Missing Witches - We Are Bat Kin

00:00:00.000 Are you bat-kin? Looking to find a cauldron of your own and support the Missing Witches project along the way? 0.76

00:00:07.840 Then join our coven. Find out how at missingwitches.com

00:00:12.160 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:18.920 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:20.320 i am a creature of the night the bible says i'm unclean i've been painted as evil because i'm 0.92

00:00:36.240 special in ways that people could not understand i fly in the dark defying the laws of what men

00:00:45.240 know. Mysterious, villainous, enigmatic, suspicious, monstrous, and full of secrets.

00:00:55.900 Misunderstood, yet integral to the workings of our world. I am a witch, and I am bat-kin. 0.97

00:01:06.860 A group of bats is sometimes called a cauldron, so let's gather in or around a cauldron and look

00:01:14.360 for what we have in common, what we witches can learn from bats. Yes, we have been associated

00:01:22.300 for centuries because of our dark mysteries, and we'll see why and how. But first I want

00:01:28.640 to put something of the bat into your blood. Bats refuse to be exploited. We are bat kin 0.99

00:01:40.440 and we refuse to be exploited. In Cooperation, How Vampire Bats Build Reciprocal Relationships,

00:01:51.700 Gilbert Roberts writes, quote, helping others can be costly and leaves helpers open to being

00:01:58.200 exploited by those who fail to return the favor. So how can such reciprocal relationships get off

00:02:05.120 the ground. A new study by Gerald Carter, Rachel Page, and colleagues reveals that vampire bats

00:02:11.860 selectively build up grooming relationships before sharing more costly blood meals, end quote.

00:02:20.380 See, some bats have such a fierce metabolism that if they go without food or water for only 24

00:02:27.000 hours, they can die. Maintaining your own food or energy supply is very important to bats,

00:02:34.400 But it also means that sometimes other bats are going to need help if we want our cauldron or our species to survive.

00:02:45.620 So bats share, but they have rules.

00:02:50.900 Bats build their relationships slowly, testing the reciprocity of other bats with mutual cleaning and toilettage before even considering sharing their food.

00:03:04.000 Roberts writes, quote,

00:03:05.620 Perhaps the most famous example of reciprocity in animals

00:03:09.200 comes from the work of Gerald Wilkinson on vampire bats.

00:03:13.460 Vampire bats are colonially roosting bats found in Central and South America

00:03:18.280 which specialize in feeding on the blood of other animals.

00:03:21.780 This can be risky, and a bat that has failed to feed is susceptible to starvation.

00:03:27.700 Roost mates that have fed will sometimes regurgitate blood meals to those in need

00:03:33.900 End quote

00:03:35.340 Vampire bats will approach the needy

00:03:37.960 Rather than expecting the already depleted bat to come to them and ask for help

00:03:43.400 But if these bats take and never give

00:03:47.580 The other bats stop helping them

00:03:50.780 Side note, if you need to convince a capitalist

00:03:54.020 this argument in favor of bats and bat preservation won't work. So remind them that bats providing

00:04:01.020 natural pest control save US American farmers more than $3 billion a year. As some of us may

00:04:08.300 desperately need to hear today, bat relationships seem to be based more on relational reciprocity

00:04:15.340 than on genetic familial ties. Bats make chosen families, built on mutual support.

00:04:23.740 This is the lesson I need from my bat kin. I grew up in a household where expectations were high 1.00

00:04:32.900 and support was low, and I went into my life thinking I had to keep giving blood, love,

00:04:39.580 energy and kindness even if it was never returned i'm learning to be bat kin learning how to step

00:04:49.580 back from relationships that drain me there's another story about bats i want to add to this

00:04:55.760 cauldron in an attempted weaponization of our bat kin the military tested a method of strapping

00:05:02.540 tiny bombs to live bats the idea being that the bats would roost in enemy rooftops and eventually

00:05:09.360 detonate, causing fires and explosions across targeted communities. The project was abandoned

00:05:16.540 when the bats, refusing to follow instructions upon release, returned instead to the military

00:05:22.980 base, destroying much of the facility. Bats refuse to be exploited. We are bat kin, and we can refuse

00:05:34.840 to be exploited. Maybe this is the scariest thing about our bat kin. Maybe this is what

00:05:43.760 power mongers truly need to fear. Cooperative communities of chosen families who feed each

00:05:50.900 other and refuse to be exploited. And maybe there's a metaphor in there too around echolocation.

00:06:02.020 Many bats assess their surroundings by making ultrasonic sounds

00:06:06.420 and listening for the echoes that return to them in order to plan their next move.

00:06:14.020 Be bat kin and put yourself out there. 0.93

00:06:18.860 See what echoes back. 1.00

00:06:21.400 Is it trying to help you fly?

00:06:23.540 If not, disregard it.

00:06:26.100 Don't let bad echoes run you down.

00:06:28.400 don't let distorted echoes take you off your path we had bats in the belfry in the house i grew up

00:06:37.200 in i remember my mother and sister screaming and wildly swinging tennis rackets but i was never

00:06:43.200 afraid of bats until my stepdad trapped one in a waste paper basket and chased me around laughing

00:06:51.220 and brandishing the basket bat in my face until he backed me into a corner and i cried

00:06:56.760 I was Bat-Kin, and we were both scared, both struggling, both trapped.

00:07:12.800 Much like witches, bats have been tortured in the name of discovery,

00:07:17.760 forced to endure physical pain and mutilation to reveal their supposedly demonic secrets.

00:07:24.820 Lazzaro Spallanzali was an Italian Catholic priest and biologist

00:07:28.680 who was nearly driven to madness

00:07:30.800 in his attempt to solve the mystery of bats' ability to fly in the dark.

00:07:36.020 In 1793, he began his three-year study,

00:07:39.220 subjecting hundreds of bats to painful mutilations,

00:07:42.960 removing their eyes and burning their ears, among other tortures,

00:07:46.660 to determine, by process of elimination,

00:07:50.100 what disability might render the bat flightless.

00:07:54.120 These experiments failed to reach any conclusions.

00:07:56.880 It wasn't until he passed his research on to a Swiss colleague,

00:08:00.460 who packed the bat's ears with starch instead of gluing them closed, 0.82

00:08:05.340 that humans began to rudimentally understand the process of echolocation,

00:08:10.000 that bats might somehow see what they hear.

00:08:15.700 James Simmons, a professor of biology at Brown University,

00:08:19.820 studies bats from a place of kinship instead.

00:08:23.160 teases out their abilities through friendly and familial observation,

00:08:28.060 and, not surprisingly, has had better results than the bat witch hunters like Spallanzani. 1.00

00:08:34.540 In the documentary Secrets and Mysteries of Bats, 0.99

00:08:37.480 James introduces us to his bat friend, Melanie,

00:08:41.180 lovingly scooping her out of her enclosure, 0.99

00:08:44.000 and describes her as chasing insects for a living.

00:08:47.980 Melanie flies out of James' hand and roosts in the corner.

00:08:51.880 That's okay, says James.

00:08:53.900 Quote, she can stay up there while we do our interview, end quote.

00:08:58.640 And we get a sense that James's desire to study bats comes from a sense of deep love, awe, and admiration.

00:09:09.420 He says, quote, lots of people are afraid of bats that come out at night.

00:09:14.120 People think bats are evil.

00:09:15.860 They can find their way in the dark.

00:09:17.600 Well, that's obviously a mystical process right there.

00:09:21.260 They surely can't be natural if they can find their way around in the dark.

00:09:26.380 End quote.

00:09:27.320 And I think Dr. Simmons has hit the nail on the head for both bats and witches.

00:09:32.800 Despite us existing in nature for thousands, or in the case of bats, millions of years,

00:09:38.680 if we have skills or traits that frustrate science, we are unnatural.

00:09:46.380 mysticism is an abomination

00:09:51.420 witches were blamed for a smallpox outbreak that led in part to the salem witch trials 0.81

00:09:58.380 and our bat kin were the first to be blamed for the spread of covid 19

00:10:04.640 but quote the pandemic was caused by people human activities that alter the environment can

00:10:13.780 increase the risk of disease spillovers from wildlife to people. A zoonotic spillover is

00:10:20.100 the transmission of a pathogen from an animal to a human. The science writer David Quammen,

00:10:26.980 who has published two books on wildlife and diseases, argues that we specifically made this

00:10:32.440 pandemic, or epidemic as it was then, by engaging in unsustainable ecological destruction and the

00:10:40.600 dangerous and devastating trafficking and illegal trade of wildlife for human consumption, end quote.

00:10:48.320 Once again, we find humanity looking outside of itself to lay blame for the consequences of our

00:10:55.480 own actions. Looking at ultra-close-ups of faces of some bats, I thought, wow, they really do look

00:11:04.500 like demons. And then I laughed at myself when it occurred to me that more likely, since bats have

00:11:10.960 existed for about 50 million years, demons were drawn to look like bats. Bats don't look like

00:11:20.260 demons. Imaginary demons look like bats. And even though science has come to understand their

00:11:30.280 mysterious night-flying ability, the bat is still relegated to the realm of fear, lumped together

00:11:37.380 in gothy Halloween spookery with graveyards and spiders and ghosts and witches. See how the world

00:11:46.180 can trick us? Train our brains to associate one thing with another until we don't even realize

00:11:52.840 or remember where the connection came from?

00:11:56.600 Misunderstand.

00:11:58.200 Stereotype.

00:11:59.600 Categorize.

00:12:00.860 Pigeonhole.

00:12:02.240 Repeat.

00:12:04.060 Leviticus 11.19 says of bats,

00:12:07.680 They are unclean to you.

00:12:15.240 Quote,

00:12:16.060 In the early Middle Ages, the devil, like any other fallen angel,

00:12:19.660 was frequently presented with feathery wings,

00:12:22.040 But after the 12th century, the wings turned into leathery, bat-like wings.

00:12:27.860 These leathery wings were popularized by the 14th century Dante Alighieri poem Inferno,

00:12:35.480 which had a huge influence on future satanic representations.

00:12:40.380 End quote.

00:12:41.480 In 1332, Lady Jacome of Bayonne in France was accused of being a witch and burned alive in public.

00:12:49.240 The damning evidence against her was that crowds of bats were seen around her house and garden.

00:12:55.720 This association was all it took.

00:13:01.640 Because they are mammals who fly, like birds in disguise, with fur instead of feathers,

00:13:07.860 the bat can represent duality or hidden identity.

00:13:10.940 Bruce Wayne chose his Batman persona because the bat instills fear

00:13:19.100 He chose the bat because he knew it would make people afraid

00:13:26.560 But I'm trying to not be afraid of my bat kin

00:13:31.020 So, as has become my custom, I turn to the nature poetry of Mary Oliver for her loving perspective

00:13:39.420 Mary Oliver. Bats. Quote.

00:14:09.420 In and out of bedrooms, in and out, the soft throats of women. 1.00

00:14:17.340 For science is only the golden boat on the dark river of blood, where women dream. 0.99

00:14:25.940 Such fur on the cheeks, such teeth behind the kiss. 0.99

00:14:32.680 End quote.

00:14:33.940 I sent a private message asking fellow Mary Oliver Stan, my coven mate Aaron, for their analysis of this poem.

00:14:41.900 Aaron wrote, quote,

00:14:42.780 This poem has me thinking of the lesbian vampire trope.

00:14:46.740 It's hard for those holding white, cishet, patriarchal worldviews to make sense of sapphic love,

00:14:54.240 by which I mean the feminine and romantic and sexual relationship with the feminine.

00:14:58.980 There are also plenty of reasons to fear it.

00:15:01.060 If you view a woman's romantic and sexual love as a commodity that you are owed.

00:15:07.240 So a lot of tropes and stereotypes are projected on sapphic love.

00:15:11.160 And one of those is this idea that a woman in active romantic and sexual pursuit of the feminine is a vampiric predator.

00:15:19.560 In the first half of this poem, we have bats as friendly pals, eating pests and gathering socially.

00:15:26.360 Humans are social animals too.

00:15:28.020 so we see connection and solidarity there. Look, we're just like you. Don't be afraid of us. We

00:15:34.760 only look scary. We're actually beneficial to the ecosystem and mostly harmless. But there is another

00:15:40.600 place to contend with. The place where the trope meets the truth. Sapphic love is powerful and it's

00:15:49.560 fucking sexy. When you've already had to step outside of the normative boundaries regarding 0.98

00:15:55.340 your sexuality, it can be less daunting to explore the depths of desire, pleasure, and the taboo.

00:16:03.680 There is a dark river of feminine desire, and it is mysterious, and tantalizing enough to steal 0.99

00:16:11.400 away your wife and turn her into a vampire, a lesbian, a witch. End quote. Aaron's sexy take 1.00

00:16:21.240 on Mary Oliver's poem fits something else we know about bats. The reciprocity of bat

00:16:26.420 relationships goes further than grooming and feeding. Short-nosed fruit bats also engage

00:16:32.920 in both fellatio and cunnilingus, making them one of the only non-primate species that we know of

00:16:39.820 to do so. Bats with penises and bats with vaginas perform oral sex on each other as a way of 1.00

00:16:46.600 prolonging copulation. And it works. Bat sex that involves oral stimulation tends to last 1.00

00:16:53.820 twice as long as bat sex that is merely penetrative. Take note. I am bat kin, and I'm fucking 1.00

00:17:04.920 sexy, playful, and reciprocal. Terrifying Puritan pearl clutchers and religious zealots 1.00

00:17:13.500 with my libidinous downtown freedom. 0.99

00:17:17.340 Indeed, bat symbolism can suggest that a hero is ready to transform and move forward.

00:17:25.060 We are bat kin, ready to transform and move forward as the heroes in our own stories,

00:17:34.240 or someone else's.

00:17:37.140 In a bout of gloriously witchy synchronicity, while I was working on this meditation,

00:17:41.940 another coven mate, Hannah, posted in our circle space

00:17:45.620 a painting of a bat that she had created.

00:17:49.220 So I had to ask why she chose to paint this particular creature.

00:17:53.560 She told me her graduate thesis was about bat mortality

00:17:56.420 at wind turbines and said, quote, 0.92

00:17:58.720 I love them for a lot of reasons.

00:18:00.960 They pollinate some of my favorite fruits, mangoes and bananas.

00:18:05.200 They're the only mammal that can truly fly and not just glide.

00:18:08.640 and their babies hang on to them, which is just adorable.

00:18:14.020 End quote.

00:18:15.160 On the subject of adorableness, some bats are the size of hummingbirds.

00:18:20.320 Others have faces that look almost exactly like the most adorable creature in all existence.

00:18:26.680 My miniature poodle, Bijou.

00:18:30.000 And it's amazing to me that for Hannah and for us,

00:18:33.580 studying our non-human kin, getting to know them, can remove our fears, pointing out that which is

00:18:42.780 helpful, heroic, encouraging of growth, and even adorable. Can we do this with people too?

00:18:53.340 Georges-Louis Leclerc, aka Count Buffon, was a French naturalist in the 1700s who wrote of bats,

00:19:00.360 quote, their uncertain and clumsy flight is obvious proof of imperfection, end quote, and he saw bats

00:19:08.520 as monsters. But our friend Dr. Simmons reminds us that Buffon's perception of bats as clumsy was due

00:19:15.300 to his inability to truly see their grace. He said, quote, they fly around in what looks like an erratic,

00:19:25.260 almost incompetent way, you don't get to see the precision of the bat's flight and behavior with

00:19:32.200 the naked eye at night. That's a crucial thing that Buffon was unable to notice. End quote.

00:19:41.680 I am a witch, and bat kin, and those who paint me as imperfect, a monster, simply cannot see

00:19:53.100 my grace. In China, bats symbolize happiness. In Brazil, Iwaki was a goddess of dreams,

00:20:01.760 sometimes represented as a bat. In Samoan mythology, bats saved the life of a princess

00:20:07.960 who had befriended them. For some contemporary thinkers, because the bat is both bird and mouse,

00:20:14.600 but neither bird nor mouse, they become a symbol of androgyny, both duality and wholeness.

00:20:27.580 Remember, we witches are bat kin, taboo, unnatural, communal, queer, horny, erratic, 0.94

00:20:40.280 non-binary what may be viewed by others as our obvious proof of imperfection might in fact be 0.88

00:20:49.260 our superpower what makes us different might make us scary but it's also what makes us

00:20:57.380 so very special there are around 1400 different types of bats and millions of kinds of witches

00:21:07.400 each making its own unique contribution to ecology and to mystery.

00:21:14.580 We are bat kin, and those who fear us are missing out on something spectacular.

00:21:24.320 Hannah told me a bit more about her study, and in doing so gave me some more advice from our bat kin.

00:21:30.300 She said bats, quote, typically don't fly if wind speeds are higher.

00:21:35.000 in order to save their energy, end quote. 0.59

00:21:38.400 So witches, my bat kin witches,

00:21:43.400 if the wind speed is too high today,

00:21:47.580 don't fly.

00:21:49.960 Save your strength.

00:21:52.080 Save your energy for your hero's journey. 1.00

00:21:57.800 Witches, let us be bat kin. 1.00

00:22:01.480 Let us fly at night 1.00

00:22:04.780 Let us be mysterious and sexy

00:22:07.720 Not demons, but angels of the darkness

00:22:11.480 Bringing grace to every movement

00:22:14.960 Even if that grace goes unnoticed

00:22:18.320 Or is misunderstood

00:22:20.120 Let us transform into heroes of happiness

00:22:25.360 Let us hear the ultrasonic

00:22:28.100 And see the invisible

00:22:30.120 We are bat kin 0.94

00:22:34.200 Mystical 1.00

00:22:36.240 Perplexing

00:22:38.320 Adorable

00:22:39.820 And ancient

00:22:41.960 I am a creature of the night

00:22:47.460 The Bible says I'm unclean

00:22:51.740 I've been painted as evil

00:22:54.620 because I'm special in ways that people could not understand.

00:23:01.880 Mysterious, villainous, enigmatic, suspicious, monstrous, and full of secrets.

00:23:10.100 Yet, integral to the workings of this world.

00:23:16.660 I see us from my window, flying shadows in the dusk amid the trees.

00:23:24.620 I am a witch, and I am Batkin, Coven, and Cauldron.

00:23:34.800 We are Batkin. 0.98

00:23:42.660 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:23:45.440 If you are Batkin, join our cauldron. 1.00

00:23:49.460 Find out how at missingwitches.com 1.00

Missing Witches - April 04, 2024

We Are Bat Kin

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