Happy full moon and lunar eclipse! We hope you’re having a wonderful summer. In this minisode we talk about our recent magical experiences with art, gardening, beekeeping, travel, and new spiritual practices–plus some fabulous witchy recommendations.
Please note: Our use of the terms man/male and woman/female in this and all of our discussions is in no way intended to be trans-exclusive or to reinforce an essentialist binary model of gender. While we often use this language as a shorthand, we recognize, support, and welcome people of all genders.
Our theme song is “Moon and Spruce” by Sarah Little Drum.
Here’s a listening guide for the episode. (For a description of our segments, go here.)
May’s full moon is known as the Flower Moon, Mother’s Moon, Milk Moon, and Bee Balm Moon. (Check out the end of this post for a fun lunar ritual!)
In this not-so-mini minisode we touch on a whole range of topics, including the reframing power of travel (perfect for a full moon in Sagittarius!); the grounding effects of place and heritage; Carnival and the liberation of marginalized bodies; the peculiar magic of royal weddings; fairies, ghosts, and monsters, and just about everything except witches–which is ridiculous, considering our conversations were centered around New Orleans and Scotland! (To make up for it, I’ve linked some witchy recommendations below.)
Our thanks to Sarah Littledrum for providing the theme song, “Moon and Spruce” (she gets a bee-themed shout out from Jenny in this episode!), and a very special thank you to Linda’s sister, Alisha, who rescued Linda’s recording for us when Linda was out of town.
Finally, if you are moved by Linda’s account of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, please consider donating to help the people of Puerto Rico who are still suffering from the damage caused by Hurricane Maria. You can find a list of relief organizations here.
Excerpt: “All the clubs owe a huge debt to the women-led social aid and pleasure clubs. … That image of women being able to be sexy and have a different body type really came from black Mardi Gras.”
Excerpt: “Carnival liberated human consciousness and permitted a new outlook by allowing common people to organize themselves ‘in their own way’ as a Carnival crowd. According to Bakhtin, the basic mechanism by which Carnival achieved its liberating effects was through turning the world upside down, especially by privileging images from the earthly underworld and the lower body, what Bakhtin called the ‘material bodily lower stratum’ represented through ‘grotesque realism'” (99).
*Relevant quote from source above: “Women have traditionally been associated with the senses in Western culture, and in particular, with the ‘lower’ senses. Women are the forbidden taste, the mysterious smell, the dangerous touch. Men, by contrast, have been associated with reason, as opposed to the senses, or else with sight and hearing as the most ‘rational’ of the senses” (Constance Classen, The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender, and the Aesthetic Imagination, 1-2).
Next month (Sep. 6) we’ll be discussing Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. See you then!
Witches in Britches 