The Witch Next Door: A Thoroughly Modern Sorceress revisit

Hey, one more thing before you go.

Do you believe in witches?

Do you think that they only come out at Halloween?

Is magic real?

I believe it is.

What does it mean to call yourself a witch?

We're going to answer these questions and more when we have a conversation with a witch.

I'm your host, Michael Hearst.

Welcome to one more thing before you go.

My guest in this episode is Amy Torque.

She, along with her partner Risa Dickens, are the co authors of a new moon magic 13 anti capitalistic tools for resistance and re enchantment, and missing witches.

Reclaiming true histories of feminist magic.

Bust magazine wrote, dickens and Torre, teach us what it means to create art, engage in activism, and exist in the intersection of witchcraft and feminism.

Risa and Amy are also the co creators of the missing Witches podcast.

It's really, really good.

You gotta listen to it.

Where episodes vary from storytelling about historic magical women and queer practitioners, to conversationalists about re enchanting the world.

Death, animal kinship, which I wholeheartedly believe in, neurodiversity, and beyond.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Michael.

It's great to be here, and I really love being introduced as a witch.

It's one of the few labels that I accept and embrace wholeheartedly.

That's fantastic, because I love the fact that I get to introduce a witchen.

So it's gonna be great conversation today.

Where'd you grow up?

I am from a General Motors factory town called Oshawa, Ontario in Canada.

And I actually kind of love talking about Oshawa because it, again, is from a different time.

So the whole town was kind of created and facilitated by the General Motors factory that had been built there.

But the McLaughlin family that owned and ran the factories, who, you know, the capitalists who made the money, they actually invested a ton of their wealth back into the city of Oshawa.

So there's a beautiful lakefront.

There are several schools in Oshawa that are named for the McLaughlin family Art Gallery, a huge library.

So again, I love talking about my hometown because it's this exemplar of this sort of anti capitalist strategy where they had a mansion, but they also were providing for the town and providing for the workers that were funding their wealth.

I think that's the way it should be.

That's a brilliant way to kind of integrate that within system.

I mean, we all live in this world together, and what a better way to integrate all of that than to take care of.

They take care of you, you take care of them.

Exactly.

Exactly.

That really works.

I like that.

What was your family like?

You know, probably normal by eighties standards, you know, again, you know, there was, like a big boom of divorce as women found autonomy in the workplace and so on.

I think that happened a lot in the seventies and eighties where women didn't have to be married anymore in order to survive.

And so they were getting divorced kind of on mass.

When I was growing up, you know, most of my friends parents were divorced, so I was that sort of typical eighties latch key kid.

And I always say that, like, raising yourself has its pros and cons.

I probably could have used some extra guidance, but at the same time, I was.

I was allowed to figure out what I thought in my own space, in my own time, without the benefit of guidance, but without also, you know, whatever prejudices that my parents were bringing from the past into their own lives.

So, yeah, I was pretty feral as a kid, I would say.

I have an older sister who gave me my first copy of the spiral dance by Starhawk, who's kind of like a famous witch, like contemporary witch and feminist and that sort of women's spirituality movement.

Yes.

So my mother was a feminist, but she was christian, and I think she was christian first and feminist second, where I sort of was feminist first and christian second.

And while I still am very down with Jesus, Jesus and I are still very good friends.

I don't consider myself a christian anymore.

And part of that is because the feminism was like, wait a minute, where is the female clergy?

Where are the female stories?

Yeah, I kind of agree with that.

I think that, you know, it's not an all boys club or shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be.

Yeah.

Kind of thing.

And you can't put a thing on there.

Well, yes, you can.

I said this is a whole other discussion.

You know, you can't put restrictions on who can lead a congregation.

You cannot put restrictions on whether or not somebody is more closer to God or closer to Jesus because of their gender in that respect.

So, you know, you either believe and you have a God and you believe, you believe in that, or.

Or you don't.

Because if you believe in it, then we're all equal.

Right?

There should not be that fine line there.

It's certainly a very, very good way to control people, though, to tell them that you need them to access God, that they are the one that you talk to me and I'll talk to God.

And severing people from that relationship with whatever they think about the divine.

Well, and that's.

I mean, again, it's a whole different conversation.

We could go on this for an hour.

But, you know, it's interesting because I grew up in a very dysfunctional family, and I grew up in the seventies, but I was like, way teenager in the seventies.

We won't say exactly how old, but I do have my hair, so I'm still good.

But yeah, it's.

I grew up in an environment where my parents got divorced, and at that time, my mother was excommunicated from the church, basically, for getting a divorce.

And then we couldn't go to church with my mother because she was excommunicated kind of a thing.

I thought, you know, aren't you supposed to be there for people in their time of time?

Aren't you supposed to say, oh, yeah, it's okay, you still can come here.

We still can, you know, do this?

So I am a very spiritual individual.

That's why I appreciate a lot of what you guys do.

I believe in the universe.

I believe there's a higher power.

I believe in the fact that we are all connected and that we all are interlaced within each other at some point, and that mother Nature and us are also interconnected.

I don't believe in organized religion, and that's just my opinion.

I think that what you had said earlier is a very right on point.

I think that they use that to control you.

They used that to, you know, my mother went to.

I can't tell you how many different churches trying to be part of that community, and each one of them have a different version of the Bible.

Right.

Which automatically kind of says, well, what's up with that?

Yeah, I come to that all the time.

Like, what's up with that?

I'm pretty sure that, like, jesus never said that you should kick a divorced woman out of the church instead of seeing if she needs help with that.

Yeah.

Seeing if she needs help with the extra responsibilities of being a single parent.

And, you know, my father was refugee.

He came to Canada during, after the hungarian revolution in 1956.

And he told me that, you know, he was raised Catholic and that the.

The collection plate was different where he came from, that it was sort of this bag so you could, like, stick your hand in and no one would really know if you were giving, how much you were giving.

And then he came to Canada, and he went to a church kind of looking for help, looking for community, looking for anything, really.

And the way he tells it, they kind of shoved the collection plate in his face, and it was this very wide, very visible basket tray.

Yeah.

And he was a refugee.

He had nothing, but he was made to feel ashamed about that.

Yeah.

And so he never.

He never came to church with us.

Like, church was like mother and daughters only.

I remember those days.

I mean, not the mother daughter portion of it, but I do remember those days because my family did.

You know, my mother was a struggling single parent for the longest time.

My father was an alcoholic and didn't have much money.

So when we did find a church that she could go to, same thing, big basket, whatever.

Somebody next to you put dollar 20 in, and my mother could put dollar two in, then she felt guilty about that, because that person put dollar 20 in.

I can't.

That's a whole boy.

We could talk down the road.

We're just back to what's up with that?

We understand this, like, capitalist, hegemonic need to control and shame people.

Like, on an intellectual level, we get that, but, like, on a human level, we're just like, what's up with that?

Exactly 100%.

I think you kind of touched on a little bit ago, I think you said your sister gave you a book what got you interested in witches, in witchcraft, and we'll learn a little bit about witchcraft, if you don't mind, in regard to this.

But is that what launched you into this arena?

No, no.

I think it's sort of like, you know, giving a painter a really nice set of brushes.

You know, it was more along that she was trying to encourage something that she saw in me rather than, like, introduce me to something brand new.

But for me, I mean, the way I think of it is this way that we.

When I say we, I mean little girls, and specifically, I guess, little girls in the past, because I think things are changing now.

But when I was being raised as a little girl, it seemed to me that there were two options of female archetype.

There was the princess and the witch.

And I certainly didn't consciously think of this.

It's only, you know, more recently that I've even pondered the question.

But you could be a princess or a witch.

In the stories that I was reading, those were the options.

And I certainly didn't relate to the princess in any way, but I really related to the witch.

I really related to this outsider, this outcast, this unknown person who was outside of the realm of human understanding.

I related to her.

And so when I got a little older and I was able to visit that.

That big library, one of the big libraries in Oshawa that's named after the McLaughlin family, and I looked in the card catalog again, I'm aging myself again.

I looked in the card catalog under witches, and, you know, I went to the section, and all I found were these histories of witchcraft, but from the perspective of the witch hunter.

So, you know, like the Salem witch trials, the Malefice, maleficarum, all of these things.

Everything that I was reading about witches when I was growing up was from that perspective of the oppressor, from that perspective of the witch hunter.

And so I think children, by and large, do this and definitely don't conceive of it as witchcraft.

But when you can't find the information that you're looking for, you just kind of start making things.

Start making things up.

You use your imagination.

And something that Risa and I talk about all the time is this.

This valuing of imagination that we kind of feel is missing.

That's part of the missing witches project, is that we felt that we were missing witches, that witches were something that was missing from our lives.

And so I think, you know, that manifests itself in a lot of different ways.

I was a teenage punk, and I had variously colored hair and, you know, basically would wear a.

A clown costume to school and, you know, just being weird.

Just being weird and being okay with being weird.

Recognizing that I was going to have to take heat for being weird, but also sort of recognizing that the other option for me was.

Was not an option.

The other option is to fade away.

You can stand out or you can fade into the background.

And that, I mean, my authenticity wasn't something I was willing to sacrifice for my comfort, for the comfort of the status quo.

So I think that all of that has led me to this label of witch because it is so inclusive.

You don't have to be an occultist, but you can.

You don't have to have a garden, but you can.

You don't have to have.

Be an herbalist, but you can.

So it's just this.

This moniker that.

That sort of means all the things that I.

That I need it to be.

Risa and I talk about.

We place the witch at the intersection of the political and the spiritual.

We place the witch at the intersection of imagination and knowledge.

We place the witch at the intersection of, you know, science and imagination and crossroads are a very witchy thing.

So I guess.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I mean, I think that.

Not to interrupt you.

I'm sorry, the Persona that most people think of as a witch, and as you grow up with that, what you see is, like, wicked.

I, you know, you see wizard of Oz, you see the green faced you know, weird nosed warts, you know, this kind of a thing, you.

I mean, that's what you grew up with.

My kids grew up with.

I have two daughters, but I think that has evolved to such a point that now some witches are.

My daughter is an actor, and she worked for Disneyland.

She.

That does scarlet witch, and she plays that and she loves it.

I mean, she does it.

She's also.

She's on Twitch, and she's just a whole bunch of creative opportunities that she's within.

You can't see my hands going, but they're going everywhere.

She's involved in it, and her hero is the scarlet witch.

And when you stop and think about where it has come from, where was back in the Salem trials to where it is now.

I mean, one of my favorite here I go.

Age of myself.

I don't care.

I'll tell everybody how old I am.

Yeah, I'm 63 years old.

So I grew up with bewitched.

I grew up with.

I dream of Jeannie.

You know, those are.

Those are staples of every day when I want to watch on tv, when we only had three channels, bewitched and I dream of Jeannie.

And in those contexts, society started accepting magic, accepting witches.

Now, obviously, Jeannie was not a witch, but they accepted magic, accepted the concept of all of this.

Personally, I think the husbands were kind of like, what is wrong with you?

You kind of.

You got.

You got this and here you try to.

No, don't do that.

Don't do that.

And that might be society saying what we were talking about with controlling.

Yeah, you may be.

You may.

Samantha, you may have these powers.

You may be able to do this, but I don't want you to use them.

You know, Jeannie, you have these powers.

You can do this and this, but I don't want you to use them.

Yes.

Kind of thing.

I love bewitched for both of these sides of the coin because the witch is presented as, you know, a benevolent figure.

And she's pretty and she's lovely and she's kind and she's smart and she's a mother.

Witty, she's a mother.

But at the same time, we have this allegory for feminism where what if all female bodies had these powers, but the patriarchy is telling us that we can't use them?

What will people think?

Because that was.

That was Darren.

Darren, yeah.

That was Darren's whole thing.

He was.

He wasn't worried about her, like, shaking up the space time continuum.

He was worried that people were going to find out she was a witch.

Yeah.

That society would scorn and burn her.

So to.

I love bewitched for all of those reasons.

And not only that, but they also.

There was a lot of queer coding and bewitched.

So I love revisiting older pieces like that with this sort of modernist approach.

I can look at this viewpoint.

Yeah, I know.

I think that looking through a different lens and, you know, it's.

I obviously, growing up with that, didn't think anything was wrong with it.

I love the show, of course, the integration of it all.

In fact, after Bewitcher was Tabitha, you know, they did that little offshoot with the daughter, Lisa Hartman.

Think about that for a second.

Lisa Hartman was the grown up version, and they tried that for a little bit.

I don't think it did.

Not sure if it did any well.

But either way, it was awesome.

And to me, we've always grown to put that in, I think.

I mean, what is it?

You've mentioned several different things about how these intersections go into place, the way that maybe we'll go into detail here in a minute, if you don't mind with it.

But what does it mean to be in today's society?

What does it mean to be a witch?

Because you're nothing.

Something with that big pointy hat and, you know, although you could be.

Although you could be.

Exactly.

If you so choose.

Yeah, but you know what I mean?

You're not.

You don't have a big green face.

And although I love wicked, don't get me wrong, I love wicked.

I love wizard of Oz.

But what does it mean to be a witch today?

Yeah, I mean, obviously, I can only speak for myself because, like I say, you know, the word witch, it really means something different to everyone who takes it on.

You know, some people are goth witches, and so, you know, black hair and black lipstick, and some people are, you know, more like a hippie witch.

And so they're, like, barefoot in the sunflower fields.

And both of those are totally valid definitions of witch.

You know, someone.

Someone who loves the dark or someone who loves plants.

Again, these are like, these feel completely.

But when you use the word witch, you can put them together.

So for me, again, being a witch, it amounts to being comfortable with the unknown, being willing to transgress, to be transgressive, to act against the status quo.

For me, being a witch, like we talked about before, is this massive awareness of interconnection.

Therefore, witchcraft is anti racist.

It's anti sexist, it's anti capitalist.

Again, there are.

I saw something on Instagram about witches for Trump.

And I'm not even gonna sit here and say that those people can't take on this label again, like, the word is not mine.

Right?

I just.

I'm just borrowing it.

So, for me, again, being a witch is.

Is scientific, because so many of the people that we talk to, especially on the podcast, their witchcraft.

I'm using scare quotes here.

Their witchcraft is evidence based.

We have spoken to scientists and, you know, PhDs.

These aren't people who are just like, whatever, you know?

And I think that the witch is demeaned in this way intentionally because powerful, anti capitalist, politically conscious women, queer people, marginalized people of all kinds.

Having that awareness is very fucking dangerous.

So we need to demean the word witch as much as we can.

We need to say that witches are not smart or that witches are ugly.

And some of those things come from reality.

You know, this story of the witch who will steal your baby.

Maybe that's true because maybe the old woman in the woods was the only person that you could go to if you had an unwanted pregnancy.

And maybe when you returned from this witch's cabin in the woods, you were no longer pregnant.

And maybe witches houses are covered in spider webs like mine is.

Literally, because spiders are great.

Spiders are non harmful insects that, you know, eat and trap and.

And make use of harmful insects.

Keep them out of my home.

So, again, this.

The witch is presented as this fantastical figure, this supernatural creature.

But for me, the witch is very, very, very human.

And, in fact, if you don't mind, I would love to read a paragraph from a book that I did not write.

Absolutely.

This is Majine Gonzalez Whippler.

And again, she's an incredible academic.

She has more degrees than I have pairs of socks, but she's also a witch, and she's also a practitioner of Santeria.

But when I first read this from the complete book of spells, ceremonies, and magic, first of all, I fell in love with this book because it was the first book that I found that had a global perspective on witchcraft that wasn't just focused on the americas and wasn't just focused on european witchcraft, as I had already learned of it, but also because in her introduction, she says this.

I don't believe in the supernatural.

I believe in nature and all things natural.

Everything that happens in this world always happens through natural channels and in accordance with the immutable cosmic laws.

All things both real and surreal, are part of the cosmos where everything has a place and a reason for being.

Maijin is this science minded person.

But to me, if you want to be science minded, then you also have to accept that there are some things that we don't understand yet, and that is indistinguishable from magic, as the quote goes.

That's a brilliant.

That's perfectly profound, actually, what you just readdez to me, I think that it kind of encapsulates all of this into one little.

I'm assuming a paragraph that was.

Yes.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Yeah.

I mean, my father in law, you know, he likes to joke around, and he said to me once, I don't believe in witches.

And I said, that's okay.

We exist, whether you believe in us or not.

And that's sort of my approach.

The cosmos.

I have no.

Can I swear on this podcast?

Yes.

I won't.

I won't.

I won't.

You can.

I have.

I have no clue what is going on in the cosmos, and I freely admit that because I am an academic, because I am science minded, I have to understand that.

I don't know.

And this is.

This is how we experiment.

This is how we invent.

This is how we learn things, by saying, hmm, I don't know.

Oh, exactly.

I'm going to look into this.

We wouldn't have what we have today if the people did not say, what if and why.

Why does this work?

Why would this work?

We would not have what we have today.

We wouldn't be able to do what we're doing right now, where you're in Canada and I'm in Arizona.

We're having a conversation like we're sitting across the table from each other.

Yes.

And this is something that I think we've.

We've lost in our society is this notion that imagination precedes invention.

We've dismissed the imagination as this.

You know, it's for children, and that's preposterous.

We have to imagine before we can invent.

We have to imagine before we can do social justice work.

If we're going to do social justice work, we have to be imagining a better world.

World.

I agree with that.

My background, I didn't get to tell you before we started, but I'm a retired police sergeant, actually.

Amazing.

It is.

I was injured, line of duty, and I retired with that.

I was diagnosed being a wheelchair for the rest of my life by four doctors.

If my dog was underneath my chair, I'd show you how I could stand up and walk.

But it is.

I think that without.

And this is.

I won't necessarily call this imagination, but without the fortitude and the possibility of combining my mind, my body, and my soul, I'd still be sitting in the wheelchair instead of walking my daughter down the aisle.

So, you know, it is.

I think what you just said is very integral within our nature, that sometimes we forget that, yes, we are adults, but that does not mean that we cannot be using our mind, using our imagination.

If I could not visualize me walking my daughter down the aisle and know that that was going to happen and know that I was going to achieve that goal, then I would have.

And this is in no disrespect to anybody in a wheelchair.

I spent four years there.

I would be rolling her down the aisle kind of a thing.

And when I asked her what she wanted for a wedding present, she said, I want you to walk me down the aisle, look me square in the eye.

So she knew that it was deep down inside me to do that.

And I think we all should take the opportunity to pause and realize that we have more within ourselves that we can bring forward.

And a lot of that starts with imagination and visualizing.

So, yes, I mean, if your listeners, viewers, are still feeling very skeptical, I want them.

You.

I want you to think about the notion that placebos work, and we don't know why.

Placebos work, and we don't know why.

What we can gather from that, though, is that our minds, in integration with our body, like you say, are more miraculous than we could even imagine.

Very much so.

Very much so.

And it's almost like magic.

So I gotta ask you this.

You know what?

It is almost like magic.

So I have to ask this, because, obviously, we're trying to.

We're trying to educate people.

People.

We're trying to inspire people.

We're trying to motivate people.

Is magic real?

Yes, period.

Because, like.

Okay, okay, okay.

Let me expand a little bit, because, again, we.

We can choose to define magic in many different ways, but maybe something that we can all relate to, again, from the.

This perspective of educating and inspiring is to think about love.

Love is an ability that we have that sometimes possesses us, that is often beyond our control and certainly outside the realm of logic.

So if you have trouble conceiving notionally of magic, I would love for you to think about love and think about the magic that is that.

And then.

And then maybe you can see everything else again, because I'm a witch.

I have a very, very, very loose, broad tent, larger than anything where I keep that word magic and my definitions of it.

But to me, geese migrating is magic mushrooms existing is magic.

The whole universe that is happening two inches under the topsoil that we have no idea about, you know, the silent determination of a worm.

This is magic.

But I think, really and truly, the magic is in the noticing.

The magic isn't the worm.

The magic is noticing the worm.

You know, that's what makes sense.

Oh, absolutely, 100%.

I, you know, the.

The life.

Look at life, where my daughter is born.

Both my daughters were born.

To me, that's magic.

You created life.

And that life learns and grows.

And, you know, we have a puppy.

Sorry.

That I just hit with a spoon.

Sorry, Charlie.

You know, we've got this.

This wonderful animal here that understands love, like, unconditionally.

And to me, that's magic.

I agree with that.

What happens, people, I have to get personal in this particular instance because, you know, as a cop, my childhood, even in my personal life, but as a cop, you see people at their worst.

You see the best people at their worst.

You see what a lot of people don't get to see.

It gives you a hypersensitivity to observation and to become a trained observer in such a point that you really take notice of things that people normally wouldn't do.

And when you take that observation and you can develop that skill, then when you sit outside on the back patio and a hummingbird comes in front of you to say hi, and watching this creature flap its wings at a thousand beats a minute and look at you and recognize you, and then go to your bushes and collect flowers, like, he stopped and said, hey, thanks for the flowers.

You really, really understand a little deeper within yourself and how, again, the universe is connected together.

And that, to me, is magic.

Yes.

And, I mean, I can think of another detective, you know, people in the stories.

He's fictional.

But, you know, Sherlock Holmes appeared psychic.

He wasn't psychic.

He was very perceptive, and he was always looking.

So, you know, to me, that is a psychic power, too, to be so perceptive that you know what your spouse is going to ask you before they ask you for it, that, you know, when you're giving advice to your friends, you know what's going to happen before it happens, because you've seen them do this, this pattern over and over and over again.

But that said, I have to leave the space open for the kind of magic that is outside of this material definition.

I have to leave that space open because why would I want to close it?

First of all, why would I want to cut myself off to a whole vast world of imagination and knowledge?

But I really, I really look to ancient cultures, the occultism the magic that they were doing.

And I have to wonder about, for example, the burning of the library at Alexandria.

I have to wonder what spells were in that library that were burned that worked, because, again, I can return to Majin Gonzalez Whippler.

She says, these are the examples of when my Santeria worked for me.

And I specifically and intentionally left out a bunch of other examples because you would never believe them because they sound impossible.

And most of us who have taken on this mantle of witch, who wear the cape and the hat metaphorically or literally, it's because we've had these moments that we couldn't understand, that we couldn't explain.

But we know that it happened.

I was there with that spell worked.

It happened.

So, you know, I can materialize the word magic all I want, but at the same time, I really, I have to Pixie Colin Smith, who illustrated the, what was known as rider Waite, and now, thankfully, is Smith Waite tarot deck, one of the most famous ones.

She says, look for the door into the unknown country.

And so we, we definitely keep that as a model.

That's, I want to remember that.

So let's talk about spells and potions.

And you kind of touched on that a little bit.

Is there such a thing as spells and potions?

Yes, period.

Yes, period.

I mean, I was recently speaking to an herbalist, and she doesn't necessarily call herself a witch.

I call her a witch because my definition differs from other people.

But she was talking about plants and their power to heal.

You know, she saw someone who had some kind of reaction, and a friend of hers put these certain kind of leaves on, on her friend's arm.

The swelling went down.

But you can also poison.

There are many double edged sword, right?

There are many plants that are poisoned.

So again, when we talk about potions, we're talking about a stew that feeds your family for a few days because you know how to stretch it.

We're talking about taking a cup of chamomile tea when you're feeling stressed out, you know, where anything that we make, either to help or to harm, is a potion.

Well, I respect that because, I mean, I manage my, I have rheumatoid arthritis, severe rheumatoid arthritis.

I manage my disease with a plant based diet and with using herbs.

So I use, and I understand which herbs do what, right.

I have a natural prednisone.

I have a natural anti inflammatory.

You know, I have natural blood cleanser.

All of these things I'd use, theoretically, I make a potion every morning and every, because I mix them together in a smoothie or mix them together in a juice.

And these ones I take if I'm having a bad day.

These ones I take if I need to sleep better.

These ones I do when I just need an overall cleanse in my body.

So theoretically, I make my own potions.

Yeah.

And to be honest, you know, I have a chronic illness.

I take medication every morning, and I have done for many years, and I will for the rest of my life.

It's western medicine.

It's a pill that I get from the pharmacy.

Also a potion, you know, just because we've taken the experimentation out of the woman, out of the hands of the woman in the woods and put it into a sterile lab.

And again, we've spoken to witches who work in labs.

Doesn't to me, anyway, doesn't make it any less of a potion.

Well, it's like the old witch doctor, you know, you get the witch doctor, that or the medicine man.

In the native american community, I've met several medicine men myself, and they do the same thing and theoretically, the same procedure.

They understand how nature works with us, how nature can different combinations of what we have in nature.

So, yeah, I understand that now.

I understand that from a different perspective because before I hadn't thought about it that way.

But we also see the science in the witch doctor.

Zora Neale Hurston talks about this, where the witch doctor, the conjure man, uses grave dirt in his spells for hexing.

And now I'm using scare quotes here.

Science can tell us that disease can leach into the soil from a corpse.

So we think of this totally supernatural, symbolic, metaphorical, metaphysical.

Exactly.

But what does he know?

He knows that this soil is dangerous.

Dangerous, yeah, scientifically.

Not because.

Interesting, interesting.

Not because of, you know, some ghosts that are at the cemetery, but because our human bodies can leach disease into the soil around our graves.

What do you think about curses?

Oh, what curses.

I am.

I am not a hexer.

I tried it once and I hurt my back the next day.

And I don't know if these two things are related, but for me, it's enough.

Hexing was never really my thing anyway.

And at the same time, there are people, people to whom I have spoken, who conceive of themselves as a balancer of justice.

They don't see themselves as, like, hexing per se.

They see themselves as restoring justice to any given situation.

I don't take that on.

I don't think that I'm the right person for that job.

I'm very non absolutist you know, so it would be hard for me to decide that someone was a villain in a story.

But I think, again, let's be very material.

Let's be very practical.

You can easily curse someone.

You can easily curse someone.

You can make their life harder.

You can withdraw yourself from their company.

You can spread lies about them.

And these kinds of things echo almost in a, in a magical, you, rippling way.

So do I think that there's, you know, in my hungarian ancestry, some vampire witch who maybe, again, I'm leaving the door open to that unknown country, but at the same time, I think that we humans are much more materially dangerous to each other than we are metaphysically dangerous to each other.

I understand that.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

But I also think it's about, like, re empowering yourself.

You know, if you got dumped in a, in a really mean way and you want to take everything that you have of that person and burn it and spit and chant and, you know, urinate into the bucket to put it, like, bless, do that if that makes you feel empowered.

But having said that, again, in my material realm, to me, if any of you are thinking about taking up hexing and cursing, for me, living well is the best revenge.

And I think the best way that you can curse your enemies is to shine.

Yeah.

Disclaimer here.

We're not endorsing Hexing.

No.

But at the same time, I'm not telling you not to either.

I really, that's, that's what I love about being a witch, is that it's just, here's an idea, and what you do with that idea is totally up to you.

Again, for me, it's how it differs from occultism.

Occultists are scholars, and, and I am not, too.

But I relate to being a witch more because it is just like, take the seed of an idea and do whatever you want with it.

If you do something amazing, you can't come back and say one more thing before you go.

Told me to do it.

That's right.

We will do this.

Disclaimer, any hexing that you take on, we are not liable for the results.

Can I say, they made me do it?

They made me do it.

You what, how do you, how do you relate witchcraft to spirituality?

Can I ask that?

Because I know earlier you were talking about Christian and being a Christian and growing up the way that you had done.

How does that integrate?

Yeah, again, for some people, they are inexorable.

For some people, they are completely separate.

Some people take on the label of which, as a purely political act, like we saw in the late sixties and the 1970s with the advent of WITC.

So they were women's terrorist, women's international terrorist conspiracy from hell.

And they were.

Yes.

So they were a feminist group who really weren't looking into witchcraft, as we think of it, who weren't looking into magic and doing spells.

What they were taking on was this archetype of the scary lady who's not afraid of you and who you should be afraid of.

So we see these.

We see these, you know, and versions of WITC still exist.

There's an active one in Portland, all over the place.

So for some people, this identity of witch is purely political.

And then we have some people for whom this identity of witch is purely spiritual.

It's about knowing our ancestors are with us, that we are not alone, that there is some sort of spiritual reality outside of what we understand.

And for me, again, I like that crossroad.

I like to place myself in that exact middle space of what I know and what I imagine, you know.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I find all this fascinating, by the way.

I think that the way that you're discussing it and the way that you're kind of breaking it down helps me understand the integration a little bit more.

Yes.

Thank you.

I think that there was another question I had when you were talking about, you just mentioned it a few minutes ago about being political.

So how.

Tell me how that's used.

I mean, other than the wit ch group, which I had not heard of before, but I'm going to investigate that.

I'd like to look a little bit more about that, other than that, from a political perspective, do you think that it has had an effect on politics?

I mean, is that what you mean?

I mean, yes, but not in the same way that we think about, say, like the hippie anti war movement of the 1960s, like the very demonstrative anti war movement of the 1960s.

It's not like that.

It's not political in that sense, although it can be, you know, again, like we've.

We've seen at women's marches, you know, people with black pointy hats and black shrouds who are doing this, you know, work of protest.

But I think being a witch is a little more in the shadows.

It's a little more grassroots.

So when we think about the politics of witches witchcraft, we find small circles of marginalized people who are working together.

And so, yes, absolutely.

I think that, and especially now, we're seeing this explosion of young women, especially taking this on and experimenting, if not with the research, but with the aesthetic.

With the aesthetic of which.

And I think that's great.

You know, experiment with aesthetics.

It's fine.

You know, you don't have to.

I'm not gonna gatekeep anybody.

You don't have to know everything to try things.

But, yes, I think absolutely.

When people take on this, this feeling of being a witch, it makes them want to change the world.

This is what activists and witches have in common, is that we think we can change the world with our actions.

That's a part of.

It'll be interesting to see.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how.

How witchcraft really changes the world.

But I think we're getting a sense of it now.

Feminists, let's talk about saint on shelves.

What do you.

How do you think that all came about?

Was that more of a, like, sit down, shut up, and do what I say, or any validation to that?

Well, I mean, who am I to say that those, the witches of Salem weren't witches?

But I can tell you that Maurice Conde wrote an amazing book called I Tituba.

And Tituba is sort of the most famous witch of the Salem witch trials.

The black witch of Salem, they called her.

She was.

We don't know much about her history, but we think she was Bahaman, a free woman who ended up sort of like, re enslaved when she came to America.

But Maurice Konde writes this book that she claims was written in collaboration with the spirit of Tituba.

So it's wonderful, and I really recommend it to all of your viewers and listeners.

But basically what happened was the Puritans were building their society, and they were looking to blame, I think, something, someone for their unsuccesses, I don't want to say failures, but, you know, the things that went wrong.

And the easy way to do that was to cry witch.

Now, the Salem witch trials kind of exploded because Tituba was like a nanny.

We'll use the word nanny.

She was in charge of the care of two young girls, and she would bring, you know, her bahaman herbalism and even spellcraft.

She made a dog cake, I think was like the thing that really sprung the whole thing off.

But basically what happened was two little girls pointed their fingers and said to a puritanical town, this woman is a witch.

And the other two, the first three to be accused in Salem were Tituba and two other women whose, I'm sorry to their spirits, but their names escape me.

One of those women was, you know, just like the town, crazy.

She didn't have a home.

She didn't go to church, and the other one was a woman whose husband died, and she didn't remarry.

She took a lover and kept all of her husband's property.

I do want to say that women weren't allowed to have credit cards in their own names in Canada, where I live, until the 1970s.

So women having property.

Yeah, that's a real thing.

The 1970s, women weren't allowed to have credit cards in their own name until then.

So women having property is terrifying, obviously.

So it's interesting to me, outside of the super natural, that these three first accused women were, you know, basically like, a homeless woman who didn't go to church, a black woman, and a woman who had kept her dead husband's property.

So, again, when you ask the question about the politics of witchcraft, I think it's inherently political.

This is what we're.

This is what we're up against.

Capitalism, anti feminism.

Um, but, yeah, so it's a really interesting story to look at when we want to see how stories get told and how our imagination very, very much shapes our reality, that this.

This story from two little girls pointing their fingers created this whole era in american history.

Fascinating.

Crazy.

That is fascinating.

And now I'm gonna have to go look that up.

I have to read that.

Read it to.

I loved itecheba.

I kind of.

I'm a bit of a restless person, maybe you can tell by my gesticulating.

So I find it hard.

Sometimes you sit and read, but I read a tituba, and I think two days.

I love.

It's Marie's Conde.

Aytechiba.

Maurice Conde.

Highly recommended.

Highly recommend that one.

I will check that.

Do you watch.

Do you watch any shows about witches?

Like, one of my favorite shows is discovery of witches.

I haven't watched that yet, but it has been recommended to me.

I'm very much into real witches, but again, I leave so much space open for fictional witches.

I think fiction, again, much like imagination, fiction, informs our culture as much as our reality.

So many of us have been inspired by fictional characters.

Or the scarlet witch, like your daughter and the scarlet witch.

You know, that's a perfectly valid witch to have as your role model.

Yeah.

It's out to send you a picture of her in her costume.

She's.

It.

It's amazing how much it looks like Elizabeth Olsen, I guess.

Elizabeth Olsen, who plays that part.

Yeah, I do.

I love all variety of fact and fiction when it comes to witchcraft, because you can't be a witch and not have an interesting story.

Well, I recommend discovery of witches to you as well.

I think that's pretty good.

Let's talk about your, let's talk about missing witches.

Let's talk about your book that you, Risa, wrote together and your podcast, please.

And how somebody can get in touch with you.

Yes, I have a copy here.

I do love a paper book, but it is available as an Eve book.

Just to talk about books for a minute.

I'm so torn myself because I love highlighting and dog earing and really messing up a book and really marginalia and making it mine and absolutely destroying it.

But then if you have an ebook, you can literally just like search and find whatever words you're looking for.

So everything has its pros and cons.

You can get our book anywhere.

It's available online.

Our distribution is done by Penguin Random House.

So if you're looking for the book, you should be able to find it.

We always recommend, though, that you either ask for it at your public library.

We are big library boosters.

These are some of the few spaces left in the world where you're not expected to buy anything.

So go to your public library and request it.

We love that.

Check out your local indie bookstore and if they don't have a copy, maybe they can order it for you.

But you can also just, you know, order it on Amazon and, like, not be a social justice warrior for one day.

It's okay.

Everybody needs to take the easy road sometimes.

And in terms of finding us, everything is missing witches.

So our, our website is www.missingwitches.com.

on socials, it's missingwitches everywhere.

We're most active on Instagram, so you can hit us up at Instagram again, the handle is just missing witches everywhere.

Twitter, Facebook, and also, we love hearing stories.

So you can email us@missingwitchesmail.com.

when we tell stories of witches, it's not just important people from history, it's your story, too.

It's our story, too.

So, yeah, we would love to hear from anyone who's even thinking about the word witch and what it means to them so that that can then expand our definition of what a witch is.

And they can find your podcast on your website as well.

There's links on your website to your podcast and to the book, I believe.

Yeah, everything we do shows up on our website sooner or later.

But you can also find the podcast on Apple and Stitcher and all your.

Usual channels, all your favorite listening platforms.

I will make sure that all of those things are enlisted in the show notes so that everybody has easy access to be able to connect with you.

This has been a fantastic conversation.

I could talk for another hour easily, Michael.

Just one more hour easily.

Maybe two.

We can save that for a future conversation.

Yes.

And again, apologies from Risa.

She had an extreme family emergency that she had to attend to.

She was really excited about chatting with you.

So maybe we will have a chance to meet again when we have a.

Chance to do it again.

We'll have to have another conversation down the road.

And we can combine that.

Life happens, and when life happens, sometimes it's meant to be a certain way.

And you know that doesn't mean that.

Yeah.

Again, we'll.

Let's have another conversation down the road and we'll have a lot of fun, all three of us.

Thank you, Sergeant Hearst.

Is it okay if I just call you Sergeant Hearst?

I love it.

I still have people call me Sarge, so it's all good.

I value.

I value that.

I do.

This is one more thing before you go.

So before we go, do you have any words of wisdom you can share?

Yes, absolutely.

But which ones?

I mean, ultimately, ultimately, again, like our, you know, you talk about educating and inspiring.

We want to do that, too, but we don't want to tell you how to do that.

I want your listeners, your viewers, your audience.

I want everyone to know that you are amazing.

You are magical.

Don't let anyone scare you into not being the fullest version of yourself that you can.

Don't be scared.

Don't be scared of the witch within.

And don't be scared of the witch without.

We're here to help you out.

Profound words of wisdom.

Anyway, thank you very much.

I honestly appreciate it.

Again, I'll have everything in the show notes for everyone to be able to have easy access to finding you, you, your website, your podcast and your book.

So till we talk again, thank you so much, sarge.

Thanks for listening to this episode of one more thing before you go.

Check out our website@beforeyougopodcast.com.

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