Missing Witches - WF Dr. Treasure Shields Redmond - Revolutionary Optimism Despite It All

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00:00:16.320 I thought it would be like that

00:00:31.580 Upon hearing of that law

00:00:34.940 Stand your ground

00:00:37.880 Hunger Games for real

00:00:40.500 He who feels threatened

00:00:44.940 What does it take to feel threatened?

00:00:51.920 How about, he was looking at me.

00:00:57.700 He didn't seem right.

00:01:02.340 He looked like me.

00:01:04.380 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Missing Witches podcast.

00:01:14.940 archivist, poet, prophet, conjurer, novelist, alchemist, master educator, community arts

00:01:22.980 organizer, and culture keeper, among other things, Dr. Treasure Shields Redmond. Dr. Redmond is the

00:01:31.260 co-founder of the Fannie Lou Hamer House, a migratory artist residency, and is the founder

00:01:38.380 of the Community Archive, a non-profit where she teaches communities how to collect their elders

00:01:44.680 oral histories. I'm so grateful, Dr. Treasure, that you made time in your clearly very busy

00:01:53.540 schedule. You come and sit down and chat with me today. Before we get into my questions, like,

00:02:03.100 how are you? Who are you? We always say you're under no obligation to be who you were five

00:02:09.000 minutes ago. So who are you today? How are you today? What do you want our listeners to know

00:02:15.460 about you? Oh, my goodness. First off, thank you so much for having me. This is truly an honor.

00:02:24.060 I have been listening to you guys for over a year now. And there have been some really

00:02:32.820 shining moments um in particular when risa is that her name risa risa's um episode about cancer

00:02:44.420 which i held in my memory as i created a banishing of cancer recently uh celebrating a friend who

00:02:53.220 beat cancer for a second time but um and i want to talk to you about all of your instruments behind

00:03:01.960 you too and ask you about that as well but who am i and how am i today well uh i um i'm treasure

00:03:11.120 shields redmond mississippi native um full of revolutionary optimism despite it all that is who

00:03:22.700 i am today and listeners you just heard the title of this episode revolutionary optimism

00:03:31.740 despite it all yes talk to me about that because that seems like the title of a poem

00:03:41.300 listen you have to have revolutionary optimism one of the things as I was walked down the radical

00:03:49.460 path by my ancestors and frankly by what I watched happen over the last decade and a half

00:03:58.240 globally and often um as a result of actions of the country in which i live the u.s

00:04:07.700 um i finally was disabused of everything that kept me from being a communist

00:04:16.300 i was i was disabused of all the propaganda and gnarly energies that you know the u.s had worked

00:04:25.880 so hard to put around words like communism and anarchism and feminism and um you know the party

00:04:34.900 for socialism and liberation psl they talk about having revolutionary optimism so that's a phrase

00:04:42.040 i i borrow from them which means that you cannot give in to despair that is you know i'm i'm going

00:04:52.720 to turn my computer around because i have a quote from audrey lord what did she say

00:04:56.660 ah despair is a tool of our enemies yes yeah so we cannot give in to despair we cannot and

00:05:12.120 you make me think of um in one of your videos you said something along the lines of that you

00:05:18.100 were surprised to find that you became more radical as you aged and not less yes yes so you

00:05:25.680 know I said earlier I'm a Mississippi native I have roots in both places the place that I am and

00:05:32.940 the place that I was born I was born in Mississippi I currently live very near a community in Illinois

00:05:40.560 called East St. Louis Illinois and that is where my father's side of the family is from and where

00:05:47.780 i would come for summers and holidays but my primary home where i slept every night until age

00:05:53.820 18 left for a couple of years and came back for college um and then finally left maybe at age 29 28

00:06:04.020 um it was a deep south black community shot through with um hoodoo and and lots of um charming

00:06:17.780 Africanisms and Southern cultural ways. And also a group of Black folks who aspire to the middle 0.79

00:06:27.480 class. I was raised working poor. My home was my mother and my grandmother in the projects.

00:06:34.300 So in the US, they had something that started after World War II called the Federal Housing

00:06:39.280 Project. And it was originally designed for GIs to come home and have affordable

00:06:46.540 apartments in preparation to use the GI Bill to buy the homes. So a place to land and then you 0.73

00:06:55.720 go get a home. And over the decades, federal housing projects, or they've been shortened

00:07:01.400 to just be called the projects, have just become where poor folks and mostly Black poor folks 0.54

00:07:11.000 live so in meridian mississippi i was raised in the projects my grandmother was a maid that is who

00:07:18.340 took care of our home my mother struggled with mental illness so was only able to work

00:07:24.740 intermittently um so working poor um went to work every day but still did not make enough money to

00:07:34.420 pay market rent still needed rental assistance through the federal housing projects but i was

00:07:40.540 taught to aspire through my church community and through my home community aspire to the middle

00:07:45.540 class you know try to get up there and go to college and you know become a homeowner and

00:07:52.920 you know just uh move up the class ladder um and you know I was raised with phrases like if you're

00:08:02.700 not at the table you're on the menu you got to be in the room to have a to have a say-so and you

00:08:11.080 know on the surface those sound like you know homespun wisdom they make sense but as I have

00:08:18.680 continued to mature I discovered that those are kind of propagandistic statements for capitalism

00:08:26.960 so don't destroy the table don't question the table try to scoot in there

00:08:33.080 don't ask why everybody can't get in the room or why it's so hard to get in the room just get in

00:08:39.640 at all costs um so you know i went to an hb well let me let me go first to because i was gonna skip

00:08:49.740 a big part so I was always I was always an artsy kid always a performer that's why I'm interested

00:08:57.000 in Amy's um in Amy's instruments behind her but uh always an artsy kid always a performer you know

00:09:05.980 in in the choir in church in community theater um and me and some friends started a hip-hop band

00:09:14.220 in junior high and then the hip-hop band got a record deal got a record deal i'm so excited

00:09:21.940 that you're bringing this up i i was gonna save it for later but yeah please please please yes i

00:09:28.540 was like should i just skip over that that would be weird but um no i you know i came up doing the

00:09:34.380 golden era of hip-hop you know very much uh tribe called quest and jungle brothers and uh peak

00:09:41.880 queen latifah where people were afrocentric backpackers um that sort of thing and i loved

00:09:49.300 it so much and that is what i considered myself although our record deal was with someone who did

00:09:55.800 more pop dance type version of rap but anyway we got a record deal everybody wanted to get a record

00:10:04.680 deal there was no such thing as streaming um there were some notable independent rap artists

00:10:11.380 especially in the south but you know we wanted to be on mtv cribs so so you had to get a record deal

00:10:19.680 and i got a record deal with my group we were called one cause one effect it was a

00:10:27.600 male female rap duo before the fugees um and i mean we became like so many other groups we

00:10:36.920 we became a tax write-off um mc hammer and his brother who kind of ran the business because it

00:10:44.400 wasn't of course mc hammer you can't be a global star performer and also like be reconciling books

00:10:51.900 at a record company so it was mostly his brother who ran the record company and it was one of those

00:10:58.600 situations that i see repeated over and over again where there is a young or young-ish

00:11:04.060 um black male performer who seems to be tapped into something some zeitgeist some money-making

00:11:11.340 scheme and the record industry goes hey you come into a meeting you find us several acts because

00:11:21.660 you seem to know what works and what sells and the that artist who is tasked with finding those

00:11:30.600 acts and often receives the money up front so they might receive 8 million 16 million some

00:11:35.740 large amount of money they are then not motivated to take care of your career because they've

00:11:43.420 already been paid so unless they are just a good person who feels very collegial and collaborative

00:11:50.500 about young artists which in general the record industry is not known for no not at all not at

00:11:58.320 all so um you know mc hammer got his money his brother got his money they they did what what

00:12:04.220 the contract said which was put out this amount of albums on this amount of artists in this amount

00:12:09.140 of time and then after that there wasn't really any love and care put into our careers so i spent

00:12:17.720 a few years in oakland california if you those of you who remember these things or have you know

00:12:24.660 research these things hammer was from oakland so i spent a few years in oakland california just as

00:12:31.200 an underground artist after um i severed ties with uh bust it records and you know what everything

00:12:41.320 there are no coincidences everything happens for a reason because of course oakland is a power

00:12:47.840 center it's the it's where the black panthers were founded it is you know the ground level

00:12:55.340 the second the second home of of of queer revolution um it it's just a powerful place

00:13:04.520 and the indigenous communities there um are powerful so it was the first time as a 18 year

00:13:14.860 old black woman from Mississippi that I realized several things number one everybody's not straight

00:13:21.880 and Christian can you believe it and it was the first time that my that a socialist consciousness

00:13:34.680 that I was confronted with that it was the first time black people my age

00:13:41.460 were not enamored with wearing logos of companies and asked me why I would be.

00:13:49.980 Why would you wear Nikes if it's operated by sweatshops? I couldn't believe that because I

00:13:56.480 had come from poverty and I wanted to be wealthy. And wealthy people wear Nikes and MCM and carry

00:14:09.900 adunian burke purse and um or whatever whatever was the hot brand at the time so i count oakland

00:14:19.020 as the place that first really shook my foundations even though the foundations of the christianity i

00:14:28.560 was raised in were shaken earlier but i'm gonna stop talking right now and and and listen to amy

00:14:36.040 amy i feel like i'm going on and on and on and on and on come on you've heard the podcast you know

00:14:43.860 my favorite is when people go on and on and i can just sit and listen to them tell me their life

00:14:49.500 story but do any of those recordings still exist oh of course of course they do so hammer and his

00:14:59.840 brother sold the catalog so unfortunately i don't make money off the songs of mine

00:15:06.040 even though i do still make writing royalties off of other artists that i wrote for and some

00:15:14.740 of the stuff that i wrote for but you know not of course not the share that mirrors how much work

00:15:22.260 my partner and i put into it yeah so you know every now and then i get an eight dollar check

00:15:27.620 a five dollar check it reminds you of the olden days yeah right yeah but you can go on spotify

00:15:35.220 and stream one cause one effect if you want to get in a time capsule

00:15:39.220 trust me i'm going straight there

00:15:43.520 i had read that you had this connection to mc hammer but that's not all i knew about it so now

00:16:02.480 trust me it's gonna go into heavy rotation at my house and if i can find it on vinyl i'll pay

00:16:09.300 whatever it costs i see your erica is that an erica badu album behind you of course i oh my god

00:16:17.400 i have i think everything except for the new album that she just put out with the alchemist

00:16:24.460 which doesn't come out on vinyl till december so okay erica is a grand high witch i mean there's

00:16:31.620 no there's no question about it most definitely yeah the first track on that new album that

00:16:40.080 just where she just calls out ancestor after ancestor i first saw her perform that

00:16:46.460 on youtube i i think she was at the new york times office maybe or the new yorker's office

00:16:55.040 but anyway i was so struck by that it's so powerful and it's all ancestors all the time

00:17:02.460 with me so you mentioned ancestors so i'm gonna ask this you said in one of your videos and of

00:17:09.760 course i love watching your videos listeners instagram all the links will be in the show notes

00:17:16.080 but you said of course you have to have an ancestral practice because all of these and

00:17:23.360 you sort of gestured to the spell work that you were doing are just crafts and notionally i love

00:17:32.500 this like we're doing spells but are we just doing arts and crafts what's the difference and

00:17:37.700 seemingly for dr treasure the difference is an ancestral practice so since you gave me the segue

00:17:44.840 talk to me about that talk to me about how ancestral practice makes spell work work and not just craft

00:17:53.360 Well, for, you know, in the U.S. South, hoodoo is what African spiritualities transformed into

00:18:06.260 on the North American continent. So the roots of hoodoo are ancient and come from practices

00:18:15.620 in western central africa who get their ashe from ancestors now you know i love me some western

00:18:25.800 occultism pointy hat witchism you're not going to stop me at halloween from putting on my pointy hat

00:18:31.220 i will be having my jack-o'-lancer i will be you know re-watching the chilling adventures of

00:18:39.480 Sabrina. Um, I will, um, at the same time until recently, most often when I see those sorts of

00:18:55.420 practitioners, they claim a lot of remote and personal power. So I'm going to light a candle.

00:19:05.260 I'm going to burn herbs. And through my own will, my own energetic field, myself, I'm going to cause something to happen outside me.

00:19:17.020 I'm going to change someone's experience. And that is just not what hoodoo and the foundational practices that it finds its roots in believes.

00:19:29.960 It believes that it is the ancestral Asha.

00:19:33.960 It is the energy of the grandmothers who gave birth to us all that continue to reverberate.

00:19:44.280 And if you continue to venerate and feed and call their names and remember them, then you can access those energies.

00:19:56.100 and you know I don't know if you've seen the latest uh Practical Magic 2 did you go see

00:20:03.400 Practical Magic 2 oh yes in the theater I was there on Friday night I went to see it in the

00:20:08.500 theater as well and I I mean this isn't a show to be given a cinema review it drug in some places to

00:20:17.060 me um I was glad to see those characters again but it it was dragging in some places and some

00:20:24.880 of the dialogue felt a little ad-libbed i was like is this what you do when you have really

00:20:30.120 famous people in a movie you just let them just say stuff yeah i mean that's exactly the review

00:20:37.580 that everyone that i know has who has seen it it's like it's good it's not great yeah um but

00:20:44.400 we're happy to like support the witch movie economy and go exactly exactly but i was happy

00:20:52.820 to see that they went to england to go deeper into the ancestral ashe yes i was like yes and yes

00:21:03.260 yes and yes and i meet a lot of mostly white witches some black some black witches but mostly 0.68

00:21:13.060 white witches who often report that their family of origin was harmful and that is why

00:21:21.480 the ancestral piece to them feels harmful um but usually but usually when i'm talking about uh

00:21:29.880 ancestral i mean go on i mean back back i mean bavaria i mean i mean go back to the eastern

00:21:39.200 european with the babushka on back you know what i'm saying i'm not just talking about just your

00:21:45.460 mother i would love it if we all had mothers who inspired a feeling of care some of us did not

00:21:52.180 unfortunately um but yeah i'm saying those ancestral practices because everyone had a

00:22:02.460 pre-colonial pre-christian ancestral practice and you run the community archive which is

00:22:12.380 in essence an ancestral veneration practice right talk about it yeah talk about it yes talk about it

00:22:22.140 you talk about it i am like i said it's all it's all ancestors all the time with me

00:22:29.100 you know the the the light is always on and it's always hot and fresh

00:22:33.840 in the ancestral realm for me um in 2015 um a chapbook of poetry i wrote called um

00:22:44.820 chop 30 kwansabas for fanny lou hamer which which is all poems about an incredible and civil rights

00:22:55.100 worker, proto-feminist ancestor, Fannie Lou Hamer. And then, of course, me and my good friend,

00:23:04.320 Dale Chambers, created Fannie Lou Hamer House, which is the migratory residency. And then in 2022,

00:23:12.060 all of my work with sound and poetry and stories and ancestry kind of culminated

00:23:20.720 in me creating the Community Archive, where we house so many oral history archives, as well as

00:23:31.260 this latest project, which I'm really proud of, which is interviews with people who are

00:23:39.200 descendants of survivors of the 1917 East St. Louis race massacre. So this summer, we actually

00:23:49.960 turned it into a living history tour and had people come out and embody the ancestors

00:23:56.700 so um you know I I just love it I love it I'm I'm I'm here for it um I don't want to pass by

00:24:08.360 chalk this quickly so I'm gonna reverse a little bit um I I mean poetry is one of the great loves

00:24:17.800 of my life so i was very happy to read your book poetry but i had never heard this term i mean

00:24:23.920 having studied poetry and all the different ways and forms of making it i had never heard this term

00:24:30.420 kwansabas and so i looked into it and according to my research it was correct me if i'm wrong

00:24:40.100 your father who invented this poetic form that is correct i am all ancestors everywhere all

00:24:49.460 ancestors all the time please tell me more my father is 88 he's not an ancestor as of yet

00:24:55.960 even though he keeps he keeps threatening he keeps he mentions it every time we're together

00:25:01.860 but um but yes i'm in the family business which is being an english professor and a poet

00:25:10.100 So, yes, he and the members of his writers club created a poetic form called the Kwan Saba made from the words Kwanzaa, which is an African-American harvest festival taken from Swahili East African roots, kind of born out of the black arts movement where people were, you know, looking to do things that were for us.

00:25:39.760 by us about us near us uh and the word saba which means seven so it is in general a praise poem

00:25:54.140 made of sevens seven lines no more than seven words per line unless it is a proper noun

00:26:02.740 um yeah so I love that little form it helped me to not proselytize in the poems because

00:26:12.340 I was so obsessed with Mrs. Hamer that when I first started writing about her it was just

00:26:20.660 like sermons and I was like wait a minute this might not be a poem so so I found that that

00:26:29.540 form and that form helped to locate the emotion focus on the emotion in each moment that I was

00:26:40.460 capturing yes I mean with the poems that are sort of strict it some people find them confining but

00:26:51.820 I find them to be a different kind of freedom to have to work my way into how do I restate this

00:26:58.340 with words that are no more than seven letters and only seven words per and i i find like a

00:27:06.120 freedom in those explorations was that the case for you too i can't i can't say that i you know

00:27:13.300 i'm a free verse girly i'm not a natural formalist however i do make myself do it because

00:27:20.400 um i love poetry so much that i like learning new things about it and myself

00:27:27.920 So right now I'm attempting to write a chuzzle, the G-H-A-Z-A-L form, kind of a Middle Eastern, Persian, Palestinian form.

00:27:44.060 And it's hard. 0.75

00:27:47.820 It is hard.

00:27:50.780 Yeah.

00:27:51.200 You have to really work on it.

00:27:53.080 Did you did you pick this form as like a free Palestine, you know, like as an homage to the people who are living through what they're living through genocide?

00:28:05.160 Partly, partly I did. Yes, that is that is partly why it was attractive.

00:28:09.580 I'm actually working on a collection of poems now that are all about water and what and how water is representative in our lives.

00:28:18.000 so I found this incredible origin story of the bozo people who live near the Niger river

00:28:30.300 in Mali and when after I read after I heard the story and retold it to myself

00:28:38.820 I even posted it on Instagram then I said I should write a poem about this since it's about

00:28:44.220 the niger river and the origin story of those people in that river and and i thought the guzzle

00:28:50.120 would be a great way to do that so um i've taken on something because it is difficult

00:28:56.840 it has these repeating rhyming parts and there's a bit of a subject script stricture and

00:29:07.440 yeah there's there's there's some things happening with the guzzle so pray for me

00:29:12.780 and and i i want to know like you're so prolific you do so much work where do you get your energy

00:29:21.580 from well you know what i for so many years wrote in different journals that i wanted to live an

00:29:31.100 art-centered life and for many years i thought well of course you have to be wealthy so that

00:29:40.100 then you can have time to be an artist and but what i have discovered is that you just have to

00:29:48.420 make art hallelujah you just have to you just have to do what you do do what you do so um i have

00:30:01.620 a schedule of what I do and the three things that matter to me each day if I get these three things

00:30:11.640 done I'm fine it is some sort of movement take a walk get in the pool get on the treadmill

00:30:18.080 write work on poetry or write something and practice my guitar I just started taking guitar

00:30:28.380 lessons listeners you can't see my face but it's like listen my my my dream is to one day be able

00:30:38.960 to pull out that guitar when i'm getting ready to to to read some poetry somewhere or or or you 0.99

00:30:45.420 know what i'm saying cast a banishing somewhere and pull out that guitar oh i'm gonna fuck them 0.66

00:30:49.640 up with that one i cannot wait and maybe hopefully you'll put out another album

00:30:57.500 right listen yes yes yes yes now you know some friends and i put out an album about two years

00:31:03.800 ago i did not know that yeah jazz and poetry the humanetics humanetics so it's the word human

00:31:13.460 i-t-i-c-s people can purchase it on band camp if they want to support but if they just want

00:31:20.420 to stream it they can go to spotify look up humanitics you will be sweetly surprised

00:31:26.080 i'm also a big i'm also gonna find this i'm also a big collaborator i'm a collaborator

00:31:34.400 that was my you know back when people were doing word of the year

00:31:37.980 several years back that was my word of the year um and it has really borne fruit

00:31:45.080 listen i would play in a band with you any day of the week so you just let me know

00:31:50.520 girl don't don't say it don't say it too loud i'll be up there

00:31:55.080 i am not the least bit joking now i'm excited now i'm excited so your great loves are movement

00:32:06.480 writing um poetry playing the guitar and but you told me earlier you love to talk about hoodoo

00:32:18.720 so i'm just gonna sit back and say dr treasure shields redmond talk about hoodoo yes i love to

00:32:27.720 talk about hoodoo I you know as I was saying earlier hoodoo is what what uh African traditional

00:32:37.360 spiritualities transform themselves into on this part of the North American continent

00:32:44.040 and uh our grand ancestor uh Zora Neale Hurston created a really foundational text

00:32:54.300 called Hoodoo in America. I would suggest that anyone who's interested in conjure Hoodoo root

00:33:01.020 work, these are some of the names it's called to read that text. And, you know, I was lucky enough

00:33:11.960 to have been raised in a community where Hoodoo was believed in and practiced. So some of my

00:33:19.440 earliest stories from my family have to do with hoodoo. I had a cousin who battled mental illness

00:33:29.800 and was hysterically mute, just could not speak and would not speak, was just trapped inside

00:33:35.820 herself. And they took her to the conjure woman in Louisville, Mississippi. And they reported that

00:33:43.780 the woman put her feet in blue water and then after afterwards her voice came back

00:33:50.800 um yeah yeah my grandmother tells a story of her beloved aunt pennsylvania who we call ain't veiny 0.98

00:34:01.640 um who had this husband that she loved named john she took in a friend who didn't have a place to

00:34:09.620 stay and so then the friends started showing signs of being pregnant and then it was revealed

00:34:17.460 that she was pregnant by ain't veiny's husband and my my grandmother talked about ain't veiny

00:34:25.760 looking under her bed and seeing these peanut shells scattered under there and apparently 1.00

00:34:31.340 that was a working designed to quote unquote bind your nature so uh that girlfriend wanted 1.00

00:34:39.340 her husband, wanted to disrupt their sexual life so she could replace Aunt Vainey. That is not what 1.00

00:34:47.880 happened. However, Aunt Vainey never did conceive her own child. So we're, you know, we're left with

00:34:55.540 of mystery there as to what exactly did she bind or did not bind but um yeah I

00:35:05.720 even though I didn't see explicit root work in my home other than my grandmother's little garden

00:35:18.740 and her catnip tea what i did know was that there was something else other than the christianity i

00:35:28.660 was raised in early on i knew that something was not matching up uh and and people you know

00:35:40.440 have different stories as to what their deconstruction moment was i love to watch

00:35:45.640 deconstruction videos on youtube and see everybody's different moment of fissure the

00:35:51.740 moment when the window plane went just cracked and for me I was about 14 um and we used to have

00:36:03.140 something called devotion in church this was a what is now called praise and worship in in black

00:36:10.920 churches. It's a time for songs and just to kind of whip up the spirit before explicit open the

00:36:18.540 doors, people take a seat and the man is going to preach part of the service. And devotion was

00:36:24.140 different in that it also allowed people to stand up and give testimony, good things that God had

00:36:31.600 done for them that week and so forth and so on. And I remember a woman stood up and the first

00:36:40.100 thing she said was magical. That didn't bother me. She said, I didn't have money for a bill.

00:36:46.460 I opened my coin purse. I closed it and prayed. I reopened the coin purse. I had enough money for

00:36:53.540 the bill. That didn't bother me. That didn't make me go, oh, they lying up in here. It was what she

00:36:59.380 said after that, that bothered me. After she said that and people, you know, clapped approvingly and

00:37:05.840 said amen she said and i can't wait to get to heaven and praise him all day long and amy

00:37:14.420 that is the crack in the window pain for me because i couldn't believe that's what we were 0.99

00:37:23.400 practicing for that's that's it to praise him to go to heaven and kiss somebody's ass 0.99

00:37:32.580 for eternity uh no thank you 0.99

00:37:41.740 it just didn't sound heavenly to me and you know maybe that's because

00:37:50.780 I was really enjoying my life you know sometimes when you tell people you were raised in poverty

00:37:57.500 uh people connect poverty with abuse addiction they connected with you know feelings of lack

00:38:05.260 but the truth is i was in a child-centered home i was the only child in the home

00:38:10.940 um my grandmother and mother were loving and eccentric and i never felt hungry

00:38:20.340 and they weren't proselytizers we all went to church because it was a small black community

00:38:27.600 and what else would you do how would you be tapped into the social anything if you didn't go to

00:38:33.540 church so I wasn't being told that you know secular music is evil or wearing lipstick is even none of

00:38:40.980 that um so i you know i really liked my life so i needed heaven to be better

00:38:49.380 that did not sound better and that was the the first major contradiction

00:38:57.680 and over time the contradictions began to pile up um and it made me wonder what came before

00:39:08.920 the contradictions and as i lived and worked and came into contact with people i realized

00:39:16.080 that i was already in contact with what had come before i was already in contact with it and people

00:39:23.300 were talking about it and doing it and practicing it and um so that is where i am today with that

00:39:31.400 as a as a devotee as a practitioner of of of conjure um you know just so grateful for the

00:39:41.500 ancestors and ready to spark revolutionary change using that ashe

00:39:50.620 how do you specifically you in your practice define ashe

00:39:59.240 i call ashe ashe is another word for energy another word for intention um

00:40:08.060 you know oftentimes when you're in in in community when somebody says something people

00:40:15.700 will say ashe as kind of a stand-in for amen um it's it's it's a multivalent word that just means

00:40:28.740 agreement at the deepest sense

00:40:31.860 i love that but we also have in your practice non-agreement or maybe we'll call it

00:40:44.000 banishing and your banishing series has been very popular i mean i was i was following you

00:40:54.040 before you started not before you started doing banishing but before you started doing this

00:40:57.880 instagram series and i was like so delighted to see how popular that series was so what

00:41:07.220 what prompted you to be like i'm banishing and we're going live

00:41:12.240 you know um

00:41:16.660 as i as i have watched the full mask of white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy

00:41:31.020 be removed. I realized that it was time not to hunker down, but to speak back and loudly about

00:41:40.860 it. And if you are using a spiritual practice to retreat, hide, and take cover, then I would ask

00:41:52.840 you to unpack whatever that spiritual practice is. Your spiritual practice should free you body

00:42:00.200 and soul so I said what's my you know one of the witches I mean there are several

00:42:08.180 quote-unquote witches spiritual people that I love one of whom is got to be Oshun I hope you'll

00:42:16.160 have her on your she has been oh no many many many many many times we love Ola Omi honestly

00:42:27.060 everything that comes out of her mouth is just like i want it tattooed on my body

00:42:31.320 so brilliant um and i love um kelly ann maddox from england and one of the things she said is

00:42:42.940 you know every now and then you'll see a group of witches saying we're hexing donald trump or

00:42:48.860 we're hexing and and you know people will go how well it didn't work but one of the things that

00:42:55.720 she said is you're donating magic and I love that idea I love the communal you know I love

00:43:04.240 a good stone soup a good stone soup magic come on so uh the banishings are my are my uh offering

00:43:17.640 my gift my little part my little cut of carrots I had a few carrots from my garden

00:43:23.300 and that's what the banishings are would you listeners if you haven't heard them you can go

00:43:31.680 to dr treasure's instagram i will link it in the show notes but for the time being

00:43:36.340 dr treasure shields redmond would you read us one of your banishments yes okay so

00:43:45.680 i banish the fantasy of male protection i banish the fantasy of male protection

00:43:59.560 i banish the false god of man i banish the pedalization of men i banish i free you from

00:44:09.900 the spell of maleness. I free you from the lies of the patriarchy. I banish all male gaslighting.

00:44:18.680 I banish. You are freed from assisting your attacker. I loose and banish the shackles on

00:44:27.200 your mind. I expose the triple-headed snake of its origins, whether it comes from our homes,

00:44:33.620 our religions, or the cultures, movies, songs, or stories. I banish belief in men at the expense

00:44:42.640 of ourselves. I seal off the entryway from our homes where the fantasy of male superiority held

00:44:49.920 us captive where we slept, pretending, propping up, colluding to create a man who didn't even

00:44:58.020 exist. No benevolent patriarch, no protector, no provider. I banish the fantasy of male protection.

00:45:09.200 I banish the fantasy that trades a woman's real divinity for a man's false divinity.

00:45:16.320 We bleed for days. We negotiate with death to give life. We bear wounds to save this reality.

00:45:24.340 We return over and over again and feed a multitude with small provisions.

00:45:32.180 I banish belief in men at the expense of ourselves.

00:45:38.080 I banish the fantasy of men.

00:45:42.080 You are freed from assisting your attacker, free from kneeling at the guillotine, free from assembling your own gallows.

00:45:50.000 I banish the shackles on your mind.

00:45:53.100 I banish lies about men. I banish male-centeredness. And finally, I banish the lie that he is not

00:46:02.500 capable of murdering you. Your son is capable. Your brother is capable. Your uncle, your pastor,

00:46:14.100 your imam, your rabbi, and yes, your lover and husband is capable. I banish the fantasy of male

00:46:24.620 protection. I release you from the lamb to a slaughter spell that has made you value a man's

00:46:32.000 life above your own.

00:46:42.380 Everybody, let's take a big deep breath together.

00:46:48.780 Thank you. 1.00

00:46:50.760 The plague of white feminism that will prioritize the imaginary protection of a man.

00:47:01.360 thanks you for putting it in its place and i thank you for carrying on the work of your father

00:47:11.080 for carrying on the work of zora neale hurston zora once said i want to collect like a new broom

00:47:19.700 and i feel like you dr treasure are just this shiny new broom picking up everything that you

00:47:29.160 made in order to do your hoodoo in order to create your magic i am so excited to discover

00:47:36.420 your music that's what exactly i'm going to do right now in this first way i will share it with

00:47:42.020 you but in the meantime it has been so glorious to read your poetry to watch your videos on youtube

00:47:50.340 and on instagram to sit down and have this conversation has been a joy and a treasure

00:47:57.420 a well named how well named you are thank you so much for sitting down with me today

00:48:05.420 dr treasure oh thank you so much for having me thank you uh i am saying that we will see each

00:48:14.960 other in person we shall i'm i don't have a single doubt about it before i let you go though um if

00:48:24.780 our listeners want to support your work follow you buy all your stuff what's the best way for

00:48:32.660 our listeners to find you support you pay you follow you all that stuff thank you thank you

00:48:41.140 um if they go to patreon they can look on patreon at the dr treasure um there is sorry i believe

00:48:52.220 It's only $2 a month, correct?

00:48:54.700 It's $2 a month, y'all.

00:48:56.200 Now, there are other tiers, but they are also quite affordable.

00:49:02.720 And you can also get a hoodoo card reading or a traditional tarot reading from me as well.

00:49:11.100 So if you want to book a reading, you can go find me on Instagram at TheDrTreasure.

00:49:17.760 Look in the bio and you can see a link to book a reading.

00:49:20.760 or you can go to Patreon and join where there's a tier where you get a free reading on the full

00:49:27.560 moon. Full moon free reading. And it is less expensive than a reading, even though both are

00:49:36.700 quite affordable. Thanks again. You are so welcome. I can't wait to hang out and play guitar

00:49:45.480 in person such as it is i'm a beginner we're all beginners i was talking to a friend of mine he's

00:49:53.180 been playing guitar for um he he's almost 60 so he's probably been playing guitar for 50 years

00:50:00.100 okay and i've been playing guitar since i was a teenager so you know 30 years but i just started

00:50:08.260 playing the bass i've been playing for one year and i told him it's my one year bass adversary

00:50:15.140 and he said yeah i don't think i'm any better at guitar than i was after one year so you're there

00:50:21.120 give it a year that's all you need one year is a year okay all you need is a year from your mouth

00:50:28.680 to goddesses ears and then we'll start that band yes on september of 2027 we're starting a band

00:50:37.740 so would it be 0.97

00:50:39.280 and blessed fucking be 0.99

00:50:42.480 yes blessed fucking be 0.99

00:50:45.180 I thought it would be like that 0.99

00:50:49.600 upon hearing

00:50:51.660 of that long

00:50:52.960 stand your ground

00:50:55.880 hunger games

00:50:57.880 for real

00:50:58.500 he who feels

00:51:01.860 threatened

00:51:02.900 what does it take

00:51:05.760 to feel

00:51:06.880 threatened

00:51:08.340 how about

00:51:10.940 he was looking at me

00:51:14.600 he didn't seem right

00:51:18.520 he looked like he was

00:51:22.800 up to something

00:51:23.780 I was uncomfortable

00:51:27.140 in his presence 1.00

00:51:28.680 if you want to support the Missing Witches project

00:51:32.680 come hang out with us

00:51:35.000 join the coven

00:51:36.320 Find everything you need to know at MissingWitches.com. 0.99

00:51:44.000 You must be a witch. 0.99

Missing Witches - September 28, 2026

WF Dr. Treasure Shields Redmond - Revolutionary Optimism Despite It All

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