you that's all you do
01:11:45.500and it's just sort of slowly changing the natural yeasts within it are changing and every day I hold
01:11:52.880it and I realized you know it's six months since I lost the job that had defined me for 10 years
01:12:00.840it's you know it's this year this two years of of death and overthrow it's you know three years
01:12:09.540since my daughter was born two years since she almost died in my arms it's I'm just turning this
01:12:15.380honey you know I'm just turning it and something is changing and that is all that I am at right now
01:12:22.180it's called the fermentation or the hidden cosmos of fermentation oracle deck
01:12:28.720by julia skinner she's been on our podcast as a closing word i will invite you all to
01:12:36.520listen to our podcast if you haven't before we we have people like the brilliant people here
01:12:42.280um who we are honored to sit with um and we tell stories of real witches um and if you want to join
01:12:51.560us on our patreon we have these conversations monthly it's not tiered so whatever you feel
01:12:58.840comfortable with we would be honored to have you and those are my little plugs um i hope you'll
01:13:04.860forgive a little plug on a friday afternoon um and i do want to continue this conversation with
01:13:12.540all of you um but i want to be respectful of everybody's time as well so i'm going to turn
01:13:18.700it over to my beloved friend and collaborator life changer my friend Amy and she will give us
01:13:27.460a last little bit of a reading and then we sort of changed our plan on the fly again and instead
01:13:32.360of whatever I was going to do she's going to sing that carol one more time and then we'll say good
01:13:37.600afternoon thanks everyone um I I really want to say on on this subject of collaboration and death
01:13:46.640um that Risa and I have have been collaborating since we met it's just sort of how we built our
01:13:53.580friendship but something that's very interesting to me is that you know she became a parent for
01:14:02.480the first time and six months later I lost a parent for the first time and six months after
01:14:08.720that she almost lost her child. So she and I have this sort of rooted system of this exchange
01:14:16.900between life and death and to us and why we're here it is both science and poetry. It is a wave
01:14:28.260that washes over us and a boil of a pot of water that we boil. Someone said to me in an Instagram
01:14:35.400message the other day that they felt that poetry was a bacteria that it travels
01:14:41.700and that to me is ultimately the goal one of the many goals of the missing witches project
01:14:51.380and something that I'll turn to a quote from another amazing witch that we reproduced in this
01:14:56.920book um to put a mighty fist up and also punch it toward the idea that witches are anti-science0.98
01:15:06.100witches are the original scientists and poets are scientists and scientists are poets
01:15:15.120and mycelium networks and poetry networks and networks networks networks and doing away with
01:15:24.960this notion of individualism that we have seen destroying our our love for one another
01:15:31.880so i just want to read a little bit from the introduction for those of you who haven't read
01:15:38.220the book i hope that um you'll pick it up and continue to ripple this bacteria that we have
01:15:46.280put into the world infect your friends with it um have conversations like these that are
01:15:53.760difficult difficult conversations are my favorite kind and the book is full of them because life is
01:16:02.940full of them you know we are life and we are death and in all of those things there is beauty
01:16:09.180and rebirth and the growth that comes from rot that is fundamental to each one of our works
01:16:17.220and our lives. There is no beginning, there is no end. Except in the case of this meeting that
01:16:24.280we're having today, there will be an end, and it's coming in a minute. With this book, we hope to
01:16:30.940reach out into the wider web of all those who feel drawn to be a witch. People who, like us,
01:16:39.860want a way to connect with nature and each other, but who find themselves alienated by dogma,
01:16:47.220Cynical of New Age spiritualism, or left out and insulted by the unexpected thorns of misogyny, commodifying racism, nationalism, transphobia, anti-science, and more, that can appear in modern mainstream paganism.
01:17:05.520Our beliefs are much more deeply rooted in research than in blind faith.
01:17:12.140But we still get funny looks from time to time when we call ourselves witch.
01:17:17.220dismissed as flaky or demeaned as illogical, we come to those encounters armed with the words
01:17:25.680of researcher, scientist, and author Majin Gonzalez-Wipler, who said in her book,
01:17:32.180The Complete Book of Spells, Ceremonies, and Magic,
01:17:36.220I don't believe in the supernatural. I believe in nature and all things natural.
01:17:44.340everything that can that happens in this world always happens through natural channels
01:17:51.080and in accordance with immutable cosmic laws all things both real and surreal
01:17:58.920are part of the cosmos where everything has a place and a reason for being
01:18:05.540so I take that with me not for the poetry and the mushrooms that surround me but also for myself
01:18:13.820and for all of us I have a reason for being I have a place and a reason for being and so
01:18:20.580do we all let's look for the door to the unknown country and find those reasons for being and find
01:18:27.480those places that no one ever imagined before and as you think on that I'll fade us out
01:18:35.580and you can feel free to leave or stay and listen or weep or stick around in the chat
01:18:42.800while i play these and again i'll do it twice so you can sing along the second time if you like
01:18:48.440unmute your microphone if you want to now let's get crazy and chaotic with noise
01:18:52.940as leaves and empires fall around me fall around me
01:19:09.940fall around me as leaves and empires fall around me fall around me
01:19:21.180fall around me i give thanks i give thanks for the spirit in all things