00:01:06.120I'm gonna take a deep breath such a fan and follower of your work I consider you one of0.87
00:01:14.300these few touch points for me in people who I admire so much for combining a really intelligent
00:01:22.960activism with their witchcraft and also I really appreciate how open you are on your own podcast
00:01:30.220about your own neurodiversity setting your own boundaries you're really really clear about0.77
00:01:36.400capacity I think there's so much for us all to learn and how to get that balance right to make
00:01:42.320a living and work together to defeat capitalism and be really respectful of these strange bodies
00:01:49.560we're in. So those are the things I think about when I get to sit down with you. I learned so
00:01:55.740much from you last time we were together. I just think you're so rad. So thank you so much for
00:01:59.500coming back and welcome to the Missing Witches podcast. Oh, it's just my pleasure. You know that
00:02:04.340I'm a major fan and admirer of your work and I just respect what you've done. You and Amy,
00:02:13.520of course missing witches I'll just say missing witches has done so much to reinvigorate this
00:02:22.480careful considered scholarship and lineage which I think especially like in these I mean I'm pretty
00:02:33.540old, right? I'm 41. In these social media times, I think it can be easy to erase a lineage or to
00:02:44.020forget about context, and to not understand why certain things have been not spoken about certain
00:02:54.560people have not been acclaimed and like I'm such a also big fan of giving people their flowers
00:03:03.640while they're alive and obviously with many of the folks that you highlight in your project
00:03:08.880they're not alive their memory is alive and their memory lives on and their memory is a blessing
00:03:14.940and I think that that care and that compassion it really shines through your work and I just
00:03:22.540It's ancestral. It's celebratory. It's analytical. It's not afraid to admit that it doesn't know or when things are ambivalent. You know what I mean?
00:03:39.840like there's an openness and a generosity within all of it that I find often missing that whenever
00:03:49.400I find it, I feel comforted because it can feel very lonely. And, you know, anytime I can kind of
00:03:59.040find other folks in the world who have similar values and ethics, it's like a little light,
00:04:07.480a little light that I can kind of be reminded of, oh yes, like other people care, you know,
00:04:13.060other people are wondering about the same things I'm wondering about. Other people are grappling
00:04:18.000with complexity and not turning away from complexity. You know, this is the time of year
00:04:25.740where I start downloading themes for next year and sort of tune in and tap into what we might
00:04:33.880be expecting energetically collectively for next year and one of the big ones that just keeps like
00:04:44.020coming in is conflict and being able to hold conflict internally being able to have conflict
00:04:56.180with other people, that doesn't result in severing, but it, it results in deepening.
00:05:03.480And the other piece that's really coming in really, really loudly for next year is accountability.
00:05:11.140And I think there's a real lack of it, which is why it's sort of coming in. And so the reason
00:05:17.000why I'm saying this is, you know, a lot of your, your work, I have witnessed as accountable work,
00:05:24.060not in a punitive carceral way that's the other thing about these words whenever they come in
00:05:30.800for me I know it's time for me to or I know that the collective or that there will be others
00:05:37.940unpacking the meanings of these kinds of words because they're so loaded and we've been taught
00:05:45.260to define them or be in relationship with these harder subjects in very binary ways
00:05:52.900in very indoctrinated ways, in ways that, again, sever or distance ourself from ourselves or our
00:06:01.480own intuition or various relationships we're in. And I'm really interested in like widening my own
00:06:09.600capacity within myself to be able to sit with defining what they mean for me personally,
00:06:17.260spiritually ethically and integrity and really kind of going away from a reaction to one of the
00:06:24.740themes of the lover's year as I'm sure you know if you're into tarot it's like we can't define
00:06:33.100ourselves by what we're against and we can't define ourselves by reacting to someone else's
00:06:44.580set of rules or someone else's definitions or parameters. And I really had to grapple
00:06:52.420personally, and I'm still grappling and I'm practicing and practicing because this is how
00:06:57.420we integrate. This is how we integrate these lessons of love, which is what I'm talking about
00:07:02.260here. I'm talking about love. What are you for? What are you moving towards? And how are you
00:07:08.240creating new definitions through your practices and through your actions right so for me I really
00:07:16.980notice how much I complain I really noticed how indoctrinated I am to respond or react or define
00:07:28.460myself like anti-capitalist which I really want to talk about with you like because I know you did
00:07:34.080a book about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do like, I want to, let's go there next. I'll stop. Yeah.
00:07:39.860I'm going to like wrap it up and then, and then ping it back to you about your thoughts. So I
00:07:44.520love, I love the word anti-capitalist. I don't right now. I don't love, and I'm unpacking all
00:07:51.500of this and I'm unraveling it. And it's always going to be a work in process for me where I am
00:07:58.280now is not where I'm going to be a year from now. I'm not super into like capitalist critical
00:08:06.000or like, what do they call it? Like green capitalism, like all of these sort of like0.85
00:08:12.360middle roads, because I don't want to live in a world where the values are greed, where the values
00:08:19.900are extraction, where in order for me to be okay, someone else has to not be okay and so on and so
00:08:27.640forth. And I think it's really important for us to be accountable to what we believe and, and the
00:08:33.600ways in which we're putting those beliefs into action, which is why I like that term because
00:08:39.860it's like, no, I don't want this system as it is practiced today. I don't want domination. I don't
00:08:46.520want hierarchy. I don't want to work five days a week, six days a week. I don't want to. And I love
00:08:53.720what I do. I don't want to work all the time. You know, I'm not, no one out here is dreaming of more
00:08:59.320labor. I'm not, at least there was a time when I was, when I, again, was like very influenced by
00:09:05.760like, you know, I'm from new England. It's a puritanical work culture. My parents have very
00:09:11.400little money. You know, I was been working since I was 12. There's a pride in work where I came
00:09:17.560from. It's like, well, just deal with it. Like get it together. It's very bootstrapped and not
00:09:23.080in a rich way and like, figure it out, figure it out, get that second job, knock on a door,
00:09:29.040talk to someone in a gas station and see if they need work. Literally things my parents would tell
00:09:33.180me to do that I did. Right. So just saying like, Hey, I don't want this, this way of relating to
00:09:40.840other people. I really just like transactionalism and it's rampant in this world. And it's rampant
00:09:47.460in the spiritual world and the witch world like rampant. I don't want to relate to people based1.00
00:09:52.840off what I think they can give me related to hoarding or, you know, clout or financial
00:10:06.660I really like the way you make a podcast.
00:10:10.220I want to be in conversation with you.
00:10:12.580I want to continue a conversation and I want to be in the moment and enjoying the moment
00:10:17.660and relating to you energetically in a reciprocal, respectful fashion.
00:10:22.840Right. And that's how I make a lot of my choices, which is also why I often feel alienated because I'm not like, oh, yeah, I don't want to play these games.
00:10:32.460I know what I would have to do if I wanted X, Y, Z in this structure.
00:10:37.500And I don't really want to do that, you know, and I don't even want to, like, try to feel better about trying to do it, you know.
00:10:46.260and sometimes when I get oh poor me or like why haven't I gotten that thing or why aren't I like
00:10:53.020those sorts of things that we all can default into because that is capitalist it's like compare and
00:10:58.020like well they have this thing why can't I have this thing you know I'm a human being right I have
00:11:02.940those moments I'm like Sarah you don't even if you wanted that thing you would have to do all of
00:11:08.600these things and you don't want to do the things because they're not in alignment with your
00:11:13.360integrity. So like, just chill, you know, so there's that too, because I'm also very much
00:11:19.900process oriented. And if I'm not enjoying a process, it's going to be difficult for me to
00:11:25.220be motivated if I don't like believe in the process of what I'm doing. So I want to talk
00:11:30.140about anti-capitalism with you. I want to talk about your personal values. I want to talk about
00:11:35.460like some of the things you've discovered and uncovered for yourself and how we can have these
00:11:41.920conversations and also learn from each other. So I'm gonna drink my turmeric wellness tea and
00:11:48.960listen to you. It's so funny. It's that's one of my favorite things about having like a really
00:11:54.760good podcaster on our podcast is inevitably, you come with questions for me. I kind of love that.
00:12:03.160I am thinking a lot about anti capitalism these days. I mean, I'm thinking a lot about some of
00:12:07.280practicalities of it right like i'm interested in basic income universal basic income i'm interested
00:12:13.920in housing first as a movement you know i i think those those movements and activism around those
00:12:18.720movements is witchcraft because it is anti-capitalist because we are defeating a system that tells us
00:12:25.120that if you don't have enough to live you don't deserve to live and that's poison and a lie
00:12:32.800you know you deserve the bounty of this earth as much as every being does you know and and i believe
00:12:39.920in reparations are core to that project too those are some of the really really practical ways i'm
00:12:44.640thinking about it these days i think about open source a lot and i think when we talk about the
00:12:49.280commons we talk about the commons a lot in witchcraft right because it's being broken from the
00:12:55.040commons and then turned against the people that were resisting that movement that's one of the
00:12:59.200origins of our story so we have that idea of the commons and the and the poverty of the commons
00:13:05.360in common with these like nerds writing code together like we're allies in a way that is a
00:13:12.640kind of witchcraft what they're doing and so i think for me like reaching deeply into places
00:13:17.920where this resistance isn't just reactionary as you said i thought that was so right like i want
00:13:24.400to be in a lover's relationship with changing the world i'm not somebody who wants to burn it all
00:13:29.520down i want to be those roots that are like sort of taking over the tree that takes over the the
00:13:38.080roads you know like i i want to be a part of that movement that is living and sustaining and and
00:13:46.800loving and making and making love with the world as it is with an idea for the future yeah i want
00:13:52.560I want to be I want to like make such a beautiful little garden for myself that's so sustainable and so enjoyable that there are extra flowers always for people to have and for people to enjoy.
00:14:09.540And more and more, I want to learn how to do it not at the expense of other aspects of my life and other aspects of my health and other aspects of my well-being.
00:14:23.920And I think that we are in a very particular time where there is the potential more than ever for more people to use the technologies and to use the education that we can have access to by way of the Internet to become more abundant and to learn from each other.
00:14:50.340One thing I've really been struggling with, like, big time, I mean, there's a lot of things, I'm always struggling with many different things. But one of the themes that keeps coming up coming up for me is like really unraveling my own participation in a certain idea of how work is supposed to look and like work, how work is supposed to be.
00:15:13.960it's very indoctrinated in me, really embedded in me to like work five days a week and like
00:15:21.900feel guilty if I take an afternoon off or just because I've worked for so long and I've worked
00:15:28.300for, I'm at this weird point too, which I think makes sense where, or it's not weird. I'm at the
00:15:33.940point where I have worked for myself almost as long as I've worked for other people. So I'm like,
00:15:40.840wait a minute we don't have to do it this way why are we doing it this way like why am I doing this
00:15:47.200this way so I've been doing a lot of questioning and really trying to unpack my own foundations
00:15:55.080which makes perfect sense because we're going into a tower so next year is going to be
00:16:02.160numerologically and from a tarot archetype perspective we're going into a chariot year
00:16:08.840and as a tarot scholar I always look at the teacher card of the of the year we're going
00:16:19.400into and the teacher card of the chariot is the tower because the chariot teaches us how to be
00:16:27.500changed god is change it helps us navigate change and be changed at the same time it's a very
00:16:35.320enlightened archetype. It's about taking the etheric and the ethereal and the cosmic
00:16:42.800and materializing it while in motion, which by the way, is really difficult to do if you've ever
00:16:50.980tried. It's been one of the major projects of my life that I come back to over and over again,
00:16:56.760because it is to me, it's about relating to our natural way of being. And it's also about
00:17:05.760embodying our supernatural ways of being, which we all have so long as we are in relationship with
00:17:16.040nature, intuition, the cosmos, our guides, deities, our ancestors, the collective,
00:17:23.160that's how we become supernatural right so and we already are it's not anything we have to force
00:17:30.180I want to be really clear about that too because that's a shadow of chariot and I'm a chariot that's
00:17:34.480my number so I'm like really really really intimate with the shadow as well as the potential
00:17:41.560the tower we can't move forward and navigate if our foundations are not in integrity however that
00:17:51.720looks. It's different for every person. We're all our own unique flowers. What works for me isn't
00:17:57.660going to work for you actually. And that's beautiful. That's also why we can't look to,
00:18:01.840I love, I just posted, I love that Deanne DePrima quote. I'm going to paraphrase it. Like we need
00:18:07.360as many people as possible trying to pull this thing down, trying to tear this thing down.
00:18:13.280And like, you have a different way. Like yours is open source. Mine is like, I want to grow a
00:18:18.200beautiful garden and make beautiful, magical products for people so that they can navigate
00:18:24.800their own waves. They can navigate their own tide pools. They can navigate their own rapids
00:18:30.960as well as that of the world. We all have our different ways. Yours might be working with kids
00:18:35.720in a preschool. Yours could be like being an amazing caretaker to a family member who's really
00:18:41.640sick. Like there's no end of the ways. And this isn't a hierarchy. Like it's not like, oh, this
00:18:46.800is the better thing or that. It's not like that at all. But we have to really think about integrity
00:18:52.720and what integrity means to us. And especially when we're making major decisions, especially
00:19:00.600when we're making decisions that are going to impact long periods of time for ourselves,
00:19:06.060the world, and for those we're in committed relationship to, whether that's our ancestors,
00:19:11.460whether that's ideals or activists or our best friend right or our inner child or our future wise
00:19:20.080self you know and so on and so forth and so I've been thinking a lot about what integrity means
00:19:25.980for me and how I can become more in integrity so that I might be more adaptable because I think
00:19:33.800that's we're really we're really being called to do that in these times on all levels you're someone
00:19:40.060who thinks so actively and so out loud so publicly about how you think which I think is I do yeah
00:19:49.380you do yeah I mean you're doing it now you you think a lot about how you think I think like
00:19:54.380you talk a lot about your ethics you talk a lot about how you how you're going to think about
00:19:59.440coming into relation or how you're going to think about being in the world you know like how do we
00:20:05.080adjust to each other and how do we learn from each other's ideas I it's it's funny that study
00:20:12.600that you question that because I find it something that I really learned from you is that you think
00:20:16.260a lot out loud about your own process of thinking and I and I I and I think like you know when we
00:20:23.400talk about figuring out the ethics of this next year or this next stage that we're going to be in
00:20:29.380we could all use some time you know thinking as a materialist practice as we talked about in a
00:20:35.380in an earlier episode Donna Haraway said we could all use some time to really think can you talk
00:20:40.780about some of the ways I mean I know you're a tarot scholar some of the the the things you use
00:20:48.220to think and that maybe we could we could learn from you well I definitely I have a lot of different
00:20:55.980ways I'm I study the Kabbalah with a rabbi and the more that I learn about Jewish mysticism
00:21:04.020the more helpful it is because it I'm like how much do I share I was raised reform Jewish
00:21:11.680and my experience was that I was not raised with many many forms of Judaism like many forms of
00:21:21.100all religions have clear edicts for how to live and clear philosophies. So I was introduced to,
00:21:31.480you know, doing mitzvahs and, you know, trying to heal the world and trying to repair the world
00:21:38.540and all of those altruistic things that are at the heart of all world religions.
00:21:43.140So there was that. But I didn't have a lot of philosophical and mythical and mystical and magical learnings until about four or five years ago, a little, whatever, until more recently in my life.
00:22:03.980and in between those i learned a lot about witchcraft and i learned a lot about the occult
00:22:13.960and i learned about that all from a western perspective and learning more about jewish
00:22:23.700mysticism i've become aware of how much of it i already learned through western occultism
00:22:30.420but there was absolutely no citation it's been completely yes i'm gonna unmute just to say yes
00:22:37.260i see that all the time with jewish mysticism completely culturally appropriated by witchcraft
00:22:42.880the the lesser vanishing right like that's an example of like people saying jewish words they
00:22:49.860have no idea what they're doing they have no idea what they're calling in they have no idea the
00:22:53.620energies that they're dealing with and these are major energies like you know people study these
00:23:02.040for their lifetimes like another example is I had no idea that angels were Jewish and I always sort
00:23:10.600of associated angels with Christianity and this is to be really clear that's not bad or good it
00:23:16.020just I was like oh this isn't for me like I don't have a relationship with angels and then I started
00:23:20.320learning, well, no angels were Jewish. And of course there's angels in Islam and there's angels0.65
00:23:24.520in many, again, like I'm not saying it's, I just want to have, you know, nuanced here and be clear.
00:23:30.100And so once I realized that, and once I started learning about the connections that ancient
00:23:36.280Judaism had with angels and healing and protection, and I started working with that energy, you know,
00:23:43.440it was it was beautiful and it was magical so a framework a Jewish mystical framework also just
00:23:52.620certain certain tenets in Jewish mysticism that are in many other religions and many other
00:23:59.300philosophies that I think is really beautiful is that you show gratitude to God for living in joy
00:24:07.500bliss in Judaism. You know, it's not some time to make the donuts or like got to repent. You know,0.68
00:24:15.260it's like, how beautiful can I make my garden? How beautiful can I make my life? I'm so grateful
00:24:21.260to be alive. And that does not mean feeling indebted or guilty. It means like enjoying
00:24:27.660things. And when I learned that I was like, I never was taught that like growing up within
00:24:33.080the context of. So that helps position me quite a bit. And of course, I'm always, always
00:24:41.220reading. And I'm always in conversation in my mind or with my partner. My partner is like one
00:24:48.600of the smartest people I've ever met. So I'm always in conversation with my partner. And I've
00:24:53.500been blessed enough to have a couple of really good friends who care about the same kinds of
00:24:57.920things and so we'll have those conversations you know I'm always just trying to really parse out
00:25:05.680who is doing the thinking what part of me is doing the thinking and why and how I can then
00:25:13.140it's very it's very witchcraft 101 how I can bring the etheric into the material how can I
00:25:19.640be like okay well this is my belief and because this is my belief I'm gonna try this thing or
00:25:26.320like I love always I call it's a joke a running joke that I have with some of my friends and my
00:25:32.460partner like oh why don't I try following my own advice we already know witches already know
00:25:38.220that there is a procedure and that there is a process to transformation and change and it
00:25:45.740looks different for every individual based on their own life and where they are and their
00:25:50.940resources and their beliefs but for example I'm like oh right I'm feeling ready for a change I'm
00:25:58.480feeling like I'm ready for a new chapter of my life which 101 is like clear out like just clear
00:26:05.160your house your schedule say no right like that's 101 we all know nature loves a vacuum and if it's
00:26:15.400time to compost it's time to compost which is we know this and so I'm like oh yes I know what to do
00:26:21.760and so for me that's very comforting because I've done it so many times before I understand it
00:26:27.360innately I know that it works so that's what I can always turn to when I'm depressed or confused
00:26:35.240or unsure the other thing I really love about witchcraft I mean we could be here all day
00:26:39.860we are taught from a young age at least in like a lot of the school systems in America
00:26:48.060not all of them but many we're taught from a young age that like we have to know if we don't
00:26:55.840know if we don't know the answer we're bad we're gonna fail we should be ashamed witchcraft is
00:27:04.120much more interested in the questions like I love the Roke quote like living the questions
00:27:10.720much more interested in the mystery you don't have to know all the time it's okay to not know
00:27:17.160it's okay to be in the dark that's part of it you know you're not off the path you're not bad
00:27:22.040you're not wrong we're always going to have things we'll never know about like I trip out all the
00:27:26.980time on how in this lifetime I'll never know myself all the way because I'm always changing
00:27:32.720I'm like, wow, this is true. No wonder I get to have like all these different lives. Like I'm not
00:27:36.760going to totally know all the different aspects of myself. Right. I want to know when I want to
00:27:41.100experience, but not, I won't be able to, it's just not possible because we're so multifaceted.
00:27:47.060So like, that's why these are the kinds of life-saving practices and thoughts that, that
00:27:53.460helped me help me formulate, you know, how I want to think about things. And also, which has been a
00:28:01.260big project for me personally. It's like how I want to feel about things and where my body is
00:28:07.860giving me wisdom and how my heart wants to feel and the power of what happens when I really tune
00:28:14.860into my heart and how much of a guide that can be. Because the thinking mind, which I'm like
00:28:22.960really good at, I have a Gemini moon in tropical astrology. I am very airy. I'm very mercurial. I
00:28:30.440have like a lots of mercury in my astrological chart, I can really just stay there. And that's
00:28:35.940not useful. I need to put it into practice and it needs to feel embodied. And I'm allowed to get
00:28:41.620messages from the plants. I'm allowed to get messages from my guides. I'm allowed to get
00:28:46.920messages from water, from my heart, from my meditations, from the hummingbirds, the messages
00:28:53.200get to come in and my mind doesn't have to judge them. And my mind doesn't have to sort them.
00:29:00.200I get to not be in my like thinking mind or my fixing mind, which is often a defense mechanism,
00:29:06.160trying to solve a problem that often doesn't even exist. So I have really found that like
00:29:11.640heart practices and embodiment practices like somatics or yoga, or I've been boxing this year,
00:29:17.740and I've been deadlifting and weight training. That's been really useful for me as someone who
00:29:22.100is so cerebral and who can live there really easily. I need the different elements. I need
00:29:28.800earth to ground me I need water I and I really need fire so that's these are just some things
00:29:35.980I've been thinking about that we all have at our disposal and we all have in our our our witch life
00:29:42.080toolkit you know I do know I mean I yeah I I was just saying to to Mark like we've been so
00:29:51.680anxious we're in this overwhelm of loss right now with his mother dying of cancer
00:29:57.600it's happening in the next days we've just been in this mounting feeling feeling and
00:30:02.560and we've just been staying in this terror place a little bit this anxious functioning place you
00:30:09.140know and we were both like we just we need to run again and like have a lot of sex and like
00:30:16.380just like, after this is done, we need to somehow come back into our bodies to process what has
00:30:24.780happened, you know, so I really, really relate to the needing to come back into some kind of
00:30:29.920balance between these elements of the self to, and I love what you said about I need to think
00:30:33.820about which me is thinking, because there are so many of these voices, you know, some of them are
00:30:41.620running back and forth across my head right now. My kid just came home and it's loud, but so many
00:30:46.000voices in me and so many roles to play to try to peace out and parents and grandparents and
00:30:51.940ancestral voices and ancestral fear and guilt. And yeah, so turning to that witch kit is definitely0.61
00:31:00.360a lifesaver for me. So thanks for reminding us about that. This is a funny backwards way to do
00:31:06.520this. But I wondered if for a last question, I think our audience knows who you because, you
00:31:13.420know, we've celebrated your work so many times, and you'd have a large platform based on your
00:31:17.980incredible work. But I wondered if, oh, I wondered if you would reintroduce yourself. It's a last,
00:31:27.980it's a closing question. And it's like, how, how are you? And who are you these days? If we want
00:31:35.040to leave this feeling like we actually got to be with you? What is the you that you want us
00:31:40.800to learn from and carry with us? You know, I'm just a little like five foot two Jewish lady
00:31:48.400living in LA. I'm an artist. I'm a writer. I think a lot. I share. I'm a channel. I'm a psychic.
00:32:00.220I care a lot. I'm a care bearer. And I'm just a human being, you know? I don't know what else
00:32:09.560to say I I feel very in flux right now you know I've been really meditating on the trap of identity
00:32:16.600I'm in a four year which is an emperor year so I'm very much and it's a death year like death is
00:32:23.000the teacher of the emperor because obviously disintegration teaches our ego so I've been very
00:32:28.620much actually like unpacking any attachments I have to identities that don't quite feel like they
00:32:40.340they fit at the moment so I am in flux like there's a lot of things I am sorting out in my
00:32:46.320life as we're all sorting out in our lives as you know we lose people and we get sick
00:32:52.580and we start hearing different calls and we need to make space to honor those calls and to honor
00:33:01.180the relationships we want to have so that's and I'm definitely like in the compost heap like the
00:33:07.420compost heap is like up to my like this you can't see it but I'm like I'm like swimming in it I'm
00:33:13.460glad you can't smell me either because it's just like compost so that's kind of where where I'm at
00:33:19.600And I like sharing it like it's fun and liberating for me to be like, I don't know.
00:33:26.500I'm not sure I get to be in the in-between, you know, for as long as I want.