Missing Witches - WF Tom Benjamin - Taking Your Magic Back Is An Act Of Resistance

00:00:00.000 just gonna take a deep breath and feel the warm autumn-ish sunlit breeze coming in the window

00:00:12.220 off the lake through the yellow flowers and feel myself settling in to this new season of the

00:00:23.100 Missing Witches podcast always such a comforting and electrifying place to come home to most

00:00:32.520 especially when I get to be in circle again with people who I'm so inspired and lit up and fired

00:00:40.300 up by I have the beaming face of the wise Tom Benjamin in front of me today and I'm so thrilled

00:00:48.540 to have you on the podcast with us and i'm so thrilled to talk about your book the modern

00:00:53.940 fortune tellers field guide she's here she's great we talked a little bit before we officially said

00:01:03.420 now we start podcasting about how we come in today but i wonder how you're feeling as a modern

00:01:10.960 fortune teller today the waves the vibes of the world are wild and I wonder what that feels like

00:01:19.440 in your body and as the cards move through your hands oh god that's such a beautiful question

00:01:24.980 you know what I feel now that you've said it that way and I would not have answered this

00:01:30.700 question the same way three minutes ago I feel like you just reminded me why we have divination

00:01:37.960 because everything is wild and chaotic and incoherent.

00:01:43.540 And just by, like you said, sliding some cards through our hands,

00:01:47.920 we can, for just a fraction of time, de-wild that wildness

00:01:52.940 and find a moment of clarity, find something to settle into,

00:01:57.680 find something that feels like an answer when answers are so,

00:02:04.260 you know, it's so hard to believe these days, right?

00:02:06.520 it's so hard to trust and know who to listen to. And so in these moments with cards, whether we're

00:02:13.720 reading for someone else or for ourselves or getting a reading, in this moment, you know,

00:02:17.900 in 15 or 20 minutes, we have this gift of clarity. And the way that you said that actually just made

00:02:24.000 me really thankful that I get to do that. And then I get to talk about this and to know that

00:02:29.360 I'm really lucky to have this system in my life. Do you feel like it takes work to use,

00:02:36.900 use as maybe an instrumentalization of it, but do you think it takes work to engage with tarot

00:02:43.320 or divination or fortune telling in a way where it's like liberatory and truth telling and not

00:02:51.560 self-serving or self-lying? Yes, it does take work. I think one of the things I learned

00:02:58.540 And I don't know when I learned this, but I realized that if I, and I really feel like

00:03:04.640 anyone who does this, especially if you do it for others, but even if you do it for yourself,

00:03:08.000 you really have to be able to face the world as it is.

00:03:11.620 You have to look at the world the way it is because it's so easy to want to paper over

00:03:16.080 all of that.

00:03:17.400 And we can't, we do have to say, we have to say the hard things sometimes, no, he's not

00:03:23.080 coming back or, no, the job offer is not going to come because clarity is kind.

00:03:29.660 If we obfuscate it, if we negotiate, if we don't tell what we're seeing, then we're

00:03:36.900 not really doing the job.

00:03:38.900 And in order to see those things, it's not just that you're not getting the job, it's 1.00

00:03:44.200 not getting the job because your boss is a jerk, you know what I mean, and a misogynist 0.99

00:03:48.540 or whatever we have to be able to have that conversation because if my client wants to 0.99

00:03:53.620 progress it's probably not going to be with that boss right so yeah we have to be brave enough to

00:03:58.840 look at the fact that things aren't pretty because people come for readings usually when things

00:04:03.040 aren't pretty and it's tough because social media kind of prefers a much more manifesting uh yay

00:04:12.560 mood board kind of approach and that to me that ain't it yeah let's talk about that you write

00:04:19.580 about it so like in a funny and endearing and fiery and also like well-informed and political

00:04:26.580 way in this book that I think our audience would really love so y'all if you're practicing your

00:04:31.440 tarot or your divination get your hands on the modern fortune tellers feel good you talk about

00:04:36.700 like a humane approach that you're spending moments with this person and you hold their

00:04:41.040 humanity. I guess we're back to hands again, things slipping through hands, which is interesting. But

00:04:46.600 you hold that moment with them in your hands, and you have an obligation to not sugarcoat the

00:04:54.440 injustice and imbalance and inequality that feeds into the reading. But how do you even see it?

00:05:01.860 Where do you see it in a reading? And how do you help a person see a way through

00:05:07.480 to some agency when a lot of agency is constricted by systemic inequality.

00:05:14.140 Oh, wow. Yeah, it's not easy. I think the first thing is that if you don't start by knowing the

00:05:21.580 systems and the repeated patterns of life, then you wouldn't be able to see that. And just because

00:05:28.900 those patterns exist doesn't mean that's going on for this client in this time. But this is where

00:05:34.980 context becomes so important. As a reader, it's one reason why I use a lot of cards, right? I

00:05:40.060 never use less than three cards and often up to nine or 10 and more. You have to know the patterns

00:05:46.940 and then you have to be able to recognize the patterns in the cards. And then you have to have

00:05:50.520 the humility to ask your client, I'm getting this or that, you know, I'm using the word client

00:05:55.080 because it's just the easiest word to use, but I don't want to imply that there has to be pay

00:05:58.820 involved, right? Because I think when you agree to do a reading for someone, you're taking on that

00:06:02.740 responsibility, whether they're your friend or client or whatever. 1.00

00:06:06.460 I'm getting the feeling that your boss might be kind of a jerk. 1.00

00:06:08.740 I'm getting the feeling that he's a grease ball. 1.00

00:06:10.440 Is that it?

00:06:11.360 You have to have the humility to ask those questions so that you don't make assumptions.

00:06:15.540 And it's also important that you not explain oppression to an oppressed person.

00:06:18.820 So that's part of it too.

00:06:20.100 But you, so part of it is you're asking questions, you're getting context.

00:06:24.360 Modern fortune telling, I think is a little bit different from maybe what would have

00:06:27.760 been perceived as old fashioned in that.

00:06:30.160 I want to know what the client is thinking.

00:06:31.780 I wanted, I want them to tell me, and I am reading them as much as I'm reading the cards

00:06:35.880 because there's only so much I can glean from a deck of tarot cards, which is very, I hate

00:06:41.260 this word, but archetypal or stereotypical.

00:06:44.240 And so it's knowing the patterns, it's seeing the world the way that it is, and knowing

00:06:48.620 that those realities could impact a client.

00:06:50.580 And then having the humility to not say, I know that this is the reason, but I'm seeing

00:06:55.380 this, I'm seeing evidence of this, right?

00:06:57.260 I see the emperor, I see the three of wands, which has this kind of takey colonial quality

00:07:02.700 to it, right?

00:07:03.280 Client, I feel like this is a possibility because your boss kind of grows.

00:07:06.740 No, he's great.

00:07:07.580 Awesome.

00:07:08.040 Okay.

00:07:08.260 That's not the reason why.

00:07:09.500 Let's keep going.

00:07:10.620 You know what I mean?

00:07:11.360 And there has to be that dance with the cards and with the client and with whatever makes

00:07:16.320 divination work.

00:07:17.520 And beyond that, I think it's also then just settling into trust and knowing that you know

00:07:22.680 how to do this and knowing that you might be wrong sometimes and that's okay.

00:07:26.940 you redirect you go back to the drawing board you re you refine your thesis and you talk about

00:07:31.460 foundations i like that you were the you use the word dance too i use that word a lot like when i

00:07:36.980 was diagnosed i was like i really would prefer not to be called a cancer warrior or like i'm in a

00:07:42.720 battle i prefer not to have war language i want to be in a dance with this because that is a dance

00:07:48.440 that i will be in until whenever this part of the dance is done and i think about relationship with

00:07:53.240 divinity a lot like that, too. Whatever the fuck divinity is, which I don't know. 0.98

00:07:58.920 Yeah, no, who knows? 0.97

00:08:00.980 Do you have ideas about how it actually works to have your ideas about that evolved?

00:08:07.760 Yo, yeah, yeah. I used to have a very secular, for lack of a better word, approach to it. And

00:08:12.860 that was because I needed that, right? I was coming out of Catholicism. And I sort of,

00:08:16.800 you know, like a lot of queer teens in my 18, 19, I sort of danced with this, that word again,

00:08:21.600 with Wicca and Scott Cunningham a little bit. But there, I just found different kinds of binary

00:08:26.940 dogmas and whatnot. So in my 20s, I was very kind of anti-spirituality. And I just said,

00:08:33.360 you know, it's just pattern recognition. It's just intuition, right? It's just our fight or

00:08:37.240 flight response helps us recognize patterns. And that's what it is. But what I could never answer

00:08:40.880 is why that works and why a set of cards would do that. And over time, I've really come to think

00:08:46.440 of it as a translation tool. I think divinity really wants to engage with us. I think divinity

00:08:50.860 really wants to talk and play and dance and connect, but we don't speak the same language.

00:08:57.440 And so we need a translation device. And that could be tarot, it could be dominoes,

00:09:02.100 it could be runes, it could be Lennarmond, it could be bones, whatever the thing is. It's just

00:09:07.100 that we, with divinity, develop a shared language. And so we become part of the translation. And so

00:09:13.780 when I pull the Emperor or the Three of Wands, we have a shared language. So I'm going to see

00:09:18.920 that card when it's going to trigger something that divinity wants me to say. And that's how

00:09:24.640 I've come to think of it now, which I actually think is sexy. I think it's, it is, can't use

00:09:30.180 any word but dance, even though it's conversational because you really, it's more receiving than

00:09:35.660 anything else. It's, I think even the word tarot or the phrase tarot reading to me is a little more

00:09:41.180 aggressive. It's more tarot receiving. The older I get, the more I understand that I'm stepping away

00:09:47.320 and just trying to sort of respond to the triggers.

00:09:50.020 And that's triggering the language

00:09:51.720 that I need to put it into for the client or for myself.

00:09:55.100 And it's because we have this shared language,

00:09:57.920 which is why having a foundation is so important, right?

00:10:00.540 Because if you don't have that,

00:10:02.020 divinity has to guess what you're gonna do

00:10:04.220 or think or feel in that moment.

00:10:06.260 But if you have a foundation,

00:10:07.880 then you've got those building blocks.

00:10:09.980 You know what the vowel sounds are.

00:10:11.240 You know what the consonants are.

00:10:12.360 You know what the verbs and the nouns are.

00:10:14.000 And you share that together.

00:10:15.480 And you can play within that

00:10:16.940 but without it, it's much harder.

00:10:19.320 You feel less confident

00:10:20.740 and maybe divinity feels less confident.

00:10:24.320 Why do you think like the vastness of the universe

00:10:30.660 wants to play with us?

00:10:34.980 I think because we're part of it.

00:10:37.000 I've been on this other journey

00:10:38.120 these last couple of years

00:10:39.300 of exploring sound healing and energy healing.

00:10:42.140 And there's a lot of stigma in those spaces,

00:10:44.760 which in some ways is deserved and in some ways is unfortunate but one of the things that I heard

00:10:50.780 early on in learning about Reiki for example was this idea that it dissolves the illusion of

00:10:56.460 separateness and I thought that was such a beautiful thing and it really changed my

00:11:00.860 cosmology we're not separate from each other we're not separate from the universe we have

00:11:07.040 personality we have individual aspects of ourselves but we're all in it together and

00:11:12.860 And there's this, I can't believe I'm going to quote Charles Dickens, of all things, but there's this phrase in A Christmas Carol where Scrooge's nephews, like, we're all fellow passengers to the grave.

00:11:22.600 And I've always loved that line.

00:11:24.280 And I think that there's something more to it than just that.

00:11:26.740 But we're all heading in the same direction.

00:11:29.380 I think, and I think that, like anything else, Divinity wants to have fun, too.

00:11:34.280 And I don't know, I think the anthropomorphizing of the universe felt silly to me once.

00:11:43.060 But now, I don't know, it doesn't feel as silly anymore.

00:11:46.280 It's like the older I get, the more playful I feel.

00:11:49.020 Yeah, I totally get that.

00:11:50.800 I felt that a lot when I was a kid.

00:11:52.680 I felt like a very clear and an unquestioned playful presence in all of nature.

00:12:00.200 And I just felt like it was really easy to talk to whatever that was.

00:12:04.060 And if you took me to church and told me it was God's fine.

00:12:08.800 And then once I flipped all those apple carts over, I had to find a new way to think about it, which was why it was so funny when I was reading your book and I got to the line talking about play where you say, let me make sure I have the full quote here.

00:12:22.740 So, yeah, nothing is sacred because everything is, which to me felt like getting a high five

00:12:28.500 from a friend because my husband and I, when we talk about our opposite approaches to understanding

00:12:35.300 the divine, we sit at opposite ends of that, that Lemnis gate. 0.91

00:12:39.140 Nothing is, and everything is.

00:12:40.420 It's okay, Maddie.

00:12:41.220 We agree.

00:12:43.860 I know.

00:12:44.580 It's great.

00:12:45.220 Everything is its own other because without the other, the thing doesn't have any context.

00:12:50.100 And so it's, and it's, I was actually, I'm looking on a new book and I was just writing about that. And it's so hard to put into words. And sometimes things shouldn't be put into words, because they are so big and so moving that we don't, language limits, but you're right. And I think just being able to, even if you have divergent ways of experiencing spirituality, the fact that you can share that together, even though they're divergent, is, makes it the same somehow, because you're contextualized by each other in that way.

00:13:20.100 Yeah. And I think what a nice meeting place for so many of us on so many different parts of the spectrum.

00:13:24.900 Like, let's agree that nothing is and everything is and just treat it all.

00:13:32.240 Beauty, treat it all as childhood, treat it all with kindness and sacredness.

00:13:37.360 Also, did you know that my last name is Dickens?

00:13:39.780 No, I didn't.

00:13:43.840 OK, just weird diviner stuff again.

00:13:46.660 I know.

00:13:47.040 I want to read a little bit of this section where you write about nothing is sacred because everything is. The page before that, you say, whatever your method, do readings about everything. Every single thing you can think of, do a reading about it. The election, the economy, your neighbor's creepy son, whether or not the Red Sox will win. Read about all the things and do so gleefully, willfully, and with your boldest middle finger to convention.

00:14:15.580 and then I'm going to skip down a little bit.

00:14:17.920 You continue and say, nothing is sacred because everything is.

00:14:20.760 Nothing can't be done.

00:14:22.240 If you're thoughtful and don't ask things you don't want to answer to,

00:14:26.020 you can't go wrong and you're not going to piss off any divine forces.

00:14:29.880 You might annoy pedants who feel like there's only one right way to do things,

00:14:33.460 but isn't that reason enough to do them?

00:14:35.680 If you feel it's necessary, invite your guides to play the game with you.

00:14:39.640 Why not?

00:14:40.880 I've been lucky as a reader.

00:14:41.940 I've been very dismissive of spirituality, thanks to the religion of my childhood.

00:14:46.520 And whatever works with me to make tarot work has been exceptionally patient because I never

00:14:51.040 invite them to do anything. Luckily, they're there for me regardless. Perhaps I should give

00:14:56.320 them a little something in thanks, but I also think these divinities know us. They know we're

00:15:01.360 playing when we're playing, and they know we're working when we're working. I think they're a lot

00:15:05.800 kinder than we are. At least they are in my cranky-ass experience embodied on this planet.

00:15:11.940 oh i read that one to give listeners a taste of the voice in the book because it's really great

00:15:18.640 and two because i think it's really liberatory i think when people start to pick up cards there

00:15:23.880 there is this whole language around what things you can read about and you can't read about

00:15:28.640 and it's nice to be like it's okay you can just play and then we also get a lot of people coming

00:15:34.540 into the coven afraid that they're going to do things wrong in terms of interacting with their

00:15:40.340 guides to do, do, have I made the wrong offerings? Have I, have I turned on the tap the wrong way

00:15:45.880 or turned it off? Or will I be? And I find that approach connects to the fear-based or to systems

00:15:53.820 of control that people generally are coming from. So it's great to hear that so joyfully.

00:15:59.600 That means a lot.

00:16:00.840 Yeah. Do you want to talk about that more?

00:16:04.200 Yeah. And you're 100% right. It is fear-based. It is control-based. When I fell into tarot,

00:16:09.040 I was like 19 and I was coming out of a religion that was very fear-based and controlling.

00:16:14.540 I was still a rule follower as much as I thought, oh yeah, I'm doing tarot now. I'm a rebel.

00:16:18.380 I was still looking for someone to tell me the rules. And there were plenty of people out there

00:16:22.040 willing to do it. And I'm going to create the caveat here. I don't think this was the intent

00:16:26.960 of this organization, but I write about this in the book too. The American Tarot Association

00:16:31.260 happened to have a very strong presence on the internet in those days. And this was 25 years

00:16:36.980 ago now, if not more, it was a very different internet back then. But their mission was to

00:16:41.620 reclaim tarot from fortune telling. And as I say in the book, I think they had the right intention,

00:16:46.920 but the wrong way of doing it, right? Because what they did was they underscored that fortune

00:16:51.060 tellers were bad and tarot wasn't. And really it was the reputation that had been generated around

00:16:57.000 fortune telling that was the problem. But they were very strict about, you don't read for people

00:17:01.580 who aren't there. You're not a predictive reader. This is really a psycho-spiritual tool. You have

00:17:07.480 to have really strong ethics. And if someone asks you a question that you don't find ethical,

00:17:11.820 you rewrite that or you rephrase that question for them. And I did those things and I did them

00:17:16.820 really dutifully. And I became very burned out and very disillusioned. I was getting frustrated

00:17:23.320 with people who wanted readings. I wasn't like a quote unquote professional reader back then,

00:17:27.320 but I was doing readings on this free tarot network where you could just read for anyone

00:17:31.320 who wanted a reading. And I stopped reading for a while. And then I thought I was not going to go

00:17:35.980 back to it. And then over time, it called me back and did. That was when I started questioning all

00:17:42.000 the rules. And I realized I don't believe any of that. You know, I believe in predictive readings

00:17:46.960 because why wouldn't I? I do believe in reading for someone who isn't there because we don't

00:17:51.340 understand our own motives, let alone the motives of other people in our lives. And they probably

00:17:55.140 don't understand their motives either. I started realizing, oh, oh, I get to do whatever I want

00:18:01.300 with this. And now as a teacher, I don't even like calling myself a teacher as a facilitator.

00:18:06.560 I don't necessarily insist that people do third party readings or, you know, predictive readings

00:18:11.060 or whatever. But what I do want to do is say those rules worked for someone else and you get to find

00:18:16.520 your own way. And I'm going to try to help you find your voice. That was really liberating. And

00:18:21.420 it's still liberating because I'm still learning things about tarot now that I'm not stuck in

00:18:26.800 someone else's kind of ethical preconceptions, I guess. Yeah, I found that bit so interesting

00:18:33.360 because I find when I talk to my non-witch friends about a tarot practice or a divinatory practice,

00:18:40.380 I definitely lean hard into the like, you don't have to think about it as fortune telling. You

00:18:46.580 don't have to think about it as predictive. This is you're looking at archetypes, you're looking

00:18:49.960 at your own symbol language it can help you understand your own interior world but reading

00:18:55.120 the way that you had to look at that and unpack it and because of the truth is when I read for

00:19:01.380 myself it's pretty clear that I'm reading the predictive answers that I get answers out of

00:19:08.980 and I maybe I'm just like oh just keep those for me I'll just keep those tools for me and the

00:19:13.380 Languages. But I wonder about opening up ways for other people to have access to that without

00:19:22.100 being so afraid of it. Yeah. And you won't know what you like doing until you try it. And maybe

00:19:26.380 you'll try doing a third party reading, or maybe you'll try doing predictive readings and you don't

00:19:29.560 like it or you don't feel good at it. And that's fine. Right? Like that is absolutely fine. But

00:19:34.520 you won't know until you try. And I think, you know, I always tell my students, and again,

00:19:39.440 I hate that word, but it's the one that I have. Listen, if you don't like something in a deck,

00:19:45.080 in a class, in a technique, that's fine, but don't dismiss it immediately. Like sit with it and

00:19:50.100 figure out why, because in that you might find something you didn't know that you liked, or you

00:19:55.420 might discover that you really hate it and there's a really strong reason for it, or that you can just

00:20:00.280 dismiss it without really worrying about it, but just kind of sit with it. You know, I got that

00:20:04.060 advice from a teacher when I was in undergrad a hundred years ago, but it sticks with me. And I

00:20:08.700 sometimes have to remind myself of that too you know especially if someone's like well you know

00:20:13.020 tarot isn't for this or it isn't for that i'm like i mean fair like for you just don't like the

00:20:17.880 absolutism of like it has to be this or it can't be that you know and a similar approach applies

00:20:23.000 to how you look at the cards themselves you describe let's sit with our initial associations

00:20:29.260 around the tower what does this and then the shift from looking at it as a thing versus a set of

00:20:35.240 functions. It was super interesting to me. Do you want to say more about that? The nuts and bolts

00:20:39.440 of reading? Yeah, that function is such an important word. I learned that from a teacher

00:20:43.400 named Camelia Elias, who has a couple books on tarot, and Lenormand did playing cards. And I

00:20:48.320 really like her approach. We're very different. She's much more ruthless than I am. And I admire

00:20:52.700 that about her. But I took her Lenormand class, which was a system, if you don't know it, it's a

00:20:57.160 lot like tea leaf reading, and it's 36 cards. And to me, it felt like a- Okay, but wait, I read you

00:21:02.040 said that and i don't know why it's like tea leaf oh because the symbols in it kind of came from

00:21:07.420 what you would find in a cup so like the heart the coffin the the flowers the bouquet like those

00:21:12.520 were things that like a fortune teller looking into a teacup would look for in the grounds and

00:21:17.320 so the theory okay yeah the theory is that it was then just like put on cards and you would read the

00:21:22.860 cards rather than the tea leaves which is a little less messy um but like tarot lenormand started as

00:21:28.340 game too. It was a mobile, modular playing cardboard. But yeah, function, what she said

00:21:34.860 was the heart in Lenormand always means love, except it doesn't. She said, ask yourself what

00:21:39.300 a heart is. What is the function of a heart? What does it do? It's a pump, right? And what,

00:21:45.160 you know, lilies mean sex and age, but why? You know what I mean? What is a bouquet of

00:21:49.040 lilies? You know, it's a funereal bouquet. It's, you know, she's helping us separate

00:21:54.960 a sort of culture context from the object itself, and then through that, you find interpretations

00:22:01.480 of things that are really coming from you, and they develop your language.

00:22:06.360 So with the tower, yeah, it can be something disastrous, but even the world the way it

00:22:11.040 is, most people doing a reading, they're not from day to day in a tower moment in the banality

00:22:18.680 of life, right?

00:22:19.440 Like, overall, there may be a very towery thing going on, you know, being ill, right,

00:22:24.100 or having a disease that you're working through.

00:22:26.240 But when you're...

00:22:27.060 Yeah, really fun doing tarot readings when you're in the midst of a cancer diagnosis 0.98

00:22:30.600 and everything is fucking tarot. 0.93

00:22:32.580 And if you're anything like me, and you're a disaster thinker anyway, yeah. 0.99

00:22:37.620 Little on the nose, guys.

00:22:39.140 Thanks a lot.

00:22:39.980 But you're sitting there in the moment and you're getting ready to have lunch, right?

00:22:43.600 You're still a person living a life, you know?

00:22:46.180 It might be a lightning bolt of depression or a lightning bolt of revelation, or it might just be something big and insurmountable or something that feels tall, or it might be a system, right?

00:22:58.180 It present the institution of healthcare, you know, it's about sort of beyond what someone said the card means.

00:23:06.900 And what is like relevant in this moment right now?

00:23:10.080 You know, what am I living in?

00:23:11.200 You know, the example I always give is like, you know, if you're doing a daily draw and you get the tower, what's going to happen today?

00:23:16.680 It probably doesn't mean that your office is going to close and everyone's going to get fired.

00:23:20.300 But it might mean you're going to have a panic attack or it might mean that there's going to be an argument that's going to give you new perspective.

00:23:25.700 Right. And so the thing that I encourage folks to do is not just think about the meaning of the card, but like the scope of the situation.

00:23:33.420 And this is also why I really, really tell, especially new readers, work with a question, because that's going to limit the possibilities of the cards.

00:23:40.520 And that's where I think a lot of new readers get overwhelmed is like the tower could be all these things, but like it's a daily draw and I just picked it.

00:23:47.560 What's my day going to be like?

00:23:49.560 That's that's hard.

00:23:50.700 You know what I mean?

00:23:51.160 But if you say, you know, what's going to happen in the meeting about the offsite planning, then the card has to speak to that and not like a company downsizing.

00:24:02.520 So the size and scope of the card has to telescope to meet the moment.

00:24:06.380 And that's another way that helps people like me who are disaster thinkers to remember, you know, I drew the death card yesterday. And the first thing I said was, oh, yeah, I'm going to die. You know, 25 years of doing this, I'm dead, you know, but contextually, it didn't make any sense. But I still felt that way.

00:24:22.120 Right. Yeah, it's a rough one to pull, especially when you're in a certain headspace. I thought it

00:24:28.180 was super useful in your book when you talk about you sort of compare reading to weather forecasting

00:24:34.120 and talk about these things are a lot more useful and a lot more specific if we can narrow our

00:24:39.900 time frame. Yes, yes. You know, people will come and ask you, you know, will I ever find my true

00:24:44.860 love? Right. And that's a tough question, because what is first of all, what is true love? What

00:24:48.960 that mean is that does everyone get that i don't know like implied question is that it's certainly

00:24:53.120 going to happen if i answer no there's this sort of ever hanging over it right like i'm never going

00:24:58.640 to find my true love so when i do a reading even if the client or the person who wants the reading

00:25:03.520 hasn't specified a time period i do that i'm like okay in the next three to six months i don't see

00:25:09.040 someone coming in that's going to attract your attention right which is different than no you're

00:25:12.880 never going to find your true love i don't rework the question but by giving it a little bit of a

00:25:17.040 time period. It just makes it easier. And, you know, to go back to what we were talking about

00:25:20.640 before in terms of not poisoning someone's well, you know, it's not right now. It doesn't mean

00:25:25.080 never. It just means not right now. And in six months, someone could be like, thank God I'm

00:25:30.060 single. You know what I mean? Like they could be a completely different person by that time.

00:25:34.340 I think, you know, as part of witchcraft or thinking about the techniques of that,

00:25:39.440 a core piece is the container. Like how do we, what are we talking about specifically and what

00:25:45.740 symbols are we putting within this this container right here so i think that's interesting for me

00:25:52.060 for my approach for divination going forward i want to have a pretty clear container so that

00:25:57.300 i can make that communication clearer which is what i think containment does in spell work too

00:26:03.320 right i think i think a lot of us would benefit if we spent more time forming the question than

00:26:07.580 actually doing the reading you know not that i do that i don't when i read for myself i'm lazy as 0.68

00:26:13.180 fuck I am such a lazy I will go above and beyond for any client or anyone whether they're paying 0.91

00:26:18.180 or not when I'm reading for myself I am so lazy it's so embarrassing I do think I would get better 1.00

00:26:23.520 readings if I spent a half hour crafting the question and did a five minute reading rather

00:26:29.140 than having no question or I love you know I used to be like what's going on at work

00:26:33.480 what does that mean you know easy question asker I am a sloppy lazy question asker too

00:26:40.620 like my my fault or whatever is i'm very prone to the like just yes no question like just give

00:26:47.360 me a one card yes no and i'm gonna move on with yeah i do that too and i think that's great if

00:26:52.700 you have a system for it to work you know and that's one of the other messages of the book is

00:26:56.200 you just need a technique that you agree to before you shuffle so you know if you're gonna do a one

00:27:00.880 card yes no does evens mean yes and odds mean no great and then the card can expand on it but

00:27:07.000 You just need a technique.

00:27:08.200 Can you talk about, so I don't know how much you encounter this, but people engage with these tools coming from a lot of different kinds of life impetus.

00:27:18.620 And sometimes we see people coming to our coven or coming to divination from a place of trauma, fear and mental health crisis.

00:27:27.640 Sometimes you can turn to these tools and bring a real deep need for control and they can start to be dangerous like any tool.

00:27:36.340 So we can turn any tool against each other and against ourselves, literally any religion, any tool.

00:27:43.420 Can you help people identify when we're using it in a way that's harmful to us?

00:27:47.620 Or is there a way that we can start to see, oh, this is maybe not so healthy for me?

00:27:53.300 That's such a good question.

00:27:54.320 i think you know i think one of the things is if it's making you feel worse all the time

00:28:03.040 then it's you know it's not giving you anything that you don't already have you can make yourself

00:28:09.000 feel like shit anytime you want to and you don't need to shuffle cards to do it right i rarely read

00:28:17.260 for myself for a few reasons and one of them is that um and i do think in that case like get a 0.99

00:28:22.960 second opinion. You know what I mean? Get someone else to read for you or go to another reader.

00:28:27.220 I think it is like any other tool. I'm going to do something I never anticipated doing,

00:28:32.440 which is comparing it to AI, right? Like first started hearing about AI. I wasn't

00:28:36.800 super fundamentalist about it. And because I work in corporate learning and development in my day

00:28:41.040 job, the things that happens on my team is that we train tow truck drivers. And I thought initially

00:28:47.000 like, oh, this could be a really good way to create the simulation of dangerous experiences

00:28:50.940 without actually putting them in that experience, right?

00:28:54.700 So there was, to me at that point, possibility there.

00:28:56.800 Now, I didn't know about data centers

00:28:58.360 and water usage and all that stuff back then.

00:29:00.100 But I was like, okay, I'm curious about this.

00:29:02.060 But it's become this other thing that is really dangerous.

00:29:06.820 And like what you're describing with tarot,

00:29:09.120 people are doing that with AI.

00:29:10.360 In fact, I think AI is maybe more dangerous.

00:29:12.360 How do you stop yourself from spiraling?

00:29:15.660 That's a hard question to answer regardless of the tool

00:29:19.380 because what I think the answer is,

00:29:21.720 and it comes back to something that I've realized

00:29:23.780 thanks in part to like the work that you all have done

00:29:26.300 with your book and your podcast

00:29:27.820 and other witch writers and thinkers

00:29:31.120 and contemporary ones who are very different

00:29:33.240 from the ones that I first encountered 20 years ago,

00:29:35.400 which is this idea of community, right?

00:29:37.120 Like if we are isolated,

00:29:39.060 then there's a danger in many, many ways.

00:29:42.320 And if we are in community,

00:29:43.480 even with one other person who's trustworthy,

00:29:46.760 then we have someone standing on the outside to say,

00:29:48.840 hey should you be doing readings about this right now like maybe that's just amping your anxiety or

00:29:54.020 maybe that's just taking you down a road like maybe we talk through it together you know what

00:29:57.300 i mean like i think i think the more solitary we are the more in danger we are of using any tool

00:30:02.540 badly and so even for chronic introverts like me we have to have some kind of community out there

00:30:09.020 who can say hey you okay you know and if we don't have that i think the harder question is how do

00:30:16.080 we find that and that's a question i don't know how to answer right because even in community you

00:30:21.120 can sometimes feel isolated and alone but it's a big question that i love it is a big question

00:30:26.680 and i don't have the answer i wouldn't expect you to have it fully either but

00:30:30.520 it's interesting to think about it together i will take this moment to invite folks to come

00:30:35.860 find the coven it is a space where we can question each other and it's where i heard a coven mate

00:30:44.480 tell me a piece that I have found useful in thinking about this ever since where they said

00:30:49.860 I'm not going to engage with any tool that makes me feel more out of control or like I need to add

00:30:57.840 more control to my life so I won't use astrology if suddenly I have to do things on certain days

00:31:04.120 or I have to they were saying I already I struggle with OCD already so I can't engage with any tool

00:31:11.340 let alone a magical tool that starts to tell my brain I have to do this this way that's going to

00:31:18.360 be a red flag for me for me that's not healthy and I think that's a really useful guideline

00:31:24.400 for me with all of my magical practices if I start to feel like you know if I don't bring an 0.97

00:31:31.360 offering to Hecate on the new moon I'm going to die of cancer I fucked myself that's not a really 0.99

00:31:37.480 great braids days to be in. And it's just not true. If there is divinity in all of it or none of it, 0.99

00:31:46.740 it cares about our joy, not about what day of the moon we put things out on.

00:31:52.820 Yeah, we have to know our own boundaries. And I think before doing spell work or divination or

00:31:58.920 anything, it's helpful to know what those boundaries are. And if you don't, that doesn't

00:32:03.160 mean, you know, you can do spell work, you can do divination on other things. You know what I mean?

00:32:07.620 It does not, you know, you can bring spell work to showing you your boundaries, do a spell to help

00:32:11.980 you find your boundaries, right? So that you can do those things. Divination is a mirror, right? And

00:32:16.980 that's another thing that it's helpful to think of. If you are in a moment of chaos, don't pick

00:32:21.260 up the cards, because they're going to show you chaos, right? Because that's what you're in. It's

00:32:25.380 reflecting yourself back to you. That's a moment where maybe you want to get a reading from someone

00:32:30.060 else. Or you want to wait until you're out of fight or flight. You know, I really don't recommend

00:32:34.960 doing anything when you're in fight or flight. Because even just scientifically, we know that

00:32:38.500 the body is not thinking logically, the body is surviving. And all it's doing is saying,

00:32:43.140 get me to the next heartbeat, get me to the next heartbeat, you know, so we can't think logically

00:32:48.300 in fight or flight, we can't think critically and behave well in the moment, you know, and if a tarot

00:32:55.100 reading is going to amp it up that's that's not great either so i never pick up the cards when

00:33:00.120 i'm in that state ever because i know that what i could be the ten of cups and you know the lovers

00:33:04.960 and the world and i would still be like okay it's the end of the world because i over hydrated you

00:33:10.560 know i'll find a reason on that i will work towards i am definitely like i when i'm panicking

00:33:15.860 about my death i am going to the cards for a yes or no answer about my yeah yeah not a healthy

00:33:22.020 practice that i have well but i have found it helpful i don't know how to explain it i feel

00:33:26.480 like there's a whole i think that tarot and death that's a whole topic that we are too afraid to

00:33:32.680 explore and i think we should explore it more you know because we i don't know about how you feel

00:33:37.460 but i i one of the things that's happened to me as i've gotten older is i'm less afraid of it than

00:33:41.260 i used to be but i i don't have a healthy relationship with it and most of us don't i

00:33:46.440 don't think the you know the ask a mortician you know her youtube videos she's helped me a lot too

00:33:51.840 by like facing it and looking at it and talking about it and thinking it's it's given me the

00:33:56.160 opportunity to to approach it in a different way I feel like there's a whole book on tarot and death

00:34:02.380 to be written you know and I don't know that that's my book to write but I put it out there

00:34:07.160 because I think people need it I think we need it I think yeah I don't know where I'm going with

00:34:12.700 that other than I think there's a healthy way to do it and it sounds like maybe you're doing that

00:34:16.860 it's interesting i read i wrote the episode about rachel pollack while i was in treatment and so

00:34:23.120 read her work and found her approach to asking the big questions of the divine and asking what

00:34:31.120 if we could know about how the universe was created what if we could know about our role

00:34:36.920 in the universe by asking these questions and found that super healing transformative like

00:34:42.720 gentle inspiring really creative and I do feel that when I am in those moments

00:34:51.900 like which I have been repeatedly in the past two years where I feel death very close

00:34:58.020 tarot is a tool I turn to not to know is it now but more like this this particular door I'm going

00:35:09.120 through to see this doctor or whatever what can i carry through this door that will help yeah or

00:35:16.000 what is a piece that i can it's sort of like getting on a boat what what little piece of a

00:35:21.440 raft can i float on in my panic what do i need to know for this piece and it in that way it has

00:35:28.880 always helped me i've always gotten the piece that i needed where i was like oh okay okay okay like

00:35:36.480 Like, I am over-interpreting these things and I need to ask this question.

00:35:40.500 Do you know what I mean?

00:35:41.140 I do, absolutely.

00:35:42.000 It's so strange.

00:35:43.120 Because you're giving yourself a context within it, you know, and so it's not threatening.

00:35:47.320 I mean, this sounds rude, but it's playful.

00:35:52.220 You know what I mean?

00:35:52.920 Because you're giving yourself...

00:35:53.880 Not rude.

00:35:54.480 Yeah.

00:35:55.100 You're giving yourself space to ask difficult questions and sit with them and also be comforted by, you know.

00:36:01.280 And the bottom line is, you know, we're all Hamlet.

00:36:03.060 We don't know.

00:36:04.920 Maybe it is better.

00:36:06.480 afterwards like who you know like you know it's not like we should all be rushing toward it but 0.94

00:36:10.600 like because of that and because that's the one thing we can never know having a divinatory

00:36:16.920 relationship with it I think is good when we're in a state of oh my god it is right now that's

00:36:22.340 you just can't think clearly enough to be playful I guess but what you're describing to me since

00:36:26.880 and again I'm not a psychologist I'm not a psychiatrist but it sounds really healthy to me

00:36:30.500 because it sounds like you're building that relationship with yourself with your expectations

00:36:33.860 and would care, you know?

00:36:37.080 I don't know.

00:36:38.820 To me, it sounds healthy.

00:36:40.360 And as a cis white guy, what I say goes.

00:36:43.960 So...

00:36:44.360 I've got the blessing.

00:36:50.500 Okay, I want to read this other piece.

00:36:52.040 This I loved, and the surface-level reason

00:36:55.820 of why I love this will be obvious,

00:36:57.380 because it relates directly to my interest.

00:37:00.080 You write,

00:37:01.180 By taking up the mantle of fortune teller,

00:37:03.600 we are aligning ourselves with a traditionally marginalized group. These truth-tellers

00:37:08.960 throughout history suffered at the hands of Christo-colonial invaders and human traffickers

00:37:14.200 at their inquisitions and revivals. I'm skipping down. If one reason for divination is to see our

00:37:22.880 lives and our futures more clearly, then diviners must make sure we remain alert to the realities

00:37:28.820 of today. We must look at the world through untinted lenses. We have to, and this will

00:37:34.860 change you. I don't want to scare you, but it will, or it should. In fact, if you find yourself

00:37:40.480 unchanged during your lifelong journey with divination, that might be a sign you're protecting

00:37:44.620 yourself from discomfort. And skipping again one more paragraph. Happily, most people drawn to

00:37:51.680 divination are also rebels. And as soon as we realize something we've held onto is actually

00:37:57.140 manipulative dogma, we can't wait to toss it into the bin. Which is another good thing because

00:38:02.840 fortune tellers are iconoclasts. I love that word. That's exactly what we fortune tellers are. Just

00:38:10.520 by existing, just by saying that we do not need the auspices of church leaders or governments to

00:38:15.440 get the answers to life's biggest and smallest questions is iconoclastic. Because so many of

00:38:21.480 the power structures that exist in this world are only powerful because we give them that power.

00:38:26.240 it is a revolutionary act to take power back it is iconoclastic it is subversive it is everything

00:38:33.780 we know we need and it's not just fortune tellers who do this it's witches and activists and anyone

00:38:40.660 who refuses to hand over their power to systems designed to hurt all of us even as they benefit 0.96

00:38:46.920 some of us first of all yay and fuck yes thank you it's so interesting to hear that because i 0.85

00:38:53.100 haven't looked at the book in a while it's funny i i i i yeah i whenever someone reads part of our 0.87

00:39:00.120 book to me or i read it again i'm like yeah great i have no idea news to me i love to see which is

00:39:09.380 there i love to feel that community of practice with you and to feel like you feel like we're

00:39:14.900 there with you because we are and and also to feel we feel really explicitly that our witchcraft

00:39:20.660 and our activism, our artistry are part of the same work.

00:39:24.240 So to see that in the same circle, too, feels really good.

00:39:27.600 And I want to talk more, hear you talk more about how we work together.

00:39:32.140 How do we flip the tables of the power structure that benefits only a few together,

00:39:37.820 we witches, fortune tellers, and activists?

00:39:40.420 I think that's such a good question.

00:39:41.900 And I'll use you as an example because the New Moon Magic book was one.

00:39:47.500 It definitely influenced.

00:39:48.580 I read it while I was writing the first draft of this.

00:39:50.500 And it definitely influenced me because just by having that book in the world changed me.

00:39:55.180 Right.

00:39:55.340 I once I started entering into my own spirituality, I was afraid to give it a name or I didn't

00:40:02.260 which felt like it wasn't for me.

00:40:03.980 And why I felt that way is it seems like a space that belonged to particularly women

00:40:09.840 and trans people. 0.93

00:40:11.340 Right. 1.00

00:40:11.500 But maybe I should say femme people because of the marginalization which witchcraft comes 1.00

00:40:16.720 out of. 1.00

00:40:17.240 Right.

00:40:17.360 Like people didn't choose to be witches.

00:40:19.020 they were witches because they were pushed to the margin. And I felt like that wasn't for me.

00:40:23.100 But one of the things that, you know, your book did was it reminded me that there is this sort of

00:40:29.600 like ancestral lineage of activists and marginalized people and weirdos and punk rock, you know,

00:40:37.480 who just by being themselves, by doing their work, by telling their story, by making their magic,

00:40:43.040 made me go, oh, yeah, they are witches, right? Like, and the whole concept of missing witches

00:40:46.680 to me was hugely influential in in writing that sentence and also allowing myself to sort of be

00:40:52.760 that thing you know and to call myself that and i think like having this dialogue with each other

00:40:58.920 right like talking to each other experiencing each other's work experimenting together like that is

00:41:06.760 a middle finger to the system i also think and this is really hard for me but this is the thing

00:41:11.560 that I learned from you and Kellyanne Maddox and others is that cynicism is colonial.

00:41:19.160 And the first thing that a colonizer does is they take away your belief,

00:41:23.400 they take away your magic, they take away your myth and your story. And

00:41:29.800 that is the only way to colonize, right? Like it's you destroy someone's magic. And by taking

00:41:36.520 your magic back whatever that is is an act of resistance now it's not going to change the world

00:41:41.880 but it's going to change you enough that you may start changing the world you know it doesn't come

00:41:45.240 down to just witchcraft and spell work and divination but that's part of it right it's

00:41:49.000 part of i think trusting your intuition is so revolutionary because we are taught and i you

00:41:55.160 know like i i write about this too like i'm not like anti-medicine at all i benefit well from

00:42:00.280 my lexapro and my blood pressure medication right but the lack of magic in medicine the lack of

00:42:05.640 of spirituality and medicine, for example, the separation of those things, that's, that's not

00:42:10.160 enough. But when you bring them together, and you welcome the two into your life, like things start

00:42:14.660 to change a little bit, doesn't mean you're going to get better. It doesn't mean things are going

00:42:17.960 to be easier. But what it means is that you are feeling more in control. You know, intuition is

00:42:23.220 part of our survival mechanism. And of course, it's made fun of and oh, women's intuition, 1.00

00:42:28.200 because, you know, if you're a patriarchal overlord, why wouldn't you want women to doubt

00:42:32.160 their intuition, right? Like, of course you do. I think people who have experienced danger in

00:42:37.200 childhood are probably much better diviners earlier because they are used to using intuition,

00:42:44.560 because our bodies are constantly scanning for danger. So we know pattern recognition, right?

00:42:50.180 And that is part of divination. So by practicing that, developing your intuition, trusting your

00:42:57.880 intuition you're retaking part of something that was taken from you wherever in the world your

00:43:02.760 ancestry came from kind of a convoluted answer but no it's so accurate i want to cheer it's so

00:43:09.840 true i do i can think of so many situations where having access to a faith in your own

00:43:19.480 knowledge of what is safe and what is right can become a route to you getting safe yeah and getting

00:43:27.140 into a place of more rightness in your life. And every time someone gets away from a system of

00:43:34.740 control, or every time someone gets safely away from an abuser, or every time someone gets out

00:43:40.400 of a power dynamic that's violating their ability to shine as the divinity that they are, the world

00:43:47.780 gets better and more beautiful. So every time we can be in community with each other and reflect

00:43:54.660 back these truths to each other. These are tools you can use. Other people have gone down these

00:44:00.100 paths like you're not alone. Yeah, yeah. I love what you said there. And I'm also compelled to

00:44:05.540 add too about intuition because I think a lot of people recognize that it's hard to tell between

00:44:10.220 intrusive thoughts and intuition. But the more you learn to trust your intuition, the more you'll

00:44:14.400 start to realize that it comes from different parts of your body. You'll start to recognize

00:44:17.860 the difference. And so that's one reason why you do want to work with positive intuitive forces.

00:44:22.660 Like even if you want to read for anyone else, practicing divination is going to develop that part of you and you're going to be able to tell, oh, intrusive thoughts come from my belly, intuition comes from my mind or something.

00:44:32.640 You'll feel it differently and you'll begin to trust yourself.

00:44:35.700 And then that will help you take care of the intrusive thoughts better.

00:44:39.500 Oh, man.

00:44:40.060 Another coven mate of ours said so wisely and this like rang in my head for years, urgency is a trauma response.

00:44:46.500 and i think about that all the time and it is so true for me that when i'm like oh no i have to

00:44:53.480 immediately do this i gotta fucking do it all right now that is not my intuition yeah that 0.69

00:45:00.560 is not my higher self like putting a plan into play no it's true but it's hard to tell that you 0.94

00:45:06.720 know it takes it takes practice because we're trained not to trust ourselves yeah sarah potter

00:45:11.740 her one of her she's such a light her one of her pieces of advice was just like just notice what

00:45:16.260 music you like it's so beautiful so beautiful right she's like when do you light up what kinds

00:45:22.280 of songs make you light up that's you're noticing how your body responds to truth oh my god i love

00:45:27.060 that she's so wise in a way that seems so girly my favorite kind i love it yeah oh it's been such

00:45:35.920 a joy i want to hang out so much i will hang out again but before we go officially do you want to

00:45:42.520 tell the people what you're working on, where they can find you, how they can support you,

00:45:46.600 connect with you.

00:45:47.500 Absolutely. So you can find me on social media and YouTube. So on Instagram, I'm at

00:45:53.080 TomBenjaminTaro. And at YouTube, if you search Tom Benjamin, you'll find me, but you can also

00:45:57.100 find me at The Fool's Journal. And then my website is TomBenjaminTaro.com. In November,

00:46:02.600 I'm going to be at a witch conference in Connecticut, and I'll be doing a couple of

00:46:05.560 classes there. I tend to do a lot of Zoom classes, and I'm keeping this pay what you can model for

00:46:11.280 all my classes going forward. So even if you don't have it in the bank right now, like you can come

00:46:15.940 and hang out with us and whatever. I have a corporate job. I don't want to make a living

00:46:19.880 off tarot. So I want to make those workshops accessible. I can do readings through Zoom. I can

00:46:25.600 do readings on video and I've got all of that information on the website. So if people want

00:46:31.480 to work with you one-on-one, that's still a possibility. Yes, absolutely. So cool. Thank you

00:46:37.500 so much and thank you for being in the circle of our our witches found our missing witches for this

00:46:44.580 podcast we don't want to label anybody but the word witch is in our minds open to anybody who

00:46:51.740 wants to wear it with us who cares about the liberation of the world and we know that's you

00:46:57.080 it is absolutely we crown you king of witches if you want i am so honored no this has been so much

00:47:03.600 fun i feel so lucky one of the other lucky things is not only that i get to read i get to have

00:47:08.360 conversations with people like you and this is so exciting thank you so much thank you so much

00:47:13.180 um blessed if i can be yes i love it 0.88

00:47:17.200 you must be a witch

00:47:22.480 hi i'm amy i'm risa voices you may have heard on the missing witches podcast

00:47:30.700 We've been producing a podcast that was really an art project, a labor of love, kind of a

00:47:36.460 love letter between us, two old, hag, baby witch friends in Montreal, but we went looking

00:47:43.820 for stories. 0.91

00:47:44.760 We really were coming from a place of longing and missing.

00:47:47.100 We were looking for a feminist history of magic, and that became a huge many-year life

00:47:56.500 mission.

00:47:58.120 And somewhere along the way, we started our own coven.

00:48:02.860 We're just a couple of besties who 20 years ago started making music together

00:48:08.640 and then making magic together and then making a podcast together

00:48:12.760 and then making books together and making all of the things.

00:48:15.740 And we want to invite you to come into this creative cauldron of energy. 1.00

00:48:21.300 It's sort of like our own social media for feminist witches. 1.00

00:48:26.160 Welcome to the coven.

00:48:27.420 I'm Zoe Flowers. It is a place of, I would say, mutual understanding, mutual learning.

00:48:34.460 We teach each other. We learn from each other. We do magic for each other.

00:48:41.800 Light candles for each other. Encourage each other. Share stories. Create stories.

00:48:50.860 Hi, I'm Reed. I am a member of the Missing Witches Coven. I have been since 2023.

00:48:57.420 I'm an ex-evangelical, an ex-fundee, and so after leaving church, I really, really longed for community and ritual, and I have found both of those things here.

00:49:09.000 I am a member of the Missing Witches Coven. I joined because the podcast lowers my cortisol levels. It's validating, it's affirming, and it's nurturing.

00:49:20.820 Hi, welcome to the Missing Witches Coven. What you can expect in joining is one of the most

00:49:27.480 collaborative, creative, and heart-filled communities that I've ever seen.

00:49:32.980 I love that my activism is welcome here. We are justice-loving, anti-ableist, pro-queer, 0.97

00:49:42.160 anti-racist, pro-trans, did I say queer? Queer as hell. Group of people. I wanted to join 0.99

00:49:49.920 a digital coven so that I could easily come and go as I please without feeling like I have to do

00:49:57.420 something regardless of my comfort level. This is not the coven that's going to force you to do any

00:50:03.000 of that. This is the longest community I've ever been a part of, which says something. I hope that

00:50:08.520 you'll find it as supportive and loving and kind as I have. I have learned stuff here. I've been

00:50:17.700 able to share my knowledge with people here. Do you like music? Do you like witchy shit?

00:50:26.540 Do you like history? Do you like meditation? Do you like art? Do you like queer spaces? 1.00

00:50:34.400 Do you like trans spaces? It's a place where we gather around music in our meetings. There's

00:50:42.700 usually some sort of song, some sort of instrumentation. We also have the Hive where

00:50:48.340 we get online and one coven member creates a playlist for that month. And the conversations

00:50:54.460 that you're going to be able to take part in. There's a whole archive of content. Do you like

00:51:01.100 anti-able spaces? Do you like anti-racist spaces? Do you like the community building through the

00:51:06.740 digital web, then you can come join our hives, our coven. It is the place for you.

00:51:15.420 Are you neurodivergent? Are you chronically ill? Do you have an altar? Do you not have an altar? 0.93

00:51:20.700 Do you spend a lot of time in bed? Do you spend a lot of time on the floor? Do you just need a place

00:51:24.960 to feel like you can be yourself? Then I think the Missing Witch's Coven is for you.

00:51:30.400 It was for me. Hope to see you. So, yeah, that's what we do here. I'm glad you're here. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the puppet. Every time I'm, you know, frustrated with social networking, I'm reminded that there's already a place for me. So I hope it's also the place for you. Welcome.

00:51:50.780 we love you even though we haven't met because we know that you have been missing witches too

00:51:59.100 we want you to know that we're here there's hundreds of us all around the world inventing

00:52:05.500 what magic and witchcraft is together and we'd really love for you to join us in that project

00:52:11.300 of re-enchanting the world a home where we all thrive while dancing to the cycles of nature

00:52:20.220 under the phases of the moon,

00:52:24.740 sharing stories

00:52:25.940 and helping each other learn

00:52:28.460 from life and life experiences. 1.00

00:52:33.280 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:52:37.640 And blessed fucking be. 1.00

00:52:39.100 And blessed fucking be. 0.99

Missing Witches - October 05, 2026

WF Tom Benjamin - Taking Your Magic Back Is An Act Of Resistance

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