THANK YOU FOR LEAVING A COMMENT IF YOU'RE READING! LOVE AND THANKS TO ALL MY READERS!
The all new 50 Books Challenge!
Title: Missing Witches: Recovering True Histories of Feminist Magic by Risa Dickens and Amy Torok
Details: Copyright 2021, North Atlantic Books
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "A guide to invocations, rituals, and histories at the intersection of magic and feminism, as informed by history's witches— and the sociopolitical culture that gave rise to them.
When you start looking for Witches, you find them everywhere. As seekers and practitioners reclaim and restore magic to its rightful place among powerful forces for social, personal, and political transformation, more people than ever are claiming the identity of "Witch." But our knowledge of witchcraft and magic has been marred by erasure, sensationalism, and sterilization, the true stories of history's Witches left untold.
Through meditations, stories, and practices, authors Risa Dickens and Amy Torok offer an intersectional, contemporary lens for uncovering and reconnecting with feminist witch history. Sharing traditions from all over the world—from Harlem to Haiti, Oaxaca to Mesopotamia—Missing Witches introduces readers to figures like Monica Sjoo, HP Blavatsky, Maria Sabina, and Enheduanna, shedding light on their work and the cultural and sociopolitical contexts that shaped it. Structured around the 8 sabbats of the Wheel of the Year, each chapter includes illustrations by Amy Torok, as well as invocations, rituals, and offerings that incorporate the authors' own wisdom, histories, and journeys of trauma, loss, and empowerment. Missing Witches offers an inside look at the vital stories of women who have practiced— and lived— magic."
Why I Wanted to Read It: Last year was a huge year for Witch books, of all kinds of Witches/witches and it was started by Amanda Yates Garcia's brilliant Initiated. I've read more modern (as in published in the last five years) Witch books in the past year or so than I've read in years. This one came up as a recommendation, and indeed, Amanda Yates Garcia herself wrote the forward and is blurbed on the front cover.
How I Liked It:
What is a Witch? If you've been reading this blog for awhile, particularly in the past year a half, you've seen me ask that question and try to give you multiple definitions, including whatever one I may think whatever book I'm reviewing may be using. Is it a spiritual/religious practice of nature that predates Christianity? Is it a folk practice independent of any religious beliefs (or highly adaptable)? Is it a fantasy creature with magical, otherworldly powers?
Generally, I've separated Witches into two categories. Capital W Witches are referring to the spiritual/religious practice. Lowercase witches refer to the fantasy figures that populate Disney and Oz. Lowercase w witches can also mean generic magic-maker. So what kind of Witches are the Witches of Missing Witches? Let's find out!
The book is separated into eight chapters, a chapter for each Sabbat, or sun-celebration holiday in Paganism. Each chapter is not only about the Sabbat itself, but also a mini history lesson on one of two historical figures, both living and dead. The chapters also contain personal stories from the two authors (who evenly divide writing duties by chapter), and a ritual based on both the sabbat and the figures mentioned (to varying degrees) concludes each chapter.
Before we get into the book, we need to talk about the last six years. 2016 was a hard hit for more people than it was not, across the globe. More people than ever before were left feeling powerless, angry, and searching for something, and Witchcraft became and has become even more popular in part because of that collective feeling. The rise of the Witch has arguably also been the rise of the protestor, the rise of the activist. This century has seen protest before, but not the numbers of the past six years.
I haven't listened to the podcast from which this book originates. It began in 2018 and according to the history on its website, it grew out of "a desire to research true histories – and interview real practitioners – of Witchcraft and other occulted practices."
So it's somewhat strange that while there are some actual Witches in the book, there are many more who do not wear that label (or even an occult practice). Had I not seen the about on the website, I would've assumed this is meant to be a feminist history podcast, with a "Witch" sheen, because Witches are currently having a Moment for the reasons I mentioned. So what's the deal with calling people who did not call themselves Witches "Witches"?
We made the decision to include people who did not self-identify as Witches. It's something we've wrestled with, since to be called a Witch is and has been dangerous. But to leave words to be defined by oppressors heightens the danger for us all. So we insist on making a big tent of the word "Witch". "Show me your Witches and I'll show you your feelings about women." And as Ipsita Roy Chakraverti iconically put it, "Every strong woman is a Witch, and she is always hunted."
Whether some of these people thought of themselves as Witches or not, they have all shaped our ideas about what it means for us to be Witches today. They belong in the canon of the craft. (pg 4)
I actually groaned a bit at that. Respecting the fact some people do not want the label of "Witch" and not assigning the label to anyone you like isn't "leaving words to be defined by your oppressors", it's respecting that words have meanings and carry weight.
Also, you can still have an incredibly rich and fascinating feminist history and include people that would have and do call themselves Witches without having to bend and squint to make a Witch out of someone.
Before we accept the label "Witch," we have to ask: What is a Witch? Do I qualify? (yes, you do). Certainly not all of the "Witches" we've profiled in this book would have called themselves a Witch. Even today, amid the millions of #/Witchesofinstagram, calling yourself "Witch" IRL is often met with condescension, a dismissive eye roll, a smug chuckle. That chuckle is, of course, preferable to not just historical but also contemporary Witch hunt reactions of, you know, being killed....All this to say, the stigma is still real-- there are myriad reasons a Witch might not want to loudly classify themselves. So sometimes we have to go looking for clues to find the Witches without visible cauldrons, goddess idols, or tarot decks. Sometimes we have to follow the bread crumbs left behind for us to trace.(pg 63)
Except that you can have a cauldron, goddess statue, and tarot deck and still not be a Witch. Also, can we finally put down "IRL" to mean "in person"?
The authors collect amongst their "Witches" several people they really have to squint to see as Witches:
Of course it's never explicitly mentioned that the main character [in Faith Ringgold's 1991 children's book Tar Beach], eight-year-old Cassie, is a Witch, but in my reading, it's implied.(pg 72)
In her home she keeps an altar, though she calls it a shelf, with pictures of her ancestors and a painting she did when she was eighteen years old to remind her of her growth. (pg 74)
So what is a Witch to the authors? A difficult woman? The religious/spiritual practice?
I was with a group of good men: queer and straight, Witches and amenable atheists. The two are not mutually exclusive-- Witches and atheists-- and good men have always fought alongside feminists of all genders for a world without the violence done by patriarchy to us all. (pg 172)
A general magic practitioner, then?
Elsewhere [Ipsita Roy Chakaverti] wrote, "In a society which batters and bruises its women, physically and mentally, in home and in the workplace, every woman is a Witch." (pg 195)
Women in general!
Plus we have RuPaul's Drag Race that, despite its imperfections, contributed to our language another definition of CUNT, a winning combination of Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent. If you're reading this book, we're going to assume that you either have, or are, a bit of a cunt. We are Witches, after all, and the words Witch and Cunt have quite a lot in common. (pg 206)
Difficult women? (Worth mentioning that that quote comes after a quote from Cunt author Inga Muscio about "it does not matter if they are biological, surgical or metaphorical. A cunt's a cunt.")
So does it matter? Does it matter if the women they are profiling are/were actually Witches? Aside from the fact I think you shouldn't assign the label to someone who didn't wear it themselves (and there are plenty of fascinating figures that actually do and did wear the name Witch), actually it's not really whether or not the figures covered were/are Witches that's my main complaint.
The authors chose to give space and acclaim among the fourteen women "officially" covered (mini bios and information about other important figures are also given in each chapter along with the named Missing Witches) a still living, still actively practicing her hate and recruiting others to her bigoted causes, militant transphobe. I'm referring to Z. Budapest.
Let me tell you a little about my own history with Z. Budapest. I read many of her books, none of which had any of her transphobia, and I chalked up some of her wording on gender to clumsy dated awkwardness. I didn't agree with all of her positions, and found her pretty self-aggrandizing, but also interesting and since I read her books as a teenage Witch, it happened to be there where I first heard of certain concepts and ideas. I kept her books out of a certain nostalgia for my early years, and didn't think much about Budapest at all since other authors/figures and their work captured more of my passion and interest over the years. She came up again when I discovered her militant transphobia. I felt horrified and betrayed that I'd kept the work of someone like Z Budapest among books I thought sacred and important. I took those books, books that I'd had for years, and wondered what to do. Briefly, that is. I knew what to do, really. I didn't want the work of anyone like that around me. An active, living bigot still living and spreading her dangerous bigotry? I thanked the books for what they once meant to me, and threw them out. Why not donate them to a used bookstore? Because someone might find them, fall in love with her writing, and get ensnared into her transphobic beliefs, the same beliefs which are literally costing people their lives. Such was the risk as I saw it, anyway.
Do you have to take such drastic action, if you were in my shoes? Nope. You could keep those books on your shelf (and not financially support Budapest by buying any new ones) and revisit them from time to time, if you think you could. But I know I couldn't because seeing them just brought back her smug and entrenched bigotry. And while I had nostalgia for the books, no concept she discussed was ever novel to her alone and her self-aggrandizing got insufferable even before I knew she was a bigot.
So knowing what we now know about Budapest (who is, again, still alive and still preaching her hate), and given that the authors bend over backwards to talk about inclusivity how exactly do they justify including (and praising) a bigot like that? As it turns out, in what has to be the most awkward and patronizing way possible.
From Lithuania we travel south through Poland and Slovakia to arrive in Hungary to meet Zsuzsanna Budapest a.k.a. Z.Budapest or Z. A woman who, blinded by her own luminosity, has perhaps taken self-assuredness too far. (pg 142)
"Perhaps?" Seriously?
If you feel a need to do something, you must do it... with compassion. Because our next Witch is powerful and brilliant, but I fear she is missing one of the key features of the modern-day Witch: radical compassion. [...]
Z. Budapest has been labeled and embraced the label of TERF-- Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist-- a feminist who doesn't accept that trans women are women. We at Missing Witches are not that. INclusivity is our mandate and our guiding principle, so I was disappointed to find more rot amid my ancestors' bones. In the spirit of Safe Spaces of all kinds, we want to make the Missing Witches Coven, in all of its incarnations, as safe as we can-- a place where we can talk about issues from a core ethic of radical compassion. Where it's safe to ask questions, make mistakes, or respectfully disagree. Learn. Grow. Change our minds, change the world, name and shame the failings of our ancestors but retain the ability to separate the toxic from the healing. (pg 155)
A quick note here. I'm aware of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy but I also believe we need to keep feminism as a movement quality. If you see women as walking vaginas and/or wombs and define them that way, you're seeing women the way misogynists do. You don't get the benefit of the doubt about your "feminism."
And "TERF" used to be a term (and still is, to some) that TERFs claimed was a "slur". You don't get to just pronounce yourself "not a TERF", you should pronounce yourself "anti-TERF". It's also worth pointing out you can't make a safe space for marginalized people if you're willing to include bigots that want to eradicate those aforementioned marginalized people. ABSOLUTELY NO TERFS (or bigots of any kind) IN MY COVEN, THANK YOU.
This story got very personal for me, very fast. I read that in the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Z. Budapest walked from Hungary to a refugee camp in Austria. And in the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution, my father had walked from Hungary to a refugee camp in Austria. It's possible that this Witch walked beside my father on this traumatic road, and maybe they made eye contact, and maybe there was comfort in that. It makes me feel connected to her in the same way I feel connected to my own family. Those whom I love despite their shady politics and clashing personalities. I'm a child of a not altogether friendly divorce, my parents were constantly talking contradictory smack about each other.
In a way, it did me a small favor because I learned early to make up my own mind. To do my own research and draw my own conclusions, to accept the good and do my best not to dwell on the bad, to snatch the teachable from the jaws of the traumatic. Z. Budapest could have been my aunt; her brother and my father were both named Imre. So I'm approaching this story the way we do with distant and problematic relatives at weddings and funerals....Agree on some issues, speak up when we disagree on others, connect based on what we have in common and what we admire about problematic Auntie ZsuZsu, without holding our tongues on the bad.
Once you learn her name, you don't stop seeing it. She pops up constantly in feminist documentaries and Witchy reading lists. As a lesbian radical feminist, she lit up the 1970s, manifesting the Witch as author, activist, journalist, playwright, and songwriter was arrested for doing tarot readings and took that battle to the California Supreme Court. Love her or hate her, Z. Budapest is a firebrand and contemporary Witchcraft has felt her heat. (pg 156)
"Auntie ZsuZsu" may have a similar background to one of the author's families but comparing your family (with whom you interact and share a history) with a public figure is questionable for a number of reasons. To say nothing of the fact this particular author is a cis het woman, so dismissing "Auntie ZsuZsu"'s hate campaign as family trouble is incredibly privileged.
"Both-sidesing" a bigot ("Love her or hate her") is another choice that reeks of privilege.
Z. was born in Hungary in 1940 to a long line of nasty (in the Donald Trump sense-- nasty meaning strong, bold, loud) women. (pg 158)
Funnily enough, "Auntie ZsuZsu" has Donald Trump's politics when it comes to trans people! Guess she's not as "nasty" as you might think.
On this day, she says, she became a feminist. For better and for worse, she solidified the bond between Goddess, Womanhood, Feminism, and the Womb, and a scorn for anyone without these organs who dares to tell her what a woman is for does or should be. (pg 160)
"For better and for worse"? Seriously?
By 1970 she was an out and proud lesbian and Witch living aloud in Los Angeles. In 1971, she founded the Susan B Anthony Coven #1, a women-only, Witches' coven. If you female identifiers have ever planned a girls night, you might understand this feeling. (pg 161)
"Female identifiers" (pretty sure you mean women: trans women are women) doesn't cover up the fact you're platforming and celebrating a TERF.
First problem. Z. Budapest named the coven after Susan B. Anthony, who is another great example of a person who goes into the wellllllllllll category. Yes, Susan B. Anthony worked tirelessly as a suffragist, but her quest for women's right to vote in particular contained extremely racist rhetoric-- a reaction to the prospect of Black men being given the vote before white women. But Susan B. Anthony was also an abolitionist and anti-slavery activist from the age of seventeen. We could go back and forth all day. But what we find is another problematic ancestor who, like many "heroes," did some great stuff and said some terrible shit. In these two, we find women who rank humans in their quest for equality. Women arrested for acting on their beliefs. Susan B Anthony and Zsuzsanna Budapest have a lot in common. (pg 162)
Susan B Anthony was a rank white supremacist who believed in bettering things for white women like herself to make her own life easier. You can be a white supremacist and still be against slavery as an institution and practice (there have been slavery abolitionists in the United States since before there was a United States). Describing Anthony's white supremacy as "saying some horrible shit" (in contrast to the "doing great stuff"; you aren't subtle) and "going back and forth all day" about arguing her legacy shows the author has not done her homework on Anthony as well as the concept of the very fact we know who Susan B Anthony is because we keep talking about her, but how many people know Ida B Wells, a truly pioneering feminist figure? Rather than arguing about why these privileged white women are actually heroes (or not, or "go back and forth"), why not just hold up better people? I believe in nuanced conversations about the past. Honestly, I do. But I also believe after a certain point, you're allowed to make a judgment call about someone.
And to be clear, Susan B Anthony has been dead for over a hundred years. Z. Budapest is, again, still very much alive and very much promoting her bigotry. This isn't a "product of her times/she didn't know any better" situation in Budapest's case.
Z. Budapest will go down in history as the last person to have been arrested and tried for Witchcraft in the United States. She was arrested for doing a tarot reading in her own shop, the Feminist Wicca, in 1975, and tried and convicted. Z. Budapest appealed her conviction on the grounds that tarot readings are a form of spiritual counseling for women within the context of their religion. It took nine years in courts, but she was acquitted and better yet, the laws against "fortune-telling" were struck down. So if you are an entrepreneurial Witch, you can thank Auntie ZsuZsu for blazing that trail. (pg 162)
The author is playing fast and loose with facts (more on that later). Budapest will absolutely not go down in history as the last person to have been arrested and tried for Witchcraft in the United States because that was absolutely not for what she was arrested and tried. She was arrested for giving an undercover cop a tarot reading because California still had tarot on the books for a faulty "fraudulent medium" law. Budapest soaked up the media attention and her defense lawyers pushed that it was because she was a practicing Witch, and the whole media debacle ("California is wasting tax payers dollars to fight Witches?") along with an improved understanding of Wicca as a religion got the law adjusted.
There have been other high-profile people arrested for crimes in the United States due in part to their ties to Witchcraft and the occult since Budapest. Damien Echols, along with a friend and an acquaintance (with a double-digit IQ whose coerced "confession" of the crimes after twelve hours of police interrogation without a parents present as he was a minor was one of the many horrific mishandlings of the case), was wrongly convicted of murder when he was a teenager based largely on his gothic attire, interest in modern Witchcraft and the occult, and Satanic Panic hitting a small Arkansas town.
If Budapest is really great enough to warrant inclusion despite her active and ongoing bigotry, at least represent her truthfully.
Z. was also instrumental in the creation of the Take Back the Night marches. I remember attending a Take Back the Night march as a teen in my hometown back in the '90s, and even then I remember arguments over the fact that men were allowed to attend the rally, but the march itself was only for women and children. (pg 162 and 163)
Now's a great time to point out that this book provides no source for this particular assertion. The sources in the book for this chapter are vague and if she's going to be credited I need a good citation.
"All Women" or "Women Only" sounds fine in a healing contest until we have to decide what a woman IS. We are all so much more than just the sum of our parts. Here's what we know: Z. has been explicit about her denial of trans women into her Dianic, all-women's coven. In her view, trans women do not fit the genetic, biological, or experiential prerequisites for womanhood. But we also know that at the time of this writing, 2018 was the deadliest years for assaults against transgender Americans since the Human Rights Campaign began keeping records. Transgender deaths by fatal violence have increased during each of the last three years.
AND we know that the Gay Panic defense is a real thing. A trans woman named Islan Nettles was beaten to death in the street by a man whose friends had mocked him for flirting with her. The killer confessed to killing her, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and was ultimately sentenced to just twelve years in prison. The mitigating circumstance being that Nettles was trans, and her killer just freaked out. This happened in 2013. It's not a history lesson. It's Current Events and Islan's is just one story of many. (pg 163)
If you know all of this is wrong, and deadly wrong, why bend over backwards to excuse and celebrate Budapest?
It costs nothing to welcome a trans person into a Coven, into womanhood. But to exclude them in this society is deadly. To exclude people keeps them on the outside and allows for a type of thinking that allows the panic defense. When you exclude someone, you make them a freak, which means it's totally normal and righteous to be freaked out by them, and by extension, totally normal to react to that fear with violence. Exclusion is deadly. (pg 163)
I get that this is mostly coming from the right place, but cis women do not and should not "welcome" trans women to womanhood. Trans women are women, they're already there. Frankly, Budapest would be welcoming herself out of her own bigotry and hate and fauxminism.
Things came to head for Z. at a public pagan convention, PantheaCon, in 2011, when she held a Ritual for cis women only. Pagan writer Peter Dybing led a protest and later wrote: "It is time for compassion in this discussion, time for the Trans community to sit and listen with open hearts to the pain of women who have suffered abuse at the hands of men, time for the Dianic community to listen with open hearts to the Trans communities experience [sic] of violence and exclusion. I believe all of my sisters have the ability to tap into the energy of the divine and approach these issues with respect, compassion and the intent to heal." (pgs 163 and 164)
If a "both sidesing" of the trans inclusion issue (in a particularly nonsensical way: trans women have also suffered abuse at the hands of men so what point is that even making?) was ridiculous and misguided in 2011, including it uncritically in 2021 is inexcusable. The trans community doesn't need to "sit and listen with open hearts to the pain of women who have suffered abuse at the hands of men" BECAUSE TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN AND TRANS MEN ARE MEN AND YOU CANNOT "BOTH-SIDES" BIGOTRY.
I was raised in a very gynocentric environment. I had a sister, my mother had a sister, my grandmother had a sister. My father moved out when I was six so I lived much of my life surrounded, almost entirely, by women. And I was raised feminist. So despite the fact that I am six feet tall, have a deep voice, broad shoulders and body hair, thick eyebrows, androgynous clothes, and a bravado that one woman after seeing my rock'n'roll band said was "like a man" (for the record and in her defense, English was not her first language and she meant it as a compliment and I took it as one)... despite the fact that I often get misgendered (called "Sir" on the phone or in shops) or have my sex, the status of my genitals questioned by curious children and men, I myself, personally, have never questioned that I am a woman. I don't know how it feel to be trans. I don't understand what it truly means. But I don't need to understand. I don't need empathy to have compassion. (pg 164)
This author is a het cis woman, and she's, uh, trying. Really, really trying. Sort of. Also, "gynocentric"?
The world, for the most part, IS my safe space. Little things add up. I can kiss my partners in public without fear of judgement or attack. My identification matches my identity. Most people just see me as a "regular" woman. I do not take this for granted. (pg 165)
"Regular" woman, seriously.
I respect so much the need and desire for safe space, especially for people who feel alienated by the world at large. A place free of judgements and devil's advocates. Free from scorn or the threat of violence. A place where you are One and not The Other. So I understand why Zsuzsanna Budapest felt compelled to create a Safe Space Coven for Women. I do not understand why she feels she gets to decide what being a woman is, what it means, and, most importantly, who qualifies. (pg 165)
You are not creating a safe space for women by excluding trans women. You are creating a safe space for transphobes. Please stop trying to excuse this.
As I look at [Budapest] and my own problematic ancestors, I worry that all her good legacy work will be lost to her stubbornness on this one issue. Is it that same laudable stubbornness that fueled her decade-long state Supreme Court battle to legalize Witchcraft that is also fueling her shameful trans exclusion? And if so, what do we make of this stubbornness?...It's almost as if nothing, no one, no single quality even, is inherently good or inherently bad. We are defined more by doing than being. And in the opposition of Good and Bad, we are all nonbinary.(pg 165)
A het cis person, helpfully using the term nonbinary to exonerate a transphobe. Truly... something.
No, we are not all good or all bad. But some people have more bad qualities than good ones. Some people have disqualifying bad qualities that cancel out their good qualities and it's perfectly okay to acknowledge that, rather than this ridiculous hemming and hawing and attempting to justify.
When asked about her choice to name her coven after Susan B. Anthony, Z. Budapest said, "We chose her name because [she] was a suffragist whom we all respected. She had her limitations. She was not perfect. And neither are we."
Well Z.'s darn right about that. None of us are perfect. But we must consider: what will our legacy be? (pg 165)
Not platforming and celebrating live 'n' active bigots, hopefully. It's so incredibly fitting that Budapest did choose to name her coven after a white supremacist who only wanted rights for herself and was willing to step on and sacrifice the marginalized to get them.
Years ago, I took my father back to his hometown in Hungary. This was after his dementia diagnosis, after he had come to live with me. Every day, sometimes every hour, he would ask, "When are we going to Szeged?" I knew it wouldn't be long before he'd be incapable of travel, so I took all the money I had and poured it into plane tickets to fly to a place I had never been, so I could go for the first time, with my father, to the place where our blood came from. Over dinner on our first night in Hungary, my father's brother, my uncle, went on an insulting, sexist monologue about my mother, whom he hadn't seen in over thirty years. He claimed she wasn't a good cook, and she dared to have a job, so she wasn't a good mother. I loudly announced that as a working woman, I would pay for dinner.
We left the restaurant and I cried in the streets of Szeged. The feeling I had was similar to the feeling of discovering some of Z.'s politics: Why? Just why? I came all this way to see you. I was so ready to connect... Healers and scientists can harness the power of natural poisons and turn them into medicines. It's a very Witchy thing to do. We make medicine from poison, Art out of grief, grab calm from inside a storm...So what do we, as Witches, do with these disappointments? These poisons hidden among the flowers? These thorns among the roses? We harness their sharpness and power to carve a Welcome Sign and hang it up on our doors, on the Missing Witches' door and in the doorway of our hearts.
Come inside. Join our circle. You are welcome here.
If you, like me, are the lucky bearer of Cis/Het/White Privilege, then you also carry the shame of shared colonial history. (pg 166)
This is well-intentioned. I'm sure. But for whom is that Welcome Sign intended? If you care about the marginalized, you can't welcome and include someone who wants to harm and exclude them.
Okay, so it was a big, ugly mistake to include Z. Budapest. But how about the rest of the book?
Well, the book is fast and loose with facts and I caught several errors. They also use "Wicca" and "Witchcraft" interchangeably and in this case of this book, erroneously in several places.
Also, if you're picking up this book, you've probably at least heard of most if not all of these people already, so the facts should at least be better and more polished.
The book quotes and is forwarded by Amanda Yates Garcia, but it can't capture her lyrical charms for writing. In addition, the chapters are somewhat disjointed for supposedly having a unifying theme or themes, and abruptly shift gears (and shift back) rather than transition between subjects, which makes the book a choppy read.
It's also not only trying really hard to see Witches in places where Witches aren't really, it's trying really hard to see revolutionary progress where there's just silly pop culture.
You can be like Jimmy, the Wisconsin groundhog who, in 2015, bit the town mayor on the ear in what I interpret as an act of defiant postcapitalist rage. I assume Jimmy the Groundhog took an honest stock of his situation and decided to protest. Jimmy would not be exploited and neither will you. (pg 51)
I know this is meant to be funny, and it did make me laugh, but it's because of what it calls to mind more than anything.
More troublesome though, the book profiles Mama Lola, a practitioner of Haitian Vodou, who has an encounter with, of all people, Tori Spelling.
You likely did not expect to read the name Tori Spelling in this book, but magic knows no bounds and always disrupts our expectations. In 2007 Mama Lola appeared on Tori's reality show Tori & Dean: Inn Love, when Tori sought the Manbo's help in lifting a perceived curse. While it's clear that Mama Lola's relationship with Tori Spelling deserves no more than a footnote in her rich history, we can't help but stop and marvel at the absurd balance that life and magic can produce. It's glorious to see Tori, the poster child for monied white privilege, trusting and recognizing the power of the Haitian Manbo. And maybe we can all admit to getting a bit of a postmodern thrill from watching Mama Lola pelt Tori with her special blend of herbs, oils, and ice-cold water. But the best part of Mama Lola's interaction with the star of Beverly Hills is the manner in which Alourdes replied to Tori's complaints: "It's cold," Tori shrieks. "It's not cold," Mama Lola states back matter-of-factly and with authority, as if her speaking the words quite simply makes them true. The water is not cold. Tori stops complaining. Mama Lola's words have changed reality.(pgs 133 and 134)
If that wasn't enough, the ritual for that chapter including an incantation that ended with "The water is not cold."
So is there anything redeeming about this book? Well, it does remind one of what an amazing writer Amanda Yates Garcia is:
Amanda Yates Garcia reminded us that "it matters whose stories get told; it matters how we tell them. Imagination matters. Our connections to one another matter, as does the pleasure we take in our experience. Witches stand in solidarity with those already doing this work. Because people have been doing this work wince humans first appeared on the surface of the earth. Now we listen to them, we participate, we use techniques of the healer, the poet, the artist, the scholar, the cunning folk to re-enchant the world." (pg 5)
But the book has a few glimmers of its own. They're too few and far between for the book, but they are there.
Writing of a difficult pregnancy and delivery, Risa Dickens writes of her daughter May,
She is every platitude accurately, and none of them are adequate: a miracle, the love of my life, my sudden purpose. She grunts and squeaks like a perfect mammal. I tell [co writer] Amy [Torok] that May lies on my belly like she's listening, and Amy says she's listening to the sounds of her hometown, and we both get hit with a wave of the enormity of that. I cry missing her and thinking about how I can never take her back to that first home. And I cry, so happy I get to see her face now. Postpregnancy brain chemistry is a wild rewiring.
I had a week of radical highs and lows after she was born. I needed to cry and tell this story more than once. I'm not sorry if it seems over-dramatic, though I struggle with feeling allowed to take up space with this story when so many are so much worse. Good luck and bad-- a predictor of life as a mother. Labor has happened to women for hundreds of millions of generations, and I walked around near them and had no idea how every ancient story about a descent into hell was a retelling of this story. (pgs 34 and 35)
It's a beautiful thought ("the sounds of her hometown") and image.
Anxiety can be a snowball that gains weight, girth, and speed as it rolls through the snow. (pg 50)
Our traumas aren't gifts, but the burning does make the gold that is already within us more apparent. In every version of what happens to us there is a version of ourselves that can rise to meet it. As the days get dark we can more clearly see the brightness in ourselves. (pg 177)
But those glimmers, while great, just aren't enough to save the rest of the book.
What is a Witch? Now more than ever, that's a question up for debate. Whether it's a political affiliation, a spiritual calling, a state of mind, or what society has decided for you, it's important to consider what you want it to mean and what you value. What is a Witch? One of the aspirational definitions to me is someone who understands the interconnectedness of life and stands up for the marginalized against bigotry and oppression. Someone who doesn't just say they do, but actually puts their money where their mouth is and does it. That definition would disqualify at least one person the authors of this book chose to honor (and it is an honor, even with caveats). Turns out more than a thousand years later, the word "Witch" is still an incredibly complicated term.
Notable:
We're placing the calling of the corners in the introduction because we think it's a great first step for every ritual and for every day. (pg 8)
In groups with whom I've worked, events I've attended, and hundreds of books I've read, I've heard it and read it as "Calling the Quarters" as in the Southern Quarter, the Northern Quarter, et cetera. I get that a good portion of all of this is oral history and word of mouth teachings, but I must say "corner" doesn't make sense to me the way that "Quarter" does.
________________________________________
Eat the fruit and think of Persephone, raped in the underworld, who saw infinite universes in a pomegranate and remembered who she was. She birthed herself from beyond death. Sit in the dark and remember who you are when you are between worlds. (pg 42)
In Circle Round, famed Pagan author and activist Starhawk (who is trans inclusive) along with her co-authors Diane Baker and Anne Hill offer a version of the Persephone story that doesn't involve rape whatsoever. If you claim this is changing the mythology, perhaps consider where the mythology comes from. I don't disparage the version where Persephone survives rape from people who see it as a survivor's tale, I'm saying other versions exist.
________________________________________
Famed author Zora Neale Hurston appears and there's some stuff you might not know about her.
Zora called herself Pagan and rewrote the tale of Moses from a rural Black American perspective. (pg 53)
I couldn't find any evidence that Hurston called herself Pagan and if she did, she probably wasn't using it in the sense the authors are.
The book covers author Alice Walker's quest to give Hurston her due.
Alice covered a lot in her Zoranthology's brief dedication, more eloquently and thoughtfully than we could ever hope to do ourselves, and she did so with a personal love and admiration that could come only from the devoted Zoraphile, Alice herself. She described not only what it's like to read Zora's work, but also how it may have felt to know her.
A friend of mine called one day to tell me that she and another woman had been discussing Zora Neale Hurston and decided they wouldn't have liked her. They wouldn't have liked the way-- when her play Color Struck won second prize in a literary contest in the beginning of her career-- Hurston walked into a room full of her competitors, flung her scarf dramatically over her shoulder and yelled, "COLOR..R.R STRUCK..K.K!" at the top of her voice.
Apparently it isn't easy to like a person who is not humbled by second place...
We live in a society, as Blacks, women, and artists, whose contests we do not design and with whose insistence on ranking us we are permanently at war. To know that second place, in such a society, has often required more and more innate genius than first, a longer, grimmer struggle over grater odds than first- and to be able to fling your scarf about dramatically while you demonstrate that you know. To know that second place is to trust your own self-evaluation in the face of the Great White Commercial of white and male supremacy, which is virtually everything we see, outside and often inside our own homes. That Hurston held her own, literally, against the flood of whiteness and maleness that diluted so much other Black art of the period in which she worked is a testimony to her genius and her faith. (pgs 54 and 55)
Two things. One, that story is amazing and makes me love Hurston more. Two, I really feel like the authors could've mentioned the still-living Walker's extremely unfortunate embrace of antiSemitism that threatens her own daughter.
________________________________________
The quality of writing varies throughout the book and the authors makes some strange choices.
A lot of her later childhood reads like a fairy tale. Not the pretty princess kind, but the old ones where wicked stepmothers do terrible things to children and idyllic youth is cut short by a cold reality. Zora's mother, Lucy-- the woman who had instructed her to "Jump at the Sun"-- died. Her father quickly, very quickly remarried, and little Zora was shipped off to a boarding school. She stayed there until her father just.. stopped... paying her tuition. (pg 56)
Back to bell hooks, who I was delighted to discover was herself inspired by Faith! If you haven't heard of activist and philosopher bell hooks, google her. You won't regret it. (pg 71)
In a book about feminist history, you couldn't offer even a small blurb about the legendary bell hooks, namedrop any of her books, instead of just a suggestion that people look her up? While promoting a specific (and troublesome) search engine?
________________________________________
Apart from platforming a harmful living bigot, the authors are hit and miss with Queer issues.
I spoke to Backxwash, a Canadian rapper Witch who was born in Zambia. She told me about growing up with the echoes of colonialism still ringing in the air. When the colonizers and missionaries came, everything they did not like or understand was labeled Witchcraft. The holy dance was demonized. Her ancestors' ways were nearly erased. So Backxwash wears the label of Witch with pride. It stands for her pre-colonial traditions and anticolonial perspective, her dissidence and her difference. She named her latest album Deviancy because, she told me, as a trans woman, her very existence is seen as a deviant act. in her way of thinking, one of the greatest political actions you can take is to unapologetically love yourself in a society that thinks you shouldn't exist. (pgs 56 and 57)
Delightful and courageous ruffler of the feathers of society, Witch and musician Athena Holmes a.k.a Big Sissy (they/them), when asked where this bravery comes from, told me, "When I am balanced and cleansed, I can access my bravery." For Athena, and for all of us, bravery isn't something that you have or don't have. (pg 57)
There is a far better way to communicate someone's pronouns (like actually using them in the text) rather than just blandly listing them. It's literally text. Use them in the text!
There are men who have cunts, who menstruate. And for those trans or intersex men who bleed, I think you'll agree that there's a lot more to being "male" or "female" than menstrual blood. And this whole gender essentialist conversation completely erases intersex people who, by the way, I'll say again, do exist. But whether you're a bleeder or a breeder, if you've got big-dick energy or yoni power, or prefer not to discuss your genitals with strangers, I think we all need to take a moment to unflinchingly look at menstruation and its connection to the cycle of the Moon, and to our earliest known symbolic structures and our earliest known poet. (pg 204)
Got it, but don't say "breeder" which has harmful connections to US chattel slavery.
The Zapotec civilization of Mexico recognized three genders: male, female, and muxe. The Bulginese, or Bugis, people of Indonesia accept five or more genders. Some tribes of the Americas First Nations saw in their people up to seven genders. The laws of Judaism contain words for six genders. The list goes on and on. I spoke to Jason Sikoak, an artist from Nunavat who told me that the Inuit didn't have gendered pronouns until the white men brought them. No He or She, only They for everyone. It will be interesting to see, in the future, how languages like French for example, which has no UNgendered pronoun, no They-- il/he, elle/she, ils/he (plural), elles/she (plural)-- will navigate our blossoming nonbinary consciousness and invent new words. (pg 205)
In French when you refer to a group of people of mixed gender, you use ils, even if, as one of my favorite French teachers put it, you're referring literally thousands of women and one single man. Ils is the term for mixed gender, and I defer to more frequent French-speakers, but it sounds like that would be the equivalent to English's singular they.
In discussions around contemporary spirituality, I have seen the words God and Goddess replaced with GoddETC, coined, I believe, by artist and self-described "queerdo" Maria Molteni, and I think that's a perfect description. What we, as humans, can imagine of that which is beyond. Etc. And so on. Plus more.
I reached out to Maria to ask her about this neologism. Up to this point, I had often seen the more standard use of the letter X to replace a gendered suffix. Think Latinx or Filipinx instead of Latino or Filipina. Maria told me that the X is a NO, a healthy and powerful No to Gender Essentialism, but the ETC in GoddETC is a Yes to Everything, healthy and powerful in a different way. For most of recorded colonial human history, the ETC of Gender is Missing. Women are missing. The Plus More is missing. Not just missing, but erased, squelched, deliberately left out of stories of how culture was built. Cunts are missing.
Inga Muscio wrote, and I'm onboard and I hope you are too, that it does not matter if they are biological, surgical or metaphorical. A cunt's a cunt. (pg 206)
________________________________________
White culture loves to worship and commodify Indigenous knowledge, casting itself as saviors in the process. But when this is not convenient, Indigenous people are caricatured as violent, drunk, a threat. Both obfuscate the real truth of a living, thriving people who have knowledge that the dominant culture lacks and longs for and endlessly seeks to destroy.
A similar pattern plays out with women, and the power of girls and womxn. Call her a Whore on the one hand to justify your violence, or place her carefully on a fragile Virgin pedestal; either way, you are making a small container for something vast. (pg 88)
Not down for comparing the two oppressions this way, especially from two white women authors.
________________________________________
We are, as the placards shout, the granddaughters of the Witches you could not burn. (pg 181)
Let's please put this phrase down. Not only for the whole "Witches weren't burned in England or its colonies" alone, but also for the fact the people who were not prosecuted/executed for Witchcraft held immense privilege as to why they were not, and claiming you're their descendants is not the statement you want it to be. Also, if you want to unpack this even further, the fact vulnerable people were executed and you're separating yourself from them is far more deeply unpleasant than you think (if on the nose for certain people, including at least one entry in this book).
________________________________________
[Performance artist] Phoenix [Inanna] is uncomfortable with the term Middle East(ern), preferring the acronym S.W.A.N.A (South West Asian/North African). She said,
The term "Middle East" centers Western Culture. Middle East to whom? To where? That doesn't make any sense and it doesn't represent our cultures at all, it doesn't show any commonalities. It always puts us in relation to the West. There is always a a Self and an Other and we are always Othered just by using the word "Middle East" so a lot of people have been reclaiming the term S.W.A.N.A. I prefer this because it includes more people that also have links with each other. It includes anyone that was hit by the Ottoman Empire, and that reaches South Asian folks, Turkish people, Iran, a lot of places.
SO I think it's more appropriate to use this term because it draws us together, rather than putting us in relation to our oppressors. (pg 214)
Interesting.
________________________________________
In the most terrible footnote [HP Blavatsky] wrote, "No amount of culture, nor generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Aryans, the Semites, and the Turanians so called. The 'sacred spark' is missing in them and it is they who are the only inferior races on the globe, now happily--owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction-- fast dying out." Vile. H.P. Blavatsky wrote racist things that were picked up and passed around by subsequent generations of "thinkers" trying to find justification for violence and injustice, and ended up in the hands of Nazi "theorists."
So at the end of this book and before the next turn in the cycle, we go back to this haunting question: should we choose to tell her story and keep her alongside other problematic ancestors in order to learn from their mistakes as well as their wisdom, to hold out a little hope for not repeating the same old tragedies against and again? Honestly I'm still not sure. In a season of death these are ghosts we have to reckon with. (pg 236)
This book is really not good with bigots and their bigotry, but at least HP Blavatsky has been dead for over a hundred and thirty years.
________________________________________
She may have sought out a place where she felt the company of fairies, but she kept other loving company close too.
Coleman Smith died in 1921, in Bude, Cornwall, where she lived in a home bought with an inheritance from an uncle. The occupation listed on her death certificate reads "Spinster of Independent Means"...[S]he was not listed as an artist and was making a meager living running a home for vacationing Catholic priests...her estate was willed to her "flatmate" Nora Lake, a reputed spiritualist and Colman Smith's likely lover; the two had been companions for forty years. Although nothing definitive is written about the artist's sexual predilections, she never married, was linked to no men, and spent her time in the company of women, many of them known queers such as the handsome Edith "Edy" Craig, a bisexual suffragist who famously lived in a ménage-à-trois with a straight couple until her death. Craig was also the model for the Queen of Wands in Colman Smith's tarot. (pgs 245 and 255)
Ignoring the troublesome language (not from the authors, from the source they're quoting), that's some truly fun facts about the illustrator of the most common version of the tarot, Pamela Coleman Smith.
Final Grade: D
No comments:
Post a Comment