Missing Witches - WF Sophie Strand： We Are The Product Of Anarchic Queer Love Making

00:00:00.340 We've been missing you. Do you want to find the witch friends you've been missing? Do you want 1.00

00:00:04.480 to participate in these conversations live? And do you want to support the work of recovering

00:00:09.080 a true history of feminist ideas about magic? Do you want to hang out? Do you want an invite to

00:00:15.440 Zoom together with Amy and myself, every new moon, along with our hilarious, diverse, wise,

00:00:22.600 queer creative anti-racist science and awe-loving coven you must join the missing witches patreon

00:00:31.200 it's pay what you can and we can't wait to meet you there patreon.com 0.97

00:00:37.160 slash missing witches you aren't being a proper woman therefore you must be a witch 0.97

00:00:41.700 you must be a witch um i'm gonna take a deep breath and 0.99

00:00:52.600 Ground myself in my snowy lake here, and my excitement at our guest and at all of you, 0.98

00:01:01.080 whether you are here with us in this moment or listening down the lines, welcome witches,

00:01:08.420 welcome practitioners of all stripes, welcome waves of all bodies and listeners and lichen.

00:01:15.480 We're so honored and excited to get to come together in a space where we take the anger and magic seriously and the awe and the ecology of it all.

00:01:30.520 And I will start with my introduction to this incredible writer whose words have been coming to me like a big, exciting wave across the distance by telling a little bit of a story.

00:01:42.540 I read in a couple places or heard versions of Sophie Strand telling a story about an encounter with magic, being in an unsafe space, and then a magical kind of moment, someone appearing and handing her a strange golden object and being able to escape.

00:02:03.640 and in that moment she said I tell you this story of magic with the hope that like you believe me

00:02:13.460 that I offer you this and hope it doesn't get killed by offering it you know and so as my

00:02:19.920 introduction to all of us this is a circle whether for the kid inside of you or the crone

00:02:26.660 to hear that you are believed. So welcome, electrifying writer. How are you? Where are you?

00:02:34.740 Tell us a little bit we should know about you today. Well, thank you for that very generous

00:02:39.040 intro. I'm in the Hudson Valley. I'm right at the confluence of the Rondout Creek and the Hudson

00:02:44.440 River. And so I'm kind of in the city, kind of in a village, mostly next to the herons and the eagles

00:02:51.080 and the water and that lymphatic pulse where two bodies of water meet. How am I today? I am melted.

00:02:59.940 I am the compost heap in its most rotted phase, but I'm trying to really enjoy and be open to

00:03:09.380 the surprising fertility of that experience. Yeah. What about you? Yeah, my body is in revolt today.

00:03:21.080 I don't feel great today, to be honest. I sort of sparked when you said you're at this

00:03:26.340 lymphatic confluence. It feels like my lymphatic system has been in revolt today and my bones are

00:03:32.760 achy. And yeah, just to be honest about where my body is at, I feel like a crumbly compost heap

00:03:41.220 with spikes sticking up through it and a hard chair. Well, we're both there. And it's honestly,

00:03:47.420 it's really nice to have someone offer such a sober and serious answer to that question. I'm

00:03:54.060 there too. Yeah. I don't even know, you know, it's a little bit of a melted day, but I'm very happy

00:04:00.560 to be here. Yeah. Thanks for being here and for being honest about that. I think a heartbreaking

00:04:07.880 amount of our listeners can relate to that feeling in our bodies. I don't know exactly what it is

00:04:16.140 about chronic illness and chronic pain in this time in our world? Yeah, it definitely feels like

00:04:22.220 it's a resonance with the pain of the earth and that there's a kind of mirroring that happens,

00:04:29.780 especially, yeah, for people who are really aware of ecology and where they live, they can

00:04:35.280 oftentimes see that their wound is actually the shape of the wound in the land, but that doesn't

00:04:39.940 make it fun yeah no it doesn't make it fun how do you think about healing that stuff I mean

00:04:48.500 there's there's sort of this desire I think to think that like as we heal ourselves we heal

00:04:55.000 the world and I think that's beautiful and appealing and also sort of simplistic frustrating

00:05:01.520 you know I I value self-care but I don't think self-care on its own is activism

00:05:08.840 Yeah, I actually think that I've been a little allergic to the word healing lately, because it doesn't necessarily map onto my experience, you know, I have an incurable illness, it doesn't, it won't heal, I can salvage it, you know, a friend of mine who has the same condition said, health isn't how well your body's doing, it's the amount of joy you feel in your life.

00:05:28.540 And that felt much more nourishing than this idea of being fixed when there isn't a fix.

00:05:35.360 When I don't, you know, when the dominant narrative is the narrative of progress, the

00:05:39.260 arrow of time, social evolution, and I don't really fit into that.

00:05:43.980 So healing for me has always been almost a weaponized term.

00:05:48.360 It's supposed to turn us into atomized individuals who are responsible for our health rather

00:05:53.360 than being fixes where oppression sediments you know illness is not necessarily an individual

00:06:00.420 responsibility it's just showing that you are the capture of oppression and sites of pain that are

00:06:06.820 more than just you so to expect a human being to solve the problem that is caused by entangled

00:06:13.100 complicated systems of oppression that you know span time span countries it seems like something

00:06:21.740 to do to paralyze you. So healing for me has become a very complicated term. I want to thrive.

00:06:28.200 I want to be ecstatic. I want to be complicated. I want to be prickly. I want to live each,

00:06:34.760 I think of Audre Lorde's diary when she was dealing with cancer that wasn't going to be

00:06:39.360 cured being like, I want to go out like a meteor. I want to go out like a meteor. I don't want to

00:06:43.740 heal. I don't know if healing is available, but I want to be very bright and shiny and complicated.

00:06:49.000 Yes. Can you apply that to your thinking about masculinities? I know you have a forthcoming book entitled The Flowering Wand, Lunar Kings, Lichenized Lovers, Trans Species, Magicians, Rhizomatic Harpists, Heal the Masculine, which is a badass title and I want to talk about all the bits of it.

00:07:09.140 But for my own context, I have family members who work at the intersection of masculinities and suicide rates because of repeated encounters with that.

00:07:21.620 And acknowledging the deep truth in what you just said about healing, how do we embrace the masculine or bring it into the compost heap of all of this, the pain that the feminine has been feeling or something?

00:07:34.900 First, I'll say that I don't think there's any such thing as a biological male or a biological

00:07:39.820 female. And if you actually look at nature, queerness is ubiquitous and intersex and all 0.61

00:07:45.820 sorts of strange, amazing, troubling amalgamations. I mean, lichen, which is the fusion of an algae 1.00

00:07:52.280 and a fungi and then a yeast and then a bacteria. I'm much more interested in that than any kind of

00:07:58.360 determinism. But culturally, masculine and feminine are so ingrained that it's probably

00:08:03.220 important to massage them. And the thing that's worried me is that masculinity has been conflated

00:08:09.080 with patriarchy and with capitalist patriarchy, but it's not the same thing. And it's been at

00:08:13.820 the detriment to men who are trying to tell a new story, but aren't given a story. There's no

00:08:19.960 alternative offered. The issue I think has been, I've been thinking a lot of capitalism and

00:08:26.080 patriarchy as being kind of like narrative dysbiosis, which is when you take too many

00:08:31.180 antibiotics and you kill off all your gut biome, there's too much open real estate so that a

00:08:35.860 pathogen can take over and bloom like a yeast or something really terrible. And the issue is if you

00:08:44.840 take fungicides to kill the yeast, it just creates the same problem again and again and again. And

00:08:49.340 the idea of cleaning out your gut, of trying to kill off the pathogen, doesn't repopulate the gut

00:08:54.080 with healthy biodiversity. So the way I've been thinking about tackling patriarchal capitalism as

00:09:01.300 being a bad story, as being a monologuing pathogen, has been, how do I overwhelm it with a probiotic

00:09:07.920 of other stories? How can I go backwards and look at and see if they're older, more healthier modes

00:09:13.440 than masculine in mythology, fairy tales, folk tales, herbal lore? And how can I compost them

00:09:20.120 with modern science and modern philosophy and storytelling. So what I'm really looking for is a

00:09:25.420 polyphony, like discordant, sometimes continuous, sometimes melodious, sometimes absolutely opposed

00:09:31.880 songs that weave together to create something very complex and thus like a resilient ecosystem,

00:09:38.960 very resilient to climate change and to pressure and to illness. Can you give us some examples from

00:09:44.160 your book of essays, especially I want to talk about trans species magicians? Oh, well, that's

00:09:49.780 my favorite example, not my favorite, one of my favorite. So I think a great example is the

00:09:55.060 mythological figure of Merlin, who predates the Arthurian myths, and may have actually even been

00:10:01.960 a bardic historical figure, who then gets combined with all these different figures to create, you

00:10:08.000 know, the wizard Merlin of the Arthurian myths. Geoffrey of Monmouth, this kind of like fictional,

00:10:14.420 he was a historian, but he was really a storyteller. He actually combined all these

00:10:19.060 different figures to create Merlin. But the figure of Merlin is really interesting in that he lives,

00:10:24.500 he's a hedge dweller, he's interstitial, he's mycelial, he's that connective tissue rather

00:10:29.660 than any kind of discrete node of intelligence. And he goes into the woods, so he'll come and 0.90

00:10:35.820 give kings advice or prophecy and help kings navigate certain kinds of dilemmas or war-like

00:10:42.580 situations. But then he'll go mad because he's in civilization too long and the violence drives him

00:10:47.980 mad. And he goes back to the forest. He oftentimes turns into a stag. He runs with pigs. He wears

00:10:53.400 antlers. And he oscillates between the world of men and the more than human world. And in fact,

00:11:01.720 in order to instruct kings, instruct men on how to be a man, he doesn't draw on the stories of men.

00:11:10.440 He draws on the stories of hawks and salmon and streams and rivers. This goes all the way back

00:11:16.740 to the Mabinogian and the oldest Welsh annals where we have that story that says I was a loaf

00:11:21.120 of bread I was a kernel of wheat this oldest poem that's attributed to Taliesin and Merlin

00:11:26.720 which is he teaches you how to be a man by teaching you how to be something else

00:11:30.860 how to be a variety of different beings an ecosystem rather than an individual

00:11:36.660 and so I think trans species magicians really it shows you what does it mean like transness is

00:11:43.740 about living between you know letting yourself become rather than be this like solid discrete

00:11:50.360 legible object you're constantly in flow and i think it's also trans species so i think i think

00:11:55.740 of merlin as being a very trans figure in every sense of the word always moving always flexible

00:12:01.260 always adaptive i i love that especially in the way of imagining um i think that just resonates

00:12:08.640 a lot with my own experience of civilization I like to go into the world and like this weekend

00:12:14.340 see a drag show and see all my my coven my women and then like it's all too much and I need to 0.95

00:12:22.800 go be a stag or a slug for a little bit or curl up with my kids like a fox or something

00:12:33.020 um yeah yeah can you so you have another book coming out uh eco-feminist historical fiction

00:12:39.920 reimagining of the gospels called the madonna secret i want to talk about that too like the

00:12:46.820 why and how of reimagining gospels um and eco-feminism um well i think eco-feminism is

00:12:54.060 kind of like a catch word that like catches the right audience but honestly if you're a feminist

00:12:59.320 you should be an eco-feminist if you're an eco-activist you should also be a feminist

00:13:03.740 the two are inextricable so it does feel like a little bit of a simplistic term or like a fake

00:13:10.540 term um a little too superficial for me I've you know I was raised by an ex-Buddhist monk and kind

00:13:20.000 of a pagan witch mother and then also by a Israeli Jewish family that um my family married into so I

00:13:27.340 had a lot of, and my parents studied and wrote about religion and spirituality. So I was like

00:13:32.760 raised by monks and rabbis and nuns, theologians and philosophers. And I had a very intimate

00:13:41.680 understanding early on that there are really helpful parts of spirituality. And then there

00:13:47.600 are really toxic parts of them. And a question I'd always had is how does someone who seems like

00:13:52.860 a nature-based storyteller who's focused on inviting everyone to the table get turned into 0.68

00:13:59.380 like the symbol of oppression and genocide and ecocide like what happens with Christianity in

00:14:04.800 particular that it gets so co-opted by colonialism by imperialism um by sexism and racism and

00:14:13.700 misogyny like what what goes wrong and so you know I studied with um one of the premier scholars of

00:14:21.000 biblical studies in college. And I've been reading stuff my whole life, very interested

00:14:27.840 in goddess culture, the movement from pantheism to monotheism. And eventually I thought,

00:14:34.800 no one's ever really done a really historical look at what happens when a Galilean magician

00:14:42.880 storyteller healer gets murdered by an imperial government early on in his teachings. And then

00:14:50.440 his teachings get deracinated from the ecology and the social context where they were grown

00:14:55.220 translated into the language of the oppressors that assassinated him and then disseminated to

00:15:01.480 a bunch of different countries as if it could possibly be transplanted i think of jesus as

00:15:06.760 being a deracinated figure he you know a great example is his parable of the mustard seed seems

00:15:14.460 kind of cute to us in like you know in oklahoma like you know feeder um church that's just going 0.93

00:15:22.320 to kind of come off as um kind of like a a riddle but the truth is that the kingdom is like a mustard

00:15:29.060 seed to a galilean farmer would have been an extremely vegetal anarchic thing to say mustard

00:15:35.400 seeds were an invasive species they took over your fields they destroyed your crops it was almost

00:15:40.220 anti-agricultural. So the kingdom of God is here, and it's that weed that you hate that destroys

00:15:47.960 your crops. So Jesus is a much more radical figure than we even know. So I wanted to write a book,

00:15:54.400 but the book is from Mary Magdalene's point of view. So I wanted to also write it from a female

00:15:58.700 Jewish perspective, like really also reroute the female, the fact that Jesus was a Jew who was

00:16:04.720 attempting to reform Judaism. He wasn't creating Christianity. So I was really thinking about like,

00:16:10.780 how do I create texture? How do I people this place? How do I create a sensory scaffolding

00:16:16.680 that makes us come alive in a way that we don't get when we're reading the texts of the oppressors?

00:16:22.660 You talk about interstitial thinking too. We've interviewed a bunch of different writers

00:16:27.060 and thinkers recently who just sort of on their own brought up an idea of channeled work of feeling

00:16:34.040 like work is coming through them. Yeah. Is there a relationship there? Do you think between

00:16:38.840 interstitial thinking, moving along sort of mycelial lines, being inspired or taken up by

00:16:44.880 the fairies as you've recently written about around us and an idea of channeled work in this

00:16:51.540 sort of other language? Yeah. I mean, I always want to trouble this idea that channeling is a

00:16:57.540 fun experience. But I do think that it is our responsibility right now to de-center human

00:17:03.940 narratives and to become a mouth for those species that are going extinct, those species whose stories

00:17:09.660 need to be centered. The thing I always think about is the fungi, the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis

00:17:16.080 that takes over carpenter ants and coordinates their behaviors to walk up these stems of plants

00:17:21.760 and then bite into the vein underneath this leaf and sporulate from their heads. So the ant,

00:17:27.020 the biologist Merlin Sheljick writes in his book that by the end, it's just a fungus wearing an

00:17:31.840 ant costume. And that's a pretty horrifying experience for the ant perhaps, but maybe

00:17:37.500 that's what we're required to do. I wrote an essay about that using Garcia Lorca's idea of

00:17:42.600 the duende, which is like, this is not the muse. This is not the fetishized, beautiful inspiration.

00:17:47.660 this is dancing in the wound with the devil this is like knowing that making art is an emergency

00:17:53.920 and perhaps your aliveness in your survival is not the most important part of it so personally

00:18:00.440 i have a genetic connective tissue disease and i found this out after i had loved fungi and

00:18:07.800 underground mycorrhizal systems for many years which are the connective tissue of the soil

00:18:11.860 and for me it felt like this pivot point where i could become very solipsistic and feel very bad

00:18:18.940 about myself or i could see how i could become a channel for something else that perhaps understood

00:18:24.260 me so how can how can we become a channel for another species knowing that perhaps it won't be

00:18:30.360 pleasurable or won't it won't be legible we won't be able to understand what it is all we'll know

00:18:35.460 is that like the carpenter ant we are climbing up that piece of grass we are sporulating something

00:18:40.540 we're not totally in control of and so interstitial thinking is that mycelial thinking it's like also

00:18:47.280 how can you how can you let your nuclei flow through the hyphal networks that filamentous

00:18:53.460 fabric that holds the soil and ecosystems together how can you let yourself travel between

00:19:00.160 different sensory experiences so that when you're speaking you're not just speaking from a human

00:19:05.040 perspective, you know, your Michael Reisel system is flowing into a tree, into an orchid, into a

00:19:12.080 ghost pipe, into a plane of grasses. Yeah. So it shows that the most fertile spots are often

00:19:19.640 between mythic gradients and between opposing ideas rather than in these simplistic and fictional

00:19:25.860 idea of binaries. Since we're playing with some kind of classic witch language that we like to

00:19:32.080 play with and problematize and explore, explore around. What about potions? Let's talk about

00:19:37.960 health, like bringing, um, maybe it's different from healing, but bringing ourselves to like a

00:19:43.820 balanced state by the things we take in or, or sort of sacralizing or creating rituals around

00:19:50.200 food or drink or, or medicine or relationships with medicine. I know you have a complicated

00:19:56.060 relationship with medicine and health. You called it a tricky dance partner, which I love.

00:20:00.520 Well, I wrote a piece about how the word poison comes from the word potion and how potion is this word for something very intense.

00:20:08.580 And that, in fact, the idea of poison is a relatively modern idea that's more reflective of our inability to dose anything.

00:20:15.160 We always do things in extremes. Any substance, when not taken seriously, when not understood as being sacred and animate and different than you, can be used ineffectively, even if it's a medicine.

00:20:27.360 so for me i kind of think of everything as being pharmakon which is that older greek term for

00:20:33.500 something that can be either a poison or a potion or a medicine and how can i be incredibly respectful

00:20:40.880 of my food and of my medicines and and to understand that maybe the model of being an

00:20:47.780 always in need of a medicine isn't what i should be thinking about i should reframe it and say how

00:20:52.300 can I be a medicine? We're so extractive. We're always, you know, part of why psychedelic culture

00:20:57.660 for me feels a little problematic right now, which it's like, I just need a heroic dose to

00:21:02.040 have my equal awakening. And then I will act better. It's like, how can you be a medicine

00:21:06.240 where we're in the landscape needs you? How could you act medicinal? Why do you always need to be

00:21:12.500 taking and eating and consuming? I don't land on any solid answer about what medicine is to me or

00:21:19.340 what a potion is to me. I just know that I have to be in interrogative relationship with the things

00:21:24.520 that constitute me. You know, I am made, my molecules are built by the microbiome I breathe

00:21:30.460 in, by the food that I eat that's grown in the soil around here that, you know, I am intimately

00:21:37.240 metabolically looping with my landscape. I'm not different than my landscape. I mean, I am different,

00:21:42.920 but I am in chained and tangled with it. So I think landscape is medicinal. And I also have

00:21:49.860 to learn how to be medicinal to it. I want to invite Ravi or Cassandra, Ravi, in particular,

00:21:56.520 in one of our previous coven circles talked about identification of they, them as coming

00:22:02.400 from an understanding of the many microbiome they carry with them. I'm cooking. So just give me a

00:22:08.440 second while I check on my cookies. Go for it. That's a perfect thing to be doing while we talk

00:22:13.480 about this. Like they said, I chose that they then pronounced not just for, you know, gender

00:22:20.080 reflection, but also I'm in healthcare. And I remember learning about the microbiome and

00:22:25.640 listening to some really cool information about, you know, you have more bacterial DNA than you do

00:22:31.020 human DNA inside your body. And I was like, oh, that's it. I mean, we're, we're holobionts. You

00:22:36.320 know we're not we're not just one thing and this is a fantastic way to dissolve these like boundaries

00:22:44.140 and borders and things that are getting in the way of connection and getting in the way of living in

00:22:49.040 that reciprocity thank you for sharing that that's beautiful and yeah i sometimes say to people like

00:22:53.660 they them is so much more accurate than he or or she you know we have 10 times as many bacterial

00:22:59.760 cells in our body than we do human cells and our very cells are the product of anarchic symbiogenetic

00:23:06.220 fusion of organelles. Like we are the product of like anarchic queer lovemaking. That's kind of 0.96

00:23:13.020 how I try and frame it. But I also think it's important to honor the differences that prick

00:23:19.400 and sustain conversation and those gradients, you know, where the river actually flows from

00:23:24.640 the mountaintop down to the valley and carves a actual vein into the stone and that we are all

00:23:31.800 connected but not everything is connected to everything and you know if your gut tissue breaks

00:23:36.340 down and that all of those bacteria get out it'll kill you so it's those slight differences that

00:23:41.460 create a complicated holobion that are important to also um honor that you know i i sometimes i'm

00:23:48.840 worried about spirituality's movement towards a kind of homogenizing universalism um that everything

00:23:55.100 is the same and i always want to say you know it's you know it's the differences between us that

00:24:01.020 that create us that that we we have um ecosystems inside of us that never touch but

00:24:09.420 create us it's a very beautiful idea i also sometimes think like yes so i i have so many

00:24:16.100 different like i have fungi on my skin i have bacteria in my liver i mean i'm i'm created by

00:24:22.820 all of these different things i wonder what i'm creating and so i sometimes also like to think

00:24:27.720 about like what am i minuscule in so holarchy is this idea of like nested systems that seems like

00:24:34.380 such an important thing to to start playing with yeah i appreciate that specificity i i worry

00:24:41.180 sometimes when i see um or not worry but i i question when i see the the broad use of fungi

00:24:49.900 as a metaphor with the way that we can metaphorize everything it sort of reminds me of like you know

00:24:57.160 early post-modernism or whatever when everything was quantum physics and it was just like it was

00:25:02.160 the metaphor for everything um it loses it loses its realness and we also i mean i think the thing

00:25:10.480 that's interesting is we don't know that much about fungi right now they're the neglect of

00:25:14.200 mega science so we can make metaphors from them but we also don't quite know enough about them

00:25:19.680 to make metaphors and i think that there's a very utilitarian almost like teleological relationship

00:25:25.560 them shipped to them like this is what they do for us this is how this is how they function

00:25:29.740 this is why they're useful which is interesting and important but I also think that they're

00:25:34.760 probably spectacular and amazing on their own and that it's important to just let them be

00:25:41.040 and to also ask them more questions so with every species that I'm thinking about and

00:25:46.680 metaphorizing I'm also trying to keep that open interrogative channel where I'm letting it surprise

00:25:52.640 me Cassandra can I invite you if you want to respond to anything I know you're you're here

00:25:59.160 your lovely energy is here I did very briefly want to say just how beautifully all of these

00:26:04.520 sessions are linking together so as I've been taking note you had mentioned Sophie like dancing

00:26:10.900 in the wound it just brought me back to um when we were sorry let me look at my notes here just

00:26:16.560 very briefly uh when we were talking to Marcelite and she was mentioning communicating with like

00:26:22.060 your problematic ancestors as a way of their healing and it's all just like slowly meshing

00:26:27.740 and melding into each conversation and thanks for that i think that connection to so we recently

00:26:34.600 interviewed a phd candidate at emory who's writing about the black witch and she's a hereditary black 0.96

00:26:41.220 witch and fucking badass and awesome awesome writer and thinker and um and we both got really 0.95

00:26:48.240 emotional at one point thinking about she was sharing from interviews she'd had with different 0.99

00:26:53.300 practitioners trying to understand this she's like healing I don't know I don't know if I get it

00:26:58.380 what is that really you know and the story she told was giving a problematic ancestor an ancestor

00:27:06.440 who caused pain an opportunity to help you in ritual work to call them in and say I need your

00:27:14.900 help now we're going to do this together freeze them in a way and that that's what they mean by

00:27:20.300 healing seven generations of the past in hoodoo and in other traditions um i wanted to ask you

00:27:28.100 about this idea that when i read it from you like landed in my belly and we read it out loud in

00:27:34.140 another coven circle your piece about uh the body is an ancestor can you talk out loud with us about

00:27:39.880 that idea yeah i do think there's something i think that there's a great need for lineage healing

00:27:46.960 perhaps for people to yeah to to look back and see where they're coming from what's inside their

00:27:52.020 cells what trauma has been passed down but there's also something a little anthropocentric about it

00:27:56.520 and also a little bounded which is it's not a link it's not a lineage it's an intertangled

00:28:03.020 relationship it's a web with multiple doors of entry in a very you know kind of rhizomatic way

00:28:07.960 to misuse that metaphor but um and it also it creates this false agential cut between us and

00:28:15.760 other species when the truth is that you know the farther you go back the more we're all involved in 0.94

00:28:21.940 each other's shit and you know you can you can look at anything and realize that you are it's 0.95

00:28:29.940 your ancestor and in fact your body is a composite of ancestors your molecules have constituted 1.00

00:28:35.840 past ancestors of yours that are now in your body that you know the fact that we know how

00:28:42.140 to have placentas that we create new beings that we then become an ancestor for we learned from

00:28:48.620 viruses that our ability to be an ancestor is viral and I think that it's sometimes there's

00:28:55.840 such an onus on us to do certain kinds of ritual work and to follow the rules and that sometimes

00:29:02.540 seems like a very re-articulation of the patriarchal hierarchical situations we're

00:29:06.760 trying to escape which is and it's also very intellectual but how can we drop into our bodies

00:29:11.960 and realize that every breath we take is connecting us it is honoring our ancestors that every time

00:29:18.660 we eat something in our microbiome works we are honoring all of the bacterial legacies that

00:29:24.820 constitute us um and i i think it was a way of making the body sacred and realizing that

00:29:32.800 the very practical things that the body's the body does ties us into all of our more than human

00:29:39.160 ancestors and something i i like offer to people who've asked me about this is you can find any

00:29:46.000 being that you love any mountain any salamander any type of grass and if you work hard enough

00:29:52.960 you can create that connective tissue to understand the line that draws you back to it scientifically.

00:29:59.720 You can do it poetically, you can do it spiritually, but you can also scientifically trace those steps

00:30:04.320 that lead you back to that blade of grass.

00:30:07.280 Can you talk more about that and maybe go back to, and I'm like excited to know more about this,

00:30:12.060 that we learned our ability to grow a placenta from a virus.

00:30:15.480 Okay. I'm going to try and say this one word. It's difficult. I'm probably going to stumble on it.

00:30:19.640 I use so many words that I can't pronounce in my writing.

00:30:22.380 Okay.

00:30:22.780 I love that.

00:30:26.000 Your body is an ancestor.

00:30:28.720 The locust leaves lie like golden scales across the stones.

00:30:33.740 I imagine last night a honey-colored snake winding along the path parallel to the river,

00:30:40.120 rubbing off the skin of the past year.

00:30:43.580 A light rain frills the air, hung on wind, refusing to fall,

00:30:47.660 swept forever sideways as if guided by another gravity. It is almost Samhain, a time when some

00:30:54.320 believe that the dead are closest, although ancestral celebrations punctuate the entire

00:30:59.820 calendrical year, each tailored to different ecosystems and practices. The dead, outside of

00:31:06.440 our idea of linear time, paradoxically mark the passing of time. How do we honor our ancestors?

00:31:13.700 what are the rituals and the spells necessary to mark this time i want to offer that although

00:31:20.100 rituals are powerful and spells can summon the unexpected there is no need of special instruction

00:31:26.060 or initiation all you need is your hands your eyes and the constant infinity loop drawn between

00:31:33.020 your lungs and the churning sporulated air of the entire world you do not need to build an ancestor

00:31:40.400 altar. You do not need to trace your bloodline back 10 generations. Ancestry isn't a lineage.

00:31:46.520 It's a non-linear tangle of animacy with multiple points of entry. For me, ancestry extends beyond

00:31:54.740 the human. It is rhizomatic rooting into different species and deep time. Your body is an ancestor.

00:32:02.580 Your body is an altar to your ancestors. Every one of yourselves holds an ancient and anarchic

00:32:08.940 love story. Around 2.7 billion years ago, free-living prokaryotes melted into one another

00:32:15.220 to form the mitochondria and organelles of the cells that build our bodies today.

00:32:20.700 All you need to do to honor your ancestors is to roll up like a pill bug into the innate shape of

00:32:27.300 safety, the fetal position. The curl of your body then is an altar not just to the womb that grew 0.68

00:32:33.760 you, but to the retroviruses that 200 million years ago taught mammals how to develop the

00:32:38.800 protein syncytin that creates the syncytrophotoplast, a layer of the placenta. Breathe in slowly,

00:32:47.000 knowing that your breath loops you into the biome of your ecosystem. Every seven to 10 years,

00:32:52.960 your cells will have turned over, re-articulated by your inhales and exhales, your appetites

00:32:58.320 and proclivity for certain flavors. If you live in a valley, chances are the ancient glacial moraine,

00:33:05.220 the fossils crushed underfoot, the spores from grandmotherly honey fungi have all entered into

00:33:11.400 and rebuilt the very molecular makeup of your bones, your lungs, and even your eyes. Even your

00:33:18.020 lungfuls of exhaust turn you into an altar for the Mesozoic ferns pressurized into the fossil fuels

00:33:25.060 you are threaded through with fossils your microbiome is an ode to bacterial legacies

00:33:31.140 you would not be able to trace with birth certificates and blood lineages you are the

00:33:35.800 ongoingness of the dead the alembic where they are given breath again every decision every idea

00:33:43.060 every poem you breathe and live is a resurrection of elements that date back to the birth of this

00:33:48.680 universe itself. Today, I realize that due to the miracle of metabolic recycling, it is even

00:33:54.720 possible that my body somehow holds the cells of my great-great-grandmother, or your great-great

00:34:01.180 grandmother, or that I am built from carbon that once intimately orchestrated the flight of a

00:34:06.940 hummingbird or a pterodactyl. Your body is an ecosystem of ancestors, an outcome born not of

00:34:13.020 a single human thread, but a web of relations that ripples outwards into the intimate ocean

00:34:18.120 of deep time thanks thanks for that thanks for writing that and for sharing it

00:34:26.700 that was things that I needed to hear thank you for letting me read it and for saying that

00:34:34.720 yeah I feel emotional when I whenever I read that piece and when I think about it and I

00:34:39.480 do you feel like you are at a place with your writing where all this stuff is is rushing out

00:34:45.440 of you it feels like following you on Instagram for example or places it feels like there are

00:34:50.860 these these big big waves of ideas and words that are coming and you're met with a big wave of

00:34:57.580 response almost every time does this feel like a really charged time for you or does it feel like

00:35:04.020 not I don't know yeah um I feel like I don't know what's happening to me

00:35:13.320 and the last two years have been really really really difficult um I my um engagement broke

00:35:23.460 down um I had a miscarriage um yeah my partner left me had a miscarriage and um my health melted

00:35:32.080 and the pandemic began and I and then I'd written this long novel that everyone had told me was going

00:35:38.540 to be sold really quickly I got an agent immediately and it was rejected 27 times

00:35:43.400 and my doctors were not feeling great about my health and maybe last March this past March I

00:35:52.380 thought you know if I'm gonna die um if nothing if I'm never gonna get published never get a

00:35:58.080 publishing deal I better just write about the things that I would want to share even if I don't

00:36:03.900 live to see them make it. You know, my big thing is like make good soil. Like, you know, maybe I'm

00:36:10.140 not going to be the person who sees these ideas sprout, but I should at least try and make some

00:36:15.620 good soil. And I was really, really surprised when I started to post this stuff online. You know,

00:36:22.380 I used to like do the very traditional route of, you know, getting things published by a magazine,

00:36:26.820 going all the traditional ways. And I thought, you know, if I'm going to die, who cares? Who gives a

00:36:31.060 fuck. I'd rather just have a relationship with readers. And, you know, within like a week I had 0.99

00:36:36.540 3000 new readers. So that was really intense. Um, I've been very inspired by Amanda Palmer

00:36:42.580 who her whole idea is, you know, don't create superficial readership, connect with each reader.

00:36:48.940 So I've been trying to respond to every single message I get. And at this point I get hundreds

00:36:53.400 of messages a day. So I'm going to have to restructure this, but it's kept me alive. It got

00:37:00.020 me a book deal I mean within a month of publishing stuff online I had a publisher approach me and buy

00:37:04.480 both my books and then I wrote another book right so it was like that side door it was like you

00:37:09.540 thought you were only given two options but the window was open that being said I don't I still

00:37:15.060 don't know I mean I feel like this writing has kept me alive but I'm so exhausted I'm in health

00:37:20.880 crisis right now I don't know what next the next steps are and I can see that I'll just probably

00:37:26.040 right till burnout or until something shifts but the relationships that have been created

00:37:32.480 to other people and other thinkers and have made me feel life sustainably less alone so that has 0.71

00:37:38.800 been i'm extremely grateful for that um yeah thank you for asking that's fucking wild to hear

00:37:48.780 because you can kind of feel that pulsing in the background of these these posts these stories that

00:37:56.260 you're sharing I just want I know that there are so many people listening to this who are just like

00:38:06.700 brimming on the edge of their seats and on the edge of tears with care for you and with thanks

00:38:15.040 for your story and who've connected with you and who will connect with you I just want to sort of

00:38:19.720 speak to that moment whatever kind of prayer we believe in especially if it's just you know

00:38:27.300 speaking to the universe being allowed to talk out loud to the universe that we are sending so

00:38:33.080 much health to you and to each other and a reminder that you are are worthy of of deep breaths and

00:38:44.720 relaxing moments and all our love and care you don't have to output until you collapse

00:38:50.140 I know every time I like my mom is like are you gonna stop are you gonna stop researching and

00:38:56.460 reading I'm like yeah I'm gonna stop and then I'm like actually just one more thing real quick yeah

00:39:01.620 but thank you thank you for that and I I think that the fallow moments are so important

00:39:09.600 you know when it looks like nothing you know the mushrooms all pop up overnight but they're

00:39:14.440 working on it for years below ground right right um so right now i'm i'm a lot of mushrooms and

00:39:21.620 i'm spoiling like crazy but um yeah to tell the truth this is like super super um transparent i

00:39:31.000 don't think i've ever said this is i given my health and my trauma history and given the total

00:39:38.120 meltdown of my last relationship i've always thought like i would need to have like an extremely

00:39:42.860 odd partner it would like really have to be a very weird person and they'd have to really given

00:39:48.580 the instability of my body it would have to not be the way they'd want the way they'd find me

00:39:53.780 wouldn't be like visual wouldn't be through dating apps it wouldn't it would have to be about

00:39:58.780 my ideas so there's also a part of me that's like if I'm ever going to have a partner again I better

00:40:04.140 spoil it and hope that they like see it and find me so yeah yeah that's my little like weird love

00:40:11.160 prayer I relate to that that they're love notes they're all they're all love notes I get that

00:40:17.620 yeah I mean I think for me this project is endless love notes I mean my I found my partners

00:40:25.980 I found my way back to a person that I could be that could be in a relationship with my partner

00:40:31.500 by being uh like just sort of totally destroyed and then relentlessly honest uh but this project

00:40:39.260 continues to be a project of love notes for me, both writing the book and doing these interviews

00:40:44.140 of like a queer diversity of love that I need. I need all the odd kin. I don't, I don't feel 0.82

00:40:50.840 sufficiently supported by one partner. He's rad, but yeah, I need all, I need all you guys.

00:41:02.480 Robbie, I see your face again. Yeah. Go for it, love. Yeah. I wanted to tie it a little back to

00:41:08.240 the beginning of the episode where you had said that self-care isn't really like great activism

00:41:14.500 because it's gotten co-opted by you know people that are selling it back to you in a capitalized

00:41:22.000 way and I think that one of our great challenges is to take it back and my hypothesis around all

00:41:34.040 of this well a lot of these things um is whenever you do put your best healed self out into the

00:41:41.080 world then the systems dissolve because you're taking yourself out of play to keep those harmful

00:41:48.740 systems in place so when you take the time or the fallow time or or anything that you that you need

00:41:56.960 that kind of like i guess you could call it self-care but it's like it's it's it's revolutionary

00:42:03.880 and it's in its way of growing into the cracks of something that is um that's being oppressive

00:42:10.440 and bursting it open well i just wanted to say that i didn't say self-care was was wrong i said

00:42:16.600 healing but but i want to say yeah i think that it's every time you make yourself orgasm you make

00:42:25.480 a good cup of coffee you let your plant your to-do list dissolve is radical and i really believe what

00:42:32.760 adrian marie brown writes about which is like you know make the revolution pleasurable the big

00:42:37.820 person i write about and pray to is dionysus like he gets co-opted and he's he's submitted to a smear

00:42:44.480 campaign by the romans because he's so revolutionary that he's at his name other name was

00:42:48.840 liber for liberation and he inspired spartacus and the revolt of the witch bakula ania um and all of

00:42:55.760 these different revolts against the roman empire and for me dionysus is invasive species and

00:43:01.300 fermentation and vines and ivy and leopards and women getting to embody their full vegetal power 0.85

00:43:08.920 and so for me self-care is dionysian it's saying like what is going to be the sexiest most chaotic

00:43:15.800 experience today the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house so self-care is not

00:43:21.660 a master's tool so yes i can live in the cracks take care of yourself in a radical sexy wild

00:43:29.840 sometimes illegible way culturally illegible way yeah i think you're immediately on the

00:43:37.020 the heart of the issue which is like how it's but how these things have been sold to us in a way for

00:43:41.660 us to just keep propping up the same harmful systems yeah i think of self-care as the withdraw

00:43:48.340 part of a wave it's inadequate on its own as activism it's it's a withdraw for care and then

00:43:56.580 are rushing forward with a community of care and I want to be part of both of those things and not

00:44:01.500 be sold either of them I love that that's perfect little that's a great metaphor thanks it's in my

00:44:09.160 book I want to finish I never want to finish but I want to be I want to close the container of this

00:44:21.620 particular moment knowing that we will spiral outward into future configurations of love and

00:44:27.780 support and odd kin for each other we're claiming you as odd kin Sophie um I do want to invite you

00:44:38.020 is there a way that you is there a ritual that you make use of an incantation a way of thinking

00:44:47.220 a magical practice something you can share with listeners and in this particular sense something

00:44:53.420 that maybe we can share as a way of that radical pleasurable um self-care or that or supporting

00:45:03.200 that wave of coming back to each other I have two things um so I'm not gonna offer one I'm gonna

00:45:09.680 offer two one really the first one is very somatic and very real which is you know our hands have

00:45:15.540 thousands of mechanoreceptors and they're so much more sensitive and tied to our brain and to our

00:45:20.920 emotions and we give them credit and they're also life is haptic you know a photon hits your eyes

00:45:26.060 eyes is actually you know seeing is actually touch you know smell is touch it's a molecule

00:45:30.800 plugging in and creating a cascade of a um of neurons that hit your brain um and so our hands

00:45:39.280 are our entry point into a kind of ecological embodiment so i like the practice created by

00:45:47.820 betty martin um the somatic therapist called pleasure in the hands where you take an object

00:45:53.000 but for me that object has to be outside has to be a stone a handful of dirt maybe a stick

00:45:59.540 a mushroom a branch maybe just like a huge boulder that you're touching and touch it slowly

00:46:05.480 feel it touching you touch it with one hand and the other close your eyes so that you damp down

00:46:12.200 those other senses and start to wake up your hands with that object and come into relationship with

00:46:17.280 it and then slow down how slow you're touching it and you will realize suddenly that there's so much

00:46:22.800 more available in your hands and there's so much more touching you in the world the world is always

00:46:28.100 reaching back so that that touch practice pleasure in the hands which you can look up online it feels

00:46:33.700 to me to be so rich. I mean, you could do it every day and have a different experience. People often

00:46:39.340 cry when they do it. It's unexpected. And then a smaller, less somatic, but equally important

00:46:46.460 practice that I really always offer is every morning I wake up and I summon by name, not

00:46:51.180 necessarily taxonomical or colonial, you know, not Linnaean, whatever name feels intimate and cozy

00:46:56.780 incorrect. Every being, fungal, plant, geological, indigenous population that I know in a 20-mile

00:47:05.320 radius. And I call them into counsel. I call them in to witness my decisions so that I understand

00:47:10.760 every decision I make is relational throughout my day. So I create my ecosystem around me in

00:47:16.620 the morning. I remind myself of it. Well, those are wildly powerful. So thank you. And thank you

00:47:24.860 for this enormous output and labor and connection and channeling that you're doing

00:47:31.240 um yeah if you want one more face to imagine when you choose to share those things please

00:47:38.660 picture mine i i'm often in tears by what you share and inspired to go back to my own writing

00:47:44.440 it's really helpful so thanks before i get too weepy i will say thank you to all of you being

00:47:50.840 here and here in this moment and here in all the future moments encountering with this

00:47:55.960 strange little piece of audio we will put out into the world um that's all for me thanks everybody 0.58

00:48:03.140 blessed fucking be thank you i mean this has been you asked about medicine earlier this has been 0.74

00:48:09.620 medicine to me that has been so correctly attuned to today thank you phew that's all we're looking 0.99

00:48:17.000 before just don't want to fuck up your day you must be a witch 0.95

00:48:26.080 the missing witches podcast is brought to you by the missing witches coven 0.94

00:48:32.460 join us right now on patreon.com slash missing witches blessed if I can be

Missing Witches - December 16, 2021

WF Sophie Strand： We Are The Product Of Anarchic Queer Love Making

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