00:02:13.700And, you know, I didn't realize that it was something in my life until after I had begun the research.
00:02:21.320I went to graduate school in the 1980s, and I've always been, the thing that's in my life, I've always been obsessed with religions.
00:02:30.260Now I understand it was comparative religions or comparative spirituality.
00:02:34.340But as a kid, I didn't have a word for that.
00:02:36.340I was one of those kids that, you know, hung out at the occult bookstore and snuck the, you know, the witchcraft recipes home.
00:02:45.420And, you know, and when I wasn't doing that, I was involved in different spiritualism.
00:02:49.620I was involved in mystical Christianity and Pentecostalism and just, you know, just over the years.
00:02:55.540My parents didn't know what to do with me, so it was fine.
00:02:58.540But it was less sort of an academic interest than a curiosity.
00:03:04.420So that's, I guess it was natural that I would end up studying this, although you couldn't tell me that I would have actually gotten a PhD.
00:03:14.800I was actually thinking about this before we came on in the 90s, in the 1980s, actually.
00:03:22.000I was going to, I decided I didn't want to work anymore.
00:03:26.320And so I wanted to apply to graduate school, like a lot of people did back then, and I guess they still do.0.60
00:03:31.560So, and it had to be, it was either going to be history, you know, but it had to have religion in it.
00:03:39.680But I was also interested in women's history.
00:03:42.520And at the time, there was a very famous historian at Wisconsin by the name of Gerda Lerner.
00:03:49.240She was really one of the founders of women's studies in the United States.
00:03:55.420And so I was going to go to Wisconsin.
00:03:58.060I'm actually glad I didn't because my life was very different.
00:04:00.880And I was all ready to go study women's history and, you know, black studies and stuff at Wisconsin was a great place, but they didn't have a religion program.
00:04:09.760So doors closed, doors opened. I ended up at Princeton where they had a flourishing department of religion and more importantly, a cohort of scholars who were interested in the African-American experience.
00:04:25.340So how I ended up writing the book was it started out as a dissertation and no one was writing about magic. A lot of people wrote about African American religions, but no one was writing about magic.
00:04:39.780And as I looked at the history, it was so it was so glaringly obvious that this was a vital part of what black folk did in slavery and even before slavery that I said, OK, this is something that no one has written on.
00:04:54.380And it was actually and that's rare. So that became part of my research.
00:04:58.920I didn't realize then, though, that there was some my childhood interests in all of the weird, the weird spiritual stuff tiding with that.
00:05:08.120so it was an example of the scholar coming together with the person who's really interested
00:05:14.520in religious phenomena and experiences too and somehow bringing them together you don't realize
00:05:19.800that when you're doing it but um it does sort of it it makes a lot of sense so yeah that that's
00:05:25.640that's how i got into it there's a real lacuna in the uh scholarship fast forward now i think that
00:05:32.920book was in the early 2000s, there are many more people writing about this. And I feel gratified
00:05:40.120that, okay, I sort of got there first. But in particular, looking at women, because my book
00:05:46.040didn't really talk that much about women. And for different reasons, I could speak to that later.
00:05:52.920So now, it's certainly much more public. And it's not a problem that it used
00:06:02.680to be for uh for people to write and to devote themselves in terms of study of this material
00:06:11.000yeah i bet uh you raised some eyebrows when you started to write about
00:06:15.800magic and especially black magic yeah i mean you know but but you know what the thing is
00:06:22.680if i had done this in history because you know as you know there's some fantastic i mean my colleagues
00:06:29.000at that time even have written fantastic books about witchcraft and fantastic books about gender
00:06:34.680and witchcraft in history but in religion it was like wow so it i you know and the the field of
00:06:41.960religion yes it's still dominated by a kind of western christian orientation theology that is
00:06:51.240very very rigid and only only in say you know i guess the latter 20th century did scholarship
00:07:00.600begin to say look we need to open this thing up it's not just about christianity is great
00:07:06.360but there are other religions in the world so you have the invention of sort of global religions or
00:07:12.360comparative religion that's really late in the game so the fact that i was writing this book
00:07:17.640in religion of discipline and religion department, I was getting it from all sides. I mean,
00:07:23.080some of my early reviews came from sort of fundamentalists. And that's the other thing,
00:07:28.120but my book really is about the intersection of religion and magic. And I think the conclusion
00:07:33.480that I came to was, you can't separate, you can't say that these are here, they actually are more
00:07:39.240like this. And then they go like this. And that in some ways, you can bring the interpretive
00:07:45.800apparatus of magic to look at religion and that's that's to me that was so i thought that was so
00:07:53.720clever and original and maybe it's not but that's sort of where i am now it's like maybe magic is
00:08:00.220religion and maybe religion is magic but if you say that to some people you're like well it's just
00:08:07.020like you know and i actually kind of enjoy that yeah i mean there's there's amazing stories in
00:08:14.120your book of of people who were you know respected in their church who were also the respected local
00:08:23.620conjurer like the the person who people were turning to for for safety and protection being
00:08:31.760being a respected church member wasn't really at odds with that identity at all yeah and that's
00:08:37.400the thing i get the most comments on from students from people who read it everyone knows someone
00:08:43.940You know, my grandmother did this and she was in the church or, you know, it was almost as if it gave voice to the kind of permission that, yes, I can be a Christian or, you know, a Muslim or whatever and still embrace this world of what I call magic.
00:09:05.880Again, I know that the category, I made it a problem and embrace this too.
00:09:11.860And I don't have to be sort of, it's not secret anymore. And so that really pleases me because I think that's the direction that we're all headed in. There's going to be people who resist this. There's people who resist the integration of science and religion or science and spirituality.
00:09:30.320but I firmly believe you you can't hold this back this is this is integration this is where we're
00:09:37.820headed as uh as the human race I was going to say as a race and I was like okay that doesn't sound
00:09:45.420right but but this is where we're headed this there there's no separations in these categories
00:09:50.160that we've created to try to parse the differences in in some respects I think they're more political
00:09:56.400than analytical um because it's really about power you people you are the ones over there
00:10:03.140that do the magic bad or you're the ones who you know the scientists say to the religion you're
00:10:09.520that you know so it becomes sort of a power thing um yeah can't hold that back so that that's my
00:10:15.720that's my soapbox we're just headed toward the integration of these ideas and how profound will
00:10:22.420that be how profound will that be when we you know say there's magic there's science and religion and
00:10:29.540in some way they're on a spectrum they're they're they're family members instead of enemies you know
00:10:38.040so so I I didn't understand that until I was really finished with that research and by then
00:10:45.100you know i had other things so yeah are there things that you learned when you were doing that
00:10:52.860research that you think you incorporated into how you think or who you are did you do you do you
00:11:01.740practice magic now more more outwardly or does it change how you think about your own academic work
00:11:08.940or in terms of my personal practice no um in other words that's a good question though
00:11:18.860i did not scour the archives looking for material that would supplement my way of thinking or my way
00:11:28.060of doing my own magic but what i did find were sort of breadcrumbs as to how one might chart
00:11:36.860a map or their own trajectory but um no the stories that i read and this is one of the things
00:11:44.320that i it's really hard to convey to today's young people because i'm not as young as i used to be
00:11:52.120it's funny hearing myself say that but the young people that the stories of these brave extraordinary
00:11:59.200people our ancestors right in particular these enslaved people their lives were so different
00:12:07.320from ours so even when we try to say oh I want to be like them it's something the way of thinking
00:12:15.880the way of being what they went through in the world all it can be for us is an inspiration
00:12:21.940I mean of course we will never go back to those days although some people think
00:12:27.560some people think we're going back to the dark days you know and that I don't believe but so
00:12:33.920so the stories were inspirational but they were also tremendously difficult to read some of them
00:12:40.740and this is true of the history of women and witchcraft you know the burnings the torture the
00:12:46.740the physical desecration of the female body the suppression of the divine feminine all these
00:12:53.280things that we talk about but to actually see it described by someone who's there it does something
00:13:00.300to you and then it's not purely academic it's like wow this really happened and what do i think
00:13:06.420about that so um i forgot your question but i i think you know it's about what is our relationship
00:13:13.480yeah i'm sorry i said you answered it you answered okay yes this is right this is where i get on
00:13:20.740beautifully you entered it beautifully i feel emotional because i i agree with you i'm i'm
00:13:26.940reading some transcripts from from you know uh the inquisition in cartagena or you know from
00:13:36.740from witch trials in in europe and you know i do i find it so kind of gut gut twisting and and
00:13:45.760painful but also like painful in this way that I experience a loss because I feel like I can't find
00:13:54.620the the layer of interpretation on behalf of the people who are writing the stories who are so
00:14:00.120much of what I've been able to read are the torturers you know it's really hard to feel
00:14:05.880like I'm getting anywhere near the the woman's worldview the woman's life so yeah that that is
00:14:12.820the most difficult thing and so what we have today are people who want to hear that voice
00:14:21.140and and take that voice and that becomes the source of their inspiration in literature and
00:14:26.900their inspiration in you know art so they'll they'll they'll tell the story on behalf and that
00:14:32.660that was a problem for me as a historian and that's i kept coming up against that again and0.65
00:14:39.420not against it because i would never say you're wrong and be like a jerk you're wrong but a lot
00:14:44.780of the people who began to write about black women for example so black women's history came0.87
00:14:50.220after women's history white women's history i'll just say white women's history uh really in at0.91
00:14:56.460the turn of the century right when 2000s um late late 90s or so where black women are like hey you0.95
00:15:03.260know we need to write our history and look at things like religion and spirituality seriously
00:15:08.300which was a lot of historians and this is this is another reason why i'm kind of happy i became
00:15:14.620a religionist historians you know they're trained in a certain type of thinking about religion um
00:15:21.180you know coming out of sort of these marxist specialties and so forth um they don't have any
00:15:27.180you know religion that's something that keeps so they don't take it seriously so a lot of the early
00:15:32.140black women histories it's like i'm looking through them and i'm like come on where's the
00:15:36.460religion it's like when you get it it's like you know these women in churches which is fine too
00:15:41.820so um you don't really get uh black women's history in talking about religion spirituality
00:15:50.220until i would say after 2000 because the people who were looking at it a the religionists are
00:15:57.900coming from the christian seminaries and so forth and they're doing great work the black feminists
00:16:02.940the Black womanist man, but they're looking at it like this. And so about that time, turn of the
00:16:10.700century, and I sort of alluded to this at the very end of my book, I was like, well, look, we have
00:16:16.620women in Afro-diasporic religions, right, like Santeria, that are very magical, right, you know,
00:16:27.020can we say something about them? And people would just sort of look at me and then move on.
00:16:32.620and so it's really it's only been within the past 25 years maybe 20 maybe 20 years or so
00:16:39.660where you know the the scholars are turning to look at this and say hey and now it's just like
00:16:45.500boom black women black women's history and religion has become a thing i'm afraid i did
00:16:52.140the same thing and i lost track of the question but i think i was trying to
00:16:55.900I was trying to put this on some sort of, oh yeah, we were talking about our relation
00:17:02.900to sources. I think that's one of, that's been one of the hardest things at all, because
00:17:08.220as we recover Black women's history and the narratives, now, oh, that was my point. A
00:17:14.340lot of the early, you know, the places where writers would talk about Black women's experiences,
00:17:22.960was in the realm of fiction. It was the most creative, vibrant, you know, and I'm talking
00:17:28.720about the giants in the field. That was the breakthrough, you know, Toni Morrison and
00:17:33.420Alice Walker. All right. But it wasn't history. And so I would be making this argument. I
00:17:38.460was like, yeah, you guys are great, man. Your metaphors. But what, where's the history?
00:17:43.780Who's looking at these sources? How can we get as close as possible to what that woman0.54
00:17:48.980was seeing, feeling, experiencing. And it just hadn't happened until, I would say,
00:17:57.420relatively recent. But again, I'm getting older. And so I've wondered why that is. And
00:18:03.540whether it's because people weren't doing the work, or they weren't interested in the work,
00:18:10.500or it was really painful and difficult to do this kind of work, given what we know about
00:18:17.460black women's experiences now so so i'm really happy that um even our conversation that it's
00:18:24.900there and young people are even kind of turning to look at this uh to be inspired uh yeah so for
00:18:34.820for for for black witches especially or or women or or people of marginalized genders who are seeing
00:18:44.380these holes in history who want to like and they're listening to you and they want to go
00:18:50.620do the work and and follow your lead and and find the primary sources what are you what's
00:18:57.760what would be your advice for someone who's looking for those ancestors looking for those
00:19:01.780primary sources oh boy that is that is a great question well a lot of the sources in the united
00:19:09.400States. And I would say now we have to look beyond this sort of U.S. American-centric
00:19:17.580history of spirituality. We just have to. And I know there's like a political movement in this
00:19:25.700country that is focused strictly on American descendants of slavery. I actually think that's
00:19:31.940the wrong way to go, but I understand why. Just focus on Black Americans. But there's too much1.00
00:19:38.700going on in those in uh the the black in the atlantic uh there's too much going on in in haiti
00:19:46.540there's too much going on in uh in mexico there's too much going on in brazil these places where
00:19:53.180africans ended up and where african women black women were predominant uh so so sure if you just0.99
00:20:02.340want a starting point here in the United States. I say you always go back to early slavery,1.00
00:20:09.120early slavery, dig through those sources. But you're actually talking about a kind of primary
00:20:15.480archival work. One thing that I like to tell people who are not just doing it for the academic
00:20:22.520side, but who might be, you know, doing what you might call a spiritual quest or spiritual journey,
00:20:28.960maybe even genealogies is to take ancestral reverence seriously i'm not going to say
00:20:37.420worship because that's kind of loaded but um this is something that the importance of which
00:20:44.620i cannot understate and you know when i when i raised this with students they they get that
00:20:51.620sort of nervous shiver that people used to get back when i was talking about magic black magic
00:20:57.180That the ancestors are alive and they are a powerful force in one's life today, as they were for people of African descent, like myself and many others, as they were for your own ancestors.
00:21:15.400In other words, if you have African ancestors, there is no doubt that they were part of a system that revered and elevated the dead, the ancestral dead.
00:21:30.620It's not unique, of course, you know, all cultures have ancestors and all cultures have a form of ancestral reference. But for black Americans, I would say that that is the number one starting point. If you want to, A, actively engage this history as a kind of spiritual reclamation, or B, if you want to do some sort of scholarship.
00:21:55.460So even if you like, I don't believe in that ancestor stuff, to look at, to try to capture this history as part of your own personal lineage is a really helpful way to do it because you have access to that.0.99
00:22:08.160And that's where, you know, Risa, that's where it gets really hard because most Black Americans, you know, the trail stops.
00:22:17.200And so you have to come to terms with the implications of that Middle Passage that caused a separation and a rupture between, you know, the African ancestors and this new world that these Black people came into that for many it's seen as unbridgeable.
00:22:37.520that's my point it is not unbridgeable especially if you if you go down the spiritual route right
00:22:44.680right i mean look i tell people this because it makes sense to them if you read the bible i tell
00:22:50.300the christians so you know those parts of the bible that no one ever reads that say yeah he
00:22:55.180begat so and so begat someone and the begats go on for pages and pages yeah i never read that
00:23:01.760They are creating a chain. They are creating a narrative chain. And I'm using chain in the way, you know, very consciously between themselves and their lineage and their ancestral lineage.
00:23:16.200and that chain which bound black people to slavery we believe that it was broken we believe0.57
00:23:23.860that the middle passage no one can trace their origins but but recreating that chain by spiritual
00:23:30.800means by supernatural means by prayerful means however however you want to say it is absolutely
00:23:36.800essential uh so it's to get back to the witches um and i mean i will just say that uh most of the
00:23:45.020African-based religions, they know this and they understand that. That's why, you know, you have an
00:23:49.400altar for your ancestors. It's like, well, duh, you know. So as far as the witches, so when you
00:23:56.260first emailed me, I was like, oh, what kind of witches is she talking about? Is she talking
00:24:01.840about witches? Is she talking about the Black women who are part of, you know, traditional
00:24:07.280witchcraft? Is she just talking about all of them because everybody's a witch now? So I wasn't0.99
00:24:13.120clear so i said well there are some things i don't know that much about and i admit there are some
00:24:18.080things i'm still learning about but um i think black witches is in the idea of a black witch
00:24:25.280is inclusive because people are sort of re what is it when you take the word and you sort of re
00:24:30.480you turn it around it's just it used to be a slur and then you sort of turn it was i don't
00:24:34.400i don't have the word for that they turn the word which is around and it's a thing of pride
00:24:42.560I think that this idea of the witch can include people who are not even part of the traditional witchcraft or Wicca or any of those, but it can include the conjure woman.0.54
00:24:56.980It could include these, I have these women, these femmes, and they do, they call themselves blitches.1.00
00:25:05.460So there's all these new kinds of things.0.97
00:25:07.440it's really this sort of idea of the the black sacred feminine and the different forms it could
00:25:12.920take so i wasn't sure which which of those but i think the term is just really inclusive now
00:25:18.560of all of those and it's yeah so it's fascinating because there's different forms of this um i'm
00:25:25.280more interested i lean toward the more formal and organized traditions because at least i can say
00:25:33.160okay what are the rules but what i'm finding and this was this was like a revelation to me
00:25:39.520this will show you how old i am um i just went to a ceremony uh on saturday i was called the
00:25:46.800goddess ceremony and it was uh in one of these art centers in in north philadelphia and it was
00:25:53.000for women only and they said dress as your favorite orisha you know the the deities of
00:25:59.460the Yoruba tradition and I said wow it's like cosplay because every practitioner at some point
00:26:11.500if their head is made they dress as their Orisha and they become the Orisha but these were women
00:26:16.960with love and I don't think anyone who was there was actually initiated in a tradition or if they
00:26:22.440were it was not it was low key so what young women are doing now to show their love and
00:26:28.560appreciation of these traditions is it's like a cosplay or it's like a performance and i didn't
00:26:36.380know what to think about that because for a practitioner a serious practitioner particularly
00:26:42.500back in the day that could be kind of offensive right but now it's like no i'm going to dress as
00:26:49.360you know uh the as marie level you know i'm gonna yeah so i just thought that was so and i thought
00:26:57.700Maybe this has been going on. I've never seen it. My other gig, as you might have seen from my blog, is I'm really into comics. I'm into black religion and comics.
00:27:12.240And so I've gone to cosplays. I do all kinds of things. But I never thought that I would see something like that in religious. And maybe that's that's the wrong way of putting it. But it just struck me like that to show your love and appreciation and a kind of veneration.
00:27:30.540It's not the kind of veneration, but to show your veneration for Yamaja or Oshun, you know, remember Beyonce last year was, you know, dressed as for two years ago.
00:27:44.840To show your veneration in love, you don't become an initiate so that you can become that deity.
00:30:45.620I have become very eclectic as I get older.
00:30:49.300I mean, I've always been eclectic, of course, right?
00:30:51.180As a kid, I'm like, oh, this, let me study this.
00:30:53.800There's a point where you only answer to the soul.
00:30:58.320And I think it will happen to everyone, but maybe not this lifetime.
00:31:02.920So where I am is a very different place from where I used to be.
00:31:06.760it's not better it's just the culmination of everything that i've done so lately i've been
00:31:12.960lately um so last year for the first time i taught a course on magic it's like imagine that i've been
00:31:20.860doing this and it was great because i i got all my friends who were magicians to show up and do
00:31:25.880do little things and some one of them did a couple of them did some ritual um and as i was sitting
00:31:31.780watching it and I was so happy because everyone was pleased, I realized how distant I was from
00:31:37.340that. And it was, it struck me, not that I was distant in like, oh, like looking down at them,
00:31:44.100but how, it's so hard to put this, that it's all good. It's all good, but that's not where I am
00:31:55.280now i prefer to to show to point to point oh look at this wow you know have you ever met someone who
00:32:04.160does cast magic check it out and and then that person suggests the ritual and so forth so when
00:32:09.920you asked me that i was like oh okay that that could i could answer that in a personal way or
00:32:14.280i could answer that in sort of the broad professor shiro way which is what i think i'll choose um
00:32:20.300so for the black witches i i'm going to reiterate what i said or for black people in general and
00:32:29.020and i am very clear on this i think it's true for everybody like i said so a white person could
00:32:34.300certainly do this but i think that we cannot be whole until we uh connect with the ancestors
00:32:42.920and the ancestors you know if it's good enough for the for the hebrews it's good enough for us so
00:32:49.380So I would recommend, and I'm not saying just for black folk, I'm just saying, I would recommend that if you're serious about this, and if you're a person of African descent, if you're serious about magical spirituality, if you're serious about witchcraft, that you have some sort of formal, and it could be very simple practice of ancestral reference and elevation.
00:33:13.320And the reason I say that is not only because every single teacher that I've had suggests this, you know, and again, it can be very formal.
00:33:24.120And I know people have altars that go up to the ceiling.
00:33:27.600And then there are people who have a picture of their first two, their grandparents, or whoever is the most immediate who passed.
00:33:37.700I recommend it for everyone, but because people's cultural traditions.
00:33:42.580So, you know, one of the things I love to teach is American religion. And where's the ancestor reference in American religion? Well, I would say in American culture, these days, our founding fathers act as a kind of civil religion, the ancestors that are watching over the nation.
00:34:03.820but you can go to any italian person and they'll you know once you ask the right questions they'll
00:34:09.580say oh yeah we have an ancestral tradition and so and so so it can be part of a religion it
00:34:15.820could be part of a magical spirituality that that's what i would recommend and i think in
00:34:21.100these times of chaos you know there's lots of people out there doing different things to try
00:34:27.000to address you know what's going on in the world but you know we're really at this place where
00:34:32.400particularly with you know what's going on here in the united states with the covid virus and
00:34:37.180the shutdowns and everything it's providing us with a chance to really be present in what we're
00:34:43.020doing so like right yeah there's nothing like a tv screen to make your present like oh i'm right
00:34:49.480here right now i'm not worried about the future and i'm not like you know miserable about the
00:34:55.100past and it's right here so i i see you know some people have said well this is a reset time
00:35:00.960for us you know um you don't have to fall into the chaos you don't have to do anything
00:35:08.040you really you don't even have to leave the house but being present and being being aware
00:35:14.120and you know most simply and i don't need to tell this to your listeners because they wouldn't
00:35:19.260listen if they didn't care about spirituality but to have that vital connection just that vital
00:35:26.680connection with oneself and one's divine self it could be god it could be goddess it could be orisha
00:35:33.420it could be you know nature which is really astonishingly powerful um but having a real
00:35:40.720vital connection not not you know something you did but just a real awareness in present time
00:35:47.940and there's a little bit of a secret there's a little bit of a an esotericness there because
00:35:53.480the truth is the present is it's an infinite time you know how they talk about different kinds of
00:36:01.560times linear simultaneous you know all these times but the present is it just extends forever
00:36:08.440so and i know that's that's my profound statement but some people will get it so that's those two
00:36:13.880things you know just being really present in this extraordinary moment and for those of you who want
00:36:22.620to do a little bit more connecting with the ancestors
00:36:50.540don't like to make suggestions like you know oh you should light a candle or something but but in
00:36:56.220in in that case as far as the ancestral practice i just think it's important in any tradition it
00:37:02.060could be any any tradition um it gives kind of a hope to the humanity right because all all humans
00:37:09.180have ancestors right and even even my palladian friends have have you seen this this is like the
00:37:18.940thing yeah i'm laughing but but it's absolutely true that they're the palladians are among us
00:37:26.860i don't know what that is oh really oh that's a they are from another system um there's you know
00:37:33.980there's a a counter discourse about disclosure and aliens and you know this every every year
00:37:39.980it's like this is the year that the aliens are going to make contact so the presumption is that
00:37:45.580It's already occurred, and this particular alien race is with us or has been with us.
00:37:54.440But the reason I mentioned it, because the question is going to come up inevitably, well, if we have human ancestors, do aliens also have ancestors?