00:00:10.460Oh my gosh, happy fullness and moonness.
00:00:14.480The March full moon is the worm moon, which, I mean, it's maybe not as like razzle-dazzle as a wolf moon or as pretty as a strawberry moon, but I love the idea of the worm moon.
00:00:28.260it's like underground it's like industrious no one can see what it's doing but it's like
00:00:34.160responsible for so much of what's happening yeah i like that i like that making moves in the dark
00:00:41.420i'll take that yeah so happy worm moon everybody yeah i up where i live i don't know if it's like
00:00:49.300this where you are amy um the snow is covered in areas where the sun is hitting it with these
00:00:57.660tiny little bugs like little tiny snow bugs that all flourish as soon as it gets a little bit warm
00:01:03.780like actual insects are you using bug as like a metaphorical no real insects oh wow life yeah
00:01:13.980yeah look closely next time you see when you're walking in the woods and you see it like kind of
00:01:18.400a black patch because we're in the woods there shouldn't be like soot on the snow but it kind
00:01:22.960of looks like it and then you look close and you realize it's all moving and jumping and they're
00:01:27.080just like tiny little snow bugs it's just that time yeah i haven't seen any of those but uh
00:01:33.620for those of you listening who follow us on instagram you saw the insane crystal castle that
00:01:39.840is being built around my house by nature right now it's crazy it's like it's the icicles are
00:01:46.760really beautiful but i also like um my roof is leaking so as as with everything they have their
00:01:53.780pros and cons but it really is like i'm when i look at my kitchen window it's like an ice prison
00:01:59.920because the stalactites i can never remember stalactites and mites which is up and which is
00:02:06.260down but anyway they're like forming these like bars across the wind just spectacularly beautiful
00:02:13.840bars we have ice dams like crazy on our roof too and we have water coming in in one part and it's
00:02:21.140like you know we were freaking out about it and then we were like also like this is the project0.95
00:02:27.060of the life that we have chosen like we we chose to buy a crazy old diy house in the woods you guys
00:02:34.700basically built your your diy house in the woods and like this is the life that we're gonna live
00:02:40.500is constantly fixing and building and being inundated by nature and and when we saw it that
00:02:47.160way we were really happy because it it is still something we we are like thrilled to choose
00:02:52.080and now we just you know it's the constant work and that's what we're doing that's what the project
00:02:56.920is yeah it works out for me because I'm not someone who will go to the gym but I will I
00:03:04.160will shovel snow for two hours a day every day for six months so you know again like with everything
00:03:11.460there are pros and cons pros and cons pros and cons it's a lot of work but at least I get my
00:03:15.640cardio in this subject is and like the lesson that I'm telling myself I'm taking from this
00:03:26.220subject this constant learning is very related to the news that we have for this episode yes and
00:03:34.120that news also has a pro and a con so yeah let's dive in announcements everyone March full moon
00:04:09.120incredible um we basically i uh you know shared our podcast in um a facebook group called binders
00:04:22.260full of women writers you're not supposed to talk about binders full of women writers but
00:04:25.680you look at a secret group it's a secret massive group that's not a secret anymore
00:04:30.800um much like bike club yeah and just said you know what my co-creator and i have an
00:04:39.540interdisciplinary occult witch history podcast and we there's a lot of writing and research
00:04:46.000that's been done for and i think it could make a cool book but we have no idea how to do it
00:04:49.440and a bunch of people replied you know maybe you should self-publish or maybe you should look into
00:04:54.540this and then someone replied um hi i'm an acquisitions editor looking for interdisciplinary
00:05:00.220witch history. Could you please send me a message? And this was, I mean, after literally doing a
00:05:08.560spell, a ritual that I can talk about, where I wrote every day for like a month
00:05:15.080that I wanted to find a soulmate editor and a soulmate publisher. And then I realized in
00:05:24.340talking to Amy one day that she was my soulmate editor, that we had so much fun writing together.
00:05:30.220And then this publisher popped up and we're in love with them. We're super excited. And it's scary because I do feel like a baby witch who's just like sharing their research notes. That's like what our project is. But that seems to be like enough of a reason to make a book, to be a baby witch sharing your research and your love. So that's what we're doing.
00:05:54.120yes especially um with some a topic as vast as magic i mean there are certainly people who
00:06:01.760um know everything about one thing but we're sort of more we know one thing about everything
00:06:08.660and so that can be a little intimidating you know like when you have a book you somehow
00:06:15.680have to take on this like i am an authority on this subject and and reese and i have always
00:06:21.940been very clear that all you listeners are with us on our learning journey. You know, we don't come
00:06:27.260as gurus on the mountaintop. We're soldiers in the trenches next to you just telling you about
00:06:32.520what we've learned. So it's intimidating, but it's also really exciting. Shout out to North Atlantic
00:06:38.320Books. Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to North Atlantic. They're rad. We're super excited about their
00:06:48.560vision for the book and they work as a collaborative consensus-based non-profit indie publisher so
00:06:56.140we truly found like we found our our witchy home with them um yeah so that's kind of the news and
00:07:04.320I guess we'll tell you more about it as we go forward and um if you're listening to this and
00:07:10.440you have advice on on writing a book or things you want to read about let us know I feel like
00:07:15.780I don't want to talk too much about what the subject is.
00:07:18.400Do you feel like we should tell people?
00:07:36.520I think that our goal is to make it something that will offer you a lot of
00:07:40.500windows and doors into your own future.
00:07:45.780research journeys and into your own practice and out into the world of magic and i think it's
00:07:52.100something that if we do our jobs right um will help build community and build you know love and
00:08:00.500and adventure and links in this kind of project and i'm gonna stop talking about it i i have so
00:08:07.540much writing to do so that's nerve-wracking it but it is you know it's like i was saying about
00:08:12.520the house like this is the project like you get to do your dream project you move to the woods and
00:08:17.560now water's coming in the roof and that's what you asked for you you know be careful what you wish
00:08:22.380for that's the project so i'm excited to do the writing and that's the project that i've always
00:08:28.780wanted to do so i remember um amanda yates garcia the oracle of los angeles talking about her her
00:08:35.280process writing her book and saying you know it was like she was coming on her knees every day
00:08:40.700like kind of bloodied the goddess and like asking for help in this work that was so much harder than
00:08:47.080than she thought it was going to be and I really relate to that yeah I mean I find like some some
00:08:54.300days I'll finish my my day job and I'll be like oh I don't want to write it's fine I just won't
00:09:00.500write today it's fine and then I'll you know sort of wake up in front of my computer like a thousand
00:09:05.940words deep into something new and sometimes i'm like yeah i'm ready to roll on this and i sit down
00:09:12.480and it's just flashing cursor um so it is tempting to like um look to some higher power for you know
00:09:23.240the uh the inspiration to make something amazing um and i think probably for all writers i don't
00:09:31.600know i can only speak for myself but from my like semi-traumatic childhood i sort of assumed for a
00:09:38.360very long time that like nobody cared about what i had to say so you know there was really like why
00:09:44.240would i write a book nobody yeah nobody could conceivably care about what i have to say for
00:09:50.420for more than a few minutes but the podcast is really like some of the emails that we get are
00:09:56.560I like, like y'all tell us about what it means to you, what we're doing.
00:10:03.140And then that feeds our desire to do what we're doing.
00:10:07.800And it is like a very much an exchange of energy.
00:10:11.520One of our listeners, one of our listeners wrote us an email that she listens to the podcast with her daughters and her daughters recognize our voices.
00:10:22.360That's that's recent my voices as the ancestors.
00:10:25.320I'm doing everything. And that just really got to me. I mean, a legacy is something that we have to keep in mind at all times, you know, when we're when we're making choices like we don't know.
00:10:39.300We've seen with so many of the witches that we've profiled on the podcast that like, you know, in their lifetime, they were demeaned.
00:10:47.000Only years later have they been, you know, exalted.
00:10:50.940So we can't always be looking for that, like, what's the word I'm looking for?
00:10:59.580We saw this with Maria Gimbutas as well, you know, that she was horse feathers until DNA science came along and that she was younger horse feathers.
00:11:09.100So, again, all this in a roundabout way to say, like, everybody maybe should write their book, whether or not they feel like anybody cares about what they have to say or not.
00:16:56.240So obviously succinct is probably going to be more succinct, but you know how, like we opened, we opened this conversation sort of with me talking about my fear of, of, of being an authority or having to be an authority, but I've always been pretty anti-authority.
00:17:15.180So, like, now I feel like I can burn that with your husks.
00:17:19.860Like, yeah, no, because because there is no one authority on any subject, once again, especially magic.
00:17:28.800I mean, you know, we don't even have the resources to go back 20,000 years to see what kind of magic was being made then.
00:17:36.820Right. And it's part of the project, you know, when we talk, when we write right now, and we talk a lot, and I don't know if we've talked about it on the podcast that much in the past, but like, part of the interest for me and for us is feminist history.
00:17:54.460And that's not just telling the stories of women, but how does the narrative of history change if we try to include ideas that were excluded by patriarchy and colonization?
00:18:12.780Like, so how does that dominant authoritative voice get turned upside down and shook open when we find these ideas that were excluded, not just the people, but their perspectives, their perception, their vision of reality?
00:18:30.040Like, that's part of what is so fascinating to us and what we went looking for, you know.
00:18:35.260So it's okay, I think, and it's part of the methodology and part of the purpose and part of the book and part of the podcast is to not know and not be right and go looking for things that were discarded, disregarded, you know.
00:18:50.720Yeah. And I think part of the push, too, was that the more we looked into these witches, the more that we found that we had heard of the men that they associated with, you know, all the male members of their posses, we had heard of them.
00:19:06.600they were household names. You know, I'm thinking like Crowley and Ram Dass. But the women were
00:19:14.160missing from the story. Long before we started this project, you remember this, Risa. I got this
00:19:18.960book. I won't name it because I can't remember the title. But the book was about how the occult
00:19:24.720had influenced rock and roll music very much up my alley. I was super excited to read the book.
00:19:30.480And I remember, Risa, you were like, oh, you know, I'm next on the list. Definitely give it to me
00:19:35.540when you're done and i never did because i never finished it because there were no women in it yeah0.77
00:19:41.720like it's just this glaring infuriating oversight yeah and it's everywhere especially because when
00:19:51.600you think of a witch immediately you you are going to conjure some kind of female form
00:19:57.660generally speaking i'm not being gender essentialist here i definitely think that
00:20:02.680witch is a gender neutral term. But in your mind, if you think witch, you know, if you think occult,
00:20:10.480and maybe it's just me, but the image that comes to my mind is a femme one. And this was just
00:20:18.660simply missing from the stories until we went digging and digging and digging and digging in
00:20:26.880the snow yeah digging in the snow um yeah so that's the news um so I guess the other piece
00:20:35.840of that news the con to the pro the con to the pro is uh we decided that we we really want to
00:20:46.300do a good job of the book which seems like kind of obvious and fair and that we couldn't really do
00:20:53.060that and do uh new missing witches like history based episodes for this season at the same time
00:21:01.180because basically the book is due to the publishers in june so we were just like it's not possible we
00:21:07.880both work jobs you guys may not know that but we both work like job jobs um so this is our second
00:21:15.460job and we don't get paid for it and we fucking love it and we sit like under mountains of books
00:21:20.880and research and swallowing this stuff0.94
00:22:05.820So we're going to keep doing full moon interviews.
00:22:09.540We're going to keep doing Sabbath specials.
00:22:11.600We're going to keep doing giveaways for our patrons.
00:22:13.940We have another one lined up for Sarah.
00:22:19.400Yeah, we have some interviews we're really excited about. Yeah, so that'll be what we do to stay connected and in each other's ears and hearts just through this season. And then we have like a crazy list of witches that we're really excited to delve into doing the stories for.
00:22:40.720so yeah we're excited for our next season but this one um we'll try to share little sneaks of
00:22:47.240what we're working on and um and yeah and if you are a witch who's listened to this and thought
00:22:53.000that you knew someone we should interview or that you know maybe you weren't totally confident but
00:22:58.160you thought we should probably get to talk to each other and that you have a story or a take
00:23:03.260on these things um yeah stop stop hesitating to write us and just write us we we answer every
00:23:10.720email we love hearing from you so much and yeah let's have more conversations let's let's celebrate
00:23:16.820that this season i also specifically would like to read y'all's witch poetry so email us email us
00:23:25.840at missingwitches at gmail.com or if you post it on instagram or facebook tag us i'm really feeling
00:23:32.160this like need for witch poetry in my life right now more I should actually say more witch poetry
00:23:38.700in my life I think it's stuff starting to melt and I just you know is it contact is it contact
00:23:45.500yeah the Jodie Foster movie where it's a sci-fi movie for those of you who haven't seen it she
00:23:50.340basically like it's impossible to explain but she goes and sees like the furthest reaches of the
00:23:56.400universe and she's staring out into this like gorgeous like purple and white and pink and
00:24:02.600all the color unimaginable colors of this galaxy that she's looking at and she sort of chokes and
00:24:10.100she says they should have sent a poet yeah and so that that's how i that's how i'm feeling looking
00:24:18.180around right now i'm like they should have sent a poet so everybody send me your poet be the poet
00:24:54.100For those of you listening, if you've never heard of Carl Sagan, just Google him. I'm not going to do him any justice here in this moment. But let's recap. It's the full moon. It's the worm moon. We are industriously turning underground, still under the blanket, but turning and turning.
00:25:43.680decisions throughout the how long have we been doing this babe year and a half a year and a half
00:25:49.780it feels so much longer so i was like 10 years six months um was our podcast our rules yeah um so
00:25:58.520we're making up the rules as we go along but it's nice to know that we are beholden only to you our
00:26:06.120listeners and our contract with you is only that we do our best to come with compassion and do
00:26:15.020justice to these stories that we're yeah I think our rallying cry from episode one has been to not
00:26:20.540fuck it up too much not fuck it up too much and you know we're human and again y'all are with us
00:26:26.920on this learning process you know we I'm just going to repeat this but you know we're not0.99
00:26:34.140gurus on the mountaintop we are soldiers in the trenches we're next to you we're trying to figure
00:26:38.840this all out and we're we're going to these real human beings um whose stories resonate more with
00:26:47.520me than stories of deities personally and i know that a lot of modern witches feel the same
00:26:52.180so we're going to these real and actual people to see what they really and actually did and how it
00:26:58.760really and actually change the world yeah and that's what we're going to be working on
00:27:04.880that's what apparently we're always going to be working on because
00:27:08.760every time you find a witch you find six more it definitely is a tree of life with twigs and
00:27:15.120branches and all of you out there who are listening are definitely twigs and branches
00:27:20.000on this tree um like we said sometimes like you think nobody cares about what you have to say
00:27:27.340And then you find out that, like, people's children are referring to you as their ancestor.
00:27:33.400And this disembodied voice from the sky that comes and tells them about these stories of the people that laid a foundation for us and our practice and our notions about compassion and about oneness.
00:27:48.820Yeah, so this full moon episode is sent with love and blessings and hope and hard work and history.
00:28:02.360This whole episode and this moon and the industriousness of the worms under the snow and the little bugs on top and our own strong hearts as we make these chrysalises.
00:28:15.160And then as we figure out how we're going to shed them and fly and be beautiful and share our stories, we send all of that and more to Ruby and her children and all of us baby witches listening, the little babies in our hearts that still need our love and care.
00:28:34.540um yeah we send this beautiful bright moon energy into all of our hearts and all of the children
00:28:43.140that will come after us and all the children that came before yes and definitely you know
00:28:48.960if if you think of yourself as a baby witch um don't don't infantilize yourself you know we we
00:28:56.360are all learning and we are all growing and babies are some of the wisest human beings that i have
00:29:01.860ever met so i don't see baby witch as an infantilizing term i don't think you
00:29:06.960should either we are all just like learning how to become endlessly yes endlessly becoming
00:29:16.460oh my god yes a million percent happy full moon everybody happy full moon we love you we love you0.94