Missing Witches - October 13, 2021


WF Ylva Mara Radziszewski - The World Needs You, Witch

Topics
MW Genesis P-Orridge - Try To Altar Everything MW Hildegarde of Bingen - Dare to Declare Who YOU Are

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 12 minutes

Words per minute

141.46

Word count

10,208

Sentence count

121

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

14

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
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00:00:39.880 We are many and we will not be silenced.
00:00:43.920 Mayor Jenny Durkan and those you've elected and appointed to your office,
00:00:48.260 we find you guilty of crimes against the most vulnerable members of this city.
00:00:53.220 By permitting the gathering of Jolie Gibson, Matt Marshall, and their followers, you are
00:01:00.780 guilty of white supremacist terrorism and collusion with Nazis. 1.00
00:01:06.240 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00
00:01:12.320 You must be a witch. 1.00
00:01:14.340 Welcome back to another episode of the Missing Witches podcast, which is found. 0.94
00:01:19.080 And today we are joined by Ilva Mara Radyshevsky.
00:01:26.640 That was my house.
00:01:30.960 And I could introduce you for days, but I want our listeners to know how you would introduce yourself.
00:01:37.360 So I'll allow you.
00:01:39.500 Awesome. Thank you.
00:01:41.720 My name is Ilva Droma Marajanya Radyshevsky.
00:01:45.180 I go by Ilva Mara for short.
00:01:46.840 I am a trans non-binary witch. I am a white person of mixed Roma, Slavic, Vulcan ancestry.
00:01:59.900 I also am somebody who comes from the Ashkenazi Jewish diaspora, but that's something I am slowly 0.65
00:02:09.560 starting to reconnect from, or to, and I am a professional witch. I run the School of
00:02:17.340 Traditional Magic, my website, traditionalmagic.com, if you're interested. On Instagram, my handle
00:02:25.280 is bimboyaga, B-I-M-C-O-Y-A-G-A. I identify also as a system. I live as somebody with D-I-D.
00:02:38.100 I also am somebody who is a survivor of sexual assault and incest.
00:02:44.280 And a lot of my work is centered in advocacy for, yes, self-advocacy, basically.
00:02:55.560 Yes.
00:02:56.600 For the space we need, taking up the space we need, and providing opportunities for others to do the same.
00:03:05.000 And I'm just so grateful to be here.
00:03:06.520 And I'm so grateful to be looking at your beautiful smiling faces. You are emanating like a joy and a connection that is, that's wonderful to behold. Thank you so much for, for being here today. Now, something that is very much a part of your practice, and I think even, let me get it exactly right, the tagline for the living altar, and we can get into the living altar, of course, but.
00:03:31.500 I didn't even introduce the living altar.
00:03:33.880 I was so, I guess I'm nervous.
00:03:36.780 Well, when you're as prolific a person as you are,
00:03:40.900 then it can become difficult to list all of our activities
00:03:44.100 in a cohesive manner.
00:03:46.680 But we're talking about it now.
00:03:48.140 The tagline is,
00:03:49.400 a radical witch's altar for magical resistance.
00:03:54.160 And again, this is thanks again to Melissa James
00:03:56.200 for providing the clip that we heard
00:03:59.000 at the beginning of the episode
00:03:59.880 and also for introducing me to your work.
00:04:04.040 And her documentary that she was working on
00:04:07.740 was about this notion of magical resistance.
00:04:10.360 It's something that we talk about all the time on the podcast.
00:04:12.700 Can you talk to our listeners about how magic and resistance are linked?
00:04:20.980 Yeah.
00:04:21.420 um so i'll start by saying um the work that i co-facilitate through the living altar with my
00:04:31.860 art partner kiki robinson of the opulent witch on instagram opulent witch on instagram is a
00:04:39.940 it's an active ritual to help both kiki and i ground in our everyday lived experience as people
00:04:50.120 who exist and try to survive within marginalized identities and politicized identities and
00:04:59.780 who also live in connection with a community of folks who experience
00:05:05.660 marginalization and the politicization of their bodies on the daily and a lot of what
00:05:13.820 we began working on through the living altar was grounding ourselves in
00:05:20.620 yeah just being able to connect our lived experience as people as witches and as artists
00:05:29.960 with our roles in community and so uh when i think about the idea of magic and the practice of
00:05:38.480 of witchcraft and the role of witch in community uh you know which we say that the witch seeks to
00:05:47.580 disrupt uh the witch seeks to name what is true um or at least create opportunities for earnest
00:05:57.060 and honest conversation with himself and amongst others and i think that when we talk about um
00:06:03.580 radical practices within magical tradition what we consider radical or what we consider radicalized
00:06:14.040 in our modern zeitgeist under late-stage capitalism with imperial structures of oppression
00:06:20.340 um have always been judicious uh uh forms of intercession by people who carry wisdom
00:06:33.640 for community and we really think that this is what the witch does we carry wisdom for community
00:06:40.000 and we help access spaces of wisdom and generosity within ourselves and and with within connections
00:06:47.080 to others and so when we think about like a radical altar for magical resistance you know
00:06:54.560 we're thinking like let ourselves liberate ourselves first from uh the constraints of
00:07:01.440 organized systemic oppression and then be empowered to be accountable to places where
00:07:10.000 um yeah that those systems live inside of us where we benefit from those systems where we
00:07:17.780 perpetuate those systems and and do the silent work uh of internal negotiation and internal
00:07:26.200 remediation um which allows us to be more accessible and more available not only to
00:07:32.480 self but to collective um you know we uh i like to say that the school of traditional magic
00:07:41.100 is a medium through which we access the identity of community witchcraft
00:07:48.120 there's so much um historic precedence around the witch as a solo like a solo practitioner or
00:08:00.380 in isolation or like as living on the fringe being
00:08:04.480 unacceptable, being untouchable, which in so many
00:08:08.520 ways is true because of the nature of our work when we're in practice
00:08:12.240 for community as steward of these
00:08:16.280 ways of tradition and these wisdom ways
00:08:19.260 we do need space. We do
00:08:24.660 need space to cultivate those relationships and we do need space to get
00:08:28.580 the work done in the ways that it needs to get done and that's not always an easy
00:08:32.340 place for others to to meet us you know um so i think like there is historic precedence for the
00:08:40.120 witch as um a lonely figure but the witch is able to maintain sovereignty and um exist within a
00:08:53.980 state because of their connections with others their connection not only to nature the spirits
00:09:02.220 of land and place the spirits of our ancestors but also as as a gift of resource to our relationships
00:09:10.040 with community members and so when i think about um the the radical altar of magical resistance
00:09:21.300 that the living altar sort of uh came into being as it really is something that um externalizes an
00:09:33.620 internal uh dream i think that kiki and i both share which is that the witch returns to collective
00:09:42.840 that the wisdom of the witch return to collective and that the witch returns to a seat of council
00:09:51.440 in collective and that it doesn't have to be anything so profound like the most powerful
00:09:57.280 magic is the most silent and subtle most often i think about that in terms of like my ancestral
00:10:03.880 heritage of being a person of balkan and roma ancestry but also and also being slavic
00:10:10.500 um like in the polish witches the traditional healers are called whisperers and a lot of that
00:10:18.400 is a means of survival you know the assimilative practices you don't go around talking about stuff
00:10:24.920 but also like um you don't need to you don't need to uh talk about your power in order to wield it
00:10:36.620 You know what I mean? So I think the radical aspect of modern witchcraft that the work that we do represent is the subtlety and helping to provide space for the individual to return to collective in subtle ways and letting those subtleties of character be profound gifts of generosity.
00:11:03.100 um like you don't have to be a celebrity which you don't have to to have power or have impact
00:11:10.140 you know you don't have to be um you don't have to be loud about things for the impact to be
00:11:17.400 substantial and you know half of the things most i think most of the most of the blessings we
00:11:25.820 offer to our lives um through living are moment are silent and subtle moments that even we might
00:11:35.360 not recognize i know that um a lot of the witches i speak to are still in the quote-unquote broom
00:11:43.560 closet and um something that i've been thinking about a lot um as someone with like a witch
00:11:49.820 weather vane on my house who has been you know and a very out and loud since birth um but I tell
00:11:57.840 them you can be a secret weapon yeah you know and your magic can be a secret weapon and you know
00:12:03.680 maybe it's just once again this late stage capitalism that tells us that we need to be
00:12:07.500 loud and profiteering you know off of everything but I also made me think of something that
00:12:13.280 white feather hunter said to me once we were talking about ritual and white feather was
00:12:19.960 talking about you know the the energy of community and raising this energy together and so I asked
00:12:26.360 you know what about when we're practicing alone and everything you were saying made me think of
00:12:31.140 her response which was like a blanket that I cover myself in she kind of kind of scoffed
00:12:37.480 she was like well you're never alone when you're doing ritual
00:12:40.520 and i mean it's so obvious in the speaking you know we are we are contacting our our ancestors
00:12:49.120 or as you say the land spirits this notion of a witch community being community even in solitude
00:12:57.180 is really really comforting to me
00:13:00.660 i agree i want to clarify too like as a as a white person who is a colonizer on uncedish
00:13:12.960 unceded territories indigenous land in so-called united states um and where i'm talking to you
00:13:22.080 from i'm on uh point elliott treaty land the coast salish duwamish territory in seattle
00:13:28.000 So when I talk about working with land spirits as a white person, as a colonizer on land that's not my ancestral home, I'm talking about working magic in a way that puts me in a place of understanding that this is not my home, that this is not, these spirits owe me nothing.
00:13:56.380 um i'm not entitled to a relationship here but i i must do what i can to honor and respect
00:14:05.160 indigenous-led land sovereignty movement with everything i do it must be in my mind it must
00:14:11.740 be in my actions and it like the idea of radical witchcraft is one that says this isn't just about
00:14:22.060 breaking intergenerational curses this isn't just about addressing and combating systemic level
00:14:30.460 you know colonized settler colonized curses through hierarchical systems of oppression
00:14:38.300 like battling those systems but it's also about slowing down and being quiet and doing what you're
00:14:48.520 told and being asked to do um by by indigenous led movements who are stewards of land and place
00:14:58.100 and as a witch we have to understand that our magic you know our magic comes from lots of places
00:15:06.720 but it's borrowed magic is borrowed energy it moves through the world magic doesn't belong to
00:15:12.480 anyone um and the point of the practice of magic or the practice of a witch isn't to access power
00:15:20.360 or to raise and gain power for self it's to place ourselves in that current of of magic as it moves
00:15:26.740 to the world and uplift it and direct it and to be a conduit in service conduit in service to
00:15:34.400 what is already naturally occurring and so that either looks like being in service to disrupting
00:15:43.040 what's actually occurring presently being in service to redirecting energy towards more
00:15:49.040 beneficial outcomes but our magic is borrowed and without relationship to the elemental forces
00:15:57.660 uh which are our ancient ancestors and those elements exist everywhere on this planet
00:16:04.680 um and and the universe i mean my god let's talk about the cosmos for a second
00:16:10.200 like geek out about that um cosmic sexual here but um i'm sorry i have never heard the term
00:16:20.120 cosmosexual before i don't know if you invented it just right now on the spot but i'm putting it
00:16:25.100 in my notes carry on you can't i talk about this a lot um we just geek out about space um but i i
00:16:34.360 just i i want to i just what i'm trying to say is um when we're working with the elements who
00:16:43.480 are our ancestors we must understand that where we exist in time and space in corporal form
00:16:49.240 um the spirit exists as well and they borrow they borrow the corporal forms around us
00:16:59.560 and we can work with the land we can work with the spirit that are here
00:17:04.920 and the ancestors that are here to connect us to our own ancestors the ancestors of our lineages
00:17:12.060 the ancestors of the land where our bodies um were born from but also where our ancestors were born
00:17:18.220 from um and so i i don't know i don't i guess i don't know really how to like frame it except to
00:17:27.440 say um if you're a colonizer on unceded land and indigenous land on turtle island especially uh
00:17:35.880 when we're working with the spirit to show up for the work um don't take for granted the fact that
00:17:47.200 are there and don't stop at at at their presence like sometimes when we call out to a spirit
00:17:54.740 they'll show up because they hear us and they're like you okay like what's up baby and then and
00:18:01.080 then we're like oh you're my helping spirit and it's like oh no no i'm sorry i was just in i was
00:18:06.360 just in the next room and i heard you and i just wanted to check on you can i call your grandma
00:18:11.960 for you like can i help you find your own spirit connections like we have to understand like
00:18:19.280 we aren't entitled to these relationships i can't say it enough like these are relationships they
00:18:25.060 are they require work and i think a lot of times because we are so disconnected from culture of
00:18:31.420 origin especially of colonizers that and and we exist within a forced separation of culture um
00:18:39.240 like we we literally exist in systems that that cleave indigeneity from the the the stewards of
00:18:47.360 land and place who are here who are fighting for their lives um that we take for granted that
00:18:53.240 uh yeah we we we're owed something so i i just like that's also what we mean by like
00:19:01.160 a radical practice of witchcraft it's just being honest like
00:19:05.220 nobody owes me anything here in fact you know even having this conversation with you across
00:19:12.100 the border of two colonized lands and false nation states like we're being permitted by
00:19:18.460 the spirits to do this and we're taking up a lot of space that isn't ours to take up and having
00:19:23.440 these conversations but they're they're needing to be had so even in this conversation we have
00:19:28.880 to acknowledge the immense privileges that we are um leaning into and and and the way that that
00:19:38.660 perpetuates even further uh colonized settler uh colon the settler colonialism that we benefit from
00:19:47.160 so uh when i say spirits of land i'm also talking about that and i'm also talking about like the
00:19:57.740 constant the constant intention of reconnecting across oceans and across diaspora i also am a
00:20:06.600 person who comes from uh lineages of diaspora and um so i'm talking about connecting through
00:20:14.380 those histories to the places where my family recognized the spirits and they and the spirits
00:20:24.220 recognize them and you know as somebody of roma ancestry it's like we have no land we have no home
00:20:33.280 so the ritual of reconnecting is one that's constantly returning to my body
00:20:38.320 yeah and honestly i think one of the most important parts of my practice as i you know
00:20:47.660 evolve and season as a witch is that recognition of a colonial mentality that still exists you
00:20:55.940 know buried deep within my heart and brain um what i'm entitled to um and working through
00:21:03.400 all of that i think is an excellent you know continual first step in in practice
00:21:09.380 i treat it like i treat my practice of witchcraft like i would um my practice of just being in
00:21:18.920 relationship with friends lovers family you know it's like i i don't know i i have to work
00:21:28.400 so i have to work on these relationships i have to work for safety i have to work
00:21:32.740 to like trust and and that that's something that i think is so uh often left out of the
00:21:42.680 conversation particularly particularly with like a more social media driven contemporary culture
00:21:50.320 like there's not a lot of room for a nuance unfortunately but there's a lot of space for
00:21:56.860 connection which is great but just like remember to slow down in our in our world our world is so
00:22:03.240 um our modern world is so uh manipulated by the the illusion of meritocracy so rooted in
00:22:15.260 capitalism which is crumbling and superiority which is shattering that it wants us to speed up
00:22:21.920 It wants us to work harder, fight harder, move faster so we don't recognize or see the cracks in the veneers, so we don't recognize the facade as a facade.
00:22:31.980 We don't see it crumbling.
00:22:32.800 So I think the more we slow down and bring intention, even to the soundbites, even to like the immediacy of connection that is so often a salvation for so many across social media, like just understanding that we can take a moment.
00:22:52.640 Like we, the urgency of the fall of late stage capitalism is not our crisis.
00:22:59.520 Like, you know, yeah.
00:23:03.220 But the impact is our responsibility.
00:23:06.880 That leads perfectly into a little quote I want to read from your book,
00:23:11.240 A Practical Guide for Witches.
00:23:13.200 And I love the book.
00:23:14.600 It is very that.
00:23:15.740 It's, it's thorough.
00:23:18.220 I, I actually wrote an endorsement for the book in which I said that I've
00:23:22.640 I think it would be equally useful for like a quote unquote baby witch as it would be for a seasoned crone.
00:23:27.920 There's so much great, great stuff in there.
00:23:31.780 Do you want to talk a little bit about the process of writing the book and why you chose to be to sort of cast a wide net with the with the topic of your book?
00:23:40.740 And then I'll get to my quote that I wanted to read.
00:23:43.440 Sure. Yeah, that feels good.
00:23:44.880 um you know a practical guide for witches um is a book that i wrote um okay i'll just be
00:23:54.260 i'm all about honesty and intimacy and i'm working real hard on that so i'm gonna get
00:24:00.560 sappy for a second um virgo sun aquarius moon over here uh but i wrote this book at a time
00:24:10.800 in my life where, uh, things, things were really, uh, changing so quickly and being held together
00:24:19.100 with such, um, uh, with such a, with so much, so many miracles. Um, it was a wonder I didn't
00:24:28.540 collapse. And I wrote this book during that time of tremendous heartbreak reevaluation and on a
00:24:36.340 deadline right so i'm healing i'm healing from some pretty intense like stuff that's going down
00:24:43.640 and i'm like i have a deadline baby we gotta like i know i know that you've been crying at 3 a.m but
00:24:49.560 like it's 6 a.m it's time to write you know i need to i need to stop you for one second would you
00:24:55.260 recommend healing on a deadline because it sounds like it was kind of a kind of a positive and
00:25:01.200 fruitful experience for you but to me it sounds counterintuitive oh it literally was uh so painful
00:25:09.480 and the reason i say that way because like i i had i had to get i had to write this book i was
00:25:15.680 under contract right i'm like okay i have to i have to write this book you know what it's like
00:25:20.640 when you're when you're contracted uh your book is amazing um and so it's like when you're on a
00:25:27.160 when you're on a deadline and you're and you're asked to share um when when you're asked to share
00:25:36.240 wisdom and insight um you know for me as a witch when i'm asked that when i was asked that of the
00:25:44.600 book i thought okay well i'm going to do this generously and i want to be very earnest about
00:25:49.460 it so i wrote this book to feel my heartbreak and as i was doing that i also started to understand
00:25:57.140 And like growing up, I needed a different kind of resource.
00:26:01.760 And so I wrote this book for the younger parts of myself who didn't have access to, you know, I grew up poor.
00:26:09.460 I grew up in the middle of nowhere, Florida, in the swamps of Okeechobee.
00:26:13.860 And I grew up just not having access to a lot of the information I had to learn.
00:26:20.200 And I was generous with myself around that.
00:26:25.080 So I wrote this book as almost like an invitation to my younger selves to accept aspects of our craft and aspects of our identity through magic.
00:26:41.280 And I did so in a way that I hope is also an invitation for other people to, again, slow down and be reflective.
00:26:49.900 I wrote this book to help soften the need for self-reflection, re-examination, and hopefully to provide resource for folks to reassess our value system as witches.
00:27:10.060 And this is not perfect.
00:27:12.300 It's a start of a conversation.
00:27:14.260 The conversation I hope it starts is, what are we actually doing here?
00:27:17.980 like what do we actually believe like why are we doing these things and so much of modernized
00:27:24.720 witchcraft has been misappropriated from stolen culture um and has been so appropriated through
00:27:33.380 the heteropatriarchal lens that it's actually violent but nobody talks about that but as a
00:27:40.340 trans person as a non-binary person and as a person from whom from cultures um that have been 0.57
00:27:48.040 stolen from i mean let's talk about the tarot for a second and like this this uh fixation of gaja 0.90
00:27:56.360 non-roma people with fortune telling um it's like okay well we have to slow down and start to say 0.60
00:28:02.740 okay i have a home where is it you know and it's inside of me first and is what i'm practicing
00:28:08.780 what i actually believe so that's a long-winded way of saying like i wrote this book as an
00:28:14.940 invitation for which is to give ourselves permission to to do better with what we know
00:28:20.760 and to allow ourselves to learn what we don't know and to uh really reassess
00:28:27.380 you said i i do have a home my home is inside of me i'm going to add that square to the quilt
00:28:37.440 blanket that i that i put over myself that that's a beautiful reminder to everyone i do have a home
00:28:45.240 my home is inside me okay let me read this let me read this short excerpt again from a practical
00:28:52.340 guide for witches uh listeners if you haven't picked it up it really is wonderful and it's
00:28:57.080 beautiful too it's beautiful the art can you can you tell me the name of your illustrator i'm
00:29:05.240 blanking the interior and cover design was by stephanie malton m-a-u-t-o-n-e and then the
00:29:13.740 illustrations are by tara o'brien tara o'brien that's the name yeah because they're comforting
00:29:19.900 that's the word that i think of like they're they're they're just they're just lovely anyway
00:29:25.460 listeners go pick up the book um you can get an e-version but i like to hold things in my hands
00:29:30.620 the cover is so velvet yeah i'm sorry i just wanted to say that yeah we can you can pat it
00:29:36.840 it can be you're familiar um okay here we go our modern world is troubled
00:29:43.360 sadly we find ourselves in the grip of unprecedented global strife and crisis
00:29:51.020 at times it can feel overwhelming or impossible to access joy or hope yet the work of the witch
00:30:00.600 is to draw strength from the past and the natural world and cast that blessing into our current
00:30:06.640 reality as a seed of hope. We must remember, as Dr. Clarissa Pinocchio Estes writes in her essay
00:30:15.160 of the same title, we were made for these times. There may not have ever been a more vital time
00:30:22.500 to access magic the world needs you which can you like speak to that moment of writing or expand on
00:30:32.560 the idea i forgot that i wrote that
00:30:36.760 as you were reading it uh kind of made me a little teary uh me too when i read it the first time and
00:30:45.740 second time and the third time i i just believe it i just i believe it it's true
00:30:54.160 i guess that's what i have to say like oh yeah it's it's um it's the truth i think so how
00:31:03.980 does magic or rituals specifically rituals i'm always interested in people's rituals
00:31:09.600 how do they benefit us individually and then how does that ripple into our culture into our society
00:31:16.980 I think for me in my experience as and I'll speak from my experience as
00:31:27.980 a high priestess who has learned from a lot of trial and error and also in the blessing of
00:31:37.780 having the opportunity to witness my students coming into this coming into their own practice
00:31:46.280 um and i feel like our rituals help us first to connect to ourselves
00:31:55.240 um and i think that's such an important reminder is that magic isn't magic is rooted in an inward
00:32:04.040 reflection um magic must come from a place of our practice of magic must come from a place of
00:32:11.700 inward reflection it must be rooted somewhere deep inside of us the inner altered that's inside
00:32:17.100 of us and because inside of that place also like bear in mind i am somebody who lives with did and
00:32:24.640 somebody who lives with cptsd and i'm somebody who has spent a lot of time in therapy so
00:32:31.100 so a lot of this is just informed by like the need to survive like then like i needed to
00:32:38.680 understand how to choose to live how to choose life um and so when i think about the practice
00:32:49.900 of witchcraft and our rituals they're meant to fortify us they're meant to root us in our own
00:32:55.740 lived experience and they're meant to bring us to places of honesty around what it is we did
00:33:01.120 experience and not only experience from others but experience in through the process of
00:33:08.280 enacting in the world so we have to take responsibility for those impacts right so
00:33:15.640 when i think about personal ritual what it does for us is it helps us come to a place of
00:33:20.820 earnest and honest care of self and i think from that place we then get to to decide like
00:33:31.620 what i'm available for what i'm not available for uh what i'll stand for what i won't stand for
00:33:37.300 and gets us really clear about what our actual resources are and what they aren't and then
00:33:46.180 when we talk about external
00:33:48.120 rituals or like how
00:33:50.460 our rituals ripple
00:33:52.360 out into community
00:33:53.600 it's you know resource
00:33:56.180 distribution baby
00:33:57.280 it's
00:34:00.280 practical like we have
00:34:01.960 I can't stress it enough that
00:34:03.860 the trope
00:34:06.460 of the magical
00:34:08.080 mystical witch
00:34:09.860 is it's a trope
00:34:11.960 it's a trope that we
00:34:13.500 both historically
00:34:15.480 we as which were responsible for casting out into the world as a means of protection and
00:34:21.360 assimilation, but it's also one that has drawn upon centuries of racialization and racial oppression
00:34:28.360 of indigenous people, black folks, Roma folks, Jews, and anyone non-Christian and non-white and
00:34:38.340 non-western european and so when we overly exotify or fetishize the identity of which
00:34:47.680 um we are further cleaving the relationship between
00:34:55.160 stewardship of land and place stewardship of magic stewardship of our relationships um
00:35:04.460 and yeah and that that that gap that is created is so impassable to fill so our rituals must
00:35:14.440 bring us to a place of self-groundedness self-rootedness and then as it ripples out
00:35:19.520 it's a it must i think bring us to a place of honest redistribution of resource whether that's
00:35:27.100 um texting a friend and being available for a difficult conversation whether that's
00:35:32.180 oh, I've got some financial flow,
00:35:34.480 so I'm going to redistribute my financial wealth
00:35:37.120 across mutual aid.
00:35:39.480 Everything we do is an opportunity for blessing.
00:35:42.760 Everything we do, like every time I Venmo somebody,
00:35:45.460 I'm like putting the little matis in there,
00:35:49.240 little evil eyes, I'm putting little lipsticks, 0.98
00:35:51.340 I'm using technology and emojis for spells of abundance.
00:35:57.340 um and it allows us to really focus um yeah really focus our impact so that it's the deepest
00:36:06.240 biggest impact possible without a lot of other lessons i'm a maximalist so you know what i mean
00:36:12.120 like i'm all about i'm a maximalist i have big presents oh my god i love stuff i love making a
00:36:19.600 big to do i love public ritual i love you know i love just going all out but but but that comes
00:36:27.180 in time that comes in time and i think we're able to get big um when we've spent time honoring the
00:36:36.220 intimate honoring the intimate i like that and that speaks to sort of the whisperer that you
00:36:44.620 that you talked about before when you mentioned emoji spells the first
00:36:49.200 face that popped into my head was that of edgar fabian frius
00:36:52.700 to me the the highest magic of emoji in my experience has come from edgar and i recently
00:37:04.120 actually watched a youtube video that the two of you did together um trancestor portal um can you
00:37:14.800 talk a little bit about opening a portal i mean i'll put the video in the show notes it's so
00:37:21.060 beautiful the silver bowl um it i mean it really is like an emotional watching experience so again
00:37:27.280 i'll put it in the show notes for our listeners but can you talk about this notion of opening a
00:37:31.400 portal yeah gosh there's so much to say uh maybe i'll start with the idea of the transistor portal
00:37:46.060 and then see if that is what I want to talk about.
00:37:49.540 Perfect.
00:37:51.060 And see if that answers, if that satisfies the inquiry.
00:37:54.000 So, when I think about portals,
00:38:00.720 I think about portals as an intentional,
00:38:08.080 creating an intentional connection
00:38:09.840 across planes of existence
00:38:12.200 Where we can meet and share relationships with ideas, energies, concepts, memories, broken promises, failed efforts, dreams that are no longer
00:38:42.200 no longer viable for corporal manifestation dreams that have manifested and we've moved on
00:38:49.320 from the future like it's whatever we are needing to find uh or wanting to find or wanting to connect
00:38:57.620 with in order to find comfort to find strength to find resilience to affirm identity um creating
00:39:05.620 portals is an opportunity to create an intentional connection through planes of existence so that we
00:39:12.020 control upon um the energy that meets those expectations or meets those intentions and i
00:39:18.580 think anytime we pray for creating a portal i think that anytime a portal of access if i think
00:39:25.360 about portals as points of access right every time i say hello to a friend you know that's creating
00:39:32.760 a portal of access this conversation is a portal you know it's creating another opportunity for
00:39:38.040 relationships uh across our communities between you and i between our life experiences um it's a
00:39:45.240 way i see it portals i see portals as like uh the way spiders weave web i see portals as the way
00:39:52.860 like ocean currents meet um i see them as like this um almost like magical wormholes you know
00:40:02.460 like we kind of like they they're doors that open quite naturally into uh energy veins that
00:40:09.940 are already in motion um possibilities that are already in motion um sometimes these portals have
00:40:16.640 to be forced open sometimes they have to be forged anew um but it's again there are these
00:40:24.220 access points to possibilities and access points to relationships um and then when we open portals
00:40:31.640 we have to tend to them right so if we're creating an access if we're creating a connection
00:40:36.280 we're responsible for it um and it doesn't mean we have to be sitting there every day
00:40:42.220 talking to it um but it means that when we're not there talking to it we close it
00:40:47.120 you know like we close the door we lock the door um you know it's a sacred thing we want to make
00:40:54.960 sure that it's held in sacredness and we also want to make sure that we're not just like cleaving
00:41:00.040 uh cleaving reality i'm saying cleaving a lot cleaving must be the word of the day
00:41:04.300 i don't even think i'm using it correctly we can't just be like rending the veil and then
00:41:08.800 walking away and being like bye y'all and then i might get mashed up and you know it's uh i think
00:41:17.220 that ultimately the natural world has a way of course correcting but we don't want to leave
00:41:22.600 messes we don't want to make it more difficult in already difficult times yes yeah and and
00:41:31.700 this notion of leaving the door open for lack of a better term is is something that you think will
00:41:37.300 make things more difficult i think that it depends i think that it can you know i think uh you know
00:41:45.020 we can leave doors open for um oh god okay so i think where it could be appropriate to leave
00:41:53.460 a door open is in relationships where um misunderstanding has occurred where harm
00:42:03.560 has been or hurt has been done i think that's appropriate to leave a door open um and i think
00:42:10.360 where it's also appropriate metaphysically to leave doors open is um in conversations
00:42:16.840 inner world conversations between myself and my my best self or my uh i don't want to say like
00:42:25.760 highest self or most exalted self because i think like that's also it's something i'm trying to
00:42:30.180 really um understand as a form of meritocracy that i don't like that i've internalized like
00:42:38.560 it's not about the best self the better self the higher self the perfect self that doesn't exist
00:42:43.200 to me that's not real but it's like the part of us that really aspires towards honoring
00:42:53.080 the fullest picture we have access to i think that's an appropriate door to leave open
00:43:02.120 but i think like when we're opening portals to say the ancestral realm meaning literal
00:43:09.980 gateways for the ancestors and spirits of the dead so to commune with us or to pass through
00:43:15.160 this into this world there are other ways that spirits can enter the world and so i don't think
00:43:21.180 necessarily that a witch accidentally leaving an ancestral portal open is bad um because the
00:43:30.680 spirits are going to find access anyway but I'm a Virgo so I like things to be tidy you know
00:43:37.440 I like to be and I'm also very flighty because I'm like what's next so I'm like I want to make
00:43:42.960 sure that this is my protocol to open and close you know so I can I can move on I'm the kind of
00:43:48.360 person that when I leave my house I'm like knowing full well I didn't cook anything that morning
00:43:52.860 I think did I leave the stove on and I'm like honey you didn't even turn the stove on like
00:43:57.820 I left it on like I'm that kind of person you know so it wreaks havoc instead of me and I think
00:44:05.520 that's also something true like when we open portals we anchor them so if we aren't closing
00:44:11.420 portals we've opened then the havoc that's wreaked most likely is just internal chaos right there's
00:44:19.380 something um on the living altar website I don't know if it was you specifically who wrote these
00:44:23.700 like couple sentences or if it was kiki or if it was something that you two did together
00:44:27.380 but um it seems kind of fit with what we're saying i am the eye through which the ancestors
00:44:34.220 thread their potential i am precision my ceremony emboldens liberation for all can you like unpack
00:44:44.720 that last sentence for us again i don't know if it was you or kiki specifically or but my ceremony
00:44:50.260 emboldens liberation i think that's kind of what we've been talking about this whole time but
00:44:54.380 That's a nice sentence to sort of boil it down to.
00:44:58.780 My ceremony emboldens liberation for all.
00:45:03.180 Yeah.
00:45:04.180 That's the spell for the ancestor card for the living altar.
00:45:07.460 So I'll do a quick introduction to the living altar specifically here because I think it'll help make sense.
00:45:14.220 But the living altar is an oracle deck that Heke and I started working on in 2017 that finally was published last year.
00:45:22.340 and it is a physical embodiment of the witch's wheel it's meant to be both an oracular tool for
00:45:29.560 practitioners but also a study guide for practitioners and anyone interested in
00:45:34.680 witchcraft and magic and what it does is it creates a um it each card is an embodiment of
00:45:45.980 an aspect of the natural cycle of nature um the natural cycle of nature that's overdone the the
00:45:53.020 cycle of nature as represented by like the turning of the seasons um the maturation process of an
00:46:00.700 of organic life from birth to maturity to death um and so each card is a spell that incorporates
00:46:09.580 uh the totality of the uh universal principles and we can work with them not only as like
00:46:17.440 um uh spells to or like uh tools to empower ourselves that specifically draw upon those
00:46:26.040 energies but also we can ask them questions and turn to them as counsel we can turn to death as
00:46:32.160 counsel we can turn to the ancestors with counsel we can turn to the earth air fire and water as
00:46:36.580 counsel um and which i think is another way of honoring those relationships it's not just like
00:46:42.760 asking for what you want it's about asking for what you should be doing you know oh definitely
00:46:50.400 definitely i want this i want that also like what would you have me be doing just like fyi
00:46:55.840 gonna check in um but the spell of the ancestor you know the the every ritual everything i do
00:47:03.320 is um a ritual in liberation to serve in liberation for all it's like we're not alone in this
00:47:09.880 we're not alone the the uh the fallacy of individualism is an imperialist notion it's
00:47:17.900 so insidious it drives us all mad i mean this is like this is the principle behind um burnout
00:47:24.200 this is the principle behind um selling out people we love for a quick whatever um so when
00:47:32.220 everything we do is community oriented witches which i think all modern witches should really
00:47:38.440 be thinking about our communal impact i think all modern witches are community witches we should
00:47:45.060 we should really be moving that way i think not little virgo mom over here but you know we really
00:47:51.200 should be thinking about this our impact is tremendous so why not in every spell we pass
00:47:57.180 include a prayer for collective why not in every even personal spells like every time i cast a
00:48:04.320 personal spell for self-love or you know a successful contract or you know to successfully
00:48:10.380 complete an art project i'm working on even if i never share it with another person i'm praying
00:48:14.200 for collective creativity you know i'm praying i don't know why i raised my hand i'm praying for
00:48:18.720 collective understanding i'm praying for collective abundance and you know like that is what we mean
00:48:23.740 biad so every every time we raise energy and this is also coming from like me growing up
00:48:29.620 in uh little swampy areas in florida um i really got connected to the reclaimist tradition
00:48:38.520 of witchcraft that was um co-founded by starhawk and so a lot of the communities i was a part of
00:48:45.780 as a as a wee witch were reclaimist in nature and a lot of the focus of reclaimist witchcraft
00:48:51.980 is on collective um or it has become focused on collective and so i really draw inspiration from
00:49:01.000 um from that particular vibe of the craft
00:49:06.460 you said um when i was a wee witch and i assume you meant small little young but in my mind i was
00:49:16.920 like a wee witch like capital w e us you know ours which and i was like i'm a wee witch too
00:49:24.680 like we we can all be wee witches and i i love that i love that i i think that you're totally
00:49:32.680 right you know um i'm the same way you know all of my spell work has some element of of communal
00:49:41.120 know blessing or you know gratitude or um you know imploring or yearning but there's always
00:49:47.880 some sort of and again i i returned to what white feather said to me which was you know you're never
00:49:52.360 alone when you're doing ritual even if you are a solitary practitioner even if you're in the broom
00:49:57.420 closet even if you know no one understands you and you feel like you don't have a community
00:50:01.880 you do you're never alone and and it's as you've been articulating like very important to center
00:50:09.720 that as we go forward with this like magical resistance that we are that we are forming
00:50:16.380 together you know yeah i think you have something to offer also like that's also part of that
00:50:23.280 conversation is that what you have so what you honestly have to share is perfect whole beautiful
00:50:33.460 wonderful powerful impactful meaningful and focus on that do that thing you know of course never
00:50:42.000 stop learning of course never stop cultivating these skills but what our innate talents are
00:50:47.140 this is where we have the biggest impact i think and so um you know spend more time
00:50:53.680 focusing on who you are how you are what you are what you want to do how you want to do it
00:51:01.380 rather than what other people are doing mind your own business is a big prayer i'm casting out for
00:51:07.140 myself um but uh you know i think about growing up in a small southern community and something my
00:51:15.020 my very first teacher and mentor jackie muskowski who was a christian mystic and i was apprenticed
00:51:21.960 to her for about 19 years before she passed away in 2017 but uh and still am an apprenticeship
00:51:28.740 like apprenticeships don't end i'm learning so much more it keeps me busy more now that she's
00:51:34.620 dead than when she was alive damn she would say you know like what's yours won't pass you by
00:51:40.020 you know just to be patient be calm and do every time we cast a spell we must follow up 0.92
00:51:47.280 with like 10 tangible action steps that's arbitrary you know what i mean but like
00:51:53.680 the six do six tangible no don't do six never work and even it's a very tough thing like nine
00:52:00.340 nine uh very very distinct clear accessible action steps with every spell we pass we must
00:52:08.760 also be doing practical world remediation um so i think if we kind of look at it that way
00:52:15.900 um it almost uh it almost requires us to tend to our relationships with others
00:52:22.560 How did you end up on the steps of City Hall?
00:52:28.060 It was something that a lot of my community members, I tend to step in things a lot.
00:52:37.680 And so I got on the steps of City Hall because our still current mayor, Jenny Durkin, had 0.95
00:52:49.820 and still has a history of aligning herself with white supremacists. 0.86
00:52:54.100 She herself acts as a white supremacist actively in office
00:52:57.820 and legislates in that manner. 0.74
00:53:00.300 And there was, at the same time that there were active
00:53:04.060 Black Lives Matter protests,
00:53:07.120 there were, that were being policed,
00:53:13.320 Jenny Jerkin, the mayor of this city,
00:53:15.620 uh decided to grant access to the city capital uh the the mayoral capital offices um she granted
00:53:26.500 access to known white supremacists proud boys and the uh the patriot people i forget their name the
00:53:33.220 uh proud boys and like um oh yeah i think it was i think it was the proud boys and whatever
00:53:43.060 affiliated group they were with it and it just it didn't it wasn't right and so we had been
00:53:50.120 organizing privately in our community to constrain the mayor and like we were trying to work with the
00:53:57.100 offices through communication but nothing was being no communication was being responded to
00:54:03.680 so we decided to go and make a declaration um and yeah revoke her authority at a magical level
00:54:13.660 as best as we could to say something be like no you like why are we don't agree with you welcoming 0.99
00:54:21.460 white supremacists and nazis to the steps of city hall like the fuck is wrong with you like that's 1.00
00:54:28.860 not literally not what we want i mean so much of it comes down to like what the fuck is wrong with 1.00
00:54:38.360 you like i find myself just like you know there's the old not old um the saying that's like i don't 0.88
00:54:45.520 know how to teach you that you should care about other people i think about that one a lot you know
00:54:51.040 like don't have white supremacists in your um you know political party or in your offices like 0.99
00:54:58.220 duh what the fuck is wrong with you but here we are and it's 2021 and we're still shouting about 0.99
00:55:04.500 this i mean i think i wanted to say like um uh first is that um sometimes we want to say like 0.99
00:55:13.020 uh duh about things that are obvious we can just say obvious because otherwise um it does count
00:55:20.320 come across as being ableist so just fyi thank you thank you it's tempting to cut this out of
00:55:27.400 the episode but everybody who's listening yeah that's something that i had never considered
00:55:31.380 and noted noted and going forward everyone i'm leaving the ableist language in this episode
00:55:37.720 simply as a learning moment for myself and for everybody who like me never thought of it obvious
00:55:42.920 thank you yeah yeah and i want to thank my colleague uh twembley borst for those conversations
00:55:49.760 with me as well um because i had a hard time uh kicking some of those words out as well
00:55:57.080 And, um, as somebody who lives with chronic mental health stuff, um, I, I try really hard
00:56:06.920 to, um, it's a, it's a, it's a very, it's a thin line between reclaiming words of self
00:56:16.120 empowerment that have otherwise been used to alienate and harm, um, folks with mental
00:56:23.340 health stuff like crazy um it's something i really struggle with historically um as an insult to me
00:56:32.580 and people i love but also understand that even reclaiming that word is uh something that
00:56:39.000 should be left to people who have been experienced in or who have experienced like institutionalization
00:56:48.320 as a result of it so we're all learning you know well i to be a kind person like
00:56:57.180 it should be obvious to someone don't invite nazis to my house like
00:57:01.560 yeah and it was the first time you know i have a tremendous amount of social anxiety
00:57:11.500 And I don't, as public as I am about things and as loud and as approachable as I am, I'm pretty reclusive.
00:57:22.260 And it was one of the first public rituals of, yeah, rituals of public activism that I facilitated at such a level.
00:57:32.940 And I chose to record that and post that recording because I thought it was important for people to understand that we can take even small actions in our own local communities and that it doesn't have to always be about targeting big.
00:57:53.320 it's not about the big target it's about like understanding if we're fighting fascism as
00:57:59.140 witches we fight that at every single level of political authority from city council to mayoral
00:58:08.700 to gubernatorial to president and without and this was also at the time where everybody was like 0.96
00:58:15.220 heck donald trump which cool baby get it like do your thing whatever like be responsible
00:58:20.260 understand the limitations that you have in your practice work within your scope do do your be
00:58:26.660 blessed be responsible um virgo witch mom but also like if we're hexing the if we're hexing the
00:58:34.760 president understanding like we're attacking a seat of power the presidency that is built on
00:58:42.180 hundreds of years of bloodshed enslavement genocide we're battling blood magic
00:58:50.260 And in order to truly, and the president of the United States is not the big boss, you know what I mean? One of them. And in order to truly affect change at that level, we have to undermine the authority of the minion seat, you know, the minions around the country.
00:59:13.640 We have to undermine the governor's seat, the mayoral seat, the city council even. There's not a true system of collective governance in colonized cultures and among systems of settler colonialism or in the perpetuation of imperialism.
00:59:40.660 like it's not possible so i i chose to um in collective with a few like a dozen witches
00:59:50.120 from community we just we and we acted fast you know because as soon as we made those
00:59:55.760 declarations we broke the staff we laid down our um judgment on the steps we turned walked away and
01:00:04.460 as we literally as i walked away i was the last person i handed off my bag to someone i said
01:00:10.100 take all of this just go walk away because i have a cane i had to walk slow
01:00:14.460 and i said if i'm gonna get if somebody's gonna get arrested it's gonna be me i'm the
01:00:18.800 i'm the slowest one everybody run so um but as we walked away literally turned the corner
01:00:27.080 five police cars rolled up the city hall onto the sidewalk and we just cloaked and just kept
01:00:34.140 walking the police kept trying to like cut me off as i was crossing the crosswalk i just put my hand
01:00:39.540 out and i had my cane and i just kept walking i was like you're not gonna what's done is done
01:00:45.720 you know what i mean so um i just wanted to let people know like it's possible to it's possible
01:00:54.040 to take up space in meaningful ways and it's possible to take up space without taking up too
01:01:00.960 much space and that's a negotiation that i think a lot of us are are doing figuring out how to take
01:01:09.980 up space without sucking the air out of the room you know and and not learning anything from the
01:01:16.060 experience it was one thing that i and the witch's temple at the time when i had the witch's temple
01:01:23.280 that was a public witch's space gathering space it's something that i knew that we as a local
01:01:28.260 community could do to take up some space to leverage our privilege, leverage our resources
01:01:35.640 during a time where there was a lot of other really important things happening that needed
01:01:43.340 more, that didn't, would have been compromised had other efforts been reallocated by other
01:01:51.800 communities to this.
01:01:52.880 so it's something that like i talked among collective with a few other local organizers
01:01:58.260 that is this something that would be helpful and the consensus was yes it would be helpful
01:02:04.720 and i said okay i'll do it um but it's something that just felt appropriate and then since then
01:02:14.100 there had been a number of other smaller collectives of witches across the local area
01:02:20.120 who have been stepping up to do those little battles which is amazing and that's what we need
01:02:26.380 yeah do you remember i i'm not sure how old you are and maybe i'm dating myself a movie
01:02:31.720 from the 90s called pump up the volume with christian slater oh my god okay yeah i'm 39
01:02:37.140 okay so yeah yeah christian slater was my adolescent flat bank you know perfect so
01:02:46.040 maybe you know exactly where i'm going and christian slater like many a childhood fantasy
01:02:52.600 so for those of you who maybe are too old or too young or you know or not pop pop culture
01:02:59.920 enthusiasts the the this movie was about a kid who started pirate radio in his basement and of
01:03:06.340 course the whole town was you know looking to destroy this this voice that he had found and
01:03:13.800 spoiler alert at the end of the movie he's caught and it's sort of implied that he's going to be
01:03:19.500 arrested you know he's cornered but the happy ending is all of these other little pirate radio
01:03:26.100 this was before the internet everybody sorry all of the that was a happy ending like all of these
01:03:32.300 other little voices are popping up because he did it first or you know obviously not first but in
01:03:39.380 terms of the little town in the movie and all of that stuff and i think that that's something to
01:03:43.780 remember too that we might not even necessarily see the effect that we can have and that it just
01:03:50.640 because we think we haven't done enough under late stage capitalism and we haven't hustled you know
01:03:56.540 our resistance enough or whatever insane messages we got that we might not even recognize how we've
01:04:03.540 changed the world and it's kind of comforting to me to know that too absolutely we're like not
01:04:09.360 enough people have seen what i've done and it's like it's not about you know i'm we moved when
01:04:15.020 we were at the city hall we moved so fast we were in and out in 15 minutes that was the limit we
01:04:20.280 gave i said i said come if you'd like but this is going to be fast and we were very strategic
01:04:26.240 and i said all right let's keep 12 of you at the very base of the steps on the sidewalk with signs
01:04:32.660 and protesting three of us are going to walk to the very top of the stairs and then well i think
01:04:38.820 six of us walked to the very top of the stairs three stopped at the lower landing and then i
01:04:43.320 just kept going i almost walked right into the city hall and i had i had people with me kiki was
01:04:48.500 with me and they were like okay you cannot go into the building and i said oh yeah you're right
01:04:53.920 thank you for being here because i would have walked right into the mayor's office i would
01:05:00.080 tried you know um but just because the force took me not because i'm like so emboldened like i
01:05:08.140 i seem really bold and crass and blazing but i'm i just get compelled you know we literally become
01:05:16.300 compelled but um it was very strategic and i said you know if you want to participate in this way
01:05:21.840 this is how it's gonna go um we had just a line of people down because i needed to cast i needed
01:05:28.000 to cast the spell i needed we needed to i needed i needed to cast the spell um and i rehearsed it
01:05:34.920 and i wrote it and i said okay this will take five minutes for me to do uh it's going to take
01:05:44.580 me a few minutes up the stairs a few minutes down the stairs and then we got to get gone
01:05:48.380 so everybody knew the parameters going in and um it was like a flash it by the time it was over
01:05:57.140 people like like there was a few people uh like observers in their general community who just like
01:06:04.200 were walking probably on their lunch break and like what's happening and then it was done
01:06:08.280 and um and i think like the ephemeral nature of activism must also be honored
01:06:19.020 yes exactly exactly that you know that we've been trained to be so focused on the material
01:06:26.940 and that's part of our praxis as
01:06:29.420 witches is to
01:06:31.160 get good with the ethereal
01:06:32.520 do you have a prayer that
01:06:35.340 maybe you would like to gift our
01:06:36.920 listeners with as we come
01:06:39.320 to a conclusion of this
01:06:40.880 portal between
01:06:43.240 the two of us
01:06:44.720 I thank you so much for the opportunity
01:06:49.580 to be
01:06:51.260 speaking with you on your podcast
01:06:52.700 I love your podcast I think it's so important
01:06:55.480 um and i just think go ahead oh i was going to thank your listeners for their time and attention
01:07:03.880 and welcome to be in the space and i just wanted to say to you something that you wrote
01:07:09.300 to me i'll say but really to everyone who's going to read your book and who has
01:07:13.180 the world needs you you ilva you you yourself personally everybody yeah yeah no the world
01:07:22.560 needs you and I'm so grateful
01:07:24.820 to inhabit this same
01:07:27.100 universe at this same moment
01:07:28.740 in the cosmos
01:07:31.040 that we get to share it together
01:07:33.200 I get really excited about
01:07:35.120 things like that like meeting people where
01:07:37.040 you're like I get to
01:07:39.080 live in the same time as this person
01:07:40.720 the world needs you
01:07:42.240 so thank you
01:07:44.300 I appreciate that
01:07:49.400 I appreciate that
01:07:50.760 um so the prayer i'd like to share is from my book a practical guide for which is on page 97
01:07:58.460 it's a prayer for blessing it's a blessing for family and friends um so i'll just invite folks
01:08:05.300 to take a few intentional breaths to ground and to center yourself in this conversation
01:08:09.320 allow anything that's kind of been stirred up for you to be held in a good way
01:08:15.420 and
01:08:18.900 i just invite you to allow any kind of shift in your senses to occur
01:08:27.080 that allows you to enter into a deeper connection to yourself at this time
01:08:32.660 i call upon the virtues of air to open the waves before those that i love
01:08:40.020 so they may access with ease that which offers them inspiration
01:08:45.420 I call upon the passion of fire
01:08:49.360 to illuminate the ways before those I love
01:08:52.660 so they may access with ease
01:08:55.420 that which offers them healing.
01:09:00.420 I call upon the wisdom of water
01:09:02.560 to transmute the ways before those that I love
01:09:06.480 so they may access with ease
01:09:09.440 that which offers them comfort.
01:09:11.560 I call upon the boundaries of earth
01:09:16.580 to enrich the ways before those I love
01:09:20.500 so they may access with ease
01:09:23.560 all that offers them kindness
01:09:26.120 may the grace of the ancestors walk with me
01:09:31.860 and walk with those that I love
01:09:33.980 may all my loved ones walk in the grace
01:09:37.660 of this blessing of the ancestors
01:09:39.600 in the blessing of this elemental prayer
01:09:41.980 and may they find themselves remembered well
01:09:45.100 and may we all do well
01:09:47.960 with what we remember
01:09:49.400 thank you so much, Ilva
01:09:58.180 of course, listeners
01:09:59.860 all of Ilva's multiple projects
01:10:03.780 will be listed on our website
01:10:05.600 in the show notes for this episode
01:10:07.180 but Ilva, what's the best way
01:10:09.120 for people who have just discovered you now
01:10:11.240 through this podcast to
01:10:13.040 get what you're about. If they're headed to their
01:10:15.280 computer right now to start typing,
01:10:17.080 what should they type into their URL box?
01:10:20.400 In your URL box,
01:10:21.860 type www.traditionalmagic.com
01:10:27.660 And if you're on the Instagram, 0.98
01:10:32.120 bimbo
01:10:33.120 yaga is my handle.
01:10:35.640 And of course, if you are
01:10:37.180 a colonizer on
01:10:38.260 unseated territories on Turtle Island,
01:10:42.680 you must do your research to find
01:10:45.100 who the indigenous communities are
01:10:47.560 that steward your land
01:10:48.760 and do everything you can to support their work
01:10:51.020 and do so without taking up too much space.
01:10:54.680 Perfect.
01:10:56.240 Perfect.
01:10:57.460 A perfect conclusion.
01:10:59.180 Thank you once again, Ilva,
01:11:00.780 and to our listeners for spending this time with us,
01:11:02.760 but especially to you for sharing this space
01:11:05.420 and time in this moment with me.
01:11:06.980 I really appreciate it
01:11:08.200 I've learned a lot
01:11:09.040 and my mind has been expanded
01:11:10.920 and my portals are opening
01:11:12.240 and I feel full of magic
01:11:15.600 and personal power
01:11:17.300 as a result
01:11:18.360 thank you again so much
01:11:19.800 you're welcome
01:11:20.760 thank you for having me
01:11:21.820 alright take care y'all 1.00
01:11:22.920 you must be a witch
01:11:29.080 season 6 of the Missing Witches podcast
01:11:32.660 is sponsored in part by Foxglove Farm
01:11:35.860 Go to Foxglove Farm, that's farm with a P-H, like Pharmacy, dot com, and use offer code
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